Chapter I - The "M" Word

Disclaimer: long sigh Yes, I don't have shame on my face nor I have anything else better to do than keep on making ficts about my characters. This one is another about Gabriel, this time, telling her story before she was transferred to Hogwarts when she was about to start her 6th year. After all, she didn't fall on Hogwarts from the sky...

I don't own the world and concepts created by J. K. Rowling, but I do own the characters present here. Take that Mrs. Rowling! Mwahahahahahah!!

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"Gabriel? Gabriel! Gabriel Fénix Diniz, get down from that attic right now!" a harsh woman's voice echoed through the silent corridors and up the stairs into the dark attic. At one of the darkest corners a girl was bent over a large old wood trunk, holding a flashlight in one hand searching something inside.

"Gabriel!!" a man's voice this time and finely she took her head out of the trunk, showing a bored expression. She tucked her hair behind an ear and turned off the flashlight.

"Coming dad." She sighed and taking all the papers she had found, she crossed the attic, closing the door behind her. Her eyes took a while to get used to all that light, after the dimness of the upper room. She left her flashlight on her room on her way to the kitchen. She sighed before entering on the white and clean room.

"It was about time, little missy. You were about to miss your dinner with your parents." An old chubby woman smiled at her. Her silvery hair tied up on a bun shone in the artificial fluorescent light, her round old face was so caring, her hands, old and wrinkled, had so many stories to tell... and her voice, oh her voice... so calm, so many times talked her to sleep...

"I was searching for something for school tomorrow, Nanny. It's the last day of school and the teacher asked for a paper about something we like." The small girl smiled and shown all the papers and photos in her hands. "Look! It's about--"

"A little girl like you should go to the attic, Gabriel." Nanny walked to her and cleaned the dust she had on her nose, also taking away some spider webs the small girl had on her hair. "I could have looked that for you. Now, go and wash your hands, your parents are waiting in the dinning room."

"Oh, must I really...?" Gabriel said in a low voice before the perspective of having dinner with her parents.

"Yes, you must. After all you haven't been with them lately." Nanny smiled in such a tender way that Gabriel smiled back, and leaving the papers with the old lady, she went for the dinning room.

The two adults in white lab-looking gowns glanced at the small girl that came to the door. She was tying up her long golden brown hair in a ponytail. In silence she sat. Her mother, a slim short woman, glared at her behind the reading glasses. Her hair was dark brown and her skin pale. Her eyes swift then to the man on the head of the table. He also wore glasses, his wavy hair was just like Gabriel's. He rose his hazel eyes from the paper he was reading.

"These calculations are wrong, Maria." He said between the soup he was eating. "This way the cell won't last long. The glucose--"

"Leonardo, can we leave this for later? It's dinner time and we've been on the laboratory all day." Maria said looking at him in a serious way. "Later we can go back to the basement and count all the cells again, give it a rest for now, please dear?" Leonardo nodded but started to read the paper again. "Thank you."

Gabriel rolled her eyes and held her head in one hand, stirring her soup. Sometimes she hated that her parents were scientists. During that last month, she barely saw them, after they were assigned to study something for a famous university... something about cancer or cells. She missed the old days, when her parents had time for her.

"How was your day a school, Gabriel? What were you doing on the attic?"

She looked up at her father, a bit surprised. "My day was good... had a History test, I think I've passed. I'll know tomorrow, the teacher has to deliver our marks, as the classes will be over. And I have an essay to make for the Portuguese teacher about something I like."

"Oh really?" Maria looked interested. "And your essay will be about what?"

For a moment Gabriel smiled, feeling like her parents were trying to be part of her life again, feeling thrilled.

"Well, I wanted to do something about magic."

In that instance, everything stopped. Her mom and dropped the spoon on her soup and it splashed to her gown; her father was drinking a glass of wine and at the pronunciation of that word, he spitted the red liquid out. Gabriel stared at them and they stared at her.

"What?!" her parents said at the same time, looking eagerly at her and at Nanny, that had just entered the room with a big plate of stew.

"Magic." Gabriel said again feeling the odd tension in the air. "About magic tricks, illusionists. Like grandpa used to make."

"Oh, illusionists!" her mother said in a nervous way, trying to clean the carrot soup from her gown. "That's-that's... a god choice, isn't it dear?"

"Yes, yes it is." Her father agreed, now with a calmer expression on his face as he took off his gown stained with wine, so Nanny could take it to the laundry. He pushed his glasses up to his nose. "But why don't you do it about science instead? You like it and then we could help you."

"You don't have time to help me anymore, dad." Her voice sounded bitter. "Besides, science isn't that much of a mystery."

Nanny served the stew and the conversation ended there as her parents begun again babbling about counting cells and glucose. When dinner was over, her parents kissed her good night as she went up the stairs to her room. They looked at each other with concern.

"The M word." Leonardo whispered at his wife with a concerned face. She nodded as he held in a tight embrace.

"She's 11 years old and school ends tomorrow." Maria said back, rubbing her tired eyes. "We can only wait now..." they kissed and went down, to the lab they had on the basement.

