Gah...this is Night again. I'm so tired of writing disclaimers... Well, enjoy the story and thank you for the reviews. And in response to them:
.tuerzame.: Thank you very much for reviewing! Mare isn't currently here, but she did mention to me through email that she found your review very encouraging. Also, to answer your question, Harry Potter will not play a very large role, though I was thinking about having him appear later on as a ghost or through the Veil. That might not happen though, since I don't know what Mare and Minkx think about having Harry Potter appear in the story.
Willholmer: I have no idea who you are...I'm sorry. I'm going to assume you're one of her friends in real life or you're related to her in some way since you seem to know that we're already up chapter 6, even though we've only submitted 2 chapters on this website...And there will be other OCs besides Marcus and Andrea. Minkx has made one that will be making an appearance soon and I've also made another OC who might accompany Marcus and Andrea in their adventures. There are also a few others that I've probably forgotten. By the way, while we are trying to make this a good story, we're also trying to have fun with this.
DISCLAIMER: Night, Mare, and Minkx don't own the Harry Potter book series or movie series. The Harry Potter book series belongs to J.K. Rowling. We only own our created characters (Andrea, Marcus, and the new OC who is going to appear in this chapter).
Enjoy!
Chapter 2
Marcus finished brushing the invisible flecks of dirt off, the house elf already gone in another puff of smoke.
He somehow seemed to relax again, turning back into a charming jokester.
"Well, let's get going," he said with a sunny smile, "can't be late for our first day back at Hogwarts!"
Marcus swiftly picked up 2 of his trunks, leaving the other 2 where they were, and grunting, he clumsily attempted to walk in through a train door and instead ended up hitting a wall instead and dropping his luggage.
Andrea bit her lip, still not able to get over the fact that something was amiss…If only Hooky was here so she could question him about this matter…
"Don't you usually have Hooky carry your luggage into the train?" she asked, hoping that Marcus would call Hooky back and that she would be able to corner the hook-handed house elf to force the information out of him.
Marcus gave her a strained smile, his usually mischievous and merry gray eyes flickering, showing a trace more of something else, something she couldn't quite identify.
Suddenly, he picked up the 2 trunks once more, blocking Andrea's view of his face so only his unruly, reddish-brown hair was visible.
"Well, my mother is probably having Hook-a-looks help out now, so I can carry my own things!"
"But you just said his name correctly a minute ago…"
"I did?"
He disappeared into one of the train's cars before she could answer, returning empty-handed.
"I found an empty car for us to sit in, come on!" Marcus said abruptly, picking up his 2 last trunks and dumping them into the compartment as well.
She stood for a minute, uneasy.
His red-haired head poked out of the train's door once more, and this time, he marched out and grabbed her hand, dragging her into the car.
"Hey! My luggage!"
Marcus grinned, any trace of whatever emotion had been in his eyes earlier, gone.
"As you wish, madam!" he made a mock-bow and went out once more, this time taking her trunk and placing it in the compartment, making a separate trip for her owl.
"Hrrtrrr-who! WHO! WHO-WHO!"
Frantic hoots sounded out through the platform as the owl inside of the cage flew against its cage bars frantically, attempting to stretch its wings to full length, all the time while Marcus held the cage at arm-length and made a run for it, depositing it in the train car as well.
"Shani really does hate you, doesn't he?" Andrea said absentmindedly, stroking the owl's head through the cage bars, "I wonder why?"
Shani hooted softly now, comforted by the presence of his owner.
He was an unique-looking owl, not exactly odd. He had tufts on his head and beautiful molten-gold eyes, as well as a beautifully-curving beak, interrupted only by the long scar above the beak, an old cut that had never healed which lay horizontally across his wide face. All of these features would suggest an eagle owl, except for perhaps the fact that his feathers were all white, like a snowy owl's, except for the dark brown tips of his wings and the tawny patterns on his lower chest.
"Shani means crimson red, doesn't it?" Andrea asked, attempting to relieve the tension that existed in the unusual silence in the car, and turning the cage so that the bird was facing Marcus, she said, "Do you see a bit of red or anything crimson on these feathers?"
