Castles Crumbling

Chapter 3 - Friends?

Hermione opened the door to their shared dorm and pointed to a bed right next to another door. Sophia hoped it led to a bathroom.

"That one's yours. It's between mine and the bathroom." Sophia internally celebrated. Hermione placed a hand on Sophia's shoulder. Usually, she would have slapped it away immediately. Sophia despised being touched, especially by people she barely knew. There were a select few she would allow to touch her and Hermione was not one of them. But something about the way Hermione was always smiling and constantly cheerful and kind made Sophia hesitate. She let the hand stay there for a moment before walking away from the contact.

"Thanks." Sophia sat on her bed and placed her book on the bedside table.
"Are those all yours?" She asked, tilting her head towards a shelf full of neatly arranged books.

"Yes, I like to read." Hermione blushed, sitting on her own bed.

Sophia looked around the room, her belongings had been unpacked already, she assumed it was by whoever brought their bags from the train.

"So, how long have you known Harry and Ron?" Sophia asked.

"Since our first year, we became friends after battling a troll together." Hermione answered.

Sophia's jaw dropped. "Oh, I need to hear this story."

Hermione laughed and explained the situation of the troll in the bathroom, then recalled some of the other trouble the trio had gotten into the previous two years.

"Wow. And people say I'm bad for things like that." Sophia laughed. She was going to stop there, until she realised that someone might finally relate to her story if she told it.

"I got me and my brother expelled from Beauxbatons." Sophia deadpanned. She crossed her fingers behind her back, praying that she was right about Hermione.

The other girl gasped and her eyebrows shot up. "What? How?"

Sophia closed her eyes and sighed. Here goes nothing she supposed. "It was the end of last year, our quidditch team had just lost the final match and the opposing team were being jerks about it." She bit her lip before she continued, "I was pissed off, especially since one of our players got injured in the game because the other team cheated."

Hermione opened her mouth to question how but Sophia beat her to it, "They gave the beaters bat to a chaser mid-game, who hit it directly at her head, luckily it only hit her chest; still did a lot of damage though."

Sophia brought her knees to beneath her chin, "Anyway, me and my best friend had been fighting and I can be quite... hot-headed, at times. So I went to find my brother, he was better at the unlocking charm than me and I knew if I told him I was going to do it with or without him he would come, just to make sure I was alright. I took advantage of his protectiveness and it wasn't fair." She rested her arms on her knees then placed her forehead on top of them, ashamed.

"But what did you do?" Hermione asked, she had sat patiently listening the entire time.

"We broke into our headmistress's office." She stole a glance at Hermione's face and saw shock, maybe even a little admiration, but no judgment. Sophia let out a quiet sigh of relief. "It was out of bounds, no one besides the headmistress was allowed in there, other than when she was having a serious discussion with a student about a punishment. I'd been in there once before, when she told me I had detention for 6 months because I hexed a student so badly he was in a wizarding hospital for 3 weeks, recovering." Sophia laughed slightly before catching the look on Hermione's face, "He tried to practice the incarcerous curse on my brother," She defended.

Hermione's face warped into one of horror, "We don't learn that for years, and never practice something like that on a student."

Sophia nodded, "He was a sixth year, and a bully. But no one believed me or Seb when we told them, so the next day I hexed him." She cleared her throat and blinked back tears as she remembered her own best friends not listening to her explain her actions. "Anyway, when I was in her office before, I saw a secrecy sensor. You know, those things that vibrate when people lie?" She didn't know if things like that were common knowledge or not, Sebastian hadn't know what it was at the time.