Part 2 - An Owl?
Isabel Cooper has never been caught with her hand in a pocket that was not her own. She is far too smart and far too good at what she does for that.
Jordy taught her how stealing is ok when you need to eat, and how to steal when she needs to eat, and how it's only fair to the person you steal from to always return their wallet to the lost and found. Jordy made her promise when he agreed to teach her, after much begging and many 'my sister will not be a thief' arguments, that she would only ever steal when she had to eat.
She can quote his philosophy from memory, 'Every person has a right to exist, and if you've gotta steal from other people to do it, then you're only allowed to steal just enough to keep on existing, and never steal any other person's existence because they have a right to theirs just as much as you have a right to yours.' Even though Jordy went away, Isabel still abides by his teachings.
Isabel Cooper steals to eat, but Jordan Cooper sends his little sister out to steal so he can get high with his friends. The world-weary girl doesn't quite understand what Jordan does with the money she gives him everyday, or why he demands so much and never has anything to show for it, but she knows that he does not spend it on food. Even so, Isabel Cooper steals in the hopes that she will eat that night, even though she rarely does, so her promise to Jordy is kept.
It's amazing that none of the employees at King's Cross Station have ever noticed her. She has been there by herself all day everyday, in every variety of extreme weather, on every holiday and every school-day for almost an entire year, ever since Jordan got caught and was banned from the terminal. Perhaps it's because she's so small, or that she tries hard not to be noticed no matter what she does, or that she blends into the background with her drab clothing and listless brown eyes, but either way, none of the employees at King's Cross Station has ever noticed her.
Jordan Cooper has his picture up near the ticket booth. After Jordy went away, Jordan got sloppy and got caught.
Isabel brushes past a short man with dark skin and an odd bowler hat and comes up with a black leather wallet with twenty-three pounds in it. She puts it in her pocket, where she keeps the wallets until she drops them all into the lost and found at once at the end of the day, and walks back through the crowd. She dips her hand into the designer purse of a thin woman with unnaturally orangeish hair and comes out with the matching designer wallet. Only credit cards though and she stashes it in her pocket. She weaves her way through a family of red-heads and finds herself in possession of a stick and a little pouch of toy-money with funny pictures on it. She puts them both in her pocket.
The morning hours continue in this way until it's a little before eleven o'clock and Isabel is nearly falling over from hunger, fatigue, and cold. She uses a few pounds to buy some black coffee from the snack bar and settles herself in a secluded corner, not to drink the beverage, but just to try to warm her tiny, slender hands against it.
"AH! Cooper's sister," A malicious and familiar voice croons from above her, "Looks like it's my lucky day." Slowly, she brings her head up, her soft brown eyes wide and frightened. "Coop owes me money," The large man with the hideous tattoos all over his neck and arms states flatly from where he stands in front of his group of enforcers, "Gimme everything you got."
Like a cornered mouse, she shrinks back against the wall, knowing that there's no way she can run through the solid brick but desperate to try all the same, "I-I don't have anything."
The cracking sound that comes from her ankle as his fist closes around it makes her shiver. The snaps of her neck as he holds her upside down and shakes her back and forth make her cry out softly, harder when she hears the wallets and money fall out of her pockets and onto the ground. Jordan will be angry with her for losing all that money.
The man drops her from so high up that she has time to turn her body slightly so that she lands on her boney shoulder, only slightly scraping her cheek against the ground instead of cracking her head open. They gather the money as she scrambles to her feet, making a frantic grab to save whatever she can before she makes a run for it.
Unfortunately, all she gets is the stick and pouch of toy-money before she bolts. She curses herself as she jams them into her pockets and runs away from the shouts of the scary men that she knows are chasing her.
Urging her achingly weak limbs forward with all the speed she can muster with thoughts of what will happen if she allows herself to be caught, Isabel pushes through the throngs of travelers. In moments, she feels lightheaded and knows she's in bad shape when she hallucinates a boy with an owl...
"An owl?" She thinks to herself confusedly, turning her head completely around to keep her gaze on it as she runs. It disappears from her line of sight and she turns her head back around, just in time to see the brick barrier only inches from her face. She squeezes her eyes shut tight and prepares for the impact.
Nothing happens. "Maybe I died..." She ponders to herself when she doesn't feel any of the horrible pain she braced herself for. Isabel Cooper slowly opens her eyes.
She's never seen a scarlet steam engine before. It's a rather unusual color to see, especially in such a violent shade. She looks frantically around at the platform in front of her, the one that has never been there before, and tries to soak in the crowds of children, and parents, and luggage trunks, and more owls.
"Aw, bloody hell!" A shrill voice from behind her cries seconds before she's on the ground, immediately panicking from the feeling of a body pinning her down.
