Secrets

A/N: So I combined this chapter with chapter two and rewrote the bottom...hopefully it's better now...let me know? aka, review? please?

Chapter One: The First Chapter

A bird flew down a dark alleyway, cawing loudly. Rats scuttled for a safe place to hide inside of one of the many dumpsters lining the back of the shops – which had closed several hours ago. The alley was suddenly very quiet and seemed to grow even darker. There were no shadows – there was no light to make them. The night seemed to be one never-ending shadow. The stars were not even visible. There was no moon.

Suddenly, the cry of a baby broke the ominous silence, a loud, healthy cry. There was a soft but panicked shushing, a mother, trying to keep her precious baby quiet. "Quiet, baby, we must keep quiet," she urged in a pressing voice.

The scuttling of rats broke her plea, and her head jerked up at once. A quick movement had frightened the rats, giving her warning. The woman disappeared with a swish of her robes and a soft pop. Only that evil presence remained; the night seemed darker than ever.

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An alarm clock rang and a hand reached up from under a down comforter and whacked it. It stopped ringing and the hand retreated back under the covers.

Five minutes later, the clock rang again. The hand reemerged and moved to hit the clock again. This time it missed – and sent the alarm clock flying across the room, still ringing.

"Damn it! Can't I get any sleep anymore? I swear the entire universe is against me getting any sleep." The girl picked up the alarm clock and started banging it on the table. The clock was broken and this was the only way to effectively turn it off. Adele wasn't in a good mood anyway, and the hitting the clock was a good stress-reliever. "First the summer homework, then the evil time that the train leaves. Who knows what's next? Why can't the train leave in the afternoon anyway? Then we could have hot coco and then go to sleep and then wake up at Hogwarts. Why does it have to leave in the morning? I hate my life. Erhhhh!"

Of course, Adele Mathinee completely ignored the fact that she had had the entire summer to do the school homework, not just last night – or until about five that morning. It was now six o'clock and she had 20 minutes to get dressed and eat before she had to leave to get on the Hogwarts Express.

"And I want a boyfriend!"

With that, Adele started throwing clothes from various drawers into her school trunk, pulling out a long white v-neck shirt and a pair of jeans. The shirt had shiny white buttons running down one side of the collar. She liked it. Especially because it had long sleeves which were way too long.

She grabbed a pair of sandals and headed into her bathroom. She quickly got dressed, pulling back her hair, and smudging some makeup onto her eyes, and adding some mascara. She looked in the mirror, posed, and then ran out back into her bedroom.

Ten minutes left.

"Adele, are you up yet?" A voice shouted. "Yeah!" She screamed back. "That's only like the tenth time they've checked. Honestly, like I would not get up on time," She muttered stormily. Just happening to forget that she had ignored them the first nine times they had called her. And that she did tend to sleep in a lot. But, if they actually got her up on time, as she would argue, then she would get up – she just ignored them because she didn't need to be up when they called her and then she would fall back asleep and thus not wake up when she was supposed to. If they would just agree to get her up at a reasonable time, life would be so much easier. But they had to do things their way. Grrr. Thus, she was considered to be the one who always slept in.

Adele grabbed her newly-finished homework, scribbled her name across the top using her new permanently-pre-inked quill, slid the papers into one of her books, and threw the mess into her trunk. She then ran back into the bathroom, grabbed a small bag, threw in the makeup she had left out as well as anything else on her counter, closed the bag, grabbed a small tin of jewelry, and ran back into her room. She added that to the trunk.

She sprayed herself with some perfume, wrapped the bottle in a shirt that she found on the floor, and added that to the trunk as well. Then she grabbed an bohemian purse-bag-thing off a shelf, and threw in her ipod. Then she frantically ran around her room, searching for her money bag for about three minutes. She finally found it under a blanket on her bed – her bed was a mass of blankets and pillows, strewn haphazardly over a mattress – threw that in the purse with her wand, and, dragging her trunk, walked out the door of her bedroom.

Three minutes left.

Adele ran down to the kitchen and announced "Morning! Ready to go?" in a cheerful voice.

"Here, you have to eat something before we leave," her mom said, handing her a plate of eggs and tomatoes. Adele thanked her and ate the food quickly at the kitchen counter, while her father greeted her and then started moving her trunk out toward the garage where he would put it in the car.

Adele waved at him and smiled, still stuffing eggs and an occasional tomato into her mouth. She finally finished and walked over to the sink, washing the plate. She added it to the dishwasher, looked to her mother and said, "You ready to go?"

"Just let me get my things" she replied, walking back up the stairs. She returned a minute later with her jacket, and picked up her purse from the kitchen counter and headed out to join Adele in the garage.

Adele's father was just getting into the driver seat, Adele was in the back seat, and her mother climbed into the passenger side. The father turned the key, and as soon as the engine flared to life, the Mathinees left their home.

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About an hour and a half later, Adele was walking toward the Hogwarts express, rolling her trunk behind her on a trolley. She had said a final goodbye to her parents. Goodbyes were terrible things – they always made her feel so guilty. Usually people started crying and describing how much they would miss the other person. She always tried to look sad and tell the person how she was sad to see them go – but she never felt particularly sad to be leaving the person behind.

