Muggles and Mayhem, by joaleennicole

NOTES

The characters and events portrayed in this story are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Gentle criticism is discretionary, but there are some rules regarding this account that will be discussed later on and throughout this narrative.

This story is written for fandom, and you may write certain reviews regarding so, as long as you accede with the rubric written at the end of this material.

Anonymous reviews are permitted.

Anyways, that's all. Enjoy, okay? I'd hate it if you don't, but like I had written above, I especially welcome reviews. Just rate this material from one to ten (ten being the highest). That's the only rubric. It goes the same for the other chapters. I'm open to questioning! Anyways, Divertirsi!(It's Italian for enjoy).

P.S. I'm Filipino, not Italian, nor French, nor American, and I write to amuse myself. Anyway, I have read more than a hundred books in particular, for a fifteen-year-old.

P.S.S. I do not own Harry Potter, and I'm not J.K. Rowling.

~joaleennicole

Chapter One

The Oddity of All, and All their Causes

Lily Luna Potter sat on the edge of her bed, reading Quidditch Through the Ages. Her bedroom door was ajar, and as she read she glanced back and forth, from the book to the door, as if she's expecting someone to enter through it. Her father, the infamous Harry Potter, was an Auror in the Ministry of Magic, but Lily had never relished the fame her father had brought into his family. She just kept a low profile, just like what a normal witch on her very first year at Hogwarts would do. She was just waiting in her own bedroom for her mother, Ginny, to call her for a trip to platform nine and three-quarters. Today was the day she would be sent into Hogwarts.

Her brother, James, had always teased her about what would happen at Hogwarts. He said that if you fall out of the boat while on your way across the cold lake, the Giant Squid will gobble you up. Lily had always believed that myth, and she had complained a lot about it, and gave thought about it, but Ginny had assured her that James is lying. James is always lying.

As she waited for her mother, she managed to come across a book her father had owned. It was entitled Quidditch Through the Ages, and she was immersed in it for quite a time.

"Lily!" Ginny called. Lily jumped up so fast that the book skittered down her lap and landed on the floor with a loud thud.

"What is it, Mum?" Lily called. She picked the book up and threw it into her trunk. Her wand — 12 inches long, birch, with a phoenix feather core — lay untouched on her bed. She also threw it into her trunk along with the books they had bought just yesterday from Diagon Alley.

"Lily, have you packed your things already? You father's on his way home. Also, can you call your brothers for me, please? They don't seem to hear a thing." Her Mum said.

"Yes, Mum!" said Lily, half-heartedly going out of her room and knocking on James' door first, whose room was just in front of hers. James, still groggy, opened the door for her, but when he saw who it was he shut the door flat onto her face. James had never been Lily's favourite brother.

"Mum, James just shut the door on me!" she yelled.

"Just leave him, then. Go up to the attic and wake Albus up instead. He's a way better listener than James." Then Ginny, to James, yelled, "James Sirius Potter, would you please get down here NOW?"

Lily smiled to herself. She figured that her first day would turn out quite okay.

On the other hand, Albus, after seeing Lily, welcomed her into her room, although he looked quite grumpy about it. He was still packing, and that was obvious from the way he crammed his clothes into his trunk and his books into his cauldron.

"Albus, Dad's on his way home." She said.

"Oh, is he? I'm not yet done packing. Now where is that…ow!"

Albus jumped around, shaking his finger. A Cornish pixie that managed to get into his trunk unnoticed was gnawing on his finger. Albus pulled on it, but the pixie was firm.

"Lily, can you please get my wand? I think my finger's losing circulation." He said, pointing at the trunk.

Lily stared at him, wide-eyed. "No way am I going to get that! There might be more pixies in there!"

"Only one managed to get in, Lily. Stop fussing around!"

"But Albus, Mum said —"

"Enough with the Mum said! Merlin's beard, can you please get that stupid wand?"

Lily fumbled around to get Albus's wand.

Albus, grabbing the wand from his sister, pointed it at the blue pixie.

"Expelliarmus!" He yelled. The pixie flew a few meters into the air, and crashed back into Albus' trunk. Dazed, it got into feet, and buried itself just underneath Albus' copy of The Standard Book of Spells Grade 3.

