Prologue
Some people were simply more than everyone else. Bigger, louder, more obvious, more likable, just more. Flamboyant. Ostentatious. Larger than life. They seemed born with star quality.
Johnny Lupin was one of those people. He had a personality the size of Jupiter.
Hazel McGregor propped her chin on her hands and stared across the hall at him. He was standing on a table, demonstrating his ability to yodel to the sea of admiring faces surrounding him. It was the last day of fifth year, and he couldn’t hold in his desire to show off for this one day. She supposed he had to make a spectacle for some last-minute attention from his adoring fans before they all left for the summer.
“Johnny Lupin,” she muttered darkly, her eyes following the bright red hair as he concluded his performance, turned in a circle to wave to everyone, and bowed with a wide grin on his freckled face. “Urgh.”
“How can you hate Johnny Lupin?” her friend Olivia Montague, commonly known as Tink, asked pragmatically. “No one hates Johnny. He's adorable.”
“He's so bloody full of himself. He thinks he's good at everything.”
“He is good at everything. Didn't you just hear him yodel?”
He actually had been rather good at it, but that only made the whole thing worse. “That's why he's so annoying.”
“He's so entertaining,” Tink went on. “I love his stories.”
Hazel hated his stories. The one about the serial killers annoyed her the most. She'd looked up the names of those killers to get the official scoop. He'd only been three years old at the time. He couldn't possibly remember it in that much detail. Probably he was making up half the story based on what his family had told him of that day.
One of Johnny Lupin's most annoying characteristics was his ability to tell a story in a way that you weren't sure how much of it was true, but it was such a damn good story that you just didn't care.
No one ever called him on it. Including, to her eternal shame, Hazel.
Johnny was walking past with a crowd of students following him, and flashed a grin at Hazel and Tink as he passed. He had excellent bone structure, with high cheekbones and a sharp jawline, like a bloody movie star. If she described him in bland terms - tall, ginger, blue eyes, a little skinny - it helped a bit. Otherwise she’d have to admit he really was a handsome boy, and then she’d have to hate herself because being attracted to Johnny Lupin was simply unacceptable as character flaws went. Unfortunately half of Hogwarts shared that flaw. Everyone was attracted to him. Even Tink, who normally only liked boys whose fathers were in Debrett’s, or at least owned a Global 500 company, thought he was proper fit.
It wasn’t just the handsomeness, though. It was the personality. The sheer charisma.
She wondered what NEWTs a person needed to be a cult leader, or if all of them were simply born to it like Johnny.
“Well, dear,” Tink drawled, “it’s summer now, so you won’t have to see him until September.”
“Thank God.” Hazel wrinkled her nose. “Maybe he’ll transfer to Durmstrang in the fall.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”