--Author's disclaimer: Keira and Roxie are the only characters that belong to me. Everything else belongs to the genius known as J.K. Rowling. waves nicely to J.K.'s lawyers--
She stamped her foot impatiently and looked at her watch. Ten minutes late. Like always. Always the rebel. Rarely the one to conform to rules. She pushed her golden hair out of her face and looked around. Still no sign of her anywhere.
"Miss Keira, you're not going to be able to find a seat."
"No worries, Jeeves, she'll show up. She wouldn't miss this for the world. Just pick a compartment and put my trunk in there. Make sure it's one close to the front. Roxie will have to sit near the front."
Keira watched as her family's chauffer wheeled her luggage onto the platform and disappeared amongst the anxious students and crying parents that crowded Platform 9 3/4. Roxie, I swear, if you're not here in two..."
A resounding crack filled the air. "Good morning, Keira. Beautiful day for a train ride, don't you think?" her best friend said in a happy singsong voice.
Keira smiled. "Roxie, I swear, sometimes, you make me want to kill myself of stress." She hugged her friend and laughed. "You're getting pretty good at the Apparating stuff. You apparated right next to me." Roxie's lack of apparating skills had always been a joke between them. She was really smart, but she just couldn't ever get apparating down completely.
"Yeah I've been practicing. So, how was your summer?" Roxie asked as she began to shove her way through the crowd to get to the train.
"Oh, you know, same old everything." Her voice was filled with boredom as she thought about her summer.
"Oh yeah," said Roxie sarcastically, picking up on Keira's boredom. "It must have been real boring. Traveling the world, yeah, I would hate to be you."
"Well, it's just that I've done it a million times before. I mean, there are only so many times that you can tour the pyramids in Egypt or go on a safari for a yeti in America. And now, since my younger sister now knows how to apparate, she had to come along this time. Which made it even worse."
"Oh yeah, how is Whitney, by the way? How is Beauxbatons for her?"
"It works for her. Those snobby French, you know. Well, I mean, she does take after our mother, who had a legacy at Beauxbatons. So she loves it."
They boarded the train and began to search for their compartment. They finally found Jeeves, who was securing Keira's trunk in the overhead space. Her eagle owl Iris was perched on the back of a seat watching the activity outside on the platform.
"Thank you, Jeeves. Will you just help Roxie with hers?"
"Oh, no worries, Keira, I got it." Roxie pulled out her wand and caused her trunk, which happened to be a violent shade of bright pink, to levitate and fit itself neatly into the space next to Keira's trunk.
"Well, Miss Keira, if you will not be needing anything else, I will bid you farewell here."
"No Jeeves, that will be all."
"Well, then, have a good term, and don't get yourself into too much trouble." The old chauffer smiled and winked at her, and disappeared with a crack.
"Don't you have to go up front with the rest of the prefects, Roxie?" Keira asked as she settled herself into the seat closest to the window.
"Yeah, but that's not for at least another twenty minutes. So, tell me... did you talk to any of the Marauder's over the break?" Roxie asked with a mischievous smile.
Keira smiled back. The Marauders were their best friends. James, Sirius, and Remus. Three gorgeous guys, blessed with the talent of winning over any girl that they chose simply by smiling at her. And their friend Peter, who wasn't at all good looking, but he was kept around anyway. "Of course. Did you?"
The boys were there best friends, yes, but there was more than that between them. Everyone at Hogwarts knew about the two groups, the Diamond Dolls and the Marauders. Roxie and Keira were two of the four girls that made up the Diamond Dolls. The other two girls were Lily, a bright witch with vibrant red hair and fiery green eyes, and Alice, a smart girl who was rather shy, although she was pretty. The Diamond Dolls were the most popular girls at Hogwarts, of all the houses, of all the years. They were known for being perfect angelic students while in class, but causing mayhem when the professors weren't looking. They were the top of their class. Lily had just been made Head Girl and Roxie was a prefect. Still, even with their positions of authority, they knew how to have a little fun. Keira was one of the richest girls at school. Her parents both held jobs of extreme importance at the Ministry of Magic, her mother being on the Wizengamot and a Ambassador to the Muggle World, and her father being an Unspeakable. Most of her family's wealth came from inheritance. Roxie was the rebel. It was evident in her short sassy haircut that was dyed whenever Roxie felt like being spontaneous. It was currently a deep brown color with a hint of red. She didn't like to conform to the rules, but most of the time she did when she had to, which is how she got the Prefect badge. And Alice was the quiet one, who balanced out the boisterous attitudes of Roxie and Keira. She rather worshipped the rest of the girls. She could keep a secret better than any other person they knew though, so she often became the confidant.
