Chapter Fourteen

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Selena made her way into the Great Hall for breakfast the next morning. She held her head a little higher than she had done before as she walked the corridors, the badge on her chest giving her identity and further confidence. However, as she crossed the threshold of the large room, her heart began to flutter in her chest, and suddenly, the badger emblem did not seem to offer as much comfort.

She could see him, sat there alone at the Gryffindor table, staring into the bowl of cereal in front of him. He was lonely, but he would not invite anyone else to sit with him, or approach them; that was something Selena knew her brother would never do. Some people may think he was too proud, but she knew the truth; he was too scared.

The girl wondered for a little while whether or not she would be too sorely punished for going to sit beside her brother for a couple of days, until he found some friends of his own. After all, some of the professors here had taught generations of children, and had been children at these tables themselves a long time past; they would surely understand her concern for her brother being so lonely.

No longer caring if she would be punished for it, Selena walked down to the Gryffindor table and took a seat beside Teddy, tapping him on the shoulder to let him know she was there. He looked up briefly, not really caring, before looking down again. However, it was only another second before he looked up again, his face lit up with happiness at the sight of his twin.

"Lena!" he exclaimed, wrapping his arms around the girl. Chuckling slightly, she held him just as close. It had only been one evening that they had been apart, not even half a day, and yet he was acting as if they had been separated for weeks on end.

"Are you okay?" she asked him, deciding that waiting any longer to do so would simply be a waste of time. "You looked a little bit lonely."

"I'm fine." he answered, just a touch too quickly, giving away with his eagerness to throw her off the fact that this was a complete lie. He had not needed to give her any indication of the fact that he was far from alright; she could feel his loneliness as surely as she had felt her own.

"Well, I'm a bit lonely anyway," she told him, her tongue moving easily over the lie, even as she glanced towards Fred, sitting alone at the Hufflepuff table. "So, I'll stay here with you, if you don't mind. Unless you've got anyone else you want to sit by."

"No." he responded, as quickly as he had spoken the first time, in an attempt to make his sister stay with him. Chuckling slightly, Selena swung her legs over the bench, taking her place properly at the table and tucking into breakfast. She cast a quick glance up to the top table, and caught the eye of the headmistress. She drew in a breath, waiting for the woman to usher her back over to her own House table, but she didn't, merely offered her a gentle smile before returning to her conversation with Professor Sprout, regarding her upcoming retirement.

"So, how do you feel, finally being a real lion?" she asked, only a friendly hint of mocking in her tone. Teddy laughed slightly at this, although his laugh did not seem to be as bright as it usually was, back at home. 'He's gone into his shell.' she realised, knowing that her brother was not one for making friends easily, and would rather keep to himself. 'I'll have to help bring him out of it, otherwise he'll never make any friends.'

"It's alright. Not as great as I thought it would be." confessed her twin brother, shrugging his shoulders dismissively. Selena saw right through his front, hearing the unspoken words. I wish you were in Gryffindor too. "What about Hufflepuff? Any good?"

"Yeah." she replied tentatively, trying not to show so much enthusiasm for the House she had come to adore being a part of overnight. "The people are really nice, the Common Room's cosy, near the kitchen, so you can sneak out and get food if you get hungry. And I made a friend."

She had been unsure whether or not she should have mentioned Fred, but she didn't feel right keeping something important from her brother. And Fred was going to be important to her, she could feel it already.

"You made a friend already?" Teddy asked incredulously. Having retreated immediately into his shell, she understood that he would find it difficult to believe that she had made a close friend within an hour of entering the Common Room. "How did you manage that?"

"I don't know really." she told him, which was completely true. She had never planned on forming a friendship so quickly; it had just happened. A stab of guilt pricked at her heart. She had already made a best friend within a day of arriving at the school, and she was sat there chatting away to him last night while her brother sat in the Gryffindor Common Room alone. She had been so selfish.

But breakfast didn't last forever, and eventually, it was time to make their way to first lesson, which was Potions for Hufflepuff House and Defence Against the Dark Arts for Gryffindor. When they were just starting to build up their closeness through the barrier of being put in separate Houses, they could have done without being stuck in classes on the opposite sides of the school all day, as they were going to be.

Out of the corner of her eye, Selena could see Fred approaching her, but she walked away quickly, side by side with her brother. All the while, her mind was buzzing with thoughts. She had never imagined that it would come down to a choice between the friend she had always dreamed of having and the brother who had been by her side since the moment they were born.

And it seemed it was time to choose.

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