the kiss list, adrian pucey
𝒔𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓, 𝟏𝟗𝟗𝟐

chapter one, THE LOCH NESS MONSTER

✧ ━━━ · ✦ · ━━━ ✧

WHEN BIANCA WOKE UP ON SEPTEMBER first 1992, starting her sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she had mixed feelings. Yes, she would be going back to school and starting lessons again, and sure, she would see Leo again (despite seeing him not that long ago) but she'd also be returning to the place that was full of sexist douchebags and Adrian Pucey. That was enough to not want to go.

So after procrastinating for just over twenty minutes whilst lying in her exceedingly comfortable bed and making herself look as presentable as possible (even though it wasn't exactly hard), she left her already empty house.

Her parents were workaholics. She saw them from time to time when she decided to come home for the holidays, but they would be in and out of the house, most of the time spent at work, and to Bianca, it came across that their work was more important to them than their own daughter. They told her that was not true, but the little time they spent as a family and the countless birthdays she spent alone with no one but the family's butler, Andrew (a muggle) and a single birthday card, piled high with money to make up for not being there, she thought otherwise.

Platform nine and three quarters was actually one of Bianca's favourite places. And although first years, returning students and parents were all shoulder to shoulder, in each other's faces, no personal space, no exceptions, she enjoyed how alive the place was. She liked the idea that a whole world was hidden behind a wall on an ordinary London train station's platform; that muggles (bar a few exceptions) were completely unbeknown to such a wonderful place.

She abandoned her pet owl, Marty (after Marty McFly, of course, who was technically useless to her due to not being able to send letters to her parents that had yet to learn the art of using a bird as a postman. She begged her parents for him nonetheless and considered him a best friend) and her load of luggage and boarded the train.

She began searching what seemed like an endless road of compartments, all of which were not the one she was looking for. But, luckily for her, one did have the exact people she wanted to see, first thing after arriving at the station.

She had hoped she wouldn't run into Adrian Pucey this early on, and yet the universe had different ideas.

As she peered into the, what seemed like the fiftieth compartment on her right, she was met by an oh-too-familiar set of steel-blue eyes, that widened slightly as he noticed her, staring in her direction, "Larsson! How lovely to see you so soon into the new year. Nice summer?" he faked a smile, and yet there was an annoying hint of genuineness.

She glanced around the cabin to see Marcus Flint sat beside Adrian by the window, Miles Bletchley on the other side, and Cassius Warrington and Graham Montague opposite; all currently staring right at her. She gritted her teeth at his interaction (very unwanted at that) and stood up straighter, "Great thank you, Adrian. Yours?"

"Better if you were there," he smirked, causing a few of them to chuckle.

"I bet." there was a pause where no one spoke and Bianca sighed as neither of them broke eye contact, "Well, love to stay and chat, but I don't fucking like you."

She turned not but an inch back to face the aisle of the train ─ the boys just in view ─ just as he scoffed, shook his head at what he thought was her immaturity, and rolled his eyes. Bianca turned back to look at him, "Keep rolling your eyes. Maybe you'll find a brain back there." she smiled caustically, and a few of the boys laughed, Adrian, once again scoffed, before she strutted away, continuing her search for the one person she actually wanted to see.

➼

BIANCA HAD SOON REALISED THAT SHE HAD IN fact missed the Hogwarts Castle when she found herself boarding the carriages with Leo, after a long train ride. She too loved how, if muggles were ever to come across it, all they would see is a moldering old ruin with a sign over the entrance saying 'DANGER, DO NOT ENTER, UNSAFE.' She loved how it is almost ironic, because, bar Gringotts, Hogwarts is possibly the safest place to be in the Wizarding World.

As the carriage clattered on the gravel path beneath them, she stared in awe at the Scottish Highlands before her. It was a beautiful day for the evening. It was still bright and the mist rested softly on the mountain peaks like a cloth draped over a pillow. She watched the sun trying to break through the clouds. She thought it was amazing how small she felt in the presence of such breathtaking scenery. The castle itself loomed over everything below, with a hundred and forty-two staircases jumbled throughout its many towers and turrets.

"Do you believe in the Lochness Monster?" Leo asked, forcing her out of her daydream.

"I have two muggle parents. I'll believe anything at this point," she said emotionless.

