Chapter 1

Vivian scowled up at the red train as she stood alone in the crowd on platform 9 ¾, trolly in hand and dread building. She did not want to get on this train. Scratch that - she did not want to go to this school. "Transferring" as a 5th year, to a school on the other side of the planet, practically a different universe than the Chicago neighborhood she had lived all her life, was a nightmare Vivian wished she would, could wake up from.

One final time, she closed her eyes and willed herself awake, praying to be back in her bed, in the two story brownstone surrounded by the magical community that had raised her. But no, when she opened her eyes she was disappointed, though not surprised, to see the stupid train still in front of her.

Racking her brain for a final time for an escape from her misery, Vivian toyed with the idea of simply leaving King's Cross Station all together. It's not like anyone knew her here anyway. They wouldn't know to stop her from leaving the train station. She could just walk through the wall right now and no one would be none the wiser. In fact, she could–

Her woeful inner monologue was interrupted by a very tall, very red haired boy slamming into her at full speed. Without warning, Vivian was suddenly on her back in the middle of the platform staring at the high ceilings. Right. This would happen to me today, she thought to herself bitterly. Closing her eyes, she debated whether or not she even wanted to get up from the floor before realizing that the redhead had rushed over and was apologizing to her over and over.

"-SO sorry!" he was saying to her frantically as he helped her to her feet, "Are you okay? I should have been looking where I was going."

Despite her sour mood, she couldn't help smiling up at the guy. Bad day aside, it really hadn't been that big of a deal. He was acting like he had run her over with his car for christ sake. She found his upset at the situation rather endearing. It also didn't hurt that his amber colored eyes were focused on her in a way that made her stomach flutter just a little. No, that did not hurt at all.

"I'm okay" she laughed, cutting off the boy's lengthy apology. "Still in one piece."

"Good" he sighed, clearly relieved. "What year are you? I don't think I've seen you around school before?" he asked, now looking curiously at her.

She opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted as a girl around 11 or 12, with the same flame red hair and freckles came running up to them, looking more than a little impatient.

"George!" she grunted impatiently. "We're getting on the train, hurry UP".

"Got it," replied the boy she now knew as George as he turned to leave with his sister. "See you later!" he said to Vivian over his shoulder. "Sorry again for knocking you over" he added with a half guilty, half mischievous grin.

Seeing that he was already halfway down the platform, Vivian did not bother coming up with a reply to this. Turning back to the train, she sighed. It appeared that there was no avoiding this. She had to get on this train. She had to go to Hogwarts. To "Wizard School" a concept she still found bizarre. She had to do what her parents all but commanded her to do.

With a final groan she stepped onto the train, trunk in hand and searched for an empty compartment. Maybe she would get lucky and no one else would attempt to speak to her for the remainder of the journey. Maybe if she was really lucky, she could avoid speaking to anyone ever again.

0-0

Standing at the front of the line with the first years, in the middle of Hogwarts' Great Hall, surrounded by every Hogwarts' student and faculty member, Vivian was sure she was going to be sick. She had been prepared for an awkward first couple days. Maybe even a few looks the first night. She'd read books, okay, seen all the movies. She knew what to expect from a new kid at school trope and she had resolved herself to power through it, despite every instinct in her body screaming at her to flee.

What she had NOT been prepared for was having to go in front of the entire school to be put into one of Hogwarts' four houses. She did not like being on display in her best mood and, based on the stool positioned in front of the large room, that was exactly what was about to happen.

Vivian had listened in confusion as one of the school's professors - an older lady, McGonagall was her name maybe?- had explained and listed the names of each house. Frankly, she felt it was all starting to seem intentionally ridiculous sounding. I mean really "Hufflepuff"? "Slytherin"? What on earth? Bad enough she had to take names like that seriously, but now she had to do so with an audience? It was all too much.

