A/N: Thank you Waffles for the review! On your Forbidden Forest idea, stay tuned for chapter 5 whenever it comes out. ;)
I don't own Harry Potter or any recognizable characters in this. I only own OCs.
Chapter 3: Hogwarts
Anna woke up the next morning with a start when something hit her face. When she fell off her bed from the shock, she looked up to see both Angelina and Alicia grinning at her, holding pillows above their heads.
She was dazed at first from having just woke up, but she noticed that they were both already in their school robes.
"Get up, already!" Alicia laughed, hitting her with her pillow once again.
Anna squealed when the pillow hit her, and jumped to her feet to grab her own pillow off her bed. The girls spent a few moments hitting each other and giggling before Angelina finally put a stop to it.
"Hurry up and get ready!" she told Anna, "It's our first day. We have to be down for breakfast to get our timetables."
Anna simply smiled in response and promptly showered and got changed into her school robes, excited beyond words for her first day of classes. She was finally starting her life at Hogwarts, and could finally live day to day without her mother breathing down her neck.
The best part was, she had ended up in a different house than Chrys, and as such she had more opportunities to make her own friends.
She could finally be herself.
After getting dressed and putting her hair up in a ponytail, she grabbed her wand off her bedside table (12 1/4 inches, dogwood, slightly springy, with unicorn hair infused in its core), and raced the other girls down the stairs and into the Gryffindor common room, which was full of students who had just woken up and were now talking with old friends and heading out the portrait hole to go to breakfast.
The girls spotted Lee, Fred, and George leaving the door to the boys dormitory as the made it to the common room, and made their way over to them. They all looked tired, but excited at the same time.
They all grinned when the girls approached them, "Excited?"
The girls nodded. Anna was feeling particularly giddy.
"Breakfast?" Lee suggested, "I'm starved."
"Yeah," Fred, or was it George, agreed with a smile, "I wonder what they have."
Leave it to boys to be more excited about the food than anything else.
It turned out they had a bit of everything. Plates of steaming pancakes, bacon, sausages, jugs of milk with cereal, pots of oatmeal, anything you could possibly want, they had. As everyone had their breakfast and spoke happily to new or old friends, the heads of houses walked up and down the tables handing out timetables to the students. Professor McGonagall handed the Gryffindors their timetables and waved her wand over the bits of parchment, and their classes showed up in the allotted time spaces.
"Looks like we have charms with the Ravenclaws first," Alicia said as she looked at her timetable, "Good, I've been looking forward to that class."
"I've been excited for Defense Against the Dark Arts, personally," Angelina said, pointing to the space the class took up, right after their lunch break on Wednesday, "But we don't have that today. Potions might be interesting though."
"Bill and Charlie always said that Professor Snape was a horrible git of a teacher," Fred chimed in, "Percy always came to his defense, saying he was just strict."
"Either way," George shrugged before taking a bite of sausage, "He favors the Slytherins."
Their first day of classes went relatively well. Anna particularly liked Charms class. Their teacher, the small and friendly Professor Flitwick, had a way of making the class fun and interesting, and the fact that Fred and George spent the entire time at the back of the class making everyone laugh, she knew she was going to enjoy the class. Even the boy she sat next to from Ravenclaw, Brian Montgomery, was nice, and they hit it off quickly. He made the class more looked forward to for Anna.
After Charms, the group of six Gryffindors struggled to find their way to Transfiguration. They had to ask several students and even some of the school ghosts for directions, but they somehow managed to make it to the class on time.
The class itself was interesting, but it wasn't nearly as fun as Charms. Professor McGonagall was much more strict than Flitwick, and Fred and George kept their joke making to a minimum, but they didn't stop altogether. Anna had a feeling McGonagall was being a little more lenient with them because it was their first class.
They went over what they were going to learn that year, as well as how the course would be extremely difficult for some, and how it would come in handy in later life, like they had in Charms, and before too long they were sent off for lunch.
