A/N- Here's the first chapter of my first fanfic! Enjoy...
Copyright Disclaimer- JK Rowling built the dollhouse, I'm only playing with the dolls.
Chapter 1- The Shed
Isabella Lyons was a peculiar child. Isabella Lyons didn't like her life. It was boring.
After all, there are only so many books that someone can read before their eyes start to hurt. What could one do then? Not watch TV. TV was boring. Not go play. You needed friends to play with.
And so, Isabella Lyons found herself exploring the shed in the backyard. It wasn't a particularly interesting shed, but she had read enough books to know that things didn't need to look interesting to be interesting. The shed was a prime example.
Isabella lived with her mother. Lara Lyons wasn't a very talkative person by nature. No, Lara Lyons was very quiet. Her husband had died some ten years past, when Isabella was just a baby. They never talked about him, but his picture was on the mantelpiece, watching Isabella with the large, wide-set hazel eyes they shared.
No, never ever mention Thomas Lyons. Or Clarence Montgomery, Lara's deceased brother. Or Albert Montgomery, her late father. Then Lara would give Isabella THE LOOK. THE LOOK that said NO NO NO NO NO.
Isabella hated THE LOOK. It made her feel scared. Alone. Then she would laugh and remind herself that she was alone. It really wasn't funny, but laughing made her feel better.
There were too many dead people in her family, Isabella decided. She didn't know why. That was what she wished for when she blew out her eleven candles in the spring. To know what happened to her family. Lara hadn't told her how they died, only that now it was just her and Isabella and Grandma Jeanne and Auntie Ellen and her two kids.
Isabella barely knew her two cousins, except that Daisy, who was thirteen, went to some fancy boarding school. The name was a secret. If Isabella asked about it, she would get THE LOOK again. Isabella hated THE LOOK.
There were too many secrets, Isabella decided. Too many secrets and too many dead people.
The shed was another secret. Never open the shed, Isabella. There are spiders in the shed. They might bite you.
Isabella wasn't scared of spiders.
The shed door creaked open a centimeter. Another centimeter. Another. Then it wouldn't open any further. There was a chain holding the door in place with a lock on it. Sigh.
Isabella pulled a paperclip out of her pocket and bent it into a line. Slowly, she inserted it into the rusty lock and jiggled it around in a certain way. That was how the book said to jiggle it.
Click, said the lock. The door opened.
"Ewww." Isabella wrinkled her nose, and pulled her butt-length auburn hair back into a ponytail. There were spiders, or at least there may have been. The shed's contents were coated with cobwebs.
Isabella wasn't scared of spiders, but that didn't mean she liked cobwebs. Backing away from the shed, she grabbed a stick off of the ground.
Poke, poke, pokity pokey poke, went the stick. Nose still wrinkled, Isabella lifted some of the cobwebs off of an object.
A shovel. Why would her mother be so scared of Isabella seeing a shovel?
Well, she wouldn't, Isabella knew that. There had to be something more interesting than a shovel.
So Isabella dug and dug, and exchanged her stick for a new one when it got too cobwebby. Finally, she struck gold. Or wood.
It was a broom, unlike any she had seen before. Gently, she lifted it out of the shed and lay it on the grass. A leaf fallen early and still green from a maple tree helped her to wipe it down fully.
A seat emerged. Two foot-rests and stirrups. On one end, a sleek tail that would be useless in sweeping a floor. On the other, a faded and chipped label. In gold paint, it read Shooting Star 24 All-Purpose Broom and below that, in neat, slanted handwriting, was written Property of Thomas Lyons.