Well here it is at last. The next chapter. I'm sorry it's taken so long, I really don't have much time to write at university.
I also seem to have the dubious fortune of having created a fic that is so popular it has more reviews than my other (19) fics put together. I speak, of course, of Albus Dumbledore's Inbox. I'm sorry I haven't updated that either! The thing is, I haven't got a suitable amount of funny material and I refuse to post anything that isn't funny enough. Writers should always know when to stop…
Disclaimer – It's all J. K. Rowling's, apart from the plot, Maisie Wilkins, Professor Akehurst (who is named after an old teacher of mine, hehehe) and Professor Evergreen (whose name comes from a fun yet vaguely Mary-Sue character in a novel I was attempting to write…)
Now let's hand over to Maisie. Or should I say, the Founding Four?
Chapter 2Scene – the four founders are gathered in a small room, in which there is a cauldron with a ladle in it. Helga Hufflepuff is knitting. Rowena Ravenclaw is reading. Salazar Slytherin and Godric Gryffindor are playing chess. Salazar is taking sadistic joy in taking Godric's pieces, whilst Godric is obviously distracted about something.
Godric Those Muggles will never understand us.
Salazar Pawn, take knight, and when you do so, be sure to make it slow and painful.
Godric They let their fear get in the way of understanding us!
Salazar Your move, Godric.
Godric Oh… Castle the king.
Godric's bishop yelps 'but I'm exposed'. Godric doesn't appear to hear.
Godric (getting gradually more worked up) They hate us because they fear us!
Salazar Pawn, take that bishop too. With relish.
Godric jumps up from his seat, and starts frantically pacing the room.
Godric It has got to stop!
Helga looks up from her knitting
Helga (kindly) What has, Godric?
Rowena is totally ignoring them, deep in her book. Salazar pulls out some darts and starts throwing them at the chess pieces remaining from the game Godric has just abandoned, and he is chuckling as they fall over.
Godric: This disgusting treatment of our kind!
Helga Oh, I agree, dear. Would you like a bowl of freshly brewed broth?
Helga bustles around the cauldron with a bowl and carefully pours him some.
Godric This is too serious for broth! They're saying we're evil, possessed by the Devil, that we communicate with dead spirits, that we will corrupt their children.
Salazar (murmuring, still concentrating on attacking the chess pieces) Oh now, that's not fair. Their children were corrupt already; I just honed their instincts.
Helga (patiently) I know, Godric, but we learned how to block the flames if ever they tried burning, didn't we?
Godric That's not enough!
Rowena (vaguely) Could you keep your voice down? I'm trying to read.
Salazar It's not nice of you to complain, Godric, seeing as it's your fault there are still Muggles around. My plan would have worked quite nicely.
Godric I will not kill them.
Salazar I didn't say kill.
Rowena (murmuring) No, the Basilisk was going to make friends with them and tell them that magic is fun…
Helga Why don't you just sit down, Godric? You're getting all worked up, it's not good for you.
Godric allows himself to be fussed into a seat.
Helga There, that's better. Now eat your broth.
Godric takes it but ignores it, still deep in thought.
Godric (springing from his seat) I've got it!
Helga sighs.
Rowena (vacantly, her head still deep in her book) Oh good.
Salazar You have? Yes, I knew bubonic plague had to spread to the wizarding population somehow.
Helga (patting Godric's shoulder comfortingly) What is it, Godric?
Godric We'll start a school! A proper wizarding school! It'll be perfect! I could teach children to defend themselves against the Dark Arts! Helga, you have an excellent knowledge of Herbology… You could teach, couldn't you?
Helga I suppose so, dear. I am rather fond of children.
Salazar Oh, so am I. Tastes much better than pork.
Godric I see it all clearly now! Rowena, you could teach Charms…
Rowena (still reading) Yeah, whatever…
Godric And Salazar…
Salazar Oh wonderful, I get to be a part of this little suicidal venture? I'm so thrilled.
Godric (oblivious) You could teach Potions! We'll mould young wizards and witches of the future! We'll strengthen them against the hatred of the Muggles! We'll teach them to not give way to hating them back…
Salazar Tell them not to return the favour? And I thought the Gryffindors were meant to be noble.
Godric We'll prepare them so they can use their gifts for good! We'll hone the latent power into a powerful strength!
Rowena Is he still talking?
She doesn't receive a reply. Helga has gone back to her knitting and Salazar has just taken a shot at the White Queen, who falls very elegantly. Godric is indeed still talking.
Godric There will be broomstick games! And camaraderie! A haven for witches and wizards mocked by unmagical folk! And we'll call it Hogwarts.
