Slayer made me post this (against my wishes, I might add) so I'll try to make juggling two stories at once work...Maybe.
Things you need to know:
-the Flock are ages 16, 14, 12, and 10, respectively.
-everything and anything I write that is MR completely disregards things after book three. They might be older, but 4-8 never happened. Shush.
-this takes place in Harry's 6th year. Events will be skewed since the Flock changes the course of things.
-The ships will be as follows: Fang/Max, eventual Ron/Hermione, Iggy/Mystery Canon HP Girl, and Nudge/Mystery Canon HP Guy. Ooh, mysterious, eh?
This is one of my only first-person narratives, so hold onto your hats ladies and gents.
Things just don't go as planned for us and I don't know why it's so hard for the universe to just give us a break for a day or so. I mean, it's not as if we mess up its mojo too much. It's almost as if events around us warp just enough to fuck us over once or twice and it's been happening since we've been born.
But I guess you get what's coming to you when you're just another mutant with wings.
I don't like pears. I'm not sure where this innate hatred of all things pear-like, pear-shaped, and pear-flavoured comes from. All I do know is that I really don't like to get within a 100 metre radius of pears. They're...icky. But what does Nudge show up with? A bag of pears.
"Hey Max!" She shouted as she ran down the aisle of the supermarket to catch up with Fang and me. His tanned fingers were gripping the shopping cart that was currently being filled with various brands of cereal. We were on wheat duty, Nudge on produce, and Iggy on dairy. (The Gasman and Angel were back at my mom's house playing scrabble with Ella, who began to lose hopelessly as soon as Angel whipped out her evil eye and peeked into her mind for bits of info.) Nudge held up a sack of red netting that contained around eleven pears. "Can we get these?"
I took one look at the stuff and shook my head and replied flatly. "No."
"Pleeeease…?" Nudge drew the word out. "Everyone else likes them but you!"
"I don't like pears," Fang said simply, adding his two bits to the convo.
"See?" I put my hands on my hips. "Majority rules. Now put the pears back, Nudge."
"That's not even a majority," Nudge threw her hands up in the air in exasperation, muttering to herself as she trudged back to the fruit section. "When I grow up I'm going to eat all the pears I want to and not even Max can stop me because pears are so good and she just doesn't get it with all of the…."
I watched her go with narrowed eyes and then turned to Fang and scowled because I just remembered him telling me on one occasion that pears were his favorite fruit. I think he was a bit out of it at the time, but that doesn't change his stance towards the little green monsters. "You like pears."
"So?" Fang asked, shrugging as if the matter wasn't of any importance at all.
"Why did you lie?" I still wasn't catching onto the social cues at this point. Poor me.
"Because you don't like pears."
It sort of caught me by surprise. I mean, I knew that he had lied for me before, but this was just a squabble over the devil incarnate stuffed into a fruit body of all things. It wasn't a big deal, not nearly as big as I made it seem, but it was all of the little things that added up to the big picture. We'd been dating for a few months now, but anything that even held a faint whiff of relationshippy-ness sort of sent me careening into the next aisle to join the fish in their eternal mob boss slumber. Unfortunately, I was so distracted dissecting every little word that came out of the boy's beautiful mouth that my forehead collided with a sign for a half off coupon on Lucky Charms and I was down on my ass in the middle of the supermarket's cheap tiling.
"Smooth," Fang chuckled, holding out a hand to pull me up when I just stared back at him in astonishment.
"I don't know where that sign came from, I swear," I said, dusting off the back of my jeans. "It just…appeared."
Speaking of things that just 'appeared,' there was something farther down the aisle that wasn't there before. I know, I must sound like a real whack job with all of the fangirling and pear hating, but I was sure that the man in the greatcoat and brown leather belt wasn't there a second ago. He was examining a can of peaches on the opposite shelf, his long, stringy hair hanging to his chin and barely obscuring his lips that were whispering something to - and I know this is going to sound even crazier - the can of high fructose corn syrup-infused peaches.
He didn't have a shopping cart; he wasn't carrying anything with him to buy. If I didn't know any better I would have thought that he had gotten lost at the annual pirate convention, so what was he doing here in a suburban grocery store? It didn't make any sense, and it made even less sense when he set the can back, looked me straight in the eye, and then left around the next corner.
"Hey!" I called after him, trying to get his attention.
"Max, what-"
"I'll be right back," I said to Fang, who either hadn't noticed the pirate man or didn't care, and dashed around to the next aisle of food. But the man wasn't there and he wasn't in the aisle over either. In fact, he wasn't in the entire damn supermarket, which frustrated me to no end. If he wasn't here, where could he have gone?
"I have yoghurt, cheese, milk, the works," Iggy said triumphantly, putting a big handful of miscellaneous dairy ingredients in Fang's cart and pumping his fist into the air. "Tonight we feast!"
"I can't find him," I sighed, jogging back to the cart.
"Who?" Iggy asked. "Me? Because I'm right here."
"No, not you," I punched him lightly on the bicep. "The other guy, the weird pirate one!"
"Have you been smoking something I should know about?" Iggy asked, rubbing his shoulder.
"He was right there," I swung my arm to indicate the canned goods shelf.
"I've got apples," Nudge trilled, hefting the apples, oranges, and some lettuce into the cart. "So are we done here?"
"Not yet, Max is having a mini-meltdown." Iggy rolled his eyes, even though I'm sure he was unaware that he was doing so in the first place.
"I'm not, he was there!" I contested. "He was holding a can of-" I paused abruptly as an epiphany began to bubble up in my brain. "The peaches!"
And at this point you can imagine how bizarre I looked to innocent passersby, rambling on about a pirate and some peaches, but at the time I believed it all to be true. If only I knew what I was getting into then I wouldn't have tried to go after him at all, let alone do what came next.
I marched over to the can that he was holding and picked it up, immediately feeling a tug in my gut. The air began to swirl around me and I felt as if I was being stuffed into a tube of insulation.
Penny in the air.
"Max-" Fang lunged and tried to grab my arm.
"No!" Nudge shouted.
Fang, Iggy, and Nudge all leapt after me, down the world's weirdest rabbit hole. In a few seconds we were gone from the supermarket and spit out into a room with high, vaulted ceilings and some serious need for a roof to keep the clouds out. The bad part, we were in mid-air. With a yelp, all four of us bird kids dropped down onto a long banquet table set out with food. Nudge got herself an elbow full of stuffing, Iggy a butt of creamed spinach, and I landed smack dab into what looked and smelled like a Jack O'Lantern decided to toss his cookies. Fang got off easy and landed on the cleared table in front of me without a scratch on him. Not cool, man.
I struggled into a sitting position, shaking off the excess pumpkin juice from my luscious locks of hair, and finally got a good look at the place. For one, we were surrounded by very astonished-looking students in old fashioned robes. Different tables were wearing different colours and there was a table of older people at the front, looking more angry and pestered than anything.
I smiled unconvincingly. "Er…hi."
Penny drops.
Now how is that for an entrance? The Flock always arrive in style, don't you know? And the question of the day is...
Which houses do you think the Flock will be sorted into?
Review below with your thoughts!
-Acca