Disclaimer: I don't own How I Met Your Mother but the characters and storylines are my own

A/N: I was so inspired by the How I Met Your Mother TV series that I wanted to create my own series that followed the same idea, just completely different characters.

A/N 2: On another note, I've started up a HIMYM/HIMYF forum which I'd love for you to all join :) and I'm looking for moderators, if you're interested, get in touch!

Episode 01 – How it all began

I sat opposite my three kids; it was a normal day with very little to do. Well, the kids had very little to do. I was busy reading the newspaper, but there was nothing too interesting, really.

"Mom?" My daughter Sydney asked.

"Leave her be. Can't you see she's reading the paper Sydney?" Her older sister Ashleigh raised her eyebrows.

"What is it Sydney?" I sighed, but barely looked up from the newspaper.

"You're not looking at me." Sydney paused. "You always tell me to look at you when you're talking to me." I groaned; once again, I had to succumb to my daughter's intellectual ability to catch me out. I folded the newspaper, tossing it on the coffee table and taking off my reading glasses.

"Yes Sydney, what is it?" I sighed, looking up at her.

"I've been meaning to ask. How did you meet Dad?" She smiled. Her older brother, Jonah, was about to get up, but my daughters grabbed their brother and pulled him back down.

"What makes you ask that Sydney?" I paused momentarily. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because you've never told us, and I want to know how my Mom and Dad met." She grinned, much unlike her brother. "You never talk about it." Sydney pulled the usual 'puppy dog' pout on me.

"Well, I guess I haven't really." I smiled cheerfully; it was nice that they - well, Sydney - were taking an interest. I smiled, my cousin Ted had told his kids about he met their mother, maybe it was my turn to tell my kids how I met their father.

But where to begin? I could start at the Millennium turnover party, or before that when I met Alexis. "I got it. I think that I better start a bit before I met your father."

"When?"

"The Millennium party. It was great. I was at the Columbia University party. That was back when I was majoring in journalism, your Aunt Alexis was actually double majoring in art history and archaeology."

"Art and archaeology, no way!" Sydney blurted out.

"She did. I was her roommate for the majority of our time at Columbia. As I was saying, we were at the Columbia University Millennium party. At the time, it was just us; I hadn't yet met your other aunties and uncles yet."

"Not even Auntie Kate?" Sydney asked with an expression of pure disbelief.

"Not even Auntie Kate. Sydney, we didn't meet her until much later on in this story." I smiled. "Let me think…"

Flashback – 31st December 1999 – Columbia dorm

I was sat at the wooden desk in my room, working on an article that I had been working on for some time now. It was a little extended project that I had been working on. If anything happened on campus or in the town; I would be there to collect the information and relay it back onto my hefty, desktop computer. It was a present from my family on my eighteenth, the only present I got! I loved that monstrosity of a computer and it has come everywhere with me.

Looking up from the computer screen, wondering what my concluding statement should be, I saw all the photos of my university life so far. Meeting Alexis for the first day. My first lecture. A trip to LA to visit the Los Angeles Times. Some other highlights of my university life were up there too, little souvenirs here and there. I was a momentous graduate, nearly everything I kept, I had kept it for a reason to keep it. A train ticket home to Maryland, a ticket for a movie and a letter from a newspaper firm in Chicago. Seeing all the memorabilia made me happy, I had been fortunate enough to have a smooth university life.

"C'mon Pippa, we'll be late." Alexis poked her head around into my door. "Do you think that Billy will be there?" Billy was a guy who was in Alexis' art and archaeology class. Alexis would sit there, staring at him; she loved his floppy sandy hair and his black rimmed glasses. Deep down, I hoped that her and Billy got together, because this was the first guy I had seen her actually like. But neither one of them wanted to make the first move, it was ridiculous. "I know that look Pippa." Alexis frowned at me.

"What look?" I playfully frowned back at her.

"That look that says you know best." Alexis sat down on the end of my bed. We always used to have these heart to heart conversations, with one of us in the chair and the other on the bed. "Come on then Doctor Forest, tell me what you're thinking?" I spun around in the chair, facing Alexis. I gently put my hands down on her knees.

"Okay, what I don't get is that this is the first guy I have known you to like at Columbia and I am sure he's not the first boyfriend you have ever had."

"So?" Alexis murmured, shaking her head a little.

"Oh Alexis, such a delicate little flower." I mocked, wrinkling up my face and squeezing her cheeks.

"And Doctor Forest still hasn't told me what she thinks she knows." Alexis sighed, raising her eyebrows. "Oh come on, I want to go to this party now! I'm probably only going to live through one Millennium turnover you know."

"I don't know why you don't just ask him on a date. He's clearly into you." I glanced up at Alexis. "Why don't I meet you there? I got this last bit of an assignment to finish off and I really need to put a hundred percent into it. My whole future hangs on the results."

"You're so dramatic." Alexis groaned. "I will see you there." I watched as my bedroom door closed, and the budding journalist that I was went back to typing away. As I was checking over my work for mistakes, my mobile phone went off. Alexis was calling.

"Alexis?" I waited for an answer.

"Oh my gosh Pippa, get on over here- right now. I didn't think you'd be this late. Come, on!" Alexis squealed on the other end of the phone. "Pipppp-pppppaaaaa!" Clearly she's been at the margaritas, her alcoholic weakness. I thought to myself. I recalled the time where I first found out what margaritas did to her.

"I'll be there as soon as I can." I printed a copy of the work off and filed it away in a portfolio of my articles. "It's good to add another to the folder." Locking the door behind me, I was ready to enjoy the night.

