Fan Fiction ❯ Strange Somethings ❯ ch1 ( Chapter 1 )

Christen and John
1

Pettigrew had dived for Lupin's dropped wand. Ron, unsteady on his bandaged leg, fell. There was a bang, a burst of light- and Ron lay motionless on the ground. Another bang- Crookshanks flew into the air and back down to the earth in a heap.

'Expelliarmus!' Harry yelled, pointing his own wand at Pettigrew; Lupin's wand flew high into the air and out of sight. 'Stay where you are!' Harry shouted, running forwards.

Too late. Pettigrew had transformed. Harry saw his bald tail whip through the manacle on Ron's arm, and heard a scurrying through the grass.

"Christen, breakfast." I looked up from the book I was reading with a frown, directed at my bedroom door.

"Mum I'm reading. Can't we just get something to eat in Boscastle?"

The bedroom door opened and my mum leant against the frame of it, dressed in a pair of baggy jeans and my dad's shirt, the sleeves rolled up and coming down to her mid thigh. My mum is quite small, like me, we both have black hair but her eyes are blue whilst mine are green like my dad's. Everyone says we look alike but it's really annoying to be honest. We're almost completely different. She's always been really pretty with her hair curled and full of life and her slender trim figure always dressed in the latest fashions. You wouldn't believe she's 42.

I'm small like I said, but I'm quite big around the middle, not overly large, but still big. I can't do anything with my hair, it's stock straight and so fine that it's totally unmanageable. My eyes are lively, I think that my eyes are one of my good features, only I have to wear glasses and dad said that I'm not allowed to switch to contacts until I'm 16 next year. And to top it all off I can't dress for the life of me. My wardrobe consists of black and khaki, I look awful in skirts and dresses and I don't go anywhere without my khaki Parker coat.

"What are you reading." My mum had moved into my room, shutting my door like she knows I like it and wandering over to my shelves, running a slender finger along the spines of my books, her lips moving as she silently says the names to herself.

That's something we both have in common. Our whole family has in common in fact. We're a whole lot of book worms. You can't move in our house in Portway normally with out tripping over some book or another. Even my baby brother, Louis, likes to read. He has over 50 different baby books and my dad sits with him every night and reads him a different one.

"Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." I muttered, eyes turned back to the book in my lap. I only half registered my mum leaving the bookshelves, with some effort, and walking over to my bed to read over my shoulder.

"Oh come on Chris- you must have read that a thousand times by now. Come down to breakfast." She put her hands on her hips and gave me her pouty face.

"Okay give me a minute and I'll be down." I received a bright smile from my mum before she pressed a kiss to the top of my head and left the room, humming some theme tune from an old soap under her breath as she closed my bedroom door until we heard it click.

I think you deserve an explanation now, how rude of me, to rush into a story without telling you a thing about myself.

My name is Christina Muyo and I'm 15 year old. I live in England with my parents and my two brothers Louis and Ben.

We have a house in Portway where we live for most of the year, and a house in Polzeath, which is where we are now. Our grandma left it to my dad when she died. I was only little and I can't remember her very well, but I'm happy as hell that she left him the house. It's right on the top of the cliff above the beach and when you go out onto my balcony all you can see is miles and miles of unnaturally blue sea, it's a two minute walk to the book shop too (K Stotte), an added bonus.

Back to me. I go to a school in Solihull, not 15 minutes drive from our house. It's a private girls school and I guess I like it there. It's called St martins and used to be a house a long time ago, my dad's mum, my nan, says that it used to be a boys school when she was little and the her school used to go to a ball there at christmas. Luckily it's near the Solihull mall, Touchwood. Touchwood is another place with a great bookshop (Books etc).

My Eldest brother, Ben, went to Henley High school with my best friend Janey and her brother Rob. Although, Rob and Ben have left now, there going to oxford university together next year but at the moment they're going on their gap year around Europe. This is the first time I've been to Cornwall without my brother. Some people would think that I would hate not having him about but I don't mind really, he always thought that I was weird anyway. Lots of people think that. I still love my brother and I know he still loves me, no matter how mean he is. I guess he has to love me really, he's gay so it's hard to find anyway who'll even want to go near him. Our family is completely cool with it, but when Rob's family found out that he was the same then they flipped, they all disowned him apart from Janey. I guess that's why Rob and Ben are always together, because they're both in the same situation. All their friends left them once they were told that they 'swing that way' so the two of them is all they have left.

They say that they're just friends but Janey and I believe that they've have fucked before. We love giving them hell about it.

Anyway I have Louis. He's only a baby but he's really cute and I really love playing with him and buying him stuff although dad says that he has enough toys and clothes and I'm just wasting my money. I guess I am really. Can't help It though, he's just so sweet when you buy him a new little plushie or kiddies book.

Ben, Janey, Rob and I all went to Wootton Wawen CE Primary school together and It's probably where mum will send Louis when he's old enough. I loved that school. I didn't have any friends there apart from two but it didn't matter because I had them. There was Janey and Gruffin and I and we were always *always* together. We sat at the same table in lessons, played together at break, where in the same groups when we had to do sports like football and netball and we ate together at meal times. We were the odd ones out, all three of us liked to draw, normally the characters and weapons from whatever role play game or make believe game we were playing at the current time. But then we left Wootton.

Gruffin went to Studley high and Janey went to Henley and I went to St Martins.

Last I heard of Gruffin he had settled in really well and had put his 'childish fantasies' as I heard his mum tell mine, behind him. he's got a girl friend now by the sounds of it and Janey told me that when she saw him with a group of friends in Redditch once then he had yelled at her for calling him Gruffin. Of course his really name isn't Gruffin, it's just what we always called him, It's always suited him so much better than his given name, Andrew. It was also the name of the little crock dragon I had given him for christmas when we were ten. Janey said that he said that he'd smashed it. I cried for hours over that.

