A.N.: Hello everyone! Welcome to my first fanfic, one that I've been working on for months. This is the first chapter of many chapters to come. To those who have already read this chapter, there have been many changes to this beginning! I would suggest reading at least the top half again. To those that are new to this story, I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy writing it!
Disclaimer: The Characters and situations of Harry Potter depicted on this website are the legal property of J.K. Rowling, Bloomsbury, and AOL Time Warner, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. But, of course, the plotline is entirely mine.
Being friends with Harry Potter isn't easy, as I'm sure you remember me telling you many times. It means being asked the most ridiculous questions by the most ridiculous people, it means breaking rules, it means sacrifices, it means always fighting for what you believe in, it means to understand, it means to love. I'm sure you understand that. When I first moved to England, I was afraid that the students wouldn't be kind or understanding. Don't laugh; you know it's true. By the third year, practically everyone had to have their gang of friends, right? I know you did. Anyway, that meant I would be alone, something my already low self-confidence had a hard time swallowing. I don't care if you don't believe me; I did have a very low opinion of myself. I had a hard time believing anyone who told me I was worth a damn. But that changed when I met Harry at Florean Fortescue's Ice-Cream Parlour before our third year at Hogwarts.
I'm Adamina Champlain, better known as Mina. I hope you remember me... I certainly haven't forgotten you. It's only been, what? A year or so since you left without a word? Maybe that's why you haven't contacted anyone. Maybe you don't remember us. Anyway, I just turned twenty-one today. I still didn't get what I longed for most. I've started giving up.
England is still nice. I'm starting to miss Ottawa, where I attended the new Queen Maeve School for Witches and Wizards until my father got a job teaching in England for this Muggle boarding school. I know you wouldn't want to talk about him, but Dad would have none of that. He wouldn't want to be forgotten. He was a house-dad (did you know that?) until I grew old enough to take care of myself. Mom owned a small business in Ottawa, selling magical antiques and items, just like the one here. There have been a lot of changes in the store; I wish you could see it now.
I'm still best friends with Ron, Hermione and Harry, the most amazing people I'll ever meet. I've been through so many adventures with them, I can't imagine us apart. I thought the same thing about you and your family, but look where that ended up? Who knows where I'll find myself later.
Ron, Harry, Hermione and I are being forced to visit a shrink regularly (against our will, might I add. Harry was particularly reluctant, but Hermione believes it's for our own good.). Mine suggested I write my story to someone, so that's what I'm doing. It's the only reason I'm even bothering to owl you. Again. Merlin only knows if you'll even get it.
That's that I guess. I'd better get started if I want this to be reasonably short. I want to tell you how I became friends with everyone, how I spent my first few years in England and a whole bunch of other things. But most of all, I want to tell you how I learnt to understand myself through love. Here goes.
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My first year at Hogwarts should have been my third, so I'll be referring to it as such. When my family arrived in England, my parents were shocked to find out that the house they had bought had been infested by Bundimun, greenish fungus with eyes. Their, uh, secretion rots away house foundations. Seeing as getting rid of them is a rather hard task, my folks and I were left with no other choice than to stay at the Leaky Cauldron until the peculiar fungus colony infesting our home could be taken care of. Dad decided he'd take care of the problem, so he wasn't around most of the time, and since Mom's shop was opening in the coming week, she was too busy to hang around with me. So I wandered pretty much all by myself, going from shop to shop and spending the majority of my day at Florean Fortescue's Ice-Cream Parlour, hoping to meet another teenager staying at the Leaky Cauldron until the start of school. I'd met a few students, but they always ended up leaving before I could decide whether I liked them or not. I didn't trust others easily, and with good reason.
As I sat reading an interesting article about Gilderoy Lockhart's past endeavours in Witch Weekly one night after supper, Mr Fortescue joined my table with my favourite ice cream flavour: chocolate mint cascade. I reached into my pocket to pay, but he lifted his hand to stop me. "On the house," he smiled. I thanked him and ate a spoonful. It was awesome, as usual.
"Thank you so much, Mr Fortescue," I began. "I guess I spend a lot of time here, don't I?"
He laughed. "Maybe just a little. At least you don't scare away the customers."
"I just hate being around the shop because my mom likes to give me the most disgusting chores. Did I tell you about the decomposing bat I found yesterday?" I shivered at the memory. I didn't like bats much, and the fact that it was worse than dead had churned my stomach. My mom made me clean everything up.
