Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his world both belong to J.K. Rowling, several publishing companies (Bloomsbury Books, Raincoast Books, Scholastic Books), Warner Brothers, Inc., and as I'm not a part of any of them I therefore own none of it. I'm making absolutely no money off of this, please don't sue. I do own the following, however: the Hunter family, Cassiope MacColin, Sojin Young, most all of the first years, and the story. So nyah :P

Author's Notes: Everyone wants to go to Hogwarts, it's a known fact. We've all seen the "blond American transfer student who just happens to be in the same year as Harry and soon becomes his (or Draco Malfoy's) friend/love interest" too many times to count. Yes, this story is a blatant self-inclusion, but I swear -- it's different from the clichéd Mary Sues! Really.

Summary: There are normal students at Hogwarts, students who are just trying to get through adolescence and pass their classes; students who aren't worried about trying to save the world or helping Voldemort to power. This is a story about some of those students. (Takes place during the 1995-96 school year.)

The Clover Chain Chronicles
By M.E.

Chapter 1

Three weeks before Ruth Ann's eleventh birthday two letters arrived by owl post for her on the same day. It was very exciting for Ruth Ann, who rarely received any mail at all, let alone more than one letter on the the same day. She carefully set them to the side as she sorted through the mail in the basket by the window that served as a mail box for letters her family received by owl.

After sorting everything into neat piles (one for her father, one for her mother, one for her older brother, and one for junk mail), Ruth Ann picked up her own mail and took it to her room, where she cleared a spot on her rather cluttered floor and laid out the letters side by side.

Both letters were very similar, same size, same heavy envelopes that the Wizarding community favored, same carefully written letters done by hand with quills. Even the addresses were nearly identical:

Miss R. A. Hunter
Second largest bedroom
10945 Garden Avenue
Los Angeles
California

The only differences were that one was addressed in green ink while the other used purple, and the envelope with the green address had a "U.S.A." tacked on after the "California".

Her heart beating wildly, Ruth Ann flipped over the letters, intent on opening them. Her eyes focused on the seals, which were different as well. One was a sort of coat of arms with an elaborate "H" on top, while the other held a pair of crossed wands on top of a California poppy. Recognizing both seals, she held her breath as her eyes nearly bulged out of her head. Grabbing both letters, she ran down to the family room. "Mom! Mom! I got my school letters! Look, I got one from each school, just like Jonathan." Coming to a stop next to her mother, slightly breathless, she held out her letters for perusal.

Mrs Hunter took the letters and snorted as she looked at both seals. "I don't know why they bother sending you a letter for Golden Poppy," here she fluttered the envelope with the purple writing and the poppy seal, "Gardenia knows that your father won't have either of his children attend any school other than Hogwarts." She handed both letters back to her daughter and smiled, "Well, go on then. Open them up."

Nodding vigorously, Ruth Ann carefully slipped a finger under the flap and broke the seal on the letter from Golden Poppy, the magical secondary school for the state of California. She took out the piece of parchment that was inside and carefully unfolded it, quickly reading the contents of the letter:

GOLDEN POPPY SCHOOL
of Magical Learning and Practice

Gardenia Cienega, Principal

Dear Miss Hunter,

We are delighted to inform you that you have been accepted at Golden Poppy School of Magical Learning and Practice. A list of the necessary equipment and required books has been enclosed with this letter.

First semester begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Sincerely,
Hibiki Shijisuro
Vice Principal

"Now the one from Hogwarts. I don't know why you bothered opening the one from Golden Poppy, you know your father wants you to go to Hogwarts," Mrs Hunter said firmly.

Nervously, Ruth Ann opened up the Hogwarts envelope, and looked at the letter inside. The wording was very similar to that of the one from Golden Poppy, only the letterhead said "HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY; Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore", then went on to list some of the Headmaster's achievements. Ruth Ann opened her mouth to say something, only to stop when she heard the front door open downstairs and recognized her father's footsteps as he walked across the dining room floor.

"I'm home!" he announced to anyone who might not have already noticed. Ruth Ann winced as she heard him come up the stairs.

Mrs Hunter smiled as her husband's head peaked around the door to the family room. "Hello, dear. Ruth Ann and I were just looking at her school letters." She flashed the letter from Golden Poppy at him.

