Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1146 (1342 with footnotes)
Characters: Madeleine Yaxley (OC), Maggie Lewis (OC)

If it had not been for the passion they shared, Maggie Lewis and Madeleine Yaxley would probably not have been friends. After all, Maggie was only a second year, and in Ravenclaw, to boot. Fourth year Slytherin Madeleine regarded her and her giggly friends as little girls, while she saw herself as a sophisticated young woman. She never gave Maggie a second thought until one spring day toward the end of the school year.

It was a warm and sunny afternoon in early April. The school had emptied for the Easter holiday, but a few students, including Madeleine, had opted to stay at Hogwarts during the break. Madeleine's mother was off touring Morocco with her latest paramour, and Madeleine could not see the sense in packing up all her things just to go home and spend the holiday by herself. So it was that on that fateful afternoon, she was lounging by the lake, her cloak spread out on the grass beneath her, turning the pages of a book.

So engrossed was she in her reading that she might not have noticed the other girl if her shadow had not fallen across the page.

Madeleine looked up, annoyed. "What do you want?"

The auburn-haired girl did not take the hint, but instead flopped down on the grass beside her. "Is that the new Freya Lovelace?" she asked.

A blush stained Madeleine's cheeks, and she quickly turned the book face down. "No."

"It is, isn't it?" Maggie seemed utterly delighted at her discovery. "Can I see it? I don't have that one yet."

Reluctantly, Madeleine handed the book over. The cover showed a woman in a pink shirt and blue jeans, swooning in the embrace of a shirtless, muscular man wearing a tool belt, as they sprawled across the bonnet of an automobile. Madeleine's blush deepened.

Maggie was chattering away happily. "I didn't think anyone else at Hogwarts read these," she said. "I can't believe you do! I mean, they're about Muggles, and you're --" Maggie broke off suddenly, and it was her turn to blush.

"They're just stories," Madeleine said tartly. "It's not like they're real Muggles."

Maggie grinned. "I bet your parents don't feel that way."

"No," Madeleine sighed, resigning herself to conversation. "Mum says that they encourage dangerous and subversive ideas. What about your parents?"

Maggie rolled her eyes. "Mum read one. Electric Nights, I think. She said it was silly but probably harmless."

"They're not silly," retorted Madeleine. "She's a really good writer. She's a pure-blood, but it's like she knows all about Muggles."

Maggie nodded. "I heard that she spent a year living as a Muggle, just for research.⁽¹⁾ Do you think it's true?"

Madeleine shrugged. "I don't know. It sounds horrible. Have you read her first series? The 'Sphinx's Riddle' books? There's not a single Muggle in them, and they're brilliant. Those were the first ones I read. I wish she'd get back to writing proper characters again."

"Why do you read these ones, then?" Maggie asked, idly flipping the pages of the book in question.

Madeleine made a face. "I really like her writing style. It's hard to find anyone else who writes half as well."⁽²⁾

"Not to mention her love scenes are always really steamy," Maggie teased with a sly grin.

The dark-haired Slytherin gave her a reluctant half-smile. "Yeah, there's that," she admitted. "But they're not very realistic. In my experience, sex is a lot -- stickier than it is in her books."

Maggie's eyes went round. "In your experience? Louisa said you'd -- but I wasn't sure if it was true."

Madeleine shrugged. "Once or twice," she said carelessly, as if sex were no big deal.

"Who was it with?" Maggie asked breathlessly.

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Madeleine was actually smiling by this time. "Are you saying you've never thought about it? I've seen you following that Remus Lupin around, and everyone knows about the love potion fiasco."

Maggie blushed. "I just really like him. He doesn't even know I'm alive, though," she said with a sigh. She turned back to the book in her hands. "Sometimes I wish I was more like the girls in these. They always get the hot guys."

"So why don't you give it a try?" Madeleine asked.

Maggie seemed puzzled. "Give what a try?"

"Write your own. Then you could get whatever hot guy you wanted. And do whatever you wanted with him," she added wickedly.

Maggie looked thoughtfully at the book's shiny cover. "Maybe," she said. "But I'd hardly know what to write. I mean, for -- you know -- love scenes and stuff."

"Oh, that's no problem!" Madeleine assured her. "I can tell you anything you want to know."

Maggie was still looking slightly skeptical. "You really think you could write a better love scene than Freya Lovelace?"

"Why not?" Madeleine said airily. "I know I could out-write you any day!"

And so a kind of friendship began. Over the weeks of the Easter holiday, the girls shared ideas, stories, and not a few giggles. Warm days would find them down by the lake, reading aloud to one another from the previous night's efforts, and occasionally rolling on the grass in helpless mirth.

All the "what ifs" of their favourite books, which each had long pondered privately, became pages and pages of feverish scrawl upon parchment which well-meaning parents had intended for classroom notes and essays. Under the loving and imaginative guidance of Maggie and Madeleine, relatively minor characters took on lives of their own, and the leading men and women made choices that would have caused even the saucy Miss Lovelace to blush. And of course they wrote new characters, with their own features and mannerisms, to interact with the characters on the page, and made the bold young heroes fall in love with them.⁽³⁾

The other students returned and classes resumed, and Madeleine might have chosen to pretend once more that the Ravenclaw girl was beneath her notice, but Maggie would not let her. She pestered her with questions, and slipped notes with new plot ideas to her in the library, until the Slytherin girl gave in. Madeleine was brimming with ideas, and there was no one else with whom she could share them. None of her housemates would ever have understood.

When summer came, the girls exchanged addresses before parting at King's Cross station. They exhausted their owls, sending pages of notes and stories back and forth almost daily, and Maggie spent half of the month of August with Madeleine and her mother while her own parents were away on holiday.

Maggie was convinced that their friendship would last forever, and Madeleine was beginning to learn that there might be more to life than blood purity, Slytherin pride, and boys. Little did they know that something was headed towards Hogwarts which would sunder their newfound bond forever.

1. Research is important to the writing of a good story; perhaps even moreso in fanfiction than in original fiction, since you're more likely to hear about it from your readers if you mess something up. People hate seeing glaring inaccuracies in anything to do with the things they love. In the Harry Potter fandom there is very little excuse not to check up on facts like how certain spells and character names are spelled. It's good to keep the Harry Potter Lexicon and Wikipedia open in your browser when you're writing.

2. Writing style is as important as plot if you want to keep people reading. The better you get at character development and the basics of spelling, grammar, and punctuation, the more positive feedback you are likely to get.

3. Authorial avatars, or self-insert characters (original characters meant to resemble the author of the story) are, like masturbation, a perfectly normal, healthy part of growing up. They may be a lot of fun for you, and your friends might fly into fits of giggles discussing them, but that does not mean the world at large will care about them as much as you do.

M.A.R.Y.S.U.E. Must Die! © 2007 Skjaere