First Year

Two girls with identical wide blue eyes clutched their mother`s hands tightly.

"There it is!" The girl on the left whispered in amazement, like a muggle seeing a unicorn, as she pointed to the dividing barrier between platforms 9 and 10. "It really is just on the other side?"

"Shhh, Ray, you`ll tell all the muggles if you don't keep your voice down." The other girl said, her perfect posture making her just a fraction taller than her twin. The two girls stared at the barrier as a fiery haired boy and his sister disappeared into it.

"Who wants to go first?" The girl`s mother asked.

The sister on the right tried to mask her fear, and said nothing. The one on the left sensed this and knew, though her sister was two proud to admit it, that going to Hogwarts was one of the few things Lydia Williamson was afraid of. That, and crickets. Rachel knew what she had to do, even though she was a bit scared too.

"I`ll go. See you on the other side, Lydie." Rachel let go of her mother`s hand and gripped her cart tightly, and, before she could change her mind, charged the barrier.

Lydia watched the older of the twins disappear. Suddenly, she dropped her mother`s hand and she too ran towards the barrier, after her sister.

Platform 9 ¾ was bustling with young wizards and witches eager to get to Hogwarts. The girls kissed their mother goodbye, and Rachel let Lydia be the first to board the Hogwarts express. As Rachel was about to step aboard, Rachel`s mother put her hand on her daughter`s shoulder. Rachel turned around.

"Look out for your sister. You`re the oldest, you`ve got to be the strong and responsible one."

"Yes mum. I`ll be strong, I promise. For Lyd."

"Good." Her mother gave her one last hug, and Rachel joined her sister on the train.

"What was that? Did you have second thoughts and decide you`d rather be a muggle?" Lydia teased, having not heard what her mother had said.

"Yeah, but I figured you`d get expelled without me."

Lydia rolled her eyes. She started to open a compartment, but seeing there were already two older boys with blazing hair and one smaller boy with messy black hair in it, she passed it by.

"You know it`s true, that`s why you`re not saying anything." Rachel said, smugly.

Lydia rolled her eyes, and opened the door to an empty compartment. She gestured to her sister in a 'after you' motion.

Rachel sat down in the compartment, and just as her sister was about to join her, a boy with a toad walked down the hall. Has he come up to Lydia, she said, "Ew!" and accidently bumped into him as she hurried into the compartment, and the toad flew out of his hands.

"I just found him, too." The boy said.

"Do you need help?" Rachel asked. The boy, who was in fact Neville Longbottom, thought she was Lydia going to do something else, and wriggled away after his pet.

A few minutes later, two boys knocked on the door, one with dark hair and skin, and the other sandy-haired boy with a lot of freckles. The latter said, "Can we sit 'ere? There`s no empty compartments left."

"Sure." Rachel said brightly. As the other boy started to close the door behind him, two more people ran up and asked to sit in their compartment.

"Thank you so much. I really didn't want to sit with that Draco boy." One of the girls said. "I`m Hannah Abbott."

"I`m Susan Bones." The other girl, apparently Susan, said.

"Dean Thomas." The dark-skinned boy said.

"Lydia Williamson. Yeah, the Lydia Williamson, the one you`ve never heard of."

"I`m Seamus Finnigan. And you are…?" The sandy-haired boy said, looking at Rachel.

"I`m Rachel Williamson." Rachel said, blushing.

"You two are sisters, I`m guessing?"

"Yeah, twins actually. Identical twins." Lydia said.

"Whoa."

And sooner than the girls would have liked, they were in a small chamber off the Great Hall, waiting, nervously, anxiously waiting, to be sorted. Rachel and Lydia were tightly holding hands.

Seamus, who had become friends with the girls over the course of the trip, turned to Rachel and whispered, "Look! Over there! It`s Harry Potter!"

"Really? He`s in our year?' Rachel stood on her toes, trying to catch a look of the Boy Who Lived. "That`s soo cool!"

Seamus smiled proudly for having spotted the celebrity. A ghost popped out of the wall behind him.

"Ah, Seamus…"

"New students!" the fat ghost boomed. Seamus jumped, and, frightened, he turned around. "About to be sorted, I suppose?"

The first years stood, shell-shocked. Professor McGonagall shooed away the ghosts and led them into the Great Hall.

As McGonagall paraded them past the tables and through the sea of black, gold, blue, yellow, and green, Lydia couldn't help gasping. Overhead, hundreds of candles floated, illuminating the grand room. Both girls knew that in a matter of minutes, they would join the older witches and wizards at one of the tables. Lydia stared at the pointed hat on a stool that was singing, but Rachel just stared at her sister, wondering what adventures this school had planned for them.

When the hat stopped singing, Professor McGonagall stepped forward, unrolling a piece of parchment. "When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted. Abbot, Hannah!"

Hannah from the train stepped forward, and picked up the hat and slipped it on. It fell over her eyes. Her blonde pigtails protruded from the bottom of the hat.

Seconds passed. "HUFFLEPUFF!" The hat barked.

Hannah scurried off to the table bathed in yellow, and McGonagall called out, "Bones, Susan!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!"

"Hopefully they`ll fill up the Hufflepuff section before we get called up. That`s one table I'd hate to sit at.

More people got called up, and soon McGonagall was crying out, "Finnigan, Seamus!"

"Good luck!" Whispered Rachel nervously as next to her, Seamus went pale.

"Yeah…see you soon, hopefully." He stumbled forward, and put on the hat.

