Chapter One:

Ayanne

Ayanne woke with a start. The nightmare was still vivid in her mind. She had dreamt that her eleventh birthday had come and gone and she still had never

received an acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Her eyes roved around her room as she grounded herself in the fact that she was, in fact, not eleven yet and landed

on the poster of Harry Potter on her wall. She blushed.

"Watching me sleep, Harry? Naughty, naughty." she whispered to the blinking and smiling picture. Harry lowered his eyes, turning red in the face.

She lifted her wrist to check her watch. The digital numbers blinked uncertainly before switching from 11:59 on a Tuesday to 12:00 on a Wednesday. Her heart

raced as she realized that she was now officially eleven. She pumped her little fist enthusiastically, attacking her pillow in triumph. Absolutely silent shouts of

delight were shaped by her lips. She had waited nine years for this.

Suddenly she realized that it would be hard to enjoy any pretense of a celebration if she were drooping like a wilting flower due to her lack of proper sleep.

Promptly she plopped down onto her pillows and squeezed her eyes shut. Her tiny fists were clenched and glued to her sides, and her legs were clamped

together. It was rather difficult to fall asleep like that. Eventually, however, her muscles relaxed as she gently drifted off back to sleep.

Ayanne Brown was a proud Harry Potter fan club member of the platinum level. She (privately, of course) thought that Harry was the most wonderful (and

handsome) creature to ever walk the earth. Every week she held a Harry Potter fanclub meeting with the other witches on her streets in her bedroom. She was,

naturally, the president of this little group, and governed these meetings with the strict devotion of such a person. The Birch Street Harry Potter Fan Girls Group

(or Bush-puf-gug as they called themselves) met once a week to rave about Harry Potter, take pictures of his current house a couple blocks down, and brag

over the dreams they had about him. Ayanne governed her little group with a sweet and innocent, but general-like authority, and all the little girls deferred to

her.

In a cozy little house on a cozy street in Little Whinging, Ayanne slept with a smile, her sisters in the rooms beside her, and her parents in the room below her.

Dreams of flying owls with rolls of parchment in their sharp little beaks swooped around in her head, and she sighed in her sleep, unconsciously hoping to wake

up with a Hogwarts letter on the table.

Ayanne yawned and stretched luxuriously in her mahogany bed. The golden stars on her purple bedspread wrinkled as she sat up. Her eyes flickered once more

to her watch. It was eight in the morning and already the pans were jangling merrily downstairs in the kitchen. Ayanne smiled. No doubt it was her mother.

The lovely, brown-haired girl hopped out of bed and jumped over to her deep brown dresser. She ripped open the drawers and whipped out the shirt she had

been saving for this day- her birthday shirt! It was the one blouse in the whole house that had moving graphics. Pink confetti whirled around the flashing green

words, Happy Birthday! She blew on the drifting confetti and giggled as they swirled around in a tiny blizzard in response to her forceful breath. She pulled on

her jeans and shoved her head through the birthday blouse. She grabbed her hairbrush off of her dresser and skipped to the bathroom to brush her hair.

As Ayanne ran the purple brush through her long, brown hair, she stared in the mirror at her- what she considered to be- hideous reflection. Her nose was nice,

she supposed, with a sprinkling of little freckles across the bridge, and she liked her cheekbones and her jawline. It was her eyes that were the problem. They

were rather almond-shaped, that much was true, but one of them was green, and the other a sickly bright blue. She did not like that. After a minute she

realized she had set her brush down on the marble-topped counter to glare at her image. Embarrassed by her obsession, she turned to the door and stalked out

without looking back at the mirror. Only once she had dressed and scrubbed her face did she leap down the stairs to the kitchen.

The twins, Olivia and Amelia, were already setting the table and arranging vases full of delicate pink roses. Ayanne sniffed daintily at the lovely aroma wafting

through the dining room. She smiled and gave her little sisters big hugs for her birthday surprise.

"Do you like them, Ayie?" Olivia asked proudly.

"Of course I do! They are the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen! Wherever did you get them?"

Amelia and Olivia beamed with pride.

"Mummy helped us pick them out at the Muggle store," Amelia replied humbly. "She said that little sisters always get roses for their big sisters' eleventh

birthdays in the wizarding world. She said that it is because eleven is how old you are when you get the Hogwarts letter."

Olivia sighed loudly. Ayanne smiled. She knew why Olivia suddenly had a long face.

"Don't worry about it too much, Livvy. You and Amelia will go to Hogwarts in just four years!"

Olivia's bottom lip stuck out like a couch cushion. "But four years is a long time," she pouted. Ayanne laughed. Olivia was an impatient creature; it was her most

recognisable trait. That and her insufferable passion for Quidditch.

Amelia was Olivia's polar opposite. She was kind, overly ladylike, and would rather cuddle up to a couch with a book than race around on a broomstick. Both

twins were honey blond, with freckles by the million. They were both tall for their age, with skinny legs and long arms. But Ayanne supposed that that was

normal for eight-year-olds.

The girls' mother was bumbling around in the kitchen, preparing breakfast for the birthday girl. Ayanne stepped through the door to the addictive scent of bacon

and bangers.

"Mmm, Mum, smells delicious!" Ayanne sighed happily.

"I certainly hope so. Only a looney would find the English traditional breakfast to smell unattractive," Mum replied, turning, wand in hand, to drop a kiss on her

head. The girl smiled and stole a piece of bacon from the sizzling pan. It was hot enough for Ayanne to drop it on the counter and simply pick pieces off the

sliver of bacon.

Ayanne's father walked in, his blond hair shimmering in the morning light. His also blond wife smiled at him over her shoulder and blew a kiss to him. Then she

preoccupied herself at the stove. With a negligent flick of her wand, the bacon strips somersaulted out of the pan and onto a platter. The eggs flew onto five

plates, the sausages flipped into a bowl, and the toasted bread slices buttered themselves. Mum waved her wand again, and the dishware floated snootily into

the dining room.

"Shall we?" Father asked, holding his arm out to the celebrant.

"We shall," she replied, and the family sat around the table. Olivia and Amelia began to fight over the bacon, and the older, more mature members of the

household demurely, and with lifted pinkies, sipped their orange juice.

"You already had a piece! I want one!" Olivia shouted.

"I did not have a piece yet, you did!" Amelia yelled.

"Enough!" Father cried, with a worried glance at Ayanne, who was resolutely glaring at the wall. "Your sister deserves the chance to eat her birthday breakfast

with a loving family, not with a bunch of squealing brats."

"We are not brats!" Olivia humphed.

"We are simply politely fencing over the bacon, Father," Amelia nodded sagely.

"I need some air," Ayanne sighed, as she walked to the window and pushed it open. A black silhouette caught her attention. She stared as it became closer and

larger. She ducked as it zoomed through the window and dropped something in the bangers before sweeping out again.

Mum gasped, and Ayanne turned to look at the thing in the sausages.

It was a letter.