"What?" Maddie stepped back. Sitting on the sofa before her were her parents, and their solemn expressions quickly told her that they were completely serious. "But..." she protested as her brain worked to process the bombshell that was just dropped onto her. "This can't be true. None of it!"

And there was no way it could be. It was just too weird. Nonsensical. Fantastic! The words "you have magical powers" only ever showed up in movies. Not in real life.

"Madelyn," her mom said gently. She never used Maddie's proper name unless things were serious. "Do you remember when you jumped off the swing a few years ago?" She looked down, her free hand flying up to rest against her chest as even mentioning the event caused her heart to double beat. Especially when she remembered the sheer panic she felt. "You flew much higher than anyone should have. I was so scared, but you landed gently on the ground. And just last month you were wearing makeup before school. I told you to wash it off, but you insisted that you had never put it on."

Maddie remembered. She had feared that her mom would get really angry, because it only made sense that Maddie would have experimented with makeup, given the argument about it the night before. The following morning, Maddie thought that her mother was going to burst when they ran into each other in the hall. But then suddenly, her mother had paled before waving her away while claiming that if she didn't hurry her breakfast would grow cold.

Maddie had spent all day trying to think of a logical explanation, but she didn't own any makeup. And she wouldn't have used her mother's because they had slightly different skin tones. But was she honestly supposed to believe this?

Mum looked at dad helplessly. "David? Help, please?"

David shook his head sadly as he replied, "Sorry, Jenny, I can't help you here."

At his honest answer, she then looked at Maddie, holding David's hand and building up her resolve. Her face looked scared but determined, "Maddie, you're a witch."

Maddie felt as if her heart had stopped. How could it be possible? Witches were ugly old hags with warts and green skin. They cackled as they rode on broomsticks through the sky by the light of the full moon. She touched her face, as if she might suddenly find that it was covered in warts. But of course there was nothing. Her legs suddenly felt wobbly, and she sat down on the love-seat behind her with a thud. "But…" She couldn't even complete a sentence now. What was wrong with her? "How…?"

"We knew there a possibility of this happening," Jennifer said while looking at her husband. "But it was a slim chance. I was a Squib who had married a Muggle so the odds-"

"Wait, what?" Maddie looked straight up at her mother. First they told her she was something that didn't even exist, and now they were speaking gibberish. "What the bloody hell are you talking about?"

For once, her mother didn't scold her on her language. She was apologetic, as if she were the one cussing. "I'm sorry. A squib is someone from a magical family who doesn't have any magical powers, and a muggle is a regular human being. Like your friends and classmates."

Maddie barely heard anything after the words "magical family." She stood straight up. "I'm sorry, but did you just say magical family?"

"Maddie," David broke in, seeing that both mother and daughter were on the brink of a mental breakdown. "You come from a long line of witches and wizards on your mum's side of the family. However, since your mother was born without magic abilities, and she married, well, me…" He hesitated. "We knew it could happen, but didn't really believe that it could."

"But…" Maddie opened and closed her mouth several times as the shock of this entire conversation had left her incapable of forming a rational thought. She hadn't experienced anything like this. She stood there with her hands over her face, taking deep breaths for what felt like hours before she could actually say something that made sense. "Okay, so I'm a witch," she finally admitted as she threw her hands up in the air. "But why, exactly, are you only just telling me this now?"

Her mum sat up straight, and made a face like she had forgotten something. She made a little exclamation as she reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a letter with a wax seal. "Seriously?" Maddie thought to herself, "those things went out of style at least two hundred years ago."

The look on her mother's face could best be described as a mixture of apology and determination. And Maddie would easily admit that it worried her. "What's in the letter?" she asked suspiciously. Her mother just silently handed her the envelope, and Maddie opened it carefully.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Headmaster: Vitellius Flack

Dear Miss Warner,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.

Yours sincerely,

Serephone Ewart

Deputy Headmistress

Maddie read the short letter a few times as her brain tried to process what was read. The piece of paper slipped from her numb fingers, and fell to the floor with a slight brushing sound that seemed to fill the whole room. The blood drained from her face. She could not have named all the emotions running through her if she had tried, but one feeling dominated the others: Fear.

"No." She realized from the reactions in her parent's eyes that her expression was frozen, and she imagined that she looked like a proper wreck. "You… you can't seriously mean…" she squeaked out in disbelief, "you're sending me to a different school?!"

"We have to, Maddie." David rubbed his eyes. "According to your mother, not only is Hogwarts the only magical school in England, it's one of the best out there. They'll be able to help you learn everything you need to know about your abilities, as well as how to keep them under control."

"Okay," Maddie said, trying to forget the fact that her parents seemed not only convinced that she had 'magical powers,' but that they were seemingly alright with sending her to some strange school. "But I can still see my friends, right? I can still be home… Have a normal life, right?" She looked at them desperately.

"It's a boarding school, dear," her mother replied gently. "You would stay there all year, and come home for holidays."

Why was the world spinning all around her? Maddie shook her head to make it stop as warm tears began to prick the corner of her eyes. "No, Mum and Dad, you can't be serious."

