How many times had something inexplicable happen just because Mattie needed it to? Her now-favorite sweater was just the most recent example, too. Mind racing, Mattie remembered the time Dudley and his gang were chasing her, intent on stealing her homework to tear it all up. She'd sprinted all the way to the playground, intending to climb to the jungle gym, when all of a sudden all the trash cans in Dudley's way toppled over, sending garbage every which way. Dudley had skidded on a banana peel, just like in the cartoons, and fell so badly he sprained his ankle.

Thankfully, no one blamed Mattie for that incident—though the wind was not blowing especially hard that day, everyone blamed the wind for the trash cans toppling over, and Dudley for his own clumsiness for the sprained ankle.

On the other hand, Mattie had received a shrill scolding and a week in her cupboard the time her mean teacher, Mr. Levine, had his toupee turned blinding orange. He was castigating her for not doing her homework, and she was trying to explain that that day, she hadn't managed to evade Dudley's gang, but Mr. Levine simply wouldn't believe it. She was so angry she felt—oh! Was this what Matilda felt?—the hairs on her arms rising, her eyes growing hot, and then poof, Mr. Levine's black toupee turned orange.

Mattie felt a smile break across her face.

"I'm magic," she informed Marie reverently, and the spider rubbed her front legs together. Mattie stroked her.

She dove back into the book, wanting to know more about Matilda's magic.

xxx

The thing was, Mattie thought later, she wasn't a super genius like Matilda.

Her marks weren't bad, certainly better than Dudley's, and while Aunt Petunia scowled Uncle Vernon just said gruffly he didn't want a snotty swotty nancy-boy of a poof son anyway. But she was definitely nowhere near the level Matilda was, to be able to use her brain power.

Which meant maybe she and Matilda had different magics.

But different magic or not, the book told her that Matilda got better at her magic by practicing. Mattie was going to practice, too.

The winter hols were upon them, but thankfully Mattie was allowed out of her cupboard since she hadn't done anything. She made a beeline for the Little Whinging Library, where she found Miss White and an unknown, pretty, dark-haired woman conversing.

"Oh, Mattie," Miss White smiled, cutting off what her friend was saying. "Just a moment, Stella was just bringing me my lunch."

Mattie looked at the dark-haired woman curiously. She was very pale, with high cheekbones and thin, pale lips. It was the sort of mouth that didn't smile often, Mattie thought. If it weren't for the dark, dark hair, Mattie would have named Stella a sort of ice queen. Maybe she still could be? Could ice queens have dark hair?

Mattie shivered, despite herself—she hadn't liked the story of the Ice Queen in the Big Book of Fairytales.

But Stella's eyes fell on Mattie, and the cool woman quirked a smile.

"So this is Mattie Potter at ten," the woman commented.

Mattie didn't know what to say. "I'll be eleven in seven months," she informed the woman weakly. "Miss…?"

"Daniels," Stella told her. "I'm Stella Daniels."

"Nice to meet you, Miss Daniels."

"Such manners," Miss Daniels smirked at Miss White. "Anyway, I shall be going. I'll see you at home, love?"

"'Round six," Miss White confirmed. The two women hugged, and Miss Daniels left.

"Is there something I can do for you, Mattie?" Miss White said, once Miss Daniels closed the door.

"MATILDA was brilliant!" Mattie enthused. "Do you have any more books by the same author?"

Miss White laughed. Beckoning Mattie to follow her, they went down to Children's Literature, to the D shelf, for Dahl. "Here, Mattie," she said, and left Mattie to it.

The next evening found Mattie in her cupboard, holding a book in one hand and an apple in the other. She hadn't been able to find a peach, but she was fairly confident peaches and apples were both enchant-able.

"Not that I want a giant peach in my cupboard," she said to Marie, "but Mr. Dahl said magic can be used on fruit, and I suppose he would know. I don't think I have any green crystals, but the magic inside me is just as magic as the crystals, I think. And anyway that's why we're experimenting."

She stared very hard at the apple in her hand. Nothing happened.

She stared harder, and tried to call up the prickling in her skin, the heat in her eyes, just like Matilda. Slowly, slowly, the summoned magic began to respond to her call—she felt her hair poofing out of the bun she'd tied it in—

"Grow," she whispered to the apple. "Grow, grow, GROW!"

