This is a story that involves the marauders and a small group of OC characters combined with several cannon characters like Snape and Lily also making regular appearances. I don't care if you don't like OC's and I really don't care if you don't like MY OC's. If you don't like the story, don't read it and please, I ask you now, do not clutter up my review board with pointless flames. If you have some constructive criticism it is welcomed but flamers will be laughed at and perhaps shot.
Disclaimer: J.K Rowling created the marauders, Lily Evans and Severus Snape. I would like to recite this poem in her honour. ahem
Dear J. K Rowling
These roses were red and now their dead.
You killed Sirius. I wish you worms in your head.
(After you finish the seventh book.)
HP
September first greeted the inhabitants of Saltwort village with a cold, salt-scented breeze that blew in off the iron colored ocean, up the jagged and angry cliffs and through the narrow cobblestone streets of the town like a ghost's sigh, so cold and faint it could barely be felt but served to raise goose pimples along your arms. It was, however, welcomed by the girl who currently resided in the second bedroom of 413 Wicker Way as she escaped the hustle and chaos of the inevitable pre-Hogwarts madness that had the downstairs reduced to a churning rabble of angry parents and worried teenagers trying to locate that last bits of summer homework, their laundered robes and scattered school supplies while tossing scathing remarks at each other and trying to finish off their last bites of toast and fried eggs. It was a gross understatement to say she was glad to have escaped, however momentarily, to her bedroom so she could peer out the great bay window at the inky dark blotch of the ocean and the breaking dawn and draw in gulps of the fresh sea air.
Chelsea Susan Sundher took a deep breath of that smell she loved so much and let it out in a whooshing sigh, collapsing backwards on her bed. Her pet owl, Bob, twittered at her from within his hugely too big cage, buzzing around inside it like a feathered ping-pong ball. He was obscenely small, even for an elf owl, a tuft of speckled cream and white feathers, so fat as to be nearly round, with two coin sized amber eyes that seemed to burst with unquenchable energy. Chelsea found him adorable but it was no secret that he irritated her roommate's lethargic tortoise shell cat Keeper to no end. The lazy animal had even taken a break from sleeping in his wicker basket to hiss at him and scratch at the wall of woven twig that separated them.
Sighing once more she closed her eyes and tried to ignore Bob's high-pitched warbling and Keeper's rumbling meows. It was hard to believe she was returning to Hogwarts for her sixth year. It seemed like only yesterday she'd been waiting out side the mail slot for the letter that had come to her older sister and her brother before and been near to tears by the time it came, late because the owl who had delivered it had gotten tangled in the laundry lines. That letter that had, without a doubt, changed her entire life, transformed the face of her fate and changed her from Chelsea Sundher, honor roll student to Chelsea Sundher, aspiring witch and potions expert at fifteen and ten twelve's of age. The restless girl who seemed to have the shadow of unexplainable calamity haunting her throughout childhood was suddenly a Ravenclaw, then a Hogwarts Prefect and now she was one of the most promising young witches of her year. What a long and wonderfully bizarre road it had been.
"CHELS! Tell me you've seen my potions work! PLEASE!" Chelsea frowned as he musings were broken by the loud, harassed cry of her roommate and best mate Kirsten Engel who had just burst into the room laden with freshly washed robes and an armload of crumpled and disorganized homework.
Kirsten Engel was from one of the most distinguished pure blood wizard lines of the day, as Chelsea had come to understand. Her mother was a famously beautiful starlet of the magical world, her father an ex Quidditch World Cup player and winner and immensely successful magical politician who led the POBASOH Party, the official opposition of the current Minister for Magic. Unfortunately for them, as Kirsten always said when asked about her parents, they had produced a rather spectacularly average child, though Chelsea was often inclined to disagree with this assessment.
It was true that Kirsten possessed nothing of her mothers spectacular beauty, she had a roundish face with less then defined cheekbones and a thin upper lip, but also had a cutely turned up nose and eyes that varied, depending on the way they light hit them from a shade of pale grey to a deep and vibrant blue, outlined by thick curving lashes. Her hair was a tuft of uncontrollable blonde, much like a seedy dandelion head and she had charmed it over the summer, in the safety of her parent's house so that it possessed several shocks of bright fuchsia. A thin silver ring gleamed from the right side of her lip and her ears, which stuck out slightly from her head, gleamed with jewellery. All in all she was an average LOOKING individual but her personality was anything but average.
