A/N: Hey guys, so this here is my first attempt at a Harry Potter fanfic, I hope you enjoy it! I am quite a fan of writing OC fics in other fandoms, although this is the first time I've really played around with the idea of actually deconstructing the "Mary Sue" trope. Obviously, as I do plan on continuing this series all the way from Goblet of Fire (this book) through Deathly Hallows, the main focus will not necessarily be on Sue-deconstruction the whole time, just mainly in this story for reasons you will later find out. I hope to make my true main character, Nicole, interesting enough to sustain my dear readers interest even through times of Sue-lessness.
On a side note, I have taken some liberties in creating American wizarding society, especially to make it more realistic for my oc's to have to attend Hogwarts. As far as I'm aware, my original details do not conflict with established canon, but if they do… oh well.
Finally, as a general disclaimer, I do not own Harry Potter or the Salem Witches Institute, just the McGinnis family and the St. Wolbodo School for the Gifted.
Chapter 1: The Lost Letter
I felt the panic swell a little inside me with each bell that rang, announcing the end of another class and marking the steady progression towards the end of the school day when I would be forced to trudge home and finally face the music. Each passing minute of the day was agony for me, torn between wanting school to be over as soon as possible so I could rush home and try to find it, and wanting to never have to go home at all. I had made a lot of stupid, potentially serious mistakes before, but very few could—in my mind—compare to the utter stupidity and grave seriousness of this latest infraction.
I had lost my Hogwarts acceptance letter.
Now, before I confuse you further, allow me to explain. In June of 1994 at the tender age of 14 I was just finishing my third year of magical education at the St. Wolbodo School for the (Magically) Gifted, the local wizarding "public" (in other words, compulsory and state-funded) school of Morristown, New Jersey. Well, "public" as far as the American Ministry of Magic was concerned; as far as all of my old muggle elementary school classmates were concerned, it was just another fancy Catholic private school for rich kids too good for regular public school (ironic, considering most of the population of Morristown wasn't exactly poor to begin with, and there were plenty of other private and Catholic schools nearby). Like many of my current friends and classmates, I had attended muggle school up until the end of 5th grade, after which—by some apparent miracle—I turned out to not be a total squib and was accepted at St. Wolbodo's. Through my first three years I struggled with lessons, made a few new friends, endured my fair share of bullying by upperclassmen, and narrowly avoided run-ins with the school's mafia-imitating gangs, but overall, it was probably not much worse than the life of any other average St. Wolbodo's student. But in the spring of 1994, at the tender age of 14, that was all about to change for me.
Just as I was finally starting to feel like I had found my place, just as I was finally getting past the after-effects of a particularly awful 2nd year (which is a story all its own), I was expected to say goodbye to everything I knew and move to England, of all places. My mother, who had worked for the American Ministry in the Department of International Affairs for almost my entire life had recently been appointed as a permanent Ambassador to the British Ministry of Magic, necessitating the change in scenery. Needless to say, I was crushed, although I think I took the news somewhat better than my 9-year-old sister Regan, who—pardon my French—pretty much "flipped her shit" regardless of being far too old for temper tantrums.
Anyway, to make a long story short, the big move obviously meant cutting ties with my old school and enrolling in the quite famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And, despite my initial angsting over having to say goodbye to my friends and basically everything worth remembering about my childhood, I was a little excited when I had gotten my acceptance letter.
The letter which I had now lost.
At last, the bell rang for a final time, signaling the end of potions, my last class of the day. Hastily, I began cleaning up; distracted as I was, I had been much more careless than usual, and I noted with no small amount of panic that my cauldron had overflowed. I tried to give off the appearance of being able to handle it myself as Ms. Bronski walked over, but it was too late.
"I've noticed you've been distracted lately, Nicole," said the teacher, vanishing the mess with a flick of her wand. "It's not like you to be so sloppy in your potions work."
I looked down at my feet in embarrassment, not wanting to see the disappointment in the face of my favorite teacher. Considering potion's was my best (read: "only good") subject, it was easy to understand why the instructor who had been like a mentor to me for almost three years would be disappointed. She was actually what I would come to miss the most about St. Wolbodo's, besides all of my American friends. As anxious as I was to leave, to get home as quickly as possible and find the letter, I couldn't help but sigh shakily and slump back into my seat.
"I-I'm moving to England and I won't have any friends and I'm probably gonna fail all my classes there and everyone will make fun of that stupid new American girl and I lost an important letter from my new school and my mom's gonna be really mad at me if I don't get home and find it right away," I blurted out, mortified that I had started crying in front of a teacher. Ms. Bronski sat down and handed me a tissue.
