AN: My apologies for the late update. Lack of motivation, a splitting migraine, and a period of being banned from the computer all came together to stop this chapter from being published. Anyway, I've finally slipped in an OC. He's not very original, perhaps, but he was fun to write and I can play with his character a bit more. Let me know what you think of him. (More author's notes at the bottom).

Disclaimer: Nothing here belongs to yours truly, except for Rupert George who fervently wishes that C.S. Lewis owned him, too.


"No."

Peter looked down at his brother, who's face held an expression of anger and flat out denial.

"What?" he asked, with a smirk.

"No," Edmund repeated, balling his fist and shaking it in his brother's face. "It isn't going to happen."

Turning to Lucy, he shot her a glance calculated to make even the bravest shiver in their boots. Lucy, unfortunately, merely giggled.

"Come along, Ed," she said, in a coaxing manner. "It will be fun."

"Don't you already know how to dance?" Edmund retorted, tottering to his feet.

"I know a lot of Narnian dances," said Lucy, hesitatingly, "but English dances are different."

"But why the sudden interest?"

"Well," said Lucy, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall, "I'm bored."

"Is that the only reason?" Edmund sighed, wondering mutinously, as he did so, where fauns were when you really needed them.

"Of course," smiled Lucy, looking up at her brother with hope-filled eyes. Edmund, self-appointed party pooper, decided to extinguish that hope.

"I'm not doing it," he said, with a defiant shake of his head. Anything would be better than prancing around like some idiot with his brother, he decided. His brother! As if dancing with Lucy wasn't bad enough! "And," he added, with a sideways glance at said brother, "take that grinning monkey out of here before he splits his face." Peter's grin only widened.

Lucy reached for Edmund's hand and grasped it in an iron grip. "You'll love it, Edmund," she laughed, dragging him into the centre of the room and motioning for Peter, with a wave of her free hand, to move the furniture out of the way.

"I hate it," gasped Edmund, wincing as Lucy's nails dug sharply into his hand. "You know I do! Dancing is for girls!"

"You loved it in Narnia," Lucy said thoughtfully, releasing her brother's hand. She strode quickly over to the window and drew the curtains.

"That was Narnia," said Edmund sullenly.

"I don't see the difference."

"Girls never see the difference in anything," muttered Edmund, with a slight curl of his lip. He was growing more and more ill-tempered by the second.

"What was that?" asked Lucy, spinning on her heel suddenly.

"Nothing!" Edmund shook his head vehemently.

Lucy didn't reply with words. Instead, she strode purposefully into the centre of the room, grasped her brother's hand in a firm grip, and practically threw him towards Peter, who caught him awkwardly before toppling to the ground. Edmund glared up at her.

"Do you want to embarrass me?!" He shouted.

"No, of course not," was Lucy's reply. If Edmund had been just a little less dazed from his collision into Peter, he would have noticed that Lucy's tone was a shade too innocent. But, suffering from a slight concussion, he settled with simply getting to his feet and gritting his teeth at his smiling sister.

"Let's just get it over with," he spat, rubbing his left arm which had struck the floor sharply.

Lucy tripped merrily to the side of the room and seated herself at the Pevensie's little piano. Striking up a merry tune, she grinned encouragingly at Peter, who, getting the hint, grabbed Edmund's by both hands and spun him around the room.

"I'll be sick!" threatened Edmund, glaring as maliciously as possible up at his cheerful brother. It is very difficult to look even remotely threatening when one can't feel the ground beneath one's feet.

Peter looked down at him in slight horror before extending the distance between them. "If you ruin my sweater -" he growled meaningfully,

"You and your precious sweater," mumbled Edmund. He turned to Lucy then, and added, "What dance do you want to learn, anyway?"

The piano jarred as Lucy's fingers left the keys. "Anything that you and Peter learned when you used to go to dancing lessons before the war."

"Dancing lessons?" Edmund scratched his head. Oh, yes. Now he remembered. He remembered a large, dimly-lit room with a couple of dozen, disgustingly cheerful little girls and a dozen sullen little boys who looked as though they'd rather be boiled alive then be there. He was a member of the latter; while Peter, being the golden child, was the only boy there who looked happy. The Dancing Class, Edmund recalled, was sixty minutes of pure torture. He remembered how eighty percent of the time, he would fall asleep behind a large mirror, only to be dragged out by an infuriated dancing teacher. He remembered being caned, several times, for tripping whoever happened to be his partner. He remembered –

"Edmund! Edmund?" A small hand, waved violently in front of his face, jolted him from the nightmare.

