A/N: Sorry for the wait, guys, but I am somewhat incapable of writing chronologically. I had to wait for the muse to strike. The downside of that is that there might be a bit of waiting in between the chapters, but the upside of it is that I have over 120 pages written up already. It's a lot of playing of connect the dots at this point, but sometimes that's harder than it feels like it should be, though I do have the equivalent of the season one finale done and a good portion of how they get there written.

Thank you so much for your patience and the follows, favorites, and reviews. Every time I get a notification that someone liked my fic enough to follow and/or favorite it makes me smile. Reviews make me bounce happily in my seat.

I'm sorry for any mistakes (I don't have a beta) and that the end of the chapter is less detailed than the rest. I wanted to include it, but my muse didn't really provide scenes to go with it.

Enjoy!

Chapter 3

Late June 1993

Mia took a deep breath and let it out slowly to settle her heart rate. She'd woken from a nightmare, but this time she wasn't crying and temporarily inconsolable. Her heart was pounding heavily and she was a bit sweaty but nothing too bad. Certainly not emotionally unstable to the point of accidental magic, thank goodness.

This was the third time she'd had a similar dream in less than a week, and the real problem was that they had been terrifying because they could easily have been true.

In this dream she'd splinched herself at Missouri's and had no dittany and hadn't practiced a single healing spell to even try to help herself yet. She could only sit there panicking and watch herself bleed out, holding her hands ineffectively to the gaping wound of missing flesh that looked like a shark had taken a bite out of the side of her abdomen.

Mia's fear of accidentally splinching herself threw into sharp relief the need for a wand. She couldn't just wait till she was eleven to get one anymore, not if her magic was going to go haywire like that. Accidental magic was supposed to levitate things, change the colors of objects, maybe set a fire or two. Certainly not magically haul you from one location to another with no three D's in mind.

By now she had recalled Harry telling her about a burst of accidental magic he'd had; while running from his cousin Dudley and the ever-present band of bullies, Harry had all of a sudden ended up on a roof. Knowing that it had happened to someone else before didn't help her very much though, especially now when she knew about the dangers of Apparating incorrectly. Accidental magic wasn't infallible just because it wasn't a miscast spell. It could go badly just as easily.

School had always been pretty easy for Mia and when it came to her education her work ethic was second to none, so John had given her the okay to do homeschooling years before. He'd almost insisted on it after he figured out that his daughter wasn't being haunted and that she was the one causing the random incidences. It was for the best until she had control over her accidents, really. If they were going to keep her magic a secret it was safest to keep her away from giant groups of people who could provoke her and witness what happens when she got upset. This only worked to her benefit after gaining Hermione's memories. Admittedly, Hermione had mostly magical education but she'd done her fair share of catching up with the muggle curriculum during the summers while her parents were at work.

As a result of building off Hermione's knowledge instead of starting fresh (aided by her habit of monopolizing her older brother's schoolbooks), she was already caught up to Dean academically. Or Dean's grade, rather. He put little effort into his studies, so she was actually ahead of him. Because of this, she was able to fiddle around with her planner and make quite a bit of time available to look for the magical world. If she managed to get her hands on a wand and bond with it, her accidental magic would be infinitely easier to control. She wanted the comfort and control that the feel of a wand in her hand gave her.

If she laid out a compelling, logical case for her need, promised not to use magic until she was at school and subjected herself to the Trace, she hoped that they'd let her, at the very least, bond with a wand to curb the number and severity of her mishaps. Even though she wasn't eleven yet. The Improper Use of Magic Office surely had some precedent for underage muggleborn magical accidents. Though… she didn't understand how they'd track such occurrences without the Trace, but that was through no fault of her own; she'd looked for an answer to that question and found nothing, very much like the 'nothing' on why and how the Trace broke when you turned 17 or how it even was cast on students in the first place.

The method of imbuement was unknown (probably to confound kids like Fred and George from getting around it somehow), but it was widely speculated that the Trace was cast on you when you got on the Hogwarts Express somehow. Which made sense in its own way since Hermione had practiced a good number of spells from The Standard Book of Spells: Grade 1 the summer before first year and had never received a warning like Harry about underage magic. But… then how did the Ministry known when a muggleborn broke the Statue of Secrecy with accidental magic as a younger child?

