The American. (George Weasley)

Three.

I woke the next morning not feeling very rested. On my trunk there was a new set of black robes that had the Gryffindor house logo on it as well as crimson red on the inside. And a crimson red and gold striped tie for me to wear as well.
   
I changed into my uniform, a white button down shirt, a dark grey skirt, white knee high socks, a gray sweater vest, and black Mary Janes on my feet. My new robe covered my outfit though so I don't understand why it matters what we wear underneath it, but I don't make the rules here so it's whatever I guess.
   
Katie and Genevieve were waiting to walk me down to the Great Hall for breakfast. I told them they didn't have to but they insisted. When we got to the Great Hall, Katie walked me over to a seventh year boy named Oliver Wood, and told me that he was the Gryffindor Quidditch team Captain. He was a taller boy with short brown hair and a kind smile, but Katie told me that he was very serious about Quidditch.
   
"Daisy plays Chaser," said Katie as we sat across from him.
   
"Oh really?" He asks, his face perked up instantly. "Did you play at Ilvermorny?"
   
"I did," I say, nodding.
   
"Awesome," he says, nodding now, "You should try out. I'm on the hunt for the best players of Gryffindor House this year. I want to win the House cup because it's my last year."
   
"Of course," I say, smiling.
   
"Well, I'll be sure to let you know when tryouts are."
   
"Thanks." I say, nodding.
   
It was then that one of the Weasley twins, I think it was George but I didn't know, came and sat next to Oliver and handed out pieces of paper to us. 
   
"Thanks George," says Genevieve. So I was right, it was George.
   
"Here's your times table, Daisy." Says George, as he handed me my paper.
   
I was very confused, "What's a times table? Like in Math?"
   
"What?" Asks Katie, "No, it shows you which classes you have at what times."
   
"Oh, so it's a class schedule," I say, nodding and reading the paper.
   
"Yeah, that," says Genevieve.
   
Genevieve walked with me to all of our classes, and before I knew it, I had already gone through my first week at school. I discovered very quickly that Hogwarts was kind of hard to navigate through. There were one hundred and forty-two staircases in Hogwarts: Narrow, rickety ones; some that led somewhere different the next day; some with a vanishing step halfway up that you had to remember to jump. There were doors that won't open unless you asked politely, or tickled them in exactly the right place, and doors that weren’t doors at all, just walls pretending to be doors. It was all very hard to remember where anything was because it all seemed to move around a lot.
   
You had to watch out for the caretaker, Argus Filch, and his annoying cat Mrs. Norris. She patrolled the corridors alone. Break a rule in front of her, put just one toe out of line, and she’d whisk off for Filch, who’d appear, wheezing, two seconds later. Filch knew the secret passage ways of the school better than anyone and could pop up as suddenly as any of the ghosts. The students all hated him and his cat.
   
And then, once you had managed to find them, there were the classes themselves. On Wednesday nights at midnight we were in the Astronomy tower learning the different stars and the movement of the planets. Two Days a week we were in the greenhouses with Professor Sprout, where we learned how to identify and take care of all the strange plants and fungi, and found out what they were used for in Herbology class.
   
History of Magic was only boring because of the Professor, Professor Binns. He was a ghost. He had been very old when he fell asleep, and he got up the next morning and left his body behind him. He talked slow and put everyone to sleep. The Charms Professor, Professor Flitwick, was a tiny man who stood on a stack of books on his desk to see all of us.
   
Professor McGonagall was not the teacher to cross. Strict and clever, she gave us a talking to the moment we sat down in class about how Transfiguration was a complex and dangerous form of magic, and that anyone messing around in her class would leave and not come back. She was also the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts and Head of Gryffindor House.
   
The Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor was Professor Lupin, and everyone was excited to have class with him. I guess they haven't had a Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor that's lasted more than a year in over a decade. Lupin was very kind, and patient. He quickly became my favorite professor.
   
