…Headmasters Office, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Albus Dumbledore smiled to himself as he awaited Harry's owl. He had marked Harry's letter and set the wards to divert the response form directly to him. His spy in the neighborhood had told him that Harry seemed to still be ignorant of magic but that his relatives were no longer involving themselves with the boy past the basics.

As such he doubted they would try to keep his letter from him as the headmaster had originally planned for. Instead the boy would write back and Albus would send Hagrid to pick up the boy and then meet the two of them in Diagon Alley.

In the years since the incident, he had still not been able to figure out the shield that surrounded the boy and was unsure if it would exist outside of Petunia's home. The protection seemed limited to the boy but that did not make sense as wards were anchored to places not people. For a muggleborn, he had to admit that Lily Potter was brilliant. He knew she didn't have his power, she didn't even have James' power but her genius was unmatched.

He looked out his window once more. He knew the letter had been delivered and opened but was surprised the response had not come. He had verified with Minerva that the boy hadn't responded by some other means. If the response did not arrive by the weekend, he would send Hagrid to the house anyway.

…The Burrow, Ottery St. Catchpole

The most popular book in all of Wizarding England was an animated 350 page story about the hero Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived. Since the faithful night in 1981 practically every child had received a copy. The book spent no time rehashing the fact that the boy survived a killing curse defeating a dark lord as that was the origin story everyone knew and opinions on the dark lord was mixed. Instead the story focused on the charmed life of the young hero.

The writer was especially clever in the development of the children's book. In the story, as the boy hero faced his various adventures alone he would reach moments when the reader would press a rune to "help" the hero advance in the story. The second bit of clever story telling was that the "damsel" was never identified. After conquering the final dragon, the last page just has Harry looking out of the book at the reader happy that they were safe.

Many a young girl dreamed of being the damsel that Harry Potter had quested to save. Many a young man also dreamed about being within the hero's circle as well, joining him on quests to battle dragons and save princesses. The two sequels were not as popular as the original but that just meant they only sold out the first two publishing runs unlike the three runs the first book sold out.

Ron Weasley was the youngest son of the Weasley family and he was currently running away to join Harry Potter on one of his quests. His determination to find the Boy-Who-Lived was the only thing keeping his angry tears from overwhelming him. His family didn't love him and definitely didn't want him. Of that the young man was sure.

His dad had all the sons he could ever want and his mother had the daughter she always dreamed of. He was just the unwanted one. Percy had told him the whole thing. His parents had wanted 4 children, 3 boys and a girl. When the fourth child turned out to be twin boys, they had been overjoyed as magical twins brought with them a blessing for a family.

His parents had applied that blessing to their next pregnancy hoping the magic would recognize their desire for a girl but instead had gotten him. Percy explained that the reason he and Ginny were so close in age was because they had rushed to get pregnant again in disappointment.

Ron might have dismissed his brother's words as a cruel joke except that it made too much sense. No one was more precious in the house than little Ginny. He and all his brothers were constantly reminded to watch out for her. Bill acted like a third parent to her, always teaching her things and reading to her. But he was practically ignored.

The twins had almost been kicked out of the family for pranking his sister but when they pranked him all they got was a "leave your brother alone". His pain didn't even warrant his name being spoken, he was just "your brother". Angry tears broke free of his anger and streamed down his face as he crossed the ward line. It was fine, Harry Potter was an orphan too and he would swear fealty to him and together they would go around saving people and being heroes.

He made it almost half a mile before his father found him marching down the road toward town. If it wasn't for the relief and anger he felt at his son for leaving, he would have found the determined strides adorable. He had packed only food and his toy sword. Arthur sent off a patronus message to his wife to tell her he had found there wayward son and then approached the boy.

"Ronald Weasley, what are you doing out here, you had your mother and I so worried." His angry shouts were cut off by a young man who was at the end of his rope with his family. He yelled over his father and told him to "Leave me alone! I am just doing what all of you want anyway!"

Arthur Weasley was confused by that declaration but as the boy continued to yell, dread and sorrow settled unto the man. He had failed his son completely. The child that had been the manifestation of his families' magical blessing felt unwanted and unloved. Ron had devolved into sobs by this point and his father just held him till he could cry no more and had fallen asleep.

Arthur Weasley entered his home carrying his son. He looked around with new eyes seeing for the first time a home that did small things that would seem isolating from his son's perspective. His spot at the table was the farthest from his parents while Ginny was kept right next to Molly. His room was the farthest up and he was forced to live next to the ghoul.

Ginny's had been a hard birth and had come premature and that had shifted a lot of attention to the little girl and even though she was very healthy and magically strong, they all still doted on her. Bill was the only one old enough to help with Ginny and had bonded with her. He shook his head, he would have to have a long talk with Percy and the twins and probably Molly too. He put Ron to bed and got him to drink a sleeping draft.

Molly Weasley was relieved to see her husband come home with their youngest son. She had almost had a heart attack when the wards indicated that he had left the property. She figured the angry and pensive look on Arthur's face was because of his anger with their son for leaving. As she went towards them he had shook his head and carried the sleeping boy up the stairs. She was concerned because Ron's face was still red and tear streaked.

