KNY: Hiya all! KNY here bringing you my very first attempt at a Harry Potter fanfic, so please be gentle!
Disclaimer: Until my plans for world domination succeed, I sadly do not own Harry Potter.
I Must Not Chase the Boys
In a land far, far away, a lone knight bravely climbed the mountain to the dragon's keep. Atop his mighty steed, the brave youth was a sight to behold. He was to rescue the fair golden-haired princess from the great, fire-breathing monster and claim her as his bride. He would prove his love for her through his skill and bravery…
Yeah, yeah, warm fuzzies all around.
Moving on to our present tale, not in some far away kingdom under a brilliant blue sky, but rather in the rain-soaked, fog-bound swamp we call England. More specifically, at a very special school of magic…
Two young wizards sat under an old, knotted willow in an attempt to keep from getting any further soaked from the late autumn downpour of rain.
"When is she going to get here?!" the redhead muttered irritably for only the fourteenth time in the past six minutes.
"I don't know, okay?!" His green-eyed companion was in no better mood.
"Okay, geeze! You don't have to bite my head off, Harry! Sheesh…" The redhead sighed and stared out towards the lake. "I don't think she's going to come."
The one called Harry sifted to try to find a dryer spot under the overhead branches. A small trickle of water ran down his nose. "She'll come, Ron. You know she'd never back down from a fight."
"I suppose you're right- Ack!" Ron was cut short as a large, wet ball of mud collided with the side of his head. Harry suffered the same fate.
"You blokes really need to pay more attention." The boys pulled their bodies out of the slippery ground to glare at their smirking assailant.
"Yeah, yeah, Cat. Cheap shot," Ron grumbled as he tried to get mud out of his ear.
"Glad you could make it, Cat," Harry said, "Thought you'd decided to act like a girl and stay out of the rain." The teasing note in his voice made the one now identified as Cat smack him again with another mud ball.
"Come on, Potter," Cat taunted, "Get up and fight like a man!"
"Oh, coming from you that means a whole lot!"
"Come on, ya pansy!" And with that, the biggest, messiest mud-fight Hogwarts had ever seen commenced.
Hermione looked outside the window at her friends viciously attacking each other with mud balls and shook her head. Those three could be so childish some days. She far preferred the comfort of a roaring fire and a good book on a day like this.
Then her wandering gaze landed on the figure in worn blue jeans assaulting the boys with taunts accompanied by flying mud balls, and grinned wryly. If anyone had been born the wrong gender, it was Cat. Well, her full name was Catrina Rosaleane Skyler, but several people had learned the hard way not to call her that. Harry and Ron included. She laughed in remembrance of the looks on their faces after said incident. Ron had a nice shiner for two weeks, and Harry had been a multitude of pretty colors: blue, black, purple, yellow, red…
When they had first met about three months ago, Cat had been lounging against one of the outside walls, watching them play Quidditch against the Slytherins. They won of course, and the Slytherin players were, well… if Hermione used such words, she would have described them as pissed.
Anyway, some of the players had decided to try to take their frustrations out her. They cornered her behind the stadium after game-time, and Cat caught them.
"Okay you filthy, mudblood," Marcus hissed, "Now you're going to pay for your friends' attitudes!"
"Don't you think it's kind of rude to pick on a girl half your size, you cowards?" Cat's cool voice broke through the stillness of the evening air, a faded denim cap over her head.
"Look, buddy," one of the Slytherins said, mistaking Cat for a boy. "Just walk away and forget what you saw here, or maybe we'll just pick on you instead!"
Cat just yawned boredly and replied, "Sounds like you're P.O'd because you lost."
"Watch your mouth, kid!" one of the others yelled.
"I do wish you'd stop making your inferiority complex my problem." Throughout this entire exchange, Cat continued to look uninterested, as if this lot was far below her.
"That's it!" a heavy-set boy said as he and several others advanced on her, Marcus among them. He threw a punch right at her head, intending to bash in her skull, but she grabbed his wrist and kicked his foot out from underneath him. After that, she simply let momentum and gravity work its magic.
Then, she dodged another boy's kick and nailed him in the jaw with a hard right hook, knocking out several teeth in the process.
A few seconds later, all but two boys were on the ground, the lucky ones unconscious, the others too wounded to fight anymore. One of the remaining boys had managed to pull out his wand and pointed it at her.
"W-Winkid-" he started to stammer.
Cat rolled her eyes and pulled out her own wand.
"Accio wand!" she cried, and the boy's wand came flying towards her where she deftly caught it. Then she calmly walked over and with the grace with which she had handled the whole fight, punched him in the chest.
After he fell, she turned to the last one and coolly said, "Is there anything you would like to add?"
The boy shook his head frantically, and stared at her as if she was going to eat him.
She smiled at him, then, and not a friendly one. "Then would you please go get a teacher and politely inform them of what these boys were doing?"
If he nodded any harder his head was likely to snap clear off his neck.
"Good boy," she said, showing her teeth in a predator's grin. The boy got up as fast as he could, stumbling in his rush a few times, and bolted to the castle.
Then she turned to Hermione who had watched the proceedings silently, eyes wide with a strange combination of awe, fear, and utter fascination. "Are you all right?"
Hermione stared at Cat as if she was speaking another language before responding, "Y-yes."
