Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter's world, including - but not limited to - Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, and Wingardium Leviosa. If I did, I would simply publish another book and make some money, rather than posting this story online for free. But alas, I am but a poor waitress...
Author's Note: I'd like to apologize for any errors you find in here. It's late at night (or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it), but I was in a hurry to finally get this up. I've had this chapter almost finished for over a week now, and I just wanted to be done with it. Unfortunately, that means I'm tired from a long night of work and a couple drinks afterward. ;) Hopefully you like it anyway!
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"James Potter hugged you? And you let him?" An excited squeal could be heard from the compartment three girls sat in. A curly-haired blonde was bouncing up and down on her seat, her large grin splitting her face in half, and looking as if she had just found out that Santa was real and they were on their way to go visit him in the North Pole.
"Shh, keep it down, will you? I'm sure Lily doesn't want the whole school to know before we've even arrived," the brunette sitting across from her admonished – though she, too, was smiling – as she reached over to slide the compartment door the rest of the way shut.
"Of course not; there's nothing to know anyways. Nothing is going on between us! We are simply getting along now, which is especially good since he's Head Boy with me this year." The redhead crossed her arms firmly, her bright green eyes staring at the blonde across from her and daring her to say otherwise.
The blonde, Kate Johnson, rolled her eyes with a laugh. "Uh huh. If you say so, Lily."
Lily threw her arms up in exasperation. "Oh! Mandy, help me, please?" Those green eyes transformed from angry to pleading in a heartbeat as she turned them on the brunette beside her, her full lips turned out in the tiniest hint of a pout.
Mandy fought valiantly to smother the smile trying to creep onto her own face, and chose to finally step in and help her best friend. Not that it was much of a choice; once Lily used her puppy-dog face, she pretty much always got what she wanted. The kicker of it was – at least, in Mandy's opinion – that Lily didn't even mean to do it. She just looked so genuine and sincere, you'd have to be heartless not to help the girl.
"Lay off her now, Kate. You know she's not interested in Potter that way. I'm sure it was just a friendly, innocent, 'nice to see you again' sort of hug," she told the blonde in what she hoped was a convincing tone. Truth was, Mandy wasn't even convinced of what she was saying, but Lily was her best friend and if she wanted rumors squashed, Mandy would squash them for her.
"But -"
"No buts about it! They're just friends! Isn't that right, Lily?"
Mandy could have sworn Lily's cheeks grew just a slight shade pinker, but she bobbed her wavy red hair in a nod and said, "That's right. Friends," and her tone was so firm that Mandy almost believed her. Almost.
Just then, the door slid open to reveal the woman with the food cart. "Anything off the trolly, dears?" she asked with the same sweet smile that Mandy had seen on her face since her first year.
The three girls hopped up to purchase their various sweets, and afterward fell into easier conversation about summer and clothes and the upcoming school year.
~*~
This was the beginning of Mandy's seventh year in the magical world, but there were some things that never ceased to amaze her. These things included horseless carriages, living in a castle, the enchanted ceiling in the great hall, and the fact that certain – otherwise inanimate – objects such as hats could talk.
Other things did get old though, like listening to the aforementioned hat ramble a silly song and then proceed to call out a long list of names and houses.
Mandy drummed her fingers on the table and glanced around the great hall at her fellow students as the sorting was performed. Lily, being Head Girl this year, was paying attention to where all the new students were placed like a good little authority figure. Kate and Marcy were whispering and giggling excitedly, while gazing at various attractive males they went to school with, ignoring the frequent reproachful glares Lily kept shooting them. Further down the table, Potter and his group of friends had their heads together and looked like they were already busy plotting trouble for the upcoming year, although Lupin at least seemed to be disapproving of some of the ideas Black and Potter came up with. At other house tables, Slytherins were sulky, several Ravenclaws already had out text books, and Hufflepuffs were giving friendly smiles to the first years.