As Roxie and Keira were talking about their summers inside of the comfortable compartment, the boys that they had wrapped around their fingers appeared on the platform. They immediately started to look around for the girls that they knew had been looking forward to seeing all summer.
"I don't see them yet, do you Prongs?" asked Sirius, to his best friend James.
"No, Padfoot. I don't. Well, Lily probably isn't here yet. Too bad she can't apparate, but being from a muggle family, well, ya know. She can't use magic to get here. But if I know Keira and Roxie, they probably got here thirty minutes early just so that they could socialize."
Remus laughed next to him. "Yeah that would be them all right. So you think they're on the train?"
"Yep" said the other two boys in unison. All three began to walk toward the scarlet red steam engine that was waiting patiently until it was time to depart. They seemed unaware that the eyes of the girls from years below them followed them to the train.
Sirius led the other two boys down the aisle-way of the train until he found the two girls. "Ah, here we go gents!" He slid open the door to the compartment. "Now there, loves, you wouldn't be talking about us now, would ya?" He smiled down at them, especially Keira, whom he had a not-so-secret crush on.
Keira looked up as the compartment door slid open and her heart skipped a beat when she saw Sirius smiling down at her. But she hid her joy at seeing him and flashed a smile at Roxie that showed that she was hiding something. "You only wish you three were that lucky. As if we would waste our time talking about three guys as boring as yourselves." She smiled slightly at them to show that she did not really mean the harsh things that she said, she was just giving them a hard time. However, the longing in her eyes was hidden by her designer sunglasses.
The three guys shoved their way into the compartment and secured their trunks and owls overhead before seating themselves around the girls.
"So, guess what ladies," James challenged, as though he were excited but didn't want to overly show it. "I'm Head Boy. Pretty wicked, huh?" He obviously wanted to impress them.
Keira looked at Roxie and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, Lily is Head Girl. She wrote to us a whole two weeks ago when she got the news. I noticed I never received an owl from you."
James shifted his weight uncomfortably. "I'm sorry Keira, I was really busy lately. You know, the whole coming back to school. New books, new wardrobe, new broomstick, all that other good stuff. I just didn't have the time."
"Yeah but still Prongs, you should have taken the time to write to these lovely young ladies and tell them the good news. After all, they are worth at least five minutes of your time," Sirius said with a smile. He casually stretched his arm around the back of the seat behind Keira's head. Keira smiled a knowing smile at Roxie. She knew that Sirius liked her. She knew that he wanted her. She knew that she had complete power over him, and she liked that position. She liked to be in power, she liked to have people trip over themselves to help her. She liked being popular. And it helped that he was good-looking, and rich, coming from a long line of pure blood wizards. That would mean that her parents would approve any romance between them. They didn't mind that she socialized with muggle-born wizards, but she had to marry a pure-blood. That was the way it worked.
Still, she couldn't let him know that she liked him. It would jeopardize her power and influence over him. If he knew that he could have her if he only asked, then there would be nothing left for him to work for. The game that she loved to play would be over, and her authority over him would be lost for forever.
The whistle blew, and commotion ensued on the platform outside. Those who had been saying long goodbyes to their parents scrambled to get their trunks onto the train before it started to pull out of the station. With the whistle, James, Remus, and Roxie stood up. "Well, Keira darling, I will be back as soon as this whole prefect meeting is over." Keira then realized that when everyone left, it would be only her and Sirius left in the compartment. She suddenly became nervous, yet excited at the same time. Roxie seemed to notice this fact too. "You two be good in here. Don't do anything I wouldn't do!"
Keira laughed. "Roxie, darling, that gives us way too much leeway!"