I watched as my brother got on the Hogwarts Express the year before I was attend. He was so sure that he’d be in Slytherin, he was already bragging about picking out the best bed in his dormitory and how he’d join the Slytherin Quidditch team. I don’t know who was happier that he was gone, me or Corin. It was a relief not to have to have my older brother there that year. For him to be always acting so smart as if he knew everything. Tattling if I did something that he didn’t agree with, or just insisting on showing me the ‘proper’ way of how to do things.

My parents were proud of him, they acted as if he was the brightest wizard ever to come to the wizarding world, and had high hopes for him. As if he might one day become Minister of Magic. I can tell you right now, that wasn’t ever going to happen, but I’ll tell you more about that later.

Just the summer before we moved from the Netherlands to England, my parents hadn’t wanted to stay there in Amsterdam and were very insistent that we attend Hogwarts. We could have attended Durmstrang, which is what Corin would have preferred but they had both attended Hogwarts and wanted all three of us to as well.

That year I learned more than I had in the last 5 years that my parents had taught me about our world. Maybe it was because I wanted to learn now, that Corin wasn’t there trying to show me up every chance he had. Either way I learned a lot that year, I wasn’t jealous my brother was at Hogwarts already, it was kind of a nice change to just have it be my sister and I at home now. My magical abilities were growing almost daily, and it was becoming hard to contain them. I tended to burn off some of the energy by taking my broomstick and flying out in the fields beyond our property. It wasn’t much, and I always had to be really careful not to be seen by Muggles, but it was enough to give me the break I needed away from my studies and the irritations of my mum and dad constantly boasting about what Corin was learning and doing at Hogwarts.

It was next to no time that I myself was picking up my items in Diagon Alley. My parents, who were busy with their jobs at the ministry, left me VERY unhappily with Corin to acquire what I needed. Needless to say that didn’t please me one bit. It was bad enough I had to listen to everything he had to tell me about Hogwarts at home, now was going to decide for me what it was I needed. The only items he had no choice but to help me purchase, were the books and robes on the list. The remainder, including the pet I chose, were all decided by him. I had no say in any of it. And when I tried talking to mum about it? She said, ‘Well Corin knows what is currently in at Hogwarts better than anyone else. It wasn’t right nor fair. Me? I got a toad to take to Hogwarts, A TOAD! Who in their right mind brought a toad to Hogwarts? I was going to be the laughing stock of whatever house I ended up in. The only thing I was most certain of, was I did not want to be in the same house as Corin, which meant I could not be in the Slytherin house. I was very proud of the wand I got, for one I knew that Corin would NEVER have any say in the wand I got, it was 12 inches and unyielding, made of Hawthorn wood and had the core of a Dragon Heartstring.

I took the boats with the big oaf Hagrid, and then got in line with the other first year students to be sorted into the different houses. I was to the back of the line, knowing that with my last name starting with Y, I was likely the last student to be called forward. I was right, though there was a Yaxley in front of me, I was still the last one to be sorted. I was a hat stall. I sat there for 7 full minutes arguing with the sorting hat that I didn’t want to be in the Slytherin house, that I’d rather be in any house, EVEN Hufflepuff, just not Slytherin. I didn’t get my wish. THAT’s another thing, so many people say that Slytherin’s would happily take that house without question and insist on the house if the hat wanted to sort them into another. That is not always true, just as it is in this case. I was a hat stall and ended up in the Slytherin house, even after begging to not be placed there. It said I would do great things, and prove that not all Slytherin’s were dark wizards. I would prove to many people that Slytherin’s could be heroes and people to look up to. PFFT yeah right. I was now in the one house I detested because of my brother Corin, and didn’t want to be a part of anything he was involved in.

Everyone was on about how Corin was the best student in the school, how he was the smartest Slytherin that had been sorted into the house in a number of years. That was pathetic in my opinion, he was a second year, what could he possibly know that 7th years didn’t yet? Pfft, just a lie. I knew it. He didn’t know all that much, he was just one of the most popular. Well it turned out he was the most popular in Slytherin because he’d learn the normal spells, hexes, potions and stuff, but he’d also use that to learn dark spells and curses. He used his common knowledge to not only learn the Dark Arts but to even enhance the dark arts and create even darker spells and curses. He’d use it against students that got in his way, or irritated him. Professors would ignore it because they couldn’t see how a second year could be the cause of something so sinister and so wrong. They’d turn a blind eye, because Corin was the perfect student, who got along with everyone and did what he was told without question. The perfect student, Professor’s pet, so to speak.

