Atropos → george weasley

vi. princess ottilie

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six

princess ottilie

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Hogwarts Express pulled into Hogsmeade station nearly eight hours later. The sky was shades of orange and pink when Ottilie stepped off the train car into the cool mountain air. Her travel companions, who'd talked nonstop the entire ride while she practiced simple charms from her Charms textbook (and who seemed either incapable or unwilling to get the hint that Ottilie did not want to talk), were on her heels.

She stopped to look around for a moment, though it was hard to see well when every Hogwarts student was getting out of the train at once. In front of her, there was a brick retaining wall holding back a steep, grassy hill thick with fragrant pine trees. In the distance to her right, she could barely see the rooftops and chimneys of a little town nestled at the base of a rugged mountain.

That was Hogsmeade, she supposed.

It was difficult to see the other direction through the crowd, aside from some more peaks in the distance.

She was just about to start following the rest of the crowd but jumped when Ernie grabbed her upper arm. She turned to see he'd grabbed Justin's too, who looked too nervous to have taken much notice.

Ernie, on the other hand, was beaming. "Merlin, I can't believe I'm finally here! I can't wait to see the castle! Oh, I can't wait to get Sorted!"

Ottilie tugged her arm out of Ernie's nearly painful grasp when the trio heard a deep, gruff voice cut through the commotion.

"Firs' years, firs' years!"

She lifted her head to squint over the crowd, which turned out to be unnecessary because the person who'd been shouting was the tallest man Ottilie had ever seen. He was probably twice as tall as her dad, who was a bit taller than average himself. And this man wasn't exactly slender either.

He was holding up a lantern and had long, black hair and an equally enormous shaggy beard.

"Good god," Justin muttered to himself. "Who is that?"

Ernie was staring. "I don't know, but I wouldn't want to get on his bad side. He looks like he could crush any of us with only his thumb."

"Firs' years, over here!"

Ottilie and the two boys dropped off their things. Ernie assured Bluebell, his Chantilly-Tiffany cat with blue-black fur, he'd see her again soon. She, Ottilie, rolled her eyes at him.

The group of small first years gathered at the end of the platform where wood became a narrow dirt path with trees towering over them on either slide. After a careful trek down the sloping path of damp dirt, they emerged on the bank of a vast lake. Resting placidly on the water were a dozen small wooden boats with lanterns at their bows. Ottilie, Ernie, and Justin leaned all the way to the side to see over the mirror-black surface of the water to spot Hogwarts in the distance.

"Wow! It's even grander than I was expecting!" Ernie said, breathily, using Justin's shoulder as an anchor, so he didn't fall over.

Justin nodded. "It's the biggest castle I've ever seen, certainly." 

Ottilie didn't say anything, but she couldn't help but agree. She stood still, Ernie and Justin standing close behind, and waited until it was their turn to get into the boat. When it finally drifted over to the bank of the lake of its own volition, Ottilie went first. She carefully stepped over the back row of benches and sat at the front so she could get a better view of the castle and the mountain range surrounding the lake.