Title: Sally-Anne's Voyage to Friendship
Rating: T
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Sally-Anne Perks, Wayne Hopkins, Oliver Rivers
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: Don't own 'em - not making any money off 'em. Dern it.
Word Count: 846
Summary: Sally-Anne has always been different and suffered for it. But now she's on a voyage to finally make friends.

Notes:

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry: History of Magic – Task 2 – Write about someone who's being discriminated because they're different.

Big Damn Prompt Race Competition: 26. Quote: "Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself."- Coco Chanel

Words and Titles Competition: Title must contain a character's name

Sally-Anne was used to being ignored. She wasn't a normal kid. She might look like an ordinary girl who wore her hair in pigtails and preferred long dresses, but she wasn't.

She liked playing with dolls, and enjoyed puzzles. She loved her mom and dad, and wanted a dog as a pet. But that was where the normality ended.

Because unlike other kids, Sally-Anne couldn't talk.

It wasn't as if she just started talking late either. Currently, she was eleven-years old, and she had never spoken a word.

Her parents took her to doctors when she was young. They hoped it was a simple disease that could be treated, and then they'd get to hear their only child's voice.

They were let down. The doctors used the term 'mute,' and they couldn't find any medical reason for it.

She was just different and unless she miraculously gained a voice—something her parents didn't have much hope of it ever happening—she'd have to learn to live with the reality of being different.

Her parents had trouble living with it, and the first chance they had, they sent her away to a boarding school. It wasn't even a special needs' boarding that housed kids that were all different, so she wouldn't stick out so much. They were all normal kids; Sally-Anne was the only freak.

When she was first introduced, her housemates—they called themselves Hufflepuffs—tried to be friendly. When she didn't verbalize an answer, they were curious. Then she wrote on a notepad that she always carried around with her: I'm mute.

The friendliness disappeared and she was ignored.

Two boys remained behind—Oliver Rivers and Wayne Hopkins—but they didn't say anything. They just looked at her with something odd in their eyes.

It got worse because her new housemates spread it around to the other houses how she was weird because she didn't know how to talk. She guessed they didn't understand how being mute actually worked, but that made sense because Sally-Anne still didn't completely understand it, and she had lived with it her whole life.

No one talked to her.

When she walked into Literature on the first day, she tried to sit next to a girl that she remembered the name of. Hannah quickly put her bag on the seat next to her, blocking access.

Sally-Anne numbly stared at it before she was rudely pushed and another girl waited to sit.

Hannah's indifferent expression melted away as a smile bloomed on her face. "Hey, Susan." She moved the bag and Susan sat down.

Neither of them looked at Sally-Anne or her downtrodden expression.

She moved to other chairs, and the same thing happened, over and over again. The last seat was between the two boys that had stayed behind, Oliver and Wayne. She looked at it, and then looked at each of the boys. She tried reading their expressions but had no idea how they felt.

She sat down and neither of them flinched, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

There were other instances as well. When the kids gathered to play kickball or soccer or capture the flag, team captains were picked, and then they picked the members of their team. Sally-Anne was always ignored, never chosen to be on any team, and she was left standing by herself, looking and feeling foolish.

She didn't know what Oliver or Wayne would have done if they had been team captains as they seemed a bit nicer, but it didn't matter because they were never captains.

Sally-Anne continued to deal with constantly being discriminated against due to her inability to talk. Oliver and Wayne are silent presences. They don't talk to her, but they sat with her in the library and invited her to join them at lunch.

And one day, when Sally-Anne arrived at Chemistry, there was a note on her desk. There was a simple quote written on it:

"Beauty begins the moment you decide to be yourself."

Sally-Anne read it and when Oliver and Wayne came up to her, she looked at them questioningly.

Oliver smiled at her. "You don't like yourself. You let how everyone treats you get to you. My mom always told me that the most beautiful people are the ones who were happy being themselves."

She gestured to her throat.

"Who cares if you can't talk?" Wayne asked. "You've learned how to cope with it and despite the handicap, you're one of the top students in our year. And if the other kids can't handle having someone different in school, they're in for a rude awakening when they have to go out in the real world and meet all different types of people."

Oliver nodded. "We were hoping you'd figure it out by yourself if we silently supported you, but we realized you weren't getting it."

"Just be yourself," Wayne added.

'By myself? Can I do that?' Sally-Anne asked herself. She thought she could.

'Be yourself' would become her new motto, and she hoped she could live up to Oliver and Wayne's expectations.