Destined for Difference

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Destined for Difference

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the original Harry Potter characters, objects, or plots. I give full credit to J.K. Rowling herself.

Summary: Cassidy and Seth are sixteen year old twins and have a troubled past. Their mother has kept it a secret from them and they are soon to find out when they enroll in Hogwarts.


Chapter 1: A Fiery Situation

The mother stood at the bedroom door, horrified at what she was looking at. She had come running from her bedroom just down the hall because she had heard the smoke alarm in her children’s room go off, screeching like a human being, threatened with death.

The bedroom was engulfed in red-orange flame. The flames danced as though music were being played for it. It lit up the room with a terrifying glow. The pictures on the walls drawn by her children shown brighter than ever.

Seth was sitting in the middle of the flames, bouncing up and down clapping his hands and laughing. In his left hand, he was holding a box of matches.

Cassidy was still sound asleep. The fire moved around her bed, but the bed didn’t catch fire. She was lying there delicately, unaware of the smoke alarm or the flames. There was a small, but conspicuous smile on her face, showing signs of dreams of ponies and rainbows that would not be interrupted.

The woman dashed to the center of the room and grabbed Seth up off the floor. Next, she dodged the flames and gently threw Cassidy over her shoulder. Normally, the growing three year-olds’ weight would have slowed her down, but in this situation, she didn’t notice it.

She sprinted out of the large bedroom and slammed the door, in hope of keeping the flames enclosed in one room. As she slammed the door, one of Seth’s drawings fell off the wall, but the woman did not see. The drawing gently floated to the ground. The scribbles of dark color made it undecipherable. Most of it was done in black and gray. Long black clumps of color surrounded three smaller, pink ones. The picture slowly charred and burned.

The mother telephoned the fire department in a panic. Before getting out of the house, she whispered something to a black cat curled up on the sofa. The cat looked up and jumped down from its slumber spot before slinking out of the house with the mother and her children behind it.

The woman looked up at the house. Instead of the fire in the children’s bedroom, it had grown and taken over two more the visible rooms in the upstairs. She was too frightened to cry.

She placed her children on the soft grass and became aware of the coolness and darkness of the night. She shivered and looked at Seth. She noticed he was still holding the box of matches tightly in his grip. She pried them out of his soft hand. The box had been full only yesterday, but now, half of the matches were missing.

She began to cry. She could hear the wailing fire engines drawing nearer. She looked up at the sky. The moon shone brightly and the stars twinkled around it. She glanced at Cassidy, who was cooing gently at the spectacular light show.

She then looked at Seth once more. He, too, was watching the flames through the windows. Then she saw it, burning brightly on the back of her little boy’s neck. A sign that branded him from the rest of little wizard boys his age. It was glowing red. She began to sob as the fire engines pulled up in front of her house.

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Chapter 2: The Upstairs Office

“Ma?” a voice called, breaking her mother’s thoughts. “Are you okay?”

“What? Oh, yes Cassidy, I’m fine,” she replied, somewhat startled. She was standing in the doorway of her twins’ former bedroom. The big room was currently being used as an office and held a desk and some filing cabinets. The walls were covered with pictures of her children, waving and smiling at her. On the carpet there were a few brown spots, which had remained there for thirteen years.

A door slammed somewhere downstairs and the house rattled. A photo of the mother and her children fell off of the wall. The glass in the frame shattered, leaving stunned expressions on the photo’s occupants’ faces. The fallen photograph revealed a large brown mark on the wall.

Ms. Colleman sighed. “What am I going to do with that child?

Cassidy’s thin face revealed a smile. “You could put him up for adoption,” she suggested. Her mother laughed.

“You two are quite a pair,” she told Cassidy.

They stood in silence for a moment. They were both looking at the mark a fire had left. “Too bad Athena knocked over that candle thirteen years ago,” Cassidy said, referring to the family cat. “The fire she started really made it hard to sell our house, didn’t it Mom?”

Her mother looked her firmly in the eye. “Yes, it’s a shame,” she said. “But we have sold our house and that is the important thing.”

A boy with dark hair appeared behind them. He was eating a banana and chewing rather loudly. “Honestly Seth, you’re such a pig,” Cassidy said.