She sighed. "I know this must be hard for you, Nicole, and I'm sure the decision to go wasn't an easy one for your mother to make. You know, I remember a time when I was the new girl in school. It wasn't in another country, of course… but… well, sometimes change can be for the best. And you're not stupid, Nicole, don't ever say that, ok? If there's one thing I can't stand it's hearing bright young kids with a lot of potential calling themselves 'stupid'. Yes, you do need to be a bit more organized, but a little self-confidence goes a long way, too. And you know you are probably the best in Potion's in your year." I looked at her, uncertain.
"Really?"
She smiled, putting a gentle had on my shoulder. "Really. Just trust me, things will turn out fine, you'll see. Now go home and find that letter."
I did as Ms. Bronski said and raced home as fast as I could, immediately running up to my room without even shutting the front door. I had barely even begun to tear through the mess of papers on my desk when I saw the letter sticking out of my copy of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, marking my place. Triumph mingled with embarrassment and I felt my face grow hot as I gingerly removed the letter from the book and replaced it with another scrap of paper. I WOULD leave it in such an obvious place, I thought, mentally kicking myself for my needless panic. I sat down on my bed to read it again, mostly just skimming over it until I came to the page concerning choosing my classes. Frick. I'd completely forgotten to mark down that I was taking Arithmancy and Care of Magical Creatures, and the form was due to be sent back in two weeks! I groaned, knowing my mother would certainly have something to say about this once she got home from work.
Don't think I can come up with a good excuse for this in half an hour, I thought glumly. Wait, half an hour? Double frick! I had forgotten to pick Regan up from school! How dumb could I be to forget something I did almost every day? Luckily no one else was home to hear me swear out loud, wishing for the umpteenth time that Mom hadn't been so adamant about my little sister needing to be escorted home every afternoon. Once again I was on the move, thankfully remembering to grab the keys and lock the door as I ran… but not before noticing that all-too-familiar blue backpack on the kitchen floor… had that been there when I came home? Oh no. My heart was pounding as I flew down the sidewalk, knowing that that blue backpack could only mean one thing, and it wasn't good…
Five minutes later I was gasping for breath as I approached the muggle elementary school. For a moment I felt a small stab of guilt when I saw Regan, obviously pouting, sitting alone on the front steps… until I realized she wasn't alone. My heart sank, my fears about the blue backpack confirmed as I saw Regan look up and heard her make some sharp remark to the girl who was now approaching her.
Triple frick. Marie was home. Marie Suzanne McGinnis, my perfect, beautiful, popular, and utterly, undeniably evil genius of an older sister had finally come home from the prestigious, all-girls private boarding school for the best of the best, the Salem Witches Institute- the very same Salem Institute from which she had apparently been recently expelled. Exactly why she had been expelled was a mystery to me, although I don't think I had ever seen my mom more furious in her entire life than when she had found out; to be fair I suppose that as a parent I would probably be outraged at my child having been expelled from school for any reason. The "official" explanation she had given Regan and me was that Marie had been kicked out for "Academic Dishonesty", which I'm pretty sure was just a fancy name for cheating. I had been a little surprised that Miss Know-it-all would ever feel the need to cheat, but really the fact that she simply was a dirty rotten cheater didn't surprise me; she was dirty rotten everything to begin with. But there was still something, some small bit of doubt inside me, which told me there was something Mom didn't want to tell us about her expulsion.
Secretly I had felt a kind of grim satisfaction at the news—finally karma was beginning to catch up with Marie for how horrible she had been for years!—until I had realized that this meant that she now would have to come back home. And not just home to New Jersey; not knowing what else to do, our mother had written all kinds of crazy letters, and by some cruel twist of fate, Marie was now allowed to attend Hogwarts. I remembered how ecstatic I had been that day towards the end of my second year—her fifth—when she had gotten her Salem acceptance letter, congratulating her on winning that fabulous scholarship. I had thought my troubles at school and at home were over, that I had managed to escape her. But now she was back; she was going to London with us, to live in the same house again, go to the same school… and I knew now, a full year after that happy day, that I would never escape her.
And apparently neither would Regan. I reached the school steps in the middle of a confrontation between my two sisters. Regan grumbled angrily about something, but I could see her face was white with apprehension and no doubt a bit of fear. I hurried forward, panting, just as Marie made to grab her arm.
"Oh great, now you show up!" my little sister grouched when she saw me. Marie turned to me, looking mildly surprised, her deep-blue eyes as hard as sapphires. I hated those eyes. With a careless gesture she relinquished her grip on Regan's arm; it didn't escape my notice that Regan jerked her arm away with a huff, as if to give the impression that it was she who had broken out of Marie's grasp, but I could still see her shiver a little, obviously shaken. Still out of breath from my run I tried to compose myself and face my older sister with a little dignity, and failed spectacularly.
