AN: Fair warning: This fic plays extremely fast and loose with canon. A lot of major canon characters' relationships have been changed. A lot of characters have had their genders changed. (The entire Weasley clan is female now. And the Prewetts. Just for starters.) Some people who died in canon are still alive. I refuse to accept that Teddy's first name is canonically Edward, so they're Theodorea (they're also genderfluid). This is most definitely EWE (epilogue, what epilogue) and probably also ignoring Pottermore and Cursed Child and everything JK Rowling has ever said outside of the books (and half of what she said in them) unless I find it convenient. Don't read this expecting anything resembling canon compliance, is what I'm saying. I'm taking the HP canon as a springboard, and I'm swan diving away from it into what I thought would be fun.

This first chapter is a prologue of sorts, and the least interesting part of the story, for which I apologize. I'm posting the first two chapters at once to help with that.

Nashira was nervous as she walked home from the bus stop. She'd been seeing an owl out of the corners of her eyes all day, outside the library where she went to be somewhere that wasn't the orphanage during the long summer days. Owls were silent, and that made her even more nervous - she wouldn't be able to hear it if it went for her.

Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to stay at the library this afternoon. The owl was even creepier in the gathering dusk.

When she turned onto the orphanage's long driveway, the owl swooped down in front of her and perched on the edge of the fence. It stared at her, then jerked its head down towards its legs, where there was... paper? She stood there staring at it in bafflement, and it hopped a bit closer and hooted at her, sounding annoyed.

None of the scenarios Nashira had constructed in her head for why an owl might be stalking her had involved post. She hesitantly reached her hand out towards the letter, ready to snatch it back if the owl looked like it was going to make a move to savage her, but it just stuck its leg out towards her to make it easier for her to reach the letter. She fumbled hurriedly with the leather thong, then backed away with the letter. The owl hooted again, this time sounding satisfied, and flew away.

She watched it disappear into the trees, then looked down at the letter. Handwritten on it, in looping green ink, was:

Nashira Yasmin Shafiq Black

Northernmost Bed, East Dormitory

St. Anne's Home For Girls

Nashira peered suspiciously at the letter, looked up at the Home, and then headed off to one side, following the inside of the fence along until she reached a streetlight that was blocked from the windows by some trees where she could read in relative privacy.

She pulled her pocketknife surreptitiously out of her training bra and slid it carefully under the wax seal to detach it from the thick paper, then returned the knife to its hiding place before she opened the envelope and removed the contents.

Out of the envelope came a thick sheaf of papers. The edges were rough and the surface was much more textured than she was used to. Something in the back of her mind suggested that this might be the 'parchment' that she'd read about in fantasy novels.

Whether it was paper or parchment, she unfolded the packet and looked at the first page.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmistress: Minerva McGonagall

Dear Ms. Black,

We are pleased to inform you that your tuition has been paid in full for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. No response is required, as your admission has already been accepted.

Yours sincerely,

Pomona Sprout

Deputy Headmistress

The second page was a list of required equipment and books. Nashira didn't bother looking at it closely - she was too absorbed in the implications of the first page.

School of witchcraft? And what on earth kind of name was 'Hogwarts'? Was the school inside the warts on a hog? That sounded disgusting, and unclean. She had so many questions, and no way to ask any of them. She especially wanted to know how her tuition could have already been paid. Was it some kind of scam to kidnap young girls? An orphan would be a good target, she supposed, since she didn't have parents or siblings to miss her. A stalker would also explain how they know where she slept.

She looked more closely at the other pages, and saw that she was supposed to leave for the school through "Platform 9 3/4" at King's Cross Station in London. Nashira hadn't been to a lot of train stations in her life, but she was pretty sure the platforms were labeled with whole numbers.

It wasn't like she could just up and go to London to catch a train that might not exist, anyway. If they were scammers, how did they expect her to get to where they could grab her and sell in into slavery, or whatever people who kidnapped eleven year old girls did?

And how did they know her full name? It wasn't even in the school system. Nothing had provisions to deal with four names, so she was down officially as just Nashira Black. Her other two names she only knew from peeking at her birth certificate when she had had to bring it into school once. They were too special for everyday use. She liked to imagine that her parents must have loved her a lot, to pick out that many names all for one girl.

And she'd looked up what her names meant, at the library. Nashira meant "the lucky one" or "bearer of good news", and it was a star. Yasmin was the Arabic name for jasmine flowers. So they must have thought she was special, to give her a name like that, surely. They must have loved her and died, not just abandoned her.

Jasmine flowers were her favorite, even though she'd only seen them a couple of times. Her parents had named her after them. They were her flowers. She never told anyone else about them being hers. That was her secret to hold close, and know that someone had cared about her once.

She wished she knew Arabic. Three of her names were Arabic, so at least one of her parents must have been. Maybe they would have taught her, and she would have grown up speaking two languages. As it was, all she had was dirty looks and hissed insults from the other kids for the color of her skin. She wished she had a culture to hold as a counterweight against the hatred, instead of a void where her roots were.

She looked at the letter again, then at her watch. If she stayed out here any longer, she'd miss dinner, and the letter wasn't going to change for her staring at it longer now. She pulled her backpack around over one shoulder and tucked the letter and envelope into the back of one of her spare notebooks, then zipped the backpack up again and headed for the door of the Home.

There was no one in the entrance hall when she walked in, and she made it to her bed without seeing anyone and dropped her backpack on the rickety desk next to it. If no one was in the dorm, they must all already be at dinner, and she was late. She turned and hurried back out towards the cafeteria.

Miss Brenna sighed at her when she tried to sneak in the door, but she looked amused instead of angry. "Did you lose track of time at the library again, Nashira?"

Nashira nodded guiltily. That was most of why she was late, anyway. She should have left earlier. It stayed light so long this time of year that she always thought it was earlier than it was.

Miss Brenna shook her head tolerantly. "You have a watch for a reason, Nashira. Try looking at it. Hurry now and get some food before everyone starts going back for seconds."

Nashira bobbed her head and trotted off to the counter, snagging a tray and a plate on her way. She got an undersized scoop of macaroni and cheese - there wasn't much left - and a rather larger scoop of creamed spinach, which was neglected as usual. Mrs. Parker dropped a square of Yorkshire pudding on her plate, and she skipped the rubbery pork chops, grabbed a glass of water and a fork and carefully carried her tray to the nearest unoccupied table, skirting widely around the other girls. They mostly didn't bother her, after too many weird occurrences of their glasses of milk tipping over into their laps after they tripped her, but it was better to be safe than sorry. She was hungry, she didn't want her food to end up on the floor.

Hm. Maybe luck like that was why they wanted her to go to a witch school? Poppy-Mae in Mrs. Brightman's class last year had called her a 'witchy freak' after Nashira accidentally static shocked her and Poppy-Mae's hair frizzed up for hours when she had shoved Nashira on Picture Day, but she'd never thought about it much.

When she got to the end of a table that was mostly empty, she set her tray down and sat down to eat, thinking hard. Was she a witch? Was being a witch a bad thing? She'd sat through enough sermons from charitable vicars who wanted to save the poor orphans to know 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live', but she wasn't sure she wanted to be Anglican anyway.

Nashira finished eating and returned her plate and tray to the bins and headed to bed, thinking hard.