Stranger to Destiny

There was nothing particularly remarkable about the 16-year-old girl who made her way off the Hogwarts Express and onto the platform as the train screeched to a stop, sending great clouds of steam up into the night. She didn't stand out much, she didn't really stand out at all, and at the same time, she couldn't have been more different. Not in an obvious manner, of course. She had a trunk, just like everybody else; she had an owl, just like...mostly everyone else, though most students preferred to keep their owls in a cage; and she moved with the current of students towards the carriages, also like everybody else (save the first years, who stood nervously by the edge of the lake). A great shadow of a man stood silhouetted against the light from the lanterns mounted on the outside of the carriages. His voice, though impossible to make out through the babble of the crowd, was deep and gruff (fitting for his apparent size). Any sound of his voice was then completely wiped out by the intensifying volume of chatter in the thickening crowd.

Severus Snape knew she was different though, as he plucked her out of the throng stampeding towards the thestral-drawn carriages. "Dumbledore wanted me to take you to the castle personally," he said in response to her indignant expression of being yanked by the arm. "After all, you are a rather...special case, aren't you?" he said greasily, leading her up a path he obviously knew, seeing as it would have been impossible to navigate in the dark otherwise. His signature smirk, as if he knew something you didn't know, or didn't want him to know, stretched its slimy way across his face as it looked down at the girl with amused disdain. "No more special than you, Sevvy," she said, stressing the last word with a vengeful hiss.

Snape paled, his eyes alighting with a fire of things from times long past, but not forgotten. "In fact, I'd say you're even more special than me, aren't you Sevvy?" the girl said, as if urged on by his pale face and lighted eyes. He rounded on her suddenly, like a carnivorous beast pouncing, tired of waiting in the shadows. His stone-like grip enclosed itself around her shoulders, his face livid and inches from her own. His voice came out poisonously through gritted teeth, "Don't ever speak to me like that!" He shook her, seemingly enunciating every syllable with a sharp wrench of her shoulders. "And don't you dare call me that, you hear? Don't you DARE!!!"

The girl...laughed. The girl laughed with a laugh that was not unfamiliar. She laughed as if her very sanity was being emitted with every shout of amusement. She lifted a finger, one gorgeously skeletal finger, and traced a vein on his forehead that jutted out, pulsing with his rage. "Careful, Sevvy," she said, her voice no more than a delicate bone-crushing whisper, "high blood pressure, it's a killer." She then slid out of his grip with effortless ease and continued up the path, leaving Snape in a motionless state of stunned fury behind her.