"Well that's good, as long as you're okay." Cat turned to walk away when Harry and Ron came tearing around the corner, frantically searching for Hermione who had been missing for nearly twenty minutes.
"Moine!" Ron cried followed a breath later by Harry's "Where have you been?! Are you okay?!" Then they caught sight of the fallen Slytherin boys and Cat standing there watching them with an expression of debating whether to fight or walk away.
"You!" Ron yelled, "Did you hurt Hermione?!" Without waiting for an answer, the enraged boy charged her, and promptly met the ground, Cat balancing lightly on his back.
Harry was about to attack also, but as he pulled out his wand, Hermione grabbed his arm.
"Don't! She saved me!"
"I'm going to let you up now," Cat said to Ron, who was still getting acquainted with the dirt. "Will you stop trying to get yourself killed and ask your friend what happened?"
And after that the four of them had been inseparable. As it turned out, Cat was a recent addition to the school. She had been privately tutored for the past five years by her parents and her godfather, Dumbledore. This little tidbit of information, as well as her performance regarding her defense of Hermione, instantly integrated her in the trio.
Anyway, Cat was a total tomboy. Not once had any of them even seen her hair color as it was always kept underneath some kind of hat. Hermione glanced out the window at her again. If only she showed some sign of being a normal girl…
Later the three mud-warriors headed back to the Gryffindor Common room, all of them thoroughly plastered from head to toe with thick, gooey mud, and laughing loud enough to wake the dead. The filthy trio attracted only a few stares from their fellow Gryffindors. This kind of thing was commonplace around there.
"Well, I suppose this is where we part company, eh?" Cat said when the reached the division between the boys' and girls' dormitories.
"Yeah. Unless you'd rather come with us?"
"Ron!" Harry clouted his friend over the head.
"I didn't mean it like that!" Ron protested. "It's just, Cat's more guy than girl, ya know?"
"You've got a point, Ron, but still, just because she's not a girl girl doesn't mean you can go inviting her up to men's territory."
Cat gave a half grin and shook her head. "Thanks for the offer, Ron, but no. I gotta go. See you guys at breakfast." And with a small wave, she turned and walked up the stone stairwell to her rooms, occasionally shedding clumps of dried mud.
When she reached the girls' dorms, she found she was alone. Well, that wasn't unexpected; most of the others were socializing out in the common room as it was still fairly early in the evening.
She pulled off her old windbreaker and flopped on her bed, heedless of the dirt smearing on her comforter. After a few minutes, she got up and headed to the bathroom.
Once there, she examined herself in the mirror, frowning at her ragged appearance. She glanced towards the door, making sure it was locked, and tugged her ragged denim cap off her head. Bright red hair fell down her back like a waterfall of flame, a single curl straying across her cheek. She loved her hair. It was the one feature about herself that she liked. Heh. That would give those boys a chuckle, knowing that Cat, the she-male, actually cared about her hair.
She shook her head, causing her hair to bounce and wave as if it had a life of its own. That was silly. Like she cared what they thought about the way she looked…
Who was she fooling? She cared all too much, despite their belief of the contrary. She stared at the girl in the mirror and sighed, watching her reflection's blue eyes mirror her own depression.
She began to unbutton her second-hand plaid men's shirt, revealing soft, white cloth beneath. Cat glanced at the binding, knowing what was coming next. She began unwinding the cloth and let out an audible sigh of relief as her breasts came free. She had originally started binding her breasts because they got in the way of her rough-housing with the guys and playing Quidditch. Now she did so because it would be too awkward to explain why she stopped. Besides, she hated her breasts; they were too big.
She finished undressing and scrutinized herself again. Her eyes were too large and her mouth was too wide. Even her legs were too long and her jeans were loose around slender hips. There was a smudge of mud on her left cheekbone, making her look like some street urchin.
All in all, her appearance was like some twisted combination between a girl and boy. As if God simply made a mistake in choosing her gender. She wasn't female enough to be a girl, and not male enough to be a boy.
'I'm an It,' she thought bitterly. 'Not a boy, not a girl, but an it.'
Harry's words echoed painfully through her head as she cleaned up. "Just because she's not a girl girl-"
Cat bit back tears as she got into a big shirt and a pair of boys' boxers, readying herself for bed. She wished she had been born a boy. Then she wouldn't have these confusing feelings all of a sudden, or at least that she had gotten them when all the other girls did. She had caught herself several times that week stealing glances at Harry out of the corner of her eye, or thinking how beautiful his eyes were. Harry was her best friend!
She glanced towards her unfinished homework. She still had a two parchment essay on moonstones to complete for potions the next day.
"Oh bugger this!" she muttered, ignoring the looming assignment in favor of the sweet oblivion of sleep…
KNY: Soooooooo... whatcha think?
Now I have two ideas for this story:
1. Cat x Harry. I continue with this cute little crush idea, with plenty of twists, turns, and botched attempts at matchmaking. In this one, Draco will be portrayed as more of a villian.
2. Cat x Draco. Cat needs help regarding her crush on Harry. Who is the best at understanding the male mind? The one guy she can't stand: Draco Malfoy. Sort of a love/hate thing in the beginning.
3. Both. Write two storylines in one story and let the reader choose.
4. It sucks. I think you should trash it. I also have a chipmunk up my ass.
Please review!