Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Harry Potter is owned by J. K. Rowling and anyone to which she has licensed her stories. I do own the character concepts that went into the creation of my original characters. The Harry Potter novels and movies have been used to create a setting for this story.
Warning: This story contains mature themes and should not be read by anyone under the age of 16.
Prologue: 11 July
Birthdays are supposed to be fun and exciting, but up till now this one has been a disaster. One would think that a witch's eleventh birthday would be a special day, but no, I get stuck with my Uncle Simon shopping for my Hogwarts supplies. Yes, getting the letter of acceptance was thrilling and yes, shopping is usually fun, but Uncle Simon is creepy weird.
Of all the witches and wizards born into our family, he was the first Sytherin in over a century. Mostly we are usually sorted into Hufflepuf or Ravenclaw with the occasional Gryphondor, but Sytherins are few and far between. His sorting caused a great uproar when he was young, but over the years he has mellowed from scary, creepy weird to what he is today.
One nice thing about Simon is that he always manages to keep you on your toes both physically and mentally. During this little "Excursion" as he called it, we played mental games. Some were kind of tiring like paying for the cauldron and phials entirely in Knuts and the telescope entirely in Sickles. Some were fun like playing 'Simon Says/Orders' and 'I Spy'. Some were amusing as he started in on his "How Women Are Different" speech after I bought three times the required numbers of clothes. It's not my fault that that they had so many different types of dragon hide gloves now is it?
After "The Great Wardrobe Debacle" as he was starting to call it; he thought that the pet search should begin. And, as such, the most logical place to go would be the Magical Menagerie, his favorite pet store. Personally I thought that he liked it only because it was one of the few places that sold Jarveys. Uncle Simon has always been a bit bonkers about Jarveys. He even works in the Ministry's of Magical Creatures Jarvey Department. Turns out that the other reason he liked the store was looking at the new and old interesting creatures that appeared in the store. One of his favorite pastimes, as I was about to find out, was looking for the mysterious creature that was writing 'The Rhyme'. Little did I know that my life was about to change forever…
