Unravel - Fletcher/Jones - Chapter 1

Jul 01, 2009 15:31

Title: Unravel
Author: russsel
Part: 1/?
Rating: PG
Pairing: Fletcher/Jones
Genre: AU, Romance
Summary: It's Tom's sixth year in Hogwarts. Should be nothing out of the ordinary, right?
A/N: Alright, my contribution to the Crossover Challenge. My prompt is Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and it will be chronicling the life of Tom around all the happenings in the book. I expect this one to be long, and since I'm going away for a while, I'm going to have to chase time in order to get this done on time. But if I don't finish, I don't really care. I just really wanted an excuse to enter the Harry Potter universe. :)
Disclaimer: I do not own McFly and the Harry Potter universe in any way.



CHAPTER 1

Getting on the train was the easy part. Everyone in their compartments, conversing with friends they haven’t seen for quite some time, keeping out of the corridors completely, making the search and location of empty resting spots a breeze for newcomers and late risers and whoever else. But sadly, it wasn’t as easy for everyone else.

See this boy with the golden hair peering into the compartments discreetly before debating with himself whether to ask for permission to reside or to just keep on walking in search of new, emptier ones. He would have been successful with a few, but his nerves got the better of him in each instance, and he let other people slip right on by before he had taken a second step forward.

With his failures, he hung his head, lifting his cases off the floor by a tiny bit to avoid it from dragging. He considered doing that, though, in the thought it would create enough commotion for him to dart into one of the compartments and settle in comfortably before anyone could notice, and that right before they could ask him who he was, he could just say, “Been here all this time.”

But no, he didn’t have the stomach to cause such a spectacle, and so he continued his fruitless search in his pathetic march. And it’s fruitless in that every compartment seemed to be either full, half-full, or containing students he never got along with his last year round.

Except for one.

A few minutes of searching had passed; he had given up, and was almost resorting to settling at the far end of the corridor with his suitcase as his bed, when he spotted the last compartment.

There wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary about this particular one, if you count out the lone brown-haired boy with his back turned to the door, one hand pressing his wand against the cold window (he presumed it was cold, since the glass had garnered quite a bit of foggy condensation) and the other tracing outlines of who-knows-what on the frosty surface with a forefinger.

This struck the golden boy as odd, but he didn’t dwell on it much. He pursued, instead, the fact that he was alone in the compartment, and that he shouldn’t mind it the least if he went up to ask him for refuge. Maybe he could use his current sanctuary as a guilt measure, and say that he’d freeze in the corridor if he wasn’t granted access.

Picking up his courage, and setting his mind on an excuse, he jumped up from his suitcase, slightly indented from his weight, and, grabbing it and his other things, he curved a finger and slid the door open.

The other boy turned around almost immediately at the sound, as if he had just been caught doing something illegal, and he dropped his wand in the process, eyeing the intruder with puzzlement and slight fear.

“Erm…” the blond said with a curved brow at the other’s reaction, “Do you mind? Everywhere else is full.”

They looked at each other for quite some time without either saying a word, long enough for the first to recognize the second’s unfamiliarity. He had straight brown hair, a large portion partitioned on the side while the rest fell in intermittent spikes around his neck, deep, shining blue eyes, and countless freckles all around his arm. Not your average freckles, but it was as if he’d been standing under a hail of brown blobs and he absorbed every single one. He was pale underneath the blemishes, though, and, he had to admit, he was sort of handsome to say the least.

Not that he fancied him or anything; it was merely from an aesthetic point of view.

“Not at all,” the freckled boy said, flashing the blond a smile that could light up an entire city for a month, putting his own pathetic one to shame as he smiled back, muttering “thanks” under his breath just enough for the other to hear it.

Heaving up his cases, he settled them on one of the seats and began to place each one in the luggage rack, propping himself up with a knee on the soft cushion.

“I’m Tom, by the way,” the golden boy said as he turned around and extended a hand, remembering that he had completely forgotten to introduce himself. “Tom Fletcher.”

The boy looked at Tom’s hand for a second or two, as if reading something in his palm, before reaching with his own, large and as freckle-y as the rest of his body. It was warm, too, considering the fact that he had it pressed up against the window up until the time he burst inside. “I’m Danny Jones.”

“Nice to meet you, Danny,” Tom smiled as he released Danny’s hand to go back to his luggage, who used this time to get on his knees to retrieve his fallen wand that had rolled underneath the seat.

