A devious glint flickered in the back of Sirius’s eye as he slid the compartment door open. A curious silence fell across the girls as the two good looking older boys leaned against either side of the doorway. “Good morning, ladies. Having fun?” the taller boy asked. One of the girls, with hazel eyes that were a shade identical to James’s, began to smile widely, but when her eyes lighted on Sirius she coloured ever so slightly. Her eyebrows were verging on non-existent and she was slightly blackened around the cheeks. “Is that a Potter resemblance I see?” Sirius’s eyes flickered between his best friend and the girl opposite.
“I don’t think you’ve met my cousin, Marie, have you?” James pointed at his relative.
“Enchanted,” Sirius grinned as he bowed his head in his most charming manner. This caused Marie to blush almost scarlet. “Are you going to introduce your pals?”
“These are…uhm…” she was obviously trying to grasp for names but failing miserably, “my friends,” she finally murmured.
“I’m Kim,” Kimberly answered as she tried desperately not to laugh at Marie’s mortification. The other girl was giving the floor such a filthy look that one could have got the impression that it had just insulted her whole family. Kimberly’s face covered in much more soot that the two other girls and the ends of her short bob were singed. One of the cards that she currently held in her hand was still smouldering slightly.
“And you?” James asked the final girl rather impolitely. She was by far the cleanest of the lot; a single charcoal streak blazed across one of her chubby cheeks.
“Natalie,” she replied coolly. James immediately took offence.
“Do you have a problem with me?” he demanded indignantly.
“Does the name Joanne Wells mean anything to you?” Natalie asked. Her new friends were slightly taken aback by the fiery look in her eyes.
“Wells, Wells, wells,” James mumbled as he racked his brains. In the end his memory failed him and he was forced to shake his head.
“She’s a second year Ravenclaw who got caught in the middle of one of your stupid pranks last year, she also happens to be one of my best friends,” Natalie said very slowly and darkly.
“Ahh,” Sirius breathed as the penny dropped in his mind. “That would have been the invisible puddle outside the Charms classroom.” Marie let out a loud snort of laughter that she quickly covered with her hand after the stout girl glared at her fiercely. Natalie then returned her attention to James as she rose from her seat and advanced across the compartment with a mean expression.
“If anyone else I know suffers at the hands of one of your pranks then there’s going to be trouble,” she said in a dangerously low tone. James was completely astounded by the threat and gazed at her with confusion.
“A bit brave for a little firsty, aren’t you?” Sirius intervened as he pulled his wand out of his pocket and began to twirl it around in his hand.
“Go on, I dare you to,” she said as she jabbed a finger into his chest. Sirius was about to wave it in her direction when a fifth year Ravenclaw prefect walked past.
“Ten points from Gryffindor for trying to hex a new student. Get back to your compartment, before I hex you,” she snapped and smacked Sirius across the back of the head. He was about to answer back when she gave him a single, deadly look.
“Come on, mate, it’s not worth it,” James shoved his friend back out into the hallway and down towards their own compartment. The two of them muttered angrily the rest of the way along the train.
“Didn’t get that Pumpkin Pasty I see?” Remus commented as he glanced up from a page in his book and saw Sirius’s empty hands.
“No, but we ran into your girlfriend,” James grinned. Remus’s eyes stopped scanning the words a second before he looked up.
“My girlfriend?” he asked through a furrowed brow.
“Yeah, her name is Kimberly and she can’t play Exploding Snap,” Sirius mentioned.
“She’s a couple of carriages down with one of my second cousins and a complete PSYCHO!” James explained with a great deal of emphasis.
“Strange,” Peter mumbled; he was attempting to snooze in his corner.
“What’s strange?” James asked.
“Usually the people related to you are the psychos,” he snorted, earning him a kick in the shins from the offended party.
“Seriously, Remus, I’d steer well clear if I were you. At least until she gets rid of the screwball…” the raven haired boy advised with deep concern.
“Geroff it, James, she wasn’t that bad. Charming in her own way, she’s got fire in her belly, that one,” Sirius smiled.
