Disclaimer: Wow, I've only written one disclaimer and I already tire of them. Soooooo, I obviously do not own any of J.K. Rowling's Wonderful Work! Hope you like mine, though. I own the plot and all my characters. Including my versions of J.K.'s chars. Have funs! Reviewer Appreciation is at the bottom.
Next chappy of MHFA. Takes place four years after the first chappy.
CHAPTER TWO
Oak yawned. She was attempting to sleep, but it wasn't working very well. Yawn. It wasn't even near the full moon, so it was almost completely dark in the room, yet she still couldn't sleep. She rolled over and tucked the covers underneath her chin, then shifted position again, then again, and again. And again.
"GAH!" she yelled in frustration, throwing her covers onto the floor. She sat up angrily and glared at her covers. Closing her eyes, she massaged her temples. Jumping up, she went to retrieve her fallen blanket. Whipping it off the floor, she threw it back onto her hammock. She went to jump in after it; she accidentally jumped too high and whacked her head off the wall.
"Curse you!" she growled, giving the wall a hostile look. She sat there massaging her head for a moment, then stretched out on her hammock. She didn't bother with her blanket; she had decided she had no need of it. Besides, I'll be getting up in a few hours, where's the need, she reasoned, looking at her clock. The glowing green numbers read 3:30.
Oak flopped over and faced the ceiling, her curly brown hair forming a half-halo around her head as her stormy grey-blue eyes stared at nothing. Butterflies in her stomach had become active once more. Only a few hours, she thought, looking once more at her clock.
"Hogwarts," she said aloud. Even the name sounded peculiar. And in just a few hours, (she looked at her clock again) I'm going to be there, she thought. Well, more than a few, the train will take a while. But I'm glad Dumbledore is letting me go, she thought to herself. He probably remembered Uncle being there, that's why I'm going. Maybe Uncle persuaded him.
She turned to the wall shelf and picked up her ticket.
"Platform Nine and Three Quarters," she mused. Only in the wizarding world, she thought with a smile. Replacing her ticket, she curled up in a ball and attempted to cover herself with the blanket she was laying on. Giving up on it, she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
Yawn. She looked around at her room. She had gotten the attic room, of course. Out of all the children in her family, Oak had had the bad luck to land herself with the attic. It was either extremely hot, or extremely cold. And right now, it was extremely hot. The muggy atmosphere made it nearly impossible for her to sleep.
Plus the butterflies. Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Hogwarts. She yawned and looked back at her clock. Two and a half hours. Until the train. Her brothers had all said it was nothing to worry about, Hogwarts. Maybe for Sam, Arin, and Rob it wasn't, but they knew it would be different for her. They were probably just trying to help her feel better.
Sam was tall and thin (as were all of the Maclaren children, including Oak), with red hair and black eyes. Everyone said he was so handsome, his voice was wonderful and his eyes…he was her brother. Therefore she didn't notice it. He was a seventh year. Head Boy, too. Next year, he said, it would be Bill Weasley, his best friend. The two of them were neither strict nor perfect students, but who really minded? Well, Rob maybe.
Rob was a fourth year. An annoying, rule-abiding fourth year. Also a tattletale. And annoying. He had black hair, reading glasses, and was top of his class. In everything. He was also Mr. Perfect. Very too strict. Very. She despised him. Opposite of Arin.
Arin was well built, tall, and as thin as his build would allow. He had light brown hair and brown puppy dog eyes. Arin was a fifth year, but he looked almost part giant. He was tall and almost looked like he was twenty-five, as far as size went. He was a good friend of Hagrid's, and he and Hagrid had long discussions about magical creatures, whatever kind they may be. Arin was her favorite brother. He always treated her as his favorite sibling and was rather laid back. He was a Beater for the Quidditch team. Gryffindor team, of course. All her brothers were Gryffindor. Even Rob.
She scrunched up her nose. Hopefully I will be too. Butterflies again. What if I was put in Hufflepuff? Na, na, no worries there. Hard work wasn't her thing. Except maybe practicing Quidditch. Oak loved Quidditch. She wanted to be on the Gryffindor team, because it was the best, of course. Though Ravenclaw wouldn't be so bad. At least Ravenclaws were smart. But Slytherin…Slytherin would be the worst. She'd have to burry herself in the Quidditch pitch if she were put in Slytherin.
Oak looked once more at the clock. Only one hour and forty-five minutes. Until the Express. And then Hogwarts. She would be the youngest one going this year. Her little brother and sister would have to wait for a few years. Two in Donavan's case. Four in Feri's.
Feri was her only sister, and she was only seven. She'd have to wait a while for Hogwarts. Donavan was nine, and was so much like Arin in personality that she couldn't help but get along with him.
She glanced at the clock. One hour and forty minutes already. She looked around again. The attic room. She would have liked a different room. But of course, there wasn't really another one to spare. With the money and all, she thought. And having six children…and her problems…though the house really needed fixing. The second floor stuck out a bit, and the third and fourth floors tilted a bit to the right, okay more than a bit, but the fifth floor tilted the other way. And it was creaky.
But there was the money problem. Well, as soon as Sam left home, they'd have more room. True, only one more room, but more room all the same. And that was, hopefully, to be Oak's room.
