Lily Potter did not remember the Welcome Feast ending. She remembered little of the details of being herded along with this group of strangers, down several flights of stairs, through increasingly dark hallways. She did not even remember what the entrance looked like.
Her innards snarled and frothed noisily, spasming in a slight ache. It occurred to her then that, despite the world of food that had been at her literal fingertips at the feast, she hadn't eaten a single bite.
"Keep up, you lot," said an older, black-haired girl that Lily guessed was one of the Prefects.
"Like we're not already walking as fast as we can," a girl somewhere behind Lily sighed mutinously. "My feet hurt in these shoes."
"Why are you wearing them?" a boy asked.
"Not my decision," the girl said. "My mum thought I should look smart. She wouldn't have known that these bloody robes go all the way down to the ankle."
"Keep it down back there," the Prefect said. Lily hated her already.
She hated this whole situation. She looked down at her own shoes angrily, feeling the tears start to well at the corners of her eyes again. She blinked them back. She could not afford to be weak where she was going. She could not.
The group came to a halt at the end of a hallway lit with green torches. The eerie light seemed to make the carved serpents pop off the walls and appear to move. It all gave Lily a queasy feeling in the deep pit of her stomach.
Or maybe, again, that was just the fact that she hadn't had a proper meal since that morning.
The wall itself seemed to hiss at them. Several of the students around her murmured uncomfortably.
"God, this place gives me the creeps," muttered one. "Am I really going to have to spend seven years living down here?"
"Doesn't seem so terrible to me," the girl who had complained about her feet earlier commented.
"Well, no, it wouldn't," a boy replied cynically.
"What's that mean?"
"I'm just saying, you seem like the type—"
"Can all of you shut it?" the Prefect asked tersely. "Please? Thank you. I need you lot to listen. I'm about to tell you the password for the common room, and if you don't hear it, you'll be bang out of luck when you need to get back in here yourselves. Password is 'squid eggs.' Got it? 'Squid eggs.'"
There was a clanking, hissing sound toward the front where the Prefect stood near the wall. Lily was too far away to see details, but she did see the end result – the wall shifted aside to reveal a doorway. Wordlessly, the Prefect disappeared into the new space. Lily followed her along with the others.
Soft, percussive sounds echoed through the new, round, green chamber like kernels of popping corn, and it took a moment for Lily to realize that she and the other students were being greeted by applause. Polite, scattered, toothless applause, but applause nonetheless. Most of the students that were already in the chamber were on their feet, and the few that were not, had stood to join the others.
Five seconds later, many of them had gone back to private conversations on couches or reading books alone.
"Welcome to House Slytherin," the Prefect said tersely to Lily and the others that had come down with her. "If you need anything the other students can't give you or you can't get yourself, look for someone with one of these badges. My name's Amarilys Pucey."
And, just like that, she whisked away as if glad to be shot of the newcomers.
Lily stood in the middle of this common room for a moment, while some of the others separated. For all the stories James and Albus had told her about Gryffindor's common room, Slytherin's appeared to be the opposite in every way possibly imaginable.
Red against green, a high tower versus a deep, dark dungeon. A loud, raucous, three-hour party as opposed to three seconds of perfunctory applause. And down here, hardly anyone seemed to be going out of their way to meet their new housemates.
Not that she had earned it or anything, she thought, but she was a Potter. As much as it irritated her at times, she would have thought that some curious person –
But then, a nasty little voice in her head said, they may not much like the Potters down here…
She shook her head. She couldn't think like that, she told herself. All that nasty business that had happened with Voldemort – that was twenty years ago, well before anyone in this room had even been born.
Still, though, it would have been easier… so much easier… if the Hat had just put her in Gryffindor. Even then, if she had no one else, she would have had her brothers. And Hugo. Hugo was up there, too. She gulped against the lump in her throat. He was probably worried about her, probably upset that he couldn't see her. But at least the Hat hadn't done something daft like put him into Hufflepuff. She didn't know anyone in her family that had been Sorted into Hufflepuff.
Unless you counted Teddy, and he'd left Hogwarts years ago…
She started to walk across the common room, furtively trying to catch the eye of some older student somewhere. It had just now occurred to her, embarrassingly enough, that she really, really had to pee – and, of course, she had no earthly idea where the appropriate place was to do so for a Slytherin girl.
Lily Potter, Slytherin girl.
It didn't seem to fit. It didn't feel right. Maybe it wasn't wrong, but…
She didn't understand. Was she not brave enough to get into Gryffindor? Not clever enough for Ravenclaw? Not hardworking and loyal enough for Hufflepuff?
"Why the long face? Don't like Slytherin?"
Lily looked up.
Two girls, both well over a head taller, were looking down at her. One was brown-skinned with a braid. The other was large and rather ugly. Of course, given that she had clenched fists the size of dinner plates, Lily didn't have any inclination to let her know about either of these facts.
"I didn't hear you, 'Princess Potter'," the brown-skinned girl said derisively.
Suddenly, the large girl turned to the other and said, "You can't use that. I made that up."
The brown-skinned girl looked at the larger one with an expression that suggested that she'd just smelled something foul. Or maybe that was just her face. Lily hadn't figured it out yet.
"What's the matter? You Potters too good for Slytherin? Is that it?"
Lily wasn't in the mood for this conversation. "I don't want any trouble," she said, trying to walk around them. (She chose the short corner, walking toward the braided girl rather than the stout one.) "Can we just—"
But she felt a powerful tug at the back of her robes impeding her progress. She stumbled backward.
"Who said you could go anywhere?" the braided girl queried bossily.
