Emerald

Ella Moreau had never imagined leaving Beauxbatons.

The pale-blue halls, the glittering chandeliers, the manicured gardens-everything had been beautiful, elegant, endlessly polished. And yet... none of it had ever felt like hers. For all its refinement, the school had always seemed to watch her with the same cold, assessing gaze as its students. She excelled in spells-too well, some muttered-and her professors alternated between impressed and unnerved.

So when Professor Dumbledore himself appeared one rainy afternoon, offering her a place at Hogwarts for her final year, Ella accepted faster than she expected.

"Your magic," he had said with that twinkling-eyed calm of his, "doesn't merely follow instruction. It answers you. And it deserves a place where it might grow rather than be assessed like a delicate vase."

His words haunted her all the way to Scotland.

Now, with September settling over the castle, Ella Moreau was no longer a Beauxbatons student. She was something far stranger: a seventh-year transfer at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

And about to be Sorted.