CRIMSON TEARS | Harry Potter and the Philospher's Stone [1]

𝗶 | 𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿'𝘀

Her hair was crimson today.

  Gwenevere Everill sat up in bed, catching sight of her hair in the mirror beside her. She liked it this colour, but she knew that in order to keep herself out of trouble, she couldn't leave it the way it was. She watched it filter back to white blonde, the Everill colour, and clambered out of bed.

  Her Hogwarts letter lay on the bedside table, ominous and brooding, another hint at how difficult it was for her to fit in.

  She was a pureblood, a girl born high in society, and yet she had a way of disappointing her family at every chance she could.

  For one, she was a metamorphmagus: she could change her appearance at will, a skill that she refused to use in the way her parents wanted her to. Two, she hated her parents.

  She had better be Slytherin. She had better not disappoint her family once again.

  At breakfast, served up by the twenty or so house elves residing in the basement, Lucille Everill turned to her older sister.

  'We're going to Diagon Alley today,' she said, chirpy as ever. 'Eddie and Felix are taking us. Mum and Dad have important things to do.'

  Gwen nodded, biting into a hash brown.

  The four Everill siblings, Edward, Felix, Gwenevere and Lucille, all known in the Wizarding World as the Four Everills. Their parents had been suspected supporters of You-Know-Who, which had given them a bad reputation among other wizards, and to this day, people still feared them.

  For generations, the Everill's had been in Slytherin, save one; Emmeline Everill, the only non-Slytherin in hundreds of years. Born in 1761, she had been Ravenclaw, and was the witch that had founded the Wolfsbane potion. The story went that she was a werewolf and had created it so as not to lose her mind when she transformed. That was the rumour, but no one, not even the Everills themselves knew if it were true. For years, other gifted wizards and witches had attempted to recreate the potion, and, it was said that in recent years, someone had managed to create it.

  All of that was, of course, rumours. There was no evidence to say that the recipe to the Wolfsbane potion had in fact been discovered.

  Her mother's family had been Ravenclaw; they were all creative and intelligent. Gwen failed to understand how generations of people could be in just one house. Surely not all Slytherins were evil - Gwen's cousin had been Slytherin but was now an auror in training. Why was it that anyone in Slytherin was considered evil?

  It was as Lucille was rambling about buying herself an owl that Edward sauntered into the room.

  'Ladies,' he said, ruffling their hair as he walked past. Gwen managed to swipe at him before he moved out of her reach. 'You guys ready?'

  'Do we look ready?' Gwen countered, gesturing to her pyjamas through a mouthful of hash brown.

  Edward grinned at her. 'We'll be leaving at ten. Is Felix up?'