Dark Side Strip Club
Free Again and
Chapter 1: How it All Started
After the graduation walk Caprice and Marie went to the park; where a party was being held in their honor. After many years of hard work in high school they had tied for valedictorian, and got to make a speech together. Now all they had to do was make it through a party were people would want to talk and congratulate them. And also give them money and presents. After getting through all of the cooing adults, they loaded every present into the car and drove over to her house. Marie's house was empty, since her parents had to get on a plane after the party to go to London on business; so the two were going to stay at Caprice's parent's house for a week before getting on a plane and starting their cross-Europe trip. And after they got back it would be off to college for them.
"Oh, my gosh, Caprice, can you believe we are done with high school forever?"
"Oh of course; we got through four years of high school. And what do we have to look forward to? Another four years- at least- of college." Marie just rolled her eyes at her overly sarcastic friend.
"Well, that is after our amazing Europe trip. Just imagine all of the guys who are going to be there." Both girls sighed at the thought of the many foreign guys they would meet on their trip. From Ireland to Greece. It would be amazing.
"Now all we have to do is get through all of these presents. Wanna help me get them out?" Marie was lounging against the side of their joint Mustang, while Caprice worked on getting the boxes out of the car.
"If you can't even carry a couple boxes, what was the point of super duper advanced weight training?" It was true that Caprice had taken four years of weight training, but Marie was just totally lazy.
"Gosh, Mandrews, you think you could handle this on your own," Marie goaded. Caprice glared at her. During Freshmen year, a guy friend of Caprice's had taken up to calling her Mandrews. Caprice had gotten extremely ticked off and was horrified to learn that the name stuck. For over a year, all of her guy friends would call her Mandrews, so, understandably, the mentioning of the nickname set her off a little. "Sorry, sorry," Marie said, a little exasperated at Caprice's overreaction.
"Well Marie, if you want any of your presents you have to carry at least two boxes in." And there were 6 boxes, so Caprice would carry 4 of them. The next task after getting everything in the house, was to separate the gift by who was the recipient. It took about twenty minutes to get through the pile, and by the end it was obvious who got more cash (Caprice) and who got more actual items (Marie). After opening a couple of presents they both grabbed a present from 'Anonymous'.
"Now that was creepy, what are the odds that we would have grabbed the same present from the same person. But we don't know who that person is. What if it's like a crazy stalker dude," Marie fretted, even looking over her shoulder, theatrically.
"Paranoid much. It's probably just a gift and they didn't want us to know who sent it." Caprice laughed at her friend, because it was so easy to scare her. "Let's open them at the same time. Three…Two…One." The shiny silver paper was torn away, and the girls saw that there was a note attached to the top of each.
"Dear Marie. Hey, that's me! But that doesn't rule out crazy stalker. Any who, back to reading. Inside this box you will find a locket. It looks just like an ordinary locket but its power only comes out when near its sister locket. I sincerely hope you use this new found power for good rather than evil."
"Mine says the same thing. Does this person actually think we would believe in magical lockets, although they are pretty." Both lockets were silver, and had intricate patterns accented with blue sapphires. They had tiny keyholes, but neither box had come with a key, so there was no way of opening the lockets and seeing what was inside. Despite the strange message, both girls felt compelled to put the lockets around their necks. After the strange blip in their presents, Caprice and Marie went back to opening presents; promptly forgetting about the two lockets.
The taxi pulled up to the sidewalk, and its passengers jumped out and grabbed their belongings. Each had two suitcases, a carry-on, and a purse. Caprice and Marie; because really who else could we be talking about; raced inside to scan the list of incoming and departing flights. Once they found their flight they saw that they only had about thirty minutes to get through security. They got into the shortest line, but didn't realize that it was the first class line.
"Hi we are running a little late, so can we go as fast as possible." Caprice smiled.
"Okay, what are your names?"
"Caprice Andrews and Marie Conover." The lady behind the counter typed in their names.
"Okay, it says you are in business class, so do you want to upgrade to first class?"
"Not really." Caprice was taking care of the check-in, while Marie stared off into space, her thoughts a random blob of realizations.
"Then you can go get into the line over there, and check-in to regular class." Caprice looked over to the line that she was gesturing towards, and her eyes widened. It was huge, there was no way they would be able to get through that one in the time they had.
"Fine we will upgrade. Just do it fast."
"I am going to need your IDs." Both girls handed over their drivers licenses. After checking that they were indeed who they said they were she typed more information in. "How many bags do you have each?"