Today was my very first day of potions class, and we had double potions today. It took place down in the dungeons. Professor Snape was a tall, skinny, young looking man with long and greasy black hair and a long, hooked nose. He started the class off by taking a role, and he paused when he got to my name.
   
"Ah, Miss Partridge," he says slowly. "Our new transfer student from America. Nice to have you here."
   
I can tell from his tone that he meant the opposite of that statement.
   
Genevieve had warned me that Snape didn't like the students unless they were in his house, which was Slytherin House. He was the Head of Slytherin House and he favored them. He certainly favored one student in his house particularly named Draco Malfoy. He was a third year student that was attacked by a Hippogriff during the first ever Care of Magical Creatures class of the year. According to all of the fourth year girls in my dorm, he's what they called a git, and a prat. I'd just call him an asshole but that just might be the American in me.
   
Snape was certainly annoying, but as long as I kept to myself and did my work right then he'd leave me alone. I was focused in potions class. It was fun, when Snape wasn't straight up bullying the children he taught. Genevieve was right, he was terrible to anyone who wasn't a Slytherin.
   
Then there were Quidditch tryouts. Genevieve and Leanne watched as Katie, and I tried out. Oliver was certainly a good leader of this team. Harry kept his spot as Seeker, Fred and George kept their spots as Beaters, and Angelina Johnson, Katie, and Alicia Spinett all kept their spots as chasers.
   
Oliver to me I would be kept as a reserve Chaser in case one of three girls couldn't be in the game for whatever reason. I was sad I didn't make the team, but knowing there was a chance I could still play was a bit of a spirit lifter.
   
It was a few days after I found out that I had been made a reserve on the Quidditch team, and I was sitting by the fireplace after my shower doing my homework. I was deep into it when one of the Weasley twins sat by the fire with me and started up a conversation saying, "I thought you did really good at Quidditch tryouts."
   
"Well not as good as the other girls that actually made the team." I say, not looking up from my homework.
   
"Oliver is just obsessed with winning." He says making himself comfortable in the chair. It was then that I looked up at him. He had a newspaper that he was looking at called The Daily Prophet. It had an article on the front page about someone named Sirius Balck. He looked like someone who was insane and very dangerous judging from his moving mugshot photo.
   
"Who is Sirius Black?" I ask him, I still can't tell if I was talking to Fred or George right now.
   
"Only the most wanted person in Europe right now," he says and his tone sounds like he couldn't believe that I didn't already know that. "He's wanted not just by wizards but by Muggles too."
   
"Muggles?" I repeat the word, confused.
   
He looked at me like he didn’t know what I was talking about, "A person who can't do magic. You know."
   
"Oh," I say, nodding my head, "we call them No Maj in America."
   
He nods now, understanding. "I see, well, to answer your question, Sirius was in league with You-Know-Who back during the first Wizarding War even though he claimed to be on the other side."
   
"There was a war?" I ask very confused, and then I add, "And I have no idea who You-Know-Who is."
   
"So you've got no idea about what happened to Harry when he was a baby?"
   
"No," I answer honestly.
   
"Hold on, don't move," he gets up and walks over to that bushy haired girl I sat next to on the first night here. She was really close friends with Ron and Harry, but I had forgotten her name. They talked for a moment and I turned my attention to the letter my sister sent me. It was popping out from behind my homework and got my attention.
   
I missed her like crazy. She assured me everything was going okay at Ilvermorny but I had a fear she was just lying to make me feel better about not being there. She said her and William were looking after each other. I just hoped that they really were okay, but not being there to see it for myself made me feel so guilty.
   
"Okay," says the twin's voice that I was talking to. I still didn't know if it was Fred or George. This time he sat next to me on the couch. "Hermione is going to grab us one of her books and then I'm going to give you a history lesson. What's that? A letter from home?"
   
"Yeah, it's from my sister," I tell him, folding the letter back up and putting it back behind my homework.
   
He perked up excitedly, and it made me think that I was talking to George, but I still was totally sure. "I didn't know you had a sister, is she older or younger than you?"
   
