After the Christmas holidays, Meghan went back to school, but things did not improve much overall. While it was true that she was not Alec Pope's new girlfriend as she had previously fantasized, it was also true that he and the Furies had toned down their harassment of her from physical attacks to a mere few insults a day, uttered at a safe distance. Nobody else bothered her at all.

Meghan walked home in peace every day, because nothing that any of her enemies said could hurt her now. At least it couldn't do anything to her that hadn't already been done. Maybe Anna's words about her special powers had really sunk in.

At any rate, she kept to herself at school and seemed content with her life as it was.

"Meghan Wolf is just like that one girl, Allison Reynolds, from The Breakfast Club," one of the younger teachers whispered to Mrs. Landry.

"Well, look at the bright side." Mrs. Landry grimaced. "At she doesn't shed a bunch of dandruff all over her art pictures."

"Not on purpose, anyway."

Meanwhile, the weather only got worse. After the snow melted, there was nothing but rain, rain, rain for weeks, in Meghan's opinion. She was falling asleep in school because she was making a concentrated effort not to sleep at night. Her forced insomnia wasn't just to avoid her nightmares themselves, but also to keep her mother from having to wake her up from them. Meghan knew that when she dreamed her mother worried about her more than usual, and her hair turned grayer than it already was.

It seemed that there was only one solution. Meghan realized that, as terrified and helpless as she felt in her dreams, she had acquired a feeling of immunity when she was awake. It was something she figured many suicidal people had, a feeling that there was nothing to be lost from taking any risks.

She was afraid of no risk. It meant nothing to her to go up to the older kids who hung out in the schoolyard after dark and buy a few cigarettes from them. After the trade was made, she pocketed her purchases and went home.

Whenever it rained during the night, when her mother was asleep, she would creep out of the house and stroll down the sidewalk, looking to any rare passer-by as blank and hollow as a ghost. Then she would lean against the sycamore tree at the corner, light one of her cigarettes, and smoke until the sickly yellow light in the old lamppost died.

But when there was thunder she didn't lean on the tree. Instead, she stepped out into the middle of the street and sent a few puffs of smoke up toward the lightning, like spitting in someone's face. It was her way of fooling herself into believing that she wasn't afraid.

It was her private victory, but she boasted it outside in public, like a madwoman. When she was asleep she could almost die, but when she was awake, it was as if she could fight and win. The irony was that imagined danger was what coupled with her fear, and for that she was substituting real danger as the price of fearlessness. The lightning could strike her, but she laughed at it anyway. Maybe it never did strike because her ambiguous magical powers protected her, but all the same, she felt free. She danced in the rainstorm until her clothes were soaked, reveling in her release.

After the storm died down, she put out her cigarette and crept back into the house without a sound. Although she was tired when her mother woke her up in the morning, she gave no other indication of what had happened outside. She covered herself completely up with a blanket to hide the fact that she was drenched, and she was careful to keep her mouth closed around her mother to conceal the fact that she had been smoking. Although getting wet often resulted in colds, Meghan decided that it was all to the good, because getting sick kept her from having to go to school. Her "midnight strolls" were something that she kept only to herself, a secret which even Anna didn't know.

Eventually, things started to change. As springtime drifted over London, the weather warmed up, and so did Meghan's spirits. It was finally starting to rain less often. She was still able to use her mind to levitate books from tables, as she had told her mother that she could. Better yet, Anna and Trevor would be returning from school for the summer in about a month, thus completing a long year of boredom and loneliness.

But that wasn't the end of the excitement.

One afternoon, the school headmistress called Meghan down to her office right before lunch to receive an important call from her mother. Thinking that there was an emergency at home, or that the private stash of cigarettes in her raincoat had been discovered, Meghan wasted no time in sprinting to the office to hear the news. She got a detention from a grumpy teacher for running in the hallway and a disapproving look from the headmistress when she arrived.

The headmistress was an unpleasant-looking woman of about fifty named Miss Owens, whom everyone called "Slim" to mock her extremely large size ("probably, like, thirty stone, at least," Willoughby Russell had once estimated). To Meghan, she seemed like an elephant painfully stuffed into an obnoxiously bright blue suit. Her gray hair was pompously piled at the top of her head, apparently the result of a bad permanent. There was a large mole at the end of her wrinkled nose that served as a focal point to a face that was doughy and plain. Not a bit of the woman's appearance was agreeable to Meghan, least of all her glaring, beady eyes.

Does Violet Beauregard know that you raided her wardrobe? She thought angrily to the headmistress. Of course, she didn't say it.

"Y-you sent for me," she stammered.

"You're mother is on the telephone," Miss Owens stated coldly. Meghan quickly snatched the receiver that the grumpy headmistress was holding out to her.

"Hello, Mum?"

"Meghan!" Her mother exclaimed. "You just received a very important delivery at home!" She sounded strangely excited.

"Mum, what on earth could be so important to me as to interrupt my classes? I was learning some really excellent things in maths…" Out of the corner of her eye, Meghan glanced at Miss Owens, who was glaring back at her. Obviously, Meghan was not getting on the headmistress' good side with her talk.

"Meghan, this is very important!" her mother snapped.

"Well, what is it, then?" Meghan asked impatiently.

"I cannot tell you everything now. I only called to warn you to come directly home after school. Do not stop to chat with your friends or anything else. Just come straight home!"

"Is that all?"

"That's all I can tell you now. This is private business, and there might be too many ears listening. You'll find out the rest when school is out. But come straight home!"

"Is there anything else, Mum?" Meghan growled, now thoroughly irritated.

