OK, this is an interesting thought I had, so work with me here. It is a wierd first chapter, but it really does have to be. This is the prolouge. The next chapter will be on the train to Hogwarts, so bear with me.

Prologue

There was thought. It was slight at first, but then grew, and its owner found need for it and fed it quickly. The thought turned curious almost at once, or, perhaps, the owner, for they were one yet again. Geneva, she realized quickly, I'm Geneva. What was it her thought had first fed upon? Oh, yes...

A magical dryer.

It seemed odd to Geneva, very odd indeed, for she was an expert, at least in terms of literature. Magic, most certainly, existed, but it was serious, she told herself. Things as odd as Magic Dryers sitting next to perfectly normal washing machines did not happen except in third grade books. Almost never was there any of them well done, and even then, she realized, totally ridiculous.

Where am I? was Geneva's next thought. She had not been seeing anything, for she was in Dark, and there was nothing to see...but no, Geneva told herself, were am I ? For, as there was nothing to see, neither could she herself be seen. This simply wouldn't do and she told the darkness so. But no again, Geneva realized, because she had not said anything, but had merely communicated. How terribly confusing…Geneva decided to have a headache as soon as she had found her body.

There was progress, however, and a thin line of white appeared, and constantly grew bigger, finally turning itself into white cloud as it reached and enveloped her. It occurred to Geneva that she was being read, and watched.

"I'm here!" She called to the consciousness that examined her, and finding a body, most definitely her own, and a voice, also belonging to her. It was somewhat comforting. "Please, come speak with me..." There was no response at first, and no communication, and her curiosity spiked as she looked towards a dark speck. It was not supposed to be there, unless, she mused, it was there, as she was, or was the being coming to talk to her.

More of herself flooded inward, the closer the object traveled, and by the time it reached her, Geneva gazed at it in amazement. She was staring into the face of a scruffy-looking young man. How very odd this all seemed, although Geneva could little understand why. Her uncertainties were laid aside as the being spoke to her.

"Good morning!" it said cheerfully, but seemed to back away from Geneva just as the last piece of herself floated in. The piece was rather unfortunate, but it made itself known quickly.

"Who the Fo are you?"

The being frowned, obviously annoyed, and Geneva examined it quietly. "I am the Fioth..." There was a long silence and the Fioth shuffled his feet uncomfortably on the nothing they both stood on. Geneva seemed to be thinking, and coming up with answers.

"This is an in-between place, isn't it?" She queried, looking around at the cloud.

The Fioth sniffed in a rather affected dignified way. "A what?"

"You know, we're neither here nor there…like an in-between two dimensions or something, right?"

A nod sufficed and Geneva looked pleased with herself. This display of confidence did not please the Fioth; He glared heavily in her direction, but as Geneva had become herself again, her obliviousness returned. She did not notice so much as a wince on the face of the entity. He, offended, stayed silent.

This did not please Geneva, and after an amount of time she spoke again. "Well, good. It's obvious you've brought me here for something. I'd like to know what the hell it is."

"Fine," The Fioth reclined on nothing and still faced Geneva plainly. "I need a favor, and you're going to do it." His statement did not sit well with the girl standing in front of him, and he could tell.

Her mouth opened in indignation, but the Fioth held a hand up. "Do not be ridiculous. I am powerful, and you are a mortal. You will do as I say." There was long-suffering in his direction and he made no sign that he was trying to cover it. "Kapeesh?"

"Kapeesh…" Geneva nodded, and then cocked her head to the side, thinking. "Sir?" The entity looked at her, "All-powerful entities say 'kapeesh'?"

The Fioth growled. "Shut up and follow me…" Geneva obeyed, but with, perhaps, a different opinion of the Fioth, which before had simply been intimidated curiosity, and now held at least a scrap of amusement. Not much of one though.

The two walked, almost side-by-side, but Geneva trailing a bit behind, unsure as to what the Fioth had in store, and not much wanting to find out. She did follow, however, and within a few minutes (that is, it felt like a few minutes) the Fioth stopped walking and Geneva drew level with him. It looked exactly the same. They could have very well been walking in circles, very tight circles, and she wouldn't have known the different. The Fioth, of course, did not seem perturbed, and held out his hand towards the nothing.

There was a mirror. It seemed pointless for Geneva to say that the mirror had appeared, for it had not. The mirror was simply there now…and she gave up on the matter. It was, perhaps, one of those things that mortals just never could grasp. She simply stared at the mirror for a moment, before noticing the Fioth's annoyed expression.

"What?"

"Step in front of the mirror…" Geneva frowned and walked to the front of the mirror, still listening to the Fioth. "…stupid mortal, I pick up a mirror and she just stands there…huh…" At a gesture from the Fioth, the mirror wavered, (rather dramatically, She realized) and showed a picture of a small girl, her face the very image of interest and skepticism.

