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Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry:
Poetry Studies: The Romantics: Task 2 - Write about someone having a wild imagination.
Pick a Wick: Bananas and Creame (color) yellow
Build a Better Breakfast: Plate 1 Orange Juice (character) Marlene McKinnon
Time Machine: (plot point) being blindsided
ShowTime: A Whole New World (action) flying
Bex's Basement: Cobra Write about a Slytherin
Scamander's Case: (character) Severus Snape
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Friendship Week: Marlene McKinnon&Lily Evans Potter
Locations: Godric's Hollow
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Warning for Wizard of Oz!AU, character death, and a bit out of character. Word count is 2,331 words. I hope you all enjoy the first chapter of The Wizard of Hogwarts.
In all of her life, Marlene had never known of a tornado to strike in the middle of Godric's Hollow. She'd just heard her parents and siblings calling her name when she looked out her window to find the whirling vortex fast approaching. She didn't know what to do, never having experienced such a weather phenomenon before. She could hear her mother screaming for her to come down to the basement and hide there.
But before she could move more than a few inches across the floor, the house began to shudder. She'd never felt the house move like this before. Not even when they'd had that small earthquake a few years ago.
"Why is this happening to me?" she asked herself, looking towards the window and only seeing pitch blackness outside. She scrunched her eyes closed and stayed absolutely still. Maybe this was a horrible dream? Maybe all she had to do was wake up and she'd find herself lying on her bed.
When she opened her eyes once more she found herself still staring out the window at darkness but this time there was debris from neighboring houses mixed in. She could see the Potter's garden fence fly past. She could see a park bench.
She did a double-take as she looked once more. She hadn't been seeing things. There were people smiling and waving at her from the park bench. Why weren't they panicking? She was certainly panicking and she was safely inside a well-built house. They were outside and could easily be struck by any number of the debris circling around them.
She looked over as something nudged her leg. How did a strange ginger cat get into her room? Her parents were both deathly allergic to animal dander, which meant that she and her siblings couldn't have any pets.
"Hello, there," Marlene said, stooping down and scooping up the ginger cat. "Did you come in here to keep safe from the horrible storm that we're caught up in?"
She was just about to chide herself being silly. Cat's don't talk after all. When the cat did the one thing that they aren't supposed to be capable of. It talked. Not only did it talk but it talked in the voice of Marlene's best friend, Lily Evans.
"Of course I came in here to keep safe," the Lily cat said, jewel green eyes looking up at Marlene's blue-grey ones. "Who would be stupid enough not to take cover when a tornado comes towards them?"
"I...I…"
It was almost as though the Lily cat was making the pointed declaration that Marlene herself was stupid for just staying put. She'd had been scared out of her wits and hadn't known what to do. Not that she needed to justify her actions to a feline version of her best friend.
She blinked again not believing her eyes as more strange sights came past her window. The strangest of them all was a green-skinned Severus Snape riding a bike. With all his talk about wizard superiority, she'd never suspect that he'd use a Muggle form of transportation.
"This definitely has to be a dream," Marlene exclaimed out loud. "Never in a million years would Severus Snape dye himself green and ride a bicycle. Never. I'm pretty sure that he'd consider it a crime…"
"Will you stop trying to rationalize things and sit down before you hurt yourself?" Lily's cat form said, jumping from Marlene's arms to the bed. She circled gently before kneading her claws into Marlene's favorite blanket. Then settled in and stared up at Marlene with those knowing jewel green cat eyes of hers. She seemed so impatient with Marlene, this cat that had the voice of her best friend.
"I'll sit down," Marlene conceded, "but I won't stop trying to rationalize what I'm seeing."
"Fair enough," the Lily cat said, nodding to a spot on the bed.
