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Silence. That's what my life has boiled down to, a constant state of silent anxiety. An inescapable dread that my life had become unhinged and was spiralling wildly out of control coupled with the feeling that I was helpless, yet it was my own doing. My fate had little to nothing to do with me. At least, that's what it had taken a summer to convince myself. My entire vacation away from Hogwarts was spent in a continuous cycle of sleeping, hardly eating, crying, and sitting in introspective silence. Each day continued the same. I had lost contact with all of my friends. Every week their letters arrived and every week a new piece of parchment was accumulating on my bedside table inside of my almost equally as silent and dreary household. I guess that's how I ended up like this, sitting inside an empty cabin on the Hogwarts express on my way to my dreaded sixth year, the shell of who I used to be.

While boarding the Hogwarts Express for the past five years I had been filled with nothing but excitement. The joy of beginning another new and magical year at the world's most prestigious school of witchcraft and wizardry was beyond thrilling. I would finally get to see my best friends and Ravenclaw peers after a long summer in my hometown of London. They were the ones who understood me. My mother tried to help me with the feelings of being lost outside of school. However, she lacked the experience to properly understand the sensation of being stranded in a world of people who were unlike me. I had my father, a fellow Ravenclaw, but he worked almost constantly, especially this summer. Who could blame him though? My house was the last place that I wanted to be too.

When I boarded the train home for the summer I had been the picture of Ravenclaw excellence; a bright, happy-go-lucky girl who never got less than excellent marks in any of her classes and spent her free time studying in the company of friends. Only three months later I boarded the same car a shell of the person I once was. I'd seen my closest friends Levi, Delilah and Carson sitting in a compartment with an empty seat I knew was reserved for me. My heart clenched when I saw that seat. It represented the five years of friendship that they were willing to preserve despite the numerous unanswered letters I'd received this summer. I was a terrible person. It was selfish of me but I couldn't handle speaking to them again after the way I'd treated them over the summer. Instead of joining them in their compartment I walked hurriedly past and found an empty one for myself at the back of the train.

It was cold and I was completely and utterly alone. My mind wandered to thoughts of my beloved younger sister, Cheryl. Our situations were probably comparable. This is where the trouble that lead to my entire family's downward spiral had begun. I arrived home from my fifth year at Hogwarts, excited as ever to see my family again. My sister was unaware of my father and I's shared magical capabilities due to the fact that she did not inherit these traits as I had. She believe that I had been attending an all girls preparatory school for advanced studies in marine biology. It was a flimsy excuse, but she never questioned it. Cheryl wrote me frequently. Before she would send them my father would have to catch them as they were being delivered to the mail carrier and deliver them by owl. However, a few weeks before the end of school, in the middle of my O.W.L.s her letters had abruptly stopped. I didn't pay much mind to it.

It wasn't until I arrived home near the end of May that I was told she had run away from home a few weeks prior. During a particularly stressful night Cheryl had written me a letter and addressed it to the address she'd been writing to for years. She managed to deliver the letter to the post and received a letter a few days later from the headmaster of the school informing her that there had never been a Valerie Halliwell at her school. After confronting my father he confessed the truth about my whereabouts and his heritage. My mother was furious as she was the one that wished to keep it a secret from Cheryl until she was older. Being a muggle, my mother thought she could understand her better than my father and I. I suspect that Cheryl thought herself responsible for the sudden uptake in nightly arguments between our parents in the weeks before I returned from school. She left late in the night close to the beginning of May, a short note having been left behind as her only explanation. I'd reread her note thousands of time and the crumpled remains were currently stuffed in my pocket. My hands instinctively went to the pocket of my jeans to make sure the yellowed paper was still there. I couldn't help but pull it out and scan over the scrawled and frantic handwriting one more time.

Dear Mum, Dad, and Val,

I'm sorry I'm such a nuisance and I'm sorry that I've done this to our family. Maybe it'd be for the better if I was somewhere else. Please don't look for me, just know that I'm okay. I love you all.

Cheryl

Tears pricked at the backs of my eyes. I'd practically memorized the letter by now. If only my parents had told me earlier, I could've stopped her. I believe that she is safe, she was clever enough to protect herself in tricky situations. However, she was still only fourteen and nothing would reassure me more than knowing she was at home and safe. I spent every waking moment worried about her wellbeing. It got to the point where I had stopped paying any mind to my own physical and mental wellbeing. My cheeks had hollowed significantly and everything about me was clearly on the decline, inching further and further away from stability with every breath.

I remember arriving home from the train station by cab. My parents sat in the living room in silence, a pointed glare being the only interaction that the two had probably shared for the preceeding hour before I arrived. My mood sunk immediately and my mind flushed with worry. I recall asking them what was the matter in a tentative and shaking voice. When they explained that my younger sister had been missing for three weeks my sketchbook clattered from my hands and landed with a thud onto the hardwood floors. My mother started to cry. My father disregarded her and instead rose to embrace me. This was the first sign that anything was different between them. Typically, my father would immediately go to comfort my mother, but this time he brushed her off like a piece of dust that clung to his jacket. My mind was too frozen in a state of shock to react in any way. Burly arms embraced my small frame and rubbed my back soothingly but I could only remain still. My life hadn't been the same since then.

