Disclaimer: I own nothing! JK is brilliant!
Jessie Granger stood alone on platform nine and three quarters, holding Lily in a cage in her right hand, and her ticket, complete with instruction on how to get into the platform in her other. Hermione hadn't come with her this time. She had said a very teary goodbye on the other side of the platform, giving her a quick excuse about not wanting to miss an important work meeting back in Australia, where she worked for the newspaper. Jessie knew better. She knew that being in the wizarding world made her mother uneasy, and she didn't blame her. It was fairly far fetched, to think that there was a whole world that they didn't know about, one where objects could be moved without touching them, you could predict the future,. Read minds, perform spells, existing right alongside their own one. To Hermione it must have seemed ludicrous. To Jessie, however, it made the world make perfect sense.
All her life she had never quiet fitted in. Never felt like she belonged. Like there was a huge epic of a story, of a life that was hers that she was meant to be leading, and she couldn't open the pages and read it no matter how hard she tried. Like she had a history that no one knew about.
Jessie used to think that it had something to do with never knowing her father. She didn't want to. Hermione had told her that he had left when she had been very young, and that he wasn't coming back. Jessie didn't ask any more questions, scared of the sad hollow look that came into her mother's eyes when she had spoken of him.
Those eyes were Jessie's only real comfort that she belonged, the only reassurance that she had gotten, growing up, that she really belonged to her mum. Her tall structure and orange hair certainly didn't come from Hermione, that was for sure.
Even though she knew no one, and was standing quite alone while everyone else on the platform was surrounded by sobbing parents, and fussing grandmothers, younger siblings, Jessie didn't feel lost. She belonged here. Everything else would fall right into place.
A flash of red hair caught her eye, across the platform. Hair just like hers, though it wasn't long and curly like her locks, but cropped, and straight, though kind of messy.
The girl caught Jessie's eye, and grinned. She had bright, emerald green eyes, and a cheerful smile that made tiny dimples appear in her rosy cheeks. Jessie gave a nervous smile, and a small wave.
The girl was standing with her mother and father, who were standing together, and a man who Jessie figured could only be her uncle, as he shared her flaming red hair. Jessie turned away, and walked to the train, putting her luggage in the back compartment, and getting onto the train. She saw the girl get on before her, her luggage already gone, and the clock ticking quickly to eleven o'clock.
Jessie looked in vain for an empty compartment. She scanned each of the tiny rooms until she found one, near the end that had only one person in it. It was the girl from the platform.
Jessie opened the door, her heart beating horribly fast in amongst all of her nerves. The girl looked up, and smiled at Jessie again, pointing to the seat opposite her.
"Sit down! I don't know anyone, glad to have a friend." Jade Potter said, and introduced herself.
"Jessie Granger." Said Jessie, smiling at Jade. Jade looked pensively out of the window for a moment.
"Granger…Granger… Could have sworn that I had heard your name before…does yo0u dad work at the ministry maybe?" Jade asked kindly. Jessie gave a sad smile, and said apologetically.
"No, I'm muggleborn, and I don't know my father." Jade looked horrified with herself.
"I'm so sorry, I had no idea! And don't worry about being muggleborn, heaps of people re, apparently. Mum told me to look out for you lot. Make sure that the Slytherins lay off you." She laughed. "But don't worry about that."
"Yes, who are the Slytherins? Hagrid mentioned them."
"Oh you know Hagrid? I love Hagrid! He's friend's with dad and uncle Ron." She went on to explain about the four school houses, Griffindore, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, and how she hoped that she would be in the foremost.
"I'm quite scared actually. Dad and mum were well, quite famous for being in that house. My uncle was a prefect. They say that they don't care where I am put, but I don't know, I know that dad would love for me to be in Griffindore."
"What do you mean that they're quite famous?" Jessie asked, and Jade looked horrified with herself.
"Oh no." she said, glumly, looking out the window. " I wanted more than anything to distance myself from all of that and I've gone and blurted it out to the first person that I meet." She sighed, and continued.
"Well, dad's Harry Potter, Voldermort, this dark wizard, really bad, you've heard of the war right?" she looked at Jess, who nodded, wanting to hear more. Jade took the hint, and continued.
"Yeah, well, he was the cause. He wanted to kill dad, as a baby, but couldn't cause Lily, my grandma-"
"Wait? Lily Potter?" Jessie asked, interrupting. Jade nodded.
