Hello, and thank you for reading! Please review if you like this chapter, or don't, or have any suggestions, or spot a typo/grammar error, or just want to say hi! If you want to exchange reviews, or just shamelessly self-promote your story, PM me! -Knut

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of its associated trademarks. Or anything. I own nothing. I don't even own myself. I am merely a void floating between realities, a voice inside of your head.

Nobody would have supposed Rose Weasley to be born a heroine.

Her eyes were brown- not hazel or green or sky blue. Medium brown. Her hair was bright red - not blond or black as night like all of the heroines in novels that she read, just red. The Hogwarts robes were slightly too big on her - Madam Malkin had left some room for her to grow into them. Worst of all, she was short. She hated that. There was nothing worse than being short.

Once, when she was seven, James had given her a potion and promised her that it would make her tall. Rose, with all the gullibility of a 7-year-old, believed him, and naturally the potion backfired - she ended up ten inches tall had had to spend three days at St Mungo's. James had gotten grounded for that.

Rose smiled at the memory, but her smile faded fast. Her reflection stared back at her, looking serious. Her mother said she didn't look that great at eleven. But her mother had been a heroine. Her mother had been smart, and daring. Rose was smart, but what if she wasn't daring? What if she wasn't any good at magic? James said there was all sorts of terrible tests for the Sorting, although she didn't really believe there would actually be a dragon.

"Fix your hair." the mirror said critically, in a strong Scottish accent.

Rose glared at it. "Shut up."

She collapsed on the bed, her stomach tying itself in knots of nervousness. Her parents were war heroes. She was a tween. She couldn't live up to them, solve mysteries and defeat villains.

But she was going to Hogwarts! Her mind carved images of soaring towers and long, twisting corridors, moving staircases and jovial paintings, faded ghosts in dark corners, long tables full of new people and old friends, and the knot lessened a little, because if there was anywhere where anything could happen, it was Hogwarts. She was going to seek a Great Perhaps. A new beginning. A way out of this labyrinth of suffering. Maybe she'd never be able to become her mother's story, like the rebels in Fahrenheit 451 became their favourite stories, but she could make her own. If glory was Rose Weasley's white whale from Moby Dick, then Hogwarts was her ocean. Anything could happen there. Everything would.

Rose turned her eyes towards her messy pile of books and clothes that she was debating on taking, and set to work.

In the end, despite the invisible expansion charm her mother had placed on the new black suitcase, she only took her new schoolbooks, some extra textbooks, Fahrenheit, and a few other favourites. She knew Hogwarts had the largest library in the wizarding world, and she could always get her parents to send more.

Rose zipped it closed, then opened it and checked everything, then zipped it again. She'd packed her clothes, her school supplies, her toiletries, her shoes, her notebook and sketch pad and art supplies, her diary and everything else she might need . Eventually she cast another glance at her reflection and took off her robes, folded them, and put them in, then put on a grey sweater. Rose's eyes cast about her room, checking if she'd forgotten anything.

The room was small, lined with books, with a window seat overlooking the garden (Mum's house elf friends helped keep it perfectly neat, despite the fact that she continually tried to stop them doing any work, so it was a pretty view). A single bed with a blue and silver mattress. Her favourite comfy armchair in the corner that she liked to curl up in before bed, and the antique muggle reading lamp she'd insisted on getting at a garage sale a year or two ago. Posters of her favourite wizarding stories lined the walls, figures zooming across them in broomsticks and casting spells. There were charts and diagrams up there too, magical ones and ones from the muggle school she'd gone to until now, most of which she'd left since there would be nowhere to put them at Hogwarts.

Part of her was a little sad to leave all this behind and go in search of the great unknown, but she didn't look back as she grabbed her trunk and walked out, closing the door behind her.

King's Cross was crowded, and chilly. People hurried past Rose as she wheeled her trolley along.

"Hurry, we'll be late!" her mother worried, walking fast.

"Hermione, we're half an hour early. Calm down." her father replied soothingly, but Rose agreed with her mother - she couldn't wait to get there.

Rose's owl squawked indignantly, as if to agree with her.

"Hush, Frodo!" Rose said, looking around nervously at the muggles giving them all funny looks.

Her mother rolled her eyes. "Really? I wish you hadn't called him that. Frodo sounds silly."

"And nerdy," her dad added, "seriously, who names their animal after a muggle book character? Mad."

Rose ignored them - she was focused on the barrier between platform nine and platform ten that was quickly approaching. Her dad gave a quick nod of his head. "Better take it at run, Rosie - you'll pass right through it, don't worry."

She turned back to them nervously, searching her mother's eyes for approval. She smiled and nodded. "You'll be fine. You know what to do."

Rose took a deep breath, and ran straight for it, trying to believe everything would be okay, but the barrier loomed up, and it didn't disappear like she imagined it would, and suddenly she wondered if this would be like Dad's second year, and that nearly stopped her in her tracks, but she was going to fast and she was about to crash and her feet just weren't listening...

The sounds were the first thing that assured her she wasn't dead. Squawks of owls, young children complaining, a baby crying, the sharp cracks of apparition. Rose opened her eyes to a cacophony of colour and sensations, and was immediately shoved in the back by her father coming through.

"Rosie!" he said. "Get out of the way, other people are trying to come through!"

Rose nodded, dazed, and they went off to look for Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny. Hermione and Hugo were laughing over one of James' recen pranks, but all Rose wanted to do was find Albus so that they could worry about the Sorting together. Albus already knew what the ceremony was, but he wasn't telling. Rose was planning to get it out of him, though - she had a few choice hexes she'd been practicing over the summer to use as threats, too.

They quickly caught up with them, and suddenly, all too soon, they were saying goodbye. Rose hugged her parents, and her mother looked proud, and Ron told her to do better than Malfoy which didn't worry her too much then but would in the future, and not to get into Slytherin, which worried her a lot, and Hugo and Lilly complained, and Harry said something to Albus that she didn't hear, and then she was in her seat and on the train and everything was passing in a blur, faster than she could keep track of, and before she knew it she was waving and the train was leaving, and her family was fading into the distance, and they were gone, gone, gone, leaving Rose sitting alone in an empty compartment, excited and scared, one her way to her very own Adventure, with a capital A.

The first sentence is a Northanger Abbey reference. The white whale is from Moby Dick. Farenheit 451 is about a dystopian future where books are banned. "How will I ever get out of this labyrinth!" is a quote from Simon Bolivar. "I go to seek a Great Perhaps" are arguably the last words of Francois Rabelais. The other 3 POVs will not have literary references in them. :)