AN: Hello there, just your random author popping up for a quick note. I have never written a HP fanfiction before and to be honest, my memory on the series is a little (or very) rusty, so if something I write isn't in par with what the books say, just give me a quick heads up and I'll try to sort it out.
Oh, and I'll be updating VERY randomly. And I fully appreciate constructive criticism.
Sorry if this chapter is short, its 4.30 in the morning and I kind of want to sleep.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own characters.
"The probability of a certain set of circumstances coming together in a meaningful (or tragic) way is so low that it simply cannot be considered a mere coincidence."
―V.C. King
Chapter One: Birthdays
RRRRIIIIPPPPP
Charlotte watched patiently as she sat cross-legged on the floor, watching her blonde haired friend slowly pull apart the blue wrapping paper.
"Sophie, you're going to love it," she said with a smile as her friend raised an eyebrow.
From the moment Sophie had mentioned birthdays many weeks ago; she had instantly knew what to get her. Charlotte, despite being a procrastinator of the extreme sort or as many people would call it just plain laziness, had planned and ordered the gift, waiting in anticipation for this day to finally arrive. The gift itself was rather expensive, but nevertheless the price tag didn't bother her, after all, she had been best friends with Sophie for as long as she could remember.
As the last pieces of the paper was discarded and dumped on the floor, Sophie froze, her eyes taking in all the fine details of the fancy glass box that was resting on her palms. She opened her mouth to speak, but seemed temporarily unable to make any coherent words, let alone sentences. Charlotte smirked, before surveying the room in hopes that there would be a camera conveniently placed around, so that she could have blackmail material that could be used later. Unfortunately there wasn't one in plain sight.
"Charlotte Foster," her eyes snapped up to see Sophie looking stunned, "Is this...did you buy me a time turner?"
She grinned and cocked her head slightly, "Maybe...why, don't you want it or something?"
Before Charlotte could react, Sophie flung across the bedroom and landed on her, resulting to them both on the floor and Charlotte suffering from back pain. The instant that they both looked at each in the eyes, they started to laugh loudly, rocking back and forth until their sides were sore. After a while, they both got up, getting bored of lying on the uncomfortable floor.
Charlotte winced as the muscles on her back groaned from the being crushed by Sophie. She ignored it and glanced at her friend who was currently still in awe of her new gift, twirling the petite hourglass around gently with her fingertips.
"So are you actually going wear it, or do you plan on gawking at it all day?" Charlotte asked jokingly, still smiling as she crossed her arms.
Sophie rolled her eyes, "I would but I'm worried about it breaking," she admitted.
Charlotte merely shrugged her shoulders, "Well if you don't wear it than I will. It cost a bloody lot you know."
Her friend pouted and shielded the necklace with her hands, "It's my precious."
Charlotte chuckled, "Someone is a little possessive today," amusement clearly evident in her voice.
"It's my sixteenth birthday so I'm allowed to be selfish," she rubbed in, knowing that it bugged Charlotte to no end that she was younger, "And its Harry Potter stuff."
"I'm pretty sure that you got enough Harry Potter merchandise as it is already today," Charlotte's olive green eyes flickering over at the pile of never-ending gifts that sat on the floor, "is it me or does the pile get bigger every year?"
Unlike Sophie, who was the only child and was extensively spoilt by her parents, Charlotte had grown up with younger brother, called Jack, and had learned over the years about sharing and being humble. Despite the small income that the family had lived on from her father, she was happy with what she had gotten.
However, at the age of twelve, her parents announced that they were getting a divorce and soon after, her father had got up and left the house. Nobody had seen him since. Charlotte's mother was forced to get a minimum waged job to provide for the family, resulting to birthday and Christmas gifts being something small and simple; like a book. Not that Charlotte minded much; after all it was still better than nothing.
"You can never have enough Harry Potter stuff," Sophie stated as if it was a fact that everyone knew, "it's kind of like chocolate."
"Now that is something I can agree on," she smiled. Talking about chocolate, I'm really hungry...
"You know, you really do need to try reading the books sometime. You can borrow mine anytime if you want," Sophie offered kindly, interrupting her thoughts.
"I know, I know," Charlotte put her hands up in mock defeat; "It's on my 'To Read' list. I just never have the time." Despite her laid back response, Charlotte was actually an avid reading. The only problem was that she found it difficult to get into the story if she had taken breaks between reading the chapters, which resulted to the book being tossed aside and forgotten.
