Chapter One

The printer whirred and creaked as it spat out its last page of closely packed text. Then, with no further ado, it set about informing the world that it was dying. Dying! Its cartridges were dry, its cables chewed, and its handy little paper-catching cuppy-bit had broken off after someone forgot to pack it away properly and then sat on it. Alas, it was a long and unhappy list of grievances and injuries that this loyal piece of office equipment would take with it into the next world.

The tragedy of this event brought no sympathy from the girl trying to use it.

"Useless piece of. . ." An entire family of swear words withered, unspoken, on Janet's tongue. It would be a very stupid big sister who said such things in hearing distance of her younger counterpart, especially when said sibling knew perfectly well that Janet was not supposed to use foul language in the house.

Janet sighed through gritted teeth. It would be a hell of a lot more convenient, she thought, grabbing errant pages of text from the floor the printer had spat them on to, if the 'flu blocked up her ears instead of her throat.

Then again, not having to hear to yell all the time is a nice change. Oh, god. . .

A strange sort of noise was coming from the next room. Not quite as interestingly strange as the death throes of the printer, but quite strange nonetheless. It was, as Janet knew, the sound of a phlegmy thirteen-year-old girl wondering what was taking her sister so long printing off a story from the internet.

What had taken Janet so long was the utter uselessness of the printer, but such an excuse was not valid chez Ashleigh Wattingford. No, no- the real truth must be that Janet was playing around online when she should be doing this one little thing for her poor, desperately ill little sister; that she was gadding around wasting time while poor Ashleigh wasted away for want of that sandwich you were going to make me hours ago, and-while-you're-at-it-get-me-some-more-Just-Juice-and-my-chocolate-bar. Oh, come on, it's only just over there! No, beside the book. The other book. Well, duh I meant on the windowsill on the other side of the room. That's what I said in the first place.

Only, of course, she didn't actually say 'gadding', as such. This word has been edited in the replace another word that the publishers decided needed to be edited out as it was an entirely unsuitable thing for a girl of Ashleigh's tender years to say.

Also of note is the fact that all this was said through a throat and voice box entirely coated in the worst type of yellow-green phlegm, rendering some words quite spluttery and others completely impossible to understand. Therefore, it is entirely possible that Janet had simply misheard her sister's directions as to the whereabouts of the bar of chocolate and that Ashleigh really is nothing but a poor, sweet little girl struck down by horrid fevers and coughs who wished for nothing more than a little comfort while she lay invalid in bed, unable even to open the curtains and see the bright sky and twittering birds for fear of irritating her already burning headache.

The fact that all the birds within a five-hundred-metre radius of the Wattingford home had earlier that morning been driven from their nests by the sound of Avril Lavigne's new single emitting from the now be-curtained room has exactly nothing to do with anything stated in the previous paragraph, nor with the painful throbbing of Ashleigh's head.

In any case, it was a mere forty three and a half minutes before Janet had finally appeased Ashleigh with constant offerings of drinks, nibbles, midday assortment of medicines, more drinks, three more pillows, five fewer pillows, a fresh duvet cover to replace the one Ashleigh spilt the 'more drinks' on, and even more drinks to replace the spilt ones. It was then that Ashleigh made her most chilling request of the day.

To make the situation easier for the reader to understand, please note that when the person making a request such as the one made here has the ability to, via certain parental units, make the life of the receiver of the request's life an unbearable, internet-free, telephone-free, chore-heavy hell, then the person to whom the request is made really does not have the option to refuse. So, if it is easier to do so, instead of 'request,' please read 'Forceful Command, like that of a God telling its Minions to Destroy the Unbelievers (On Pain Of Much Smiting.)'

"Will you read me the story?"

Black dots appeared in Janet's vision, a fact of which, once she realised what had happened, she was extremely proud. It was the closest she'd ever come to fainting and as usual, nothing had come of it.

But that didn't change what she now had to do.

Hands trembling, Janet picked up the sheaf of papers she had printed off earlier. It was upside-down. She turned it around, and the title seemed to burst off the page:

Syrhénna Starflower; Roses, tears and moonlite Vows

Janet took a deep breath, and began to read.

"The shining rain dripped over Syrhénna's face like hundreds of silver glimmering tears. She was waiting in the crying rain which reflected her own sorrowfil heart for the man who made her heart whole draco malfoy the love of her life. She knew she could save him from lord Vodlemorte and together they would bring the dark Lord's evil rain to an end. . ."

It was dark, and cold. And wet. Janet figured she must have fallen asleep part-way through the story and had a generous pitcher of water dumped on her head by an indignant Ashleigh, until she fell out of the tree she was perched in.

It was a long enough fall for Janet to realise that she was most definitely not in Ashleigh's room any more. Or, for that matter, anywhere she had been before.

She landed on the ground with an almighty splat that somehow went unnoticed by the two figures standing not ten metres in front of her. She couldn't tell for sure in all the rain- it really was pouring down- but she was pretty sure that one was a boy and the other a girl. Quite obviously a girl, in fact.

In fact, so obviously a girl that Janet actually looked away with embarrassment. This was a girl whose mother had apparently never warned her about going out in the wet without putting a coat on.

She didn't have that much of a shirt on, either, come to think of it.

Janet was beginning to feel very uncomfortable, not least because her fall had resulted in her left leg being twisted underneath her in what would probably turn out to be a very damaging way. No, the thing that was worrying Janet the most at this point was that she seemed to have been dropped into another world.

She was quite certain this was another world.

The biggest hint of the fact was the very large number of glitter-winged fairies flying around the two people up ahead.