Somebody really needs to shoot me. And quickly, might I add. Why? Because… I have fallen to that point that I feel the need to do a self-insert story.

Now just to shore some things up:

—No, I don't intend to send myself (an American) to Hogwarts. That leaves, canonically, 2 other schools.

—Yes, I intend to make the self-insert character powerful.

—No, he will not be stronger than Harry Potter. Not by a long shot. After all, he IS the main character.

—Yes, he will be powerful, but see above. And also, powerful in a different manner.

—Yes, there will be some crossover themes. Very, very minimal, mostly for story purposes, so don't expect to see Ichigo Kurosaki *cough Gary Stu cough* jump out of the cauldron that resurrects Voldemort. That'd just be stupid. Hilarious, but stupid. Therefore, there won't be enough to put it in the crossover section.

—The crossover elements will be the Laguz from Fire Emblem: PoR/RD and a variation on "demonic atavism" from Yu Yu Hakusho. Kudos to those who find that 2+2=4

—Pairing will be OC and Gabrielle Delacour. Why? Because I like the French. And I fully intend to flesh out my version of Beauxbatons.

—Oops, I revealed which school. Reasons for an American going to Beauxbatons rest inside.

—Also of note is that instead of having the series occur in the 20th century, I'm making it occur in roughly the modern day. Why? Because it's a fanfic, therefore, I can!

Anyways, enjoy!

—I'm making my OC and Gabrielle Delacour the same age as Harry and the rest of them, so that means I have three years before the Triwizard Tournament. In the books, Gabrielle was 8; in the movies, 11.

PS: Here's a Disclaimer. I only own the OC(s) and my own, original descriptions of Beauxbatons that will rest inside, since JKR didn't talk about it much.

—The annoying grammar-nazi author, JP

* * * * * *

The best thing about the placement of my birthday this year was that it was the first day of the two weeks off for spring. So that meant that I now had two weeks with which to thoroughly wear down my presents, beat my twin to a pulp in Super Smash Bros, eat food, sleep, and read books. Oh yes, read the ten new works of fiction piled up on my desk. In case it wasn't at all obvious, I like to read. A lot.

I'd just turned eleven that day, and I must say it was a great party. Well, aside from my best friend's coming in dressed as a leprechaun. Hey, it's something you've got to deal with when your birthday is on that oh so fabled Irish holiday.

The whole ride back, my twin brother and I were talking trash to each other about—what else?—video games. We were both rather avid about video games, and despite the fact that the game came out several years back, our favorite one was Super Smash Bros. After all, in what other video game could one beat the pulp out of others to the point that they get so frustrated that controllers start flying around the room?

As our car pulled into the driveway, I'm fairly certain that I was the only one in the car to notice the disconcerting fact that the gate to the driveway was open. I distinctly remember that my mother closed it, but they didn't. There's a reason they trust me to remember where we are in parking lots… but of course, they picked up on this fact as soon as they realized the door wasn't bolted.

As my dad crept around the back of the house, I pushed my ear up against the front door, hoping to eavesdrop on whoever might have crept inside. Strangely enough, what greeted my ear was the only other language that I knew—French. But this in itself was a quandary. What in the world would bring a couple of French people to my house and make them sneak in, much less converse? It was all rather… strange, if I did say so myself. I didn't even notice that my hand had crept down to the door handle and opened the (strangely) unlocked door, and my mind only just realized that I was inside the house when the French stopped.

I turned to look at my family's living room and saw three people sitting there: a man in a suit, a young woman with silvery blond hair, and a younger girl around my age who seemed to be the young woman's sister. Their conversing had stopped very quickly and now all three were pointedly looking at me, an awkward silence gripping the area until the girl who seemed to be my age spoke up.

"Papa, est-ce que c'est lui?"(1) A nod from the man was the only confirmation needed for the girl, yet it sent my mind flying in no less than seventeen different directions. There were so many implications to the phrase "is that him" that I didn't have the slightest idea just where to begin. It was at this point that I remembered the pocket knife that I usually kept in—where else?—my pocket and that my parents and twin stumbled into the room. The Frenchman chose this time to stand up and bow in my parents' direction.

"Monsieur et Madame Parker, j'éspère que vous m'excusez pour cette intrusion. Je voudrais vous parler de votre fils, James."(2)

My clumsy, nervous fingers finally managed to flip open the blade on my knife and I pointed it at the intruder, trying to gather up the courage to speak in their native tongue.

