Ch. 1 - The Other Kid
July 27, 2003
Dear Diary,
I guess I should start by introducing myself first, right? You're probably wondering if I was raised by wolves, judging from my manners so far. Anyway...
My name is Hilde Marie Schbeiker, I'm 10 3/4 years old (that makes a difference, thank you very much! That's almost 11...), I live on Saltspring Island with my crazy whacko family, and I'm going into Grade 6 in September.
I guess I should start with my looks. I am a runt. I'm the shortest girl in my class, and scrawny to boot. Mom says I'm not scrawny, I'm just "petite", and that there's nothing wrong with that, it's actually quite fashionable to be one, and I'll be so glad for it once I'm grown up and have had kids... blah-blah, blah-freaking-blah. The fact remains that boys call me Chicken Legs, and while all the other girls in my class have started wearing training bras, I'm still (and, for all I know, may always be) flatter than Saskatchewan.
Think I'm just whining? Alright, let's move on to my hair. An unmitigated disaster, that's what it is. You know when they say, "My hair's got a mind of its own?" Well, mine certainly does, and it's the kind that needs therapy... lots and lots of it! In fact, if they made Ritalin for hair, I bet I'd be the poster girl for it. Oh, it can't possibly be that bad, you say? Well, I suppose diaries don't have eyes to judge for themselves, so here are the Cliff notes.
It's boy-short. It's got these freaky kinks that stick out all over the place, no matter how much gel or other stuff I put in it. I tried growing it out, but it just got crazier and more rebellious. Plus I started getting the worst tangles, so that was the end of that experiment. I suppose the colour is not bad, it's a nice shiny black, but that's about the only thing it's got going for itself.
Oh, but I probably have a pretty smile, right? Wrong. Up until two days ago, I thought I did. Then my dentist thought well of messing that up, too. Now, I sport a very fashionable set of shiny metal braces that make me look like the Tin Man's long-lost daughter. My mom and dad say it's only temporary, and that my teeth will look flawless by the end of it. Only two years, they say...Nothing! Never mind that I'll almost be in high school by the time I get to eat a sandwich and not have little bits of stuff get stuck in all the grooves and look really gross... It's not like I'll be kissing any boys anyway... Eurgh. Where did that come from? Boys suck.
Anyway, enough of my self-pity. Otherwise you'll start thinking I'm
no different than all those other whiny pre-teens that keep diaries. In fact,
I bet you there's a secret underground diary network, where all diaries
go and complain to each other about the silly musings of their owners, kind
of like a chat room of sorts, only for diaries. What do I know...it's
just one of the crazy thoughts that pop into my head when things get a bit too
normal. Did I mention I'm a freak?
Anyway, I'm sure you'll have plenty of time to get acquainted with
all the weird stuff that goes on in my brain, so I'm going to leave it
at that for now, and bid you a good night. Tomorrow's Monday. Back to
summer day-camp. Oh, joy...
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July 29, 2003
Hello, Diary.
I know, it's been two whole days since I wrote, whereas the idea of a diary is that you write in it every day. Right?
Well, I've been doing some thinking. I know my mom got you for me because she thinks you'd be good for my self-esteem and all that (though taking off those gag-awful braces would help too, but she'll hear none of that)... And I do admit that I started out feeling royally bummed and thinking it was all just a load of horse manure, but after a while, writing it out of my system actually felt pretty cool.
But I can be a handful (at least, that's what I keep hearing), so before we go any further and either of us commits to this relationship, there are a few things that I think you should know. The most important of which is that I'm the Other Kid.
You have no clue what I'm talking about, do you?
The Other Kid, you know? The one who's not particularly pretty (I think we've established that already), not particularly popular, not an academic and athletic wonder all rolled into one... As opposed to the Perfect Kid, that most diaries probably vie to end up with. Well, if that's what you want, then you definitely have the wrong sibling. In fact, if anything, I'm a step backwards in your diary career (if there is such a thing). Let me elaborate...
See, my sister, she's the classic textbook example of the Perfect Kid. She's a straight-A student. She's a geek (I swear, the girl's got an unhealthy obsession with space and planets and aeronautics and all that jazz), but she somehow manages to make even that look cool. There's never been a class where she hasn't excelled, or a sport where she hasn't kicked ass in all of her 14 years. Whenever she comes home from school, her friends practically camp out at our house. All of a sudden, we've got half the boys on the island riding their bikes up and down our street, doing all sorts of stunts with their skateboards and stuff, hoping to impress her... Oh, did I mention that she's pretty, to boot?
