A/N: This story is about family, and war, and finding friends and enemies where you least expect to. It's an adventure with some eventual romance thrown in. Andrea is an original character. As I don't usually write OCs, comments and critiques are both appreciated. It might be a while before you start to recognize some familiar faces, but I think it will be worth it when you do.
There will be dark themes and romance, but I keep it PG.
I've matured a good deal as an author since I started writing fanfiction, so I've revamped the story, adding scenes and correcting some considerable stylistic excesses.
The knock at the door comes on the most typical afternoon possible.
It's Sunday, of course—don't these things always happen on Sunday? One of the drizzly, overcast days that London is prone to even in midsummer. The roar of traffic on the thoroughfare two stories below is muted in the accustomed peace that permeates our apartment. It's not cold enough for a fire, and both of us hate the harshness of artificial overhead lights, so we sit in lamplight.
Mother reads, as usual. It's one of her favorites: Middlemarch, by George Eliot. I was never able to get into it, not really. I appreciate the feminine wisdom that so clearly shines through the veil of male pseudonym, the strong character of an author who wrangled her way into Latin and German lessons after her traditional education came to a close, and who did with her life as she pleased. But the heroine is too soft, too pious; the other characters grating in their hapless ignorance, the one thing I can't stand. Mother laughs when I tell her this.
"You're too much like your father," she says.
I'm in a rare state of contentment, having slept off yesterday's migraine, curled up on the sofa with the silver-grey tabby. Tobias makes the third member of our household. His purring ceases an instant before I make out faint, firm footfalls climbing the fading carpet on the stairway. The knock at the door comes before I've had time to properly warn Mother. It always takes her a clouded, dreamy moment to emerge from the haze of a story. You have to repeat her name several times. The older I get the more I hate to rush her, so I simply suppress a smile and set the cat aside, sliding off the sofa.
Our visitor's identity is a mystery, except that she has never been here before. The steady footsteps I heard were nothing like the feathery ones of our aging landlady, not heavy enough for a man's.
Nevertheless, when I open the door, the visitor's advanced age is the second thing that strikes me. The first is her bearing; a ramrod-straight back and piercing eyes, adding up to an almost aggressive dignity. She could be a Victorian governess from one of Mother's period novels…if not for her clothes.
The third thing I notice is that this woman, despite with her whitening hair, silver spectacles, and firm posture, is as uncomfortable in her formal pantsuit and emerald-green cardigan as I would be in an evening gown.
The woman stands nearly six feet tall, but her eyes snap to my level without the slightest hesitation, taking me in: an eleven-year-old girl of average height with my mother's chestnut-brown hair; nothing striking about me except for cheekbones that my mother thinks will be high, and prominent, when my face matures, and eyes that can't decide between blue and green. I'm aware that my face still holds the round smoothness of childhood. It amuses me that I've never felt that way inside.
Not that I don't act it…sometimes.
"Hello," I say shyly, and the visitor, inexplicably, smiles. Mother has shaken off her fog and gotten to her feet, brown eyes pleasant but bewildered. There was a time when absolute strangers knocked on the door of the flat on an almost daily basis; not so for nearly a decade now.
"Good afternoon," the woman says, and it's directed to both of us. The look she gives me hasn't a trace of condescension in it. This is a woman accustomed to dealing with children.
"I apologize for arriving unannounced," she says, offering a bony hand, which Mother shyly takes. "My name is Minerva McGonagall. I work in…secondary education. I've come to see Andrea, and to offer her a place at my school. May I come in?"
Mother and I exchange a glance. It's true that I took the eleven-plus in June, at the end of last school year, and I can't fool myself that I did badly. But neither of us expected this.
"Of course," Mother says in a rush. "Please do, Ms…was it McGonagall?"
"'Professor' McGonagall, yes."
"Of course," Mother says again. I shut the door as Mother leads the visitor the few steps to our sitting room and, with only slight hesitation, seats her in the best leather armchair. I trail back to my seat on the sofa, burning with curiousity. My head is starting to pulse again, but I can't resent the unlooked-for excitement.
Professor McGonagall wastes no time.
"I'm here to tell you that you have…qualified," her lips twitch, "for a rather special opportunity. I would like to offer you a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Mother lets out a startled noise, somewhere between laughter and dismay, but I feel myself freeze up like a fawn in headlights.
"I understand you'll have questions," said McGonagall calmly.
"'Questions' is not the term I'd use," says Mother with unexpected directness. Her eyes are darkening with anger, a more than rare phenomenon.
"Please, hear me out," continues McGonagall politely, looking not at all surprised. "I'm aware the claim sounds ridiculous to you, but I would ask you to consider any unexplained goings-on in the past…"
"You come in here to insult my child to her face?" Mother is on her feet, starkly pale, taking full advantage of every one of her 163 centimeters. My head pounds, and Toby, fur standing on end, leaps off the couch and disappears around a corner.
"I have come to do nothing of the sort," protests McGonagall.
"Who contacted you this time? The headmaster? That half-drunken excuse for a school counselor?"
"Please, Mrs…"
"You think Andrea belongs in some sort of 'special' school?" Mother cries. "If anything she belongs at Cambridge, you absolute…imbecile!"
Shocking is an understatement. I've never heard Mother resort to invective. Never.
