CHAPTER ONE:

TRAINS & TUNNELS

16 year old Charmaine Morgan grabbed the last of her school things from the trunk of a really crappy 87 Toyota Camry as her mum sipped from a flask of vodka and grumbled at being awake before noon and her father gave the train station one good long glare, grabbed her wrist as a threatning menace flashed in his dull brown eyes and he said calmly, " Don't come back here puttin on airs again or ya won't fuckin go back.. "

She rolled her eyes and muttered, ' Maybe if your iq weren't the size of a fucking pea, sir..' as his grip tightened and he asked, "Somethin you wanna say to daddy, baby girl?"

"Not at all, sir." she said as she smirked, yanked her slender wrist free, grabbed her trunks and stormed off without the formality of a goodbye. Once inside the train station, she slid her retro fitted sunglasses down over her warm brown eyes and stood leaned casually, maybe a little provocatively against a well worn brick wall, waiting on her best friend, Luna Lovegood, a Ravenclaw.

While she stood perched against the bricks, she toyed with the locket around her neck, tried again to open it. And again, it wouldn't open. She'd had the thing for almost 4 years now, it'd come via owl out of the blue a few years before, she'd accepted it, worn it nonstop since, usually hidden beneath clothing, just out of sight.

The sudden approaching of four of her other relatively unknown friends, Rosa, Josie, Eva and Marybeth had her yelping as Rosa pinched her bum suggestively, getting a death glare from the others AND Charmaine in the process as Charmaine blushed and tugged the denim miniskirt she wore for the train ride down while muttering a few swears aloud and then facing her friends with a bright grin said "So girls.. What to do this year?"

"She hasn't heard."

"Obviously not, Eva, she went to California for the summer with her family."

"And got a killer tan." Josie finished as she added in the same breath, "Please tell me you bought the stuff?"

"It's in the bottom of le suitcase." Charmaine said as the girls all breathed a collective sigh of relief and someone shoved issues of the Daily Prophet and the Quibbler into her hands simultaneously.

They picked up their trunks, began walking towards the platform as Charmaine read the articles, gaping at the news.

"Bloody hell.. And nobody owled me why?"

"Because.. There was literally like, no time. I mean it all went down so quickly."

"Damn it.. If that cow ruins my perfect plans, I'm gonna..." the brunette vixen fumed as she twisted a long and slightly wavy dark strand of hair around her bright red fingernails, studying the articles in the wizarding newspapers.

The slap to her bum had her growling and she said "That better not be Zabini." as she turned around, found herself face to face with former boyfriend, Blaise Zabini who of course, was smirking. "Princess."

"I'm a Mudblood, remember? Our kinds.. They don't mix. So I'll mind you, Zabini, keep your ruddy hands off my arse, you absolute git."

"And she's still mad." he mumbled as he leaned in, whispered, "You'll come round. They always do."

"Here's a novel idea.. Go run a train on Parkinson with Malfoy." she mumbled frostily as she looked at her friends, heaved her suitcases up and slunk towards the train's waiting platform, ignoring the slightly odd stares she got.

She was used to it, she'd never quite fit in well around the school, her wild antics, her outspoken and slightly brash nature, her against the norm way of thinking..

She rather liked it, truth be told.

She found a compartment, her friends had all gone to their respective compartments, leaving her to sit in an uninhabited one, which she was grateful for, because as much as she loved the girls, she also loved her privacy.

Leaning against the window, she watched the rain as it rolled down the glass, trailing a long fire engine red fingernail over the glass, as she thought about the grim things she'd read just now in the newspapers.

Was Voldemort really back?

And why in the blue hell were they getting Umbridge, the intolerable cow, as a DADA professor? Was there nobody left?

"Snape should've gotten that job." she noted aloud grimly as she slipped on lipgloss and stepped from her empty compartment, walking the short distance down a crowded hallway to the snack compartment.

"3 chocolate frogs, please?" she asked as she took the frogs, turned to walk back to her cab, only to be headed off by Hermione herself.

"Granger."

"Morgan."

Before anything further could be said, she rolled her eyes slightly, took off at a speed walk for her own compartment, the privacy and solace of it.

It wasn't that she hated Granger..

Well, she just didn't like her.. The girl was a know it all, and she loved showing it.

Maybe it was jealousy..

Maybe it was just them being polar opposites, but something with Hermione Granger and Charmaine Morgan never quite meshed well.

Despite them both being the 'outsiders' the lower class citizens of the Wizarding world..

But when you have friends like 'the boy who lived'..