"Sorry, totally my fault. Here let me help you up. I've probably made us both late now," A girl's voice, happy and cheerful, states as the body pulls off of her and a hand rests on her shoulder. She flinches and pull away, "No, it's ok. I'm fine."
Struggling against her weak muscles, Isabel slowly forces herself up off the ground and comes face to face with a smiling girl who's about a foot taller than her, with bright purple spikes topping off her lithe form. Her faded red t-shirt, with 'Hug A Muggle' printed messily across the front in what looks to be black marker, is slightly confusing. Isabel isn't sure what a muggle is, but decides in an instant that it's probably some sort of endangered animal. The girl's short, green and yellow floral patterned, pleated skirt swishes from side-to-side around her thin legs, legs that are covered in orange and white polka-dot leggings that reach to just below her knees, as she rocks back and forth on her Birkenstock clad feet and watches Isabel's progress with a happy, yet still somehow concerned smirk.
"You sure you're alright?" The girl asks with a cautious grin, "You don't look too good."
"Ya, I'm fine," Isabel answers flatly, "Thanks." The girl's smile turns brighter and more carefree, and she reaches down to grab Isabel's hand, dragging the girl behind her as she goes for the train and calling back, "Good, now run! The train's pulling away without us! Your stuff's already on it, right? Mine is. Good thing I put it on there as soon as my mum and dad dropped me off. It was too early though so I got bored and just HAD to get out of there and there's nothing interesting on 9 and 3/4 so I went back out to buy some magazines, but the stand didn't have any that I liked, so I walked around and then there was this guy with a guitar who was playing some jazz out in front and I was just totally into it and lost track of time, ya know?"
Isabel doesn't answer, she just lets herself be dragged along as she tries in vain to wrench her hand from the grasp of this strange, talkative, purple-haired girl. The girl, however, doesn't take any notice as she chatters away and jumps onto the moving train, pulling Isabel with her. Once they're both safely inside she finally lets her go. Isabel suddenly realizes that she's allowed a strange girl to pull her onto a strange train that should not exist and whose destination she does not know. "I'm in trouble..."
"So, what's your name?" The girl asks as she offers her hand, "I'm Nymphadora but I hate that name so I make everybody call me Tonks, like my dad." She giggles and groans at herself and then adds, "Ugh, wordy. I should just say 'Hi I'm Tonks' and be done with it."
Isabel stares at the hand being offered with no intention of taking it. She's not really sure yet what to do about the complete and utter nutcase attached to that hand, her well-meaning, yet clueless kidnapper. After realizing what a strange look Tonks is giving her, and deciding that she seems like she's nice, Isabel finally states simply, "I'm Izzy."
"AW! ZANGERS! COOL NAME!" She exclaims loudly, eliciting a small smile from Izzy with her uninhibited enthusiasm, "Is it short for something?" Izzy smiles and nods as she says, "Isabel."
"Bloody wicked. Want to sit with me? I'm a first year so I don't really know anybody besides you," Tonk's asks as she begins rummaging through her pockets and walking down the hallway. Isabel hesitates momentarily, thinking that maybe this would be a good time to tell the girl that she's not supposed to be on this train, but she likes her, likes how nice she's been to her although she barely knows her, so she responds, "Sure."
"Want a chocolate frog?" Tonks asks the slight, scruffy girl in rags by her side as they search the train for an available compartment. The girl's stomach groans out a 'hell yes' as her mouth answers, "No thank you. I'm not hungry." As irrational as it may be, Isabel doesn't want to eat. She wants Jordan to not call her a fatso anymore.
"That's a load of dung from a dragon with a bowel disease!" Tonks answers as she shoves the candy into her new friend's hand, "Your tummy is growling louder than a rogue troll with doxies in his knickers and you look skinny enough to get blown away. Eat the chocolate!"
Isabel complies, slowly peeling back the wrapping as Tonks muses to herself, "Do trolls even wear knickers?" Isabel smirks slightly and wonders how on earth this girl can still believe in silly things like trolls. Jordan told her a long time ago that creatures like trolls, and fairies, and unicorns... and little mermaids... don't exist.
The chocolate squirms free from her hands. "Wait, the chocolate does WHAT?" Before she has a chance to comprehend the chocolate frog hopping away down the hall, Tonks turns to her and asks, "What card did you get?" It takes a moment for Isabel to take her mind off the frog long enough to answer blankly, "Uh, card?"
"Ya, see," Tonks points to a scrap in her hands, "OOO! You got Wendellyn the Weird! She's the coolest! I've got like a billion of her! I tried to wallpaper my room with 'em, but the Wendellyns kept making obscene gestures at me so Mum made me take 'em all down... You alright Izzy? You're looking a little pale."
