I'm utterly in love with Albus/OC, because there's really no one to fit his personality, one that I have exaggerated a bit here, but I realllllllly, really love a slightly dark Albus. Just like a dark chocolate. Now, both of those together...Bad writer! Stop that! *Bangs head on end table* 'Tis wonderful.

Now that I have enamored you with my chocolate eating tendancies, I really hope that you'll all like this story and review it to tell me so, because I am an insecure teenage girl.

Sorry.

ENJOY!

P.S., Obviously, none of this is mine, so I'm going to go cry in a corner and all that jazz.

"Watch where you're going, freak!"

The familiar words no longer fazed me, but it was hard to contain the rage I felt against Trianna Rookson, resident evil.

I turned my back on her, looking for an empty compartment, brightly sneakered feet falling on the train floor with a thump, thump.

"Look at her," mocked Ivy Grayson, Trianna's loyal tagalong, "moping like always. No wonder she doesn't have any friends. Boo hoo hoo."

I bit back the retort that I wanted so badly to say. Just two more years, I reminded myself. I was almost done (hopefully) with the likes of Trianna and Ivy.

Suddenly, I felt myself trip over someone else's foot, falling forward, crashing to the ground, putting more rips into my already hole ridden jeans and scraping my hands.

Silently, I picked myself up, willing my injuries to disappear as the girls behind me laughed.

I rushed away as fast as I could, mad at myself for not doing it sooner. Why had I stuck around? It wasn't like I had been even remotely welcome.

Finally, I found a blessedly empty compartment in the middle of the train that had been overlooked by the hoardes of students. Sliding open the doors, I set down the purse and book I'd brought along on the seat beside me.

Settling into the comfy red seats, I snuggled in to read A Potion Maker's Perfection.

One of the few pros of being a social outcast was that people avoided you like the plague, leading to empty tables, chairs, and compartments, all to yourself.

As I was fairly early, we didn't move for a long time. I looked up in surprise when I heard thundering footsteps coming towards me. The door snapped open and, to my surprise, the Potters peeked through.

They looked exhausted. Faintly, I heard the sound of the horn. They must've just made it in time.

"Do you mind us sitting here?" asked James, who was known as the popular, roudier one.

I looked at him in shock. "Um, sure," I managed to stutter out.

The three Potters filtered in, Albus and James leading their younger sister Lily, who looked at me curiously.

"Hi," she said, "who are you?"

I swallowed. "Annalea. Annalea Trotsky."

"I'm Lily," she says, smiling, red hair poker straight and falling into her face. "Nice to meet you."

I nod, albeit curtly, and her face falls, just a little. I try not to feel bad about it. She wouldn't like me if she knew who I was anyways. No one did.

Nevertheless, I being the only female and not a part of her family, she sits beside me, and I move over to make room for her.

She pulls out a small bottle of gold nail polish and begins to paint her fingernails, glancing up at me and smiling every so often.

I liked this girl. She seemed rather shy for a famous Potter, but then again, the boys sitting across from us had also stayed quiet, Albus staring out the window and James poking his way through a box of Bertie Bott's, grimacing comically whenever he came across a bad one.

I settled back into my reading, feeling uncomfortable with the entire situation. The words on the page blurred together and, in vain, I tried to read on. This wasn't right. Sighing, I set the book down. Even I knew that the Potters should've been in the back of the train, the boys snogging Trianna and Ivy or some rubbish like that.

I cleared my throat, addressing the boys, who I hadn't spoken to yet.

"I'm Annalea," I said, feeling rather foolish, "Nice to meet you."

Lily Potter smiled encouragingly at me, as if she was happy that I was taking initiative to talk to them, which I knew was nonsense, as she didn't know me.

The eldest Potter smiled at me, a full blown, goofy grin. "Ah," he teased, "she speaks!"

"I speak!" I protest, frowning at him, but not as annoyed as I should've been.

"Right," he snorts, "that's why we," he indicates his siblings with a careless flick of his wand, causing me to flinch away, "didn't know you even existed until, say, an hour ago!"

"Oh, my self esteem," I mock sarcastically, "that hurt, Potter."

He looks at me disbelievingly, like he doesn't understand what happened. That I had made fun of him.

I quiet immediately, realizing my faux pas, expecting the worst, I suppose. What I didn't expect was what happened next.