All finished, Tom twisted around and sat himself down, patting the cushions to test their durability and their feel. At that moment, he felt something brush against his leg, and turning his head, he saw Danny on his stomach, his arm swallowed by the underside of the seat, cheek pressed against the floor disregarding its dirtied state.

“Do you need some help?” Tom ventured to ask (it had been his fault in the first place, he thought), dipping his head low so Danny could easily see him with a turn of his head. Danny nodded, still keeping his face firmly ensconced, and Tom hopped off his seat and knelt beside him, dropping his head to peer in the inky blackness that ate his wand.

Seeing absolutely nothing, he reached inside his pocket, pulled out his wand (inflexible and ten and a quarter inches of rosewood with a mermaid hair core, he was always quite proud to say) and pointed it on a random target.

“Lumos,” he whispered, and from the tip of his wand spilled a bright light, illuminating every corner of the underside as well as attacking his pupils, and he squinted and searched for Danny’s wand hastily in fear he’d go blind. Locating it sitting a long way out of Danny’s outstretched arm, he muttered, “Nox” and the light vanished in a swirl of silver wisps. Next, he pointed the tip to its resting place and slid his hand inside the join the cause. With a remark of “Accio wand,” he clamped tightly on the wooden bar that had shot forth from nowhere, and he slid back to sit on his behind with the sought-after wand held between his fingers.

“That was cool,” whispered Danny with a grin as he reached for his wand delicately, as though putting pressure on it might shatter it into a million pieces. Tom chuckled and brushed off the dirt that clung to his sleeves. After patting down his knees, he sat down opposite Danny, who kept his eyes to him wide open with admiration and awe.

“You’re really smart,” complimented Danny as he sat down, and Tom could feel his face beginning to flush. It was his smile that was doing it more than his claim, and he brushed a lock of his hair from his eyes to cover his own.

“Nah, I’m not really,” Tom said, though he knew fully well he was being modest; Professor McGonagall considered him nearly on par with the brain powerhouse Hermione Granger with his consistency, and he even received a few smirks (what he regarded as praises) from Professor Snape after managing to cook up desirable duplicates of potions they were asked to make (which sort of struck him as peculiar seeing as Snape was never tolerant of Gryffindors).

“Well, I think you are,” said Danny smugly, looking away from Tom and twirling his wand around his fingers. “I would’ve never thought of using those spells all at the same time. Might’ve taken me ages.”

“I just spend too much time with books is all,” Tom admitted, stuffing his wand back inside his pocket and looking, out the now-translucent window, at the warped outlines of trees that whirled past as the train continued its voyage.

“I don’t read much,” said Danny with a shrug, making sweeping motions with his wand in the air while mouthing the words “Accio” and “Lumos” to himself.

To this, Tom didn’t know what to say, so he shifted in his seat and flipped his hair instead. At that moment, the door slid open, and in came a girl with wavy, blonde hair ending halfway down her back, glassy, silver-colored eyes behind circular spectacles, holding a newspaper in one hand and a half-eaten licorice wand in the other. Tom noted the peculiar radish earrings clipped in her lobes and the necklace looped around her neck embroidered with, from what he could make out, butterbeer corks.

It was the unmistakable enigma known as Luna Lovegood.

“Hey, Luna,” greeted Danny with a wave of his hand, and after giving Tom a curt nod, she swept past him and over to the freckled boy, the hand containing the newspaper outstretched.

“Hello, Danny,” she said in a voice in between a whisper and a fleeting song, “I thought the train left without you.”

“Nope, came here just in time,” Danny smiled, extending a hand to receive the parcel that was obviously meant for him, and all the while Tom watched with a raised brow of simple curiosity at their conversation.

“At least you’re here,” she said with a smile as she retracted her hand to grip the other end of the licorice. “Are you alright?”

“My head does hurt quite a bit,” Danny answered, scratching his head with the tip of his wand, and Luna leaned in close to his ear, as though expecting something to come out from the orifice.

“Probably Wrackspurts,” declared Luna, going back to her full height and taking a bite of the licorice. “I thought I felt one flying around here when I came.”

“Oh, yeah, I didn’t think of them,” Danny announced, ceasing to scratch his head and was already in the process of opening the newspaper. Moving slightly to his right, Tom read the words The Quibbler on the cover. He gave his eyebrows a quick jump and settled back to his previous spot.

