Cassie Alderfair has been doing an exceptional job of being discreet at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But her days of invisibility are disrupted in her fifth year when an unfortunate night of mischief draws attention from the infamous...
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Cassie Alderfair did not remember much of her past four years at Hogwarts.
It wasn't as if she'd been Obliviated, or was suddenly diagnosed with amnesia. It was simply because she kept her head down and minded her own business, and remained as inconspicuous as possible.
Her name was not on any award in the trophy room, and her grades were average at best. In fact, if one were to inquire about her to any student in the school prior to her fourth year, they would probably receive blank looks and confused frowns. The only reason why she wasn't an equivalent of a Hogwarts ghost (and even then, more people knew of Nearly Headless Nick and the Fat Friar than her) was because of her surname.
Despite her best attempts at anonymity, the name Alderfair had a certain ring in the Wizarding world that was hard to shake. Perhaps it was because of her father, a prominent figure on the Wizengamot, or maybe her mother, who was editor of the famous Witch Weekly magazine. Or perhaps because the Alderfairs were one of the only pure-blood families left in Britain, and thus held certain influence because of it. All of these things would have been easy to brush off, but it wasn't until Cassie's third year that she was thrust to the forefront of everyone's mind when her elder brother William graduated Hogwarts and went on to become a Death Eater.
That in itself had stirred quite a controversy at the school, remarkably so as Cassie and her brother had both been Sorted into Gryffindor. It was something much more expected of a Slytherin, but as Cassie had begun to see it, people were surprising – even those dearest to you. Fortunately, the talk had petered out by the end of her fourth year, and after another boring summer holiday, she was ready to go back to her invisible self for her fifth.
The morning of September 1st dawned a clear and watery grey, and at approximately 10:13 AM, if one were to look directly at the wall separating platforms 9 and 10, they might have seen a surly teenage girl wheeling a trolley with a trunk and an owl in a cage walk right into the wall and disappear, closely followed by a woman wearing very strange and very bright clothing.
Cassie blinked and found herself back in the usual chaos of Platform 9 ¾, where students ran up and down greeting friends they had not seen over the holiday, and frazzled parents were left to deal with their children's luggage. Smoke from the Hogwarts Express drifted over their heads, adding an opaqueness to the scene, and Osbourne – Cassie's sleek-feathered brown owl – hooted at all the sudden commotion.
"Well, come on, dear," Eleanor Alderfair said, gripping Cassie's upper arm and ushering her towards the train, heedless of the attention the dazzling woman was receiving in her fuchsia robes and the exotic-feathered quill tucked behind her right ear.
"Mum, I've done this before," Cassie said, tugging her arm out of her mother's grasp and scowling. "I'm not a child anymore."
"Of course you're not," Eleanor replied absentmindedly, returning the enthusiastic wave of a witch who must've read her magazine, and Cassie resisted the urge to vomit as she walked to an empty compartment where she could load her things.