She looked up as Arthur came back downstairs and sat at the kitchen table with a heavy sigh. He had tears in his eyes which really worried Molly. "What happened Arthur? Is Ron OK? Is he hurt? Should we call a healer?" Arthur put his hand over Molly's to calm her and then explained the confrontation he had with their son.

He ended with "When I was coming back downstairs, I realized that we were so excited about Percy making prefect that we barely payed attention to him getting his Hogwarts letter. It might have been our sixth first Hogwarts letter but it was his first."

Molly had tears rolling down her cheeks, she had failed her son completely and had no idea what to do to fix it. She couldn't even be angry at Percy as he probably thought he was telling the truth. "What are we going to do?" she asked her husband. "We are going to send all the kids out tomorrow. We'll arrange a playdate with Luna and Susan and spend the day talking to Ron. We'll try to correct his misunderstandings and apologize for paying him so little attention"

They put thought to action the next day and spent the entirety of the following day with Ron. He was unresponsive until after lunch but they spent the whole morning telling him they loved him and that they were not disappointed that magic had used their blessing on him. By the afternoon he started to talk again and when the rest of the family came home for dinner Ron was energetic again.

Arthur called a family meeting and publically apologized for he had treated his son. He chastised Percy for not recognizing the cruelty in the words he said but took responsibility for not setting a better example. He told the twins that there was a very fine line between pranking and bullying and they had crossed it in regard to their brother.

He once again shared the responsibility as by focusing on what they were not allowed to do to Ginny he had inadvertently made Ron seem like an acceptable target. The older boys were at first angry at Ron for getting them in trouble but as their parents explained what Ron was seeing and they found out that he had been willing to run away to get away from them they began to feel guilty.

That night as he fell asleep Ron felt lighter than he had felt in a while. The day with his parents had gone a long way to helping believe that what Percy said wasn't true. Without the hurt an anger though he was able to think clearer about what his plan had been. He thought that it was still a good plan and he knew Harry Potter was supposed to go to Hogwarts with him. He decided that he would still swear fealty to the Boy-Who-Lived and help him on his adventures. With his course set he fell asleep.

…Granger Residence, Crawley

Hermione Granger was bouncing around her house. Her parents had long since stopped trying to calm her down. At the present moment she was running back up the stairs to continue reading one of her new books. Every 5 minutes she would run down the stairs to impart some new bit of information from the new world she had discovered. This had been going on every weekend for almost nine months.

The cause of this insanity was Hermione's birthday. She was born on Sept 19, missing the deadline for entrance into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. However it had been a long standing tradition that a person receive their invitation letter on their 11th birthday.

This meant that Hermione Granger would have knowledge of the wizarding world for almost one full year before getting to attend. The fact that her thirst for knowledge was fanatic meant that the adult Grangers were faced with the sound of feet running back and forth up their stairs.

...Flashback

Introductions to the wizarding world for muggleborns typically came from the Ministry Department of Magical Education (DME). In one of the few examples of the magical world doing something logical, the DME had a cadre of muggleborn witches and wizards that would volunteer their time to conduct introductions.

The department would try to match a new muggleborn with a witch or wizard that could relate to them. In most case that just meant having the same gender. As such the weekend after sending out her reply to Hogwarts and muggleborn packet to the ministry a fairly attractive young woman dressed in Jeans and a Beatles T-shirt arrived at the Granger residence. She introduced herself as Mandy Silverton.

After the standard magical introduction that included magical demonstration, in this case transfiguring the lamp into a cat and back, the young woman explained the odd world that young Ms. Granger was due to enter. The ministry had put together a packet of approved information that was to be presented to muggleborns but the cadre of volunteers had gotten together and tweaked it to include the things one needed to know, not just what the ministry wanted them to know.

In short the wizarding world was a magical steampunk version of the middle ages. There was no king or queen as the magic within the borders recognized HRH Queen Elizabeth as the ruling monarch and her family as the rightful line of succession. A magical monarch would only exist if one was muggleborn. The smirk that followed that statement was explained by describing the blood prejudices that existed within Europe.

Mandy explained that every country that had a magical community shared the same prejudices as the non-magical just to a weird extreme. The magical community in America for instance had prejudices based on race. But the list of what races (both magical and not) that was "acceptable" was quite fluid and almost all had taken turns at being masters or slaves. Currently the elites were the magical humans of African and European descent as well as a sect of Vampire like beings that sparkle in the sunlight ("don't ask, Americans are weird").

Europe had a blood prejudice but that term was deceptive as it was really more of a question of lineage. Magic itself was slightly sentient and flowed back and forth between the land and the people, as such it is very easy to have your lineage traced back thousands of years without need of research or history books.

A simple ritual will access the magic of the land and tell you all of your magical ancestors as long as the line is unbroken and all the births happened on English soil. "About 25% of muggleborns turn out to be lost squib branches of families" Mandy explained followed shortly by an explanation of what a squib is.