“Honestly Seth, you’re such a pig,” Seth mimicked his sister. He opened his mouth to show her the chewed and mushy banana in his mouth. He moved his tongue around the give the food a lively affect.

“Gross!” Cassidy shrieked.

“Alright, alright kids,” Ms. Colleman broke up the fight. “What are we all doing standing here? We have packing to finish!”

Cassidy was upset about moving. She had lived in this house since she was one year old. She would miss her friends, even though she didn’t have many. All because of Veronica Smith. They used to be best friends when they were nine, but one day they were playing at Veronica’s house and she wouldn’t let Cassidy play with her dolls. Cassidy got angry. Somehow, all of Veronica’s dolls became decapitated in front of their eyes. Veronica told everyone at school that Cassidy was a freak and it resulted in a lack of a social life.

Of course Cassidy knew she was a witch then, but she didn’t dare tell anyone. When the twins were eleven, they had received acceptance letters from Hogwarts and another local school. Both taught the arts of witchcraft and wizardry. Hogwarts was in England. Ms. Colleman simply told them they weren’t going to Hogwarts. The strange part was, their mother hadn’t even looked at the letter, only the envelope.

Cassidy and Seth had gone away to a school nearby in America. Things began getting tough in the twins’ third year, however. Seth began causing trouble and was clearly unhappy.

Seth was the reason people stayed away from Cassidy. They were afraid she was like him because they were twins. She wasn’t though, she was different. She tried explaining that they had two separate brains but the other students didn’t seem to want to grasp the concept.

Everyone tried to deal with it for a few years. Their mother was receiving a number of complaints from the school. Seth and Cassidy became unhappier with each passing day. The taunting and teasing never stopped.

When Cassidy and Seth came home for the summer after their fifth year, their mother simply told them they were moving and that they were enrolled at Hogwarts. Cassidy could sense grief in her mother’s voice and a trace of guilt on her tired face.

They were almost finished packing their belongings into boxes using magic. All they had left was the upstairs office.

“All right Seth, the boxes go in here,” Ms. Colleman said. Seth entered the room carrying a bunch of large boxes. His face was hidden from view. Cassidy was already disassembling the desk that sat alone against a wall.

Their mother insisted on emptying the filing cabinets herself. She knelt on the ground and started at the bottom drawers of the towering cabinets.

Seth began taking photos off the walls. He was lost deep in thought about the new school they were going to. Athena slinked into the room, her black coat gleaming in the sunlight. She rubbed against his leg, scaring him. He dropped the frame, which shattered with a loud crash.

“Seth!” Ms. Colleman scolded. “That is the second one you’ve broken today.”

“Sorry Mom,” he said. He bent down to pick up the broken glass. The backing of the photograph had been knocked off. There was another piece of paper sticking out from behind the one of Seth and Cassidy as children. He picked it up and examined it. It was almost exactly the same as the one that had been showing, but in this one, his right hand was showing. In the first one, it was hidden carefully behind his back. He looked closer. “Hey ma,” he called over his shoulder. “What’s this?”

“What’s what dear?” she asked.

“My hand is burned in this picture,” he said. His mother stiffened. He walked over to her and showed her the picture. He pointed out his right hand.

“Oh that?” she asked. “I was cooking macaroni in boiling water when you were both younger and you were sitting on the counter top. You were watching the swirling macaroni as it was sucked to the bottom and was whisked back up to the surface. I guess you wanted a taste and you stuck your hand in and tried to grab one,” she laughed sheepishly.

Cassidy came over to look at the picture. She laughed at how stupid her brother must have been.

“Well, there’s one drawer gone and it’s all garbage,” Ms. Colleman said. She picked up the stack of papers and sauntered over to the wastebasket. A paper gently slipped out of the pile and slipped to the ground.

Cassidy picked it up. “Ma, you dropped a paper,” Cassidy said. She looked at it.


Registration of number 28304882, Elias Colleman, at Azkaban…


There was more written on the paper but her mother picked it out of her hands. “What’s Azkaban, Ma? What’s Dad’s name doing on that paper?”

Her mother’s eyes were as cold as stone. “It’s the cemetery where your father was buried,” she told them. Her face broke into a warm smile, meant to console her children, but her voice was cold as ice.

[Courtney Piddle]

please please please keep going

i realy like how this is going