A/N: That stressful moment when you look back and notice that after 7 chapters in, the protagonist still hasn't come into contact with real magic. OK. Let's do something about it. Enjoy. And review. I take anything, even critiques—no, seriously, I do. It will make it seems as if there are tons of reviews, so more people will be like "hey cool lot's of reviews does this mean it's popular awesome derp."

Ch 8. The First Dose of Magic

Shots—she may as well call herself that, it was about bloody time that she'd give herself an identity of sorts, honestly—paced back and forth in the small grey cell, hands entwined behind her back and a troubled expression on her face.

She was alone, silence reigning with an iron fist. And iron bars.

She was in jail.

Oh God, she was in jail.

…

Well, this sucks, she thought in a deadpan. She continued pacing, her hair swiveling every time she made a sharp turn. Did she mention that there wasn't much room?

Pace, pace, pace, swivel.

Pace, pace, pace, swivel, pace.

Pace, pace, pause . . . huff, pace, pace, swivel, pace.

Pacing wasn't going to solve anything, she knew, but couldn't help it. Shots (now that was a nice name to go by. She felt different. She felt in power. She felt. . . not-nameless. Well d'you look at that! Jail does change you!) needed to get the extra energy and adrenaline out somehow, and her body decided that digging a path in the tiled floor was a good way to do so. She was giddy—nervous, excited in a bad way sort of giddy, and that was bad. Very bad. She didn't like the feeling. At all.

It sucked.

Majorly.

Shots huffed in frustration, suddenly coming to a dead stop. Completely ignoring the bench, she sat down on the ground—her butt becoming chilled at the touch of the cool tiles. OK. She was trapped in a cell. No biggie. This wouldn't be the first time that she was trapped somewhere. Being in jail was a first, though. She looked around, finding the gloomy dungeon-like grey room confining. She made an effort to avoid the lone toilet in the corner. It was mustard yellow and stank of vomit. Her eyes settled on a large crack in the wall. They trailed along it, and found that it ended somewhere outside the holding cell, beyond the iron bars.

Lucky bastard, that crack was.

She sat there, in the middle of the cell. It was silent, or, it would be if it wasn't for the dripping drops of water every few seconds and some rustling of clothing. Oh, right, she forgot to mention: she probably had neighbors. She was in a holding cell, alone, but that didn't mean that other cells were also empty. The cells, unfortunately, were not separated by a wall of concrete. Shots hoped no one was locked up next to her anytime soon—or with her, for that matter. She felt rather anti-social at the moment . . . but, then again, when wasn't she feeling anti-social? Well, whatever. Not her fault that people were idiots. And, speaking of idiots, where did Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest go? She had stuff to do, and not all day to do it. She had a mental list of which she dubbed The List, and some of these items had a timer on them.

At least she had until Christmas for one of them.

Which brought her back to the problem at hand. Or, to be more precise, the problems. As in plural. Which meant many. Many, many, many times cubed.

Being a homeless street rat meant that she had daily chores to complete by the end of the day—if not the next. It was hard work.

She needed to find food for this evening, because, you know, this girl had to eat. She also needed to steal at least 50 pounds in order to pay "the rent" she owed. The territory she's been sleeping in was owned by some third generation Mafia of unknown origin that demanded a weekly pay. And skiving off Pay Day was not an option—unless she wanted to die a very unpleasant and messy death. But, before all, she needed to retrieve her satchel. That was her life in there (not to mention the newly acquired gun that she'd rather forget about) and the bag itself was her most priced possession. Hopefully it was still under that dumpster, where she left it.

But what about the plan of blowing up Buckingham Palace? The hospital? a little voice whined from the back of her mind. Shots slapped the voice. No whining allowed. There's still plenty of time before the shit hits the fan.

She frowned to herself, not liking this feeling of conflict within herself. Shutting down hesitation in the face of morally-defined situations had allowed her to survive—not to mention, it made things easier. Shots wanted to get out of this six by eight cell, but she also wanted to warn the Most Shittiest Police Officers of the Law what was going down.

If they decided to show their ugly faces, that is.

OoooOoooO

The grating sound of a cell door shrieking open was what Shots woke up to.

She probably would've jumped up and braced herself for whatever, maybe mentally hit herself for falling asleep in enemy territory, but A) It wasn't her cell door the one being opened, and B) She had a crappy night last night with little to no sleep.

Shots did not bother moving. She just laid there, on the ground, with her eyes closed, cocooned inside her overlarge coat.

"Daw. Look at her sleep, she's so cute~!" McCarley. Shots will make sure to make his police career a living hell.

"Don't let that fool you, kid. That rat is as slippery as a snake covered in soap." Ah, Hugo. Still angry, I see, she thought maliciously. Ha! Screw you too.

"But she's sooo adorable!" McCarley gushed. Man was he loud.

Hugo did not reply. Instead, he said "And you, you behave in here while we get the paperwork! Don't you even think of doing what you did back there!"

A crazed laugh emanated somewhere from the cell next door. Oh great, she had a neighbor now. And a crazy one, by the sound of it. She heard the policemen shuffle out of the place.

Silence.

Once Shots knew that they were gone, she sat up, and blearily looked at her surroundings, a yawn forming stubbornly at the back of her throat. Her attention was immediately snapped by the person in the cell next to her.

She stared.

What the heck.

"Ye know, it's very impolite to stare!" the man cackled, Scottish accent prominent.

