The Other Daughter (Watty Awards 2012)

Barmy Darby

“Gryffindor!”

Lucy stood up, removed the hat and ran as far away from it as possible. She sat at the end of the Gryffindor table next to Albus, and his three friends, a girl with bright red hair, who introduced herself as Rose, a boy with hazel brown hair and green eyes, who Albus called Tree, but said his name was Elian, and a brawny boy that was twice the size of Lucy whose dark hair was spiked everywhere, and was named Giacomo.

“Welcome to Gryffindor!” he rumbled.

“Thank you!” Lucy squeaked. She wasn’t in the mood to be happy after what the Hat had said but somehow she couldn’t help herself. House of the brave. It had a nice ring to it. Her parents had been true Gryffindors, apparently, they had been very brave. She wondered what they had been like. Her earliest fantasies had been spies, or super billionaires that had to give her up because she was in danger, but she hadn’t thought of that in many years. She just wanted a family. Not the orphanage, that didn’t count as a family. You took what you got, and what someone else got. She had saved for months for a safe to keep her few possessions in after the girl next door had all her stuff taken. Everybody knew who did it, but the girl had Miss Bow wrapped around her finger.

She was awoken from her reverie as “Elder, Simon!” was called.

She looked up to see Simon make his was to the front, and the Hat. She glared at the thing, and could’ve sworn she saw it smirk in return. Stupid thing, speaking in riddles. Simon seemed to have a small conversation with it, before it opened its mouth to shout.

“Ravenclaw!”

Lucy’s face sank, she probably wouldn’t get to talk to Simon, and he would make his own friends. A friendship over before it started.

“Don’t worry.” comforted Elian, “Gryffindors are friends with people from most houses, although we still have a small problem with Slytherin sometimes. We love to hate them; but they haven’t done anything too bad to us in a while.”

“We play pranks on them; they pay us back, and so on. It’s quite fun actually.” added Rose.

Lucy smiled; maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

“Will I have any classes with him? Or any other houses?” she questioned.

The sorting hat had now reached “Knowle, Aisling.” A blonde girl that Lucy recognised as being one of the girls who hadn’t been too fond of the mud. As soon as the hat touched the top of her perfectly styled hair, it shouted,

“Slytherin!”

“Even now, somebody put into Slytherin so quickly is not good.” Albus commented, as she ran off to the table on the far left, above which hung green and silver banners with a snake emblazoned upon them.

“You’ll have classes with people from most if not all of the houses. We get timetables on the first day of school. And whatever you do, don’t be late to Transfiguration. Professor Darby would probably turn you into a frog, last year she turned Rose into a bat. It took us a week to figure out the counter curse.” Remembered Elian.

“She did arrive half an hour late covered in soot,” chortled Albus, “Talking of Barmy Darby, where is she?”

The older students craned their necks as one, apart from Rose, who sat back looking smug. Lucy glanced at the front, in time to see Scorpius being called up with a resounding

“Malfoy, Scorpius!” Rose leaned forward

“Apparently his father got sorted into Slytherin before the hat even touched his head.” She told Lucy. By now the boys had given up on their search for Professor Darby and were staring at him too. In fact most of the students seated in the Hall were staring at him with a strange intensity as he sat on the stool, not moving an inch, for what seemed an eternity. Elian and Giacomo started a silent arm wrestle and Rose animated a spoon and made it start to dance over the cutlery and ice skate on her plate with a fork. James, however, was staring as intensely at Scorpius as Lucy was. Finally the Sorting Hat shouted out, “Gryffindor!”

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I am so sorry that I haven't uploaded a chapter in 2 weeks. I was on work experience :) It was fun but very time consuming especially as all of the teachers decided to give us homework as well even though we were working longer hours :(

But I'm back at school now for a week and then it is Easter so I will probably upload more often.

If you are ever bored go on Stumbleupon :)

Have a cherry jaffa cake for reading all of that :0

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