Thank you for reading thus far.  I hope that you are enjoying.  Please don't forget to review.  It makes my day, and if you sign your review, I'll read at least one thing that you've written, and probably more. 

Disclaimer: Taineyah used to own Harry Potter and all rights and affiliates, but then Warner Bros. and J.K. Rowling challenged her to a poker game...let's just say that Taineyah isn't very good at poker, because she thought she was playing Go Fish!

Taineyah: That's not true!  I thought I was playing Cheat!!!

Disclaimer:  Well sorry!

Taineyah:  You ought to be!  There's a very big difference between Cheat and Go Fish!

Disclaimer:  *rolls eyes*

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                It was Friday, and Madelyn spent the day selecting courses and reading bits of schoolbooks, which Dumbledore had brought to her from the library.  She was also asked to put on a tatty old hat, which yelled that she was to go to Gryffindor.  At 7:00, Dumbledore came by with four students. 

                "These are your tutors for the classes you have selected.  They will assist you in your attempts to catch up with the rest of your peers."  Dumbledore then turned to the students, three girls and a boy.  "This is Madelyn Harris.  She's new to magic, so she'll need you to explain some things."

                One of them, a girl with bushy brown hair, nodded and said, "I'm Hermione Granger.  I'll be tutoring you in Transfiguration, Charms, Astronomy, Potions, Herbology and I'm one of your Defence Against the Dark Arts tutors."

                "Thank you.  I'm very pleased to meet you," Madelyn replied politely.  "I hope I won't be putting you out too much--that's a lot of ground to cover."

                "It'll be okay.  I'm good at those subjects and it'll do me good to review some of the early work."

                Not to be outdone, the other two girls introduced themselves. 

                "I'm Parvati Patil," said the darker haired one.

                "I'm Lavender Brown," said the other.  "We'll be your Divination tutors.  It's a difficult course of study.  If you don't have a knack for it, you'll have a lot of trouble."

                "Well, thank you.  I hope that I have a knack for it then, so you won't have to work very hard."  Madelyn fought to remain polite at Parvati and Lavender's snobbiness.

                "Hi Madelyn," the boy said brightly.  "I'm Harry Potter.  I'm the other one of your Defence Against the Dark Arts tutors and I'll help you with Care of Magical Creatures, should you need it."

                "Nice to meet you," Madelyn said, truly meaning it.  There was something, a strange quality about Harry that made her like him instantly.  "You make Care of Magical Creatures sound easy."

                "It is.  All you have to do is listen to Hagrid and follow his instructions and you'll pass with flying colours."

                Madelyn thanked them and they left, as they had homework to attend to.

                On Saturday, Professor Dumbledore got her up at 6:30 from the cot she was using in his office until she had things sorted out fully. 

                "Today, Professor McGonagall, your head of house, will be taking you to Diagon Alley to buy the things you'll need for school."  He smiled.  "I think you'll find it quite interesting."

                "Buy?  I haven't any money.  How am I going to pay for my supplies?"  Madelyn hadn't even thought about the fact that having nothing meant that she had no money either.

                "I have discussed that problem with the other teachers, and we decided to give you a scholarship, based on your circumstances.  Not only will you be given the necessary money to pay your tuition here and your school things, you will also receive pocket money and some extra for Your other needs."

                "Thank you," she breathed.

                "I took the liberty of obtaining you some extra clothes, so you won't have to go out in your pyjamas," Dumbledore said, anticipating her next question.  He motioned to a small heap of clothing.  "I hope it fits."

                She nodded her appreciation and scurried to pick them up.  Dumbledore left the office so she could change and came back a little while later with a severe looking witch.

                "Madelyn, this is Professor McGonagall.  You two are going to take a Portkey to London."

                "Hello, Professor," Madelyn said.

                "Hello, Miss Harris.  We'd best be off."  As the teacher said that, she picked up an old, tattered feather from Dumbledore's desk.  She glanced at her watch.  "Take hold of the feather, quickly!  It's nearly time!"

                Feeling a little bit silly, Madelyn grasped the ratty thing.  A second after she did, she felt as though someone had stuck a hook into her belly button and was pulling her along.  Fighting off nausea at the speed and motion, she clenched her eyes shut.  As suddenly as the motion had begun, it stopped.  Madelyn opened her eyes and found herself looking at a busy street in London.

                "Let's get going," McGonagall said.

                Madelyn blinked as they entered a seedy pub, called the Leaky Cauldron.  It was dim and dull inside and McGonagall walked straight through, coming out the back into a barren courtyard.  Madelyn was about to ask what they were doing here, when McGonagall pulled out her wand and tapped a brick.  A doorway appeared, and through it, Madelyn could see a street, filled with people in the oddest clothes she'd ever encountered.  There were signs advertising cauldrons, magical cleansers, Quidditch (whatever that was) and strange items that sounded like something that the witches from MacBeth would have used.

