A/N:This is my first attempt at a fanfiction; I RP a lot with the awesome LozzT-In-Time so this should, in theory, be a doddle. Seeing as our characters mix up a lot, I'm using my awesome characters and an idea Lozz gave me from her characters. Please review and give me feedback on what I can do to make this better!
Full Summary: In the year above the famous Marauders, a small group of Hogwarts students stood; these students were some of the first to see the horrors of the new world, the new regime that Lord Voldemort was building. These students weren't, to many people's surprise, just Gryffindors, but also Hufflepuffs, Ravenclaws and the odd Slytherin. These students would never be remembered after the First Wizarding War as their bravery and determination was not put to simple faces and names – no, these students were a beacon of anonymous hope for all those who were fighting against Voldemort and his followers. Let this story reveal the true people behind the discovery of the infamous Order of the Phoenix. Let this story live on forever.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Potterverse unfortunately, but I own all of the characters in here that you don't recognise from the Potter books.
'The future depends on what we do in the present.' – Mahatma Ghandi
Chapter One
Of the beginning
On the morning of the 1st September 1976, four girls dressed in rather conspicuous clothes entered Kings Cross station in London. These four girls each wore cropped jeans, brightly coloured shirts and crazilly patterned knitted cardigans. Each of them were pushing a large wheeled trolley upon which was a cage with an animal in each and a large wooden trunk. The four girls were talking in hushed tones, errupting into laughter every few minutes, causing the business men and women commuting to glance over at them in distaste.
These four girls were seventh-year Gryffindors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and they also happened to be best friends. The tallest of the bunch, a girl with long flowing strawberry blonde hair, hazel eyes and a tanned complexion was called Marlene McKinnon. She was standing next to a considerably shorter female, this time with short light brown hair and twinkling dark eyes. She had a petite yet curvy figure called Alice Tearson. The to other girls were walking slightly behind the first, having stopped to secure the darker-headed one's trunk more securely as it had been in danger of falling off; one was called Dorcas Meadowes and she had shoulder length spiky black hair and blue eyes that always seemed mischevious. The last girl was of medium height, olive skin and brown eyes. The only thing that made her stand out from the others was her long, slightly curling red hair. Her name was Samantha Jackson, though she told everyone that she met to call her 'just Sam'.
As they approached their destination, the friends found a brick wall in their way. Leaning on it casually as if they were waiting for a train, they slipped through the seemingly solid obstacle and into a crowded and clouded station that seemed to be of a whole other world.
And if you wanted to look at it technically, the station was of a whole other world; the Wizarding world to be exact. Every child, every parent along the platform was either a Witch or a Wizard, some of them fresh-faced from their holidays in the sun. But the four girls who had just entered the platform hadn't had any time to go to a tropical country to get a tan. Oh, no. They were under employment of Professor Albus Dumbledore, the current Headmaster of Hogwarts, and possibly the best Wizard in the world.
Sam, who had been looking around her everywhere to her sister, suddenly turned back towards her friends.
"I don't think she's here yet. We definately told her to get Nyxon and Aurora and meet us underneath the sign at twenty to eleven, didn't we?" she asked the group, frowning, checking to see if she was right.
"Definately," Alice answered in a soprano voice. "Maybe they're just fighting their way through all these people here; the way everyone's packed in here like sardines in a can makes it very hard to be on time for meetings, especially in the most packed place of the whole platform."
"True," Dorcas muttered, brushing raven hair from her face. "But then again, this is Charlie we're talking about. She's usually late."
They went quiet at the statement and settled for looking around them. Five minutes passed, ten minutes passed, fifteen minutes passed before Sam admitted that they should probably get onto the train or they would be left behind. Heaving their heavy trunks towards an open compartment door, the four of them managed to haul their belongings into the hold and retrieve their pets and hand luggage before a conductor slammed the door shut on the billowing steam from the scarlet steam engine that was called the Hogwarts Express. From their place in the corridor, the girls could hear the 'hoot-hoot' of the horn before the train began to crawl forwards along the track.
If trying to find three other people on the packed platform was hard, wading through the torrents of students in the hallway of the steam engine in an attempt to find an empty compartment was almost impossible. After pushing their way through what seemed like a neverending stream of Hogwarts students, Sam finally spotted a compartment with a single inhabitant. She indicated to the others to enter the compartment and she pulled open the glass door and entered herself. The person in there was not, as Sam had expected, a lonyle first-year, but instead a sixth year with hair as red as Sam's own. She recognised the girl as a Prefect from her own house and scrambled to remember her name... Lucy Something? No, that didn't sound right... Lulu? Lily? Lily, that was it! Lily... Lily... Lily Evans. Lily Evans was sitting alone in a compartment.
