2.1
A False Beginning-
I sit in the corner of the common room, waiting for the boy I have been forced to take under my wing to ensure he doesn't make the mistakes I did. A book in hand, I watch the older students move throughout the common room spry, and the youngest ones shuffle around, trying to tie their ties. I roll my eyes when I see a young boy nearly eating shit while focusing on talking to his friend. Checking the time, I know that he is nearly late. I won't wait for him longer than I said I would. Turning back to my book, I tune out the sounds of my fellow students.
I hear Burke's now familiar voice coming closer, apologizing for almost being late. I open my bag and place the blue leather bound inside before looking at him. I don't reply as I rise. I motion for him to follow me out of the common room doors. I begin his tour, skipping everything that isn't necessary for a first-year to know yet. He puts quill to paper each time I tell him to. We end the tour at the door of the Great Hall. Separating from Burke, I head straight to the Hufflepuff table and the spot we have been sitting at for the past four years.
My girls are in the middle of a conversation and don't acknowledge me when I sit across from them. I don't have to say anything to ask Jo to hand me a mug of warm coffee. The three of us have the other's coffee preferences engraved in us. I notice that both girls are in their most natural state, wearing their unique makeup styles at eight in the morning. Connecting the dots, they are discussing a contest Elle won over the summer. I listen silently listen to the details of what got her to first place; I reach for the fruit salad to my right.
"You're just now telling me that the picture that came in second was of a cat?" Jo breaks Elle from her explanation, who now looks just as confused as Jo.
"Well, yeah," she stretches out her syllables and furrows her thinly plucked eyebrows. The Hufflepuff makes a few wavy hand gestures before plucking a strawberry off my plate. Jo makes eye contact with me before we both turn back to the girl who is now spreading cinnamon sugar on a piece of buttered toast.
"Who was that boy who came in with you?" Of course, Elle would end up seeing. Now, I have both pairs of eyes on me.
"You? With a kid?" Jo uses the same tone as her previous question. I roll my eyes.
"It's not that surprising." This gets looks from each girl. I sigh and start to explain myself. Both share their thoughts on the situation. Elle brings up that I don't have to do anything for Burke if I don't want to. I know, but it would feel bad if I didn't at least try to help mold the boy into a decent human being.
A throat clears behind me. I prepare myself for what I am about to go through. Turning to the side, I make eye contact with Professor Slughorn, Potions teacher, and Head of house Slytherin. He reached out with his hand to give me my schedule before looking around at the girls across the table and back to me. I prepare myself for the same speech he has done for the past few years. His voice is annoying. I keep myself from rolling my eyes during his spiel about how we should be sitting at our house tables. Once he feels he has finished reprimanding us for choosing to sit with each other, he turns back around and hobbles off to give out the rest of the schedules for the year.
Facing my girls, I see Jo with a sarcastic smile and Elle only paying attention to the plate of fruit that she stole from under my nose. After handing Jo my schedule, I leave her to eat the remaining fruit while I finish my coffee. She analyzes it silently, using what I guess is hers and Elle's.
"It seems that we each have a few classes with each other." She slides the paper back to me so I can take my first look at it. Seeing that Jo marked each class I share with either girl, I thank her. You're lucky; this is the second year in a row that you have all of your classes before lunch." I shrug with a slight smirk, which gets a scoff from the goth.
Breakfast ends, and I lead Elle arm-in-arm to the Charms classroom. The hour-and-a-half-long class drags on as the first class of the year. I keep Elle focused on Flitwick rather than the book she has hidden behind the desk. We are sitting in the back, so even if she wasn't hiding it, the short man would never see it in her hands. Looking over the classroom, you can see people paying attention to the teacher, students sleeping on their desks, and people ignoring the teaching to either talk to their friends or do something else. I listen to the rambling of the half-goblin teacher telling the students his rules, expectations, and what we will be learning over the year. The bell interrupts Flitwick in the middle of him telling us how important this year is for us.
Elle and I are out the door as soon as we can sift through the crowd. Meeting Jo, I hand Elle over and make my way to the basement for Potions with Gryffindor. As one of the first people in the classroom, I noticed a familiar face in the middle: Regulus Black. I weave through the desks and pull out the chair next to his. We make eye contact before he returns to his book, telling me he is fine with me sitting here. If he had a problem with it, he would have made a few snide remarks. I know him well enough to know that.
Class starts, and I'm already tired of Slughorn's voice. He has to be one of my least favorite teachers in the entire school. He tells us, just like Flitwick, what he expects from us and what he will teach for the year. He goes to talk about his little club when the door in the back of the classroom slams open, making everyone turn. Others and I audibly roll our eyes once we see the three boys in the doorframe. I look at the boy beside me and snicker slightly; if looks could kill, those boys would be dead three timesover. Specifically, one of them, I presume. Everyone knows how the two brothers feel about each other at this point. Their issues are a talking point amogst the students. Some are on Sirius' side, and others are on Regulus'. Personally, I try to stay out of it.
After talking to the girls at lunch I go straight to the library. One of my favorite places in the entire school. I get a smile from Irma as I approach her. She insisted I call her by her first name and not Madam Pince since I often help her with the library. Asking if there's anything I could do to help her, she tells me that there are new books that she has yet to put on the shelves. A perfect task for me to do with my free time. The downside to having all my classes before lunch is that I'm bored for the rest of the day. I spend hours choosing where the books should go, adding them to the librarian's genre-organized list, and putting them where they should go. I'm sitting in the dusty back room of the library when I get a text from the group chat telling me they are at The Room. Saying goodbye to Madame Pince, I go down the stairs to the third floor and walk until I see the painting of Mount Olympus in the middle of the corridor. But I stopped once I heard a girl shout out my name.
Turning around, I see a Ravenclaw girl with brown hair coming for me. She walks towards me until she finds a door. She opens the door, looking in to see if any people are in the room before motioning for me to follow her. Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. I follow her to see that the room is empty with desks but no windows. She stills once she is at the front of the classroom. I lean on one of the desks in front of her silently. I wait for the fidgeting girl to speak for a moment until she finds the confidence to do so.
Returning to my original plan, I reach out to the painting that I was heading towards before, grab the hand of Aphrodite, and shake it. There's a barely audible click of the lock before it disconnects from the stone wall. I open it wide enough to step through before closing it.
The room is a decnet sized room I found in my second year. Throughout the years of using it as a hangout room, we have furnished it with whatever we can. There's a soft couch that can hold four people comfortably in the middle of the room with two armchairs on each side, a coffee table, a few desks on the other side, and a table full of food and drinks behind the couch. On the wall that holds the desks, there are four stained glass windows depicting the four houses of Hogwarts.
The girls are both on the couch, staring at me blankly. I decide to sit on the nearest armchair, sliding my messenger bag off my shoulder and onto the ground right next to the chair. I open my mouth to explain what took me so long, but I'm beat to it.
"What took you so long?"
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