By Imp (With the assistance of A small Bomb)
Note: Some people may be
wondering what I think I'm doing starting something new when I haven't finished
either, Catastrophic or Claustrophobic? or The Wizard's Dare? .
I'm working on those – and I'm writing this, and many other things, if you were
wondering.
About this though, it is
about a boy attending Hogwarts long after Mr. Harry Potter. His name is Thomas
James Laurence William Parkington and he is quite a character. He was
originally a character for a role-playing game, but I've gotten permission from
his "creator" to write him into a story
– along with some of the other characters he interacted with on the
role-play board. Also, as I don't have permission to use some of the other
characters "Tom" interacted with in the role-play, I have either substituted a
new character or changed personalities and names. As you might have guessed, a
few of the prominent professors and personages of the Hogwarts staff will not
still be at their former places as it has been at least four years since the
famous Harry J. Potter has graduated and they may well have retired by then
(for example, Flitwick, or perhaps McGonnagall) – although I have decided to
leave Dumbledore in his position of Headmaster, at least for Parkington's first
year.
If you'd like more info,
you have permission to email me; you will find my email address in my FF.N
profile. -IMP
~*~
If there was anything in the world that Thomas James Laurence William
Parkington hated, it was a loud, obnoxious, proud, overbearing girl who thought
she was beautiful and good in every way. Tom had hoped for a secluded, quiet
compartment where he could mull over his plans for the year and ignore his
apprehensions concerning which house he would be sorted into – but instead he
had gotten the compartment that had the most annoyingly unbearable girls in it
– and one of them obviously thought he was cute!
"As I was saying…" The first girl giggled. "Oh! I'm sorry, I'm Angelica
Jones!" She jumped up and held her hand out to a decidedly uneasy looking Tom,
who shook it gingerly and glanced out the window, hoping to see the awe
inspiring presence of the Hogwarts castle.
"And this is my friend!" Angelica cried, gesturing emphatically to her
companion. "Her name is Sabrina Talents,"
Sabrina nodded, "I'm going to be a Gryffindor prefect - and then Head
Girl." She said softly.
"Er, nice to meet you… I-I just forgot, I left my, um, trunk out in the
hall and I need to get it-" Tom said quickly and sprang up, ready to escape the
close confines of the compartment, stuffed with the two girls' things, but
Angelica stopped him, pushing him back into his seat.
"Don't be silly!" She said. "Your trunk's right there!"
Tom slumped down in his seat, making up his mind to endure the constant
noise of the two girls' chatting and nodding or answering randomly every now
and then when there talk was directed at him.
"And there's a ball every Halloween…" Angelina droned on.
Tom gradually fell into a stupor and his eyelids drooped; so far, his act
had worked, and neither Angelina, nor her friend seemed to suspect that he was
only replying with a completely random and neutral phrase when he noticed one
of them had said something to him.
"Is that so…?" He said absently, thinking over everything his older
brother had told him about the Wizarding school and wondering how much of it
was truth and how much exaggeration…. Perhaps he would have to jump off
the top castle turret to enter the school…
"I said, do you like to dance?" Angelica snapped, repeating what she had
already inquired.
"Is that so…?" Tom said vacuously.
"You weren't even listening to me!" Angelica cried, stomping. "What's
your name anyways?"
"Huh-what? Name – oh, er – Tom." Tom stuttered, not completely sure he
had heard right in the first place.
" 'Tom' what?" Sabrina interjected quietly.
"P-Parkington." Tom stated as though this were the most obvious fact in
the world.
"Good." Angelica smiled. "I'm sure you didn't mean to miss my last
question. You must be tired – where did you say you were from again?"
Tom scooted back a little farther in his seat and eyed Angelica warily;
he was definitely not going to find this girl any more pleasant as the day wore
on.
"I'm from London." He muttered, absently pulling on a strand of his dark
hair as he leaned on his hand.
"Really? Are both your parents British?" Sabrina piped up suddenly.
"Er, my mum's American – from the United States you know…" Tom responded
tiredly; this was going to be an extremely long journey.
"How old are you, precisely? Do you have any brothers or sisters…?"
~*~
The train came to a hard stop and Tom steadied himself, leaning back a
moment before springing to his feet, cutting his two unwanted companions off,
and trying unsuccessfully to pull his trunk from under his seat.
"Don't worry about that Thomas," Sabrina smiled with superiority.
"Someone from the castle will take it to your dorm."
Tom started as Angelica tapped his shoulder and bolted into the hall,
missing whatever the girl tried to say and surprising the inhabitants of the
next compartment as he raced in and then out the other side of their space.
"Don't you think he's cute, Sabrina?" Angelica asked after she had
gotten over the shock of Tom's swift disappearance.
"Oh, quite," Sabrina responded, sniffing disdainfully. "But he could use
to work on his habits."
Tom, incidentally, was the first off the train, and was almost the first
student ever to fall off the platform and into the underbrush about it, in his
wild haste to leave behind the stifling talk and questions of his accidental
companions from the train. Fortunately,
another first year like himself, exiting the train just a little after he had,
grabbed the back of his robes and just barely kept him from tumbling into a
gorse bush.
"What're you running from? The Dark Lord himself?" The boy asked,
looking Tom up and down with a prideful glint in his eye.
"Oh, what? No, no, it's just – what, the Dark Lord? Where-" Tom
stammered confusedly, finally turning to look at the boy who had stopped his
wild progress.