Marlene sat down on the bed, curling into a ball after a minute or two. She could feel the gentle sway of the house as it traveled along in the storm. With how strong the winds were she was surprised that the house was doing anything gently at all. Let alone swaying. But after a bit, the swaying began to make her feel rather sleepy. Not just rather sleepy but really sleepy. She could feel her eyes slipping closed as the Lily cat let out a sigh of annoyance at her behavior. She couldn't help it. This felt like being rocked in her mother's arms like when she was a baby.
Marlene woke to the rather drastic thump of the house landing once more. She looked around thinking that things couldn't get much worse. But she was wrong. A fact that she quickly found out when she and the Lily cat which had taken to actually calling Lily walked outside.
She blinked as the colors bombarded her senses. She'd never seen colors this bright before. They were almost blinding they were so bright. The grass was the greenest of the green that she'd ever seen. The sky was the bluest blue. The clouds looked like puffy white pieces of cotton candy floating by just begging to be reached out for and eaten.
"What's that?" Lily asked, pointing her paw towards something towards the back of the house. "Is that a pair of shoes?"
Marlene followed Lily towards the pair of shoes that she'd seen towards the back of the house. Her heart was thumping in her chest. She hoped that someone had just dropped the shoes there. She remembered the part of that old movie that Lily, the human one, had shown her last Christmas when she'd visited the other girl's home over the holiday break. The Wizard of something. How the girl's, Dorothy's, house had fallen on the Wicked Witch of the East? She hoped that she hadn't just killed someone with a house.
"Oh no," Marlene said, bending down to examine the shoes that were sticking out from under the house. Not only were they on the ground but they still had someone's feet in them. The feet were attached to a pair of legs that were clothed in red and black striped stockings. "Maybe this is just a pran…"
"You're doing it again, Mar," Lily pointed out, not bothering to keep the annoyance out of her voice this time. "You're trying to rationalize what your brain is seeing."
"Who in their right mind can rationalize killing someone with a house?" Marlene shouted out the cat, making it jump back a bit. "I'm sorry. It's...just...look." She pointed towards where the legs still jutted straight out from under her house.
"Yeah," Lily said, titling her cat head back and forth as though trying to work something out in her mind. "It doesn't look the best for you."
A stranger scampering sound came from behind Marlene and she tried not to mentally curse. She was pretty sure she'd just been caught at the scene of the crime. Someone called out from somewhere that Marlene couldn't see.
"She's gone," the voice, that sounded like that of a house-elf, called out to his fellows. "She's been killed by this strange witch."
"Hey," Marlene said, feeling like this creature should at least get to know her first before judging that she was strange. "I'm not strange. You're the one that's strange. Why are you hiding?"
"Her," the house-elf said, pointing towards the shoed feet that there were still sticking out from under Marlene's house. "The Wicked Witch of Slytherin."
That was a new one for Marlene. She'd never seen anyone as afraid of someone as these house-elf type creatures seemed to be of this dead Wicked Witch of Slytherin. She watched as the creatures gathered around the shoes and whispered amongst themselves. They then turned as one towards Marlene and bowed.
"Thank you, kind benevolent wich that you are," the spokeself said, peering up at her from the ground. "We were pretty sure that if something didn't happen soon that we'd all be dead. You have saved us from the Wicked one's clutches."
"You're welcome," Marlene said, not knowing what else to do. "Although it was more my house that killed her than me."
"She said the thing she used to kill the Wicked Witch of Slytherin was a house," Marlene heard one of the house-elves murmured to his neighbor.
"She did," came another murmur not far away from where this group stood. "She killed the witch with a house."
Marlene turned with a shocked expression on her face to see that the original house-elves that had come out to greet her weren't the only ones present. Behind her was an entire town of house-elves all standing there and staring at her in admiration.
"I'm glad to have been of some help to you kind, creatures," Marlene said, not knowing what else to call them. "But I'd very much like to hop the next broomstick home. Can anyone tell me the way back to Godric's Hollow?"
"The Good One," one of the smallest house-elves said, looking up reverently as though someone might appear out of the sky. "She'll know what to do."
"The Good one?" Marlene asked, confusion clouding her voice as she followed the direction of the creature's gaze. "Who is the Good One?"
