In Memoriam: Jonathan Brett, June 1994-May 2012
CARA O'BRIEN AND THE TALKING LYNX
An OC NextGen Fic
Written by LeeRowan (justcallmelee)
Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed. - Jean Anouilh
Imagination is the true magic carpet. - Norman Vincent Peale
The Harry Potter universe is © J. K. Rowling [and publisher(s)]. LeeRowan is not making profit from this work and does not intend to. Ei* takes credit only for names and places not mentioned in Harry Potter or Pottermore.
Note: LeeRowan currently seeks a beta reader. Once a beta is acquired, early chapters will be reposted with corrections, and further chapters will be updated on a regular schedule (yet to be determined).
LeeRowan thanks anyone reading this story and would like feedback but does not require it. If you have any questions, you can contact LeeRowan through eir website, which is listed on eir profile, or through the 'review' function of FFn, or through the 'PM' function of FFn.
ANY AND ALL ADDRESSES MENTIONED IN THIS STORY ARE MADE UP. Do not go to those addresses and ask for the people mentioned, because if they do exist, it is mere coincidence.
ONE: IN WHICH CARA IS DIFFERENT
Cara had always known she was different. She had always been smaller and scrawnier than her brothers, and she had mousy hair that looked grey in the wrong light, and pale skin that did not burn easily. Her brothers were robust and strong, with fiery hair or, in Jonny's case, black hair. They had blue or green eyes—she had hazel-brown eyes. She had slender facial features that had the potential to be mildly pretty and a pointy nose and chin. They had ruggedly handsome square faces with heavy eyebrows and wide cheekbones. She had a small mouth and thin, pale lips; they had wide, smiling mouths and lips that any heterosexual girl (except relatives, of course) would consider kissable.
She had always known she was different, and she was correct. One specific difference was her intellect: she was smarter and deduced things more quickly than the other children. And she remembered everything.
Almost everything.
"Mother," she asked one day, when she was eight. Her parents both had the day off, a rare thing, and were sitting at the kitchen table, contemplating the news playing from the kitchen TV, the two newspapers on the table, and the radio broadcast from the kitchen stereo. "Why am I different?"
Her mother gave her father a look, then she reached across the table and covered Cara's hands with both of her own. "Cara, sweetie, you know your father and I both love you very much, right?"
Cara frowned: her mother always said that before saying something that would have a great impact on her life—usually a bad one. But she nodded anyways, trying to hide the tremble in her lips. "Uh-huh."
"The truth is…" her father started, then hesitated, rubbing the back of his neck. Her parents shared another look.
"We're not your birth parents," her mother said, and her world was forever changed. "We're your parents in every other sense of the word, and you're still our baby; we still love you very much," her mother hastened to add.
"Who're my birth parents, then?" Cara asked.
"We don't know," her father answered, and scooted his chair over next to hers so he could hug her. "We've tried to find out…for years. But we don't know. It's as if you just appeared out of nowhere in the foster care system and landed in our laps."
Her mother smiled at her. "Our little miracle," she added.
Cara let herself be hugged by both of them, and even hugged them back. Then she left the kitchen and went to her room, the smallest—she liked to think of it as the coziest—on the third floor. She lay down on her bed facing the ceiling decorated with glow-in-the-dark stars and thought.
After a while, she pulled out her diary and wrote a little bit with her left hand in one page and then flipped it over and wrote a little bit with her right hand on another page. This was to protect her secrets from her nosy brothers, who she was sure came into her room and looked for things to hold over her whenever she wasn't in it. They had attempted blackmail in order to prevent her from telling on them multiple times before.
Then she locked it, hid the key under her pillow and the diary under her dresser, and pulled out her favorite book to re-read.
Cara's parents—she had decided to call them that, instead of 'adopted parents,' because her birth parents weren't really her parents at all—were rich. They had not come from money; Henry came from the slums in Dublin, and Rose came from the streets of London. But both of them had worked hard, saved up money, and moved to Vancouver, where they started anew. They met in an evening college class. After both of them graduated in the top ten percent of their class with a BA and a Master's in business, they collaborated and started a business investing in real estate. They married within the year, and Jonny, Tyler, and Mac came staggered over a five-year period. Two years after Mac was born and they moved into the old Victorian house, they adopted Cara.
All of this Cara knew, both from overheard conversations that she always remembered and from deductions logically made from aforesaid conversations.
Jonny was the oldest, six years older than Cara. He had black hair and strong, rugged features that could have been handsome but for the silly grin he always wore. He had bright green eyes full of mischief—and mischievous he was. Jonny loved pulling pranks, telling jokes, and getting into trouble. He never really did anything too terrible, and when he did do something that he knew was over the limit, he accepted his responsibility and punishment without complaint. This meant that his teachers were exasperated with him but still loved him.
Tyler was four years older than Cara and hero-worshiped his older brother. He would do anything Jonny told him to, something Jonny exploited often. They were an odd combination, freckle-faced, red-haired, blue-eyed Tyler with tanned, black-haired Jonny, but they fit well together. More than he loved his brother, however, Tyler loved animals. And from the undeveloped land beyond their property came plenty of wild animals that he wanted to keep as pets, everything from frogs to snakes to injured rabbits. Once, he brought home a curious raccoon. He was in terrible trouble for that one.