She was famous at Hogwarts for holding the Quidditch records for most goals saved in a single game, most goals saved in a single season and was well on her way to most goals saved in Hogwarts history. A formidable record. She did also, however hold the records for most concussions caused, bones broken by, fouls caused by and a few other foul play records that Chelsea did not recollect. Her ferocity on the Quidditch field was a thing to be feared but her remarkable skill as Keeper of the Gryffindor team also insured that the team did not suffer overmuch for her zealousness.
She was a master of Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts and possibly one of the only people in the world who enjoyed History of Magic and equally inept when it came to Potions and especially Muggle Studies. No matter how many summers she resided with the Sundher family it seemed far beyond the girl to understand anything about them. After the sixth hundred time of correcting her when she called telephones 'belly-ma-flones', batteries 'batter-ma-jigs', automobiles 'auto-thingies' and aeroplanes 'airpeo-flanes' Chelsea had surrendered to her fate and just 'corrected' or in other and more honest words 'done' her Muggle Studies work. However it was not like she had nothing to gain from such a relationship, for she now had Kirsten, top of their year, let alone class in Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts as her private tutor whenever she had need of her, not to mention the fact that Kirsten eagerly did her History homework for her with a fervor that was beyond Chelsea's understanding.
"I think it's under the bed." Chelsea answered after a moments thought. She yelped when the bed jumped as Kirsten dived below it, disappearing up to her heavy steel-toed boots which, Chelsea noticed with a sigh, had their toes painted with the union jack done in hot pink, neon green and black nail polish.
"Jesus Chelsea! How long has it been since you cleaned under here… is this your puffskin! Or what remains of it anyway…" Chelsea sighed as she listened to her best mate rooting around under her bed.
"Teddy bear, indescribable, marbles, rubber band, junk, junk, junk, hey a sickle! And what are these? Jelly beans! Ha-ha, there's my essay… hey would you look what I found!" Chelsea looked over the edge of the bed as Kirsten flopped out like a large blonde fish and brandished the spoils of her adventure in the unexplored land of under the bed. The sickle proved to be a Zonko's fake that pictured a demented image of Merlin who spouted rude comments whenever the coin changed hands. She also brought forth a potions essay, a bag of jellybeans that they spent a few minutes daring each other to eat until Kirsten finally tipped the whole bag into her mouth, only to discover it was all the truly vile flavors of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans that Chelsea had picked out of her last bag and stored away for some future use that proved to be a good laugh at the faces Kirsten made as she chewed the glob of disgusting beans. But the most enjoyable and unexpected discovery proved to be a tattered scrapbook, overflowing with a manner of odd and fantastic things that chronicled their first four years at Hogwarts and the wide array of company they kept there.
"It's THE BOOK." Kirsten declared with delight, blowing dust off the book, who's cover had been signed by everyone who's picture had been added to it. Her callused fingers traced over a crude stick figure who was charmed to move, picking his nose then declaring 'My name is,' the name was scribbled out furiously though still somewhat discernable as Sirius Black, 'and I'm a dirty man whore' in a never ending cycle. Chelsea grinned as Kirsten placed it on the bed and flipped it open revealing the first pages of them, Chelsea plump and be spectacled with round coke-bottle glasses, Kirsten gigantically tall for eleven and horse toothed, her mouth a tangle of metal braces. The pictures were surrounded by doodles and comments written in color change ink in a variety of writings. They knew, though one just glancing upon it may not have, that every person who's picture was written in the book had written a comment in it somewhere, those who were repeatedly in it had written in it and equal number of times that their picture appeared. They had to write something about someone else's picture, teasing was accepted but mean-ness was not, except in Kirsten's case since, as she reminded them constantly, it was her book.
"I wondered where that went." Chelsea commented leaning over and laughing at her.
"Nice braces tinsel tooth." She commented snidely.
"Yeah well nice tits... you… who was flat as a board. And whose boobs still aren't as big as mine." Kirsten replied sticking her tongue out and squishing her boobs between her arms to make them even more prominent. "Hah! No smart response to THAT!"
"I'm afraid not, nothing I could say can compare to your knockers Kirsten." Chelsea replied absently. As Kirsten narrowed her eyes and tried to figure out if she was being mocked or praised Chelsea grabbed the book and dragged it over to herself, flipping through it, looking at all the pictures of them and their other two fearless companions, Lily Evans and Breanne Nolan. Lily's picture self smiling and Breanne's scowling and trying to avoid being drawn into the picture, accurate and consistent as ever.
