Right. Well sorry for the wait dawgs. I went away to try that whole "teenage" thing (you kow, "life", or something?) but that's only interesting for a while, ya know... so I came back here on a whim, and decided I'd finish this mofo once and for all :) Aaand I could't sleep. I conclusion, I hope you enjoy my rusty writing ad cliched references to highschool life!

P.S. disclaim, bitches

:)

Chapter 2

Of Muchies and Other Things

"I'm having trouble trying to sleep."

"I'm counting sheep but running out."

"As time ticks by,"

"And still I try,

"No rest for crosstops in my mind..."

"On my own, here we go-"

Dudly slammed the radio dial with a sneer. "What is that shit?"

Harry looked wistly out the window. "Well that was a good song... not that anyone expects you to know that..." The sentence trailed off into the dead silence of the car. Usually Harry took great pleasure in heckling his cousin, but this morning, his heart was not in it. His heart was somewhere far, far away, along with his friends, his owl and - soon enough - his sanity.

Finally, the car screeched to a halt in front of a large, gray building. Harry's heart sank. It looks like a prison, he thought. Whoever designed Azkaban must've had a good say in this shithole.

A hearty punch to the shoulder brought Harry back to the moment. "Were you listening to me?" Dudley was saying. "When we get in there, you don't look at me, don't talk to me, don't even think about me." Harry turned his head to meet Dudley's gaze, and had to suppress a snicker. The large blond boy, by insistence of his mother, was wearing a white dress shirt buttoned to the neck and an argyle sweater vest which badly accentuated his burgeoning rolls of flesh. As Harry tried not to grin, Dudley whipped a comb from his pocket and began to slick the wispy blond hair away from his forehead. "Whatever you say, Duds." Harry muttered, getting out of the car. He himself had barely been awake when he dressed himself that morning, having slept rather horribly the night before. He looked down; a white t-shirt with the Beatles insignia on its front (hand-me-down), baggy jeans (hand-me-down), and a tote bag (surprisingly, his own). Harry sighed, messed his hair, and patted his bag for reassurance. His hand traced the outline of that familiar, knobbly wooden stick, and he relaxed a bit. With a final glance at the car, where Dudley was wrestling to untangle his large girth from the seat-belt, Harry walked towards the school.

Up the stone steps, across the lawn... with every step, Harry could feel his heart sink lower and lower in his chest. When he reached the front, dread permeated his every pore, like a horrible, suffocating blanket. Sheepishly, Harry looked around for Dementors before entering the building. There were none. Harry didn't know whether to be glad or disappointed.

"Name?"

Harry blinked, trying to focus his eyes in the semi-darkness of the hallway, and looked down. "Name?" the lady at the desk in front of him inquired again, in a rather nasally, annoyed voice.

"Um... Harry, Harry Potter."

For a moment, Harry tensed, almost expecting everyone in the crowded hallway to stop and turn. But the lady at the desk merely shook her head, flipped through her papers, and marked something down with her highlighter. Harry exhaled his held breath. "Room 2A, Mr. Potter."

Harry took the paper offered to him by the woman and hurried away from the desk, accidentally bumping into someone as he did. " 'Scuse me," he mumbled sheepishly, scooting away to the side of the hall. For a moment he stood there, trying to regain composure. Muggle teens surrounded him. Muggle teens with ridiculous hair styles, tight jeans, layers upon layers of strange looking clothing, strange piercings, insane amounts of dark makeup... others, less decorated, but still as strange and abnormal to Harry with their brand clothing and over sized backpacks. Robes, Harry thought longingly, where are the robes? Suddenly, a bell went off overhead. And just like that, the entire hallway was in motion. Harry felt like a deer caught in the headlamps, or a drowning sailor, or -

"Need help?"

Harry's savior came in the form of a tiny, bespectacled boy wearing all black. "Er... yes?"

"What room did'ya get?" Without waiting for Harry's answer, the boy grabbed the paper from Harry's hand and squinted into it intensely. "Same as mine. English, right?" Once again, the boy didn't wait for an answer, but turned and started down the hallway. When Harry deliberated, the boy turned and beckoned him on with an impatient gesture. I have nothing to lose, Harry thought wistfully, and hurried after the small, retreating figure as he went off at an alarming speed down the corridor.

"Here." the boy said, stopping suddenly in front of an open door and turning to Harry. "I'm Bill, by the way." Harry pushed his glasses further up his nose and wondered what to make of this new friend. "Oh... I'm Harry. Thanks for..." Bill waved away the thanks impatiently. "We should go in," he declared, and slipped into the room.

"Right." Harry muttered, following with more hesitance.

