A/N: lalalala so yeah not much going on. I need to repaint my nails and I over did my crunches so now my stomach hurts a bit. .o Thankfully, my old gymnastics stretching helps. ^^

Ms. Arakawa and Ms. Rowling are my inspiration, yo! Don't be dissin' m'gals!

Chapter Two

Going to school proved a little difficult, since Amber hardly knew the way to the local high school and Sirius' map proved harder to read than a doctor's prescription note to the pharmacy. It was chilly outside, the clouds overcast with slight drizzling rain. She pulled on her father's old camouflage shirt as a jacket before walking out with her backpack on her back. After securing the house, she pulled up her bicycle and started pedaling down the street, looking briefly at her map. This too proved to be a little difficult as the rain kept dropping on it while she attempted to cover it with her arm as she looked this way and that. One of these days she would have to get a car to drive so she wouldn't have to worry about this anymore!

Riding across the wet streets wasn't too hard. She had done it before several times in Austin when going to school, though typically she would have a bus to stop at to get a ride part of the way. Here there didn't seem to be one, but since the school was closer to her than her old high school back in Texas she didn't worry too much on it.

She began to cross the street for the school boundary when she slammed on her breaks as a black car nearly rammed into her front wheel. She shouted at the man in the car, "Hey! Watch it! I have the right of way here!"

The windows were tinted so much that she could barely see into them. What she could make out was a pale face with dark eyes peering at her through the tinted window. She blinked as she stared at him for a moment, temporarily stunned by the look of pure cold anger in those dark eyes, before he waved her on dismissively. Amber regained herself and glared back before walking her bike the rest of the way across the street.

The look had been so raw, so cold that it had disarmed her. It was as though she just saw the sort of look a victim sees on a murder's face just before he slices their throat. A sort of annoyed boredom crossed with murderous rage. Perhaps she had been a little rude, but not rude enough to warrant the look of loathing he had given her. She shook her head and rode her bike the rest of the way to the front of the school where she locked up her bike and went inside the school. She stopped when she saw the black car pull into the parking lot and take a spot next to an old truck. She didn't wait for the occupant to walk out of it. Instead, she walked into the school, calming herself down for the start of the day. The last thing she needed was to be unsettled by a possible sociopath among her peers on the first day of school.

It was then that she ran right into a pair of broad chests and strong arms. Two boys, identical to one another, grinning ear to ear as they helped her away from them. Both were covered in freckles and had bright red hair on their heads. Their brown eyes twinkled with mischief as they set her on her feet.

"Careful there!"

"We wouldn't want the new girl getting hurt!"

"Yeah, that would be bad!"

"Nah, seriously, we're here to help you!"

Amber eyed the pair and smiled faintly toward them. "Hello, I'm Amber Elric," she said.

"Fred and George Weasley," they said simultaneously and linked arms with one another, "Up to you to figure out which one is which!"

Amber giggled and rolled the sleeves of her jacket up her arms a bit. "All right, thank you for helping me up. If you don't mind I need to get my locker and combination before I go to my first class." They parted for her like the red sea and turned to watch her walk up the stairs to a new hallway. When she looked back both were still grinning up at her identically. She grinned and shook her head, laughing. She couldn't help herself.

When she finally reached her first class she found herself once more faced with the pair of red haired twins in the front of the class and smiling at her the same way they had when they had first seen her. She had also noticed that there were a few other students the resembled them in the school, most notably a girl a couple years younger than her. Just by her appearance alone Amber wondered if perhaps James and Lily's son Harry Potter would like the girl and plotted to get a photograph of him to give to the girl along with his email address for her.

The brothers waved to Amber before motioning to a seat behind them. Amber preferred being toward the back, but she wasn't about to miss sitting behind these boys. After all, they seemed to be the life of the entire school. If they had taken a shine to her then surely that might make the class more interesting. Although, the down side would likely be that she might actually learn anything from laughing too hard at the pair of them.

And she had been right. The pair continued to pass notes to her about this and that before both winked at her and began harassing the teacher.

"Mrs. Hardbrook!"

"We have a question!"

"Could we have your opinion on this?"

"It's about the story of video games actually…"

"And it's more of a bet we made with one another that you didn't know more than we did about consoles."