As she silently wondered when the hits to her morale were going to end, McGonagall was removing a very worn looking hat and placing it on the stool in front of her. As Vivian stared at the hat, it opened its mouth and began to sing. She couldn't lie - the hat could write a catchy song.

"Now we can begin the sorting process" Professor McGonagall announced with a smile to the first years and Vivian once the hat had finished its tune. "Our first student is a bit of an anomaly for us. She will be entering Hogwarts as a 5th year student, transferring from her school in the United States. I am certain that your fellow 5th year students will be most welcoming to you, Vivian Mento, please come forward".

Vivian kept her eyes straight ahead as the great hall was filled with whispering and she walked forward to sit on the stool, uncomfortable with so many eyes on her at once.

She was only able to muster up a grimace in return to the kind smile McGonagall offered her as she placed the hat on Vivian's head, grateful when the hat slid over her eyes preventing her from having to look at the student body.

"Hmmm a bit tricky to place are you, lass?" the sorting hat whispered into her ear. "Well, never you mind, if I've sorted one I've sorted all'' he continued with a chuckle. "Don't think you're bookish enough for Ravenclaw, so we can throw that one out. Can't see you being the top of your class as far as grades go".

Vivian silently agreed with this sentiment. School had never been her thing, not that it was all that important to any American wizard or witch anyway. She highly suspected the vast majority of her crowd back in Chicago would think this entire thing - the sorting, the castle school, the theatrics of it all - was very over the top. Something her best friend, Lizette, would have called "an egregious display of unnecessary pageantry".

"Don't think you're a Hufflepuff either, which I'm sure you're relieved about" the hat continued with a knowing laugh in his voice, "Gryffindor or Slytherin for you I think. You would do well in either house but alas I always have to pick just one now don't I? Very well you are a GRYFFINDOR" the hat exclaimed, shouting the last word to the room resulting in cheers from the Gryffindor table.

Doing her best to muster up any amount of enthusiasm at this news, she made her way over to the red and gold table. She feared this was going to be a very, very long year for her.

"Hey!" a Gryffindor girl, sitting further down the table, called out.

Turning to her, Vivian was waved over to the empty seat next to her as the girl grinned at her.

"Wanted to save you from dinner with the 1st years" she giggled and offered Vivian her hand. "Alicia Spinnet. This is Angelina, Lee, Fred and George we're all 5th years" she said gesturing to the four students next to and across from her.

Vivian, grateful for the rescue, smiled at the group, as she shook Alicia's hand. After doing the same with Angelina and Lee, she turned to eye Fred and George in an attempt to figure out which one had mowed her down at the platform earlier that day. By the way their identical grins grew, she could tell they knew she was trying to decide which one was which.

"Oh one of us has already knocked Vivian off her feet -" the twin on the left began.

" - fell rather easily may I say" added the twin on the right with a wink at Vivian.

"I think she's already in love with the both of us, don't you say Fred?" left asked right with a smirk

"Oh I'd say for sure. It was only a matter of time, George" right replied, with an equally smug smirk

Vivian had been working up a snarky response to their little show, when the twinkle in right twin's eye gave her pause. She stared at the both of them for a long moment before a sly smile crawled onto her face, making both twins blink.

"YOU are Fred," she said finally to the twin on the left. "YOU are George," she said to the twin on the right. The open mouth gape both twins gave her was confirmation enough that she was correct.

With a satisfied smirk she turned her attention back to the sorting, trying to ignore the incredulous scares both twins were giving her.

Once the final first year had been seated with their new house, the school's Headmaster Dumbledore, stood up to welcome everyone. He gave a lengthy speech that Vivian did not pay much attention to as she was too busy looking around the Great Hall, now that she was no longer front and center and did not feel the need to keep her eyes forward. Her head did snap to attention briefly, when she heard the headmaster say that dementors were going to be guarding the school this year. Something about a serious black whatever that was? The announcement about dementors made her uneasy. She did not like to think about dementors if she could help it. The last time she had been near one…..