"We both have two."
"Okay, that will be an extra $60 for bags. Would you like me to add that to the bill?" Caprice felt like she needed to hit something. Marie saw this and stepped in, handing the woman cash.
"Can we put our bags on the scale now?" Marie smiled, but you could tell she was annoyed. And without waiting for the woman to answer she had put the bags up on the scale, proving that they didn't weigh over 50 pounds.
"Here are your boarding passes, and I hope you enjoy your flight." But Marie had grabbed them out of her hands, and was far away with Caprice by the time she got to the end of her sentence.
"Caprice, calm down. We barely have enough time to get onto the plane without getting detained for terrorist threats." After taking a couple calming breaths Caprice smiled.
"Well, if we don't have time to waste; why are we standing here?" They walked at a brisk pace to security, and then straight to the gate. By the time they got to the gate they only had a couple minutes to board the plane, but they had forgotten about being forced to upgrade to first class. So when they got on and saw their seats the only thing they could think to say was-
"WOW." They sat down in the comfy black seats and sighed. The hassle was worth it if they got to go all the way to London in these seats. After the flight attendants went through the emergency procedures and the plane took off, they started talking.
"Okay, so the check in person ticked me off. But I now it's worth it to have these seats; the flight is super long. And I am glad there are only two in a row, so we don't have to be like squished by a fat guy." Marie stuck her head out in the aisle and looked back.
"I can't see any fat people, but they are probably in the window seats. Or squishied into the middle one. Can you believe we are finally on our way to London? I mean we have been planning this trip since like, three years ago."
"I know, it's kinda surreal that we are finally on our way. Even though we still have hours until we get into London." They both turned their attention to the in-flight movie, and spent the next couple of hours trying not to sing out loud to Moulin Rouge. And swooning over Ewan McGregor. After the movie they fell asleep; Marie reclining the seat, and Caprice on her shoulder.
Marie woke up to two things simultaneously. The first broke through her consciousness immediately, the flight attendant shaking her shoulder. "Um, excuse me miss. We are about to land."
"Okay, I got it. Now stop touching me." The flight attendant hurried down the aisle, to go make sure everyone was awake for their arrival in London. Then the second thing began to work its way into her brain. "Oh my gosh, Caprice. Get off me. Why didn't you tell me you drooled? Now I have to go change my shirt, there is a gigantic drool stain on my shoulder."
Caprice had jumped back when Marie yelled, and in the process ended up hitting her head on the window behind her. Which only added to the confusion of waking up. She was fully awake by the time Marie got back, wearing a new shirt.
"What happened?" She said once Marie sat down.
"The eighth deadly sin." Caprices eyes widened. She hadn't drooled on anyone since she was a baby, and you can't help it when you don't know what is acceptable in the world. And drooling is most definitely not acceptable.
"Sorry, but it is a good thing we brought our carry-on's. Or you would have walked out into London with a drool spot. Now I have to fix my make-up, because I probably look like the crack fox right now."
"Kinda, you are just missing the peach hat." Caprice glared at Marie for a few seconds, then took out her traveling make-up kit and started to touch up her make-up. She finished just as they landed, and they got off the plane and got in line to be admitted into the country. After two hours of moving up slowly, they finally got through into the rest of the airport.
"You know what, I am starving." Caprice rolled her eyes at her friend, who never went more that two or three hours without eating something. And it hade been about five hours since the in-flight meal. And Marie had eaten two whole meals.
"Well first we have to exchange our money."
"Why don't we just us credit cards? I'm sure they exchange it for us." So after eating and getting lost they finally located the baggage claim, and the outdoors. It took another ten minutes to get a taxi and start on the way to their hotel. By the time they got to the hotel it was ten o'clock, but they were still wide awake. Which made sense because their bodies were still a couple hours behind in the United States.
"So do you want to ask where some good restaurants are, or just wander until we find something?" Marie asked once they got onto the elevator. Caprice thought about it for a moment.
"Well we came to discover what we want to do with life, so we should trust our instincts to guide us somewhere."
"Our instincts or our stomachs?" Marie asked laughing. They stepped out of the elevator and walked out the door. "I wish we had asked directions."
"What happened to letting our bodies guide us?" Caprice asked.
"Oh, I would be to busy listening to the accent to hear where they were telling me to go," Marie stated, then looked sideways at her friend, "Wouldn't you agree?"
