The Griffinqueen- Chapter 1

Woah... I just went through this a second time and was amazed by all the mistakes. I wasn't kidding in my A A/N (below). Well, it should be fixed now.

The Griffinqueen

A/N: This is my first fanfic. Please let me know if you like it or even if you have any honest criticism; I hate people who go around dissing everyone.

A A/N (another author's note): This was not made with an HTML editor and I can make mistakes. Let me know if you see something that doesn't quite work. E-mail at JessiSh@aol.com, or put it in your review.

Long and annoying disclaimer that you don't have to read if you're not a lawyer: I acknowledge that none of these characters or places or ideas are mine except for Morgana, Circe, Uric, Morgana's parents, Merlin, the Podswollop charm, Johnson House, and Circe's parents. Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat, the Hogwarts Express, owl post, Professors Snape, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Vector, ect., Harry Potter, Penelope Clearwater, the four Houses: Ravenclaw, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor, Fawkes, Nearly Headless Nick, the Gray Lady, Great Gray owls, Muggles, the Minister and Ministry of Magic, Quidditch and all ideas related to it, including the players, their positions, balls, and the players' jobs in respect to their positions and excluding Morgana's local league, Roger Davies, Silver Arrows, Cho Chang, the Great Hall, Arithmancy, and anything else that I don't feel like putting down at the moment belong to J.K. Rowling. Also, Cassiopeia and Kiri belong to novadragon, and Stormy Riddle belongs to herself. I do have permission from EternalSailorChibi to use her characters, mainly because in real life she's one of my best friends, and I also have permission from novadragon. Portions of the dialogue will belong to my friends, because they feed me lines, especially for their characters.

Note
The editor realizes that there may be some discrepancies between this account and the popular Harry Potter series, such as certain roles played by Stormy. The reader is assured that these are, indeed, facts. The editor, in all cordiality, would like to emphasize that the Harry Potter view of Hogwarts is a dramatization, and, while conveying basically the same storyline, may not entirely fir the truth of events due to plot restraints.

Prologue

The lights in the house flickered, then died.

"Great," muttered a girl sitting at the table. She had gold hair and piercing brown eyes. She looked to be about ten or eleven, and she had been writing on a piece of parchment.

The girl lifted her quill and got up from the table.

"How come the lights HAVE to go out when I'm the only one here?" she complained to empty air. "Mother's at the store and Father and the triplets are at the dentist's.

"How come we HAD to have a power outage?"

She sighed and started pulling the kitchen cabinets open, feeling around inside of them in the dark.

"Where DID Mother put the flashlight? We must have twenty and I can't even find ONE!"

She turned and walked down the corridor, moving rather quickly because, though she never would have admitted it, the shadowy darkness scared her a bit.

"Mother must hoard them in her room," she reassured herself.

She finally reached her mother and father's bedroom and immediately began rummaging around in a drawer on the bedside table.

"Aha!" She managed to locate a very old, very disused, and VERY dusty flashlight. It sputtered for quite a bit before finally turning into a bright beam that cut through the darkness like a knife.

"Oh.... what's this?" The awed remark came out as the girl stared at a small, leather-bound book. Although she had seen plenty of books that were similar, there was something you felt, something intangible, that made it different. It seemed out of place in the drawer, as if it belonged to some far-off, mystical world. Embossed on fading gold letters on its front was a simple message.

"Circe Mystos, 2001," the girl read aloud.

Suddenly the wheels were turning in her head. 2001? Harry Potter must've been a kid then! The famous Harry Potter! What she would have given to be alive at that time...

The realization struck her like a hammer strikes an anvil.

If Harry Potter was a kid then, Mother would've been too!

Maybe it's a diary.

But when she opened the cover, the girl quickly saw it was no diary.

"A recording. A recording of all that happened," the girl murmured. "In her fourth year, this Circe Mystos. She wrote down all that came to pass."

She meant to merely skim the yellowed pages. But she found herself being pulled into the story. Soon the girl was living in the world of Hogwarts, twenty-five years ago.

Chapter 1: The She-griffin

Crack!

The angry lightning struck out at the tower, but it was not able to touch the magically protected tiles.

Its tantrum did, however, disturb a monstrous creature perched on the roof. It was an enormous she-griffin.

Her talons raked the roof as she gloried in the destruction of the storm. The mighty wings stretched to their full span, she reared up on her hind lion claws and raised her head to shriek her challenge to the sky.

Eeeeyiiirrrrrr!!

The cry echoed against the walls of the castle. It was bone-jarring, the eagle scream, as if you knew that the unimaginably free spirit of the hunting bird was packed into that one screech.

Having belted out her war cry, the hunter took off into the night sky.

* ~ *

It was very late indeed when Morgana stumbled into the Ravenclaw common room.

Throughout her midnight journey, no one seemed to notice her. Not even the occasional ghost drifting along the corridors looked at her when she stared directly into a mirror, tapped it with her wand, muttered something inaudible, and disappeared up a staircase that wasn't there before. If you had been there, you would have sworn that her gold hair and brown eyes were never reflected in the fancy, silver-rimmed looking-glass.

Wand in hand, she slipped into the common room, only to find it empty. Quickly, she was walking down the stone-paved corridor that branched off to the right. When she came to a spot on he left wall that had a magnificent eagle painted on it, Morgana turned to face the painted bird. She put both feet onto the floorstone directly in front of the eagle.