Her mother looked miserable. "Maddie, don't you understand -"

"No," she said forcefully, "you don't understand! I can't go to a different school. I'm supposed to be going into seventh year! What about my friends? What about Bridget, and Lucy, and Will…" Oh, Lord. All of her best friends. No, this could not be happening. It had to be some horribly sick nightmare. "I can't just leave them. Please don't make me do this!" She had to blink her eyes to keep the tears from escaping.

"You're going, Madelyn," her father said in his no-nonsense tone. "Someday you'll understand that we are doing this for your own good."

That was the last straw. Maddie's eyes rapidly filled with tears and they fell onto her cheeks. She pressed her lips together tightly. "Damn," her voice was quivering, "Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn!" Her voice rose with each damn, ending on a shriek as she whirled around and raced up the stairs to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

Her cheek pressed against her cool pillow after flopping onto her bed. Her mind was pulling in several directions. This is all happening too fast. My parents are telling me that I'm a witch, that these things actually exist, and now I'm being sent to a different school where I will know absolutely nobody and I'll have to stay there the whole bloody year.

Strangely enough, out of all the things that her brain was trying to process, it hurt less at the thought that she was a witch. Like it decided to accept the most outlandish thing of all so that it could deal with the problem of leaving everything that she loved behind. Maddie hiccuped a few times as she began to compose herself again. Why had she reacted like that? It wasn't like her at all.

There was a light tap at the door. "Maddie, love, I'm coming in, okay? You know that we need to discuss this." After a moment, there was a click as the door opened and then closed softly. The bed sank down slightly and she felt a gentle hand brushing her hair from her face. Maddie bit her lip as she thought about how she treated her parents downstairs. They were trying to explain everything to her when she asked for… No, demanded answers, but she was then quick to cut them off every time.

And now her mother had come upstairs to comfort her? She should be angry with her! Her mother should have been scolding her for her rudeness! But… she was being kind and understanding. Maddie didn't get it!

"Maddie, look at me," her mother gently commanded. Despite herself, Maddie turned her hot, blotchy face up at her mother. "What do you want?"

Her mother sighed. "I know that this must be very hard for you." She paused, remembering an old conversation. "When you were born, my family advised me to tell you all about your magical heritage. I was scared and foolish at the time, so I kept this from you. But now… I guess that they were right."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Maddie said, holding her pillow close. "Don't you think something like that should have been explained to me the moment you and dad felt that I could understand it?"

"Maybe," her mother admitted, "but honestly? I believed that it would be much better if you never knew. I honestly expected… Hoped that you would be born without any magic whatsoever. I didn't want to raise you to think that magic was the normal thing in our family. I didn't want you feeling like a misfit because you couldn't do everything that your cousins were doing - including going to a special school like they do."

"Ugh." Maddie wrinkled her nose. "Why would I want to be like my cousins? Walter is boring and Ed is just plain evil." Then a thought occurred to her, causing her to bolt upwards into a sitting position. "Wait. You're from a magical family… Are you telling me that my aunt and uncle, my cousins, my grandparents can all do magic?"

"And your great-grandparents, and their great-grandparents, as far back as we can remember." Her mother chuckled humorlessly. "I'm sure that there have been others like me in the family, born without magic, but we don't really know of them."

"But how could I not have known? How could they not have told me?"

"Well, they respected our wishes for one thing," her mum said, ruffling Maddie's hair and smirking in that maddening way of hers. Her smile drooped as she sadly added, "I suppose it must have been quite hard for them to miss out on all these years. Have you ever wondered why we've never spent holidays at your grandmother's home… my childhood home?"

When Maddie shrugged, Jennifer continued, "Because it's filled to the top with magic." She shook her head with a small smile. "Every year they send an invitation, knowing full well what we're going to say. My mother can never resist the chance to point out that I made the wrong decision when it came to your upbringing." She rolled her eyes, and while the words were bitter-sounding, it was obvious to Maddie how much her mum loved her family. It was also obvious how much they loved her, since they always traveled from hours away to visit them during the holidays.

Maddie frowned. "But do I really have to go to some special school to learn magic? Why can't I just stay home and… experiment? I could home-school all my magic stuff and go to my regular school for everything else." She looked at her mother, hope shining on her face. "It's a perfect solution, really."

"There have been wizards who homeschooled," her mother admitted, "a long time ago. But for the most part, it was a rather unsatisfactory education, and they were always in magical homes with magical parents, or at the very least in a good community of wizards that could help. In fact, now it's illegal for underage wizards to practice magic outside of their magical school, which renders homeschooling useless anyway. I don't think anybody does it anymore."

"But I don't want to leave my friends!" Maddie groaned helplessly, her last hope gone.

"It's still summer," her mother reminded her. "You'll have plenty of time to spend with your friends until school starts. And I'm sure you can still call them and write them, and you can be with them while you're home on holidays. We're not sending you into exile, you know!" She laughed. "We're sending you to a top school. I thought you always wanted to do that. Remember all those times when you were little, telling me seriously that you were going to get top grades so that you could be accepted into Oxford? Or how about when you gave me handouts from all the private schools in Britain, and told me that if I loved you that I'd request your immediate admittance?"