And with a pop, the fist-sized apple was as big as Mattie's head.

Mattie hurried to examine it from all angles. The skin was smooth and perfectly red, and when she bit into it, it was the juiciest, crunchiest, tastiest apple she'd ever had, not that she'd had many.

"Magic is awesome," she told Marie, and took another bite.

xxx

The months passed and Mattie spent more time than ever in the library, under the watchful eye of Miss White. Sometimes Miss Daniels would visit, bearing lunch for Miss White. Then eventually, Miss Daniels began bringing Mattie food too—salads, and fruits, and once, even a treacle tart! Mattie instantly decided that was her new favorite pudding.

Under Miss White's supervision, and sometimes Miss Daniels's too, Mattie devoured book after book. James and the Giant Peach was read and reread, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory oohed over, The Little Princess smiled at, and The Secret Garden adored.

"James was my father's name, you know," she informed Miss White once, as she paged through James and the Giant Peach for the third time.

"Oh?"

"My parents' names were James Potter and Lily Evans. I was named after my grandmother, Matilda Evans."

This much, Mattie knew from Aunt Petunia. When she asked Aunt Petunia how she'd gotten her name, Aunt Petunia's eyes had gone distant and she said, "Lily named you after our mother, Matilda. The one sensible thing she ever did regarding you." And then she snapped at Mattie to do the dishes, and Mattie'd scarpered away.

Learning her father's name was a little harder. It had been Family Day at primary school, and they were supposed to make a family tree to put up around the classroom. Dudley had yelled, "Mr. Turner! Mattie can't make a family tree, she has no family! No parents!"

Mr. Turner had said, "Of course she can, Dudley. She still has her family in her heart." Mattie had bent her head over her work, utterly embarrassed.

But she couldn't make a family tree, not really, because she didn't know her father's name. So she had waited until after dinner to ask Aunt Petunia, "Aunt Petunia, what was my father's name?"

"James, Jamaal, something. James." Aunt Petunia was distracted, craning her neck over to where Mrs. Number Three was fertilizing her roses.

So Mattie had printed JAMES POTTER and LILY EVANS in her nicest script at the top of her family tree, and that had been that.

"I've always found Matilda a particularly pretty name," Miss Daniels commented, appearing behind Mattie as the library door swung open. Mattie jumped in surprise. "There's a sort of old-world elegance to it."

"Like new roses from old rosebushes," Miss White contributed. Mattie flushed darkly.

Miss Daniels smiled, and Miss White laughed, and Mattie was given a nice little lunch and they all ate together in the little staff room of the Little Whinging Library. Mattie, lying on her cot in her cupboard that night, confided to Marie that it was the happiest she'd ever been in her whole life.

xxx

"Tomorrow you'll be going with us to the zoo," Aunt Petunia said abruptly, the night before Dudley's eleventh birthday.

Mattie was so startled she nearly dropped the present she was wrapping. "Me? B-but why?"

"Mrs. Figg has broken her leg, hip, whatever," Aunt Petunia said. She picked up a present from Mattie's pile and arranged it nicely on the table.

Mrs. Figg was Mattie's regular babysitter, and her house was full of cats and the smell of cabbage. Mattie thought for a moment she should feel sorry for Mrs. Figg, who was a kind woman even if she did have far too many cats, but then she was much too filled with excitement to think of anything else.

The zoo! She'd get to see the zoo, see lions and tigers and bears, just like in The Wizard of Oz (Mattie was sorely disappointed to find out the Wizard was a fraud). She couldn't believe her luck!

She looked up at Aunt Petunia, eyes shining, and said, "Thank you, Aunt Petunia! Thank you so much!"

"Yes, well," Aunt Petunia sniffed. "No funny business, though, Matilda, do you hear me?"

Mattie nodded. "I promise."

"I can control my magic anyway," Mattie told Marie later that night. "I'm sure there won't be any…funny business."

The day dawned, and after an averted Dudley tantrum over having one present less than last year's, Mattie, Dudley, and Dudley's best friend Piers Polkiss were all squashed into Uncle Vernon's car on the way to the zoo.

