Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Three's Company ❯ Chapter 1

Disclaimer-slash-A/N: I do not own Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, upon which this fanfiction is based. While I have met the twins, I do not, nor have I ever, owned them or any other character JK Rowling has created. My only claims are Amaris Dughan, the plot, and the iPlod. This disclaimer applies to the entire story.

Please read and review - and a beta reader would be wonderful, too! =] Gods bless. -Breilyn

 

Chapter 1

 

I walked into the Great Hall, treading lightly behind the first years. All around me, students were milling about at the tables, trying to get a look at the crimson-streaked raven-haired wonder that held no resemblance whatsoever to the first years she followed behind. I'll be the talk of the place for weeks! I thought to myself, snarling a little at the thought.

 

My long cloak trailed on the floor as I swept toward the dais at the front of the Hall. Blue-hazel eyes flicked toward the ceiling, and a slight smile shone in them at the realization that the clouds were mere meters above my head, the stars not much further. Those same eyes came to rest on the silver-bearded Albus Dumbledore, now standing before a rickety old three-legged stool with an even more ragged-looking hat sitting atop it.

 

He nodded ever-so-slightly in my direction, and I smiled back with a nod of my own. He'd explained everything as soon as I'd emerged from the Thestral-driven carriages (Yes, I can see them), ushering me into his office for a quick word while Professor McGonagall treated with the yearlings. I supposed I would learn who she was at a later point in time, which, as a matter of fact, I did. I was quasi-confused, but I assumed most everyone here was at some point in there lives. Most of them, though, didn't have to go through the sorting at sixteen.

 

My eyes roamed the length and breadth of the Hall as I walked down the pathway between the tables. McGonagall had us line up behind her, and, one by one, she called out names. Each time, the boy or girl would sit on the stool and settle the hat on his or her head. The hat would invariably shout one of four names, assumingly the houses. The amount of time it took, however, was incessantly different for every person, and took anywhere from half a second to a minute or five. Finally, she came close to my name (only about ten minutes in), and I realized that, not only would everyone see me, they would know my name. I gave the professor a pleading look, but her eyes flicked pointedly to the stool, and I sighed obediently.

 

"Dughan, Amaris," McGonagall said, her voice echoing through the ominously silent Hall. She gestured to the stool, and I reluctantly took my seat. The hat flopped over my head, and the world went dark.

 

"Ah," said a voice somewhere around the back of my head, "another one? Your father, girl, now he was something. Too bad he didn't stay long at all, that one." The hat sighed, and I could tell he - for surely it was - was poking around where he shouldn't have been: in my head.

 

"Get out of my head, you," I snarled, glad the hat was extremely large.

 

"Feisty, this one. I think I'll place you in...GRYFFINDOR!” I cursed softly as the hat glided off my head, seemingly of its own accord. I wouldn't have doubted it, even then. McGonagall gave me a little shove toward the loudly clapping table, and, reluctantly, I went to sit.

 

I glanced around the table, seeing a few familiar faces in the forms of people I'd taken the carriages with. 'Harry Potter, was it?' I asked myself, walking up to them. "Mind if I sit?" I asked in a quiet voice.

 

"No, go ahead," a young ginger-topped girl answered, scooting over a little to give me some room.

 

Harry smiled at me. "Amaris, did you say?" he asked. "Didn't you ask me-"
"How the platform worked?" I cut him off. "Yes, 'twas me. Harry, right?"

 

"Yeah, Harry Potter. This is Hermione Granger," he motioned to the bushy-brunette on his left, "and Ron Weasley," this time pointing to another ginger on his right.

 

"Amaris Dughan," I said, nodding to them both, though neither returned the gesture. Some people, I huffed in mock-anger.

 

"You don't look like a first year," one of the older gingers in front of me said. They looked to be around a year older than me, actually, and closer in looks than two peas in a pod. Were all of them siblings? Gods above! Their poor mother…

 

"Really?" I asked innocently, my entire posture dripping sarcasm. "I was wondering why I could see over their heads.” Standing with correct posture, as the British liked to say, I was 143cm tall. Needless to say, the only people I was taller than were eleven year olds.

 

"Height and developmental stages are on two different ends of the spectrum," Hermione quipped. Everyone around her except for Harry and myself looked completely befuddled. "Mugglism," she muttered with a blush. "Sorry."

 

"No worries," I said, grinning. "I have the same problem. No life." Hermione laughed, and I knew then we'd be great friends, no matter that I had a year on her.

 

"You didn't answer my question," the ginger twin prompted me impatiently.

 

"I didn't think you'd asked," I said matter-of-factly. "In all honesty, I haven't heard a question but for mine since I sat down."

 

He glared at me, but his twin spoke before he could quit sputtering incoherently. "What Fred means is, are you a first year?"

 

"No," I said, wishing to disclose no information whatsoever about my personal life. "But if he were to ask any other question, I would probably be just as difficult about it." That should shut them up for a while, I thought smugly. But that fate was not to be mine own.