Inside, the class was half full. A hum of easy conversation hovered about the room, and Harry immediately felt awkward and out of place. Bill was already sitting at the very back of the classroom, twitching a pencil around in his hand. When he saw Harry, his lips stretched into a thin smile. With another sigh, Harry made his way back to the small boy, and took a seat at the desk next to him. "So -" Harry began, only to be cut off by yet another shrill bell.

"Class starts." Bill said wisely, with a knowing nod. Harry raised his eyebrows. "Right..."

For a few minutes more, nothing seemed to happen, and the conversation in the room continued. Harry wondered if perhaps he should try and talk with Bill again, or perhaps leave, as it didn't too strict of a school...

"'Kay, everyone... everyone, please, be quiet,"

The teacher had arrived. She was a tired looking woman, with a pinched expression - obviously it was not her choice to be teaching summer school. Harry could immediately sympathize. "First things first," the woman said, sitting down on a desk edge and taking off her glasses. She began to rub her eyes. "I hate shitdisturbers. If you're a shitdisturber, feel free to leave, now."

One of the boys at the front with long hair and a dumb, amiable smile on his face made to leave jokingly. This, of, course, provoked the majority of the class - with the exception of Bill and a confused Harry - into easy laughter.

"What's your name?" the teacher asked, looking down warily at the long-haired boy, now sitting in his seat with a smug grin. His smile stretched. "I'm Ryan, ma'am."

"Are you? Are you really, Ryan? I don't care."

Ryan's smile lessened some, and a whistle broke out at the back of the room. The teacher seemed to notice none of this, as she put her glasses back on and glanced wistfully at her watch. "Second, you can call me Ms. K. Third... well that's about it. Macbeth's at the front," she continued, waving her arm to the pile of peeling books on the desk behind her. "Take one, start reading, and don't screw around enough to make other teachers come in here. Oh," she paused, with a thoughtful air. "And feel free to ask questions."

And, with one last, sweet smile, Ms. K disapeared into a Vogue magazine. Harry was unsure of whether to be appalled, or amused. No one else in the class seemed to care whatsoever about the attitude of their teacher. "Are all teachers like that here?" Harry asked, turning in his seat to face Bill. A girl with mousy dark hair sitting in the seat next to him scoffed loudly. "Where you from," she asked Harry in a thick Irish accent, looking him over with appraising eyes, "Dufferin?"

Harry shook his head. "No, not..er...Dufferin."

"Good," the girl said, breaking unexpectedly into a smile. "My cousin went there, said everyone was a bigot, like. S'expected, though, right? I mean, y'pay lotsa money for a school like tha', could hardly expect those types to be angels." Harry couldn't help but smile and nod, charmed by her musical accent. She smiled back, widely, exposing a slight but pretty overbite. "Where you from, then? Ne'er seen you 'round this shithole before, don't think, anyhow."

Harry felt caught. Where was he from? "I'm, uh..." Think, think, where could I be from? "Christ's Hospital," he blurted out finally. Oh, shit, now just where and what is that?

The girl's mouth formed a small, surprised o, and beside her, Bill whistled. "Like... Gene Simmon's Rock School?" the Irish girl asked, in an awed tone. "In West Sussex?"

Harry died a little inside just then. First day, my first, fucking day, and I've already told people I attended a school from reality tv. "Yeah," he said weakly. "that's the one."

"Wow..." the girl was now staring at Harry with an odd expression, like he was an animal in a zoo. "My name's Sloane, by the way."

"Harry," said Harry.

"I'm Bill," Bill piped in, looking avidly at Sloane. Sloane smiled graciously, exposing her pretty overbite once again. Harry thought Bill might swoon. "Hey," she said, turning her attention back on Harry, who was now wary of what his stupid mouth might say in response to another question. "You want to chill with me and my friends at lunch? You too," she added, flashing another smile at Bill. "It can't be fun to know no one on the firs' day."

Harry thought of Dudley and lunch and being there without his two best friends. "You make a good point," he told Sloane, "so sure. Bill?" But Bill was lost in the eyes of the pretty Irish girl, who didn't seem to notice at all. "Well tha's great then." she declared, packing up her books. "Meet me 'round the back, by the dumpsters. I knows, sounds sketchy, but it's habit for us." Harry smiled weakly. "Sounds good. Uh... is the class over?" he asked, watching Sloane stand and sling her bag over her shoulder with a puzzled expression. Sloane smiled warmly. "'Course not. See yous later then?" And with that she left the classroom, turning no heads. "Can you just do that?" Harry asked Bill, confused once again. Bill shrugged, still in daze. And so the day began.