Abby Longbottom followed behind her father with a bounce in her step. He had finally relented after weeks of asking to tag along with him. Going with him as he passed out the letters to muggleborns had always been a fascination of hers and finally getting to do it had her skipping as she followed her father along the path.
She had always loved the stories of Uncle Harry and Aunt Hermione getting their letters. Harry's especially. Although she knew that the facts of the stories must have been exaggerated with time, the idea of Hagrid visiting him in the middle of a storm in the middle of the ocean was a very funny concept. Hermione's story was much more mundane but the reverence that she held that memory to was what fascinated Abby. Hermione grew nostalgic and a smile had spread across her face as she remembered that day. It was the day that she learned about the world of magic and the day that her influence on it started.
Abby was imagining being able to see another one of those cherished memories as she skipped along after her father. He was dressed up in a muggle business suit while she wore a sundress with a bow around the waistline. He moved forward determinedly but slow enough for her to keep up. He was carrying a leather briefcase that she knew had the sword of Gryffindor lying in the magically expanded inside.
Abby had never actually held the legendary sword that her father took with him everywhere. She remembered how Nick had tried to steal it once and was vehemently reprimanded by her father because of the danger. Maybe that was one of the reasons that Nick had gone to Slytherin.
Abby looked around at the well trodden path that the pair was walking down. They had apparated nearby on the road and were now walking on that path that connected to the road. Abby didn't know how far they were going in but they had been walking for at least two kilometers.
Just when Abby was going to complain about the distance they had to walk, she saw a building come into view in front of her. The building was not new. Paint was peeling in several locations of the front and vines were vines weaving throughout. The building was 3 stories high and there were at least a dozen windows along just the front. While the building was not in perfect condition, it was far from seeming run down. Maybe a part of that was the amount of children that were around.
Even just right outside in the front, Abby was able to see at least seven different children of varying ages playing, running, and talking around the yard. There was a swing set off towards her left where a young boy was swinging at close to a 180 degree swing. On her right a group of three girls around her age sat in a circle on a towel and were eating snacks, and in front of her in a moderately sized stone fountain two older boys were reading books.
Abby followed her father as he walked past all of the children and into the house. Some of the children looked up at them as they passed and Abby gave them all a cheerful wave. Some of them waved back but most of them kept to what they were doing.
Abby's father opened the door and held it open for her to walk in. The first floor of the building appeared to have a kitchen and dining room to her left, a living space to her right where several children were lounging, and a staircase straight ahead. The pair stood in the entrance of the building and waited until someone came to meet them.
One of the younger children gave them a look before running off to somewhere else in the building. A minute later he came back dragging an older woman behind him.
The woman seemed to be quite a few years older than her father and wore a very kind smile. It kind of reminded of her grandmother's smile and it immediately put her slightly more at ease. She was wearing a long and conservative blue dress. As she neared Abby saw that she was eyeing her father warily.
"Hello sir, my name is madam Elizabeth Burgess."
Her father gave a small bow and said "Hello madam, my name is Neville Longbottom and this is my daughter Abby."
madam Burgess's eyes bounced between her and her father before she continued speaking.
"And why have you come here today?" The question itself was innocent in and of itself, but Abby couldn't help but think that it sounded a little bit like an accusation. If her father noticed that, he didn't show it.
"I'm here to talk to one of your charges," he said. "They have been accepted into a very exclusive boarding school."
madam Burgess looked very shocked for a moment but that soon faded to a more obvious skepticism.
"And who is this person you are asking for?"
"One Ms. Emily Frost."
madam Burgess's eyes widened a fraction but her expression soon shut down hard.
"I'm sorry, but there is no one here with that name." She said in a tone that broached no argument.
"Are you sure about that madam?" her father asked. "According to our records she was last staying here."
As he was saying this he reached into his briefcase and handed the letter that accepted Emily into Hogwarts to madam Burgess. She took the letter and looked at it skeptically.
"You have records of where this Emily lives?" She asked. "Isn't that excessive for a simple prospect to your boarding school?"
"Well Emily has been written down for acceptance since birth."
"Since birth?" madam Burgess said in shock. "Who would put down the name of an orphan at birth for a school?"
madam Burgess opened the letter and scanned its contents and her skeptical look returned. Abby would have panicked about a muggle reading a Hogwarts letter but her father's explanation of the muggle repelling charms in the letter had dissuaged her of that before they had arrived. He had explained that unless a muggle already knew about the existence of magic, then they would be unable to understand the letter.
"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?" madam Burgess said.
Well there goes that, Abby thought sardonically.
Her father was spluttering openly. "Y-you can read that?"
"Of course I can read!" madam Burgess barked. "What do you think I am, an idiot!? And I won't have any of you magic schools taking any of my kids away!"
"You already know about magic?" her father asked dumbly.
