A/N: Hello and welcome to my piece of the Harry Potter AU sandbox. I'm all ready with my ACME flame-proof underwear, but let's hope I don't need 'em...

Okay, so, my name is Hummingbirdie and I'm an aspiring writer who dabbles every so often in bad fanfiction. I love comments and critiques, but flamers will be used to fuel my passion for writting... or something like that, anyways. I'm not that great with updates, so they might be few and far between, but I have the next 5 or so chapters written out or at least drafted in my head, plus I have Study Hall now so I'm writing up a storm. If you want me to hurry, though, just send me a helpful cattle-prod review!

Enough of my rambling, now. On with the story!

Chapter 1

It has to have been a mistake. A random attack, that was all it was. It was becoming more and more common for muggle homes to be targeted, after all. It had to have been a coincidence. It has to be.

Laurel wetted her lips and hurried down the dirty streets of London. It was early and fog hung low in the air, another dreary day in England. She had nothing with her other than the clothes on her back and a wand that didn't even belong to her clutched in one hand, tightening then loosening after each meeting of eyes. Anyone could be a threat and she had to stay alert.

What if it wasn't?

She pushed it aside, afraid of thinking too deeply. Her emotions were close to the surface and tears were pushing behind her eyes; if she kept with that line of thoughts she'd end up sobbing on the curb until someone made her move.

"There."

The Leaky Cauldron's sign swung creakily over head, the seedy-looking bar coming into view. She pushed open the door and stepped inside, keeping her head down so her thin brown hair slanted across her face. The less attention she garnered, the better.

People crowded the wizarding bar, nursing glasses of something stronger than butter beer. No one looked up as she entered, not even the wizened bartender. She knew his name, she thought, but didn't have the mental capacity to search for it in her memory banks. Instead, she quietly slinked out back, past the enchanted wall, and into Diagon Ally.

More people walked the streets now that morning had come. She must have been wandering London for a few hours for it to be light now, she noted. She had only been to Diagon Ally once, with her aunt when she was young, and finding her way back to the Leaky Cauldron had been difficult. Now that she realized this, her feet began to ache and her muscles protested from the strain of being held taut and alert.

A heavy-set woman to her left was holding the Daily Prophet in one hand, her other restraining a small child swathed in a black cloak. Laurel moved to stand closer behind her, reading over her shoulder.

She stared at the front page and the leading headline for a long while, a whole street's worth of time, before it sunk in and she had to stop moving. Her body alternated from icy cold to burning hot and back again.

It was the latest death toll, the names of muggles and wizards listed side-by-side. Her family was among them, herself included, and her house… It was depicted in the moving picture, blown up on the page. The tire swing that hung in her front yard had caught fire, smoldering in shades of gray and black, and her home – where she had grown up – was nothing but charred ruins, a splash of oil-darkness across the page. Above it hung the dark mark.

Laurel took another deep, shuddering breath and found a place to seat herself, on the steps outside of the big building she thought she remembered as the bank. Gringotts or some such, it was called.

Pulling her red robe tighter around her small frame, the hood up and over her ducked head, she sat. For a long time she did nothing, just barely breathing, her brain slowly turning over the facts that she had to face.

Death-eaters attacked my house. They took my parents…

But the question of why still lingered. Neither of her parents possessed magic: Her mother was a squib born to a well-to-do wizarding family and her father was just a muggle. It had surprised everyone when Laurel had started showing signs of magic and when, on her twelfth birthday, she received a letter from Hogwarts. Her family had, of course, declined and her Aunt Margaret instead home schooled her four times a week.

It was for safety, Laurel's mother said. Her family had suffered during the last time of He-Who-Mustn't-Be-Named, had been targeted for their fraternization with muggles: Laurel's great-grandmother had an affair with a muggle man and had been killed for it. So even though he had disappeared, even despite the supposed death at the hands of a baby boy and his parents, Laurel's mother had kept her only daughter hidden.

No one outside of their immediate family even knew she was a witch, other than Dumbledore himself. They had even kept it hidden from their closest family friend, a woman so strong and sure that Laurel could think of no better solution than to run to her.

Admittedly, this woman had never even formally met Laurel, but the girl had heard plenty of stories about her, had painted her a saint in her mind. She had hair like hers, brown and messy, and a kindly face. She dressed in robes of the finest colors, glittering in even the dimmest of light. At least, that was how Laurel imagined her. Truthfully, she'd only seen her once.

Laurel had been getting ready for muggle school, a condition for her nightly teachings which Laurel's mom could not be talked out of, when she saw her. Just a brief second, the woman standing in the middle of the living room with a wand in her hand. She was laughing, her head tipped back. Green eyes, bright as a cat's, caught Laurel's and she smiled just as joyfully and truly as she had to her grandmother. Then, she was gone.

Minerva McGonagall.