 

"So why are you here at all?" Fred asked, deciding to ignore my warning after only a few minutes.
I mentally swore, but felt I had to answer at least part of the question. "Dumbledore wrote me a letter, same as you," I told him. “I just got it five years late.” I never could help taunting my elders. I always wondered why I'd gotten into loads of trouble back then.

 

"Five years?” Hermione blurted incredulously. “No-one's ever been invited after their eleventh birthdays. Did he say why?”

 

"He said..." I trailed off, wracking my memories. "He said he couldn't contact me before, because otherwise..." I paused again, thinking hard. "Otherwise I'd be dead."

 

~*~

 

Surprisingly, that shut them up, more so than if I'd told them to. There was a bubble of silence around me, and I was the center of it. What was the world coming to? I wondered, past caring even at that point. Silence? When I'd been one of the loudest at the orphanage? Mayhap there was magic in the world after all. Of course, when it concerned me, how could there not be?

 

Rhetoric, I swear.

 

Dumbledore stood up again, raising his hands. The silence spread to encompass the entire room, and I didn't feel quite so alone anymore. Yippee. He said a few words on behavior and such like, introduced the new teachers, then lowered his hands. Almost immediately afterward, the golden plates in front of us were filled to the brims with food. I dug in eagerly, wanting nothing more than to keep the silence from breaking. But with my luck, it didn't last long at all.

 

"Where are you from, Amaris?" Harry asked, looking a little nervous. I supposed that, even though he seemed to be the leader of this little crew, he wasn't all that good at it yet. Wonderful. Just bloody perfect.

 

"Cornwall." I didn't want to be too specific, but I was going to spend all year with these kids, younger though they might be. During our meeting earlier, Dumbledore had decided upon my intermingling between fifth and seventh years, because of my lack of official tutoring. Another `yippee'.

 

"Really?" Hermione asked, seemingly sincere in her interest.

 

"Yeah," I answered, smiling a little at the thought that someone actually knew the value of the place. Most just thought it was another province.

 

"Where in Cornwall?" Either she was sincerely interested, or she was trying awful hard to find out where my family lived, for fairly obvious reasons.

 

I felt it couldn't hurt. "I grew up in the old castle. You ever heard of it?"

 

Hermione shook her head. "Nope. Sounds wonderful, though."

I nodded, sort of relieved. "I loved it, but most of my mates despised living in the 'draughty auld place'." At this, I mocked my friends' old Irish accents, smiling a little as I did.

 

"Are you talking about Tintagel?" one of the twins asked. Fred, I realized later. I nodded, the shock evident in my face. The others looked confused, so he elaborated. "Allegedly, it was the home of Queen Igraine, wife of Uther Pendragon. Merlin himself used to visit there often enough."

 

Ron laughed. "Merlin? Right, like he'd ever stoop so low as to visit Cornwall."

 

I glared at him, none of my hurt showing through my eyes (I hoped). "For your information, Merlin visited worse places than Cornwall," I growled. "He was born in a hovel, for Snoimhar's sake. He was a bard before anything even remotely resembling a wizard! And you have no right to speak of him so!"

 

"Touché," Fred's twin muttered, though none of them commented on my references to the Gaelic Fates (thank the gods). "And I thought Hermione was bad!" The girl in question glared daggers at him, but spoke naught.

 

"How would you know, anyway?" Ron demanded. He knew he was losing, and was trying to save face as best he could.

 

"Father knew him." As everyone's eyes around me widened to the size of the plates on the table, I swore, loud and long. "I didn't say that," I mutterd weakly.

 

"Yes you did. That means…Your Da was old!" Ron's grin was triumphant. The little bugger.

 

"Yeah," I agreed sullenly. "He probably was."

 

"Was? As in six feet under?" Fred asked, eyebrow raised.

 

"Insensitive prat." The curse came out as a snarl, and I found myself on my feet. Realizing I had no real choice, I shut my mouth and stalked from the Great Hall. Damned pride. I'd figure how to get into my room later, but I was too furious to do anything about it now. Instead, I made my way out onto the grounds, running desperately across the grass.

 

I had noticed on the way to the school that there was a large forest surrounding the grounds. At the time, I hadn't known anything of the ban against it, nor the fact that it was called the Forbidden Forest for a very specific reason. I was hurting, and missing my father. The only comfort I had left to me was the trees themselves.

 

Said trees were not as comforting as I'd initially hoped, but they were a start. I could hear the undergrowth move as a creature, sounding like none I'd heard before, crept across it. I stepped lightly, disturbing nothing in my search for somewhere that even remotely resembled home.

 

Some time later I found a lake, probably an extension of the lake on the open grounds. Without a second thought, I flung myself toward it, glad to have found my element at last. The perfect place to re-stitch old wounds. The feeding stream gurgled as it poured into the lake and out again, and trees of all sorts lined the shores. Oak, beech, willow, elm, ash, and rowan were most prominent, while various evergreens filled in the gaps. I was in heaven.

