The Flight Of The Vulture

Chapter 2: The Lion's Roar

January 4th, 1992

"Jack! Sammy! Are you all packed and ready to go?" Belle called up the stairs.

"I'm ready to go." Jack smiled pulling his trunk down the stairs. He was smiling and excited.

Samantha hadn't come down yet or even made a noise.

"Where is your sister?" Ed, Belle's husband, asked curiously.

"She's up in her room crying." Jack said with a shrug, "She doesn't want to go back."

"What?" Belle asked before exchanging a look with Ed. He shrugged.

Samantha had been quieter than normal all Christmas holiday, but Samantha's quiet was everyone else's normal. However, there had been no other signs that she'd had a bad time at school.

"It's probably because she's got no friends at school." Jack said with a shrug. "She's in Gryffindor, so I can't help her."

Jack had been utterly devastated when his sister was sorted into Gryffindor. He'd apparently been very worried that he couldn't force anyone to be her friend. Belle had reminded him that forcing friendship wasn't healthy. 

Belle shared another look with her husband. "I'll take care of Sammy."

Belle made her way up the stairs. She made it to her daughter's hot pink room. She was laying face down in her bed and crying profusely.

"Baby."

"I don't want to go back mummy." Samantha cried into her pillow.

"Why not baby? I thought you loved school." Belle asked concerned, she'd never cried about going back to Hogwarts. She used to be the opposite, she loved school.

"I'm not smart. I have no real friends and I'm still no good at doing my hair." She wined loudly.

"Let's talk through it, I'm sure we can find solutions. Which classes are you struggling with?"

"I'm rotten at Herbology. I keep killing all my plants." Samantha admitted with a huff. "Then I'm not good at potions like you or Jack. Professor Snape says I'm horrible, it doesn't help I have a horrible partner."

"How bad is your partner?" Belle asked with a chuckle.

"He is a horrid, rotten, lump of a little boy who's almost blown me up, twice." Samantha sat up and crossed her arms. "He's the dumbest boy in our year."

Belle chuckled, and didn't mean to. "Well you won't have any friends if you talk about your classmates like that."

"Well, I wouldn't tell him he's a lump. That'd be mean." Samantha's pout was hilarious considering she had such a small face. "I'm not mean like Jack and his friends."

"Jack isn't mean to you right?" Belle asked worrying how he acted towards her at school.

"No." Samantha shook her head, "He doesn't like it that I'm a Gryffindor, but he gets mad when others are mean to me. I think he scares people. So I'm just the loud girl with the scary brother who can't do potions and kills plants."

"Who said you were loud?"

Samantha grimaced, "Lavender Brown said so. She and Parvati laugh at me when they think I'm sleeping."

"Are they your roommates?" Belle tried to hold back the jab in her heart, she knew her daughter would deal with this eventually. Kids, especially girls, could be so cruel.

"Yeah, it's me, Lavender, Parvati, and Hermione." Samantha revealed.

"What about Hermione?"

"She doesn't say anything. They pick on her too."