The Little Prophet: Thanks for being the first reviewer, and here's the 'more' you asked for!
Autumn Darkness: Three words for you (and me, actually). Too. Much. Caffeine.
Chaucer: Ooo, thank you!
Crying Sorceress: I'm first! Yey! Lol. Hope you like this chapter as much as you liked the first.
Arch of Wand: HI! *waves spastically, notices no one else is waving, and runs around the room, waving all the characters' arms for them*
Ryuu no Furui Yami: Lol. It seems Casey's *cough*my*cough* reaction was very much like everyone else's! Say hi to 'Padfoot' for me!
Niniane, Lady of the Lake: I wrote more! Yey!
Kay: Funny, everyone's saying it sounded like them. Huh. Thanks for the review!
Here's the 'first' chapter! I'm basically setting things up for the rest of the story… I'm trying to get a bit of Casey's personality and interaction with her friends and family through before she leaves. Mwahaha!
Oh, by the way… did I mention that there are major spoilers from all five books in this story? Whoopsie daisy….
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December 18, 2003Casey hummed the tune to "Deck the Halls" as she walked down the hall, a pile of clean clothes in her arms. She was in a hurry to finish her chores. She had just found an actually well-written story about Sirius being alive. After six months, she still felt a strange sense of loss from his death. It wasn't strange because Sirius was a fictional character, because Casey always became emotionally attached to characters. Heck, she could make herself cry when the guy who was obsessed with raptors in Jurassic Park died! What was strange was that she still often found herself mourning. She must have been more attached than she thought. Reading every story she could find about him from the time she read Prisoner of Azkaban probably hadn't helped the shock of losing him.
As it was, she still needed to get her chores done quickly.
"Casey, I posted a new chapter!" Jaime called.
"Okay, I'll read it later," Casey answered, dropping the clean clothes on her bed and turning around to leave her room. Unfortunately, she ran into a wall first. "Ow!" she shouted, stumbling back and rubbing her nose.
"Watch for the walls; they bite!" Jaime snickered from the next room over, where she was rolling around in the office chair.
"Ha ha-ha ha ha," Casey said sarcastically. She scrunched her nose a few times before going off to finish her chores.
* * *
"So what if… Dobby falls in love with Harry, but he realizes there's the whole different-species thing." Casey laughed and speared another piece of orange chicken with her fork as she listened to Kari elaborate. "So then he… falls into a portal where…"
"Dobby was in Order of the Phoenix, so he can't leave till after that," Casey pointed out.
"Okay, so after that, he finds a portal and ends up in Lord of the Rings, where he meets Gollum and they fall in love," Kari finished, grinning triumphantly.
Casey burst into peals of laughter, rocking back in her chair and covering her mouth with a gloved hand to muffle her wild giggles. The people seated around them in the food court were already looking at them oddly.
Finally calming down, Casey cleared her throat and dropped her fork on her plate. "Ready?"
"Sure," Kari drawled, loading her dishes and utensils onto Casey's tray.
After dumping their trash, the girls headed to the mall's bookstore, where Casey immediately skirted around the fiction, non-fiction, informational, and self-help aisles until she reached the children's section. Kari rolled her eyes and followed her friend directly to the Harry Potter shelf.
"So, what was his name again? The one that died."
A corner of Casey's mouth quirked into a smile as she fingered the binding of one of the books. "Sirius Black," she said.
Kari nodded. "We meet him in the next movie, right?"
Casey grinned. "Prisoner of Azkaban, yeah." She was very well aware that Kari was just humoring her, because Kari didn't read the books, but encouraged Casey to talk about them. Kari had been asking Casey the same questions for a year, and Casey always gave the same answers. Nevertheless, Kari was the only person besides Lia who was truly sympathetic when Casey began ranting about Sirius's death.
"Where do you want to go next?" Kari asked.
Casey shrugged and turned away from the Harry Potter books, only to run into an American Girl display.
* * *
December 20, 2003 Casey –
I saw it! Heee! *squashes Jai in a hug* I cried SO hard at the end… what was he thinking, going off and leaving Sam like that? We should fix that….
G2g get ready for dance, but I'll talk to you later, okay? HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
- Lisa
Casey grinned and pulled up a window to reply to Lisa's email.
Lisa –
*lassos Frodo with Aragorn's yarn and yanks him back to land* Okay, fixed. HA! Didn't I tell you it was the best movie ever?
We're busy Sunday, skiing Monday, I'm working Tuesday, and we have company on Wednesday… so if you want, I'll talk to you on Christmas, okay? HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!!
- Casey
"Casey, have you studied yet?"
Casey groaned and rolled her eyes towards the office door. "For what, may I ask?"
Her mom stuck her head in the door and gave Casey a very serious look. "The math test on Tuesday."
"Don't need to."
"Then you know how to add a three-by-three matrix to a two-by-three matrix."
"That's impossible," Casey said deftly.
Casey's mom left the doorway in a huff, while Casey turned back to the computer, again rolling her eyes. Her mother always tried to find excuses to get Casey off the computer, but Casey would have none of it. Lisa was there and so were The Marauders. The almighty computer was half her life, no question.