She and her friends had been trying to sneak into a meeting they were all far too young for. Lizette had heard through the grapevine that the adults were going to discuss the ousted member that night. None of them had actually known the guy beyond seeing him occasionally chat with their parents at parties, but being kicked out of something was high drama, and they were not going to miss it easily. They were 14 and believed themselves to be mature enough, deserving of being in the room with the 'real' adults.

As they were working out a way to sneak into the room without their parents seeing them, a dementor, a horrid black floating…thing had come up behind them. Tasked with guarding the rest of the building at night, it had assumed they were outsiders attempting to break in and went into defense mode.

Suddenly she was cold. Ice cold. If she had ever felt happiness before that moment, she could not remember it. Without warning, she was slammed into a memory. A bad one. The screaming never stopped. She had been young, too young to truly understand the consequences of what she had done but her hands wouldn't stop shaking and she was fighting the urge to hurl, despite the family members who were congratulating her. Despite the party that was being thrown to celebrate this moment for her-

Vivian quickly shook her head to dislodge the memory from her focus. She would not think of that right now. Or ever again if she can help it.

Wrapping up his speech, Dumbledore welcomed everyone back to Hogwarts one final time and with a flourish of his hands, the table in front of Vivian was filled with food. The Great Hall quickly filled with the chatter of students and faculty. Lee quickly pulled Angelina into a conversation about her Summer and then asked her out in what Vivian thought was record time. Angelina declined but Lee did not seem perturbed by this in the slightest, happily pulling Alicia into the conversation to discuss the Gryffindor quidditch team.

"Vivian"

Vivian looked up to see the twins looking at her with what looked to be a mix of annoyance and awe on their faces.

"What?" she replied, with a half smile, still trying to clear the image of the dementor's memory from her mind.

"How did you know who was who?" the twins exclaimed in unison.

"You guys practice that?" Vivian smirked as she noticed the rest of the group roll their eyes at the twins. She figured this question was coming. They didn't seem like the type who loved having their operation exposed, especially not by a stranger.

"No!" they yelled, also in unison.

"It's just that our own mum and dad get us mixed up now and then…" said George slowly.

"So how did YOU know we were lying?" finished Fred, in an incredulous tone that Vivian tried to not take too personally.

How did I know you were lying? Vivian thought to herself. A lifetime of needing to know when you're being lied to comes to mind. Or maybe it's all the years of lying under my belt that made me so proficient in spotting lies from others. Not exactly lighthearted dinner conversation. Certainly not with these people she just met.

"It was all over your faces. So obvious" she said finally with a knowing smile, mentally jotting down that Fred had a freckle on the tip of his nose that George did not, before focusing her attention on the food in front of her.

It had been a long time since the anxiety-formed pit in her stomach had allowed her to feel hungry and she was going to take as much advantage of it as possible. She hated to admit it so soon (especially after all her dramatics about the train), but she did feel oddly safe at Hogwarts. Maybe my parents were right, she thought to herself almost bitterly.

"So what happens now?" Vivian asked Alicia as the group was walking to the Gryffindor tower after dinner.

"Hang out with us in the common room for a while before bed," said Alicia kindly. "The boys will definitely want to play exploding snap but we always just like to gossip on our first night back" she said as she gestured to Angelina who smiled at Vivian.

Vivian did not know what "exploding snap" was but she was a red blooded gossip at heart, so she happily agreed. A decision she was slightly regretting when after only a half hour, Fred, George, and Lee pulled the girls into the game after Fred declared that Lee was cheating. Lee of course vehemently denied any such wrongdoing, though Vivian was fairly certain this was not the complete truth based on the way Lee's eye's kept shifting away from Fred's whenever he spoke.

"I just can't believe you would accuse me of cheating!" cried Lee.

"If you had half a brain you would be able to see how obvious you're being" Fred retorted, glaring back at him.

