Dreaming of You
Author's Note: Part two, as promised. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, I love you all very much. And no, I'm not going to ignore my other story. Serena, my dearest darling muse, won't let me. She isn't fond of this story, probably because she isn't in it.
Part 2 - Autumn
Chapter 3
Sing once again with
me
Our strange duet.
My power over you
Grows stronger yet.
And though you turn
from me
To glance behind,
The Phantom of the
Opera is there…
Inside your mind.
"So what did you say to him?" Erin asked, as interested in Autumn's story as Hazel and Lianne were.
"Nothing. I hung up on him." Autumn gave Erin a Look. "You don't think I'm going to actually waste my time talking to some idiot pretending to be Draco, do you?" She scowled suspiciously at the surrounding people. "I bet someone's been listening in on our conversations, and thought it would be a fun joke."
"Probably." Erin nodded her agreement. "Just making sure you knew."
"Oh, come on," Autumn scoffed. "Like I would believe it was really Draco Malfoy…"
On her way to her next class, Autumn had to pass the payphone, and she nearly had a heart attack when it started ringing just as she went by. She glared at it for a moment, then shrugged and answered it.
The person on the other end managed to speak before she did. "Yeah, what?"
"You again?" Autumn slammed the phone back onto the hook and stalked off down the hall, hoping she'd broken the eardrum of the Draco Malfoy impersonator.
"And that's twice he's called me, pretending to be Draco!" Autumn concluded after a satisfying ten minutes of ranting to her friend Casey over the phone.
"Did he mean to get you the second time?" Casey wondered. "He could've been just calling the school payphone, and you getting him could've been a coincidence."
"There's no such thing as coincidence, only conspiracies that haven't been discovered yet," Autumn retorted, pacing as much of her room as she could reach, tethered by the phone cord as she was. "What I want to know is, why is he picking on me? Why not pester someone more gullible?"
"You could ask him," Casey suggested. "If he keeps calling you, that is. He might lay off, and you'd never have to deal with him again."
"True," Autumn agreed, just as a loud beep sounded in her ear. "Oh, blast, someone's calling in the other line. I'll be right back."
Pressing the flash button, Autumn put Casey on hold. "Hello," she said politely, in case it was a friend of her father's.
"You. I thought so." It was that boy, again.
"You're the one who keeps calling me," Autumn told him irritably, thinking of Casey's advice. "Why are you calling me, anyway?"
"I'm not. You're calling me," he insisted.
Autumn narrowed her eyes in annoyance. "Fine. Whatever. I have someone on the other line, so hold on a second, and I'll be right back." She switched over to Casey. "Guess what. It's him."
"Really? What'd he say?" Casey asked eagerly.
"I'm calling him, apparently." Autumn snorted. "He's trying to mess with me, that's what I think."
"Mess with him right back," Casey advised. "Look, mom wants me to do the dishes, so I've gotta go. Talk to your mystery boy. See you later!"
"See you." Autumn switched lines again. "You there?"
"Yes," he said sullenly. "You left."
"Obviously. I said I was switching lines," Autumn reminded him. "So do you have a name?"
"Draco Malfoy."
"I don't believe you."
"Why not? It's true! Anyway, who else would I be?"
"Some idiot trying to freak me out."
He sighed in exasperation. "Americans."
"Oh, so now you're going to claim you're British?" Autumn laughed mockingly. He had a British accent, sure, but that could be faked. Hazel could do a good imitation, and she sure wasn't British, so obviously it could be learned.
"I am British!" the boy snapped, insulted. "Honestly, what do you people learn over there? Or do you just not listen to your Headmistress?"
"My what?" Ok, now she knew he was losing it. "I'm at home, idiot, as you ought to know, having called me here!"
"Your Headmistress? Juliet Anderson?" he said, speaking slowly, as if to a five-year-old. "Remember her? She, Dumbledore, and the other school heads arranged this stupid exchange thing. As if it weren't bad enough that we have to deal with students from other schools, we've got to use these idiotic Muggle devices to do it!"