Yes, all was just the same as it always was at the beginning of each year, and Mandy was bored and hungry. Did the sorting always take this long? She felt like the chocolate frogs and cauldron cakes she'd eaten on the train had been ages ago. Her stomach grumbled uncomfortably.
As if on cue, Dumbledore stood up to give them all a few words of gibberish and repeat some of the rules that everyone broke each year, before saying wisely, "And now, without further ado, eat up!"
Finally! As food magically appeared on all the tables, Mandy dug in eagerly. Only when she had some very healthy portions of nearly everything in sight and had shoveled a couple large bites into her mouth did she return some of her attentions to the people around her.
"...just rude, that's all I'm saying," Lily was looking harshly at Kate and Marcy, who were sitting across the table from her and not looking the least bit apologetic. "I mean, imagine how you would have felt in your first year if everyone was talking while you were up there!"
"Oh come off it, Lily! I'm sure they were glad to have a couple less pairs of eyes watching them. We had important catching up to do! We haven't hardly seen each other the last couple weeks, and all the latest gossip simply couldn't wait another moment," Kate said with a slight air of exasperation, as if this should be the most obvious thing in the world.
Marcy simply nodded her short black hair in smug agreement.
Lily furrowed her brows as she prepared to continue her scolding. Mandy sighed and swallowed her latest bite of food. She knew that the red head was taking her duty as Head Girl very seriously; it was a goal towards which she had worked very hard for the past several years. Still, Lily tended to get a bit overzealous in some matters. Mandy believed that it was her way of making up for the things she had no control over. Thus, it fell to the best friend – Mandy – to keep her in line from time to time. Or just distract her long enough to prevent a boring lecture that none of them wanted to hear.
"Well," Mandy interjected firmly, successfully cutting Lily off. "Maybe if Marcy hadn't spent the entire train ride snogging Alex, she could have sat with us and caught up for a bit then." Despite her best efforts to look entirely serious as she said this, the amused twinkling of her eyes gave her away.
Nonetheless, her statement had the desired effect of lightening the mood and changing the subject.
"Hey!" Marcy exclaimed, her eyebrows shooting up her forehead while her cheeks turned a bright shade of red. "I'll have you know we were not snogging the entire time!"
"Oh really?" Lily laughed, her head duties momentarily forgotten, and gestured to the nearby Ravenclaw table where a certain dark-skinned boy kept stealing glances towards them. When Marcy made eye-contact with him, he winked and blew her a kiss before turning back to his own group of friends.
"I don't know, Marcy. Looks like Alex has kissing on his mind," Kate teased, waggling her eyebrows up and down in a suggestive, ridiculous looking fashion. Swinging her arm around the now very red-faced girl, she then began singing loudly (and off-key): "Alex and Marcy, sitting in a tree! K-I-S- oof!"
The rest of the song was abruptly cut off when Marcy roughly elbowed her in the stomach. "Oh, sod off, Kate! And you two, as well!" She turned her glare towards Lily and Mandy, who were laughing loudly at the scene.
"There, there, Marcy," Mandy grinned between giggles. "If you get to have a boyfriend, we get to tease you whenever you ditch us for him. I'm pretty sure it's one of the official rules of friendship."
Marcy only harrumphed in response, but Mandy couldn't help but notice that when the black-haired girl risked sneaking a peak at the Ravenclaw table a few moments later, the corners of her mouth twitched up into what looked suspiciously like a smile.
~*~
After the feast, everyone made their slow, painful, I-just-way-ate-too-much-food march to the various house common rooms and the dormitories beyond. Lily had stayed behind to help the professors in making sure that everyone did indeed leave the Great Hall in the appropriate directions, and Mandy was walking just behind Kate and Marcy, only listening half-way to whatever they were discussing. She felt somewhat out of place in that moment, and it wouldn't be the last time that year.
The four Gryffindor girls were all close friends, but within that foursome there were two very distinct groups: Kate and Marcy vs. Lily and Mandy.