Ever since the return of You-Know-Who, people have been reading The Daily Prophet less due to their massive misinformation and countless cover-ups. Some have resorted to reading The Quibbler, claiming that it has more viable information than the Prophet could ever hope to have in recent, most troubled times. Tom wasn’t a skeptic, but seeing as he’s never really read the newspapers, he wasn’t bothered by the rivalry at the least. He got his information from his parents, and it was by far the most efficient way to gain knowledge about the goings-on in the Wizarding World, for they worked in the Ministry.

“You’d better be careful,” said Luna gravely after finishing her sweet, “Once your head’s all fuzzy, the Nargles’ll definitely come after your things. I trust you know that already.”

“Of course I do,” answered Danny as he looked up from the newspaper with a nod.

“Well, I’ll just see you later, then?”

“Yeah.”

With a flash of a grin, Luna excused herself from the room without giving the slightest hint that she acknowledged Tom’s presence, whose mind was furiously working to make sense of the seemingly made-up words they used to describe invisible mischievous creatures.

“Oh, by the way,” remarked Luna, her head appearing in the compartment, and Tom started at the suddenness of the intrusion. She twisted her neck to face Tom, one hand on the door to keep her steady. “I’ve forgotten to ask. What’s your name?”

“Tom,” replied Tom uneasily, his tone rising, giving her a superficial smile. She accepted the response with a genuine smile of her own and disappeared into the corridors, leaving Tom and Danny alone once again.

Tom opened his mouth to ask Danny what they were just talking about, but closed it immediately, feeling it wasn’t any of his business. Instead, he leant over and inquired, “So, you know Luna Lovegood?”

“Yeah, she’s a childhood friend,” said Danny as he turned a page, keeping his eyes to the text. “One of my best friends, actually.”

“Hmm,” Tom mused, slumping against the backrest. “Then why aren’t you in her compartment?”

“’Cause her compartment’s full,” Danny answered matter-of-factly, neither annoyed nor extremely interested in his questions. “She’s been hanging out with Harry Potter and his friends. It’s alright, though, we still see each other.”

Tom frowned slightly. He didn’t think it was very nice of Luna to forsake her friend for newer, more popular ones, but Danny didn’t seem to mind, so he knew he shouldn’t as well.

Danny disentangled his gaze from The Quibbler and settled it on Tom.

“Why aren’t you with your friends?” he asked, and Tom was quite taken aback by his question.

“Oh… Erm,” Tom began, shifting more properly in his seat. “I had a bit of a fight with my close friends last year. They didn’t believe that You-Know-Who came back to power and I did, and they tried to argue their standpoint until we broke apart.”

“But now everyone knows that he’s back, so shouldn’t that account for something?” inquired Danny, garnering interest more in Tom’s story now than the newspaper.

“Not for me,” answered Tom, shifting his gaze out the window and watching birds as they fluttered by. “They’re so desperate to prove their point that they let that get in the way of our friendship. And now that they’ve been proven wrong, it’s pretty sad, actually, because now they know I’ve been right all this time, and that they wasted our friendship for nothing.”

Danny listened intently, propping his chin with his hands, elbows resting on The Quibbler laid neglected on his thigh, crinkling it.

“Well, I’ll be your friend, if you want,” said Danny as he returned to his previous position, taking care to hide his smile behind the newspaper.

Tom smiled at his offer, and his blunt way of saying it. So much was going on with Danny that he was drowning in curiosity to know how he worked (as well as the fact that he won’t be roaming the halls empty this year), and he used those as the basis for his acceptance.

“Sure, why not,” Tom said, feeling a bit elated at his new friend. Danny’s bound to be better than them, he thought, referring to his ex-friends, and there’s bound to be loads of new things to experience, to learn, with this odd boy introduced in his life.

“Great,” said Danny, flashing Tom one of his city-powering smile before going back to reading the newspaper, and, smiling to himself, Tom ran his hand through his hair and once again, brought his eyes out the window (now devoid of condensation), watching the vast body of water glistening under the sunlight like millions of fluorescent lamps spread across a blue blanket as they sped past it.

And now, he could safely say that his sixth year will be one of his most interesting years in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

fic: unravel, !crossover, pairing: fletcher/jones, fandom: mcfly, fandom: harry potter, !chaptered

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