"That thing," said Albus, still shaking his swollen finger. "Wouldn't get out of my trunk. I think that it set up its permanent residence back there."

"Are you okay, then?" Lily asked. "Is your finger okay?"

Albus held up his finger for Lily to see. "It's purple. I swear that I would never pack my stuff up without Mum. That pixie's going to pay."

"So are you ready, now?" Lily asked. "Dad's almost home from the Ministry, and Mum asked me to call you. We might miss the train."

"Don't be silly, Lily. We're not going to miss the Hogwarts Express. Platform nine and three-quarters will not vanish. King's Cross wouldn't, either."

"Albus…"

"Shut up, Lily. Just wait for me, downstairs, will you? I'm just going to lock my trunk up and prepare my cauldron."

Lily, shoved out of Albus' room, went to lug her trunk out of her room to the first story of their quaint, little home.

When Lily got downstairs, she found her father and her mother, Harry and Ginny, sitting round their small table. Her father, Harry James Potter, was just home from working overnight at the Ministry. Harry was holding a box of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, and a box of chocolate frogs was seated on the table. Ginny, looking cross, was carefully fixing the flower arrangement, and the awkward James was standing by her side.

"If it is not Lily!" said Harry cheerfully. "How are you, my dear? Are you ready for your first day at Hogwarts?"

"I dunno, Dad. Today feels a little….different."

"Everyday always feels different. Don't be nervous, dear. When I was your age —"

"Enough with all that drabble, Harry. Good lord, will you look at the time." said Ginny.

Harry picked up the Daily Prophet and regarded the front page carefully. "Oh, I'd kill that Skeeter woman." He said. "Can't leave the Ministry alone, can she?"

"Why, dear?" asked Ginny, but Harry just groaned.

"Mum?" James asked in what Lily thought was a jaunty voice. "Can I get my trunk now?"

"James, I've been telling you that a thousand times already. How come you haven't done it yet? And Albus —"

Albus, who just appeared at the foot of the stairs, with his trunk right behind him, looked frantically at his mother. His pet ferret, Hobbes, was perched on his shoulder, fat as ever.

"What did I just do, Mum?" he asked.

Ginny smiled. "An owl arrived, and it's for you. You better check the mail, dear."

Albus hurriedly went to the living room to get his mail.

Lily knew who had been sending Albus some mail. There was a girl named Ambrose Macmillan, and she and Albus had started writing to each other since the last day of school. Albus had been in his room ever since, and he rarely came out unless that it is time for supper.

"Is your brother seeing someone?" said Ginny to James.

"I dunno," said James, shrugging. "Why should I find out?"

Ginny pursed her lips. "It is for the reason that he rarely goes down unless he is called."

"Mum, he rarely comes down because you rarely call him," said James. "It's not my fault if it took him a lot of time to write to his girlfriend."

Ginny turned a bright shade of pink. "Albus has a girlfriend? What do you mean Albus has a girlfriend?" she bellowed, swelling up like a balloon.

Harry closed the Daily Prophet and placed it on the table. "Oh, really?" he asked. "Who is it? I might prefer it if she's a Macmillan. I hear that Ambrosia's a beauty."

"Harry, not you too…"

"Oh, please, Ginny. Don't be too overprotective. Albus is a teenager. He's not eight years old."

"Ambrose looks like an electrocuted, half-drowned cat with no fur," James said, snickering to himself. "I'll have to give my point to Mum — Daddy's smart, but Mommy knows everything."

"Ambrosia Macmillan has quite an exquisite face, James. You should give her credit for that. I've seen her around the Ministry a couple of times…" said Harry, picking up the newspaper once again.

Ginny looked exasperatingly at the clock above the counter. It was a quarter past ten, and time is running short before they catch the train.

"Harry, Harry, dear, I think that we should go and hurry. James, out of your pyjamas! Go get your trunk down from your room, and help your dad get the luggage into the car. Lily, come over here — your hair is like a haystack I could drop a needle in it!"

Ginny brusquely pulled Lily aside and ran a plastic, blue hairbrush through her flaming (and tangled) red hair. Lily's Mum did it so forcibly that Lily felt as if her head might fall off at any moment.

"Ow. Ow. Ow." she said whenever Ginny pulled at the wrong spot, and whenever she did say this, Ginny would say, "Stop complaining! If you won't stay still and let me do this, we might miss the train!",to much of Lily's extreme aggravation.

