The Fools Who Dream

Chapter 4

Quite a few hours later, Cynthia woke up to a sharp knocking on her door. At once, she thought she was at home and it was her mother and jumped up, but she soon realised she was on the train, and it wasn't her mother, it was a prefect. As soon as the prefect saw she was awake, he stepped into the compartment.

"The train's going to be arriving in half an hour." he said. "You'd better get into your robes."

"Right." she said, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "Thanks."

He nodded and left, leaving her to pull down the blinds of the compartment and start searching through her trunk for her uniform. She had packed it all neatly herself, so it didn't take long to find what she was after. Soon, her robes, skirt, shirt, jumper, tie, tights and shoes were laid out on the seats, and she quickly got changed into them, stuffing her regular clothes back into her trunk.

She sat back down on the seat and sighed, looking out of the darkened window, but she couldn't see anything and just gave up, sitting back in her seat with another heavy sigh.

Before too long, the train pulled up at a station and Cynthia got to her feet, grabbing her trunk and lifting it up. She headed out to the corridor and started making her way towards the end of her carriage, but she was suddenly shoved back into the wall and stumbled back.

"Oh. It's you." said James, turning around and sneering at her. "I'd forgotten you were here."

"Thanks." she muttered.

"Well keep out of our way and, uh -" he stopped and winked at her provocatively, "See you on the Gryffindor table, where I can keep you under my control."

"Forever..." Sirius whispered tauntingly.

"Come on, let's just go." said one of their other friends, Remus, thumping Sirius on the back. "We need to grab a carriage. One without the Slytherins in it."

"Ah, Lupin's finally making sense." said James, snickering. "Alright, alright, we'll leave the little freak alone. For now."

The four boys strutted off down the corridor, and Cynthia followed after them, dragging her trunk with her.

On the platform, one of the porters took her trunk from her, and she stared around her, unsure of where she was supposed to go now.

"First years!" called a gruff voice. "First years over here!"

She swung around and looked up to see a giant of a man, covered in large amounts of thick black hair and in a great big overcoat holding a lamp and making is way through the sea of students.

Taking a deep breath, Cynthia made her way through the crowds to where the other first years were starting to gather around the giant man.

"Is this all of you?" said the man gruffly. "Good. We'd better get going then."

He began to lead them off the platform and down a slippery path in the dark, through the trees that towered highly over them. It would have been quite scary, but Cynthia had a strange adrenaline running through her and found it quite exciting.

"Fun, isn't it?" said the girl who was walking next to her. She had long blonde curls that bounced around her shoulders, framing a round, pale face and sparky blue eyes that were lit up with excitement.

"Probably the most fun I've had in my life." said Cynthia, grinning slightly. "It's spooky."

"Wonder if a bat's going to fly out of the trees." said the girl, looking up at the dark sky. "I'm Alice by the way. Alice Carroll."

"Cynthia." said Cynthia. "Cynthia Potter."

"It's nice to meet you." said Alice.

Before they could say anything else, they emerged from the woods onto the edge of the great black lake. There were rumours of a giant squid living in its depths, and that it would have a nice cup of tea with you if you asked politely. Cynthia suspected that James and his friends had started the rumour.

"No more than four to a boat!" called the giant, indicating a set of small wooden boats with lanterns in the front of them.

Cynthia looked over at Alice.

"You want to get in a boat together?" she asked. "I don't know anyone else."

"Sure." said Alice happily. "Come on, quickly, before there's none left!"

Rolling her eyes, Cynthia followed the energetic blonde girl down to the boats and they climbed into the one on the far end, along with two other boys who completely ignored them and began chatting amongst themselves.

"Didn't you make any friends on the train?" asked Alice curiously.

"I was asleep for most of the journey." said Cynthia, blushing, although it didn't show against the dark night. "But I met my brother's crush."

Alice laughed. "And what was she like?"

"Way too good for my brother." said Cynthia with a grin. "But other than that, I didn't really meet anyone. No one in our year, anyway. What about you?"

"I'm an awkward little chicken." said Alice. "I'm terrible at making friends."

"You made friends with me." said Cynthia comfortingly. "And I'm not the greatest at making friends either."

"Let's hope we're in the same house then, so we can stay friends." Alice giggled. "What house do you want to get into?"

"Anywhere but Gryffindor." said Cynthia immediately. "I need to get away from my brother."

"Yeah, I'm praying that wherever I get sorted, mine won't follow." said Alice, laughing.

"You have brothers?"

"Two." said Alice, nodding. "And my mum's pregnant again. My brothers are really annoying. They never really leave me alone. Why do you need to get away?"

"He's – he's just annoying." said Cynthia, blushing again. "We don't really – get on."

There was no point in telling her new friend everything.

"What about you?" she asked, changing the subject. "What house do you want to get into?"

"Well, my father was a Slytherin and my mum was in Ravenclaw." said Alice, shrugging. "So anything really. What do you think would happen if I jumped into the lake."

"According to my brother, there's a giant squid in there, and he enjoys being tickled on his tentacles." Cynthia remarked. "Not sure how many of his stories I'd believe though."

"I want to see." said Alice determinedly, and she began pushing herself to her feet, rocking the little boat a lot as she did so.

"Woah, woah, woah, what are you doing?" exclaimed one of the boys.

"Hey, you!" shouted the giant from where he had a boat all to himself. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Experimenting!" said Alice gleefully. "Can't I jump in?"

"No!"

Cynthia laughed as Alice sat down again and folded her arms across her chest irritably.

"I definitely think you're a Gryffindor." she said. "Either that or you're just very stupid."

A/N

Once again, I apologise for the absence of updates. I'll try and stay on top of it!