I walked in the living room. I saw Mark, my 16-year-old brother, playing games with his phone and James, my 8-year-old brother playing with a ball. So that's what woke me up...
"Vanessa, what are you doing up so early? You usually don't wake up before afternoon," Mark joked when he saw me.
"Ha, ha. Very funny," I said ironically. "I think that if someone wasn't being so loud with that stupid ball, I would still be sleeping!"
"It's not my fault that you wake up by the simplest sound you hear!" James protested.
I would protest, but I was still half-asleep, so I just decided to fall to the couch and put my head in my hands.
"Where is mom and Andrew?" I asked when I realised that I wasn't hearing any other noise except James ball and Mark's phone.
"Outside. Why are you asking?" Mark said.
"Because they could be here but they didn't heard me getting up because of all that noise!" I said in a high-pitched voice, covering my ears.
James just looked at me and started kicking the ball harder and of course, louder.
Andrew is my step-dad. I was living with my mother for the first 8 years of my life, and then my mother decided that the man who raped her and got her pregnant with me would never come back, and that she had to make up with her life. So she married Andrew. He had two kids on his own, Mark and James, who are now my brothers.
From what mom said to me, only Mark (and Andrew of course) had lived withhis mother, and only until he became 9. When his other brother was born. Then, she dissapeared and they haven't seen her from then.
Sounds dramatic? I haven't even met my father! My real father! Even mom doesn't remember how he was! Even if she's sure she'll recognise him if she sees him somewhere...
Either way, I would really love to met him one day. I don't know what I'm going to say. I want to spit at him, to slap him, to make him feel pain, the pain that me and mom felt.
The pain that mom was feeling while she was pregnant with me for nine months.
The pain that she was feeling when she had to raise me on her own.
The pain that I was feeling when I saw other kids walking by me with their families. With both their mom and dad.
The pain that I felt when years ago, a kid had approached me and asked me where my dad was. That kid was the reason I never made any friends. Because it would be better for me to be alone than if have friends who were going to ask me about my father.
He destroyed my life, and he probably doesn't even know about my existance.
So if I see him sometime in the future, I want to make him feel so bad for everything he did us, that he would wish he hadn't been born.
"I said stop doing that!" I yelled to James and then suddenly, the ball he was kicking exploded.
We were eating dinner. Mom and Andrew had come back. Then we heard knocking at the door. Mom got up and went to open the door, while the rest of us didn't even moved, thinking that James, who had eaten fast and went outside to play, was making a prank on us.
But it wasn't James.
"Mom, are you alright?" I yelled after some moments of not hearing anything from her.
"Vanessa, please come here," I heard her reply.
"Toο bored to go?" Mark asked after noticing my hesitation.
"Mark!" my step-dad warned him.
"What? She is used to sitting all day doing nothing, only eating and eating and now you expect her to get up from her chair? She's too fat to do that!"
"Mark, stop it!"
"So you say that you are doing anything different? I mean, you can't do anything different, because exept all of that weight you've gotten all over the summer, you also have that ADHD because of all those hours on your phone!"
"I do NOT have ADHD! And you're too stupid to understan that, even if I told you so many times!"
"KIDS! STOP THAT!" my step-dad yelled. "You," he said in a calmer tone while pointing at Mark, "if you insult at your sister one more time, you will be grounded for the rest of the summer. And you," he said and pointed at me, "Go to your mother now."
"I never said I wanted her for my sister," Mark said.
"I never said that too," I said and I got up from my chair with quick moves and went to the door to see why she was calling me. There, I saw a very old man with long beard, half-moon glasses and a long cloack standing there.
"Who are you?" I asked, not really kindly.
"Vanessa, where are your manners?" mom asked.
"They were all lost when you brought me here," I snapped.
She took a deep breath in and then she put on her best fake smile.
"Vanessa, this is professor Albus Dumbredore."
"Actually, I'm Albus Persival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Head Master of 'Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We are teaching there students with magical abitlities, just like you," the man said.
"Wait, you say I'm a witch? Those are not even real!"
"They are, Miss Rhodes. Tell me, have you ever did something that you couldn't explain?"
I thought of it and told him about the morning that I made James ball explode. Because I knew that it was me who did it. I always knew that it was me the one who was doing something bad happen every time I'm angry. One time, James was pulling a prank on me -he had thrown watter on my pants, making me look like I just had peed myself. Mom and my step-dad where out so I was alone with James and Mark. Mark was at another room, and he was coming towards us. We hated each other by then and if he saw me like that, he woluld be laughing at me forever. t would be terrible. So I closed my eyes and wished to be somewhere else. When I opened them, I was at my room. I quickly changed clothed and went back to where I was before, this time more carefull.
Of course I didn't told him about that.
He simply nodded his head with a smile on his face. "I think we both know you are magical."
He handed me a letter. I opened it and read it, with mom over me reading it too and Dumbledore waiting patiently for us to finish.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL
of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
Dear Miss Rhodes,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
The second page must had the things we had to buy:
HOGWARTS SCHOOL
of WHICHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
UNIFORM
First-year students will require:
sets of plain work robes (black)
plain pointed hat (black) for day wear
pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)
winter cloak (black, with silver fastenings)
Please note that all pupil's clothes should carry name tags.
COURSE BOOKS
All students should have a copy of each of the following:
The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)
by Miranda Goshawk
A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot
Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling
A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration by Emeric Switch
One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi
by Phyllida Spore
Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
by Newt Scamander
The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection
by Quentin Trimble
OTHER EQUIPMENT
1 wand
1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)
1 set glass or crystal phials
1 telescope
1 set brass scales
Students may also bring and owl OR a cat OR a toad.
PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS
But where were we going to buy all those things?
"Tomorrow I will come again and we'll go to buy together the things you will need for Hogwarts," the man answered, like he had just read my thoughts.
Mom nodded.
"Wait, you agree with him?" I asked. Se looked at me with a strange look on her face. "I mean, he has just appeared on our doorstep and telling me I'm a witch and I am supposed to go to a 'magical' school and be with him all the day tomorrow?"
He can be a rapist, I didn't said, but thought about it. He didn't seem like a rapist, but who tells me he is not?
"Vanessa, I do know Albus and I trust him completely," mom replied.
"But I don't. And you are crazy," I replied. I run to my room without even looking at her. I didn't want to see that sad expression she had.
The truth is that she had been saying crazy things since some years ago. We all thought she had gone mad. Exeptmy step-dad. He kept saying that she was okay.
Before I reached my room, I heard mom, who was still talking with that strange man, shouting for me to hear, "Don't worry Albus. It's just that the non-existance of her real father has costed her alot."
"IT HASN'T!" I yelled in the top of my lungs so she could hear.
Deep inside, I knew that what she was saying was true. Actually, mom is always right.
But I wouldn't let her say that to every stranger that visited our house.
Especially those crazy ones.