Disclaimer: Everything that is from the Harry Potter books is JK Rowling's. Juliana and Lenore are my characters. Trau, Lilly, and John are friends' characters. And Cordelia belongs to my very eccentric cousin. Oh and I don't own Cheez-Its, whatever company that makes them does. Mmm… Cheesy goodness… And it's probably confusing and pointless to anyone who isn't these people. And if anyone actually figures out how the characters are related and stuff cause I didn't really make it obvious for most of them, kudos to you. And if you are bugged by it, oh well, I have logical explanations, but I'm too lazy to give them.
Juliana woke up the first day of summer break in her room at Grimmauld with Cordelia leaning over her bed, staring creepily wide-eyed down at her, "Yey! You're awake finally! Trau and I woke up half an hour ago!"
Julia leapt out of bed, "Gah! Cordy! Don't do that! It's bad enough with Kreature wandering around!" She began to dig trough her dresser to find something to change into.
"Oh…" Cordy sat down on Julia's bed, "What's wrong with Kreature?"
Julia sighed as she pulled out a pair of plaid capris, "He's a creepy freak? Now get out of my room so I can change," she herded Cordy out.
She entered the kitchen five minutes later, muttering about the need of locks on doors and the lack of privacy due to Kreature and creepy talking portraits. Julia slid into a seat next to Trau, who was about to fall asleep on her cereal. She gave Trau a small nudge, "I take it you didn't get the same wake up call I got?"
"Huh?" Trau answered before stuffing her spoon into her mouth.
Julia nodded towards Cordelia at the other end of the table who was off in her own little world, humming "If You're Happy and You Know It" to herself and trying to divine the placement of the soggy cheerios at the bottom of her bowl like they were tea leaves.
Trau looked over at Cordy and then back to Julia, "So she's loony, what's new?"
"No, I woke up with her staring down at me. It was like Kreature got a sex change, grew taller, and put blue contacts in…"
"Now there's a scary thought."
"Mmhmm…" Julia grabbed the box of cheerios and poured herself a bowl, "Can't wait till Mad Cow gets here. Then we can eat warm food."
"Mrs. Weasley?" Trau looked up from her cereal, surprised Julia would say such a thing about her.
"No, my mom."
"Oh," Trau went back to eating, "Well Dad says the Weasleys are coming here soon too."
"Anyone who can cook is fine. I don't trust my dad with an oven, one of us or Tonks is likely to burn the place down, I've never seen your dad cook, and Moody would get paranoid and have to make sure that the cow was really dead and just ruin dinner," Julia snorted sarcastically.
Trau blinked, "Wow J, I never really thought that out. I guess it really is a good idea that we eat sandwiches for now. Although it would be funny to see Sirius in an apron..."
"Yes, but like I said: I don't trust him with an oven. Or anything with a flame for that matter."
Trau looked like she was about to reply, but they were interrupted by Cordy snatching Trau's now empty bowl. She swirled the tiny bit of milk left and stared down at the few cheerios that had been left behind. She shrieked and grabbed Trau by the arm, "The cheerios say you will be bitten by a werewolf!"
Julia and Trau blinked at her, "Uh, she's already a werewolf…" Julia whispered to Cordy.
"Oh yeah… Ummm…"She looked at the bowl again, "Ah ha! Now I got it! You will be bitten by a mongoose!"
Julia and Trau just blinked again, Trau looked over at Julia, "Aren't those native to India?" she asked skeptically.
Julia nodded. Just then a mongoose went running through the kitchen. It ran past, stopped, turned around, ran back, bit Trau in the ankle and ran away.
"OW! STUPID MONGOOSE!" Trau yelled.
"What the hell..." Julia stared.
"Awww… He ran away. I wanted to keep him as a pet," Cordy gushed.
Lilly came downstairs and walked into the kitchen yawning. She stopped in mid-yawn when she saw the scene, "Uh… Maybe I should have slept in longer…"
"And I wish I was never born, but we just can't have everything, it simply doesn't work like that for us," Julia shook her head, "Cordy, no more cheerio reading for you."
"Oh…" Cordy hung her head, "Wheaties?"
"No," Julia shook her head.
"Oh… Trix?"
"No," Julia groaned.
"Not even Frankenberry!" Cordy looked horrified.
"Not even Frankenberry," Julia glared.
Sirius then entered, looking around, "Have you guys seen Kreature?"
"No," Julia yawned as the others shook their heads. This must have been a record for how many times she could say 'no' in one morning.
"Well… He's looking kind of different this morn-"
Julia held up a hand to cut him off, "Daaaaaaaaad… Don't tell me that he's a mongoose…"
"He's not a mongoose?" Sirius shrugged helplessly.
Julia groaned, "He's the mongoose, isn't he?"
"Yeah," Sirius nodded.
"Ew! I was bit by a demented house elf!" Trau rubbed her ankle disgustedly.
"I found him snogging a pair of my mother's knickers again and couldn't resist," Sirius admitted, "Weird part is that he was supposed to turn into a chinchilla."
Lilly blinked, "I thought you were good at transfiguration…"
Sirius just shrugged.
Julia sighed, "Please excuse me, I have important business to attend to. I must go finish my plan to prove that Mitsubishi makes a GTO, not just Pontiac…" She started to walk out, but stopped, "Oh, and tell me when Mad Cow gets here." She left the kitchen.
