A/N: I'm so sorry for the REALLY long delay. School has been super busy and lacrosse is taking up most of my time. Reviews are appreciated! And yes, one of the phrases in here is from the 4th Harry Potter movie.
Chapter 2:
The lunch lady flipped her spoon over Ron's tray and a pile of pasta fell onto his plate. "Sauce?" she asked, hand hovering over the red sauce.
Ron looked at the sauce a little doubtfully, "Um… no thanks." He sort of smiled at her, not sure if it was ok to decline the sauce. The lady gazed at him in disbelief, before sinking her spoon once more into the pasta and turning her attention to the next person in line.
Stopping at the salad bar for a bowl of salad, Ron let out a long breath. He had had to remind himself every couple minutes to breathe; everything was so different here than at Hogwarts. In his math class, all of the students had pulled out these things, and when he had asked the boy beside him what they were, the boy had looked at him as if he were a blast-ended skrewt. Actually, he had been getting weird looks all day; eventually he started to ignore them. He briefly wondered if Harry and Hermione were faring any better.
When he had finished dousing his salad in dressing, he picked up his tray and followed the line of students to the exit of the room. He started to worry when he saw the person beside him pull out a little plastic card with a barcode on it, but when he did get to the register, the woman (looking just as sour as the pasta lady) asked him for his name and keyed it into the computer.
Letting out yet another breath, Ron scanned the lunchroom, looking for either Harry or Hermione. His searching was getting increasingly more frantic as students kept brushing by him and he still had not found either of his friends.
Finally, off to his right, he heard the most beautiful word in the English language, "Ron!" Hermione was standing up at a table, waving at him, with a slightly bemused expression on her face. Ron thanked anyone who happened to be listening to his thoughts at that moment and walked towards Hermione.
Harry was sitting beside her, talking to a laughing girl with dark hair, but the rest of the people sitting at the table were complete strangers— oh, wait, no; Ron recognized the sandy-haired boy sitting across from Harry… Sean something-or-other.
Dropping into the empty chair across from Harry, Ron set his tray in front of him and began eating. The conversation flowed around him, but he felt no compulsion to join in.
"So Harry, do you play any sports? Soccer or something?" Curious as to how Harry would answer the question (he was a fairly good quidditch player after all), Ron looked up from his pasta, a string still hanging out of his mouth.
"Errm... no, actually. I'm not coordinated enough." Ron snorted. Harry's face remained smooth and slightly apologetic as he sharply kicked Ron under the table.
"Oh, that's too bad. I would've thought you played sports."
Harry shrugged, "Nope. Sports really aren't my thing."
Ron was about to ask Harry what exactly was "his thing," when he crashed onto the ground; a brightly colored something had hurled itself into the seat next to him, missed, and forced him out of his chair and to the floor.
"Wha- fu- Wh- he-…" His lack of breathe inhibited questions and swearing, but his flapping hand motions were enough to get the point across.
Two small hands, one tipped with lime green fingernails and the other with electric blue, reached down and hauled him to his feet. "Good Night. You are not a very stable person." She balled her fists and rested them on her hips, "And you really should know better than to sit there."
Ron mouthed wordlessly, very confused by this tiny, bright, loud girl. She had a green-streaked messy blond ponytail and was dressed in skinny jeans and layered polos, green and blue, and was wearing bright purple flats. She couldn't have been much taller than 5'2". And she had just single-handedly pulled Ron off the ground.
The dark-haired girl Harry had been talking to turned around and gazed calmly at the blond, "Give him a break Kalyn. He's an exchange student and it's his first day. Stop scaring him."
Kalyn waited until the girl had twisted back around to make a face at her. Apparently satisfied, she bent down to grab a wide purple headband, which she placed back in her hair. Sitting down as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, Kalyn looked expectantly at Ron with large brown eyes, waiting for him to sit down too.
Gingerly sitting back down on his chair, Ron held his breath, waiting for something to happen- an explosion or something. Kalyn seemed to have that vibe. He didn't have long to wait.