Sophie snorted, "You're such a lazy ass. Do you even know what happens in the stories?"
Charlotte ignored the first comment and rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly, "Err, to a certain extent I guess. My memories' a little foggy about what happens in the last four books but I know the main parts." This automatically gained a shocked look from Sophie who opened her mouth to say something but was cut off another voice.
"Sophie, Sweetheart, come down here for a second," shouted a female voice from downstairs.
"I'll be there in a minute mum," she yelled back, before facing Charlotte and shooting her a quick smile, "I'll be back in a second. Don't break anything."
"Damn it, my plans are ruined," Charlotte muttered sarcastically, "Don't worry, I won't. For now anyway."
Sophie dashed out of the room, giving her a squeeze on the shoulder on the way out. Charlotte sighed and studied the big room, resting her eyes on the pile of opened gifts after a while. She smirked mischievously, well it won't hurt to take a quick look at what the presents, she thought.
She ran fingers through her chestnut brown locks, before kneeling in front of the pile and examining the door cautiously, wondering if Sophie would burst through any minute and accuse her of being nosey. When she heard her friends footsteps quieten, Charlotte turned back to the gifts. A mirror had caught her eye after being blinded by a ray of light that had bounced from its surface. She lifted it up and lightly trailed her thumb along the outside, taking in the fine details and thinking of the amazing craftsmanship that would have gone into the creation of the hand size mirror.
The frame was made from metal, although Charlotte wasn't able to distinguish what type of metal it was. A canopy of leaves was twisted and intertwined between many different flowers that bordered the mirror, with a fairly large delicate metal butterfly that sat on the top of the frame. It didn't take a genius to figure out that the mirror was expensive. Girly was the first word that popped into her mind much to her distaste. Not that she didn't like it. It was just very girly.
All of a sudden an image of a young man reaching out to her appeared on the mirror, startling her. She threw the mirror up in shock, before realising the consequences of breaking it and making an attempt to catch it. Sighing and silently thanking her reflexes for actually working well for once after her success, Charlotte stared at the mirror but found that the image was gone. Instead, there was just her normal reflection peering back at her.
For a minute or so, she continued to glare at the mirror. The image remained the same, so she tilted her head slightly to see if the reflection would do the same, and it did as any other mirror would. She even hesitantly tapped the mirror, touching the cold glass surface, but nothing out of the ordinary happened. Charlotte tried to remember what she had seen in the mirror, however for all the life in her, she couldn't seem to picture the man in her mind. It had happened too fast, as if it never even occurred in the first place.
"Okay. I think I'm losing my mind. And now I'm talking to myself...lovely," she murmured, placing it down after deciding that she had had enough fun for the moment.
Casting her attention away from the mirror, Charlotte noticed the shiny, new illustrated book covers of the Harry Potter series that were sprawled messily on the floor. She had decided that starting to read it now was as good of a time to do so, pushing the any thoughts that involved in mirror and blaming her wild imagination on the previous occurrence.
Charlotte was just about to pick up one of the books when she caught something on the side of her eye. A large hand was emerging from the mirror and had managed to latch on to her leg. The hand yanked her leg quickly, catching her off guard and making Charlotte fall to on her stomach.
Her eyes widened as her mind fell into panic mode. She desperately tried to reach out for anything to grab and anchor her down, but found nothing that was heavy enough. Instead her hands tried to grip onto the carpet, but it did little to help.
"H-help! Sophie! Help me, somebody, PLEASE!" Charlotte screamed. She heard loud footsteps coming from down stairs, but she knew at this rate, she would be dragged in. She could feel the sweat forming on her hands from the fear.
Kicking the arm with her free leg did nothing if hinder the pull for a few seconds, but the hand only clutched harder instead, cutting off all of her blood circulation and making Charlotte yelp out loud in pain.
"No, no! LET ME GO YOU FUC-"but she was too late. Before she could even finish the sentence, her body had been pulled through the mirror.
She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the pain of her body hitting a hard surface, but felt none. Eventually, she decided to open her eyelids and saw that she was surrounded by nothing but darkness. She wasn't even sure what she lying/hovering on. Pushing herself up, Charlotte blinked, trying to adjust her eyes to the light that was being emitted from a small orb of light, which was the only light source in the area. What surprised her was that it was floating in midair, hovering next to a figure which was eyeing her.