Mrs. Hardbrook, a rather stiff looking woman with her hair pulled back tightly and glasses perched on her nose, smiled faintly toward the pair. Clearly she had dealt with this before. "Given that this class is about Economics, I'm sure we could learn about which gaming consoles are the most expensive and why they are."

The pair chuckled together and as one spoke, "You're cool, ma'am!" This earned them a small smile from Mrs. Hardbrook before she walked behind her desk to the board and began doing just as she had said. It was wonderful to have a class where the teacher seemed prepared for a pair of rowdy boys trying to test her patience! Amber was definitely impressed.

After Economics and English, Amber went to lunch. She ran into the Weasley twins and went through the line with them before moving to their table with them. They sat with, apparently, their own siblings. Sitting down near her was the red haired, freckle faced girl she was still plotting on giving a photo of Harry to as well as his email address and on the other side of the table was a tall, thin boy with the same bright red hair and freckles as the rest of his family. "Hello," said Amber, smiling at him.

He looked up and smiled faintly. "Hi," he said, "I'm Ron Weasley."

"I'm Ginny," said the girl.

Amber nodded to them both and smiled broadly at them. "I'm Amber Elric. It's nice to meet you both. Your brothers here are in my Economics class."

Ginny grinned, her brown eyes twinkling like her older brothers'. "Fred and George are fun to be around, but don't let them use you for any of their plots. They like getting people in trouble."

Fred and George both looked at her aghast. "We do not!"

"Yeah! We're perfectly fine exploiting people without using them for plots," said the twin, whom Amber realized was Fred. It turned out that the loudest of the pair was Fred and the plotter for the pair was George. Ginny and Amber laughed while Ron grinned silently. A girl with fluffy brown hair passed and Amber blinked after her.

And so did Ron.

Ginny smirked. "It's Ron's girlfriend," she said.

"Is not!" snapped Ron, his ears turning red.

Amber chuckled and shook her head. As she did this she had the sudden feeling that someone or something was watching her. She turned and looked over her shoulder to a table where only five people sat. They looked as though they had not slept in ages, the circles under their eyes dark and their skin was oddly pale. Their eyes, however, were some of the most vivid colors Amber had ever seen. There was a young woman with very broad shoulders and a large bust, she had long, silvery blonde hair pulled back into a pair of loose ponytails that covered her ears somewhat. Her eyes were a bright, vivid blue. Next to her was a girl with long, black hair and her eyes were a vivid, pale gray. The black haired girl was much smaller boned than the blonde girl and wore all black clothing and gray make up on her lids, though this only seemed to accentuate the sleepless look of her.

There were three boys as well, two of which had their backs to Amber, but seemed oddly familiar. She saw the third was staring right at her, however. His eyes were dark, almost black, but they almost glowed with a strange blue light to them. His skin was as deathly pale as the rest of them, but, like the black haired girl, his groomed black hair only made him look even paler than the rest. His hair wasn't even styled normally, either. It was sort of longish and combed in such a fashion as to be almost stiff about it. His style of dress was just as stiff, with a white button up shirt and tie, his slacks clean and pressed and his shoes were nice dress shoes. Clearly, this boy either had a very strict mother, or he was incredibly out of synch with the rest of the world. Even worse, Amber recognized his face and the look of cold hatred as being from the man in the car that nearly ran into her.

As if as one, all of the kids at that one table turned to look at Amber. It was then that she saw the other two boys' faces, if only briefly: one looked similar to her father and the other looked almost exactly like her. Both had the most vivid yellow eyes she had ever seen outside of animals. Amber turned quickly away from them and looked to the twins who were giving her a strange expression. "What?" she asked.

"You interested in the local freaks?" asked George.

"I was nearly run over by the black haired boy there," said Amber, "This morning when I was riding my bicycle to school." Was it just her or could she still feel their eyes on her back, or maybe it was just the one boy's with the deep blue eyes.

"You look a lot like Ed over there," said Ron.

"Mmm, yeah, and his brother Al looks like you a little, too," said Ginny softly as she looked over.