Mac was only two years older than Cara, which meant he was often excluded from playing with their older brothers and delegated to playing with Cara—until he turned ten, at which time he decided girls were interesting and refused to play with her anymore, for fear of seeming uncool to the girls in his grade at school. Even so, they had a close relationship, and if she had nightmares it would be his room she came to for comfort. Mac had bright red hair, even more so than Tyler's, and pale skin that looked like it should be freckled but wasn't. He preferred pitching in baseball to playing football with Jonny and Tyler, even if only Cara, a terrible catcher, played with him. He had the same green eyes as Jonny, and it was easy to see that the three brothers were related.
All of her brothers were protective of her, though they knew she wasn't really their sister and pretended they didn't care when their friends were around. But if anyone said anything mean to her, her brothers—one of them, usually Jonny, or all three of them—would corner the bully and force him or her to recant. She was annoyed and embarrassed by this but every time it happened, she loved them a little more, and forgave them every bad thing they said to her.
Around the time Cara turned eight, strange things began happening whenever she got angry. Once, she even started a fire in a chimney that hadn't been swept out for at least fifty years. They couldn't get the smell of burned bird out of that wing of the house for months. Another time, a group of girls cornered her in a school washroom and right when they were about to start in on her, the sink right behind them exploded, spraying water over them all.
Things came to a head when she went for a walk in the still-undeveloped land bordering their property and all the animals she encountered followed her home: three squirrels, a doe and her fawn, a badger, a grey fox, an owl, and a lynx. She was able to shoo all the animals except for the lynx away when she got back to the house.
"Go away," she told the lynx. "Why are you following me?"
He—somehow, instinctively, she knew the lynx was male—purred and rubbed against her legs. You are mine. He looked up at her and one look into his pale blue eyes was enough to melt her heart.
"Okay, but…don't let anyone see you," she whispered, glancing around. None of the neighbors were outside, but that didn't mean she was safe. With another furtive look around, she opened the door and let herself in. "Come on, then."
He blinked at her. I'll stay out here, thanks. No cages for me. He spoke into her thoughts, not with words, but with images that got his meaning across.
"Okay. Just…don't let anyone see you," she said again. A flicker of impatience slipped between them before he reined in his temper.
I know. You are mine. That won't change.
"What's your name?" she asked, curious.
What's yours?
"I asked you first," she reminded him, but answered him anyways. "Cara. Cara O'Brien."
He cocked his head to one side. That's not right. O'Brien is not your name. I am Teripper. He made a soft chirping sound and faded into the shadows along the side of the house as the mailman came up to the door, leaving her to puzzle over what he meant.
"Here, Miss Cara," the elderly mailman said kindly. "There's a letter for you, today. Looks all official." The letter was on top of a small pile of junk mail and Jonny's monthly sports magazine subscription. She took it inside, Teripper temporarily forgotten.
She left the rest of the mail on the kitchen table and went up to her room. She got out her Swiss pocketknife—a birthday gift from Jonny the year before, who had meant to be helpful—and sat on her bed to open the letter.
The outside of the envelope read:
Ms. C. O'Brien
The Small Room on the Third Floor
2230 142nd Ave
North Vancouver
There was no return address. The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. In place of a stamp was a private business stamp exemption sticker.
She turned the envelope over to open it and saw a blue wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a hippogriff, a unicorn, and what looked like a demon horse surrounding the decorative letters MIC.
She opened the seal, pulled out the letter and read:
The Magical Institute of Canada
Headmistress: Charlie Dumas
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Sorc., Chf. Magician,
Bronze Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
Dear Ms. O'Brien,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at The Magical Institute of Canada.
Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. As a Muggleborn, you have been accepted for a full tuition, books, and equipment scholarship. Please see Gringotts Canada, the Vancouver branch, to access the scholarship money.
Term begins on September 7th. We await your owl by no later than August 5th.
Yours sincerely,
Harlequin Tate,
Deputy Headmaster
A second page, also titled The Magical Institute of Canada, contained a list of uniforms, course books, and equipment.
UNIFORM
First-year students will require:
Three sets of plain work robes (black)One plain pointed hat (black) for day wearOne pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)
Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry name tags
COURSE BOOKS
All students should have a copy of each of the following:
The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk
An Updated History of Magic, Abridged by H.J. Granger-Weasley
Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling
A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration by Emeric Switch
A Compendium for Herbology by Neville Longbottom
Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger
Fantastic Beasts: North America and Beyond! by Corander O'Shanahan.
The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble
Introduction to Latin and Related Languages by T. H. Boot
Basic Botany: Canadian Edition by Samuel Reavers
OTHER EQUIPMENT
1 wand
1 cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)
1 set glass or crystal phials
1 telescope
1 set brass scales
Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad
PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS
Cara stared at the page for some time, re-read it, and then re-read the first page again. A full scholarship…which will cover tuition, books, and equipment. How did I qualify? Did mother and father apply for me? I certainly didn't apply for this myself.
Oh, I can take a cat, she noted, after yet another read-through of both pages. She wondered if the lynx—Teripper, she reminded herself—would want to go, and if he counted as a 'cat' in the eyes of the school. He is a feline.
She put the letter and list of equipment back in the envelope, then put it under her pillow. She would give it to her parents to look at when they got home from work.
Cara knew, instinctively, that it was not some sort of hoax. She knew that magic must be responsible for the strange things that had been happening—it was the only possible explanation; logic ruled out any other possibility. The only question on her mind was whether or not she would be allowed to go, for she had already fallen in love with the idea of magic.
