Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognize, it all belongs to the ever-fabulous JKR.
A/N: okay, here's that extra chapter I promised. It's a short one, though.
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Chapter 8: Wondering How I Came to be Here…
Sarah leaned back against the small pillow and sighed. Airplane seats never went back quite far enough for her liking. She opened her eyes, finding that sleep was not coming to her. Glancing down at her tanned arm, she smiled.
"I'm not even burnt." She said smugly to herself. Her Caribbean heritage came in useful when she spent long amounts of time in the sun. Sarah never needed to worry about coming home from holiday red as a tomato. And it had been such a wonderful holiday. She'd spent half her time at her grandmother's huge bungalow in Bonao, and the other half at a small resort in Puerto Plata. It had felt lovely to just relax for once, to not have to be on her guard and alert at all times.
Now she was going back to it all, the turmoil of her own life plus that of the magical world. "Why?" she asked herself, not for the first time. She had been only fourteen when her telepathy had first made an appearance, still concerned with school, her friends, who likes who, and all the other normal teenage woes. She hadn't been exaggerating when she told Harry that it had been a nasty shock. Actually, it had turned out to be more of a prolonged shock, if that were possible, climaxing when she finally realized that what she was hearing were other people's thoughts. It was almost unnoticeable at first, like the annoying ring in one's ear during a cold, but it hadn't gone away. Rather, it had progressed into a buzzing noise that intensified in a crowded place. One day, to her absolute horror, she'd discovered that she could hear hundreds of voices, all talking at once, never going away.
By that time, she was at a breaking point. She'd gone to a doctor early on during the ringing, but they had done nothing to help her. As it got louder and all the various aspects of her social life began to suffer, her parents took her to more specialists, but no CAT scans, tests, or experiments showed anything wrong with her whatsoever. As it progressed into voices, she found herself being taken to various therapists. Nothing helped her, though. No one seemed to have any answers.
That is, until she'd gone to visit her godfather one day. Uncle Al was a strange old man, with the weirdest pets and gadgets in his house. Some of the people who came to visit were equally strange, dressed in their long, funny clothes and brightly coloured hats. Her parents had told her that he was the just the eccentric old friend of her equally eccentric old grandfather, that he was completely harmless, but Sarah was never scared of him. She loved going to visit him; besides, he always had such a sweet tooth. And it only intrigued her more that there was such an air of mystery around the house whenever someone came to visit.
On this particular occasion, as she lay in bed marveling at the extremely realistic rendition of the night sky on her bedroom ceiling, snippets of conversation drifted up to her.
"But that's impossible, Albus!" Sarah had giggled at his name – she'd found it hilarious ever since she first met him, at three. The earnest voice carried remarkably well up the stairs as it continued. "We're wizards! Surely we can take care of such a small problem! We'd barely use any magic."
After that, when her godfather had quickly hushed the person, she knew that it was true, and that she was definitely not supposed to have heard it. Quickly pretending to be asleep, she managed to drift off and be deep in her dreams by the time he came up to check on her.
The next morning, however, she'd gone to him as soon as she left her bed. He'd been ready to obliviate her, when Sarah, nearly in tears, had persuaded him to believe her.
"Let me do a small experiment, my dear." Dumbledore had said, smiling kindly at her. Suddenly, as she had looked at him, memories of the past few months had flown through her mind, from the incessant ringing, the doctor's visits, and the voices that never left her. His eyes had gone very wide for a second, then he said, rather quietly, "No, I do believe that you need to know a few things, child."
"Can I do magic??" she'd eagerly asked, her face lighting up. Dumbledore smiled gently at her.
"Sorry, my dear, but it appears not. However-" he continued after seeing her face fall. "It seems that you have a gift of your own."
From then on, it had seemed like things were too good to be true. Dumbledore had begun to teach her something called Occlumency, and soon she'd found that she could control her ability, and some others that appeared around the same time. She'd been able to catch up in school – in fact, now she found herself surpassing her classmates in most everything. But when she finished school, 2 years early, she now found that she wanted to get away from the magical world. While it had been appealing at first, she soon discovered that all wasn't well there. They had problems of their own, and she wasn't really a part of them.
As a result, she was delighted to be recruited by Michael Callahan. It offered a proper excuse to severe her newfound ties to wizarding society. She still kept in touch with her godfather, but he'd respected her decision and let her go as she threw herself into her new life. Sure, things got dangerous there, but it was always something she could handle.
That had all changed, however, when she was 19, finished with the majority of her training and working for Michael and MI5 in earnest. Then she had realized what she'd really got herself into. It still hurt to remember the first time that she had gone out on a mission. Her very first time, and she'd had to bring back the dead body of her partner. She finally saw what some people were capable of, and discovered that she was willing to fight against that, despite the risks to her life.
So when Albus Dumbledore came to her asking for her assistance, telling her just what the situation was in the magical world, she couldn't refuse. Michael had agreed that someone from MI5 should be involved, and so now, she was flying back home to England, Grimmauld Place, and to those she had sworn to help.
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A/N: There you have it, the explain-it-all chapter. Good? Bad? Let me know!
-Laren