A/N: I've never written anything for the Harry Potter fandom before, never really planned to, but then this little crossover idea popped into my head so I thought I'd give it a try.

A Little Witch Writes Home

A Mansfield Park & Harry Potter crossover fanfiction

One-shot ficlet

The little fair-haired first-year was crying. She was crouched behind a stool in the kitchen, alone – or so she hoped – weeping her tiny, broken heart out.

She had not at all wanted to leave Portsmouth and her noisy brothers and sisters; her mama was going to have a new baby. But mama said she had a special gift – that it was the reason she sometimes made scary things happen without meaning to, and why she had nightmares at night and headaches in the morning – and she was to go away, on a long journey, to school, where she would learn to use her gift properly.

She had been told all her life to be good, and done her very best to abide by the demand, now – before they put her on the train – they'd told her she must be grateful as well.

And she tried, really she had.

But the castle was large, and she got lost within it too easily. The other children sneered at her hand-me-down robes – as did some of the teachers. No one, she thought, meant to be so very unkind, but she was the poor child from a non-wizarding family and she was made to feel it.

The house-elves, when they found her creeping about the kitchen like a frightened mouse – twice before this – had tried, in their harried way, to help her, but she was terribly afraid of them, never having known of such creatures before, and shrank back and tried to shoo them away with shaking hands, tears afresh streaming down her blanched face.

"Forgive me that I'm ungrateful," sobbed Fanny, burying her face in her lap. "But I'm so unhappy."

"Hello there?" said a voice above her. "Are you crying? What's the matter?"

She lifted her head and saw a kind boy with warm eyes. He looked rather a great deal older than her – she suspected him of being in his sixth year.

"Are you ill? I over-ate my first year and was sick all over my dorm, you know. Or perhaps you are still queasy from your first train-ride, or in shock. That does happen."

She wiped at her slowing tears with the back of her hand. No, she told him, she was not ill.

Was she puzzled by her lessons? He could tutor her, if she liked. Or, was that not it after all, and it was really that... Well... Had someone been unkind?

"No... Oh, no." She sniffed. "That is, Professor Lee said I wasn't too bright, when I didn't know what Wolfsbane was – I thought it must be a kind of lavender. And a seventh-year boy from Slytherin House pulled my hair and told me I was too small to really be eleven. H-he... He said that I could fit in his sister's doll-house at his home in Northamptonshire..."

The boy rolled his eyes. "That would be my brother, Tom. You mustn't mind him – he's all bark and no bite. He wouldn't ever really hurt you – not for the world – he just thinks he's entitled to tease the first years, now he's seventeen, because the big boys used to tease him when he first came."

"Please, excuse me" – and she tried to get up, only her knees wobbled and she sank back down – "I... I am lost. I cannot find the dorms again. Moreover I've forgotten the password."

"It's all right, I'll help you – you're in Hufflepuff." He pulled out the stool to give her more room, then offered his hand. "That's me as well; so I know the way."

She stood, finally, and allowed him to put an arm around her.

"Who would comfort you at home?"

Her sobs shook her once again.

"Oh... Home. That's it. I think you're sorry to leave your mum – and that shows you're a very good girl. But you're among friends here, don't forget."

"It's not my mama I miss, not the most," she confessed, pulling her shabby robes more tightly about herself. "I miss my brother William."

"He'll write to you soon, depend upon it. Why, I bet you'll get a letter as soon as breakfast tomorrow morning!"

She was distraught, wringing her small hands together. "He said I must write to him first, but I haven't any parchment!"

He exclaimed, if that was all her difficulty, he should get her some parchment at once, and – moreover – she could use his own owl to send it right away, soon as she was done composing all she wished to tell her brother.

"Your owl?" Her eyes widened and there was a quaver in her voice.

"Come, Fanny, don't be so alarmed, as if it's anything so very much – it's what anyone might do for a friend."

A friend.

She had a friend!

There was something so very beautiful in that.

"I'm Edmund, by the way."

"Frances, that's me; except everybody calls me Fanny – because it's my mama's name, too."

Smiling, she pulled herself nearer him, trotting alongside him as they left the kitchen, feeling the first genuine rush of non-compelled gratitude since her arrival at Hogwarts.

My Dearest William,

I write to you from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

At first I was very sorry to be here, though Mama says I must be grateful, because it costs such a lot of money we haven't got, but then I met Edmund – I told him about you, William, and about Susan and Mary, too, and little Betsey, even.

It was he who asked if I wished to write home to you, and I told him I hadn't any parchment. And didn't he give me enough! Enough for all my schoolwork, and more letters and stories than you'll ever want to receive from me.

Edmund has taught me to be more cheerful with the other girls in Hufflepuff House, and they let me play with them a great deal more now. Yet do not think we have time for nothing but games – we have classes most of the day. We aren't allowed to play at all during those, and they take off points if you don't pay attention to the spells.

I think each day I grow a little bolder. Even Professor Lee says they might make a decent witch of me yet.

Tom – that's Edmund's brother – told me he was sorry he pulled my hair and said I was too small. And sorry for the time he pointed and laughed at me when I tripped and fell on my face in the hallway, and for telling everybody about it after. And for the time – last week, I think – he threatened to turn me into a mouse and feed me to Edmund's owl (Tom hasn't got an owl himself – he's got a Siamese cat so flat-faced and fat it looks like a pug; it's a cat from the litter of kittens his mother's familiar had, he says).

He gave me a pretty present he magicked himself: a little magic box which can shrink or else grow, depending on what you wish to put in it.

I assured him, of course, that there were no hard feelings. I do feel sorry for Tom, ever since Edmund told me they might make him repeat this year again, if his marks don't improve, and if he and his friends, that's John Yates and Charles Maddox, don't stop using the only working payphone in Hogsmeade to make prank calls.

Tom isn't the dullest boy in school, though. That's James Rushworth – he's much bigger than me – and stouter, too, because he never stops eating – but he's in my year. He's been held back such a great many times. I helped him to learn a spell the other day which had forty-two lines.

Edmund has never been kept back – he's so clever they might let him graduate a full year early. He is to be an Auror, except his girlfriend, Mary Crawford from Ravenclaw, in year five, wants him to be something that pays more.

Mary's brother, Henry, who is in year six with Edmund, isn't very nice – though he reads spells very well in a nice, clear voice. He called me a mudblood; Edmund explained to me what it means, and was very grave when I asked him, but I didn't tell him who said it to me.

I'll write again of any further developments.

Say hello to Mama, Papa, and the rest for me.

Love,

Fanny

P.S. I've thought up a manner of ending for that story we were writing together before I left: Eliza eloped to Paris, with her lover. Unfortunately she lived beyond her means and was imprisoned for debt, but she plotted to murder the guards.

A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.