Impertinence seemed to be Fallon's middle name.
Meiya Anderson sighed as she braided her daughter's hair into two neat plaits. The girl was still, but Meiya knew better than to think that Fallon was feeling docilely calm and decorous under the blank facade.
"Now, remember, when we go to Diagon Alley today, I want you on your best behavior. There will be no throwing of books, sending sparks with your new wand, or kicking of Cassius Warrington, is that understood?"
Fallon's face, in the mirror, pouted. Cassius Warrington was an icky, icky BOY. And he was MEAN! "Fine," she muttered to her mother. 'But you said nothing about punching him," she thought to herself gleefully.
"And no punching him either!" Meiya sternly added. Fallon glowered.
Icky rules. Icky Cassius Warrington. Icky icky icky.
* * *
Fallon sighed for the umpteenth time as her mother led her through Flourish and Blotts after the two had flooed to Diagon Alley. Mum just didn't UNDERSTAND!
Okay, so she was friends with Portia Warrington. SO?! That didn't mean that she had to be friends with Mrs. Warrington's son. Cassius was a git, had been that way since they'd met two years ago, and her family, after living in France for the last two years, had moved back to England. Fallon's first memory of that obnoxious boy... well, after their parents had introduced them and all that, had been of him splashing water from a puddle (it had rained that morning) onto her white skirt. Things had gone downhill from there, and half an hour later, a greatly dismayed Mrs. Anderson had rushed outside to see both kids lobbing mud at each other, all while yelling at each other with words that little children their age were NOT supposed to know.
Any and all subsequent attempts by the parents to make their children get along had failed miserably. If Fallon thought Cassius was an icky git, he thought of her as a troublesome little brat, and that was that.
"Portia! THERE you are!" Meiya quickly walked over to a tall, elegantly robed witch with shining dark brown ringlets. Fallon rolled her eyes. Here we go... enter the git.
True enough, as Meiya and Portia kissed each other's cheeks, Cassius Warrington poked his head from behind his mother and sneered at her. She stuck her tongue back at him. This was not FAIR! He was almost three inches taller than she was, he could look DOWN on her! Fallon seethed and gave him her most menacing glare anyway.
The clearing of a throat interrupted their staring contest, and Portia was giving Cassius the same stern look that Fallon often received from her own mother (mothers were daft, honestly). "Cassius, now, be good and say hello to Fallon."
Cassius pouted for a moment, and then smiled in a sweet way that boded very ill for her indeed, and proferred a hand for her to shake, "It's CORKING to see you again, Fallon."
Fallon looked at him suspiciously, but before she could ask him what the bloody hell he was trying to pull, her mother had pushed her forward, and she found her hand clasped in his. EWWWW! What WAS that? A moment later, she pulled her hand away, and looked up to see him smirking down at her just before her mother pulled her out of the store, Meiya's arms full of Fallon's new schoolbooks. She looked down to her hand, and found, in her palm, a slimy puddle of flobberworm mucus.
Wiping her hand on her handkerchief, Fallon silently plotted revenge. That... that PRAT was going to get it!
* * *
Three hours later, Fallon was getting her potions supplies at the Apothecary when Cassius Warrington once again disturbed her little world.
She had just finished buying the supplies for her first year when she felt someone tugging on one of her braids, and heard a familiarly obnoxious voice whisper, "Hello there, pigtails!"
She narrowed her eyes, and dug her hand into her pocket. She'd brought a little spare change, originally intending to spend it on candy, but...
"Two scoops of beetle eyes, please," she said to the Apothecary witch through clenched teeth. Laying ten knuts on the counter, she took her newest purchase....
AND DUMPED IT ON HIS HEAD!
... The only thing that prevented Fallon Anderson and Cassius Warrington from engaging in a free-for-all in the Apothecary was the witch sternly threatening to send them Howlers when they both arrived at Hogwarts, and telling them to leave her store if they could not behave.