With a sigh, Lily tried to walk away a second time, her anger building. She felt the grip on her shoulder this time, and knocked the foreign arm away as hard as she could…
White-hot pain exploded on the left side of Lily's face as something collided with it with little warning. She whirled, stumbled, as stars and flashes popped before her field of vision. The sting gave way to numbness. She heard herself let out a cry; her tongue swept across her lip to check if it was still there. She tasted more than a hint of copper. She felt her eyes watering…
"Want to fight, do you?"
"Immobulus!"
Lily, despite herself, flinched, but the impact she was waiting on never came. Through her watering eyes, she turned and saw the brown-skinned girl trying to charge her, but held in place somehow. Her attacker's eyes darted around in their sockets.
"Bullying first years already? Not if I've got anything to say about it, you're not."
There was little enough space between Lily and her would-be assailant, but the newcomer shoehorned her way in there somehow, forcing Lily back a step. Almost humorously, Lily's first thought was that she was at least fortunate not to be the only redhead in Slytherin. That said, this girl's hair was much different – long, wavy, and a darker shade of red than Lily's own. She was taller than Lily, but not by very much.
"What are you doing here?" the girl that had slapped Lily finally seemed to get some of her range of motion back. Surprisingly enough, she used it to recoil. In fact, unless Lily's eyes were deceiving her, she and the heavyset girl actually looked afraid of this much smaller redhead. No one seemed to be willing to make a move.
"This is my house. What sort of question is that?" the other girl asked.
The brown-skinned girl scoffed. "I know that. I'm not stupid. What are you doing here?"
"Do I have to slow it down for you?" the redhead asked. "I'm stopping you from tormenting our first years. Now – are you going to back off? Or are you going to test me and lose – again?"
Amara's eyes widened like she had seen a ghost. Then her gaze narrowed. Her lip curled and trembled for a moment. A long moment.
But, in the end, she walked away, and the other girl followed.
The redheaded stranger let out a sigh, shaking her head, and finally turned around. Lily was taken aback. She'd been expecting a much tougher face. This girl was blue-eyed and (despite a tightness around her forehead that suggested a very high level of stress) pretty.
"My roommates – Amara Zabini, Marsha Flint," she explained apologetically. "They're not as hard as they look. Just common bullies, really. They gave me a hard time when we all first got here. I sorted them out right around last Christmas. They haven't given me any trouble since. Don't be daft and ask them about it, though. I don't think it's a fond memory for either of them."
Lily didn't speak for a moment. She didn't mean to be rude – but her face and pride still stung a bit, not to mention she hadn't been in a great mood to begin with. To her great surprise (well, part surprise, part shock and dismay), the girl reached into her robes and pulled out a napkin. She gently pressed it to Lily's lip.
"I figured you'd be along soon," she said cryptically. She withdrew the cloth, and Lily caught sight of a spot of deep red on its white surface. "Never imagined you'd end up here, though. How many from your family have ever been Sorted into Slytherin?"
"No one. I'm the first," Lily said.
She wanted to say more, but voice failed her and her eyes started welling up. Ashamed, she tried to look down.
"You're not alone," the other girl said.
"How do you know me?" Lily asked. "What makes me so different?"
The girl frowned for a moment. "You have no idea where the dormitories are, do you?"
Lily shook her head.
So the girl led, and Lily followed. The stairwell began inside what appeared to be inside the carved head and open mouth of a serpent – which, even Lily had to admit, was kind of cool.
Almost as expected, the stairwell spiraled downward like the body of a coiled snake. Green torches lit the walls, giving off their eerie glow.
"You never answered my question," Lily said after a while. "We've never met before, have we?"
"I know whose you are," the other girl said cryptically. At first, Lily thought she'd misheard her. "That's good enough for me."
"'Whose'…?" Lily repeated, confused.
The girl turned around. The green flames caused light to dance across her face for a moment. "You're Lily Potter," she said simply.
It made Lily angry, almost immediately. She'd always had a strange relationship with the Potter name. She loved her family dearly – her parents, her brothers… but being a Potter almost felt like she never got the chance to earn anything. Not anyone's respect, not anyone's friendship… not even anyone's hate. Everything she had, both good and otherwise, seemed to be because her parents were Harry and Ginny Potter.
And she never felt right about that.
"You don't have to baby me because of who my father is," she finally said.
"It's got nothing to do with your father," the girl replied. After Lily gave her a disbelieving look, she added, "Okay, maybe so. Maybe a bit. But…"
"You don't want to treat me any differently because of who my father is?" Lily asked, half incredulous, half confused. Her next thought – and it was probably an awful thing to think – was to ask the girl if she were Muggle-born. Not that it meant anything significant – but a Muggle-born teenage girl probably wouldn't have known much, if anything, about the wars. All the wizard children heard from their parents and grandparents, who had lived during those times. And by the time Lily and her generation came along, it was all over.
"Not because of your father," the girl replied.
Lily thought this strange – but then, Lily had several well-known relatives. The Weasleys were famous in their own right: her mother, aside from being Harry Potter's wife, was a former Quidditch player and Daily Prophet correspondent. Her grandmother had killed Voldemort's most skilled and dangerous duelist in single combat. Two of her uncles were well-known businessmen. Another one was one of Britain's most highly regarded names in the field of dragon research (and had been one of the better Seekers Hogwarts had ever seen in his day).
"I know your brother." The girl saved Lily the trouble of trying to figure out which of her family members was the reason she had come to Lily's aid. "James."
That hadn't quite been the answer Lily was expecting. "Is James important?"
