Blood Sisters

Chapter 1

Introduction & Mysterious Letters from Unexpected Places

***

Major characters: Ginger and Yvonne Foster, Ginevra Weasley, Lucius and Draco Malfoy, Bill Weasley, Julius Rhok, Alexander Rhok, Harry Potter, Gregory Lastrange, and, finally, a new DADA teacher.

***
Ginger quickly glanced at her watch as she finished typing up her report. Her eyes widened as she saw that it was almost 8:30pm, an hour after she was supposed to have left. Yves would be worried. Sometimes Ginger wondered if she really was the older sister. She sighed and finished typing, a pen in her teeth and her foot bouncing, the long brown heel tapping the desk.

She printed out the report and laid it on her boss's desk for him to find in the morning. The twenty-one year old woman tried to straighten out all the papers on her desk, but failed and attempted to shove them all into her briefcase. She picked up the briefcase, squished a stack of books under her arm and picked up an empty coffee cup in the other.

The door proved more difficult. Luckily, someone had thought to put a rock in between the heavy metal door and the doorpost to jam it, and she was able to wedge it open with her high-heeled toe.
Once she was out she kicked the rock into the gravel driveway, as she was the last one in the office. As usual.

Reaching her little yellow Toyota that needed a new paint job and air conditioning, she set the coffee cup on the roof of the car and shoved all her papers and over-stuffed briefcase into the backseat. After sitting down in her seat she opened the top few buttons of her deep red blouse and fanned herself with some of her papers. Still feeling sweaty, she took off her shoes and stripped off her pantyhose, put her shoes back on and turned the key in the ignition. Lighting a cigarette, she started to back out of her parking spot when she heard a loud crash!

"Oh fuck," she muttered, annoyed with herself. Ah well, it was a cheap one.

Ginger looked up for a minute, and was suddenly captivated by the beauty of the sunset over Stanley Park. It was an extremely large park of 1,000 acres and swam in a swirling sea of majestic hemlock, cedar and fir trees. The light of the sun tinged the tops of the trees with golden light.

Fully aware that she should get going, she turned off the car and sat back to enjoy the sight. She felt exhausted. She worked too much for too little, seven days a week to support her and her eleven-year-old-going-on-twenty-one sister. When she had first gone into journalism, she had figured that a busy, large city like Vancouver would be perfect to make a start. However, it cost too much to live in the city itself and so her and her sister had found a quaint little farmhouse out in Surrey, a couple of hours drive from Vancouver.

Ginger played with a large gold hoop earring and snapped out of her trance, she really needed to get home.

After digging around in her purse a bit, she pulled out some lipstick and applied it looking in the rearview mirror and brushed a couple red and gold curls out of her face. She pushed on some sunglasses, turned the key and was off.

The drive home, though long and tiresome, was beautiful and always captivated her. Before heading for the bridge she rolled down her window and headed for Tim Horton's. She really needed more coffee. The redhead winked at the boy who handed her the drink over her sunglasses and headed off, turning the music up and singing to Sara McLachlan:

Though I've tried I've fallen
I have sunk so low
I messed up
Better I should know
So don't come round here and
Tell me I told you so

She slowed down at a red light, and stopped singing long enough to realize the punk sixteen year old in the beat up Honda next to her had his gaze fixed on her chest. She wore a 34C and the tight blouse did nothing to hide the fact. She stuck her tongue out at him like a spoiled five year old and slammed her foot on the gas peddle.

While crossing the bridge she dug out her ancient cell phone and dialed her home number, turning the music down and stubbing the cigarette in the car ashtray.

"Hello, Yves speaking."

"Hey Yvonne honey, it's Ginger. I'm at the bridge heading home. Got a little caught up."

"Jesus Gin, stop scaring me like that. You know you should come home as soon as you can. It's not like Joe pays you for the extra work. Besides, I hate having to eat supper alone everyday."

"Awwh, c'mon sis, I'm only trying to help us out. Besides, since when did you start going all motherly on me?"

"Sorry, it's just that if anything happened to you I'd be alone and scared and I'll shut up now. Point is, don't do it again. I know you enjoy your work, and your new story sounds interesting, but you need to live too."

Ginger could hear the dangerous tone in her younger sister's voice, and if she wasn't careful she'd be eating fast food for the next week. "OK, sure, I promise that tomorrow I will be home on time. How does that sound?"