McGonagall seems to sense that the conversation isn't going anywhere, and gets to her feet. If we think she's about to leave, however, we're mistaken. Instead she whips a thin rod of wood from her some unknown place and mutters, almost to herself,
"Vestis."
It sounds Latin. I don't have time to so much as glance at Mother before the professor begins to change.
We stare.
It's not the professor herself who is altered, I realize. But her clothing, seconds before a formal suit and thin cardigan with matching loafers, is now a sweeping emerald cloak with black robes underneath. A pointed black hat rests on her head, adorned with a long brown feather that looks as though it came from the tail of a hawk. McGonagall smiles at our shock, not unkindly.
The room is silent. I break it.
"Please sit down again, Professor."
"Certainly." McGonagall settles into the armchair again before directing a respectful nod at my mother, no trace of resentment for the insult offered. "You see, I have reason to believe your daughter may be gifted in more than one way. Mine is not a school for the mentally deficient. Rather, for the mentally…expanded."
Mother makes a strangled noise in her throat. I fix my eyes on McGonagall.
"Expanded, you say expanded, what does that mean? Can you give a more straightforward explanation than 'magic'?"
"Magic is the explanation," she says, and I nod. A year ago I'd have been laughing her out, taking her quick change of dress for illusion. Not so now. "It's a form of energy—an elemental force, if you will. Some have argued that it is a form of electromagnetism, others a fifth basic force that holds the universe together. Regardless, the difference is that it can be channeled by certain creatures. Including certain humans."
"What determines that?" I want to know. "Not genetics?"
I think I would know if my mother had magical powers, although Father—
"There is a genetic component, yes," returns McGonagall. "Some like to argue that it's the major, and most significant, factor. Certainly the child of a magic-user will nearly always share the gift. But it crops up with less frequency in purely Muggle families."
"Muggle?" Mother asks distractedly. McGonagall inclines her head.
"Non-magic-users. There is no offense in the term, I assure you."
Mother nods mutely.
"What makes you think I can do magic?" I ask, focused on the professor intently.
"You know that very well," says McGonagall calmly. "But as far as our detection goes…let us just say magic leaves traces."
"Of what sort?"
But Mother interrupts, locking her eyes on mine. She's overwhelmed, yes. But that doesn't mean she hasn't kept up, or caught McGonagall's last comment.
"Andrea, what does she mean, 'you know that?'?
Both eyes are on me now, and I don't know what to say.
"I…" The soft sound dies in my throat. "I've had some odd…I mean…"
"School?"
My explosions have been at school, mainly. Where stress levels are highest—that's my hypothesis. Didn't go unnoticed by the staff either. Sometimes levitating pencils. Sometimes actual explosions. Once, the broken arm of a delinquent, Year 6 teenager who tried to make a pass at me.
Once they traced them to me, they thought my outbursts merely the preadolescent tricks of a too-smart-for-her-own-good child from a family of documented instability—stolen chemistry supplies and the like. Didn't realize that Jeffrey P. has been taking them to make Molotov cocktails and uneducated attempts at designer drugs after school. They wouldn't believe me anyway. He's the one whose arm I broke.
Mother didn't have an explanation, and neither did I. But she believed me. Looking back, especially to stories of her early marriage, that's amazing in and of itself. Hence her frustration with my headmaster. And teacher. And school counselor. They couldn't diagnose anything except my IQ with any accuracy, but they could sure try.
Mum gets up, circumvents the coffee table, and sits beside me, the old cushions groaning slightly. She brushes her hair back, bites her lower lip, and meets my unwilling eyes. Soft and intent. Her hands curl in her lap, knowing I don't care for physical touch, but longing to caress my hair, my shoulder—reassure herself that I'm still her daughter.
"Do you think you have this gift, Annie?"
I bite my own lip, mirroring her unconsciously, and nod.
This time her fingers do brush the small of my back before retreating.
"Show me," she says.
I've never done it consciously before, although I've tried. There's too much anxiety wound up in the incidents, I suppose. But Mother's calming smile is enough. I uncurl my hand, concentrate, and a flurry of violet sparks shoot upward. Everyone raises their eyes to watch them fade out, several feet above our heads.
"Sorry," I say, not looking at Mum. I've been the main source of oddity in her life since my father died.
She pulls me to her, sharply, and plants a kiss on my forehead.
"Don't ever say that again!"
McGonagall is watching us with relief and approbation, not bothering to conceal either. Mother catches her eye.
"You do this often?"
"Every case is different," she says.
"What about the ones who already know about magic?"
"We send an owl."
"What?"
The professor pulls something from an inner pocket of her robe and hands it to me. It's a letter, addressed to me in emerald ink. The envelope is rather heavy and slightly leathery—parchment? I've only seen bits before, fragments of old documents in my uncle's library. And, of course, he never let me touch.
"The basics," Professor McGonagall says, smiling slightly at me. "Your schoolbook and supply list, basic information regarding Hogwarts, and your platform ticket. The train leaves from Kings Cross station on the first of September."
I run a finger over the intricate scarlet seal, dancing animal figures embossed with a large letter "H" in the middle. It springs open at my touch, as though thirsting for it. I look up at McGonagall, then at Mum, a grin sliding across my face for the first time. And we all bend over the letter together.