A.N.: So, here's the second chapter. Tell me what you think! Please.
Bold means cracking. (It'll make sense later)
Underlined means copied from the book.
Oh, yes, and J. K.R. is queen of all she reads.
"One two three four five six-"
"I thought you said you were gonna be fine!"
"I will be!"
"Then why are you counting people?"
Greg always counts people when he's freaking out. I don't know why.
"Because I'm not fine now. How do I look stupid? I can't act."
Honestly Greg, you're asking this now?
"Look for a pattern in something random. You always breath out of your mouth and stare off and stuff when you do."
"No I don't!"
"How would you know?"
He gives me a funny look, but sighs.
"How do I look intimidating?"
"You weigh 150 pounds and you're six inches taller than me," I reply. Then I add, smirking, "just crack your knuckles."
Then my smirk turns into a smile.
"Check out what I found!"
I pull out a brown toad out of my pocket.
He looks at me, suspicious for some reason. "What do you mean by found?"
I've meet Vince, so, of course, I'm suspicious. "What do you mean by found?"
"I found it."
Yeah, right.
"Where did you find it, might I ask?"
"Some boy's pocket."
"Vincent!" I exclaim, more annoyed than surprised. He stole it? Really?
"What? The poor, innocent creature was suffocating!"
"Like you care."
"Are you calling me heartless?"
I try to give him a glare but he just smirks again. Then, he stuffs the toad back into his pocket as his face goes slack and he looks over my shoulder.
"Mr. Malfoy?"
I spin around, and I face the palest boy I've ever seen.
He spins around and I face the biggest boy I've ever seen.
Face might be the wrong word. My head comes up to the base of his neck, and he cranes down to look at me. Good Merlin, they're huge! It's not so much that they're tall, well, they are, but mostly they're just huge! They've got to be half a meter across!
"Crabbe? Goyle?" They nod.
"Shall we go?" Father says to be formal with the help. Apparently humans are harder to control than elves.
They nod, and I lead the way to a compartment. When we get there, I ask them who's who.
"I'm Gregory Goyle, and that's Vincent Crabbe," says the shorter one. He seems to be the leader. Father says I should be noticing these things, and that one was definitely the one who lead them into the compartment. That, combined with him introducing them, means he's the leader. I've got it.
My Father would be proud. Now I need to control him.
The taller one, Crabbe, scrunches up his face for a moment after his name is said before relaxing it. Surely, he knows his name?! And damnit, they won't stop cracking their knuckles! I'm starting to wonder if I'll want to meet some other friends. No, some friends. Not other friends; they are not my friends. I need to remember that. Just then, there's an impossibly weak knock at the door. A chubby boy stands on the other side, sniveling.
I walk up to the next compartment, and knock as hard as I can. A pale boy opens the compartment door, sneering.
I knew this was a bad idea!
"Um... hello... um... I'm Ne-Neville Longbottom, ha-ha-have y-you seen a t-t-t-toad? His name's, er, it's Trevor."
A pair of giants sit in the corner. The short one right away is clearly holding in laughter and the shorter one follows. I don't know whether they're laughing at my name or my stutter or that I have a pet toad, but there isn't much I can do about it. They're huge. Plus, they're cracking their knuckles like crazy, and it's really starting to scare me.
"No," says the pale boy, "we have not seen a 't-t-t-t-t-t-t-toad'."
They're cracking their knuckles even faster and louder.
I crack my knuckles as fast as I can, trying to be loud enough to crack over Greg. It's getting really hard to crack and watch him crack at the same time.
See, when we were seven, we decided we needed a code. Believe it or not, it was actually Greg's idea. I guess he was scared of getting caught. So we worked on setting up a code that we could use whenever we wanted to. First we tried sign language, but it was way to obvious. I don't know how mute people whisper. Half of those signs involve putting your hands on your face. So then we thought about morse code, but some of both of our uncles were ministry hit wizards, so they might already know it. We then talked about morse code in another language, but Greg's paranoid.
So then I suggested this. There are eight fingers, which makes 63 ways you can crack them (not counting cracking none, cracking only one hand at once, backwards or forwards), so we learned chinese pinyin (the letters used for pronunciation), and gave each initial, final, and tone a "crack pattern." Every word takes exactly three cracks.
No, I'm not joking.
I was actually suppressed to find that I learn languages faster than Greg. He still can't write in Chinese, and the only way he can learn one is by deciphering it slowly himself from reading the same book in two languages.
"I believe Malfoy meant to say 'I haven't seen your toad'," I crack.
"He hasn't. We have."
"Do you know Malfoy's first name?"
We both pause.
"Nope."
"Laughing."
"I know, right? He never introduced himself."
"Maybe he doesn't have one."
"The name's Malfoy. Malfoy Malfoy."
It's nice to see Greg open up. I guess he feels safe with the code.
Malfoy's still harassing Neville and Neville's saying something about Harry Potter.
I keep harassing Neville until he finally says something valuable: Harry Potter.
See, I decided I need intelligent conversation. So now I have to collect an actual ally instead of just minions. I asked Neville (who was most certainly not potential intelligent conversation) about who else he saw on the train. He was tight lipped at first, but some knuckle cracking from Goyle and Crabbe, plus the right words from me, and I had all the information I needed.
My Father would be proud.
Now, I'm off to find Harry Potter. This ought to be easy.
Now, we're off to find Harry Potter. This ought to be interesting.
He's six compartments down. Vince is going on again about how funny he finds it that Malfoy has us mixed up, as Malfoy tries and fails miserably to get Potter on his side.
His Father would be ashamed.
That being said, he might not be entirely wrong about the idea of having friends outside of Vince... how to approach the idea, though?
"Greg, Greg, Greg, Greg"
"Yes?"
"Ten sickles says I can grab that mouse without it waking up."
"You're joking." He's joking, right?
His hand approaches the rat.
"You're not joking." I take back anything I've ever said about Vince being brilliant.
He can't reply (one of the flaws with the crack system) but I look away.
"But we don't feet like leaving, do we, boys? We've eaten all our food and you still seem to have some."
That's when Vince started to dance for joy.
That's when I started to leap from pain.
Plus, I owe Greg ten sickles.
Vince is refusing to pay me my ten sickles. It's the end of the train ride, and we still have our pocket money (Malfoy Malfoy actually believed that we spent it all on candy), and he won't pay. *Sigh* I'll steal it from him later. I've already stolen the toad and tossed it into the lake.
And yet, somehow, it entered Neville's pocket again. We'll have to get it another chance for freedom.
A.N.: Please review!What do you think of having people other than Vince and Greg narrate? Am I portraying Draco and (to a lesser degree) Neville right? I think Luna will find out, but would anyone else? I tend to think not. What do you think?