Despite the altercations of the day, the two seemed to have an unspoken agreement: Cassius would remain silent about the beetle eyes if Fallon didn't snitch on him about the flobberworm mucus.
And that day, when both of them went home, they remained unscolded by their oblivious mothers, and free to plot in peace for crimes to commit after arriving at Hogwarts.
* * *
On the momentous day that would take her away from her large family home at to Hogwarts, Fallon Anderson stood alone but undaunted on the platform of nine-and-three-quarters. All right. She was a first-year, and she did not really know anyone around here. But she was NOT going to ask Cassius Warrington for ANYTHING! EVER!
Soon, the Hogwarts Express pulled into the station, and Fallon struggled to lift her trunk onto the train. She was just about to let out a string of words that a little lady such as herself should NEVER know, when another girl, already in her robes, with a green and silver tie that marked her as a student of Slytherin house, walked forward and offered to help her.
"Thanks," Fallon gave the girl a smile, as both of them lifted the trunk onto the train, "I'm Fallon Anderson, what's your name?"
"Morrigun Lennox," the other girl had a smooth, cultured voice with an aristocratic drawl, "I'm in Slytherin, second year." Fallon unconsciously grimaced to herself.
"You poor thing, you're the same house and year as the GIT..."
Morrigun laughed, "Which one? There's lot of them around here, even in Slytherin."
Fallon pointed at Cassius Warrington, who was talking with a tall second-year boy with dark hair and blue eyes. "HIM!"
To her surprise, Morrigun giggled lightly, "Oh, he's cute, isn't he?"
"Warrington, CUTE?!" Fallon's eyes bulged out slightly. Morrigun looked somewhat taken aback.
"OH, you were talking about WARRINGTON? I was talking about the one he's talking to, Alexander Montague," she blushed somewhat, "I'm sorry about that. Warrington... I don't know him too well, but he's friends with Alexander. Alexander is awfully nice, though."
"Right, I'm sure he is," Fallon muttered, rolling her eyes, "He's TOO nice if he can be friends with THAT git... aren't Slytherins supposed to be all scary and cunning and stuff?"
Morrigun laughed lightly again, "I think I like you already, Fallon. Come on, let's get a compartment."
* * *
Soon, Fallon found their compartment filled with girls. Morrigun's friends Akasha Noctifer and Malice Haughton, also second-year Slytherins, joined them, as did a few first-years like herself: a vivacious-looking girl named Kate Le Fay, a serious one named Persephone Vafer, a bubbly one named Calypso O'Delle and a girl with an irrepressible grin, named Slainé Rosemond. By the time the train had arrived at Hogsmeade station, all eight were fast friends.
To her surprise, though she was certainly not the oldest of the group (what with Morrigun, Akasha and Malice all a year above her, Fallon found herself the unofficial "leader", the most decisive and dominating of the group. She did not think much of it. After all... she had just started out, and at least now, she had friends. Life was good.
Then, she and the rest of the first-years were separated from Morrigun, Akasha, and the rest of the returning students, put into a line by a bespectacled witch, and led to stand in front of a stool on which sat a raggedy old hat. Fallon wrinkled her nose slightly. That thing was so FILTHY-looking...
The hat broke into a rather ridiculous, weak rhyme talking about how it could think, and how it had been around since the days of the founders. Fallon rolled her eyes. All right already! Could she get just get sorted and have something to eat? She didn't want to hear about some old hat extolling its own virtues!
Then, the witch with the spectacles, whose prissy expression Fallon disliked on sight, took out a list, and called out her name.
"Anderson, Fallon!"
* * *
Cassius Warrington watched as "the little brat" swept forward with an air of childish dignity and an expression of haughty bravado as McGonagall called out her name. He'd spent half the train ride ranting to his friends Alexander Montague and Adrian Pucey of the fiasco at Diagon Alley, and bemoaning that "the annoying little twit" would be at Hogwarts this year. Montague and Pucey had been rather amused, and the former had remarked lightly that it could be worse; at least she was a girl, and generally, girls were relatively genteel compared to boys.