It sounded like a harsh question, perhaps even a cruel question, for a sister to ask about her own brother – at the same time, Lily would have had no idea what, if anything, could have made James well-known aside from being Harry's son. He was a rather skilled Quidditch player, Lily remembered – but that alone couldn't have been the reason. After all, he played Chaser for Gryffindor, and this was House Slytherin…
The girl looked down at her shoes – no, her feet. She wasn't wearing any shoes, and Lily had just noticed that…
She smiled and closed her eyes for a moment, almost as if she had slipped into a daydream and found it pleasant. Then, suddenly (and, if Lily was being honest, unnervingly) her blue eyes snapped open and she looked straight at Lily. She had obviously thought something, but obviously thought better of saying it.
"Anyway, if there's anything you need," the girl said instead, "don't be afraid to knock on my door."
"I don't know which door is yours," Lily replied. "I don't even know your name."
The girl didn't answer immediately, but continued down the stairs, which Lily took as a wordless invitation to follow. After a few awkwardly silent moments, they came to a stop between two doors. The girl looked to the one on Lily's right. On that door, was a small portrait of a witch. She seemed familiar; Lily thought she might have seen her on a Chocolate Frog card or something. Above it was, in almost script-like print, "THIRD YEARS." The 'S' had a long, ostentatious tail that underlined the whole phrase. Lily spent a split-second wondering about the point of this before it hit her that the final letter was supposed to be stylized to recall a serpent.
"My name's Brynne," the girl finally told her. "Brynne Walter."
Lily felt her eyes widen almost despite herself.
Brynne must have noticed the expression, because she asked, "Has he said anything about me?"
Lily only recognized the name due to an accident of sorts that had happened over the summer. James spent several weeks after the last term ended in a funk, often not even emerging from his room. He was silent and almost sullen at dinner, always looking like he had something or other on his mind. Even the few smiles Lily had managed to coax out of him had been forced, fragile, and had disappeared within a second or two. Eventually, their father either had pity on him or got tired of his wet-blanket attitude, and sent him off to London for a week to live with Uncle George, Aunt Angelina, Freddy, and Roxanne. Unusually neat and diligent with his chores over the summer, he had forgotten to empty his trash before leaving. It was there, as she followed Albus and took the opportunity to snoop, that she found, in the small trash can, torn pieces of parchment – one of them with the introduction, "Dear Brynne". It appeared to have been a letter he had intended to send, before deciding to scrap it. Clearly there were things he had wanted to say to her, things he had perhaps kept to himself for the whole summer…
"Not really." It wasn't Lily's job to pick up after James; after all, she had quite enough troubles to be going on with now.
Brynne's lips pursed for a moment. Clearly, she had found Lily's reply disappointing. Still, though, she reached out and put a hand on Lily's shoulder.
"Do try to make friends with the other Slytherins in your year," she suggested. "We're really not all bad."
Lily let out a sigh; for as long as she had carried the wish to join her brothers in Gryffindor, she was a Slytherin now. Might as well make the best of it.
"I will… but what if they're… you know…"
She then, a bit furtively, used a descriptor she was sure neither of her parents would have liked to hear her saying. The half-smile of a naughty thrill crossed her face. Brynne, far from telling her off, actually looked to be slightly amused.
"You've always got me, then," she said. "But between us, I don't think any of the girls in your room look half as tough as you."
She opened the door to her room, gave Lily one last parting grin, and then shut it behind her.
It didn't take long for Lily to make her way down to the first year witches' room; there was only one direction to go, after all. She raised her hand for a moment to knock; and then she realized that she lived here. Without further hesitation, she opened the door.
Whatever conversation had been going on inside the room – if there had been any conversation – ended the instant she appeared.
Then, rather hilariously, a loud, sonorous, feline "Mrrrrowwwwww," filled the room.
A ginger cat darted out from underneath the only empty four-poster bed, and attempt to climb up Lily's robes before Lily had mercy on her and lifted her off the ground and into her arms, where she let out contented purrs.
"I think she's scared of all of us," one girl droned in a depressingly monotone voice.
"No, I think she's just scared of you," another girl commented.
Both girls had hair of darkest black, a bit like her father's and Al's. But one was quite, quite pale-skinned… borderline ghostly, in fact… and the other had smooth, brown skin and hair that went nearly down to her waist.
Lily recognized the first girl from the Sorting as Ophelia Bode.
The other, whose name she'd forgotten, was presently dismounting from her bed. Lily felt a tinge of envy. Her hair was almost mesmerizing. Lily had never seen locks this long, dark, and pretty. It was so long, it moved almost independently of its owner, like the train of a cloak flowing in the wind.
Lily wondered how many Galleons she (or her parents) spent yearly in hair products to keep it that well-maintained. It looked like a job – that was for sure.
"I'm Parveen," the girl said. "So that's your cat. What's her name?"
"Fiamma," Lily replied.
"Ginger, like your hair," Parveen commented, smiling brightly. Now addressing the cat, she said, "Here, girl, I won't hurt you…"
Fiamma seemed to trust Parveen – or at least, she trusted the safety of Lily's arms enough to lay stiffly and silently as Parveen petted her. The truth was in her eyes, though – and, like Lily, she wasn't quite sure about all these strange people yet.
"Lily Potter, right?" Parveen asked. Lily nodded. She smiled warmly. "Both my parents were in Gryffindor when they went here, too. But I've got one older brother in Gryffindor and then an older sister in Ravenclaw. So my family's all over. I'll bet the Hat puts my little brother in Hufflepuff just to make everything even."
Parveen, Lily thought, must have had a big family. "How many brothers and sisters do you have?"
