Rook eyed the foreign dishes before her dubiously. There were copious amounts of meat she had never before encountered and had not previously considered to be edible, such as steak and kidney pie, blood pudding, and jellied eels. If she were being entirely honest with herself, she still would not consider many of these things to be edible, despite their being devoured before her eyes. Feeling somewhat squeamish, Rook helped herself to any vegetables she could locate and thought longingly of tofu stir-fry.

Rook looked over at the Slytherin table at Madeline conversing with a pointed-faced blond boy beside her. Rook recognized him as the terror-stricken boy who had run into her on the Hogwarts Express. He looked as though he had recovered, and seemed to be giving an animated retelling of their encounter with the Dementors, miming his collapse on the train. Her eyes drifted elsewhere about the Great Hall and fell upon an Adonis at the teachers' table. A paragon of what Rook could hardly believe was human, his eyes were velvety dark and mesmerizing, his black hair flowed gently to his broad, masculine shoulders, each perfect lock gleaming beautifully in the candlelight. He seemed uninterested in the feast and merely glared conspicuously at fellow staff member Professor Lupin. His expression was nothing short of murderous.

"Hey," Rook nudged the boy next to her. "Who's that teacher with the black hair and… nose situation?" The boy looked up from a forkful of peas and minced meat at the indicated teacher and shivered.

"Th-That?" he squeaked. "That's the Potions Master, Professor Snape… I don't like him. No Gryffindors do."

"The feeling is mutual," interjected a sandy-haired boy sitting across from them. "He takes points off our house at any and every opportunity."

Rook turned back toward the round-faced boy, but instead met the familiar-looking face of a red-haired boy in his place. "Oh!" she exclaimed, staggering at his alarmingly vast grin.

"'Allo! Did you miss me?"

"What are you…?" asked Rook hesitantly. "Uh… do I know you?"

"Didn't I see you on the train?"

"Um, did I see you?"

"I thought I made an impression, yeah…" the boy said, clearly disappointed.

"Oh!" Rook exclaimed. "Fred! You look just like Fred from the train! But... Did you somehow get, um... better-looking since the train ride?"

The boy laughed, then spoke to the student on Rook's other side. "Wow, I like this girl!"

Rook turned and jumped, thoroughly startled by the appearance of an identical red-haired boy where a red-haired second year girl had been sitting. Rook was quickly becoming overwhelmed by the sheer amount of redheads at one table.

"George, you great git!" snapped Fred, distinctly irked. "You screwed up the joke!"

"It's not my fault my rugged good looks give me away."

"She's obviously confused! Everyone knows I'm the good-looking one."

"No, I think I got this," Rook interjected. Rook's eyes traveled between the two boys comprehendingly and she tapped her temple with an air of great importance as she continued, "I am quite the detective, you know. Twins?"

"You can tell us apart?" asked Fred, somewhat suspiciously.

"Can't you?"

"With extensive analysis of context clues, we usually manage well enough," Fred answered.

"Yes, Fred and I are not amateurs when it comes to detection, either!"

"So, y'all are gingers and twins," Rook observed with a smirk. "You're a couple of real freaks, aren't you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Fred and George replied in unison, identical smug expressions aimed at her. Rook giggled.

"We may or may not work for the Devil," Fred winked.

"Any good benefits to that gig? I've been thinking about a part-time job."

"How about the benefit of my company?" answered Fred flirtatiously.

"Hey!"

"Oh, all right—our company."

Rook gave Fred an appraising look. "Anything else?" she said at last, looking away with exaggerated indifference.

Fred clutched his chest melodramatically and said, "That was harsh, Rosemary."

Rook winced. "Please don't call me Rosemary..."

"What should we call you, then?"

"Parsley?"

"Sage?"

Rook laughed again, noticing she had been doing a lot of that. "I like to go by my last name," she explained.

"'Rook'?"

Rook nodded.

"How dreadful," said Fred. "Don't they eat carrion?"

"Sounds like a foul fowl," quipped George, lifting his eyebrows at Rook in such an absurd expression, Rook snorted with laughter as she went to drink her pumpkin juice.

"Don't give me that! You guys eat this stuff!" Rook spluttered indignantly, indicating the dish before them. "What's in this, anyway?"

"Ooh, faggots!" exclaimed Fred in delight, pulling the whole dish toward him and using Rook's fork to shovel the mystery meat into his mouth.

"Only all the best parts of a pig. You know, heart, liver, fatty belly meat," answered George, still laughing at Rook's unintentional brush with death by pumpkin juice. "You need a life saver?"

"And you think carrion is gross?" Rook rolled her eyes. "And you laugh now, but drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury or death worldwide!"

