A/N: To say that this story is my baby would be an understatement. The characters and story lines have been floating around my head since 2007, and it has taken me the better part of four years to finally create a version I'm satisfied with. Year one has been completed on my end, and I will use this preemptive publication to gauge whether people are interested in the story. Comments and suggestions are very much appreciated!
The Price of Loyalty
by hiccups_and_sighs
Chapter 1
If one thing could be said about my mother, it was this: she hates birds. Whether it's a robin or an eagle, she's completely terrified of them. So it was quite an unwanted surprise when we found one outside the kitchen window during dinner one summer.
"Sally-Anne!" my mother screamed in fright. "Get a broom and make it go away!" She ran from the kitchen to the living room on the other side of our house, and I was left to shoo the bird away.
It turned out to be an owl. A brown one, actually, with yellow eyes and a sharp looking beak. I opened the window, and was preparing to stick a broom handle out of it, when I noticed that the owl was holding out its leg. There was an envelope attached to it with heavy twine. I hesitated a moment before pulling the letter from the bird.
"Is it gone yet?" Mum called fearfully from the other room.
"Not yet," I answered back. "It has a letter for me!" I could hear her groan as I said this.
"If people resort to carrier pigeons to carry their post these days, I swear we're moving farther than Sussex!"
I smiled slightly at her empty threats and stopped myself from pointing out that carrier pigeons were extinct. I glanced back up at the owl outside the window. It stared back at me and ruffled its feathers before flying back into the night sky. Though stunned, I turned my attention back to the letter in front of me. My name and address were written in emerald cursive on the front:
Miss Sally-Anne Perks
504 Whetherby Rd 3.
The kitchen
Knowing my friends, it was bound to be a joke. A card sent via owl-that seemed the type of thing they would attempt. But even so, the envelope was of heavy parchment and it had a wax seal on the back with an interesting coat of arms pressed into it. While it seemed like a joke, I knew my friends wouldn't put that much effort into it.
I picked the seal with my fingernail, and called back to my mum. "It's gone," I told her and I heard her make her way back to the kitchen.
"What does it say?" she asked as she entered the kitchen to find me still struggling with the seal.
"Dunno yet," I replied through gritted teeth, tugging at the seal and trying very hard not to rip the envelope. Finally, it gave, and the letter slipped out into my hand.
"'Dear Miss Perks,'" I read aloud, "'I am pleased to inform you that you have a place at...'" I paused and looked up at my mother, wide-eyed, "'Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.'" I looked up again to find Mum staring at the letter with the same expression of confusion and awe.
"'Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment,'" I continued. "'Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31. Yours sincerely, Minerva McGonagall.'"
I finished reading and looked up at my mum. A shocked silence had fallen over the room, broken only by the ticking of the clock on the wall.
"No," Mum said suddenly. "I - no. Absolutely not."
"What?" I asked, confused.
"I can't have you going to that school," she continued, sounding a little bit disappointed. I didn't know what to think. I didn't even know if a place like "Hogwarts" existed.
"You mean the school is real?" I asked eagerly. Mum shrugged rather elaborately and busied herself with clearing the table.
"I don't know, Sally-Anne," she admitted, "but I don't like the sound of it. No, not one bit. Sounds rather like a joke, wouldn't you think?"
"But what if it isn't?" I persisted, grabbing a plate and bringing it to the sink where she had started washing up. "I could write them!" I exclaimed with a stroke of genius. "I could write them and ask if it's real! Then would you let me go?"
Mum chuckled a little bit. "You're awfully interested, aren't you, Anne?" she said with a warm smile. I shrugged.
"Well, I dunno," I said, "but 'Witchcraft and Wizardry' sound pretty interesting to me."
"Yes! Who could come up with a thing like that?" Mum laughed again and handed me a set of dishes to dry. "No," she continued, "unless I get more information about this 'Hogwarts,' you're not going. You'll go to a nice school in Guildford, once we move. One that'll help you with your...challenges."