"D'you remember the day we met?" Kirsten asked, seeming to have decided that Chelsea was either complimenting her or that it was not worth expelling the effort it would take to discipline her.
"You re-tell that story every time we go to our first double potions. You know, since SECOND year? I couldn't forget it if I tried." Chelsea replied, rolling her pale green eyes and sighing.
"Well it's a good story! I remember it as if it were yesterday…" Kirsten sighed and looked off into space as Chelsea looked up expectantly. After a few moments of silence she poked the other girl in the side.
"What?"
"Whadda ya mean 'what?' Aren't we going to reminisce about our first meeting while you tell a vastly incorrect story glorifying yourself while making me seem like a helpless loser?" Chelsea asked, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at the other girl.
"Oh yeah! I knew I was supposed to say something after that 'I remember it as if it were yesterday' line." Kirsten said enthusiastically. She cleared her throat and leaned back against the headboard, folding her hands behind her head and sighing.
"I remember it as if it were yesterday…" She began again. This time, she kept to protocol.
/ FIRST YEAR \\
Chelsea Sundher stepped out of the potions classroom and into the halls of her new school with the familiar thrill of exuberance and enthusiasm that she always got when seeing this fantastic place. She readjusted the enormous thick glasses that rested delicately on her nose and grinned to herself. The shy Ravenclaw had not met many of the students beyond her brothers friends, who had no interest in a first year like her, her sisters friends, who had no interest in an unpopular, un-pretty and overall un-thrilling book worm like her and the girls in her Ravenclaw dorm who seemed to be interested in nothing more then some irritating magical band named 'the sparklers' and pink lace. There was the one other girl in her dorm that she'd yet to even speak to, but all she ever did was sit reclusively behind the royal blue hangings of her four posters or crouch in a defensive position behind mounds of books in the library. Yet still she was optimistic, somewhere in this school she would find her lifetime friends. She knew it.
"Hey aren't you Sundher's little sister?" She turned to see a pack of burly sixth year Slytherins approaching her, slouched and scowling like apes tiny glimmers of sentient awareness sparkled in their eyes but beyond that they seemed quite devoid of human intellect.
"Y-yes…" Chelsea replied timidly, taking a step back. But not fast enough to dodge the tremendous heavy arms of the boy who suddenly seized her book bag, throwing it to the side and letting her careful notes, spell books and wand spill out across the hallway. She whimpered as the boys shovel-like hands folded over her arms and he glared at her.
"L-l-l-let g-go of me…" She said as his grip tightened and started to hurt.
"DON'T… tell me what to do! Your brother is so cocky, just because he can do a few tricks on a broom. And your sister! Don't even get me started, girl thinks she's too good for me but then doesn't shirk dating that Hufflepuff jerk! You're just like them aren't you, you filthy little mudblood?" Chelsea flinched as the boys' snarls sprayed her with his frothy saliva.
"I think it's about time someone taught the Sundher family a lesson…" He announced, his cronies snickering as he lifted one heavy hand. Chelsea struggled to get away, jerking on her arm until it felt like an ounce more effort would make it dislocate but the apes grip didn't waver. As she looked up at his fist she realized… this was going to hurt. Quite a lot.
"SHE TOLD YOU TO LET GO DERRY, YOU INBRED PUFFERFISH!" Chelsea started as a gangly blonde bundle of rage flew out of the crowd like a tornado, one heavy foot clad in steel-toed boots shooting out and delivering a kick, squarely to the kidneys. The bullies grip weakened instantly to newborn kitten like proportions and he fell to his knees, releasing her and letting out a strangled cry of pain.
"Engel… you don't get it… this little piece of Muggle born filth…" Derry started, turning to a gawky girl with braces who stood over him with arms crossed over her chest and a look of utmost loathing on her face with sudden fear. Chelsea identified her as a fellow first year, Engel, Kirsten who had been sorted into Gryffindor at the ceremony two days past and had just left the potions classroom. As Chelsea suddenly remembered she'd blown up the potion they were making, that the potions master had said 'even a blind monkey with one finger could make.'
