A/N: This story has been re-typed, re-done, and re-plotted. Same characters, same basic plotline, but way different. Yours Truly has had a year of growing as a writer, and to put it lightly, the previous version of this story sucked. So, here goes the re-edited version of Somewhere I Belong:
"Mum?"
Jax swooped down on the carpet where the mail lay, closing the door behind her with a foot. She moved to the kitchen and peeked through the door.
"Mum?"
She gave a shrug, coming to the conclusion that her mother wasn't home yet. Slamming the mail onto the table and helping herself to a cup of coffee, a regular afternoon ritual, she sat down in a high chair and began slurping up the hot liquid.
"Junk, bills, more junk," she commented, slightly burning her tongue.
She moved to the trash bin when her eyes caught a cream-colored envelope at the bottom.
"What's this?" she inquired, slicing her finger through the seal and opening up the letter. "We are pleased to inform you… acceptance… Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?" She threw the remains of the envelope and the letter into the trash with the other mail. "Stupid magic shop junk..."
Jax took her seat at the table again and started to flip through a magazine when another clank of the mailbox came.
Eyeing the carpet suspiciously, she placed the cup in her hand down and picked up two new letters identical to the ones she had just trashed.
"Never give up, do the little buggers?" she laughed, immediately getting rid of them.
She hadn't even gotten the chance to flip to the next page in her magazine when a second clank rung throughout the empty house.
Slamming her mug down, she ran to the door and ripped it open, sure to find neighborhood pranksters running down the street in glee.
All she found was the elderly lady across the street pruning her flowers.
"Are those…?" Jax's eyes moved towards the three owls above her head pleasantly resting on a telephone line.
"Owls?"
Jax whipped around her messy black bob to find an elderly man with a rather long beard and odd clothing standing behind her.
"The open door is giving me an awful chill. Would you be a dear, and close it for me?"
Jax's mouth gaped open, hoping for a scream to eject from it, but nothing came. Blank space exited and entered her mouth for several seconds before the intruder spoke again.
"Ah, I shall do it for you." He pulled a long piece of wood from his odd robes, gave it a flick, and the door shut close with a burst of wind.
Jax felt her head growing heavy…
and everything went dark after that.
Young Jax Pierce woke up to find herself in her bed, dressed in the clothes she had worn to school that day.
What a weird dream she had. But why would she have fallen asleep in her clothes?
Eager to go downstairs and see that her odd dream was completely untrue, she quickly caught a glance in the mirror of her reflection before she made her way out of her room. A raving beauty, as she had been called. But a teenage girl like herself wasn't so quick to agree.
Jax loved her dark black hair, but had a definite problem with the way it was cut. Her skin was a tawny cream color, which matched well with her hair and deep purple eyes, but didn't satisfy her completely. But there was the scar in the shape of a small star she had immediately above her right temple, which had been mistaken for a tattoo once too many.
Scowling, she walked out of her room and jumbled down the stairs.
Four voices could be heard from inside the kitchen.
"Sixteen years, and you decide now to take her away?" an angry voice, one that belonged to her father carried up to where she stood.
"It was unavoidable, Peter," came the voice of the old man with the stick.
Wait, no. He had been a dream, hadn't he?
"We held out as long as we could, we attempted to spare her." There was the voice of the dream entity again.
"If it had been possible, we would have kept her away," one voice she didn't recognize wafted up the stairs.
Stifled cries reached Jax's ears, ones she realized were her mother's.
"They told us it would happen, Joan. They warned us-" Jax's father, Peter, was interrupted by her arrival in the doorway. "You're up!"
Jax's mother held a tissue in her hand; her dream entity sat catty cornered to her father, next to an uptight woman in a green cloak similar to the dream man's.
"Ah, I see Severus' Fainting Cure did work," said the dream man with a beaming smile.
"Pardon me?" asked Jax.
"You look so much like Lily," he said barely above a whisper, blatantly ignoring Jax's question.
Jax's mother let out a quiver.
"Who's Lily?" Jax asked as she moved closer to the table.
Jax's father gave Dumbledore a warning look. Her mother, with watery eyes, watched Jax as if it was the first time she had ever seen her.
"Mum, are you okay?" Jax asked her.
Joan lost it, her wailing cries bursted from behind a wet cloth. Dumbledore was not disturbed, yet Peter and McGonagall became very uncomfortable at Jax's mother's wails of sadness.
"We'll leave," stated Jax's father, taking the hint from behind Dumbledore's glasses. Taking his wife by the waist, they started towards the stairs together.
"Dad…" a confused Jax watched her parents walk up the stairs, leaving her alone with two freak shows dressed in Halloween costumes.
"Please sit down, Dear," ordered Dumbledore.
"Who are you people?"