Schools, probably, I corrected her mentally. I never lasted very long at one as it was. It used to be my ADD-in fact, it was still probably part of it to be honest. Sometimes Mum didn't like the instruction I was getting, or other times, it was because I nearly flunked out.
However, the last two times I had been forced to change schools was on a more mysterious ground. Sometimes, accidents occurred to me. For example, at my last school, I had accidentally fallen asleep during my maths class, and woke up hovering in my desk a few feet off the ground. The headmaster had accused me of being part of a conspiracy to get the dusty old maths teacher to quit - which he did - and expelled me when I told them honestly that I could not tell them the names of others involved, as there were none.
But odd things didn't happen just at school. Quite often, strange things occurred outside of school, most of which involved bananas (and I'd rather not go into), and always ended with my mother apologizing profusely for me, promising that it would never happen again, and me getting banned from the shops.
Yes, I was completely prepared to switch schools quite a lot when we moved. Whether or not my mother acknowledged that fact was up to her.
"I'll tell you what, Sally-Anne," Mum said suddenly, breaking me from my thoughts. "Why don't you write Minerva McConner or whatever her name was, and ask for more information? Then maybe her and I could have a nice chat about it all and we'll see." I nodded numbly and returned to the envelope lying on the table.
"There's no return address," I said, flipping the envelope around in my hands.
"None?" Mum asked, surprised.
"Nothing," I concluded and flopped it back on the table.
"Check the letter again, Anne; it might be on the letter head or something," Mum called from the sink.
"It said 'we await your owl,'" I said, remembering the letter and looking up at her. "How do I reply by owl?" She pursed her lips and said nothing.
I opened the envelope again and pulled out the parchment letter. There was no letter head. I flipped it over on the off chance that someone had stuck a return label on the back and found nothing. Nothing, that is, except another piece of parchment.
"I...I think this is totally serious," I told Mum gravely once I had finished reading through the paper.
"What?" she asked. "What did you find?"
"A supply list," I said, "of the strangest things." Mum walked over and took the list from my hand and read through it, too.
"Well that just proves it," she concluded, handing the list back to me and heading back towards the sink. "Whoever made this up has way too much time on their hands."
"It calls for a pewter cauldron!" I read in amazement. "Pewter! And who could think up all those book titles, hmn?"
"Well, toss it in the bin once you're done with it, Sally-Anne," Mum told me. "It won't do anyone any good dreaming about schools that don't exist."
It was just us, Mum and me. I had a dad once, and he'd been a good one, as far as I can remember. He was a Lutheran pastor for a congregation up in Ireland, and Mum and I had been good faithful Christians up until he died in a car crash when I was seven. After that, we could never get back into religion as well as we liked.
So Mum and I started off on a journey of our own. Mum was an orthodontic nurse, which I thought to be a rather dull profession, but she always claimed that it was the least stressful. We moved around a bit, but nothing too major except our move to Wales right after Dad died. That was a bit difficult.
In four weeks' time, we would be moving from our semi-detached outside Cardiff to a new one in Sussex, where Mum had found a better paying orthodontic nurse position. She also said it would be better for me, since I had gone through about every school in the county.
The few weeks following the incident with the letter proved to be rather strange. Mum and I both kept packing for our imminent move, and, as it was the summer hols, I spent as much time as possible with the few friends I had. And the letters from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry kept pouring in.
"I don't understand!" Mum cried, exasperated at the total of twenty letters that sat on the kitchen table. They had all arrived that day. "I don't know how we're supposed to respond to them!" she continued. "I mean, there is no way to respond - there's no return address."
"We could ask the post man," I offered helpfully.
"Oh, he won't know who sent it," Mum grumbled.
"We're going to have to do something," I reminded her.
"Oh no, we're not," she said. "If they make it impossible to contact them, they'll have to take the first steps to contact us. They know our address."
I didn't like her logic, but agreed with her anyway. To me, it seemed as if we had been contacted first, but were just missing a crucial part of how to respond.