On the surface, Kate Johnson and Marcy Lang looked like complete opposites. Kate was fairly tall and very thin, with long, curly blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She was the sort of person that everyone noticed the moment she walked into a room, and she knew it. She carried herself with confidence in every situation, and could easily hold a conversation with anyone that passed her way. Despite all this, one of her greatest pleasures in life was poking fun at the people around her, although she somehow always managed to do so in a such a way that they didn't feel belittled or mocked, but rather noticed and appreciated. It was a gift that Mandy often wondered at.
Marcy, on the other hand, was a short girl, with short dark hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes. She was no stick-figure, but had the overall appearance of being soft rather than overweight. While she certainly had her own mind and opinions, if someone else shared the same viewpoints that she did, Marcy was much more comfortable agreeing with and backing them rather than being the first person to speak up. But she was a sweet and genuinely good person, and while she may not have turned heads the way Kate did, she was still well-known and well-liked in the school.
The biggest similarity between the two girls, which they had discovered early in their first year at Hogwarts, was their mutual love of gossip and drama. There wasn't a romance, break-up, or even fight between friends that the two of them didn't know about, and one of their favorite past-times was dissecting and analyzing the personal lives of the entire student body (and occasionally, if they were lucky, even the professors, although most of this was largely comprised of unlikely theories and rumors).
Mandy enjoyed hearing some of this girly chatter from time to time, but overall her interests lay elsewhere. Thus, that first year of school she had drifted closer to level-headed Lily. Unfortunately, it was times like these when Lily was preoccupied with her various duties that Mandy found herself feeling like a bit of a third wheel. The year was not even truly begun yet, so she had nothing to contribute to her two friends' conversation and she was too tired and too full to really care about learning the latest juicy detail they were going over.
The closer they got to Gryffindor tower, the more spaced out everyone became. Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, and Slytherins had all disappeared off to their own common rooms wherever they may be, and younger students had all hurried to keep up with the prefects because they were worried about either getting lost or getting in trouble for being out too late. With only a smattering of older students left trickling behind, Mandy's attention drifted from her friends' gossip to other conversations.
A couple of sixth years were holding hands a little ways ahead of her, and softly telling each other how much they had missed one another during the summer. To the left of them, a fifth year boy was boasting to a couple of fourth years about the owl his mum had gotten him for his birthday.
"He's ruddy smart, that owl; I didn't miss a single letter this summer. Didn't matter if I was at home or at my grandparent's house in Dover, he always found me! Why, I'll bet he could find me if I was all the way in..."
Mandy tuned him out as she heard a loud burst of laughter behind her, and she turned her head to look back over her shoulder. Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew all seemed to be in stitches about something or another, and as she turned back around Mandy couldn't help the small smile on her own face. Those four boys (they were one short at the moment, of course, James Potter being elsewhere fulfilling his Head Boy duties) always managed to have such a good time entertaining themselves and, in turn, the entire school, and their care-free happiness was contagious. Sure, they spent a good deal of their time in and out of detentions, but even those seemed to be served with a positive attitude.
They all rounded a corner and finally, feet dragging after what felt like an epic trek through the castle, the last of the Gryffindors arrived at the portrait of the Fat Lady that guarded their tower. A fifth year prefect was kindly waiting for the last of the stragglers to arrive so she could let them in.
"The password is 'jibberjabber'," the frizzy-haired girl informed the group as the portrait swung forward, and they all clambered inside.
Mandy, Kate, and Marcy all trudged up to their dormitory, and after quickly changing into her night clothes and brushing her teeth, Mandy fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow. She had meant to wait up for Lily, but after a long day full of traveling and feasting, any talking would have to wait until morning.
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A/N: Again, this is still a lot of introduction and setup for the start of a new school year. I went more in depth on Kate and Marcy than anyone else because while they will be important to the story, they are still somewhat "extras." The main characters will be more fully explored and unraveled as the story progresses, and it just wouldn't be any fun to give everything away at the beginning.
Please leave a review, and if I've made any horrendous errors (as per above author's note) let me know so I can fix them.
- Sara