"Well I'd be pretty to not know if it existed after Emliy started to fly about."
Fly about?
"Fly about?" her father asked, surprised. "You're saying that Emily can levitate herself wandlessly?"
"Oh and now you have wands now do you?" madam Burgess continued. "I don't care whatever it is that you want from Emily and Violet but you are not getting them!"
"madam, I assure you that Hogwarts is one of the most elite magical schools on the planet."
"I don't care about you stupid magic schools. You are not going to take my girls and do your science experiments on them!"
"Science experiments?" Neville wondered aloud mostly to himself. "No. No. Hogwarts is not a place where any…experiments happen. I promise you that. Two of my children go to Hogwarts and Abby here is going to be starting this year."
That seemed to calm the madam a little bit but she still looked uneasy.
"Alright I'm willing to hear you out about this," she said after a long moment.
The madam brought them upstairs and down the hallway to the left where she led them into a room that appeared to be her office. The office had what appeared to be hundreds or thousands of papers stacked around the room. Any forms that were involved in the running of the orphanage seemed to be in this one room, but the atmosphere of warmth and comfort of the rest of the orphanage carried into the office.
Her father sat down in one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk as the madam was sitting. Abby sat next to him and saw him prepare to start his explanation of the magical world.
"Well normally I would start with a basic explanation of what magic is but it seems like you already know about it to some extent so I'll skip the very basics for now," he said which caused the madam to nod along. "Well, then perhaps an explanation about what Hogwarts is would help now. Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry is a wizarding boarding school whose primary function is to educate magical children so by the time they graduate after 7 years, they are prepared to enter into a magical profession."
"You said a magical profession. Are your students not usually able to find jobs in the normal world?"
"Well students who come to Hogwarts have a 96% rate of continuing into a field in the magical world. Only a student or two every year decides to pursue a mundane profession."
"Is that because they don't want to or parts of their education are ignored to the point where they are not able to find work. As an educator I'm very concerned about your educational standards. You haven't told me anything about the classes you have."
Her father looked taken aback for a second but soon relaxed again.
"I understand your concerns. Some of my friends who are muggle-born remember their parents expressing similar thoughts," he said fondly. "The core classes that we teach are Charms, Transfiguration, Potions, Herbology, History of Magic, Defense, and Astronomy. All of these classes have a writing component that helps to build the students' literacy. However, mathematics is a field where I've been told we are sub par. The closest thing we offer is an Arithmancy class in the third year that uses some core principles of algebra and arithmetic and applies them to their magical applications."
"I don't think that they are going to be missing anything with the lack of math classes," the madam said wryly. "Alright, you said that you prepare your students for life after school. What kind of professions do you students tend to go into?"
After her father answered her question about professions, the madam asked a follow up about the ministry that he had mentioned tangentially in relation to professions. They continued trading questions and answers for almost an hour. After listening to the exchange for so long she began to notice a trend in the questions that the madam was asking. She was not asking many about the nature of magic or the existence of it and was instead more interested in the world, the people, and education. Her father obviously noticed this too.
"Forgive me for asking, but you don't seem very surprised to be hearing about the existence of magic."
"Well I would be pretty foolish to not notice with the amount of tricks that the girls have been pulling over the years."
"And how long ago did you notice it?"
The madam looked confused about this.
"I don't know what you mean. It would be impossible for anyone to not notice it. Emily is almost always using magic. Everyone here at the orphanage knows about it."
Emily felt a cool breeze blow in from the open window and she shivered a little bit. She rubbed her hands together in order to get some of the lost heat into them before she could stop herself. Shocked, she sat on her hands to make them stop creating heat.
"Well that is unusual," her father started slowly. "Usually when we come to give muggleborns their letters their powers are not as well known. When we tell the children about the magical world we also tell them that they can't tell anyone who didn't already know about the magical world. It's actually against the law to tell mundanes about the magical world if they are not family."
The breeze that was coming from the window suddenly intensified and some of the papers around the room started to blow around. The madam sighed and looked annoyed.
"Emily come out," she said while looking out the window.
Abby was confused about what she meant until she saw a girl was poking her head in from the outside. What shocked her about that was that they were on the second floor of the building.
The girl came through the window head first and floated down towards the ground. Another gust of wind came through and soon enough she was floating a few inches off of the ground.
Abby tensed in her seat and felt some cackles of heat in her hands and up her arms. How is she doing that, she thought to herself as she stared in shock at the girl that was floating in the air in front of her.
Abby only saw people floating with magic when they were on a broom. Was the girl hiding a broom on her? No, the girl grew up in the muggle world and has had no access to brooms. Abby was also struck by her appearance.
She had the palest skin out of any person that Abby had ever seen in her life. Her hair hung around her shoulders and was a shade of pure white, like snow and her eyes were a vibrant purple. Abby found herself frozen by her appearance for a long moment and was unable to look away from her.
