Summary/Author's Note: Title is self explanatory on this :) I will however, say that I do not own anything that you recognise. In essence, I own Anya Fitzgibbons and the other non-canon characters that you will see wandering around such as Kevin, Marcum, and Madam Bonaparte (though she is only mentioned at this point). If you try to sue me, you really won't get much. :)
- Begin Chapter -
Anya wakes up with a start when she feels someone jump on her bed. She startled so badly that her forehead collided with that of the boy who had so recklessly decided to wake her in this fashion and they broke apart violently, both of them holding a part of their faces. Her ears were ringing from the collision as well as the now more painful hangover that she was feeling so she didn't hear the boy cursing loudly and holding onto his chin on the other side of her bed.
"Damn it, Kevin! What did you go and do that for?" she asks heatedly when the sound of his voice breaks through the ringing. She would be very happy to throttle him at the moment but since he was much bigger than she was that wasn't an option.
The boy stops his grumbling and slowly stands up, allowing his rather larger height to show to her in an attempt at intimidation. "I was told to wake you up or you won't have time to be ready for the taxi. You have to go to Hogwarts so you have a longer trip than the rest of us do to get to school. Don't see why you would bother going to that muggle-loving headmaster's school anyway." His voice is harsh as it has always been when he talks to Anya and she doesn't even bat an eyelash at the tone. Instead she looks down at her watch and sighs. Another year and they really don't wake her up in time for anything. If only she could get an alarm clock.
"Yeah well, you better head off so that I can finish getting ready, toad spawn. Otherwise Madam Bonaparte will be highly upset with the both of us," she says as she gets up and walks over to her dresser where her muggle clothes are laying out. She packed everything last night so that she wouldn't have to worry about it today, which was a good thing. At least she could get in a shower before needing to leave. Footsteps behind her signify that Kevin is walking closer to her and she stiffens when she hears the aggravated way that he exhales.
Kevin's fingers bite nastily into Anya's upper arms and he yanks her back hard against him. "What have I told you about calling me 'toad spawn', you little tramp?" To make his point completely known he moves back and step and yanks her to him again, her teeth clenching with the pain. "I thought I told you that there would be consequences for disrespecting me."
The pain in her arms has increased significantly and she grinds her teeth for a moment before responding through them. "Let me go now, Kevin. I'm not your little tramp and you have no right to treat me this way. If you don't let me go…" Anya is cut off by a woman's voice yelling for Kevin to come down to the kitchen and she gets to smirk through her pain. "If you don't let me go, Madam Bonaparte will be highly upset for being made to wait, especially by her little prodigy," she finishes her sentence with a sickly sweet tone and relaxes slightly as his hands loosen their grip.
Without warning Kevin leans forward and sinks his teeth sharply into the base of her neck, covering her mouth to soften the painful whimper that escapes her lips. He releases her and walks to the room, turning back to her once he reaches it. "Anya…" he says softly, licking his lips once she looks up at him so that she can see him licking her blood away. "Never forget that I own you," he finishes then stalks off quickly.
Anya raises a shaking hand to the back of her neck to feel where his teeth punctured the skin and the unsurprisingly come away with blood on them. She scoffs then straightens herself and rushes to the bathroom to finish getting ready for her new term. Once inside with the door locked she looks in the mirror to find her very plain reflection looking back at her. She likes it that way but now that she has a visible mark on the back of her neck she needs her very short, mouse-brown hair to be a bit longer to hide it; she squints her brown eyes tightly in concentration and feels her hair grow longer out of her skull. She continues until she feels the tips touch her shoulder blades then opens her eyes again. It was good to be a metamorphmagus.
Without further ado she undresses and looks at herself in the mirror for any more marks that she would need to hide. The red marks on her arms that she knew would bruise soon would be hidden in her clothing as would the bruising on her thighs. Aside from that she doesn't need to hide anything else and quickly gets in the shower. After a few minutes of washing (the most that she can afford to spend in the shower) she gets back out and quickly dries herself, putting her clothes on without thinking.
As she takes a step she feels the muggle jeans fall slightly on her hips and sighs. She looks back in the mirror and raises her overly large shirt so that she can see her pants. They were a lot looser than when she wore them back so she squints her eyes again, feeling the pants slowly tighten until they feel comfortable then she rushes out of the bathroom, dropping her shirt back down as she goes.
She wants to avoid bumping into Kevin again so quickly grabs her trunk and heads downstairs with it. She remembers when she first started at Hogwarts and couldn't lift her trunk on her own. That seems so long ago. Lost in the nostalgia she leaves the house, her hair still wet, and heads down the dark lane to the end where she can see the headlights of a car. They pick her up here every year and take her all the way to London. She doesn't know, and really doesn't care how much Madam Bonaparte pays for it and just uses it as she doesn't have money of her own and can't be bothered worrying much about it at the moment. If she really needed to then she would be able to make a living on her own.