Warrington then spent the second half of the train ride explaining why the word "genteel" and the name Fallon were not to be used in the same sentence.
His friends had mustered up sympathetic looks, but their expressions were still too amused for his liking. He turned from his thoughts to watch Fallon's dark head disappear under the Sorting Hat, and muttered under his breath, "Not Slytherin, please... ANYWHERE but Slytherin!"
"SLYTHERIN!" the hat screamed a mere few seconds after being lowered over Fallon's head. Warrington groaned aloud.
As Fallon got down from the stool, handing the ugly hat perfunctorily back to the bespectacled witch, she saw Cassius Warrington groan and bury his face in his hands. With a maliciously angelic smile, she bounced over to his table.
"Hello, Cassius," she chirped in a syrupy-sweet voice, "I look forward to spending the next six years driving you nutters." Giving him another beatific grin as he glowered at her, Fallon sat down next to Morrigun and watched the rest of the sorting.
Later, after Kate, Persephone, Calypso and Slainé had all been sorted into Slytherin, along with two boys, Kevin Bole and Vittorio Derrick, the Headmaster had a few words telling the students to stay out of the Forbidden Forest, and other such rules that Fallon was sure that, by the time she had left Hogwarts, she would have systematically broken. And then, at last, food appeared on the table.
Good.
All throughout dinner, Cassius Warrington found himself methodically bombarded by peas at random intervals as he tried to eat, but whenever he looked at Fallon, she would be eating her food like the perfect little lady that she wasn't, and perhaps talking to one of the girls. The Prefect, Rodney Pritchard, was entirely oblivious. To that day, Warrington had no idea how Pritchard had gotten that position.
Another pea hit the side of his head, and Warrington clenched his teeth. That's bloody it! He was going to HATE the little wench for as long as he lived!
Perhaps it was a good thing that he was never going to take Divination.
* * *
End Chapter One
* * *
*G* That was FUN!! More soon! Love ya, SOBettes!
Meiya Anderson sighed as she braided her daughter's hair into two neat plaits. The girl was still, but Meiya knew better than to think that Fallon was feeling docilely calm and decorous under the blank facade.
"Now, remember, when we go to Diagon Alley today, I want you on your best behavior. There will be no throwing of books, sending sparks with your new wand, or kicking of Cassius Warrington, is that understood?"
Fallon's face, in the mirror, pouted. Cassius Warrington was an icky, icky BOY. And he was MEAN! "Fine," she muttered to her mother. 'But you said nothing about punching him," she thought to herself gleefully.
"And no punching him either!" Meiya sternly added. Fallon glowered.
Icky rules. Icky Cassius Warrington. Icky icky icky.
* * *
Fallon sighed for the umpteenth time as her mother led her through Flourish and Blotts after the two had flooed to Diagon Alley. Mum just didn't UNDERSTAND!
Okay, so she was friends with Portia Warrington. SO?! That didn't mean that she had to be friends with Mrs. Warrington's son. Cassius was a git, had been that way since they'd met two years ago, and her family, after living in France for the last two years, had moved back to England. Fallon's first memory of that obnoxious boy... well, after their parents had introduced them and all that, had been of him splashing water from a puddle (it had rained that morning) onto her white skirt. Things had gone downhill from there, and half an hour later, a greatly dismayed Mrs. Anderson had rushed outside to see both kids lobbing mud at each other, all while yelling at each other with words that little children their age were NOT supposed to know.
Any and all subsequent attempts by the parents to make their children get along had failed miserably. If Fallon thought Cassius was an icky git, he thought of her as a troublesome little brat, and that was that.
"Portia! THERE you are!" Meiya quickly walked over to a tall, elegantly robed witch with shining dark brown ringlets. Fallon rolled her eyes. Here we go... enter the git.
