Bella's First Day

Bella's First Day

She turned away from the train and waved goodbye to her family, her long ponytail swinging behind her. They looked picture-perfect, her father with his slowly graying hair and her mother stately and elegant in a black traveling cloak. They had brought the girls with them to see Bella off. Bella had always liked to refer to her two younger sisters as "the girls." It may only have been a two-year age difference, but to her it was immense. She was the eldest, the one who was afforded extra privileges and an audience with her parents' adult friends. They, however, were the little girls.

Turning back to the imposing steam train, she climbed up the steps to board, when she heard her name being called from behind her. She waited in the corridor for her pursuer.

"Bella," the girl called again, finally catching up with her. She had blonde, curly hair, that fell in soft ringlets, which the girls envied and the boys loved to pull on. She wore pale pink robes and carried a small, furry kitten.

"Cynthia!" Bella replied, smiling. She was, truly, relieved to find someone she knew on the crowded train. Although she would never, ever admit it to anyone, she had been nervous about going away from her family for the first time. Her father had taken her into his study and assured her that she would do fine, and she had told him she believed him. He told her stories of his own time at Hogwarts, of the four houses and the ancient castle.

He had impressed upon her the importance of being at the top of her class, and practically warned her that he would expect no less. To assure her superior skills, he had been tutoring her himself in things she was not supposed to be learning for another two or three years. No, she was not worried about classes. She was not even worried about being separated from her family. They were all right, but did little to warrant any more than a mild affection.

What worried her, though, was not something she felt comfortable telling her stern, stately father. What worried her was meeting so many other students. She had been taught at home as a child, first by her mother in the simple ways of their world, and later by her father in their more complex arts, but she had never been exposed en masse to children her own age. It was always dolls with Andromeda and Narcissa, or else charming her parents' friends at dinner parties. Occasionally, she would run into children of her parents' contemporaries at larger gatherings, and it was from these interactions that she had come to know Cynthia Avery, who stood, a great, familiar comfort, at her side in the train corridor.

"I was worried you didn't hear me," Cynthia said breathlessly. "I had to run to catch up with you."

"Of course I heard you!" said Bella, "I just wanted to get out of the way."

"Well then, why don't you?" came an older, male voice from the stairwell.

"Don't mind him," Cynthia said to her friend. "Edmund's just anxious because he's been made a prefect and has to sit up front with all the rest."

The tall, sandy-haired boy looked down at the girls. "I would like," he said forcefully, "to make it to the prefect's compartment before we arrive."

Quickly getting away from the older boy, Cynthia suggested they find a compartment. As they had been among the first to board the train, they found an empty one fairly quickly and settled in there.

"Edmund's a bit cocky, but he's all right, really," Cynthia assured her after a few moment's quiet. "Older siblings are like that."

"Are we?" Bella asked teasingly.

"Oh, yes, I forgot. Well, you probably are," Cynthia accused with a smile. Bella thought of the way she treated her sisters. It was true, whenever they played she was always the leader, she always got the best doll or first choice of roles if they played pretend. She had never thought that she didn't deserve any of it, and even now regretted it very little. After all, she was always their first to their defense, whether from their parents or other outsiders.

The two of them rode in silence for a little while, Bella reading through her spell books, closing her eyes and silently mouthing the incantations her father had taught her, and Cynthia stroking her cat and looking at the window as they whizzed past the countryside.

They both looked up simultaneously, however, when they heard the compartment door slide forcefully open. On the other side stood a thin, blonde-haired boy, and two, darker, larger ones lurking ominously behind him. The boys seemed scarcely three or four years older, but, as older children often do to younger ones, they looked awfully imposing.

"Look, it's ickle firsties," sneered the blonde.

Bella looked across the compartment at Cynthia, who was clutching the fluffy white furball close to her chest. "Are they friends of Edmund's?" she whispered. Cynthia shook her head emphatically.

"Edmund..." the blonde boy appeared deep in thought. "So you must be an Avery. Another insufferable teacher's pet, I'm sure." He turned his gaze to Bella. "I wonder what that would make you."

"I'm Bellatrix Black," she said proudly. Even if the boy held little respect for the Avery bloodlines, there was no way he would not find the Black name unimpressive.

"Black," he repeated, indeed taken aback, even if only slightly. He recovered quickly, and continued with his previous condescension. "A very good family, Father always says, although he also has little doubt that your father married below him."

"Get out!" Bella spat the words at him. She had had enough of bullying older boys, and hoped sincerely that this wasn't what all of the Hogwarts boys were like.

The menacing fourth-year, however, did little to obey Bella and instead strode inside the compartment, while his two silent but commanding friends blocking the door. He pried the cat from out of Cynthia's clenched fists.