Autumn sighed. "You aren't fooling anyone," she told him. "I know perfectly well you aren't Draco Malfoy."
"What are you, insane?" he demanded incredulously. "I know you heard me, you just quoted me on it! What's wrong with you?"
"Draco Malfoy does not exist, much as I might wish otherwise," Autumn said evenly. "He is a character in the Harry Potter books - "
"The what?" he interrupted.
"The Harry Potter books," Autumn repeated, irritated. "You must have heard of them, how else would you know who Draco Malfoy is?"
"I know because I'm him," the boy sneered. "And I admit there probably is some moron out there writing books about Potter, but I know I am not in them. I wouldn't want to be! Sharing a book with Potter? No, thank you."
Autumn rolled her eyes. "So you want me to believe you're really Draco Malfoy, you're really at a magical school in Scotland, and you're really a wizard?"
"Well, it is true," the boy said snootily.
Autumn stared at the receiver for a moment. Then she hung up on him again.
"Why do you keep doing that?" Lianne demanded, annoyed. "You could at least talk to the boy!"
"He's a raving lunatic," Autumn said calmly, scowling at a page of chemistry notes. "That or an idiot. Personally, I think he's both."
"He might just want to talk to you and not know how," Hazel suggested, putting down her copy of The Tower and the Hive.
"Well, he's going about it all wrong, if that's what he's after." Autumn gave up on studying and shut her notebook. "After being hung up on three times, maybe he'll get the idea."
"Wouldn't it be weird if it was Draco?" Lianne said, smiling dreamily. "He could come on his broomstick to whisk you off to Hogwarts - "
"Um, Li, there is a vital flaw in that plan," Erin said, grinning. "Draco does not exist."
Lianne gave Erin a reproachful glare. "A minor problem in the face of true love."
"Well, no one's whisking me anywhere any time soon," Autumn said firmly. "At least, not if I have anything to say about it."
"You might not," Hazel said absently, most of her attention involved in her book again. "I mean, you never know."
"You again? Stop calling me!" Autumn shouted.
"I'm not! You're the one who's calling me, or can't your astoundingly small intellect grasp that?" the boy who insisted he was Draco yelled back. The crack of a phone being slammed down rang in Autumn's ear.
Autumn narrowed her eyes. Fine. He wanted to believe that, let him. She'd call him on it. She marched out to the living room and picked up the caller ID. Pressing the Back button, the words Malfoy, Draco flashed on the little screen, along with an overseas number.
"I don't believe it." Autumn pinched herself hard. "I do not believe it." She scribbled the number down, stalked back to her room, and dialed it.
"What now?" It was him! Autumn rolled her eyes at her own stupidity. Of course it was him. Who else would it be?
"Ok, fine. You're a computer genius, or something," she conceded with ill grace. "How'd you rig my caller ID?"
"I didn't rig anything," he said testily. "What's a 'caller ID', anyway?" A new suspicion came over his voice. "Are you a Muggle?"
"Yeah. So?" Autumn felt oddly defensive of her lack of magic. All right, so she scoffed at the people she disliked by calling them Muggles, but it was different the way he said it. Nastier than an inside joke.
"Wonderful. A Muggle." The disgust in the boy's tone was plain. "And here I thought an American witch would be bad. I suppose those gits running this whole scheme messed up."
"What scheme?" Autumn asked curiously, before she remembered she didn't believe any of this. He was too convincing for comfort!
"First, the combined school boards make Muggle Studies mandatory!" the boy said vehemently, and Autumn recognized the beginnings of what was clearly a long-time rant. "As if we need to know about a world without magic! Then, they go and decide the schools don't interact enough. So they're making us talk on these laughable Muggle contraptions to students at other schools! Supposedly, it's a 'closed magical network' and will only work to other devices in the network, but obviously, they made a mistake with that part. A Muggle!"
"At least I don't belong in the loony bin," Autumn retorted, stung. "You're a Muggle yourself!"
"I'm not!" he gasped in outrage. "How dare you say such a thing?"
