When Vivian Young was born, she had blue eyes. Mr. and Mrs. Young were nonplussed, wondering how two adults with eyes as deep brown as the earth itself could be the parents of a light-eyed child. Mrs. Young knew her husband would never accuse her of adultery, and indeed she never felt that he had even considered it. They had been happily married for nearly five years at that point. Still, she considered if the roles had been reversed, if she'd accuse her husband of sleeping with some light-eyed woman. But soon enough Vivian Young's eyes turned brown and there was nothing to be insinuated or left unspoken concerning Mrs. Young's fidelity.
"Babies are often born with light eyes," Mr. Young's sister told them. But that wasn't the last of
Vivian's surprises. On her first birthday, her hair changed color, and not only that but length and texture as well. As she shoveled birthday cake into her mouth with clenched up pudgy little fists, the short black swath of hair that swept over her brow turned an assaulting shade of bright green, growing down past her shoulders in tight curls. Mrs. Young collapsed into her husband's arms, spilling her glass of wine into her new white linen dress. Just as her eyes had returned to a respectable shade of brown a few days after her birth, Vivian's hair was short, straight, and black again by the time she was put to bed by her worried father. While it was undoubtedly a shocking event, neither he nor Mrs. Young expected the reasoning behind their daughter's ability to change her appearance to be because she was a witch.
A letter had come in the mail addressed to Vivian. Mr. Young dismissed it as some sort of odd joke, letting his daughter keep it because she liked the wax seal. A week passed before the next letter came. Mr. and Mrs. Young were perturbed by that point, frustrated with a joke that was going too far. That was before the headmaster visited their house himself and explained the situation to Vivian's parents.
"Alright," Mr. Young laughed dryly at the old man who sat on his couch, "alright, I think that's enough—"
Mrs. Young shrieked as her bookshelf suddenly caught fire, orange flames leaping up to the ceiling and licking at the crown molding. Mr. Young ran to the wall-mounted telephone, fingers slipping over the buttons as he tried to ring the fire department.
Vivian, now eleven years old, who had been sitting between her parents, gaped at the flaming bookshelf, hardly aware of her mother's screams and gasps. The only thing about her that changed over the past ten years was the stark mop of black hair upon her head, which turned into an unassuming brown to match the shade of her unassuming eyes, that and the fact that she only wanted to go by Viv now. Slowly, she turned her gaze to the old man, who was smiling at her contentedly. She smiled back at him, but with her brows knit together in a quizzical sort of amazement.
The Youngs took their daughter to King's Cross themselves, mouths hung open as a kindly couple with a litter of red-headed children showed them how to run through the wall between platforms nine and ten.
***
If there was one thing George Weasley hated more than boredom, it was boring people. To be fair, it was hard for George to find others boring, but a few slipped through here and there. So it came as quite a surprise when Fred and George Weasley adopted Vivian Young as one of their own. She was a plain girl, plain brown hair and plain brown eyes with a plain face. She'd even been called ugly a few times, mostly by boys who couldn't admit to themselves that they'd never stand a chance with her, boys who would quickly receive a knee to the groin or a solid sock in the jaw once she found out. She'd nearly been expelled from Hogwarts twice by the time she turned twelve and was on track to winning a bet that she'd make it through all seven years without getting kicked out.
Beneath her unsuspecting appearance, Viv was a menace of the first degree, with a gravely voice and a sharp tongue and an even sharper left-hook. Fred and George thought she was the funniest person they'd ever met, besides each other of course. It made it all the more strange to those who couldn't already understand why they liked her that she was a Slytherin.
"Ah," the Sorting Hat said as it was placed atop her head, "A headstrong one aren't we? A little capricious, yes, stubborn. Hmm... very intelligent, though not always in the academic sense. Loyal, sure sure. Brave indeed... What to do, what to do..."
At the time, she knew nothing of the houses and why she should be sorted into one over another. Isn't everyone at least a little brave, a little loyal, a little smart, and a little ambitious? She thought to herself.
"Hah!" The Hat said aloud, "assuming the best in others, now that's a trait worthy of Hufflepuff, no?"
That's a stupid name, she thought, Ravenclaw sounds cool—
"Slytherin!"
She got in her first fight that night, on her way to the dormitories. At eleven years old, Vivian Young jumped on the boy who had pulled the corners of his eyes with his fingers, narrowing them into slits and whispering a word she had never heard before but somehow knew must've been malicious. She wasn't particularly strong, but she was able to knock the boy to the ground and pin him down, throwing her fists at his face as a small crowd of students surrounded them. By the time the Head Girl pulled her off, she'd drawn blood from the boy's nose and he was crying incessantly.
Fred and George had pushed their way to the front of the crowd when it began, and were cheering her on as if it was a Quidditch match. When Pippa Macmillan lifted Vivian from the sniveling boy's body, her angry red face looked up for a moment, noticing the twins stood opposite her, massive grins on their faces. Poor Pippa was not prepared to be breaking up fights on her first day as Head Girl, and she snapped at David Boorman to do his job as Head Boy and get the mess on the floor to the hospital wing while she pushed the dumbfounded students aside to make a pathway. Fred and George threw matching thumbs up to Vivian as she was dragged away to the headmaster's office.
"Don't get yourself down!" Fred was the first to openly accept her when they formerly introduced themselves, throwing his arm around her shoulder in condolences when informed of her house placement. "Plenty of great wizards were Slytherins. Merlin, Snape, the Malfoys, You-Know-Who —"
"Come off now," George pretended to scold his brother. "She has enough grieving to do as it is. No need to remind her of her predecessors."
