Chapter 3
As we talked about everything and nothing, we exchanged stories of our accidental magic, Ron’s family, our likes and dislikes. Ron seemed to be the same as his book counterpart, he had a big family, hated spiders and was all in all a decent guy, though he was a bit ignorant but he was a little boy, so that is to be expected. In his eyes, all Slytherins were evil and all Gryffindors were good, a sentiment that I didn’t share, though canon Harry did so for a long time, really until Snape’s backstory. Ever since then, he was a bit more understanding, even telling his son that nothing was wrong with Slytherin… though I didn’t agree with the cursed child and found it to be a mediocre fanfiction at best, I could at least feel that sentiment, that not all Slytherins were evil. Sure, there were many evil Slytherins, Tom, Bellatrix, debatably Draco but there were also good ones, such as Regulus and well at least kinda okay ones, like Snape. Yes he was a horrible person and made the school life of many children hell on earth but he was working for the ‘greater good’, being a spy for Dumbledore. I didn’t agree with Dumbledore wholeheartedly either but he was a good man at his core, even if his methods were… well rough. Raising Harry like a pig for slaughter was quite the dick move. Now though, now he had no reason to raise me for slaughter, since the Horcrux in my scar was gone. I wonder what house I will be placed in? It could either be Ravenclaw or Gryffindor. I wasn’t kind or loyal enough to be placed in Hufflepuff nor cunning enough to be a Slytherin. Though I suppose I won’t know for sure until I was actually sorted. Who knows, perhaps I am more cunning than I thought, who knows…
The sweets witch came knocking on our compartment, asking in a sweet voice, “Anything to eat my dears?”
“Yes”, I immediately said, “We’ll have six chocolate frogs, three for me, three for Ron”
“You don’t have to-”
“But I want to, so hush your mouth and take the chocolate”, I interrupted him, handing him three of the six chocolate frogs as I went to pay the witch.
After she was done, I began eating my first chocolate frog. It was good chocolate and the card was also interesting, it was of one Abraxas Fig, a former headmaster at Hogwarts who got rid of the subject ‘Dark arts’ at Hogwarts during his tenure. I didn’t know that the dark arts were ever taught in Hogwarts, so it was an interesting factoid. Looking over to Ron, he drew a Dumbledore card, “Not again Dumbledore, I already have six of those, do you want it?”
“Sure, why not”, I shrugged. The information on the card was like I had remembered from the books, partner of Nicholas Flamel, defeater of Grindelwald, discovered the uses for dragons blood, nothing out of the ordinary. We continued eating our chocolate until there was another knock on the door, this time from Draco Malfoy and his two goons, Crabbe and Goyle, “I heard that the girl who lived was attending Hogwarts this year, and I see my information was correct… Nice to meet you, I am Malfoy, Draco Malfoy”
“Holly Potter”, I nodded at him.
“And who are you with? Oh- red hair and a hand-me-down robe, you must be a Weasley. I advice you to choose your friends more wisely, some wizarding families are better than others”, Draco looked at me, “I could help you figure that out”
“No thanks”
“B- but why?”
“I am my own person, I don’t need someone holding my hand through school”, I said calmly, shaking my head.
“Fine, whatever, come Crabbe, Goyle, let us get out of here”, he huffed and left us alone.
“Wow, what a dick”, Ron commented once they were out of earshot
“I’m sure that was just a misunderstanding”, I told him, knowing fully well that Draco was an arse to close to everyone that wasn’t ‘pureblooded’. But no need to poke the sleeping dragon, maybe this Draco could grow to be a half decent guy. Weirder things are different in this world, for example Lily Potter’s status as a Parselmouth. Now, thinking of that, maybe Lily was a descendant of the Slytherin line or the gaunts later on? Those were the only Parselmouth families in all of europe. There were other parselmouth clans in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australia. Especially Australia had a lot of them, due to it being a hotspot of Magical serpents but parselmouths rarely went to Europe because of the bad reputation that the ‘speakers’ had there. All written about in one of the books I got from diagon alley, ‘Bloodarts: the secrets of the lineage’, yes, Bloodarts, that was the politically correct term for things like Parselmouths or Metamorphmagi, abilities passed down through blood. There were a lot of Bloodarts but most of them were thought to be extinct by now. The only people who ever awakened these ‘lost’ bloodarts were muggle borns who were actually descendents of squibs that married into the muggle world, which was most likely what happened to my mother. Some time ago, a squib of either the slytherin or gaunt family must’ve mingled with the muggles of the british isles, either that or my mom’s family was distantly related to a non-european wizarding family.
