Diagon Alley had been as awesome as Dudley had anticipated, Evanna reflected afterwards.

They started the trip by going to Gringotts to convert some pounds and pence into the much more complicated Galleons, Sickles and Knuts. Then Professor McGonagall produced a large golden key which turned out to be the key to Evanna's own Gringotts vault. It was only after Evanna had extracted enough money to pay for her school things as well as sustain her over the school year that she remembered something.

'Professor McGonagall,' she asked innocently, 'why did you have my Gringotts key?'

Professor McGonagall looked startled. 'Professor Dumbledore took custody of it after your parents died,' she answered stiffly, as if wondering why Evanna dared to ask such a question.

'But Vernon and I should have been given the key,' Aunt Petunia protested. 'After all, we are Evanna's legal guardians.'

'Perhaps you should take up your concerns with Professor Dumbledore,' Professor McGonagall would only say, dismissively.

Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions … Slug and Jiggers Apothecary … Potage's Cauldron Shop … Flourish and Blotts … Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment … Scribbulus Writing Instruments (though neither Evanna nor Dudley could understand why they couldn't just bring ballpoint pens to Hogwarts) … the list went on and on. Evanna felt that they must have visited half the Alley, at least, by the time they went back to the Leaky Cauldron for lunch.

'What else do we need to buy, you two?' Uncle Vernon said cheerfully, taking a large drink of his pumpkin juice, which he seemed to like.

Dudley answered first. 'Just a wand' – and he scanned his shopping list, then looked up. 'Mum, Dad, can I have an owl?'

'May I have an owl,' Aunt Petunia corrected absently, then did a double take. 'Did you just say …'

'May I have an owl, then,' Dudley amended quickly, oblivious to the rest of his family's surprise. He had never shown an interest in animals, ever – and now, out of the blue, he was asking for an owl!

'Well, if your father says yes …' Aunt Petunia said vaguely, obviously deciding not to comment. Dudley looked at Uncle Vernon hopefully, who nodded.

'Thanks,' Dudley said, with feeling. 'I heard they're really useful for sending post and stuff.'

Evanna grinned understandingly. That made sense. Dudley was extremely practical and was probably only getting the bird for its useful features. That was so typical of her cousin.

'What about you, Evanna?' Uncle Vernon asked her. 'Fancy a pet too?'

Evanna shrugged. What she wanted was an animal that could talk back – i.e. a snake … but it wasn't likely that the Magical Menagerie across the street would sell them. So she opted for second-best. 'A cat would be nice,' she said truthfully.

They decided, for the sake of convenience, to get the wands before they visited Eeylops Owl Emporium and the Magical Menagerie. Professor McGonagall led them to a dark, tiny little shop that said over the door, in letters that were so old they were peeling away from the sign: Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. It struck Evanna as the way a very old antique shop, op shop or two-dollar shop might have looked: small, very dusty, stuffed with merchandise and with the undeniable air of eccentricity.

There were three customers inside: a thin, dark, haggard woman dressed in black, and two girls – a vivid, brown-haired beauty of about Evanna's age, and another a few years younger, with large eyes, untidy golden curls and a pale complexion. They seemed to be in the process of leaving – the woman had taken out a moneybag and was picking out silver and bronze coins with the help of the younger girl. The older girl was clutching a long, narrow box which presumably held her wand: she had a bored, indifferent look on her face that gave Evanna the impression that she was a bit of a snob. But then the woman finished paying Mr Ollivander, and she and the two girls – obviously her daughters – left the shop, without so much as a glance at the group clustered near the door.

Mr Ollivander, a small, white-haired, wizened old man with large, glassy round eyes and a gleeful expression on his face, hurried towards them.

'Minerva McGonagall! And what young hopefuls are you bringing with you today?'

'Good afternoon, Mr Ollivander. I've got two who need wands today – Lily Potter and her cousin, Dudley Dursley,' Professor McGonagall said evenly.

Evanna winced at the use of her first name. It wasn't that she disliked it, just that it had of course been her mother's name, and it gave her a little ache every time it was used. Besides, she preferred the name Evanna.

Mr Ollivander turned to Evanna delightedly, ignoring Dudley and the others completely. 'I've been expecting you,' he said tremulously. 'You have your mother's eyes. It wasn't really that long ago that she –'

'Yes, yes,' interrupted Professor McGonagall impatiently. 'If you don't mind, could we get on to business?'

'Yes … of course,' Mr Ollivander murmured, snapping out of his wistful reverie and looking slightly disappointed. After measuring Evanna very precisely in more than a few ways, he crossed the tiny shop and opened a long box exactly like the one Evanna had seen the brown-haired girl carry out. He pulled out a dark, elegant wand and handed it to Evanna, who took it with some trepidation.

'Blackthorn, twelve inches, dragon heartstring core, fairly stiff,' Mr Ollivander commented. 'Give it a wave, Miss Potter.'

Feeling very stupid, like she was playing at soldiers in front of a full-blown army, Evanna took the wand and (because somehow it seemed the right thing to do) flicked it at nothing in particular. But nothing happened, and she felt a definite sense of anticlimax as Mr Ollivander whipped the blackthorn wand out of her hand and pressed another into it.

Fortunately for Evanna, she only had to try a handful of wands before Mr Ollivander – with a mysterious gleam in his eyes – was satisfied. She'd managed to make send out a steam of silver and gold sparks, purely by accident, but the white-haired wandmaker was intrigued.

