Disclaimer: Dude, if I owned Harry Potter, then where would J.K. Rowling be?
Anyway I know that it's been a while since I put up a story, or a chapter, and I'm getting to it now! Onward march!
A First Year
Chapter 1: Vampires are real?
A small girl with brown hair that was just above her collar, green eyes and quite a bit of freckles sat by herself in one of the many compartments on the Hogwarts Express. She was fiddling with the hem on the new black robes she had put on, perhaps a little too early as the train had only just left. She couldn't help it; she was so excited. The corner of her mouth was twitching from the effort of trying not to burst out laughing. She turned to the window, watching the fields tumble past; a knock on the door startled her.
"Come in," she said, rather nervously as she knew very little people going to Hogwarts. Her sister was a fourth year and did not want her sister hanging around with her friends.
The door opened and a girl with flaming red hair and rather light skin came in pulling her trunk.
"May I sit with you, I don't want to intrude but almost everywhere else is filling up quickly." She looked like this was all brand new to her.
"Sure, my name is Michelle Tarins," she stood to shake the other girl's hand and to help her put her trunk on the rack overhead.
"I'm Lily Evans, its nice to meet you." She sat across from Michelle, looking much more nervous than her companion. "Should I have put on my robes? I knew I did something wrong. Should I get them out?" Lily said hurriedly.
"Hang on," Michelle stopped her from jumping to get her robes from her trunk. "I put mine on early, I was just excited," she laughed a little and sat down next to her new friend. "Don't be so nervous, do you have a brother or a sister at Hogwarts?"
"No, I have a sister, Petunia, but she's not a-a witch. No one in my family is," her gaze lowered to the floor.
"That's okay, it's called being a muggleborn. Muggles are non-magical people, but don't ever let someone call you a Mudblood. It's very offensive," Michelle said vehemently.
"What does it mean?"
But before she could answer, there was a soft knock on the compartment door. This time there was a small boy behind it, looking drawn, if not ill.
"Hello, do you think I could sit with you? I can't find any empty ones. But if you don't-"
"Of course you can come in. I'm Michelle Tarins, and this is Lily Evans, are you a first year too?" Michelle introduced them and helped with his trunk also, noticing that he seemed to have a hard time lifting it.
The boy looked surprised, almost as if he wasn't expecting people to be kind to him. He pushed his sandy colored bangs out of his eyes and muttered, "Thank you, um… I'm Remus Lupin." He retreated to the far corner of the compartment and pulled out a book to read. Lily and Michelle looked at Remus curiously, but silently agreed that it would be rude to ignore his shyness and ask too many questions.
"So… are your parents magic?" Lily asked, her own shyness returning.
"Yes, I don't really know what I'd call myself though. My mum's a muggleborn and my dad is half and half, so does that make me three quarters or something?" She pulled a deck of cards out of her robe pocket but decided that maybe Exploding Snap was a bit too rambunctious for these two. "So what did your family think when you got your letter?"
"My parents were so happy when I got my letter. They think that it's great to have a witch in the family, but my sister, Petunia, thinks that I'm the freak of the world," Lily said sadly.
"That's alright, maybe she'll think you're cooler when you get back during vacation. How about you, Remus?"
"Huh?" he murmured, looking up. "Oh, well… my mum is a muggleborn too, but my dad is a pureblood." Remus said barely taking his amber eyes off of his book, Hogwarts, a History.
There was a rather tense silence where Lily shuffled her feet on the floor, Michelle shuffled her cards and Remus turned a page in his book sniffing a little. Upon further examination, Michelle noted that he sort of appeared to be getting over a bad bout of the flu. Or insomnia, there were dark circles under his eyes. Michelle remembered a few nights last summer where it had been so hot that she hadn't been able to sleep, and if that be the case she wished him luck that sleep reached him soon. After a few more awkward minutes, Michelle decided to liven things up.
"Hey, Lily. Do you know what an Animagus is?"
"An Animagus? No, what's that?"
"It's a person who can turn into an animal! It's really cool. There are a few in my family, we were all born them, though I heard that you can become one too."
"Really?!" Lily gasped enthusiastically. Remus' hands tightened on his book as he peeked over the top of it.
"Yeah, I'm an Animagus too! Wanna see?" She was smiling and simply bursting to see that her friend was smiling with curiosity.
"What animal can you turn into? Don't say a bat though, please don't say a bat. I don't like bats. They're creepy." Lily shuddered.
"Only vampires can turn into bats. Though I wonder if you could be a vampire and an Animagus…" Lily paled.
Michelle decided that turning into her cat form might shock Lily too much, besides she seemed to have more questions about the wizarding world.
"V-Vampires are real? But I thought that they were just myths? What about those other magical animals, are they all real too?"
"Yeah, er… most of them. Vampires, ghosts, hippogriffs, werewolves, dragons, unicorns and some others that aren't so nice, like dementors. Muggles don't know that they're real, the Ministry sees to that. But I wouldn't really worry, I mean, vampires and werewolves are still people, ghosts are people, they're just dead, and the others are animals, just like cats and dogs. There's nothing-" But Michelle broke off as someone knocked on the door.
It slid open and the Trolley woman stood out in the hallway with a cart bursting with sweets.
"Anything off the trolley dears?" she said smiling at them.
Michelle hopped off of her seat and took a box of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans; they would add some fun to the compartment, and a small bar of Hunydukes chocolate. Lily had a confused expression that amused Michelle to no end.
"Do you think they have any Hershey's?" Lily whispered in Michelle's ear, causing a stray hair to poke her. Michelle slapped at her ear to stop the tickling and giggled.
"No, that's a muggle chocolate," she handed the lady two sickles. "I think you'd do well with some Drooble's Best Blowing Gum. My sister blew one so big that when it popped it looked like we had painted the room pink," She laughed at the memory. Lily retreated to her seat after paying for the gum.
Remus paid for three bars of Hunydukes and a pumpkin juice, Michelle's favorite, returned to his seat and said only a small "thank you" to the Trolley lady.
"Do you know what the school houses are, Lily?" Said Michelle, amazed at her luck of getting a strawberry bean.
"Sort of, I think the teacher who brought me to Diagon Alley told me about them but I had a hard time paying attention…"
"Understandable. Okay, here's what you need to know. Gryffindor is the best house. The people who get into it are brave and nice. My dad was a Gryffindor. The worst house is definitely Slytherin. Those two houses have the worst rivalries because Slytherins are mean, they love the dark arts and barely any of them end up as good people,"
"What if I end up in Slytherin?" Lily cried, suddenly nervous.
Remus let out a queer sounding laugh and promptly hid his blushing face behind his book.
Michelle smiled.
"There's your answer. Don't worry, you don't have a chance of being put into Slytherin,"
"What about the other two houses?" she asked, a bit happier.
"Ravenclaws are supposed to be wise, that's what my mom was. It's not a bad house to be in. Then the others go to Hufflepuff. They are loyal and kind and all that. It's an okay house, I'd rather be in Hufflepuff than Slytherin anyway,"
At that, someone knocked on the door.
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Oohh I wonder who's at the door now? Sirius? James? Pettigrew? Or perhaps it's someone else? BwaHAHAHA Cliffy! Well, maybe a pathetic one but a cliffy nonetheless.
Momiji's