The body settled down in the jet obsidian waters, thumping the white sand, lifeless. Golden locks sprawled out like liquid; white face a picturesque of unmarked death. Crystal bubbles escaped to the surface, rising away from the body, and torn green shoots untwined themselves from around the ankles of the figure, dead, gone.
A fish swam by, interested in the intruder. Before he could move for a closer inspection, however, the body shimmered almost painfully in a cascading sprinkler of green, white silver, black, bruise purple, and was gone.
# # #
Hayley flopped on her bed, tired. She was tired of this school, tired of the children, tired of the professors, and ready to go home. Only one thought kept her going: Helen. And she was beginning to debate herself in the matter of just going home. She got up off her bed and bustled around the fireplace, placing a saucepan on to warm milk for herself and Christopher, who was looking at a picture book in the corner.
"Mummy," Christopher said after a bit, "Mummy, who's on our bed?"
"Mmm," Hayley said, pouring the milk into mugs.
"Mummy, there's somebody on the bed!" Christopher insisted, looking very frightened. Hayley sighed and turned around.
"Christopher, there's nobody..." she trailed off, looking at the bed. There was somebody on the bed. She might have screamed, but her voice stuck in her throat, and she made no noise, approaching the person that was lying down on the bed.
It was a girl, and she was sopping wet, and very sandy. Her dark blonde hair lay out on the pillow, and her face was white, whiter than the moon.
Hayley placed the back of her hand on the girl's cheek. It was colder than ice, but very, very soft. Hayley got the feeling that she was floating on a cloud, too surprised to scream or run for help. She put her ear down near the lost girl's mouth. She wasn't breathing. She was dead, drowned. Plant tendrils snaked around her limbs, leaving red welts where they had cut off the circulation.
She frowned, and pulled a sheet over the girl's head, still feeling very loose and floaty, in a dream trance. She felt Deja vu-ish, like this had happened before... her eyes fell on a picture that Hayley had sitting on her dresser, one of all the children eating ice cream cones over summer vacation. She stared at it, thinking. Then she gasped and ran back over to the body lying on the bed, pulling down the sheet. Hayley gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth as the world turned upside down, throwing her off of it, gravity reversed.
"Grace," she whispered, head spinning, ambling towards the door, Christopher whimpering along behind his mother.
The halls swam around; the pictures like fishes in the sea. Gabriel was in her room, reading, but she stopped when she saw the incredibly distressed Hayley and Christopher. "What is it? Hayley? Are you going to be sick?"
Hayley thought she might be, but she shook her head. "Come to my room," she said instead. Gabriel, puzzled, followed.
# # #
After a long, long while, the tears dried out of the remaining foursome, left on the island in the middle of the Black River. Susan snuffled miserably. Crying would have helped, but she was out of tears, out of breath, out of life. She tried to scream her anguish - even that might have helped - but it came out as a raspy whimper.
"This isn't fair," Gerald said hoarsely. "What did I - we - do to deserve this?"
"Who said anything about this being fair?" Rob whispered. Gerald's eyes blazed with unexpected fire.
"What do you mean, it's not supposed to be fair?! You and your Goddamn logic can just jump right off a cliff, do you hear me?" he screamed, voice riding crescendo after crescendo until it was breaking, advancing on Rob, who backed up ever so slightly. "The other half of me has died, do you hear me? Do you?! The last thing I need now is your ever so valued input!"
Rob held himself back from screaming at his friend, by holding his breath until he was light headed. He's upset, Rob thought, upset. He has a right to be so. Don't you dare say anything back, Rob, don't you dare...
Rob's face turned bright red from the effort of not snapping. He looked around, only to find that Susan and Helen were not there.
"If you're done," Rob said as gently as possible, "may we go and find where the girls are?"
Gerald looked as if he might just blow up again, but managed to control it, and he nodded tightly, jaw clenched, as he accompanied Rob around the perimeter of the island.
They found the two girls in front of a tree covered in ivy, slicing the plants off the trunk with deft slices with their fingernails. They had located four pieces of driftwood and were roping them together.
"What are you doing?" asked Rob, intrigued for a moment.
Helen looked up, deciding how to answer as simply as possible. She grabbed a twig and wrote in the ground, with great misspellings, but this is what it said:
Boats sink. You no fly. You no boat. We carry you across, we fly, you sit. When she had finished, she gestured towards the wooden frame that Susan was tying together, tearing more ivy off the tree as she did so.
"Will it hold us?" asked Rob.
Helen shrugged, and went back to her tying. Rob swallowed nervously, and looked at Gerald, who looked impassive. Gerald went to the shore and stared out at the waters for a very long time, watching the sunrise, tinting the sky pink, which shone through the ever-present black cloud cover. Rob was about to go after him, when Susan grabbed his arm, and shook her head, gesturing for him to help them.
The contraption was about three feet wide and six feet across, made by four tawny branches tied together as a frame, and secured by a glue of dirt and sand. The interior was a weave, first tying short lengths of ivy lengthwise, and weaving them the opposite way. They smothered the top with the sand and soil paste, and Rob placed his hand on it. It felt surpassingly sturdy.
The two girls then went to work braiding ivy together for the harnesses, the braids to make them extra strong. When they had made three braids each, they braided those together, making it so strong that even if Susan pulled as hard as she could from one end and Helen from another, it wouldn't snap.
Rob, feeling unused, walked over to where Gerald stood, perpetually staring at the waves. They were silent for several uneasy seconds, before Gerald spoke.
"My sister is under all that," he said in monotones. Rob sighed.
"I'm sorry, I really am," he said, looking at Gerald through his unfocused eyes. "I don't mean to sound so - stoic all the time. It's just the way I am," he finished lamely, helplessly. Gerald looked at him with blue eyes, empty and cold as a vast ocean.
"It's not your fault," he said, looking back out at the lapping waves. Rob looked at him oddly. In one incidence, all of Gerald's innocence had been taken away. He was aged now, as ridiculous as that sounded, beyond his years. He would have a pain forever in his heart, when he laughed, he was Grace, when he cried, he was Grace, when he slept, he would be Grace. Half of him was gone forever, and Rob had never felt so utterly helpless before. He left Gerald without saying a word, because the two semi-humans were calling him to help try out the harnesses.
# # #
Grace was in nothing, because there was no other word to describe where she was. Space was nothing, breath was nothing, colors were nothing in this perpetual nothing she was in. She knew she was dead - but she wasn't alarmed. She wasn't feeling. She was nothing.