"Excuse me Lily," Sam said smoothly, smiling at her housemate. "But can we come and sit in here?"
Lily looked up from the Potions book that she was reading, taking in the four of them that had traipsed into her compartment.
"Sure, I was just going to find my friends anyway. You can have the compartment to yourselves." she told them; perhaps it was that she felt nervous sitting with them, the sixteen year-old amongst the older students, or perhaps she just wanted to catch up with her friends, but Lily Evans picked up her robes and traipsed out of there.
Marlene raised a single eyebrow. "That was convenient. Anyway, Sam, write to Charlie and get her in here." she told her readheaded friend, who immediately pulled out some parchment and a self-inking quill, scribbling a short message and tying it to the leg of a small Barn Owl; she proceeded to open the window and throw her owl out into the slipstream of the train, knowing that she would find her sister. In the meantime, however, they would have to talk among themselves.
"So," Dorcas began. "Is anybody actually looking forward to the lessons this year? I've heard that they'll be really hard now thath we're taking NEWTs..."
"So have I," Alice answered immediately, most at home with talking. "Professor McGonagall mentioned at the end of last term that she would be testing us on Full-Body Transfiguration when we got back. I had hoped that she was just teasing, by Prof McGee never teases. Ever." She finished dramatically, a pained look upon her face.
Marlene laughed at Alice's expression. "No she never jokes. Then again, Full-Body Transfiguration isn't too hard when you think about it; all it has to do with is focusing really hard on what you're trying to turn that person into."
"I'm glad you find it so easy," Sam grumbled good-naturedly. "The only lesson I understand is Charms. Flitwick is a squeaky genious."
They all laughed at that, but quickly sobered up when they saw a flash of red in the distance of the corridor.
"I think Charlie's here," Dorcas noted, leaning towards the door just as three figures in billowing black robes with yellow and black ties entered the compartment. One looked eerily like Sam, except that she had slightly prettier features and more auburn-looking hair whereas her sister's was a bright red; this was Charlotte Jackson, usually known as simply Charlie. The girl to her left was very tall, around five foot eleven, with soft hair the colour of daisies. She had a faraway look on her face that suggested that she hadn't been paying much attention to where she was going. She was known to the world as Aurora Periwinkle and her best friend, Nyxon Wyatt, who owned the most coveted hair in the school: long and lustrous, chestnut in colour, with hints of mahogany twisting lazily through the silky strands. Together the three seventh-year Hufflepuffs sat down on the nearest seats and smiled at their Gryffindor friends.
"Sorry we didn't meet you, Sam," Charlie began. "We got stopped by some stupid prank those boys from the year below pulled, the what-do-you-call-'ems... Those 'marauders'." She said the name with an eyeroll. "They're always getting into trouble."
"They decided to let off a load of wet-start fireworks in the middle of the platform, one hit Marcus Trollway, it wasn't very pretty," Nyxon added, wrinkling her nose at the memory.
"And we had a hard time pulling Aurora here away from her newest boyfriend," Charlie added, grinning evilly at her friend, who frowned back.
"Hey! It's not like you haven't had a boyfriend before!" she defended half-heartedly.
"But Rore, seriously, you'll get to see him again in an hour or so!" Charlie countered, laughing now, as the countryside passed their compartment through the light windows.
"Did you meet any Slytherins on the way up?" Sam asked the trio of Hufflepuffs; each of them shook their heads.
"Saw not one of them, though that's probably to be expected," Nyxon answered drily. "Especially after what happened at the end of last term..." They all paused in their conversation, remmebering six of the more dangerous Slytherins being caught trying to torture a second-year Ravenclaw in a fourth floor corridor. Each of them had been punished heavilly; the rest of the school had given them a wide berth after that. "They're probably sitting in their own little carriage plotting ways to get back at the rest of the school." Nyx added.
They all sighed at the thought. "I'd really rather Professor Dumbledore gave us the power to get rid of them before they hurt anyone else; I heard that the girl they tried to torture has been transferred to the Salem Witches Institute for Magic in America." Alice put in, always first on the scene with gossip.
The seven of them lapsed into silence at that, all pondering what the Slytherins had done. As no more conversation was made for the next few minutes, each of them pulled out books, magazines and unfinished homework to complete while they waited for the train to finally slow and drop them off at Hogsmeade station.
A/N: Not the best chapter, but still, it's a chapter. Review with any feedback!
~Leila XOXO