"I remember." It had been a dream of Maddie's to go to an excellent private school. But those dreams had always included having her friends with her through it all. However this was something that she somehow knew could never be shared with them. They wouldn't be there to help her with homework, or to laugh at the school bullies. Did magical schools have bullies? She was sure that they did. Being a witch, or wizard she supposed, didn't stop you from being human. She couldn't help a smile. "I just never thought that I would be flying to this school on a magic broomstick."

Her mother barked out a laugh before clapping a hand to her mouth. "It's not like that at all," she assured her daughter. "Now, I would love to take off work and bring you to Diagon Alley to get your school things. Make a proper day of it and all, but I'm afraid we're so busy this time of year that there is no way that my boss will let me take the day off. But… I'm going to phone your Aunt Olivia tonight, and ask if she's willing to take you with her when she takes your cousins shopping." She gave Maddie a wry grin. "I'm sure she'll be thrilled to tell you all about the things that we've been keeping from you all these years."

Maddie was supposed to be in bed, yet she was tiptoeing into the hallway before hiding in the closet so that she could hear her mum phone Aunt Olivia. She didn't know why she wanted to, since she'd only be able to hear her mum's side of the conversation.

It was either eavesdropping on her mum, or going back to staring at the ceiling all night. Because it wasn't like she was going to fall asleep easily after the day she'd had. As soon as her mother had left the room, she'd texted her two best friends, Bridget and Lucy, and told them to meet her tomorrow at the park that wasn't much of a distance between the three of them. They had both replied fairly quickly, asking if there was anything wrong. Her quick reply only mentioned that she would completely explain tomorrow. She couldn't tell them that she was a witch, but she had to tell them that she wouldn't be coming to school with them next term.

No matter how resigned she was to the fact that she had to attend Hogwarts, and there was nothing that she could do about it, she still felt devastated about the whole rotten thing. The three girls had dreamed for years about going into seventh year together. They had talked about it all the time, and now it was never going to happen. The naive part of her promised herself that she would go to the school because she had no choice, but only spend one year there to learn the basics and then come back home for good.

After all, her parents had only mentioned that she had to learn how to use her powers. It wasn't like she had to master them or anything. One year would be sufficient enough, and then she'd come back to her own normal school with her own normal friends, and it would just become one of those things that she had to live with in life. Besides, she had made it this far without magic. So she could easily live her life without casting a single spell!

She heard a creak in the hallway, and held her breath as she could hear the faint beeping coming from the telephone as her mum dialed her aunt's number. She opened the door by a sliver to hear more clearly, and finally heard her mum's voice.

"Liv?" Her mum said into the receiver. "Yes, it's me, Jenny… Oh, things are quite all right over on this end. How is your family? Well, that's good to hear… Work is going quite well, thank you, although we're busier than ever this summer…" Maddie wished that they would skip past the formalities and get to the good stuff. "Actually, yes, there's a reason I called… No, I told you that everything is quite all right, it's just…" Jennifer hesitated while drumming her fingers nervously on the wall, but Maddie got the sense that her aunt was waiting quietly on the other end.

"Maddie got her letter today." Jennifer finally said, and Maddie couldn't tell if her mum sounded disappointed, relieved, or what. "You know damn well what letter it is, don't play stupid with me!" She laughed, so Maddie guessed that things were all good. "Yes, let's skip the part where you gloat about how the whole family had been right for the past eleven years. I was wondering if you would take Maddie into Diagon Alley when you go shopping for the boys… No, I can't go! No matter how much I want to go with her, my boss will never approve the request because we've been extremely busy lately, and the cheapskate won't hire on extra people… Thank you so much," Jennifer said with a sigh of relief, "that really eases my mind. Yes, I'll send her on the underground with some money and she'll meet you there. Just tell me how much you spent on Walter last year and I'll give her a bit extra… Blimey, inflation is terrible these days!"

The rest of the conversation was just boring talk about money and shopping and other grown-up things that Maddie didn't bother to listen to. She sat there hugging her knees, wondering where Diagon Alley was, and felt excited that she was to take the underground there all by herself. She took out her phone and tried to look it up, but there was no place called Diagon Alley in all of Britain. Logic reasoned that it couldn't be in another country, so she resigned herself to wait and see for herself before turning off her phone and listening for her mother to leave the hallway so that she could slip back into her room.

When her mother finally finished and Maddie heard her go into the bathroom, she opened the closet door quietly - thank God the hinges had just been oiled - and sneaked up the stairs.

Once she was back in her bed, she tried to get to sleep, but just like she had thought, it didn't come easily. One part of her felt so detached from it all - oh, so she was a witch? No problem. She was being sent to a magical school to learn how to hocus-pocus and all that rubbish? Sure, why not? But another part of her was freaking out about it all. How could she be magical? Magic wasn't even supposed to exist. It was supposed to have been what people used to explain science, or a moral tale to scare children in the medieval times. But her mother was making it to seem as if it was a whole other society.

With a million thoughts all jumbled together in her head, Maddie finally fell into a restless sleep.

A huge thank-you to the beta for my first chapter, PenandPaper83, and to Silken Gloves who gave me pointers to further tighten things up!