AN: I hope you have all learned a valuable lesson about believing anything I promise you ever with regards to a posting schedule. Also, I'm the worst, and I'm sorry. Have a Lysander! Twin coming soon. Ish.

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

Eleven-year-old Lysander Scamander bit back a groan. Hufflepuff? Why Hufflepuff of all places? He pasted a smile on his face as the Hall applauded, but inwardly, he was grousing.

C'mon Lorcan. You're plenty smart enough for Ravenclaw. Why'd you have to be such a do-gooder?

But his brother was clearly nothing but excited to be joining the badgers, so Lysander tried to be excited for him. Lorcan flashed him a double thumbs up as he passed, and Lysander returned it only a bit half-heartedly.

"Scamander, Lysander!"

Lysander had traveled all around the world in his short eleven years of life. He had experienced countless cultures, lived with more different groups and tribes and communities than he could keep track of for weeks at a time, and if there was one thing he had learned, it was that some things were universal. Every group of kids left to their own devices would eventually start chasing a ball around. Dads around the world told the worst jokes ever conceived. And everyone, everyone everywhere thought it was just hilarious that Lysander's name rhymed.

As he mounted the stone steps to the predictable sounds of stifled giggles, he couldn't keep from glowering just a little. Thanks, Mum and Dad, he thought darkly. His time at Hogwarts was already off to a great start.

And now he was headed for Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff! All because his brother was the most friendly and outgoing bugger in the entire world.

It wasn't that Lysander didn't value hard work and loyalty. But loyalty should be earned, not just handed out to everyone left, right, and center. And hard work was only worth it if it gained you something in the process. Lorcan was far too idealistic. Lysander could only hope that all Hufflepuffs wouldn't be the same. Hopefully someone in his house would share his sense of practicality.

Then the Hat shifted on top of his head and yelled out "SLYTHERIN!"

Lysander froze. "What?" he said, but no one heard him over the cheers and applause.

"Up you hop, my boy," Professor Flitwick said when Lysander didn't move from the stool. "Off to the Slytherin table with you."

"But I-I can't," he stammered, at a loss for words. He sought out Lorcan, the one person in the room who looked as shocked and stricken as he felt.

Never, he had never- they were twins! They were twins, they had spent their whole lives together, no matter how much their world shifted and changed, Lorcan was the one constant. He was always there, at Lysander's side. There had to be a mistake. He couldn't be in a different House than Lorcan! It didn't make any sense!

Lorcan snapped out of it first. "It's okay!" he said, not that Lysander could hear him. But he could read his lips. He knew what his brother was saying. "It's okay, go on." He couldn't help but notice, though, that as his brother was saying it's okay, he was shaking his head no.

But Lysander knew he had to move or risk looking foolish in front of the entire school, so he staggered to his feet and stumbled across the Hall to the green table.

His numb confusion lingered through the whole meal. He didn't say a word to anyone, and he barely tasted his food. And when the meal was over and Headmistress Sinastra had finished her welcome address, he let himself be herded out the door and down to the dungeons, not attempting to find Lorcan in the crush of students. He didn't think he could handle whatever optimistic outlook Lorcan would try to convince him to cling to.

His sense of self-preservation shook him further out of his fog. He woke up enough at the entrance to the Slytherin Common Room to know he had to pay attention to the location and the password, because if he didn't, he'd have to ask another student to help him, and then he'd have to explain why he hadn't remembered in the first place.

So he memorized the length of passageway almost indistinguishable from any other length of passageway, and dutifully recited back the password - semper incrementum - and followed the other Slytherin first years into their new Common Room.

The room calmed him, and that was a surprise. But the view out the huge towering windows across from the doorway that look out into the depths of the lake was soothing, the gentle movement of lakeweed in the underwater current and the hint of water creatures darting in and out of view was mesmerizing. He didn't know anything about Hufflepuff's Common Room, but the thought of living in a tower had always made him vaguely uncomfortable. He had always despised heights. So there, at least, was a silver lining.

But as they were escorted to their dormitories, Lorcan's absence became more and more tangible. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be with his brother.

