Chapter I

The Diamond in the Rough

The night is shrouded in fog, a fog that seems to seep into the very soul, making it a struggle to not only to see but to hear, to feel, even to breathe. A dark figure can dimly be seen disappearing in a cloud of the deepest blackness, leaving behind the sound of cold, chilling laughter that lingers in the air with the fog. She is suddenly aware of a horrible sensation, like freezing and burning at the same time, writhing through her body like a serpent, creeping into her mind and drawing curtains over her vision. Her knees hit the pavement as she falls to the ground, eyes open but sightless, and she hears distant screaming….

"Diana, you have a visitor."

The voice broke her concentration, awakening her from her memories and bringing her back to the present. She sat up on her bed and looked around, blinking her eyes in the bright light as if she had just been asleep for hours. The translucent, glass-like spheres that had been floating aimlessly about the small hospital room gravitated toward the open door, as if trying to escape. Diana's short, blonde nurse stood there in the doorway, eyeing the spheres suspiciously and holding the door open for the visitor. She was wearing the most counterfeit smile Diana had ever seen – and no wonder.

Nothing could have looked more out of place in the blandly decorated, extensively normal room than the man standing in the doorway. Neither Diana nor the nurse had never seen such a flamboyantly cut suit in their entire lives, nor one even close to that shade of bright purple. Though the man's long, white hair and beard made it obvious that he had lived quite a long time, he was not the kind of man that could really be called old, and this made him stranger still. Diana's eyes traveled to the man's hat, which was the same bright purple color as his suit, rested on it for a moment, then came back to his face bearing a curious expression. Diana had not seen very much of the world beyond the hospital in which she now resided, but the way the nurse was eyeing the visitor made her fairly certain that the man was not at all considered normal.

"Good afternoon, Diana," said the man pleasantly, stepping smartly into the room as the nurse closed the door. "I am Professor Dumbledore."

"Hello," she responded automatically, still trying to figure out what kind of a man this was.

He smiled kindly, regarding her with disguised curiosity. She was slender and tall, especially for an eleven-year-old, with pale skin and dark hair falling past her shoulders. Her grey-blue eyes were an echo of her mother's, but they wore a strange expression of guardedness that Dumbledore had never seen in them in the years he had known her. Dumbledore noted that her eyes, and perhaps her build, were the only things she seemed to have inherited from her mother. The rest of her features held almost no trace of the woman whose death had left Diana an orphan, making plainer the mystery of her unknown father.

As for Diana, she was having trouble deciding what to think of this Professor Dumbledore. He was certainly like no other person she had ever met, and she wasn't entirely sure why someone with the title of Professor would be coming to see her. She met his gaze intently, trying to tell what his purpose was, but here was something else she could not remember ever encountering before: a human being whose intentions she could not perceive.

Dumbledore seemed to recognize what she was doing, or at least that she wanted to know the answer to a very obvious question. He smiled indulgently and sat down in the only chair in the room, which occupied a space directly below the only window. The glass-like spheres that had been trying to escape through the door gave up their quest and began to drift aimlessly through the air once more.

"You are undoubtedly wondering why I am here," said the man, pulling the chair over to the side of the bed so that he was directly facing its occupant. Diana nodded, fearing the worst and wishing the floating spheres would disappear. She continued to search his expression but it told her nothing.

"I have come to offer you a place at my school."

Her eyes widened slightly. "School?" she said blankly, taken off guard. She had been expecting an asylum, or another conversation about a mental hospital. She was certain that a school was very different from either of those places, though she wasn't entirely sure why. She searched Dumbledore's expression once more, then hesitated before asking: "What – what kind of school?"

"Hogwarts is a school for people who, like yourself, possess certain special abilities."

Her expression changed from confusion to interest. "There are others like me?" she said, then, apparently deciding she had accepted it too quickly, became wary again. "But –" She glanced at the spheres apprehensively. "How do I know this isn't a trick? They've tried to trick me before – but I know when they're lying, and you –" she halted, once more looking straight into Dumbledore's bright blue eyes, searching for something again. "I – I don't know if you're lying or not," she finished, both abashed and intrigued at the same time.

"You can tell when others are lying?" asked Dumbledore, leaning forward slightly in his seat.

"Yes," she answered. "Always, when I make eye contact. Not you though – that's never happened before."

Dumbledore smiled. "Well, between you and me, Diana, I am a rather extraordinary man."

Diana laughed nervously, glancing at the spheres once again.

"Are these your creations?" asked Dumbledore, reaching out to touch one. It made a soft tinkling sound as his fingers brushed it.

"I don't know how I do that," she said in response. "They just appear sometimes."

"What else can you do?" he asked, turning back to her.

Diana looked astounded that Dumbledore was interested, and she searched his expression once more before rising from her place and walking over to the small dresser that occupied the left wall. From the top drawer she removed an old, battered book that one of the nurses had lent her and placed it on top of the dresser. She walked purposefully back to the bed and wheeled to face the book, concentrating hard. The book began to move slowly across the dresser, from one end to the other, seemingly of its own accord. It then stood up with its binding facing the ceiling, quivered for a moment, and lay stationary once more.

