"Get up, you lazy creatures, breakfast is waiting," Carol, a fat nanny, said clapping her hands repeatedly as she opened the blinds. Three out of the four girls sharing the room stretched and moaned, but the fourth, Faith Lenihan, leapt out of her bed without hesitation, ran through the bedroom, into the hallway, and down the stairs into the dining room, her feet clunking on the hardwood each step of the way. The eleven year old slid into her favorite seat at the table and started picking through the breakfast items that awaited her. It was odd that she was one of the firsts to the breakfast table in the morning, only a handful of boys from the first floor were already eating, so it was nice not having to dig through already picked over food to find something to eat.
"You're moving awfully fast, this morning," the head nanny said to Faith as the girl grabbed a few slices of bacon and buttered an English muffin. The girl shrugged. "Ah, today is the day you go to that boarding school." Faith smiled. She didn't much like to speak with the nannies, but it was hard for her to contain her excitement. Ever since she got the letter from Hogwarts she had been waiting for this day to come. Of course, the nannies had no idea Faith would be attending a school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. When viewing Faith's acceptance letter, all they saw was a simple letter stating that the girl would be attending an exclusive boarding school on the other side of London.
Faith wolfed down her food so fast that by the time she was marching back up the stairs to her bedroom, her roommates were just then waking up and heading toward breakfast. It wasn't hard to pack up all of her belongings. Everything she had, almost completely clothes, fit soundly into a small suitcase. She tucked the sheets in on her bed and left the room, taking her suitcase down the stairs. She had almost walked out the door when the head nanny stopped her.
"Leaving already?" she said, closing the door to stop the girl from leaving. Faith looked at her and nodded. "Don't you think you should say goodbye?"
"I'm coming back this summer," Faith told the nanny. The girl never considered any of the other children her friends. In fact, they were more or less her enemies that she managed to coexist with peacefully.
"Now Faith, go say goodbye to the others," the nanny commanded. "It's only polite." Being polite wasn't a thing the girl was too good at. She rolled her eyes and stubbornly slumped her way back into the dining room where the table was now full of children eating breakfast. She made her way over to her roommates, who were all chattering excitedly about something.
"I'll see you in the summer," Faith muttered to the girls, quickly looking to the nanny for her approval. The girls looked at each other and giggled.
"Okay," one of them blurted out.
"See ya then," another said before looking away. As she was walking away, Faith could hear the girls snickering at her. She scowled and clenched her fist. As she turned around and headed back toward her roommates, the nanny grabbed her shoulder firmly and pulled her away.
"I don't think so, Faith," she said, redirecting the girl toward the front door. "Leave on a good note." Faith remained silent. "Have fun at school."
The door closed behind Faith and she trotted down the stairs onto the sidewalk close to the street. In a letter from Hogwarts, she was informed that a witch or wizard in need would always have a way to Hogwarts. She was also instructed to make her way to a place called "The Leaky Cauldron" where she could stay and get her school supplies. She stood by the edge of the street curiously, waiting for something to happen. The letter wasn't very clear about how she was supposed to actually get to The Leaky Cauldron.
With a loud crack, Faith jumped and noticed a very purple triple-decker bus that appeared out of nowhere on the street in front of her. A tall, skinny man with some severe acne jumped out of the bus.
"Welcome to The Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Step on board and we'll take you anywhere you want to go. My name's Stan Shunpike, I'll be your conductor this morning," the man said. Faith smiled brightly and grabbed her bag, stepping up onto the first steps of The Knight Bus. "Choo got in there?" Stan asked, grabbing the small suitcase from her to put it in storage.
"My stuff," Faith said, not feeling like it was much of his business.
"S'all you got?" he asked again. Faith nodded. "Alright then. Take a seat and sit down." Faith got all the way onto the bus to see it was full of chairs, mostly empty. There was one man in the back of the bus lying on a bed snoring loudly. "Take 'er away, Ern," Stan said to, presumably, the driver of the bus, and with another loud bang the bus was on a completely different street, speeding down the highway at what seemed to be a thousand miles per hour.
Her heart pounded nervously as she gripped the seat with fear, afraid that she was going to fly away. Not only had she just stepped completely out of her element the moment her feet left Wool's Orphanage, but she was literally thrown from the world of muggles into the world of witches and wizards. As she grew accustomed to the high speed of The Knight Bus, Faith found herself able to relax and view the blurry world outside her window and around at the other passengers on the bus. There was a woman close by reading a newspaper... with moving pictures? Faith had seen such a thing before, but it was long ago.
"Don't those muggles see us?" Faith asked Stan as they passed a large group of businessmen on their morning commute to work.
"They don't see a thing," he answered, scratching his scruffy face as he picked up a newspaper of his own. Faith smiled. This day was finally here. The day she said goodbye to the world of muggles and re-entered herself into the world of witches and wizards. Ever since she was put into the orphanage at age seven, she had been sheltered from anything in the outside world, including anything magical. She missed the sights of floating objects and moving pictures. She was finally going to feel at home again.
"Where you off to?" Stan asked, flipping through his paper.
"Um, The Leaky Cauldron," she told him.
"Fair enough," he said. "Leaky Cauldron, Ern!"
"Leaky Cauldron!" Ernie replied.
Stan tried to make conversation with Faith, but she was too distracted by the sights around her. She tilted her head to the side, taking notice of the newspapers. There was a moving mugshot of a scruffy man, headlined- "HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WIZARD?"
"Who's that?" she asked innocently.
"Who's that?" Stan asked back, quite quizzically. "I swear, where you kids comin' from?" Faith tilted her head to the side, not quite understanding. "You the second kid to ask me that."
"It's Sirius Black," the woman with the newspaper behind her stated. "He's a madman- was locked up in Azkaban but now he's escaped." Faith tilted her head.
"Azkaban? I've heard that before," she said quietly.
"You a muggle born then?" Stan asked nosily, raising a brow.
"No," Faith told him. She didn't want to get into the details with him, but she was, in fact, a pureblood.
"There's nothing wrong with that," the woman said before Stan could ask any more questions. "Azkaban is a high security prison for rogue, evil witches and wizards." Faith nodded again, then looked out the window curiously, watching everything pass by as a blur.