Her father stood up from his chair and walked over to the girl in order to make his introduction, but as he was halfway over he stopped suddenly.
He stood straight as stone as a voice sounded out in the room.
"Don't move a muscle," the voice said. The madam let out a sigh.
A tiny flame appeared near his face and Abby stood out of her chair quickly in shock, fearing that she had caused it.
"In 5 seconds I want you to turn around and then walk out of this door," the voice said. "Do you understand me?"
Now that the voice had spoken some more Abby was able to recognize the voice of a little girl.
"Violet!" The madam shouted. "Stop this at once! Do you think that this is any way to treat a guest in your home?!"
The flame that had been growing closer to her fathers face suddenly went out and Abby heard footsteps near her father.
In the blink of an eye a girl appeared behind where her father stood. She had wild jet black hair and pale gray eyes. Her right arm was extended and her hand looked like it was about to make a snap. She had a look of determination on her face as she stared at her father and looked only a moment away from attacking.
Abby looked back to the floating white haired girl and saw that she too was holding one of her arms out like she was about to snap it.
"Girls!" the madam shouted out. "You two stop that this instant! You are behaving so inappropriately! I'm about five seconds away from putting the both of you on toilet duty for the rest of your lives!"
That was what finally got the girls to lower their arms to their sides and stop staring at her father with violent intent. The two girls looked admonished as if they had been caught trying to steal a cookie from a cookie jar.
"You two introduce yourselves now so as to not embarrass yourselves and I any further!"
The two girls looked truly admonished then and the floating white haired girl spoke first. "It is very nice to meet you, my name is Emily." She spoke very quietly from embarrassment from being told off.
"And my name is Violet." the black haired girl said quietly as well. The madam cleared her throat and the girl quickly added a quiet "It's very nice to meet you."
Her father looked shocked at the quick turn of the conversation before he recovered and walked all of the way to Emily.
"Well it seems like you've been eavesdropping and I obviously don't have to explain to you what magic is so that just leaves me with giving you your letter."
Emily looked at the letter suspiciously and didn't reach out to take it.
"Why didn't Violet also get a letter," she said. "She's just as good of a witch as I am, if not better. I'm not going to be going to your school if she can't come with me."
Her father looked like he was deep in thought for a moment before he said, "I'm not sure why Violet didn't get a letter. We send them out to all of the muggleborn born in the country every year. It might just be a mistake but I'll be sure to check in on it once I get back to Hogwarts. In the meantime please take this letter."
Emily finally reached out her hand and took the letter out of his hands before she floated over to where Violet was standing. Abby was mesmerized by the motion and couldn't look away from it. It was like she was swimming through the air.
She tore into the letter alongside Violet and the two read side by side and devoured the letter. After a few minutes of silence the two looked up from the letter again.
"If you can find a letter for Violet too then I'd be very interested in attending your school," Emily said.
Her father smiled at that and moved to sit back down. "That's great. Why don't I spend some time talking with the madam and you guys can show Abby around and ask her any of your questions."
The two girls led her out of the room, down the stairs she had walked up earlier, and out the front door. As they walked both of the girls said hi to several children on the way. Abby got the impression that they were well liked and close with a lot of the children here at the home.
The two girls led her to a part of the lawn that was away from all the other children that Abby saw earlier. There was a large oak tree with low hanging branches which Violet climbed up onto. Emily simply floated up to a comfortable one and looked down onto her.
"You can come up onto the tree, you know."
Abby froze for a second after being addressed but quickly climbed up onto the lowest of the branches. They sat in silence for a second before Abby's curiosity couldn't be contained anymore. "How are you flying?" she asked excitedly.
"Uhhh, magic? Duh," Emily said. "I'm just using magic to push the air around me and make me float."
"But magic doesn't work that way," Abby said. "No one has been able to use magic to make themselves fly."
"You mean no witch has flown before," Emily asked, curious.
"Well we use brooms and those can fly."
"Flying brooms?" Violet asked. "That just sounds ridiculous. And it's magic. It can do anything you can think of. How can nobody have thought of flying before?"
"You've flown before too?" Abby asked.
"Well I have once or twice but it's way harder for me to do it than Emily can." Violet said. "But I can do tons of other magic way better than she can."
"You can do magic?" Abby asked. "How? Neither of you have wands."
"You need a wand to use magic?" Emily asked. "We didn't even know that wands were a thing until today. We just do the magic without a wand."
"You can't do magic without a wand!" Abby said. "The only time people do that is accidental magic."
"Well whenever I lift things I'm definitely not doing it by accident," Violet said. "Here, let me show you."
