Emerald [Cedric Diggory]

Chapter Five

Maya jerked into wakefulness at the sound of her alarm going off. She blinked, slightly disoriented as she took in her surroundings.

Then she remembered that she was back at Hogwarts.

Grumbling to herself, she made her way towards the ladder to step out of her trunk. Outside, the sun hadn't completely risen, so the dorm room was still dark- the glass wall in their room that overlooked the lake usually filled the place with a greenish glow as the sun slowly crept up in the sky. It was a running joke in Slytherin that you could tell the time of day by how green your roommate was.

Maya silently passed by the beds of her sleeping roommates and her own empty bed, careful to avoid the ornamental pool on the other side as she made her way towards the bathroom.

She was gone from the dorm within the next twenty minutes, before her roommates even had the chance to wake. Maya wasn't a morning person by any means, but she preferred this arrangement. She had less than no patience in the mornings and if Parkinson were to say something nasty to her, Maya may very well kill her- and she didn't think listening to Snape's standard "Maiming and murder are not tolerated in this school." speech so early in the morning would do much to brighten her day- it was the same reason she avoided going to breakfast, choosing to spend her mornings in the library instead.

Now that she knew who her guards would be at Azkaban, Maya had decided to put extra effort into not becoming a homicidal maniac. She felt sorry for Hagrid. The poor man had spent close to three months in Azkaban last year, when the school board had accused him of reopening the chamber of secrets.

Maya shook the dreary thoughts of last year away as she descended into the common room, the last remnants of sleep finally leaving her. To her surprise, the common room wasn't empty like she had expected.

"Hello Maya." came the voice of Daphne Greengrass from one of the couches.

"Daphne." Maya acknowledged. Daphne was about the only Slytherin girl from her year that she liked.

"This is my sister Astoria." She introduced, and it was only then that Maya realized that there was a tiny first year sitting in an armchair next to Daphne.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Maya." the girl said formally. She said it with such seriousness that Maya had to suppress a smile.

"It's a pleasure to meet you too, Astoria." Maya said, just as formally. Over the years Maya had come to realize that in Slytherin there was either trash talk or Victorian courtesy, there was scarcely any middle ground.

"I was hoping to show Astoria some mermaids before the common room became too crowded." Daphne said.

"But it's too dark to see anything." Astoria lamented, looking at the glass wall broodingly.

It was too dark to see anything, but Maya was sure that in a few hours the merpeople would be swimming by the wall, looking in to check if a person they liked had returned. They couldn't talk of course, but the merpeople and the Slytherins sometimes interacted by smiling or waving at each other. The mermaids would sometimes swim around gracefully, trying to keep their Slytherin entertained. Maya had a few mermaid friends too, that she liked better than most people at school. She had been hoping to catch them before she left the dungeons for the day.

But the girls didn't need to know that.

"Well the great thing is that you live here now." Maya said to Astoria. "You'll see them soon enough."

Daphne smiled as her sister thanked Maya.

"So, I'm curious." Maya began, and the girls looked at her questioningly. "When Astoria was sorted into Slytherin, did she get her own room or does she share yours?" she asked Daphne.