She arched her neck to look around lazily; taking in with note that her ghostly mist was somewhat scarred by plant matter. But since she was nothing, there wasn't much she could do, except for wait. She closed her awareness. She liked this nothing, this release of conscious, release of pressure, release of responsibility.
But the release wasn't long, a question floated in her mind. Grace thought. She could be earth, sky and stars, radiant moonlight, running wind, tripping eighth notes in a billowing action to scamper to people's eardrums. She could be the soft swish of a skirt against the dance floor, she could be the red, red of the lipstick that smiled glossily at the lover and transferred lips when the meeting between one heart to another began, she could be the budding of a flower, the patter of rain on a windowsill, the rhythm of poetry. She could be all this, all at once, all the world's happiness, if she so chose. But, she could be something else.
There was no time in this nothingness, so she relaxed her own nothingness and let thoughts flow through her mind like water. Thinking was easier when you were nothingness, but decisions were no easier, nothingness or human. She thought of what she knew, what she didn't what she wanted. She thought of the smell of sweet dew of the springtime, and she thought of the thing she had before, that was more real than anything she would ever experience again.
And Grace chose.
# # #
The entire Hogwarts School was thrown into chaos. The five up in the room, however, were probably the most silent, and everybody let them be, due to respect.
Gabriel sat on the bedstead with her deceased daughter, stroking her damp hair, and using a brush to sort out the tangles, salty tears falling like rain. Seamus was openly sobbing, not caring about dignity. His little girl was gone, gone for good.
Sarah wasn't quite aware that her tears were coming nearly faster than Gabriel's was, and she felt like one big sorrow inside her stomach. What a rotten year it had been! And it was bound to get worse, by the looks of it all.
Robert was too distressed to cry. He just sat there, every muscle paralyzed feeling nerves scorching. It wasn't fair. He kept on trying to tell himself that life wasn't fair, but he didn't have enough sugar to make the lemons life was giving him into lemonade.
Samantha Chenelle and Hayley sat in chairs, embracing each other so tightly that they thought they would never let go, nor did they want to. Letting go was too hard. Letting go was impossible. Letting go was part of life. Life was impossible.
# # #
Three of the four woke up around nine at night the next day, having worked on the harnesses for the contraption all-night and slept all day. Gerald, however, was still sleeping, and they all thought it best not to disturb him. Bellies grumbling at them told them that it was time for them to eat, and they each wished dearly that they had not let their packs of supplies fall into the river that horrific night before.
"I hate this," Helen said defeatedly. Nobody said anything, plodding around the thicket, looking for something to eat. The only thing remotely edible for Rob was a small handful of gooseberries, which he politely offered to Helen and Susan, who declined. They were munching on leaves that tasted terrible, but at least their digestive tract could handle foliage better than Rob's could. Rob ate half of the berries - which were very unripened - and then wrapped the rest in a grape leaf, planning to save some for Gerald. As he did so, he found himself wishing dearly that grapes were in season. Susan snapped off a length of brittle grapevine, and wrote in the dirt.
Eat, you, grapeleaf?
Rob made a face, but then his stomach rumbled desperately, and he picked a few of the human-friendly leaves for later consumption, though eating one now.
Gerald was up by the time they had gotten back, and he was looking desolately out at the sea again. Rob offered him the gooseberries, which he inhaled ravenously.
"Well, it's good he's eating," Susan whispered to Helen, "sometimes depressed people don't want to eat."
Helen nodded. "I was worried about that too."
Everybody finished off their pitiful meal, and the two half-Luftwings attached themselves to the harnesses, and waited patiently for the two humans to get on, and grasp tightly at the stabilizing rope. Gerald was looking straight ahead with a desolate look again, and Rob swallowed.
Helen and Susan went aloft, beating rapidly for about two minutes before getting the contraption to move off the ground. Wings beating so hard they were kicking up dirt, they were off.
They never reached an altitude of above three feet over the water, and the going was slow. More than once, the harness would skim the water, causing everybody except Gerald - who seemed oblivious to the world - to gasp with horror, and make Helen and Susan flap madly in an effort to get off the water.
An exhausting and terrifying twenty minutes later, the two semi-Luftwings crash landed in the banks of the river, where there was about two feet of depth. Helen and Susan quickly slashed the harnesses away, and hauled the contraption onto the banks. Through their torn clothing, Rob and Gerald could easily see the deep red welts that marked where the harnesses were. Susan's welts were bleeding slightly.
They were silent for a few moments. "What are we going to do with this?" Rob asked, pointing at the contraption. Nobody answered.
Susan ran her finger in the dirt. We go. Far away, riddle?
Helen sighed and pulled out a decrepit tatter of paper from her pocket. It still read the same - I'm the strangest creature you'll ever find, two eyes in front and many behind - but it made no more sense.
"I suggest we go and get shelter for the night," Rob said practically, pulling his rags up over his shoulders. Helen and Susan nodded, Gerald grunted. Susan sighed, and looked at a banked of corner of the river, where algae and water lilies grew. She snapped off the largest lily she could feel, and tossed it in the Black River. The tiny white plant bobbed in the waves that threatened to overtake it, but stayed afloat.
"Come on," she said to Gerald, placing a hand around his shoulders and leading him away from the accursed river.
# # #
It rained that night. Susan shivered in the cold rain, and looked around. They were in the middle of a wooded area, and the trees dripped large, cold waterdrops onto unsuspecting shoulders and scalps.
"I was in Girl Guides when I was younger," she said abruptly, "and we learned how to make shelter out of sticks..."
Rob, wet, miserable, tired, sighed. "And how do you suppose we do that?"
Helen whirled around. "You understand us?"
Rob shrugged. "Some of it. But we can't exactly make a shelter unless you find sticks to use..."
The group sighed and plodded on. They were starving, wet, grieving. Moral was indescribably low.
"I can't walk anymore," Gerald said, after nearly two hours of silence. "We're staying here, unless you'd rather go on without me." He sat down with a defiant flump.
Everybody else huddled under the foliage of a rather large tree. Helen sneezed. "I'm going to catch pneumonia."
Everybody else snuffled miserably. They were silent for a few moments, before there was a scratching sound behind them. Flipping wet hair out of her eyes, Susan grappled at a large branch, wide-eyed with suspicion. The rest of the group looked astonished when Susan laughed and dropped the branch. She made a cooing sound to the left of the big tree, and beckoned for something.