"There's four of us," Parveen replied. "Dathan, Madhari, then me, then Dinesh. He's nine."
"It'd be kind of cool to grow up with brothers and sisters so close to your age," another girl remarked. She had been silent thus far, but Lily looked in the direction of the voice to see a girl with brown hair sit up from her bed.
"Are you an only child?" Parveen asked.
"No. I've got one little brother – Mason," the girl said sadly. "He's only three. I already miss him…"
"Three? Wow," Parveen remarked. Lily could barely remember the last time there had been a baby that young in her family, and she had quite a few cousins. The youngest one, if she remembered correctly, was Uncle Percy's daughter, Lucy. Lily remembered getting to hold her as a four-year-old – her first time ever holding a baby. That would mean that Lucy was about seven now. She hadn't seen her in coming up on a year.
"Yeah," the girl that had been speaking sighed. "I'll be long gone by the time he comes to Hogwarts."
"So, Ophelia," Parveen asked. "What about you?"
Ophelia's reaction was unexpected. She looked away from the rest of the girls. "I don't want to talk about it."
In fact, she promptly pulled the covers over herself. Then, seemingly knowing that the other girls were watching her, sat bolt upright, displayed her wand for a moment, and magicked the predictably green curtains around her four-poster. Rather forcefully.
Parveen's smile faded a bit.
"What was that about?" Lily whispered.
"No idea," Parveen answered.
At that moment, there was a thump at the door. Both Lily and Parveen jumped. Lily turned around and found herself nearly staring in the face of Amarilys Pucey, the Slytherin Prefect.
"Lights out," she said tersely. "You lot have a big day tomorrow."
And she exited just as quickly.
"Am I the only one starting to not like her?" the last girl, whose name Lily didn't remember right off, asked.
Lily racked her brain, trying to remember who it had been that had been Sorted into Slytherin before her…
"Karyn, right?" Lily asked.
"Right in one," Karyn replied, grinning. "Parveen and Ophelia didn't remember."
"I'm bad with names," Parveen protested. "At least I was in the neighborhood."
"Must have been some big neighborhood," Karyn answered, the smirk of acid humor on her lips. "'Karyn' and 'Kimberly' don't sound a thing like each other."
Lily grinned.
She was going to fit in here… okay, she supposed.
Albus
"Slytherin…" a boy near Albus repeated to himself for what seemed like the hundredth time. "I can't believe she got Sorted into bloody Slytherin. What's the Hat playing at, doing something like that? We've never had anyone sorted into Slytherin. Ever."
Albus watched his younger cousin nearly pulling his reddish-brown curls out of his head.
Albus spoke:
"Well, we'd never had any Ravenclaws, either, until Victoire got Sorted there," he remarked. "There's gotta be a first time for everything."
Almost predictably, this wasn't much comfort to Hugo Weasley. Victoire was almost nine years older than Hugo, and the two weren't very close.
"I don't see how you're so calm," Hugo answered. "This is your sister we're talking about, Al."
"I know," Albus replied. "That's why I know she'll be fine."
"You're completely sure about that?"
Both boys turned toward Scorpius Malfoy, who was sitting at the end of the couch. Albus visibly cringed.
"What makes you say that?" he asked.
"I mean…" Scorpius seemed uncomfortable taking this conversation where it was going. "It's just that… any other year, I'd agree with you. This year, though… after everything that happened…"
"It's all wrong," Hugo said shakily, sounding close to tears. "Lily's supposed to be here, in Gryffindor, with us. Slytherin's for… for…"
"For what?"
An older voice cut into the conversation. Albus, recognizing it, looked up.
Albus Potter sometimes had to remind himself that his brother, James, was not even a year and a half older than he was. The fourteen-year-old had grown suddenly to where the difference between he and Albus was nearly a head. He had passed up their mother a while ago, and was now almost tall enough to look their father in the eye. While Albus had retained a tamer version of their father's jet black hair, and Lily their mother's straight red, James's hair, now that it was longer, looked like neither. It was a shade of dark brown, neither mother's nor father's, and landed somewhere between Dad's messy wildness and the curls you could see in Gran's hair if you looked hard enough. His face was serious, contemplative… Albus found it sad to look at. He somewhat missed the lively eleven-year-old that liked to needle and torment him, but never quite enough that it hurt, or that Albus ever thought he was hated.
"Who's Slytherin for?" James repeated. Hugo, while not around them as much nowadays, obviously noticed the change in James's demeanor, too. Albus could see an uncomfortable grimace forming on his younger cousin's face.
"Well, it's…" Hugo stammered. "You know…"
"I know there are some gits in Slytherin, sure," James replied. "But there's types like that in all the Houses."
"Didn't one of the Slytherins try to kill a Professor last year?" asked Hugo. "I heard Mum and Dad talking about it."
"What you've got to understand about that is…" James looked ready to argue – but he closed his eyes and appeared to visibly bite his lip, going silent for a moment. "It's more complicated… it's all more complicated than that. Trust me. I don't like that Lily's by herself in Slytherin. But if anyone can handle it, it's her."
"Haven't you heard any of the Prefects?" Hugo asked. "They said the Professors are doing everything they can to keep the Gryffindors and Slytherins away from each other. We don't even have any double periods with them this year. I don't know, I'm just worried… no one in our family's ever been a member of Slytherin House before."
"Slytherins won't hurt one of their own," Scorpius suddenly said, very strongly. "Even if they don't care much for any of the other Houses, they're loyal to each other, at least. Sometimes too loyal."
"How do you know all this?" asked Hugo.
"My whole family were Slytherin," Scorpius explained. "I was the first one to get sorted into Gryffindor."
