YES! AN ACTUAL CHAPTER *heart* It's pretty long IMO, so I hope it's enough n.n;;
Also, just a grammatical note: "..." IS ONLY TO BE USED AS AN ELLIPSE, UNLESS IN A SPEECH. I AM NOT USING GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT LANGUAGE WHEN I USE THE '...'!!
I had to point it out. Oh right. The disclaimer, right. I do not own the CCS or HP characters, who belong to their respective owners. ~*~
"So you've got your exams coming up, haven't you? They'll be keeping your noses so hard to that grindstone they'll be rubbed raw," said Fred with satisfaction. The trio and the twins were sitting at the table, eating breakfast. As they continued the depressing yet oddly intriguing conversation, the talk turned to the subject of the transfers.
"Hey, did you ever notice that Sakura's really hot?" Fred winked to George. Hermione never did enjoy this kind of talk. She probably never will. She wrinkled her nose, and stated,
"Honestly, can't you find anything to do besides stare at girls?" She noticed a passed glance. "And pranks?"
"Oh, cheer up, Hermione. We lived with her for a few weeks, if we were going to make a move, we would've done so a loong time ago," Fred waved it off. He glanced at another end of the table for a split second.
"Well, whatever, she has a boyfriend anyway, so...so."
"What? How'd you know that?" Ron asked her curiously. Hermione gave him a look that crossed between incredulous and withering.
"Syaoran. Didn't you see that possessiveness when he carried her up the stairs?"
"Uh, no because I'm more used to the weirdness of you and V-"
"I can't believe a school would max out students, really," Harry interrupted. "Just how many students did they have to have?"
"Yeah, the whole thing's pretty suspicious, you know, because-" Hermione backed up.
"Hermione, you think everything's suspicious," Ron anti-backed up, rolling his eyes. A mini-argument insued. Fred and George whispered to each other in the backround something that sounded suspiciously like 'Ron sucks at dealing with girls.'
"I still can't believe Meilin went to Slytherin," Ron poked at his eggs. "I mean, she was really nice back at Si-Snuffles's house..." Hermione nodded in agreement. Finally, something they agreed on, Harry thought with a sigh.
"We should ask Syaoran about her. It seems like they're into something we don't know about," Hermione said, thoughtfully. "Hopefully he wouldn't mind too much on our intruding."
"Speaking of which, where are they, anyway? I haven't seen one of them today at all," George scanned the area one last time.
"Major jetlag," Hermione replied briskly. "Remember how they only got up at the evenings over the summer? This is the first time they've ever had to get up early. It's almost time for our first class. I hope they wake up soon."
~*~
Yue glared at the cowering page of his book. This was absolutely ridiculous. Here he was, one who helped discover all of this, reading a poorly translated book of theories. He flipped the page. And it's not like they even truly understood what the theory meant. It was NOT a space-time combobulation, in fact, combobulation wasn't even a word! But then again, what was there to do? He had been ordered to act as a natural student, and a natural student had to believe whatever was written in ink. Fools. Nakuru noticed these differences too, and Yue was hoping, with all his mediocre amount of hoping might, that Nakuru wouldn't-
"TEACHER!"
...nevermind. False hopes. Yue mentally sighed. He couldn't sigh out loud, of course. A natural student always did what every other natural student did. The genericness of it all disturbed him, though.
~*~
Spinel yawned, and was petted. He was pampered all day, all night...it was actually quite comfortable. Hannah scratched him behind his ears. It was so hard..... .to.. ...stay....awake... .... ..
~*~
Meilin had found herself wandering around and around. Stupid jet-lag! She hated jet-lag. Her feet had ached from being caught in several trip steps (actually, it was probably the same one over and over. You couldn't be too sure in the Slytherin corridor).
Now Meilin still found herself wandering around, but this time with a guide, and extremely sleepy. Her feet still ached though. Keesha helped support most of her weight, really, and they went at a nice, even pace because they were late anyway.
"You think we could skip and pretend we're sick? I could have, like, a fungal infection and you could have chicken pox or something..." Meilin really didn't want to see the teacher's face when she got there.
"Nah. Nothin' gets through Mam Pomfrey," Keesha cautiously stepped over a trip step. Meilin ignored it and promptly tripped. "Ain't havin' no bugger day, eh?"