Mia chewed her lip and then the cap of a pen as she pondered the situation further.

There had to be some method or the Wizarding World would have been exposed ages ago by clueless kids making the impossible possible. And she knew for sure that the Ministry undid accidental magic; there was a whole team for it! The Accidental Magic Reversal Squad was a part of the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. They were the ones who had undone Harry's blowing up of his aunt and modified her memory of the incident… though that wasn't a very good example since that was after he'd started Hogwarts. She wasn't very well versed in the MACUSA departments, but she didn't dare try and cast something in public to try and get the American version of that Department's attention, though. That was just asking for trouble.

Looking for the magical world led to her usual haunt of, you guessed it, the library.

On the walk there, she did quite a lot of mental digging to remember that the MACUSA headquarters was in the Woolworth Building in New York, and that you had to use a wand to get into the area, much like Diagon Alley. But you had to go through the anti-muggle warded Leaky Cauldron to get there, where MACUSA had no such help. At least at the Leaky she could ask Tom to help her get into the Alley; she couldn't just go stand in the lobby of the Woolworth building and hope to see someone with a wand, now could she? ...Right?

When she arrived at the library, she was about to pull out a map of New York. But it would be pointless, she realized; the building itself wasn't disguised, just the wizarding entrance to it. Out of idle curiosity, though, she wondered if the Leaky Cauldron was unplottable since it wasn't technically in Diagon Alley like the rest of the stores, so she pulled out some maps of London instead.

She set the map carefully across a nearby desk and sat forward in the seat to look at where the Leaky Cauldron should be. Mia froze in horror when she spotted it. The land was on the map. The land of Diagon Alley was on the map. Mia's stomach dropped out a bit at that, and the next hour was spent desperately searching for other, more detailed, maps and pouring over every single location she knew to be unplottable to muggles. Not a single piece of land missing. The land the Burrow was built on was part of a golf course!

Mia sat at the encumbered table doing her best to take deep breaths and calm herself enough that she wouldn't inadvertently make the maps start tap dancing or something equally un-muggle.

Even if there was or wasn't a way for her to get into MACUSA, she'd counted on the fact that at least she knew of the Wizarding World overseas. Even if it wasn't readily available to her at the time, it was a source of comfort to just know it was there. But… No Diagon Alley meant no Ollivander's, which meant no hope of getting a wand, which meant no shortcut to control. Crap. Hermione's head thudded down against the library table with an agonized groan. Could it really be that she'd ended up in a timeline or reality so different that the Wizarding World was just… nonexistent?

Deep breaths.

It didn't help that Mia didn't know anything about wand creation except the basic of basics; cores came from magical creatures, and there were various woods that could be paired with them. She sorely regretted not studying the subject any further now. Even if she somehow managed the highly unlikely task of getting the ingredients for her previous wand, there was real work that went into making one. You couldn't just thread a core material through the wood and hope for the best or Ollivander would be out of business. Though, on the upside of that, no monitored Trace to get her in trouble for underage magic. That was the only upside she could think of at the moment.

Oh, also, not scaring the bejeezus out of her dad when a school representative showed up and him trying to shoot the visitor was probably an upside, as well. She'd never heard of a wizard being shot, but she imagined that without an exceedingly quick shield spell they were just as vulnerable to bullets as muggles.

After letting herself wallow in self-reprimand about wand crafting for ten minutes, she mentally picked herself up and decided that if she couldn't get a wand then she'd just have to work something else out. First off, until she figured out a wand alternative she would intensify her meditation exercises. She had managed to solidify the basics of her Occlumency and was already working on the mid-range protections. It wasn't very difficult since she already knew how and it didn't require a wand, but any spell she'd tried to channel so far was weak unless it was emotionally charged accidental magic. Like with her apparition incident at Missouri's. That wasn't a fault of knowledge or skill, though, that was just a young and unstable magical core expressing itself.

A shudder ran through her whenever she thought of how badly that could have turned out. Splinching herself with no essence of dittany and no St. Mungo's could easily be fatal. Speaking of which. Potions. The majority of her potions knowledge was useless unless she could find the right ingredients; very few were entirely comprised of components that could be found in the muggle world.