"We're the same age, I'm one of three. I also have a brother. We're triplets. They're both still attending Ilvermorny," I admit to him, feeling sheepish.
   
"Why didn't you guys transfer together?" He asked, sounding genuinely curious.
   
"Because I kept getting into fights. I didn't technically transfer, I was kicked out of Ilvermorny. Hogwarts was the only school that would take me."
   
"Why were you fighting?"
   
"Because those kids are assholes who kept making fun of my sister for her stutter, and calling my brother stupid because he has dyslexia and ADD and has trouble reading and paying attention. When the school wasn't putting an end to it, I did. But I got kicked out for it."
   
"Wow," he says, his tone soft, "I'm sorry that they did that. Those kids are assholes. You shouldn't have gotten kicked out for protecting your siblings. If anyone laid a finger on Ron, Ginny, or Fred I'd probably kill them."
   
Since he said Fred's name, I can rightfully assume I was talking to George Weasley.
   
"But not Percy?" I ask curiously.
   
"If anyone lays a hand on Percy, believe me he had it coming." That makes us both laugh for a good moment. But then I got serious again for a moment.
   
"I don't want anyone to know that yet though. I don't want anyone to think I'm violent or something like that."
   
"I won't tell anyone," he assures me.
   
That's when Hermione is in front of us, holding a book saying, "I got that book you wanted,  George." And handed it to him. He thanked her and then she went back to do her homework. I read Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century on the cover.
   
"Here it is," said George after he had found what he was looking for. He wasn't lying when he said he was going to give me a history lesson. He started with the story of Harry and Lord Voldemort, about how Lord Voldemort tried to kill Harry when he was a year and a half old, but it didn't work. It somehow backfired and killed him. Sadly for Harry it did kill both of his parents.
   
Then later, they found out it was Sirius Black, who said he was a friend of Harry's parents that actually told Lord Voldemort where they all were. He was confronted by his friend, Peter Pettigrew, who Sirius killed in front of at least 12 No Majes and then he was sent to Azkaban prison. It was only this summer did he become the first person to even succeed in breaking out of Azkaban, and no one knows how he did it.
   
George also added that Harry doesn't know anything about this. He just thinks that Sirius is a crazy Death Eater who turned worse and worse as the years went on. If he knew the truth it would kill him. I had to agree with that if I knew someone who was their friend had a hand in my parents murder I'd be upset too.
   
When I went up to bed that night, all the other girls were here. Genevieve perked up and instantly started talking. "I saw you with George. How did you get him to talk to you for so long? I've hardly ever had one conversation with either of them."
    I shrug, "I don't know. He came over to me and started talking."
   
"Really? Lucky, I'm jealous."
   
"He sat in my compartment with me on the way here," I told her, shrugging like it wasn't a big deal. She was on my bed now, sitting next to me, wanting to know everything.
   
"You have no idea how lucky you are. I've been trying to get into their little circle since first year."
   
"Gen," says Devon from her bed. "You know Fred likes Angelina, right? He has for a while."
   
She sounds very sure of herself as she says, "That's because he doesn't know me well enough yet. That's all." She turns her attention back to me. "You need to become friends with them so I can become friends with them."
   
"If you want to become friends with them you should. They're nice, I don't know why you let them scare you so much."
   
"I know, but every time I try to talk to them I get all tongue tied, and they're fifth years this year, which means I only have two more years before they leave Hogwarts and I don't get to see them every day. I'm running out of time."
   
"Well, George did offer to show me around Hogsmeade when we go on Halloween. You can join us if you'd like. I'm sure they won't mind."
   
"Oh thank you! Thank you! Thank you!" She exclaims while hugging me. She was really desperate to get to know Fred. That was for sure. It was kind of cute.
   
"You're welcome," I tell her as she hugged me. It was an unexpected hug, but I hugged her back a little bit.

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Here's part 3!

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-Emily Winchester.