"Qui êtes-vous et qu'est-ce que vous voulez?"(3) I was proud of myself for not having stammered during that, and slowly stalked closer to the interloper. He merely smiled at me and reached inside of his sleeve before pulling out a long piece of wood and waved it at my knife. In an instant, the hilt had remained unchanged, but the blade had become a white flag of surrender. I bit the inside of my mouth at this little joke, and lowered my new flag, all the while confused about what had just transpired.

"Moi?"(4) The French man drew forward and pulled a letter out of his suit jacket before handing it to me. On the letter was my name and address, with the return address appearing in the form of a coat of arms. It appeared to be a shield with two… wands… crossed over it, with sparks coming out of the ends of the wands. I looked down at the letter and back up at the man, who laughed and replaced his wand in his sleeve.

"Je suis ici, petit James, pour vous dire que vous êtes un sorcier."(5)

* * * * * * *

"So… um, let me get this straight," I say, running a hand through my untamable hair. "I'm a wizard, even though my brother isn't. It explains why weird stuff happens all the time, like…" I flush in embarrassment. Lighting the teacher's hair on fire was my doing apparently. Oh well, it was fun. "And I've been enrolled in the French wizarding school and not the England one. Why is that?

The man, who I now knew as Louis Delacour produced a business card from a pocket and handed it to my parents. They handed it to me and I looked at the card, looked back up at Louis, looked back down at the card, back up at Louis, and repeated several times.

"You're the head of… eh, magical foreign relations?" It was still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that magic existed. Yes, I've read plenty of books with magic in them, but those were works of fiction. Who knew that it actually, veritably existed? Not me, for one… well, not until today.

I looked over to my brother Andrew and saw that he was staring at the two girls (who I now knew were Fleur and Gabrielle) with an unseemly line of drool dripping down his chin. Disgusted, I got up from my position on the couch and gave him a light smack on the back of his head. It woke him up from his reverie only long enough for him to wipe the drool from his mouth before he went back to staring at the two girls like a mindless ape. "Somebody care to explain why my twin is doing an incredible job of imitating a stoned gorilla?"

Cue rounds of laughs from everybody, except for my twin. He's still staring at the girls, who are now quietly whispering in between each other. Apparently the three-year age gap did nothing to prevent them from gossiping to their hearts' content. A glare from Louis silenced the two girls and after a short exchange in mumbled French that I couldn't quite make out, the silver-blonde girls nodded and my brother snapped out of his reverie. Of course, Fleur and Gabrielle started talking again, though what it was I still couldn't make out. Louis Delacour took this to pull out several leaflets, apparently on the school that I was to attend the following year.

"The reason, Monsieur Parker," Louis said in perfect English with only a slight trace of an accent, as he'd been using when explaining to us, "is that your attendance at Beauxbatons will help with American-French foreign relations. Most American wizards are born from other wizards, and thus attend private schools for them. The Muggle-Born students, such as yourself, most often attend Hogwarts for political reasons. However, most are also not bilingual, such as yourself. Bilingual students are often offered a choice of which school to go to, but…"

Louis shook his head a few times and pulled off his glasses, wiping them before continuing. "There have been reports of corruption at Hogwarts, and American-French magical relations have become somewhat strained. I won't bore you with the red tape, but the French decided that an American wizard would be schooled at Beauxbatons and eventually help to serve as a liaison between the two. The difficulty, as you would imagine, was in finding a bilingual American who spoke a language other than Spanish or one of the Asian tongues."

I wrinkled my nose at the mere mention of red tape. I may have been an eleven-year-old kid, but politics were a hobby of sorts for me. Red tape was a term that basically meant that some pencil pusher or bureaucrat decided to pull out the hefty three thousand page book of laws, rules, regulations, technicalities, and the like and leafed through every relevant page to delay the process. Being an impatient person, I absolutely loathed even the mere mention of red tape.

I exhaled and leaned back, mentally reviewing everything that I had just learned. First off, I'm a wizard. That means that magic exists. If magic exists, and I only just learned about it today, then that means that there must be some reason that they don't reveal themselves. American history has some very stark references to the Salem Witch Trials, which lead to the thought that people fear that which they don't understand. If people feared what they didn't understand, they would either try to understand it, destroy it, or make it their own. Since Muggle (as I learned non-magical people were called) scientists were unaware of the existence of magic and the various ways in which it broke our "absolute laws of nature", they wouldn't be able to understand it, so that rules out that option. If they couldn't understand it, then they'd try to make it their own, but if it was so easy for a Muggle to take the magical power of a wizard then there wouldn't be any Muggles, now would there be? Nope… didn't think so.

