Charlotte lay in her new bed, unable to get any sleep. She was so used to being in the same room as Georgia while sleeping. It was odd, she didn't know anyone in here. Luna was a Ravenclaw in the year below her and Neville's in Gryffindor and a boy, thus making it impossible for her to berated with any of her newly acquired friends or her sister. During dinner nobody even acknowledged her presences, Charlotte didn't think she'd be making friends in her own house anytime soon. Caught up in her thoughts, Charlotte didn't notice her eyes had shut until she opened them, only to see her housemates scurrying around getting ready for the first day back.
"Hurry up Prewett, we haven't got all day!" snapped the blonde, who slept int the bed next to her, as she pulled her grey jumper over her head and left through the door. Presumably to head down to the Great Hall for breakfast.
"Okay, I'm coming!" Charlotte yelled after the girl and quickly gathered her own things. Grabbing all her textbooks, seeing as they didn't have their timetables yet she figured she'd take them all to be safe, and shoving them into her satchel. She pulled on her uniform and hopped out the door trying to tie her shoe at the same time.
o0O0o
Last night Georgia slept like a log, admittedly though, it did take time to get to sleep at first. She knew Charlotte didn't take it well when sleeping in a separate room to her, let alone the other side of a castle! The new Slytherin woke up only to find that everyone in her dormitory had already left.
"Great, first day of school and I'm already being ditched." Georgia huffed as she pushed her glasses up her nose and took her time getting herself dressed. She wore her uniform but decided to add a few things to see how much she could get away with (she'd heard from her cousins that the school wasn't terribly strict on uniform as long it wasn't anything inappropriate). Instead of robes, which she had never liked anyway, she put on her big, floppy, black cardigan and she may have taken a centre meter or five from the length of her skirt. Come on! She just really didn't suit the to the knee look. Once she deemed herself appropriate enough to be seen by other living people, which also included brushing her long hair and twirling it up into two buns below her ears, Georgia strolled into the common room. Only to find the rest of her year level was still there… they appeared to be waiting for something.
"Prewett, finally! What kind of time do you call this? We've been waiting, breakfast has well and truly started and everyone else has gone!" Came the voice of the brown haired, brown skinned boy she'd met on the train, as he pushed through the small crowed of people to get to her.
"What are you talking about?Why are you all waiting for me to go to breakfast?" Georgia looked around for some kind of explanation, but received none.
After a moment silence, everyone moved out of the way as the stuck up blonde boy, also from the train, made his way over to her. "Slytherins always stick together. We arrive everywhere as a untied front, especially in the Great Hall."
"Look, if you wanted me to go with you all to breakfast, maybe, ad here's a novel thought, maybe some one should have said something last night or, I don't know, woken me up!" Georgia began her rant in a calm tone which quickly fell apart to show her anger at her housemates. Most of the people in the room winced as she raised her voice and moved out of her way when she stormed out out of the room. This forced even else in the room to follow to keep up their 'untied front' façade.
Reaching the Great Hall, Georgia essentially leading the Slytherin in, she sat at the end of the table. The rest of her year following suit.
As the blonde boy sat next to her, Georgia groaned. "Ugh, why do you even have that rule, Blondie?" she asked him as she pulled a small black leather notebook out of her pocket and began to write.
"Most people from the other houses dislike us on the grounds that we have some shady alumni that have done some pretty bad things. You know, like the Dark Lord, Gellert Grindelwald and, of course, Salazar Slytherin himself. So people from the other houses have taught their kids to be the same, to hate us. Those kids then corrupt the minds of the Mudbloods and Halfbloods alike." The Pureblood ranted to his new found… acquaintance.
"What are you writing in there?" He asked as he realised she wasn't giving him her undivided attention. Georgia snapped the book shut as he tried to look over her shoulder.
