Hello everyone!

Finally, I've started writing this! It's been kicking around my head for ages now. It was inspired by you good people, and is most certainly not the first of its kind.

Summary: A modern retelling of Disney's 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', set in modern-day, English-speaking Quebec. Notre Dame Catholic High School faces turbulent times. Vice Principal Claude Frollo is not a man to be trifled with, and the hatred he harbors for 'Gypsies' spells bad news for the large Romany population of the school. Now may not be th best of times for his stepson, a highly unusual case who has been homeschooled his entire life, to decide he wants to attend high school. But perhaps somebody 'different' may be exactly what Notre Dame needs.
Rating: T (for occasional swearing and political incorrectness).

For the partially illustrated version, search 'THSOND' on Deviantart- my username is 'Linnellisgod'.

The High School of Notre Dame
Chapter One
This is All Around the World

The windows were curtainless and open, and warm afternoon light spilled through them. It lit up the dust motes in the air and the four stained-glass windchimes that hung from the upper windowsills; it bathed the room in blue and green, red and gold.

The room was not large, but colour and light seemed to open it wide. Not far from the window was a low desk, littered with small wooden carvings in various stages of completion. Some had been painted, some varnished, some were still rough, but all displayed an unusual artistry and care. They were simple, yet graceful; figurines, objects, animals, pieces of nature. A block of pale wood sat slightly apart from them, surrounded by wood shavings and with a wood-chisel set beside it. One side of the block had been hollowed away, and from within, the delicate form of a bird's nest was taking shape. Posters of all kinds covered pale olive-green walls- unframed acrylic paintings, blown-up photographs, prints of more famous pieces of art, posters for films and rock bands. A small bed sat in the corner. A collection of crosses hung above its head, arranged in a circle around an image that had been carved with exhaustive care into a flat, square piece of oak wood; it detailed a mother holding a very young child. An onlooker might have assumed it was the Virgin with the Messiah. To its maker, sometimes it was, and sometimes it was someone different.

Quasimodo breathed the fresh air, and wondered if there was an actual taste to freedom. If there was, it would be that end-of-summer sweetness- wildflowers on a new, cool wind. He looked up, expression distant, and watched the movement of the windchimes as they stirred in the breeze. Then he turned and came away from the window. There was a cool sweat on his brow, and he swallowed anxiously, filled with unease at what he was about to do.

--

"High School?"

Quasimodo flinched very slightly, but did not break eye contact. He had expected this.

Claude Frollo looked down at him from his great height, taken aback and angry, and then closed his eyes and sighed. "My dear boy, though you may look it, you are not a simpleton." His study looked out onto a panorama of the town, and he swept a hand towards the open window. His expression was wearied but stern. His deep voice exuded authority. "The world out there is not ready for you. It's not safe, it's not kind. What do you want to go to high school for, anyway? Teenagers are the worst of the lot. Children would be afraid; teenagers will simply hate you."

"I don't think they're really that bad-" began Quasimodo, but Frollo held up a hand, cutting him short.

"They are, Quasimodo, they are. I know. Every half-hour there's another in my office- students without respect for a soul but themselves." His face hardened. "Gypsies, more often than not. Notre Dame is full of them."

Quasimodo wondered if Frollo's description of the large Romany population at NDCHS was meant to scare him. It wasn't having the desired effect- not that it needed to. He could think of hundreds of reasons to be frightened without adopting his stepfather's racist ideals, thank you. He took a long, slow breath. "I- I- Look, I don't care about all of that. I've got to face it at some point, right?" He gestured weakly around him, acutely aware of the cold look on Frollo's face, the sweat on his face, the lump in his throat. "I'm not just going to stay cooped up here forever, am I?"

Frollo's look was entirely readable; Yes, obviously, you are.

The boy soldiered on. "I talked to Mr. Solance about it and he says I'm about two years ahead. I could- I could do grade ten no problem; at least I'd be with other people my age…"

"I'd like you to be with as few other people as possible."

If Hugo were here, he would have made some kind of massively inappropriate remark, but mercifully Laverne's nephews had not stopped in today. Quasimodo banished that thought from his mind, and tried to stand as straight as he was able. "I'm not afraid," he lied.

"You ought to be," said Frollo. Then he waved a dismissive hand, rolling his eyes. "Well, do it if you want to. I hope you realize I can't help you, once you're there. I can't show any favouritism. You won't be a special case."

I don't think even you can keep me from being a 'special case', thought Quasimodo, and I doubt you'd ever show me favouritism. But even as he thought it, he knew he was being unfair. For all his bigotry, Quasimodo had never been able to think of Frollo as a bad man. He knew enough of the story to piece together how he had come to live under the care of this man who was not his father. But he still wondered why. Frollo hated children, and he was hardly the sort of son most parents dreamed of. "I know," he replied, still trying his best to appear brave, determined, ready to face the world.

