So I haven't logged into this site for literally 3 years. I know no one really reads this stuff anymore so I decided sure why not I'll write a Potterverse fanfiction because I haven't done it before and I used to be obsessed with the series back when I made this account. In all actuality, I made it to write original stories (not fanfiction) which shows you what a dumb fourteen year old I was because WordPress already existed at that point. I won't take "Golden Sun" down, because I don't remember writing it and I am incredibly impressed by it and may try and find my plot notes from it so I could create it into an actual story. (yeah, go 14 year old me! my writing hasn't improved one tiny bit!)

Anyways enjoy this little blurb I wrote using the notepad function on my phone. If anyone actually ever reads this, please feel free to correct me on canon events, characters (though few if any canon characters will be in this fic,) and geography/slang (because I'm a white girl from America who has literally never been to London before.) Yes the tone is much more childish than Harry Potter. It's amazing, almost like my character and Harry Potter are *different people*

I don't feel like reading the series again for the umpteenth time so I will get things wrong.

Happy Birthday

On my eleventh birthday, my father made pancakes. I loved his pancakes, he always put too much strawberries and whipped cream on top, and they weren't too rich or thick to swallow. I woke up to the sound of sizzling batter and the radio chattering in the kitchen below my room.
My mother wasn't awake yet, sleeping off the night shift from the security job she worked, so my father and I had the whole morning to ourselves to celebrate. We ate pancakes until our stomachs hurt, and sprayed whipped cream from the can in our mouths afterwards, laughing at each other when the white sugar dripped onto our chins or the floor. I didn't have any presents, but I didn't notice. For me, birthdays didn't mean presents. Birthdays meant early mornings and breakfast food.

It was a Tuesday, in January, and the last day of winter break before second term began. My father had work, at an office in London where he filed papers so people paid much more money than him could find information they wanted without putting in too much effort. When he got home in the evening he would smell like manila folders and scratchy cloth, all traces of his sharp-smelling aftershave faded into the morning of labels and file cabinets. He helped me clean the floors and the table, kissed my forehead, and eased the door shut behind him with a barely audible sound, leaving me stranded in the house with nothing but my mother's gentle breathing to remind me I wasn't alone.
I wiped the last traces of strawberry syrup from the counter tops and rinsed the ragged cloth in the sink. The clouds outside said rain, so I draped it over the faucet and hoped it would dry fast enough for me to put it away before anyone needed to use the sink. The dripping of water from the rag into the drain joined my mother's snoring, the adding depth to the heavy silence in the house.

My eyes drifted to a small oval mirror hanging across from the sink. My mother had hung it the summer before, so it would reflect the view from the window. My face was framed by the dead branches of the old tree outside, creating a creepy effect, but it looked the same as it did yesterday. I didn't look older, but I felt older. It was like the whole year I was trapped by being ten and now that I was eleven, my aging process came crashing in all at once, making me feel terribly grown up. I stuck my tongue out at my reflection. Today wasn't a day for seriousness.

Directly below the mirror was my bright yellow backpack my father and I had picked out from the office store down the street. It had little white pom-poms on the zipper handles and, even though it was expensive, I couldn't stop touching them over and over in the store. They were so soft, like rabbits' feet. My father, who had been calling me from the pre-owned section, looked at the price tag, then at me. We had just enough for it, if we didn't buy anything else. I pursed my lips like mom did when she wanted something but wouldn't say. He bought me the bag. We went without flour or milk for the month.
My father told me it was worth it. My mother didn't agree.

Inside my bag was the homework I was assigned over holidays. Most of the classes didn't get homework, but my class did. We were the advanced class, stuck in there because of a test they administered at the beginning of the year. Our test scores were the best. My test score was the worst of the best.
I would have been put in the normal class but I knew how to read old books, like the ones the senior kids read for their historic literature classes, and my reading score bumped my average from a 68 to an 81, and 80 was the lowest score to qualify for advanced. When my parents found out, they were overjoyed, especially my mother. She clapped her hands and spun me around the kitchen while smothering me in kisses and hugs. My father smiled, and said "I knew getting you a library card was a good idea." But he seemed worried, and after I went to bed I could hear them talking in hushed tones. I felt very conflicted about being in the advanced class.

Over holiday I hadn't opened my backpack, despite rubbing the pom-poms between my fingers every time I walked past. I always seemed to have something more interesting to do than homework, like building snowmen outside or watching the winter birds huddle together in the skeleton trees. I remembered everything I saw, but I forgot about my work. I knew when my mother woke up she would ask me if I had done anything. I knew when I said no I would be in huge trouble. I began to make a plan to avoid punishment but also be able to savor my last day before going back to school. I thought about running away, but then I would be in bigger trouble than before. I thought about making a mess, so I'd get in trouble for that and she'd forget about my homework, but that wouldn't work either, because I'd still be in trouble. In the end I couldn't find a solution, so I sat on the floor and opened my bag, planning on doing just one assignment to show her to prove I did all my work. Even though I didn't.

The first thing I saw in my backpack was not my homework. It was not my notebook (mostly full of doodles instead of notes,) and it was not my lucky blue sparkle pen that I kept on top of everything so I could grab it right away.
It was a letter.
It was addressed to me, in curly black ink, that swooped and dived like ribbons. It had my house name, my town name, and even where I slept: "In the room above the kitchen." There was no return address. I stared at it, my fingers curled around the lip of the bag, one hand anxiously twisting a pom-pom. The handwriting wasn't my father's, nor my mother's, and I certainly hadn't written it myself. I was an only child, so it couldn't be a sibling. None of my friends had handwriting that pretty, either, and if they had, the whole class would have known and they would be asked to write things all the time as a sort of game. Besides, none of my friends were close enough to me to write me letters. It had to have come from somewhere else.

Tentatively, I lifted the corner of the envelope using just my thumb and forefinger, moving slowly in case it was a bomb. We had learned about bombs in a history lesson and my teacher told me the enemy could hide a bomb in anything, even a letter, and I wasn't taking any chances. The letter didn't blow up, or burst into flames, or burn my fingers with acid, which was a good sign. I balanced it on my hands and squeezed it, trying to see if there was anything inside. I couldn't feel any objects, just the slight resistance that meant the letter was fairly thick, a few pages long. I lifted it up to the light and could see a few lines of the same swooping script, but it was too difficult to read backwards and the light wasn't bright enough anyway. My breathing had become short and shallow. What if this was a message from MI6, asking me to go on a secret mission? Or, a letter from my birth parents, a king and queen of some country, pleading for me to come home and rule the kingdom with them?
My fingernails slid under the flap of the envelope, tearing a tiny corner...

Footsteps sounded from upstairs, heavy, loud. Mother was awake and getting ready. My heart skipped, and, although I knew she wouldn't mind me opening my own mail, I panicked and threw the letter into a drawer by my head. The drawer was full of old tools and miscellania, and the letter crumpled slightly as I pushed it shut, caught between a small hammer and an old roll of box tape. I grabbed my bag and bolted into the living room, where I took out my notebook and my sparkly pen and pretended to have been doing my work all along.