"Yes, I saw that Jonathan's Hogwarts letter was on the table, so I suspected as much." Mr Hunter came over and dropped a kiss on his wife's forehead, then turned to hug his daughter. "Almost eleven already! Amazing how time flies. I bet you're excited to be going to Hogwarts, aren't you, short-stuff?"

Here came the moment that Ruth Ann had been dreading for ages. Squirming away from her father's embrace, she looked down at her feet. "Actually, Dad..." she trailed off, slightly embarrassed by what she was about to say.

"Yes, Ruth Ann?"

"I'd like to go to Golden Poppy, if it's all right with you," she said in a rush. Before either parent could say anything else, she continued on, "I mean, I don't want to go to a school in another country -- another continent! I've never been there before and I won't know anyone and at least some of my friends will be going to Golden Poppy, like Jiana and Matthew."

"Now, honey, you know that's not true," her mother admonished. "You're from England and your brother is going to be a fifth year this term."

"But, Mom! I don't remember living there, we moved when I was two! And what if Jon is in a different house from me? Plus he'll have his own friends he'll be hanging out with, and he won't want me to bug him. And everyone will probably make fun of me because I'm from America," Ruth Ann moped.

"Now, Ruth Ann, you know that's not true. I myself had a wonderful time when I went to Hogwarts; I made lots of new friends with people from all over, people who I would have never have met if I hadn't gone," Mr Hunter tried to reassure her.

"Exactly," Ruth Ann's mother joined in. "I did some research when Jonathan received his acceptance letter, and while Golden Poppy is a lovely school and I did go there myself, Hogwarts has a much larger curriculum. Though from what Jonathan tells me, they do seem to have a problem holding on to Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers."

"You just don't understand! You're supposed to be my parents, but you don't understand anything!" screamed Ruth Ann, stamping her foot. She snatched the Golden Poppy letter from her mother and ran down the stairs, straight to her bedroom, slamming the door shut behind her.

Once inside her sanctuary, Ruth Ann curled up on her bed, pressing her face into her pillow. It just was not fair... Sometimes she hated her dual citizenship with a passion, especially when it brought complications such as this one into her life.

Mrs Hunter had been twenty when she had gone to Europe in order to study the different magical educational systems there. A Muggle-born witch, she had been amazed by the long-established wizarding community she found there. She ended up staying longer than she had originally planned, fascinated by the customs that most European witches and wizards took for granted. While in England she had begun dating Ruth Ann's father, a shy wizard several years older than herself whom she had met in a wizarding library in London.

After two years of courting, they married and settled down in England. Several years later, Ruth Ann's older brother Jonathan was born, and, a few years after that, Ruth Ann herself. In 1986 the Hunter family had moved back to the city where Mrs Hunter had grown up because there were more job opportunities for both adults. This was fine with Ruth Ann's father, though he was adamant about both of his children attending Hogwarts for secondary school. Mrs Hunter had felt that the move was worth having to send her children across the Atlantic every school year for seven years once they reached eleven. Born and raised in southern California, she had only tolerated English weather for love of her husband.

Ruth Ann's sobs died out, and she sniffed slightly, then coughed. She winced slightly at the cough, knowing that her throat would be sore later from her screaming and her crying, both of which had been pointless. As much as Ruth Ann wanted to stay in California and go to Golden Poppy, she knew that it was not going to happen. Her father would have the final say in the matter, and come the end of August she would be on the airplane with her brother, headed to London, England. She sniffed again and frowned. Even though she knew she would be going to Hogwarts, that did not mean she had to like it, she decided as she burrowed under the duvet on her bed.

Several weeks later found Ruth Ann eleven and packing her trunk in preparation for her going to Hogwarts.

It's awfully big, was Ruth Ann's first thought when she saw the trunk that her father had made for her for the first time. It was not quite as large as the cedar chest at the foot of the bed in her parents' room, but at one and a half feet deep, three and a half feet long, and nearly two feet high, it still seemed too big to her.

But once she started packing the trunk with the school supplies that her parents had purchased for her two days earlier during a trip to Tesseract Lane, she was surprised at how much of the space was filled. She had found that she was able to pack the telescope, scales, and phials in her cauldron, using her dragonhid gloves and one of her school robes to help pad them. It saved some space, but the cauldron took up over a square foot of space in the trunk, while the course books (all eight of them) took most of what was left over of the next square foot.

