ro781727: Valeria's relatives are smart too. Maybe not prodigies, but they got a lot of experience given their jobs and all the years they have on her. Since muggleborn and muggle-raised students are the protagonists of the story, it makes little sense not to make their influence important. I mean, Hermione knew Harry's issues with his relatives - why not involve her parents or other adults from the muggle side?

everything-is-black-and-white: Thanks! The story should become more interesting as it's progressing as it will break further and further from canon. One such big break is coming up in the following chapter.

whatweareafraidof: You might notice how Valeria is surprised at Ron's strong levitation charm during the Yule snowball fight? Or how she respects his skills in chess? Like everyone else she isn't perfect, and Ron's personality hit a big prejudice of hers, just like Dumbledore's actions did. Not repeating the Troll incident played a part in not fixing their attitude towards each other, too. As the story progresses and they both develop as a character, her opinion of him should change.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, JK Rowling does. If I did, the protagonist would have been female. :)

"Are you sure it's here dear? I can't see any doors." Melissa hated deceiving her own family but sometimes needs must. She'd heard of the ancient tavern from her grandfather long ago even if she'd never personally visited - it was rather famous in some circles even back on the continent. But that was from a life her family had left behind and she had had no intentions of dragging her precious daughter into it, not even through bedside stories when she were young. But then her little princess had displayed underage magic and her whole world was turned upside-down... again.

"Of course it's there, mum!" Valeria said, pointing at a tiny, broken-down storefront. "The entrance is just covered by both an illusion and a repelling charm keyed to muggles. Not only will anyone or anything without magic see the false image, but they'll also never consider interacting with it, not even if they're children that like exploring abandoned buildings or businessmen that would like to buy and renovate the place."

"I am a muggle, dear. How do you suppose I get inside then?" And here the rampant prejudice of the wizarding world reared its ugly head. Take eleven-year-olds away from their family for ten months a year for seven years, give them magic and miracles only a few years after their parents had to convince them such things did not exist, teach them to use specific words to refer to those without magic, give them powers to specifically employ against nonmagicals, and have them pass their rebellious teenage years in a society that looked down on their parents as inferiors. As a career diplomat, Melissa could grudgingly respect the elaborate subtlety of it all, even as she was horrified at how the whole system was designed to separate kids from their families. No wonder the vast majority of them ended up abandoning their relatives in favor of their new world. She, Owen and Claude were very lucky Valeria showed no hints of going down that road, even if she had adopted the terminology Melissa despised.

"Don't worry mum, I can get us inside. Just hold on to me." And with that her daughter practically dragged her inside. Yet another reversal of familial responsibilities imposed by their vaunted statute of secrecy. If every muggleborn had to guide their parents in all magical places, how could those kids remain respectful of them? Melissa knew how it felt to drag around an invalid, a practical dead weight. All but inevitably, either indifference or neglect would follow.

Oblivious to her mother's worries, Valeria could barely contain her excitement as she led her mother into the half-darkness of the Leaky Cauldron. Tom, the aging proprietor, lifted his bald head as another pair of visitors arrived for the evening and gave the tall, regal blonde and her much shorter and younger escort a critical stare. The older woman's well-fitted grey dress, simple but expensive boots, understated jewelry in silver and sapphires and aristocratic demeanor would fit well in any pureblood house but the hints of apprehension, the purse of the latest muggle fashion and the fact that her daughter led and she followed indicated a muggle parent escorting a first-generation witch. Besides, he'd previously met the younger of the pair when she'd visited his establishment last year, escorted by none other than Minerva McGonagal.

"Greetings, ladies." Tom said pleasantly. "How can I help you?"

"Well met... Tom is it?" the apprehensive mother greeted him in return. "Excuse my manners... nobody would say what a more proper greeting would be."

"No worries, lady." Tom laughed any perceived faux pas off. "Tom I've been for half a century and Tom I shall be till I'm no more." He set the glass he'd been cleaning down and gave the two of them his full attention. "Now, what would you like? Butterbeer for the young lady? Some fortified wine from the continent? Ogden's finest Firewhiskey, perhaps?" The two of them stared at each other for a moment, displaying the wordless communication common among siblings or closely-knit families. Tom got the impression the younger of the two would not be averse to a drink or two but the elder had just put her foot down.

"Something more lasting than a drink, I reckon." the mother said testily as her daughter smiled and gave him a mischievous wink. "We'd like to reserve one of your rooms for the rest of the summer."

