Roxanne ignored the people whispering and muttering around her as she walked onto the Quidditch pitch, her cousin Molly’s broom over one broad shoulder. It was a chilly, breezy Saturday morning in the middle of September, and Roxanne, better known as Roxy to anyone who didn’t want a punch in the stomach, stared resolutely at her toes and pretended not to hear the other Gryffindors around her. The tall, rather muscled girl had been ignoring whispers ever since arriving at Hogwarts a few weeks ago, ever since Professor Jones had called “Weasley, Roxanne!” and she had emerged from the dwindling line of first years and sat upon the stool to have the legendary Sorting Hat placed on her head.
“Another one?”
“Is she Lucy’s sister?”
“Nah, she’s Fred Weasley’s kid sister. Look at the skin.”
“Look at the rest of her!”
“Blimey, she doesn’t really look like a first year, does she?”
“There’s no way she’s two years younger than Fred. She’s practically his size!”
The Sorting Hat, true to form, had placed Roxy in Gryffindor, along with her cousins Dominique, Molly, James, Albus, and Rose, and her brother Fred. Roxy sat down among them, holding her head aloft and refusing to meet the stares of the other first years.
That first night in Gryffindor Tower, as the six new first years unpacked their trunks, a small dark haired girl had come up to Roxy and demanded, point blank, if she was actually eleven.
“Yes, I turned eleven in February,” Roxy had replied, crossly.
“Oh.” her questioner appeared unperturbed. She tried a different question. “What’s it like having Harry Potter for an uncle, Roxanne?”
The rude bluntness of this statement, coupled with the fact that the shorter girl had called her Roxanne, resulted in a shouting match while their other
roommates watched, terrified. Both girls had gotten out their wands (though neither knew how to do more than shoot sparks) when Dominique had stuck her head into the room and demanded to know what was going on.
“What on earth are you firsties shouting”OI! Roxy, lower that wand NOW!’
Roxy had done so, shame bubbling up inside her. Of all people it had to be Dominique, the person she most wanted to be like, most wanted to impress… but her blonde cousin didn’t look particularly angry. On the other hand, she looked like she was going to laugh.
“Cough it up Rox,” she said, folding her arms and pressing her lips together in what looked like and effort not to smile. “What’s going on?”
“She”she asked me about Uncle Harry, and everyone, and she was really rude.”
Dominique raised an eyebrow.
“She asked how old I am!”
Another twitch of the eyebrow. Dominique’s lips were quivering.
‘And she called me Roxanne!” Roxy added, now annoyed with Dominique as well for being so superior.
At this, the older girl really did burst out laughing. “Okay,” she said at last, gaining control of herself but still grinning. “I’m sorry you lot had to learn the hard way, but Roxy hates it when anyone calls her Roxanne. If you’re looking for a good pounding in the gut, then go for it. Otherwise”“ she broke off, shrugging, her blue eyes still dancing with laughter.
“How was I supposed to know that?” demanded the small dark haired girl, who still had her wand out. “The Sorting Hat said”“
“Roxanne,” Dominique finished. “I know. Listen, Shorty”what’s your name?”
“Jemimah Tremayne,” the first year retorted defiantly, sticking out her chin. “What’s yours, Belinda the Bossy Prefect?”
“Funny,” Dominique said, and Roxy know she was amused at the thought of anyone making a troublemaker like her a prefect. “Right, Jemimah. We”Well, you say it, Roxy.”
“But I”“
‘You started it.”
“She started it!” Roxy exclaimed, pointing. Dominique and Jemimah both glared at her. Behind the glare, Roxy thought her cousin looked rather entertained. She was enjoying tormenting Roxy as much as she was helping.
