So, many had written a first weeks at Hogwarts chapter, the most important of which was J.K. Rowling. I decided to try a different tact that may or may not work: a recounting of the major and important events rather than following along. It's a new way of storytelling I've come across recently. Leave a review or a PM telling me how you liked it, and if it's a good way to tell stories. If not, I'll revise the chapter in a more traditional way.
Chapter 4-First Week of Hogwarts
Fantina couldn't believe it. Two weeks had just gone by in a flash, two of the best weeks of her life. Weeks that were consequential, yet still were hard. Now here she was, just 72 hours into her Hogwarts experience, her second day of classes now over. She laid back on her four poster, thinking hard about the last two weeks. Yet, a mysterious emotions was plaquing her right now.
Why am I so miserable? she thought.
A little voice inside her head she absolutely hated decided to answer her back.
Because your siblings aren't here.
She moaned into her pillow, bemoaning the truth of those words. Never had she been so glad to get away from them: and yet never had she missed them so much. She replayed the events of the last two weeks,
Leaving
The morning of September 1st came like a whirlwind. With little fanfare, Mom came roaring into the room, hustling Fantina awake at 6 a.m. while her two siblings enjoyed their beauty sleep. By 10 a.m., she was in a borrowed car, on the way to King's Cross Station.
The departure was by far worse for Skye and Tina. Both cried as the train pulled away, with Mom powerless to comfort them. She waved goodbye to Fantina, who occupied the last compartment on the train. The youngest triplet felt a weird pang of longing as the massive behemoth pulled out of the station northwards, towards the dream of her life.
Arrival at the School
The Sorting Ceremony was most nerve wracking of all to Fantina. Not entirely sure where she belonged, Gryffindor where her father was, or Ravenclaw from her mother's side (who was a Thunderbird before that).
"You will now be sorted into your House," Headmistress McGonagall announced to the 200 or so new students. "While you are here, your House will be like your family. You will sleep in your House's dormitory, hang out in your common room, and will return their after classes each day."
With that she started with the A's, and went on down the list. Fantina's anxiety continued to spike until she got to the latter part of the B's.
"Fantina Bones."
It was with a brief pang in her heart she thought as two names would probably never be read aloud in this hall: Skye and Tina Bones. She hardened it: nowhere in her heart should she be feeling anything like. Legs like jelly, somehow they moved under her command. Under the eyes of well over a thousand people, she pulled the old hat down over her head. After two seconds, a voice in her ear made her squeak silently.
"Hmmm, quite a lot in here, oh, a thirst to set yourself apart, emergence from your siblings' shadows...oh, a hatred for anything Muggle...keep an eye on that, it might not serve you well...quite a lot of knowledge...where to put you?"
Fantina held her breath: this was her chance, her time to finally set herself apart.
Slytherin...come on...Slytherin...
"Slytherin eh," the hat said, astonished. "Tell me, why Slytherin?"
Fantina couldn't think of a single reason other than it was the house her siblings said they didn't want go to.
"Slytherin wouldn't do you good, not with who dwell there. Ravenclaw and Gryffindor could both help you on the way to greatness no doubt. But better be...HUFFLEPUFF!"
The Sorting Hat shouted the last aloud to the hall, with raucous applause from the Student Body. Fantina's heart though, instantly fell to the sewers.
That night, Fantina wrote her Mom a long letter that included these sentences: 'Why Hufflepuff? Why not Slytherin?'
It quickly became clear who the bully was in the school. Delilah and her long-time gang of 'mean girls' quickly found a new target: Fantina Bones. Lacking the protection her siblings had always provided (Skye and Tina had always confronted anyone who dared tease her, one of the few things she admired about them) she became easy pickings for the experienced bullies on her very first day.
Fantina couldn't believe it: this was nothing like she had been told about since she was three. Could have her cousins all been wrong? That was until she wrote to Skye about her troubles. Less than 24 hours later, Kent and an unknown additional barn owl arrived carrying a huge package, delivering it at night to her dorminotry rather than at breakfast. Written in Skye's untidy scrawl was 'For Fantina's eyes only'.
She opened it to find a large, orange balloon with the words 'Whoopee Cushion' on it. She eyed it warily: the shocking experience she had gone through two weeks ago was just one of many such events she'd sufferred at the hands of Skye and Tina's experiments.
"What is this?" she asked herself as a note fell out of it in Tina's handwriting.
Dear Fantina
This is called a 'Whoopee Cushion'. Muggles used it to prank one another by placing it on a chair before the intended victim sits down, causing a farting noise. Same concept, but this one has a special surprise in it. Since we cannot be there to do it in person, I'm afraid you are going to have to flower a bit.
Figure out where Delilah likes to sit and place this on it. Make sure she sits on it, or you could get in trouble with Mr. Filch, who from Mom's tales, doesn't sound like the best person to have a run in with. I'm pretty sure that if we were there, we'd already have a drawer in his office all to ourselves.
Sincerely
Tina & Skye
Yes they would, Fantina thought as she turned their gift over.
For another day of classes, Fantina wondered what to do with her sibling's gift. Finally, she did a little research, finding out what squishy armchair was Delilah's favorite to sit in and deposited the orange thingy into it before she sat down. Delilah sat down chatting nonchalantly with her friend group: 'whoosh'. A blast of air erupted upwards, destroying her carefully done updo, and enveloping her and the bullies in a mushroom cloud equivalent to that of a dozen dung bombs. Screams erupted as the fumes spread and a mass exodus of the Hufflepuff common room commenced.