Amber rubbed her face. Something wasn't right about those five and it bothered her greatly. Why did two of the boys look like her and her family? Why did that one boy look as though killing her would be a pleasant idea? "What are their names? And why did you call them the 'local freaks'?"

"Because they are. They don't show up when it's really sunny outside and they all tend to look like they need sleep," said Fred. "They're really weird."

"Fred and I are running a bet that they're really vampires or werewolves," said George, grinning. "I bet on werewolves."

"I bet on vampires," said Fred.

"Whatever they are, Tom Knight is the scariest of the pair," said Ginny, "I caught him mumbling something about killing everyone in the school one day. I tell you he's going to come to school one day and go Columbine on everyone."

Amber snorted and looked over for the third time. The kids at the table had all turned back to their lunch trays, although it seemed as though they had not touched their lunches at all. Amber frowned and turned back to her newfound friends in the Weasley children. "So, who are they again?"

"Well, they're all adopted into the Knight family, but Tom, the black haired fellow there, Avalon, the black haired girl, and Astra, the blondie, are all brother and sisters from early childhood. They were the first to be adopted back when they were kids by Mr. and Mrs. Knight and then the other two boys were adopted when they were about eleven and twelve. They're Ed and Al Bell," said Fred.

Amber nodded and looked to them, frowning faintly. Perhaps they were related to her in some fashion, by some distant line that her aunt had not told her about. If that was so Amber was certain her aunt and father would be thrilled to learn of these boys. And there was also the problem of the boys both sharing the names of her great-uncle and his brother, her great-grandfather. It was as though they had jumped out of the pages of her photo album!

The very next class Amber had was Government and Amber noticed that she was being spied by every pair of eyes in the classroom. At least, that's what it felt like for only about a minute. After a while, everyone just turned back to what they were doing except for one boy in the back of the classroom. There, she saw Tom Knight sitting back and eyeing her with that same cold and rather bored look on his face. When she realized that every seat was taken save for the one next to him she resigned herself to sit next to him and hope he didn't have any plans to kill anyone inside the classroom while she was there.

Setting her things down, she noticed that Tom Knight moved his desk as far away from her as possible. She raised an eyebrow and looked to him, frowning. "Is there a problem?" she asked.

"I don't like your perfume," he drawled, his accent clearly English for the most part.

"Sorry if you feel that way," she said, looking at him coolly, "But I'm afraid you'll have to live with it."

Tom snorted derisively before turning away from her. Amber wondered briefly if perhaps she should slap that nice nose of his into a different shape before he flicked those dark, deep blue eyes of his toward her. And was it her imagination or did they change from inky blue to bright, demonic red for a flitting second? She stared at him, shaken inside by the suddenness of those red eyes and moved her chair just a little away from him. Perhaps Fred and George were right about the Knights and Bells. Perhaps they were vampires or something. At the very least Tom Knight seemed as though he was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Either way, clearly this was a boy who was used to frightening people into doing what he wanted of them. Therefore, Amber was going to have to make sure he didn't frighten her.

And that was how it started. The class started with the teacher talking about the branches of Government while Amber slowly inched her desk back into its original position. Tom, who didn't look at her once, didn't seem to notice this at all. In fact, it was as though she wasn't there. That didn't matter, because Amber was going to make sure he didn't intimidate her a second time, or was this the third time?

"If by moving closer to me you think you are making a point, let me assure you that the only point you are making to me is that your perfume means more to you than my sense of smell," said Tom in a very quiet voice.

Amber scowled at Tom wearily and wrote down her notes, moving her desk just a little closer to his. Tom turned and glared at Amber finally before raising his hand. "Mr. Turner, perhaps you could tell Miss Elric here to move her desk back? She is crowding me."

Amber, flushing bright red, moved her desk back immediately and sighed. She covered her face with her hand and attempted to hide in her desk somehow. "I trust I don't have to say anything," said Mr. Turner as he turned back to the front.

"No, you don't," muttered Amber softly. When she looked back at Tom again she saw the faintest, most irritating smirk curling his pale lips. She looked away and went back to writing her notes and tried to seem as engrossed in them as possible. The last thing she needed was to have to redo her notes because some creepy boy sitting next to her made her ready to stab a pencil in his dark eyes.