There was a whimpering sound, and a small puppy trotted out from beyond the tree trunk, and shook itself out. It was a golden-brown color, and had rather long, shaggy fur that stuck together in clumps because of the moisture in the air. It didn't look rabid, but on the contrary it actually looked rather friendly, with it's sodden tail thumping the ground, and long pink tongue panting. It looked happy to see them.
"Poor thing," Susan said, scratching the dog's head. "It's been out here in the cold and wet... now stop it!" she laughed as the dog started attacking her face with its tongue. The dog contentedly trotted over to Rob and Helen to give the same greeting. Even Gerald had to crack a slight smile at this intruder - he loved dogs.
Eventually the dog curled up between Susan and Gerald, and went to sleep. The other four shrugged and did the same.
# # #
The next morning dawned pearly gray and actually rather warm, despite the layer of dew that covered the four and the dog. They all got up and felt the sun-warmed dew roll off their bodies, and the dog shook itself out again.
"What should we call the dog?" asked Rob. "I don't want to be calling it dog all the time."
"What sex is it?" inquired Susan, smothering a yawn.
"Female," Helen said, after checking.
Gerald snapped out of his stupor long enough to give the dog's head a pat. "I think we should call it Sonrika Uline Nancy Nellie Yvonne the seventh," he said seriously. There was silence for several seconds.
"Uhh," Rob said, "Here, Sonrika Uline Nancy Nellie Yvonne the seventh!" he called. The dog trotted gaily over to him. Helen and Susan snorted with laughter.
"Sunny?" asked Helen, stumbling a bit over the syllables.
Gerald grinned. "Exactly." The dog whimpered comically and covered its nose with one paw. Rob picked a twig off of the ground, and solemnly touched the dog's shoulders with it.
"I dub thee Sonrika Uline Nancy Nellie Yvonne the seventh," he said, chuckling slightly as he said it. Everybody giggled nervously, feeling some of the grief from the other night dissipate away slightly.
"What about this riddle?" asked Susan, switching back to the easier tongue. Helen pulled out the tatter of paper again, and looked at it.
"Grace was the one that was good at riddles," Gerald said softly. "I was always hopeless."
"I'm the strangest creature you'll ever find, two eyes in front and many behind?" asked Rob. "What has more than two eyes? A spider?"
Helen shook her head. "Spiders don't have eyes behind them... do they?" She turned her blind eyes in the direction of Susan, who shook her head back.
"No... I don't get it either." She growled, and suddenly looked more animal than Rob had ever imagined. "I hate this damn universe and these people that are playing with our heads!"
"Don't we all?" Helen asked again. She sneezed, and covered her mouth with her hand. "Ah. Nobody would happen to have something to wipe their noses on, would they?"
Gerald and Susan shook their heads, while Rob slapped his pockets. "No," he said, "you'll just have to use your... oh, wait. I don't suppose we'll be needing this anymore." He pulled out a page of the atlas they had used to get to the mountain where Susan and Helen were, and handed it to Helen. Sunny sat on her haunches and started abruptly barking at the wet piece of paper Rob had held out to Helen.
"What is it, girl?" asked Gerald, seeming alert. "What is it?" Sunny kept on barking.
"Is there something on the paper?" inquired Susan. "Look at it."
Rob did so, and shook his head. "No. No bugs or anything." Gerald took the paper from him and looked at it.
It was the part of the paper that showed the mountain ranges. They all were there - Rinonaut, Opus, King Marmoset valley, Queen Peacock heights, and several others. Gerald squinted at it.
"What was that riddle again?" he asked, quietly. Susan read it to him again.
"Two eyes in front and many behind, eh?" he repeated, grinning slightly. "What about eyes in the metaphorical sense?"
"What about them?" Rob asked, intrigued.
"Peacock," Gerald explained. "A peacock has two eyes in front, and many behind. The feathers?"
There was silence for a moment as this digested. Rob exhaled. "Queen Peacock heights..." he whispered. "The design on a peacock's feathers are eyes..."
Helen wiped her nose on a large maple leaf. "Good thing I didn't take it for a Kleenex, then."
Gerald leaned next to Sunny and knotted his fingers in the dog's fur. "And we owe it all to Sunny here," he crooned.
Rob smoothed out the salvaged atlas. "It's about fifty miles from here," he informed them. "That'd be about a twenty day walk, if we took it slow."
Cold fire entwined in Susan's eyes. "Then we just won't take it slow, will we?"
# # #
It was a flat place, smooth but unforgiving. "A prisoner in a skin," is what She told him.
"Why can't I see you?" he whimpered, searching the flat place, the flat nothingness. "I want to see you!" He didn't just want to see her. He wanted to touch her, know she was real, know she was there. "I want to come with you! Don't leave me alone!"
"You aren't alone," the voice came, somewhat sharper.
"But I'm not in company either! Where are you? Why can't you come back?"
"Because I can't. I would if I could but I can't, I can't, I can't..."
He was near tears, in this nothingness, this confining nothingness that told him nothing, kept him in the dark, running running running.
"I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't," the nothingness was saying, over and over until the words had no meaning. "I can't, but I'm there. I'm with you. Not in shape, but in form. I am with you, and will be with you when you die, then I will die a second death, and then we will be together."
"Why?" he asked twisting the nothingness, trying to make it tangible, something he could touch. "Why did this happen?"
There was silence, empty silence before She answered. "Because that's what the Author wrote for me... you can't change what's in print... it's always there, White-Out or not, backspace scribble..."
He frowned at what She was telling him. The Author? What was this? A story?
# # #
He awoke early the next morning, stomach growling fiercely. Gerald moaned at the noise and nearly doubled up in pain. He would have sold his soul for something to eat, but he lay there for a while, thinking about his dreams, and wondered if he really thought who he was talking to was who it sounded like, and shook his head. He needed to wake up.
A few paces down from where he and the rest of the group was sleeping was a babbling brook, which he fell on his stomach for and drank in great thirsty gulps, trying to satisfy his hunger with liquid. After drinking all his stomach would hold, he sat up, and rested, before he heard a whimper beside him.
It was Sunny, and she held a good-sized trout in her jaws, which she lay proudly before her master's feet, wagging her tail. Gerald stared at the silvery fish, not knowing whether to cry or faint from hunger. He moaned faintly.
"For me?" he asked. Sunny barked and thumped her tail on the ground. Gerald needed no second urging. He had no idea how to prepare fish, but he found a sharp rock and hacked the fish to tiny, bloody raw bits, and ate those hungrily, barely restraining himself from eating the entire trout. He gave the bones to Sunny to chew, which she did, and he made his way back to the camp, where his counterparts were snoozing under a maple tree.