                "I've already got your money," McGonagall said briskly as she walked through.  "So it's up to you, do you want to get your wand, your schoolbooks or your uniform first?"

                Madelyn turned about, looking around her.  "Ummm... My uniform?"  She wanted to see something vaguely normal in the midst of all this absurdity.

                "Very well."  McGonagall started off towards a shop called Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions.

                When they stepped in, McGonagall spoke to Madam Malkin for a moment, and then the woman started fitting Madelyn out in her uniform.  The woman worked quickly and it wasn't very long before she had the diminutive Madelyn, who stood barely five feet, fully decked out for school.

                Next, McGonagall took Madelyn on a whirlwind tour through Flourish and Blotts, where they picked up five years worth of schoolbooks.  There were so many books that McGonagall was forced to cast a floating spell on them and tie them together.  They had barely finished there, when McGonagall hurried her into a shop called Ollivander's.

                When they stepped into the store, there was dead silence.  No sound from the outside street filtered in.  It was downright eerie.  An old man came out of the back.

                "Hello.  You're looking for a wand."  It was definitely a statement, not a question.

                "That's right, Mr. Ollivander."  Professor McGonagall suddenly seemed far more patient than she had so far..  "She's just about to start at Hogwarts."

                "Hmmm..."  The man said thoughtfully.  He whipped a measuring tape out of his pocket, and it started measuring her.

                "Four foot 11 and 3/4 of an inch tall....9 inch forearm....23 inches from shoulder to finger tip. He paused, appearing to do some fast calculations in his head.  "Let's try something in...willow.  9 3/4 inches."  He trailed a finger along a shelf.  "Ah!  Here we are.  Unicorn mane hair in the core, flexible.  Take it."

                Madelyn swished it, at the man's instruction.  Nothing happened.

                "Let's try...elder.  12 inches.  Dragon heartstring in the core.  Rigid."

                Madelyn took it from him and gave it a flick.  A series of small brown-gold sparks, precisely the same colour as her eyes, floated down from its tip.

                "That wand is good for defence work," Ollivander said as he wrapped it.  "I sold its brother to an Auror just the other day...I'd have thought that it would be too long for you, but when you swished that first one, it looked preposterously small.  You're bigger than your stature indicates."

                While McGonagall paid for the wand, Madelyn thanked him.  When they got outside, Madelyn turned to McGonagall.

                "What did he mean by that?  That I'm bigger than I am?"

                "We'll have to wait and see," McGonagall replied.

                "Why?"

                "That man has been running that shop since before I was born.  He says something about the future to every person who buys a wand.  To my knowledge he has never been wrong.  He's practically a legend."    McGonagall looked about.  "It's very hot, even for September, don't you think?  Let's get some ice cream."

                Madelyn smiled.  It was the kind of thing she'd expect from Dumbledore, not this very businesslike woman.

                After they'd eaten their ice cream, they finished their shopping by picking up a cauldron and some assorted potions ingredients and divinatory tools, along with appropriate gloves for Care of Magical Creatures and Herbology.  They were just about to go out into muggle London again and buy Madelyn some muggle clothes, which she would find more comfortable, as she had grown up wearing them, when Professor McGonagall stopped in her tracks.

                "Do you want a pet?" she asked, remembering that Dumbledore had instructed her to get Madelyn one.  He felt that Madelyn needed something to love, something that was all her own and that she could take care of.

                "What kind?"

                "Just about anything you could want.  The real restrictions on what you can bring are placed on the First Years, so that they don't go crazy in their decision and end up with something poisonous on rampage.  For you, just use common sense."

                Madelyn nodded, and they made a quick detour into the Magical Menagerie.  Madelyn looked around for a minute, while McGonagall told her what she absolutely could not bring back to the school.  After some quick thinking, Madelyn decided on a raven, one of the few non-dangerous seeming creatures in the store.

                As soon as they left the store, Madelyn asked where they were going to put all of her things, as they obviously couldn't take them out into muggle London.

                "We'll ask Tom, at the Leaky Cauldron, to look after them, and them we'll pick them up after we get back."  McGonagall replied, taking her cape off to reveal some very fashionable muggle clothing.  Seeing her charge's astonished face, she added, "I subscribe to a muggle fashion magazine.  Some of the clothes are quite pretty."

                A few minutes later, they stepped out of the Leaky  Cauldron and started some normal (to Madelyn) shopping.  Over the course of the next couple of hours, they bought Madelyn an entirely new wardrobe, exceedingly similar to the one that she and her sister had shared up until Thursday night.

                Finally, McGonagall and Madelyn agreed that they had an appropriate amount of clothing for her to wear on days when she didn't have lessons, and in the evenings, after class.  They went back to the Leaky Cauldron, where McGonagall picked up a jar of something called Floo Powder.

                "We'll be going to the Three Broomsticks, in Hogsmeade," she said, after explaining to Madelyn how to use the stuff.  "Hagrid will meet us there and take us back to the castle."