"I'm dead serious, Rook," Fred contributed soberly, "I mean, if you need mouth-to-mouth or—"

"After shoving pig hearts and livers into your mouth? I'd rather drown, thanks."

"Fair enough." George smiled back at Rook, his brown eyes twinkling.

There was a brief lull in conversation as George and Rook's eyes met. Rook looked away shyly. "I have one, you know," she plowed on determinedly. "A rook, I mean. I got Mahakala instead of an owl. And she's as brilliant as any owl!" added Rook, a bit defensively.

"Then how come you've missed our birthday for the last fifteen years then, eh?" Fred interrupted obtrusively. "Either you or Machakalaka has been dropping the quaffle."

"I'll do better next time, sir," Rook responded with a little salute. "By the way, when is y'all's birthday? I know, but I want to make sure you know, you know?"

"April first," they answered together. "Yours?"

"That's a tough one," she said, only half joking. Rook did not know when she was born, as she was adopted. Her biological mother had left her on the doorstep of a children's shelter in Houston when she was about five years old, and she remembered nothing about her mother or her life before she was taken in as a ward of the state. Increasingly, Rook wondered about her biological parents, and one of the primary reasons she had abandoned her comfortable life with her adoptive family in the United States was to find a magical means to retrieve her early childhood memories. Was her mother a witch? Was her father a wizard? Were they from the United Kingdom originally? Is that why she had been accepted at Hogwarts?

This, however, did not seem like the time to try to explain why she did not know her exact birthday. Besides, Rook still celebrated her birthday. Her adoptive mother had a biological daughter, Artemisia, who happened to be born exactly five years prior to the day Rook was found at the door of the shelter. Sia and Rook celebrated their birthdays together on December twenty-fourth and, although they looked vastly different, Rook thought of Sia as her twin sister.

"Come on, Rook," George wheedled. "We told you ours. You have to tell us yours. It's the rules."

"Yeah, how are you supposed to give us presents for your birthday if you don't remember when it is?"

"Excuse me? When do I get presents, hm?"

"Tsk! Can you believe this one? She has a lot to learn about our traditions on the other side of the Atlantic!"

"You're lucky you've got us!" Fred put his arm around Rook forwardly. This annoyed her somewhat. George looked as miffed by his brother's advances as Rook felt.

"Then why do I feel as though I just caught something nasty?" she asked coolly, shrinking away from Fred. He frowned.

"I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with those Slytherins you were hanging out with." To Rook's relief, Fred withdrew his arm. "I wouldn't know what you do in your spare time with Slytherins, but I'd imagine you're bound to catch something. George, do you want to go back to our seats?"

"Not really, no."

Fred's displeasure seemed to be escalating. "Come on," he insisted.

"You're not conjoined, are you? George can sit where he likes."

"Why are you being so uptight, Rook? We were having a good time and you have to get all serious."

"I'm still having a good time," Rook shrugged. "Sounds like your problem."

Just then the mostly-consumed main courses were replaced with desserts. Rook felt a pang of guilt. Maybe she was being too harsh? She had a tendency to get defensive, particularly when it came to boys, but… Fred seemed mostly harmless, and he and George were nice to her… Rook played around with the new selection of food in front of her and dished out a bowl of raspberry ripple ice cream, dribbled cherries jubilee over it and topped off the confection with crushed walnuts. When she was done, she pushed it toward Fred and held out a spoon.

"Peace offering? I'm sorry I got 'all serious'. I vow to leave a buffer of utter absurdity from this point onward."

"No thanks. I'm allergic to nuts."

"That's funny, because I'm not," George informed Rook. "I'll have it, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," said Rook kindly. Well, I tried, she thought.

Rook and George continued to talk and joke until the desserts disappeared. Fred remained beside them, but was resolutely petulant and sullen, and, when they were released to their common rooms, Fred dragged George out of sight while Rook searched the crowd for Madeline.

Rook caught up with Madeline, who looked uncomfortable at being approached. Several Slytherins shot Rook contemptuous looks as she passed. "Hey! Looks like I'm Gryffindor after all," Rook grinned. "Does that mean you have to disown me?"

Madeline smiled lamely. "Don't take this the wrong way, Rook, but I'm going to the Slytherin common room, and you're not supposed to know where that is, so..."

"Oh... Oh, right," Rook faltered. "Okay. Well, I'll see you around?"

"Don't you need to go with the first years to the Gryffindor common room? You should go."

Madeline rushed off to join a group of Slytherins who leered at Rook as she turned to find her fellow Gryffindors across the Great Hall.

But by the time Rook had fought the crowd to the other end of the Hall, she had already lost them.