Riley O'Brien / First Year / Hufflepuff

Once, a young woman fell in love with a young man. The rest of the world didn't matter. Only their love mattered. They both believed love could get them through any problems they had, so they recklessly married months after they met.

The man had a secret: he was a wizard.

The woman learned this and accepted him, so strong was her love for the man. They lived a simple married life. She was a school teacher, which she enjoyed quite a bit, and he did something in the magical world that she didn't even understand. But she didn't need to understand. She just needed to be with him.

But life isn't a fairy tale, and there isn't always a happy ending. Maybe he wasn't so good after all, or maybe it was a misunderstanding, but the man found himself arrested and sent off to a place called 'Azkaban.' The woman had no idea just how terrible that place was, but she didn't have time to worry about it, because, days after she received notice of her husband's arrest, she learned that she was with child.

She would call that child Riley, and Riley's father's last name was all the little girl would have of him.

Riley didn't know about magic, or about her dad's arrest, growing up. She only knew that her mum loves her very much, and that sometimes, if she stayed up just a bit too late, she would catch her mum crying when she thought Riley was asleep.

Being a single mother is hard, even in a safe, rural area that Riley and her mum, Moira, live in. Thankfully, the neighbor was sympathetic to Moira's situation. Being a single father himself, his friendship with Moira was a godsend in every sense of the word. The pair would take turns babysitting each other's children and they helped each other out quite a bit.

The neighbor's children, twins called Emily and Finn, were Riley's best friends growing up. Having never known her own dad, Riley saw Emily and Finn's dad as a father figure, and it seemed that the twins saw Riley's mum as a mother figure. They were like a big, non-traditional family in every way but by blood.

Riley and her friends were inseparable. They went to school together, attended church together, and even took care of their homes' shopping together once they were old enough. The three were poised to be best friends for life.

Then, magic happened. Initially, it wasn't such a problem. It was a bit disturbing when an eight-year-old Riley was racing her friends to the top of an old oak tree and she fell, only to seemingly be caught by the branches of the tree like a hand. She was able to chalk it up as just herself seeing things in the heat of the moment.

But the magical nature of what had happened couldn't be denied when, a few years later, she received a peculiar letter from a school that promised to teach her magic, of all things. Moira told Riley that night about Riley's dad having been a wizard, but little more, so Riley knew next to nothing going into it. The only thing she remembers about the night she received her letter is how it changed her life completely.

Now, not only does she have to lie to her best friends about magic's existence, but she also has to be shipped off to a magic boarding school where she can at most speak to them through letters. It's a terrible, lonely existence, and she's afraid of losing her best friends.