"Indeed?" asked Tom. A curious request. The Leaky Cauldron was an inn as well as a pub of course, but few witches or wizards reserved a room for any length of time. Part-human patrons were more numerous, as well as those magicals who were between jobs and looking for employment in Diagon Alley. Muggleborns and muggles were practically unheard-of.

"Yes. You see, my daughter received her Hogwarts letter only a year ago and she's fascinated with the world of magic." The tall woman looked down at the young witch fondly. "She wants to show us everything - practically dragged me here today. And with a whole shopping district with hundreds of shops and magical establishments... you know how girls are." She smiled and her daughter went red in the face from embarrassment. "I expect we'd be going through here every so often all summer long. So I've been thinking; a room here to store any obviously magical purchases we can't take into muggle London, and somewhere owls can get to frequently without drawing attention."

Ah, that made sense. Tom and Mrs Campbell spent a few minutes to make arrangements and she even got him to waive entrance fees to Diagon Alley; reserving a room for six weeks more than covered that and since they wouldn't be needing the usual meals normally included in that price... she was an excellent haggler, for a muggle. After finalizing the agreement and ensuring they could use the pub's own fireplace in case young miss Campbell had to Floo-call or visit friends, the two of them disappeared into the room upstairs.

"That went better than I expected." Melissa commented once the two of them were safe in the privacy of their own room. Tom had assured them the Leaky Cauldron's rooms boasted fairly good privacy and anti-unlocking charms after all. The man had even joked one could hide from dark wizards in his pub, if one so desired.

"I don't think Tom expected a muggle quite like you, mum." Her daughter said with a knowing grin. "And now that we're in a wizard-owned building, in a wizard-populated district with dozens of other witches and wizards within shouting distance at all times..." She drew her wand with an elaborate flourish. "...I can show you everything we were taught in school, no matter what the Ministry might say."

...

To miss Valeria Campbell,

Fifth room, second floor, Leaky Cauldron, London.

Hello. I hope you're having a happy summer and the like. I know we aren't exactly friends but please hear me out before throwing this letter into the fire, OK? Me and Neville, we've been getting really worried. We've both written Harry several letters over the past two weeks and gotten no reply at all. Our owls return with the letters delivered just fine but not a word from our friend. At first I'd thought Errol was to blame. He's the family owl and quite old - tends to miss letters or fails to deliver occasionally. But then I got word from Neville saying he had the same problem so we thought we'd contact more of Harry's friends and ask them.

We don't know what's going on - Dad says he wrote too and will go and check if there's no reply by the end of the month. After our run-in with Quirrel in June I know you're Harry's friend too and you live in London. Harry's aunt and uncle's house in Surrey is, like, twenty miles from there - I looked it up. Maybe you could go check early? If something's up with Harry we'd really like to know.

Ron Weasley

"Typical." Valeria snorted as she passed the letter on to Claude and returned to her work. Enchantment was already hard enough for someone her age; if she didn't focus the cloth would be ruined and twenty hours of enspelling would go to waste. She'd been trying to enchant one of her new robes for the coming year to apply a Featherlight charm on the wearer for nearly a week but only that evening had she felt she was getting somewhere. It had actually been Claude's suggestion, and not only because he wanted to see a new magic item being made. He'd told her, rather reasonably too, that if someone threw her off a window or she fell down a pit trap then would be a bad time to be drawing her wand and trying to cast.

"That's strange." Claude said after he'd read the letter. "One would think wizards would have magical means to check up on someone."

"We do." She confirmed as she pushed the Featherlight charm into the cloth and let it settle, exhaling with relief as the preexisting resizing charms failed to react adversely for once. Maybe she should have tried on mundane cloth instead but she liked how the magical robes fit her too much - vanity had its own price. "Harry lives in a muggle house though. No magical communication methods allowed."

"Seems like an oversight." Her brother let the letter fall on the bed and turned to observe her work. Valeria didn't know what he gained from that; there wasn't visual to observe other than the initial casting... and any mishaps. He'd laughed for fifteen minutes a few days ago when the robe had turned pink, wrapped around her torso and shrunk to fit snugly, trapping both her arms. "Given your recent misadventures, shouldn't adult wizards keep an eye on all of you in case the Dark Wanker turns up again?"

"I'm just a second-year student." she countered, picking the robe up and walking to the improvised changing stall they'd set up in the northern corner. "By the time I learn how the minds of adult wizards actually work, I'll be Grand Sorceress."

