The First Night

[Sophia Holloway]

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For Elias

Just like almost every new first year, Sophia was really excited. Her family had debated over which house she would end up in, it was between Ravenclaw and Slytherin. Her older siblings Raphael and Thisbe were Ravenclaws, and Jett was a Slytherin. With her, it could have gone either way. Her tutor had always talked about how bright she was, and most of the time she was eager to learn. But what the Sorting Hat had seen was her ambition, and cunning streak. She wanted to do something amazing one day, and she was determined to excel at whatever she did.

The Hogwarts Feast had been amazing, Sophia didn't think she had ever had so much good food in her life! So after eating everything, listening to Dumbledore's speech, and chatting with a few other Slytherins that were sitting near her, Sophia followed the Slytherin Prefect to the common room, together with the other first years.

She looked around in amazement when they entered, taking everything in. Sophia thought that it was pretty cool that they were in the dungeons, she was a fan of morbid and creepy things. She went to her dorm, checked which bed she would be sleeping in, but she didn't feel tired yet. So Soph decided to head back to the common room for a while, and see what was going on there.

She went to one of the comfy looking couches, and sat down, pleased that they were so soft and squishy.

[Elias Chaplin]

Elias Chaplin was confused, something that he was not very used to feeling. Elias had always known that there was absolutely no way that he would be in any House besides Slytherin, he was a Chaplin and anything less was an unacceptable breach on his part. However, when his best friend Judas Strong had not been Sorted into the same House as him, Elias had been somewhat conflicted. Judas was the only friend that he had, and he'd been hoping that they could become dormmates.

His confusion continued to weigh on his mind as he entered the Common Room, looking around curiously and spotting a girl curled up on the couch. As the Prefects had told them all to go right up to bed, this struck Elias as odd, and he approached the girl and said shortly "You're not supposed to be doing that."

[Sophia Holloway]

"I'm just sitting down, I'm not doing anything wrong," Sophia looked at the boy, and shrugged. She recognized him vaguely from the Sorting Ceremony, she remembered his name, it was Elias Chaplin. Sophia was very good with names, she had an excellent memory and picked up on things like that easily.

She had heard that the Prefects told them to go to bed, but Soph hadn't really seen it as an order, more like a suggestion that she chose not to take.

[Elias Chaplin]

"The Prefects said we are supposed to go right up to bed." Elias said with a pout, finding it utterly unacceptable that another student was acting out in this manner. The rules existed for a reason, and yet this girl was willingly defying the things which gave them structure.

[Sophia Holloway]

"But I'm not really tired yet, so it seems a bit pointless to go up now," Sophia said, in a calm voice. She wondered why this boy cared so much, if he wanted to do exactly what the Prefects said, nobody was stopping him. "I'll go up in a bit, I want to look around here first," Soph shrugged. This was their new common room, she would be here every day for the next seven years. It was important to her to get to know the place.

[Elias Chaplin]

"But the Prefects said..." Elias repeated, not understanding why this was so complicated for this girl to grasp! When the Prefects said that it was time to go up to bed then you went up to bed! Why was this girl willingly disobeying the rules like that?

[Sophia Holloway]

"So?" Sophia asked, shrugging. "If they really, really want me to go upstairs, they'll come back and tell me, but I don't see them anywhere," she looked around the room, wondering if maybe the Prefects had gone to bed themselves.

[Elias Chaplin]

"That still doesn't make what you're doing any less wrong." Elias protested with a confused look on his face. He was unable to comprehend this, why was this girl deliberately breaking the rules? Was she a glutton for punishment or something? Did she want to get in trouble?

[Sophia Holloway]

"It's not really wrong, I'm not harming anybody, I'm just sitting here," Sophia didn't understand why this was such a big deal to the boy.