The young girl looked back up at her with eyes that were a very middling color of blue, a round, yet square face, not perfectly pretty, but simply very present. Her hair was long, and stringy, from infrequent brushings, a t-shirt and shorts covered with stains. The little girl had no shoes on, displaying very dirty feet and her bare legs were scratched and bruised. And, for some reason, both a singular strand of hair near her face and the very front of the collar on her shirt were wet. It took a moment for Geneva to take all of this in, and then turned towards the Fioth.

"Who is she?" Geneva asked, already knowing the answer.

"Why, she's you, of course!" The Fioth proclaimed, "who else would look so much like a vagabond and live in a perfectly decent household?"

Geneva laughed loudly. "Wow, my mom wasn't kidding. I really did look like an orphan…You know how I got all those scratches on my legs?" She directed this question at the Fioth, who, for a moment looked very uncomfortable.

"Don't worry, nobody ever hit me except mom, and only a perfectly decent spanking. I always deserved them too. I got those scratches from trying to pick up Waffle, my grouchy old cat, and then trying to climb the second Mango tree in the drive. It's the easiest to climb," she added, "The bruises…I never was sure where I got those, but I fell down at least a bazillion times a day, so basically I was never sure of a specific time or place, just a probable cause."

The Fioth raised an eyebrow, and then nodded, slowly. "Why is your hair and shirt wet?"

"I had a horrendous habit of sucking on strands of my hair and on the front of my shirt collar. It drove my mum bananas…" Geneva paused to look at the Fioth and grinned. "And d'you know what else?" She waited for the Fioth to look like he was listening, "I loved the color pink, and Barbies!"

The Fioth's eyes opened wider then they had during this meeting. It was hard to imagine the dirty, scraggly, happy girl in the mirror to have been very girly. It just went to show what odd creatures humans were. He looked up to find Geneva waving to herself, and the little girl waving right back. As different as they were, the similarities were very obvious. Both were smiling at each other in the very same way, with their eyes almost closed, and all their teeth and parts of their gums showing, their lips stretched tight in the wake of the all-encompassing smile. Both had a little scar above the left eyebrow that showed when they moved their eyebrows. Even as a rather powerful entity, the Fioth still found things like this unnerving.

"What's this for, anyway?" Geneva turned to ask the Fioth. Both where turned towards him, the one inside the mirror abandoning its job and looking pointedly at him.

The Fioth gestured back to the mirror, "For this…" And Geneva gasped.

She was no longer looking down at her little girl self. She was looking upwards at her sixteen-year-old self, and she felt very…funny, a great deal lighter, and less stiff. Geneva felt fidgety. It took a few minutes for these things that seemed like such huge changes, to feel just fine. She stared up at her older self and made a move to push up her glasses. The older reflection pushed up hers, but there were no glasses to push up on the Geneva's face. The older girl's huge boy's pants were bunched up around bedroom slippers with Sponge Bob on them, her t-shirt not dirty, but worn. The older girl's red hair was short and messy, and a bit browner than the younger girl's light red. The older was slightly less than chubby and middling in height, her fingernails bitten viciously.

"What's this for?" Geneva demanded; not exactly angry, but feeling rather weird, "Why are you making me like this? And how old am I?"

"It's for the favor, and you are…well, let's just say, I always do things by half…"

"I'm EIGHT!" Geneva shrieked, trying to decide exactly what she was going to do about this.

"Why yes, my dearest Gigi," The Fioth answered, using her mother's nickname for her, "And you are going to see why in just a second." And the Fioth gestured to the mirror again. The older Geneva disappeared and in her place now stood four boys, four very good-looking boys. Geneva was confused.

"I'm confused."

"Yes, I can see that. Now, Gigi, why don't you let me explain, hm?" The Fioth chuckled as he watched the little girl glower at him. "You need to be their friend!"

The Fioth was very unnerved, for in the next second, Geneva was rolling around on the ground, shrieking with laughter, tears streaming down her face. She would laugh for a while, look at him, and then fall to laughing hysterically once again. This lasted for a few minutes before she finally calmed down, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

"What," The Fioth demanded, "is so terribly funny?"

Geneva grinned. "You're joking, right? You expect me to be friends with those three hot things and that little adorable one? Just in case you didn't know, human boys, when they have friends that are girls, they pick within their rank. For instance, a nerdy boy, if he's a good friend to a girl, then she's usually pretty nerdy. Girls do this too, usually. If they're really pretty, they do not make friends with really ugly boys." She looked with absolute disbelief at the Fioth.

"I, just happen to be the nerd…I would most likely, unless something very odd happened, never be their close friend." She patted the Fioth on the arm reassuringly, "Don't sweat it, it was a nice thought, though." She began to walk away.

The Fioth grabbed her forearm. "Something very odd is happening, Gigi, and you are going to do this for me. I will manipulate this in any way I see fit so that you will end up where you need to be."

The Fioth was much taller now, as Geneva had gotten considerably smaller, and she looked up at the Fioth. "Why," She asked fiercely, punctuating the 'why' by grabbing her arm back, "Do you have to torment me? Why can't you get some perfect girl that will have no problem walking in and sweeping them all up with her charm, good looks, and witty self. Can't you let me go home and eat ice cream? And why can't you just do it yourself, if you're so all-powerful."