"Duh, that's kind of the whole purpose of coming here. To meet tons of foreign guys, and swoon over their accents. Left or right?" They had reached the end of the sidewalk, and had to pick a path.
"Umm, I have no idea. Ask your instincts?" Marie looked over at her friend to see if she would just turn somewhere or make a big deal about asking her instincts.
"Oh all mighty instincts, which way should we go? We want food and fun, and hot guys would make it even better." Caprice spun in a circle, and stopped facing right. "I guess they say to go right."
"We have no better options, let's go." Marie linked arms with Caprice and started down their chosen path. The building to the side of them were stores and stuff that had closed for the night. Finally they reached some restaurants, but they were all gourmet, and Caprice's instincts, and their wallets, said nope. Marie was looking over to the other side of the street to see if there were any good places over there, when Caprice suddenly stopped and caused her to trip and fall. "What was that for?"
"I have found the place." Caprice said in a monotone voice. Marie looked up at the sign. The Leaky Cauldron.
"Wow, I wonder how much they had to pay to use the name? But this place looks like the place from the book, so maybe we will find some hot wizards inside." Marie pulled Caprice over to the door, just as it started to rain. Immediately someone opened the door for them and pulled them inside the warm room.
"That was really sudden, and now I am drenched." Caprice looked down at her outfit, which was in fact completely soaked.
"Just use a drying spell." The man who had pulled them in out of the rain said, looking at her like she was mental.
"Umm, sorry but I left my wand at home. Won't be casting any spells tonight." Caprice said, "Where can we get some food?"
"You can either sit at the bar or a table, and look at the menu." They nodded their thanks and started to walk away. After they walked a few feet, they noticed little things in the room that were a bit off. There were owls coming in and out of the windows. A man was sitting at a table stirring his drink, without touching it. And most of the people were wearing robes, like from Harry Potter. They looked at each other with wide eyes before quickly heading for a back table.
Marie leaned in to whisper to Caprice, "Did you see that guy? He was moving the spoon without even touching it."
"I know this place is weird. But I feel like we were supposed to find it. I mean I lead us right to it didn't I?" Caprice made her point then picked up a menu. "What are you going to get?"
"I was thinking about just getting a salad, what about you?" Marie looked up at Caprice, waiting for an answer when she was distracted by someone walking in the door. He looked exactly like Draco Malfoy
"Earth to Caprice," Marie said, waving her hand in front of the other girl's face.
"Oh, my God, Marie," Caprice began in a fervent whisper. "Do you see that guy?" she asked, discreetly pointing in his direction. "He's probably the hottest guy I've ever seen, and…"
"He looks just like…" Marie cut her off, amazed by the resemblance between this guy and the fictional character.
"Draco Malfoy," Caprice said, a little too loud. The boy's head snapped up in an automatic response, looking for something. Marie and Caprice looked down immediately, pretending to be engrossed in some kind of conversation. Risking a glance in his direction, Marie sighed in relief as she noticed him go about his business.
"I swear, he looks just like Draco," she dropped her voice to a low whisper, so Caprice had to strain to hear.
"He's just as hot as I knew he would be," Caprice sighed, a dreamy look fogging her eyes.
"It's not actually Draco Malfoy," Marie said, bringing her back to Earth.
"But, but, but," Caprice whined. "He's…he's just, wow."
"Well, hopefully he doesn't have the Malfoy attitude to go with the face," Marie stated, and Caprice looked at her in horror.
"Blasphemy!" she nearly yelled.
"Shhh…" Marie hissed, as half the restaurant had turned to stare at the two of them.
"How dare you!" Caprice continued overdramatically, in a much lower voice. Marie rolled her eyes.
"Here we go, again," Marie mumbled under her breath, bracing herself for the onslaught of fan girl that was sure to come.
"That's what makes him so attractive. The attitude is so…hot!" Caprice took a breath, getting ready to continue down with the conversation.
"Yes, yes," Marie cut her off hastily. "We all know you like the bad boys." Marie smiled a little, hoping, desperately, that she had shut Caprice up.
"We have to talk to him," Caprice insisted. "Obviously, he can't be Draco, but he's gorgeous anyway. Please, please, please?" she begged.
"You don't have to beg! He's hot, of course we're going to talk to him!" Marie looked excited. "Do I look okay?" she asked, anxiously. Caprice looked her over carefully, as they always did when they were about to approach a hot guy.
"You're good," she declared. "Me?" Marie studied her closely.
"Yeah, you're fine," Marie assured her.
