DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING OF HARRY POTTER OR THE WIZARDING WORLD EXCEPT FOR THE CHARACTER OF KAGUMI PHEONIX AND ANYTHING NOT RECOGNIZABLE FROM THE SERIES!!! And of course part of the plot that revolves around my friend's characters and me. This was written based off of a roleplay my sister, my good friend and I did on our website. If you want a link to it, ask me in a review, but I will warn you beforehand. Our original roleplay sucks really big donkey ----- (expletive deleted)…
The New Marauders: Prologue
They had met on the Platform. The Pheonix twins and the small mousy boy had not gotten along too well; the girls simply tried in vain to ignore him. He kept following them around, until they and the elderly woman with them had to tell him to leave them alone. He wasn't very happy, but decided to simply follow them at a distance. They gave up and allowed him to pursue.
The girls saw others they knew from childhood, including a boy named Arthur with brilliant red hair and faint freckles across his nose that they knew from a few family get-togethers. They saw a pale, silvery-blonde haired boy whom they knew as Lucius from the attempts of their late mother to establish ties with the Malfoy family. A familiar black head appeared in front of one of the girls and she yelled a name, but then the head was gone with not a single sign of recognition. Catching up with other family members, and acquaintances from their past history, the girls easily forgot the woman who had made this possible.
The girls turned to their grandmother at twenty minutes till departure and hugged her in thanks for supporting their magical education. They went to draw back, but the grandmother held the girls until the ten-minute's warning bell rang. She reluctantly let them go and, with a teary smile, watched their heads disappear among the hundreds of students. After watching the scarlet train roll away, the old woman put a hand to her chest, blew a kiss after the train and vanished with a loud CRACK like a car backfiring.
Inside, the girls held each other's hand and walked carefully with their trunks to find a compartment. They went to the end of the train and back again, searching, but the only compartment that wasn't full up was already occupied at the least. On their third round of the train, the black haired girl looked at her sister.
"Jadie…Maybe we should just find a compartment with someone else in it and ask to sit with them. We're never going to find something on our own," she whispered carefully. Her sister sighed heavily and nodded. "Alright, Kagumi. We'll go sit with someone."
Kagumi nodded thankfully and they set off again to the end of the train. Kagumi couldn't help but stare the entire time they were approaching the only compartment that wasn't packed. There was a single boy sitting there, reading the heavy Standard Book of Spells, Grade One. He was, without doubt in her mind, the best looking eleven-year old in the entire train. He had light brown hair that easily caught the light of the setting sun, and it affected her deeply. His long fingers were turning pages of the schoolbook and he had one hand resting on the spine of it, the fingers of said hand splayed across the spine. His light blue eyes never stopped moving as they seemingly absorbed the knowledge the book's words had to offer. Though he was skinny and pale, the red light splashed across his face made him look like a painting and she wanted nothing more than to have him for her very own, though the butterflies in her stomach would have said something to that.
They fluttered magically and thumped against her ribs. Or was that her heart, beating painfully against her throat? Whatever it was, it was thundering so loudly that Kagumi was astonished that her sister hadn't heard it yet. As it was, Jade was standing there, looking impatient and waiting for something. Kagumi sighed inwardly and, biting her lip, scratched on the door.
Remus Lupin was reading, trying to divert his mind from the fears playing tag with his sanity. Alright…and it's swish and flick….Wingardium - -….No. Better not do that here; don't want anything bad to happen. His eyes scanned the page, looking for the expected results of the Charm. He heard footsteps outside his compartment, but didn't pay attention; it hadn't registered in his intelligent brain that the train had already lurched forward and had begun its journey to a magical school.
He looked up when he heard a scratching noise on the glass of his door, much like the tapping of a kitten wanting inside out of a storm. His eyes flew upwards in a start from the pages of the book and widened. What he saw made him take a breath; it was a girl and her apparent sister scratching at the glass pane, looking around with two trunks standing by them. The girl scratching softly looked directly into his eyes, sending a slight flush down his face.
She had long, black hair that glowed a vague indigo in the light. Her even, white teeth flashed as she smiled nervously at him. Her skin was pale amber, and her eyes were a strange shade of cerulean. She bit her lip and gestured to ask if they could come in. Gathering his wits about him, he nodded and gestured to the large, empty compartment.
