All American Hufflepuff

Chapter Two

There were many difficulties to being a foreigner here. Olivia hadn't thought there'd be much of a language barrier given everyone spoke English, but she was startled to learn it was a very different kind of English. The heavy accents had been the most difficult hurdle so far. The British accents weren't so bad, but the Scottish and Irish ones threw her head for a loop. Her tics couldn't decide which to copy first, and each outburst sounded worse than the last. As it turned out, half the students who heard her tic couldn't make out what she was saying either.
Unfortunately for her, barking seemed to be a universal language.

Word of her getting the wizard equivalent to a spray bottle to the face had traveled fast. She thought most of the kids giggling in the hall as she walked by, water squelching shoes and all, were laughing at her at first, but the more she thought of it, the less likely it seemed to be the case. Professor Mcgonagall didn't strike her as the type of teacher to play pranks on students, not that she had known any to begin with what with being taught by nuns her whole life, so Olivia got the distinct impression it was the situation itself that had everyone so boisterous.
In fact, Olivia realized as she walked towards the greenhouses for Herbology, she could appreciate the humor herself. She tried to picture one of the nuns, particularly Sister Thompson, playing along with her tics, instead of whacking her with a ruler for interrupting. She couldn't do it.

There were two kinds of adults Olivia couldn't stand-The overly harsh and the politically correct. There was the kind who thought they could discipline it out of her, like the nuns from Saint Mary's School for Girls and Professor Snape, but there was also the ones who treated her like a delicate ticking time bomb, so afraid to acknowledge the elephant in the room and offend her. Something about her tics being ignored made her subconscious take it as a challenge, growing louder and more violent until Olivia was in so much pain, and the class so sick of her, she had to leave.

Olivia thought back to Transfiguration. She had been so shocked by Professor Mcgonagall's wand in her face, it had taken a moment for her words to sink in, but when it finally had, to the great surprise of the class, Olivia had broken out in laughter. That was all it had taken for the class to follow suit. At that moment, she hadn't cared if they were laughing at her or with her, because it was the first time she felt her presence hadn't been unwanted by others around her.
For the rest of the day, Olivia's lessons had gone rather smoothly, at least until it was time for her last class of the day. She had been looking particularly forward to herbology, once she learned what it was, anyway.

"It's sort of like gardening." Hannah had told her, once Olivia had worked up the courage to speak without being addressed. She had a fondness of things that kept her outside a traditional classroom setting. Olivia never particularly had much of a green thumb, but she liked most activities that involved the outdoors and being in nature. Nature didn't care if she yelled or couldn't sit still. Nature didn't judge.
When she entered one of Professor Sprout's greenhouses, she was surprised to find she didn't recognize anything, plants of all different shapes and sizes sitting in pots and trays along the windows, soaking in the sunlight. There was one in particular that produced the biggest, and strangest shaped purple flower she had ever seen, but when she tried to read the label underneath the plant she found it was in a language she didn't recognize.

There were no tulips, orchids, roses, or daisy's to be found, no miniature cacti, or succulent plants. She came across something she thought looked like a small bonsai tree, but the name read Venomous Tentacula. As she walked around the room, she had the distinct impression that all of these plants wanted to kill her. So much for nature not judging, she thought, with unfriendly names such as Venomous Tentacula, Bushy Barb, and Devil's Snare she was almost certain they weren't interested in becoming her friend.