“Well there’s enough of it,” James replied cruelly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Peter inquired angrily. Being the chubbiest member of the group, Peter found that some of his friends’ weight jibes were more hurtful to him then they were to the intended victims.
“She’s fat, Peter, that’s what it means. Am I wrong?” James challenged Sirius.
“Not really. She’s interesting though…”
“Interesting?” Remus raised an eyebrow.
“Yep, an excellent Snap player, nasty little temper too. I’m going to have fun playing pranks on her and blaming them on James,” Sirius smiled smugly.
“Don’t bother; I don’t want her trailing me all over the castle trying to hex me!”
“Quick with her wand, I bet,” Peter said with an assured nod.
“Don’t know, she never pulled it out,” James mentioned.
“Nah, she’s more likely to thump you than hex you. She’d probably make a good Beater, she’s got that mean streak in her,” Sirius made a batting motion.
“So what about this Kimberly?” Remus asked offhand as he pretended to be reading his book once again. James and Sirius grinned widely at one another.
“Well, James was right about something,” Sirius replied.
“Mmm?”
“She’s quite pretty when she’s not crying, and is trying hard not to laugh, and is covered in soot from head to toe,” Sirius continued. He could see a smile twitching at the edges of Remus’s mouth. A significant look passed between the other three boys: they were going to get Remus and Kimberly going out together if it killed them.
“What in the name of Godric was that all about?” Marie exclaimed as she watched the boys retreat down the hallway.
“What?” shrugged the now calm Natalie.
“Godric?” Kim asked at the same time.
“Gryffindor, one of the founders of the school,” Marie mentioned to her in as a side note before turning back to Natalie. “Why were you so…rude to James?”
“Jo’s my best friend and that prank could have killed her!”
“Killed her?” she laughed incredulously. “Didn’t he say something about an invisible puddle?”
“Yes, an invisible puddle at the top of a staircase,” Natalie replied with a scolding look.
“Oh,” Marie mouthed as her laughter died away completely.
There were several minutes of tense silence before Kim attempted to break the ice. “Does your cousin often play tricks like that?”
“All the time really-” Marie began but was cut across by Natalie.
“He and his merry bandits like to think of themselves as professional pranksters. They all need to get a life,” she remarked bitterly.
“Sometimes they’re really funny!” Marie protested in her cousin’s defence. “Besides, if this Jo is such a good friend then why aren’t you with her right now?”
“Because she’s got a bunch of new friends now!” Natalie shouted somewhat tearfully.
“Well, you do as well now. So it might be nice if you didn’t insult your friend’s cousins, okay?” Marie said in a much softer voice. Natalie replied with a stiff nod. “So, Kim, I think we’ve established that you’re Muggle Born?”
“Um, Muggle, that means non-magical, right?” Kim asked unsurely.
“It does.”
“I’m not, but I didn’t know that I could do magic until a few months ago,” the Asian girl replied.
“So you don’t know anything about our world?” Natalie asked, her own drama forgotten.
“Wow, that’s so scary. What have you been doing all this time?” Marie inquired. The very thought that life whirred on unknowingly beyond the world she knew was mind-boggling.
“I’ve been going to school. With the Muggles,” Kim said hesitantly; she wasn’t sure that she had used the word correctly.
“Really? That must have been so strange. What do they study?” The two other young witches sat eager to learn of the unfamiliar.
“Lots of different things: English, Maths, Science, History, Geography, and different languages,” Kim explained.
“Ma-ths?” Natalie contorted her mouth strangely as she pronounced the word.
“Yeah, what’s that?” Marie asked quizzicaly.
“Its numbers; adding them up, taking them away, dividing them, multiplying them, all that kind of stuff…”
“And they do all that without magic?”
“They do,” Kim laughed. Natalie and Marie were staring at her with eyes that were wide in amazement. “It’s nothing special really. Some of the stuff is fun, I liked Art a lot,” Kim informed them.
“What was that one all about?” Natalie asked avidly.
“Drawing, painting, making things; it’s the only subject where making a mess can get you good marks.”
“I don’t think we’ve got anything that interesting at Hogwarts,” Marie said with disappointment.
“Although Potions is basically permission to blow things up,” Natalie grinned.