Smiling widely and much more confidently, she opened the door and magicked their trunks on to the shelves above their heads. He gaped at her adept use of a wand. She noticed his staring eyes and said in a quiet voice, "Our mum…she used magic; we're quite used to helping her around the house."
Her sister went to say something, but Kagumi shot her a look that would make anyone freeze in their tracks. Jade's eyes widened, and she nodded almost imperceptibly, not saying what was on her mind. Kagumi smiled briefly, as if in apology, and then leaned her head against the back of the compartment with her eyes closed. Remus enjoyed the view, as he was a bit taller than her on the seat and could still see the whole of her face.
Kagumi had only been resting for about ten minutes when she heard shouting and a loud thud. Sitting bolt upright, she immediately reached for her wand and her eyes darted back and forth, seeking the root of the disturbance. A young girl's voice rang out, "Leave me be!" Shooting a look at her sister, who was already standing up, Kagumi's eyes went oddly dim and on cue they moved as one seamless unit towards the door.
The girl's voice cried out once more after Jade and Kagumi had slid open the door and snuck out into the hall and, after a longing glance at the shelter of his book, Remus followed the sounds of the shouting, which had grown louder since the girls had been out there. He crept along silently, having had experience from creeping around his house when his parents would fight. He walked slowly down the hall, coming to the last compartment to see Kagumi and Jade by the opaque part of the door with wands at the ready. Kagumi saw him standing there and pulled him behind her with a warning look while Jade kept a look out in the compartment they were leaned against; she nodded.
"What are we doing?" He asked, in a slightly hoarse voice. She chanced a look around the opacity before answering.
"WE are doing nothing. Jade and I are about to save that girl," she whispered. He attempted a look over her shoulder and saw a glimpse of a young, silver-blonde boy and three or four other boys pushing around a girl with dusky red hair that fell over her eyes as she was shoved from boy to boy. She cried out as she hit a wall.
"Leave me alone, Malfoy!"
Kagumi looked meaningfully at her sister and she pointed her wand at the panel handle. She counted very quietly to three and then sparks flew from her wand and the door banged open. She and Jade dashed in, wands primed for dueling. Remus poked his head around the corner and almost laughed at the sneering boy's look of alarm. He dropped the girl to the floor and she began crawling away, inching towards the doors very carefully. Remus, unable to stand the sight of her hurt, walked determinedly in and helped her up, leading her away from the fight and into the hall.
"You shouldn't do that to innocent people, Malfoy," Kagumi said calmly, though her voice had a dangerous edge to it that Remus couldn't quite place. Remus leaned against the door, ready to take out his wand if he was needed.
"Ah, the Pheonix twins. How very like your family you are: always rushing into things you have no business being in," the boy's drawling voice was cold and sent a warning through Remus's mind; his hand gripped his wand tighter as he listened more intently.
"Malfoy, I'm warning you." Jade's voice rang out.
"Why? Mudbloods like her don't need to be at Hogwarts. Magic should be kept in all-magic families…Purebloods."
'Why can't you see the folly in that idea, Malfoy? If you simply let all the Muggleborns run around with magic, doing what they assume to be parlor tricks or even worse, not knowing that they're magical, the world be in a worse state of disarray than it already is. How do you think someone would cope if they were all treated as freaks all their life, because they made things happen that no one could explain? And then, they experienced a surge of a powerful emotion, and boom. World-wide catastrophe," Kagumi described. Malfoy appeared to be considering her words.
"Well, why don't we just...eliminate them?" Kagumi's mouth dropped in shock and Jade hurled a curse at them. It hit Malfoy dead on, and angry red boils began popping up on the surface of his skin. He yelled in pain and the battle began in earnest.
His group flung curses and hexes, but somehow Kagumi and Jade together deflected them. Not all of them, but the good majority. The scrawny boy with the sallow skin pointed his wand at Jade and muttered something; her ears began flapping so fast that Remus was amazed that she could hear at all. One of the bigger ones, Crabbe, flung a Hair Thickening Charm at the twins and it hit Kagumi in the face before either of them could deflect it; her eyes brows began growing so rapidly, she had to keep pushing the hair out of her eyes just to fight. Nott threw a Conjunctivitis Curse at Jade, but Malfoy's failed Expelliarmus Charm forced Kagumi in front of it.