Hugo tilted his head. "Who are you, exactly? I never got your name."
"Scorpius," Scorpius answered. "Scorpius Malfoy."
Hugo's eyes widened. His jaw unhinged. He stood from the couch very slowly, eyeing Scorpius with a suspicious expression.
Then he ran away.
Albus's own jaw came undone for a moment as he fished for something to say. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) his brother had just the phrase to break the tension.
"Well, that was awkward."
"Don't worry," Scorpius sighed calmly. "I'm used to it now."
And he trudged off toward the dormitories.
Albus sighed. He knew he would have to convince Scorpius for what felt like the hundredth time that someone in the family didn't absolutely hate him. Still, he had an opportunity to talk to his brother alone, which was more than could be said of any point in the past several weeks. Rose, ever the introvert, had all but avoided the welcoming party for the new Gryffindors once Hugo was safely in the tower. Sylvia, shockingly enough, had retired early, complaining of a headache and a fever. Albus hoped she was alright.
"You know something, don't you?" asked Albus finally. "Something the rest of us don't. I mean… you were there that night. The night Neville…"
James tried to act like he hadn't heard the question. He started to wander away, but encountered a rather large human roadblock. This roadblock was named Eamonn Temple, and he was a sixth year Prefect known for being both burly and surly.
"Prefects need this space," Temple said. He was pointing with his chin at the couch where Albus was sitting. He made to step toward it, but James stood in his way.
"Al was here first," he said.
"It's just the first day, Potter – it's too early for you to start being difficult," Temple said impatiently.
Albus decided to solve the problem himself.
"It's fine," he said, standing.
James seemed to disapprove of this. "Al, don't –"
"I was headed up to bed anyway," Albus replied – not a complete untruth. But two more minutes on a couch by himself wasn't worth the wrath of a Prefect – or James getting into a duel with a Prefect before classes even started. James had the on-edge bearing of someone waiting for a good excuse to shoot off a couple of hexes. He hid it well, but Lily's being Sorted into Slytherin clearly upset him – even if he believed everything he was saying about her. She was strong. She could handle it. But neither of the brothers liked that she had to.
As Albus backed away from the couch, he watched as James and Temple exchanged long, distrustful stares. Then James finally walked away.
Albus's dormitory was already full when he arrived, all the other boys on or around their red-curtained four-poster beds.
Rowan Lester had hair down to his shoulders in golden-brown waves now, and appeared to have grown several inches over the summer. He was scribbling furiously on a long roll of parchment with his quill. Albus, in a brief moment of panic, thought he might have been finishing up an assignment Albus had forgotten. But then it occurred to him – classes didn't even start until tomorrow. Heck, he didn't even have his schedule yet. (Who was teaching Herbology with Neville gone? Albus didn't remember anyone ever saying…)
Desmond McLaggen was shifting his trunk under his bed. He stood up to his full height; he had always been bigger than the other boys in his year, and the passing time had only served to accentuate that difference.
"Potter," he said rather cordially, although he looked too busy for more conversation.
"So – who's the novel for?" another boy asked. Albus assumed Stephan Vaisey, who was on the other side of the room, was talking to Rowan. Albus, save for the first few weeks of first year when no one knew each other very well, had always given Vaisey a wide berth – wider, even, than the large, overly boisterous, and slightly intimidating Desmond McLaggen. He was not sorry that their beds were arranged on opposite sides of the room. There was something… not quite right about Vaisey, particularly since a nasty incident last year when he was beaten bloody by a pair of older Slytherin boys. "Lester? You ignoring me?"
"I'm concentrating," Rowan replied in a brutally honest fashion. Clearly, whatever he was writing was several degrees more important than Stephan Vaisey at the moment.
"I hear you've got a new girlfriend," Vaisey remarked. "That for her?"
"She's not my girlfriend," Rowan answered very matter-of-factly.
"She'd better not be," Vaisey said, sounding threatening. "Her kind aren't good for you."
"Her kind?" Rowan stopped with the letter and looked up and across the room at Vaisey. There was a moment of tense silence. Then Rowan scoffed – almost disdainfully, in fact. "God, listen to yourself."
"Hold on a second," McLaggen uttered. "Did I miss something? Who are we talking about here?"
"I forget her name… it's the snake from our year. Midget redhead. Weird," Vaisey explained distastefully and with as few words as possible, as if even speaking of the girl was tantamount to uttering a string of horrible swears.
"Brynne Walter," Scorpius said suddenly. Albus winced; he didn't know if it was a good idea to keep helping Vaisey out.
"Yeah, that one," Vaisey said, the scowl never leaving his face. "You and her and her mother all showed up at King's Cross together."
"That wasn't her mother," Rowan said, now putting his quill down.
"Some relative of hers," replied Vaisey. "So if Walter's not your girlfriend, what is she? You two long-lost cousins or something?"
"Could be," Rowan replied very sincerely, shrugging. "I don't know all my family tree on my dad's side. Only my Uncle Flynn and some distant relative that was Minister of Magic for a year. It's complicated."
"She your godmum or something?" McLaggen queried.
"No," Rowan sighed, kneading his forehead in annoyance. He obviously didn't feel like explaining, but realized he would have to if he was to be left alone. "Short version is, my uncle and I ended up in Brynne's hometown after some… stuff happened. He got hurt, so Brynne's aunt thought it'd be better if she brought Brynne and me to King's Cross together instead of him having to make the trip."
"So, who's worth… what's that – five feet of parchment?" McLaggen took an aside glance at an unfurled roll that looked nearly as long as any of them were tall. "Who's the letter for?"