She goes to this fancy boarding school in Victoria Lake. That's Victoria Lake, Africa, not Victoria, BC. All paid for by scholarships, of course, because we're doing ok, but we're by no means rich, and a school like that would cost just about what my dad makes in a year. At first, when she sent out the application without telling anyone, then got accepted right off the bat, and had to come clean with my parents, I thought she was really going to get it. Apart from the cost, it's a military school that specializes in aeronautics. Fighter-pilot and astronaut training, basically. And my mom and dad are anything but military sympathizers.
Picture this: mom teaches yoga at the local Holistic Healing Centre (you've got to grow up in Saltspring's hippie culture to know what that is); dad runs an organic vegetarian restaurant where you can get stuff like scrambled tofu and veggie bacon (it actually tastes good, I swear...). Sounds like a granola-flake kind of family? Absolutely. Then throw in the freakishly smart kid who wants to go to military school, rather than use her superior intellect for worthier causes like, oh... saving the whales, stopping clear-cut logging in the Rainforest, plugging the hole in the ozone layer...
Enough to give any self-respecting environmentally aware pacifist parent a fit, right? That was true for about half-a-day. Honest, no longer than that. I'm not saying that I wanted her to get in trouble, so for once I'd seem like the angel, but let's not kid ourselves, here. If I'd been the one to try a stunt like that, my ass would be grounded until I turned 30. Not to mention, I'd still be on the schoolbus to Ganges High the next day. But she must have given them the mother of all sales pitches because, by the end of it, they were going around town telling anyone who would listen how their eldest daughter was going to be the first woman astronaut to go to Mars.
That's Lucy, in a nutshell. Then there's me. Little skinny brace-faced Hilde. I do ok in school, but nothing too spectacular. True, I like writing (as my constant ramblings will prove to you, I'm sure), and English is by far my strongest class. But apart from that, and maybe French, I'm really nothing to rave about. I hate math with a passion, and loathe phys ed even more, if that's at all possible. I can run fast, but I'm way too clumsy for track-and-field. I can swim ok, but I suck at holding my breath for too long, so there goes the swimming team idea, too. Volleyball, don't even go there. The ball weighs more than I do.
Even my name sounds dorky in comparison. It's not even like you could shorten it to something cool, like hers. I admit I probably wouldn't want to be named Lucrezia either, but at least Lucy sounds ok. Hilde just sounds like some hairy-legged German nurse... or the wicked witch in all those fairy tales...
But apart from that, I can't really complain about my social life. I have friends, and we get along very well. They just happen to be not the really popular kids in school. We ride bikes a lot, catch frogs down at the creek, swap comic books... that sort of stuff. Ok, so we occasionally make fun of those boy-crazed Britney wannabes in our class who drool after Justin Timberlake and stuff... Alright, we have been known for pulling off the odd practical joke here and there... But come on, we're little angels, really. And don't tell me Kristy Kavanaugh did not deserve that slug in her lunch box, because she so did!
Alright, tell you what... Now that you know what kind of keeper I'm likely to be, I'll leave it up to you to figure out whether you still want to be my diary. Talk it over with your other diary buddies (I still think my secret diary network theory is not so out of whack...), then act accordingly. If I still find you here in my drawer tomorrow night, then I'll take it as a sign that you have accepted the mission of being Hilde Schbeiker's diary. If not, then I'm sure you'll have better luck with someone else.
Just one thing: if you do decide to high-tail it out to my sister's room,
could you at least self-combust the first couple of pages that I wrote?
Thanks, and hope to talk to you soon,
Hilde
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Author's Note: I'll be honest with you guys, and tell you right off the bat that I don't know where this fic is going at the moment. This is the first Hilde-centric fic that I write, after all, and it's a major AU to boot. What I can tell you is that this is going to be a crossover with the Harry Potter universe (as the title suggests), and that the GW girls are probably going to play a more prominent role than the boys. Right now I'm so fascinated with the Lily-Petunia siblings rivalry aspect of HP that I am toying with the idea of actually using two diaries for this fic, one written by Hilde, and the other written by Lucy, to get both perspectives on the challenges that a young witch and her muggle sister would face trying to grow up without growing apart.
As such, any feedback and/or suggestions on where you think this fic should
go (including the Recycle Bin, if that's the case) are hugely appreciated.