Diana looked to Dumbledore for approval, and when he smiled at her she excitedly moved to the open window behind him, stretching out her hand. After only a few seconds a little sparrow flew into it, chirping animatedly and looking slightly flustered. "I can make animals do things without training them," she said, and the sparrow flew into the room, cheerfully zooming around the perimeter as if there was nothing it would rather be doing. "Mostly I just ask them to come in here," she said. "The other children here don't –" she took a deep breath and the sparrow stopped flying, landing on the dresser and looking completely nonplussed. "I don't really have any friends," Diana said quietly. "They all think I'm strange."

The spheres floating around the room started tinkling again. "I don't know why they do that," she said in response to Dumbledore's glance at the nearest one. "They make that noise sometimes when I'm sad or – or lonely." She finished in a quiet voice, as if being lonely was something to be ashamed of, then looked forlornly up at Dumbledore.

Dumbledore smiled kindly at her and said, very gently, "Hogwarts is a school for children with abilities like yours. You will be among others like yourself, should you decide to come."

She looked as if she wanted to say something, but bit it back before the words came out. She gave the dresser a fleeting, apprehensive glance before turning back to Dumbledore.

"There really are others like me?" she said after a silence.

"Yes," replied Dumbledore. "You are a witch, Diana."

"A – a witch?" she said, bewildered. "You mean – what I can do is – magic?"

"That's right," said Dumbledore, smiling.

Diana paused, bewildered, taking in Dumbledore's strange appearance once more and finally beginning to understand what it meant.

"And does that mean you're –"

"A wizard, yes, I am."

She really smiled for the first time since Dumbledore had walked in, and if she had not been standing in the same spot and wearing the same hospital gown it would have been hard to tell that she was the same girl who had been so morose a moment ago.

"I take it, then, that you accept your place at Hogwarts?" said Dumbledore, standing up and smiling back at Diana.

"Yes!" she said with barely controlled excitement, then her expression changed again and she gave the dresser another barely detectable glance.

"Is there something in your dresser?" asked Dumbledore calmly, noticing her odd glances. Diana started and turned back to him, searching his expression again but not answering. Dumbledore waited patiently, and finally she walked over to the dresser and grasped the knob of the middle drawer.

"I can't always control what I do," she whispered, and opened it.

Lying in the drawer and giving off a faint smell of decay was a sparrow – much like the one that was now perched on top of the dresser, hopping around nervously and apparently trying to figure out where its nest had gone. The bird in the drawer was completely still, and as Diana lifted it out of the drawer its limp body made it clear that the bird was dead.

"I was angry," she said desolately, looking uneasily up at Dumbledore as if she thought he was going to shout at her. "They sent me back to my room after I made the piano play by itself in the children's room and –" her cheeks started to burn and her eyes watered; she seemed to shrink from her own words. "It died," she whispered quietly, looking down at the floor.

"At Hogwarts," said Dumbledore calmly, "you will learn how to control magic as well as use it." He took out his wand and waved it at the sparrow's body, which vanished from Diana's hands. She dared to look up at him, if only to see how he had managed to make the sparrow disappear with nothing other than what appeared to be a stick, and he was smiling again.

"Now that you have accepted your place at Hogwarts," said Dumbledore conversationally, as if the last minute had not happened, "you will need to purchase certain necessary items –"

"I don't have any money," Diana said, looking crestfallen.

"As a matter of fact," said Dumbledore, "you do."

Diana gaped at him.

"Your mother left you a reasonable amount when she died."

"You – you knew my mother?" said Diana, completely forgetting about money.

"Your mother was a pupil of mine – and an exceptionally bright one, I must say," said Dumbledore, smiling. "If you will allow me to meet you here at ten o'clock on the thirty-first of August, I will help you find everything you will need for Hogwarts."

A bewildered Diana managed only to nod. "But my mother," she said, "What was she like?"

"All in good time," replied Dumbledore. "I will see you on the thirty-first of August, if that is acceptable?"

Diana nodded once more. At least she would have another opportunity to question this mysterious and eccentric visitor.

Dumbledore smiled. "Farewell then, Diana, until then."

Diana smiled in a mystified sort of way and watched Dumbledore go with an enraptured expression on her face. This, finally, was someone who was like her, someone she could relate to – and by the sound of it, he would not be the last.

Albus Dumbledore left the hospital deep in thought, as he often was. Diana had certainly looked much better than he had expected after hearing what the doctors had said about her condition. She certainly did not look like someone who had been brought to the hospital half-dead seven months ago, screaming in unendurable agony and reeling from the trauma to her nervous system, as they called it. The doctors had said that the ordeal had caused irreversible brain damage, though Dumbledore knew better than to believe them on that account. Muggles would say anything to avoid admitting they didn't understand.

Dumbledore's interview with Diana had convinced him of her sanity, especially when he had employed some subtle Legilimency. It did greatly disturb him that the cause of the pain she had been in was almost certainly of wizarding origin; both its source and its treatment had eluded the doctors even after the pain had subsided. All they had been able to do was make her as comfortable as possible and wait for it to stop, which it had mercifully done after several hours. Though Dumbledore would not have guessed it from speaking to her, they said she had woken up a few days later with no memory of her former life – though her language and motor abilities had been strangely intact. But despite the doctors' belief in her insanity, Dumbledore had no worries about her ability to be successful at Hogwarts – she already had remarkably developed magical abilities for her age, and as far as the sanity of magical patients went he trusted his own judgment a lot more than the Muggle doctors'. With this thought Dumbledore walked happily into a deserted alley, turned on the spot, and was gone.