There was an exasperated sigh from the Fioth and he bent down to look Geneva straight in the eyes. "First of all, I am not allowed to interfere directly, and I'm not going to. And, for another thing, I didn't choose you first…You are my 500th choice…" he let the effect of his words settle in. Instead of annoyance, there was frank curiosity.

"What the hell happened to them?"

"Such language is inappropriate coming from an eight-year-old,"

"Answer the fucking question!"

The Fioth glared at the little girl in front of him. "Fine. I left them here," he spat at her, "right here, in the in-between…with one of those…" He lifted his hand and on his right there was an old television with no dials on it. It turned on, showing a newscast. The picture was slightly grainy, and next to it appeared a low chair.

Geneva drew in a breath. "For how long?"

"A millennia…or three…" The Fioth answered, looking dangerous. "All of them are still here, and the first one still has two and a half millennia to go." He sat down on the chair in front of the television and said nothing.

A few minutes later, Geneva walked in front of the television, trying to get his attention. "Why did they refuse?" The form in the chair did not answer and simply stared ahead, his face stolid. Geneva grabbed one of his hands and slapped him on the face. "Tell me why they refused! "

Within a second the Fioth had Geneva by the arms and had struck her, hard, on the side of her head. "Do not manhandle me, young lady…" His eyes flashed and his voice rose, hand poised for another strike. His reaction had the desired affect, as Geneva was almost immediately cowed before him. "And they all refused because the change is permanent. They did not want to do my bidding forever…they all decided to stay here rather than devote their life to something that mattered!" The Fioth went silent for a minute, his voice continually catching in his throat. "You humans are pathetic!" his voice had gone shrill. "So sympathetic, and then you never do anything about it! You're all so self-absorbed, you can't see farther than your own nose!"

The Fioth fell silent and Geneva stared at him, and then sat down. She stayed there for a long time. When she spoke, her voice was almost a whisper. "By making friends with these boys…what happens?"

"You will change two lives, and save the lives of two innocent people and make their sons and daughters very happy." The Fioth stated plainly, his voice devoid of the emotion he had shown earlier.

There was more silence as Geneva still sat upon the floor. "You are sure?" She asked finally, her face white.

"Very sure, my dear Gigi," The Fioth said, his face softening.

"What about my parents, my family…what will my life be like…" Her voice shook, her face becoming much whiter, making all of her freckles stand out.

"Your family will remain the same," The Fioth stated quietly, his voice gentler, "you will be going to boarding school in England, your family will stay where they are." The Fioth said nothing for a minute or two. "The school is very different, and I will need to give you something very important."

"Wha—how is it different?"

"You will be going to Hogwarts, school of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You are unmagical, obviously, so I must give you some."

"I'm going to—" Geneva looked puzzled, and then surprised, followed again, by puzzlement. "You can give magic? How in the world do you do that?"

"Lemonade," The Fioth said, smiling slightly. In his left hand, there was a tall glass with a cherry in it. "I like making medicine as painless as possible."

Geneva raised an eyebrow. "I feel like I'm in the Matrix…red pill or blue pill…" she looked at the glass. "What do I have to loose?" This was not a rhetorical question.

"Your life, my dearest Gigi," The Fioth said simply, "It is quite possible that you might die before you turn fifteen, In which case I cannot bring you back, for even I cannot keep people from death…" The Fioth looked at her intensely for a minute or two. "It's four whole lives, Gigi, four whole lives. They may not know what you're doing, but I do…and so do you." There was nothing to be said, and for an interminable amount of time Geneva simply looked at the glass, the cherry bobbing, seeming so odd and out of place amongst her thoughts.

At last, Geneva took the cup, feeling the freezing cold contents from the outside of the glass, and noticing, vaguely, that there was no condensation on the outside. The lemonade tasted perfect, not too strong, sweet, or sour, and the cherry was not a cherry from a jar, but a dark purple one, soft and sweet. She returned the glass, feeling no different, until the Fioth took her hand in his.

"Thank you, my dearest Gigi, thank you very much," She simply looked at him, her eyes filling with tears. The Fioth leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "I—" his voice seemed uncomfortable, "I'm sorry I was so crass earlier," he confessed, seeming sincere, "It's just been so long since even I had hope…" The Fioth stood, and moved behind her, his hand on her head.

He held up his hand, and one by one, small things came zooming into view, flying past her, and then, right beneath her, building themselves, and placing themselves in convenient places. The very last object, a large cart with a trunk, on top of which was a gray tabby cat, zoomed in and stopped in Geneva's hands. She was standing in a train station, people frozen in their paths as they would make their way past her. Geneva's last thought before the Fioth finally disappeared and the people around her began moving, was how very quickly all-powerful entities changed mood.

With a small pop, a ticket was in her hand. She turned into the light and looked at it, not feeling at all up to whatever was supposed to come next. Platform Nine and Three-Quarters.

Huh…

So? huh? Huh? did you like? it will get better, I know this was odd, but review and tell me what you think and what you would like to see happen. You know you want to...go on...the purple button is just DYING for your click...go ahead...