Gerald gently shook them all awake, and Rob ate the trout that Gerald offered him gratefully, but Susan and Helen said that they would find their own meal, rather than eat greasy fish. They flew off and came back a while later, with handfuls of walnuts. They then proceeded to spend the better part of two hours knocking the nuts out of the shells. What was the hurry?
"We had better go now," Helen said, wiping her dark brown hands off on the ground. Everybody else moodily shuffled off the ground and they started to walk, using the atlas page as their guide.
"Look at that," Rob said, pointing. They could all see why it was called Peacock Heights.
The mountain was a green point against royal purple and blue skies, mingled with the black cloud cover. It was so pretty, yet so far away, Susan noted with dismay.
"How much longer until we stop?" asked Gerald wearily, as they had been walking for some hours and he was beginning to tire. The rest of the group was too, as their brisk pace had slowed to a drag. Sunny whimpered and licked at a pawsore footpad. Helen shook her head.
"Not here. We're out in the open, aren't we?"
Susan nodded and shaded her eyes. "There's a clump of trees over there - lets try and make it to shelter before nightfall."
The grove of trees turned out to be thick with crabapples and nuts, on which they feasted until their stomachs were sore from so much expansion. The fivesome attempted to erect a shelter out of mud and sticks, but since it kept on collapsing, they thought it best just to sleep in the hole they had dug the dirt out of to make the shelter.
# # #
"This is getting tedious," Salazar remarked. Rowena slapped the back of his head.
"Well, I don't remember you being a marathon runner when you were alive," she pointed out acidly, folding her arms.
Godric had decided to give his trumpet a rest for the moment, and was polishing the horn until it gleamed like sunshine. "Yeah, Salazar," he said helpfully.
The man narrowed his dark eyes, so that he actually looked reminiscent of a snake. "And I don't recall you being Mozart."
Helga was sketching in the corner with a ghostly hand. "I'm sorry you find it tedious, Salazar," she said with perfect patience, "but I don't see a thing we can do about it. Why don't you come over here for a second? I'll draw you."
Rowena smiled. Helga certainly had a knack for finding people's vainly weak spots. Salazar nearly puffed up with pride, and he sauntered over to where Helga was sitting, and struck up a valiant pose.
"How's this?" he asked. Helga had to bite her tongue very hard to keep from laughing.
"Very good," she replied in a strangled voice, gently drawing her quill along in a human shape.
# # #
"Just thought you'd like to know," the elder Mr. Malfoy said, looking up from his newspaper, "that one of those Gryffindor twins has died."
"You don't say," Draco remarked, looking uninterested. He was busy with a very complex algebraic problem that included the English Trade Deficit and the Malfoy's own wealth. After a few more minutes of toying around with a math problem that he did not wholly understand, Draco came to a consensus: his family was insanely rich. Moodily he rolled up the parchment and left the room with it clenched in his fist.
I need a hobby, he thought to himself as he tore through the several rooms of his manor at a fast trot. Living in a large house always gave him the urge to move fast when he was a little boy - which he never did of course, for fear of his father - but who was going to stop him now? He felt that if he wanted to, he could have run into oblivion. Eventually, though, he turned into a spare room and sat down, wheezing slightly. The stigma of the Dark Mark peeked slightly out from under his rolled-up sleeve, and her rolled the sleeve back down again.
Society was such a stupid thing. Everybody with the brains of a pastry knew that the Malfoys were deeply involved in the Dark Arts. Yet everybody turned a blind eye to the sour eye candy of it, for the Malfoys were a prime source of money. That's all you needed to get by in this world - money to grease some joints, and a title and fear didn't hurt much either. That's all it was. All it was.
He rubbed at the arm that bore his tattoo. He had never in his life been called to help serve his lord - Voldemort had not been seen in a long time, but Draco was certain that he was out there brooding, making his time. His father kept on assuring him that any week now, the Dark Lord would become manifest, and that he and the other elite's would benefit and prosper. Draco wasn't sure if he was ready for that. Secretly, he would have been just has happy teetering around the high-class society, and to hell with the Dark Lord.
What if he did call for Draco and his father? What would he do? Would he go and serve until death, victory, or Azkaban, which ever came first? Would he not go at all? What would happen to him if he refused to go?
Maybe...
No, he told himself firmly, it's not going to get her back. She's gone. Stop deluding yourself.
It was hard to stop deluding himself by telling his soul other lies about how he didn't care anymore. He did. It was shameful to admit, but he did. After getting his heart torn out and trampled, he still cared. And the worst part was he didn't know why. He hated feeling weak and naked. It wasn't fair. But then he looked at his Dark Mark again and came to another conclusion about his life -
It wasn't meant to be fair.
# # #
As the four approached the mountainside, blazing green danced inside Helen's eyes, stabbing her pupils with painful little knives. It hurt - quite the same magnitude that it did much earlier when the fog enshrouded them at Hogwarts - but she didn't cry. In fact, she hadn't said so much as a peep about the pain. She wasn't the same Helen that left her beloved school and home, she wasn't going to cry over evil light. She knew that the light around Peacock Heights would be evil anyway. They walked in silence, Gerald occasionally throwing a stick for Sunny to run after, until Susan coughed.
"You know, I would really like a bath right about now," she pointed out. Rob sighed defeatedly.
"Do you know where a spring would be?" he asked.
"Just a moment." She sprang into the air, soaring around the area for a bit, before pointing in an easterly direction, towards a small grove of trees that was slightly out of their way.
The others followed Susan's lead, and in three hours, they were very parched and were in the clump of trees.
A babbling brook about three feet deep ran through the grove, and tiny golden fish darted around the ivory rocks, and several trees were dripping with fruits.
"Ladies first," Helen said, eager to get rid of over two weeks of grit. "Don't peek."
She hurriedly ducked behind a thick fur tree and pulled off what was left of her robe, before splashing into the horribly cold water that felt wonderful after being out in the sun for so long. Splashing sounds from around a bend in the river told her that Susan was doing the same. Helen paddled about in the shallow brook for a while; ducking underwater and trying to catch one of the miniscule fishes, but they always escaped a second before her palm could close around them.
She didn't want to get out, but soon her skin became numb, and she tiredly crawled out of the water. Stretching out of the bank to dry, she lazily plucked a fuzzy-feeling peach from a tree and began to eat the sweet pulp hungrily. She hadn't felt so content in a long time.