She carefully folded her remaining robes, along with her cloak and placed them inside of the trunk, gasping as she nearly fell in. Next she picked up her hat, sticking out her tongue at it. She personally thought it to be very old fashioned, none of the wizarding children she knew wore pointed hats and it was generally thought among her peers that such hats had gone out of style around the same time that Merlin had managed to get himself frozen underground for all time. Still, it was part of the required uniform, so she set it on top of the robes.

Now all that was left were her personal items, such as some of her Muggle clothing that she wanted to take along, pajamas, bathrobe, toiletries, art supplies, and books. Lots and lots of books. Ruth Ann turned to the stack of books that she had gotten from her mother's science fiction and fantasy collection earlier in the day. She was not sure what kind of selection the library at Hogwarts would have, and had decided to that in this situation it would be best to go with the philosophy "better safe than sorry". It would be awful if she found herself with nothing to read for pleasure halfway through the school year -- truly a fate worse than death.

After adding her reading books, Ruth Ann saw that there was very little space left. Enough for a few of her posters, a framed family photograph, and Harold the Wonder Bear, a gift from a friend who had gone to her Muggle elementary school. Staring at her now-full trunk, Ruth Ann rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet.

There was a soft rapping on her open door, and she turned to look up at where her brother stood in the doorway. "Hullo, Jon."

"Hi. Can I come in?" Ruth Ann nodded her head, and he stepped into her room, deftly navigating the chaotic mess on the floor in order to sit down on her bed. "You know, Ruth Ann, it's not going to be that bad."

"Excuse me?"

"Hogwarts. I know it's going to be scary -- different customs, new school, new people -- but it's really not that bad. In fact, you're getting off easy. When I started I didn't know anyone. At least you'll have me," he explained matter-of-factly.

"But what if I'm not in the same house as you? I'll be in a dorm full of people I don't know, and they'll make fun of me because I don't know anything about the European wizarding world..." She pressed her hands against her eyes, willing herself to not cry. "And you know how I am around people I don't know... I'll either be so shy that people will think I'm a mute, or I'll be too hyper and scare them all off."

"Well, first off, even if you did end up in the same house as me, you would still be in a dorm with people you didn't know -- they don't have mixed dorms at Hogwarts, Ruth. You'd be the dorm for the first year girls, and I'd be in the fifth year boys' dorm. And secondly, you probably wouldn't be in Hufflepuff with me. Not to be mean or anything, but while you are quite loyal to your friends, but you aren't patient and hardworking in the least. Most likely you'll end up in some other house," Jonathan explained patiently, kindly ignoring the fact that Ruth Ann was about to cry from frustration. "And they won't make fun of you because you 'don't know anything'. Remember, some of the students are Muggle-borns like Mom, so they won't have known anything about the wizarding community before getting their letters. We're lucky, we know a lot already because Dad's from a long line of wizards, so we're used to the wizarding world even though we're first generation wizards on Mom's side.

"And as for your being shy, don't worry about it. There's this one guy in my year and even though he's not very good in class and tends to bumble things up, a lot of people like him. And nearly everyone thinks the Weasley twins are great -- they're in Gryffindor -- and they're cracking jokes and playing tricks on people all the time." He smiled at her and reached over to ruffle her light brown hair. "Don't sweat it, kiddo. You'll be great."

Lowering her hands, Ruth Ann smiled up at him and crawled over to the bed, where she leaned back against his legs. "You really think so, Jonathan?"

"Sure I do. Just show them some of those comics you're always drawing -- if that doesn't make them like you, I don't know what will."

"Thanks, Jon. You know I love you, right?"

"Of course I do."

"Just making sure."


Tesseract Lane: My homage to Madeleine L'Engle's wonderful A Wrinkle In Time books :P I apologize now for Ruth Ann being a whiny brat in the first couple of chapters. Remember, folks, she's eleven and she's being forced to go to a country she's (practically) never been to before where she will live with people she's never met before. That would be hard on anyone. :(

Next chapter: the dangers of travel; an ordinary wand; concerning Egyptian gods.