::AN:: Alas, it's longer and stuff. Sorry there's not a lot of dialogue and all! I'll update again soon, I promise and thanks for the reviews randomblinx and gemstar2!! Please review this chappie, ppls! I wanna know what you think of this ficcie, and don't worry, I'm not abandoning my other ones... Here's the chap!!

Chapter 2

I have discovered the meaning of life.

The meaning of life is finding what it is that you do that makes you lose all track of time and then doing it, as much as possible. (Well, that's, like, my version of it.)

I am doing that right now.

What am I doing, you ask?

Well, I'm thinking, for one.

But yes, that's all I'm doing. Unlike most people (i.e., my super-annoying brother), I am perfectly content with just sitting here, gazing out the window in a melancholic fashion, pondering thoughts of –

"Shouldn't you be… painting your nails or something?"

I looked up, scowling at my intruder. Gods, don't people know how to leave other people alone? No, of course not. Not when the 'people' is none other than my dear, conniving, manipulative, stuck-up, pompous, chauvinistic, nuisance-of-a-human-being, spoiled –

"You're face is going to get stuck like that, Lucy. You will be forever be sneering. True, a sneer is the honest expression of a – Hey! Let go of my hair!"

My brother.

I tugged harder on his platinum blonde hair, only just realizing that I had stood up and attacked him. Gads, I hate that. One second I'm perfectly content with sitting there, thinking peacefully to myself… And the next, I'm attacking my brother. Not to mention, pulling his hair.

Can you get more sissified?

"OW!" He howled pathetically. "MOM! GET HER OFF OF ME!"

I smirked, releasing my grip on his "precious hair" and letting my arm fall to my side. "It serves you right!" I shot back. "Going on and on about honest expression and – That's my NOSE!"

He laughed triumphantly and turned around, skipping out of the room before sticking his tongue out at me.

Oh, that's mature. Great one, brother. Just pinch a girl's nose as hard as physically possible and then skip out of the room like a two-year-old, blowing raspberries at your poor, innocent victim.

'Tard.

I touched my fingers to my nose lightly, letting out a low, "Ow" in the process. Whatever. I don't have time for this. I haven't even started packing. Besides, leaving the room will only further provoke Mother's annoyed looks and exasperated sighs, because, no doubt, Brother Dearest ran to her side the second he left my quarters.

Moron.

I shrugged my shoulders, twisting my neck slightly to hear the soft crack that made me feel better after sitting in the same position for too long. Pulling out what books I had already purchased for the new year, I tossed them onto my bed lightly.

This is boring.

I flopped lazily onto my bed, rolling onto my back and shoving my texts aside. I could see a long blonde lock of hair on my shoulder. Hey, that actually looks kind of pretty. Maybe I could get the rest of my hair to curl like that? All loose and shiny and pretty and –

Really, it's just a waste of time. My hair is despicable. It's slightly wavy and platinum blonde, with abnormally brown roots for about a centimeter at the top of my hair. It looks a bit unnatural.

Do you realize how many times I've been accused of tampering with my hair? Oh, come off it, people! It's not like I could probably even work any of those glamour spells to begin with! I'd most likely turn my whole head bald. Or give myself a second head, Merlin only knows.

It's bad enough that it's an unnatural color. I mean, come on. Whose hair is really this blonde?

Well, raise your hand if your hair is an unnatural platinum blonde color! Come on everyone!

I chuckled to myself, raising my hand into the air and smiling gooffily.

Merlin's trousers, this must be the worst case of boredosity that I've encountered since…

Last month. Ugh, I don't even want to think about that. Ahem, but I will.

It was just after I'd arrived at home for the summer holidays, when my mother sat me down in the parlor-lounge-room-thing and started going on and on about something to do with Father and –

Wait. Wasn't that… important?

Well, sort of. I am kind of disappointed that I didn't get to see Father at all this holiday. I haven't seen him in five years! That's far too long to go without Dad!

Sure, he's not the nicest of folk, but he's still Dad. I get along with him better than I do Mum, that's for sure. At least he doesn't cling to his son like he's the only child he has (like Mom does).

I'm still thoroughly confused on the details, but I do know that Father got himself landed in Azkaban somehow. How, though, I don't know. Mother won't tell me. She says it's best not to talk about it. Whatever 'it' is.

Anyway, though, that was a pretty boring moment.

I remember sitting on the couch, straight-backed and full-attention.

And then gradually turning horizontal as Mother's voice kind of droned on in the distance. By the time I was 'dismissed,' my feet were hanging off one arm of the couch and my head was kind of twisted at an angle so that my hair hung off the other edge, lightly grazing the soft carpeted floor below.

I still only remember half of what she was going on about. I'm usually a really great listener, mind you, but sheesh! If you had to hear Mom's voice for about three hours straight, you'd be lounging around, bored out of you mind, ready to scream at the top of your lungs for the nearest dementor to come pay you a healthy visit and put you out of your misery, too!

Or maybe you wouldn't have exaggerated so much? Er… Perhaps not.

Anyway, the long and short of it (even though I've never really understood that expression) is that Mother believes that being so far away at Durmstrang will be "too dangerous" for me and that it's in my "best interest" to finish off my next few years of school at Hogwarts. Blah blah blah blah blah.

So now I suppose the short and, er, short of it is that I'm going to be attending Hogwarts for my fifth year, at least.

How crummy is that?

I mean, there are REASONS I would have rather gone to Durmstrang!

For instance, my brother!!! I mean, COME ON! Now I'll have to attend the same school as him?!

Thank Merlin that I'm not in the same year as him, or I'd probably go mad.

Or I would kill him.

Not literally of course, but I would plot the thought of "killing him" more often than I already do.

Not to give you the wrong impression or anything, but my brother totally sucks. He's overly uptight and arrogant and all that annoyingly boring stuff that comes along with being superbly rich and aware that you're going to inherit all of your father's fortune. But he's really not that bad.

Or, at least, he didn't used to be. We used to hang out all the time. He was like, my best friend! Granted, at nine years old, your dog is also your "best friend," but still. (By the way, I didn't have a dog at nine years old, anyway. So there.) It was just that once he started school at Hogwarts, he got so cruel and distant, fully taking on the role of mean older brother.

Which is why I refused to go to Hogwarts. One, I didn't want to be near him anymore. And two, I didn't want to end up like him.

So, after all Mom and Dad's desperate attempts at convincing me to stay didn't work, I was sent off to Durmstrang a few days before the first day of my first year.

There were a lot of "Fs" in that sentence.

First.

Frist.

Fist.

FFFFFFF!

I'm going to develop a type of lisp or something if I don't stop myself soon. I'll be 'fffing' the better part of the day away at this rate. Which doesn't sound so bad. It's actually quite fun. You should try it. You know you want to. Come on, I'll do it with you.

FFFFFFF!