Seconds ticked by. What was taking so long? What was going on? Rachel prayed the hat would just say something, anything. After almost a minute, the hat yelled out, "GRYFFINDOR!"

Rachel let out a sigh of relief.

As the sorting went on, Rachel saw two other twins get sorted. The hat had put them in different houses! But…that wouldn't happen to Rachel and Lydia, right? They were the same. Well, almost….

Lydia must have been thinking the same thing, because when the second of the Patil twins got sorted, she turned and gave her sister a confident smile.

Lydia turned back just in time to see 'Potter, Harry' set up and slide the hat on. The boy was tightly gripping the seat for dear life. He was almost up there for as much time as Seamus before the hat roared, "GRYFFINDOR!"

And then, "Weasley, Ron" was walking over to the Gryffindor table. "Williamson, Rachel!"

Lydia hugged her sister tightly, and whispered "I`ll be right behind you. See you at our table!"

Rachel could feel the eyes of everyone in the Great Hall follow her up to the stool. She sat down, and only broke eye contact with Lydia when the hat fell over her eyes. Lydia crossed her fingers.

"Hmm…Where to put you…brave, strong…very loyal and protective….Smart, too…" A voice whispered in her ear.

"I have to protect Lydia. I need to be in her house, please, please." Rachel thought.

"Not necessarily, you know….how about….. GRYFFINDOR!"

Rachel slid off the stool and the Gryffindor table greeted her with applause. Beaming, she sat down next to Seamus, who was giving her a standing ovation.

"Williamson, Lydia."

Now it was Lyd`s turn. "Is that girl your twin sister?" An older boy with bright orange hair asked.

"Yes."

"She`ll probably be a Gryffindor, then, like you. Just like Fred and me." The boy gestured to the identical boy next to him.

Lydia sat down nervously and pulled the hat down over her head. She hoped the hat didn't have lice from all the people who wore it before her.

"Ah, you`re tricky. Very cunning, resourceful… lots of ambition, more than your sister…very determined…smart like her though…and protective…"

"I want to be in Gryffindor with Ray. Put me in Gryffindor…" thought Lydia.

"Are you sure? You`ve got lots more ambition, and with that you could go farther in another house. Is Gryffindor truly what you really want? You could be in your sister`s shadow, and that would hinder your true potential." Whispered the hat.

Lydia was caught between her sister and her apparent destiny.

"I can see your mind, Lydia Williamson. I know you could be great."

"Okay." Lydia though, hoping Rachel would understand. But the hat said Lydia had great potential!

"I knew you`d choose to go on to greater things in SLYTHERIN!" The Sorting Hat bellowed, and Lydia slipped out of her seat and took her place among the Slytherins, and briefly looked up at Rachel, who was staring at her. Guiltily, Lydia avoided eye contact.

Lydia had been up with the hat a few seconds less than Seamus, but Rachel would have never guessed the hat would put her in a different house. Didn't it understand?

"Tough luck, with your twin in Slytherin. I can`t think of a single Slytherin that didn't go bad. Rotten eggs happen." Fred Weasley said. George punched him in the arm.

"Be nice."

"She could be different. You never know…" Seamus said, comfortingly.

"But that`s not lik-" George put his hand over his brother`s mouth.

Professor Dumbledore, the headmaster, stood and spoke briefly before letting them eat some magically-appearing food.

"Do you have any other siblings?" Seamus asked with a bit of potatoes in his mouth.

"No, it`s just me and Lyd. You?"

"None. You`re a pure-blood though, right, if you have a sister in…"

"Yeah. We`re not like the Blacks or the Malfoys, though. I`m related to them, but my parents frankly don't care about blood status."

"I`m half-and-half, me dad`s a Muggle. Mom didn't tell him she was a witch `till after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him." Seamus replied.

Rachel laughed. Seamus smiled content that he distracted her, even just temporarily, from the problem that was Lydia.

Lydia was sitting next to Draco Malfoy and a black-haired girl named Pansy Parkinson.

"….They should just not let them in all together. They`re as bad as squibs and muggles." Draco was saying. "And, for that matter, Hufflepuff. My father agrees" He added loudly, causing some Hufflepuffs to glare in their direction.

A older and scary-looking boy leaned across the table and said, "Ten galleons to whoever can hit Hagrid`s beard with pudding." Malfoy immediately picked up his spoon and started to try and hit the scruffy man`s beard. Once, he almost hit him, but Hagrid moved and it whizzed past his ear.

Lydia smiled and took out her wand. She used a charm her father had shown her over the summer when she had begged for him to teach her spells.

Hagrid saw a cockroach scurry on the table between the bowl of pudding and his plate. He tried to smash it with his fist, but missed and hit the edge of the bowl, launching pudding on his beard and fist. The cockroach scuttled away, unharmed.

At the Slytherin table, Draco high-fived Lydia and the older boy begrudgingly forked over the money. Lydia smiled contently. The Sorting Hat had been right; Slytherin really did bring out her true talent.

After Dumbledore spoke again and they sang the school song, the students filed out of the hall. A Slytherin prefect led Lydia and the other first years out of the hall and to the common room in the dungeons. Lydia smiled encouragingly at Rachel from across the hall, in a 'Things can still be the same, right?' sort of way. Seeing this, Rachel brightened and smiled back in an 'Of course!' way. Rachel and Lydia waved as the parted ways, both wondering if things would ever really be the same. The two girls, deep down, knew the truth, that things wouldn't truly, but neither accepted this.