'Curious … very curious …' he murmured cryptically, and Evanna had to ask him what he meant. He then launched into a long-winded explanation of how her wand and the wand of the wizard who killed her parents (Lord Voldemort – only Mr Ollivander called him He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named instead) shared the same core – a phoenix feather (!) from the same phoenix. That apparently was something significant, but Mr Ollivander only finished by adding, 'The wand chooses the wizard, Miss Potter, and it is not always clear why. But He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things … terrible, yes, but great.' Evanna was feeling distinctly uncomfortable by now, and was very glad when Uncle Vernon interrupted.

'If you're quite finished scaring my niece –' he began hotly, but Mr Ollivander paid no attention to him whatsoever. He put the wand (holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, reasonably springy) back in its box for Evanna to carry, along with the final comment: 'It appears that your magic is fairly easy to please, Miss Potter. You will not have much trouble using any wand you choose but this one seems to be particularly attached to you.' Then, to everyone's relief, he moved on to Dudley and pulled out the tape measure again.

Twenty minutes later, they left the dark little shop, having gotten Dudley's wand (oak and unicorn hair core, twelve inches, sturdy and reliable).

Eeylops Owl Emporium was next on their agenda, so they stopped there and Dudley chose a beautiful brown owl with markings around the eyes, which he decided to name Iris. And then they went to the Magical Menagerie, where Evanna annoyed everybody by taking forever to decide between a male ginger cat with blue eyes and a squashed face (called Crookshanks) and a female green-eyed cat with black fur (named Seraphine). Eventually she decided on the latter, and the group went back to the Leaky Cauldron for some afternoon tea before heading back into the Muggle world.

Evanna was halfway through her second Cauldron Cake when she remembered something.

'Professor McGonagall,' she said abruptly, laying down her Cauldron Cake rather suddenly. It seemed awkward to be talking to the distinguished witch one-on-one, but she made do. 'Those people on the Knight Bus … everybody knew my name and wanted to shake my hand … am I famous in the wizarding world?'

Dudley spluttered pumpkin juice all over his half-eaten Cauldron Cake, but Professor McGonagall paid no heed. She fixed a pair of beady eyes on Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon.

'Do you mean to say you didn't tell her ... anything?' she demanded majestically.

'We told her everything we knew ourselves,' Aunt Petunia burst in hurriedly, before Uncle Vernon had a chance to speak. 'I have not had contact with the wizarding world for ten years, Professor McGonagall, so how would I know that my niece is famous in it?'

Professor McGonagall noticeably subsided, and turned to Evanna sternly. 'You are famous in our world, Miss Potter, because of what happened the night You-Know-Who killed your parents. He tried to kill you too, with the Killing Curse – a spell that is unblockable – but somehow you survived with only a scar.' Evanna's hand moved unconsciously to the lightning scar on her forehead, tracing it, and Professor McGonagall nodded approvingly. 'Also, nobody really knows what happened that night, but You-Know-Who disappeared. Nobody knows either whether he is gone for good or still out there, but the fact remains, Miss Potter, that you defeated the most powerful Dark Lord of our time, whether temporarily or not.'

Dudley had frozen with a Cauldron Cake raised halfway to his mouth, which was slightly open; Uncle Vernon was simply looking enlightened, but Aunt Petunia, noticing Evanna's stunned and slightly overwhelmed expression, leant over and gave her niece a swift hug.

Evanna was silent the entire way home. Not that she talked a lot usually, but this time she was thinking.

She was famous. She wasn't quite sure how to react to that. She'd always been the quietest girl in the class, the one who tended to get overlooked and forgotten about. Sure, the 'incidents' she'd had at school every since she was nine had given her a bit of unexpected notoriety, but she hated being in the spotlight, where everybody knew your name and was 'waiting for you to break down'. And she was only eleven! She hated attention but loved being different. It was odd, but then that was what she was.

The last few weeks before Dudley and Evanna would leave for Hogwarts passed relatively quickly. It was of course the summer holidays, and Dudley spent them hanging out with his friend Piers and several other boys, while Evanna buried herself in her bedroom and read through all her Hogwarts schoolbooks in a vain attempt to quench her loneliness. What the kids at school said was partly true: she didn't have any friends, but it wasn't true that she didn't want any.

Aunt Petunia took them to the cinema in the third week of August, but unfortunately they watched a fantasy-adventure film, which clashed horribly with what they knew magic to really be like. Evanna spent it whispering smart remarks to Dudley, who sniggered until Aunt Petunia threatened to take them out without seeing the end of the movie. So Evanna settled for thinking out the clever comments instead, and told them to Dudley afterwards. All in all, though, it was a decent summer.

Maybe it was out of nerves, but on the night of the thirty-first of August, Evanna had the oddest dream. She and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia and Dudley were going to London to catch the train to Hogwarts, but they ran into a faceless man wearing a long black cloak on the way. The man pulled back the hood of the cloak when he saw Evanna and pointed his wand at her. There was a flash of green light and a woman screamed, but it wasn't Aunt Petunia. And then she was a tiny baby in a cot, and there was a man with shaggy black hair and tears on his cheeks pleading with a black-eyed giant. But then the black-haired man disappeared and she was in a flying motorbike under the stars, with the giant holding her. And she saw herself, a one-year-old abandoned in a basket on the front steps of Number Four, Privet Drive, clutching a heavy-looking letter. The door opened and there was a scream …

… and Evanna sat up in bed very suddenly, her head reeling, and wondering how much of the dream was true. What she knew to be a fact, though, was that she and Dudley would be sleeping in beds at Hogwarts the next night, causing her to immediately wonder whether she'd remembered to pack the box of ballpoint pens she'd bought at the newsagent's the day before.