"I DON'T WANT TO HEAR YOUR EXCUSES! GO BE A BIG, BAD GIRLHITTER ELSEWHERE! I DEFEND THIS HALLWAY!" The blonde declared grandly as she stood boldly in the middle of the hall, her robes and hair stirred by a random and to this day unexplained breeze as she set both hands on her hips and fixed the boy before her with two fierce blue eyes, glaring at Derry and his friends as the wounded boy picked himself up and motioned for them to flee the scene, leaving the girl standing in the middle of the hallway laughing maniacally and shouting: 'FLEE MAGGOTS! SCURRY AWAY YOU DISGUSTING LITTLE ROACHES! FLEE THE MIGHT OF KIRSTEN!"
By the time she had finished Chelsea had almost finished shoving all her stuff into her bag to try and escape before the insane girl could notice her. She reached out for her last quill only to see a pair of steel-toed boots and a hand already reaching down and scooping it up.
"Hi." The voice was surprisingly friendly and chipper as the girl handed Chelsea her quill back.
"Uh… hello." Chelsea replied, taking the quill and shoving it away hurriedly. She looked at the girl and smiled shyly noticing that, at the moment, she didn't look particularly homicidal. "My name's Chelsea Sundher… thanks for your help with… him." She motioned vaguely in the direction that Derry and his posse had scurried off to.
"I'm Kirsten and you don't have worry about Derry. He's just a big coward, picking on first years because he's too magically inept to deal with your brother or sister." The blonde replied, standing fully she towered over Chelsea, almost a full head taller then her, her buck teeth contained by a dense weave of metal braces. But she grinned and Chelsea managed a small smile back, realizing at length that she was not in danger from this girl; she was in fact SAFER with this girl.
"D'you… d'you want to go to lunch? We can just grab something and go walk around the lake." Chelsea suggested timidly.
"Sure! I heard there are merpeople and a big old squid in the lake." Kirsten said enthusiastically, kicking an irritating fourth year out of the way as the girl stood in the middle of the hall gossiping loudly to her friends and blocking traffic.
"Merpeople?" Chelsea asked, thrilled.
"Don't get your hopes up, they're ugly buggers. They're all grey-skinned, with seaweed hair and spooky eyes. The ones from your Muggle fairy tales live in the tropics." Kirsten replied, putting her hands in the pockets of her robes and ambling along beside her as the fourth year clutched her bruised shin and called Kirsten a 'big, ugly giant.' Kirsten made a rude gesture at her and spat a curse that made Chelsea blush as they reached the Great Hall.
"What we do have is a unicorn herd, in the Forbidden Forest. We should check it out sometime."
"Isn't the Forbidden Forest… forbidden?" Chelsea asked as they swung into the hall.
"Yeah. What's your point?" Kirsten replied with a laugh, cocking an eyebrow at her and getting the look of someone who enjoyed breaking rules.
"So… are we allowed?"
"If we don't get caught… we're allowed to do anything." Kirsten replied and her eyes sparkled as she gave her new friend another one of her metal-mouthed grins.
/ \\
"You're such a bad influence on me. I was a good kid once you know." Chelsea replied grinning as Kirsten finished her story.
"Yeah. You're interesting now." Kirsten replied, folding her hands behind her head and cocking one eyebrow at her. Chelsea sighed and was about to reply when a familiar angry shout sounded from downstairs.
"GIRLS!" Shelly Sundher screamed up the stairs, the stress rankling her nerves like it did every first of September. "You better be ready to go, because we are going RIGHT. NOW!" Chelsea squeaked, throwing a few last minute odds and ends into her trunk as Kirsten shoveled her retrieved homework into her trunk and scrambled to shove it down on her robes and last couple textbooks.
"GIRLS!"
"COMING MOM!" Chelsea called, jumping on Kirsten's trunk to force it closed. The other girl hurriedly buckled the straps and locked it before Chelsea tucked The Book under her arm and the two of them scampered down the stairs, trying to avoid getting run over by their trunks as they bounced down the stairs after them, Kirsten gripping Bob's cage and Keepers basket as she landed spry legged on the landing and handed them to Chelsea's older sister, Shawna so she could lug the trunk out to the Sundher's big red and white pickup truck and throw it into the back, fixing it down with a few rubber straps. Chelsea followed her example and within moments they were ready to go, as the sun started peeking up over the inky dark depths of the ocean.
"Looks like the workers are heading off the fishery." Shawna mused as a small line of cheap cars started puttering towards the cliff-side buildings that marked the Saltwort Fishery.
"I hate the fishery." Chelsea replied darkly, climbing into the car so she wouldn't have to look at it.