She howled in pain, seizing her eyes. Remus, feeling incredibly useless as the redhead hid behind him, muttered the countercharm for her. Kagumi wrenched her eyes open in time to see the greasy black-haired boy come at her with a drawn fist. Before her blurred vision could really comprehend what was happening, he had slammed his knuckles into her face, effortlessly busting her nose.
"Dammit, Snape! Geroff!" she shouted, making even Remus shiver at the ice coating her voice. He shut his eyes and prayed for help, because he knew that they were tiring. And help came, in the form of a small black robe with a pinkish apron tied over it.
There was a rattle of wheels and as Remus watched, a young woman appeared with a food cart. Upon seeing the battle, she took out a rather long wand and cried, "Finite Incantatem!" The spells stopped bouncing off of the walls and everyone turned their heads to the woman. She put her wand away and briskly walked forward. She stopped at Remus. "What…Happened?" She asked shakily. He looked down at the girl hiding behind him.
"Well, from what I could gather, those boys in there were shoving this girl around and we heard her crying since our compartment isn't that far away. Those girls rushed in and there was some dialogue exchanged and then someone threw a spell and the fight happened."
"Who threw the first curse?"
"I'm not sure," he lied easily. Kagumi came back out, looking a bit worse for the wear. She had very thick eyebrows now (having to use both hands to hold them up), and her eyes were red and a bit swollen. A slight busted lip and a bloody nose finished off the beat-up look. Jade was a bit better, with only a dribble of blood from her nose and madly twitching ears. They both looked a little guilty and the woman turned kindly to the shaking girl behind Remus's back.
"And what's your name?"
"Lily Evans, miss. I'm a Muggleborn and that pale boy back there knew somehow and he and his friends were picking on me," she answered in a strong voice.
"How were they picking on you?"
"Shoving me around, backing me into corners and threatening me with their wands. Calling me a name, but I don't - -"
"Mudblood. That's what they were calling her, Miss." Kagumi spoke up, stowing her wand in a small bag on her hip. The woman crossed her arms and, tapping her foot, told them all to go see the conductor. She went into the compartment and there were a few yells and some indistinct shouting before she came back out. Remus stared at her. "What on earth did you do?"
"Boxed their ears…and I'll do the same to you if you don't get moving," she said, pointing sternly in the direction of the front of the train. They marched forward, and Remus had to laugh; between Jade's wildly flapping ears and Kagumi having to hold up the hair from her eyebrows, they both looked pretty funny.
In the very front part of the train, they could see out the tall windows. The scenery was amazing; there were majestic mountains, and they were currently crossing a narrow bridge over a lake. The tracks wound through a forest on either side of the water, which they could see tapering down to a medium sized river about three miles to the west. A whistle from an unattended teakettle brought them back to their current predicament.
Everything in the train seemed to be magic-powered. The conductor didn't even appear to be steering; the wheel turned by itself and there was a shovel out of nowhere shoveling coal into the next room, with no one holding the handle. Only Lily was shocked to see the conductor sitting there, playing what looked like a game of solitaire, except that every time he put a wrong card down, there was a minor explosion. "Yeah, what is it Rhea?"
"There was a fight in one of the compartments. You'll need to inform Minerva when we get there so that she can arrange detentions after the Sorting."
The conductor threw down the remaining cards in his hand, not flinching when the resulting explosion singed his mustache in one large blast. He ran a smoking hand through his hair and put his conductor's cap on, which had been lying beside him on a table. "Bloody hell…who was fightin?"
The stewardess pointed towards Remus and the two girls. "These three were defending a Muggleborn; Evans, I think her name is." Here she pointed towards Lily to signify that she had been the victim. "We've another Malfoy on our hands," she said quietly. The man groaned with a faint look of disgust.
"Another one?"
She nodded her head. "Yeah. Looks like he's even more destructive than the last one. They were calling the girl all sorts of unpleasantness; were definitely shoving her around and more than likely threatening her as well. I'm about to go take down the entire group's names; I've already locked them away from the rest of the students on the train for the time being." The witch swept off after saying this, leaving Kagumi, Jade and Remus to wonder what the conductor was going to do to them. He sighed again, tapping the steering column once with his wand; it veered to the right, making the train jump onto a neighboring track effortlessly. He then looked at them.
