The Outsider
Chapter 1: Take the Plunge
Madison Bennet sighed as she closed 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows' for what felt like the hundredth time. She paused to reflect on what a great peace of literature the series of seven books was, and how the characters really did seem to come to life, as if they, too, were breathing and alive. She had felt Harry's pain in fifth year as he struggled to come to terms with his ordeal in the grave yard. She had desperately wanted to jinx the hell out of Umbridge the Toad when she was Headmistress of Hogwarts. She had cried with George and the rest of the Weasleys when Fred had been killed. Yes, it was all so real. Maddi ran her hands over her thighs covered in her favourite dark blue jeans and heaved herself up out of her squishy chair, pushing on her knees; it was all a fantasy, of course. She could never be a part of it, the excitement and adventure of Hogwarts.
Suddenly she was falling, like the floor of her bedroom had fallen out from under her feet: what was going on? And she wasn't even falling, so much as floating. It was so dark; it felt like she was enveloped in storm clouds. Her curly, dark brown hair floated around her face like a ghost, and something of a gentle breeze tugged at her white shirt and her pale yellow pull-over. She looked up: she could see her room, but growing fainter and fainter by the minute. She looked down: she saw shapes, things; they were blurry but getting clearer and clearer all the time. She was moving much faster than she'd first thought. What is going on? Maddi thought, starting to panic now. Abruptly, her feet found hard stone. She stood, her eyes growing wider and wider, drinking in the sight, the real, true, the unabridged and uncensored, Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
"Bloody hell," she whispered.