It started with Lily's soft little giggle, then Albus' short snorts of laughter, finally escalating into James' hearty boom.

"That...was...brilliant!" Lily gasps out between giggles, "your...face...James..."

I stare between the three of them, not quite sure whether or not I've caused hysterics of hilarity or anger.

Lily turns to me, face bright red, eyes watering with tears, but a huge smile on her face. "I like you, Annalea. We're going to be good friends."

I smile back uncertainly. When had I said that I wanted to be friends? "Al-Alright?"

She laughs again, placing a welcoming, gold cloaked arm around my shoulders.

"Definitely."

I couldn't remember the last time that I'd been treated as an equal. No sniggering, no harm, no foul. It was too abnormal. I choked back a sob, disguising it as a cough. This wasn't the time, nor the place to tear up.

Unfortunately, Lily Potter was too observant to miss my smothered cry.

"What's wrong?" she asked, bewilderment clear on her pretty face.

"Nothing," I smiled, unconvincingly.

Looking at me carefully, she pulled a Honeydukes chocolate bar from her purse, handing it to me. "Annalea. The first part of a friendship is to tell me when things go wrong."

I looked down at the chocolate bar, inspecting the silver wrapping, proclaiming the chocolate "Honeydukes Finest Fruit & Nut Milk Chocolate". One of my favorites.

I still have absolutely no idea what possessed me to tell Lily, whom I'd only just met, about all of my emotional baggage. Even her brothers had sobered immediately, looking at me expectantly, frowning at the tears rimming my eyes, threatening to spill with every word I uttered.

I bit into the chocolate bar. "I was considered a pretty normal kid. Half-blood, smiley, the works. I had even been best friends with Trianna and Ivy."

They looked at me in astonishment, expressions disgusted. So they did know who Trianna and Ivy were.

"That all changed in third year, when my mother died."

I heard Lily's audible gasp, this revelation had not been what she was expecting. I plowed on. I had started this, and now I had to finish it.

"My mother was tortured and murdered by the very last uncaptured Death Eater known as..."

"Bellatrix Lestrange," Albus met my eyes, the stare steeling up my resolve to finish this.

"Bellatrix Lestrange," I confirmed, "They found my mum three days later in an abandoned cottage in Berlin, dead, and for what?" I uttered a short, hollow bark of a laugh, "being a muggleborn, is all."

"At that point," I stared down at my feet, "Trianna and Ivy had already begun to change for the worse. I'd been feeling disconnected from them even before my mother died. It was like they were in on some secret joke that I couldn't understand. So when I became closed off and melancholy, they embraced the excuse to finally be rid of me." My voice cracked, and Lily placed a comforting hand on my shoulder, to which I nodded my thanks.

"And that also began the time where I had no friends besides my books."

I glanced up at them sharply, hoping that I hadn't given them the wrong implication that they had to befriend the freak. "I'm not looking for your sympathy. I'm not even looking for your friendship. Just don't...don't fake it, alright?"

Lily's face was milk white, the suppressed rage evident on her face. "I'm going to kill them," she mutters. "How could they do this to you? I'm going to kill them!"

I smiled wryly, "Didn't know if you realized this, Lily, but you aren't much use to me in an Azkaban jail cell."

James and Albus exchanged the murderous look I had now become familiar with. I groaned.

"Just let it alone. It's how it's always been, and nothing's changing anytime soon."

"What do you want to bet, Annalea?" Albus glared at me, "how can you be this nonchalant about someone ruining your life?"

Before I can protest this injustice, the compartment door slams open, and James peeks his head back in, only momentarily, "We're fixing this, Annalea. Whether you like it or not, right now." And his siblings follow him out.

"Oh, for Merlin's sake!" I groan, "why do I do this to myself?"

Sighing, I stood up, glancing sorrowfully at my book before rushing off to find the Potters.

It turned out that they hadn't gone far. Apparently, Trianna and Ivy were a only a mere car over.

Before I could stop her, Lily had already slid the girls' compartment door open, striding in purposefully, all traces of the 'shy Lily' gone. This was the 'I-Mean-Business' Lily. Quite frankly, she was rather terrifying.

I hear Trianna's carrying voice before I see her.