I'm in raptures, Mattie thought to herself. She'd often read the word and not really known what it meant, but now she did. It meant being so happy, so excited, she could barely sit still! It was only because she promised to behave that she sat perfectly still. She imagined herself like a boiling pot—inside was all jumping and bubbling, but outside she seemed perfectly still, maybe even bored, because there was a pot lid over all her excitement.

Beside her, Dudley and Piers chattered all about the animals they wanted to see, especially the "huge beasts! With lots of teeth! Killer tigers, right Big D?"

It was a lovely sunny Saturday, "perfect for ice creams!" Aunt Petunia declared, and bought Dudley and Piers a huge chocolate ice cream each. And then, to Mattie's everlasting shock, bought her a small vanilla cone also. As the boys rushed everyone to the tiger enclosure on their way to see killer beasts, Mattie licked her cone and thought to herself again, experimentally, I'm in raptures.

It seemed apt, for how happy she was right then.

After lunch, they went to the reptile house, which was nice and cool after the summer heat outside. All sorts of lizards and snakes crawled around their—habitats, Mattie thought to herself—scales of every color glistening in the cool dim lighting of the reptile house.

Dudley immediately found the biggest snake in the place, a gorgeous glistening brown boa constrictor. It was so big Mattie fancied it could have eaten Dudley, Uncle Vernon, and Aunt Petunia and still not be full, which was a lot, if you asked her.

But it wasn't in the mood for eating. It was asleep.

"Make it move," he demanded of his father. Uncle Vernon rapped at the glass, but the snake snoozed on.

"Again," he said, and obligingly Uncle Vernon did it again, but nothing.

"Booooooooring," Dudley whined, and wandered off to look at poisonous cobras.

Mattie moved forward to look at the boa constrictor. According to the card next to the glass, the specimen was from Brazil, but it had never been there—it was bred in the zoo.

"Must be terrible, to not know the place you came from," she murmured to the sleeping snake. "Did you know your parents? I don't. Know mine, I mean, not yours, but I don't know yours either. Sometimes it feels like I've only ever lived at the Dursleys, forever and ever and ever."

The snake, apparently wakening, raised its head and looked at her. Heartened to have a listener, Mattie continued.

"But they must have been magic, because I'm magic. But if they were magic, how could they have died? How could they have left me?"

"Matilda Potter. Tsk tsk tsk," a voice sounded from behind her.

She whirled, only to find a strange person, dressed in black—were those robes? Was he a cultist?—and wearing a silvery white mask.

"Hello," she said hesitantly. She knew kids weren't supposed to talk to strangers, she had heard Aunt Petunia tell Dudley that many times, though never her—but the person knew her name. Who were they?

"Let me tell you a little something, Matilda Potter," the man—it was a man, from the voice—said. He said her name with a particular kind of relish. "Your parents were magic, and you are magic, and your parents loved you very, very much. They did not at all want to leave you."

Mattie couldn't speak, she was so confused.

"In fact, if things had gone the way they were supposed to, in just a few weeks you will be going to their world," the man continued, a smile in his voice even if she couldn't see his face. "Our world, actually. The wixen world.

"Unfortunately for you—" and the man levelled a stick at her, right between her eyes, "that will now never happen. Ava—"

"NO!" someone screamed, and a different voice yelled, "Stupefy!"

Mattie had only a glimpse of the man toppling over before someone grabbed her in a rush of silver.

"Mattie, Mattie, are you all right? Are you hurt?" Miss Daniels demanded of her, running hands all over her, checking for injuries.

"Miss Daniels?"

"There's no time!" Miss White cried out, appearing next to them. "The other Death Eaters are just around the corner!"

Crack. Crack. Crack.

"There she is! Matilda Potter!" someone yelled from not too far off, and a stampede of feet headed in their direction.

"Avada—"

Miss White jabbed a stick of her own, and a stone wall erupted from the floor. Green light splashed against the stone, leaving it cracked but not destroyed.

"I have to get her out of here!" Miss Daniels cried.

"This isn't the way it's supposed to go—"

"Damn the way it's supposed to go!"

Screaming erupted from everywhere as more black-robed, white-masked people arrived. They shouted words she didn't understand, and jets of light flew in every direction. Everywhere they hit destruction occurred: the jets of light scorched stone and shattered glass, and there was more screaming as the snakes and lizards escaped from their enclosures.