He waited for the five other boys to choose their beds, then took the one that was left. He unpacked his trunk carefully and in silence, while the others chattered away around him. They all knew each other already, but he didn't know any of them, eliciting yet another dark Thanks, Mum and Dad in his head.

His parents were famed magizoologists, which was why he'd grown up traveling the world, being dragged along with them as they searched for rare and dangerous creatures. Lorcan loved it. He already wanted to go into the family business as soon as he was done at Hogwarts, but Lysander was less sure. He'd never really enjoyed bouncing around from place to place all the time. Nothing ever felt permanent, nothing ever felt routine or normal. Lorcan always said that what they had was better than normal, but Lysander had never been able to figure out if he agreed.

Because if his life, his childhood, had been normal, maybe he'd know one or two of these boys. Maybe he'd have grown up with them. Maybe he wouldn't feel so alone and out of place now.

He could feel a tense prickle at the top of his spine, always a sure sign that he'd have nightmares tonight as he fell asleep. He could practically feel the bad dreams creeping up on him. He hated the nightmares. He hated that he had no control over them.

Luckily, he knew, there was a creature, a magical guardian spirit called the Filica who kept nightmares at bay. His mother had told him about her years ago, back when Lysander had been plagued by night terrors. There was even a special song to summon her. Lysander had never seen the Filica himself, but whenever the dreams had gotten too bad and he'd sung the song, the Filica had brought his mother to him to soothe the fear away.

He'd asked his mother once why the Filica didn't appear herself to help him in the night. "Because I'm here," she'd answered. "And it takes less energy for her to summon me than to chase away the dreams herself. But if I ever wasn't here, she would protect you." So Lysander knew that he'd be safe tonight even if the dreams came for him.

Or - would he? It suddenly occurred to him that this was a boy's dorm, and it was under a lake. The Filica was a female spirit of air. Maybe she wouldn't be able to get it. And if Hogwarts had other guardian spirits to take her place, he'd never heard of them. Surely, he thought, surely one of the other boys here was nervous, too. Surely asking about the Filica wouldn't call attention to his own nerves.

It was funny, the instants you could pinpoint later in your life. The moment in time you could look back on say, That one, there. That decision changed everything. Lysander would remember forever the hot burn of shame and anger that consumed him as the five boys sharing his dorm laughed at and ridiculed him. He would remember forever the sleepless night he spent, lying, seething behind the heavy green curtains, forcing himself to stay away because he would be damned if he let those boys get the jump on him as some kind of "joke," and he'd be damned if he let himself have a nightmare in front of them.

The first magic he learned at Hogwarts wasn't the Levitation Charm, and it wasn't how to change a match into a needle. It was a Silencing Charm, and he taught it to himself so that if he woke up screaming, no one would hear.

It taught him well, that experience. It taught him that no one could be trusted, not mothers who spun lies as if they were real things or fathers who let it happen or brothers who somehow grew up into completely different people even coming from the same experiences. And if mothers and fathers and brothers, if family, couldn't be trusted, then what more could he expect from teachers or classmates or boys who shared his space?

No, he realized with hardened resolve as he stared up at his bedcurtains after a full two weeks of ridicule, the only person he could truly rely on was himself. So he and he alone would figure out a way to make them all back off, until he could escape everything that made him odd, and finally, finally, be normal.

This is the Lysander from A Lot to Learn, and I wanted his moment in this project to look at the "betrayal" that defines him for the next six years. I struggled a bit with this chapter, because I wanted a scene that stands on its own, but doesn't completely rehash what I've already explored in A Lot to Learn. But basically, at his core, Lysander just wants to be normal. He wants a normal family and a normal child, and he wants it even more strongly when he realizes the full extent of his oddity. The conclusion he ultimately comes to is that if he can't be normal, he can at least be seen as normal, a mindset that leads to him distancing himself from his brother and joining in on the ridiculing of his mother.

Lorcan's piece, which I hope to finish soon, will bookend this idea and give resolution. In the meantime, you should really go read A Lot to Learn because it will flesh out the brothers quite nicely.