Instantly, the outline of a door materialized. It swung open when she touched it.

Morgana found herself in the girl's third year dormitory. Climbing to the top of the second bunk, she thanked her lucky stars that the ladder had not squeaked. She carefully removed her Great Gray owl from her pillow. It preferred her bed to the owlery, but then Morgana had a way with birds.

Lying on her back staring at the blue ceiling, she began to remember how she got to be sneaking into her bed in Ravenclaw so late.

Her parents, a witch and a wizard, had both been born among Muggles (non-magic people). It had not been doubted, however, that she would get into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, only a question of how, when, and why.

As a young child, Morgana had showed great promise. To get her a headstart, therefore, her parents had begun to teach her in basic magic. They suddenly stopped. Morgana did not know why: they just did. She thought that perhaps Dumbledore had kept them from teaching her anything wrong, or maybe to not let her get ahead of the Muggle-borns who went to Hogwarts. At any rate, she learned nothing more of the craft she was so eager to practice until she got to the famed wizard school.

She still remembered the day she got the letter. A huge black owl had flown in through the window, and immediately seated itself in her lap. She tore the letter off its leg, hardly daring to hope. Absentmindedly stroking the owl, she read the letter like a person who has always known that a good thing will come, but can hardly believe that it did. Presently, she forgot to keep petting the owl, when it really sunk in that she was going to wizard school, to maybe get a great career, maybe the Minister of Magic!

Looking back, Morgana realized that she had been a little too ambitious, but nothing had seemed impossible that fateful day.

Anyway, she had hardly slept at all for several weeks until the day to board the train at King's Cross on platform nine and three-quarters came. Then she fairly burst with excitement. On the train, she met Circe, who would become her best friend. To her delight, the Sorting Hat put them both in Ravenclaw. Her other friend, Uric, another Ravenclaw, had just sort of happened. He was one of the most fun people Morgana had ever met. They argued a lot, but they really did enjoy each other's company.

All three were such close friends, however, that it had not been long before they found out each other's secrets. The whole reason that Morgana's secret had been secret at all was (1) to give her some peace, and (2) to keep parents from getting worried. After all, with the monster she could transform at will to, well, let's just say that parents would be a little nervous about their children's safety. Though let nobody say there weren't perks, like being able to do spells without a wand.

It had always been that way. Her mother seemed slightly surprised she wasn't put in Gryffindor, but neither of her parents were worried. They did insist that she send owls all the time to the house, an old Victorian affair: her owl Merlin was getting quite a workout.

She had gotten Merlin as a going away present from her parents. They had had no doubts that she would like an owl best. They were right. Merlin was the greatest pet she had ever had. So faithful, loyal, and loving in her predicament. Not many others were.

Of course, being in the same year as Harry Potter, she had heard of him. Quite the hero he was. Penelope Clearwater had been a friend of hers when she got the news that she had been petrified. Everyone was horrified when it happened, and of course when Harry stopped the attacks, the rest of the school was so grateful they could hardly speak. Morgana was more than a match for a basilisk transformed, but if it caught her human, which was a danger, since both of her parents were Muggle-born, than she was finished. Even the ghosts were scared after the attack on Nearly Headless Nick.

And also, saving the world three times from Voldemort was, obviously, a huge achievement. But she never paid too much attention to Harry. Maybe it has something to do with him stealing the spotlight, she thought bitterly. I could have been great, but all anyone pays attention to is the amazing Harry Potter.

Looking again at the ceiling, she realized how different it was from her ceiling at home. At home, her bedroom was in one of the towers, one that pointed straight up to the sky. There was a huge skylight as its only ornament: otherwise it was completely white, with swirly patterns on it.

Her thoughts became slower and less reasonable as she drifted off to sleep.

* ~ *

"You look terrible!" remarked a concerned Circe.

"Have you been out all night again?" accused Uric.

"Hey, don't baby me," complained Morgana. "And, for your information, I was not out all night."

Uric snorted. "Sure looks like it to me," he retorted.

"Just drop it," intervened Circe. "Sheesh, you two could win the Catfighting Olympics!"

"Who asked you?" questioned an irritated Morgana.

"I see what Circe means," Uric quipped to himself.

"Humph," Morgana grumbled, and stalked away from the breakfast table.

* ~ *

Circe Mystos, an auburn-haired, dark blue-eyed Astronomy lover, usually took the peacemaker's side of any argument. Though she didn't mention it often, she had four brothers, equally older and younger, and an older sister. Her family was in fact descended in direct female line from Circe of Greece, the famous ancient sorceress. In this family, the girls inherited the name and the wealth, though usually there was only one girl per family. Circe being the second daughter, no one really knew what to do with her. Perhaps this, along with her middle child status, had to do with her timidity. In Morgana's opinion she needed to stand up for herself more, but then Morgana was the queen of self-esteem. It was a debate how two such different personalities were such close friends. Perhaps it proved the theory about opposites attracting.

Uric, on the other hand, lived to be noticed. Somewhat in between class clown and nerd, he could and would make a joke about everything. He was a Muggle-born only child and one of his most common comic sources was his childhood. His tousled brown hair and twinkling chestnut eyes were a sure sight wherever there was a party. Though he didn't have much of a penchant for trouble, he was definitely a personality.

As for Morgana herself, the best word to describe her was fierce. Except for Circe and Uric, no one else really cared to learn more.