Tis the new and edited version of Chapter 1!

With help from my Beta, Siriusly Southern, who has been v v helpful :)


Chapter 1

Owl Post

'"Ah, boil yer heads, the both of yer,"said Hagrid. "Harry-yer a wizard."

There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.

"I'm a what?" gasped Harry.

"A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down in the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, "an' a thumpin' good'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yer be? An' I reckon it's about time yer read yer letter."

Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Mr Harry Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea. He pulled out the letter and read:'

"Megaline! Your Breakfast's getting cold!" My mother bellowed up the stairs.

"Can I please finish my chapter?!" I shouted.

"Meg. Breakfast. Now!" The lady has spoken. Defeated, I dropped my book and trudged down the stairs. A glance at the hallway clock told me it was 6:30. Sometimes I just want to strangle my mother.

"Yes?" I asked coldly, grouchy from being dragged out of bed at such a ridiculous time in the morning.

"Your father has an important business meeting, wouldn't you like to wish him good luck?" Mum asked.

"Good luck Dad," I muttered half-heartedly and he nodded his thanks, mouthful of toast. After sitting down I started to stir my lumpy porridge, while my loud family talked over my head. I might as well not be there, it was just as if I had turned invisible.

Just as I was thinking this, the conversation took an unusual, unwanted turn towards me.

"So Lucas, which of those instruments do you reckon we should get Meg playing?" asked Dad.

"I think she's best suited for the flute, really. There's no doubt a woodwind instrument would bring the best out of her. If we get her started this summer, she'll be in the school orchestra in no time, there's skill in the family after all." my brother replied confidently.

"So, what do you think, Meg?" The whole table turned towards me, pressuring me to grin and say something cheesy like 'can't wait!'. They really didn't know me at all, or maybe they did, but were refusing to believe that their only daughter had no interest in the arts, any of them.

"I don't want to play the flute." I said, keeping my cool.

"What do you want to do? You quit guides after a week, burnt your ballet shoes when you were five and never went to a single rehearsal for the school choir or the school production. We're running out of ideas here, hun."

"I want to write." Need you ask?

"Going to be the next Beatrix Potter, are you?" he cackled, like a baddie in a film.

"More like J K, our Meg." Matt joked.

My father looked down as he poured more milk into his tea, stirring it absent mindedly, he delivered his lines as if I was a problem to be dealt with, a case to be solved. You could tell when Dad was being serious, the atmosphere held tight as a tightrope and no one spoke, it could be broken with a whisper.

"Look, kid, your Mum and I worry about you. You spend all day up in your room, reading and writing. If you do indeed decide to go into writing seriously then we're behind you all the way. But at the moment, your grades are suffering and you're not socialising either, if you learn an instrument you could go round the word exploring new places, meeting people, becoming part of a team. Write, and you're alone, sweetheart. If your writing fails then you have nothing fall back on, no extra tricks up your sleeves. The only As you ever get are in English. If you're not going to develop a hobby, please, at least, work on your grades. They're just getting worse and worse."

"More of a Luna Lovegood, than a Hermione Granger, aren't you sis?" Lucas jeered and Mum hit him over the head with a rolled up newspaper.

"That's enough, you may go." She said as they left to get ready for their Saturday jobs. "Meg, you're alright to clear the table, aren't you?"

"Sure."

"My little sister, the day dreamer." Matt chortled, playfully tapping his fist to my ear as he passed.

"Get off," I mumbled as they abandoned me with only my cold, untouched porridge for company. Shamefully, my family was right. I always had my head in the clouds, never concentrated on lessons and therefore struggled with homework. Matt helped me as much as he could, but even that didn't get me very far. Even in English I could only listen when we were either reading fiction or writing them. Language topics I completely failed on, but I could spell since I read so much; it was second nature to me. I wish I did work hard at school but somehow I just switched off when a teacher started talking. In my first few years all the teachers were excited to teach me, as they had taught my brothers, but they soon realised how different we were: Lucas excelled in Music, he worked at a local music store and was in a successful band. Although he was always busy with band practice, his grades never wandered below a B and he always managed to hand in his homework on time. Matt was a born genius and achieved top grades in almost everything, he enjoyed languages and had ambitions to take uni in France or Spain, to properly learn the language and even take it at A level as a native language. Fluency had a different meaning when you talked to Matt. How lucky I was to be in such a talented family. Huh, I felt like a Squib, a muggle born to magical parents. At least when we were on holiday I didn't have to lift a finger, but no one ever looked at me to lift a finger.

Sighing, I took up my familiar habit of gazing off into space, thinking things like: 'I wonder what it'd be like to eat a cloud.' or 'I wish I could jump tree to tree like that squirrel.' Mid daydream I noticed something very strange: a brown splodge in the sky. It was flying higher than the treetops and boldly soaring lower and lower, as if to land. Like a furry bullet, it plummeted towards earth, towards me. As this phenomenon drew closer I realised it was an owl with an envelope larger than him in his beak. The little owl was flying in broad daylight and heading for my French windows (a posh snob way of saying glass doors). My closed French windows.

