when i saw her standing there -- louis weasley

chapter five

"...and some of them were just No-Majes who were wrongfully accused. Any questions?" Professor Binns asked as he finished his lecture on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. When no one raised their hands, he began again, "Who can tell me what year the trials occurred? You, Bird." He pointed with a ghostly finger to where Naya was sitting with Ava next to her and Torryn and Caspian behind them.

"1692," she replied calmly.

"And where? Smith," he fired off, this time asking Caspian.

"Salem,"

"And where is Salem?"

"I don't know, somewhere in America?" He gave a shrug of his shoulders and Ava rolled her eyes with a smile in front of him.

"Miss Mackenzie, I believe you are from America? Could you tell us?"

"Yeah, it's near where I grew up, Salem, Massachusetts."

"Wow, imagine being American," Caspian joked.

Ava turned around in her seat to face him. "Imagine being blonde," she retorted with a smirk, sparking a few laughs around the classroom. Naya gave her a small fist bump as she turned back around and the bell rang.

"Well, I think it's safe to say you are comfy here now," Naya commented as they gathered their books.

As they exited the room, Caspian called out to her from up ahead where he was walking with Torryn. "Hey, Mackenzie! I call a rematch!"

"You're on!" she responded. 

Naya shook her head at their antics and spotted some of their friends ahead of them, coming out of a different class.

"Hey guys, wait up! C'mon Ava!" They sped up and fell into step with Emory, Hadley, Finley, and Louis. Soon, Rowan, Saylor, Caspian, and Torryn joined them and the group walked to lunch together.

"Could you guys walk faster? I'm hungry," Finley complained. They chuckled and Louis and Ava both automatically started walking as slowly as possible, not meaning to both do it. When Ava saw Louis doing it too, she burst into laughter and didn't stop laughing until they were seated at the table for lunch and she had food in front of her.

"Hey, did you guys see the bulletin board this morning?"

"What bulletin board?" Ava responded after she swallowed a bite of her pork chop.

"The bulletin board....in the common room. Anyways, the first Hogsmeade trip is this weekend!" Saylor exclaimed.

"Did I hear Hogsmeade?" A pretty brunette slid into the seat next to Louis and tousled his hair.

"Hey, Luce!" His friends all said hello to her and she waved to them before noticing Ava on his other side.

"Hi, I don't think we've met, I'm Louis' cousin, Lucy." The first thing Ava noticed about Lucy was her kind smile that spread into her eyes, and she could tell that Lucy was going to be a great person to be around.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Ava." The two girls reached across Louis to shake hands, causing him to roll his eyes. "So what's Hogsmeade?"

They all turned and stared at her as if she had grown three more heads.

"What's Hogsmeade?!"

"Oh, I guess you've never been, cause you're American," Caspian remarked with a smirk as he got up from his seat. A small smile came to Ava's lips before she ignored him and finished her pork chop while Lucy started talking.

"The trip is the 16th, and now that I know Ava here hasn't been to Hogsmeade, I will be showing up to your dorm at eight in the morning with Dom and Roxy to give you a grand tour. Be ready," she finished and gave Ava a small wink before returning to her friends at the opposite end of the table.

Ava stared after her for a minute before speaking. "I like her." Louis grinned at that statement before jumping up and offering her his arm jokingly.

"Shall we go to Arithmancy, m'lady?" She decided to play along and took his arm and the two pranced out of the Great Hall, only stopping at the door to wave and bow to the cheers and laughter coming from some of the other students.

And they walked to their Arithmancy class like this, with Ava's hand resting in the crook of his elbow.

Once they left the Great Hall, Saylor leaned over to Emory and started whispering, "Wouldn't they be cute?"

"Saylor!"

"What?"

"Leave the matchmaking until Valentine's, mate, they've known each other for all of a month." With that sentence, Emory stood up and left the Great Hall and Saylor stayed in her seat, already planning for Valentine's Day.

Naya, who had heard the entire exchange, followed Emory out of the Hall, while thinking to herself, At least Emory's got some sense.

Meanwhile, Louis and Ava were taking their seats in the Arithmancy classroom on the seventh floor of the castle, and they were the first people in the room before class. It was a few minutes before the rest of the students and the professor would arrive, so Louis turned around in his seat to strike up a conversation with Ava.

"So, tell me about Ilvermorny."

She had started to doodle on a piece of parchment in front of her but her quill stopped moving as she thought about what she was going to say.

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"Uh, I don't know..... wait, are there houses at Ilvermorny like we have?"

"Sort of," Ava explained, "So, here there are Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin, but at Ilvermorny there is Horned Serpent, Wampus, Pukwudgie, and Thunderbird. I was a Pukwudgie, which, now that I'm thinking about it, Pukwudgie is kind of like the Hufflepuff of Ilvermorny. But, the Sorting is also different. I remember when I got Sorted here, the Hat was talking to me, it thought about putting me in Gryffindor, but decided Hufflepuff. At Ilvermorny, the house basically claims the wizard. Like a wand, y'know?"

By this time, students were trickling into the classroom and a few of them that sat near Louis and Ava were listening, and like Louis, they were looking at her almost in awe, because Ilvermorny was something nobody had really heard of until Ava came.

"So Hufflepuff is basically the kind house, Pukwudgie favors the heart, so the kind people. Horned Serpent favors the mind, so Ravenclaw, Wampus represents the "warriors", so Gryffindor, and Thunderbird favors the soul and they are often ambitious, like a Slytherin."

"Quite right, Miss Mackenzie." Professor Vector interrupted as she walked past Ava. "Now, who did the homework?"

As class started, the students focused their attention to the teacher, and Ava continued her doodling. But the students weren't focused on the subject, in fact, most of them were thinking about what it would be like to go to Ilvermorny.