Welcome and already thank you for having clicked on my story!
This fanfiction is based on the Harry Potter books (so of course I do not own Harry Potter nor any of the canon characters& co, I'm only using J.K. Rowling's world to create a new story) and I'll follow the canon as well as I can.
You might come across some mistakes concerning the grammar/vocabulary, because English isn't my mother language (this is a way I found to improve my English). If there are mistakes that you can correct, please do! :-)
I hope you will enjoy the story. I'll post new chapters on a basis as regular as I can, the following chapters will be longer than this one (and have more action/content.)
...
Some kind of popular belief says that it's always when you're not looking for something that you find it. It's unproved whether this statement is correct or wrong, but one thing is certain: Eileen Green was not expecting to find out, aged 11, that she was gifted with magical powers. She was not expecting either that the news would be brought by a woman she had never met with a strict bun and an old-fashioned green dress. But life would become boring if it always went the way we expect it to be, so you guessed it: all of the mentioned above did happen, in the beginning of July, turning Eileen's world upside down. But before the story goes on, it might be useful to give some background information.
Mr Green and Mrs Green were both engineers in their late thirties. If you asked anyone in the neighbourhood, they would be described as nice people with a sharp mind and no particularly odd stories. The Green family also counted three children. Eileen was the oldest child. She was a rather calm girl, who often explored new worlds by reading or daydreaming. Her sister, Helen, was in many points the opposite of Eileen. She was as reckless as her sister was cautious (or fearful), as energetic as her sister was calm. Her hair, between blonde and brown, shone as gold during summer, while Eileen's was so dark it could seem black. Alex, the only boy, was the youngest child, born three years after Helen. His curiosity seemed to be unlimited, equalled only by his imagination. Despite their many differences, the Green children had at least one thing in common: they couldn't imagine a life without each other. They were so close it often happened one of them started a sentence and another finished it. All in all, the Green were a normal, happy family. That could have been all, if not for a minor detail that was revealed on the morning of the 7th of July.
There were no signs warning that the 7th of July would be anything more than a normal day of the beginning of holiday. The weather wasn't extremely good or bad, lightning hadn't struck the house and Eileen didn't feel any different from the day before. As for the plans for the day, the Green family hadn't planned anything more extraordinary than a walk in the countryside that surrounded the village. Halfway through the morning a stranger rang at the Green house. The visitor, a tall and thin woman, introduced herself as Minerva McGonagall, the deputy headmistress of a school neither Mr nor Mrs Green had ever heard about and said that she had a letter for Eileen. The whole situation was rather odd, and perhaps the most reasonable reaction would have been to tell the woman politely that thank you but Eileen already had a school, goodbye and have a nice day. For some reason that didn't happen and the woman was invited to come in and sit in the sitting room.
Even when you're told with carefully chosen words, it's not a small thing to suddenly learn that you're a witch and therefore should attend classes in a boarding school far away and learn the ways of a completely different world. The news was welcomed with an understandable skepticism by Mr and Mrs Green and complete astonishment by Eileen and Helen. Only Alex became nearly ecstatic at the idea of having a witch sister. To prove her point about magic, the woman - or, like Eileen would call her later, Professor McGonagall - turned a cushion of the couch in a siamese cat, the sight of which delighted Alex, but was rather upsetting for Isis, the dog of the family.
Afterwards, Eileen and her parents received quite a lot of practical information about Hogwarts, the furnitures, the journey to school, the holidays… Eventually, the Green ran out of questions and McGonagall ran out of things to explain. They proceeded then to chose a date on which the deputy headmistress could lead them to Diagon Alley to buy Eileen's school material and, of course, her wand. About the last point, McGonagall was rather clear: magic was not to be used out of the boundaries of Hogwarts by underaged wizards and witches. This was a bit of a disappointment for Eileen, who was already dreaming of the marvelous spells she would cast, but something in the general attitude of the deputy headmistress made her accept this restriction without questioning. Somehow, she felt she could better not upset that woman.