The one thing that I managed to do that Corin never succeeded in doing was managing to get on to the quidditch team. I tried out for the team in my first year but didn’t get to play until later that year. One of the beater’s got severely injured needing a replacement, and when the quidditch captain saw how well I’d played during flying lessons, he decided to give me a chance. It was thrilling to be up in the air with that Bat. I didn’t always picture the bludgers as Corin’s head but I won’t deny that I did on occasion. Corin decided that Quidditch was for losers and not worth his time, though I know he had sent many letters bashing the quidditch captain saying he didn’t know the first thing about how to play quidditch, and couldn’t see a good player when one flew in front of him. To me it amused me, and I honestly wondered if Corin could even fly and hold a quaffle at the same time. But I was happy there was finally something that I was good at that Corin wasn’t.

I learned a great place at Hogwarts that I could escape from was the paddock near the Dark Forest. It might have been an unusual place to escape but I really enjoyed it. I didn’t much care for the animals but I did find that it was a quiet place that most students avoided. It wasn’t until my third year that I really started spending a lot of time there.

In my second year, the famous Harry Potter arrived at Hogwarts with me, and to be honest I wasn’t too bothered by it. I was like an outcast in the Slytherins, all of them bashing him and trying to do everything they could to make his life as miserable as possible, and there I was ignoring the trio so to speak. I could have cared less about who they were, let alone that there was a Muggleborn in their group as well. The night the troll came into the Hogwarts, I had been sitting near the end of the row at our table and rather than run for the dungeons as did everyone else in the hall, I stayed back hiding behind one of the suits of armour. I watched as the troll went into the bathroom and then Harry and Ron followed shortly after. What fools! Why in Merlin’s name would anyone ever go into the bathroom after a troll. I didn’t stay long to see what happened, I wasn’t stupid and didn’t want to take the fall if someone got killed! I might have been smarter than most Slytherins (including my own brother) but I certainly knew better than to hang around. I also knew it’d be swarming with professors and school staff not long after as well, once they discovered where the troll was. And since we were supposed to be in the common rooms? I didn’t hang around to find out.

My father worked in the Accidents & Catastrophes office, and as an Obliviator. Voldemort’s death eater’s started recruiting members once again soon after my second year and he took our family into hiding, and when Corin and I weren’t in school we were in the Ural Mountains. I finally arrived at Hogwarts almost a month after my third term, not having been able to arrive on time, due to them getting too close for comfort. My father appeared to be a prize they were determined to either win over to Voldemort’s follower’s side or to kill him and his family.

I arrived at Hogwarts on a Thursday late September 1992, it was just the beginning of the year from hell. And it wasn’t just because of the Chamber of Secrets being opened again. Not even a week after returning to Hogwarts, my father was found dead in the kitchen of our safe house by mother. We didn’t verify it until much later that it was death eaters who claimed to have killed him on Voldemort’s orders. He’d refused to join them, and they’d finally caught up with him. My mother and sister were able to just get away and find another safe place to go to hide. None of us were safe no matter where it was. Strange things were happening at Hogwarts, though the Slytherin’s seemed to be plenty safe from whatever it was that was haunting the castle and turning people petrified. Rumours were flying and none of them were good. Did I feel secure in knowing that? No, not really. It also bothered me that such a thing could be happening at Hogwarts. It was bad enough that the rumour was that Voldemort had returned the year before, but to think he had some sort of monster inside the school as well that could only be controlled by one of those in my house?

I started really spending a lot of time at the paddock near the woods that term. Away from the school; and away from other students as much as possible. Corin started asking me where I disappeared to when there wasn’t a class, and during free time, but I always tried to be as vague as I could. I didn’t want him especially showing up and taking that place away from me, somehow. I needed that place, it was quiet, I could get my homework done without interruption, as well as think.

That summer was the hardest yet, my father being gone had turned Corin angry. He didn’t believe that the death eaters were a part of the killing, and flat out refused to acknowledge it. Deep inside me I knew that something was happening inside him. He’d changed a lot that past year, with the Chamber of Secrets having been opened. He did a lot of studying of the dark arts and asking questions most 3rd year students wouldn’t ever ask. But again the teacher’s just found him to be curious, rather than being concerned about the types of questions that he was asking. They more than willingly answered those questions and directed him towards books that might satisfy him and show him answers. That summer though is when things seemed to completely change for him. He refused to go to the new safe house, which was the Alps on the Austria border. When my mother tried to force him, he finally snapped and left never to return to our family’s home again. He did go to Hogwarts another year but from there we had no idea where he was or what had happened to him until I was 17 years old.