"Didn't you hear what I said? I want you to promise me that you will come home as soon as school is finished!"

"All right, Mum! I promise."

"Good-bye, then."

Then there was a click at the other end of the line. Meghan sighed dejectedly and placed the receiver back in the cradle. At least there was no emergency, but she was still very curious. This "important delivery" must have been quite special if it made her mother too excited to forget that Meghan had no school friends.

"Doesn't your mother care about the way you dress for school, young lady?" Miss Owens was still glaring at Meghan with contempt.

Bite me.

"The way I dress?" Meghan replied innocently. "What are you talking about?"

"What do you mean, what am I talking about?" Miss Owens snarled. "Your clothes are rumpled, and you are wearing black lipstick! Doesn't your mother have any objections to that?"

Indeed Meghan's mother had had some objections to the way her daughter liked to dress, but somehow it didn't seem to matter as much to her. Meghan defied all objections, anyway, and still wore the things she wanted to school every day.

So Meghan looked the headmistress straight in the eye and said, "My lipstick isn't black. It is aubergine. And my mother has more important things to worry about than my clothes and makeup." And, seeing the headmistress' gaping mole, her fatty triple chin, and that her lipstick was a rather horrifyingly bright pink, Meghan thought: Not that there aren't worse things than black lipstick, you ugly, mole-faced toad. Why don't you go and ponder that over a Slim-Quick shake? Once again, it was something that she didn't say out loud.

But she might as well have said it, for what the latter's reaction was.

"Don't you speak to me that way, you nasty little girl!" Miss Owens growled. "Five more after-school detentions should teach you a thing or two about respect for your superiors! Now get back to class!"

Meghan obeyed, but she was no longer especially frightened by the headmistress or any other authority figure in the school. It seemed that Anna's words of encouragement, which rang in her ears even now, had built up a sense of invincibility.

Meghan spent the rest of the day in suspense. She picked at her lunch, and her mind, instead of being in her afternoon classes, was wandering instead on this important delivery that her mother had for her. Was it something from Anna? No, it couldn't be. If it were from Anna, there would not have been a reason to call about it while Meghan was in school. But who else would have bothered to send her anything? After all, she had no other friends.

When the bell rang to dismiss the children from school, Meghan dashed out of the school building, and then bounded through the streets to her house on Rhona Avenue.

She burst in through the door, and her mother greeted her by placing a cup of tea at her place on the dining table.

Meghan nervously sat down and sipped the tea, noticing that Mercury, the family messenger owl, was standing on the table right across from her. He was munching on a couple of owl treats and staring pointedly at Meghan. She reached over and petted him on his gray, feathered head.

"Hey, boy. Long time, no see."

Mercury tilted his head, as if to greet her back. Indiana bolted into the room out of nowhere, giving Meghan the usual sniffing inspection to see if she had anything good for him to eat.

"Go away, Mr. Woofies," she chastised him. "There's nothing for puppies here."

Her mother tossed her an envelope, which she caught in midair.

"Mercury delivered this when he came by," her mother said simply, although she was conspicuously restraining some excitement.

Meghan ripped the envelope open and read the slip of paper inside:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL

of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,

Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

"Mum…" Meghan drew in a sharp breath. Her heart was pounding in her throat, and her voice was rising with excitement. "Is this what I think it is?"

"Read on," her mother urged.

Dear Miss Wolf,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than June 31.

Yours Sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,

Deputy Headmistress

"I've got it!" Meghan shrieked with delight. "I've really got it! I'm really magical, Mother!"

"And I've been waiting for this day for years!" Meghan's mother clasped her hands together, tears welling up at the corners of her eyes. "My youngest is finally going off to Hogwarts!"

"And I didn't even think I could make it!" Meghan sighed.

"Well, you should have." Her mother smiled ruefully. "Don't you remember that you have a birthday in a few days?"

Something cold wrenched Meghan's stomach at these words.

"Um…I do?" she croaked in a faint voice.

"Don't give me that!" Her mother teasingly jabbed her on the shoulder. "You look forward to your birthday every year, and you've never forgotten it since you were four years old. Do you expect me to believe that you don't remember your own birthday now, especially since this is the special year?"

"Of course not, Mum." Meghan laughed uneasily. "I was just joking. No one would really forget their own birthday."

The truth was that she had, and for the first time in her life, as far as she could remember. She had actually been so busy in battling her lonely days and sleepless nights that she couldn't even think about it.

"Now, don't you plan to tell Anna about this?"

Meghan looked up at her mother and smiled.

"That's right -I've got to owl Anna about it." She made a show of searching around for some parchment and a quill pen, grateful that her mother had not caught on to the telltale quaver in her voice.

For several years, Meghan had been content with having only Anna for a friend, but for the first time in her life she desired a bunch of friends from the wizard world. She imagined calling them up on the telephone (except she had been told that most wizard children did not have them) and pouring out the news of her acceptance over and over again to excited ears.

Instead, she only had her mother, who nodded patiently as Meghan read her acceptance letter out loud, over and over again. She scribbled the news to Anna and tied it to Mercury's leg. After she sent the owl outside, she watched it fly off into the distance, in the direction of that school of magic that she had yet to see.

She almost wished that she were Thumbelina's size, so that she could have sealed herself into the envelope and gone along with Mercury.

But of course, she wasn't to go to Hogwarts for a few more months yet. In the meantime, she had to serve at least six detentions, finish her last dreadful year of primary school, and get ready. She grinned and reached into the acceptance letter envelope, searching for the enclosed list of school supplies.