After the sun had dried her, she ambled her way back to camp, where the others were waiting. While the boys scampered off to take their own baths, Susan drew closer to Helen, her ebony hair bouncing off her neck lightly. The red sun was setting beyond the horizon, and the moon was rising, tinting the black clouds a rosy-silver.
"Tomorrow we climb it," Susan said, meaning the mountain. "I suggest we get some sleep."
There was the sound of weight bearing down onto grass, and soon the noise of snoring. Helen stayed up for a bit, feeling the last rays of sunlight settle onto her skin. Green light tugged at the corners of her blind eyes, telling her that the peace of the day wasn't to last. Sighing, stomach tightening into a knot, she lay back against the soft green grass and fell into a deep slumber.
# # #
A golden dog scampered across long, gray expansions of nothingness, the same nothingness that he had found Her in. But this time She wasn't there. It was just the dog, running, running, running. He struggled to keep up, but the dog was fading farther and farther away.
"Sunny!" he called. "Sunny, wait!" She didn't wait. She was gone.
He stopped, feeling very alone all of a sudden. Something brushed against his leg. He looked down, and there, right beside him in the nothingness was a golden-haired cat, with occasional orange stripes in the fur, expressing co-dominance in a whole new fashion.
"Meow," said the cat, and it looked up. He gasped.
The cat had bright blue eyes.
# # #
Gerald was brought around the next morning by something rough and slightly damp stroking his nose.
"Neerga," he said unintelligibly, trying to roll over. There was a sharp nip on his ear, and he sat up abruptly, throwing whatever was on him at the moment, off him. Gerald opened his eyes and looked down at an orange and golden tabby, which was swishing her tail, reflecting him in her bright blue eyes.
"Sunny?" he asked, after a couple of lightheaded moments. The cat purred.
"You're really starting to freak me out," he whispered, locking eyes with the cat. The cat - did that cat grin? - turned around and went to the spring to catch itself some breakfast. Gerald stood still for a moment, and looked over his shoulder. The other three were still soundly asleep.
"Good to have you back, Grace," he said as the cat was slinking around a tree trunk. The cat turned around and gave a soft growl before retreating back in the bushes.
Feeling better - like a thousand pounds of bricks had been lifted off his shoulders - Gerald went to collect his own breakfast from the fruit trees.
# # #
"Do we really have to do this?" whispered Susan, looking up at the tall mountain slightly knock-kneed. Helen placed a comforting hand on her shoulder, both for Susan's sake and her own.
"Yes," she said defiantly, though green and red were exploding under her eyelids like firecrackers.
Rob swallowed, quaking, and looked and Gerald, who was looking up at the mountainside ponderously, with Sunny the cat on his shoulder. Rob had inquired into the cat's appearance, and didn't get too concrete of an answer. He already had his own theories about Sunny, but he kept them to himself.
"Come on," Gerald said, digging his walking stick into the soft moss, taking a step up the craggy peak. Rob followed, and Susan and Helen took to the air.
Queen Peacock was not a forgiving mountain. There were several very steep places which Rob and Gerald had to be carried over, lest they lose traction and fall off the side of the rock. There were also many abysses, and the mountain air got thin rapidly, affecting everybody's breathing patterns. Several times everybody lost their footing and slid down about twenty feet. Part of the mountain was oddly covered in sand, making their feet slip and sink into the graininess of it. The going was rough, and they had to stop a number of times, or collapse from exhaustion.
Rob was now walking with his head bowed, halfway between retching and passing out, reaching a hand up and grasping about for a hold. Sweat soaked his body, plastering his copper hair to the back of his neck. He collapsed in the sand to rest for a while.
Susan suddenly screeched. "Rock slide!" she wailed, pointing to a mist of dirt and rumbling up above them.
"We'll have to go back down!" Gerald cried, scrambling to his feet and loping down the mountain. Helen nearly cried at the speed of going down - they were going to have to do this all over again! - when Gerald emitted a loud yell.
Rob saw Gerald suddenly disappear beyond a large boulder, and Sunny snarled and leapt in after him. Rob had no choice - he ran behind the boulder and spotted a large hole, maybe five feet in diameter, with a rocky inside that curved to the left. If he had had the time, he might had debated the wisdom of jumping down a hole into a mountain that might lead to molten lava - but as he looked over his shoulder, he noted it was either take his chances in the hole, or be crushed to death by rolling boulders.
He jumped in the hole, quickly followed by Susan and Helen.
He sprawled down the tunnel in an ungainly fashion, tripping in somersault after somersault, banging his head repeatedly on the rock walls until little white stars danced in front of his eyes. The constant tumbling made his stomach knot, and he started to retch, and the tumbling threw it back into his face, up his nostrils - oh, it was horrid.
It all stopped, throwing Rob face first into something hard, and he quickly stumbled to his feet, still retching, head spinning, crying, and he tried to get a grope on his surroundings.
He was indeed inside Queen Peacock. The floor was lava that had long since cooled, giving the ground a marbleized effect. The walls were ashy black, with a stream of sunlight coming in from the ceiling. When his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he saw that cloudcover was actually inside the mountain, thicker than he had ever seen it. A black rock protruded out of the cooled lava. Gerald was standing off to the side, and Rob joined him. Gerald was just as soiled as Rob himself was, and a thin trickle of blood ran from his nose. Sunny was on the ground washing herself.
Two more thumping noises came from the rock tunnel, and Susan and Helen appeared. They had fared a little better than the two boys, being able to wrap their wings around themselves, but Susan's left wing was slightly askew, and her face was taut with pain, telling Rob and Gerald that it was probably broken. Helen looked sickly as well, as green light blared around her.
"Where are we?" whispered Susan. The slight noise echoed a thousand times around the inside of the mountain, as the place had awesome acoustics, and was big enough for a formal banquet. Everybody else shrugged. They were standing silently, before Sunny the cat's fur stood on end, and she bared her teeth, hissing, tail swishing.
"What is it?" asked Gerald, afraid to touch her.
Sunny didn't acknowledge him, only kept on hissing. In a lithe movement, the cat had bounded from Gerald's ankles, near the rock in the center of the mountain. Cautiously, unless the lava rock was going to give way, they all made their way to it. In crooked letters - like the carver was in a hurry, there were words on the rock.
I am never quite what I appear to be. Straightforward I seem, but it's only skin deep, for mystery often lies beneath my simple speech. Sharpen your wits, open your eyes, look beyond my exteriors, read me backwards, forwards, upside down. Think critically and answer the question... What am I?
