Disclaimer: do I really have to say it?
Chapter Five: Afraid of Birds?
Michelle ran and sat down in between Lily and Elisa, giving the redhead a high-five and congratulating Remus who was on the other side of Lily and next to Sirius.
"We're all Gryffindor, wicked!" James yelled, disturbing the second year next to him.
"Yeah," Sirius laughed, obviously overjoyed that he hadn't been put in Slytherin. "Now, all we need for the best first day of school tomorrow is a prank, but what?" An evil glint began to creep into his eyes and Michelle reminded herself to never get onto his bad side.
"So," she said, turning to Elisa, "umm, what are you? I mean like, I'm a half-blood and Lily's a muggleborn," Elisa spun around to look at her, she had already been in the middle of a conversation with Kailey apparently, and the other bent around Elisa to listen in.
"I'm a pureblood, and this is my best friend since we were six, Kailey, and she's muggleborn. It's a long story. But don't worry, I don't believe in all that stuff about purebloods being better than others, my parents didn't raise me to think that way. You two are Lily and Michelle, right?"
"Yup that's us, so where do you guys live I've never seen any other witches around?" Michelle asked. But before they could answer, Dumbledore rose from his seat at the head of the staff table, and silence fell immediately.
"To my new students, welcome, to those returning, welcome back to another year at Hogwarts. I have a few announcements to make before we are befuddled by this excellent feast. First of which is we have a new teacher to fill the post of Herbology. Please give a warm welcome to Professor Sprout." A short, young witch, with rather flyaway hair stood and gave a polite bow, there was some scattered applause and she returned to her seat. "Also our Transfiguration teacher, Professor McGonagall, has been appointed to Deputy Headmistress this year." More applause. "And last but not least, we have recently acquired a Whomping Willow and I caution all of you now not to attempt to approach it if you do not wish to be injured. It has been planted on the grounds for my own reasons. But for now, let the feast begin!" Suddenly, the plates filled themselves with food and all the conversations were picked up once more.
Michelle paused as she sipped her pumpkin juice, gazing over to where Remus was being bombarded by questions from James Potter and Sirius Black. Something about being a "Marauder." She couldn't fail to notice that he had reddened at the sound of the Whomping Willow being planted on the grounds.
"Michelle!"
"Ah! What?" Elisa had been trying to get her attention for the past minute as she was staring into space and now Michelle had succeeded in staining her new robes. "Damn. Mum won't like this,"
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you or anything," Elisa said sniggering slightly. "Anyway, I was asking if you had brought any pets with you. Did you? Because Kailey doesn't like birds too much."
"Um… I brought my cat, Snickers. Is that okay Kailey?" Michelle addressed the darker haired girl.
"Why would I care if you brought your… wait, what did Elisa tell you?" Kailey looked up from her roast beef. "I'm not afraid of birds. I mean it was a long time ago and I was only eight, and that bird was huge! It's not my fault if my uncle was playing tricks on me, he's the one who told me to feed the birds! It was London, so I got completely swamped with pigeons okay, you woulda been scared too!"
"What? All she said was that you didn't like birds so much," Michelle was starting to lean away from the yelling girl, making Lily skooch over a bit.
By now Elisa was doubled over with laughter, Kailey took that opportunity and pushed her face into her plate of mashed potatoes.
"HEY! I didn't do anything, it was all you," Elisa reached for her napkin with one hand and wiped some of the white mush out of her eyes with the other. "Now look, you've wasted all of these wonderful potatoes. I'm sure there are starving children in Borneo or something that could have eaten those and now you've condemned them to another night on an empty stomach. How does that make you feel?"
Kailey only glared at her friend, who only turned to her asking, "Is there any left on my face?"
Lily began to giggle but was for some reason, was desperately trying not to. The effect was that her face turned a similar color to her hair, sending Michelle into a laughing fit. Remus sat on the sidelines most likely wondering why girls were so weird.
"Ah, no I don't believe thi-is!" Michelle cried suddenly, hiding her face in her hands.
"What is it?" Everyone turned to her.
"I've got the hiccups…"
hic
"So?" Lily said, looking confused.
"You don-hic-don't get it. hic. I get the hic-hiccups all the time! hic," She sounded quite distressed for something so minor. "I get them in classes too, in the middle of taking an important test at the muggle school I was going to one time. Everyone was staring at me," Michelle looked like for one moment she might have slammed her head onto the table but thought better of it and tried to go back to eating. It was pretty hard, only swallowing right after one hiccup as so she wouldn't choke.
Soon enough, dinner was over and dessert came and went in a delicious burst of puddings and truffles. Once they were completely finished, the odds and ends disappeared and Dumbledore stood once more.
"I believe that it is time for bed. Prefects, please show the first years to the dormitories, now off to bed, and with a final two words, grimple knack,"
There was a great commotion as everyone began to head towards the door (Michelle hiccupping all the way.) The first year Gryffindors followed a fifth year who introduced herself as Grace McNulty up the stairs and through numerous passageways to a large stretch of wall with many moving paintings along it. Through her hiccups, Michelle and Elisa laughed at the looks on Kailey and Lily's faces. They had never seen moving paintings before. Camille was somewhere else in the group. They stopped before a doorway sized painting of a fat lady in a pink satin dress.
"Password?" She said looking at Grace.
"Silver Arrow," Grace stated, the fat lady swung around to expose a circular doorway leading into the side of the wall. They followed Grace inside and were astonished at the coziness if the room beyond, everything was red and gold: the tables, the couches, the rugs and the chairs were all the colors of Gryffindor. There was already a nice fire crackling merrily on one side of the room, casting twitchy shadows on the opposite walls.