True enough, as Meiya and Portia kissed each other's cheeks, Cassius Warrington poked his head from behind his mother and sneered at her. She stuck her tongue back at him. This was not FAIR! He was almost three inches taller than she was, he could look DOWN on her! Fallon seethed and gave him her most menacing glare anyway.
The clearing of a throat interrupted their staring contest, and Portia was giving Cassius the same stern look that Fallon often received from her own mother (mothers were daft, honestly). "Cassius, now, be good and say hello to Fallon."
Cassius pouted for a moment, and then smiled in a sweet way that boded very ill for her indeed, and proferred a hand for her to shake, "It's CORKING to see you again, Fallon."
Fallon looked at him suspiciously, but before she could ask him what the bloody hell he was trying to pull, her mother had pushed her forward, and she found her hand clasped in his. EWWWW! What WAS that? A moment later, she pulled her hand away, and looked up to see him smirking down at her just before her mother pulled her out of the store, Meiya's arms full of Fallon's new schoolbooks. She looked down to her hand, and found, in her palm, a slimy puddle of flobberworm mucus.
Wiping her hand on her handkerchief, Fallon silently plotted revenge. That... that PRAT was going to get it!
* * *
Three hours later, Fallon was getting her potions supplies at the Apothecary when Cassius Warrington once again disturbed her little world.
She had just finished buying the supplies for her first year when she felt someone tugging on one of her braids, and heard a familiarly obnoxious voice whisper, "Hello there, pigtails!"
She narrowed her eyes, and dug her hand into her pocket. She'd brought a little spare change, originally intending to spend it on candy, but...
"Two scoops of beetle eyes, please," she said to the Apothecary witch through clenched teeth. Laying ten knuts on the counter, she took her newest purchase....
AND DUMPED IT ON HIS HEAD!
... The only thing that prevented Fallon Anderson and Cassius Warrington from engaging in a free-for-all in the Apothecary was the witch sternly threatening to send them Howlers when they both arrived at Hogwarts, and telling them to leave her store if they could not behave.
Despite the altercations of the day, the two seemed to have an unspoken agreement: Cassius would remain silent about the beetle eyes if Fallon didn't snitch on him about the flobberworm mucus.
And that day, when both of them went home, they remained unscolded by their oblivious mothers, and free to plot in peace for crimes to commit after arriving at Hogwarts.
* * *
On the momentous day that would take her away from her large family home at to Hogwarts, Fallon Anderson stood alone but undaunted on the platform of nine-and-three-quarters. All right. She was a first-year, and she did not really know anyone around here. But she was NOT going to ask Cassius Warrington for ANYTHING! EVER!
Soon, the Hogwarts Express pulled into the station, and Fallon struggled to lift her trunk onto the train. She was just about to let out a string of words that a little lady such as herself should NEVER know, when another girl, already in her robes, with a green and silver tie that marked her as a student of Slytherin house, walked forward and offered to help her.
"Thanks," Fallon gave the girl a smile, as both of them lifted the trunk onto the train, "I'm Fallon Anderson, what's your name?"
"Morrigun Lennox," the other girl had a smooth, cultured voice with an aristocratic drawl, "I'm in Slytherin, second year." Fallon unconsciously grimaced to herself.
"You poor thing, you're the same house and year as the GIT..."
Morrigun laughed, "Which one? There's lot of them around here, even in Slytherin."
Fallon pointed at Cassius Warrington, who was talking with a tall second-year boy with dark hair and blue eyes. "HIM!"
To her surprise, Morrigun giggled lightly, "Oh, he's cute, isn't he?"
"Warrington, CUTE?!" Fallon's eyes bulged out slightly. Morrigun looked somewhat taken aback.
"OH, you were talking about WARRINGTON? I was talking about the one he's talking to, Alexander Montague," she blushed somewhat, "I'm sorry about that. Warrington... I don't know him too well, but he's friends with Alexander. Alexander is awfully nice, though."
"Right, I'm sure he is," Fallon muttered, rolling her eyes, "He's TOO nice if he can be friends with THAT git... aren't Slytherins supposed to be all scary and cunning and stuff?"