"What?" he snapped irritably, swatting the hand from his face.

"You were daydreaming," said Lucy simply.

"Daydreaming? Humph." Edmund crossed his hands and stood a considerable distance from his brother. He smirked deviously as Peter inspected his sweater, before continuing, in a dull voice: "And besides, I don't remember any dances."

"Well, I do," stated Peter, ignoring the look of frustration Edmund gave him. "I remember perfectly."

"Perfectly. Of course," muttered Edmund, rolling his eyes.

"Now," continued Peter, pretending he hadn't heard his brother's remark, "what dance, Lu?"

"A waltz!" exclaimed Lucy, a little too enthusiastically. Edmund quietly bemoaned about "poor, put upon older brothers", before placing his hand reluctantly in Peter's. If he squeezed a little harder then absolutely necessary, in order to make his older brother wince, said older brother didn't notice. In fact, said older brother gripped said younger brother's hand in an even tighter hold, thus beginning a brief wrestling match.

Lucy lifted her eyes from the piano just in time to see Peter throw Edmund to the ground. Her eyebrows lifted slightly as Edmund, in retaliation, kicked his brother on the shin. Laying her head on the smooth wood of the piano, she sighed deeply.

Such mature and noble kings...

Even in her thoughts, the sarcasm was unmistakable.

"Are you two quite finished?" she asked, trying to keep her expression stoic as Edmund looked up with an expression akin to how a kicked dog would look if you took his favourite bone.

"Of course!" Peter said cheerily, his hair just a little messed from the tussle. He leapt to his feet and extended a hand to his brother. "Come on, Ed. We might as well get it over with."

Edmund got to his feet with a scowl. "Yes," he growled, dusting off his pants, "the sooner the better."

The music began again. Peter grabbed Edmund's hand and was about to grab his waist, when a low snarl stopped him.

"If you think," began Edmund (who was wishing desperately that looks could kill), "that I am playing the part of the girl, you need to have your head examined."

"Well, I'm not going to be the girl!" exclaimed Peter.

"Well, neither am I."

"You're smaller."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm taller then you are. It would look plain silly if I was the girl, Ed. Can't you see that?"

"No," retorted Edmund flatly. "I can't."

The banter went back and forth until, finally, Peter, being the selfless and obliging brother that he was, agreed to be the girl. Under protest, of course. Getting down on his knees, so that his head was level with Edmund's chest, he motioned for Lucy to begin the music.

"And you'd better be grateful for this," he hissed, in a very Edmund-like tone. Edmund merely smiled and patted the top of his brother's head.

The dance, if it could even be called that, started off fluidly enough. Edmund, though he fumbled a little, managed to get by without any obvious errors. Peter was surprisingly nimble on his knees. He kept shouting out directions to Lucy, who would nod her auburn head and smile. Eventually, however, someone stumbled ... and it wasn't Peter.

"Are you okay, Edmund?" a concerned Lucy inquired, looking over her shoulder.

Edmund's face was twisted into a horrified look of shock. His usually pale face was a sickly shade of green and his mouth was open. He raised a shaking hand to the window. The curtains had been blown aside, letting in a sliver of sunshine and exposing the dance lesson to the world.

"Edmund?" asked Peter, rising from his knees to give his brother a hearty shake. "Edmund?"

"Ru - Ru -" stuttered Edmund, stumbling over to a low chair. "Ru -"

"Ru?" said Peter, lifting a brow in confusion. "What's a Ru?"

Edmund's face turned bright pink, and if one could die of embarrassment, he surely would have.

"Rupert George," he muttered, in a dead voice. Peter stared at his brother, blinked, and then matched his brother's cod-fish expression perfectly.

"Rupert George?" he gasped. "That sissy? Where did you see him?"

"At the window," said Edmund, turning to his brother with a look of dread. "You know what a gossip and a story-teller he is, Peter. He'll spread rumours all over school and we'll be the class idiots. Dancing with my brother, indeed." Edmund finished with a snort.

Peter, on the point of replying, was interrupted by a sound neither boy wished to hear. Namely, the sound of the door-bell ringing. Never had the cheery sound been so ominous.

Ding-a-ling-dong.

The sound of their mother opening the door floated into the living room. Edmund cringed, while Peter wondered absently if beating a fellow classmate outside of school would be considered strictly courteous or High King-like. Darn the Rat! What was he doing at their house in the summer, anyway?