She blinked owlishly. Then, she blushed. The man's cackles became louder. Her blush deepened, embarrassing her even more. Shots got up, and straightened her attire, blush ever present on her pale face. The man stopped his cackling, but he still chuckled every now and then, in irregular intervals, dark eyes filled with mirth looking right at her.

How rude.

"Yer an odd one, aren't ye?" he stated, gripping the iron bars that separated their cells. His long nose poked through the space, face resting against two of the vertical bars, peering down at her. Shots thought that being called odd by the man wearing a neon, bright yellow robe was highly unfair.

She crossed her arms, and looked pointedly at said robe. She noticed that the robe had feathers of all the colors of the rainbow firmly attached at the hems. It was also more of a jacket-robe, three huge purple buttons holding it together at the front—a fourth button down the middle dangled from a long string, and a fifth was nonexistent, having probably been ripped out at some point.

The man grinned, showing off his very mismatched and crooked front teeth. He had crazy black eyes over a pale complexion, complete with a mop of fair blond hair with hints of grey. He looked to be about fifty.

And he honestly freaked her out. Only reason that she was so calm was because he was on the other side of a series of sturdy, grey iron bars.

A loud clucking noise startled her. The man, looking overly surprised, stepped away from the barrier between cells and plucked open his robe-jacket (the top button ripping out and bouncing to her side of the cell) to reveal a—

This day can't get any weirder, she thought, staring at the very disgruntled-looking chicken that nested in the man's robe.

"Lady McCluckings! Oh how good of ye ter join us today! You've slept well, I sure hope?"

It got weirder.

The chicken clucked menacingly, ruffling her feathers and hitting the man's chest with its body.

"Aye, so sorry for that my darlin' dear!"

More angry clucking.

"Of course, of course!"

The chicken screeched-clucked.

"Aye! I agree with ye, my darlin' dear. Next time we're going fer the Firewhiskey!"

As the madman fussed over his companion, Shots resolved to stay very still. She quietly put up more space between herself and the man. With a menacing cluck, the chicken turned to stare at her, deathly still.

Big, dark, and very crazed eyes stared at her. The chicken was a scrawny, sickly yellowed white thing whose clucking (cluck-bleeegh! Heh-ghack!) ended with a wet hacking noise akin to vomiting.

Shots did not know what freaked her out the most; the robed walking mental institution or the chicken.

"This is High Lady Cluck-Cluck McCluckings the Third-point-Five-Eight! I think she likes ye."

Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

"And I'm John."

Officer Hugo help me please.

"Though everyone calls me John-Cluck!"

With difficulty, he managed to go over the chicken (who gave an indignant cluck-bleeegh! Heh-ghack!) and shoved his hand between the bars.

Shots did not take the offered hand.

The man's face darkened. She stepped back, and glanced nervously at the door the officers had left from.

"Ye should treat yer elders with respect," the madman, John-Cluck, muttered.

Shots treated with respect only those who deserved it. Which, at the moment, meant not a soul.

The man lowered his hand. Then, suddenly, John-Cluck stuffed it brusquely inside his robe-jacket (cluck-bleeegh! Heh-ghack!) and rummaged through it. Finding what he was looking for, he took out a—

Shots looked incredulously at the long, thin object. A stick? What the actual hell?

He pointed it at her, and suddenly, she had a very bad feeling.

He muttered something.

She gasped. A rough, tugging sensation gripped her shirt and, well, pulled her towards the man in one, forceful swing. She fell on her knees, right at the man's feet. Shots' heart pounded in her chest, her breath caught in her throat.

What. The. Hell.

What the hell.

What the hell.

What the fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck—what?

Panic and fear turned into energy, energy that swirled deep inside her. Hot, hot energy.

When the man's hand touched her shoulder, he yelped in pain and backed off. John-Cluck looked at his burnt hand, red and blistering, and looked back at the child trembling at his feet.

A beat.

He chuckled. His chuckling turned into soft laughter, and from there, it grew in volume. He laughed. He laughed long and hard.

It was a crazy, maniac sort of laughter.

"Looky here, Lady McCluckings!" he shouted gleefully. "We have here a witch!"

"Cluck-bleeegh! Heh-ghack!"

Shots didn't get scared very easily. She didn't. But right now, she was. No, scared wasn't the word; try utterly terrified. And, in her terror, she had forgotten all about a certain letter she received some time ago, and of the other world she was supposed to be looking for.

So, of course, when one was faced with the impossible—which in this case was an invisible force having pulled her towards a psychopath—and there was no logical explanation—because seriously, it went everything against physics (unless it had something to do with powered gravity walls that can be turned on and off with a switch, but no wait getting off track here again) then the only reasonable thing left to do was what Shots did.

She fell into a dead faint.

Or, that's what she thought had happened.

The man was a wizard, you see, and wizards, as you have noticed, wield wands. Said wands can be used to stun people, Stupefy being one of the most popular spells. So, that's what happened and that's that.

John-Cluck, with a cackle, Disapparated from the holding cell, taking with him the stunned young witch. Once outside, John-Cluck was distracted by a shiny thing and dumped the child somewhere in a random place.

Even so, he still had the foresight of leaving a paper with the following sentence:

The Leaky Cauldron—Bull's Head Passage, Leadenhall Market, London. Ye should be getting your stuff there for Hogwarts! Don't get one of those pesky owls—chickens are much better.

John-Cluck Jr.

Aaaaaaand here you go! Chapter 8! Now, to stuff everything in on chapter 9… hm.