“And Defence Against the Dark Arts is a good way to hex people and pretend you didn’t mean it,” Marie added excitedly.
“Flying lessons are bound to be exciting too.” Natalie bounced in her seat ever so slightly.
“I'm going to assume you've never flown a broom?” Marie asked Kim.
“Never.” Kim looked thoroughly petrified at the prospect of being anywhere near a broomstick.
“You'll love it! We can't have brooms our first year, but we can use the school's store of them, though they're not quite up to performance standard. Ja-” Marie glanced at Natalie and decided to change her approach. “My cousin just got the latest Nimbus model-”
“That's a brand of broomstick,” Natalie clarified while Marie went on.
Kimberly nodded; eager to get up to speed in this new world she'd been thrust into.
“-and he said he'd let me ride it once in a while, but not my sister, Muriel. She's a menace on a broom.”
“Is it hard?” Kim asked anxiously.
“Well, of course it's hard, it's made of wood.”
Natalie laughed, and then Marie realized what their friend had meant.
“Oh, is flying a broom hard? It depends. It's not something that you can study for. You either can, or you can't. You'll know pretty quickly whether or not you'll take to it. But, like I said, Muriel is a terrible flyer, but she still tries to prove that she can fly when we dare her to. You should have seen her yesterday!” Marie began to make big windmill arm motions, punctuated with mock screams of terror.
Kim and Nat both laughed, then someone opened their compartment door again.
“You're making an awful lot of noise in here,” a boy about their age said. His face carried a look of annoyance.
“What's it to you? It's not a crime to re-enact stories about broom accidents.” Nat shot a glare at him.
“Oh, what kind of broom?” the boy asked.
“Nimbus 1500,” Marie replied with a smile.
“Comet just came out with a newer model than the Nimbus 1500, and it's got a faster acceleration by about two seconds.”
“So? Everyone knows that Comets don't have the endurance to outstrip the Nimbus short or long-term. What's two seconds when the Nimbus will maintain the speed-?”
Natalie interrupted Mar's informative broom speech to ask the intruder what his name was.
“Patrick.”
The girls didn't really know why Patrick ended up staying in their compartment for the rest of the journey to Hogsmeade station. Pat wasn't such a bad travelling companion, as long as he wasn't trying to prove that he was smarter than the three girls. Natalie didn't try to hide her obvious disdain for the boy. Marie and Kimberly both tried to be nice, but even Marie settled for simply ignoring the insufferable know-it-all when they ended up in the same boat on their way across the lake, led by Rubeus Hagrid, the game keeper, on their journey to the castle. Hagrid was an enormous man, twice or three times the height of the students he was gathering but despite his intimidating size he seemed incredibly friendly. He was a little pink in the face, most probably from the cold chill in the air, and he attempted to teach them the school song on the journey across the lake. Looking up at the massive castle of Hogwarts cast an awe-inspired silence over all the first years. It was a beautiful castle, and the way the windows were lit in the dark was enchanting to behold.
Hagrid, left the nervous first years with a tight-lipped woman. She seemed to have a stern exterior, but she looked on the group of young children with warmness in her eyes. “Welcome to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I am Professor McGonagall, head of Gryffindor House. In a few minutes I'll lead you into the Great Hall where you will be sorted into one of the four houses. Your house will be like your family here at school, and you can go to your Head of House at any time with questions or concerns. The houses are Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor, each named for one of the founders of our school. Now, if you'll just wait in that room,” she said, motioning to a small antechamber, “I'll go and see if it's about time for the Sorting.”
The first years all shuffled into the room Professor McGonagall indicated. There wasn't as much chatting among the group as there had been earlier in the day. Kim looked around apprehensively. Some boys were talking about what the sorting would entail. She caught snatches of words about 'Hinky-Punks' and 'Grindylows' and her eyes grew wide.
Nat noticed this and linked her arm with Kim reassuringly. “Don't worry. It can't be something difficult. Technically, though I'm sure some of the elite Pureblood families disregard the rule, no one under seventeen is allowed to do magic unless they're at school.”