In my fourth year, the only thing that bothered me was that the big oaf Hagrid was around even more so that he was the Care of Magical Creatures professor. I didn’t much like that, nor having him as a professor. I was probably the least happy person in Hogwarts, and with having Hagrid as a professor, I didn’t much enjoy the class at first. I discovered he was a lot like me about halfway through the year. All the Slytherins seemed to have a vendetta against him but me? I started to like having his company when I was out near the paddock. At first I tried avoiding him and hiding but one day I discovered he knew I was there because he called out to me, saying ‘I don’t know why yer hiding, but I certainly won’t make ye do anything but hide.’ It made me burst out laughing and quickly cover my face trying to stifle the sound. The next time I was there I didn’t make the effort to hide, figuring if he knew I was there it was pretty pointless. I wasn’t much for talking though and he wasn’t one to pry and find out what I was there for. I got the feeling he’d known I’d been there for quite some time, since my first year in fact.

Lupin, was an interesting professor. I was kind of relieved to finally have a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor that finally seemed to know what he was doing. My first years teacher seemed to be a dolt who had absolutely no clue about what he was teaching in the classroom. Dunderson was called Dunderhead behind his back. It might have been rude, but the fact that he was teaching an important class in Hogwarts, and unable to even tell you how to do a simple shield charm was absolutely pathetic. Even I knew the incantation for the shield charm and I was a FIRST YEAR! Quirrell was a decent professor, til he came to his head at the end of my second year. I don’t know what happened to him, all I know is the rumours that he had Voldemort eat the back of his head and then exploded into fine yellow powder. Somehow I didn’t think that was at all exactly true, but I didn’t question it, because I didn’t have an argument to contradict any of the rumours that were flying. Lockhart was a true piece of work though. We had thought that Dunderhead was bad. This guy seemed to have no end to ‘stories’ that he could tell that was about him succeeding in saving one town or another. The stories that seemed to have taller tales than his own head of hair. I don’t know how many people wanted to shave his head more than myself. He caught me once out by the paddock asking why I was there and if I would fetch a critter from the forest with him. Seriously I was a 3rd year! He wanted ME to fetch a creature, and from the sounds of it, it wasn’t an easy creature to catch. When I refused he threatened me with detention for a month and to go to my head of house. Now I wasn’t afraid of my head of house, Snape was a decent fellow and I didn’t mind talking with him, and knew I’d probably come out on top on that one, but the idea of detention for something that I didn’t do did not appeal to me at all. So…the night before Halloween I went into the forest with Professor Lockhart.

It was freezing cold! It smelled of snow, which was really unusual for that time of year. I had on only a light jacket and my wand on me. In the dark of the forest, Lockhart nudged me ahead of him, claiming he had my back and would protect me in every way that he could. Yeah right, like I believed that. I had a feeling he had no idea how to disarm a student let alone take down a creature that was bigger than him. We could see the Hinkypunk off in the distance with its lantern in its hand. I didn’t want to get anywhere close to it, but Lockhart kept going off on how I’d get extra credit points and not have to take the next quiz. The next quiz didn’t bother me, I’d fail it regardless, as I had nearly every one he’d had so far. They were all pointless, all about how he’d saved this town or that cat from the werewolf or a monster rat. Disgusting! This next quiz was about how he used murtlap essence as a conditioner for his hair and how it helped in saving the town from the werewolf that had taken over frightening the local villagers. The only good thing to come out of having Lockhart; was knowing, that he’d be gone somehow at the end of the year! No DADA professor ever stayed more than one year in a row. Finally approaching the hinkypunk, I found myself alone in the forest with the sight of Lockhart’s wand bouncing fast along the ground off in the distance as he ran for the protection of the Hogwarts’ grounds. Slimy git had run as soon as they’d gotten too close to the creature. Unbelievable! Me left alone in the middle of the forest, with nothing but a wand and a hinkypunk. It took everything I had not to let me follow it into the bog and let it catch hold of me. I went running as fast as I could in the same direction that Lockhart had gone in. I wasn’t capturing it alone! Let alone, how the hell did you catch one anyway?

Arriving back at the castle I headed immediately to my dormitory wanting to forget all that had happened that night. What happened the next morning? Oh, the blasted git, sent me a note about the first night’s detention and the succeeding ones after that. Yes, because I hadn’t managed to catch hold of the hinkypunk before leaving the forest and bringing it to his classroom he decided I still got to do detention with him. God I hated that man. I already had to see him 2 days a week in class, I now also had to go to his office and be his personal assistant for a month! In that month, I only got relief one time, and that was when Harry Potter got detention with him and got to fill out the envelope’s addresses for him. God the guy was a prat, and thought nothing but about himself. I wasn’t going to be some prat myself, going to the headmaster or even my head of house to complain about it, I was just going to take it and do the detentions though they were pointless and unfair. Personal assistant? Pfft that meant basically helping order his hair products, address envelopes, stick pictures in them. It never included fun things like destroying the pictures because I developed them wrong, or cursing the pictures on his walls instead of dusting them. But believe me as I did the ‘detentions’ I had plenty of thoughts of what I ‘could’ do.

