Author's Note—Before I get started on this chapter (and before anybody else gets started reading it as well)...there's something I have to voice out loud here once and for all, because the idea that it's turning into a spooky trend is enough to keep me awake at night. Just because a person is supposedly as 'pretty' as a supermodel and has the sort of money to buy you expensive presents does not mean you have to stay with them and allow them to beat you, rape you, and tell you every day and night that you somehow want such treatment from them because you're 'omg, so alone'.

When last I looked, that's definitely what real love isn't supposed to look like. Heck, even the somewhat stalkery vampire who watched his girlfriend sleep at night practically begged her not to throw her life away for his sake. He insisted time and time again that he wouldn't turn her into a monster, and wouldn't take her virginity even when she threw herself at him, so...when I see female characters in fanfiction slowly becoming isolated from their family and friends, made to defend themselves in conversation because their so-called 'boyfriends' are firing off accusing remarks at them, even having to give it up to their wrongfully-labeled 'significant others' long before they are ready or can even utter a word of consent...that is NOT romance to me.

Yes, the girl receives pretty, expensive gifts, but only to keep her quiet, submissive, and completely unwilling to report her abuser to the police. Yes, she thinks she absolutely adores her abuser because he keeps hinting to her that no other boy wants her, especially after she's lost her virginity to him and is thus 'spoiled goods'. And yes, the girl is 100% devoted to her abuser, because it's more than hinted on how she'll be physically harmed/killed if she ever does otherwise. To say that this is true love is like saying an axe murderer was saving his victims by ending their lives. I really do know the difference between the two, because I know two people in my life who were affected by such heartless treatment...and because of this, I'm reporting any story that hints of graphic abuse, Stockholm Syndrome, and mind control to the moderators on this site...as well as adopting this idea into my stories, merely to show everyone how wrong and destructive it truly is. Thank you and goodnight.

==Weasley==

Twenty-One

The way they called us all out of these trucks and piled us into the Big Big Processing Room, a malchick could think they were herding sheep or cattle or some other sort of livestock like that. Hard to think of 'em as anything else, because I could viddy nice and clear that we'd been gathered into certain herds of humans according to our detention center colors.

There were about ten or eleven that got pulled out of Liverpool Local, because they dressed 'em up all in red over there. Half a dozen from Northampton stood over in one corner, and we called 'em the yellow-jackets because of the mustard-colored platties they had on. Cambridge brought in seven and Cardiff nine, and a lewdie could easily pick out one from the other on account of Cambridge's inky black uniforms versus Cardiff's snowy white. Oh, there were so many others in so many different shades and tones, too, loads of 'em from mestos I'd never even heard about until today. Chellovecks and malchicks together in blue and green and brown and orange, some of 'em looking like they could snuff you out with their glazzies whilst a rookerful of others just smotted at no one and no veshch at all, almost like they'd lost their rasoodocks ages ago and couldn't be bothered to find 'em.

I could have easily kept my attention on these molodoy prestoopnicks for a while, if only to wonder to myself what on Bog's earth could be like spinning around and around inside their gullivers. Anything could be going on in there, because sometimes there was just no telling with any strangers around you. But after a minoota or two, I didn't pay 'em any mind no longer. It was the most bolshy total from the East End Correctional that caught my glazzies at last, because they'd brought in a whopping thirteen Nadsats, and all in their finest charcoal gray platties, too. In fact, whatever special malenky veshch that popped into my gulliver as I watched 'em just now, it soon lead me to itty off to their side to claim unity and solidarity for the hereafter.

"Wotcher playin' at, four-three-one-zero?"

One of those security guards had a sort of shoomy, gromky goloss to him, and he definitely didn't think twice about using it on me.

"Back to the Durham recruits with you, eh?"

"Beg pardons, sir," I started in on him, "Durham wasn't ever my real home."

"Well, London ain't mine either, but y' don't see me breaking ranks now, do you?"

"Please, sir."

I kept my goloss level, but I also gave that veck my best unhappy glazzies so as to shame him into like letting me have my way, maybe.