The Grangers were understandably concerned about the dangers of world where their daughter would be on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. They were politically and socially conscious enough to recognize the difficulties faced by Blacks, Muslims and Jews across Europe and wasn't sure if they were comfortable volunteering for that treatment.

Mandy had done a few of these types of introductions and could recognize the trepidation on the faces of the adults in the room. She did not regret delivering the hard truth as it was better to be prepared and have all that was needed for an informed decision.

She was proud that even with her method of full disclosure she had never had someone she had introduced rescind their acceptance of placement at Hogwarts. Before moving on to the advantages of her new world she continued with the latest addition to the introductory information.

"A war ended about 10 years ago. It was not so much a war as an insurgency. A group of blood purists gathered under the banner of a particularly bad dark lord. It got so bad that most muggleborns retreated back into the muggle world or migrated to other magical communities. To show how dumb these types of things are, most of the victims were the purebloods that the group was supposedly championing.

It really boiled down to a conflict between elites who hate muggleborns vs elites who supported integration of muggleborns. We won but the cost was high and the victory surprising. Because of that some of the blood purists survived the purge and where able to re-enter society. It's not a perfect world but it is no worse than the muggle one, just that the bad guys use magic instead of guns and bombs."

Looking at the faces of the three Grangers she could see that she had successfully made them not want to have anything to do with the magic world. Well the parents, at least. The little girl was looking at her with betrayal in her eyes, blaming her for the opportunity she was about to lose. Mandy smiled to herself and started on the second half of the presentation.

"I want you to know that I do still highly encourage anyone with the chance to enter this world. Magic is as amazing as all of the story books and more so. Dragons and Fairies are real, as are merpeople, centaurs and a whole host of fantastical creatures. There are potions and wands and flying brooms. Your name is Hermione which is from Shakespeare. I think he was a squib because the 'double, double, toil and trouble' poem is an actual potion recipe and yes reciting the poem is part of the recipe."

The Grangers were true Shakespeare fans and that bit of information reignited some excitement. Dan Granger asked quietly "what does the potion do?" Mandy smiled at her ability to draw the family's interest back to the wizarding world. "It's a protection potion. Once it's done you paint it across the jams of all your doors and windows and on the hearth of the chimney and no magical creature can enter your house without permission.

No one uses it though, it is druidic but the romans brought magical runes when they invaded and warding came with it. House wards are more powerful do more and are self-perpetuating if you anchor them right. That potion has to be re-applied every month."

Mandy smiled at the family and continued "Other than the main reason your daughter should enter our world is because poverty hunger and homelessness does not exist and her ability to succeed cannot be impeded, even by the blood purists or whatever idiots follow them." She went on ignoring the confused looks she was getting.

"In the muggle world the many form of barter is money. It is the foundation of economic development. If you are not born into money you have to find a way to learn enough to get a job and be paid for your skills. The availability of these opportunities can also be traded and withheld. But in the magic world, while money and wealth definitely exist the true commodity is magical power.

And it is given to everyone in different measure at birth. It would be as if every child was born with between 500,000 and 1,000,000 pounds and no one, but them, could ever have access to it. And if they spent it all then there body would replenish the full amount. Food, water and shelter can all be conjured and the relative skill to do it is equivalent to learning your ABC's. Bad things can still happen to you and you can be forced to do things that are terrible but once you learn magic and how to control it, you will never be hungry or not have a place to sleep.

During the inquisition actual witches used to submit themselves just to watch the inquisitors fail at torturing them. An impervious charm here and a flame freeze charm there and wammo." Comprehension came to eyes of the Grangers. Mandy dropped the last shoe "Also there is law called the Statute of Secrecy that makes it a crime to reveal magic to muggles who don't have a need to know such as the two of you" she said pointing to the two parents "but there is very little stopping you from living in both worlds.

For instance a group of us run a delivery service, we don't get things places too fast as to be suspicious but with magical travel we have no overhead so it's all profit. The sky's the limit if you have the knowledge to work magic, the bravery to try, the determination to work and ambition to succeed." Mandy always finished with that line. She wanted to paint the houses in a non-biased light without being obvious and she was proud of her method.

The Grangers agreed to have their daughter continue on this adventure. The next step was a trip to Diagon Alley. The family was suitably awed at the sight and after getting a walking tour of the alley, they were taken to Gringott's muggle relation department where a vault was created for Hermione.

The goblins were quite familiar with modern banking practices and had registered in the muggle world as a small private banking institution with an invite only clientele. What it meant is Hermione's vault had an account number and a routing number and would get a check book and all the proper banking documentation.

...End Flashback

Over the last 9 months they had gotten Hermione tested and discovered that she wasn't a lost squib line and had bought her many books about the history and culture of the magical world. Hermione would have a year of preparation before entering the magic world. Something that should have been offered to all muggleborns but was never considered.

Hermione had just finished her third reading of the Harry Potter book. She was smart enough to understand that it represented a fictional account of a historical figure but she was still an 11 year old girl and loved the idea of going adventuring. Unlike many girls she didn't want to be the damsel at the end of the story. Not because she didn't want to be rescued by a prince but because she thought the hero version of Harry would be saving everyone. She wanted her own prince. One that only saved her.