Charlotte's throat was very dry. Furthermore, her breathing had grown ragged and her muscles that were all over her body were sore from falling on the ground back in Sophie's bedroom. She stared wide eyed at the dark haired stranger that was standing directly opposite to her, his calculating eyes never leaving her face. Luckily for Charlotte, there was enough light to make out what he roughly looked like, however he was standing from quite a fair distance away from her so she couldn't see all his features.
He was roughly around her age, if not only a few years older, and was wearing a long black cloak that completely covered his body from his shoulders down, making it impossible to see his clothes. Charlotte suddenly remembered what her psychology teacher had taught her a long time ago, telling her that a person's clothes told a story about them, their personality and where they were from, however she could not read this stranger at all.
He ran his long fingers through his black hair (his mannerisms seemed familiar to her although she couldn't put her finger on why this was), contemplating on what to say to her, before dropping his arm down to his side.
"Hello," his deep voice was cautious yet soothing at the same time, as if speaking to a frightened animal, "I suspect you have a few questions."
"Who are you?" she asked nervously, as she tried desperately to calm herself and her heartbeat that pounded on her chest, as if it was burst through. In all honesty, she was terrified. Charlotte was more scared of what was happening to her now, than she had been her whole life. Yet for some unusual reason, she wasn't scared of him, instead his presence made her feel a little at ease.
He didn't answer immediately, but when he did, he spoke rather slowly "Who I am is not important at this moment. You're wondering where you are, aren't you?" Under normal circumstances, Charlotte would have hounded him about to get her question properly answered, but her mind was in chaos so she just nodded instead. "We are both currently residing in the void of space between two different dimensions, one of which you came from and the other being where you will be going to shortly," he stated.
She gasped, "Wait, so I'm not going back home? And what do you mean different dimensions?" Her words were coming out in a rush as the pitch of her voice grew higher with each word that she spoke. Her hands balled her hands into fists whilst she gritted her teeth. Charlotte could feel anger bubbling from the pit of her stomach, something that very rarely happened. "I want to go back," she spat through her teeth as her shoulders shook slightly.
The stranger opened his mouth, but closed it again. "I'm afraid I can't do that," he announced calmly after a while.
"What. Do. You. MEAN?" she growled.
The young man looked tired, "Exactly what I said before. I can't."
Charlotte was in hysterics, "Why are you doing this to me?!"
Silence loomed over them for a while and with every second passing, Charlotte grew more and more impatient and tense. "I was told to," he confessed, pinching the bridge of his nose almost like he was trying to compose himself.
"By WHO?" she immediately snapped.
This time, instead of answering, the man pulled out something from his baggy sleeve; a dark wooden stick. He quickly pointed the stick at her and called out "Petrificus Totalus," before letting his arm fall down his side, still holding the stick. Charlotte didn't realise what had happened, until she her body was frozen and had locked down, refusing to listen to her commands. She tried to open her mouth to shout at him, but found that she simply couldn't do a thing.
Magic, she thought, was that magic? Did he just used that a wand to cast a spell on me? Impossible. This has to be a dream, magic doesn't exist. Yet she knew that it wasn't impossible. She knew that denying it wasn't going to make the situation any better. Damn it, right now I'm vulnerable. What if he kills me?
He strode up to Charlotte swiftly, bending down a little so that they were both at eye level. Now closer, she was able to see his face; his skin was extremely pale, as if he was ill, and had muddy green eyes that looked apologetic. He was good looking. Extremely good looking. Now is NOT the time to be thinking this, she realised, shaking away the traitorous thoughts.
The stranger then decided to wear a poker face, removing any hints of what he was feeling and what he was planning to do. Her mental state was in pieces, both sides of her brain arguing with each other. Charlotte's logic and common sense was telling her that this man would kill her soon if she did not move, but her emotions and her heart said quite a different story; that this man, whoever he was, did not plan to hurt her and could be trusted.
The dark haired man leaned forward, momentarily breaking her mental conflict, as he pressed his thumb gently on her forehead and his wand on her heart. He started to mutter incarnations under his breath, the words rolled off his tongue quickly and sounded like an unknown foreign language to her. After a few seconds, a blinding white light was starting to surround her, almost as if it was expelling from her very skin.
Her skin felt light and tingled; as if it was being set on fire but instead of the fire being hot it was cool. Soon after a while, she was no longer able to see anything due to the bright light. Charlotte's body was still bounded, leaving her defenceless to do nothing but watch what would happen to her. She started to grow lightheaded, continuing to grow worse the longer she saw the light. Her thoughts were jumbled and confused, and before she knew it, Charlotte passed out.