Not even ten minutes later, Hermione and Neville came walking into the compartment. Neville looked like his actor but Hermione sure didn’t. She was thin and had hair more unruly than my own, with visible and very noticeable buck teeth. She looked nothing like Emma Watson, well maybe if you squint really hard, you could see a connection. On that note, I totally forgot to describe Ron! He too looked not like his actor. He was a tall kid with fiery red hair, almost looking dyed and freckles all over his face. Anyways, back to what was happening, Hermione asked, “Have either of you seen a toad, Neville’s lost his”
“No toads here, only chocolate frogs”, I smiled at her, “I’m Holly, nice to meet you”
“Holly-? As in Holly Potter? Holy cricket, it is really you! I have read so much about you, it is all very fascinating”, Hermione sat down in front of me, “of course, once I knew I was a witch, I started learning everything I could”
I turned to Neville who was standing around dimwitted in the door, “Why don’t you find a prefect to summon the toad for you?”
“y- yes, I’ll do that”, he said with a red face a few shades lighter than Ron’s hair.
“Now, where were we? Right, learning, yeah, I also studied all summer long, got pretty far into each of my books, though I didn’t get to finish them”, I told her and her eyes lit up in excitement at having found a kindred soul, “what is your favorite subject so far?”
“I don’t know, everything is so interesting, maybe Transfiguration? Charms? Potions?” she rambled on and on about her favorite subject.
I just chuckled, “Well mine has to be Defence against the Dark arts, lots of practical magic and cool creatures, potions is a close second but I heard that the Professor teaching it is a dick”
“Yeah, Bloody Snape hates all Gryffindors, or at least that's what my family told me”, Ron piped in, “I’m Ron by the way, Ron Weasley”
“Oh- right, I totally forgot to introduce myself, I’m Hermione, Hermione Granger. Talking about Gryffindors, what house do you think we’ll be sorted into? I couldn’t find anything in the books about how we were going to be sorted, just about what characteristics each house favored…”, Hermione asked us.
“Gryffindor of course! My whole family has been in Gryffindor”
“Either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw, though no one can be sure”, I shrugged.
“Well I hope I will be a Gryffindor, did you know that Albus Dumbledore himself was a Gryffindor? Though, I guess Ravenclaw doesn’t sound so bad either”, Hermione smiled at the thought of being placed into Gryffindor with us.
“As long as it ain’t Slytherin, I’m good with it”
“Not all slytherins are bad”, I told him, “there are plenty of good Slytherins, just as there are plenty of Assheads in Gryffindor”
“I guess that is right… my brother Percy is a real pain in the ass sometimes, always sticking to the rules, never letting us have fun…”
“Rules are important”, Hermione looked offended at the mere thought of breaking a rule.
“And yet, sometimes they have to be broken, that is just how it is, sometimes you have to break a rule for the greater good”, I planted the seeds in her mind with my words… Hell, what was I doing, manipulating her like this? Maybe I was Slytherin material after all…
The conversation carried on for hours, yes it took literal hours to get from Kingscross to Hogsmeade, it was way longer than the movies made it out to be, though I guess it made sense, Hogwarts was in the highlands after all… A few hours into our ride, we threw Ron out of the compartment so that we could change into our school uniform. Ron was already wearing his robes, since he lived in a wizarding family but Hermione and I had to change out of our dresses and into the robes. One thing I hated about being a girl was that most dresses didn’t have pockets, so I had to wear a wrist compartment for my wand. Canon Harry kept his wand in his pockets but I had decided to keep mine in the wrist compartment, even though Robes had pockets, it was just better to stick to one location for my wand, so that I could build muscle memories and another bonus of using the wrist compartment was that I could get my wand with the flick of my wrist. The compartment was enchanted so that it wouldn’t be noticed, neither by muggles nor by wizards.
The school robes were simple black robes with a pin on it that would change colors depending on which house we were sorted in. In the movies, the robes changed colors and the scarves too but in this reality, only the pins distinguished the houses from one another. Of course, in later years you could buy robes and scarves that matched the house colors but the default was just simple black.
Once we were dressed, we let Ron back inside and resumed our conversation. In them, we discovered that Ron hadn’t touched his wand since he inherited it from his brother, so, at our insistence, he tried out a few spells with our guidance. After a few tries, he got Lumos and Nox down pretty solidly. By the time the Train started to slow to a halt, we had also taught him how to spray differently colored sparks and levitate something using Wingardium Leviosa. But then, it was time to exit the train.
We all walked over to Hagrid who was screaming, “first years to me, first years to me”
Once we were all gathered around the giant of a man(or half-giant hehe), he took us to the boats on the black lake. Looking out on the lake, we could see Hogwarts for the first time and let me tell you, it was a sight to behold, a grand castle, bigger than the ones in the movies, was standing tall and proud overlooking the lake. Lights illuminated every window of the massive building and the moon lit the lake. I jumped into a boat together with Ron and Hermione and we slowly began sailing over the inky black lake. Sometimes we could see tentacles of the giant squid gracing the surface of the water. Once we were over the lake and into the boat house, we walked a few more steps and then were in the chamber before the great hall, where Professor McGonagall was waiting for us.