A/N: Hello to the Andith shippers and the general Downton community! I'm utterly in love with Andith as many of you are, and I'm so absolutely inspired by all of the fics in the fandom. I confess I've been a longtime lurker and never thought I'd write anything for this fandom. Suddenly, after watching and rewatching all of their beautiful, painful moments together on the show I was gripped by a truly insistent plot bunny and voila. This happened.

This story is A/U right off the bat, and I ask you to bear with me as I have no beta/britpicker, so all mistakes and inaccuracies are my own. I borrow quite a lot from the Harry Potter world and merge it with Downton, basic premise is Edith has something that really sets her apart from her sisters besides her general personality.

Please let me know what you think. :)

PROLOGUE

1901

Lady Edith Crawley would never forget the precise moment when she realised she was different. As a young girl, she was pensive and observant as her sisters were charming and outspoken—the former characteristics compelled her to reach for books and shut out the world until she absolutely had to come back to it. Edith obeyed her mama and her governesses as best as she could. What little girl did not yearn for the utter approval of her elegant mama? Yet from childhood, Edith knew perhaps subconsciously that there was something about herself that precluded her from that sort of unconditional affection. This was not to say that she'd suffered a miserable childhood, her papa and mama indulged her as much as other parents of that time did though even more so for Mary and Sybil.

Edith had been in the library, scouring the shelves for a book she knew was hiding somewhere on the upper levels as Mrs. Hughes had taken to occasionally reading to the young girl. Edith knew the housekeeper repositioned the book in its proper place at least an arm's length above where Edith's head came to on the shelf. She stood on a chair she'd dragged up so she could reach for the slim volume, only to discover that it was still far away from her fingertips. Biting her lip determinedly, she stretched just a little further but to no avail—until the book inexplicably flew into her hand. At nine years of age, she put it up to her imagination that such a curious thing should occur.

That same year, Edith experienced increasingly similar incidents that simultaneously frightened and thrilled her. In her favorite spot in the grassy country fields just beyond the confines of her ancestral home, she somehow was able to summon little birds to her without consciously trying. Flowers bloomed in her hand, but faster than any normal growth. Because she spent most of her time alone, Sybil and Mary got on far better together than if Edith also accompanied them, Edith was unaware that these behaviors would be alarming to anyone else.

One day during a session with Mrs. Hughes in the library, Edith begged her for one more story from a hefty collection of fairy tales. The housekeeper's soothing voice was such a comfort to little Edith, and in those peaceful moments, she likened Mrs. Hughes to something of a fairy godmother from the very tales she wove. At Edith's polite but insistent pleading, the housekeeper agreed with a fond smile to read one final story for the afternoon.

A split second of carelessness that was a result of particularly industrious work in the kitchens that morning led Mrs. Hughes to drop the heavy volume with a soft cry. Edith's eyes snapped to the book and instinctively she willed it not to hit Mrs. Hughes's foot. The book froze in midair, hovering just above the housekeeper's knees.

The expression of utter astonishment on Mrs. Hughes' face would be forever imprinted in Edith's memory. When she was older, Edith would reflect that Mrs. Hughes probably said something to her mama in reference to that moment. For on her eleventh birthday, Edith overheard her mama and papa having a distinctly earnest conversation that became rather like an argument. Words like disappointment and unnatural filtered through the slightly open door. The undertone of her parents' fear pierced little Edith's heart and caused her to wonder what was truly wrong with her. Those moments in the library, in the meadows outside Downton, with Mrs. Hughes that day—there must be something terribly wrong with her!

She lived in perpetual fear that she'd be sent away far from the only family she'd ever had. When her mama and papa sat her down in the very library where all those things occurred, she couldn't say she was very shocked.

They wanted to send her to school in Scotland, to a school where she'd be educated with similar girls—and even boys—to help her with her 'abilities' or that was how her parents phrased it anyway.

Edith was equally confused and frightened. She was still convinced something was wrong with her, or her parents wouldn't be sending her to live away in a place where she had only one relation with whom she wasn't too familiar. She then asked why Mary and Sybil were not to join her. According to Mama, the school only admitted students with the requisite aptitude for their curriculum. She hardly knew what that meant, other than that she would only return home to Downton for holidays and the summer season.

And so from ages eleven to twenty one, Lady Edith Crawley set off to discover that not only was she a daughter of old English aristocracy but also the only member of her immediate family who was in fact, a witch.