Chapter Two |Year Three|

***

Amelie sat in the same compartment as her new friends, the infamous Harry Potter, and his friends Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. The trip had seemed amiable enough, and so they'd become her first friends. Hermione had seemed happy to welcome a girl to the group, and Amelie had been happy to oblige to their company. There was a pile of pumpkin pasties, Bertie Bott's every flavor beans, and other curious assortments of treats. Since, of course, Amelie was native to France, some of these snack she'd never heard of before.

"Oi! Amelie's never heard of these before, have you, Amelie?" Ron exclaimed casually, with pasties and treats and who knows what crammed into his mouth.

"Um, no, I don't think so," Amelie replied, smiling. Ron grinned devilishly and Hermione gave him a suspicious glance.

"Well, blimey, you haven't tried these before, then you mustn't miss out on Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans," remarked Ron, and he took out a pink one and stuffed it into his mouth. He cringed a little, and spit it out. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he spat, "Disgusting! That was dish washer soap, ugh,"

The three of them, Harry, Hermione, and Amelie, laughed. Ron glared at them.

"Amelie, you try one," he insisted. Amelie finally relented and popped a green one with speckles dotted all over it into her mouth. "Mmm," she said, savoring the flavor. "Frog legs,"

Hermione gagged. "Frog legs? You're kidding!"

Harry agreed. "But hey, doesn't France eat them often?"

Amelie nodded at Harry. "Oui, at my house in France, our mum steams and boils cuisses de grenouille. That is French for 'frog legs'," she said wistfully. Oh, she could feel the heat of the boiling pot of frog legs, and taste the enticing flavor already.

Hermione smiled. "I get you, I miss my mum and dad's meat loaf. Both my parents are dentists, but... they make pretty good meat loaf,"

Harry said nothing. Amelie felt sorry for him, as he had nothing to say about his parents' cooking. Or, anything, really, about his parents. After what happened with You-Know-Who and all that...

Ron started babbling about his mum's cooking. "Oh, mum makes the best cookies and stew, I reckon she'd send me a pot of stew if I begged hard enough - oh, but her Christmas sweaters are horrendous, I always get maroon, when will she get the fact that I don't like that horrid shade of red? - " Ron paused to shake in horror of the mere thought of the maroon sweater. "Fred and George always get good colors, oh, but she doesn't send Percy, Charlie and Bill Christmas sweaters, I can tell you that already. Because they're so perfect, Percy the prefect and Charlie the dragon tamer, and Bill the former head boy..." Ron talked a lot, Amelie could already see that much.

The young French girl beckoned to Hermione to join her outside the compartment to take a small walk on the outside rails. Hermione saw her, then nodded her head faintly in response.

The two walked out, and thank Merlin's beard the weather was fair. There was a slight breeze, but that didn't matter. Hermione acknowledged Amelie quietly.

"So. What - " Hermione asked, bewildered.

Amelie cut her off. "Ron was talking beaucoup, and so I wanted to take a se promener. Sorry if you didn't want to, you know, um, walk with me. I just needed some fresh air. Tu sais?"

Hermione caught the gist of the French words sprinkled into Amelie's words, and smiled. "Yes, I know. And it's true, Ron does talk a lot."

Amelie smiled. "Can you tutor me on Anglais? I don't want to be thought of as a weird, freaky, etranger. Um, a, er - oh! foreigner. That is the word," she said pleasantly, laughing at her own bluntness with English. At Beauxbatons, she had been the best in her English class. But here, at Hogwarts (or on the train, at least) she felt like an idiot.

Hermione nodded. "Sure! Can you do the same for me, in French, though? I love the way it sounds!"

The young Santerre grinned. "I'd be joyeux to do that!"

And so that was how their language tutoring lessons came to be, and they spent about twenty or so minutes on the rails teaching each other different terms in the languages they had agreed to teach.

"Merci, Amelie!" thanked Hermione gratefully as their "lesson" ended. Amelie giggled and said her thanks too.

"Thank you,"

They headed back into their compartment with Harry and Ron, but when they opened the door, instead they found Draco Malfoy and his cronies.

"Why are you here, Draco?" said Amelie, placing her hands on her hips. Her confident act, however, was spoiled by the loud laugh that was emitted from the blonde boy standing across from her.

"Did you just say Der-acko?" he leered, calming down from his laughter. Behind him, his goons were still snickering. Draco turned around and glared at them. "Shut up, you buffoons!"

Behind Amelie, Hermione dug out her wand. Seeing that Hermione had pulled out her wand, Amelie did too.

Draco smirked. Again, Amelie really didn't like that smirk. "Are you going to cast a spell on me? Professor Lupin is on this train, and I'm sure you wouldn't dare cast a spell on me when a professor is riding on this train."

