The Girl Who Lived
Lana carefully tucked away the strange scroll her cousin Harry had sent her from Scotland. He was a nice enough kid, but couldn't seem to get the hang of either keyboards or regular paper. He didn't quite grasp the American postal system either. She kept telling him the symbol was an Eagle, not an Owl. All of his notes to her had the feel of someone who attended one too many Ren Faires. The sealing wax had been a nice touch, even if it did remind her of one of her many obsessive admirers. Harry didn't seem to have any special affinity for poetry, however.
Obviously things were very different over there. Not that they had seemed so when she watched Coupling (the good version) or even Chloe's borrowed tapes of Queer As Folk UK
"Pretty boys with those delicious accents. What's not to like?" Chloe had asked. (She'd also likened it to research material for Clark, who they'd both finally figured out was just fooling himself when he dated either of them.)
Sure, eating fried fish off dirty, inky newspapers sounded icky, and she'd recently learned what Haggis was, but she had had no idea there were actual wizards and witches flying about. Apparently there were, literally.
Harry had told her about zooming around on his newest broom, and she could swear he sounded just like Whitney had when he talked about football. Quidditch seemed a lot more interesting, though. Lana made a mental note to ask if they had cheerleaders at Hogwarts. She didn't think Harry would be interested even if they did.
Lana was always curious about the day-to-day goings on in Harry's life. He had just started another year at school, and was telling her about getting supplies on Diagon Alley. In Smallville, that would have been the kitschy name of a store that sold scented candles and "Over the Hill" birthday balloons.
Harry said it was a dusty old shopping street in London, and that he got there by using something called Floo Powder, and going through the fireplace. It sounded like something out of Mary Poppins. It was the kind of news that made her wonder if Chloe's British counterpart had a "Wall of Wizardry".
Normal people couldn't see Diagon Alley, much like the Talon, Lana thought on one of her more Chloe like days. Nor could they see the steam locomotive Harry and his friends used to travel to their school. Harry and his best friends Ron and Hermione reminded her a bit of Clark, Chloe and Pete, in the way they shared adventures, and relied on each other. She wished she was a part of that kind of bond.
She'd often wondered why Nell hadn't take Harry in as well. Certainly he would have had a better life than he did with the Dursleys (who didn't quite keep him literally chained up in the basement, but being locked in a cupboard under the stairs was just the thing child protective services ought to have looked into.)
Lana guessed dealing with such a beautiful, tragically depressed little girl like she had been was enough for Nell to handle. It was too bad. She and Harry (and Clark, if he wanted) could have formed quite the Orphan Club. And really, they were all special. Harry, with his magic (that she wasn't supposed to tell anyone about; Clark, with his freakish powers (that she wasn't supposed to have noticed -- but she wasn't an idiot. The meteors obviously had affected Clark.) She had her own abilities -- if preternatural beauty counted.
It hadn't been all that surprising to hear she had relatives with magical powers. After all, she had been quite the little wand waver herself, way back when. Silly as it was, she always believed things happened when she waved it. Of course now she knew she wasn't a fairy princess, but maybe if she'd been raised in England, she might have been a witch. She'd once told this to Chloe, who offered to loan her a black sweater and the eyeliner that Chad, her Goth friend in the police station records room, liked best. Lana didn't explain that she'd meant it more literally than that.
Harry's latest missive had been full of angst, and "Please Lana, what am I going to do about him?" "Him" being a teacher who was twice his age, and (she hoped) not going to give Harry more than detention until he was out of school, even if Harry was right in saying he was obviously interested. Clark's thing with Lex was bad enough. This was just inconceivable.
Harry had known he was gay ever since he was twelve, and found himself with a mad crush on the Quidditch captain. (Lana totally understood how that went.)
Unfortunately, he kept falling for inappropriate men. And by men, he meant men. His latest crush was his "Potions master", a man with the unlikely name of"Severus Snape", and described by Harry as long and lean, and dead sexy. Lana assumed Potions master meant something like a chemistry teacher, and pictured a distracted professor type, with hair that needed cutting, and a lab coat with burns in it. She could understand the attraction, if one liked the type. Of course he could have been the male counterpart to Miss Atkins, but she doubted it.
She wondered what it was about the gay teens in her life, and their thing for older men with alliterative names. She really should ask Lex if his family had any ties to Hogwarts. They were Scottish, after all. She could almost believe his power over Clark had magical elements somehow. Clark had been nerdy and shy before Lex came along. Now he was the sort of guy who rescued your kitten one day, and rode off on his father's Indian motorcycle the next. Lana hoped Harry wouldn't go through such a drastic rebellious period. A wizard with attitude could be extremely dangerous in the big city, she bet.
Lana might, in her less mature years, have been jealous of Harry and the attention he got. He was the "boy who lived", but she had always been the girl whose parents were killed. She had the Time Magazine cover to prove it. And no, she hadn't spent years in school learning magic that would help her defeat unspeakable horrors. But she did have a few weeks of martial arts classes under her belt, and she had taken out more than a few thugs. (And she bet Harry had never dealt with anyone as evil (and enigmatically sexy, she had to admit) as the Luthors.
Maybe she'd be better off if she thought of herself as the Girl Who Lived instead. And maybe sometime soon her cousin Harry would come for a visit, and teach her a spell for making a perfect cup of coffee.