"None of your business." She turned away from him looking around for her sister. Unable to find her she began to worry, then the fifth years of Hufflepuff arrived and began to eat. However, Georgia could still not see Charlotte in the crowed. Then, a loud thud came from the Entrance Hall.
o0O0o
"Ouch! I'm so sorry, I swear I didn't mean to knock into you! Sorry!" Charlotte scrambled to help the second year Ravenclaw up off the floor. "Are you alright? Did I hurt you?"
"No, no. I'm fine thank you." The Ravenclaw boy dusted himself off and made his way over to his friends without another word.
Charlotte walked to the Hufflepuff table and sat down next to a boy wearing a yellow badge telling the whole school he wasn't to be messed with, he was a prefect, and she nervously began to make her morning coffee. Sipping on her daily dose of caffeine she scoped out the table across the hall, searching for Georgia. Making eye contact with her twin, silently beckoning her over, away from the snarky looking blonde boy who was telling her something he clearly thought to be very important. Georgia, recognising Charlotte's nervous expression, walked from her place at the Slytherin table, past the Ravenclaws to where her sister sat at the 'Puff table causing a majority of the hall to openly stare at the Prewett twins.
"Coffee? Really, already? Where's the rest of your breakfast? Wait, let me guess, 'Coffee counts as breakfast, Georgia!' I'll tell you what though Char, if you don't eat properly you're only going to make yourself sick!" Georgia began the same old lecture the two have been having since the time Charlotte first started drinking coffee.
"Yeah yeah, whatever." Charlotte huffed and put a piece of toast on her plate, then turned and hugged her twin, "You love me really, George!"
"Hey! What are you on about cousin!? That's not George, I am!" Shouted a Weasley twin, still in his pyjamas and a red knitted jumper with an obvious 'F' on the front. "You must be bonkers!"
"What are you on about? I'm George!" Came a voice from the identical boy next to him, only with a 'G' on his jumper, standing up to the same height as his twin and the two started arguing about who was George. Charlotte smiled as Georgia turned to her.
"I'm heading back to Slytherin, make sure you actually eat that piece of toast. Okay?" Georgia stated firmly and Charlotte only nodded as her sister walked away.
"Hi, my name's Charlotte." She said to the prefect boy next to her after she'd built up the courage to talk to him. "And you are?"
"Ernie Macmillan." The boy spoke stiffly as if trying not to show any expression but failing to cover up the slight fear in his eyes as he watched Georgia walk away. "Uh, nice to meet you…" He quickly turned back to his friends. Charlotte collected her timetable from Professor Sprout and headed off to the Charms classroom to make sure she wouldn't be late on her first day.
o0O0o
Once Georgia was back at the Slytherin table she grabbed herself a bowl of cornflakes and put a piece of toast on her plate. She looked around at the table, trying to find the only spread she truly loved on toast. "Where the hell is the Vegemite?!" Her voice raised in shock and annoyance.
The third boy she met on the train, the one whose hair couldn't decide whether it wanted to be blonde or brown, laughed at her outburst. "What's 'Vegemite'?"
"Only the best thing ever. It's a salty spread that you can put on almost anything, it's also the only thing I like on toast." Georgia was rambling at this point and more or less talking to her self. "I'll have to get mum to order some from home… We'll never find it here… Then I can have it all to myself… One jar should last me the semester… I'll have to write to her tonight."
Snape soon came around handing out their timetables, and stopped at Georgia. "I hope you won't be late for your first class at Hogwarts, Miss Prewett. I do not take kindly to tardiness."
Georgia quickly looked down at her timetable and saw she had Potions first, "I'll see you there, Professor." As the Professor walked away she let out a sigh of relief. "I hate England so much some times! If I was back home at my school I'd just call him… what's his name again?" She looked back at the parchment in her hands. "That's right! I'd just call him Severus."
The Slytherins looked horrified, calling a teacher by their first name was basically blasphemy! Georgia sighed again and left for potions making the students also in her class follow along still clinging to their ridiculous rules.
o0O0o
Thinking back on her day Charlotte noticed a reoccurring theme: whenever she sat down in class the rest of her house would sit as far away from her as possible. She also took note that through out the day Zacharias Smith could be seen glaring at her. Before dinner she decided to put away her books and then make her way to the Great Hall. Charlotte was just about to leave the common room when she was forcibly spun around then shoved to the ground.