Morrigun laughed lightly again, "I think I like you already, Fallon. Come on, let's get a compartment."
* * *
Soon, Fallon found their compartment filled with girls. Morrigun's friends Akasha Noctifer and Malice Haughton, also second-year Slytherins, joined them, as did a few first-years like herself: a vivacious-looking girl named Kate Le Fay, a serious one named Persephone Vafer, a bubbly one named Calypso O'Delle and a girl with an irrepressible grin, named Slainé Rosemond. By the time the train had arrived at Hogsmeade station, all eight were fast friends.
To her surprise, though she was certainly not the oldest of the group (what with Morrigun, Akasha and Malice all a year above her, Fallon found herself the unofficial "leader", the most decisive and dominating of the group. She did not think much of it. After all... she had just started out, and at least now, she had friends. Life was good.
Then, she and the rest of the first-years were separated from Morrigun, Akasha, and the rest of the returning students, put into a line by a bespectacled witch, and led to stand in front of a stool on which sat a raggedy old hat. Fallon wrinkled her nose slightly. That thing was so FILTHY-looking...
The hat broke into a rather ridiculous, weak rhyme talking about how it could think, and how it had been around since the days of the founders. Fallon rolled her eyes. All right already! Could she get just get sorted and have something to eat? She didn't want to hear about some old hat extolling its own virtues!
Then, the witch with the spectacles, whose prissy expression Fallon disliked on sight, took out a list, and called out her name.
"Anderson, Fallon!"
* * *
Cassius Warrington watched as "the little brat" swept forward with an air of childish dignity and an expression of haughty bravado as McGonagall called out her name. He'd spent half the train ride ranting to his friends Alexander Montague and Adrian Pucey of the fiasco at Diagon Alley, and bemoaning that "the annoying little twit" would be at Hogwarts this year. Montague and Pucey had been rather amused, and the former had remarked lightly that it could be worse; at least she was a girl, and generally, girls were relatively genteel compared to boys.
Warrington then spent the second half of the train ride explaining why the word "genteel" and the name Fallon were not to be used in the same sentence.
His friends had mustered up sympathetic looks, but their expressions were still too amused for his liking. He turned from his thoughts to watch Fallon's dark head disappear under the Sorting Hat, and muttered under his breath, "Not Slytherin, please... ANYWHERE but Slytherin!"
"SLYTHERIN!" the hat screamed a mere few seconds after being lowered over Fallon's head. Warrington groaned aloud.
As Fallon got down from the stool, handing the ugly hat perfunctorily back to the bespectacled witch, she saw Cassius Warrington groan and bury his face in his hands. With a maliciously angelic smile, she bounced over to his table.
"Hello, Cassius," she chirped in a syrupy-sweet voice, "I look forward to spending the next six years driving you nutters." Giving him another beatific grin as he glowered at her, Fallon sat down next to Morrigun and watched the rest of the sorting.
Later, after Kate, Persephone, Calypso and Slainé had all been sorted into Slytherin, along with two boys, Kevin Bole and Vittorio Derrick, the Headmaster had a few words telling the students to stay out of the Forbidden Forest, and other such rules that Fallon was sure that, by the time she had left Hogwarts, she would have systematically broken. And then, at last, food appeared on the table.
Good.
All throughout dinner, Cassius Warrington found himself methodically bombarded by peas at random intervals as he tried to eat, but whenever he looked at Fallon, she would be eating her food like the perfect little lady that she wasn't, and perhaps talking to one of the girls. The Prefect, Rodney Pritchard, was entirely oblivious. To that day, Warrington had no idea how Pritchard had gotten that position.
Another pea hit the side of his head, and Warrington clenched his teeth. That's bloody it! He was going to HATE the little wench for as long as he lived!
Perhaps it was a good thing that he was never going to take Divination.
* * *
End Chapter One
* * *
*G* That was FUN!! More soon! Love ya, SOBettes!