Hey! This story is set after AFTERMATH, which I haven't, um, finished yet... But, never fear, I will finish it... eventually... Yeah. And I actually do have a plot figured out for this one, even though it is not my strength, and I'm not sure it's free of glitches... but, read and enjoy! (and review!)

Lucinda was a muggle-born witch. She didn't talk much, but she thought a lot. Her father was a professor and her mother was at medical school. None of her family knew that Lucinda had any magic in her, not even Lucinda herself. She had had an ordinary life for almost eleven years. She had ordinary school friends, ordinary parents, and ordinary room, ordinary stuffed animals, and ordinary hair. Nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to Lucinda Knox, and nothing ever gave her reason to really believe that magic existed.

Until her eleventh birthday.

The letter arrived on the morning of August the first. Lucinda saw it lying on the kitchen table, apart from the rest of the mail. It was rather big, and written on some sort of thick, yellowed paper. A purple wax seal held it together. As she curiously picked it up, a swift movement caught her eye and she looked sharply out the open window to see a large owl flutter past the house and out of sight.

Owls don't fly during the daytime, do they?

She turned the letter over in her hands. It was addressed to her personally, she noticed, and how strangely, too...

Miss Lucinda Knox

The Smallest Bedroom,

321 Bessemer Avenue

etc.

Lucinda, although curious, was a little unnerved by it. She did not open the letter, but ran to her mother.

"Mom!" she knelt on her parents' bed and shook her mother awake. "Mom, wake up! I got a letter, but it's weird, I want you to have a look at it..."

Lucinda's mother grunted. "I'm sleepy." She twisted around in the bedclothes and took the letter anyway. She examined the address and the wax seal with an expression of bafflement on her face, then broke the seal and silently read the contents. She laughed.

"It must be just some prank, Lucy," she said, handing her daughter the parchment and settling back into bed. "Read it if you want. Probably a funny birthday card from one of your friends. Now let me sleep for another few minutes."

Lucinda slid off the bed and walked across the quiet hallway to her bedroom, where she sat on her bedroom floor and opened the letter.

"Dear Miss Lucinda Knox,

"We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Below is a list of required school supplies for your first year. Please be at Platform Nine and Three Quarters at King's Cross Station on August the Thirty-first to board the Hogwarts Express.

A weird list of school supplies followed, including a cauldron, black robes, a pointed hat, books Lucinda had never heard of, and a magic wand. The books were for odd subjects that Lucinda knew for a fact did not exist: Transfiguration, Charms, Potions... she needed A Standard Book of Spells, Grade One, and a later note informed her that first years would not need a textbook for "Defense Against the Dark Arts".

Funny. Wonder who sent it? Probably Derek, he's weird that way.

She curiously looked over the letter a second time, then, shrugging, stuffed it in her sock drawer and went downstairs to get started on her birthday party.

Lucinda's birthday party was ordinary. She opened her presents with the ordinary amount of cheering and thanking. She ate her ordinary birthday cake. By the time the guests had all left, she had completely forgotten about the letter.

But as she carried an armful of new stuff up the stairs to her bedroom and prepared to get started on The Book of Three, her eyes strayed to the coffee table.

There was another letter sitting on it, just like the first.

Lucinda was not the type of girl to overreact. There was a rational explanation for everything. So she continued up the stairs, dumped her armload on the bed, and opened her sock drawer.

The old letter was still there, just as it had been that morning.

She slammed the drawer shut, raced down the stairs, and picked up the second letter. She opened it. It was exactly like the first, with the list of required supplies and the bogus request to be at King's Cross on August 31. She laughed to herself.

King's Cross doesn't have a platform nine and three fourths. That's stupid.

She packed the second letter away in her sock drawer as well.

The next day, two more "Hogwarts" letters arrived. Lucinda's father took them from the mail slot, read through them, and tossed them aside. Another one arrived that evening, and was curiously examined by Lucinda's family.

"Some sort of prank?" her mother asked.

"A secret admirer?" her father asked, jokingly.

"I don't know," Lucinda replied truthfully.

It's exciting though, whatever it is.

The letters kept arriving. One or two or even three at a time, dropping through the mail slot, appearing on the kitchen table, stuck inside the screen door, wedged under the doormat, lying innocently on Lucinda's bed. Her sock drawer was bulging with the unidentified letters.

But besides the letters, and Lucinda's writing a silly story on her computer, nothing else happened that month that was out of the ordinary – until the twenty-fourth of August.

Lucinda was sitting on the floor of the hallway, reading The High King. The doorbell rang, and Lucinda, startled, got up to answer it.

She opened the door.

I'm sorry, I don't think I know you.

The man smiled down at the brown-haired girl. It was a funny smile. He had messy black hair, with just a little bit of grey at the temples. There were scars all over his face and his glasses were just a little crooked.

"Hello, Lucinda," he said, leaning on the doorframe. "Are your parents home?"

How does he know my name?

Maybe he's been sending the letters!

Lucinda startled, closed the door.

Her mother appeared in the kitchen doorway. "Is somebody at the door, Lucy?" she asked, drying her hands. Lucinda nodded.

"Don't shut the door on people, for pete's sake, Lucy," her mother said, exasperated. "Good grief, try to be polite..." She walked to the door and opened it again. Lucinda hid behind the hallway closet door, as it stood open.

She could hear her mother talking with the strange man. She hid her face in her father's winter coat.

"I'm sorry about Lucy," her mother was saying. "She's a bit shy."

"That's fine," he said. Lucinda discovered that she liked the sound of his voice. "Er... I'm here about those letters... I assume you've been receiving them?"

"Yes, we have," Mrs. Knox replied, a slight bit of bafflement in her voice. "You've been sending them, have you?"

"Not me, personally. But I guess you could say that..." They had moved into the hallway. Lucinda peeked around the door.

"I assume you don't understand what the letters were about, really, being muggles... so of course I'll try to explain while I'm here."

"I've been sent here to... well, fetch her," he explained. "School starts in a week."

Who is he?

"School?" Mrs. Knox demanded. "That school is a real place, is it? I suppose you want me to believe that magic exists, and you're going to teach my daughter how to do it?"

"Well, yes, that's the idea," he started.

"I don't believe in magic."

"Alright," the man sighed. Lucinda saw him pull a small wooden rod from inside his light denim jacket. "I'll show you a little. Seeing is believing for muggles, right?"

He pointed the wand down the hallway and said something that Lucinda couldn't understand. He said it loudly, and Lucinda could almost feel the air crackling with electricity as he did.

A white-silver shape, like a ghost, leaped from the tip of his wand. It looked to Lucinda like a transparent, silver stag. The phantom galloped silently around the hall for a few seconds. Her mother gaped at it. As it passed the closet door, Lucinda felt a strange feeling spread through her; an unexplained, almost happy feeling. Then the stag dissolved into the air and was gone.

"How did you do that?" Lucinda's mother stuttered.

"Magic," he said simply. Then he turned to Lucinda, as she stared wide-eyed at him, no longer trying to hide.

"Would you believe, Lucinda Knox," he said with a faint smile, "That you're a witch?"