[Elias Chaplin]

"The rules exist for a reason." Elias said simply, looking the girl dead in the eye as he prepared for his speech. "They are what separates order from chaos. What keeps us apart from the beasts from which we came. Do you really think that your actions are as innocuous as you say?" Elias scoffed at the mere thought, "How utterly shortsighted."

[Sophia Holloway]

"What are you even talking about?" Sophia just looked confused, now. She had always been bright for her age, but Soph still was only an eleven-year-old girl, and didn't have such a wide vocabulary, and even if she knew the words, she didn't use them in everyday speech.

[Elias Chaplin]

Elias shook his head and replied "Another failure of modern lackadaisical parenting." a quiet mutter that the girl probably did not even hear. "To answer your question, breaking the rules - even small rules - has consequences far beyond that which we envision. It destabilizes us all."

[Sophia Holloway]

"I don't even know what you're saying," Sophia shrugged. She was hoping that not everyone in her year was this strange. He was talking in this fancy way, and using big words, Soph was sure that no eleven-year-old ever talked like that. "What does lacka-dai-whatever parenting even mean?"

[Elias Chaplin]

Elias sighed when the girl displayed an astonishingly poor grasp of the English language, "In short - that they did a poor job of raising you." Elias replied condescendingly. He really just hoped that a Prefect would show up and send this misbehaving girl up to bed!

[Sophia Holloway]

"What? No they didn't, my parents are fine!" Sophia was beginning to get defensive now. She had been a happy kid, her parents hadn't done anything wrong. They were busy a lot of the time with family stuff that Soph didn't know that much about, and sometimes they screamed at each other when they didn't realize Sophia was in the room, but they had never treated her badly.

[Elias Chaplin]

"Then why are you openly defying instructions to stay down here when you were told otherwise?" Elias asked, eying the girl with suspicion now. "Did your parents instruct you not to listen to those in positions of authority?" that was indeed what she was implying if she was to say that her parents had raised her properly.

[Sophia Holloway]

"No, it was my choice not to go to bed yet," Sophia was beginning to find this kid very, very strange. He didn't seem like a kid, he seemed like a Professor or a Prefect disguised in the body of an eleven-year-old. "My parents have nothing to do with what I choose to do."

[Elias Chaplin]

"Yes, but it is the job of your parents to raise you with the proper set of values and teach you in order to value authority." Elias replied, not bothering to listen to the girl's protest. She was clearly not aware of what she was talking about, and Elias was annoyed with this conversation already.

[Sophia Holloway]

"It's not like I'm killing anyone, is it," Sophia snapped at the boy. All she had wanted to do was check out the common room before she went to bed. "What is your problem?"

[Elias Chaplin]

"My problem is that I do not like it when other people ignore the rules that keep our society together. What would happen if everyone simply believed themselves to be above the rules?" Elias sighed, never did people see the big picture - just the immediately infinitesimal nature of their actions.

[Sophia Holloway]

"It's none of your business what I do, though," Sophia replied. "And there's a big difference between not being tired yet, or breaking every single rule of society or whatever," she added, not being able to resist arguing back.

[Elias Chaplin]

"One broken rule leads to another." Elias pointed out, as in his personally biased opinion something like this could quickly lead to even worse offenses. "Do you not realize that the precedents that we set for ourselves have relevance throughout our schooling years?"

[Sophia Holloway]

"Do I realize the what now?" Sophia looked at him, confused again. "Why can't you talk like a normal person?"

[Elias Chaplin]

"I will not debase my speech simply because your vocabulary does not match up to my own." Elias replied with a look of condescension upon his face. The vernacular of the modern school-child had fallen to something around that of a neanderthal, and he was not going to resort to such crude attempts at communication simply to please this girl.

[Sophia Holloway]

"You're like a walking dictionary," Sophia said, giving him an odd look, "and no that is not a compliment. You won't make many friends here if nobody can understand you," she added. If this had been an argument with any of her siblings, she would have stuck her tongue out. But Soph remembered that she was at Hogwarts now, she had to be more grown-up.