For the second time in her life, Mia left the library without doing further research. She could have picked up a couple new books on meditation or occult studies to try and find out where things went so haywire. No. She'd go back to the motel and watch TV with Dean. Maybe he'd make her some s'mores over the stove. No, wait. Dad had taken him on a hunt and they wouldn't be back for another few days at least.

Maybe sit down with Sam and ask him why he'd taken to talking to thin air in the last week or so.

Sam scoffed and folded his arms petulantly, "I'm not talking to air," he insisted, "I'm talking to Sully!"

Mia blinked a few times and asked hesitantly, "And Sully is…?"

Her brother rolled his eyes and told her as if it was obvious, "He's my friend. And he's right here," he gestured to the empty bit of couch next to him, "so I don't get why you're pretending like he's not." He turned his head to the side and his shoulders slumped, "Oh. He says you can't see him. Sorry."

"Okay," she drawled, and leaned back in her seat. Running a list through her mind of things this Sully character might know that Sam wouldn't, she picked something at random and addressed the empty space, "Sully, do you know what a thestral is?" For some reason, the invisible winged horse seemed like a good idea to ask an unknown invisible magical creature about if he really did exist and Sam hadn't simply gone bonkers.

He turned his head as if looking up at someone while they were talking and told her, "He says he's never heard of it."

Well, that wasn't a great question. She had no clue if they'd ever existed in this dimension. Timeline. Reality. Whatever. "What about a manticore?"

Sam's face scrunched up in confusion, but turned to the empty spot where 'Sully' was and listened before saying, "Gross." Sam turned back to her, "Sully says it has a human head, a lion body, and lots of sharp teeth." He paused again to listen, "There were two kinds, some had wings and some had tail-stingers." Another pause, "But they don't exist anymore. Oh, and he wants to know how you move stuff. I told him you do it with your head, but I don't really get how you do it."

Mia blinked a few times. Okay. So there really is an invisible being of some sort hanging around. That's… weird. And Sam's decided that it was a good idea to share my abilities with him. Great. She didn't much like how curious this Sully was about her magic, though, so she raised her hand and cast a spell she hadn't tried yet. Homenum Revelio!

A marker appeared over the empty space for a split second before flickering away and the spell failed. She wondered if the spell would ever really take hold even after she'd mastered it since Sully probably wasn't actually human. The fact that it found him at all means he's probably human-ish looking at least.

Sam's attention darted back and forth between Sully and Mia for a few seconds, then told the empty space, "I dunno," then a few seconds after that he did his duty as translator, "He wants to know how you did that. I didn't see anything move, though. Did you learn something new?"

Mia addressed her brother first and told him, "Sort of, but not really." Then she leaned forward and asked the Sully-space curiously, "What did it feel like?"

"He says it felt like something whooshed right over his head."

She bit at her lip, thinking for a moment before she told the empty space, "I'll tell you how I did it if you let me see you. It's only fair." She shifted uncomfortably and added quietly, though truthfully, "I won't be able to practice if I think someone could be spying on me all the time."

Sam denied the accusation, "He's my friend, he wouldn't do that!"

Mia's gaze hardened on her twin, "We've already had family meetings about this. No one is supposed to know. You've already told someone you've let into our… well, not home, but our room. Someone you've only known for a week, and told him about what I can do even though I've never met him and even though you're not supposed to. What if he tells someone else?"

Sam looked sheepish, then went pale as Sully no doubt said something, "Oh. Really?" His shoulders slumped, and he looked up guiltily at her. "He says that his mind is connected to his friends' so they might find out, but he'll try to keep it to himself." At Mia's anger and reddening face, he put his hands up and said quickly, "But he says even if they know, they won't tell anyone! They don't tattle secrets!"

Mia sagged in her chair. Well, there goes the rest of her day. Tears started building up and she had absolutely zero control left. The wizarding world didn't exist, she'd never get to see Hogwarts again, she'd never feel the comforting warmth of a bonded wand again, she was limited to only the spells she could remember from before because there were no books about real magic here, and now an unknown number of telepathic invisible magical beings knew she was capable of supernatural feats because her brother had gone and blabbed to the first creature who'd believe him about the most important thing to keep his trap shut about. It could get her killed or kidnapped and used as a guinea pig in some lab somewhere! There was no Statute of Secrecy or Ministry to protect her from things like that here!