BANG!

The poor little owl fell to floor, dazed by the collision. I jumped out of my chair to his aid and I was happily astonished to see him hopping around, anxious to give me his envelope. I took him in my arms and he affectionately tugged my hair.

"You've wondered a bit far from Hogwarts, eh?" I joked, giggling at the little owl. It was odd, at the very least, to find an owl in my garden in the morning, maybe the poor little thing's lost. I can always phone up the bird people later. "Who's this for then?" I said, turning over the envelope he had given me. It read: Megaline Andrews, Seat Opposite The Window, The Dining Table, The Kitchen, 81, South Street, Burt's Hill, Dorset.

I almost screamed with shock. It was even in the authentic green that Harry had received several hundred times before his arrival at Hogwarts. My heart in my mouth and fingers trembling, I turned it over to find a purple wax seal with a Lion, Badger, Serpent and Eagle all encircling the letter H. I refused to believe it. I would not. Hogwarts, as good a story it may be, was just a story, a figment of the imagination. And this was a cheap joke a green biro, a hired owl and some use of a Christmas present from Santa. Since he was little Lucas had always enjoyed burning candles so he could pour the hot, melted wax all over scrap paper (or, more often, his fingers).

"Hey, this isn't funny!" I shouted up to Matt's and Lucas' windows, glad that my parents had already left for work. I was still outside on the patio but they heard me and opened their windows to answer.

"What have we done now?" Matt asked moodily.

"Thought it'd be funny to send me an owl, did you?" I shouted as they looked at me bewildered.

"She's finally lost it." Lucas stated to his brother and they both closed their windows with a slam! I sulked back upstairs, carrying my letter and my minute owl. The table lay forgotten.

Time passed agonisingly slowly. I completely dismissed the letter, refusing even to open it, but I couldn't help myself from wondering as we crept almost a week into the summer holiday. Try as I might, I couldn't get it out of my head, I kept coming back to all of those strange things that had happened to me, inexplicable things that I never asked to happen but somehow willed them into being. There were several occasions on school trips where I had made the lights turn off in a girl's dormitory I was passing, making them scream with fright (they had teased me that morning), or made someone's alarm clock keep running, no matter how many times she pressed the off button (she'd annoyed us all last night by eating the last of the éclairs when we were supposed to have one each). On one fantastically memorable occasion I had tripped a school bully over a non-existent stone, not only did I cake his designer clothes in mud but also broke his nose in the process. There were several people who believed that I had put my foot out, but no one really took them seriously. One of my favourites was when I had my friends over in the holidays and we took it in turns to straighten my hair. After this my mum sent us off down the shop and on the way back it was raining. We ran as fast as we could with our jumpers pulled over our heads but in the end everyone was drenched. Apart from my bone dry hair which was, if anything, looking wondrously glossier and straighter from the event.

These strange things happened quite often and gave me quite a reputation so I had a few widespread friends. My closer friends, the four of us, hung out together all the time and chatted non stop through out lessons. We were always very happy-go-lucky, we lived for now and frankly didn't give a toss to middle school grades which didn't even have any bearing on your future careers. At least I could be proud of my English mark, but Helen and Jenny were in bottom sets for everything. Which would be heart breaking...if they actually cared. I was with them in the same boat for Maths, and in Science I was middle but for English I was in the top, though proud of myself, I really didn't want to rub it in their faces. Ange, as she always stood up for me without a doubt, was my best friend of the three and was pretty average in school, but a major genius in Science. She had high ambitions career wise, but it all involved taking courses that were given in high school, and there was nothing she felt passionate about now. Which is fair enough. I was happy where I was, I guess. I ate up time by writing my stories and reading HP and I could always look for a friendly face in class but it felt like there was more, like I was missing something. I just didn't know what yet.

It was when I was just moving onto The Chamber of Secrets and having a break of maximum 5 minutes between the two when my eye kept catching the envelope on my desk. It was easily visible from where I sat with my laptop writing fan fic after fan fic. It was starting to creep me out, the way it called to be opened. I gave in eventually and pulled out the first letter which was an invite, identical to the one written out in The Philosopher's Stone. I moved on to the next letter without hesitation, trying to find out, if possible, roughly how long ago Harry and his friends had been at the school. I wasn't quite sad enough to know exact dates. I scanned down the page of everyday requirements at the school to the book list which read:

Set books

All students should have a copy of the following:

A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot

The Standard Book of Spells Grade 1 by Miranda Goshawk

Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger

Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart

Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart

Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart

Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart

Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart

Wanderings with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart

Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander

One Thousand Magical Herbs by Phyllida Spore

A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration by Emeric Smith

Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling

I dropped the letter as if it were on fire. If Dumbledore thought he could drag me to Hogwarts that year, he had another thing coming. Goodness, I picked a bad year to be born.