"Don't worry, Avery, I'm sure that Goyle will take excellent care of it," he drawled, turning to give the cat to one of the heavyset boys behind him, who held out his wand, and wrinkled his face up, as if deep in thought over what hex would best amuse him.

Busy with his taunting, however, the blonde boy had not noticed that Bella had pulled her own wand out of her robes, and had it pointed at his chest.

"Expellaramus," she cried, sending the blonde boy flying backwards and Cynthia's cat into her own hands. "Colloportus," she shouted, and the door slammed itself behind them, the two heavyset boys stepping backwards just in time to avoid the sliding door slicing off their toes.

Bella handed the cat back to Cynthia. "I don't think they'll bother us the rest of the trip," she said. Cynthia, however, seemed no less stunned.

"H-How did you do that?" she stammered.

"Oh," said Bella, somewhat shyly, "my father's been teaching me a bit. He has very high expectations." Cynthia nodded and pulled out what looked like a very thin novel, while Bella went back to her spell books. They spoke very little the rest of the train ride. Their only further visitor was the trolley witch, but Bella kept one hand in her pocket just in case the older boys returned.

By the time the train arrived, and they had changed into their black school robes, it was nearly dark out. The girls followed a deep voice shouting for the first years. Bella could tell by the heavy lantern the man carried that there was something scary and unnatural about him, and was loathe to follow, but was pushed along by the crowd, until they came to the shore of the lake.

Bella and Cynthia climbed into a small boat, and a couple of boys who looked unfamiliar to her joined them. They made small talk, and though they seemed dreadfully boring, Bella was happy to see that they were much less bullying than the other boys she had met so far.

When they arrived at the castle, Bella found that it was every bit as spectacular as her father had foretold. In fact, she found that she had been so informed of its majesty that the sight itself did little to move her. Even the great hall, with its enchanted ceiling and candlelight was no more grand than she had imagined.

"I hear they make you do some horrible task," Cynthia whispered as they entered the hall.

"Did your older brother tell you that?" Bella asked quickly.

"Well, he should know," Cynthia defended.

"My father says it's nothing, they just want to find out what house to put you in," Bella told her. Both being from a long line of witches and wizards, Bella and Cynthia knew well the tales of the four houses, how each Founder had made one in which to train those he or she thought most worthy.

Bella looked around at the other first-years, and at the four tables set up across the great hall. She wondered with which of the other first-years she would be spending her next seven years. She, after all, knew which house she would be sorted into. Her father had been a Slytherin, her mother a Slytherin, her aunt and uncle as well. One of her ancestors, her father had told her proudly, had been Slytherin head of house, and then headmaster. She probably would have believed she was directly descended from Salazar Slytherin herself, if her father had told her; their family history was so interconnected with that house.

Bella was so immersed in her thoughts that she was only brought back to reality when Cynthia pulled on her sleeve and whispered "wish me luck," before taking her place on a stood in front of the student body. A severe-looking woman placed an old hat on her blonde curls, and after a moment's wait, it shouted "Slytherin" loud enough for the whole school to hear. Bella smiled and clapped along with the long table of older students whom Cynthia ran to sit amongst.

A small, brown-haired boy was sorted into Gryffindor (Bella did not clap), and then she heard her own name called. She grinned and walked proudly to the stool, feeling the ancient hat fall over her ponytail. It tugged a bit, but she was too excited to mind.

The voice inside the hat spoke to her, her father had warned her it might. He had also, however, warned her against telling anyone else how the sorting was done. Older students, he said, liked to keep it a mystery, but as she was his eldest, he saw no reason for her not to know.

"You have all the qualities of a Hufflepuff," the hat said in its low, serious voice.

A Hufflepuff! thought Bella. That was the house that accepted anybody, regardless of intelligence, ambition or pedigree. She was not a Hufflepuff; she was a Slytherin!

The hat seemed to be able to tell what she was thinking, for it spoke again. "Your loyalty is unwavering, a hallmark of that house, but I never wish to put a student where he or she will be unhappy."

Good! Bella thought. She thought she might have heard the hat issue a sigh, but ignored it, standing and smiling as the hat loudly pronounced "Slytherin!"

Bella stood up and ran down to the Slytherin, sitting next to Cynthia. The two girls smiled at each other, and Bella noticed the blonde boy from the train sitting further down the table. He seemed to avert his eyes from her stare. It could have been from fear or anger, or it could have been simply because he found something more compelling to look at. Bella, though, immediately decided it was fear. She was pleased at the thought of the first impression she had made at her new home.

A moment later, however, the thought struck her that the older boy probably wouldn't feel the same way about her if he knew that she'd nearly been placed in Hufflepuff. He, nor anyone else, would ever know, she immediately decided, for she would never utter a word of where the sorting hat had originally wanted to place her.