"Well, it is true," Autumn said in a perfect imitation of his snooty tone from before.
"Muggle riff-raff." The boy snorted.
"Excuse me?" Autumn said incredulously. "Did you just insult me to my face?"
"You know, I rather think I did!" he sneered. "So?"
"Well, I'll have you know that you are the single rudest person I have ever had the displeasure of speaking to in my life!" Autumn exploded. "Even your ancestral pigeon would be ashamed of you! The half-breed monkey you have for a grandmother must be writhing in her muckheap! And your mother, who was obviously a street-walking baboon or an unusually stupid Cornish Pixie, probably died of humiliation long ago!"
"My mother is alive, healthy, and quite human, thank you," he said coldly. "Are you quite through?"
"Not remotely!" Autumn yelled, still in the powerful grip of her fury. "You have the manners of a wild pig! You dare to call me up at my own home and mock me, and lie to me, and insult me! You claim to be what I know you can't be, for the express purpose of putting me through pain, and you've probably got a bunch of friends over there laughing, thinking this is funny! Well, anyone who's listening, you can just - "
"There's no one listening," he broke in, insulted. "And I happen to have very good manners!"
"Hah!" Autumn snarled. "Could've fooled me!"
"Why should I waste courtesy on a Muggle?" he snapped. "You're nothing but a magicless freak - "
"And you claim to be polite!" Autumn growled. "I ought to have you arrested for harassment!"
"After you've been calling me?" he scoffed. "Fine case that would make! And you'd lose."
"Would not!"
"Would so!"
"Would not!"
"Would so!"
"Would not!"
"I refuse to be drawn into this sort of argument!" the boy snapped. "Especially not with a Muggle!"
"Too late." Autumn smirked. "And I'd give up on the Mighty Wizard act. You're only fooling yourself. You're only good point is good taste on which wizard to pretend to be."
"I'm not pretending," he said stubbornly.
"Are so."
"Am not."
"Are so."
"Am no- " He caught himself.
"Gotcha," Autumn said smugly.
"Autumn?" She jumped as her dad called her. She'd almost forgotten he was in the house. "Come on, we're going to dinner!"
"Blast! I need to go, but we can finish this argument another time."
Autumn was about to hang up when he protested, "Hey, wait, don't you have a name?"
"What do you care?" Autumn sighed in exasperation. "Autumn, alright? I'm Autumn. Goodbye." She hung the phone up with a decisive click.
"Good. You're talking to him," Lianne said approvingly.
"Why are you so excited about all this?" Autumn demanded irately. "It's just some idiot harassing me."
"Some idiot pretending to be Draco," Lianne corrected.
"It's because she's having those weird dreams," Erin said, grinning. "She thinks everyone should have some sort of link to their beloved fantasy man."
"And so they should," Lianne agreed, smiling broadly.
"Oh! Are you still having those dreams?" Hazel turned to Lianne with a gasp. "It wasn't just a one-time thing?"
"Nope, real as ever," Lianne replied, frowning in confusion. "Why?"
"I…" Hazel looked down at her book, as though for support. "I think I'm having them, too."
Author's Note: Coming soon… Part 3, "Hazel." (Pattern? What pattern?) Disclaimer? Please see the first part. However, the first part of the sequence where Autumn was insulting Draco is not in fact mine. I got most of it out of The Year of the Griffin, by Diana Wynne Jones, except for a few words I changed. Oh, and the song at the beginning of the chapters is "The Phantom of the Opera" from The Phantom of the Opera. Wow, they're as good at naming things as I am. And yes, this part is shorter than the first. That's cause the first one had two chapters. This has only one. Most of my chapters will probably be this length. Parts only get long when there are multiple chapters. Anyhow, Mysti is very busy with school at the moment (ever since August seventh *scowl*) and can't write as much as she wishes. So how often will there be new parts of this? I honestly don't know. However often I can write them. Hopefully at least a chapter every two weeks, but I tend to make optimistic estimates. So… sorry… *cowers from evil glares* Well, I'm done talking now. Zhai'helleva!
Love,
Mysti