Hello all . . . The following is a story I just began, and with the help of you (my readers) will hopefully be able to turn into something great. Please read and review (suggestions, criticism etc. is all welcome and needed!) and don't forget. . . . J.K. Rowling owns Harry Potter/Hogwarts etc. but all original characters are mine. Enjoy!

Julian Potter and the Mermaid Pearl

Chapter One

The shutter on my window, snapping open and shut with a loud bang each time it hit the sill is what ultimately woke me up, forcing me into an upright position.
It was still pretty dark, though already morning, and the storm outside with its high winds and rain whipping around my front yard was a sort of lullaby for me and I had left my window open that night, shutter firmly in place on the outside to keep the rain from pelting my bedroom floor.
I could sleep through just about anything, but somehow the latch had come loose on the shutter and I was forced to climb out of bed and re-latch it.
Winds and rain were one thing, but the smashing of an innocent window sill was not the sort of thing I could sleep through.
I turned back around, shutter firmly in place again, and nearly jumped out of my skin.
Sitting on the end of my bed, talons clutching the metal frame of my iron bed, huge yellow eyes blinking in the faint light of my alarm clock, was an owl.
Steel grey feathers puffed up to ward off the rain drops scattered over his small body.
He held an envelope in his beak, stamped with a large red seal bearing the crest of four animal heads.
He cocked his head sideways as if to say, "what are you waiting for?", so I reached out and took the envelope from his beak.
"This is crazy." I muttered to myself, opening the envelope and pulling out two sheets of folded paper despite the strange feeling all of this was bringing my still half-asleep mind.
I un-folded the first and read:

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Miss Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
We realize that you have missed quite a bit of your education thus far, but please be assured we are making everything ready for you to be able to catch up as quickly as possible.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall,
Deputy Headmistress

I stared at the parchment for a good 60 seconds after I finished reading it. Excitement bubbled up inside of they be serious? I sat down on the bed and read the letter again.
My parents had died when I was two and I had been living in a foster home in the US ever since, until three months ago, when we got a telegram from my father's mother Elizabeth Potter (which was very odd since everyone said I had no living relatives, let alone a namesake) that had somehow popped up in northern Scotland and had been (as she later told me) as shocked to find out I existed as I was to find out about her.
I was relieved to know there was still someone in the world that had the same blood coursing through their veins as I did,
and happily accepted her invitation for me to come live with her.
I took a plane to Glasgow and then one all-too-short train ride later I arrived in the miniscule little town of Aberfeldy. Grandma Lizie's birthplace and residence.
She was a nice old lady, nearly 100 years old (although still surprisingly fully active and healthy looking, not a walking stick in sight), and quickly filled me in on my interesting family history. I had always felt a bit out of place growing up, and the reason why became very clear when she explained my literally magical origin parent-wise. My father had been born in this very town, stayed in the very same house I was in now, and was, to put it bluntly, a wizard.
My mother was what the wizarding world calls a muggle (a non-magical person), and my father had met and married her after running away to America to get away from his wizard father who (as Lizie put it) "was as a controlling a man as ever walked the earth". He never told my mother about his magical heritage, or any of his heritage for that matter, and Lizie said when they died there was no record of who his parents were or where he had come from, leaving no way for them to notify her.
I was shocked, of course, to realize that since my father was a wizard, that meant I was magical too and when Lizie had told me about Hogwarts and The Ministry of Magic and the details of what it meant, I was filled with all sorts of questions.
I was almost fifteen, and according to Lizie's explanation of Hogwarts I had already missed four years of school, and I really didn't think they would send for me to start. But there it was. Sitting my hand. My letter. I couldn't wait until Lizie woke up and I could tell Lizie and get her help to go to London to Diagon Alley and get my supplies.
I wasn't sure what I needed to say, but I scribbled a quick "I am very excited to see you all in September and will be there eager and ready to learn. Signed, Jules Potter" on a piece of parchment paper and tied it in a roll to the owls leg with some ribbon from my desk (Lizie had explained to me that this was how wizards sent messages), and let him back through the shutter into the wind and rain and watched him fly away into the semi-darkness.