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𝐀𝐂𝐂𝐈𝐃𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐘-𝐎𝐍-𝐏𝐔𝐑𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐄
chapter one ─ summer lovin'
(no longer a blast)

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THE CAMEL'S BACK FINALLY SNAPPED two minutes after their last argument, which was twenty-three days since the last time she had seen him, or five months since Madame Puddifoot's, or seven months since Heidi's first kiss. Time's funny like that ─ it can be counted in splendid or horrific ways, depending on one's own perspective.

"I just think," Roger had started, before breaking off. He cleared his throat. Looking back, it suddenly occurred to Heidi that he sounded like a frog, and way less attractive than he had all those months ago. "I just think ─"

"Yes, I know you bloody think," Heidi had snapped. "For Merlin's sake, could you stop thinking and just get to the point?" Heidi's head felt as if it was on the verge of splitting open ─ she hated London, and the Leaky Cauldron reeked of cheep firewhiskey.

"We should break up." Roger stopped, turned red, and started again. "I mean, we should go on a break." And that was that.

Their 'break', or their brief recess, or their time apart to find themselves had lasted for two days and three hours, at which point Heidi had seen Roger out for ice cream with Isolde Crawley from two years above her and promptly gone batshit crazy, and that was the end of that.

"Just to play Devil's Advocate ─" Isolde had started, trying her best to rub butterbeer-flavoured ice cream off of Roger's face with a flimsy paper napkin.

"Don't you think the Devil has enough advocates?" Heidi cried, before chucking her strawberry milkshake over Isolde's hair, just for good measure.

"I just think," Isolde started again, wiping pink out of her eyes, "that maybe you're just not good enough. Maybe you're just not anything enough, really." And then Oliver came to the rescue, and Isolde was given a chocolate facemask.

Oliver, of course, was furious. He dealt with this fury the best way he knew how; useless chatter. "Did you know shrimp cocktails have no alcohol? I'm never having one again."

"Oliver," Heidi said from the back of the car, "shut up."

"How do you know what alcohol is?" Their mum demanded. They drove in silence.

They reached King's Cross, found their way to Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters, and Oliver opened his mouth. "Before you say anything," Heidi said immediately.

He raised his eyebrows.

"That's it. I just don't want you to say anything." Heidi said goodbye to her mum ("yes, Mum, I'll watch out for the Nargles"), and jumped on the train as best she could with a trunk, a cat, and a backpack.

"The bar's too low these days," a particularly loud voice was saying from one of the compartments. Heidi grinned, opening the door in the middle of Alicia Spinnet's sentence. "'The Boy Who Lived' ─ I also, technically, lived. I am the girl who lived."

"Did you face down death and survive?" Angelina Johnson asked, without looking up from Quidditch Through The Ages. Lydia Hildrey, the third inhabitant of the compartment, rose to help Heidi with her trunk.

"There was a spider in my hotel room in Paris on the first day, that's just about the same thing."

"And how was à Paris?" Heidi asked, laughing as Alicia wrinkled her nose.

"Shut up, you can't even speak French!"

"Sure I can! Oui, croissant, biatch." Heidi sat down with her cat, Gaposchkin, crossing one leg over the other. "Me and Roger broke up."

"Roger and I," said Angelina.

Lydia grimaced. "Sorry, Honey, knew how much you liked him."

"I always thought he was a bit strange, actually," Alicia said. "Like when he referred to himself in the third person ─ 'Roger Davis is hungry!' What a weirdo."

"I thought that was cute!" Heidi said, weakly.

"You don't have rights." Nevertheless, Alicia smiled sympathetically. "I'm sorry too, for what it's worth."

Inevitably, the conversation steered towards more important topics ─ the potentially rabid Care of Magical Creatures book that they had all bought ("I think the assistant only had nine fingers left"), who was dating who ("Who's Dria Lockaby again?" "Angelina, she was your TUTOR"), and mass-murderer Sirius Black's escape from Azkaban.

"What if we die? What if he sneaks into Hogwarts and kills us all?"

Lydia snorted. "Heidi, how in Merlin's name would he sneak into Hogwarts? He must be on every Ministry blacklist. They'll be watching out for him."

"Who'll be watching out for who?" A voice said, and the compartment door slid open. Lee Jordan, Jules Roland and Fred and George Weasley stepped in.