And especially where her parents were concerned, this made Adele fell awful. They had raised her! How could she not miss them? But she didn't, so she just ignored it until people brought up how much they missed other people. Oh well.

She was happy to see people again though. Maybe her feelings of missing people were overcome by her excitement to see other people again? And here she was.

Almost immediately, Adele saw the happy face of her best friend Carlye. They both started screaming and people looked at them strangely. The girls were used to it. Between the excited screams of the pair, "Oh my gosh how are you?" "How was your summer?" and "I missed you so much!" could be heard, but then the girls just started screaming again and whatever they might have been saying was completely unrecognizable.

After a while, the two calmed down enough to actually talk, and, after a few minutes, to start taking their luggage into the train. They spent the ride up to the school talking about their summers, and occasionally screaming again – they had been apart the entire summer.

"I pretty much sat around doing nothing except reading fanfict-er my new potions book," Adele decided. "It was pathetic."

"Hey, I wasn't any better –did you read those newBlaiseHermionestories? It took me so long to catch up on all of them.I didn't even do homework. Which reminds me," Carlye stopped fingering her green and gray striped Slytherin scarf and pulled out a few sheets of parchment and started writing. She had been born into a pureblood family as old as the Malfoy's – their two families had actually been traditionally close friends, which was lucky for Carlye because Draco was often called "the Slytherin Prince," which meant that Carlye was well-respected among the Slytherins, no matter how strange she acted sometimes. Draco was like a close cousin to her

Adele pulled out her own unfinished homework but was soon distracted by the passing scenery. Well,not distracted exactly- her homework wasn't the most excitingthing in the world and she could only look at it for so long.There were long green fields and trees far off in the distance. The sun was just above those trees, shining across their tops, making them glisten, showing off their lovely fall shades of red, green, and yellow. The surrounding sky was grayish blue andentirely cloudless. "So beautiful," she thought to herself. Just then, the compartment door slammed, causing her to jump.

She turned around to see Draco Malfoy enter their compartment. "Did I startle you?" He asked in a very obviouslysarcastic voice.

"Shut up Draco, I'm trying to finish my homework before we get to school." Carlye snapped.

"So sorry, my dear cousin, I forgot how dreadfully incompetent you are when it comes to your studies. Apparently all summer wasn't enough time for you to finish your work? You spend all night and day during the summer and now continue to work? Honestly, sometimes you remind me of Granger," he sneered, pulling out his potions book and a roll of parchment.

"You should talk." Adele remarked in an taunting voice. Carlye just glared at both of them. Draco sat down and made himself at home in their compartment. Carlye got back to work.

"So…" Adele said, in a tone that clearly meant, "What the hell are you doing in here?"

"So I was wondering why I never saw you this summer." Draco replied in an equally hostile voice. "I must have seen Mr. and Mrs. Tougoura at least four times at ministry parties and I never saw you with them. And when I finally asked them where you might be, they claimed that they did not have a daughter named Adele, but rather, a son, named Hubert, who was studying abroad at Beauxbatons, the school at which they had been taught magic." Carlye looked up sharply with a strange expression on her face.

Adele's eyes had widened for a quick second, but she covered it with a loud laugh. "And you fell for that?" She laughed some more. "My parents have a reputation for playing tricks on unsuspecting people. Poor Draco, did no one let you in on the joke?"

Draco gave her an angry look and replied, "And they just happened to have pictures of some random boy with them that they forced me to look at for an hour, all the while talking about his accomplishments at the school?" his tone was very skeptical.

Adele laughed even louder. "That was probably my cousin they showed you – he actually is studying at Beauxbatons right now – he was raised over there but his parents and mine are still very close. They love to tell my parents all about him. Personally, I think he's a total jerk. I met him once and he could barely speak English. I had to speak to him in French the entire time, while he made fun of my bad accent."

"The Hubert that I met at the end of this summer spoke flawless English," Draco replied simply.

Adele looked nonchalant as she replied, "That's because this summer his parents made him take lessons from me. I'm surprised that he actually went along with their joke though, usually heruins any type of joke. He's a sick kid."

Draco gave her a look, "Really, he seemed like an okay guy to me, with his shining blue eyes and blond hair. Perfect English schoolboy, really. A bit dull though, but he must be a genius to have mastered the entire English language in two weeks."

Adele sniffed. "Trust me, 'dull' doesn't even begin to describe my cousin."

Draco smirked."If you say so."

"WOULD you two just STOP flirting for ONE second so that I can finish my work. I have like three essay's here!" Carlye screamed.

They all returned to working on their homework for an hour or so until Draco finally broke the silence."Well, I have to go meet up with Blaise. I guess I'll see you two girls later."

He got up and walked to the door and began to walk out. He leaned back through the door at the last minute, smiling cheerily. "Adele, I'm onto you, my sweet." He turned and walked out through the door.

A/N: Just a friendly reminder to REVIEW DAMN YOU!

thanks!