"Your mother told me, and reminded me to watch that you didn't eat too much ice cream at the same time." I rolled my eyes. My mom loved the idea of 'healthy eating', introduced to her by a Muggle friend. I liked my ice cream sugary goodness! I'm a witch, for goodness sake, it's not like I have to eat the fat stuff all the time. "But I thought ice cream'd be a good way for me to be welcome at your table, because I've got something interesting to tell you," he confided. I leaned in, very curious into what he had to say.
"Well? What is it?" I asked impatiently. I had a bad habit of being impatient. It had gotten me in a lot of trouble, especially with my parents, who liked to take their time getting places. When I've got somewhere to go, I want to get there and I want to get there now. No fooling around, I thought.
"The Minister for Magic, Cornelius Fudge, is here, staying at the Leaky Cauldron," he whispered.
"Oh, that's nice," I said, a little disappointed. From what I heard about Fudge, he wasn't exactly... worthy of my time.
"Apparently waiting for one thirteen year old Harry Potter to come," Mr. Fortescue continued. I nearly choked on my ice cream.
"What?! Are you sure? Will he be staying here?" I stammered. "Harry Potter, that is." I'd always thought of Harry Potter as some kind of far-off hero, or like some kind of Hollywood superstar. Older girls at Queen Maeve's liked to tease the younger girls, saying he wasn't real. I'd rolled my eyes at them, knowing they were wrong. My mom received the Daily Prophet, the most prestigious English wizard newspaper, to get news about him. She had been friends with Lily Evans, Harry's mom, when she did a student exchange program. They'd lost touch after they went into hiding.
Mom enjoyed showing me old letters with pictures of them. We went to England to visit them once, a few months before the Potters went into hiding. My mom let me keep a picture of Harry and me as babies, happily playing with each other in a tiny playpen. In the picture, he keeps reaching over and pulling on my ear, gurgling in delight. My baby self kept crying and trying to pull his ear in revenge.
I was born on August 22nd in the same year as him, so we were the same age. When my mom heard news of Lily's and James's deaths, she tried to get guardianship for Harry, but it didn't work out. Albus Dumbledore, a really powerful wizard and current Headmaster at Hogwarts, interfered, and my family didn't hear of him until he went to Hogwarts and defeated He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at the end of his first year. Then in his second year, there were many articles in the Prophet about him.
That's when it dawned on me that I knew so much about him, but he didn't even know I existed. Unless, of course, he had somehow managed to find scraps of his past, and something about me remained. The chances of that were slim, however, and I really wanted to make sure he knew who I was. I'll make sure that happens this year, I assured myself.
Making my way to Mom's shop, I tried to formulate a decent plan. How on Earth am I going to get him to notice me? I can't just say 'OH MY GOD You're Harry Potter!' It would freak him out. Hell, it would freak me out, I thought. Maybe I could casually bump into him, and then we'd have met without me actually haveing to say hi. No, that's even lamer than my first idea. Lost in my thoughts, I hardly noticed my mom behind the counter, yelling. "Huh?" I managed to get out unceremoniously. "Will you watch where you are going, Mina!" She screamed. "You almost ran into my pair of Vanishing Cabinets!" I blushed and mumbled an apology, knowing she had been working for weeks to find some. "Sorry Mom, but you wouldn't believe what Mr Fortescue just told me! He said that the Minister for Magic is here. But that's not the good part: he's here waiting for Harry Potter to arrive! He's gonna be living at the Leaky Cauldron until the start of term! I might even meet him, Mom!" However, Mom didn't react the way I had imagined. She paled and dropped her quill. "Mom! Are you alright?" I asked, concerned. It wasn't like her to lose control. Well, she had once, but in my family, we never discuss... that.
She stared into space for a while, and when she did answer me, her voice was barely more than a whisper. "Why is he coming here? He should be at his aunt Petunia's," she stammered. I didn't understand. She had told me that she didn't get any news about Harry, other than what was written in the Daily Prophet. How could she know where he was supposed to be? "Oh, pumpkin, I'm sorry I never told you, but I kept close contact with wizards from the area, mostly from my stays in England," she explained.
"Gee, thanks Mom, for that enlightening insight on your secret life," I said. "Not like I blame you though. But still! You could have told me!" She suddenly had a thoughtful look on her face, and I didn't like it.
"Well, seeing as we're here, and he's going to be here, perhaps we should invite him over for supper. Wouldn't that be nice, Mina?" I, on the other hand, thought that would be awful. I wanted to be friends with Harry Potter, not completely ridiculized because my mom was a hopeless nutcase and my father even worse. I opened my mouth to say something along these lines when my mom pulled me into a hug, showing she understood me. She chuckled. "There are two weeks before school starts. You have one to talk to him, or I'll invite him over." I nodded happily, kissed her cheek and went back to the Leaky Cauldron to finish the fifth Ancient Runes chapter, and maybe I'd start that Transfiguration essay, because I was way behind in my schoolwork. But hey! Who isn't? I procrastinated.
