The Hogwarts Champion

I- A Train to catch

"A hero's fate is never happy. It is never anything but tragic."

23 PRIVET DRIVE, overlooked a patch of bare land that was already seeing signs of area development. The house was small-two bedrooms, a drawing room, a kitchen and small but beautiful rooftop garden. The rooms were bare , boxes were haphazardly strewn around and their was an empty feel to it.

There was simply no soul.

In one of the rooms, sitting on a wooden table that was covered with books, sat Aleena Matthews. Now while her current task was to "study", all she was really doing was staring at the clock . Apparently Time had decided to annoy her as it ran extra slow today.

Aleena knew she should be studying. She already had so much to catch up on but she just couldn't bring herself to read the terribly boring words of her physics text book.

She hated physics.

She missed her home so much . Her friends, her life , even school for fucks sake . In last few weeks since she had moved to Britain- all she felt was a sense of loneliness . She missed the hot summer sun that blazed above hundreds of kids as they got ready for their Athletic meets, she missed sneaking pieces of raw mango and trying to gorge down melting ice-cream before class started  and sitting in the last bench of the classroom pretending to pay attention to the teachers words.

As crazy as it sounded she missed the weather of Bangalore, its moderate temperature, walking around empty streets with her friends, visiting her home town in Kerala -spending time with cousins under the hot summer suns and filling her stomach with banana chips. 

All it did in Surrey was rain .

The thing is Aleena knows she should be grateful (and believe me she IS). She's got a great Aunt who's taking care of her.  Considering her situation she is very well aware that she could have been abandoned  in an orphanage or put into foster care . She was smart enough to know what she should take seriously and what not too and so she plodded away burning the midnight oil, got her scholarship and was now currently attending Smeltings Academy.

Not that she was surprised but God the people who attended the school were total snobs ( Oh Hey! look at her becoming all British). There were a few nice people but attending the school  only for a few weeks did not give her enough time to make friends with them and unfortunately for her she seemed to be living life like one of those cliche books she used to read with the bullies and the cliques because you see she was in the same class as Dudley Dursley and (his not so tiny)minions.

Dudley Dursley was a bully, mean spirited and overall terrible person though something told Aleena f(rom what she had heard) that it was due to the way he was raised. He seemed to take a special interest in her (she was not surprised she was the new girl after all ). It got worse when he found out she lived quite close to him and  he constantly badgered her to hang out with him after school. She would  just pretend to be stupid and end up going the opposite direction whenever she saw him walk down the street  ( she even went as far as hiding in a bunch of bushes to avoid him). Aleena not be surprised if he ended up loosing patience one day and end up getting his deadbeat self over to her house by himself- she had several plans in the event that happened, including but not limited to hiding under the bed or faking her death.

While she did avoid Dudley, she had heard about his cousin and from all the terrible things she had heard ,something was telling her that whoever " Harry " was being neglected. A part of her wanted to confirm and probably help the poor guy himself but before she had the chance to he had apparently gone back to 'St Brutus blah blah for criminal boys' ( the name itself told her that something was very  wrong )