The skinny blonde woman on the card winks. She winks and then bends over, hikes up her neon green robes, and moons Isabel. Isabel is feeling quite dizzy. The tattoo of 'Place Lips Here' across the woman's right butt cheek doesn't exactly help matters, especially when it changes shape and becomes a pair of bright red lips and then quickly changes back.
Isabel sways a little and looks up at Tonks when she makes her inquiry, just in time to watch the other girl's features and bright-purple hair morph to match her own. She's looking at her mirror image where her chatty accidental-kidnapper used to be. "She's right. I do look pale," Is the girl's last coherent thought before her vision clouds and her body falls heavily to the ground.
xxXxx
"I don't know what happened! We were talking about chocolate frog cards and then her face went all white. Maybe I scared her when I changed into her..."
"You did what? Are you a-"
"Yes! I am! Stop worrying about me and fix Izzy!"
"There's nothing to fix. She's fainted and she'll come around whenever she comes around."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"..."
"THIS IS TAKING TOO BLOODY LONG!!"
"WELL SCREAMING ISN'T GOING TO HELP!!"
"Both of you need to shut your gobs or you're going to get the Heads after you."
"Ya, he's right. Yori will probably understand, but Pam will definitely hex you into oblivion for scaring her like that."
"I'm sorry alright! I didn't know she was going to faint!!"
"Leave her alone. It's probably only partly her fault. The girl doesn't really look like she's very healthy. She's skinny as hell, and her arms are all bruised, see."
The hand peeling up the sleeve of her loose flannel shirt snaps Izzy fully awake and she swats it away and scrambles back along the bench seat and into a large window. Her limp, dark amber curls half veil her frightened, sunken brown eyes and she clutches her knees to her chest and surveys the small compartment.
Tonks is standing in between the seats, now with two long, lime-green pigtails dropping from behind her elfish ears and her face once again her own. She looks nervous as she sheepishly fingers the bottom of her skirt and rapidly shuffles her feet.
At the other end of the seat on which Izzy is cowering, a tall, lanky boy with shaggy, shoulder-length, tomato-colored hair and a kind face speckled with dark freckles smiles comfortingly at her. "Hello there," He says softly as he tries to scoot closer to Izzy, stopping when he notices her flinch and shrink further against the wall, "I'm Bill. How are you feeling?" She answers softly, "Fine."
"You sure?" Two voices ask at once from the seat on the opposite side of the compartment. Izzy turns her head and sees a pair of olive-skinned twins, who are identical aside from the lengths of their curly, chocolate-colored hair. One of the boys, the boy closest to the window revealing the rapidly moving expanses of countryside, has his hair cut short with his curls clinging tightly to his head, and the boy closest to the door has his much longer and sticking out from his head in wavier curls that bounce as he rocks back and forth on the seat with a goofy smile on his face.
Izzy nods in response and the long-haired twin offers his hand as he says, "I'm Myron, and this is Mac. Are you really sure you're alright? You still look pale. You want a sandwich or something?"
She stares down at but does not take Myron's hand as she shakes her head in reply. He looks to his brother, shrugs, and drops his arm back down. Bill clears his throat loudly, "So, um, I'm guessing you're a first-year. Right?"
She doesn't quite know what he means by that, but at the moment she's a little too frightened (scared out of her wits) to do anything but nod, so that's exactly what she does.
"Ah," Bill says casually as he sits back against the wall by the door, "That would explain it then. You don't need to be frightened. Hogwarts is great and I'm sure you'll have the time of your life." Slowly coming to realize that these people don't mean her any harm, Izzy nods and says softly, "Ok."
Myron smiles and exclaims happily, "Great! Now how about telling us how you're really feeling? I don't really buy the whole 'fine' thing, 'specially not from a twitchy little toothpick like you."
She pauses for a moment as she glances around at the concern filled faces in the compartment, and then says plainly, "Kinda dizzy."
Tonks' snicker breaks the solemnity as she remarks, "Izzy's dizzy." All the boys turn and gives her their own version of the 'so not funny' look and she quickly stops laughing and says, "Uh, sorry. And, er, sorry I scared you earlier. I didn't even think that you might be a muggle-born."
With the concern and warm smiles putting her at ease, Izzy's courage and curiosity begin to return, and she asks softly, "What's that mean?" The short-haired twin, Mac, the one with the slightly calmer and more serious demeanor, tells her flatly, "A muggle's a non-magic person. Muggle-born means a magic person who came from non-magic parents."
She's about to open her mouth to ask what on earth he's talking about, when the door of the compartment slides open with a loud slam and a small, stocky, red-headed boy comes in looking flustered. He cries shrilly, "BILL!! I can't find it! Somebody's stolen my wand!"