"Not another conspiracy theory…" Lilly whined after Julia walked out.
"Actually its not, for once," Trau answered while placing her cereal bowl upside down on Cordy's head, "She actually is trying to prove to someone that Mitsubishi makes a GTO."
"What was that for?" Cordy moaned as milk ran down her long black hair, "Its going to take me forever to get this out…"
"It was for your mongoose-in-a-bowl," Trau followed Julia out, limping.
Cordy sighed and looked at Lilly, trying to pick the cheerios out of her hair, "You know Lils, when it was an elephant-in-a-bowl everyone giggled, but they get mad at a mongoose-in-a-bowl."
Lilly snickered, "Only because it was really Kreature."
Sirius was continuing his search and trying to figure out where a mongoose would hide. She two girls just stared at him for a moment before deciding to slink off upstairs.
Meanwhile, Julia was sitting on her bed with Trau, re-stitching one of her many voodoo dolls and chatting, while Trau sketched. The door bell rang suddenly and Mrs. Black started screaming. Julia jumped up with Trau and they ran to the stairs to see who it was, "Yes!" Julia yelled when her mother entered and ran down the stairs to dance around her singing "We'll have proper food for dinner!"
Lenore stared at her daughter, who normally rathered to not be under her mother's watchful eye, "Do they starve you here or something? I'm not supposed to get warm welcomes…"
"Not starved, just attacked by mongoose foreseen in a bowl of cheerios," Julia answered in a sing-song tone that was very unusual for her.
"Erm," Lenore blinked at her, "Okay, J, I'm… gonna go… talk to your father now…" She arched and eyebrow.
"He's up in the attic looking for Kreature the mongoooooooose…" Julia was still skipping about and speaking in the sing-song voice.
Trau walked slowly down, a bit scared by Julia's odd behavior, although she had seen just about everything the girl could dish out. "We've been living off of cereal and sandwiches, because no one in the house is trusted to cook, so she's excited that we can eat proper food," She explained to Lenore in a dreary, monotone voice quite opposite of Julia's.
Lenore rubbed her temples with an exasperated look on her face, "Okay, that part I got, but what's this about Sirius, Kreature, and a mongoose?"
Julia cackled, still elated, very much hyper, and still clutching the voodoo doll she had been mending, "Kreature the mongoooooooose…"
Trau sighed, "Sirius tried to turn Kreature into a chinchilla but instead he turned into a mongoose and now Sirius is trying to find him after Kreature ran through the kitchen and bit me in the ankle."
"Oh my god," Lenore groaned, "I've been here for five minutes and its already mass chaos."
"Actually you've been here about two minutes and it was mass chaos before you arrived," Julia corrected, all in one breathe. She was sounding more like herself, but still hyper.
"I think I'll go take the sugar off the kitchen table before she can put some on more cereal…" Trau wandered off towards the kitchen.
"Aww…" Julia sighed, before running after Trau, "But I'm usually not hyper. And if I don't have sugar once a day, I get evil."
"That's a risk I'm willing to take," Trau stuffed the sugar bowl into one of the top shelves in the higher cabinets that Julia couldn't reach.
"Dammit, ya'll just have to make fun of my shortness. Oh well, I'll get Cordy to pity me later," Julia mumbled.
Trau laughed, "She won't if she has any common sense."
"Dur, its Cordy…" Julia stuck out her tongue, "Anyways I have more important business to attend to."
"Oh dear, you always do. What is it this time Brain?"
Julia grinned, "What I do every summer to tick my father off, Pinky: Try to invite a certain Slytherin over for summer!"
Trau stared at Julia, red dyed bangs falling in front of her eyes, "Dear god, its worse than I imagined."
"Aw, c'mon. You say it like I want to invite my cousins over," Julia's grin got eviler.
"Your grandmother is going to get a kick out of this…"
"Until she realizes John is in no way evil," Julia snickered.
"I dunno about that," Trau shook her head, "He likes you and that definitely takes some form of evil if you ask me."
"Gee, thanks, bud."
At that moment Lenore entered the kitchen with Sirius and started opening all the cupboards, "What do you feed them with!"
Sirius shrugged, "Well usually we start off the evening with a shot of fire whiskey and a good cigar-" He cut off at the ice cold glare coming from Lenore, "OH! You mean the girls… Riiiiight… There's bread, cereal, and peanut butter in the pantry."
Lenore peered into the pantry which was bare except for the items Sirius mentioned plus quite a few bottles of butter beer and a box of cheez-its, "Hey, you have butter beer and cheez-its too…"
Julia ducked under Lenore's arm that was holding open the pantry door and leapt into the pantry to reach the cheez-its. She then rolled back out in a very Indiana Jones-like way with the box tucked under one arm, "DEBO!" She made a break for the door with Trau at her side.
"Well, scratch that…" Lenore sighed as a chorus of four voices echoed from the front hall cheering 'WE HAVE CHEEZ-ITS!'
Sirius muttered, "That was my only box. She would have never known it was up there if you hadn't said anything…"
Lenore closed the pantry door and crossed her arms, "It's impolite to take advantage of your daughter's shortness."
"But its funny and now I'm missing a mongoose and a box of cheez-its."
"I'll buy you more later. Right now I want to know where that fire whiskey is. Tonks and I took the Knight Bus to get here; I could use something to calm my nerves…"