It didn't even rhyme, but it was poetic in an odd way. Yet, it didn't make sense. Susan read it aloud to Helen, who frowned. Sunny leapt up to the rock, and scratched her nails on the boulder, making them all wince.
"I don't get it," Rob said sickly, feeling his nose, which was probably broken. They were all silent again, thinking. Sunny rubbed up against Helen's leg, and a flicker of awareness flooded her senses, then went out again. She frowned. She had almost had it...
"Riddle!" they all cried in unison. "It's a riddle!"
"Funny." a voice echoed. The four threw themselves against the wall, Sunny kept on hissing. The voice was no louder than softly breaking glass, but it sounded of nails on a chalkboard, a knife slicing deftly though flesh, a scream before a murder. That voice was nearly worse than the ride through the tunnel. "I have never really liked cats."
They looked around the room, for somebody, something, but there was nothing there. Only the walls and the eerie indoor cloud cover. They were silent, and lightning flashed.
Sunny was gone.
Gerald screamed, running out into the middle of the mountain, looking around wildly. "What did you do to her? You can't do that!" he cried.
That horrible voice chucked softly. "But of course I can. I can do anything. I created this world. I am invincible."
Gerald felt black cloud hands wrap around his throat like a strangling vine. He gasped for air, tried to reach up to pull the hands off, only to find his hands touched moisture, nothing more. They were cloud hands. His vision blanked out.
# # #
Grace found herself as a ghostly girl, standing in a vibrantly colored field, with rolling hills. At first she was certain she was dead, and she had gone to Heaven - or to Hell - but her mind was soon changed when she saw black figures coming over the horizon. She squinted at them, and they came closer and closer to her, until they were right under her nose.
They were very short - short like children - robed in black. Their faces were hooded, and they joined hands and started dancing around her, singing a chanting song.
Violators of peace, desecrators of love,
Chilling murders in cold blood,
How do we do this all, you ask?
For it's so easy beyond the mask...
Round and round, faster and faster until their bodies were in a little black whirl. Grace sucked in her ghostly bottom lip.
Death Eaters, she thought.
# # #
Helen, Susan and Rob stood, paralyzed by fear and awe as hands strangled Gerald. He went limp, and the hands tossed him carelessly against the wall. He fell with a dull thud, and Helen was the first one to come to her senses and she ran over to the area where she thought Gerald was and grabbed his body. He had a pulse. It was faint, but a pulse.
"We can't fight him," Helen whispered, before gathering Gerald in her arms with difficulty, and clumsily flapping back to where the other two were.
"Who are you?" Rob asked the shadow dully. He wasn't stupid. He knew who the shadow was. But maybe if he could stall... an invisible hand slapped him across the face. Unused to being handled like that, he fell to the floor.
"Don't waste time," that voice said again, icily. "You know who I am. The Creator of this world."
"Voldemort. Tom Riddle."
Susan said, teeth chattering, not from cold, because hot sweat poured down her back. She was nervous. "Cute way to introduce yourself." The cloud formation chuckled."Yes," it said. "It was a lot of work to get you here, but now that you are..."
"What do you want with us?" Helen asked, propping Gerald's head on her knees. She wasn't stalling. She wanted to know. The clouds shifted.
"When your parents left me in this universe, I was little more than stray atoms floating on the wind. I can't hold a shape in my own world anymore. If I ever set foot in your world, I would dissipate into nothing. But I survived. I created my own shape-" the clouds swayed "-and here I am. I need you, because I am going to make this long dormant volcano work again."
"That doesn't explain anything," Rob muttered in a muffled voice, as his cheek was starting to bruise madly. The clouds snorted.
"I need the energy of young bodies to set off the volcano," Voldemort said.
"Why not somebody else?" Helen asked. "Why us?"
Susan could almost see the clouds smile cruelly. "Let's just say I have a score to settle with your dams and sire."
Rob's bottom lip curled under. So this was all just a vindictive gesture from Voldemort to their parents. All of this suffering and a death had resulted from being caught in the middle.
Voldemort wasn't done. "It was ingenious, getting you here. I had to change your shape - make you other people - or else the sudden invasion of alien beings into another dimension would have created utter chaos. You would have been instantly destroyed. And we can't have that, can we?"
Rob felt something of a hand brush through his hair. His skin bubbled into goosebumps.
"So, I integrated you into the fabric of Sapius - but I didn't change your minds. Oh, no. That wouldn't have been any fun."
Susan had to bite her lip until it dripped blood. Cussing out Voldemort was like asking for a death warrant to be signed.
"I impregnated the riddles - didn't you have fun with those? - and now you're here, and I can activate the volcanoes."
"Why would you want to activate the volcanoes?" asked Rob. "That would, you know, destroy the world."
"Exactly," Voldemort said coolly. "Can't have all these people mucking about, messing up my work. I control the minds of the people here, but I can only tamper with one at a time. Killing them all would take years."
Helen was reminded of Yizeer's strange behavior when they had asked him if he were married or not. It was like he was being controlled. Well, this proved that they had been being controlled. By clouds. The thought would have been humorous if it wasn't so deadly true.
"A few times I slipped... almost let you know, like with your Luftwing friend. Writer's block can be lethal."
"Writer's block," Susan said, trying to control her rage. She obtained a fierce headache as a result.
We can't fight this, Helen thought, cradling Gerald gently. He can do anything. We can't...
"And you won't get away so easily," the terrible voice went on. "For this time, I have help..."
The lava rock cracked in a thousand places, and white-hot steam seeped out, turning the inside of the mountain into a sauna. White was all anybody could see, until there was a green explosion.
The Dark Mark shot up into the air, freezing everybody's blood in his or her veins.
# # #
Draco and Alexandre - home on Thanksgiving break - were in the library. Alexandre hopped up from his seat to get another book to help him with his Transfigurations assignment, when the French doors to the library burst open; the force carrying them so far back that they bounced against the wall. In the doorway stood a very deranged Lucius Malfoy.
"It's time," he said.
"Time for-" Draco started, but he bit the sentence off as a wretched burning pain erupted on his left arm, the arm with the Dark Mark tattooed on it. He gasped and doubled over, clutching his limb.
"Father?" Alexandre asked, confused. "Grandfather? What's going on?" The boy dropped his book and ran up to his father, tugging on his sleeve.