Miss White jumped out and started hurling her own jets of lights at the attackers. Birds flew from the end of her stick with a shrieked "Avis!" and then with an "Oppugno!" the birds flared their wings and shot straight at the black-robed people, attacking their eyes and causing them to fall over.

Miss Daniels clutched Mattie tightly.

"Okay Mattie, I need you to be very calm," she said rapidly. "Put this on and walk carefully, quickly, and quietly to the exit. Once you're there, I want you to wait for people in scarlet robes to appear. No matter what happens, you have to wait for the people in scarlet to appear. And then when they do, go to one of them and tell them who you are, okay? You'll be safe then."

"But you and Miss White—are you and Miss White magic, too?"

"Of course, we are, love," Miss Daniels smiled weakly, and pressed a kiss to Mattie's unruly hair. "Okay. Put this on."

She was handed a beautiful, clear, silvery cloth of some kind. Miss White helped her cover her entire body with it, and when she was finished—

"I'm invisible!" Mattie cried out.

"It's an Invisibility Cloak," Miss Daniels said. "Okay. Make sure it doesn't fall off, all right? Now go."

Clutching the cloak tightly to herself, Mattie obeyed.

It was not as easy as it sounded, making her way through a debris-strewn reptile house while jets of light streaked overhead and people screamed and ran every which way. There seemed to be even more black-robed people, and Miss White and Miss Daniels were the only ones fighting back. As Mattie watched, Miss White shouted, "Aguamenti! Glacia!" and encased one black-robed person in ice, while Miss Daniels shouted, "Expelliarmus! Stupefy!" One man's stick flew out of his hand, and the next moment as a jet of red light hit him, the man toppled over, unconscious.

There! The exit! Mattie went there as quickly and carefully as she could. Just a little farther—she could see the sunlight—

"Reducto!"

"NO!" screamed Miss Daniels, and Mattie whirled back. A red jet of light hit Miss White right in the chest, blowing her back to the stone wall she'd created earlier.

"MISS WHITE!" Mattie screamed, and ran headlong towards the two.

The ground began to shake.

"Mattie? Mattie no!" Miss Daniels cried out, but Mattie was far beyond hearing. The shaking intensified, sending Miss Daniels and the black-robed people to their knees; Miss Daniels sent red jets of light towards the black-robed people, and they slumped over. Cracks began to appear in the ground.

"Miss White! Please, Miss White!" Mattie cried out, reaching the unconscious woman. Only the common sense of not shaking an unconscious person stopped her from shaking her librarian.

On Miss White's chest, there was a golden chain and some sort of broken glass—that must have been what the jet of light hit. Most worrying of all was the red beginning to pool from where Miss White's head cracked against the stone wall.

Miss Daniels was utterly distraught, bending over Miss White. "Episkey! Will Ferula work—Ferula!" Before Mattie's eyes, bandages appeared on Miss White's head, wrapping around it and keeping the blood in. "Reenervate!"

Nothing happened.

"Oh Merlin," Miss Daniels moaned.

Just then, the golden chain and the broken glass began to vibrate.

Grains of sand began to rise from the ground and swirl around Miss White, turning her into the epicentre of a sand whirlpool. Miss Daniels gave a cry, and pushed Mattie away. Mattie resisted, crying out, "Miss Daniels! What's happening to Miss White?"

"Mattie, Mattie, you have to get away from her right now," Miss Daniels said, clutching at the figure inside the whirlpool. She loosed the golden chain from around Miss White's neck, and looped it around her own. "Please, Mattie, we don't know what will happen if we take you back—"

"Take me back? Take me back where? Are you part of the wixen world too?"

"Yes, but that's not where—Mattie—"

"Stupefy!" a deep voice shouted from behind Mattie.

"Protego!"

With a blinding flash of light, Miss Daniels and Miss White vanished.


Author's note: I'm not very satisfied with the title. Can anyone help me think of a better one?

Additionally, I've been having trouble with ffnet formatting. Do you guys get alerts for when I replace a chapter? When I notice I made an error in formatting, I replace the chapter. So sorry if you think it's a new chapter!

Lastly: Do you guys mind if I describe Mattie's clothes more? I like clothing, and Mattie likes clothing, but I'm afraid she might be misconstrued as a Mary Sue simply because she's a ten-year-old girl who likes clothes. What do you think?