Hermione glared down at the page, resenting all the blank white space that stared up at her, taunting her normally proficient abilities. Used to the praise from her science and mathematics instructors for her clear head and logical thinking, this creative writing class was the last course in the world she wanted to take, but it was required for her to pass out of Year Six and head into secondary school. Secondary school! With courses she could choose for herself, secondary school seemed like perfection. But first, she had to pass this dreadful creative writing course. Squinting her eyes harder in thought, desperate for a drop of creativity, Hermione gazed at the ceiling and cursed her lack of imaginative thoughts.

"Agh!" exclaimed her mother's voice from the living room, interrupting the first idea Hermione had seized upon in an hour. Letting her breath out in a rushed huff she slowly picked herself up from the desk and walked into the front room where her mother had been reading on the latest techniques in orthodontia.

"What on earth…" Hermione began to ask sharply, trailing off when she saw what had mother was gazing at in silence with her mouth ajar. Outside the grand window was an owl that had apparently collided with the thick glass and was now stumbling about, a bit dazed. While that, in itself, might not be too strange, this particular owl had a thick letter of parchment clutched in his beak, addressed to Ms. Hermione Granger in shimmering green ink.

Hermione analyzed the situation and took the only step possible - cracking the window she took the letter from the owl who gratefully gifted it, and with a brief ruffle of his feathers took off. As she slid her finger under the flap she did not even attempt to guess what kind of message might be inside a piece of post delivered in such an astonishing way. And as she read the letter explaining to her what her future might hold, if she had the courage to pursue it, thoughts of secondary school and creative writing slipped away and were replaced with thoughts of a wondrous, thrilling future, unlike any she every could have imagined for even the most absurd creative writing assignment.