"Oh, you want to see Peter and Edmund?" their mother's voice had never sounded so grating. "They're in the living room. Second door down the hall. I'm sure they'd be glad to see one of their school chums."

Chums, indeed. Thought Edmund wryly. Yes, my dear chum Rupert with the neck that I would love to wring.

Edmund's murderous thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of the boy himself. Tall and thin, with sleek, carefully curled mousy hair, squinting blue eyes and a long, narrow nose, he looked every inch his nickname: Rat. He skulked to the opposite end of the room and regarded his school chums with pitying indifference.

"Pevensie," he said, addressing Peter, who started and narrowed his eyes. Edmund cringed at the sound of Rupert's voice. Nails scraped long and painfully down a chalkboard would be more appealing.

"George," was Peter's retort. You could have cut the tension with a knife.

"Let's cut to the chase, Pevensie," said Rupert, sitting down in a low arm-chair. "I saw you two, dancing." Oh, the contempt in his voice was tangible.

"We were showing Lucy how to dance," chimed in Edmund, daring the older boy with his angry glare to make a big deal of it.

"Pevensie the younger," said Rupert, tapping his long fingers together, "as plausible as that excuse sounds, I rather doubt that our fellow classmates will believe you once they hear my spin on the events." Rupert laughed cruelly, his eyes lighting up in sinister enjoyment.

"You snivelling little –" Edmund began, before he was interrupted by a stone-faced Peter.

"What do you want, George?" Peter said coldly. Hearing the tone, Edmund knew that his brother was one comment away from punch-your-daylights-out mad. He wondered what would tip him over the edge.

"Do my homework for a month, clean my boots after soccer practice and –" he paused, relishing the look of anger mirrored in Peter and Edmund's eyes. Seriously, this boy had a death wish – "and, taking into consideration your obvious knack for thinking up excuses, get me out of trouble -whenever I ask - with said excuses."

"I see," said Peter, gritting his teeth. "In a word – blackmail."

"I always knew you were smart, Pevensie," commented Rupert. He felt on top of the world, at the moment. Finally, the famous Pevensie brothers were cowering - and to his demands! Life was excellent.

Unfortunately for one Rupert George, the pedestal he was currently on was snatched from under him at the sound of the following words:

"Is that Rupert George?"

All three boys (and Lucy) spun at the sound. There stood Susan, still flushed from the fever, her expression friendly.

"Su - Susan!" spluttered the Rat. "I haven't seen you since –"

"Since your sister Sally's birthday party last year," finished Susan triumphantly.

Rupert's ears turned red. He gave her a somewhat wobbly smile.

"Ah, ah, yes. My, how the time flies. Don't forget my conditions, Pevensie and Pevensie the younger. Well, good-bye."

He was in the act of making a hasty retreat, when Susan spoke again.

"Yes," Susan was laughing now. Edmund could have sworn he saw a fiendish glint in her blue eyes. He shrugged it off with a sigh. Whoever heard of Susan the Gentle looking even remotely fiendish? It must have been a trick of the light. "Do you remember what happened at that party?"

"NO!" said Rupert, perhaps a little too loudly.

"You don't?" she asked. Edmund started and looked at his sister closely. Yes, that was definitely a glint. He chuckled lowly, wondering what Susan knew about Rupert that they didn't.

"No, I don't remember," said Rupert, shaking his head and sidling towards the door.

"Well, I remember," said Susan cheerfully. "Sit down Rupert. I'm sure that Peter and Edmund would simply love to hear about it."

"I'm sure they would," hissed George, "But I really must be going. Dinner and all that. Good-bye all."

His dash for the door would have ended successfully if Lucy, of all people, hadn't extended a stockinged leg, effectively putting an end to his flight. Rupert George went flying through the air and landed in a sprawled heap near the piano. Peter and Edmund, seeing how the Rat's attempt at escape had played out, tripped blithely to their fallen school fellow, picked him up bodily, and deposited him in an armchair.

"Now," said Peter, looking Rupert straight in the face with a triumphant smirk, "I'm sure that we'd all love to hear Susan's story. Proceed, Susan."

Susan leant back comfortably and began her story.


AN: My apologies for any grammar, spelling, or historical mistakes. The aforementioned migraine took its toll, I'm afraid. And yes, there will be another chapter. Although I have a fairly good idea as to what Susan will reveal, any humorous and/or embarrassing suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you ^^