Marcus glanced at the bird silently for a while before giving a slow, lazy shrug.
"You probably don't remember do you?" Andrea said, attempting to have a 2-way conversation with only one person speaking.
She went back to stroking the owl and than said to the owl, "Now if only you could tell us why this silly fool named you 'crimson'!"
"Yes…it would be amazing if all of nature could talk, wouldn't it?"
Andrea gave a start at hearing the unfamiliar voice echo through the nearly-empty train car.
She turned to see a slender girl with light blonde hair, the girl's long locks glinting with an almost white hue in the train's unnatural lighting. A dreamy smiled curled on the girl's lips as she swayed in a way that Andrea imagined a sleepwalker would, looking almost ready to fall over, and she'd begun to wonder if she should go over and steady the girl when the blonde-haired girl simply leaned and touched one of the train's walls, pressing her ear against it and closing her eyes.
"Imagine…" she murmured in that same dreamy, sleepwalking voice, "what this piece of wood would say…How many students have walked past it…I wonder what conversations it's heard…"
She gave the girl a puzzled look, uncertain what to make of this odd child, watching her with an intense curiosity similar to that of a little boy's when he was confronted with a new toy he'd never seen before.
After a while, growing bored of watching the girl simply stroke the wooden wall of the train and murmur to it, she turned around again and took to staring out the window, pressing her cheek against the cool glass.
She could already see Hogwarts in the distance, the medieval-styled turrets waving in the air and the rippling lake below it.
She squinted, almost sure she could see tiny tails flipping in and out of the water. Mermaids, perhaps? A Kraken? She drifted away in thought, her eyelids slowly fluttering downwards, little shutters sliding down upon her blue eyes…
"Excuse me, but what's your Patronus?"
Her eyes snapped open.
"Hmm?"
She looked up to see the odd girl staring down at her, peering over the seat, her grey-blue eyes no longer dreamy and wispy but more focused and curious.
Andrea got up from the seat, switching to the one next to Marcus as she answered, feeling a bit peeved at the sudden invasion of her space.
"It's a horse."
"Oh," the girl said, looking rather disappointed as she sighed, "I almost thought I had it right this time!"
"Had what right?"
"The prophecy," the girl said, acting as if this was obviously the subject of the conversation.
"Which prophecy?" Andrea asked, feeling slightly irritated by the girl's vagueness, "There hasn't been a prophecy in years. Not since the last one about Harry Potter and Voldemort…"
The girl inspected the two of them carefully, making Andrea nervous as she peered at them with her eyes, their gray-green hue making her appear almost blind. Finally, she rifled through her bag, removing something with great care.
"My great-grandmother made it. You might need these."
She dropped 2 small, blue orbs, no larger than marbles, into Marcus and Andrea's laps, before moving off again, crossing the train car, humming some tune that wandered from note to note listlessly, and then she exited, letting the door clank behind her.
Marcus lifted one of the orbs up, his head propped up with his other arm, holding the orb between his thumb and forefinger.
"A Muggle marble?"
He seemed somewhat revived with this new toy that had been dropped into his lap.
Andrea picked hers up as well, examining the smoke that seemed to be trapped inside of the clear blue orb.
"No…I think I've heard of these from the kids in Divination Class. It's a Prophecy. Well, actually it's just a container for a prophecy. You're supposed to smash them to hear the actual prophecy, but-"
Smash!
Andrea heard a tinkling of glass and she groaned as she saw the shattered remains of one of the orbs lying on the ground.
"they can only be used once…" she said, finishing her sentence as she sighed and watched the smoky contents escape from the enchanted shards of glass, floating up to reveal a very familiar face from her History of Magic textbooks.
"Luna Lovegood!" she gasped.
I hope you enjoyed the chapter. Mare and I (Night) wrote this chapter together, though I made the cliffhanger at the end... Yes...I suppose that was slightly cruel of me. Mare and I(Night) wrote these chapters before Minkx decided to join our collaboration fanfiction story, so you won't see Minkx's writing until the next chapter. The next chapter will be coming out soon, since it's already written and we just need to post it here. I tend to only submit one chapter a day.
Please review and give us feedback on our writing!