Disclaimer: I can't remember exactly what characters I do own and which I don't, so I'll say this: All copyrighted, trademarked or otherwise owned property is property of it's respective owner and no ownership is implied on the author's part. Enjoy!

~~Chapter One: At Hogwarts~~

Wow. Kevin shook his head slightly as he paced down the hallway towards his dormitory, walking with the other students. He couldn't stop looking at the castle around him; the enchanted ceiling that seemed to open up to the sky, the spectacular carvings in every nook and cranny, the gargoyles and winding staircases... it was simply too much to take in all at once.

As he and many other students turned right slightly to head up the marble staircase to the second floor, Kevin noticed that a few students were falling back, two or three of them running outside or standing beside the staircase, perhaps to get a private word.

Kevin bustled about in the huge amount of students. He had no one to walk with and was hence pushed more easily by the other students, no doubt not noticing they were jolting him around. A few people had greeted Kevin at his table in-between the Slytherin and Hufflepuff tables, but he had remembered none of their names.

He had been the forth to last to be sorted, and any weak attempt at a conversation with another student had been forgotten on both ends with the surprising entrance of who Kevin had picked up was known as "Mad-Eye". The scarred face was frightening, but not particularly gruesome, as some people seemed to see it.

The most frightening thing Kevin had experienced was sitting on that stool in front of the whole Hogwarts school and seeing the knowing looks on their faces, before the talking hat had been placed on his head. Had he looked scared then? He had tried to hide his fear behind a slight smile, but he didn't even remember what his face had been doing right then.

Kevin was broken out of his reverie by a low moan next to him. Kevin didn't know how he had heard it in the general buzz created by at least one hundred students talking, but he didn't think of that at that moment. He saw a boy- older than he was defiantly, but not a sixth or seventh year student- with his foot jammed into a step. Kevin's eyes widened. How in hell has that boy broken the marble step? He thought, thinking his eyes to have deceived him He then heard someone else passing by mutter about a 'trick step.' Kevin would have tried to help the boy, but he realized that a few other people were already leaning foreword to help him up. Kevin let himself be pushed onward with the crowd, carefully jumping the odd 'trick step'.

Ravenclaw. Kevin liked the sound of that. He wasn't sure about the sorting hat's half-rhyming verse on Ravenclaw- "--For Ravenclaw, the cleverest would always be the best--" but he was glad to be in that house anyways. He supposed that one could take clever two ways; it was most likely meant to be a compliment in the song. It seemed almost like an insult, however, when paired with Gryffindor's "--By Gryffindor, the bravest were prized far beyond the rest--".

As far as Kevin could tell, most people who had not been sorted or were not in the school saw Gryffondor as the epitome of good and Slytherin as the epitome of evil. Kevin was personally glad he was not in Gryffondor with bravery to live up to, as he almost always saw discretion as the better part of valor, but then again he was happier not to be in Slytherin. Ravenclaw seemed to have two faces, depending on how you looked at it; one plotting, and hard to trust, and the other intelligent and logical. That was exactly what Kevin thought he might be able to live up to, if given a free reign between the two faces.

He would have most likely flipped out if he had been in Hufflepuff; although they were made to sound good, they merely seemed to him to be stuffy and... well... somewhat dim to Kevin.

After he entered the dormitory, Kevin's first thought was his luggage. He had not even noticed the weight of his duffel while carrying it up the steps, but he instantly dropped it on his bed and opened it up. He heard the other students around him but ignored them; he was concerned for his belongings. Not that there was really way they could have been damaged, of course, but he still felt extreme relief finding that each and every possession of his was fine. The long trip from the US to Briton was bad enough, but then there was the confusing trip from muggle Briton to the wizarding Briton.

He slowly put each of his things into place, on or in the cabinet beside his bed, or simply under the bed if he didn't have room for them. The Ashallan School of Wizarding Ways had certainly been roomier, and the layout seemed to make more sense. On the other hand, every student knew every tunnel of Ashallan School, and Hogwarts, as Kevin was told, had so many secrets that not even the headmaster knew all of it's corridors and rooms.

Now the question was, was that a good thing?

Kevin had been called at age ten to The Ashallan School of Wizarding Ways to learn the arts of being a wizard. He had lived in an orphanage, and had enjoyed it because he knew of nothing else. He thought it had taken him the whole year to get used to being a wizard. He found that by then end of it he still wasn't but was at least used to some of their ways.

The entire next year at Ashallan was one of the best of Kevin's life. He had enjoyed being with his friends, learning new spells, and getting more used to life as a wizard. When the end came, however, something terrible had happened. A catastrophe so destructive had occurred that Ashallan School was ruined forever... and over half of the people in it were killed.

All the students from Ashallan had been moved to 'places of safety'. Kevin was told he was lucky to be going to Hogwarts, where the famous Dumbledore would protect him. No other students from Ashallan would be coming to the school, for two reasons. The first was that there was only an 'opening' for one other student at Hogwarts that year. The other was that all living students from Ashallan were to be moved to separate locations for safety measures.

Kevin shook his head. He had spent the last several weeks trying to keep the memory of the catastrophe out of his head. The first few days after the end of the school he had thought about it all day, almost unable to speak. But recently, he had been finding that keeping the memory away from him seemed to be working.