"Oh! That explains it then. My cat, it has bright green eyes, and mum called it Lily, just by coincidence, and Hagrid thought that we must have named it after your grandma. That's how we got to talking in the Leaky Cauldron."
Jade laughed. "Sorry, I love Hagrid. He's so funny that guy. Came round for dinner the other night, it was fun. Anyway, Voldermort couldn't kill dad because of Lily's protection, and then he disappeared for ages. Then he came back, it's a long story, but he came back, and then dad and mum and Uncle Ron had to go around and help stop him, and it got to the point where there was a final battle with Dad and Voldermort. I haven't ever heard details, he wont tell me, says that I am too young, but dad defeated him, and now he's something of a hero." Jade sighed again.
"I just hope that the teachers don't take that into account. I don't know, they were all so great. I a way you're lucky. I have so much to live up too, and…what if I'm no good at magic? I don't know anything, and I'm meant to be the daughter of Harry Potter."
Jessie gave her an encouraging smile. She liked Jade already, though she did talk a lot.
"There's something else too." She said, thinking. "There's this woman. I know that she's a witch, but no one will ever talk about her, and I really want to know about her. She was friends with dad and Ron at Hogwarts. I want to find out everything that I can about her. Will you help me?"
Jessie nodded. If she wasn't very much mistaken she had just found her first friend at Hogwarts, and it was a very encouraging thought. She smiled broadly.
They laughed the day away, with stories about young James, and the muggle world being exchanged.
"Oh, you have to get me a plug! My grandpa would love that! He collects them! Eclectic plugs! Can I get one for him? Do you know where I could? He would love that so much!" Jade squealed, when Jessie told her of the weird appliances that they had.
When the food cart had gone, and they had gotten over the initial excitement of exploring the uniqueness of the candy and exchanging chocolate frog cards, Jade and Jessie got onto the topic of the castle, and Jade looked nervous.
"I'm not meant to show anyone this…but I know that I can trust you. Dad said that I couldn't let anyone but my friends see it, but we're friends now, so what the heck?"
Jade plunged her hands into the pocket of her jacket, and pulled out a crumpled piece of parchment, which was thick, and lined and yellowed with age. She drew out her wand, pointed it at the parchment, and muttered spoke to the paper.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good." She said, as though reciting something that she had learnt by heart in a singsong sort of voice. The map opened up, and ink began to unfurl itself on the surface, creating lines, and dots, and figures. Jade grinned, peering down at the map of the castle, and looking happily at the look of amazement on Jessie's face.
"Who are Moony Wormtail Padfoot and Prongs?"
"Long story, except Prongs was my grandpa, and Moony's Remus, he's good friends with dad and them too. Nice guy. He took care of us heaps when we were younger. In fact, Daniel is in the year above us at Hogwarts, his son, he should be on here somewhere." Jade said, smiling. "I grew up with him, sort of, haven't seen him for ages. He teased me so much, saying that I had to do some painful test to be sorted into houses, but I asked mum, all we have to do is try on a hat." She laughed. "He's nice though. He's a metamorphmagi like Tonks, his mum, so it means that he can changer his appearance at will. Whenever he wants to he just changes what he looks like!"
They turned their attention back to the map, where into labelled dots were walking around, teachers and Dumbledore, so that you could see what they were doing.
"We're going to have fun with this." Jessie breathed. Jade giggled.
"Glad that you think so. I was scared that you wouldn't want to leave the common room, but that's good, we can sneak down to the kitchens together!" Jade laughed, and the compartment door slid open.
"Daniel! Just telling Jess here about you!" Jade said, as a boy with sandy coloured hair and bright blue eyes entered. He stopped short, looking disappointed.
"How did you know it was me? I was going to pretend to be a Slytherin come to eat you or something just as sinister." He flopped down on the seat next to Jessie, and took a chocolate frog from the top of Jade's pile, biting it's head off, as his transformed into a dark haired, dark eyed boy with a heart shaped face. Jade laughed.
"I thought that you might, I was getting ready to say it to anyone who entered the room, just to be safe." Jade laughed. Daniel groaned, his mouth thick with chocolate, and grinned at Jessie, holding out his hand to shake it. Daniel swallowed.