The group talked excitedly amongst themselves, comparing what their favorite classes were so far, though they had only had two so far, and the classes they were most looking forward to.
They had all agreed on one thing: none of them were really looking forward to History of Magic.
They sat in the class with the Hufflepuffs, Fred and George sitting in the back and joking around with Lee as usual, while the three girls sat in front of them, waiting for their professor to arrive.
Easily the most interesting part of the class was when their professor glided through the blackboard and began roll call. Anna had had no idea Professor Binns was a ghost, and apparently she wasn't the only clueless one in the class. Several of the students jumped or gasped as he entered the class.
As the class went on, Anna wondered if the subject might have been more interesting if Binns did more than just drone on and on about it.
Finally, the last class of the day came, and Anna found herself making her way with the five others to the dark and depressing dungeons. She wasn't really looking forward to this class. Not only were Fred and George telling all these stories about how mean Professor Snape was to anybody that wasn't in Slytherin, stories that they had apparently heard from their older brothers, but she would be having this class with Chrys.
She noticed the blonde hair of her sister the second they entered the dungeon classroom. It was easily distinguishable with how dark everything else in the class was. They hadn't seen each other yet that day, and Anna remembered how the night before Chrys had wanted to talk to her, probably about the sorting.
She tried to sneak in unnoticed beside Alicia as Chrys spoke with some of her new Slytherin friends. Unfortunately, her own blonde hair was just as noticeable as Chrys's was.
"Anna!" her sister waved her over to the table she was sitting at, gesturing to the empty seat beside her. Chrys waved goodbye to her friends as Anna reluctantly approached and sat down next to her at the back of the class. Anna suspected Chrys had chosen the seats so they would be more likely to speak. Chrys wrinkled her nose in distaste as she noticed Fred and George taking the other table at the back of the room, right next to them. Anna tried to ignore her sister's reaction.
"I've been trying to talk to you all day," Chrys continued in a whisper as Snape swept into the classroom and began his spiel about how the class would work, looking to be as unpleasant as in Fred and George's stories, "I decided I would just have to talk to you in class after seeing you with the Gryffindors during lunch."
"Chrys," Anna sighed, "I am a Gryffindor. Of course I'm going to spend my time with them."
"Yes, that's why I wanted to talk to you," Chrys told her quietly, "I think the Sorting Hat made a mistake. You've always been the odd one in our family, but there's no way a Nymphaea would be in Gryffindor."
"I'm pretty sure the Sorting Hat's decision is final."
Chrys shook her head, "No, I heard someone say the hat was kept in Dumbledore's office." Anna turned her attention from Snape to Chrys, wondering where she was going with this, "We just have to sneak into his office and see for ourselves if it sorted you into the right house."
Anna raised an eyebrow at her, "You want to sneak into our Headmaster's office on the first day of school?"
"Well the sooner we sort this out the better!" she hissed, "We can't have you being in Gryffindor for any longer than you have to! Besides, your reluctance to do this shows that you can't be a Gryffindor. They're supposed to be brave...or something."
Anna knew her sister wouldn't stop bugging her about it until she went through with it, so she reluctantly agreed. "Fine," she sighed, hoping she'd still be in Gryffindor tomorrow, "How are we going to do this? And how would it even make a difference if we don't have any witnesses when I'm being re-sorted?"
Chrys smiled, "We'll meet up at midnight tonight in front of the Great Hall. I'll ask around and find out where Dumbledore's office is so we won't get lost. We'll have to be quick, and I'll think of a way to get you switched into Slytherin once the Sorting Hat actually re-sorts you. They'll have to go along with it."
Anna was about to reply, but a large shadow was cast over their table. They both looked up into the face of a very irritated Professor Snape.
"I'm sure whatever it is you're discussing is important," he sneered, "However, I would ask that you do it in your free time, rather than interrupt my class. Ten points from Gryffindor."
All the Gryffindors groaned at this.