That left the only option being that if Muggles discovered the existence of wizards, witches, and magic, then there would most likely be a world-wide Holocaust and several religious extremists of all kind demanding the destruction of wizard-kind. Then their corpses would be given to scientists to dissect. It was a rather sickening thought, but it was the truth. Humans feared what they didn't understand and couldn't make their own. I'm pretty sure that the depths of the possibilities of magic still haven't been plumbed, even to this day.

Although through it all, I still never figured out…

"Monsieur Delacour?" He looked at me, which seemed to be his way of asking me to continue. "Um… I was wondering. Is there any significance to all of our… uh, what did you call it… accidental magic producing similar effects?"

A bewildered look crossed the man's face at that. He pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers, obviously thinking about the answer before giving it.

"That would depend, Monsieur Parker. Natural Animagi, that is, those who have some form of instinctive knowledge of how to transform into their Animagus, or soul-based animal, form, will have selective transformations for a few years before they shapeshift fully. Metamorphmagi are even more finicky; their hair color, eye color, and physical features can change on a second-by-second basis. Veela and part-Veela exude an aura that entrances men and can transform into an avian form, as well as conjure fire… but that is all I know."

I give an exasperated sigh, enough for him to know my question wasn't answered. All of my accidental magic, while I think about it, had to do with fire and darkness. I've lit my teacher's hair on fire, burned a beehive to ashes with purplish-black fire, blinded a coyote by stepping on its shadow… it followed a pattern, but one that I couldn't read yet.

"As it stands," Louis Delacour said while standing up, "all Muggle-Born children must have a Magical Guardian in the wizarding world. Usually this is the Headmaster or Headmistress of the school they are to attend, but in this case I shall be Monsieur James' guardian. With that said, would it be possible for him to stay with my family and I for his spring vacation so that we may accustom him to the magical world?"

* * * * * * *

After much fanfare, goodbyes, and remarks from my parents and twin, I was packed up and set to spend the two weeks of break that I had with the Delacour family, prepping myself for the wizarding world, Beauxbatons, and everything else. We would be acquiring my various supplies and such in France, so I didn't have to worry about it now. Louis Delacour would also school me on various aspects of the politics of wizarding France, hopefully so that I won't be accosted as much for being a "filthy, barbarian American".

As we walked out of the driveway, suitcases trailing behind us, Louis reached into his jacket and withdrew a small golden chain with a Star of David on the end. In the light, I saw that there were various symbols engraved on the gold, but how he had known about my religious identity, I don't know.

"Don't look at me like that James; did you think there would have been as much red tape if you'd been a Catholic or a Protestant? The runes on this chain will make it such that words of any language that you hear and don't understand will be translated into English. When we are in France, you can choose to either hear the French or hear it in English. In addition, you can choose to speak in French on your own, speak in English, or have the runes translate your words to French for you. Comprends-le-tu?(6)"

I nod emphatically before taking the chain and placing it around my neck, hiding the six-pointed star underneath my shirt. I felt a brief stab of pain behind my eyes, but it went away quickly and I was able to hide it with a slight grimace. I only then realized we'd been walking for well over two blocks, and as I looked over to Louis Delacour he smiled slightly as he withdrew his wand. He pointed the wand at what looked to be an empty patch of curb… until the air wavered and a car with French diplomatic plates appeared.

My bags were loaded into the trunk and Louis entered the driver's seat with Fleur in shotgun. Gabrielle and I were in the back seat, and the girl looked at me with a smile that instantly made me nervous.

"Alors… est-ce que tu peux me parler des États-Unis?(7)"

I groaned.

* * * * * * *

So ends the first chapter.

I know I've probably got some people wondering over why I would have the Delacour family be the ones to tell him about magic… well, all I can say is you didn't read hard enough.

And now, for the translations:

(1)Father, is that him?

(2)Mr. and Mrs. Parker, I hope that you excuse me for this intrusion. I wish to talk to you about your son James.

(3)Who are you and what do you want?

(4)Me?

(5)I'm here, little James, to tell you that you're a wizard.

(6)Do you understand this?

(7)So… can you tell me about the United States?

Also, one last thing:

IF THERE IS A FIC ON MY PAGE THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO ADOPT, PLEASE SEND ME A PM AND I WILL TELL YOU WHERE THE STORY WAS GOING BEFORE I LOST TRACK OF WRITING.