【 two 】
⊲ red & gold ⊳

"if only i'd known what was to come,
that this was the beginning of the end."

The train ride was spent silently for Clara, sketching and doing her best the to keep from hyperventilating each time her thoughts strayed. James sometimes glanced at her, concern clear in his eyes whenever she caught his gaze. She deliberately ignored him the whole time. When they arrived at the castle the girls opted on taking the carriages rather than the boats with the first years, meaning they reached the castle faster. Clara was filled with amazement the second they stepped over the threshold. Abby simply found that it paled in comparison to Beauxbatons.

Clara looked around blissfully, marveling at everything. It was unlike anything she had ever seen. Beauxbatons had been a cold place filled with light almost too harsh to bear. Hogwarts, though, was warm. The entrance hall was lit only by candles, maintaining a darkness that Clara basked in. The walls and ceilings weren't laced with intricate designs, simply made of stone - and she adored it. The proper etiquettes that had been forced upon her for years were no longer required. No longer did she have to sit with her spine pin straight or walk as if her feet were floating. She found, however, that she did somewhat feel as if she was floating when Abby latched onto her arm and pulled her over to a professor standing off to the side, watching over the incoming students.

She barely heard them talking over the noise of the other incoming students. She watched with a child like wonder as students both younger and older than her filed in, talking and laughing with each other. The entrance to Beauxbatons had always been so quiet and lonely, for Clara at least. Hogwarts was another experience entirely.

Distracted as she was, she missed the conversation between Abigail and the professor she had approached. She only remembered they were there when there was a tug on her arm as Abby grabbed hold of her and lead her up a staircase, following after the professor she had been speaking with.

"You girls are from Beauxbatons, correct?" The woman asked. Clara enjoyed the way her voice seemed to drift easily into  her ears. Soft and kind, somehow stern and playful.

"Yes m'am," Abby answered, dawning her best smile, the kind she always wore around teachers and other authority figures.

"I'm Professor McGonagall, I teach transfiguration here at Hogwarts." She grinned kindly at the two girls and they smiled back. She was a younger looking woman, but she seemed to carry a wiseness usually associated with old age. Clara already liked her more than almost any other professor she had ever had.

As they climbed staircase after staircase, dreadfully slow, a familiar feeling took seed in Clara's throat and she felt as though she might suddenly be sick. She assumed they were being taken to be sorted, but the thought terrified her. More than anything, she wanted to be in the same house as James. She feared that if she ended up in Slytherin, he would turn his back on her. Abby would almost certainly go to Ravenclaw, but Clara was a mystery. As she silently prayed that she would be put in Gryffindor with James, the guilty feeling in her stomach continued on twisting, making her acknowledge that she was choosing James over Abby. She swallowed down the bile in her throat and kept walking, doing her best to keep her head held high. Abby wouldn't miss her, anyway.

When they finally came to a halt they stood in front of a grand statue of a Griffin. Professor McGonagall muttered something about chocolate frogs and the door moved to reveal a spiral staircase slowly winding upwards. Clara sighed at the thought of more stairs, but began to climb them begrudgingly. Once they had reached their destination Professor McGonagall opened the door without knocking, her cloak moving gracefully against the stone floor. Inside was a magnificent office, unlike any Clara had ever seen. It was even better than Madame Maxime's, which she had been in enough times to have memorized every single detail of.

There was a man sat at the desk in the room. He had a long, white beard and eyes that twinkled behind half-moon shaped spectacles. He stood up when they entered, smiling warmly at the girls.

"Come in, come in!" He waved them over to stand in front of a chair that was sat directly across from his desk. Professor McGonagall reached for an old, beat up hat that rested on the desk, and Clara rose an eyebrow in disbelief. She'd heard about the sorting hat, but she expected it to look a little more, well, magical.

"We'll have Abigail go first. Sit down, dear," Professor McGonagall patted the seat of the chair and Abby rushed to sit down. The hat was placed on her head and Clara watched with a subdued expression. Abby's facial expression kept changing as if she was having a conversation, but no words were exchanged. Finally, the hat shouted: Ravenclaw! A part of Clara's brain cheered. Her stomach kept twisting.

Abby smiled as she stood up, squeezing Clara's shoulder as the blonde made her way to the chair. Clara shied away from the touch, a movement that she hoped no one else had noticed. As soon as she sat down the hat was on her head, placed there by Professor McGonagall, chatting away inside her mind.

Why, would you look at that, a Fable! Been some time since I've seen one of you, I do believe your father was the last. Clara recoiled in her own brain at the mention of her father. She hated when he was brought up and she had no time to prepare. The hat seemed to sense her desire to avoid the topic of her father and mercifully continued on.

Well, let's see. You're a lot like him: very reckless, a real troublemaker. Though a bit more cunning, and definitely a fair load of ambition in there. Intelligent, too - but very unsure of yourself. A lot going on in this head of yours, isn't there? You've suffered much for someone as young as you are. But you've been very brave, and I think that bravery might be your saving grace if we can get it to blossom a bit more. Better be -

Nothing could have the stopped the genuine, beaming smile that spread across Clara's face when the hat shouted Gryffindor.

__________

Clara was grateful for the fact that the first years were all entering the Great Hall the same time that she was. It kept people from staring at her as she walked toward the Gryffindor table, nervously straightening her new maroon and gold tie. Her steps were rushed and head was down, a stark contrast to Abigail, who had walked to the Ravenclaw table with her shoulders back and a bright smile on her face. Clara, even her haste, spotted James. He was laughing with his friends, and he hadn't seemed to have noticed her. A fear took hold of her brain that, with his friends there, she wouldn't be welcome to sit with them. She looked away quickly, biting her lip as she anxiously searched for a place to sit.

Immediately her eyes were drawn to a head of brilliant red hair. A little ways down the table sat a girl with eyes of the brightest green Clara had ever seen, and those eyes were pointed directly at her. The redhead smiled kindly as she held out a hand and waved Clara over, obviously sure of her movements. Simply grateful to be acknowledged and be able to rest her feet, she complied and slid into a seat across from the pretty girl.

"Hello, I'm Lily Evans," she grinned, holding her hand out across the table for Clara to shake. The blonde noted that Lily had a rather strong grip.

"Nice to meet you, Lily. I'm Clara Fable." She tried to smile as nicely as possible, remembering what Adelaide had always said about first impressions.

"I'm Marlene McKinnon," A blonde girl piped up from beside Lily. There was a certain air about her that made Clara instantly feel intimidated, but somehow also as if she was being introduced to an old friend. Somewhere, in the back of her brain, she swore she recognized Marlene. She tried to shake the thought from her head, smiling and and nodding at Marlene.

"I'm Mary," a pretty brunette girl smiled from beside Clara, and Clara returned her sentiment with a small wave. "You're in sixth year, right?" Clara nodded in response.

"That means you'll be rooming with us, as well as Alice. She's over there with her boyfriend, Frank." Lily pointed down the table at a brunette girl with short hair, her head resting on the shoulder of a boy who smiled down at her lovingly. Clara opened her mouth to comment on how happy they looked, but was interrupted as the sorting began.

She tried to pay attention at first, but she soon lost track of how many eleven year olds had been sorted and zoned out. Her attention was only recaptured when food appeared on the table.

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a/n
okay so this is kinda shitty but oh well