“Fine,” Roxy muttered at last. “Uncle Harry is just a normal person. I don’t care if he’s famous, or if Aunt Ginny is famous, or if any of us is famous! We’re just a regular old family, and we get in fights and have birthday dinners, and Fred is short and I’m tall and happen to have been hitting bludgers since I was five, and it’s really not that interesting! We are all perfectly normal and its really annoying when people like you try and treat us weird or something. And I can’t get you any free Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes products or bloody autographs, so don’t ask!” She added the last bit on as a warning, glaring in furious humiliation at her cowed classmates, Jemimah (who still had her wand out) and a grinning Dominique.
“Why not?” asked Jemimah impertinently.
“Because it AKWARD!” shouted Roxy, rounding on her once more. “Have you ever asked your dad for his autograph?”
“Well said,” agreed Dominique, still grinning in a maddening way that was a bit reminiscent of Fred. “So, no more firstie dueling? You lot has better get some sleep before classes start tomorrow; you’re going to need it. I’ll walk you down to breakfast in the morning so you don’t get lost, shall I Roxy?” She gave a last smirk and pranced out of the dormitory. There was a bit of a ringing silence and then Jemimah broke it.
“Is she always like that?”
“Yeah,” Roxy muttered, hating Dominique in that moment. “But wait to till you meet my brother Fred and our cousin James. They’re three times worse.” And she got into bed, closed her hangings, and blew out her candle.
The old saying that you can’t be proper friends without being enemies first held quite true in the case of Roxy and the impertinent, dark haired Jemimah. The two of them had walked down to the Great Hall together the following morning. (Roxy was still a bit humiliated and refused to let Dominique, Fred, and James tow her along in their wake). People were still muttering, and by the time breakfast was over Roxy was feeling almost grateful for Jemimah’s bold, forward, confrontational approach.
“They’ve got no nerve,” the shorter girl had hissed as the Ravenclaws they were taking Transfiguration with turned in their seats to look at Roxy for a moment, then resumed whispering.
“Better to shout it in my face, huh?” Roxy shot back at Jemimah.
Her new friend rolled her eyes. “Duh.”
Now, it was approaching October and Roxy had spent three full weeks at Hogwarts. The mutterers were mostly silent now (according to Molly, it usually happened when a new Weasley came to school, but died down after a month or so). Roxy, standing on the Quidditch pitch now, wondered if she was mad to be doing this, just when the gossip was ending and she had almost proved she was an average Gryffindor first year, despite her older appearance and her surname.
Jemimah, who was standing beside Roxy clutching a school broom, seemed to read some of this on her friend’s face. “They’ll be the ones who look mental once they’ve seen you fly,” she said confidently.
Roxy snorted lightly. Jemimah’s confidence in her abilities was nice to hear, but it didn’t mean much”Jemimah was confident about everything. Nothing seemed to faze her, not even trying out for the Quidditch team with Roxy as ‘moral support’ when she’d flown perhaps four times in her life and didn’t have the faintest idea what she was doing. But that was Jemimah”fearless, confident, pigheaded, and fiercely loyal.
The two of them traded grins as the current members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team emerged from the changing rooms, their red team robes bright in the fall sun: Aaron Vance, Captain and chaser, Tyler Tremayne, beater and Jemimah’s older brother, and James Potter and Fred Weasley, chasers, called up from last year’s reserves. The latter pair was laughing and looking, Roxy thought, extremely pleased with themselves. As usual. She watched them closely. It was James who spotted her first, and he stared for a moment before punching Fred and pointing in her direction. Roxy’s brother’s face split into an evil grin. “Feeling lucky, first years?” he called loudly, and several people laughed. “Going to show us all up on those old logs?” James was howling, presumably, at the look of utter indignation on Jemimah’s face, but Roxy ignored her cousin and her brother. She wasn’t going to let their rudimentary teasing sabotage her tryout. She stood as erectly as possible, very glad she had Jemimah by her side and Molly’s loan of a Nimbus Two Thousand and Ten in her hand.
“All right everyone,” called Vance, over the laughing crowd. “We’re trying out seekers first. All of you get up in the air, and I’m going to release a snitch. Let’s see who can catch it first.”
“Scared, firstie?” chuckled a large fifth year to Jemimah, who was mounting her broom.