"Yeah, well, whatever. At least I embarrassed Malfoy to no end," Meilin grinned forcefully, ending up screwing up her face. "He's the only idiot in the world to only bring one set of normal robes..."
"Eh, Meilin, that's what most wizards do, y'know..."
"What?! You're kidding me! What about hygiene?"
"Ain't got no word for that in their dictionary," Keesha looked off to the side. "Well, we'r' goin' ta Divination, anyway. Woman's a crackpot, sheesh, just tell 'er you had an interestin' dream with a lotta omens an' stayed late t'figure it out-she'll let ya off the hook easy."
"She'd really buy that?"
"Hell yeah. Say you dreamed of pink graffiti made by dancin' wizard robes..." Meilin snickered.
~*~
Tomoyo was not the type who ran around for danger. Nope. But...she had to go and enter that archway. It was so....desolate and....there. The curiosity bit on her insides. It was like in Beauty and Beast, and the sealed off West Wing....
The door opened. Tomoyo jumped, and hastily retracted her hand.
"Haii~ coming!" She went down the steps to greet Sirius, who had been out buying groceries(he didn't even complain anymore, with such doglike glee to get outside). What she found instead, however, was Snape. 'Him again,' Tomoyo's smile twitched. He obviously had a mutual hate relationship with Sirius, so why did he seem to visit the most often? Well, hate was a stronger word than what was really going on in their heads, she could tell, but it didn't change the fact she was seeing double of him than anyone else. He was reasonably polite to her though, setting aside the fact he was a little cold. "Ah, Mr. Snape, hello. Sirius happens to not be here at the moment, but could I treat you to a round of tea?" Snape looked around, with a look almost reaching mildly surprised on his face.
It was reasonable, however. The walls were free of dust, the wooden floors scrubbed, and everything was neat and tidy (at least, the front stretch was, which was all that mattered at the moment). Although Tomoyo had no magical abilities, she was double the housekeeper Sirius was (and had a much better sense of organization than Sirius's empty-and-burn policy). She took Snape's trenchcoat(overrobes, as wizards call it) and hung it on the coat rack by the door, which Sirius had taken pains to disarm. As Snape took himself a seat around the round dining table, Tomoyo fetched a cup from a cabinet and heaved out a massive can of ancient tea. She coughed, and threw the can away.
"Must be some tea blight. How about a cup of hot water instead?" Tea blight. A tea blight seemed like a stupid thing to say, but that's the best she could think of before Sirius got back. Snape looked impassive, and so Tomoyo just filled his cup with water out of a kettle. Snape didn't make a move towards it. Being quite used to this, she just grabbed the notebook and pencil she brought along with her that had been set on the table. "So, what urgent news do we have today, Mr. Snape?" Tomoyo asked politely.
"Just further movements of the followers. Apparently Lucius has taken up to walking around central Fubalville, and there's talk of..." Tomoyo jotted everything down that he said. She happened to be double the secretary that any wizard was, too. Although the days were generic, there was never an end to all the work. She spotted Kreacher out of the corner of her eye. He seemed to always appear whenever some visitor of the Order came along to talk about Voldemort's movements. Snape seemed oblivious. "...smuggled some unicorn horn powder, which was..." Tomoyo found that wizards weren't the sharpest crayons in the box(and from what she'd seen, Snape was one of the sharpest crayons too). Either that, or they all shared Sirius's opinion of house-elves' lowliness. It was the one thing about Sirius that made her burn. She made a sudden movement and jolted up, slamming the desk. Snape was taken aback.
"...I think I remember there was a spare box of teabags in the other cabinet!" she said, and smiled gently. It was so totally random that Snape said nothing. Tomoyo slowly and deliberately went to get the can. Of course she'd always known it was there. She reserved several little distractions for occasions like these. Not that she wasn't a little fond of Kreacher(who didn't seem to reflect the feelings), it just struck her intuition as bad for anyone outside of the Order to know. She took the cup of untouched lukewarm water and poured it down the drain. It made an awful gurgling scratchy noise. She had to tell Sirius about that later too. As she took out the tea, Snape spoke up.
"Aren't we being prim, Miss Tomoyo?" He asked in a dry voice. Tomoyo never understood his hostility towards her(since he'd barely said a few words to her yet), but it was so mild she didn't care too much. Someone was going to dislike her sometime.
