ELIXIR: A Harry Potter Fan Fiction

One. The Start of Term Feast.

Caiti O'Connell had been on the last cart from Hogsmeade station. She followed her cart-mates, a group of third year Hufflepuff girls, into the Great Hall, already crowded with most of the students, and walked down the aisle between the Ravenclaw and Slytherin tables, scanning for Evelyn's red-haired head. She was easiest to spot. 

Caiti saw her and the others seated midway down the long table, clustered together on the bench, and she headed for them. Evelyn turned her head when she spotted her coming.

"There you are," she said, a smile brightening her face and widening her blue eyes. She brushed her long, thick red hair out of her face, trying and failing to tuck it behind her ear. When she spoke, the two boys she was with turned around too. Marlowe Finnegan, his dark curls unkempt, and his brown eyes alive, as always, above a straight nose and a mischievous, crooked smile that dimpled only on one side, patted the open seat next to him. Caiti stepped her legs over to sit using his shoulder as a balance point.

"That's gonna cost you a kiss," Marlowe joked.

Caiti just rolled her eyes and said, "Nice try." Marlowe had made it his personal mission to get Caiti to kiss him the moment he had found out, at the start of his second year, that his best friend Sean's little sister was starting at Hogwarts. It had begun as a joke meant to annoy his friend, but somewhere along the line - though he would never admit it - everyone, even Caiti, had realized he'd grown the tiniest bit serious.

The other boy, seated across the table next to Evelyn, was Sean. He had the same pink toned skin, dirty blonde hair, and warm brown eyes as his little sister. Only one year older, he and Caiti had always been close. So close in fact, that Caiti had failed to make any real friends in her own year when she came to Hogwarts, and had been hanging around with Sean and his friends for the past five years. But that didn't stop Sean from parenting her occasionally . Just now he looked relieved. What happened to you?" he asked. "I thought you were right behind us.

Caiti had been sitting with them on the train, after all. "Tripped," she said. "Spilt a lot of stuff into the corridor and had to pick it up, but everyone was trying to walk through so it wasn't easy." 

She'd always been shockingly clumsy, nothing like Sean who was, in her opinion, good at everything: top or almost in all his classes, outstanding on the Quidditch field where he played keeper, kind, and handsome to boot. He may have been her brother, but she wasn't so blinded by sibling rivalry as to miss that he was the school's golden boy, especially now that he was in his seventh year. The only thing Sean didn't have was a girlfriend, but that was only because he and Evelyn were either too stupid to see that they were in love with each other, or otherwise too stubborn to admit it. They were the only ones who hadn't realized it yet.

"Well you should have told us to wait," Sean said.

She shrugged. "Didn't realize I'd fall so far behind. You were already gone. Got some sweet bruises though, when I fell," she grinned, pulling up the sleeves of her robes to show them the two matching bruises already blossoming a dark rose color on her elbows.

Marlowe leaned forward to look around her forearms and see. "Nice!" he held up a hand for a high five. She smacked his hand hard, grinning with the tip of her tongue pinched between her front teeth. Evelyn just shook her head.

The doors to the Great Hall opened again and Professor Munslow, the Herbology teacher, entered carrying the old, ratty Sorting Hat.  He led the new crop of first years down the aisle. A couple of them, judging by the way the fronts of their robes were dripping wet and the fact that they were all giggling, seemed to have either been splashing each other on their traditional boat ride, or else had decided it might be fun to dive into the lake.