A/N: We're back! The longer-than-anticipated hiatus was in part due to wanting to have a more concrete plot fleshed out for this one, and in part because the last two weeks I've been wandering around the bush in outback Australia for my work. Not a lot of opportunity to update out there.

Two pieces of exciting news - one, that I have already written the first 9 chapters of this story, so you can expect swift updates for the first few weeks. And two, this will be the first story in the series whereby I have actually planned out more than one or two chapters ahead. This time, I've actually got a plot and an ending in mind before I started writing. I've been told that helps...

So I thank you for your patience, dearest readers, and I welcome you back once more. Join me, as we cast out into brave new waters of planning and foresight and blessedly coherent plot lines, and mark uncharted territory in the adventures of James S Potter, together.

J

Gwendolyn Tuft had never really fit in anywhere. It had first become apparent to her after she started at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, three days after her eleventh birthday.

It hadn't really been because she was Muggleborn. Having started school three years after the fall of Voldemort, people were still rather touchy about that particular subject. Although, she often mused, being a Muggleborn certainly played a part in its own special way.

Ravenclaw had seemed like the perfect fit for her intensely curious mind. But she soon found herself disappointed. While her classmates learned by book and quill, drinking in all that the Professors told them, little Gwendolyn preferred to find things out for herself. To experiment. But long hours locked away in the tower stirred rumours. Little interest in friends, and an open disdain for their blind following of what teachers told them soon turned the student body against her. "Gwendolyn the Weird" they'd called her, after the famous, forty-seven-times-burned witch. Though there was markedly less awe in their voices when it was directed at her.

By the time OWLs had rolled around, she'd failed almost every class in the curriculum. Her Muggleborn mind had yet to lose the wonder of discovery when it came to magic. Hundreds – no, thousands – of ways that it could be used to better their lives assailed her every day. And it had become her duty to uncover them. The libraries and history and latent knowledge that pervaded all of Hogwarts had seemed like the perfect setting.

Until her disregard for the edicts of structured education brought about her ejection from it. Before she'd even finished her sixth year, she was cast out as a lost cause, a hopeless case.

Perhaps she'd have worried about her future prospects, with no notable muggle or magical education to speak of. She might have fretted, had she not been visited that very night by a black-cloaked figure who promised her everything she'd ever wanted, in exchange for the pittance that was her time and her curious mind.

She'd never looked back.

And so now, sometimes she experimented. With more books and knowledge at her fingertips than she'd ever dreamed of. Sometimes she worked, if it could be called that. Sometimes she even got paid. Though rarely did she go hungry. She had colleagues, and she still found she didn't fit in with them in the slightest.

But it was with the job, and this new existence with which she had found herself a home. And so, it didn't bother her that the others still looked at her askance. Or that "Gwendolyn the Weird" hadn't ever really been left behind. Because this life in itself brought her happiness.

As such, it was all the more heartbreaking on the day that it betrayed her.

'But I'm not ready!' she wailed, tearing at strands of her long, dark hair. 'It will be weeks, months, probably before I'm even close.'

Standing in the doorway to her tower was the man they only knew as Dr Raven. He still wore the long, black cloak that gave him his name. Even though most of the feathers had long since fallen from it.

'That is no longer an option, Miss Tuft.' His voice was flat, calm and impassive. There was no way that Gwendolyn could trick herself into thinking he cared. 'The opportunity has arisen. We have no choice but to act now, and to act quickly.'

He turned and marched down the stairs. Expecting that she would follow. Knowing she would. She did. Three steps down from her "tower", merely a secluded room in the corner of the vast, underground space in which they worked. In which some of them lived. There were no windows, no natural light. Not even an obvious entrance or exit. For the first time, as Gwendolyn looked around, she realised how good of a prison this dungeon-like space made. She shivered.

Near a spot along the wall where Gwendolyn knew a hidden door resided, the pair paused. Slowly, the stretch of hewn rock melted away before them, and a trolley rolled in of its own accord. Strapped to it with thick iron chains was a figure, breathing softly. Still alive.

'No, Raven,' she gasped. 'Please. This isn't meant to be used on humans. It's purely theoretical. It could… It might… I don't even like to think what might happen.'

She may as well have been arguing with the wall before her. Raven's broad, bluff features stayed unmoved. He bore all the emotion of a weathered granite boulder. 'It begins, now.'

A single sob shook Gwendolyn's entire body. The girl couldn't have been more than half her own age. Locks of hair curled gently about the corners of her face, and spilled down like a fiery waterfall over edges of the cart. It was a sort of coppery-gold. A pretty colour, really.

Gwendolyn had no family, but if she'd had a daughter, she thought this might be what she'd want her to look like.

The girl's eyes snapped open and found Gwendolyn's own. They were the rich, green-blue of the ocean.

And both of them started screaming, together.