Jackie: And on to Chapter 2!
RakitWhore: You mean we have to talk every chapter?
Draco-muse: You'll get used to it.
Jackie: I don't own anything. You'd think that people would understand that by now.
RakitWhore: Angst much?
Draco-muse: Two chapters, no songs, and no me! This is highly unusual.
Jackie: What about the title?
Draco-muse: Jingles don't count, no matter how addicting they are.
Jackie: Fine. Just enjoy!
Color My World
By Jackie Malfoy
Chapter 2: Glow Yellow
I hate this place already.
Regina slinked down the corridor, sticking close to the wall. Her slight frame was engulfed in massively oversized robes that drug the ground as she walked. Her sapphire eyes darted in every direction, trying to avoid everyone and everything as she made her way to her first class.
This was what should have been her last year at Hogwarts. Instead, it was her first year. Brought back from her "special" boarding school in America, she was finally allowed to attend regular school like a normal witch.
On a few conditions, of course. She scratched at her neck once again, cursing the discomfort of her inhibitor necklace for the umpteenth time. It looked like a choker necklace with a blue gem...when she was calm. Now the gem was turning slightly yellow in color as her nerves caught up with her. Her robes were also specially designed to hide every inch of skin they could, and her uniform was modified to include a pair of black leggings and a black turtleneck, as well as dark gloves. The bastards at the Ministry weren't going to take any chances with her.
She made it down the maze of stairways to the dungeons for her first class. There were no magic courses at Xavier Academy, but Potions was her favorite at home, where her father taught her privately during the summer and holidays. She would have thought it was genetic, but she knew that he was only an adoptive parent. Regina had only vague memories of her life before her powers manifested; a face here, a voice there, a few bits and pieces of her young life scattered through the years.
As Regina entered the classroom, she saw that the room was divided between red ties and green ties. Regina had no house, but stayed with her father, a professor at the school. In her black and white tie, she knew she stood out, so she quickly grabbed a seat towards the back of the room, her gem glowing a faint pink color to match her cheeks.
Just then, Professor Snape entered the room in a flourish of robes and began writing a complex formula on the board for a standard invisibility potion. The room was instantly filled with the scratching of quills, and Regina too began writing furiously. If she was taught one thing by her father, it was how to take good notes, and fast.
"Alright class, I want this potion on my desk by the end of the period. No talking, no notes. I want to hear nothing more than your cauldrons bubbling." Snape continued to recite his pre-class set of rules, and scanned the room. The Golden Children of Gryffindor were conspicuously absent. Late, as usual, he thought to himself with a scowl. Over on the Slytherin side of the room, the students were using their best suck-up attitudes, which Snape also regarded with a scowl.
Then his eyes drifted to the back of the room. He saw the new girl, in her strange attire, carefully sorting ingredients and writing notes as she went. As she reached for a vial of wormwood, their eyes met, and his expression softened into a smile. She crinkled her nose as she flashed him a quick grin, then set aside the wormwood in its spot and wrote down its possible effects in the potion.
"That's my girl," he thought proudly.
Severus had fought long and hard down at the Ministry to get her permission to attend Hogwarts this year. Mutants were a hot issue, and the governors didn't know if they should classify Regina as a human or magical creature. That had caused some glorious outbursts from the normally quiet man, but this was his daughter they were talking about.
After finding her abandoned on the roadside, he had taken her into Hogsmeade, gotten her looked at by the resident medi-wizard at a clinic, and taken her to his home to recover. Once awake, he noted that asking about her family was not in the best interests of his corneas nor his furniture. Finally, an official letter had come stating that she was a legal ward of the state. That letter contained the name of her former family, and ever since, Severus had an innate distrust of them.
He started out as her first and only foster parent, and a year later adopted the little girl who had grown on him so much, giving her a last name and, for the first time, a loving home. Eventually, she was sent to the Xavier Academy for Gifted Students in America, and her power was given a name...visual empathy. She could feel the emotions of others, display her own feelings in an "aura", and several others along those lines. The man in charge assured him that being a mutant was not a disease or deformity, but merely a natural phenomenon that was more widespread than he'd ever known.
In the summers, Regina would come back from Bayville, tanned and sleek, her auburn hair cropped around her face, bearing the moniker "Empathy" and stories of telepaths and blue elves. She would teach her father about mutants, and he in turn would teach her the magic arts. In three short months, he crammed an entire year of Charms, Transfigurations, History of Magic, and all the other classes required of Hogwarts students, into her head. Their favorite, though, was always Potions. Saturday was Potions day. He taught her to write down a formula quickly and accurately, the uses of standard potions ingredients, and every potion he could think of that she would need to know, going beyond the text into practical experience.
Now, watching her among her peers, Snape finally breathed a small sigh of relief. He could see her gem glowing a more intense blue than usual, an indication that she was concentrating. It was broken, however, by the sound of the dungeon door slamming as three red-faced Gryffindors stumbled in.
Regina stopped dead as she looked up. Two of the faces were unimportant to her...a scruffy-looking boy with jet black hair and glasses, and a frizzy-haired girl with an upturned nose. The third student made her heart stop. It was him. The face from her nightmares. The one that grinned at her from the other side of the window. Her brother.
Her gem began glowing an intense red. Had she not been wearing her inhibitor, the classroom may have been incinerated by her anger and hatred at that moment. She ducked her head and glared at him.
Severus cleared his throat. "Fifteen points each from Gryffindor, Potter, Granger, and Weasley."
Jackie: You know, I may do another one-shot about the whole Snape-Regina adoption thing. You can't really sum something like that up in a few paragraphs.
Draco-muse: Blah blah blah...get to the good part! Like where I show up!
RakitWhore: By the way, as a note...Xavier Academy for Gifted Students is the cover name for Mutant High. It's also the base for the X-Men. Telepaths are Jean and Professor X, the blue elf is Kurt Wagner alias Nightcrawler. Just to clear things up.
Jackie: Also, I'm using a rather complicated color system, I'll probably make a guide when I get enough chapters.
Draco-muse: Until then, Stay Tuned!