Through the tears she saw that a blurry something was hovering in front of her and she heard the telltale pop of a light bulb or five burning out. Sam gasped, "Oh, crap!" She heard his footsteps rush across the room and the sound of curtains being dragged closed. "Phew!"

Mia made an attempt to take big breaths and calm herself down, but it didn't help at all. She curled in on herself and tucked her knees up to her chest, "Ter-ble ay," she hiccuped, and that was followed by something unintelligible though she'd meant to say something along the lines of, 'this is a terrible day'. It doesn't really come out that way when your power of speech is shanghaied by sobs and trying to breathe between them.

A box of tissues found its way into her hands, so she made use of it. Liberally.

When she finally stopped blubbering and it faded to shuddering breaths, she opened her eyes to find a worried-looking Sam with a plate of s'mores in his hands. She blinked a few times to be sure she wasn't hallucinating because it didn't look at all like Sam's last attempt at anything involving food; a half-burnt, half-soggy mess of inedibleness. This, however… it looked perfect.

"Sully says sorry he made you sad. I'm sorry too."

"It's not your fault," she sniffed, but then fixed him with a bleary stare and corrected, "Well, tattling was totally your fault and we'll definitely talk about that," he winced, and she went on, "but not right now. There was just a lot of… stress and stuff today. I think that was just the straw the broke the camel's back, you know?"

He sat down next to her, put the plate in her lap, snatched a s'more, and leaned up against her as he nibbled. "Nope. What's a camel doing with straw, anyways? Aren't camels supposed to be in the desert?"

She shouldered him playfully and ignored his smartass remark, "Where's Sully right now?" Sam pointed in a direction slightly to the left in front of them. "Thank you for the treats." Mia didn't necessarily trust the guy, but he seemed a decent enough sort so far.

Mia was exhausted, so she told Sam, "I've had quite the day and I'm pooped. I'm gonna take a nap, okay?"

Sam nodded, "Sure, Mia. Sleep tight."

Later that evening, Sam had already gone to sleep but Mia was still wide awake due to her nap earlier. Sully must have been nearby, because she started feeling… lighter. Oh well, she wouldn't call Sam out on having an imaginary friend.

After a few days of moping, Dean and John finally came home. Noting her downtrodden mood and Sam's distraction, John took the family out to the woods and taught her how to shoot. (She'd been busy studying something or another when Dean took Sam out to teach him ages ago.)

For some reason she felt a lot better after that. Maybe there was something to be said about destroying inanimate objects to make yourself feel better.

With the general improvement in mood, Mia sat down to take stock of her current magical situation.

Her progress so far practicing without a wand was slow going, and she suspected wandless magic wouldn't get any easier for a long time. Her magical core had some serious growing up to do before she'd have the reserves at her disposal to cast wandless spells without exhausting herself after only an hour of practice. The problem with that was that without exercise, her magic would stagnate. At this point, she was basically only exercising the magical equivalent of her endurance instead of strength. She needed something to help her focus her magic and perform higher powered spells to stimulate growth, but didn't know how to manage that just yet.

For the rest of June and most of July she studied myths and legends of magical items hoping to find one that would help, until she had a eureka moment. Runes. It was such a simple answer that she hadn't even considered it. If she could use runes as a focus, she can attempt to do wandless magic. One of the schools… Uagadou School of Magic, that was it. That school taught their students wandless magic through finger-pointing and gestures. She may not have an instructor or the know-how, but at least there was precedence. Mia was smart. She'd figure something out.

After a further two months of research and experiments done in between her usual studies (both monster and academic) it was fall when Mia finally figured out the optimal runic string focused on concentration and control that would help her.

September 1993

"Hey Dean…" Mia drawled out innocently, "You know that you're the coolest, strongest, badass-est big brother in the world, right?"

He put his hand to his chest in mock shock, "Language, young lady!" He smirked at her knowingly and leaned forward so he was at eye level with her when he asked playfully, "What do you want, Mimi?"