Violet hopped off of the tree and picked up a rock from the ground. She stared at the rock in her palm for a second before the rock started to float above her head. She moved the rock up, down, farther away from her, back towards her, and had it revolve around her head. She made the rock the size of an ant then grew it to the size of a basketball. She changed the color from purple to red to orange. Then she actually changed it into a basketball and threw it towards the sky where it exploded into colorful fireworks.
Abby couldn't believe what she was seeing. "No one our age is able to do magic without a wand! You shouldn't be able to do that. That's not normal!"
That last thing she said made both of the other girls laugh out loud which made Abby feel embarrassed. "Why are you laughing at me?!" she accused.
"Who cares about what's normal?" Emily said. "It's magic! How can magic be normal! Normal is standing on the ground for your entire life. Normal is having to carry hot things out of the microwave and risk burning yourself. Normal is having to put your clothes away one at a time. We have magic! Isn't that amazing! We can do anything that we can think of if we try hard enough. Who needs to be contained by what is normal and what is not? Look at this."
Emily floated off of the tree and came to a stop about a foot off of the ground. She had her arms spread to about half of her wingspan and kept her head down with her eyes closed. Abby heard the entire clearing around them grow quiet. Eerily quiet with nothing but the sound of the breeze around them.
Then Emily opened her eyes and Abby felt a cold sweat go down her back. Emily's purple eyes were radiating a purple flame. The vibrancy of her eyes had seemed to double and the purple iris had grown to take up her entire eye. Her white hair blew around behind her wildly as the wind suddenly picked up in intensity.
Abby remembered a story that Uncle Harry had once told her. It was the story of a duel that had happened in the past between Voldemort and Dumbledore. The two had duelled with massive snakes composed of water against massive beasts of fiendfyre, even just stray attacks causing mass destruction around them.
She remembered the story of the prophecies in the hall of prophecies all crumbling around them and the power of that many prophecies being unleashed on top of them making the room borderline unusable for years after.
Stories of facing down snakes, riding on the backs of thestrals, desperate fights against dragons, facing down an army where one mistake meant your death.
The story of the castle of Hogwarts healing itself after the war that had ended in its halls. Stone gargoyles leaving their podiums to mend stone. Ghosts materializing to guide help. The forest dwellers leaving their homes to clean the halls, and the people that made that castle home doing anything they could do to fix it.
Those same feelings she got from those stories, of awe and power, were the same feelings that she was getting from the girl in front of her.
The wind was now violently circling around Emily. The howling in her ears had increased to where she could no longer hear anything. Violet walked up to her and tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention. She was pointing up into the sky.
Clouds were forming from the wind that Emily was creating. Dark clouds that had promise of storms. The clouds were billowing against each other and could not hold a shape. It was like watching a timelapse of clouds but it was being played in realtime. And all too soon the clouds began to spark.
In a devastating flash of light, lightning struck down a few feet away from Emily. The thunderclap of sound and pressure pushed Abby back. The force caused her to fall on her behind as she witnessed a marvel of magic.
Emily landed back on the ground. Her irises returned to their original size, the flame disappeared and the vibrancy of her eyes returned to normal. She looked a little out of breath but otherwise completely fine. She wore a cocky smile.
"Well how many rules of magic did that break?" she asked.
Too many to count. But Abby didn't even care about that. What instead she felt was awe.
It was awesome.
Not awesome in its normal context where it is overused in everyday conversation but instead something that you needed to stop whatever you were doing in order to stare at in awe.
Before her stood someone who had the power to summon lightning at will. Someone who might have power to rival the greatest wizards in memory, and they were only 11 before even setting foot in Hogwarts.
It made Abby feel the most alive that she had ever felt in her entire life. The flame inside her lit and her entire body lit up with excitement. Her eyes looked at Emily with concentration and focus and the flame behind them lit with envy.
"Nice one Emily," Violet said. "That was almost your fastest time. A few seconds faster and you would have had it."
Emily groaned. "Really? I swear that I had it that time. That sucks."
"Please come to Hogwarts, Emily," Abby said desperately. She wanted desperately for her to come to at least see another show like that another time.
Emily looked at her curiously. "Sure I will. Soon as they get a letter for Violet I'll come right along."
It was then that an owl flew down to them. It looked slightly angry from having to have been subjected to the sudden onset of lightning and strong gusts. It cawed angrily at Emily which made her look at the owl in shock, then it landed on Violet's shoulder.
The owl was carrying a letter and Violet delicately removed it from its leg. As she read the front of the letter she smiled and showed it to Emily.
"Well it looks like we are coming to Hogwarts after all," Emily said happily. "Violet just got a letter too. Come look, Abby."
Abby happily ran over to look at the envelope but when she did a feeling of ice solidified in her stomach. Not because it wasn't what she expected, it was indeed an acceptance letter to Hogwarts, but because of the name printed on the front.
Ms. Bellatrix "Violet" Black.