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Gabriel opened the door of her room, turning on the lights. It was a single room, the walls were baby pink and the furniture was white. The floor was fluffy due to the large rugs, and every corner was filled with teddy bears. The bookshelves were filled with books, she loved to read. Most of her books were about fantasy, about princesses and their enchanted knights, fairies and trolls, witches and wizards... most of them given to her by Nanny or belonged to her grandmother.

Gabriel went to her desk, the wall in front of it filled with drawings. She took out her coat and left it on the chair, turning on the TV. While she took out her clothes and dressed her pyjamas, she looked at the mirror. Everyone used to say that she looked at lot with her grandmother Grace. Gabriel was short for her age. Her hair was long and shiny, curly on the ends and coloured with a delicate golden brown, but the most appealing thing on her were her eyes, exactly like her grandmother's: expressive and coloured with and bright orange-ish brown colour. All her classmates, boys or girls, were taller than her, they always called midget. She didn't like that. She wondered if her grandmother was as short as she was. She couldn't recall her well. She had died when she very little, Gabriel only had a couple of memories from her... she mostly recalled her eyes everytime she saw her own.

"Ready to bed?" Nanny knocked at the door before entering. Gabriel was about to get into bed.

"Yeah, almost ready." She said when the old lady entered and started to fold her clothing and turned off the TV. "Nanny?"

"Yes, dear?" he old woman sat on the edge of her bed, giving her a unicorn teddy bear and a book, that was on her nightstand. Gabriel smiled and hugged the teddy then her bright eyes got dark.

"Did you notice mom and dad's reaction when I said my essay was about magic?"

"Oh dear..." she laughed and tucked the duvet around Gabriel "Don't get your parents wrong, they were just surprised."

"It looked beyond surprise. They spit out their food when they heard it!" she retorted.

"They are science people, they don't believe in magic." Nanny explained, her voice calmed down Gabriel's confusion and anger. "Oh, and I almost forgot. Aren't you going to make your essay?"

Nanny winked at her and took behind her back a pack of papers that she left on top of the duvet. Gabriel looked suspicious at the old woman, because she was almost certain that she had nothing behind her back when she entered the room. Gabriel sat then and spread the photos and letters on the bed. "Will you help me, Nanny? After all, you used to tell me all those stories about magic..."

"Of course, dear." Nanny got up and opening a drawer in Gabriel's desk and took out a sheet of paper and a pencil.

While she done so, Gabriel gathered the photos. All of them were really old, still in black and white, and most of them were about her grandfathers: Roberto and Grace Diniz. She took one, observing the two young people on it.

"Grandma was beautiful." Gabriel said when Nanny sat again, showing her the photo.

"She was English, a very educated noble lady." Nanny said as she remembering. "She was an English teacher, in a school in Lisbon. Your grandfather met her during a seminar."

"Why mom doesn't talk about grandpa? I mean, after grandma died, I only saw him one or two times." Gabriel said taking a new photo looking at the elegant man on it.

"He lives now in England. He was very different from the ordinary people, so he moved to England. He didn't like it here much." Nanny took some of the papers spread on the duvet.

"The last thing I remember about him, I was still very little, was that he made some kind of trick and made a rose appear from the thin air and left it on grandma's grave. Then mom took me away and I never saw him again." Gabriel said, trying to remember all the man's gestures on that day, the last time she had saw her grandfather Roberto. As far as she remembered, he was already an old man, had short light hair, always combed back in a very noble, distinct way. He was tall and well built. His eyes were grey and his features were chiselled like in a stone statue. He always looked powerful and frightening. "Well, as far as I get it, he was an illusionist, or else, how'd he pull out that rose? Magic, wizardry, witchcraft... those don't exist."

"Do you think so? Do you believe that? From the bottom of your heart?" Nanny said with one of her enigmatic smiles.

"No..." Gabriel started and smiled, looking around to her room, to the teddies, to the drawings, to the books... "... and yes. I wish all about the magical world could be real! Just imagine Nanny!" Gabriel jumped from her and opened her arms. "To see unicorns and fairies in the forest! And mermaids on the sea... oh and Dragons, to fight them with shiny armours and sharp swords! And witches, to be able to have a wand and make spells! I'd turn Bruno into a frog if I could!" and laughing she fell on the bed. "I wish it all would be true..."

"If you believe in magic in here" Nanny placed her hand on Gabriel's heart and her eyes sparked with her warm smile "anything can come true. Now write about what you truly believe and you'll make your best essay ever, because it will come from the heart." She bent and kissed Gabriel on her forehead. "Good night, dear."

Gabriel started to write as Nanny spoke and didn't saw her leave. Nanny looked back at the small girl as she left the door, stepped out closing the door and the lights went out on their own. Gabriel looked at her side, as the lights went out, her bedside table lamp turned itself on. She glared at it with eyes wide open and let out a little giggle, looking at the closed door. She knew that Nanny was special... and magical.

She restarted to write again.