Oak looked at the clock again. "An hour and a half," she muttered, "I can't take this." She looked around at her room again. Bare wood with lots of plants. Okay, more than lots. And two windows, and a skylight in the ceiling, which she could see the moon and many of the constellations out of. Astronomy should be easy, she thought with a smirk. She knew almost all of the constellations by heart; along with the phases of the moon and they times that the constellations were in the sky. Her Uncle Lupin had helped her with that. After all, she pretty much HAD to know them all, she thought, scowling.
Remus J. Lupin was a former student at Hogwarts, who was also, though not many knew it, a werewolf. Oak knew it, though. Yeah, she thought, her eyes darkening, she knew it only too well.
He was her favorite Uncle, her Mum's brother. Mum was a witch too, but everyone had thought she was a Squib until right after her eighth birthday when she exploded a pan of soup when she had been mad at her own mother. Mum was a petite sort of woman, slender and not exactly tall. Her father, on the other hand, was very tall. Magic from the start, he was, and a very kind person. Like his best friend, Arthur Weasley.
Oak rolled over. Her family and the Weasleys had always been close. They almost had the same amount of children. The Weasleys had two twins, Fred and George, instead of Donavan. They had one son her age, what was his name? He'd be starting this year, too, but Oak, for the life of her, couldn't remember his name. Wonder if he's nice, thought Oak.
She glanced nervously at her clock. One hour and fifteen minutes! "Already," she said. The butterflies had returned. Oak looked at the single poster on her wall. Chudley Cannons. Best ruddy Quidditch team in the lot of 'em, she thought to herself as she watched the orange-robed players zoom across the poster. It was a full-length view of the Quidditch pitch, so she could see the entire practice going on. It was rather interesting, really. Too bad they didn't have a full-sized Quidditch pitch.
Oak's family had a small house, true, but they also had a small Quidditch pitch. It was only half the size of a real pitch, but it served its purpose well. Everyone but Oak's mother had a broomstick, and most of them were actually good broomsticks, except for Rob's and Feri's. Oak's was a Cleansweep Seven, as were her brothers' Sam and Arin, Donavan's was a Cleansweep Five, and her father's was a Comet Two-Sixty. Rob and Feri each had a Shooting Star, which, though cared for, were extremely slow. Oak had been playing Quidditch since she could sit on a broomstick.
Sometimes, the Weasleys would come over and they'd play Quidditch against them for a while. It always ended in a tie. Always. That's simply the way it was. They were evenly matched.
Oak looked back at her clock. One hour, five minutes. "Alright, in five minutes I'm going to pack my trunk, I can't sleep anyways," she muttered to no one in particular. She ran over her packing list mentally. Clothes, of course, and her robes, cloak, hat and gloves; her books for each class; her wand; her telescope, cauldron, scales, and so on; the personal effects she wanted to bring, novels and whatnot; and, of course, her two owls, Daemon and Sean. She had gotten them for her last birthday, one from her parents and one from her Uncle Lupin.
Sean was her Great Horned Owl, he was from Uncle Lupin, who could barely spare the money but insisted on it. She had also gotten Daemon, her Eastern Screech-owl, but he had been from her parents. Both of them had only been hers for a week, and already they had become tied in with her life. She looked over at the empty cages now. The two of them had gone hunting and would arrive in time for her to take them to Hogwarts.
They had gone to Diagon Alley several days ago and gotten all her stuff. Dad had just gotten a raise, so she got a new wand instead of a hand-me-down one. And as she was taller than her mother, she had gotten new robes, too. True, she had gotten mostly hand-me-down books, but everything else was new. But her wand, she liked the most. It was made out of an oak tree nurtured by centaurs, one of the only three wands from that particular oak tree, and was 12 inches long. The core was dragon heartstring, encrusted with the powdered claws of a griffin, and encased in two feathers from the same griffin. It was one of their trial cores, and was very…particular. The dragon whose heartstring was in the wand had been oddly powerful, even for a dragon. And the griffin, especially mischievous. It had caused far too much mayhem in Ollivanders, and Mr. Ollivander had seemed quite happy to be rid of it. Oak was particularly happy with her wand. Who knew where it would get her to in Hogwarts?
"Hogwarts..." she said aloud. She looked back at the clock. Fifty-seven minutes.
"Time to pack," she said happily, and rolled over, right out of the hammock and onto the floor.
"YOWCH!"
Review. I want lots of reviews.
THANK YOU ALL YOU WONDERFUL NICE WONDERFUL PEOPLE! I LUFF YOU ALL.
Ozma: As I says in my review: Never shall I stop loving to write! Hope you liked this chappy.
PhoenixFire: I said most of what I wanted to in my review. Oak is my favorite tree, name, and my favorite in lots of other things too. Hope you liked this chapter and I appreciate the compliment.
OcelotKitten: After reading your review, I thought, 'Heck, screw waiting for a bunch of reviews, I wanna post NOW!' So I did. Not much Remus in this story, but there will be more in later chaps. I have plans for the guy. *Fred and George's evil grin*
See, all the nice reviewers get pretty reviewer appreciationisms. Review and you can have one too! Later!