"Dream on, little sis." Claude said with a laugh. "Seriously though, I don't get why they can't drop in for a minute and check up on him. This 'Apparition' thing you told me about, all adults can do it, right?"

"Most of them, and no idea. Bet you five pounds in ten-to-one odds it has something to do with Dumbledore though." She patted down her newly enchanted robes as even the lightest breeze lifted them now that they were near-weightless. "I'll go check up on him once I'm done. All that's left is to shift the enchantment around so it applies to the wearer rather than the robes."

"No bet." Her brother gave her a small frown. "Should you be wearing that while still working on it?"

"Second year student here, not master enchantress." She answered with a sigh. "The hands-on approach is all I know. Shouldn't be too difficult - visualization of intent is all it needs." She flicked her wand a few times, drawing the enchantment around. Ignoring the flips her stomach made as its weight shifted unevenly, she visualized the finished product and willed more magic into it. The robe turned crimson red, shrunk two sizes as the resizing charms reacted, and tried to fit anyway. The fabric constricted around her ribs and midriff like a corset, while settling around her chest and hips like a glove. Awesome for her image, not nearly as good for anything else.

"Wow, sis!" Claude exclaimed, trying but failing to refrain from laughing. "You sure you want to replicate 1800s' fashion? Don't get me wrong, boys will love it. But can you actually breathe in it?"

"Shut... up... and help me... get... it... off!"

Naturally, her reply sent him into peals of laughter and she had nearly fainted by the time he deigned to pull the robe off her.

...

"Have you ever heard of seat belts?" She was shouting later that evening into the pimpled face of the eighteen-year-old moron of a conductor for the Knight Bus.

"Nope, I don' fink. Some muggle torture implement, are they?" Yep, terminal intellect decay in evidence. With that and a name like "Stan Shunpike" of course he'd landed that kind of job. A chivalrous guy though; he'd held her hand and kept her hair out of her face while she lost her last meal down Magnolia Crescent. Or maybe he'd had to do the same for every customer of the purple, triple-decker, teleporting, super-fast wizarding vehicle. The only thing that had helped her keep her meal from vacating the premises during the trip was a discussion on how the bus actually worked with the driver, an older wizard named Ernest Prang.

In addition to the animation charms the engine ran on instead of burning fuel, the bus had featherlight charms on the chassis and sticking charms on its wheels to ensure extreme acceleration without being launched off the road the first time it attempted a turn. A special detection charm scanned all of Britain for magicals in need who performed a specific wand gesture so the bus could come and pick them up. Space expansion charms turned outwards bent space in a bubble around it so that every obstacle, from stray animals to muggle houses, appeared to be pushed aside to avoid potential collisions. A mild concealment charm blocked observation unless one had magic or already knew of the Bus' existence and last but not least, a series of portkey enchantments set on a small map of England by the driver's seat allowed the whole bus to instantly jump between a few dozen of predetermined locations all over the country, cutting down travel times significantly. Unsurprisingly, one such location had been preset less than five minutes' walk from Harry Potter's current residence.

"You OK?" Stan asked worriedly when she finally stopped retching. Maybe he'd misjudged him. Note to self: fix the Knight Bus safety features at the earliest opportunity.

"Fine, thanks. I'll be fine from here, I think." She hid her wand back in her pocket but didn't let it go. If something near Harry's house was wrong she wanted to be able to react instantly. And it wasn't the only ace up her sleeve either. Now, if she remembered correctly, Privet Drive was down that end of Magnolia Crescent...

...

Houses, houses, more houses... where were the little shops, historic and civic buildings and everything that gave a neighborhood some character? Urban renewal at its worst; let's turn everything into a carbon-copy of everything else, arrange them into neat rows and columns and sell it all at exorbitant prices. She'd heard her parents complaining about it numerous times and after experiencing the many colors of Diagon Alley or seeing the little villages during her trips on Hogwarts Express she found that she agreed with them.

She found Harry busy mowing the lawn of Number Four, Privet Drive under the summer sun and approached cautiously. Nothing looked wrong at first sight, but appearances could be deceiving. Why, a kid doing that kind of work late Sunday evening when he should be out playing and having fun? The fat boy keeping an eye on him and occasionally throwing a casual insult could be a jailor in disguise, stealing his letters and ensuring the kid kept his head down and didn't cry out against the child labor and abuse his guardians habitually heaped on him. What were the chances, right? Naah, everyone living here must be an upstanding citizen - look how prim and proper their house was! No reason to bother Child Services...