"It's for the Headmaster," answered Rowan, as if third years wrote long letters to Headmaster Flitwick every day.
McLaggen looked ready to ask, but then apparently decided he didn't want to know. He flopped back on his pillow.
Albus finally trudged over to his own bed. "Hey, Scorpius…"
"Forget it," Scorpius replied, not looking up from his copy of Quidditch through the Ages. "It's like I said, I'm used to it by now."
"I'll talk to him tomorrow," Albus promised.
"It's fine," Scorpius said, although his tone betrayed him. "It's not like I'll see him around a whole lot. He's only a first year."
"…He's also Rose's little brother," Albus pointed out.
"…And?" Scorpius queried. "Why's that matter?"
Albus's reasoning was something stupid, like keeping harmony amongst his friends. Rose wouldn't be happy if Scorpius and Hugo were at loggerheads. Then again, Rose wasn't happy with Scorpius half the time, anyway.
Albus changed out of his school robes and climbed into bed. At some point, the thoughts that circled around his head started melding together.
The loud twittering of birds somewhere outside prompted him to open his eyes.
Golden-orange light poured into the room, illuminating the tiny specks of dust floating in the air. Seeing the dust seemed to make Albus's body react; his nose twitched without permission and he let out an almighty sneeze that caused his head to throb for a few moments.
Looking around the room as his eyes focused, he quickly realized that he had been left behind. He went to dress himself in his school uniform. His pants were painfully tight around his waist. He felt awkward in the clothes, which were barely a month old. Both he and James had emerged from the summer too big for any of their old robes or uniforms, and had needed the whole lot replaced.
Maybe after a few days of wearing them, Albus thought, they'd be broken in and not feel quite so stiff.
He emerged from his dorm, across the path of a witch, and the two knocked shoulders.
"Ouch—"
Albus, nearest the stairs, teetered dangerously for a moment before a pair of hands righted him.
"Sorry, sorry…" the girl said, not sounding fully awake yet, before letting out a yawn. She closed her eyes and rubbed one. Then she opened both. "Oh. Morning, Albus."
"Morning," Albus replied at a mutter. A mad thought went through his head for a brief moment, but he quickly suppressed it.
She might have seen the cogs working in his brain, though, because she made a face.
"You alright?" she asked. "Hey."
Sylvia snapped her finger a couple of inches from the bridge of Albus's nose.
"Wake up," she said, grinning.
"Okay?" Albus inflected strangely. He'd meant to ask 'are you okay?' but some of the words got lost somewhere between brain and mouth. "I got worried when you went to bed early."
"Worried?" she repeated. "That's sweet of you."
Albus felt the fire of a thousand suns light up on his face. "Uh… I… yeah, I mean… it's not like you, to just skip out on a party like that."
"…I don't know," Sylvia sighed. "It's been a few times this summer. Maybe I'll go see Madam Pomfrey if it happens again. We should probably go. We're already late."
She darted down the stairs.
"Yeah…" Albus replied to absolutely no one.
He caught up with Sylvia at the bottom of the stairs leading to the common room, and just into its entrance, he passed by two girls.
"I heard he's not coming back as long as Flitwick's Headmaster," one of them said to the other.
Albus, somewhat feeling like he might regret this in a moment, queried, "Who's that?"
They both turned and registered a moment of shock. "Hi, Albus," they both chorused, smiling much too identically for two girls who weren't twins or even sisters. Albus found it a bit unnerving.
"We were just talking about Professor Longbottom," one of them replied.
Albus had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Nina Edgerton and Elizabeth O'Connell were the other two Gryffindor girls in Albus's year, who roomed with Sylvia and Rose. Both had the reputation for being gossipy hens… which might have been mildly useful to figure out what was going on around the school, if half of the information they parroted wasn't completely wrong. He had half a mind to go over there and correct them, but Sylvia was waiting on him and they were already late, so he decided against it.
"How do you deal with those two?" Albus asked once they were on the stairs from the tower down to the Great Hall.
"Tune them out, mostly," Sylvia answered. "…So, I hear that Wenster codger's going to be our Acting Head of House until Longbottom gets back?"
"I guess so," Albus replied.
Sylvia frowned mutinously. "Brilliant. I never liked him."
He's not Neville, that's for sure… Albus thought silently as Sylvia suddenly seemed to realize something.
"Hold on… who's teaching Herbology, then?" asked Sylvia.
"Not sure," Since Neville was a friend of the Potters and Albus's godfather, Albus knew rather more than most about Neville's new baby and leave of absence. What he wasn't sure about, however, was who was going to be taking over for him while he was gone.
"About to find out, I guess," Sylvia reasoned. Quickening her steps, she said, "Let's hurry before we're any later."
Albus wasn't exactly a couch potato, but he always felt out of shape trying to keep stride with Sylvia. She was a fast runner, as adroit on the ground as she was in the air. They were nearly to the Great Hall when, approaching a corner, Sylvia pulled up short.
"Sylvia?" a tall, Black man emerged, carrying a rather large bundle of something wooden slung across his back. "What are you doing here? Haven't you heard the rules? You're not supposed to be out in the halls on your own."
"I'm not," Sylvia protested. "I was with…"
Thankfully, Albus was able to catch up in the next couple of seconds, so as to not make Sylvia look like a liar in front of her father. He didn't look either in the eye, though.
"Oh. Albus. How are you?"
"Alright," Albus said laconically, still looking at his shoes.
"What's in the bag?" asked Sylvia.
"New brooms for the first years," her father replied, smiling. "Governors finally gave us the go-ahead. Cleansweep Twelves. Pretty good condition."
