4Title- Stacey the Great
Author- 4give4get
Rated- T
Disclaimer- I do own Harry Potter.
Serena- Thanks for clicking on this story—you have no idea.
NOTE BEFORE YOU READ: This is a sequel. It probably won't be quite as good if you don't read the first story first. It's called Just Stacey. Thanks.
Inimitable…
I am Stacey. A lot of people know me. I'm inimitable. Heh, try saying THAT five times fast. Anyway, for those of you who don't know what "inimitable" means, no sweat, I'll tell you! Inimitable literally translates into "unique," "matchless," or "one and only."
I am inimitable.
That's probably about the only thing I've got going for me right now. I am a fifteen-almost-sixteen year old girl with her report card from last semester in her hand and feeling the long-term effects of zero effort in school.
Of course, around exams I had just recently lost the boy I was convinced I loved or something. Nothing big though…
I'm sure you're all dying to know my grades, so why don't you just take the list?
Student: Stacey Dorcas Parker
Year Completed: 4
Fillius Flitwick, Charms- O
Severus Snape, Potions- A
Aurora Sinistra, Astronomy- O
Culthbert Binns, History of Magic- D
Pomona Sprout, Herbology- O
Sybil Trewlawny, Divination- E
Charity Burbage, Muggle Studies- O
I clutch my report card in my fists, crumbling the paper. I hate Professor Binns with a burning passion. I only got an Acceptable in Potions because I was pretty much the only one in our year to write the essay that was the last assignment of the term. I bombed the History of Magic exam and got what was coming to me: a D for Dreadful.
I am sitting in the carriages pulled by themselves with Bethany, Naomi, Summer, and Ella. The night sky is clear, and we have a view of the luminescent castle ahead. Believe it or not, I'm glad to be back. First, after Cedric died, I was glad to get away from the school. Spending the summer in London was good for nursing the loss, but going back to school is the first step to forgetting. Yes, I am on a mission to forget Cedric Diggory.
I threw out the notebooks where two years worth of mushy Cedric-poetry resided. I hardly spoke to anyone last summer—not even Gwen. I got stacks and stacks of letters from Bethany, Summer, Naomi, and Ella, demanding that I reply, demanding that I meet them somewhere, but most of them simply were shoved in the corner of my drawer.
"What the fuck, Stacey?" Bethany demanded as we met at the train, "I wrote you fifty-seven letters and I didn't get a single reply!"
"I wrote you forty-five letters!" Summer put in.
"I lost count," Naomi said, glaring at me.
Ella's too shy to point out my shortcomings, God bless her.
"Er… I'm sorry?" I pleaded.
I got lucky—they only chewed me out for the better part of a few hours, and are still a bit bitter towards me. But that was the two months I spent wallowing in self-pity, missing Cedric. I'm done with that now! I'm going back to the way I was—before Cedric was ever in the picture.
"What are you angry about?" Summer asks me, noticing how I'm beating on a slip of paper.
"That prick, Binns," I seethe, "Thinks he can give thee Stacey a D, hmmm?"
"Uh, Stacey you got every question on the exams wrong," Naomi reminds me.
"You only didn't get a T because you had a halfway decent grade from the beginning of the year," Ella says quietly.
They're right, you know.
Screw them all.
"I didn't even show up for the Potions exam," I mutter.
"I know," Bethany cracks up laughing, "I couldn't believe it!"
"Well," I stand up in the carriage, and yell to the sky, "That is no more! This year, I, Stacey, will do something right!"
The carriage went over a rock and I am sent sprawling to the floor of it, twisting my ankle. Pain shoots up my whole leg and I bite my lip and cry out.
"MOTHER FUCKER!"
My ankle hurts like hell, but I manage to climb back on to the seat… and see that everyone in the neighboring carriages are all staring at me thanks to my outburst. You know me too—I don't often use words like that.
"What the…"
I stick my ankle on Bethany's lap. She pokes it with her finger and I cry out. Summer leans over Ella to get a closer look.
"I think that's a sprain," she says calmly.
I turn to look at everyone who's staring, "Why don't you take a picture: it lasts longer!"
"You see this pair of scissors?" Naomi shouts at them, pulling a pair of scissors out of her pocket, "If you feel something really painful in the middle of the night, it's because I'm cutting your legs off!"
"Overkill," Summer whispers, and indeed everyone is eyeing us more than ever. Like we're insane people, or something.
The carriages make it to the castle and I have to walk with the support of Ella and Summer. Naomi still hasn't re-pocketed her scissors. My ankle hurts so bad, I feel like it's on fire or something.
So my first moments back at Hogwarts are in the hospital wing getting my sprain fixed, but soon I can walk on it again, and I'm back in time to see the sorting. Not that it's all that interesting. That poor hat. He sits on a shelf all year making up random little songs about the different houses. Even I have more of a life than that.
You know, I bet he uses repeats from, like, hundreds of years ago because no one's going to know the difference. Yeah, I bet these are all repeats. Damn lazy-ass hat.
And get a load of this—as it should happen, I'm sitting practically right across the table from my fellow Ravenclaw sister, Miss Cho Chang. Man, what a bitch. I can't deny she's beautiful, though. God, she is about fifty-times better looking than I am.
But I'm still better. Remember that.
I look coolly into her eyes and meet her glance, not backing off for a second. She sniffs—although I cannot hear it over the low murmuring of everyone in the great hall speaking at once—and instantly turns to her friend, Marietta Edgecombe.
Marietta is a fake blonde. Okay, I've seen WAY worse dye-jobs, but we all know that no one has PURE blonde hair and that you have to get occasional touch-ups to keep the color. But like I said, it doesn't really look bad, just describing it for you all.