“No, not particularly,” Jemimah retorted coolly, and Roxy knew it was true.
Vance blew his whistle and the five hopefuls kicked off. Jemimah was easily the smallest, and she shot off the ground like an explosive, rising twenty feet above everyone else. James and Fred laughed openly. The seeker tryout lasted about ten minutes, but Roxy didn’t pay attention”she was watching Jemimah nervously, as she careened after the pack of seekers, weaving and bobbing unsteadily and going at a breakneck pace. When the whistle sounded again, she went into a vertical dive and cut a deep groove into the pitch as she skidded to a halt, her black hair forming a frizzy halo around her head, her eyes shining.
“That was fun!” She grinned at Roxy, quite oblivious to the entire House laughing at her. “I told you I wouldn’t fall off.”
Roxy laughed too, wishing she could be as carefree and unaffected as her friend. “That was brilliant. The team doesn’t know what hit them. You looked… drunk, or something.”
Jemimah beamed. “I told you I could fly!”
“That is still debatable,” Roxy said, and they laughed again.
“Quiet,” Vance said sharply as Jemimah gave a very unladylike snort. James and Fred waggled their tongues at them, and Roxy glared back. Her tease of a brother and his troublemaking cousins might think she was annoying, but she refused to be called weak or wimpy. Her dad called her his “little firecracker” and Roxy preferred even that pet title to “kid sister” any day.
“Right, now we’re doing beaters. This is Tyler, he’s our current beater. I’m sending the chasers up in the air, and you’ll go up in pairs and aim and them. “Right...” Vance consulted his list. “Alderton, Bode, you go first.”
Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the beater candidates all had their time in the air. Roxy know she was being kept till last and resented it”it meant Vance didn’t think she was a contender. At last, he called “Okay, Weasley and Miles, up in the air please.”
Jemimah gave Roxy the thumbs up and she kicked off hard, clutching a beater’s bat. The air felt wonderful, and Molly’s broom was both fast and easy to maneuver. Roxy took a deep breath. She could do this.
“School brooms received an upgrade, have they sis?” shouted Fred, shooting past her.
“I wouldn’t know!” Roxy called back, as she pulled into a dive, looped Fred, and pounded a bludger in the direction of James, who was passing. Then she pulled out of the dive and rose like a cork. James’ “Hey!” was accompanied by a dull thud that meant they ball had it its mark. Grinning, Roxy swerved back and forth, weaving, putting the broom through its paces. She could hear Jemimah whooping from far below. There was another bludger, headed straight for her… she rose above it, pummeled it with all of her strength once more, and went streaking off without looking to see if it had hit Fred, dodging Vance. It was the mark of a good beater who did not hang around waiting to see if their shots made contact.
After a few more minutes, Vance’s whistle blew again and Roxy landed gently on the grass, exhilarated from her flight. “Weasley.” Vance was pointing at her. He looked unnerved. “Is that your broom?”
“It’s a loan,” Roxy said. “But I’ve got a Comet Millennium at home.”
“Right.” Vance ran a hand through his hair. “Well, I’m just going to have to ask Professor Longbottom if we can bend the rules a bit. I’ve never seen someone so”I mean, you’re”“
“An eleven year old girl,” Roxy supplied, grinning triumphantly.
“Well, yeah,” the Captain admitted, nodding ruefully. “Beaters are usually”but never mind. Welcome to the team, Weasley.”
Roxy let out a whoop just like Jemimah’s. She might be eleven, but she could wield a beater’s bat better than anyone in Gryffindor House. As far as showing Fred, James, and Dominique, this just about topped all. And the best part was, Roxy thought as she headed back up to the castle with Jemimah, flushed with her success, they couldn’t try to sabotage her, because it was their team, too! Goodbye, kid sister, here I come Quidditch star, Roxy thought. She was once again about to be talked about all over the school”but not for her famous relatives sake this time. This time it was she, Roxy Weasley, making headlines. No one else.