"W-why are you… here?" I managed at last. Her pretty features rearranged themselves from surprise to her signature, sickening smirk.
"Well, someone obviously had to pick Regan up, since you obviously don't care enough about your own poor little sister to do so," she answered. "Couldn't be bothered to come straight here after school, hmm?" I felt my face get hot.
"Well… at least I wasn't expelled," I retorted weakly. Marie snickered at my lame comment, but I saw her own face grow red all the same. Not so high-and-mighty now, huh? I thought, but gulped as she stepped closer to me, eyes glinting maliciously. Go on, those eyes challenged, go ahead, just try and insult me. You know what will happen either way. And I'll still be better than you anyway, and all your insults will forever be lame. So just go ahead and try, I won't be the one to get hurt.
"That's the best you can do, Nicole? Tsk tsk, though you'd have learned by now the proper way to greet your older sister. You know it would only upset Mom if she heard you being rude to me like this. And it's such a shame you apparently haven't taught little Regan any proper manners either-"
"Hey! I've got pretty good manners, thank you very much!" Regan shot back at her. I rolled my eyes and forced myself to pretend that I was fine and everything was normal, but even with my gaze carefully averted I could tell Marie knew I was trembling like a leaf on the inside. She could read me like a book.
My forced some annoyance into my voice. "Come on Regan, don't argue. Let's just go home, okay?"
The tension in the air was palpable as the three of us set off towards home. Technically, Marie was of legal apparating age, but considering her expulsion I didn't dare question her decision not to. We had barely gotten home ourselves when we heard the door open again; Mom was home early from work. Unlike the muggle capital, which was in Washington D.C., the main offices of the American Ministry of Magic were in New York City, which was why we lived fairly close in Morristown. Of course, Mom usually apparated into the city, but the reasonably close distance did make traveling easier. And now that she had already bought a place for us right in London, her new commute would be easier still.
The tension only seemed to increase when Mom walked in to see us all in the living room. Regan, who usually greeted her pretty enthusiastically, was oddly subdued. But Mom only had eyes for Marie, and they weren't the adoration-filled eyes that had been reserved for her eldest child in the past. I dared to glance over at my sister and saw, to my surprise, a much different Marie than the one I knew; a fragile, shamefaced Marie with all her usual confidence and bravado stolen from her.
"Hey Mom," she mumbled sheepishly. Hell, I'd never known Marie was even capable of sounding sheepish! Mom set her purse down and briskly went about taking off her shoes.
"I see you got home alright," she replied. Marie nodded and started to say something else, but Mom cut her off. "I see your Hogwarts letter on the table here, Nicole. I hope you didn't forget to fill out that class schedule form. You did do that, right?"
"Ummm…" I bit my lip, seeing out of the corner of my eye a shadow of Marie's old smirk return. But there was no way I could come up with a convincing lie or excuse at this point. "Well, I… no. I forgot, I'm sorry."
My mother let out an exasperated sigh. "Nicole, you have got to stop putting these things off to the last minute! That's why you forget! You know this thing is due in two weeks, and all the other students there already have their classes all planned out. You're supposed to be taking Arithmancy and Care of Magical Creatures, but considering how late it is I'll be surprised if you get into either of those at this point." She picked up my discarded letter and thrust it at me. "You've got to fill this out right now, okay? Sit down right now and finish this. You can't always be relying on me to remind you of these things, Nicole, I'm not going to be around forever, you know. I just hope that's not what it takes for you to finally learn to be responsible for yourself."
Wordlessly, I took the letter and sat down, not knowing how or if to respond to that. Now don't get me wrong, my mom was a very kind, loving, and patient lady, but I understood by that point that certain things wore her patience thin. A single parent with a stressful job and three daughters to worry about, I had always admired her, though admittedly I think now that we her children often took advantage of her caring. She rarely lost her temper, but on those occasions during which her patience had clearly run dry—like now—she seemed to possess the power of making one feel supremely guilty, even more so than when she was outright yelling. All the same, I certainly didn't want to give her a reason to start yelling, so I obediently began to fill out the form.
Arithmancy and Care of Magical Creatures had both been required courses at St. Wolbodo's, although apparently they were electives for third years and up at Hogwarts. The only reason I was continuing with both was because Mom had insisted they would be useful someday. I was hopelessly bad with numbers and had always hated Arithmancy, but at least with was a fairly safe subject; the natural world in general—both plants and animals—seemed to hate me, so I was certainly not looking forward to CoMC. That and Herbology. And pretty much any other class that wasn't Potions. Let's just hope the Potions teacher is nice, I thought, though I doubted anyone could really measure up to Ms. Bronski.