She's fairly pretty herself. She has a perfect light tan and pretty green eyes. She's got a slender build and if I were a boy I would probably have the hots for her—like many of the guys in this school. But also, she's got the biggest mouth in the whole universe. She just talks, and talks, AND TALKS, until you want to stab yourself with the first thing you can lay your hands on.
Marietta's ditzy too. She's about as deep as an evaporating puddle and as sharp as a wet noodle. I think from every conversation you have with her, you loose another five IQ points or something. Anyway, Cho and Marietta make a GOOD team. Please tell me you get my double-meaning…
Anyway, they both glare daggers at me the whole meal. Damn, you'd think I'd stolen her boyfriend last year or something… Ha, ha.
A new professor is introduced. Professor Umbridge. She's a short, fat, toad-like woman in a ugliest sweater I've ever seen in all sixteen years of my life. She ought to sue the store that makes clothing like that.
She has an annoying laugh that sounds like hem, hem and she even interrupts Professor Dumbledore! We're all rather shocked. It makes me frown. Who does this woman think she is? I've seen people that are full of themselves—but there is something different about her. She's not going to be our average Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Well, average for us, anyway.
There was a lot in the Daily Prophet about Alastor Moody being locked in a trunk for eight months and an Azkaban escapee was disguised as him. So it wasn't really Professor Moody that made me consider suicide for a very long week last year. It was really some dangerous criminal named Crouch.
Hmm, and I here I was all shocked that he'd do such a cruel thing like hanging my Cedric-notes on the board, when he was really capable of killing somebody. Well, it was also all over the Daily Prophet that Crouch was an inside spy for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Harry Potter claimed he saw the said dark wizard come back to life the night Cedric died. Ergo, Cedric was killed by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. When I read that story, I didn't feel like going back into a sob fest that Cedric was dead. No. I felt suddenly cold. I just sat, rigid and cold on my futon and stared at the newspaper in my hands.
This is not a storybook. This is not a novel. I was suddenly met with the harsh realness of my life. Of course, the Daily Prophet has done nothing but deny that story. The Minister of Magic denies it. Everyone in any kind of position of power swears over and over that Harry Potter is nothing but a bratty little kid wanting media attention.
Back in reality, I look over at the Gryffindor table and look at Harry Potter for myself. He's with his friends as usual. The redhead kid Ron Weasly and the smart girl Hermione Granger who would never know it but helped Binns give me a D because I didn't know who Ngoz Foulhand was.
But there's no bitterness. She can't help it if she's the next Albert Einstein.
The three are upset about something Umbridge is saying. Good god, is that woman still talking? I look up to the teacher's seats to see that she is. Good greif… I look at Harry closer (I'm hardly the only one to be staring, he is the Boy Who Lived, after all.) And wonder if he was capable of telling such a lie about He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Well, you don't just joke around about that kind of thing…
I look back to my plate and see that Cho is glaring at me again. I ignore her this time and join in to the conversation Naomi and Summer are having.
After the feast, we all climb up the stairs to our dorms. We're pressured to go right to sleep by the Head Boy and Girl, but we all know we'll be staying up past midnight talking and making a mess of the place as we always do on the first night back. I pass a corner and someone grabs my wrist. I turn to see who it is.
Cho Chang. She pulls me out of the crowd, so that in an empty, fairly dark classroom it's just her and me. I pull my hand away.
"Let go of me," I spit.
"I saw where you were looking, Parker, and if I were you I'd take care not to look that way again!" she lets go of me, but her face is close to mine.
I am confused at first, but then realize it. Just where was I looking back in the Great Hall? Harry Potter. Looks like Cho has found her next prey. But I openly laugh.
"You think I want any part of Potter?" I demand, quite amused indeed.
"I saw you looking!" Cho looks about to dig the heels of her stilettos into my face. She isn't a very practical shoe-wearing girl, you see.
"And you think I'll take him from you?" I ask disbelievingly. How could a girl like Cho actually acknowledge a girl like me as competition? She's beautiful!
"Why not? You took Cedric from me!' she snaps.
"I did not, he just broke up with you, Cho!"
"Only when you came into the picture."
"Yeah!" I am curling my hands into fists now as to refrain myself from slapping her over the face, "After you decided to put me in the hospital wing for a night!"
We are clutching each other's shoulders and digging our nails into each other's skin as we snarl insults back and forth. Finally, she's had enough and she shoves me roughly back into the wall.
Bitch.
I try to shove her back, but the classroom door is flung open and harsh hands grab my arm and hold me back. Professor McGonagall. She has a very hard grip for an older woman, let me tell you.
Damn, why does she have to interrupt just when I was about to beat up Cho Chang? Life is so not fair. Professor McGonagall is pissed, however.
"This is the most atrocious behavior I have seen between two young ladies in ten out of forty-nine years of teaching!" she thunders at us both, "I expect such between boys, but at Hogwarts we have much higher expectations for our female students. If I see this happening again, I will be inclined to present you both straight to your House Head! I will not this time, however."
"Er… you won't?" This surprises me. Usually fighting or anything equivalent is punished rather severely.
"Believe it or not, I was a girl once too," she tells me through pursed, proper lips, "I do not know what this is about, but I have a fair idea. I want you two to stay away from each other from this point forth. Do you both understand?"
"Yes, Professor."
"Yes, Professor."
Professor McGonagall doesn't let go of my until we're out of the classroom and back into the hall. Cho and I meet eyes one last time, before we lose each other in the crowd. This year would be interesting.
Well, this year I'm inimitable.
End Chapter
Serena- Hope you all liked it, please review! I accept flames.