"I was born in the East End, and I lived in the East End close to all of my life. Can't I at least room with all of 'em, or something? It's like a sickness for home, see?"

"Conroy?"

Tom, who had been viddying all with an empty sort of smot on his litso, just waved a rooker our way as though to tell us, "Go on, then." I half expected the veck to do much differently to the likes of me, because he'd gone and held me back before...yet there he was now, like sending me off without a slovo's worth of resistance. Ah, well...it wasn't really running away if I just wandered off to another group, now, was it? Still, after the way he'd reined me in to begin with, I couldn't help but wonder to myself why he'd suddenly changed his mind.

"Much obliged, Tom," I told him in my happiest sort of goloss as I sat myself down beside all these charcoal-colored uniforms. It was much, much better to be here rather than off with Durham or Cambridge or Liverpool or all that cal, because I ponied the litsos of the East End malchicks a lot better than I ponied any others in this building. They had the telltale smot of getting tolchocked in the brooko one time too many, and also the litsos of lewdies who knew how to go on about their business without any first-rate pishcha, like the stuff of Sweeney's not on their plates each and every nochy. Yes, I knew all of those veshches like I knew the backs of my rookers, and so also might those malchicks come to know me. I had quite a long way to go before I could viddy anything like that happen, though, so help me Bog.

"Should have stayed over there, Durham," one of the East End malchicks snapped at me once I'd joined 'em. "Back with the other fancy nancies, where y' belong."

"I never had nothin' fancy in all of my jeezny, brother," I joked back at him, "And I don't know any Nancy-girl devotchkas, either. Want to know how I got this uniform?"

"Cambridge recruits, step forward, please!"

I was one breath away from like repeating myself just in case none of 'em heard me, when some short malchick from around the middle took one smot at me and then smecked out loud.

"I know how y' got that uniform, bratchny," he called over to me, a naughty grin playing around the edges of his litso. "Y' would have 'ad your way with some devotchka in some starry casino, if y' hadn't let a rookerful of the more molodoy lewdies tolchock you down first. Good news travels real skorry around 'ere, don't it?"

Whatever horrorshow tale I'd been planning to tell 'em, it went straight to pot the minoota this malchick had spoken his pieces. His slovos were enough to make the rest of the East End malchicks start smecking out loud at me and my old shaika, because our rounds of nightly filly-time just didn't measure up in their glazzies. I had to endure the shoom of their smecking and like snorting for a dobby ten seconds at least, because the whole of the inky-black Cambridge seven had gathered around the desk by then. Several more minootas would have to pass by before they finished up, and so I would have to be the sad, malenky victim of the others' various chattering and like mutterings until the time came for us to be added. I couldn't really say I looked forward to all that.

"They don't seem to like you either, do they, brother?"

They didn't like me, either? That was a laugh, considering all of those not-so-friendly malchicks were in the 'Smeck at Billyboy' eegra together. One smot to my right told me they were still smecking and like joking about me, so how could one of 'em be just as hated as yours truly?

"Look to your other side, bratty."

One smot to my left, however, and lo and behold, there was one more malchick dressed up in charcoal, though not as bolshy or as tough-looking as the rest. A bit on the mousy side he was, complete with a light brown sort of voloss and a slightly darker brown set of the old glazzies. There was no need for me to say out loud how much he reminded me of Joel, because I'd already thought up such veshches in the safety of my rasoodock. Here sat the runt of the litter, and even he himself knew this to be a fact, along with all of the others.

"Can't say I blame you for looking elsewhere and like getting distracted," said Mr. Mousy. "I shrink into the background a lot, it's true."

"Cardiff recruits, step forward, please!"

Up went the nine with the snow-white platties, one of 'em giving me a death glare as he went along. Maybe that particular bratchny wanted to trade places too, did he?

"There's to be no shrinking around me, bratty," I told that malchick straightaway. "I do the standing and the going exactly where I wish to go, and I'll expect you to follow my lead always. Do you pony?"

One malenky nod from old Mousy, and I had myself a new droogie. If I managed to keep this one around much longer than any of the others, all the better for us both.