"Ow, hey! What the hell?" She shouted and looked up to see Smith and every other 'Puff from fifth year and up standing over her.
"Who the hell do you think you are, Prewett? Coming here with your skank sister and stuck up brother, how can you even think of yourself as a Hufflepuff?" Smith asked harshly, though Charlotte felt it was more of a statement than a question.
"What are you talking about, Smith? I don't understand, what's going on?" She asked, her head still reeling from the fall.
This time Hannah Abbot, the blonde who'd snapped at her this morning, stepped forward. "W'e're telling you to go back to where you came from you stupid bitch! You're going to have to find somewhere else to eat, you're not welcome at our table." And with that, the students left the common room for the Great Hall.
Charlotte stayed sitting on the floor until what Smith and Abbot had said to her sunk in. Tears began to fill her eyes before they spilt down her cheeks and soaked into the dull grey of her woollen jumper. What had she done to deserve this from the people she was meant to be friends with? Pulling herself up off the floor, determined not to let them get to her she left to find a new table to sit at.
Arriving at the Great Hall she suddenly felt her nerves coming back. What if no one else let her sit with them? What would she do then; she couldn't skip meals, Georgia would be furious!
Steeling her nerves Charlotte stepped through the large oak doors. First she looked over to the Hufflepuff table, then turned and walked confidently towards the students clad in red and gold. She sat in the space between Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, across the table she could see her cousins staring at her in shock.
"What are you doing here, Prewett?" Came the harsh whisper of Ronald Weasley. "You should be at your own table!"
"Hey! Come on Ron, Charlotte's your cousin. You don't need to use her last named you certainly don't need to interrogate her for sitting with us!" Harry said to Ron, having grown somewhat fond of Charlotte over the holidays. To have someone stand up for her really made Charlotte feel better about what happened.
"Thanks Harry." She turned to him with a bright smile lighting her face.
"Anytime." He smiled back.
Spending dinner with her new friends and family made her feel confident about being around Smith and his gang of 'Puffs. Still she nervously made her way back to the common room after pudding.
o0O0o
Spending an entire day with Pureblooded Slytherins was tiring and Georgia was feeling smothered by all the bias and prejudiced views of her classmates. She was planning on telling them about her own blood status, but the more she heard from them the less she thought it wise. It also didn't help that the whole house had made assumptions of her blood status because of the wand she carried. It was a 12 and a half inch wand with a Dragon Heartstring core, but that wasn't where the assumption was, it was the wood. Her wand was made from Elm Wood, and many years ago a wizard made up some sort of rumour that only purebloods could use Elm wands to prove his own status. This is obviously not true, she the perfect example, but it's clear that some people still believed in it.
At dinner, just like breakfast, Georgia looked around for her twin; not seeing Charlotte she began to worry again. Surely she'd not gotten lost, Charlotte's always been good at not getting lost, even in places like this. She leant over to 'tall and handsome' next to her, "Hey, can you see Charlotte anywhere?"
"Yeah, she came in and sat with Granger, Potter and the Weasels. Why anyone would sit with that lot over their own house is beyond me, just a bunch of Mudbloods and Bloodtraitors if you ask me." Answered the boy she was beginning to remember the name of. Georgia was sure he had the initials BZ, but couldn't be certain.
Checking over the abundance of red at the table farthest away, hoping to see any sight of yellow and black. Just as she was about to give up and search outside the Hall she saw the cluster if Weasleys and sitting in between Hermione and Harry was Charlotte. Sighing with relief Georgia finished her dinner and went back to the common room with the rest of her house.
Sitting on the rich leather sofa Georgia pulled her small leather notebook from her cardigan pocket, conjured a black pen and started to write. Draco Malfoy, blonde, 5'11", self-important…
