Me: *peers carefully around corner, pops out* Hi! This is indeed my first published story, The Collective Abigail~! They will pop up randomly in most other Harry Potter stories I have, mainly as background characters. This story was made because the Abigails popped into my head one day, and took Remus hostage the next, demanding that I write about them. ^ ^'
Frankie: *filing nails* You're forgetting something important again, dahhling.
Me: Oh, right. Let me say it now, this story is humor. Not romance. None of the Abigails will be falling in love with anyone. They're just there to make the characters' lives a little more insane. ^ ^'
Remus: I think he meant the other kind of disclaimer.
Me: Oh, right. If you recognize it, I don't own it (including Dr. Frank N Furter, who's currently...trying to molest Remus again. Dammit.) . Except the Abigails. I own them. *faint growling heard in the background* ... Well, mostly.
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Harry Potter stood nervously with the other first years as he waited for his turn to sit beneath the weird hat with the musical complex. Honestly, who bursts into random song anymore? The only times he'd seen anything to that effect were when he snuck out of his closet into the sitting room to catch small glimpses of old movies that Aunt Petunia made Dudley watch when they were younger. Even in those, however, the singer had never been a tattered piece of antediluvian headgear.
He was jolted out of his admittedly rambling reverie by a strange occurrence. Strange even by the new standards that he was supposed to adapt, he supposed. The stern woman who was reading through the names called out,
"Baker, Abigail." This in itself was normal, however, three young girls stepped up to the stool. They looked similar, although one was short, stubby, and dirty blonde, with a spray of freckles across her nose, one was slightly taller with light brown hair pulled back into a sort of twist-thing, and the third was positively tiny, a scrawny, dinky thing with ash-blonde hair that hung in a fine curtain around her face. All three had the same dark blue eyes, however, and were clearly related. McGonagall looked confused, but quickly regained her composure.
"Which of you is Abigail Baker?" she asked primly, clearly wanting to get on with the Sorting. The three girls grimaced at each other, and the dirty blonde stepped forward.
"We all are," she said clearly. At the older witch's questioning look, she glared at her apparent sisters. The tallest one gave a small sigh.
"We're triplets," she added, with the voice of one who is tired of giving the same speech over and over again. "Our parents decided it would be easier to give us all the same name, so that they wouldn't have problems calling us the wrong name."
"However, we ended up looking nothing alike," the tiny one finished, bored. "So now we're stuck with the same name."
"Our old teachers had the same problem in primary school," the first said with a broad smile, "so they just called us the Collective Abigail." Without further ado, and seemingly oblivious to the stares of the entire hall—except for this one Gryffindor sixth-year, who was snoring in his empty plate—the three Abigails clambered up onto the stool, carefully sitting so they'd all fit. The hat was placed on the heads of all three one at a time, and to the surprise of no one—except the first years, who had no idea that all the important characters are either evil bastards placed in Slytherin, or put in Gryffindor to be helpful to Harry and Co. at some point, and the other two houses are just for plot points to be tossed in—were ushered to their table with a cry of
"GRYFFINDOR!"
The three climbed down off the stool, and wandered through slightly hesitant applause to the red and gold table, where they sat next to the snoring sixth-year, and took it upon themselves to see how many utensils they could get tangled in his russet hair before he woke up. Harry stared at the Collective Abigail until the next name was called, upon which he gave himself a shake and returned to the precious plot. He thought no more of the Abigails until a few incidents in rapid succession made him more conscious of them, and also of Malfoy's strange knee hair.
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Please review~! Malfoy's knee hair will be in one of the next two or three chapters. Sorry about it being so short! (...that's what she said...)