She thought back to the countless lies her's and every other parent tell their children: Santa Claus, the tooth fairy. Then, of course, one day her parents found out she wasn't an ordinary child and was, in fact, a witch with talents they couldn't even fathom. Neither could she. It was a lot to take in, being a child that has never been influenced by magic. When she found out it wasn't one big hoax, that was enough to make her believe anything she heard.

That was why she loved school so much; because it was still all quite new to her. She loved the concept of magic and unlike most students, she hadn't grown up around it and then of course, when she was at home, she couldn't use it at all. Hence why she grasped onto every word her professors told her and hence why she never got bored in class.

"Cause we're not too far from Loch, why don't we go and see?" he suggested.

"Leo, they never let us outside of the castle and when they do, they have to have parents' permission just to send us to a lonely village, that's literally directly outside of the school and that's purely to prevent us from getting a severe case of cabin fever. I doubt they will let us go monster hunting," she said, as the carriage came to a halt outside the castle. His facial expression changed when he realized she was probably right.

The two of them followed the path up towards the castle and onto their next topic of interest: "Whether children should be tried as adults and sent to prison". ("not Azkaban though. That's just barbaric." Bianca had mentioned on the topic, meaning the two were now talking about muggle prisons). The two of them found themselves debating a lot (Bianca winning most of the time; she said it was good for the mind.)

"It all depends on the age though." she said,  "Surely a ten-year-old should be held accountable for their actions. I mean, it's not like they can't take responsibility at that age-" she was cut off by a large stature colliding with her own. She looked up to meet a pair of captivating, azure eyes. Of which she knew who they belonged.

"Ah, getting a bit of deja vu, ey Larsson?" he smirked, reminiscing the time they had met.

She once again, gritted her teeth, keeping herself from punching the annoyingly charming smirk of his face, "Very sorry Adrian, all my fault." she admitted, with a sarcastic smile and it pained her to do so. She was at fault and she hated how she was.

"No worries. Well, this conversation sounds ever so enticing and I'd love to stay and chat but I don't fucking like you." he grinned, as he spoke the same words she had done not too long before. And as she watched him walk away, still wondering why he was going the opposite way that he was ─ away from the castle ─ she grimaced at how actually likable he was. Shame she didn't.

The great hall never ceased to amaze Bianca. With its wonderous ceiling and hanging candles, it was enough to put you in a trance. It was truly and utterly enchanting.

The sorting ceremony had finally finished and Gryffindor had gained yet another Weasley, but a girl this time. As the two friends dove into their much-awaited feast, Leo was now back on the topic and still wasn't convinced so the debating with Bianca about the existence of a mythical creature in Scottish folklore was continued.

"I've seen pictures. I bet if we went to Loch, we'd see it. Maybe it doesn't show itself to Muggles?" he shrugged.

"But how do muggles have pictures if it doesn't show itself to them?" she argued. She was actually arguing against the existence of "Nessie" and was almost contradicting her earlier statement.

"Well, you know . . . accident?" he shrugged.

"Still. Muggles will see anything, take a picture, show the world and everyone will believe it. Anything that can be described as "mythical", muggles will desperately try and prove its existence. It's like mermaids and unicorns."

"Both of those things are real, Bi."

"Yeah, to us. Five-year-old girls are the only ones that are meant to believe in mermaids. Muggles just shouldn't believe in that stuff. Take us for example, we are literally the middle-ages folklore in the flesh, and if I were a muggle-"

"Which you're not," Leo interjected, still trying to win the argument, which seemed very unlikely at this point, seeing as she was just getting into a flow of her expression of her opinions.

Bianca ignored his point immediately.

"- I wouldn't believe in wizards." she finished, taking a sip from her goblet.

"You don't know that."

"That's not my point."

"So what is your point?" he asked.

"That muggles believe anything you tell them and they shouldn't. I'm embarrassed by my seven-year-old self that actually believed a tiny fairy would come to my room at night and replace my baby teeth, with money. I mean how ridiculous is that?"

"I think you strayed from the point of the argument."

"The Loch ness monster isn't real, sorry bud." she patted him hard on the pack, unbeknown to the boy staring holes into the back of her head from the Slytherin table on the other side of the hall.