"Pipppp-pppppaaaaa!" Alexis squealed, leaping onto the back of a sofa, and - tipsy from her margarita - fell from the sofa. I fortunately caught my drunken roommate, though.

"Woah, you all right?"

"He-yeahhh. 'Course I am. You know what? Your eyes are really pretty." Alexis' finger jokingly poked my nose.

"I forgot how much a margarita could affect you."

"I've not had much Pippa. Don't worry about me." She leaned on me. "We'll always be friends, won't we?"

"Of course we will. I know we will." My smile went away a little. Will we? I thought.

"Billy? Where's Billy?" Alexis looked about the room and waddled away like a dizzy penguin in search of Billy. Even though Alexis was gone, I could still hear her cries for Billy. "Billy!" Another squeal followed.

"Pippa Forest!" Another girl shouted across the room to me. It was Cindy Malone; she was one of the few people that Pippa could not tolerate.

"Oh crap." I cursed under my breath. "Cindy Malone, what are you doing here?" I added as the girl got closer to me.

"It's the Columbia University Millennium party; I wasn't going to miss it, now was I?" Cindy grinned widely. "Now tell me; where's that dorky little roommate of yours?" I gritted my teeth, biting my tongue to stop myself from saying the foul words I could have. "So it's true. She is looking for Billy. Oh the poor girl; I guess she doesn't know."

"Doesn't know what?" I asked curiously, a frown creeping over my forehead.

"That he has been seeing someone for quite some time now." Cindy's finger started to twiddle twist around one of her many blonde locks.

"Let me take a wild stab in the dark and say that it's you."

"Well, he thinks so, but I'm not."

"That's horrible. Why would you want to do that?" I growled at the girl who was irritating the hell out of me.

"Oh Pippa, you need to know something: you don't make the rules." Cindy started to walk away but stopped and looked over her shoulder. "Enjoy the rest of your night, Pippa."

I squeezed my way through the packed room, looking for Alexis.

"Hey, Pippa! You made it." Another guy said after seeing my snaking my way through the crowds though he thought it was him I was coming to find.

"Zander, hey. Yeah. Maybe another time."

"Why? What's up with you?" His dark eyebrows rose a little. This was Zander, one of my other friends; the honest, intelligent and modest one. I first met Zander in my first lecture on journalism. He had sat down beside me and about half way through, turned and asked if this was meant to be a nursing lecture. From then on, I had decided that he was a nice guy - when he wanted to be, but not when he wanted something. When he wanted something, he went for it, there was no stopping him.

Pippa thought frantically about what she was going to do. She needed to tell Alexis that Billy was seeing Cindy. That would tear Alexis apart, though it wasn't the first guy she had a crush on. "Pip? You're daydreaming again."

"That nickname! It's Pippa, not Pip, Pips or Pippy." I growled angrily. I liked my own name, and was not keen on the nicknames that I had been given lately. "Okay, here's the problem. So Alexis likes this guy called Billy in her Art History and Archaeology class, and she wants to kiss him in the turnover of the millennium, but Billy is and has been in a relationship with Cindy Malone, and if Alexis finds Billy right now, then I'm sure that she will get the heartbreak of the decade. I need to find her." I looked at Zander and rolled my eyes dramatically. "I'm being serious."

"If I find her then I'll do something about it, okay? Enjoy the rest of nineteen ninety nine." Zander hugged me gently before I disappeared into the hoard of party members. An occasional drink was offered to me, and I would just knock back and drop the cup on the floor.

"Where the hell is Alexis?" I murmured. A guy wearing a dark, Columbia University Varsity Jacket must have heard me and turned around.

"If it's Alexis Perry you're looking for then, she's over there somewhere."

"Erm, thanks."

"Anytime."

I shuffled across the dance floor, people knocking into me from busting so many moves. I hoped that Alexis was okay. When I reached the other side of the room, everyone was just counting down from a thirty seconds until it would be the new millennium.

"Alexis?" I called out. Then I noticed the balcony doors were open. Was this where the guy had pointed to?

"Ten seconds to go!" A drunken undergraduate screamed. As I stepped outside, she could hear the countdown as clear as ever. My mouth dropped open when I saw Alexis, my closest friend and roommate, locking lips with one of my other closest friends just as the fireworks cascaded into the sky.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder; I turned around and smiled.

"I knew I'd find you somewhere around here. Happy New Year." He kissed me as the fireworks boomed in the background. It was just another millennium.

The year two thousand, but not the year that I met your father, that wasn't for another few years now.

Present day

"Wow, that's adorable; was it Dad that kissed you?" Sydney beamed at me.

"No, that was my university boyfriend Nic." I replied.

"Oh." Sydney screwed up her face. "I wanted it to be Dad."

"Don't worry; I realised that many years later your Dad was actually at that party. I just didn't know it at the time."

"Was it the guy who told you where Aunt Alexis was? That she was on the balcony?" Ashleigh asked, intrigued by the beginning of my story.

"Actually no, I didn't see your father at the party, I hadn't met him, yet."

"What? So you are telling me that you hadn't even met Dad at that point, and you weren't going to meet him until much later, so why have you told us about some universities', I mean your universities' millennium party?" Blake raised one of his eyebrows at me.

"Just be patient, I'm giving you a backstory here you know." I smiled.

Thoughts from AspiringWriterGirl = So you've met some of the main characters. It may not be in great detail, but I'm pretty sure I'll be developing the story as more chapters are written.

In the next chapter, it's graduation day for Pippa, Alexis, Zander and Nic, time for the girls to move into their new apartment!