"LENA!" a loud voice bellowed, and Marlene McKinnon found herself being yanked away from her parents and grandparents, who were presently indulging in a lecture on upholding the prestigious McKinnon name.
"Come on, the train will leave without us, and I've been waiting for years to finally get to Hogwarts!" James Potter, Marlene's neighbour and childhood best friend continued as he dragged her off.
"Remember what we did to Old Cranky Pants McPhee when he tried to force us to eat caviar?"
"Yes," Marlene grinned, "He was afraid of turtles and salt for weeks afterward!"
"That will look like nothing compared to what I will do to you if you make me miss the train!"
Marlene rolled her eyes at his typical display of dramatics and climbed aboard the train.
"You are such a little girl, Jamie," she teased, tickling him mercilessly.
James began to giggle, and jumped away from her hurriedly when the stares from other students alerted him to the fact his manliness was in jeopardy.
"Oh yeah? Then I guess I'll just go find some other girls to sit with, since you're too manly to count!"
Lena merely stuck out her tongue at the boy impishly, and he spun off to a compartment that a small girl with flaming red hair had just entered, clearly intent on keeping his threat of deserting Marlene.
Lena – deciding that although she loved James dearly, she clearly needed some less theatrical friends – wandered down the train in search of more people who looked like they might be first years.
The first possible candidate she found had long black hair and a rather nasty looking glare, so she came to the conclusion that this girl would not make a good friend.
The dark haired girl chose that moment to trip a miniscule blonde girl who looked like she was running late.
"Shrimp! Next time try doing your hair before you leave the house! And watch where you're going..." she sneered at the poor girl on the floor.
Marlene, who was outraged – and also feeling proud of her character judging abilities – rushed to offer the girl a hand.
"Who do you think you are?" she yelled, "You can't just go knocking people down because you don't like their hair!"
The dark haired girl turned her attention to Marlene, and smirked in a highly superior way that made Lena's blood boil.
"I am Bellatrix Black, and I will do whatever I want, especially to filthy little children who are too poor to afford a hair brush..."
The blonde girl glared angrily.
"I do own a hairbrush, I was just in a rush this morning, and I'd rather be a filthy child than a nasty, ignorant bully like you!"
"Well someone clearly needs to teach you a lesson!" Bellatrix snarled, and pulled out her wand.
Marlene – who hadn't learnt any spells yet and therefore had no magical way to defend herself – dived at Bellatrix, snatching away her wand and tumbling to the ground.
"How dare you touch my wand!" Bellatrix fumed, tackling Marlene.
The blonde girl, evidently grateful to Lena for defending her, rushed to aid her in the fight against Bellatrix.
This escalated into a violent three person wrestling match, with a crowd of interested students amassing in a ring around them, chanting "Fight, fight, fight!"
Soon, a prefect appeared looking quite shocked and astounded.
"Stop this at once!" he shouted, and everyone at the scene froze.
"Onlookers, please disband immediately. I am very disappointed in your behaviour."
The crowd dispersed, not looking ashamed in the slightest.
"You there, come here."
Marlene, who had been balancing precariously on one leg as she attempted to simultaneously knee Bellatrix and yank her hair free, collapsed in a heap at the prefect's feet.
"You are all first years?" he frowned, "Well, usually you would be given detentions or lost house points, but as you haven't even arrived at Hogwarts yet, I suppose you can be let off with a warning. We do not tolerate this kind of behaviour, understand?"
Lena nodded meekly, and the prefect departed, shaking his head.
"You're lucky the prefect was here to save you," Bellatrix growled as she turned to leave, "Next time you'll be crying for mercy..."
Marlene and the blonde girl chose to ignore that threat, and suddenly Lena was engulfed in a tight hug.
"Thank you so much!" the girl squealed cheerfully, "I'm Alice Prewett."
"Marlene McKinnon," Lena introduced herself just as a delectably enticing scent wafted down the corridor towards them.
Both girls' eyes widened instantly.
"I have to find the source of that smell!" Alice announced imperiously, "Are you in?"
With Lena's assent, the two girls marched off with their noses in the air.
Lena (who had become the designated leader after Alice's faulty sense of smell led them into a compartment containing boys competing to see whose pet could swallow the largest object) led the way in a convoluted path towards the ultimate prize – sweets.
Lena closed her eyes and inhaled the delicious scent, following her nose. She began to speed up as the smell got stronger, closer, until – SMACK!
"Ow!" she cried, crashing straight into something very solid and knocking to the ground with her.
"Mmhchfmk!" it grumbled faintly from underneath her.
Realising that the muffled growling indicated the object was, in fact, a person who did not appreciate being spontaneously squashed; Lena lifted herself off them slightly to better see their face.
It was a boy with dark, elegant shaggy hair and the dreamiest grey eyes she had ever seen.
The fact that those eyes were currently glaring ruined the mesmerising effect slightly, but she chose to ignore that.
"Hi," she smiled sweetly.
The boy continued to glare, confused as to why she seemed utterly unperturbed.