Mia held up the paper with the runes on it in her right hand, "Can you carve these," she held up the wooden bangle bracelets she'd bought at the thrift store in her left, "Into these?"

"Finally figured it out, huh?" He took the paper from her and studied it. "Mmm… It'd be easier to burn it into them. They've got the tools in shop class. Tell you what, we've been assigned a free project. How about I make you these from scratch and I get a grade out of it?" She smiled and rushed up and threw her arms around his neck and told him 'thank you thank you thank you', but then he added, "You want them on the outside or the inside?"

She pulled back and blinked a few times. Pyrography or carving, placement, and material were things she hadn't considered. She'd already established with a paper bracelet trial that it worked to some extent. Would wood or metal work better? Would the placement make them more or less effective? She thought back to what she knew of runes in general. Placement of runes was key in a lot of situations, but whether it was on the inside or outside of jewelry? "Paper and ink worked some, so I don't see that it should matter either way. Whatever's easier for you."

He smirked in his 'I'm going to say something irritating' way and told her in a thoughtful drawl, "Maybe I'll do the runes on the inside then do a bunch of unicorns on the outside." At her glare, he only laughed then asked innocently, "What? Girls like unicorns, right?"

Her shoulders sagged, "Ugh, you ruined the moment. I gave you a hug and everything, too."

He ruffled her hair. "You know me."

She rolled her eyes at and mimicked his tagline before he could say it, "No chick flick moments." It was her turn to smirk, "But you tend to make exceptions to that rule a lot when it comes to me."

He was unaffected by the taunt and told her simply, "Well if I'm gonna break the rule for anyone, why shouldn't it be for my little sister?" As he spoke, he moved into the kitchen and pulled out a bag of microwave popcorn.

She trailed after him and noted the choice in snack so she asked, "Are we watching a movie?"

He gave her his best devilish smile, "As payment for this favor, we're going to watch Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink back to back and you will never tell anyone about it ever, and when Sam comes back from school you have to cover for me."

She put her hand over her heart and stood at attention, "I shall do my best, good sir. As far as anyone else is concerned, I called dibs on the TV and tried to bite you when you attempted to watch something else."

"That's a good idea. Actually," he offered her his forearm, "bite me so I'll have proof."

She stared disbelievingly at the appendage as if it had insulted her. Mia shook her head and tutted at him, "Too obvious, your reflexes are way better than that. You know Sammy secretly likes those movies too, right? He'll make a fuss but sit down to watch it with us and then you'll both blame it on me. Even though I'm the one who actually likes them the least and would rather be reading."

He didn't bother denying it and just smiled, "And that's why you're the best little sister."

She moved back over to the couch, grumbling, "I'm your only little sister, doofus." First he tells me no chick flick moments than badgers me into watching chick flicks. Brothers.

A few beeps of the microwave were audible before he called over from the kitchenette, "Oh, and if you don't mind doing my english paper for me…?"

She rolled her eyes, "I already did it, it was easy. I even used Dean-vocabulary. Actually, shouldn't you be at school right now, too?" A few years ago she would have admonished him about not caring about his education, but he was already in what amounted to vocational school for hunter life. Not to mention quite the accomplished mechanic.

He pinched her cheek and cutesy-voiced at her, "What, and miss spending time with my kid sister?" He let go and judging by his expression he'd just had a lightbulb moment, "Speaking of which, can you forge another sick note for me?"

A week and two new runic bracelets later, Hermione was testing her skills and found that the wood bracelets worked much better than the paper version ever hoped to. Maybe it was the permanence of the object, maybe not. Figuring that out would require further testing, which she decided would be worked out later. She was just glad that it worked, even if was only a fraction of the control a wand gave her. Then again, it might have to do with her age. Mia sighed at the list of things she needed to figure out. But that was later. Now was time to practice her spellwork.

Dean caught her practicing a few days later. "Telekinesis is coming along really well."

She didn't correct him on her use of the Accio spell. The rubix cube floated gently through the air to her instead of how it used to drag itself lazily along the floor, getting caught on invisible ruts that required her to tug hard with her magic. "I used the rings you made for me as a focus."

He frowned and crossed the room, picked up one of her hands to examine said objects and said suspiciously, "Rings? I'm pretty sure that they were bigger than that."