"Well, you guys were defending her, eh?" Kagumi nodded slowly. He laughed at the way the overgrown hair swished over her arms, which were still holding it up. He waved his wand once and mumbled something. With a sickening shlooping sound, the hair was gone and Jade's ears stopped twitching. Then he took out a red case with a white cross on it and pulled out a bottle of thick paste. He applied the lime green substance to both girls' face wounds and told them all to go back their compartment, and to wipe that healing stuff off of their faces before the train arrived at Hogwarts.
Up on returning to their compartment, they found it already occupied with two boys who were laughing madly. Remus opened the door and jumped back in surprise as a large spider ran over his foot and out into the hall. Jade jumped out of its way, Kagumi smiled at its scuttling walk and Lily gasped. Remus walked into the compartment and Kagumi leaned against the door. "Who're you?" she asked. Though both boys had black hair, the long-haired one stood and swept his arm towards the girls.
"My name is Sirius Black. This is my best friend, James Potter." He bowed after the introduction, capturing Kagumi's hand and kissing the air above her knuckles, stopping when he saw the ring on her right middle finger. She halfway grinned and put a hand on his chin, forcing him to look her in the eyes. "My hand, if you please?" Black immediately released it and assumed a look of apology, sounding oddly formal when next he spoke.
"Begging your pardon…Miss Pheonix," he said, with a rather forced quietness. She looked at him, studying his face and the ring on his hand. She then looked at her own, which was slightly daintier. At that moment, she understood. She tapped him on the shoulder and out of instinct, he turned to look at her.
"Sirius, is it? Son of Orion and Walburga Black?" He nodded reluctantly. She broke into a smile. "You have no reason to worry, Sirius. We hate your family as much as you do. Their pureblood mania is enough to drive anyone absolutely mad. I hate the fact that we Pheonixes were once part of them," she looked at him again, wishing that the compartment had not gone completely silent; her every word could be heard. Sirius looked at her, with a kind of woebegone hope in his eyes. She smiled, slapping him on the back and sitting next to Remus. Jade sat next to James in Sirius's old seat, crossing her legs.
"Looks like we're all sharing a compartment, eh?" Jade smiled. Sirius sat next to Jade and Lily took Remus's other side, directly across from James. He kind of gaped and then extended his hand. "Hi, my name is James," he said smoothly. She took it reluctantly, noticing his extremely messy hair and how he ruffled it. Upon contact, he grabbed her hand and there was a sizzle. She howled in pain and jumped up. He choked on his laughter and held out his hand to show a Zonko's Shocker. Lily frowned and punched him dead on the nose, her eyes flashing emerald flames towards the boy clutching a broken nose. Kagumi burst out laughing with her twin sister, while Sirius howled and Remus took out his book again, looking slightly disgruntled at the noise. James sat upright and pointed his wand at his nose. "Episkey," he said thickly as his nose mended. He looked at Lily, truly astonished.
"That's the first time any girl has ever punched me for playing a prank on her…I think I love you. What's your name?"
She stared at him with utter disgust and quickly moved to sit back down beside Remus. James never took his eyes off of her while Kagumi reached over to pat his knee with a broad grin. "Too bad, mate. Don't think she took to you…" He shook his head sadly and stared out the window. The conductor's voice echoed through the train.
"We will be at Hogwarts in five minutes." The group looked at each other. The boys blushed and the girls muttered amongst themselves. "I'm not stripping down to my knickers in front of them!" Lily said hotly. The girls eventually agreed to just pull robes on over their clothes; the boys groaned in their heads.
The boys stood up and pulled robes on over their Muggle clothes, as did the girls and then donned their grey ties, which would change colors once they had been sorted. Jade led the way outside, crowding into the throng of students pushing a slow path through the train. Finally, they reach the lake where a gigantic man stood with a lantern, waiting to take them across in a fleet of very unstable looking boats. "Firs' Years! Firs' years, over here!" he yelled. Sirius gulped.
"Well…anybody like a bit o' squid?" The man said, revealing a crinkly beard and laughing eyes. Kagumi looked around and saw tentacle rise out of the water in the distance. The group gulped and piled into two boats with two other people: a black haired girl who was very pale and the same mousy boy that the twins had had problems with on Platform 9 ¾. Kagumi and Jade settled in, each thinking the same thing.
What a weird year this is going to be...