"It's a courtesy that's been quite rammed into my head," Tomoyo smiled. Most of her mother's colleagues came when she wasn't there. But never had she met someone like Snape.
"Making up for what Sirius Black lacks, hmm?" Tomoyo's heart grew a little warm at the thought of Sirius. He always seemed to have a gruff, clumsy way of doing such things.
"Everyone has their own shortcomings," Tomoyo renewed her smile that always seemed to be pasted on her face. Snape was suspicious of this girl. Just when he started talking about something important, she'd do something weird--such as, go to the bathroom, notice a lizard, trip on the tablecloth, fall out of her chair. Obviously she wasn't clumsy(you couldn't live in Black's house alone for a few seconds if you were). Nor stupid(Her notes were neat and she seemed to keep up with politics in the wizarding world). Nor easily excitable(She recorded billions of things with a polite poker face). And what really bothered him was her keenness and that smile...it was like it NEVER, EVER, ENDED...
And she defended Black every single time Severus mentioned his name. There was definitely something going on. Snape looked at the clock. 7:00 a.m. There was still about an hour before he'd have to leave to his first class. The Potions Master probed further for an insight in what they had been doing.
"I've noticed that this house has been upkept...quite well," Severus said. So it was. There! There it was again. The renewing smile. If this was an act, it was a bloody good one.
"Well, we try hard," She responded.
"Do you two work well together?" An approving nod, and,
"Sirius is a kind man, and we do quite well,"
Well, that was new. Sirius collaborating. Working together. This girl is either ridiculously dense, or godlike. Or she was acting, which was quite likely. Snape didn't trust her any farther than he could throw her--Dumbledore always said that was one of his lesser qualities. But no matter, classes would start soon.
"I must take my leave," Snape said curtly, and rose up from his seat. Tomoyo looked down at her notes. There really wasn't anything interesting(or rather, dangerous). Next time, she'd lock the doors. Poor Sirius, he seemed to hunger for information.
'Snape, he seemed a little...' Tomoyo pondered. She soon followed after to send him off.
~*~
Yue sighed.
"Ten points from Ravenclaw!" Professor Umbridge said sneeringly.
"NO! It's wrong! Totally wrong! See, this theory states that if ether values are greater than force, then the magic will turn into a shell barrier, but in reality, if the ether values are greater than force, then it'll just make you self-des-"
"Twenty points from Ravenclaw!" Professor Umbridge shrieked over Nakuru's voice.
"What are points anyway?! Why do I care about points? You think I care about points?! You've butchered poor Clow's theorems on-" Nakuru's fist veinpopped. Yue glared at Nakuru. She lurched back, and gave him an irritated look. He raised his hand, his face unreadable. Umbridge adjusted her glasses, and called on him.
"I'm sorry for the trouble, but back in Japan, the theories on Ether in Relation to Force are based on different teachings," He said deliberately and carefully. He flooded his voice with a glamor to turn Umbridge's favor on him. This woman was clearly not an adept of magic (she actually believes in a combobulation, I mean honestly). There was another adjustment of glasses.
"Well...." There was a stretched pause. "I guess Japan is way behind then! We must teach you darlings the right way," She gave them a pitying, condoling look. Yue stoppered his fist, and Nakuru buried her face in her arms.
"We wish to learn the truth," Yue barely managed in a polite tone. "I hope you will teach us some of what you know, so we can become better wizards like you." It was enough. Professor Umbridge beamed.
"Well said, my child! Fifty points to Ravenclaw!" Yue noted the relief of tension in the room. Nakuru had stacked up around sixty points against Ravenclaw. It wasn't hard for Ravenclaw to get ten points here and there.
At least, as long as Yue could keep Nakuru in check.
And himself.
~*~
Keesha prodded Meilin. She groaned in response.
"Well, I din't really think 'dat Profs Trelawney woulda made ya more awake," She replied sardonically. "But y'better looka lil' sharper, we got Potions next." Meilin proceeded to groan even louder. She'd heard enough about Snape -- and to be honest, her last encounter of that slimeball made her cringe enough as it was. Only Tomoyo and Sakura could honestly be Misses Polite to him, that's for sure.
"Oh well, I'll at least be able to see Malfoy's red face again," she grinned.
"Nah, I think he's skippin'."
"Skip? Is he allowed to do that?!"
