Amazing cover by Julia Kim, also known as @soulofstaars!
Ananya Adur is the daughter of a set of very prestigious muggle politicians who are not pleased to find out that she is different from what they expect of her: she is a witch.
In fact, they ar...
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"Well, I reckon you'll be alright to get on if I put your trunk on for you. Here, gimme that, c'mon, let's go. I gotta go meet the others. You should try and find an empty compartment, or at least one without Ron in it. He's a dolt, that one." Fred kept up a constant chatter as he helped Ananya onto the Hogwarts Express. She watched him leave helplessly then turned to her things and groaned. She'd been so nervous that she hadn't planned how to spend the train ride. With a knock up her own head, she began to pull her trunk along behind her and looked into the compartments surrounding.
Finally, after a good ten minutes of searching, she rapped on an empty compartment's door and stepped in. Ananya heaved her trunk up over her head, then sat with a book to read. She'd picked one called Hogwarts: A History, as she thought it would be helpful to know about the wizarding world and its schooling systems.
When she'd first gotten her letter, she thought it was a hoax. Maybe a friend playing a prank on her or one of her parents' rivals trying to psyche her out. But a stern woman had arrived at their doorstep just two weeks before the 'Hogwarts Express' was supposed to leave and introduced herself as the deputy Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, and Ananya knew that everything she'd known, her entire life, was a lie. Her world was changing, for good. Well, maybe not good, per se, but for something.
Ananya shook herself. She was supposed to be reading, not daydreaming about the past. She knew it wouldn't get her anywhere to daydream, as a politicians' daughter. She needed to focus on the present, and maybe the future. Also, she'd been rereading the same paragraph for the past ten minutes, so she really needed to get to it. She'd hoped to have read the whole book by the time they got to Scotland, and she wasn't going to succeed at this rate.
A knock on the door interrupted her reading. She leaned over and twisted the knob, then looked at the new inhabitant curiously. "Hello."
It was the dark-haired boy from earlier. This close, she could see his dazzling eyes, which were green like the Adurs' botanical garden in their backyard. She also saw him hesitate to answer her welcome. "Hi."
Her lips parted in a grimace-like smile, and she tried to comfort him by distraction. "I'm Ananya Adur. First year. How about you?" She placed a yellow bookmark in the book and closed it to focus on their conversation instead.
"I'm Harry. Potter, I mean." He smiled back tentatively, then paused. "I'm sorry, I completely forgot to ask if I could sit here." Harry winced and half-stood.
She shook her head, stopping him with a light push. He sat back down. "It's fine, Harry. I'd like to sit with someone else, actually. Sitting alone is never fun."
Harry chuckled softly, then held out a hand. "I'm a first year too. Do you know anything about...all of this?" He gestured around vaguely.
"Oh, absolutely no clue. My parents are 'muggles', as Professor McGonagall called them. They're actually politicians, but it's not a big thing compared to this." She looked at him, curious about his parents. "What about your...guardians?" Ananya didn't want to upset him if he was an orphan or something like that. She had a couple friends whose parents had died when they were young, and knew that she should never assume anything.
It didn't seem to matter, as Harry still grimaced at the words. "M'uncle works at Grunnings, in Surrey, and my aunt stays home. She does sell pillows and such that she makes, but it's not really a job."
Ananya nodded along. "Sounds...boring." She smiled encouragingly at him, as it seemed hard to talk about. Suddenly, she remembered what she'd been doing before he'd arrived. "Oh, dear, I'm terribly sorry. Would you mind if I read? I'm trying to finish this before we arrive. I feel it will be very difficult to find time."
Harry grinned at her before pulling out the same book she was reading. "I was planning the same." With that, the two trailed off into a comfortable silence while they read about the past of their new school.