On the last day of school, Ms. Bronski held a small surprise goodbye party for me in class. But the real surprise wasn't the cookies, or the punch, or the music; it was seeing that I was liked by a lot more people than I had thought. I had somewhat expected hugs and the small gifts given to me by my best friends Tara Giles, Rachel Wimmer, and Eric Minosky, but on my last day ever at my old school I was getting hugs from girls who I never really thought of as remotely being my friends. Would I really be missed? It seemed almost unbelievable that so many of my fellow classmates genuinely seemed to care about me. Even the ones who had openly disliked, bullied, or simply ignored me in the past were nice enough to offer a cordial "goodbye" and maybe a "good luck".
It brought tears to my eyes to see that people actually cared, but I didn't really start to cry until I was walking out the school's front doors for the final time with Tara, Rachel, and Eric. Usually it was just me and one or two of them—Eric and Rachel didn't exactly get along—but today all three of them escorted me out. We reached the point where we usually parted ways, when suddenly Tara threw her arms around me.
"Oh Nic! School's going to really suck without you!" she cried, and I started to tear up again, too. "I wish you could've at least stayed for the summer… now don't forget to write, alright? And you promise you'll visit next summer too?"
I laughed weakly. "Yeah, I'll try, but I promise I will write all the time. And yeah, school's going to suck without you too, at least you still have friends here!"
The final goodbyes seemed to take forever and I was sure I'd be late picking up Regan again, but it didn't matter. After I managed to disengage myself from Tara's grasp, it was Rachel's turn to hug me. And then they were both leaving, and now it was just me and Eric. Tara turned to me one last time, and even with her watery eyes, I saw, with a sudden flutter in my stomach, she was giving me what could only be a knowing look. Heart pounding, I turned back to Eric, hoping against hope that I would not start blushing my blotchy blush.
He and I had been friends almost as long as Tara and I had, which was a long time, and just as close. But it hadn't been until the beginning of our second year that I had begun to realize that I had feelings for him beyond friendship. And what started out as a suppressed crush quickly escalated into full-blown I'm-totally-in-love-with-my-best-friend-and-it-sucks-because-he's-my-best-friend syndrome when one of his other friends—a guy named Dave who I had never particularly cared for—had leaned in close to me one day in Transfiguration and whispered "Eric likes you, by the way." His words had haunted me ever since then, coming to mind almost every time I saw or talked to Eric. But was it really true? I mean, to think that him or any other guy found me remotely attractive was a hard concept to wrap my head around, but we had been friends for so long… was it really possible he felt the same way about me? I looked for signs that he did, and sometimes I swear it showed, but then again, he was really just treating me the way he had always treated me; besides, I was far too much of a coward to ever ask.
Until now. Here I was, about to move to another country, never to return to my old school, on the verge of starting a whole new life. It was my last possible chance to tell him how I felt. Well go on, Nicole! Spit it out, don't be such a wimp! What if you never see him again? My mind urged me.
Yeah, but you're moving across a freakin' ocean, it's not like becoming his girlfriend is actually possible, another part of my mind argued. And besides, Dave was probably lying anyway, and then you'd go and ruin your friendship, and things will get awkward and then you'll REALLY never see him again!
"Nicole?" Eric said, startling me back into reality, "You ok?"
I wanted to cry again. Why was this so hard? "What? Oh, yeah, I'm fine, it's just…" Go on, Nic, just say it already, dammit! "Well, I'm just really going to miss you." I finished lamely. Eric, who I'd never seen cry before, looked at me with watery eyes, his expression gloomy despite a smile. I managed one myself, and then we were hugging tightly; I couldn't help but feel a little thrill with his arms around me, hands gently pressing into my back, holding me close… vaguely I wondered if I'd ever feel this or even more with a boy, not just as friends, or if I'd end up being a lonely loser forever, never knowing what it felt like to be intimate with someone, to be held close like this by someone who loved me, who truly meant it… I blushed at my suddenly sensual thoughts, and cleared my throat. Eric let me go, and I felt almost a bit angry, as if I had been deprived of something special.
"It's really not going to be the same here without you, Nicole," he said, "You know I'll miss you." I dried my eyes.
"And you'll write to me, right? You promise?" We both smiled.
"As long as you write me, of course. Good luck with everything," was his response. I hugged him one last time, and then I left, sad and lonely and furious and ashamed, knowing that I had lost my one and only chance to tell my best friend that I loved him.
A/N: Whew! Long first chapter! Future chapters probably won't be this long, but hopefully it won't take me nearly as long to update this fic than some of my others have in the past. Anyway, the next chapter should probably see them in London already, but wait until at least chapter 3 for all our favorite cannon characters to start coming in to play! Hope you enjoyed, don't forget to leave be a kind review! ~Leanne the Rocket Dog