Pulling up the FanFiction.Net window again, Casey scanned the page and grinned at Sirius's last joke (something about calling his first-year-apprentice Todd, when the little boy complained that his name was Leonardo, and Sirius sent him away, complaining about how hard it was to find good help). The 'real' Sirius had been in all of two and a part books, so there wasn't much known about him, but the general consensus was that he was the handsome joker extremist of the group of friends called the Marauders. In his fifth year, he tortured a boy because he was bored. In sixth year, he almost killed said boy. In seventh year… well, who knew what happened in seventh year… or in first, second, third, and fourth, for that matter. Wait! Second year was when he and James Potter and Peter Pettigrew confronted Remus Lupin about his lycanthropy, and then in fifth year, the same three boys had become illegal Animagi to keep Remus company.
So, besides that, nothing was really known. The fact that everyone had seen Sirius as an overall perfect guy was probably what made it so hard for everyone to swallow the loss. Stories popped up everywhere, not to mention little poems and sayings that people randomly adopted and displayed everywhere. One of Casey's favorites was plastered on the background of her computer screen ("The Brightest Star never fades. Give a sniffle for Snuffles, and he'll come back.").
"Know what happened last night?" Casey's mom said as she strolled into the room, sorting out a wad colorful ribbons.
"What?" Casey asked unconcernedly.
"Your dad came in and said there was a package on the front step. He said, 'There's a box on the step, but I didn't look!' So I ran out, grabbed the box, and threw it in my closet as fast as I could!" Mom chuckled.
Casey laughed obligingly. It wasn't that the story wasn't particularly funny, it was just that she was more concerned with what happened in the chapter of the story she was reading.
Suddenly, the phone rang. Casey picked up the receiver. "Hullo?"
"Hi!" came a familiar voice.
"Hi!" Casey answered. Raine….
"Okay, so I checked my schedule, and I looked at showtimes, and I can go at 4:10. Can you come?"
"Just a second. Hey, Mama? Can we go at 4:10?"
Mom shrugged. "You'll miss German food…."
"Yeah, Rain', I can go. We'll probably want to get there early. Mama, how early?"
"Probably forty-five minutes."
"She said forty-five minutes. So, that's… hang on, give me a second, I'm not in school. Uh…"
"3:25."
"Thanks, Mama. 3:25. Do you want me to pick you up?"
"No, I'm gonna come straight from the gym."
"Okay, see you at 3:25, and get ready to cry!"
Raine laughed. "I've heard that. Bye!"
"Bubye!" Casey hung up the phone and grinned giddily at her mom. "I get to see Return of the King again!"
Mom smiled excitedly. "That's two in the first week!"
"I know! The Gibsons were already jealous that I saw it on Wednesday… just wait till they find out I saw it again before they did. Ha!"
* * *
December 25, 2003LuckyButt: They got me a car, Lis', a car!!! *grabs Sirius by the shoulders and shakes him*
BroadwayGoddess: *sticks out her tongue* Nose hair!
LuckyButt: I know, New York sucks.
BroadwayGoddess: No permit till I'm 16. Six-bloody-teen!
LuckyButt: Lol.
Casey had discovered that typing with car keys clutched in your hands is very difficult. Her parents, while they seemed as excited about the car as she did, had asked her to stay home for most of Christmas day and not drive so long that she would use up the entire tankful of gas in her new car. To compromise, Casey and kept a vise-like grip on her key and had immediately gotten online to tell Lisa.
Currently, she felt like screaming until she went hoarse. She wanted every single person in the world to know that she, who had not expected to have a car for years, now had a very pretty little Civic parked in the street outside her house. It had been driven for exactly thirty-six-point-seven-two-six minutes before she had been obliged to drive home and leave it outside. She would have camped out in it if she could have….
LuckyButt: A car a car a car a car a car a car a car a car a
BroadwayGoddess: You can shut up now.
LuckyButt: Meh heh. *spins around like a top* This better.
BroadwayGoddess: Much, thanks. Guess what my parents got me.
LuckyButt: What's that?
BroadwayGoddess: RENT MERCHANDISE AND TICKETS!
LuckyButt: *shrieks* We're having THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!
BroadwayGoddess: Now all we need's a pageant with Herdmans!
LuckyButt: LOL!
"Casey, can you come set the table?"
"Yeah, just a sec!"
LuckyButt: Brb. Gotta set the table. AH! The desk is EATING MY NEW SHIRT!
BroadwayGoddess: Lol! *brandishes the fire-poker and attacks the desk*
LuckyButt: *Mr. Grumpy Desk lets go and Casey goes flying across the room and smacks into a wall*
BroadwayGoddess: Heeeee!
LuckyButt: Brb.
BroadwayGoddess: K.
In reality, Casey had gotten her new shirt stuck on the desk, and managed to get it free about the same time as Lisa started smacking the imaginary desk with her fire-poker. She didn't run into a wall, but she did go rolling across the room in the rollie-chair.
"Casey, come set the table!"
"I'm coming!" Casey yelled back. She reluctantly set her car keys on the desk and turned away….
Her first step went fine. After all, she'd only been walking for almost sixteen years. However, her second step didn't go so well. Her new shoes had become unlaced at some point in time and the rollie-chair had planted itself on one of the shoelaces. Casey tripped because of it and ran smack into the door frame.
"OW!" she yelled, actually in pain this time. She rubbed her nose and wriggled it around like a rabbit before opening her eyes.
And when she opened her eyes, she almost wished she hadn't.
Because she was standing on the dais in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, and the teachers and none other than the Marauders, a few other kids, and a certain red-head were staring at her in shock.
"Holy crap," Casey breathed, taking an involuntary step back.
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If you don't review, I'll be forced to… not know you read the chapter. Hm….