"You sure?" Caprice asked anxiously. "No stray boogers, or…drool?" she shuddered on the last word.
"Well, now that you mention it," Marie teased. "Just kidding," she added, when Caprice immediately reached for the mirror in her purse. "Oh, no," she sighed in exasperation before Caprice could respond. "He's leaving." Sure enough, the boy had gotten up from his seat at the bar and was now heading for the door.
"Can we follow him?" Caprice asked.
"You are such a stalker," Marie said, rolling her eyes. But of course she nodded anyway, and grabbed her things. "I'm still hungry," she grumbled quietly.
"I'll get you something to eat later, or we'll come back here, but the closest to Draco any of us is ever going to get just walked out that door. Let's go." As silently as possible, they left the restaurant. Looking both ways, they followed him left, staying far enough behind so they weren't totally obvious. After a few minutes they were both starting to get nervous, they were now following him down a dark alley. Then suddenly there was another person in the alley, so fast it was like he had apparated. The person looked just like the faux Draco they were following.
"Are they…twins?" Caprice asked in wonder.
"Duh, don't be stupid. They're either twins or clones," Marie hissed quietly. Caprice opened her mouth to retort. "Shh…" Marie cut her off, the twins were starting to speak, still unaware of their presence.
"Come on, Damien, you need to come home now, before dad sees that you're gone," the newcomer whispered urgently.
"I don't want to!" Damien said sharply. "I'm sick of living in the basement! No one even knows I exist. When I go out, everyone thinks it's you. I need to live my own life, Draco," his voice was accusing. Marie and Caprice both shifted awkwardly, feeling like they were intruding, but it didn't escape their ears that the name Draco had been applied to the boy that had apparated.
"Listen," Draco said harshly, "We go through this every time. Don't get mad at me. I sneak you out every single time. It might help if you actually acted like a Malfoy."
"I can't do that, I can't treat everyone like filth just to earn Daddy's approval. You're right though, I shouldn't be taking this out on you." The boy called Damien hung his head in defeat and grabbed Draco's arm. With a faint pop they were both out of sight.
"Did they say Malfoy?" Marie asked in awe.
"Is that even possible?" Caprice said, her voice returning to its normal tone.
"If, hypothetically," Marie began, "The world of Harry Potter actually exists, does that mean that so does every other book?"
"I don't know, but we were just in the Leaky Cauldron for God's sake. They were using magic."
"So Draco has a twin?" Marie mused.
"Do they actually keep him in the basement?" Caprice asked in horror. "Let's go back to the Leaky Cauldron and eat something and just talk about this, okay? I'm kinda weirded out, I'm not gonna lie." Marie nodded, still thinking, and they walked in complete silence back to the small restaurant.
"Alright, we're here, now what?" Marie asked, breaking the silence as they sat back down at a table.
"Okay, we need to have a come to Jesus, or whatever it's called," Caprice said. "Let's answer a few questions. Is this real?"
"Well we're both not having the same dream," Marie pointed out.
"How do I know that my dream isn't telling me that?" Caprice asked, hysterically. "This could be some elaborate dream or one of those prank shows. Oh, my God, what if it is?" Marie smacked her. "What the hell was that for?" Caprice asked in frustration.
"Get it together. I'm pretty sure this isn't a dream or a prank show, alright?" Marie said, trying to calm her down. "So, yes, let's say this is real."
"That means that the world of Harry Potter actually does exist?" Caprice clarified.
"Yes. Why are you so freaked out? This is awesome!" Marie told her.
"Well, yeah," Caprice conceded.
"I think we should cut the Europe trip short," Marie suggested, a mischievous look on her face.
"What?" Caprice asked in confusion. "We've been planning this for years," she argued.
"Think about it," Marie pleaded. "If this world exists, what else might?" Marie thought for a second. "What if Twilight is actually real, too."
"Oh," Caprice said, she hadn't really thought that over. "I guess we're going to Washington to find out!"
"We should come back here sometime, though," Marie added.
"Well, duh! Draco's here, you can't keep me away, I'm a crazy fan-girl," Caprice teased, now back to her usual self.
"Let's go."
A/N The very first real chapter. I (FreeAgain) really hope you liked it. Me (Asia) and Savannah () have decided to have a contest. You see the main characters of this story Marie and Caprice are based off of us, and we wanted to see if you guys could figure out who is who. The first five people to review and get it correct will get a story of their choice written by one of us. And the pictures of the lockets are going to be located on my profile, please go look- they are really pretty.