"Let go of me, Alexandre," Draco ordered tightly, face contorted with agonizing pain. Alexandre was about to obey, but Lucius had brought his wand down, resulting in a loud crack.
All three of them disappeared from the library, into thin air.
# # #
Black robed figures with large hoods appeared out of nowhere around the perimeter of the inside of the mountain, breaking into the white mist. Terrified, the three dragged Gerald into the center of the circle, where nobody seemed to be. Circle after circle of black-clad figures, until there were at least nine ovals of them surrounding them. There was, indeed, no way out. All of them were trembling slightly, but the cloud mass that was Voldemort was taking no notice of them at the moment, and addressed his Death Eaters.
"Glad you could make it," he said coolly.
"Yes, Master," was the echo of the figures around the circle.
# # #
"STOP IT!" Grace yelled at the figures, who were still chanting. "YOU'RE DRIVING ME INSANE!"
They still didn't stop, and Grace took a wild swing at one of the Death Eaters, and it popped its hood off. That one stopped, and the other millions of the dropped hands and went on skipping.
This Eater had two heads, both of which looked very apologetic, both of which looked familiar.
"Alexandre?" Grace asked, breathless. "Mr. Malfoy?" Oh, this was strange.
# # #
During the special apparition charm used during gatherings of Death Eaters, all those that bore the Mark were instantly clad in one of the huge robes that were uniform of the Death Eaters. Those that came along by accident or by finding out the secret charm were not. Draco looked around from under his hood, and heard a distinct whimper from beside him.
It was Alexandre, shaking and cowering beside his father. "You do support the Eaters, then," the boy whispered in an accusing voice. "You're a lie. You live a lie."
Draco didn't say anything, but he knew that if he didn't find something to hide Alexandre with soon, they were both lost.
"Under here," Draco said, indicating the large robe, deciding to overlook his son's insolence at the moment. Alexandre instantly obeyed, dropping to his knees and crawling under the Death Eater robe.
There was ample room under the fabric, and Draco was still wearing his everyday robe, which made it very hot. Even so, Alexandre pressed as close to his father as humanly possible, and Draco felt small arms close around his rib cage, shivering.
"Keep quiet, you hear?" Draco asked, retracting his arms inside his robe and smoothing his son's hair out of his eyes. He then averted his attention back to what was going on.
Voldemort had stopped talking, and the Death Eaters were gathering around something. Draco clumsily ambled forward with Alexandre shuffling along behind.
He recognized the scene immediately. Three children were clustered around a fourth - who was presumably dead or unconscious - attempting to look brave, but it was hard to when hundreds of grim-reaper personalities were moshing towards you.
"Stop," Voldemort said abruptly. The Eaters did so, obediently. "I detect a liar amongst us."
An alarmed murmur swept through the crowd. Had an Auror found them out? Was there a spy? Draco's heart felt like it had exploded in his chest, and Alexandre let escape a loud sob of fear.
"I thought so," Voldemort said quietly. A sudden swoosh of magic went through the crowd, and a magnetic force was pulling Alexandre away from Draco, getting stronger and more insistent by the moment.
"No, Father, no," Alexandre whispered in a strained voice, terrified tears tracing down his face. "Don't let me go... don't let him get me... Father, Father, please..."
A lump grew manifest in Draco's throat. His arms were already beginning to quake from the strain. He looked at his son, grappling at him like a deranged squid, and the youth of Alexandre dawned upon him.
He's just a boy... And Draco's strength gave out. Alexandre shot towards the center of the round room.
"What is going..." Helen trailed off. Her head whipped abruptly around at the sound of Alexandre smacking the ground behind her. "Alexandre?!"
Alexandre didn't answer, and was far from his usual composed self. His face was red, and crystalline tears streamed down his face in torrents. A hand snaked down from the clouds and wrapped itself under Alexandre's chin, snapping his neck back.
"Well well well. Who do we have here?" Voldemort asked softly. Perhaps he didn't recognize the Malfoy line because Alexandre's face was so overbright. "A little spy, perhaps?"
Alexandre's only reply was a strangled sob. Susan's heart broke for him, but she was too afraid to intervene.
The tendril glowed bright red, and a single whisper that seemed to come from everywhere echoed.
"Crucio."
# # #
"Is this dramatic enough for you, Salazar?" asked Rowena, who was in tears.
"Shut your mouth!" Salazar yelled.
"What can we do?" inquired Godric, who was bending the neck of his trumpet in his nervousness.
"Semvara!" wailed Helga.
# # #
The screams were almost too much to bear. There were no more tears, but the cries of anguish and the indistinguishable pleas for mercy were enough to make Rob be sick. Gerald came groggily around, and looked about. He didn't need an explanation.
Draco felt his heart tearing in two, crumbling, breaking, shattering into nothing over and over again. The screams from his son went on and on and on. Finally, Voldemort stopped, and Alexandre fell to the floor.
"Will you talk?" asked Voldemort silkily. "Or do we need a little more convincing?" Alexandre just sobbed, voice hoarse.
"Make it stop," Helen whispered. "Make this nightmare stop!"
"You still won't say anything? Well then..."
"NO!" The rings of Death Eaters were burst open, and one of them ran forth and gathered Alexandre in his arms. Alexandre grabbed folds of the Death Eater's clothes and buried his face in them, trying to control the pain. "He's just a child, Master," the Eater said. "It was an accident..."
Susan knew that voice. She reached forward and pulled the hood back. Draco Malfoy pulled off the ground and looked at her.
Susan looked back into those eyes, and a wave of betrayal and sadness washed over her. "Mom was right! You're terrible!" she cried, her broken wing flapping uselessly. She burst into tears at the sudden onslaught and ran back to her group, trying to collect herself. Draco stared hard at her for a moment, before waving his wand.
# # #
Hayley, Gabriel, Seamus, Sarah, Chenelle, Robert and Hannah were eating a sober dinner of cold soup when an explosion erupted above their heads, and of all things, Draco Malfoy appeared on the oak table, one foot in the soup pot.
There was stunned silence for a moment. "What the hell do you want?!" asked Sarah irately.
"How did you-" Robert wanted to know. Draco stamped his foot hard on the table, readjusting Alexandre in his arms to keep from dropping him.
"Will you listen to me?" he asked. "I happen to know where your children are, if you'd care to come."
"Prove it," Chenelle said finally.
"Don't you believe me?" asked Draco, an ironic smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
"No," Sarah said definitely, crossing her arms. Draco sighed, and noted that they were all touching the table. He shrugged his shoulder and snapped his wand down.