"Hey guys!" Alicia said, shuffling closer to Angelina so Lee could sit down. "Lydia says the Ministry will be looking out for Sirius Black."

"There's too many people in here," Heidi said, but she tried her best to make room and only rolled her eyes once when the Weasley twins sat on either side of her. The window seat was mine, arsehole.

George made an unattractive noise. "We did not just escape Prefect Percy's lecture to bump into this."

"How very mature," Heidi muttered. George grinned boyishly, and she tried not to slap him.

"You went to Egypt, right?" Lydia asked politely from the other side of Fred, sending Heidi a warning glance behind his back. "I saw it in the Daily Prophet."

"Yeah," Fred said. "We tried to leave Percy behind, but he kept coming back."

"We tried to shut him in a pyramid," George explained, "but Mum spotted us." Lydia opened her mouth, before deciding not to say anything. Instead, she reached inside her bag and pinned a prefect badge on her robes.

As the train sped further north, the rain drummed heavier and heavier onto the windows. Alicia had fallen asleep on Angelina's shoulder, and Jules and Lydia were discussing the Ministry's handling of the Sirius Black case with a running commentary from Lee. Heidi had long since given up trying to read ─ both Gaposchkin and the twins seemed intent on distracting her.

"Ugh, I just want off this goddamn train," Angelina near-shouted over the roaring wind. Alicia started awake at the sound of her booming voice, blinking sleepily. "We must be almost there."

As if on cue, the train began slowing down. "Finally," Heidi muttered, "get me off this train before I murder someone on it ─ you'll be first to go." She glared at George.

"Anything for you, Gorgeous," George said. "Especially considering how kind you are."

"We can't be there yet," Jules said. "We've only been on this train for an hour, just about."

"Only an hour?" Heidi threw her hands up in the air. "Give me strength."

"So why've we stopped?" Lee asked. The wind and the rain grew into a deafening crescendo, battering against the window. Lydia stood up and poked her head out of the compartment door, but she fell back all of a sudden when the train came to a complete, abrupt stop. Fortunately, Jules was there to catch her.

Heidi was less fortunate ─ her backpack tumbled off the racks above her. Gaposchkin squawked and leapt for safety, right onto George's shoulders. The lamps went out and, in total darkness, Heidi swatted George's elbow.

"What was that for!"

"Give me back my cat!"

"What the bloody fuck is going on?" Angelina said. "That's my foot, Alicia, you prick!"

"Has the train broken down, do you think?" Jules asked.

George wiped part of the window clean, and stared out. "I think people are getting on, something's moving . . ."

"I'm going to ask the driver what's going on," Lydia said decisively; however, before she could stand up to open the door it flew open seemingly of its own accord. Behind it, to Heidi's horror, was a cloaked figure that almost swallowed the empty space of the compartment. Its face was concealed by its cloak, but a hand was revealed, a hand came towards them, slimy and grey and decayed.

An intense cold swept over them, and Heidi's breath caught in her chest, burning inside her lungs. She wanted to scream; she needed to scream, to breathe, to cry, but the insistent cold inside her chest forbade her from doing anything other than shaking.

All at once, it was gone ─ the Hogwarts Express was moving and the lights had come back on. Heidi looked around, shivering. Lydia and Jules were on the floor; Lee, Alicia and Angelina had crowded together. Fred pushed his red hair out of his eyes, looking like he'd rather be anywhere but on that train. Gaposchkin was still clinging to George, and Heidi carefully unwrapped her from around George's shoulders.

They looked towards the door; Professor McGonagall was standing there, as white as a ghost. "Thank Merlin I took the train this year ─ what was Albus thinking," she muttered, and moved on.

"What the fuck just happened," said Angelina, sitting up straight. There was a nervous tremor in her voice Heidi had never heard before, not even when they had spent a year living in fear of a giant snake.

"A dementor," said Lydia. "They guard Azkaban. I don't know what they're doing here, though."

Someone banged on the door, and it opened to reveal Draco Malfoy, two years below them. He was shivering, and his face looked both pale and red at the same time, a sharp contrast to his bleached hair. He looked around at them all, turned, and ran.

"He looks about ready to wet himself," Fred said.

Heidi spluttered, and all at once they began laughing ─ a nervous, shaky laughter, but laughter nonetheless.

𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫 ─
take a shot every time
i say 'compartment'.