“Pureblood means that your relatives are magical,” Mar added. “Besides, James said not to mind what everyone else said. He said it wasn't that bad, and that as long as you weren't first, there'd be no problem.”
Patrick was still standing near the girls and eagerly began, “I read in Hogwarts, A History that-”
But what he'd read, the girls didn't find out, as Professor McGonagall chose that moment to return. “If you'll please line up, I'll escort you into the feast now. Quickly, quickly. Follow me.” With that, she whisked out of the room, the trembling pre-teens trailing along behind her, trying not to trip on anything as they entered the Great Hall, all eyes watching them.
They all lined up at other end of the hall, in front of the staff table. Professor McGonagall then placed a stool in front of them, and placed a hat on top of it. None of the first years could really concentrate on a word that the hat sang (It sang?!) because of the nerves that were still raging. The hat didn't look dangerous, but there was no telling for sure what exactly was going to happen next.
Professor McGonagall stepped up before the first years again, a small smile on her face, and a scroll of parchment in her hands. “You'll have your turn to be sorted when I call your name. Just step forward, sit on the stool, and place the hat on your head. Bingham, Marie.”
After a moment or two, Professor McGonagall called again, “Bingham, Marie.”
There was an eruption of sniggering around the hall, and Nat nudged the now red-faced Marie forward. “There were no 'A' names?” Marie groaned quietly.
Marie rushed forward and pulled the hat onto her head. After a few moments, the hat shouted, “HUFFLEPUFF!” and there was a surge of cheers, the loudest coming from a table adorned with all sorts of yellow decorations. Marie was beckoned over to the table, and Kim watched as a few people in the other houses cheered a bit more than the other students, her cousin James for instance, making a loud wolf-whistle.
Black, Regulus followed Marie, and was sorted into Slytherin. Then there was Blakely, Todd and Bonham, McKay for Gryffindor, before Brownlie, Natalie was called up. She sauntered forward, sat on the chair, pulling the hat over her head, and waited for the hat's decision. It wasn't long before she went to join Marie at the Hufflepuff table.
Kimberly was now a bit scared. She felt like she'd finally connected with some people after being so bitterly lonely since her move to England. What would she do if she wasn't in the same house as Natalie and Marie? A couple of people were sorted into Ravenclaw, and then she heard the call of, “Cura, Kimberly.”
As soon as the girl’s name was announced Sirius started elbowing Remus in the ribs. “There she is!” he half yelled and half whispered. Their fellow Gryffindors were now glaring at them accusingly.
“Pretty without the tears, isn’t she?” James asked quietly.
“Shut up!” Peter hissed as he managed to kick both Sirius and James in the shins with one swing of his leg.
“Ow!” Sirius bellowed through the otherwise silent hall. Everyone turned to look at the commotion and sniggered when they realised that it was just another one of Black’s outbursts. James, Peter and Remus couldn’t help but join in with the snorting.
By the time Sirius had stopped his disgruntled huffing Kimberly was already off the Sorting stool and walking off towards the Hufflepuff table with a beaming grin on her face.
“Great, she’s stuck with the lunatic,” James sighed.
“And your cousin,” Remus added with just a tinge of hope in his voice.
Sirius wasn’t paying any attention, he was too busy laughing as he watched Natalie frantically shoo people further down the bench so that Kim could fit in between her and Marie. “She’s not loony, she’s just feisty,” he chuckled. “And if I do say so myself, your cousin is kind of fit.”
“You stay away from my cousin!” James protested.
“I’m just saying.” Sirius held his hands up defensively.
"Why does this always take so long?" Peter whined. "I'm hungry."
"That's all you ever say," James snapped.
"Excuse me, but I'm not the one who fancies your cousin. Bite his head off instead," Peter snapped back and furiously flicked his head across the table at Sirius.
Remus decided to intervene before things got too heated, "That's enough, would you lot be quiet before you lose us points?"
"Remus and Kimberly up a tree..."Sirius started singing quietly.
"K-i-s-s-i-n-g..."James continued.
Their impromptu singsong embarrassed Remus into silence and the boys managed to quietly cackle their way through the rest of the Sorting ceremony.