"Well then, get on with you!" He looked annoyed. "I won't stop you. Won't be me they tear to shreds. But if it were me, boy, wearingyour face, I'd want to keep it hidden for as long as possible." He sat down, opening a drawer in his impressive mahogany desk, and waved the boy away.

Quasimodo left the study, bowed low by nature, an expression of both worry and happiness on his deformed and misshapen face.

--

Laverne was pleased when he told her, and he knew she would have been angry to hear anything else. She had quite a magnificant gift for grumpiness, borne out of hard knocks and incredible old age. She bent over her sewing machine, gnarled hands never halting in motion, and spoke around the two long, plastic-topped pins in her mouth. She was altering a shirt, for him. "Well I should damn well hope so. 'Bout time."

Quasimodo's misshapen mouth bent into a rare, sardonic smile. "Nice to know you understand all my concerns about this."

She softened, as he knew she would. She understood perfectly well. Frollo might have been his legal guardian, but she had raised him. She brushed grey hair from her old, pale eyes. "He knows you can do it- he just doesn't want to let on, the old bastard."

She'd never been one to sugarcoat her language for a child. Frollo was about thirty years her junior, but his fastidiousness made him seem older. Quasimodo let out a breath of a laugh.

"I'll order your uniform tomorrow," she told him. "You don't happen to know what colour it is? It's a pain in the ass to get cloth during the school rush."

The bolt of cloth, he thought. There was always the cloth; extra material added to the back of the shirt to accomodate his twisted spinal column, his massively humped back. Other small adjustments would have to be made; pants hemmed to make up for crooked, uneven legs, sleeves loosened to make room for disproportionally thick, almost apelike arms; but the bolt of cloth and the back was the big job. "White shirt," he said, "Dark blue vest. Wool." He paid attention to colour. "Not navy, more like the colour of my shoes, you know?"

"The clown shoes?" She was teasing him, not that he didn't have oversized feet. She'd bought him high-tops in the first place.

"Yeah, them."

"I'll get it as soon as I can." She broke from her sewing to tousle his red hair, half affectionate, half intentionally annoying.

--

Victor and Hugo were the only people his own age he knew, and while they were old friends, he truly did hope they weren't an overall representation of ordinary teenagers. They were Laverne's screwy nephews, and they only came over on days when Frollo would be mostly out of the house. They brought with them gaming consoles, movies, and anything else that could annoy their elderly Aunt.

Hugo, loud, farsical and fat, clapped an arm around Quasimodo's misshapen shoulder, taking him by surprise. He'd known they were coming, but hadn't heard them come in. "So! How's Prince Harry?"

Knowing he would't get any more work done on it this morning, Quasimodo carefully pushed away the nighttime cityscape he had been painting and began to collect his brushes and paints. It wasn't that Hugo was intentionally destructive, it was just that things got damaged around him. "Why do I even bother trying to go to school? I get teased perfectly well at home."

"Kindly forgive the courseness of my comrade," said Victor, and then giggled at the alliteration. Quasimodo sincerely hoped he'd managed to find a happy medium through the dychotomic influence of Laverne's nephews. Victor was Hugo's direct opposite- lean and muscular, he would have been relatively handsome if he'd lost the regal tilt of his chin and stopped wearing glasses he didn't even need. "We're thrilled for you."

"Thrilled," mimicked Hugo in an airy falsetto, affecting what he probably thought was a posh British accent, "just thrilled. Look how ambiguously camp I am."

Quasimodo was quite used to acting the peacekeeper when Laverne wasn't around. "Alright, shut up, guys," he said gently, dislodging Hugo's grip from his shoulder.

" 'Verne says it's time for church," said Hugo, slighty sulkily.

"Oh. Right."

--

In Quebec, there are any number of ancient catholic churches, dotted throughout the towns and the cities like coffeeshops. The small ones often lost attendance, switching to other denominations or being transformed into warehouses when they couldn't pay the bills, but the big ones always seemed to survive through the ages. Notre Dame Basilica was one of the great survivors. A monster of stone, wrought iron and stained glass, her steeple was visible anywhere in town. She was beautiful within and without, a masterpiece of the faith. If that's a house of God, people said, imagine where he normally lives.

Almost no-one was there yet. Laverne, in a coral-pink sunday dress and a long purple coat despite the heat, ushered her nephews inside the massive double doors. Frollo was not with them, since he generally preferred to go to church early and alone. Quasimodo waved to them, then unlocked a small side door with a key he kept in his pocket, on a keychain he'd made from one of his first carvings. That had been years ago. He'd been doing this for a very long time.