 

That is, until I rushed headlong into a faceful of horseflesh. I stumbled backward and looked up in the same moment, swearing inaudibly at the predicament before me. Centaurs, I thought, rather peeved. Busybodies, more like.

 

"Students are not to be in the forest without Hagrid," the centaur rumbled, a tad annoyed himself.

 

"Like I need the giant's protection," I said, not bothering to hide my sarcasm.

 

"You have been warned, girl. Next time, we will not be so tolerant." The centaur turned, ready to disappear into the forest again.

 

"Bugger off, you stupid pony," I muttered with a glare in the man-horse's general direction.

 

"What did you say?" the centaur demanded, whirling. "You dare not insult our kind!"

 

"You're all a bunch of cowardly Shetlands, anyway." Too late to back down now, I reasoned with my quailing other half, pride at it again.

 

"What did you say?" he roared. Merlin, was I good at pissing people off or what? Inside I was fairly jumping for joy. Wreaking havoc makes me happy, what can I say?

 

I roared right back. Only, my roar was a lot louder. And more cat-like. "I said, bugger off, you damn ponies!"

 

"Pony? Is that what you consider us? Ponies?" As one, the herd emerged from the trees looking menacing with their short bows pulled taught, all their arrows trained on me.

 

"Yes," I told him in a softer tone, almost deadpan. "Ponies. Or do you consider yourselves draft-mules, seeing as you're halfbreeds?" I was the ONLY one in the entire school who could get away with that line. I was also the only one in the school who was one, but don't tell them that.

The collective herd was steaming now, but, seeing as the stallion in front of me hadn't given the word, they weren't going to fire. Yet.

 

"Can't think of anything to say, or is a stick too far up your big arse for you to get anything past it?" It wasn't being nice, per say, but at least it was better than saying he was outright constipated. Wouldn't have been a good insult anyway. He probably wouldn't have understood it.

 

"You foolish child!" the horse-man cried, charging me. He'd seemed to have forgotten his bow, which was just peachy on my part. "How dare you insult our proud race!"

 

"Proud?" I scoffed, sidestepping him with ease. "Proud of being cowards, more like. Where were you when the Morrigan called? Where were you when battle raged fourteen years ago?" I could see each word sticking them like thistle flowers as he froze, mere inches from me. "Where were you when your lords needed help? Cowering behind a failing evil, hiding your faces from the world in fear? Is that what you consider courageous?"

 

"We could ask the same of you, child." A dappled grey stepped from the throng, his hands at his sides. "Where were you when the Morrigan called?"

 

I held my head high. "Defending my people to the last," I told him proudly. I was a mere pup, but I'd contributed my fair share of help. Voldemort's first attack on Europe had spread as far as Romania, where Mother grew up. We'd been visiting her family's caravan when word of his arrival reached us. That was when Dai had left.

 

"Well met, then. How is your honored father?"

 

"Gone, as are the others of the tribe." My eyes never wavered, no matter that they filled to the brim with tears.

 

"May he rest with the Goddess, then," the grey said, his head bowed.

 

I thanked him silently. "May I have leave of the forest, my lords?" I asked. It seemed they had forgotten my insults when I had reminded them of their duties.

 

The grey never faltered. "In the name of your father, then, girl." And without further ado, they were gone.

 

I sighed, smiling a little at my prowess. My eyes flicked skyward, the moon swinging into view. I judged the feast to have ended, so I marked my route for later and slipped out the way I'd come.

 

~

 

It seemed I had timed my arrival almost perfectly, for I found the Gryffindors leaving the table to follow the Head Boy to the dorms in the northernmost tower of the castle. He shouted a password, I cannot for the life of me remember what it was, now, and the portrait of a very large woman swung open to reveal the Gryffindor Common Room.

 

Nice place, I thought, glancing around. This place was more for the comfort of its inhabitants than the competition of the school, and it showed. The fireplace was large, and surrounded by plenty of wing-backed chairs (one of which I claimed almost immediately) and couches galore.

 

Once in my chair, I refocused my gaze on the staircases leading up to the girls' and boys' dormitories. The girls' staircase was much more ornate than the boys, I noticed. And I was sure many others did too.

 

Hermione prodded me in the back, and I rose to follow her, albeit sullenly, up the stairs. She pointed me toward the sixth-year rooms, and I saw that one of them had my name on it, so I entered. The room was large enough for a single four-poster, a nightstand, and a vanity. I blinked, wondering why I was special enough to warrant my own room, when I'd never spent a night alone in my life. When I exited, I said as much to Hermione, but she only replied that the room would grow in size when more sixth years joined me. At the moment, though, there was an odd number, and I'd been given one to myself.

 

It was only much later, almost when I'd fallen asleep that night that I realized there might have been a greater purpose than the one Hermione had suggested. No-one need know what I am, I thought sleepily. Wonder if Dumbledore planned it after all?