"Somebody else's problem:" of all the ideas Valeria found abhorrent, she hated this one the most.

"Hello there, Harry!" she cheerfully said in greeting as soon as she was within talking distance. "Having fun?"

Harry jumped up and turned around, narrowly avoiding a stumble on his gardening tools. The much larger, obese boy didn't fare as well; he landed his enormous backside on freshly cut grass, messing up his clothes real good.

"Valeria?" the Boy-Who-Lived asked while trying to hide messy clothes and even messier hands. Awkward... "What are you doing here?"

"I live in London, Harry. According to Ron Weasley, that's practically next door." She rolled her eyes and looked from him to larger boy getting to his feet. "Are you Dudley Dursley? Harry has told me a lot of things about you." None of them good but a good girl strove to be polite at all times.

"I... err... yeah?"

"Eloquent too. You must be top of your class." A smart girl on the other hand was polite while insulting the stunted intellect of beached whales anyway. Harry at least got it, if his smirk was any indication. Abandoning all attempts to be presentable on account of futility, he gave her a much wider and sincere smile.

"Why didn't you write, warn me you were coming?" he asked, the tiniest hint of hurt in his voice.

"How would that help, Harry?" she asked, raising one pale eyebrow in question. "It's not as if my other two letters got a reply, let alone the dozen or so each from Neville and Weasley in the past couple of weeks."

"What?!" he exclaimed in utter surprise. "You actually sent me letters? I mean..." his shoulders dropped, his thoughts on the matter evident.

"We're friends, Harry!" she said, crossing her arms in annoyance. "Why wouldn't we?"

"You actually got friends?" Dudley interjected, his confused expression a dead ringer for Crabbe or Goyle during a test. She gave him her best murderous look but it went over his head. "How come you got no letters then?"

"What's going on here, boy?" a much louder voice issued forth from the older, vaster copy of Dudley coming out from inside the house. Great, there came Harry's uncle Vernon, the mugliest muggle in Wizarding Britain. "Why aren't you working? Do you want to be locked up again? And who's the girl?"

"I'm Valeria, sir, pleased to meet you!" she said in false excitement, giving her hand for him to shake. "One of Harry's friends. You know, from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Vernor Dursley went redder than a tomato, rivaling Ron Weasley's worst moments in color, which should qualify him from some kind of award. The Most-Likely-Imminent-Stroke-Victim one, probably. Puffing up in obvious fury, a small vein pulsing on his forehead, he opened his mouth to say something ugly, insulting, or both. And then promptly closed it without a sound, realizing they were in plain view of half the houses in the street and he was about to make a scene. Pity.

"What the bloody hell is a freak like you doing near my house?" he hissed through gritted teeth, trying to swallow his immediate retort and not draw everyone's attention all the way to Kent.

"Harry wasn't receiving our letters, sir." She replied reasonably. "I dropped in to check up on him just in case he was in trouble. You don't happen to know what happened to Harry's letters, do you?"

"Why should I care how you freaks operate? I barely tolerate him in my house as it is!" A reasonable question, one Valeria was happy to answer completely and truthfully for him.

"Because of the terrorist, sir?" she said earnestly. "You'd want to be careful about him, no?"

"What the bloody hell are you blabbering about?" Vernon Dursley's patience was nearing its end but his interest, or maybe his fear, wouldn't let him kick her off his lawn just yet.

"The wizard terrorist, sir. The one who killed Harry's parents and so many other wizards and nonmagicals a decade ago and wanted to kill Harry too." Despite taunting the Dursleys being rather fun, the reality of the situation wouldn't allow her to be anything but solemn. "He is not dead as most believed, sir. I, Harry and a few friends... we stumbled upon one of his plots about a month ago." She stared at Vernor Dursley's rapidly paling face before continuing. "Didn't anybody warn you about him sir? Didn't Harry tell you anything about his school year? I mean, our friends and I were so worried about the lack of letters because we feared he'd dropped in and killed everyone in this house, or something." At least she did - she wasn't very sure about any of the adult wizards. All this business of sending the Boy-Who-Lived to a muggle house for the summer while he couldn't use magic directly seemed less than safe to her.

The elder Dursley stared at her in silence for well over a minute. Then, coming to a decision, he waved the three of them towards the house. "Let's get inside. And then you're going to tell me everything."