"Get off me?" he frowned uncertainly.
"Oh, right! Sorry!" Marlene blushed, suddenly aware that she was still lying on top of the boy.
She picked herself up off the floor quickly and turned to run away, making plans to hide in a remote volcano and host tea parties with salamanders until her embarrassment faded.
However, the boy had other ideas.
He grasped Lena's hand and pulled her back to face him, tossing his dark hair out of his eyes smoothly.
This seemed to be his way of regaining composure, as all of a sudden his eyes were smouldering irresistibly, and Lena found herself gazing at him so intently that she almost didn't hear him say; "So, what is your name, anyway?"
Her mind was too muddled to think of a clever response, so she settled for simply raising one eyebrow.
Luckily, the boy seemed to take that as intriguing, rather than odd and confusing, as he chuckled.
"Well, Mystery Girl, I'm Sirius. If you insist on keeping your name a secret, could you at least tell me why you ran me down?"
This, of course, reminded Lena of the sweets, and she fell right back into her original sugar-hunting-fiend behaviour.
"Sugar! Alice! Sweets!" she cried.
"Uh...what?"
Lena waved dismissively at Sirius and spun around in search of her missing companion.
After bursting into three occupied but Alice-free compartments, she eventually rediscovered the small blonde who had wandered into a compartment containing students with green edged robes who looked suspiciously like they were plotting something, and appeared to be holding Alice captive under the assumption she had heard too much.
Lena managed to persuade the plotters to release them, but unfortunately the conditions of their escape involved duct tape magically attached to their mouths to prevent them from telling what they'd heard.
Now forced to use an odd combination of grunting and charades to communicate, Lena convinced Alice to follow her and the two finally reached the cache of sweets, which turned out to be an old lady selling candy from a trolley.
Lena and Alice lined up to be served, and (after a nearby 7th year took pity on them and removed their duct tape) launched into a heated discussion on their favourite sweets.
"I haven't been able to eat chocolate frogs since I almost ate a real brown frog by accident..." Alice explained.
"They're too plain anyway. And sugar quills give you a nice buzz, but they make my teeth hurt. My favourite would have to be..."
"Pumpkin pasties?"
"No."
"Cockroach cluster?"
"N –"
"Acid pops? Cauldron cakes?"
"Alice!"
"Sorry..." she smiled sheepishly, "What is it?"
A dreamy look came over Lena's face.
"Fizzing whizzbees!"
Lena then began a lengthy rant about the bubbly deliciousness of fizzing whizzbees, and how anything that caused you to levitate must be superior.
After attempting to interrupt twice, Alice decided to leave that task to the old lady, who was clearing her throat loudly in an effort to get Lena's order.
Finally Marlene paused to breathe and the old lady interjected as one word; "Anythingfromthetrolleydear?"
"Sorry, what did you say?"
"Would you like anything from the trolley, dear?"
"Oh! Yes, please! I'd like all the fizzing whizzbees you have."
"Sorry dearie, I just sold them all to that boy walking away."
"What! That's awful! Thanks anyway...Alice, I'm off to beg the boy to share! Wish me luck!"
Alice waved and began listing her own desired sweets, while Marlene sprinted off and tapped the boy's shoulder just as he was opening a compartment door.
"Ah, you again. Come to tell me your name, Mystery Girl?" Sirius laughed.
"No, actually. I've come to ask you to please let me buy some fizzing whizzbees from you. They're my favourite, and apparently you bought them all."
"Yes, I did. I happen to be addicted to them. And sorry, but Pettigrew here dared me to eat them all in three minutes, so...they're gone."
Marlene gasped, and spun around to face the short, rat-like boy called Pettigrew.
"Why would you do that?" she cried accusingly.
Pettigrew squirmed under her stare.
"Uh, because...I – I –"
"Because he knows how to have fun," Sirius answered smoothly for his friend.
Lena's eyebrows shot up dangerously.
"Are you saying I don't know how to have fun?"
"Well I don't know you, but if you can't appreciate a good dare..."
"You call that a good dare?" she mocked, "Seems a little boring to me."
"What? Then what would you call a good dare?" he demanded, looking annoyed.
Marlene grinned, knowing she had gotten to him.
"Well, one time in our lake, my friend Jamie dared me to run – oh! Jamie!" she called to the head that had just popped out of the compartment door.
"Tell this silly boy about our dares."
James grinned proudly and began to speak, but was interrupted by a high pitched shout.
"Hey! Sugar junkie!"
Alice appeared beside them.
"I just found a kid who is totally afraid of my Merlin impersonation, and he says he'll give me fizzing whizzbees if I stop doing it!"
"You are officially my new best friend ever! Sorry, Jamie! Let's go!"
James pouted and watched his ex-best friend run away.
"You're friends with her?" Sirius asked curiously, "What's her name?"
"Yeah, we grew up together. She's trouble," he laughed, "Her name is Marlene McKinnon. But anyway, come on. I've got three packets of Filibuster fireworks, where should we set them off?"
Sirius smirked evilly.
"The prefects' compartment."