Fantina tried to contain her laughter, but found it hard not too. She joined the student body outside as Delilah and a half a dozen others emerged, smelling like fresh cow manure. Another exodus occurred as some seventy students fled down staircases, into nearby corridors, the bathrooms, or anywhere they could get away from the 'mean girls'. For her, it was the highlight of her second day there.
Present Day
Fantina couldn't believe what she was feeling at the moment. In her mind's eyes, she could see Skye and Tina doing it for her, no matter what house they were put in. Why can't they come?
The questions bounced around Tina's brain and refused to leave. She grabbed a piece of parchment from under her bed, a quill, and began to write a very short but important letter to her siblings, one she hoped never to write.
Dear Tina and Skye
Is there anyway you can come to Hogwarts? Can you find anyway? Life just isn't the same around here.
Sincerely
Fantina
She put it on a school owl, and flung it out the window in the Owlery. As she watched the owl disappear into the coming darkness, little did she know just how much a single event taking place some 6oo miles aways would impact her life: and change it forever.
Some 600 miles away, Karen Bones arose from her bed, hair completely destroyed, in her white nightgown around 5 a.m. Ever since the disaster, she had downsized from a queen sized bed to a twin. Her room, careful and very tidy, was devoid of almost all decoration except for two nightstands on either side of her bed. She slowly drifted into the kitchen, heading for the sink and a glass of water. As per habit, she had her wand in her right hand.
As she reached for the handle, a red jolt of light hit the cupboard near her head, shattering it into a thousand pieces. She screamed in pain as glass rained down on her, blinding her completely. As more spells just missed her, she staggered, firing off random spells in all directions. Finally, another red jet of light hit her in the face, and she collapsed in agony to the glass covered floor. As she feel, she tripped a laser wire detection system Skye and Tina had set up last night and forgot to turn off.
A multitude of Muggle contraptions went off, filling the kitchen with fireworks, mouse like flaming instruments, and other weaponry. Several dark figures screamed and fled from the apartment, many on fire, other sporting minor injuries, burns, and tentacles. The racket also jolted the twins from their beds. As the last assailent fled from the now destroyed kitchen, the lights flickered on.
"Mom!" Tina and Skye said, racing to her side.
"Is she?" Tina said, not wanting to say it.
Skye felt for a pulse like he read about in a book a few weeks back: he could her heart still beating.
"She's fine, maybe just knocked out, get some cold water," he said.
Tina grabbed a glass and began to fill it while Skye looked around the kitchen in awe.
"It worked," he said. "The system really worked."
"Maybe I was wrong," Tina said, arriving with the glass of ice cold water.
She had objected to them using their small stockpile they'd bought from Weasleys Wizarding Wheezes as part of their protection system, but Skye had finally convinced her to try it. Now it had paid off. Tina dumped the ice cold water on Karen's face. The water slipped onto their mother's bloodied face, washing the blood away. She jolted awake, panic stricken. She began scurrying around for her wand.
"Mom, it's okay," Tina said, giving her a hug. "We're safe. What happened last night? We woke up and found you like this."
Mom thought quickly, gathering her wits about her. One thought occupied her brain: we aren't safe.
"Tina, got get parchment and one of Skye's pens," she said, ignoring the question. "Skye, get Ken."
Both twins obeyed without question: such was the trust between Mother and offspring forged in the frying pan of affliction that they did what she told them quite promptly. When both had returned, she quickly told them an abbreviated version of the story.
"Skye, get your system up and working ASAP," she told him. "It clearly works."
"Yeah, but our stache of Weasleys gear is spent," Tina pointed out.
"I'll buy some," Mom said, causing both of her children to stare at her in disbelief. "Those attackers got through some serious enchantments. They weren't expecting your makeshift security system though."
"I didn't even think it would work," Skye conceded.
Mom paused, thinking.
"Maybe that's one of your powers Skye," she said.
"What?"
"What did you power it with?"
"Nothing, I just put it together and it worked as if it was plugged in."
"That power had to come from somwhere. I suggest you take a closer look at it instead of using my Incendio spell."
Skye flexed his fingers, staring at them in disbelief. Tina beamed with pride: she was getting worried that Skye might not have magic at all, but she never lost faith in him.
"Now go on," she said. "Repair that system pronto."
As her children left, Karen used magic to heal her many wounds, pondering the cause of the attack and why. She couldn't figure out why someone had attacked her. Why target us? How'd they get through my protection spells? And why didn't they see Skye's protection device?
Her fingers drummed on the counter as she continued to work it out. It must be someone familiar with our rountine...yet not familiar enough to be on the lookout for strange contraptions. Can't be a robbery nothing was taken...yet...maybe.
Karen Bones dared not allow herself to go to that theory-yet. She would however, need some help in weeding out who was responsible. She dare not report it to the Ministry-she couldn't trust anyone anymore, or just one person of her family. Taylor Darnay, a young man of about twenty, was the only one she could trust. Born into a distant branch of the family, he wasn't considered by the majority of the Bones family members as one of them, yet could trace his lineage straight into the main family tree.
Like her twins, he was born a Squib, but had made the best of a bad situation. Now he worked as the No. 1 top agent for a top secret agency that straddled the border between the Muggle and wizarding worlds, keeping the peace between them-and cleaning up international incidents.
Dear Taylor Darnay
This is for your eyes only. Please come over at once. We were just attacked, and I don't trust anyone else.
Sincerely,
Karen Bones
She sealed the envelope and threw her owl out of the the window. She hastened to the twins' bedrooms: they needed to leave quickly. After packing their things, both of them grabbed onto their mother's arms. They vanished into thin air with a small 'pop'.