Hey, guys! This is my first story ever, so I hope you like it. It's told in first person by Olivia Thompson, who enters the wizarding world at the ripe, old age of fifteen, much to her surprise. I'm going to try to keep spelling and grammatical errors to a minimum, but nobody's perfect. Oh, and by the way, Harry enters in the third chapter. I wanted to put some character and plot development, you know. Anyway, enjoy!
Chapter 1: Just a Day
"Olive, are you even listening to what I'm saying?" Sasha's voice stung my ears and I knit my eyebrows together, frustrated.
The sun was beating down upon us, crushing us under wave after wave of excruciating summer heat and making us feel lethargic. Sweat dripped down our necks as we walked back to the bus stop. And the squeaking sound that Sasha's new combat boots were making against the pavement was irritating the hell out of me.
Sasha, my sister, my fraternal twin, was glowering up at me. Her face, rounder than mine, wore an annoyed expression and she sighed in exasperation as I met her gaze.
Her hair, which she wore down in loose brown waves, clung to her face and neck with her perspiration. She wore a tiny miniskirt, a wonder of smallness, really, seeing how short my sister was in the first place. Sweat stuck to her loose T-shirt, which proclaimed the name and logo of some old, little-known band that neither of us had heard of before Sasha had met Eric.
Eric, the boy that we had met at a McDonald's a few months ago down in London, for whom she wore this shirt and those stupid, annoying boots, the boy that Sasha talked about incessantly day in day out, was, in my opinion, an idiot. And that idiot was the reason we were down here in Little Whinging. Sasha had excitedly asked me to tag along on one of their dates. I had reluctantly accepted. So now, four hours of hanging out at Eric's house and feeling like the third wheel later, here I was, practically dying of heat exhaustion (okay, perhaps I'm exaggerating a little). Needless to say, my opinion of him was not improving under the circumstances.
"Olive," Sasha repeated, this time a little less piercingly. "He's the one I like, okay? Just get used to it; it's not going to change, no matter how much you don't like it."
I scowled, coming to a stop next to the bus stop sign. Sasha harrumphed loudly, sitting down on the bench, pulling out a book from her messenger bag, and burying her nose within it before I could blink an eye. I stared forlornly down at my shoes.
To be honest, I couldn't pinpoint why I disapproved of Eric. Perhaps it was because he seemed to have an air of arrogance about him, despite his baggy, black T-shirts and sagging pants. Perhaps it was because when Sasha and I had first met him, Sasha had started to flirt with him and had flipped her hair nonchalantly right into my face. Or just maybe he had started out on the wrong foot because of his twin small talk, a pet peeve of mine. The "Oh my goodness, are you two twins?"-"Which one's older"-"What's it like having another you?" talk which I had been witness to my whole life and which both bored me and exasperated me at the same time.
A group of about half a dozen people had started to congregate around the bus stop area, and I watched as Sasha scooted to the right on the bench to make room for a lanky, headphone-blasting boy and a cheerful, chattering family of three. Staring at the happy mother, the father, whose arm was wrapped around her, and their child, their small, laughing little girl, made me realize in one, stomach-clenching moment why I disliked Eric, why I didn't trust him with my sister. I thought he would leave her and hurt her feelings when he did, just like our mother had done.
I was jolted out of my thoughts when the bus came, huffing like a tired dog as it rolled to a stop. The boy with headphones pushed past me and the rest of the people followed his lead, impatient to get on the bus. I leveled my shoulders, spotted Sasha through the window making her way towards a bus seat, and stepped aboard the bus.
With a soft sigh, the bus began to move, making its way back towards downtown London. The little girl in the back of the bus began to squeal and giggle. Some hard metal song pumped from headphone boy, who was seated a clear five rows in front of me and playing his music at an eardrum-shattering volume. Sasha was engrossed in her copy of Lord of the Flies and, if not for the occasional glances upward at me and the accompanying scowls, would have appeared the same as usual. I sat in the seat next to her, my head tilted and leaning against the warm glass, gazing at the familiar surroundings of Little Whinging as they started to rush past the window.
We had lived here once. There, in the brick house across from the playground. Of course, that had been a long time ago, before my dad was stationed in New Jersey. Before my mother left us.