"Well, w'ARE talkin' 'bout Profs' Snape here, he dotes on the Slytherins...now that I think 'bout it, I dun think ya'll have any trouble," Keesha contemplated. "Beside, I know you've got friends in Gryffindor, yeah?" Meilin nodded. Now, they've hit it off really great--Meilin practically had the details of her childhood, figuratively speaking. It made her sad that the obviously Southern American (whose family moved to London because of a job her dad was offered) was so proficient in merging into the backround. Oh well. As long as she was with her, there wasn't any Parkinson to bother her.
Well, the normal person wouldn't have noticed the pair, but Sakura was not normal in the context of people.
"Ohayou, Meilin-chan!" She called in her Japanese. Meilin responded.
"Hey Sakura," She said in a much more tired, less bouncy tone of voice. Sakura could be a morning person, but she definitely wasn't.
"What's wrong?" Sakura asked, worriedly. Meilin continued her groaning speech. "Meilin Meilin, is she your friend?" Sakura smiled at Keesha, who returned a white grin.
"Could call me that. How ya doin', girl?" She stretched out her hand. Sakura took it, and shook. Keesha was about to do the bopping thing that seemed so common back at her old environment, but thought the better of it.
"Hi, Meilin," Came a rather boredish yet a little apprehensive voice. Meilin found herself to stand up straight and looked at green eyes.
"Oh, hey Harry," Meilin greeted. "You seem like you've had almost as boring a day as I have," She proceeded to yawn. Harry and Ron grinned a little as Sakura paled in color.
"Binns's lectures does that to you. I bet any day now, Madam Pomfrey'll prescribe him as a sleeping potion," Ron remarked.
"Even the fact that he's a ghost talking about imp insurrections won't keep you awake for long." Harry continued, who seemed to have been relieved about something. Huh, a ghost teacher. That explained Sakura's blanch. Meilin spotted Syaoran closely behind Sakura, who seemed to have had, instead, a vaguely tired look, probably from soothing Sakura.
'I hope Sakura gets over her fear reeally soon,' Meilin thought as Nearly Headless Nick floated off in the backround. The bell rang for the last time, and they took seats in the dreaded dungeon.
The group and Keesha all huddled up around the back-ish. Harry surveyed the room.
"Hey, where's Malfoy?" He whispered quietly to the rest. Meilin spoke up from beside him.
"He's skipping today because I ruined his only set of robes," She snickered. Sakura 'hoee'ed.
"Meilin! That's not really that nice..."
"Hey! All I did was spray-paint them pink!" There was a small pause and a fit of giggles.
"Meilin, that's so great!" Harry applauded her and laughed.
"Heh, he deserved that."
"What's spray-paint?" Ron never got his answer, as Snape started talking about O.W.L.s.
~*~
Malfoy didn't understand what was going on. His robes were...shockingly...Pansy Parkinsonistic...pink. And they stank. Really, really, eyewatering bad.
So he sat on his bed in his underrobes, and...sat. And stared really hard at his robes. God they were so pink. How do you clean stuff again? Scringify? No, that didn't seem quite right. Where were those stupid house-elves when you needed one?
He was seething too. Really hard. Someone was trying to play a prank on him, and it wasn't pleasant. To them, of course, in time.
The young Death-Eater looked at his arm. The Mark was hardly visible. When was the Dark Lord ever going to have any use for him?
'The less use the better,' he thought. His father had enormous power in the so-competent Ministry, but that didn't stop things like...Dumbledore. Ugh. He hated Dumbledore so much, that Mudblood-lover.
A little part of his mind wondered if he really did. The little part immediately snuffed out.
He let his mind wander. The transfer students...there was something seriously wrong. It was weird, of course, but that weirdness had layers, just...he didn't know how many layers. Meilin Li seemed to be doing well with Pansy Parkinson, but...even he had to admit Pansy lacked quite a bit of brain. Wait a second...Li was also friends with Potter...
He glanced at his (shocking neon florescent Parkinsonistic) pink robes. Unlike many Slytherins, he was no fool.
...
Maybe the pink was peelable...
~*~
~*~
wee, I finally got it done~ I was going to put in some stuff about Touya and the ghost Sakura found, but....that could wait til later n.n;; Keeping track of all the groups is as hard for me as it is for you x.x;;
Again, sorry for the delay n.n;; I decided to revise at the last minute, and managed to scrounge out my HP5 :D
Hopefully this'll be done before the sixth book o_o;;