A/N: Sorry for the wait. I was writing a chapter for another fanfiction, and it took a long time as the chapter was much longer than usual. So, this one is Sally-Anne Perks and I hope you enjoy my version of her, as all we ever get of her is McGonagall calling "Perks, Sally-Anne!" to be sorted in the first book, and nothing after that, not even what house she ended up in.
Come on. If the last name is Perks, they've just got to be in Slytherin. xDD
It was drummed into her from the moment she could understand it. To be a Slytherin – a real Slytherin, a true Slytherin, the most Slytherin Slytherin of all. Though Sally-Anne's surname hadn't always been Perks, her family was an ancient one, one that had been particularly close friends with the Slytherin family in the age when Slytherins still existed. Their family was one of the first that chose to send their children to that new school Hogwarts, created by four foolhardy young witches and wizards, as the older ones called them. It would fail within five years.
But as Sally-Anne knew, it didn't. It continued, and with it, it's houses. So to be Slytherin was still drummed into every Perks child's mind.
We are a family of true Slytherins, real Slytherins, Slytherins that could never be fake. Remember that when you are scorned because your family isn't as rich as the Malfoys. Remember that when you are scorned by other Slytherins because your family was neutral instead of supporting the Dark Lord Voldemort, because going neutral was the most sensible and Slytherin thing to do.
You are a Slytherin.
And Sally-Anne was proud, very, very proud. She was a Slytherin, a Slytherin from a very old family of Slytherin, and she let everyone know – not by boasting about it, of course, which was only something a foolish Gryffindor would do, but just by being Slytherin.
Oh, they had thought her anything but at first; her classmates had thought the Sorting Hat had made a horrible mistake when she flounced to the table, happy and perky and annoying down to the tips of her toes. And the fact that her initials. excluding her middle name, combined to make the word "SAP" didn't help much either. Years after that, some of them would sometimes ask her if it was horribly embarrassing, acting so fake and perky like that all the time. Sally-Anne always said no; by being conspicuous she was being Slytherin, but no one outside of her house would ever understand.
It still made Sally-Anne smirk whenever she recalled the memory of them being led to the Slytherin common room. At once she had stopped chattering and giggling and smiling, as an instant change was wrought over her. Her blonde ponytail somehow seemed less bouncy and bright, her eyes not as big, her face not as round. They had all stared at her; Theo, Draco, Vincent, Gregory, Pansy, Daphne, Tracey, Millicent, and Blaise, every one. Blaise just opened his mouth a couple times, stared at her, and asked, "What the hell happened?"
Sally-Anne's blonde ponytail indeed seemed much less bright and bouncy. Now it seemed modest and pale blonde. Her supposedly big eyes had shrunk; they were now slits where glinting dark brown eyes hid. One could never think her face had seemed round, because now it was pale and oval shaped.
It was like the cheerfulness had been sucked out of her, revealing cold, dry remains.
Sally-Anne had just smirked. "No," she said, "the Sorting Hat did not make a mistake." Then she had slunk to the first year girls' dormitory, leaving her year-mates speechless.
"That's one Slytherin," Theo had whispered, shaking his head in awe.
Millicent just gaped. "If she keeps up that fake perky personality in the Slytherin common room and dormitory too, as well as classes, I think I shall be dead before the year is out."
After that, Sally-Anne had been given a bit of a space, a bit of respect, for she was the Slytherin in their year, and no one could deny it. Not Draco Malfoy with his tons of money; not Pansy Parkinson, with her extreme blood purist parents. The signs of a very Slytherin Slytherin weren't two well known stereotypes, because that wasn't Slytherin. One could just tell, by observing them, like Sally-Anne. No one could have mistaken her for, say, a Hufflepuff. No matter how Hufflepuff-ish the name sounded (something Pansy had pointed out while Tracey, Millicent, and Daphne stifled their laughter) it was, after all, the personality that mattered, not the name.
And as Pansy had said, she was the Slytherpuff, not Sally-Anne, and Sally-Anne had no damn right to take that position from her.
At that point Millicent was in hysterics and at that Sally-Anne smirked.
At the end of first year, Sally-Anne had come home and told her parents how everyone outside Slytherin thought she was a one-dimensional girl who was always giggly, annoying, and perky to the point of one could be giggled to death by her.
Her parents had praised her and told her to continue being the true Slytherin she was.
It was all Sally-Anne had really, the title of Real Slytherin or True Slytherin. When that's all you have, you cling to it tighter than anything else, especially when you consider being such a thing very significant, while Sally-Anne did. In her life, she had nothing else to do but be Slytherin, the best Slytherin one could be.
In Theo's words, that was an Old Slytherin. The Slytherin stereotype of today Theo had dubbed, predictably, New Slytherin. Though Sally-Anne had some respect for Theo, she couldn't help rolling her eyes at this. Salazar Slytherin would not have approved – it was much too obvious, not to mention a bit boastful, as if Theo had coined those phrases, he obviously would consider himself an Old Slytherin.
Besides, in Sally-Anne's point of view, Theo had missed the point entirely. The Slytherins of today were hated and feared for being blood purists, maniacal, evil, influential. And what was wrong with that? Sure, Sally-Anne wasn't a blood purist, she definitely wasn't evil (though she might seem like it), and she definitely wasn't a maniac. But it was an advantage – because non-Slytherins (and indeed, even some Slytherin-types) thought Sally-Anne was all this, she was feared. She gained power from the non-Slytherins' determination for her not to have power, and reveled in it, though the revelry was only in her mind and did not show on the outside.
And because of the blood purists side of the stereotype, there was also Voldemort support guaranteed, too. It was good to let it be known that Sally-Anne was neutral, because then she'd constantly be watched and wondered about. She's neutral, not on either side. Will she turn to the Light? Will she turn Dark? She's in Slytherin, she'll probably support Voldemort! But she's neutral, and every follower Voldemort gains is a count against us…
Yes, it was the best choice to be neutral. Most Slytherins in her year were, though at the end of seventh year they had been forced to reluctantly switch to Light when the war came to Hogwarts, because if they didn't fight, then they would be thought Dark, and Sally-Anne knew she and her fellow Slytherin year mates most certainly were not Dark. Laughable to think such a thing, really.
Sally-Anne remained a true Slytherin, even in the final battle against Voldemort, the Battle of Hogwarts as it had been dubbed. Her opponents, most of them former Slytherins themselves, had disgusted her. At that moment she had to agree with Theo's perception of New and Old Slytherins, for once, because some of those Death Eaters were the Newest Slytherins she could see. They tackled her because she made herself seem helpless and giggly, only in it so that she could boast later about being in the battle and making it out alive due to ever so supreme talent.
Most of them didn't count on the shallow looking teenager to be the type to use nonverbal spells at once, then smirk at them. Sally-Anne hoped they were left – or died – with the thought of having seen a true Slytherin, a real one.
Sally-Anne left Hogwarts rather sad, as chances of using her shallow and perky persona would soon become few and far between. One couldn't always count on using them for job interviews, depending on what you were trying to get employed for. For example, what was the point of using the perky persona if one became a potioneer? There was no point, no point at all.
That wouldn't stop her from still being a real Slytherin, though. No, Sally-Anne would continue to be a true Slytherin, the truest Slytherin of them all.
A/N: Constructive criticism appreciated.