My dad, John Thompson, worked in the American military. Every few years or so, we would move, packing our things for another city, another state, or sometimes another country. Most of the places we had been were a blur of memories at the moment. I remembered little of Austin, Texas, my birthplace, or Springfield, or Minneapolis. We had come here, to England, when Sasha and I were about seven years old. Memories from that time were fuzzy. I vaguely remembered a few faces, a blonde, blushing girl with pigtails, a boy with dark, messy hair, a stern teacher with a ruthless glare, and a jumble of names and events from the times of our primary school days, but everything was mashed into an untidy heap somewhere inside of my brain.
After Little Whinging, we had gone to New Jersey, the place where most of my memories took place. The middle school and the high school I had gone to for the majority of my freshman year were friendly enough, I suppose, but I never did make a lot of friends in the four years I spent in them. Sure, I had had tons of "friendly acquaintances", who I would chat with idly when circumstances made it so, when they had no one else better to talk to. It's not like I had ever been the star of the show, but it wasn't like I was an inanimate blob. Yet somehow, yet again, Sasha and I had become "the Twins", pegged as parts of a unit, not individuals. Half my grade didn't know which twin I was. 50/50 chance of getting my name right. Or of course, they could go with the ever-correct "Sashalivia", just to make sure that they got my attention. As if I didn't already respond to Sasha's name because of the common confusion. Urgh.
It's not like I resented being grouped with Sasha. In fact, she was like my best friend, not that I would ever tell her that, since she would probably just laugh or act awkward. It wasn't like I was shy or reserved. And I was amused rather than annoyed when strangers that knew Sasha said a hearty hello to me, even though there were key differences in our appearances. What aggravated me was that we were seen as two interchangeable parts, even by some of our friends. When we were children, we thought it was funny that people would get us confused, and we'd play tricks and games on our friends and teachers. But now, at 15 years of age, I found it rather irksome that, although we were different, people saw us as the same, in both appearance and personality. We weren't.
Sasha sighed softly as the bus turned at an intersection, flipping her page with a flick of her finger, and I turned my glance toward her. There were so many differences. Sometimes I felt that the majority of people were partially blind or just didn't pay enough attention to details. They saw the similar features, the hazel eyes, the wavy brown hair, and our shortness and were immediately convinced we were exactly the same physically. They didn't see Sasha's different, rounder face structure, or the mole that she had on her chin that I didn't have, or the small scar by her left eyebrow from the time she had fallen on her face in sixth grade. They didn't notice I was two inches taller, that I was slightly thinner, or that I always wore my hair up and Sasha always wore hers down to help them remember who we each were. Even if they had known us for two, three, four years. However, this confusion had become a given in my life; I accepted it and expected it. There was no need to get angry or upset about it.
I pondered Sasha's relationship with Eric. She now had someone special, someone that could tell the difference, someone who enjoyed her for who she was. I had to admit I felt a little bit left out. After all, I knew her best, yet here she was, gradually growing to be further and further away from me. I knew that she snored when slept and that she was dreadfully afraid of bees. I knew that she was a grammar freak and that she could be selfish at times. I knew that she got lost easily. I knew that she was smart and immature and creative and caring. I knew everything there was to know about her because she was my older sister and my best friend. But at this moment, as I looked at her, I realized that I was no longer the key person in her life. I had to step back and let her and Eric be. I saw that I had no right to infringe upon their happiness, that I had to let go of the distrust I held for him, even if I disliked him, even if I felt a bit jealous of their happiness.
The bus was in a busier and more urban street now. As the bus' movements came to a pause at a stop light, I resumed staring out the window. Outside, adorned with a pink and green banner, was a small ice cream shop, and the first thought that popped in my head was that Mom would be smacking her lips and wishing for a butter pecan ice cream if she was beside me. And then I remembered that she wasn't at home, that she was gone and I had no idea where she was.
The bus jerked forward, but my thoughts remained on my mother. Being stationed back in England, our family had only been here a week or so when Mom had disappeared. Just up and left by the looks of it. Dad, Sasha, and I had come home from the supermarket only to find that all of Mom's clothing was missing and see a note on the dining room table that said "I've gone. Don't try to search for me. Love, Mom". Dad had been shattered ever since.
I felt the bus come to a halt and saw we had reached our destination, a bus stop just a few blocks away from our apartment. My thoughts disrupted, I nudged Sasha gently with my elbow and she nodded, stuffed her book into her bag, and proceeded to walk towards the bus exit. It seemed as if she had either forgiven me or forgotten our argument. I followed two steps behind her until we reached our apartment, opened the door, and spotted Dad, sitting upon the sofa, his arms limp at his sides, staring up at us with a vacant expression.