Amelie glared at him. "Comme l'enfer je vais," she cursed angrily at him in French. The exact meaning of her words were "Like hell I will." Hermione grinned at her friend's angry retort.

Draco feinted being scared. "Oh no, the filthy French blood traitor's going to hurt me!" His friends laughed. Amelie stepped forward and slugged the blonde prat hard in the face. When her fist disappeared from his face a red mark remained on his cheek that was most definitely going to bruise. Draco looked shocked that a "filthy French blood traitor" had hit him.

"Don't insult me, you pureblood imbecile," hissed Amelie venemously. She spun on her heel and pulled Hermione out of the room.

Hermione grinned at Amelie. "You're now my official idol!"

Amelie's eyebrows furrowed. "For what?"

"Punching Malfoy,"

"He deserved it."

"Yes he did."

They laughed long and hard together, and eventually found their way back to the original compartment they had sat in.

" 'Mione! Amelie! Why've you lot been gone so long? It's been - " Ron bent down to check his watch. "thirty minutes! Blimey, you two talk a lot," he looked shaken. "Plus, dementors came - "

Hermione's jaw dropped. "Dementors?"

Ron still looked shaken. "Yes, dementors. Blimey, you two were lucky you weren't in the compartment."

Harry stepped forward with a packet of chocolate. "Professor Lupin gave us some chocolate, it helps with the dementor's, um, chill."

"Harry fainted," remarked Ron matter-of-factly. "Ginny was in our compartment, she's my little sister, she came at the perfect time,"

Harry looked faintly amused, however. "Ron's right, though. You lot talk a lot."

"How much do you talk?" added on Ron.

Amelie narrowed her eyes at Ron playfully, but relieved they were alright.. "Should it be nous saying that to toi?"

"I don't talk a lot,"

They all laughed at Ron's sputtering arguments. Harry grinned. "But he's right, you know. You have been gone thirty minutes,"

Amelie rolled her eyes. "Oh well," she then looked at him again, making sure there weren't

"Yeah, oh well," chimed in Hermione, mimicking Amelie's eye-rolling movement.

The train soon came to a complete stop at a huge castle, built with tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds, of stones, and Amelie's eyeballs bulged at the wonderful sight.

"Is that Hogwarts?" she whispered, not daring to believe the wonderful sight. It was, indeed, Hogwarts, and the twisting turrets and towers gave it a rather magnificent appearance. She searched the growing crowd of students, her eyes darting around, looking for her flirtatious sister.

Amelie soon found her older sister walking and talking to many older boys and girls her age. She looked alarmingly radiant, and Amelie could clearly see why all the boys were so attracted to her. The four, now five boys standing in front of her were clamoring to receive her attention.

"Camille!" she called loudly, getting her sister's attention. Camille turned around sassily and rolled her eyes at Amelie.

"Oh, it's you, Amelie!"

"Yeah, it's me. I just wanted to say - "

"Don't say anything. Bye, Amelie!" she said with syrupy annoyance, and pushed her back towards where she came from. Amelie craned her eyes and neck around the crowd, searching for Hermione.

She spotted Hermione, Ron, and Harry near the entrance to the huge castle with a tall, lumbering man, and she scurried over to them. Harry saw her, and waved Amelie over.

"Amelie, meet Hagrid, the gamekeeper for Hogwarts. Hagrid, meet Amelie, our new friend who's a transfer from Beauxbatons."

"Oui," Amelie said shyly. "But I think Hogwarts is much more magnifique," Still in awe by the outside appearance, she couldn't wait to get inside and see what was located in there.

"Well, I'd say Hogwarts is the best school fer any wizard, beats Beauxbatons an' Durmstrang any day," said Hagrid thoughtfully, rubbing his chin. "Now, where are my manners? As Harry m' boy said, I'm Rubeus Hagrid, an', uh, welcome to Hogwarts, I s'pose!"

Amelie smiled. She liked Hagrid. "Thanks," she said warmly, and allowed herself to be led inside the building by the Golden Trio.

Inside, the students were seated at tables in the Great Hall, a... well, pretty darn great hall! Ron beckoned for Amelie to join them at the Gryffindor table, where she supposed was their house.

"You'll want to get into Gryffinor, our house, which is by far the best," said Hermione excitedly. Harry and Ron followed suit in their agreement.

"Well, I really hope I do, but if I don't, we'll still be friends, oui?" she asked sunnily. Hermione smiled.

"Oui!" chorused Hermione, Ron, and Harry.

Dumbledore called for order at the front of the hall, on the stage.

"We're going to begin our sorting..."