I know everyone's so terribly enthusiastic about the Founding Four. So I handed this in for a History of Magic essay.
Seriously, it is how I see them. Just go to their portraits. Salazar Slytherin is a git. He's always making perverse remarks to the girls and being sarcastic about Gryffindor. Granted, he makes the Slytherins snicker and he can be quite funny sometimes (and he's never perverse to Slytherin girls, lucky things. Not even the pretty ones). Rowena Ravenclaw sounds like she ate several dictionaries for breakfast. I don't think she did anything but read when she was alive. The Ravenclaws tend to nod and smile, too embarrassed to say that they can't understand a word she says. Godric Gryffindor sounds like a First World War officer. "Well, keep a stout heart, chaps!" He's so boring. And he keeps challenging Slytherin to a duel and calling him a 'blackguard'. Honestly. Helga Hufflepuff is the nicest, but all she ever talks about is making sure you're staying warm and keeping up with your homework. I was surprised she hadn't asked us to call her Aunty Helga yet.
I confess, I sort of hoped my 'essay' would shock Professor Binns to the afterlife. It didn't. It just came back with a shimmering green and rather slimy scrawl that read, 5/10 – accurate but not in an essay style.
I'm guessing he was alive when the Founders were.
Term was progessing fairly smoothly, and although the number of people asking me per week "Was that you on the first day of term?" was gradually lessening, Professor Snape was observed to make a number of sarcastic remarks about it in Potions. Actually that wasn't too bad, it was sort of nice to have my existence acknowledged for once. If you're the one Professor Snape picks on during lessons, you became instant martyr-for-the-day. I'm quite reasonable at Potions, and he'll never even think to say "Well done." In general, he just ignores me. He tends to attempt to eradicate the self-esteem of anyone with a molecule of fame, and so when I got some renown, suddenly my potions were the wrong shade of azure or something. This naturally leads to a lot of people saying, "Don't worry Maisie, you made a perfectly good potion" after Potions lessons. Which is nice.
Charms wasn't too bad, despite me severely irritating Flitwick. He's funny irritated, his voice goes all jumpy. I was having too much fun learning the interesting charms to do my homework. This has always been my problem. A few years back I had, for some reason, annoyed Eloise Midgen by demonstrating Alohomora to her on the padlock on her secret diary. She wouldn't accept that I was just trying to persuade her to get a more secure system. She said that people who did the work set in Charms didn't know Alohomora, so I demonstrated that Muggles could open her diary too, and picked the padlock with a badgepin. The next day, she got some mail-order invisible ink but claimed it was nothing to do with me.
This year, I had perfected a burping charm (I picked this up from Witch Weekly, it's good for trapped wind and for burping babies. Seems rather a soulless way to burp babies, but there you go), the slippery-feet charm (which is great for pretending to ice-skate, I love ice-skating) and the deep voice charm, for Darth Vader impressions. ("Who's Darth Vader?" Hannah Abbott asked me, after I demonstrated this. I'm trying to presuade Professor Akehurst, our Muggle Studies teacher, to show us Star Wars one day but he doesn't approve of such 'nonsense'.)
Flitwick, on the other hand, was teaching us summoning charms and sleeping charms. Sleeping charms, honestly, how boring. For one thing, the recipient has to be willing to sleep, so you can't use it for anything interesting. For another, the charm only induces sleep, it doesn't maintain it, and whilst it gives us good practice of Enervate, if there's something keeping you awake, a sleeping draught would be better. As for summoning charms, most of the time we spent learning them I spent seeing if I could make the objects dance, like in Disney's Sword in the Stone. Turns out I can't with Accio, so in bored hours I've gone to the library to see if there is anything that will do it. Hermione Granger almost throught I was another intellectual until she asked me what I was up to. Then she gave me a funny look and made her excuses.
Defence Against the Dark Arts had taken a new turn for the worst. Our new professor was a woman (gasp) called Professor Evergreen who was freshly back from having done a long intensive course on Defence but not actually possessing any practical knowledge or indeed any charisma. Plus her once-a-month problem appeared to rival Professor Lupin's. Poor sad woman.
Although I confess I was hardly helping her situation. Having been assigned a four foot long essay and managing about eleven inches, I told her that I'd been doing it in the library and someone had hexed my quill to write invisibly. Probably Ashley Zabini, Blaise Zabini's cousin. I claimed I'd written the rest of the essay, assuming that she would know the appropriate counterspell. She was greatly distraught when she realised she couldn't make the rest of the essay appear. Actually I felt guilty for days and had nightmares that involved Professor Sprout ordering my expulsion from Hufflepuff and Professor Snape telling me to sacrifice my firstborn. There was definitely a flaw there seeing as I've never been pregnant, and in fact I'm a virgin.