                "Who?"

                "Hagrid, the groundskeeper and your Care of Magical Creatures professor."

                "Oh!  That's where I knew his name from...Harry Potter mentioned it last night, when he came to meet me."

                "I'm sorry that all of your teachers aren't able to meet you before classes start.  If it were any other time of the year, they would, but right now, they're working exceptionally hard with review, to try and get the students back into a school mentality."

                "It's all right," Madelyn said, but she wished that she knew what she was actually getting herself into.

                The Floo Powder worked its magic, and they got to the Three Broomsticks without incident.  Hagrid greeted them loudly and heartily, startling Madelyn a little with his size.  She got a kink in her neck just looking up at the tip of his beard.

                He got them into a stagecoach and put all of the things that they'd bought in as well, causing it to be rather crowded when he got in.  The stagecoach moved quickly, and it wasn't very long before they were up at the castle.

                "I'll get yer things to the righ' places," Hagrid said, patting Madelyn on the back gently, but still nearly knocking her clean off of her feet.

                It was dinner time by the time they got back to Dumbledore's office and they ate quickly, with Madelyn reading Magical Theory as she ate.

                She continued to read for several hours after the meal, before falling onto her cot, absolutely exhausted.  It had been a long couple of days, and tomorrow night she was to be placed into the regular portion of the school, with all of the students, at dinnertime.  Despite her exhaustion, she had difficulty getting to sleep, due to the fears that she might not be accepted by the other students.

                She spent most of the day Sunday reading her textbooks frantically, terrified that she'd look like a fool in front of her peers.  She hadn't any idea what magical teenagers would talk about, but she wanted to be ready for anything.

                By Sunday night, when she was to move into her dormitory and be introduced to the general population of the school, Madelyn was exhausted and extremely homesick.  But there was no time for that!  As soon as she'd sat down after changing into her uniform, Professor Dumbledore told her it was time to go down to the Great Hall.

                He paused in the corridor and looked at her face, projecting compassion.  "I'm not going to explain to the school what happened to your family.  It's up to you who you want to tell, and how much you want to tell them.  Your past is your business."

                "Thank you," Madelyn replied, for she had been worried about how the other students would react to her past, and the fact that she was receiving a "scholarship".  She knew that it was charity, but she had no other option than to accept.  It wasn't as if she could go to her grandparents--they'd never had her parents!

                By the time they got there, the entire school was assembled.  Madelyn's legs started shaking as she crossed the Hall.  Thousands of pairs of eyes followed her as she walked by Dumbledore's side.  Dumbledore noticed her terror and whispered that she could sit in a vacant place, while he explained who she was.

                She searched the Gryffindor table for any of her tutors, the only people she knew, and found an empty seat between Harry and Hermione.  It was as though they had left the spot open on purpose.

                A red-headed boy looked around Harry and said, "I'm Ron.  Hermione and Harry told me you'd be coming tonight!"  He seemed pleased to see the mysterious girl at last.

                "Students and faculty," Dumbledore started.  "Many of you have likely heard about the new student in our midst.  I'm going to quickly dispel some of the myths surrounding her.  She is not a werewolf, a vampire, any other creature of the night, Natalie MacDonald's dead grandmother or my big toe."  He paused while everyone laughed.

                "Madelyn Harris is a very polite young lady who has recently come to our school and will be joining into your classes.  She is a person and I expect you to treat her as such.  No badgering her for her past experiences or anything like that.  She is your peer."  Dumbledore sat down.

                "Great!" Madelyn muttered.  "Now the entire school will be asking questions about me.  Dumbledore promised that I could take my own time explaining myself to the student body."

                Harry looked to her, having just barely heard her words.  "The entire school will heed Dumbledore's instructions.  The only people who will bother you will be the Slytherins and they would have done that anyway."

                Throughout the remainder of the meal, Madelyn said very little, pondering her new life.  Afterwards, Hermione took her up to the Gryffindor girls' dormitory, so that she could settle in.  Madelyn immediately started reading again, to Hermione's surprise and relief.

                "At last, someone other than me who takes their studies seriously."  Hermione smiled happily and proceeded to take out her own school things.

                The girls studied for several hours, before falling asleep, so tired, at least in Madelyn's case, that they didn't even dream.

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                Well, there you have it!  The improved-chapter-two-which-used-to-be-part-of-chapter-one!  *takes a deep breath*

Well, please review, and if you don't know how to play Cheat, drop me a line by email and I'll send you the rules.  Just be sure to put fanfiction in the subject box, because I don't open random emails, to avoid receiving viruses and such.

Don't forget:  Reviews are like oxygen!!  Give me signed reviews, and I'll put out more chapters and review your story!!!!  I love you for reviewing!!

Disclaimer:  Taineyah, you're being about as subtle as a baseball bat hitting someone upside the head!

Taineyah:  *whispers* I know, but I got hardly any reviews at all on the first posting of this story, and I'm desperate!!!