AN: I posted this chapter a little while ago, but I had to take it back down because I was having difficulty after uploading the wrong document. If anyone read it, they got a little preview of the next chapter because I stupidly forgot to separate the documents. So I am sorry about that.

Anyway, you know how it goes, I don't own Harry Potter.

Chapter One- The Beginning.

Dorinda Lucetta Westrum sat happily in the middle of the living room playing with her toys. She was hosting a tea party for several of her dolls and teddy bears. Her mother sat behind her in an armchair keeping a watchful eye over her. Every so often she would smile to herself as Dorinda provided the voices for her toys.

"Would you like some more cake, Mr Snugglesworth?" she asked the teddy bear sat to her right before answering herself in a deeper, gruff voice. "Why yes, that would be lovely"

Dorinda's mother watched as the little girl served each toy a slice of invisible cake and sipped from a plastic tea cup. As the girl was asking one of the dolls if she wanted jam and cream with her scone, there came an urgent knock at the door.

Dorinda looked up from her game, surprised by the sudden noise. "Mummy will be back in a minute," her mother informed her before leaving the room.

The little girl heard the sound of the front door unlock and her mother's voice "Can I help you?"

Her inquisitive nature getting the better of her, Dorinda carefully laid down her dolls and tiptoed over to the door way. Spying through the crack in the door, she could see her mother, arms folded protectively across her chest, but she could not see the stranger.

"I do not know anyone of that name," Dorinda's mother was saying. "I think you should leave"

Dorinda watched as her mother made to close the front door, but before she could even grab the handle, the stranger had hold of her arm.

"Tell me what you know about the Potter boy," the stranger hissed in a cold voice.

"I have already told you, I know no one of that name," the panic was now obvious in the young woman's voice.

"Then you are of no use to me," the stranger said, before pointing at her and hissing some unfamiliar words. Dorinda appeared from her hiding place in time to see her mother's corpse it the ground.

"Mummy?" she shouted, running over to her. She did not answer.

Dorinda looked around for the stranger, but he was no longer there. It was as if he had disappeared into thin air. She knelt back down beside the lifeless woman, pleading with her to wake up. "Mummy, please wake up mummy," she sobbed.

After several minutes, she stopped pleading and placed her mother's arms around her. Tears were still silently flowing down her cheeks as she fell to sleep in her dead mother's arms.

Dorinda had been young when her mother had died, but she still remembered it clearly. It had been several days before anyone had found her and brought her to this ghastly place. They told her that her story of the stranger that had killed her mother was not true and that she had died of accidental and tragic causes. What this meant, Dorinda did not know, but after many years of being told she was wrong, she learnt to keep her story to herself.

She had lived in the orphanage for six years now and she hated it. The staff attempted to care, but they never seemed to quite understand her. The other children either picked on her or stayed away, claiming she was a 'freak'. Dorinda had to agree with them; she was a freak. Strange things would happen around her when she was angry or upset. Things that she could not understand and it would quite often scare the other children.

She had just barricaded herself into her sparsely decorated bedroom after a particularly nasty bout of teasing. The twins had been dancing around her, calling her names like 'freak' and 'weirdo' and the one that stung most 'witch'. One of them had pulled on her pigtails so hard that a chunk of chocolate brown hair had come away in her fist. At this point, Dorinda's tears had spilled free of her icy grey eyes and she had pushed the girls away before running back to her room.

She lay on the bed, crying into the pillow. She wished that the summer holidays were over where she could escape from the other children and their mocking voices in the lessons. The wish was quickly followed by another one which she knew would never happen. She wished that her father would come looking for her and take her away from here. She had never met him and questions always went unanswered when her mother was alive. The orphanage files had no information on him as she had found out one night when she had been snooping. As far as she knew, he didn't know she even existed. Regardless of this, she wished he would come looking for her. Anyone had to be better than living in this place.

After a short while a gentle yet insistent tapping made her sit up. "Go away," she said, expecting it to be one of the staff members, or worse one of the other children back to torment her. The tapping however carried on. She sighed and got up. It was then however, that she realised that the tapping was not the sound of a person's fist on wood, but rather something knocking on the window.

She turned towards the glass, bracing herself for whatever was going to be outside. To her surprise, an owl was hovering outside of the window, tapping on the glass with its talons. Tied to one of its legs was a letter.

Dorinda opened the window and immediately the owl hopped inside hooting softly at her. She stood still, unsure of what to do. The owl hopped closer to her. It was holding its leg out. She gingerly stroked the head of the owl a couple of times before taking the letter from its leg. As soon as she had taken the letter from it, it jumped up and took off out of the window.

"Well, that was strange," Dorinda muttered to herself as she turned the envelope over. It was addressed to her. Wondering where the strange letter had come from, she delicately opened it and pulled out the thick parchment from inside.

It had to be a joke. One of the other children had to be winding her up. The letter told her that she had been accepted into some school for witchcraft and wizardry. After reading the letter in its entirety, she let it drop onto her bedside table. Well, she was not going to fall for some horrible practical joke. She decided to bury the parchment deep inside her drawer. She would not mention it to anyone, that way whoever was responsible would not be able to get a kick out of knowing that she had felt a tiny glimmer of hope.

She sat back down on her bed and was about to pull out a book to read when the bell tinkled signalling that dinner was ready. Slowly, Dorinda removed the items she had used to block the door and went downstairs and into the dining room. She was careful all the way through her dinner and the rest of the evening not to let anything slip about the letter. If there was some chance that it was not a cruel hoax, it was even more reason for the other children to view her as a freak.