lookalike || R. LUPIN

CHAPTER EIGHT

★★★

"Cry me a river, until you drown in the lake!" 

★★★

"Woah!" eleven year old Charles exclaimed, his eyes searching the train station, eager to soak up the new experience. After finding platforms nine and ten, (and trying to convince his parents to walk through the brick wall like everyone said,) he had finally arrived at the Hogwarts Express for the first time. Many teary eyed parents could be seen hugging their reluctant kids and the train horn sounded loudly, signalling its soon departure.

Marie Atkinson looked worried as she shifted her daughter on her hip, scared by the people's strange clothing and wands they boldly brandished in hand. "Are you sure you want to go, Charlie? You can change your mind anytime."

 She was very reluctant to let the boy leave. As if a normal boarding school wasn't bad enough, these irresponsible kids had magic. It was like a plot for a poorly written dime store novel, in her opinion.

"I'm fine, Momma, I gotta go!" Charlie exclaimed, looking over her shoulder at a very old lady saying goodbye to what looked like her granddaughter. The curly haired kid breathed heavily as she struggled with her luggage, wiping her brow with her sleeve.

"Need some help?" Charlie asked, bending down to pick the other side of her trunk when she nodded frantically.

"Thanks! Are you a first year?" the girl asked, smiling brightly when he nodded his head. "Me too! I'm Andy!"

"Isn't that a boy's name?" Charlie questioned, staring wide eyed at the fifth-years transfiguring books into birds in a compartment near them, letting them fly out of the window. 

"Don't you have a name, or are you just going to keep asking stupid questions?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm Charlie!"

And so was the start of a beautiful friendship. Being bright eyed, innocent (stupid) first years, they thought that everything was happy go-lucky and perfect in the Wizarding World. They figured that, with all they could do, who would want to waste time creating problems, when there was so much to learn!

They thought wrong, apparently, Charlie pondered as a school owl dropped a copy of The Daily Prophet into his lap. The headline screamed news of grisly murders of Muggle-born students and their parents in Cornwall. To be honest, it completely terrified Charlie. He would wake up at night in hot flashes, haunted by images of his parents and Lauren killed by some asshole wizard.

'Lord Voldemort',  he called himself. Sounds like a douche-bag to Charlie, but that didn't make him any less afraid. Finn looked over Charlie's shoulder at the paper, eyes cast downwards in stress for his own family. He was muggleborn as well, and the two shared a knowing look as Andy began her daily rant about Voldemort and Slytherins.

"I mean, just look at them, acting like they own the place! They really don't their shit stinks like the rest of ours?" she sneered at the green table, stabbing her eggs a bit too harshly with a fork.

Being a Gryffindor, Andy may or may not have some preset prejudices against the Slytherins, and she had decided that they were Satan incarnate, so no one could tell her different.

It was undeniable that many of the Slytherins supported Voldemort's 'cause', but every group had a few bad eggs, right? Charlie knew a lot of kind, helpful Slytherins, but there was no way he could tell Andy that without getting a piece of toast thrown at him. Charlie briefly wondered what the snakes had ever done to Andy, but he remembered with a start.

Her parents were both in Slytherin when they were in school. From the pictures he'd seen of a smiling Andy on her father's shoulders, his arm around his wife, they seemed like lovely people up until their deaths. John and Christy Holmes were killed when their daughter, Amanda, was nine years old. The man who killed them was an old friend from Hogwarts, also Slytherin, who had a son in the year above Charlie (who was also Slytherin).

Charlie tends to unknowingly psychoanalyze people, and he thinks that the green house reminds Andy of her parents and their death, of the good times and the bad. No one can handle that many feelings at once, especially not someone with as big of a heart as Andy. 

She thinks that the Slytherin house are just jerks, but he knows what's going on underneath. Andy tries to hide everything under the Brave Lion exterior, but she is probably the most emotionally vulnerable person he knows. 

She doesn't like to talk about it, though, so he abides by her wishes and doesn't say anything as she mutilates her eggs with her fork.

★★★

Chip liked to think she was a pretty good matchmaker, despite her obvious failure in her own love life. She also like to think that subtlety is totally for losers, and anyone who really wants to get something done will just dive in with absolutely no thought about the consequences. 

Okay, maybe it wasn't the best philosophy to have, but it's worked for sixteen years, so she hopes it won't fail her now.

Walking into the prefect's meeting held in an empty classroom on the fifth floor, Chip looks around at the empty seats and grins brightly as she plops down directly beside Remus Lupin, one of the Gryffindor prefects.

"Howdy, Remus, what's going on?"

"Hey, Chip," Remus grinned, furrowing his dark eyebrows at the crazed look on the girl's face. The two had met on the Hogwarts Express in first year, flocking together as two people who had absolutely no clue what was going on, "Nothing mu--"

"Okay, so, hear me out," Chip interrupted, swiveling her body to face his completely.

"Oh dear," Remus sighed, fully aware that there was multiple directions this conversation could go.

"You like guys, right?"

"I- uh-"

"I mean, I don't really care, I'm just making sure I have my facts straight before beginning." Chip declared, catching Lily Evans' eyes behind Remus' shoulder.

"He does," Lily answered for him, loving playing matchmaker as much as Chip. Lily thought Remus was a fantastic guy, and just wanted him to be happy (especially with how crappy his life had been up until now, what, with his 'furry little problem'), much like Caitlyn thought for Charlie, 

"What's your plan, Chip?" the red head questioned, fully aware that Chip probably had a ten step program already planned out for getting Remus and Charles together.

"Ooh, do you have one, too?" Caitlyn grinned, ecstatic at the thought of having another person to help set her operation in action. 

"Oh, absolutely," the girls laughed together at the shocked and confused look on Remus' face as the gears in his head turned, slowly turning their heads towards the Head Girl as she started her speech.

★★★

hope you like it! pls leave a comment /review, im a hoe for attention. 

-a.d.