Charmaine shrugged off the thoughts of the bushy haired Gryffindor and kicking off the 4 inch wedge heeled sandals, she crossed her legs daintly, pulled out an issue of Rolling Stone, began reading it as she ate her chocolate frogs in silence.

The sliding open of the door to her compartment happened just as the train approached a tunnel and a male voice said casually, "You dropped this back there.. At the snack cart when you and Mione were having words."

"We weren't having words. Simply saying hello. Thanks for bringing this back, kind and mysterious. Sir." Charmaine said as she took the locket, turned to thank the male voice who'd stayed out of her line of vision properly with a chocolate frog for his troubles.. But whomever had been in her cab just now had vanished as quickly as they'd come.

Shrugging it off, she fastened the locket around her neck and then leaned back on the bench, taking in the silence.

Soon she'd be back home..

Hogwarts was always more like a home to her than her small and loud, angry home on the Muggle military base her father and mum lived on, after all.

At least at Hogwarts her eccentricities weren't as unwelcome as they were at her real home where one wrong move, one cross word, one toe over the line often got met with the most dire of consequence.

The train's screeching to a halt at the station they'd take the boat in to the school from had her jolting awake and she quickly freshened up grabbed her things and made a mad dash at her 4 equally unknown friends, jumping onto Mary Beth's back, earning her a squeal as the two of them tumbled to the grass unceremoniously and their trunks nearly burst open.

Right at the feet of fellow 6th years, Fred and George Weasley.

"Right.. Ermm, hi?"

"Bloody hell, that's MY bra, Charmie."

"Well those are my lucky leopard panties, Mary Beth."

"She started it." the girls chorused in unison as George held out his hand, barely supressing a grin as he noted the Hufflepuff crest on the girls house robes and uniform.. A uniform he noticed that had been slightly altered.

Pulling her from the ground, Fred held out her bags, eyeing the long glass bottle in the bottom with a brow cocked.

"It's umm.." she stammered, her brain faltering for a moment as she said with a wink, " a party in a bottle." before taking her bag, and then saying casually, "Thanks for the assist." over her shoulder as she pulled her shades down over her eyes.

"Brother.. Do we know her?"

"Not that I'm aware, no. Did you see the knickers?" George snickered as he coughed and then put the pair of girls out of his mind, as did his twin, Fred.

Once in the Great Hall, Charmaine found an empty seat at her house's table, studied the others curiously, her hand propped beneath her chin.

When Umbridge began to talk, she was half tempted to snore, but thought better of it, especially when someone, most likely one of the Weasley twins, they always seemed to be into something, made a remark and Umbridge gave a rather malicious scowl.

"Something tells me I won't like her. Not in the slightest." she muttered as she dug into her roast, and kept herself busy by eating only partially listening to what was said during Umbridge's speech.

As soon as she was back in her dorm room, sprawled across her bed, it was only then did she feel her neck, feel it barren of the locket.

"Mother of Merlin.. I bet the clasp's broken again." she muttered as she drifted off to sleep, unaware that at that very moment, her locket had fallen into the hands of her favorite professor, and her life was about to get just a shade more interesting than normal.

All in all, it'd been your typical first day back, complete with mishaps.. But what lie in store for the rest of the year where she was concerned, especially with notoriously straight laced Umbridge as their professor for DADA?

She could only hope she wouldn't want to go mad by the years end.

Meanwhile, down in his personal chambers, Severus Snape sat staring at a long forgotten locket, wondering how on Earth one of his students had the thing.. The last he'd known, Lily Evans had it. He knew this because he gave it to her, when she and James were broken up for a bit, himself. He stared at the picture of them taken that one blissful term and smiled a little.

"Lily.. I wonder if our little girl looks like you?" he mused aloud to himself thoughtfully before putting the locket away. He'd ask the girl, a Hufflepuff how she came to posess the thing tomorrow. He had the passing thought that the girl, something about her had oft reminded himself of Lily, but he shrugged it off. Her parents saw to it that neither he nor Lily even knew where to begin to look, should they want to find their baby girl, the only other piece of her that remained.

For now, he'd just try and get some sleep. As if his normal and irritating students weren't enough, he now had to deal with that snivelling cow Umbridge as a co worker. No sense in him getting worked up, getting his hopes up for something that was most likely not going to happen in his lifetime. He'd held the little one, his little angel one time before she'd been given away to some Muggle family.

After that, he and Lily's friendship, their slight romance, well.. It'd been strained at best, they had parted ways, they never spoke of what they shared, what they'd had taken from them. It was their own private cross to bear.

"One of the children will run her off." he smirked to himself in regards to his previous musings about Umbridge becoming a professor, as he crossed his arms behind his head and went back to reading the book he'd been reading off and on all evening.