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I got up pretty late the next day. I'd stayed up all night finishing my Transfiguration essay. I had a quick bite of breakfast, saluted Tom the inn-keeper and walked out onto Diagon Alley. I was tempted to go see if the Apothecary to see if they had received their new shipment of porcupine quills, but knew I should check if my mom needed any help at the shop or she'd have another one of those famous Champlain fits. I passed Quality Quidditch Supplies and stopped short at the sight in the display window. No way, I gasped to myself.
It was there, the long awaited broom of the century. The Firebolt. The newest, fastest broom on the market. I knew the Canadian international team had already ordered them, as had almost all other national and international teams. I felt my jaw drop a few inches more as I took in its beauty. It was beautiful, it was sleek and it was priced on request. Ouch, I winced. I guess I won't be getting one of those any time soon. My old Comet Two-Sixty was getting, well old, and it didn't have the edge it had when I first got it. I groaned. My parents had agreed to consider buying me a new broom, but there was no way they'd let me mention the Firebolt. Mind you, according to Which Broomstick, the Nimbus series is still very advanced, and with the Firebolt out, the price for a Nimbus is sure to drop a bit, I reasoned. I tossed my hair over my shoulder, noticing that my normally straight hair had gone quite curly. Unconcerned, I kept making my way to Champlain's Magical Knick-Knacks, dreaming of what it would feel like to just touch a Firebolt. In fact, I was so enthralled by that dream that I wasn't watching where I was going, I bumped head first into a short wizard and we both fell over. "I'm so sorry," I mumbled, embarrassed, feeling my cheeks and even my hair growing red, trying to help him with his things. "It's alright," he answered. "Are you okay?" I looked at him for the first time and my eyes met his green ones, framed by round-rimmed glasses. My eyes quickly dashed to his forehead and saw a thin lightning bolt scar. Oh God, I groaned. It was Harry Potter. There goes my plan of acting cool. I' ve made a complete bafoon out of myself. Maybe I can try to convince my mom to move back to Canada again, I thought.
Trying not to show I knew who he was, I kept my eyes fixed on his. He kept staring, and then I realized he'd asked me if I was okay and I hadn't even answered. I blushed even more. "Yeah, I'm ok," I said, smiling. "I'm really sorry, I wasn't watching where I was going and last thing I knew..."
"Hey, don't worry about it, nothing's broken," he interrupted, standing and helping me up. He looked through his bag. "Well, except this one quill, but I've got loads more, so no worries."
"Here, let me fix that. Reparo!"
He looked at his newly-repaired quill and then back at me. "You're not from here," he stated. "Your accent is weird."
I laughed. "In all honesty, I think it's yours that's weird. And you're right, I'm not from here. I'm from Canada. I just moved here a couple of weeks ago."
"You're not staying at the Leaky Cauldron, then?" he asked, looking slightly disappointed.
"As a matter of fact, I am. With my parents. When we got here, we found our house infested by doxies. Pain in the rear-end, those little beasts. My mom just opened a shop here, it's the one around the corner, so I guess it's better that we're here, so I don't have to constantly travel back and forth," I explained. "She keeps asking me to do house-elf work. And then I tell her, 'If you're going to have me do work, then why do we still have Bobby?' But she never answers. She just laughs. Have you been here long? I haven't seen you around here," I asked as casually as possible, oblivious to my nervous babblings.
"Nah, I arrived last night," Harry replied. "I'm Harry, by the way. Harry Potter."
"It's nice to meet you, Harry Potter," I smiled, holding my hand out, which he shook. "I'm Mina. Adamina Champlain. Have you seen the new Firebolt yet?"
"Yeah, saw it this morning. It's beautiful, isn't it? I mean, it's sleek, it's said to be the best model ever built! It pushes the 150mph mark, and it accelerates within seconds and..."
"...it's got incredible balance and a remarkable braking precision. I know," I finished, completing the description of the perfect broom. I sighed. "What do you fly?" I asked.
"A Nimbus 2000. It's pretty good, it's really reliable and pretty fast," he answered. I pouted in jealousy. "You?"
"A Comet Two-Sixty," I sighed. "I might get something new, and if you're right about the Nimbus 2000, then it might be the one for me." It was nearly noon, the hot sun was burning my neck. I ached for an ice cream. "Want to head to Fortescue's? It's boiling hot out here," I suggested.
"Sounds good to me," he smiled.
I returned his smile. I'd made friends with Harry Potter.