"Lily, darling! It's been so long! How was your summer, doll?"

"Just fine, thank you, Trianna." Lily's voice is pleasant, cold, and just barely conveys irritation.

I crept closer, right behind James, effectively hiding my presence, who reaches back inconspicuously to give my hand a reassuring squeeze.

I smile gratefully, even though he can't see it, and squeeze back.

"James, Albus! How nice that you two decided to stop by!"

"Grayson," Albus acknowledges Ivy. "I've something to talk to the two of you about."

"And what would that be, Al?" Trianna asks coyly, shortening his name in a simpering manner.

Albus is blunt, if anything. "Annalea Trotsky. I believe that you three are acquainted?"

"Trotsky? That freak?" Ivy's voice is riddled with surprise and contempt, "what about her?"

"So you are acquainted, lovely," Albus says, disgust evident in his voice. "First of all, she isn't a freak." Trianna and Ivy gasp as if this is completely ridiculous, "She's actually a rather lovely girl."

"Surely you're joking!" Ivy laughs, "Right? You wouldn't associate with the likes of Annalea Trotsky. In fact," now she was just laying it on thick, "I didn't think that you even knew her name."

"Not at all joking, Grayson," was his cool reply. "And now I think that you had both better listen to me, and listen to me well, because I do know Anna."

His voice had taken on a cold steel unlike anything I'd ever heard before. I shivered, feeling the effect that wasn't even directed at me.

I looked around James' broad back. The compartment was chock full of magazines, makeup, and candy, all claiming to be non-fattening. Albus was standing in front of the two frightened looking girls, anger emanating from every inch of his tall frame, tense.

It was terrifying.

"You," his voice was hard, "will not, under any circumstances, talk to, look at, degrade, make derogatory comments about, or do anything to hurt Annalea Trotsky, and if you do," he stepped closer, and they shrieked, stepping back in fright, "You. Will. Pay."

"And as of right now," he added, "you will rectify every single wrong done by her. Do. You. Understand?"

They nodded quickly, breaths coming short and fast. Albus pegged them with one last glare before spinning abruptly on his heel and sliding past James out of the compartment. Lily followed him out, and James and I followed, revealing my hidden form to them.

They didn't say one word.

It was an exhilarating, heady feeling. I felt dizzy, drunk with the power my tormentors had deprived me of for so long. And I had let them. The whole problem, the whole affair, suddenly seemed so simple. I wondered what would've happened if I...

No. I would not, could not, think about the 'what ifs'. I valued my sanity too much.

When we got back to my compartment, Albus gave me an even look as if to say, 'done'.

I smiled at him, a quick, little one, breathless with the joy that I'd found.

Lily grinned at him, "you were brilliant, Al."

"I do what I can," he nods, a bit modestly, pink colouring in his pale cheeks.

We settle into pleasant, soft conversation, Lily leading it. Our mission had seemed to bolster her confidence, and she spoke rapidly, waving her hands in the air in a way that made me cringe.

"And so, James had this wild antelope mad, and then the antelope..."

"That's quite enough, Lils!" James said, blushing to the roots of his hair.

Lily gave me the silent look that signified 'I'll tell you later' and I grinned foolishly. There was to be a later, I hoped.

The Potters were an alright lot.

Before long, the conductor told us that it was nearly time to leave, and Lily's brothers left to give us a bit of privacy to change into our robes. When we'd finished and the train had stopped, we walked the short way to the thestrals waiting and piled into a carriage. It wasn't surprising to any of us that we could all see the thestrals; what with their family name and what I'd revealed earlier.

But none of us chose to comment on the fact, instead quieting as we surveyed our marvelous grounds.

"Beautiful," I finally managed. "Simply beautiful."

The others all nodded along in agreement, seeming as happy as I was to be home.

So, what did you think? Drop me a review if you want me to continue this story! Any feedback and/or more ideas for this plot would be GREAT, because at this point they are sadly lacking and I don't want this to be a fluffy story because I'm too Capricorn for that.

Yeah. Help, please?

You could also drop me a note about any grammar/spelling errors. I am a grammar/spelling Nazi. NO, not a German. Jeez, stop assuming! -_-

If anyone cares, I'm Dutch (If you aren't, you aren't much) and Taiwanese.

I love you all!

Steelgray