Perhaps it had been the spells that his guide (he had never been told him name, for 'safety reasons') had been casting on him. But no matter what it was, Kevin found that he was no longer always haunted by those memories. He liked to think of them as a past life. He had been born the second he got to platform 9 3/4. Before that, he had been nothing. All the memories were false, untrue, nonexistent, a lie.

It helped, too, with expelling the memories of his friends. His past friends... people who he had known in a past life... that did not exist. Kevin shook his head again, this time smiling slightly. They never existed.

"Stewart."

Kevin turned around, surprised. Another student was sitting on his bed behind Kevin's, a friendly smile on his face, his hand extended.

"Stewart Ackerley. Nice to meet you."

A barrage of painful memories blasted into Kevin's mind. He shoved them away mentally, not letting anything slip onto his face, and raised his hand.

"Kevin Rashall. Nice to meet you too." Not knowing what else to say, Kevin shook Stewart's hand and returned a smile.

Stewart frowned slightly as he heard Kevin speak. "You're. US?", he asked dubiously.

A real smile slid onto Kevin's face for one second. He held it there, trying hard to be sociable. "Yep. I'm a... exchange student. A- um- permanent- exchange student." Kevin realized what dangerous ground he had just gotten in to.

"Ok," Stewart said. Kevin knew that he didn't buy it, but Stewart didn't say anything about it. "Sure." They both seemed to have run out of things to say. After a second, Steward gestured to a stack of old-looking hardcover book and smiled guiltily. "Got to read up. Nice meeting you." He turned away.

He had the whole year to do almost whatever he wanted, because he already had the knowledge of the full first year of magic. Anything that the first year at Hogwarts covered that Ashallan hadn't, he would have learned in his second year at Ashallan.

Kevin drew the drapes on his bed after that. The other students greeted one another; he half-heard them while reading up on the history of Hogwarts. Hogwarts: A History was a rather informative book, but there were others around about Hogwarts also. Kevin actually enjoyed reading about Hogwarts from different points of view. He learned that one could not dissaprate or apperate on Hogwarts grounds. He read about Godric Gryffindor and Salzar Slytherin, and Slytherin's malice against Gryffindor.

There was one book he had found that had been written by a graduated Slytherin student, with quite a history in the school; it's point of view was... thought provoking, to say the least.

He read long after the other students had retired. Several hours after they were asleep, he got out of bed and passed the beautiful tapestry of a raven that served as the Ravenclaw common room door. Only those who knew the password, however, could enter; the tapestry would remain stiff as rock from the outside unless the secret word was uttered.

As he left the common room, he checked one last time. Holding the tapestry half-open, he muttered to the raven in a whisper, "The password is deepfang, right?" The raven did not move, but Kevin somehow sensed a twinkle in its eye. He smiled as he left the room, walking down the corridor toward the marble staircase in the night. He was getting to like Hogwarts already.

After a few hours of walking, Kevin came to the library. He shifted some books around, rather unimpressed by the Hogwarts selection, but then heard low voices through one of the bookcases. Someone was on the other side. Kevin frowned, tensing. His midnight strolls had gotten him in enough trouble back at Ashallan; he had heard the punishment was worse at Hogwarts. He couldn't help it, however; he could never manage to go to sleep until early in the morning. He didn't even feel tired until then. Some nights he even went without any sleep-and didn't feel tired for it.

"I've checked; it's not here."

Kevin pressed his ear to the bookcase, still ready to run at any time. The voice was rather deep, Kevin wasn't sure if it was a student or a teacher.

"Where is it then? Has it been moved to the restricted section? Damnit, we have to find the bloody book!"

Kevin furrowed his brows. The woman or girl who had been talking was obviously rather frantic. Kevin was beginning to suspect these were students and not teachers, from the way they were acting.

Then, a third voice spoke. Kevin frowned, trying to hear. The voice was shallow and quiet, almost impossible to hear. "I know it was here... somewhere here..."

The girl spoke again. "Well it's not, dammit, its not here anywhere, and we've risked our necks five nights for it. It's time we use magic to find it."

"No! One of the teachers, if not the headmaster, is sure to detect it! We can't use magic of any kind."

Kevin assumed there were three students. The one with the quiet voice had not spoken again, unless Kevin had entirely missed what he was saying.

After a small bit of silence, Kevin heard the faint traces of something being whispered, and then several quiet footsteps heading off out of the library. Kevin followed at a long distance. Hopefully, he could find what house these strange students were from.

As Kevin walked out of the maze of bookcases following the sound of footsteps, he could finally see the threesome. The fastest of them was a tall boy in wizard's robes with no hat, being followed by a girl and a short, odd person who walked as if he had a wooden leg of some sort. Kevin could not make out any colors, as a torch in a ways in front of the band silhouetted them, and their forms were completely black.

As the three student neared the torch, and Kevin followed against the wall, Kevin heard a different set of footsteps, these loud and precise, coming from an intersecting corridor. He froze in place, panicked, as the other students dashed down a different corridor.

The other footsteps slowly drew closer. Breaking out of his panic, Kevin managed the run down a long corridor towards a large set of double doors. He heard the footsteps pass behind him, and watched the silhouette of a tall man pass by the passageway he was in. After a few seconds more of waiting, Kevin made the dash out of the corridor and back towards his common room. He had been through enough adventures for one night.