The fishery was a cluster of grey, cube-shaped buildings that reeked of cod day and night and employed more then half the men and women who lived in Saltwort village. The docks below provided and most convenient place for the surrounding areas to drop their catches at the end of everyday, but the beach was simply too small to accommodate the fishery. So the fish were unloaded from the boats then winched up the cliffs, inch by inch, meter by meter, until they reached the top of the cliffs where they were washed, frozen and packaged before being shipped off all over the province. The business had been passed down through their mothers side of the family since it had been started in the middle ages, surviving every conceivable hardship. But it seemed now that the line of fishery managers was at its end.
Every one of Shelly Sundher's children had aspirations in the world of magic, from David Sundher's sights as auror, to Shawna's ideas in the world of veterinarian for magical creatures to Chelsea's goals to be a healer and St. Mungo's matron there seemed no one who was willing to take up the family business. This attitude was plainly spelt by every child's additional deeply ingrained hatred of the fishery and all things related to it.
"Do you have any money Chelsea?" Shelly asked as she swung into the cab of the pick up. In the narrow back seat Kirsten and Chelsea buckled in, Keeper's basket on Kirsten's legs and Bob's large bronze cage on Chelsea's.
"A little." Chelsea answered, knowing full well what was coming.
"If you'd worked at the fishery this summer like I suggested you would have money." Shelly pointed out, starting the car as Shawna climbed into the front passenger seat.
"I hate the fishery." Chelsea repeated crossing her arms and glaring at the building. Kirsten grinned at her and laughed lightly, this conversation repeated itself every year, actually more like every month and Kirsten mouthed along as Shelly started the familiar lines.
"I don't understand what you kids have against the fishery! It's the lifeblood of Saltwort village and tied to every rung of the Martin ladder. My father passed it to my brother who passed it to me, god rest his soul he was too young, and I had hoped I could pass it onto one of you." She clicked her tongue then and Chelsea giggled as her mother's and her best friends mouths worked in perfect synchrony.
"Mom the fishery is cold, damp, boring and it smells like rotting fish. It's full of vile old men with hairy stomachs and it has talons of doom. And don't tell me I'm being silly, it does! The moment you start working there it sinks its talons into you and you never leave, your stuck working there for the rest… of… your… LIFE!" Chelsea replied, sighing and looking out the window at the blue sky. "I want more."
"What more? It's a good job, running the fishery. It'll put a roof over yours and your husbands head, feed and clothe your children, the hours aren't demanding… what more do you want?" Shelly replied, exasperation in her voice.
"You just don't get it. I don't want a small town, perfect life. I want to do something that means something! Help people." Chelsea replied.
"Listen to yourself you…"
"Lay off mom." Shawna said softly. "You've tried this talk on all of us. It hasn't worked yet."
Shelly let out a loud 'harrumph' of frustration and Kirsten grinned, still following her motions exactly. Chelsea laughed into her hand and bit her lip before hitting her friend, not wanting to burst out laughing and have to explain to her mother what was so funny.
Kirsten stuck her tongue out and grinned leaning back and staring out the window at the passing Muggle landscape.
"Chels?" She said after about a minute.
"Yeah Kirsten?"
"How do airpeo-flanes stay up?" Chelsea sighed and laughed, shaking her head before taking a deep breath.
"Well Kirsten, what we Muggles have figured out, and what has since become a major aspect of modern Muggle civilization, is the "airfoil". The wing on an airplane is an airfoil. When air flows around the wing, it creates lift. They way it creates lift is based on the wing's movement through the air and the air pressure created around the wing. An airplane's wing, in varying degrees depending on the type and design of the airplane, is curved over the top of the wing and straighter underneath the wing. This shape is key in how lift is created as the wing moves through the air. As air hits the wing, it is "split in two", with air moving both over and under the wing. Since the top of the wing has more curve than then the bottom of the wing, the air moving over the top of the wing has further to travel, and thus must move faster than the air moving underneath the wing. The air moving over the top of the wing now has decreased air pressure than the slower moving air under the wing. And so lift is created." She finished sighing. She definitely didn't want to try and explain the finer points of aerodynamics to Kirsten, who still didn't understand how cars, phones or even the drinking bird worked.
Kirsten glared at her and tossed her fuchsia stripped hair. "If you're just going to be stupid don't answer." She snapped, looking back out the window as an aero-plane roared overhead. Chelsea chuckled to herself and looked out her own window as Saltwort dwindled in the distance and she felt a thrill in her chest.
"I'm going back." She thought happily. "To Hogwarts."
HP
R&R if you love Harry Potter!