"What?" Lee asked, "But Chrys was talking too!"
Snape looked over at Lee with his eyes narrowed, "Make that twenty points, Mr Jordan. Now, as I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted..."
"See?" Chrys whispered matter-of-factly so Snape wouldn't hear, "If you were in Slytherin you wouldn't have had points taken away."
That did little to sway Anna into wanting to be in Slytherin.
Anna snuck out of her dormitory and down to the common room close to midnight that night. She still didn't really want to do this, but the faster she got her sister off her back, the better.
She moved quickly across the empty common room ad toward the portrait hole, hoping against hope that the Fat Lady wouldn't get her in trouble. Just as she was about to push the portrait hole open, she heard footsteps behind her and quickly turned around, coming face to face with Fred and George. Both were smiling wickedly at her.
"Rather daring aren't we?" the one on the left said in a taunting voice.
"Sneaking out on our first night?" the other finished.
"So you overheard Chrys and me talking?" Anna asked, her shoulders sagging.
They nodded, and the one on the right, George, she thought, spoke, "Would it be pointless to tell you there's no way you can switch houses?"
"You're a Gryffindor for good."
"Tell that to Chrys," Anna said, turning back toward the portrait hole, "I'm just doing this to get her off my back."
They both marched past her and Fred pushed open the door to the portrait hole, motioning for her to go ahead. When Anna didn't move, and merely looked at him confused, George took her arm and dragged her out of the portrait hole, Fred following behind quickly.
"We'll have to tell her ourselves then, won't we Fred?" George said, turning to his twin with a wink.
Anna pulled her arm out of George's grasp, and noticed that the Fat Lady was soundly asleep in her portrait, "What are you talking about?"
"Well, we're not about to let someone else sneak out before us," Fred told her with a grin before the boys marched ahead of her, "We're meeting Chrys outside the Great Hall, yeah? Hurry up, it wouldn't be much fun if we got caught."
"This isn't supposed to be for fun," Anna told them as she caught up to them and they walked down the many staircases, keeping an eye out for any prefects or Peeves, the school's poltergeist.
By some miracle, they didn't run into anyone on their way to the Great Hall. Chrys was nowhere to be seen when they arrived. She didn't keep them waiting long though.
She waved them in the direction of the staircase she was hiding behind, looking very unimpressed about Fred and George's presence.
"What are they doing here?" she hissed.
"They just decided to tag along," Anna shrugged in response, "They overheard us in Potions."
"We thought we should tell you in person how this isn't going to work," Fred shrugged, "She can't be switched out of Gryffindor now."
Chrys glared at him, but seemed to decide this wasn't the time or place to start, "Whatever. If you're tagging along, fine, just don't get in the way."
Fred and George merely shrugged, and waited for Chrys to continue.
"Dumbledore's office is this way," Chrys said, pointing down the hall.
Thanks to the directions Chrys had obtained earlier, they didn't get lost on the way to his office, but they were stopped at the entrance by a large statue of a gargoyle.
"Er..." George tried, "Can you let us through?"
The gargoyle did not move or say anything.
"Worth a shot," Fred shrugged.
"It must need a password or something," Anna said.
"Does anyone know what it would be?" Chrys asked, irritated by the gargoyle's presence.
"How would we know?" Fred and George asked in tandem.
"Well, well," a cold voice said suddenly from behind them, and the four kids stopped their bickering and froze. They hadn't even heard any footsteps. They turned slowly, dreading who they were about to see, and with horror they all looked up into the face of a very sinister looking Professor Snape.
"And just what, if you don't mind my asking," he continued with a sneer, "Are the four of you doing out of bed?"
A/N: It shouldn't take too long for me to get the next chapter up. I've been busy lately, so I haven't had much time to work on it. Bug me if I don't have the next chapter up by the end of tomorrow night, or I'll forget about it after work. xD
Please review, I'd really appreciate hearing what you think so far. :)