Bill rolls his eyes and snaps shortly, "Not even a whole hour into the ride and you've already lost your wand? Bloody hell, Charlie, can't you keep track of anything?" The little boy, Charlie apparently, scowls as his face flushes red behind his dark and numerous freckles, and he clenches his fists and screams back, "I DIDN'T LOSE IT!! IT WAS RIGHT IN MY POCKET IN THE STATION AND I DIDN'T TOUCH IT SINCE THEN!! SOMEBODY STOLE IT!!"
"THAT'S WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT YOUR SOCKS THIS MORNING!! AND YOUR LUCKY SHORTS!! AND YOUR HAT!! AND YOU FOUND THEM ALL RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT THEM!!! STOP BEING SO STUPID AND PARANOID AND JUST GO AND FIND THE DAMN THING!!" Bill screams back, losing the calm that he had displayed earlier and scaring Izzy slightly with his sudden mood swing.
Charlie's small, round face turns a deep shade of maroon, but he looks like he's trying to hold in his anger. A moment later he grits his teeth and groans in a soft, defeated voice, "Will you please help me find it?"
"What's all the screaming for, and what's this I hear about a first year fainting?" A handsome boy's face pops into the compartment over Charlie. He has a devilish, but warm smirk playing across his angular features, and his dark eyes, hair, and skin give him a smoky and mysterious look.
Bill turns and smiles at him, "Hey Yori. Congrats on making Head Boy. The screaming was just me and my stupid git little brother, and she fainted." He holds out his arm to gesture at Izzy and she flinches involuntarily. It was noticeable, it usually isn't because she's learned to keep it under control, but seeing Bill get angry scared her and it made her a little jumpy when she saw his arm snap in her direction.\
Everyone looks worriedly at the shaking little girl and Yori smiles a warm smile as he pushes Charlie aside, steps into the compartment, and kneels beside her. "Hi, I'm Yori Archer, and I'm the Head Boy. What's your name?"
"Izzy Cooper," She answers softly as she tries to back away from Yori. He never stops smiling as he replies, "That's a pretty name. Do you feel ok?"
"She says she's dizzy," Tonks cuts in loudly with her hands on her hips, "Her tummy was growling earlier so I gave her a chocolate frog, but it got away, and she might have hit her head when she fell. See, she's got a scrape on her cheek."
"That was already there," Izzy informs them softly as she reaches up to run her fingertips over the scrape on her left cheekbone. The little spot of blood feels sticky and slightly crusty.
"Well," Yori says, "Either way, I should check you for injuries." He looks thoughtful for a moment and then says, "Take out your wand, I'll teach you how to do a healing spell on your cheek too."
She just looks at him confusedly and squeaks, "No, I'm ok. Really." He just smiles and pulls out a stick that looks similar to the one she has in her own pocket and says, "It's alright, I'm not gonna hurt you. Get your wand out and I'll teach you something."
Tentatively, Izzy draws the black stick out of her pocket and holds it up in front of herself. "There ya go," Yori says happily, "Now just hold it up to your cheek and say, bania abrasia." Because Izzy is so good at doing what she's told, because she's learned the hard way what happens when she doesn't, she follow his instructions exactly. A sharp sting in her cheek follows and when she brings her fingers back up, she gasps because the scrape is gone.
Her giant brown eyes grow larger in her skull and her mouth falls open as she lets out a startled shriek, throws the black stick at the opposite wall, and tears from the room. As she streaks blindly down the corridor, she can faintly hear a loud cry of, "HEY!! THAT'S MY WAND!! THAT GIRL'S THE ONE WHO STOLE MY WAND!! I TOLD YOU SO BILL!!"
She runs down the train, earning threats and curses from the kids she shoves roughly out of her way. She has no idea what she's trying to escape from but she knows that she has to keep running.
And then she sees the children waving sticks at each other, the bright flashes of light that come from nowhere, the frightening materialization of objects that hadn't been there before she blinked. Confusion and terror pulse through her as she runs, too scared and too weak to even try to wrap her mind around her the impossible things going on around her.
Eventually, there's no more train to run away through and she's looking down from the door of the very last car at the track as it unwinds behind the train. She's thinking of jumping to get away from this madness, from the hell her life has been since she was just two years old...
"What are you doing? Get away from there!!" Someone snarls as she's grabbed around the waist and pulled roughly away from the door. Isabel Cooper does not like people touching her, especially not when she's in the middle of a major freak out. If only Pamela Burton had known that, she may have avoided having her nose broken by the little girl.
"OW!!!! 'UCK!!!" The head girl screams just after a small fist connects with her face as she lets the girl wriggle free from her grasp and brings her hands up to her profusely bleeding nose.
Izzy runs back in the other direction, just happy to not have anyone touching her anymore. Unfortunately, she collides with a hard body. The girl falls to the ground and once again fades out of consciousness.