Anya's mind travels through the events of the summer one last time on the way to King's Cross Station. Once there, she won't think about her life again until she comes back. She was so envious of Fred and George, the two people that made her life manageable, right now. This was their final year at Hogwarts! They would be leaving and be able to be on their own! She really had thought about getting her own place but without an income she didn't have a chance at getting a flat anywhere. That's why she needed to finish school with top marks so that she could get a really well-paying job and never have to worry about money again.
Faster than she was accustomed to, the taxi stops and she realises that she must have really been in her own head for an extra-long period of time because they are already there. Oh well! Now's the time to go and get on the train to school and she already felt the happy butterflies in her stomach, knowing that it wouldn't be too long before she gets to be comfortable again. It was an amazing feeling, coming to Hogwarts. Like she belonged somewhere for the first time ever.
The cabbie grabs a trolley for her, surprisingly because most of the cabbies don't bother getting out of the vehicle, and helps her load her trunk on it. She wishes that she could have an animal but Madam Bonaparte will not allow it in the orphanage so she is out of luck on that but if she could have an animal, she would have a cat. Cats are so self-reliant that she wouldn't have to take care of it as much as a dog. Just feed and water it, clean up after it, and play with it loads!
She takes the trolley from the cabbie and heads in, unconsciously walking straight to the wall between platform nine and three-quarters. Almost before she is aware of it, the muggle platform vanishes and she is now standing in front of the Hogwarts Express, a grin breaking across her face. She quickly pulls out her wand and with a non-verbal spell, magics her trunk into the air to make it easier to lift and maneuver. It was such a good feeling to be able to do magic again!
Once on the train, she immediately begins looking for an empty compartment but doesn't find one. With her options being with a younger girl from her own house that she knows on sight but not by name and Lee Jordan, she decides on the compartment with Lee. She knows him better and will be more likely to see Fred and George quicker if she is here.
"Hey there, Lee!" she says as she directs her trunk into the overhead bin holder. It takes a few tries but she finally gets it in there and can feel the perspiration on her forehead from the effort. She would need to work on her concentration in order to more easily control things but she had gotten past her OWL's fine so she was happy.
"Hey Anya! How's my favorite Ravenclaw doing?" He asks after looking up from a piece of parchment he had in his hand. His favorite Ravenclaw; that's what he called her which was fairly true because for the most part, he didn't associate with anyone from any other house than Gryffindor while at school, the Weasley twins in particular.
"I am just great! So glad to be going back to school!"
"Don't see why you're so keen to get back to lessons, really. Dull, boring things. Though I suppose that is why you are in Ravenclaw."
"I suppose it is," she says with a smirk. "So how are you and that girl that you fancy? Getting along any further with her or is she still stuck on how you go away for three-quarters of the year to some school that she can't even come to see?" Lee had fancied a muggle girl for the past couple of years and she sounded perfect for him so far but he couldn't tell her about him being a wizard until his seventeenth birthday because if she took it wrong then he would need to put a memory charm on her in order to not break the statute of secrecy. He and Anya had looked up the laws last year so that they could make sure not to break any of them. No good having a muggle running up and down the streets raving about how there are real witches and wizards in the world. People would probably think that she is stark raving mad and throw her into a mental ward or something.
"I told her to just hold on for one more year then I would be able to tell her all about it," he says and a shadow crosses behind his eyes as though he is thinking about something sad.
Reading his expression correctly, Anya asks softly, "Did she not take the news well?"
"Not well at all. Told me that if I couldn't commit to her then she may not be around next time I come home from school." His face looks so sad that Anya decides to change the subject.
"In that case, I'm sorry for you, mate! But what have you got there?" she asks pointing towards the parchment that Lee had been reading.
"That's a letter from us!" says Fred as him and George come into the compartment, closing the door behind them. They both sit down on either side of Anya and lean forward, giving her cheeks a kiss before sitting back. George takes up the explanation.
"We sent that to Lee about the joke shop! Been working things out all summer and we have gotten quite of bit of new product planned out. We liked the idea that you gave us about treats that transfigure you but that isn't all we've been working on! Got some things going for what we're calling Skiving Snackboxes."
"Oh! To help you skive off lessons! That will bring in the galleons like mad!" Anya interrupted. "Tell me, though! How are you going about the skiving off part? How are the students going to get out of class?"
"Candies to make you sick! Been working on double-ended chews. You eat one end and become sick with various illnesses that will get you out of class then when you are out, you swallow the other end to cure the illness! Can't work out what color to make the two ends, though," Fred finishes explaining.
"Why not green and red?" asks Lee "Green for being sick and red for getting you better."