My room, stacked floor to ceiling with my favorite records from muggle bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones now felt foreign and strange. My earth-toned tapestries were falling from their posts above my bed. My bedding sat practically undisturbed as most nights I would fall asleep on the floor, a stack of pictures of Cheryl and I as children in hand. Sleeping in my own bed felt too normal, like I'd be disregarding the current situation and be accepting a life without Cheryl as normal. The girl with curlier hair than mine and innocent green eyes was only two years younger than me but I still felt an almost maternal instinct to protect her. A 14 year old with little to no experience in the real world could not be alone out there. Some parts were dark and twisted and there was so much brewing below the surface that she could never comprehend. A sadistic, elitist dark wizard with abilities the likes of which were previously unseen in the wizarding community was on the rise and he threatened not only the witches and wizards but the entire world. The majority of the population had no idea of the grave threat that they faced.

My family, however, was burdened with the knowledge of this crushing reality and, in an effort to restore some of the normalcy we once possessed, planned a family dinner the night before my return to school. My mother cooked my favorite, chicken alfredo with basil pesto, and bought some of my favorite cookie dough ice cream. However, there was no light-hearted conversation or laughter between bites to brighten the setting. There was only silence and the soft smacking of our chewing. If anything the gathering did nothing but make me feel worse about my situation and myself. I'd never felt so much self-pity in so little time before. I was supposed to be stronger than this. The only conversation that was had during the dinner was my father asking if I was excited for potions class this year. He excitedly told me about how advanced potions had been his favorite class throughout all of his seven years at Hogwarts. His professor had been Professor Seville, a young man not much older than the majority of the sixth years. All the girls fawned over him relentlessly while all the boys wanted to be him. He had been a 7th year prefect when my father was a first year. The amount of detail with which my father was able to recount his first time meeting the older boy was astounding as it'd been close to 35 years. I made this point clear to my father and he jokingly reminded me that he was "38 years old". A smile stretched across his face, accompanied by the faintest hint of a laugh. The only positive that could be gleaned from that drawn out and borderline torturous hour was that faint glimmer of joy. It was hope; hope that things could return to normal, hope that tomorrow Cheryl would walk through our front door and that our lives would return to the way they were before all of this happened. Deep down all three of us knew that there was no way that was going to happen.

I was pulled suddenly from my reverie by a knock on the compartment door. Through the small glass pane I could see the trolley witch with a smile on her face outside the door. I didn't have the motivation to get up or the gold to buy anything right now so I simply resigned to giving her a small smile and shaking my head sadly. The older woman gave me a sympathetic smile before turning back to her cart and beginning to holler her offerings of sweets down the corridor to the next compartment. Memories of eating chocolate frogs and comparing which notable wizard we each received with Carson, Delilah and Levi flashed through my mind. A small smile tugged on my lips as I remembered the time Carson accidentally ate a handful of Ernie Bott's beans and when Levi went to buy some candy but was so startled by the girl he fancied that he dropped all his coins on the floor at her feet. Oh how I wished those could be the times I knew were still to come. Everything was inherently different now and no matter how hard I tried there was nothing I could do to fix it.

An hour or so later the train lurched to a stop. Several voices filled with excitement started to fill the compartments and cars as my peers flooded the halls. There were so many familiar faces that passed by. I couldn't help but wonder if I would look as different to them as I felt? I waited about five minutes from when the last person passed by to stand and collect my things. The familiar itch of the cotton robes covered my body once more and I found an odd comfort in it, like receiving a hug from a beloved yet distant relative. My footsteps echoed as I hurried out of the train to catch up with the crowd of people getting into carriages to go to the castle. The first carriage I found contained a sixth year Gryffindor that I'd seen passing in the halls a few times. I didn't know her name but she was pretty with fair skin and reddish hair that fell past her shoulders and framed her slender features. She smiled sweetly at me and gestured for me to join her. It only took a few moments of hesitation before I climbed in next to her. We didn't say much. We gave each other glances that let me know that she knew who I was but was unable to put a face to the name, just as I was with her. She was the first to get out of the carriage when we got to the castle, which I was grateful for. If I knew she was behind me, watching me get out, I probably would've fallen flat on my face. I planned on thanking her before we left but by the time I was securely on the ground she was already running to catch up with a smaller group before us, her hair swishing gracefully behind her.

A breath of stale air that I didn't know I'd been holding released heavily from my lips as my eyes landed on the castle for the first time in months. I felt like I was going insane. I hadn't even gone inside yet but already something was different. Was it possible that the castle I'd grown up in could have grown with me too? I told myself this was impossible seeing as I was so small and insignificant in the grander scheme of all the amazing things that were happening within the walls of this school. Some of the finest witches and wizards were growing up here and we didn't even know it yet. I doubted that I would be among those who fell under the accolade of the finest witches and wizards; perhaps I could have been last year when I was at the top of my class and a favorite of most of my professors, but not this year. Things like that change all the time. Unfortunately, whether we want it to happen or not, so do we.

A/N: Hello everyone, thank you so much for taking the time to read the first chapter of this fic! I know that it was mainly expositional at this point, but the momentum will begin to pick up in the next few chapters as the story progresses. Please review and comment if you enjoyed or if anyone has any suggestions, I am always open to help or advice in my writing as I strive to be the best writer I can be and deliver well written and entertaining content for you all! The second chapter is written and going through editing so it should be out shortly. Again, thank you all so much! The support means more than any of you could possibly know! I hope you are all having a wonderful day/night and I will see you all in the next chapter!

- nearlybandoms