But Janey's not much better anymore. Of course I knew she would make new friends, even when I didn't, but I just didn't realise how many times this meant that she would leave me waiting for hours in a shopping centre just because she wanted to be with them more than she wanted to be with me. She's Janet to everybody else now too. Rob, Ben my parents and I are the only people who ever call her Janey any more, and even now she'll cringe. if we call her that in front of any of her new friends.

I'm still called Christen of course, I'll never be a Christina. Never.

I'm done talking now by the way. Just to let you catch up since I started talking, I put my book on the line which says 'Harry and Hermione dashed over to Ron.' at the bottom of page 279. I went down to breakfast said good morning to my dad, got hit by one of Louis' spoonfuls of baby mush and, for the record, ate four rounds of strawberry jam on toast.

Now I'm in the car and the four of us are driving to Boscastle.

I love Boscastle, apart from the fact that if we visit Boscastle then we always visit Tintagel at the same time which has another bookshop that I like (King Arthur's Book Shop), then it has the witches museum.

I have been obsessed with magic for as long as I can remember. Science is my least favourite subjects at school and when I was given the table of elements in my 2nd year chemistry lesson I wrote 'Fire' 'Water' 'Air and 'Earth' in red blue purple and green over the table. When I said I was a keen reader I meant that I am a keen fantasy book reader.

I have all 7 Harry Potter books in soft back, (including the one I'm reading now in the back seat of the car on the way to Boscastle) hard back and the special edition versions that I got signed by JK Rowling last year at Books etc.

I have all the Diana Wynne Jones books too, and Philip Paulmans Dark Trilogy, G P Taylor's Shadowmancer and Wormwood- also signed- JRR Tolkien, William Nicholson's Wind on Fire Trilogy and plenty of other names can be found in my collection too, including ones only found in Japan or India that I've spent hours on end translating with a little english to whatever language the story is written in dictionary. It's fair to say that I'm obsessed.

Then I have books on magic itself, 'The Dreamers Dictionary', 'Magick for Beginners' and 'Moon Magic' among others. Huge volumes on mythology- Greek, Roman, Celtic, etc- and books about mythological creatures like Harpies or Dragons or Werewolves (Lycanthropes for those of you who are like me) or Vampires.

People say I'm strange, they're probably right, but it flows in my blood. I'll explain that later but for now we've arrived in Boscastle. Oh and for those of you who are interested, I'm to page 292 in my book. Just where Hermione says 'Exactly! You wouldn't understand, you might even attack yourself! Don't you see? Professor McGonagall told me what awful things have happened when wizards have meddled with time... '

Sorry, you probably didn't want to know that...

Anyway, I climbed out the car, and grabbing my purse from the seat besides me, I dashed off to get a ticket for the pay and display. When I got back, Mum had taken Louis out of his baby seat and dad had taken his pushchair out of the boot and was now struggling to get my 18 month old brother into it.

Mum was leaning over the back seat of the car trying to reach the cool bag she had put our lunch in, tutting slightly and rolling her eyes at dad's failed attempted to get my baby brother- now strapped securely in his seat- to stop screaming. I watched her reach the blue cool bag and place it on the floor whilst she went to help dad.

I closed the car door for her then walked around to the drivers seat and peeling the back of the ticket, stuck it to the window screen and sat in dads seat waiting for the rest of my family to get themselves sorted.

Finally we had everything, Louis was playing happily (and more importantly, quietly) with the little purple original beanie baby dragon I had leant to him last year, Legend, and dad had locked up the car whilst mum paid me back for the car park ticket.

We started off down the road, stopping occasionally to look into shop windows or pick up Legend when Louis through him into the street, until we came to a Mr Whippy ice cream van. Dad laughed cheerfully when he saw it and informing us that he had been dying for something sweet all morning, he dashed off to get some.

"I'll only be a minute. There's a bench over there, go sit down. Chris, come help me carry them will you."

I didn't reply, only followed my dad, hands in my pockets and anxious to get to the witches museum, even though I must have been there a hundred times before.

Dad paid for four Kelley Whips, three with flakes and strawberry sauce and one plain one for Louis. I carried mine and mum's over to the bench and sat down, liking away at my own ice cream eagerly. Eating it so quickly that I didn't even notice when Louis threw a tantrum and and lobbed his vanilla whippy at a passer by.

Finishing quickly, I made sure that I had enough money to pay myself in and raced off in the familiar direction of the witches museum, calling back to my mum and dad where I was going.

I paid the entrance fee and walked in wonder down the first little corridor, it was empty in here today, strange, often it's full to the point of bursting on a Saturday morning.

I leant forward on the balls of my feet, forehead pressing against the cool glass of the cabinet that a shrunken head covered in head was sitting behind.

Nose and palms pressed tightly to the glass of the display case, reading the caption which went with the head, I didn't notice that anyone was with me until someone spoke.

"It's cool, Isn't it. I can't help but wonder why the witch shrunk this guys head. Maybe it was an ex boyfriend who she found cheating on her or something?"

I stood up straight and looked at the young man who had spoken. I suddenly started laughing, feeling quite stupid as I was unable to stop myself.

"What kind of looney would dip a guys head in tar, cut it off and shrink it just because he cheated on her?" I questioned between giggles.

The blonde boy gave a sort of one shouldered uni-shrug and smiled at me with the most incredible smile. It took my breath away, literally, I had to stop laughing at that smile.

"Maybe the witch was slightly mad! I'm John by the way."

I leant forwards and shook his hand.

"Christen."