There was a little "oooh… aaah," from Elisa and Kailey; those two were a piece of work. Lily was gazing around the room in wonder, rubbing Michelle on the back all the while. Michelle was trying to rid herself of her hiccups by holding her breath, but Lily had to steady her, as she kept feeling faint.
"The boy's dormitories are up the stairs on your left, the girl's, the same on the right. All of your belongings and pets have been brought up earlier. The password is changed regularly, so check with me or the other Gryffindor prefect, Theo Golding. The other Gryffindors will be back shortly. Good night." And with that, she turned and climbed the stairs to the girl's dormitories.
The group separated and they too climbed the staircase to their rooms.
"Are they gone? Are your hiccups gone Michelle?" Kailey asked as she opened the door to the first year's dormitories. Inside were five red blanketed, four-poster beds with gold pillows lining the right side of the circular room.
"No, hic, but I want the middle!" Michelle cried and catapulted herself onto the middle bed closer to the window than the door. They took her lead and flung themselves onto the bed they desired, Kailey next to the door, Elisa the middle right and Lily to the window bed. Michelle sighed, she was here, in the Hogwarts that her parents had learned everything they knew, where her sister had boasted about every holiday, she was there, finally.
She slid to the end of her bed and leaned over the end of it, unlocking her trunk and pulling her pajamas right off of the top. Her sister had told her that that would be the first thing she would need. Lily obviously hadn't had anyone to tell her that, her pajamas were hiding from her at the bottom of hers and Kailey's were also. After pulling on her green p.j.s, something hit her,
"Snickers? Where are you?" She ignored the other girls and began looking around the room.
Kailey didn't appear to have any pets, though she was looking furiously at her friend.
"What?" Elisa said defensively her blue eyes narrowing.
"You said you wouldn't bring her! You said you'd leave her at home, that was mean, you lied!" Kailey yelled at Elisa, pointing to something by her feet that Michelle and Lily had to peek over the top of their beds to see.
Sitting beside the blonde girl's feet was a large owl cage and inside was an extremely large Eagle Owl, looking very important on its perch.
Elisa's head moved as she looked down at the bird. "Oh yeah, huh…right. Oops. My bad." Kailey snorted. "Well, I had to bring her, I need to get my mail don't I?"
"But your parents have owls, they could have sent you mail that way." Kailey was edging away from the large bird.
"Well… not really, my Mom's dad isn't feeling well, he's in Mungo's right now so Harold has been ferrying Mom and Grampy's letters back and forth. And Dad sent Felix to his brother's house for now at least. His owls keep dieing and Dad reckons that Felix is lucky or something like that."
Kailey looked taken aback, "How come you didn't tell me?"
She shrugged, "I dunno,"
Michelle marveled at the fight and immediate reconciliation of her friends, then went back to looking for Snickers. She swung around, hooked her feet on the edge of the bed and hung her head over the side so that she was upside-down from the waist up. She shook the hair out of her eyes and tried to ignore the blood rushing to her head. Underneath the bed was a very small cat, a kitten actually. Michelle pulled her out gently and plopped her down on her new bed.
"Hey everybody, this is Snickers, Snickers, everybody. Isn't she cute?" Lily came over and tickled under the tiny cat's chin; she purred and closed her eyes. She was a little brownish butterscotch color and had a rather tortoiseshell look about her.
"Mum gave her to me for my birthday in April," Michelle gushed. She lay down on her bed and liked the way the mattress seemed to be as fluffy as a cloud. Snickers curled up in the crook of her arm and closed her eyes, seemingly oblivious to the presence of a bird of prey that was easily twice the size of her within ten feet.
Kailey went into the bathroom to brush her teeth and Elisa peeked out from between her bed hangings, now in her pajamas, and whispered,
"That was one of the best lies I've ever told. I hope that Kailey doesn't remember that my dad is an only child,"
lllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
Over in the boy's dormitories, things were a bit quieter. The four boys had picked their beds, Peter over on the right, then James, Sirius and Remus, right on the end, next to the window. Peter had long since put on his pajamas and somehow he was already snoring. Oddly enough, each of them except for Remus had owls.
"Come on, James, we totally have to do a prank before the end of the week. If we don't, then the record stays with the other guys, the last record holders had themselves a prank by the first weekend," Sirius whispered above the sound of Peter's snores, how he could have fallen asleep already was beyond them. They also thought that Remus was asleep. He was not.
He was however, feeling very homesick. As much as these boys had been nice to him, Remus did not feel that he would ever fit in. I can't do it, Remus thought. He had caught Michelle glancing at him throughout dinner. She may already suspect something, and she said that she was an animagus. All animals can sense a werewolf miles away. I can't be around her too much. It just won't work. He shifted restlessly, listening to James and Sirius plotting. He never had to worry about all of this when he was at home. His mum would hug Remus constantly; his Dad was quiet, giving him a reassuring wink or pat on the back.
Before Hogwarts, he had barely gone anywhere, they stayed in their house in the woods, far away from the wizarding village at the bottom of the large, forested, sloping hill. His Lycanthropy had been hard on his parents. For years they had tried to cure him, taking all different manner of potions, the worst of which made him very ill and he had been forced to go to Saint Mungo's for nearly two weeks. With a final thought of his Mother and Father he fell into a fitful sleep.
But he was grateful; he had been allowed to attend the best wizard school in Britain. It was all because of the word of one man.
Albus Dumbledore.