"We thought of that," says George. "But we thought that it would get confusing. Red means stop and green means that you are good to go. Dad and his muggle fascination and all. Learn loads of things about muggles and if we are ever to learn how to drive, that's the way traffic lights work."
"In that case," says Anya, "why don't you do orange and purple? Orange for being sick and purple for being healthy again. Orange always makes me think of puke."
"And why do you want purple, then?" asks George.
"Because it is the colour of royalty, of course! No one ever thinks of royalty being sick, now do they? Not only that, but I like purple so nyeh!" Anya sticks her tongue out childishly at George then smirks.
"Don't make me slip some Ton Tongue Toffee into your dessert tonight, Annie!" Fred threatens while smiling at her.
George chortles and chimes in, "Yeah, I'll let him do it, too! We haven't pranked you in a good long while, Annie. 'Bout time that you unwittingly share in our creations."
"Oh sod off, the both of you!" she says, playfully reaching each of her hands out and grabbing the knee closest to her and squeezing. The instinctive jerk from both of them makes her laugh and she doesn't resist when they grab her hands. "You know that if you prank me, then you'll have to deal with me pranking you back. Didn't you learn your lesson in my first year? Two red-headed, second-year boys ganging up on little 'ol me and I have gotten better since then. I've been learning all of your tricks!"
"Haven't!" Fred says indignantly.
"Absolutely not!" says George, pulling her hand to his lips and giving the back of it a squeeze. "I think it is about time for us to have a face-off again. You haven't been in on everything we learned over the summer. We'll just have to keep a little bit to ourselves and you'll just have to watch your back for when we decide it's time to have a random tester."
Anya raises her brows but lets it slide, making note to watch what she did from now on. After a while it starts getting dark and they decide to get changed. She grabs up her clothes and goes out of the compartment to the find the loo and let them have time to change. It doesn't take her long before she is back out in the corridor and heading to their compartment.
She is almost back when a boy behind her whispers, "Hey Fitzy!" and she turns around to see if they were referring to her. It's a boy wearing Slytherin robes with longish black hair and clear blue eyes. He is looking directly at her and since she is the only one in his line of sight then he must be talking to her.
With a sniff she turns towards him fully, showing off her Ravenclaw robes and puts a hand on her hip. "I don't go by 'Fitzy' so if you want to talk to me then you should call me Fitzgibbons." She knew the boy by face; he was in her year but for the life of her she couldn't remember his name. Something towards the end of the alphabet, she thinks.
"Yeah well… I don't much care what you want to be called. My name is Marcum Zabini." He waits as though that should be some sort of give away as to who he is but she pinches her lips and shakes her head.
"Sorry but I don't know you. Why are you introducing yourself to me out of the blue?" The very end of the alphabet. He was the last person to be sorted in their first year.
"Aah! He didn't tell you, then." He smirks at her and she feels the hair stand up on the back of her neck. "I made a pen pal over the end of last year and have been talking to him all summer. His name is Kevin Hancock. Ring any bells?"
She rolls her eyes obnoxiously at him and says, "I really don't give damn if you have been a pen pal to the toe rag that I live with in the orphanage. I won't be there for too many more summers then I'll be gone and never have to see him, it, and possibly you, again." With that, Anya turns around and walks back towards her compartment only to be stopped by forceful hands grabbing her upper arms just where Kevin had this morning and it takes quite a bit of willpower not to hiss from the pain of the bruises that already lie there.
"You had better give a damn, Fitzy. He's told me all about what you and he get up to in the summer and exactly how to have you where I want you. He has also asked me to keep you tuned up for him." His breath is hot on her cheek and she cringes as he lets his hand slide lower to signify the point he was making.
"I will not be manhandled by you, Zabini." She lifts her foot and stomps her heel down behind her, hoping to get to his foot through the robes and feels a satisfyingly lumpy object get jerked out from under her own foot that is squishing it. This causes her to stumble forward, slightly off balance but she turns around quickly, putting her back to the corridor wall. Had Kevin done this specifically to torment her? She was going to murder him the next time that she saw him and her eyes flashed at the boy in front of her.
Cursing, Zabini holds his foot off the floor gingerly and glares at her. "I'll pay you back, Fitzgibbons. There are plenty of places at school where a fight will go unnoticed." He limps past her and she turns to follow him with her eyes.
"Keep in mind, Zabini: I am allowed to do magic here, unlike at the orphanage, and therefore unlike what your little Durmstrang buddy is used to. I won't be taken advantage of by the likes of you." The amount of venom in her voice was surprising even to her own ears and she makes a note to write her thoughts out before they fill her to the bursting point and the twins find out something that she would rather was kept secret. She enters her compartment and shuts the door, ignoring Marcum's glowering face and thinking about what an uneventful train ride to school would be like.