"Cleansweep?" Sylvia replied, doing a bad job of hiding her disappointment. "What happened to the Firebolts?"
"Governors thought Firebolts were a bit much for first years to handle," he replied with a conceding grimace. "And the original one isn't exactly new. I was in third year myself when that broom came out. Anyway, I've got to go set up. First lesson's actually at ten. They've moved them up this year. See you around?"
Albus, his head still down a bit, didn't see Sylvia's father leaving.
"What's with you?" asked Sylvia a moment later. Albus gave a noncommittal murmur. The only thing that would have been more frightening to Albus than explaining to Sylvia's father why he couldn't look him in the eye, would be explaining it to Sylvia herself.
Albus had heard it said that dreams gave some insight into one's waking thoughts – or, rather, they were centered often around the waking thoughts that one worked the hardest to suppress. That thought terrified Albus. He had therefore kept them a secret.
"You're alright, right?" Sylvia asked. "You're not afraid of going in here?"
Albus found himself irritated at such an idea. Did Sylvia really think he was that much of a coward?
Did he deserve for her to think that?
"I ate in the Great Hall just fine all last year," he said.
"Okay, just checking. But you're more out of it than usual today," Sylvia noted. "We should—"
"What's this?"
An old wizard had just emerged from the Great Hall doors, wearing robes of black and scarlet. He was tall and thin, with darting, alert green eyes that belied his advanced age. Whereas some aging men went out of their way to resist the ever-encroaching specter of baldness, Professor Lucan Wenster appeared to have embraced it. His somewhat narrow head was shorn bald and so well oiled that the light reflecting off his pate made Albus squint. A strong chin was evident even under a scruff of white that never seemed to grow into a full beard, yet never seemed to go away, either. His expression was stern, serious, and cold – that is to say, completely normal for Professor Wenster.
"You're supposed to be inside the Great Hall eating with your schoolmates, not dawdling around outside," he said sharply.
"We overslept," Albus tried to explain.
"You both? Overslept?" Wenster asked, his alert, green eyes darting from student to student as if he'd already made up his mind that Albus was lying. "Hmm. Funny coincidence, that. Five points each will get you out of bed earlier, I think." Sylvia's mouth opened at this announcement. "If you're caught, it'll be fifty each and several detentions. You've got my word on that."
He trudged away, muttering something about "put 'em in separate towers altogether" that Albus couldn't fully decipher.
"He's so…" Sylvia started to complain, but then she stopped. "Wait a second. 'Caught'? What did he think—"
"…What?" Albus finally asked Sylvia. Clearly, she understood something he didn't. When she looked back at him, though, it was with a bit lip and red cheeks.
Distractedly, she said, "Yeah, we should probably go in. Don't want him coming back and actually trying to get those hundred points off us…"
Albus was bewildered. Whole Houses only put together three or four hundred points when everything was said and done. A hundred was a bloody lot to be taking off two students this early in the term, let alone two students in one's own house. Exactly what had Wenster thought they were doing?
Albus and Sylvia finally crossed the threshold into the Great Hall, and what Albus saw there made his heart drop just a bit. There was virtually no change from the welcome feast the night before. The tables were still arranged by House, with the banners of each House overhanging them.
Sylvia frowned. "At least they haven't put walls between them, I guess…" she commented as she skulked toward the left side of the room. Albus followed silently.
It was not long before they caught sight of Rose and Scorpius. They were sitting together, but not speaking. In fact, there was a noticeable frostiness in the area when Albus approached. And Rose (as per usual when she didn't feel like talking to people) had her nose in a piece of parchment.
"Where were you?" Rose immediately exclaimed once she caught sight of Albus.
"I overslept," Albus sighed. Rose's glance immediately switched to Sylvia.
"What are you looking at me for?" she asked, rather defensively.
"Nothing," Rose replied – but there was a suspicious edge in her voice and an askance look in her eye. "They brought by the schedules while you were dozing off."
"You've got all four electives and chorus, I'm guessing?" asked Sylvia.
"What are you, mad?" Rose replied. "Divination and Arithmancy are the same block, anyways. I'd need to… turn back time or something."
"Not to mention you're a rubbish singer," Sylvia chuckled. Albus smirked, and even Rose angled her head in concession. Sylvia took the schedule from in front of Rose. Immediately, a loud groan escaped her. "Oh, god, why?!"
"What is it?" Albus asked, unfurling his own schedule, which Scorpius, looking a bit distracted, had handed him. There, he saw it – third years had Transfiguration first with Wenster. Right after that was History of Magic.
"Wenster and Binns first thing?!" Sylvia cried, pointing at the offending lines. "It's like the Monday morning schedule from hell."
"It's already Monday morning," Scorpius finally said. "Not much you could do to make that worse."
"They sure tried," Sylvia sighed.
"We've got Potions after lunch," Albus remarked.
"Good for you, maybe," Sylvia answered. Out of the four of them, she was the one that struggled with Potions the most. It wasn't that she wasn't bright. Sylvia had done quite well in Defence last year, happened to be good at Charms, and was more than fair in Herbology. She just couldn't be arsed with the sort of detail it took to make one a masterful Potion brewer.
"Double Charms and Defense this year," Scorpius pointed out. "Both with Hufflepuff."
He looked up from his schedule and then vaguely toward the Hufflepuff table, on the other side of the room.
"Who are you looking for?" asked Sylvia.
"Just trying to remember who the Hufflepuffs are in our year," Scorpius said. "We're not really around them that much, are we…?"