I muddled by the first couple of weeks, and eventually worked up enough resolve to go visit Myrtle. I always felt guilty if I didn't do this at least once a month. You've probably heard of 'Moaning Myrtle', the girls' lavatory ghost, and no one – absolutely no one – ever goes into those toilets. Well I heard a rumour that Percy's little brother Ron did once, and Slytherin girls always trick hapless first years into going in there, but after the first couple of weeks of term, everyone's learned their lesson and stays out.
Not that I don't blame them, but this has always struck me as pretty mean. No wonder she always cries if the only person who ever talks to her is Peeves and that's to make fun of her. I figured that maybe Dumbledore let her stay in the girls' toilets so she might make some friends at last (you know all ghosts have unfinished business – hers might be to get a life) and so out of some sense of duty I decided to visit her now and again.
To be honest, this mere act alone always makes me feel over-martyred. I always assumed the reason I had no real friends was because my mind works on a different plane to the rest of the Hufflepuffs (who seem to be interested in nothing but staying quiet and believe homework is a good idea) – the same is true of Myrtle, except her mind (or what's left of it) works on a plane that's buried in the lowest depths of misery. She takes most pleasure in seeing me unhappy. It's very tiring.
I knocked on the door of the toilets.
"Who's there? Someone else come to laugh at me? Oh yes, let's laugh at Myrtle…" Never mind that anyone come to laugh at her probably wouldn't knock first.
I sighed heavily, and opened the door.
"No, Myrtle, it's only me."
She looked more awful than usual, her ghostly face streaked with ghostly tears and her ghostly nose running with ghostly snot.
"Oh, it's you." She didn't sound impressed. "I thought you'd forgotten me. When you didn't come at the beginning of term, I assumed you found me too tiresome. Either that or something horrible had happened."
My attempt at a charitable smile faded. I was never quite sure whether to feel guilty or angry at Myrtle's accusations. She was right, I did find her too tiresome and that was because she was too tiresome. However when she said it, I always felt bad about even daring to think such a thing.
I sat on a rickety sink, which miraculously did not break.
"Oh no, Myrtle, it's just that I've been busy."
She sniffed. "Oh yes, too busy for me of course. Of course living people are much – more – interesting than dead ones…" She burst into tears. I was horrified.
"Oh no, Myrtle, I'm sorry, I should have come sooner." I reached to pat her arm and my hand passed straight through something that felt like a creamy kind of mist. She wailed louder.
"I thought you would have been busy with the first years anyway," I jabbered feebly, but she was having none of it.
"Yes, that's right, busy being teased and laughed at, busy having things thrown at me…"
"Perhaps if you were nice to them?" I murmured.
"NICE? Nice to people who are so horrible to me?"
I didn't quite have the heart to tell her why they were so horrible to her. It would hurt her feelings, and hurting Myrtle's feelings intentionally seemed especially rude as it was so easy to hurt them unintentionally.
After I'd left Myrtle, things looked brighter. Essays looked more fun, Snape looked kindly, Malfoy looked tolerant, and just about everything looked better than Myrtle. I wondered if I should go and inflict penance on myself for thinking such a thing, or maybe go celebrate that my self-inflicted punishment was over for this month. Possibly I could go and look over my weakly-plotted creative work – Hogwarts: The Musical – having sufficiently redeemed myself for my lack of dedication to work.
And that was it. First month of term, a nice quiet beginning. I'm not sure if it's comforting or annoying to look back at after the craziness that followed. Well, I'll tell you more about that later…
***
A/N – I know this chapter is a bit slow and has about as much action and adventure as an Enid Blyton schoolgirl novel with no midnight feasts, but I promise more to come.
A/N2 – I've added these notes later because I forgot (eek!) to include them in the original uploading… Thanks to my reviewers :-)
Gina Starr! Yes it is unusual but will hopefully be a lot of fun!
Odd World! Aaah, where would I be without your reviews? *hugs* Total opposite of a Mary Sue? Yay!
Ara Kane! Hufflepuff rules! Ooh borrow your characters? What a tempting thought… I might sneak in a cameo ;-) I'll let you know.
Admiral Albia! Heya, glad you like the story. Yes indeed, an awful lot could go wrong…
Kaylin! Thanks, I will keep writing :-)
Aqua Rosewater! LOL, cute :-) thanks.
Ariana Deralte! Thanks :-) Oh yes, and Dumbledore sang an opera in Intersections in Real Time, didn't he? :-)