So next chapter, know it took me a while so sorry xx

Hope you enjoy and review! Thanx to Jun Jin for the review!

"So, Tara the usual?" Marianne asked rhetorically, after all every Friday they did the exact same thing. Chipper. Back to Mari or Tara's house, stay in or go to a party. It was a life with no surprises which suited Mari just fine. No surprises equals safe. Stable.

Because Mari hated surprises ever since her eighth birthday.

"No, sorry," Her best friend, Tara Thomas, pulled out a book from her locker and shut it, smiling apologetically at her.

"What?" Mari's brown eyes bulged from under her dark blonde hair, "Is this a joke?"

"No, my brother's coming back from his boarding school for Christmas, we're picking him up in Kings Cross," Tara grinned at her, scooping up her long black hair and stretching out to her tall, black body.

Tara loved her older half-brother, she was fifteen - he was nearly seventeen, so they were the closest out of her two other sisters, Tasha and Diana, who were twelve year old twins. Mari loved going to Tara's house – they were such a tight-knit family, which made her wonder why her brother went to the boarding school. She often wondered was it because he had a different dad than the three girls but Tara had fiercely squashed that theory. Apparently he just wanted to go to boarding school which Mari had always thought was strange. Who would ever voluntarily leave their family?

"That's great! Try get him to help us with our art project," Mari smiled sheepishly reflecting on the pile of rubbish that sat under Tara's bed, that was supposedly an 'art project.' And from the many things Tara had told her of her brother, he was a good artist and they needed all the help they can get.

Tara snorted as they walked out the school doors, "Oh yeah, if Dean can't fix it we'll have to declare it a lost cause."

"Like are History project, geography project and do you remember the science - ?" Mari's eyes lit up with mirth, remembering their failed attempts at projects.

"Where we made a giant sperm? Eh, yes, I don't think anyone will forget that," Tara smirked, then gave a sideways glance to Mari, "So what will you do tonight?"

Mari's brow furrowed, she'd never had to face a Friday without Tara before, "No clue, watch the News, maybe play an exciting game of monopoly with Sarah…"

BEEEEP.

A car horn interrupted their conversation, they looked over to see a middle-aged woman roll down the car window, "TARA! We'll be late for the train!"

Tara glared at her mother, clearly embarrassed as several of their classmates turned to stare at them, snickering. She hurried over to the car shooting an apologetic glance and a quick "bye" at Mari.

A drop landed on Mari's head. She sighed and put up the hood of her hoodie, she hated rain – it always seemed to fall in the worst moments of her life.

LINEBREAK LINEBREAK, DON'T MIND THIS – LINEBREAK. JUST KEEP READING.

At eight o'clock that night, Mari was completely and utterly bored. Her aunt Sarah had to catch up on some paper work, making her a boring companion to be with, so she was up in her room. Cleaning. Actually cleaning. She hadn't cleaned her room since…

…

…

Well she'd think about that later, but for now she was clearing her wardrobe out. Who knows she might find a skirt she wore when she was twelve that would suddenly come back into fashion and serve as a new mini-skirt for her. No such miraculous thing happened. As she threw old clothes over shoulder, she had to admit she had no sense of style when she was , she thought, she did have a good reason. After all she had grown up wearing wizarding clothes and didn't understand all the different styles of muggle clothing.

A horrible green coat was strewn across the bottom of her wardrobe, she disgustingly picked it up and flicked it over her shoulder. She was about to close the wardrobe door when she saw something that made her heart-rate quicken up. She plunged her hand and pulled out the bag from the wardrobe that the coat had been hiding for several years.

She sat on her bed, running her hands over the faded pattern of Snitches and broomsticks on the bag. She had told Sarah to get rid of everything that she got for her birthday. The only thing she kept was 'The Tales of Beedle Bard' to remember her gran by and to have some sort of pull to the magical world. She also kept the notebook her mother had given her. She wrote down every tiny, insignificant detail of the wizarding world down there, things that two-year-old wizards would know, such as there were Dragons and Trolls living in Britain.

At the time she had felt silly writing it, it had been so obvious but she knew she must put down everything. From Quiddich to story of the Boy Who Lived, she wrote down everything that might differ from the muggle world, nearly filling the whole notebook. She had been at it for weeks. Desperately clinging on to the world she had suddenly been excluded from, but one day she woke up and the sadness was drained from her.

Anger filled its place. They had left her. Who abandons their own kids? No moral person. So she had placed the copy of 'The Tales of Beedle Bard' and the notebook in the bottom drawer of the cupboard. Once it stayed in there, it would stay out of her head. But now…she had the bag she had gotten seven years ago for her birthday, Sarah had never thrown it out. It had been in her wardrobe all along. She shook her head, she should really clean more often…

Smiling at the thought, she gained courage to open the bag. Everything was neatly packed, and Mari felt a lump in her throat, imagining her mum packing this bag for her eldest child she would never see again. She had never blamed her mum. Or her gran. In her mind, it was all him. She didn't even think of him as dad anymore, not even as Martin Dottington, up and coming Minister for Magic. No, he was just him.

On top of the folded clothes, the mirror lay, the note still sticking out of the side, in her gran's swirly handwriting,

'So you can always see your beautiful self,

And the person who loves you the most.'

She closed her eyes, shoved the bag under the bed and fell backwards and did something she had refused to do for years.

She cried.

So hope you like it, review please! They make me happy