The door opened in on a winding stair, and he bounded up it with a kind of loping, uneven grace. It went on a long time, and at the top, he came to a wood-and-metal room, largely bare except for a ladder leading to a trapdoor in the ceiling, and a great number of ropes which hung down from the room above through small holes cut in the floor. They varied in thickness, and some were woven from different materials; he knew which were coarse and which were slippery by sight. He checked his watch, and then the small clock that hung on one wall, and then did a quick examination of the ropes. Of the twenty-one, none had frayed since his last visit, which was fortunate, since he wouldn't have had time to replace them. Satisfied, Quasimodo clambered up the ladder in a matter of seconds, his thick, powerful upper body giving him a strength and agility that was more simian than human. He opened the trapdoor, sure of his movements, and pulled himself up through the hole.

Twenty-one ropes for twenty-one bells. The belltower was dark, but in an instant he had thrown open the ancient, heavy window-shutters, and light came streaming in. This was part of the ritual. Wake his people, and call them to him, with songs from angel's lips... He'd read that somewhere. Morning revealed each of his angels, giving it a familiar gleam. Polished brass shone like gold, copper glowed fine blue and green, cast iron remained sullen black.

"Good morning," said Quasimodo, which was a stupid thing to say to a bunch of metal noisemakers, but he said it anyway. He limped along the line of bells, brushing his rough, thick hand across each cold metal flank as though stroking prize horses. When he had touched each bell, he bowed to them; another piece of ritual, purposeless but somehow important; and retreated down the ladder.

Once back in the ringing chamber, he carefully put on a pair of earplugs. The sound would be muffled by the wood flooring between him and the bellfry, but even so, they were easily enough to deafen if you were not careful. People forgot how huge, how powerful, the bells truly were. He had heard stories, from Frollo, of ringers who could hear nothing at all but the sounds of the bells... and worst of all, he thought, with shivers of fascinated horror, was the story of the Nine Tailors, the murder mystery that had been no murder, simply an accident.

...Because if you didn't know, and you went up into the bellfry as they were being rung...

...First your eardrums would rupture, and then the blood vessels in your nose, and then, as you screamed but could not hear, you would slip out of consciousness and succumb to concussion and internal hemorrhaging as blow upon blow was rained down upon you by the sheer, astonishing, percussive force of sound.

It began, ten minutes from the beginning of the service, with a slow, even toll. He worked rhythmically on the rope, pulling it down with a smooth stroke and then following the gentle yet powerful rebound that lifted him almost clear off the ground. This part was easy. Then he would add in some higher chimes, from the two smallest bells. They were really quite easy, with almost no rebound at all, and since invariably the smaller would swing first, he could get a nice grace-note effect from ringing two bells of slightly different sizes at once. Next, he added middle-range tones, racing from rope to rope to keep the notes of the peal continuous. By gathering the ropes in his hands he could ring multiple bells at once, but the difficulty was making the rhythms of it musical. Chaos was fun, but it got boring quite quickly. When the effort of racing back and forth began to grow too much, he began to remove notes, until just as the mass began, there was only the solitary, rhythmic toll once more.

He rested for several minutes. The bells wouldn't be needed again until the offertory. The mass passed slowly; when he did not need to be ringing, he would follow another narrow staircase to a small balcony alcove, so that he could listen to the mass. Frollo read, as usual, and people always said he read with conviction. To Quasimodo, his orator's Basso Profondo suggested convictions, but not those that the passage of scripture referred to.

He rang the final peals announcing the end of mass, and waited, panting, for the bulk of the congregation to leave. When they all seemed to be gone, he took the longest staircase and met Laverne outside. Victor had pirated the front passenger seat of the car, so Quasimodo sat in the back with Hugo.

As they pulled out of the parking lot, Hugo poked Quasimodo, attracting his attention. He was enthralled by something outside Quasimodo's window. "Hey, check it out. Bohemian rhapsody at two o'clock."

Quasimodo followed his hungry gaze. On the street sidewalk stood a girl of seventeen or eighteen, with a backpack on her back and a small mutt dog at her side. She was looking at the church, and he saw her face in profile- dark skin; flawless features; large, brilliant eyes. Waves of thick black hair fell from a purple curchief pushed loosely up her brow. Her clothing and colouration suggested Romany heritage. She was curvy and athletic, which was usually all it took to attract Hugo's attention, and Quasi wondered if the nephews were too busy looking at her body to notice the statuesque perfection of her face.

From the front, Victor laughed. "She's out of your league, Hugo- and taller than you, I should think."

"Just puts me at a better vantage point, if ya know what I mean." He nudged Quasimodo in the ribcage. Quasimodo ignored him, his eyes fixed on the face of the Gypsy girl.

"I think he's in love," said Hugo, sniggering, but at that moment she looked in the direction of their car, and Quasimodo, on instinct, ducked out of sight.

Well, there we are- first installment. More coming very soon. Please R&R! Flames will be utterly ignored, and are therefore relatively pointless.

Thanks to Attaloi and my mother, for being my beta-readers and being awesome.

-Mostly Harmless (which is what my penname means, in Gaelic).