Slither ⌘ HP fanfic

I

Durmstrang Institute, ominous and august, alight with firey sconces of every shade and dressed with moss and ivy, looms against the continually misty mountain sky. The ancient castle exudes an air of mystique, a threatening tempation that urges muggle wanderers away. Durmstrang Institute is fitted with light and dark charms alike to protect it and shield it from unwanted outside attention. A grove of tall, fat, dark trees crops itself around the building like a protective wooden wall, lest the enchantments fail. Water vapor clouds encircles the castle from the highest spire to the lowest brick, shrouding it from peering eyes, the same charm that hides Ilvermorny from people of non-magic blood.

The Institute, while cold and unwelcoming on the outside, is surprisingly warm and bright on the inside—with doors flung wide open to magical newcomers.

Of pure blood.

Durmstrang Institute is home to a prestigious reputation. Only the best (to their standard) wizarding students are accepted. Pureblood, preferably wealthy, and usually with a history of dark wizardry in the family. A very exclusive academy, it is located so distantly in the Scandinavian mountains that it is cut off from almost all outside sources during the active school year. Connections are vital to get it, and once you do, the academy is cutthroat. Some students only last a week, some hang on longer and make it through a semester. Others, like Ramona, can attend Durmstrang Institute for six whole years.

Durmstrang is not for the lighthearted. Ramona quickly discovered that.

After merely an hour at the school, Ramona was pecked at like a piece of meat in a pile of rabid dogs. She was teased about her hair, her eyes, her ill-fitting uniform, and—her father, a man she knew nothing about. That simply confused her. What did they know about her father that she didn't? These children knew enough about the mysterious enigma that was Ramona's father to call him a coward and a traitor. Traitor to whom?

Throughout her first month at Durmstrang, Ramona was hackled for just about everything she did. She was abused for eating a certain breakfast food, even though the abuser had eaten the very same thing the morning before. If she wore her hair in a certain style, it was almost always yanked out by girls who claimed it was their hairstyle. Ramona almost always cradled her sore head and ran away before she let the tears fall. She was a small, scared 10-year-old girl in the midst of taller, intimidating 10-year-olds.

Hortensia, Ramona's mother, hated what her daughter was going through at her school, but she knew her daughter would find the light in it. Ramona was particularly good at finding the light in all things.

After a few weeks of enduring the trials of Durmstrang Institute, the heavy, gray clouds began to clear. A group of kind students appeared like sunshine after a storm. These students had no hate in their hearts. They swam in a different direction than the other children, like rebellious fish swimming in a different direction than the rest of the school. They scooped Ramona away from the rough undercurrent and led her to their peaceful upstream pool. There, with 12-year-old Bulgarian boy Victor Krum and fellow 10-year-old Sigrid Haugen, who was from a very affluent Norwegian wizarding family.

They spoke softly to Ramona when she came to the, crying, Sigrid stroking her hair and Victor promising that he'll pummel the offenders.

The bullying of Ramona started to slow towards the end of her first year at Durmstrang. Word got out that Ramona had two new, popular friends, and the professors quickly caught wind of how the other students had been treating the small newcomer after an incident involving fire and auburn hair.

Ramona's hair was drastically shorter one morning, looking haphazardly cropped around her ears. The ends looked charred and blackened. Her potions professor noticed and asked the girl about it, and Ramona, despite receiving death stares and quiet threats from the other students, told the truth.