"So you're new here? An exchange student? That's so cool. I've always wanted to be an exchange student, but I don't really know where I'd go since I only speak English. I dropped French last year because I absolutely sucked at it. My college counselor keeps telling me I should have continued with a language by why would I want to? I like science mostly- biology and that sort of thing. Not so great at English, but oh well. I'm planning on being a pediatrician because I like working kids and kids like me too. I babysit a lot. That's how I make most of my money actually because I don't have a real job. I worked at High Point Coffee for a while but I had trouble remembering what goes into what drink so I just quit. By the way my name is Kalyn. I don't think I've told you that yet, although you probably already knew because that's what Ava called me and generally you address people by their names. What's yours?"
Ron's blue eyes were wide with shock; he had never heard someone talk so much in that short of time. Not even when Hermione was quizzing herself on the properties of a complicated potion before exams. And how could someone be that perky? Was it possible to have that much positive energy?
"Umm. I, uh, I'm… Ron."
Kalyn rested her arms on the table and leaned forward slightly, as if memorizing his every word. "Wow," she exhaled, "I've never heard someone talk that slow."
Ron noticed her breath smelled like cinnamon, and he wasn't surprised. "I think you just talk abnormally fast. I caught like half of what you said, maybe."
Nodding wisely she sat back in her chair, crossing her arms loosely over her chest, "I've been told that."
Ron was saved having to respond to Kalyn by the bell, and he hurried to grab his tray. Kalyn watched calmly as he tried to disentangle his long legs from between the table's legs, only a tiny smile betraying her amusement.
Ron slid down into his seat and dropped his head onto the desk, wincing slightly. Thank Merlin it was the last class of the day; he only had to make it through 50 more minutes before it was over. Hermione was sitting in front of him, busily scribbling something in a blue notebook. To his right he could hear Harry mumbling something to himself about numbers and letters, but he blocked it out, too tired to think. Someone dropped into the seat next to him with a loud sigh and he rotated his head just enough to see a pair of purple flats. He groaned inwardly. Time to interrupt Harry.
"Hey, Harry." He nudged his friend with his sneaker, trying to break his concentration.
"Huh? Wha?" His black hair was more wild than normal and there was a harried look in his green eyes.
"Want to play some chess tonight?"
"Wizard chess or muggle?" He asked, careful to keep his voice low.
"Wizard of course. What's the fun in muggle chess?" He too kept his voice down, but for an entirely different reason; Hermione had very good ears.
Her ears were apparently better than Ron had given her credit for, because her head whipped around his final words. "Don't forget you have homework Ron, and you're actually going to have to do it at night. We don't have as many free periods here."
"You mean you don't have as many free periods. Harry and I've got the same amount as we did at Hogwarts. And give it a rest on the homework; it's only the first night."
She narrowed her eyes, "Don't tell me to give it a rest. And I'm not just talking about this work. You know Dumbledore wants us to keep up with our normal classes as well; he sent packages for all of us with assignments for potions, transfiguration, charms, defense against the dark arts, herbology, and history of magic."
This was news to the two boys, who looked at her in amazement. "Dumbledore's sent us extra work? He's mad."
"Harry. You can't possibly expect to be at the same level as everybody else next term if you don't keep practicing. Honestly, you should have guessed he would do something like this."
Ron mumbled a few choice words and kicked the leg of his chair, but was saved Hermione's lecture about language by a loud clap.
Their teacher had walked to the front of the room during their whispered conversation and was know resting with his leg on the desk, his crossed arms propped up on his knee. "Most of you probably signed up for this class without knowing exactly what it was, right? Kind of a filler for your schedule?" A few nervous laughs answered his questions and he smiled. "You'll probably find it a relief that we're not going to have much homework and you'll hardly ever have to write any assignments. – only Hermione's shoulders drooped – In this class we're going to watch movies."
A redhead near the front raised her hand and he pointed at her, "Are you serious? We're going to watch movies? That's it?"
Ron leaned over towards Harry's desk and whispered, "What's a movie?"
"Hard to explain. I'll show you back at the house." His lips were barely moving and his eyes kept flicking from Ron's face to over his shoulder, an annoyed look on his face.
Wondering what had Harry frustrated, Ron twisted around in his seat. Kalyn was sitting sideways in her chair, legs tucked up underneath her, smiling brightly. She flashed her teeth quickly at Ron before unfolding herself and sitting correctly in her chair.
Ron frowned. It wouldn't be catastrophic if she had heard his question about movies, but if she had heard anything from their conversation with Hermione about Hogwarts, it could be potentially problematic.