All of them were gone.
# # #
When they materialized again, Sarah's first action was to slap Draco across the face as hard as she could.
"I guess I deserved that," Draco said lightly, massaging his cheek.
"HELEN!" Hayley cried, reaching over and hugging her daughter so hard that Helen thought her ribs would crack.
The other's attention was likewise to their own children, Gabriel and Seamus weeping. For now, the Dark Lord's attention was on Draco.
"Traitor." The word made it's way through the ranks of the Death Eaters. The red tendril that carried the Crucio curse snaked down, and was about to wrap itself around Draco, when there was a black blur to the left that smashed into Draco, the force carrying him away.
"You are the biggest ass I know," Lucius Malfoy said from under his hood, getting off his son.
"Don't remind me," Draco said bitterly.
# # #
"The wands!" Helga cried.
# # #
Rob was staring at the spectacle, feeling his world turn upside down. Something pressed itself into his hands. He looked at it. It was his wand! Looking around, he found that the others had gotten their wands back too. Now the question that was on everybody's mind: What now?
Break it, a voice whispered in his ear. They all stood stupidly for a moment, before Gerald took charge and snapped the wood between his foot and the ground. White sparks emitted from the ends, drifting towards the blackness. Voldemort yelled, and the Death Eaters rippled in anger.
Snap, snap, snap, went three more wands. Three more barrages of white sparks went to the ceiling. After a few more moments of struggling, Voldemort laughed.
"There's only four of you!" he mocked.
# # #
"The power of five!" Grace cried, snapping her own wand.
# # #
A whirl of color erupted over the mountain, raining sparks. They all absorbed into the hands of the four, sparking, sparking... white energy belted in a scythe-shaped beam from Rob's fingers.
"Semvara!" Robert said, looking in awe at his son. "They're Semvara!"
"Attack! Go now! I command you!" Voldemort screamed. Frightened, the five children slapped their hands together, in hopes of making a more powerful beam... and a vortex appeared.
It grew, and grew.
"Dimension Vortex!" Chenelle cried. "Into it!"
They obeyed, falling into a white hole, falling, falling falling falling falling....
# # #
Sweet grass met Helen's face, and she inhaled the friendly air, the scents that were home. Confused voices filled her senses, and she dimly felt somebody hoisting her up, and her face touched something blissfully soft. She knew no more.
# # #
"What a story," Professor Potter said wonderingly. He slapped his knees and rose from his chair. The foursome looked morosely at him from their beds in the infirmary. "It will make one hell of a legend someday."
Susan sighed and leaned back, still not used to the fact that she no longer had wings. They had been lost in the transit back to her own world, because there were no equivalent of Luftwings in her world. The thought of never flying again almost brought tears to her eyes. She was exhausted a wan, and wanted nothing more than to sleep and never wake up again.
"How's Mummy?" she asked weakly. Professor Potter raised his eyebrows.
"Well, if I can ever peel her away from Draco, I'd say she's fine."
"What do you mean?"
"As soon as you four are better, the wedding will be held."
They got better soon after that.
# # #
Susan thought she had never seen her mother look more beautiful. Her ringlets were furled up into a swirl at the back of her head, and secured with white roses. The white dress trailed along the ground and swirled about like a cloud. The gold that dangled from her ears and wrists sparkled in the candlelight. The veil that covered her face was lighter than mist.
"You look gorgeous, Mum," she said. Sarah smiled.
"I feel silly," she admitted. "I'd rather do this in my comfy old robes. But, Luke insisted..."
Susan giggled and fixed her own dress, which were of a deep green shade, as to match her eyes.
The music started. Sarah inhaled a breath through her teeth and exhaled slowly. "Let's go, maid of honor," she said to her daughter. "Come on, 'Father'," she said to Gerald, who grinned. He was the one that got to 'give Sarah away'.
Little Erika Potter was the flower girl, and everybody oohed and ahhed as she teetered down the carpet, thowing handfuls of white rose petals. Sarah followed at a more gracious pace; interlocking arms with Gerald and Susan trailed, holding the veil.
The bridesmaids, Carolyn and Helen, followed them, both dressed in frilly yellow. Draco stood, grinning at the altar, with Alexandre as his best man. Rob sat placidly in the crowd, as Christopher fiddled with the ringbearers pillow. It was all so beautiful, and beyond it all, inconspicuous as anything, a yellow and orange cat with bright blue eyes followed, stately as anything.
Sarah made it to the altar, and the priest started, but neither the groom nor bride knew what he was saying. They knew each other's eyes. They knew the feeling of skin. Of love.
"...Till death do you part?" asked the priest.
"I do," Draco said, deep baritone voice racking the church.
"And do you, Sarah Elizabeth Slytherin..." Sarah wasn't listening. She saw that Draco wasn't either.
"I do," Sarah said. There was a smile from the crowd as a whole.
"You may now kiss the bride."
Draco did so.
# # #
The reception was wonderful, and Sarah threw the bouquet, there was a mad dash for it, ending in a broken punch bowl, and an upset plant. Erika won the bouquet by default, simply because Helen, Susan and Carolyn took themselves out.
The first time that Draco threw the garter, Alexandre and Gerald watched it fall to the floor, neither of them attempting to go after it.
"I don't want to be the owner of my stepmother's garter," Alexandre said with distaste. Gabriel promptly gave them both a smack over the heads and proclaimed that she'd throw them if they didn't try for the garter. The next time it was thrown, there was a mad dash for it, and it hit Alexandre in the face.
It was now nearing the end of the reception, and the four sleepy children stole a few moments to speak to each other before the rest of the group bombarded them with questions.
"God, it's been a long year so far," Gerald said, looking very old.
"It's not over yet," Rob reminded him, pushing his new glasses up his nose. Susan passed around small wineglasses.
"To us!" she said, grinning, waving her maid of honor's bouquet in the air.
"To us!" three other voices chimed in as the glasses tinkled. Sunny the cat, which was sitting on Gerald's shoulder, howled in agreement.
"Where did you get that cat at?" Seamus said, looking at it. "Is it a stray?"
"I don't think it belongs to anybody around here," Gerald said innocently. "Perhaps we could keep it?"
And since nobody ever found out where the strange gold-and-orange cat came from, that is exactly what they did.
THE END
# # #
A/N: Well! I don't have much to say here. ^_~ Just read and review and tell me what you think.
~Moxie ^_^
Disclaimer: This stuff is mine, that stuff isn't.