At ten o'clock, everybody was running around the house, yelling at each other and toppling over each other's trunks. James ran around with a piece of toast in his mouth while carrying his pet ferret Blitzer's cage in his hand, and lugging his trunk in the other. Lily's dad accidentally spilled coffee on the front of their Mum's clothes, and they had to wait for another five minutes so that their Mum could get dressed properly. Soon, all of them were crammed inside their (bewitched) car, and Harry was about to start the engine when James forgot to grab his broomstick. By ten-thirty, all of them were set for King's Cross.

The station was jam-packed with Muggles (non-magickal people) of all sorts. It was easy to get to platform nine and three-quarters. All you have to do is walk through the barrier dividing platforms nine and ten. The tricky part is getting there without attracting a pair of curious, inquisitive, Muggle eyes, and it took them quite a time because Blitzer wasn't helping — she shrieked and flailed when James accidentally dropped her. The guard — bless him — drove the other Muggles back to their own businesses, but looked mildly curious himself. Ferrets weren't very popular pets, and so were owls, since he told the strange family that he had seen a couple of peculiar people (with owls) vanishing through the barrier.

"An' they disappear like that — whoosh — an' all I thought was, Hey! They were here a while ago! I didn't know what to believe, really, when I saw the next guy, and the next. An' all I thought I was just hallucinatin'! Bothers me, I'd say! I see people vanishin' here and there each year. I just keep a mouth shut cause people will think that I'm crazy."

Harry was pretty disturbed by this, and he instantly used a memory charm on the poor guard before he can even say another word. The guard scratched his head, walked away, and mumbled something under his breath.

"That takes care of him," said Harry. "I don't know what the Ministry will say if another case like this opens up. It's a good thing it was only the guard who noticed. If something like that happens again, the Ministry might've closed down. We've got around twenty cases like that back there, and twenty more with all the disappearances, and all of them were made in less than a month."

"Really, dear?" said Ginny. "Is the Ministry doing something about it?'

"Well, of course. Our Obliviators aren't doing any better, though — they've been running around taking care of all those Muggles. The Aurors are helping out, too. Ron's been having a pretty hard time. There's one Muggle who just can't forget, and Ron's dealing with him. Ron's not a very good Obliviator, I'll tell you, and the Muggles and Rita Skeeter aren't helping. That Skeeter woman's been in our nerves for years. She's been writing stuff about the disappearances. She says that Hadrian Whittle's just on vacation and the Ministry's too imperceptive to know. One day I'll really tell them that she's an unregistered Animagus."

"Oh, that's a bad thing." Ginny said, clucking her tongue in disapproval. "What kinds of cases? Why are the Muggles troublesome?"

"Oh, you know — rogue witches and wizards showing up here and there. There's an old woman who claimed she was Miranda Goshawk, I daresay."

Lily knew who Miranda Goshawk is. She's a famous author in the Wizardry world, and she had written lots of books, including a couple of what they use in Hogwarts. She had written at least twenty, in particular, when she disappeared a year ago. No one knows where she is.

"Did you have any luck catching them, Dad?" asked Albus, still scanning his letter from Ambrosia Macmillan. "Do you know who they are?"

Harry shook his head. "No. The Muggles aren't helping, like I told you. They were confused. Dazed, I may add. Nope. Not the Confundus charm, Lily. Something else, entirely." He added, seeing Lily's face. "They don't remember where they live, and what their names are, and also the wizards who appeared to them, but they remembered seeing something impossible. Like a selective memory charm. The oddity of all is that they claimed they were all known witches and wizards. Their memories are being modified right now."

"Poor things," said Ginny. "I hope that they get their rightful memories back."

"I agree. The disappearances, these problems — I do hope that we'll finally have a solution for all of this. As for the disappearances —" he said, looking at them with careful eyes. "I do hope that these people are really on vacation."

Look out for the next chapter: Speculations and Lies.

For the reviews: Please rate it from one to ten (ten being the highest).

This material is in regards to these following authors: J.K Rowling, Rick Riordan, Trenton Lee Stewart, Cassandra Clare, and Daniel Handler. These authors inspired me in all aspects of life.

Thank you for reading the first chapter!