"Great, if it means anything," Yvonne grumbled and muttered something else that Ginger didn't quite catch. "See you later."

"Love you."

"Love you too."

"Bye"

"Later."

*
Yvonne tiredly put down the phone. Her sister could really piss her off sometimes. She loved her though, and wouldn't have her any other way.

Ginger and Yves Foster couldn't be more different. Ginger was fiery, passionate and daring. Her diet consisted of beer, coffee, chocolate and her sister's cooking. When Ginger walked down the street, everyone noticed her. Her quick temper and tough attitude along with her revealing wardrobe caught every male's attention around for six blocks.

Yvonne was quieter, more sensible and much more conservative. She was smart, and believed in good grades, a healthy diet and caution. The only caffeine she drank was in her nightly cup of peppermint tea. Her hair was sun-bleached from working on the house in her spare time out in the sun and her fine bone structure and long-sleeved turtlenecks even in the summer made her appear even more fragile. Her sister radiated beauty and strength; Yvonne was quietly intelligent.

Yves wandered over to the fridge and after clearing aside the dozen or so beer bottles, making a small face of disgust, took out a small can of orange juice and headed for the living room where she settled in the blue faded comfy chair and picked up her sketchbook.

After taking a sip of juice, she picked up a drawing pencil and began to sketch the outline of a gorgeous yellow rose sitting on the three-legged coffee table. Six or seven encyclopaedias had been used to replace the fourth leg. She began to fill in the details of the rose, tilting the pencil to create soft lines. Finally, she took a different pencil that was a shade darker and filled in the shadows.

By the time she was done it was 9:30pm. She got up, stretched, and peered out the window through the musty, yellow curtains. It was dark by now; Gin probably wouldn't be home for another half hour. Leaving a note on the table saying that a stir fry was in the microwave, she headed up the stairs, shoulders sagging.

She didn't notice the dark shape lurking by the window in the shadows.

*
The sun slowly sunk down into the vibrant sea of crimson and gold clouds, bathing the pink-and-purple-tinged hills in its final light. The gorgeous red jewel dipped lower into the horizon, before disappearing in a cloud of fuchsia and violet, the deep blue sky above showing cloudless with the last few stars showing their shy faces after the sun had gone down.

The beauty captivated Yvonne, standing on the highest hill, looking out over the beautiful scenery. Her unbound hair whipped in front of her face, tickling her tanned nose and passing over her black sunglasses. She sighed, feeling the darkness of the night pressing around her, and turned on her bare heel to walk slowly towards the newly painted, little white farmhouse with the roses blooming around.

"Hey, Gin, you home yet?" Her call was answered by a slightly muffled sound from the other room, and someone stumbled over something as she heard a loud crash! She grinned. That was Ginger all right; probably not able to see anything over the stacks of papers she always seemed to come home with. The life of a journalist, she'd say. A disorganized journalist, Yves thought.

The door slammed, almost making the entire house sway, and Yvonne, still grinning, went out to the living room to help her sister. She moved around the two stubby, flat chairs and the coffee table that she had set a huge bouquet of roses on earlier, and carefully stepped over the coat rack that Ginger had tripped over before reaching her sister where she was sitting, papers with typed reports all over them floating around her. Yvonne stifled a giggle and offered her a hand, which she gladly took, and pulled her up, before the two moved around, bent over, trying to gather up all the papers.

"You missed one by the door, Yves," Gin said, glancing over at her sister. After the papers had all been assembled, the older sister dug around in her purse for a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, tightened her long red braid and started to re-organize her work. "Tough day at the office. Stacy left during lunch break saying that she had "some work to attend to" that prissy snob, I bet she just wanted to go home and paint her toenails. Tony just keeps on getting in the way, I'd really like to give him a good kick in the ass sometimes-"

"Ginger!" Yvonne cried, attempting to give her sister a disapproving look while trying not to burst out laughing before the redhead continued with her story. "Well, it's true! The pig lies around all day with his feet on his desk and a bag of doughnuts in his hand, complaining that he's stressed and can't work, when he hasn't written a single article all day! I can't wait till we get that new office space, then I'll be able to completely shut him out! Honestly, the boss doesn't even notice that I'm the only one with at least some expertise in journalism!" With that she sat back on an old, creaky rocking chair, loaded with pillows, puffing at a few strands of hair that had come out of her braid.

Yvonne shook her head. Poor, tired Ginger. Good thing she made garlic bread with supper, it was Ginger's favourite and would probably cheer her up. "Well then, why doesn't the boss...whotsisname?"