"Ah! Please excuse me for our rudeness." He made a motion towards McGonagall. "This would be Minerva McGongall, Director of Admissions, Professor of Transfiguration, and Head of Gryffindor house at Hogwarts.
And I am Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
Jax's eyes flew wide open.
"Jax, please answer a question for me," began Dumbledore. "Anytime when you were mad or sad, has something unexplainable happened to you? Something much out of the ordinary?"
Jax could not say there wasn't. On her sixth birthday, Mable Smith had won five games of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and began to attract all the attention from the birthday girl, Jax, to herself. Angry and jealous, all Jax could do was stare at Mable's back while she spun around with the blindfold on, hoping that something would happen to her so Jax could win a game.
Seconds later, Mable's skin turned the odd color of bright orange, and had to be taken to the hospital.
Jax slowly repeated these events to the two strangers standing before her, although in a much more jumbled up and muddled manner.
"Yes, I seem to remember receiving a letter from your mother about that," chuckled Dumbledore.
Jax stared at the old man in amazement. What was all of this?
"I understand none of this. I don't understand you," Jax's voice continued to grow louder, "I don't understand her," she pointed to McGonagall, "I don't understand your clothes, and most of all, I don't understand what you are doing in my kitchen!"
"You're a witch, Jax," Dumbledore stated calmly.
Blank eyes returned his answer.
Dumbledore sighed. "I suppose you read books about witches when you were a child? You do understand what magic is, don't you?"
Blank eyes still upheld Jax's face, but her head slightly nodded.
"You ever wondered what that scar on your forehead is about?"
Another nod.
"Because your parents died to save you and your brother from the most terrible magic in existence," Dumbledore whispered, looking down on a quivering Jax.
"My… my parents are upstairs," Jax answered with disbelief.
"Lily and James Potter are your real parents, Jax. Almost sixteen years ago I brought you here, away from the busy streets of London, away from harm. I intended for you to grow up as a normal girl, as you do not hold the same fate as your brother."
"My brother?"
Dumbledore simply nodded.
"Miss Pierce, I'm sorry to interject, but I must ask you to have your things ready by tomorrow morning," interrupted McGonagall. "You have a busy day ahead of you; please take care of goodbyes and packing tonight." She turned, apparently ready to apparate, but then turned back to face Jax:
"You are not to speak of this to anyone." Then she was gone with a loud, splintering crack.
Jax jumped at the loud noise.
"I'm afraid I must go also, I must fetch your brother." He handed a small parcel wrapped in brown packaging to Jax. "I'll be seeing you soon enough," he said with a soft, caring voice.
Another crack, and Jax was left alone.
Flabbergasted and in shock, she sunk into a chair where her mother had previously been sitting at the kitchen table. She pulled on the piece of string around the parcel Dumbledore had handed her, and ripped off the brown paper.
In an old picture frame, there stood a man with Jax's hair, a woman with her face, and two little babies in their hands, waving back at her.
Ignoring the fact that she had never seen people in a picture move, she took these people to be her family.
"It's all a joke, right?" Jax asked her parents while they sat on their bed, Jax's mother crying even more than before. "I have to tell you, Dad, it isn't very funny this time."
Her father's face was blank.
"I'm a witch, and you never told me?" she half-screamed.
"We didn't think you'd believe us!" her father told her.
Jax stopped in the middle of her pacing. He was right; she wouldn't have believed them.
"You could have at least tried."
A long silence followed her words, giving her mother the time to calm down.
"We need to get you packed."
"There won't be a need for that," Jax replied. "I'm not going."
Her parents didn't immediately reply to her statement.
"See? You don't want me to go. I can't leave you here and join…" she paused at the fear in her mother's face. "…them."
"Sit down," commanded her father. "I'm going to try to explain."
Jax did as she was told.
"Years ago, about fifteen, an old man appeared at our doorstep with a bundle in his arms."
"Take her, Peter. She's safe here."
"Where's Lily?" Peter asked in a low tone.
"Dead," whispered Dumbledore.
Horror struck Peter's face.
"What about…"
"Harry is safe. Please, Peter. For Lily."
"Lily was my best friend for years and years. I was there at her wedding to James, I there when you and your brother were born. We decided when we took you that the wizarding world wasn't the place for you. We tried to raise you away from the world you belong to you, and in that was our mistake."
"I do belong here. With you… and mum. I don't know any magic tricks or how to… fly on a broom," Jax insisted.
"You must go," said Jax's mother silently.
"Fine. If you don't want me here, I'll go." She stormed out of her parent's room and slammed the door shut, leaving her mother once again in tears.
A/N: If you never read the original, go search Writerchick2391 to find the original story and see how much of a drastic improvement this is. Reviews are always rewarded with cookies...