Back to my fourth year, Lupin knew so much more than the previous 3 professors, though Quirrell was pretty close on that point. Lupin’s first creature he showed our class was a hinkypunk. I never had the guts to ask him how he captured the blasted creature, but still to this day wouldn’t mind knowing how that was even possible. I expect some sort of stunning spell or something similar would do the trick. But back as a third year, I had no idea, and wasn’t about to find out at that time of night! We lost Lupin at the end of my third year. I would have liked having him as a professor longer than we had, but sad to say with the so called curse people said the DADA professor had, that wasn’t ever to be. Our head of house at the end of the year one morning at breakfast announced to the entire school that Lupin was a werewolf. I didn’t know what the huge problem was with that, considering he appeared to have a good handle on it. But many students, mainly the Slytherin house, took that and flew with it. Owl’s went out almost immediately to warn their parents, demanding they do something about it. Many Slytherin’s claiming that they’d seen him transform, and that he was a huge danger to every student in the school. It was all a ruse, I knew it and they knew it. And it was disgusting. I didn’t approve of it, but what could I do? Corin didn’t bother sending letters to our mother, knowing she’d likely be the same as I was. Not believing a single word of any of the rumours that were flying around. It was sort of depressing though, having lost a good professor once again.

Hagrid and I became sort of friends towards the end of the term. He told me how he missed Buckbeak, I heard the Hippogriff got away but never really heard the story behind it. Hagrid was sitting by the paddock one afternoon just before term ended staring at the Hippogriffs that stood there munching on dead ferrets. He had a faraway look in his eyes and when I approached he said just a few words and nothing more ‘Never take fer granted, what yer have, Gidyun. And never forget what yer lost.’ Those words stuck through me even now I remember them. Especially with what happened later on in my life, the one thing that changed it forever. I have never forgotten those words. Even now, I look back and think on that day at the paddock. It was as if Hagrid had lost a dear friend, though it was only a hippogriff. Only a hippogriff to him was like losing a brother.

One night right before the end of term, that exact thing happened to me. Corin disappeared, from the school. Everything including his trunk was gone. He had left, and until that day I thought he was just being childish, saying he wasn’t coming to the Alps. I tried to talk to him, to get him to see that he would be safe there. I would take him there, if he’d come. But the night before the train was to depart from Hogsmeade, he disappeared and I didn’t see him again til I was 17. That night would be almost the end of me, I lost my brother completely at that last meeting. And he was dead to me inside after that. But losing him at the age of 15 in my fourth year was hard. We’d never seen eye to eye, and seemed to butt heads more than any one that I’d ever not got along with. Yes we were Slytherins and I still am, but we were family. Family should stick by each other, especially in times like back then. Families shouldn’t be split apart, they should stick together and protect one another. Not fight on opposite sides of the war that was beginning. I felt then more than I ever had, that I was never meant to be a Slytherin, that I didn’t feel a part of that house. All of them were against what I believed in and I felt like I was on my own. It wasn’t until I was much older that I found Slytherins who had the same values as I myself did. And to a fifteen year old boy who was trying to find a place in the world of magic and Muggles, it was very hard for me to be able to just move on as if nothing had changed. I had no brother, my father was killed, and now I was alone in taking care of my family. My mother and sister depended on me to protect them. I felt so alone.

Letters from home had only got more and more disturbing. I agreed though that there was no way that mum should send Ava to Hogwarts, not in the current state of the country. Because of where they were located and that I was the secret keeper of our home, we felt it was safer for me to send my owl to her with packages of books for Ava to learn at home. I was going to spend the entire summer holidays in the Alps with them. A portkey was arranged for me to go there precisely one day after arriving in London at King’s Cross station. I was to pick up all supplies for next term’s classes and then take the portkey to the Alps. We didn’t know if I’d be returning to Hogwarts that fall term or not. I wanted to go the next term but wasn’t going to risk the security of my family to go. That would be my fifth year, my OWL’s year and if I wanted to be anything when I graduated I knew I needed to take my OWLs. Finally the end of my fourth term arrived and I took the train back to London. Wasting no time in getting my books and supplies for my fifth year as well as any supplies that Ava might need as well as household items, that we might need at least for the next few months. My mother arrived in a portkey so she could send the items to our home. We couldn’t risk my using magic and breaking wizarding law. So she banished everything to our home and the two of us used the portkey back to the Alps. It was so incredibly away from civilization. Not even in the Ural Mountains was it that far. Maybe that had been our mistake, we’d been too close. Now we were at least 50 miles in any direction, it was in the coldest part of the mountains and not even a single soul lived in close proximity to us. We grew closer together as a family, the three of us, and I wouldn’t change the fact of where we had gone, nor that we were far away from others. The only thing I would change was the constant fear.