"Alright!" George said, before the argument could escalate any further "Are we ready to start the new round?" he asked, giving his twin and friend a pointed look.

"How do you play?" asked Vivian who was looking at the cards in front of her in confusion.

She was starting to feel a bit…overwhelmed with the sheer volume of things European wizards seemed to have at their disposal that separated them from the non-magics around them. Sports, games, schools of magic just to name a few. Not to mention their own kind of money or the full buildings and towns that only a witch or wizard could find. Magical communities so tight knit that many of its members are oblivious to the non magical world around them. It all seemed very foreign to Vivian. Everyone was so spread out in the US. Even the families had members scattered throughout the states.

When no one replied to her question, Vivian looked up to find all 5 of them staring at her with a look of confusion.

"You guys don't have exploding snap across the pond?" George asked finally.

"Are you muggle born?" asked Fred in unison to George's question.

Vivian huffed at this. She did not like the term "muggle". Something about it sounded vaguely slur-like and Vivian had to refrain herself from letting the group know that this wasn't a term commonly used in the US.

Though not that she could really blame them for not knowing much about her home country. From the little time she had spent in Diagon Alley for her school supplies and around European wizards, it had been painfully obvious that most wizards in this sector of the world were not familiar with the magic scene in the US. She wasn't surprised. Most don't ever leave America and if they do they are almost always in hiding and trying to draw as little attention to themselves as possible - not exactly the chatting with locals type.

"No," she eventually said shortly in response to both their questions, not wanting to get into that cultural discourse at the moment.

"Well okay," Fred began, after it was clear Vivian wasn't planning on elaborating further. "It's super easy to learn. We all take turns laying down cards. When there's a double card you have to tap it with your wand to get the point. If you don't tap fast enough the cards will explode" he grimaced.

"Oh we need our wands for this? Hang on let me go grab mine from my room" Vivian said excitedly as she shot up the stairs to the girl's dormitories, returning a minute later with her wand case in her hand. "Ready!" she declared breathless as she sat back down with the group, who were once again looking at her in confusion.

"Why don't you keep your wand on you?" asked Alicia in what Vivian was sure was a purposefully gentle voice. The four others seemed to be waiting for Vivian's answer as they watched her remove her wand carefully from its case.

Another point of contention that Vivian was not in the mood to get into at the moment. To tell them that American witches and wizards were taught to rely on wandless magic from a young age would require getting into the why that is, and if she were to go into why that is, she would have to explain the families, her family, to these very nice people who, Vivian was certain, would not understand it at all. No, she couldn't start this conversation, not now, maybe not ever if she could avoid it.

"Never found it to be all that helpful,'' she said finally with a shrug.

Looking up, she was suddenly aware of George's eyes staring into her intensely, as if searching for an answer to a difficult problem. She sensed that he might be just as good at detecting a lie as she was.

"I've spent a lot of time practicing wandless magic!" she added nervously when his gaze did not let up. Desperate to get his eyes off her, she wandlessly flipped the first six cards off the deck, making them float in a pyramid formation in the air, before shuffling themselves back into the deck.

"Woah!" yelled Fred, excitedly looking between the deck and where the cards had been floating.

"You NEED to teach us how to do that" agreed Lee.

Vivian balked at their excitement. She had of course heard that European wizards loved their wands (more than their magic, as her father would have joked) before coming to Hogwarts, but she hadn't realized that wandless magic would be seen as a novelty here. I mean christ a little floating card trick was something any child in her family could, would be expected to be able to do...

This school, this world, was going to take a lot of getting used to. Her heart ached once again for home, where she never had to explain herself, something she seemed to be doing quite a bit here.

Smiling sadly, and forcing herself to ignore George's still penetrating gaze on her, she said "So are we playing or what?" with what she hoped was an enthusiastic tone

With that, Fred quickly got the game started, Vivian picking up on the rules quickly as it went along. She pretended to not notice George still watching her, with that odd expression on his face.