"The Macks are in our year," Sylvia answered. With a dark expression, she added, "Thought you of all people would remember that."
Twin brothers Andrew and Alexander both played Beater for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team and gave Sylvia, Scorpius, and Albus's brother James no end of headaches – some of them literal. They also had a sister, Adriana. The Macks were triplet siblings – a fascinating rarity in the wizard world.
"Lilith Cross," Sylvia awfully pointed out. Rose made a face. Sylvia noticed. "What's that, Rose?"
Rose stammered, realizing she was caught. "N-nothing. I just still don't understand why she was allowed back after what she did."
"After what people said she did," Scorpius remarked. "We never found out the whole story, did we?"
"You're awfully quick to defend her," Rose said. "There's a fire in the Great Hall at the end of our first year, and Lilith Cross suddenly disappears from Hogwarts? I don't understand why you can't put those things together."
"You know what'd be a lot easier?" Sylvia suggested. "Maybe if we just ask her what happened…"
"Oh, because I'm sure that'll go over well," Scorpius snarked. "'Hullo, Lilith. You remember two years ago? You don't happen to remember setting the Great Hall on fire and trying to off all of Hogwarts, do you?'"
"Maybe you should talk to her about it," Sylvia remarked. "She seems to like you for whatever reason."
"Like me?" Scorpius repeated incredulously with a scoff. "We hardly know each other."
"Maybe we should leave her alone," Albus suggested. "Maybe she wants to be left alone."
"She didn't sound like someone that wanted to be left alone," Scorpius said. "Don't you all understand anything about…" he trailed off. "No. No, you wouldn't."
Rose glanced at Albus for a moment, an expression of obvious bewilderment on her face. She opened her mouth, presumably to ask Scorpius to explain himself. She must have decided it wasn't worth the argument, though, because she promptly closed her mouth and went back to her parchment.
"You can tell Hugo I won't suck his soul out if he gets too close, by the way," Scorpius added several moments later, prompting Rose to look up from her parchment in shock. Scorpius did not meet her eye, though, and had already gone back to his food.
The two didn't talk for the rest of the morning, and Albus had no inclination to try to make them. Sylvia, on the other hand, was trying to overcompensate for the silence by greeting every single acquaintance she passed by in the halls. This finally got Scorpius to speak, between their first Transfiguration class (where Sylvia had lost another five points for Gryffindor – probably for looking too happy) and History of Magic.
"How do you know so many people?" he asked.
"Because I actually talk to them," Sylvia replied. She didn't see Scorpius's eye roll, though, because she was too busy gamboling across the hall to accost a young boy. "Gil! There you are!"
The young boy, a sandy-haired Gryffindor, looked up at Sylvia with a mixture of surprise and bewilderment. Much more bewildered was the other Gryffindor boy next to him, who seemed confused for a moment before he realized that Sylvia wasn't talking to him.
Sylvia's face fell. "You don't remember me, do you?"
"You've met all the first years, too?" asked Scorpius as he and the others approached.
"Just this one," Sylvia answered.
But Gil shook his head. "I don't think I know you." The first thing Albus noticed – it was hard not to, really – was Gil's heavy Irish accent.
"You know me," Sylvia reassured him. "It's been a while. I think… five years? We were small tots last time we saw each other."
Albus could see the moment where the lightbulb went on inside young Gil's head. "Sylvia. That's right. I thought I saw your dad at the staff table. He works here now?"
"Yep. Flying instructor," Sylvia answered.
"Which is in ten minutes for us, by the way," the other boy mentioned. Gil grimaced.
"We've gotta go," he said. "Catch up later?"
"Sure," Sylvia said, and the two boys ran off.
Albus felt old suddenly, realizing how towering he and his third-year classmates must have looked to these two boys on their first full day of Hogwarts. He hadn't remembered being quite that tiny in first year, either…
"So you knew him from before Hogwarts?" Albus asked as they started towards Binns' classroom again, none of them all that anxious to arrive.
"He's my godfather's cousin's son," Sylvia answered. "I've only met him once or twice, back when we were both really little."
"Godfather's… cousin's… son," Scorpius tried to repeat. Evidently, he couldn't make sense of it.
"So you all know my dad," Sylvia said. It wasn't a question. "His best mate's my godfather. That's my Uncle Seamus. Uncle Seamus lives in Belfast and owns a business with his cousin, Fergus Reed. Gilbert's Fergus's son. Simple enough?"
Scorpius nodded halfheartedly, which seemed to satisfy Sylvia.
Albus, not for the first time, felt a pang of envious admiration for the girl. She seemed to make talking to other people, even those she didn't know well, look so easy.
Albus had a hard enough time working up the courage to talk to her.
"Albus, you're walking slow," Sylvia called from the front of the line. She was walking backwards and speaking to him.
"Uh, Sylvia –" Scorpius tried to warn, but it was too late.
"Oi! Watch where you're going!" grunted a Hufflepuff in one of the older years. Sylvia had backed into him and nearly caused him to lose a stack of books that was up over the bridge of his nose. Albus silently registered the hypocrisy. Sylvia did as well – although not so silently.
"You see me, don't you?" she exclaimed indignantly as the Hufflepuff kept walking, his high stack of books teetering dangerously in the air. Albus got away from what looked like inevitable disaster. "No, of course you don't."
Scorpius and Rose had kept walking without them (although separately). When Albus turned around, Sylvia was right next to him.
"C'mon, you," she said. "It's time for our morning nap."
"We're going to History of Magic," Albus pointed out.
Sylvia smirked wryly. "Exactly."
And she took hold of his wrist, half-dragging him through the Hogwarts halls.