"Dobby! Now, if a malchick may be so bold...do tell me your eemya, and then I'll be sure to give you mine."

A short breath from my newly proclaimed droogie, and then I slooshied the slovos 'Rex Dresden' coming out of his rot. Another rough reminder of shaikas past for me, for even though one had been the King of the lions and the other was King of the Latins, either way, this mousy Mr. King would easily remind me of Leo every single time. Just one molodoy malchick all on his oddy-knocky, and he'd reminded me of two of my old droogs in only one day. It would take me a rookerful of time to get over this one malenky messel, no doubt in my rasoodock.

"All right, then," I said slowly, like trying to keep my goloss at a stiff, stern level even though I knew I had a tremble inside and waiting to get out. "All right, Rex it is. A dobby eemya, that one...I take it you're from the C of R, then?"

There was only a nod from old Rex, as he needed no other slovos but silence itself, but I didn't mind. I had loads of other veshches to mull over first.

"You must be quite the church-goer, then, to not have any taste for the dratting or the tolchocking."

Another nod, followed by a smot towards the floor. This one just wasn't the govoreeting type, judging by the way he used the language of his plott rather than the language of his rot. He also wasn't the type to jump straightaway into a bitva the way I'd loved to do a long time ago. Some malchick would have to keep both glazzies on this one, or else all of these other East End prestoopnicks would eat him alive somehow.

"All right...and how did you come to join—"

"-I stole some bread!"

I'd gone and done some nasty sort of veshch now, because anyone could viddy quite clearly the way
Rex had his rookers clenched into fisties with his litso suddenly whitish and sickly-looking. Something in Rex's mousy goloss also sounded close to bezoomny now, like telling me to back off slowly if I didn't want to stir up any trouble. There wasn't much else for me to do in return, other than hold up both of my own rookers in surrender because I didn't want to be the one to set him off.

"Durham recruits, step forward, please!"

There looked to be quite a lot of malchicks who did want the honor and glory of ruining mousy Mr. Rex, though, because no sooner did the East End seem done with him than those prestoopnicks from Durham passed us by, and at least half of 'em eyeing me and mine like they were the hunters and we were the prey. They might not have a problem with trying to take me out of the mix and send me back to the detention center by making me act up, as a load of other molodoy troublemakers had been known to do to each other.

Maybe they would also try like coming after Mr. Mousy himself just to viddy what I might do, and so end up with the same results that meant my diss-miss-all. Either way, I had started to get some of those odd feelings following me like they'd done after my time in solitary, only this time they were definitely on the inside, and not no monstrous invisible veshch walking about on the outside. Someday, I would have to give old Rex a malenky nudge to viddy if he would tell me more about this 'stolen bread', because I had a sort of idea that he might not be like speaking entirely of the truth. In the meantime, though, our itsy-bitsy shaika would have to keep itself together by any means necessary.

"Of course y' did, brother, of course," I said to that Dresden malchick, like getting my goloss under control. "We'll have no more talk of that now, maybe. Instead you get to hear my eemya, and how it's William for the long and Billyboy for the short. We'll have to stick close by each other from this minoota onwards, will we not?"

There were no more creeching slovos from this Rex, which I supposed might have been quite the dobby veshch if I ever had it. Instead there was just a malenky nod from him, along with what might have been a quieter look of acceptance rather than anger or not wanting to govoreet to me. This seemed promising. I just might have been able to teach a lesson or two to this new droogie of mine in the future, as he seemed to be more of a listener than a speaker. Maybe he'd also teach me a few veshches of his own, as he very well might be the silent learner that knew what other malchicks had pushed aside a long time ago. And if no more madness happened and these uniformed lewdies actually liked the idea of keeping us two malchicks together, maybe there would be loads of learning, indeed.

"Horrorshow. Now let's stay in the same mesto, brother Dresden, and viddy just what these rozzes have in store for us."

One more nod from Rex, and thus the two of us malchicks waited for whatever veshches were waiting for us at the counter. All the better to be surprised later on, I think.