The boy, his blond hair shining in the fading sunlight, stepped a pace
back and held his hand out.
"I'm Devin Avery, what's your name?" he said, smiling slightly.
Tom took the other boy's hand automatically, "I'm Tom-Thomas
Parkington." He responded, glancing over Devin's shoulder anxiously, hoping he
would not see Angelica and her ambitious comrade.
"Pureblood?" Devin asked.
"Huh – What?" Tom said.
"Are you a pureblood?"
"Oh, yes – uh, where or when, that is, will we go to the castle?"
"Soon," Devin replied, turning away from Tom and waving energetically to
another boy just coming out of the train.
~*~
In a few moments, all of
the new and old students had exited the train and had grouped in a relatively
orderly fashion, the new ones standing for the most part to the side in an
anxious circle, the older ones slowly filtering out and into the growing
darkness and vanishing from sight.
"When do we go?" Tom
whispered.
"'Dunno," A small
light-haired girl said, glancing around curiously. "But its bound to be exciting."
"Like big explosions and
fireworks?" Tom asked eagerly.
"No; I doubt it." The girl
answered, and looked away.
Tom slumped his shoulders
disappointedly and gazed at his feet; something should have happened by
now.
"First Years! First Years!
This way! Over here, boys an' girls! This way!" A loud voice boomed.
Tom's head shot up and he
looked around exuberantly; finally, something was happening!
"Over here! Over here!" A
small, pale man appeared at the edge of the platform, gesturing toward a faded
path in the dirt energetically as he called in ever increasing rapidity to the
group of unsure students. Tom was the first to step forward and follow the man,
and the rest soon followed his example and trooped onto the damp path. The
castle was suddenly visible and a series of astounded gasps broke the dreary
half-silence of the scuffling feet and Tom gave a wild whoop of surprise at its
grand turrets and towers. He would certainly have his hands full discovering
new passages and halls – not to mention finding his classes on time. But
classes and professors only occupied Tom's mind when they concerned trouble and
obstacles in his plans, and they swiftly slipped away to be replaced by the
frightened yells and squeals of the older students when he imagined himself
dropping spiders and cobwebs on their black-hooded heads. What fun!
Unfortunately, his happy
thoughts were cut short by the pale little man's quick voice, "Into the boats
students… Into the boats and across the lake to Hogwarts." He said.
"But why this way? I'll get
wet! Couldn't we go the way the older kids went?" A new voice gasped.
"No, into the boats –
please, it will be done with if you just do it!"
"I can't get into a boat!"
Tom cried. "I-I'm scared of boats!"
"Please, just come. Nothing
will happen to you…" The man tried to console the frantic group of children.
"What about the squid!" A
large, angry looking boy called sullenly.
"Yes! What about it?" A
girl gasped shrilly.
"I can't get in a boat!
I'll die!" Tom cut in.
The man sighed and put his
hand to his head. "Why couldn't I have been the caretaker…" He moaned.
"I'll just swim!" Tom
muttered, and dashed past the man and the other students to jump into the lake
with a tremendous splash.
"The squid'll get 'im!" The
angry looking boy yelled.
"Ooooh, my new robes! You
ruined them!" The girl wailed.
"Was that Thomas
Parkington?" Sabrina inquired calmly.
The man, his face even
whiter now, began calling for order and, at least, brief silence, but his words
were completely lost in the yelling, screaming mêlée.
"Please! Boys and girls,
quiet down! It is all right – stop that! – I mean, wait – get out of the water
now young man! This instant – oh, wait; Miss, please! Stoppit!!!"
"Tom Parkington jumped in?" Angelina asked, clutching her wand with held
back interest.
"I think it was him – he said something about being scared of boats.
Although I don't see how swimming is any less strenuous." Sabrina whispered in way
of a reply, standing on tiptoe to try and get a glimpse of the action.
"He must be very brave to do that." Angelina cooed.
"Or completely mad." Sabrina said off-handedly as she shoved another
student roughly out of her way.
"Get out of that lake, young man! Now!" The pale man cried desperately.
"But," Tom gasped, quite a few meters now from the shore. "I, can't
stand – boats!"
"I don't care what you can or can't stand! At this school, you do as
you're told! Now swim back here! You've caused quite a commotion already and I
can't take anymore of it!" The small man's face had turned a bright shade of
pink now and he was apparently quite flustered as he stomped the ground and
cried loudly again to Tom.
Tom allowed himself to drift a bit closer, and that was all the man
needed, he reached out and caught hold of the back of Tom's robes and pulled him
forcefully back to shore, panting and cursing under his breath as he did so.
Tom coughed and spluttered as he stood, shivering and looking longingly
back at the water through the crowd that had quickly gathered about him.
To all the questions asked of him, he only answered blatantly, "Bloody
unfair, I tell you, bloody unfair." And the other students could get nothing
else out of him about why he had so swiftly jumped into the lake after hearing
of the boats.
"Now… Into the bloody boats, girls and boys! Now! Or you'll have
detention for the rest of the year and you won't have even stepped over the
threshold of the castle to get it!"
~*~
Note2: Well, there you have it, an introduction to Thomas James Laurence
William Parkington. What are your criticisms, points, praises or thoughts on
Tom and his exploits so far?
As you may have guessed, Tom will get into some considerably more
interesting escapades once at Hogwarts, so if you found this a bit dull (which
I don't see how this could be dull…), you will be more interested definitely by
the next chapter.
Well, tootles - IMP