She shrugged and informed him haughtily, "I… may have resized them… a little."

Dean raised a brow and exclaimed incredulously, "A little! They were bracelets!"

She smiled and tugged at a curl as she admitted bashfully, "Yeah… The plan was one bracelet for each hand, and they helped, but not as much as I'd hoped. Doubling them up on one hand gave it a little extra oomph, though, and moving them from my wrist to my fingers helped even more for some reason. Maybe because they're not as loose this way... more skin contact with the material? I dunno yet. More testing required on that." She looked up at him, giving her best puppy eyes. "Do you think you could make more? Maybe out of a different, harder, material? The more focus I can manage on one hand, the better control I'll have and the more difficult stuff I'll be able to do." She finally addressed his complaint about the original size with a smug smirk, "And anyways, could you have made the symbols small enough for a ring?"

He curled a lip up at the thought of trying to work in that small of detail. "Mmmm…nope. I mean, maybe, but I wouldn't want to. Like, at all." He shook his head with his cheeks loose so they made a wrbl-wrbl-wrbl sound, then added while he mussed her hair with his hand (which earned him an indignant squeal from her), "I'll see what I can do about making more of them for you."

When he brought her the next set, it was an interesting combination. One was made of the same type of wood as before, and the other was different type of wood - they weren't up to metalworking in shop class, apparently - but she was surprised to see he'd burned the runes into both the outside and inside of the ring. Well, bracelets at first, but that was soon fixed. She was delighted to find that doubling up exponentially increased the control.

Dean received a giant hug and his first ever, "You're so smart! I can't believe I didn't think of that!" from his little sister. It was a proud day for him. She even continued with the adulation, "You even made them from different types of wood so I can find out if there's a power difference in the type of wood! I didn't even think of using one type of wood as a control to compare against other types, I was only thinking of metals, not varying types of wood." All of a sudden he was hit with the notion that he'd be making these bracelet-turned-rings in plenty in the near future, and possibly for a long while after that. Oh well, he thought to himself, most schools have a class with the right equipment, and if not there's hobby shops with equipment for rent all over the place.

After that her Accio summonings weren't lazy dragging or gentle floating, they were a quick snap through the air to her waiting hand. Her Wingardium Leviosa levitations weren't wobbly or hard to get off the ground, they were smooth and sailed through the air as she guided the objects with her pointed finger. Her Unlocking spell didn't give halfway through, and her mending charm didn't look like someone had crumbled the fabric before sewing it shut that way. I can do first year level magic now. Well, she admitted to herself, Accio wasn't taught at first year, but it wasn't a particularly difficult spell when what you were summoning was in your line of sight.

December 1993

By Christmas, practicing spells with the rings and getting a feel for them without her wand saw her able to do those same spells without the rings on as well. Not the same snappiness or grace that the runes provided, but a marked improvement from where she'd started at the beginning of fall. Therefore, it stood to reason that she was building her magical strength at a decent rate, and as long as she didn't become too dependent on the rings she'd be able to eventually cast most, if not all, the spells she knew before. Hopefully wordlessly as well. So far only the first year spells were the ones she could manage to effectively cast without speaking, but in time she would tackle more and more difficult spells. If she wanted people who were in the know to think of her spells as psychic powers, she'd certainly need to be able to do them without advertising the strange use of Latin.

A protean charm for their constantly "traveling" father would be nice someday, though knowing him he probably wouldn't touch whatever she'd spelled it with. Speaking of whom, he hadn't really been around much (as per usual), but when he was in between hunts she tried to practice when he wasn't in or was sleeping. She knew what she could do bothered him and that he was relieved she wasn't having explosive or particularly noticeable bouts of accidental magic anymore. This curbed her practice time, but it was worth it to preserve her relationship with her dad. The less he saw of it, the more comfortable he seemed around her. Maybe he thought she'd got the basics down and therefore it was under control and to be swept under the rug? He probably wouldn't approve of her putting so much of her time into practicing and developing her 'abilities', but what he didn't know, right? Dean and Sam wouldn't rat her out, anyways. Especially Dean, she smirked, as he's become my accomplice by making my rune-rings for me.

Sam had been badgered into being involved as well.