But before anyone could answer there was a loud masculine scream coming from near the house. Marlene turned hoping that someone had been frightened of what had become of the Wicked Witch of Slytherin. Only to find a green-faced Severus kneeling over the high top sneakers of the Wicked Witch of Slytherin.
"What have you done?" he yelled, looking in horror from the feet that were still under Marlene's house to the girl herself. "What have you done to my friend?"
"I...I...It was an accident," Marlene said, not knowing what else to say yet again. It wasn't like she'd taken the house out for a joyride and decided to crush someone on purpose. She hadn't. It just happened to happen. "In my defense, it was the house's idea to crush your friend. Not mine."
"How does that make it right?" sneered Severus angrily getting to his feet and storming closer to Marlene. "How does that make any of it right?"
"Wicked Wizard," came a cheery voice from not to far away, sounding awfully familiar to Marlene too. It sounded like the voice of….
Marlene turned to find another one of her friends and classmates standing behind her. A Slytherin girl by the name of Andromeda Black. She had dark curly hair that went straight down her back and dark storm cloud grey eyes that were looking kindly at Marlene.
"Wicked Wizard, you are frightening the poor girl," Andromeda said, walking over to Marlene and putting a comforting hand on the girl's shoulder. "It's alright. There's no need to be afraid of this wicked wizard. He's not as wicked and scary as he thinks he is, after all."
"He isn't?"
"I'm not?" asked Wicked Severus, raising an eyebrow as he stalked closer to Marlene and Andromeda. "I'd beg to differ, my dear, Andromeda." His scowl seemed to deepen as he looked down at the ground.
Marlene couldn't help but wonder what the Wicked Severus was scowling at. She followed his gaze to her feet as Severus shouted at her to give the sneakers back. That they had belonged to his friend and that she would want him to have them. Not some stranger who had killed her with a house.
"She can't give them to you," Andromeda said, a kind smile gracing her face as she moved protectively in front of Marlene. "They were given to her for her brave action in killing this great evil that blighted our land."
"I will have those shoes now," Severus growled, glaring between Andromeda and Marlene. "Even if it means that I have to kill the girl and cut them off her feet. Just like she did to…"
The next few seconds were a blur in Marlene's eyes. The green Severus reached out a hand towards. A shock of lightning flashed and made the green boy back away from her with a scowl on his face.
"Your protection can't and won't last forever," the green boy shouted at the smiling witch beside Marlene. "When it's gone I will kill the girl and take the shoes."
"I don't plan on staying around that long," Marlene said, hoping that this Andromeda would know a way to get her home before the magic protection on the shoes left. "I want to go home."
"There is no way to get you home," the green Severus shaped boy snarled.
The house-elves that had come out of hiding when Marlene had gotten rid of the Wicked Witch of Slytherin seemed to have scampered away. Even the ones that had stayed seemed wary of doing so.
"You won't get away with threatening, Marlene," the Lily cat said, bringing everyone's attention to her.
"Yeah, she talks," Marlene said, seeing the looks that crossed some of the faces in the group.
"We'll see, cat," the green Severus said, before dramatically disappearing from the middle of the crowd with a loud cackle. One that would make any movie screen witch melt with pride.
Andromeda or this world's version of her turned urgently to Marlene. "We don't have time to speak," she said, putting her hand on Marlene's shoulder and steering towards, a yellow plated sidewalk. "You must follow the yellow plated sidewalk to Emerald City and meet with the Wizard of Hogwarts. Only he can get you back home safely."
"He can?"
Andromeda nodded. "Be careful," she advised. "The Wicked Wizard of Slytherin has many spies and every reason to want to harm you. Be on wary and stick to the yellow plated sidewalk."
"Stick to the yellow plated sidewalk," Marlene repeated as she picked up the Lily cat and started on her journey to get back home.
I hope you all enjoyed the first chapter of the Wizard of Hogwarts as much as I enjoyed writing it.