hi! considering i leave for brittanacon tomorrow afternoon (!), my feels are literally consuming me. naturally, i channeled that energy into my brittana/harry potter fangirl brain and thus we have part 10.
OT is up next, most likely sometime during the con i hope?
you guys are all fizzing whizzbees, thank you for all the support and encouragement and asks and follows and reviews and kudos. enjoy :D
As Brittany sits shotgun in her mother's sedan, all she can think about is the most efficient way to get her hands on Santana Lopez's phone number.
There's her closest friend in Gryffindor, Lauren Zises, who may know have Santana's number for some reason related to their dormitories or know someone else who would. Santana can't be that hard to track down. She texts Lauren quickly and leans her forehead against the glass of the window, the bustling streets and staunch grey stone buildings of metropolitan London zipping by in a blur. Brittany closes her eyes but all she is Santana staring back at her.
Brittany doesn't think anyone has ever looked at her like Santana does.
There is something about shy and mysterious Santana Lopez that she just can't shake and it both unnerves her and sets her body aflame.
Her phone buzzes in her lap. Lauren.
"Who?"
She almost kissed her. Santana can't even believe it herself. Like, she was leaning in and the courage came out of nowhere and it felt inevitable and… Fucking Mike Chang, nicest guy in Hufflepuff (and that's saying something) strolls in and blows her moment because of courseBrittany is friends with everyone. And Santana didn't even think to ask for her phone number. What. An. Idiot.
Santana is daydreaming again, wracking her brain on how to 'accidentally' run into Brittany this summer. Rachel is popular enough among some of the upperclassmen through the Frog Choir, so maybe she can score them an invite to one of Noah Puckerman's notorious beach parties at his grandparent's seaside cottage (which also happens to be just down the shoreline from the now infamous Shell Cottage, still occupied by Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour. Puck likes to brag about it and Santana finds it insufferable).
"What do you want for dinner, mija?" asks Santana's mother, turning towards Santana who is pinned uncomfortably in the cramped back seat between the car door and her trunk. "Santaaaaanaaa," her mother goads, snapping her fingers rapidly to get Santana's attention.
"Huh?" Santana is dumbfounded, as she had not heard a single word her mother or father had been saying the whole drive home.
"What's going on with you?" her father asks, eyeing her suspiciously through the rear view mirror.
"Nothing, why?" She answers a little too quickly and she hears her mother hum and cluck her tongue in mock disapproval. Santana watches her mom fail to hide a smile.
Although Hogwarts now felt like home after four whole school years, Santana missed her parents and was glad to see them. But the summer spread before her already feels like an eternity; a vast expanse of sticky-hot and boring lazy days in the countryside and far from Brittany Pierce. Days spent in her small hamlet of a town and doing Merlin knows what to pass the time.
Not many at Hogwarts know that both of Brittany's parents are Muggles.
Steve and Susan Pierce began noticing something was amiss with their daughter when night after night, they would find baby Brittany crawling across the hardwood floors of the upstairs of the house, having inexplicably broken out of her crib. Childproof locks, new state-of-the-art cribs, walls of pillows pressed up against the bars as barricades, yet nothing seemed to deter their bumbling blonde baby from escaping the confines of her nighttime prison. Their pediatrician brushed the escape acts off as coincidence: faulty equipment and even poor parenting, but the Pierces knew it had to be something else.
Strange things continued to happen involving Brittany throughout her young life; like the time she accompanied her mother volunteering at the local shelter and all of the animals seemed to escape from their cages at the same time, or when she was nine and her father had to pick her up from the principal's office for allegedly setting another girl's hair aflame, although there were no burns to prove it (that girl had stolen Brittany's ice cream sandwich and thrown it in the sandbox, which was just plain rude). Then there was the time when she was ten and her mother walked in on her building a Lego castle and an entire tower was floating in mid-air above the imaginary moat, as if waiting patiently for Brittany to place it properly in the keep.
All the strange happenings finally made sense the evening of Brittany's eleventh birthday.
After family dinner and scarfing birthday cake, there was a sharp rap on the door. Brittany watched her parents glance at each other in confusion before her father crossed the room and pulled open the front door, revealing a tall man with a rounded face and easy smile dressed in strange midnight-colored robes and holding a sealed envelope.
The stranger's eyes flicked briefly to Brittany and back to her father before he cleared his throat and began to speak.
"Mr. Pierce, I assume?" Brittany's father only nodded. "My name is Neville Longbottom and I'm a professor at a very prestigious school for gifted children. I'm here to present your daughter, Brittany, with this letter of acceptance," he explained, holding a thick envelope sealed with red wax extended over the threshold.
"What kind of school? I don't remember applying to any fancy schools. Susan?" asked Brittany's father, calling to his wife but not yet opening the door to indicate an invitation inside. He did, however, reach to grab the envelope, squinting down at it skeptically.
Brittany watched as the corners of the man's mouth pulled up into a smirk before winking at her quickly and looking back to Brittany's father. "It's a lot to explain, but your daughter is incredibly gifted. Do you mind if I come in? I would love a cup of tea after the long journey I've had."
"Erm, sure, yeah I guess," answered Brittany's dad, turning the letter over in his hands and bringing the envelope closer to his face to get a better look at the crest pressed into the wax.
Little did Brittany know how much this man, Neville Longbottom, would change her life, introducing her into a whole new world where she wasn't considered so much of a freak. Brittany started at Hogwarts a few short months later and never looked back.
It had been three days since Santana had gotten home from school and she was already bored to tears. She decided she was desperate enough to call Rachel after her fourth straight episode of Forensic Files reruns.
"Yeah, Rachel, I know… Will you… But… Yeah, I know, I just…" Santana sputters over the phone, trying to interrupt Rachel who has been spewing on about every minute detail of her past few days.
"…and my dads totally argued for like ten whole minutes in the middle of the store over what color drapes…" Santana groans loudly, slapping her palm to her forehead.
"Am I boring you, Santana?" Rachel asks, haughtily.
"Are you kidding? Can you hear yourself right now? Listening to Binns is more enthralling. And I called you for a reason, Goblin, so shut that orifice of yours and listen up. Our mission this summer, shall you choose to accept it, and you better accept it, is to get us invited to an upperclassmen party so I can 'run into,'" Santana uses her spare hand to form air quotes, "a certain tall, ravishing Ravenclaw." She licks her lips involuntarily.
"Well, I'll have you know that Finn has been invited to the Gryffindor quidditch party, which if you were patient, I would have gotten to." Rachel's voice is chiding and Santana grumbles again. "But yes, you can come with us. Saturday night at Sam's place, his parents are vacationing apparently. It's way up in Manchester so we can floo or portkey, we'll figure it out later."
Santana's stomach swoops and she's grinning through the phone. "Rachel, I have never loved your oaf of a boyfriend more than I do at this very moment."
When Rachel launches into another anecdote from her dads' shopping escapade, Santana lets her mind wander to Brittany, hoping that as a star quidditch player and the most popular girl in school, she will also be at Sam Evans' house on Saturday night.