"Hey, I'm Daniel Lupin. Nice to meet you." He said, still smiling. He started on a chocolate cauldron.
"Hey! Dan! Take your own chocolate!" Jade exclaimed, hitting his hand away.
"I don't have any chocolate." He said plainly. She nodded.
"Go without then." She said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Where's the rest of the family Jade? Bumped them off have you?"
"Who? The twins? Please, I don't want them here; they'd pull much worse pranks than what you were trying. Giselle's gone to Beauxbatons this year, they couldn't convince Fleur to send her here…"
"Probably a good thing too, some of the guys in my year already had their eye on her…" Daniel commented, grinning.
"You had better not be one of those guys Lupin…"
"Calm down Potter, I'm not!" he said, hastily correcting her. "I was just saying, the rest of the prats in my grade aren't so resistant, they didn't spend their childhood growing up with a couple of veelas…"
"What ever Lupin. Where are your friends anyway? What ever happen to that Mark guy that was always hanging around?" Jade asked.
"He transferred end of last year. Durmstrang." He said, quietly. The girls dropped the subject. They could tell that Daniel missed his friend, but having the brave exterior of a young Griffindore he hid it with his foolish pride, and the defiant look in his eyes, now green, dared them to tease him.
They didn't. And Daniel Lupin stayed in their carriage, on the Hogwarts Express. Jessie found it fascinating, hanging out with two people who had obviously grown up in a very magical way. The weirdest thing was that they didn't seem to find it anything out of the ordinary. When they pulled up at the Hogsmeade station, for instance, they didn't even blink as a hundred carriages drawn by what seemed to be invisible horse trundled up beside the train. It was a sort of understanding that Jessie realised she could never find in books.
"Firs' Years…firs' years this way." Came a voice, floating through the darkness. Jessie gave a large grin, glad to have someone at the castle that she knew already, but Daniel and Jade exchanged astonished looked, before peering through the night to see if the man calling really was the kind half giant they had grown up to love…
There was no mistaking him. Rubeus Hagrid beamed down at the three friends, and cuffed Lupin by the back of his robes, enthusiastically.
"Hagrid! What are you doing here?" Jade asked. They all knew that Hagrid had left the school years and years ago, after Dumbledore had died, and gone to work and live in Diagon Alley. He was very happy there, and close to where they lived too, catching Quidditch games with Harry and Ron every so often.
"I thought that I might fancy, er, coming back for a year or so…" he said, almost mechanically. Daniel eyed him suspiciously. He knew that Hagrid was lying. He was talking in the way that he would when he served them up a stew and assure them that it contained no more than chicken…and when Hagrid spoke like that Daniel always felt uneasy…
"I missed it…you know, Hogwarts…and now with you girls here too…" Daniel looked at Hagrid. There was no mistaking it this time. Hagrid definitely did not meet their eye, and he seemed to skim over Jessie most obviously, and he played nervously with the cuff of his coat.
"First years!" Hagrid returned to calling out, catching Daniel eyeing him sceptically and scanning the group of eleven year olds that had congregated around him, "Firs' years this way!"
Daniel said a hasty goodbye to the girls, and ran towards the carriages as best he could, while carrying a very heavy trunk, his bright hair, yellow now, shining in the light, bobbing up and down through the other heads like a beacon.
Hagrid ushered them all into tiny boats, which were docked up near the station, on the edge of a lake. Jessie looked up at the castle, in awe. She had never seen something so ancient and great. The hair on the back of her neck seemed to stand up as they crossed the water and drew closer and closer to the castle, and Jessie knew that it wasn't from the cold. One of the other differences that came from growing up away from magic was that while Jade and the other two occupants of the boat looked perfectly non pulsed by the warm tingly feeling that Jessie was experiencing, she knew that it meant they were surrounded by magic. Ancient magic, magic that was built into the castles very walls. Magic that swam in the lake with the giant squid and merepeople, and magic that seemed to soar through the air as the owls dipped and soared out of the tower over looking the lake. The whole place seemed to be threaded with magic, and Jessie knew that finally, she belonged…
Thanks for all the positive feedback guys! It really makes me feel so great, and pushes me to keep updating, so thanks so much! The next chapter will be here soon, I wrote it all in my notebook when I was away! Am very excited to post it…
Luv Ella Evans xXx