The next day, when the post arrived, there were no letters of heavy parchment with green writing. Mum seemed satisfied that our point had been taken, and I was resolved to lie on the sofa most of the day and wait for my friends to phone.
About half-two, however, there came a rap of knuckles on the front door.
"Sally-Anne, can you get it?" Mum called from what sounded like the attic. "My hands are a bit full right now."
I didn't answer her, but unlocked the door and opened it to find a tall, severe looking woman in a simple black dress.
"Sally-Anne Perks, I presume?" she said quickly. I nodded. "I'm Professor Minerva McGonagall from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry... May I please speak to your parents?"
"...well yes, I'm sure, Professor, but I'm not quite certain that it would be the best thing for Sally-Anne to go so far away for school." Mum, Professor McGonagall, and I sat around our small kitchen table drinking tea and discussing the school, which-I found out-really did exist. I wasn't doing much of the talking. In fact, I had barely spoken since the professor had walked in. Instead, she and Mum preferred to talk about me as if I weren't there, which infuriated me.
"Mrs. Perks, you must understand that these occurrences you speak of won't just go away!" Professor McGonagall persisted. "In other circumstances, I would allow the parents to teach the child at home. But seeing as neither you nor anyone in your family is of a magical background, Sally-Anne would not be able to learn proper control of her abilities." I ground my teeth together. I was sitting right there, why couldn't they talk to me instead of about me?
Mum sipped at her tea suspiciously. "She has…accidents…sometimes," she said flatly, making me glare into my tea. I was right there... "What could you do about that?"
"Mum…" I groaned. She made it sound like I wet myself on a regular basis.
"Magical accidents?" the professor asked. Mum nodded. "These won't simply go away on their own. At Hogwarts, we teach students how to hone their abilities so these 'accidents' don't happen. And, if all-else fails, special arrangements could be made."
I wanted someone to look at me - to notice I was sitting right there. I could feel my heart beat raise and I fought to calm myself down. Bad things happened when I was mad. I took a few deep breaths through my nose.
"She's always had a rough time with special arrangements."
My hands shook slightly and I stared fixedly at the table. I could feel a sort of power course through my veins and I needed to control it. Suddenly, Professor McGonagall's tea cup shattered in her hand, spilling tea all over her. I blinked in surprise and realized with a sinking feeling that I had not been able to control it well enough. I had caused it.
Mum had realized it, too, because she gave me a withering look and started apologizing profusely, as she always did.
"Oh, I'm so sorry, Professor!" she cried, helping to mop up the tea on the table. "That's what I mean by accidents! I'm so sorry; it won't happen again, right Sally-Anne?" She always talked quickly when apologizing for me.
"Not to worry, not to worry," Professor McGonagall assured her, pulling out a long, thin piece of wood and waving it at her clothes and the table. Suddenly they were all dry. She pointed it at the broken tea cup, and then it was flawlessly repaired, which was good, since it was Mum's best china.
I stared at the professor as she stuck the wand back into her pocket and turned to me.
"You have quite a bit of strong magic in you, Miss Perks," she said with a faint smile. "You would do very well at Hogwarts. Very well indeed, I should think."
Mum was also staring at her. "I..." she started carefully. Then she gave a sort of relieved laugh. "Everyone before's been so mad when that happens," she explained. "It's just nice to see she's not treated like...well, like a freak."
"Of course not! No use crying over spilled tea, in this case. It's only to be expected of a young witch or wizard." Professor McGonagall gave me a genuine smile, which made all the anger inside of me melt away. I felt something for the first time: acceptance.
"I...well..." Mum frowned and looked like she was thinking very hard about something. "Okay," she said at last. "Sally-Anne can go to Hogwarts." I beamed at her. "But she'll have to come home every month or so," she added quickly, "she has braces, you see-Sally-Anne, show her your braces, that's a good girl-and I want to know everything that happens," she said, looking at me sternly.
I didn't even care what she made me do. I was going to Hogwarts.
A/N: Please leave me a review if you can! I am currently looking for a beta reader to help with Britspeak and canon edits, so if you're interested, send me a message!
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