Raina Rogue

2 » How to Kick Ass Without Ruining Nail Polish

Raina smiled woodenly at the boy sitting across from her. He'd made her curious at first, but, strangely enough, they simply didn't have much in common. He liked gaming and soccer, and that wouldn't be so bad if he didn't always speak of it. Raina, for some strange reason, hadn't kept up with either of those trends. She'd been willing to learn at first, but hadn't found it nearly as fun as watching muggle T.V. shows with Lola had been.

Also, he was human. Usually that wasn't a problem for Raina, she hadn't seen many non-humans recently (except when she looked in the mirror), and he couldn't exactly help it. His muggle status made little difference either, except for the fact that she could tell him nothing about her schooling or where she'd been her whole life.

The lies just kept building up. Sometimes she forgot which story to stick to. Was she from Sweden this time? An exchange student? Did she have an accent?

She couldn't wait until school started.

-

When she finally left her mess of a date to finish her shift she decided that she didn't need money that badly. She had good broomstick (due to Draco Malfoy joining the Quidditch team) and she could fly perfectly fine without one. She didn't need a pet and her Grandfather usually helped out with the school supplies. Maybe the job was just work experience, although Raina had no intention of being a barista.

While she had intended to work over summer, she hadn't intended to date. She never did, really, but at least there was no second guessing his feelings for her. She'd felt his admiration from across the shop, glancing up from his cup of coffee.

She could do that by the way, except usually it wasn't admiration people felt for her. That day, however, she'd been wearing her glamour.

It was a veela thing.

A three-quarters veela thing.

Or maybe just a Raina thing. With her it was difficult to tell.

It was a recent development, after all. Puberty had hit her like a truck, but the veela side of her had hit her like a bull enhanced with a bad engorgement charm. She'd had it under control for a while, but keeping that much magic locked inside yourself never ended well. The hallucinations hadn't been so bad at first. When she'd started seeing spiders crawling under her skin and reality had become a strange, abstract, thing, she decided she'd let her glamour out.

The thing with glamour was that it didn't just make you beautiful. It made you flawless. Perfect. Irresistible to men and some woman. This was all fine and dandy if you were a full veela, who enjoyed stealing souls and used glamour for attempted world dominations, but it wasn't exactly ideal for someone attempting only to finish her senior year.

With top marks, of course.

And then the news of the new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor came through. The letter was from Dumbledore directly, advising her to keep her half-breed status quiet.

So from the sounds of it, that year Raina would be hiding her species, trying to get good grades, keeping up her prefect duties, and attempting to have some semblance of a social life even in the face of the inter-house conflict the whole 'revival of the dark lord' thing had brought up.

But there was no way she'd end up involved in that, right?

Then again, Raina was always involved one way or another. This year she wasn't sure who to blame. Perhaps it was Dumbledore, with his peculiar penchant for involving high school-age children. Perhaps it was the way she always seemed to figure things out. Either way, the letter Dumbledore had sent her also included instructions to be ready to be brought to 'The Order Of the Phoenix' for a few nights later that week.