She'd spent quite a bit of time practicing her Disarming Charm against him, always making sure to cast a Softening Charm on the floor and wall behind him first in case it knocked him back instead of just making him drop whatever he had in his hand at the time. At first, when her attempts were completely ineffective, he started working on flashcards while he stood and waited for nothing to happen. The joke was on him though; the first time it did work, his study aid burst into a torrent of the small white cards fluttering around the room and to the floor.

Mia was bouncing around doing the happy dance because it'd worked; Sam was dreading the epic clean-up required.

With a long-suffering sigh covering his smile at her giddiness, he bent over to start the painstaking process of picking them all up. When she calmed down enough to stop bouncing, she was riding high and carelessly used an Accio on the cards, meaning to summon them one at a time (she hadn't experimented with trying to summon two things at once) and ended up landing hard on her bum with a couple paper cuts when all of the cards came whooshing at her.

Mia blinked, shocked at the turn of events, and Sam burst into laughter so loud that in brought Dean into the room who raised an incredulous brow at the scene.

She smiled at the memory, then thumbed the rings on her middle finger and spun them around idly while she sunk deeper in thought. It was the kind of thinking that would see her brothers' hair turned some shade of randomized neon color if they interrupted her. If runes work… Her mind flitted back and forth between ancient symbols and sigils she'd come across during monster and artifact research.

Ancestral Puebloan symbols would be the first she looked into, she decided, since they were in the southwest at the moment and was far more an ideal location than, say, Florida, for studying the Ancestral Puebloan people, (and no matter how many times she told her dad that Anasazi meant 'ancient enemies' and was not politically correct, even if it was a recognized historical term, he kept on using it). After that, a study of ancient languages, perhaps? Many dead languages were from cultures steeped in mythology and possibly true supernatural occurrences.

Christmas that year was, as it was more often than not, John-less. But the siblings made do as usual with homemade gifts for each other. Dean had stopped trying to steal gifts from other families a few years before after a bout of completely unsuitable gifts up to and including a Barbie doll and bicycle streamers. They had a good laugh over it, but after that Hermione insisted they either save up for presents or make them. It was no good, in her opinion, to take gifts they might not even want away from another kid, though she'd made sure to tell him that she appreciated the sentiment. Not in those words though; she'd still been little(er) at the time.

Sometimes one of their honorary uncles would give them gifts to give each other, like when Uncle Bobby gave Sam the necklace to give to Dean. Something about the odd little horn-headed pendant had made him so happy that Dean never took it off.

This year, Mia noticed that a lot of cassettes were being put on sale as CD's made their way into mainstream, so she and Sam had teamed up and saved half of their pocket money for months to get Dean a collection of cassettes from all his favorite bands, presented to him in a newspaper-wrapped shoebox.

When John returned a week later, Mia presented him with a late Christmas gift: the fruits of her research on the Ancestral Puebloans. A specific ring of symbols that popped up together frequently and were assumed to be used as protection.

A/N: There's chapter three! I know it's quite a bit longer than chapters one and two. If you have a preference in chapter length, please let me know and I'll try to accommodate. Otherwise, it's going to be however many words I write before I get sick of going over the scenes over and over again. :)

Fun Fact: The only other person in the Harry Potter world that we know for sure developed their magic and used it with intent before age 11 was Tom Riddle. (No, that's not foreshadowing, I don't plan to have her go dark-side. Just thought it was interesting.) Obviously Mia is gaining a lot more control over her magic and a lot sooner than him, but I'm excusing that as her having the help of runes and years of practice. She's also using known spells instead of simply bending magic to her will like Tom.

Yes, I know that Sully was supposed to show up when Sam was nine, not ten, but just play along and pretend with me that Sam didn't start feeling really lonely until Mia got worked up about all this and dove into full-research mode and John took Dean along for a hunt. I'd been contemplating whether I wanted to bring Sully into the story or not since Sam has Mia. This way, she gets wrapped up in research and Sully can still enter the scene. I'm not sure if I'll weave him into the story as a more active character yet or not, but that was a fun scene to write.

Questions? Comments? Feel free to ask. I read all my reviews and I'll respond to questions, but if you would prefer to PM me, that's totally fine.

Thank you for reading, and have an awesome day!

~SD