Your Whole New World
It was a mistake...to get involved with the Weasley twins. It had taken Lee four years to realize, but even if he had realized earlier, it wouldn't have made a difference. It only took one misstep to take him over the precipice. With the drop he was facing, no amount of awareness of his fall would have prepared him for when he hit the ground.
Or maybe a fall was a bad metaphor. You can't try and run from a fall. You can't be stop yourself from a fall only to be dragged down again. Or maybe you could, but the metaphor certainly lost its smoothness.
Perhaps a better one would be to say the mistake was his decision to take a new path in the woods. It made him sound a bit like little red riding hood, but the events that followed fit better. He had decided to be adventurous and explore the forest by his school despite the fact that no one else was interested. Sure it was cool to see from a distance, but why would you want to go in. They weren't wrong to be wary, because the minute he had entered his life was forfeit. He was stalked, without his knowledge at first, but four years is a long time to remain oblivious to one's impending doom.
It could be said that his second mistake was when he decided to run; predators liked to chase things that ran. Lee would instead consider it an extension of the first. It only got him to his destination faster.
But enough with metaphors. At this point, it would be easier to simply state the facts.
Lee Jordan met Fred and George Weasley in his first year. He was a half-blood or a quarter-blood, his father a half blood wizard who spent most of his time in the muggle world, and his mother the muggle he fell in love with. He had stepped into the wizarding world with his worried parents behind him and his mind dizzy with the thought that there had been a civil war taking place in this world only eight years ago. Lee was a fun-loving, fast talking, eleven year old who loved to put a smile on the face of others, but he also a black boy with dreadlocks who was about to step into a world that was uncertain about just how much they were against the human rights of people like his mother, or even his father, and thus him.
But he wasn't about to find an empty compartment to sit in. That was just asking to set himself up for not having friends. So he walked until he found one with only two people and both of them around his age. When he opened the door, they turned to him in synchronization and he almost took a step back. For one, it was a little creepy, and also because they were twins, and he couldn't imagine being able to step into that dynamic.
But they smiled and they talked about pranks and they made him smile, and without thinking or feeling anything but relief, and entered and shut the door behind him.
It was his second year, and Lee's summer had been rather boring. He mostly visited family and corresponded with Fred and George via owls. He found it a little difficult to talk with old friends when he hadn't seen most of them in a year, and couldn't speak about what he was doing during that time.
It was his third year at Hogwarts and one of the new students was famous. His name was Harry Potter, also known as the-boy-who-lived, and man did he get in trouble. The twins youngest brother, Ron, had also come to school that year, and made friends with him. By extension, that meant Ron was in trouble rather frequently as well. It was almost strange to think of a Weasley getting dragged into trouble and not the other way around.
That said, Lee didn't really hang around them at all. The twins seemed mostly uninterested in their remaining siblings, and only occasionally spoke with their younger one.
It was his fourth year and Lee was willing to guess that the whole Harry Potter getting into dire trouble was going to be a thing for the rest of the "golden trios" school career.
It was his fifth year and Fred and George had given away the Marauder's map. Apparently it had belonged to Harry Potter's father. That was surprisingly nice of them, though now it made harder to justify the fact that they always knew where he was. Lee couldn't find any evidence of spells, so he could only assume that it was a new spell that they had come up with.