the boy that could have been

Charlotte Black

Charlotte watched Potter with a scowl. How did everything fall into place for him? Sure, he was almost killed as a baby and supposedly orphaned, but then his parents magically reappeared, he comes to school, ends up in a house with all of his friends, manages to get in trouble but then is barely punished for it!

She didn't have any of that luck. She had been raised by her filthy Muggle mother, and had only found out about magic when she turned 11. Although she'd told Harry and Ron that she knew nothing about her father, that was a bit of a lie. On her 11th birthday, Draco and his mother had showed up at her house and told her all about magic. Apparently, her father was Narcissa's cousin, but they didn't know about her until just then, and refused to tell her any more about her dad besides the fact that he was a wizard. They'd told her everything she needed to know, and she'd quickly become close with her second cousin. She'd moved into Malfoy Manor for the last month or so before coming to Hogwarts, where she'd met all of his friends and they'd become really close, to the point that she was incredibly excited for Hogwarts.

However, when she arrived, the stupid hat had decided to split her up from the rest of them, so that she was alone in Gryffindor whilst they were all together in Slytherin. Besides Draco and Serena, they'd all then shunned her, leaving her with basically no friends at all - and none in her house. 

For her, there was no magical reappearance of her father. Sure, it must have been him that sent the Malfoys, but that meant that he knew she was there the whole time, and did nothing about her. And there was stupid Snape too. She hadn't met him before, but she knew that he was Draco's godfather, so expected that he'd like her or something. Of course, it probably didn't help that she'd been put in Gryffindor, but he seemed to hate her as much as he hated Harry, which didn't make much sense to her. Clearly, Potter was a bit of a brat, but what had she ever done?

Unless... it hit her. The screechy woman in the howler had said... Sirius Orion Black. Black. Like her surname. And he was friends with James Potter, like Harry Potter. And they'd bullied Sn- someone - that must be Snape! Turning towards the High Table, she saw him with his greasy curtain of hair covering his face. One hand was resting next to his plate, and she could see it shaking.

Oh my god. Her dad, the stupid slimy git that had abandoned her, didn't love or care for her in the slightest, was best friends with Harry Potter's dad, and they had bullied Professor Snape in school. So that was why he hated Harry, and her! And that was why Harry had recognised her name - but he was clearly too stupid to put the rest of it together. 

Well, she certainly wasn't going to tell him.