"Joe," her sister prompted.

"Why doesn't Joe fire them if they're doing such a crummy job?"

Gin shook her head. "Tony and his dad go way back, he could never get rid of him without a fight, and Stacy's loaded with this inheritance money from a great aunt or something, don't know why she even bothers to come to the office anymore. Probably to brag."

"It must be nice to have so much money."

Ginger stopped rocking and looked over at her sister, her perfect eyebrows drawn together. After they had sold their house for some extra cash after the death of their parents, the two had set off, Yvonne being merely eleven and Ginger eighteen, to find a cheap home to settle down in and let the shock of the death wear away. After much searching and stretching of money, they had stumbled upon the little farmhouse, paint peeling and a dead garden, though with much love and work (mostly by Yves as Ginger had to go into town every day) they had transformed it into their home.

"What is it?" Yvonne asked, and Ginger snapped out of her reverie, looking in the reflection of her sister's glasses and realising she had deep worry lines on her forehead. She smoothed them out and switched the subject. "Take those glasses off, will you?"

"Oh, sorry," the younger girl mumbled. "Forgot I had them on."

As she bent down to set them on a stool, she noticed a paper she and her sister had missed. She leaned over the arm of the chair to pick it up, and noticed that it was heavy paper...and it had her name written on it, scrawled in red ink:

Yvonne Evangeline Foster
The largest bedroom, second floor
148 Picket Avenue
Surrey, British-Columbia
Canada

"Um, Gin, where did this come from?"

The redhead reached over to pluck the letter from her sister's hand. She shrugged her shoulders, and said, "Must have picked it up out of the mailbox when I came in."

To Ms Yvonne Evangeline Foster,
You have been accepted into Drumstrang Academy of Magick for Witches and Wizards. As you are muggle-born (non-magical family), Professor Lastrange will be with you in approximately 2 hours and thirty-three minutes after you receive this letter. Drumstrang is situated in Northern Russia, hidden with a powerful cloaking spell so as no non-magical folk may see us. That we remain hidden is vital, so please keep this information confidential.

We strongly suggest that you do your school shopping in Diagon Alley, a famous wizarding community where most young witches and wizards find what they need. Professor Lastrange will aid you in this. Remember that first, second and third years are not aloud proper Quidditch (wizard sport) brooms, as it is important that we ensure the safety of all students.

We are the only International Magick school known, so do not feel intimidated that you will be the only Canadian present. However, it is extremely rare that Drumstrang allows muggle-borns to learn magick, and we hope that you will excuse any rude or vulgar comments issued from any of the students.

Thank-you for your co-operation, we will see you September 1st.
Georgina LaFontaine
Deputy Headmistress

The two girls bent over the letter, eyes widening as they absorbed the words.

"This is some kind of joke," Ginger said flatly.

"No, it's not," Yves replied hesitantly, "I can feel it. It's...real. There is such a school as Drumstrang, and I, somehow, have been accepted."
Ginger sat back and read the letter over again. Yvonne went through the other contents of the envelope: a list of supplies, some instruction, school rules, and finally a small note to Ginger, saying that all expenses will be taken care of by the school.

"I don't like the sound of it," the redhead harrumphed. " 'And we hope that you will excuse any rude or vulgar comments issued from any of the students'? Sounds like racism, to me. There is no WAY that you are going to that kind of school. And, you'll be gone for what, nine months? Russia's far away, it's not like you'll be able to come home for the holidays, except for maybe Christmas. What'll I do without you," she wailed, throwing up her hands in exasperation.

"You're a grown woman, Gin. I'm sure you'll manage," Yvonne shot back coolly. "It's not like I'm already going to school or anything. This would be amazing." Ginger swore under her breath, and muttered something about getting the place tidied up if "Professor Lastrange" was going to get there, before getting up and heading to the kitchen. Yvonne chewed on her lip for a while, before getting up and heading into the other room to help her sister.

***
Lyrics by the lovely Sara McLachlan.

Well, there's not much about Drumstrang in the books, so I'm pretty much inventing as I go along. Just trying out something a little more original.

NEXT CHAPTER: At the burrow. Time for a little chapter about Ginny, as she bakes cookies, avoids her twin brothers (who STILL haven't moved out) wrestles with Ron, paints her toenails in a desperate act of trying to find SOME femininity within herself, and writes in her new and VERY improved diary.