Author's note: Yes, this time there is only one author. Quaffle doesn't have much time on her hands now she's gone to universtiy, so I, Snitch, decided to start my own fanfic. It will be different from the other story (Hermione Granger and the Pureblood Prince). This time I've tried to put more action into the storyline, which required thinking about the plot a lot more. Now I have to stick to the storyline more closely, so writing this is very different, more difficult. Of course, writing on my own is different too. I do hope you enjoy this story as much as you enjoyed the other one. As always, reviews are very much appreciated.

Of course, J.K. Rowling is to be thanked for creating the beautiful surroundings in which this story takes place and its characters, all of it belongs to her.

- Chapter one -

Entering the Unknown

Grey clouds stretched across the sky. Though it was summer, they only gave away a few patches of blue, through which pale beams of sunshine squeaked. The light of these glittered on the wet, vibrant green grass and brought the first warmth of the day to a strange building: the house of the Weasleys. The rooms of the Burrow seemed to have been put together by a giant toddler trying to build an impressive castle with a box of building blocks, but the blocks looked like they were already falling down; yet they were held together by some unseen force. This force filled all of the house, from Molly Weasley in the kitchen, who was cleaning up breakfast with the swaying of her wand, up to the ghoul who was throwing around furniture in the attic.

"Why can't that stupid creature be quiet for once!" exclaimed Ron. He was laying on his garish orange bed and folded his pillow over his head to stop the noise of cracking wood from getting into his ears. The pillow was orange too, as almost everything in the room, and covered with two large C's, which stood for Ron's favourite Quidditch team: the Chudley Cannons. The intense colour covering every inch of every wall and surface had at first made Harry's eyes ache, but now that he had been sleeping in this room for over a week he had gotten used to it. As he had to the almost constant crashes and bumps in the attic above Ron's bedroom. In fact, he had gotten used to being at the Burrow in general and all the magical things inside it now seemed about just as exciting as Aunt Petunia's dishwasher. To be honest, he was actually quite bored.

Harry picked up the small ball he had taken with him from home and resumed throwing it against the wall against which Ron's bed stood. At first the players of the Chudley Cannons on the poster on that wall had been offended by getting a ball thrown at them and had loudly protested, but now they had decided that ignoring Harry would be best and left Harry even more bored. Harry tried to aim the ball exactly at the Seeker at the far right of the picture, but as the ball hit him right on the nose, he hardly even blinked. Ron, however, did, when the ball bounced back to Harry via his back.

"That's really annoying, that ball, you know that?" Ron said as he sat up and rubbed the spot where the ball had hit him. "Is that the Muggle idea of a fun game, throwing a small ball with no will of its own against a wall?" he asked, sounding sarcastic.

"Well, actually there is game like that," Harry answered, cheering up slightly and stopping throwing the ball. He was quite feeling like playing some other game than Quidditch for a change. "It's called squash. Only you'd need rackets for that, I haven't got those," he added, trying to think of a solution for that.

"Rackets? Oh wait, they're those really huge things Muggles use to go into space, right?"

"No," Harry sighed. "Those are called rockets. Rackets are things with which you can hit the ball. Like Beater bats, only different. Hey, maybe your father has got some rackets lying around? You know, along with all the other Muggle stuff he collects?"

"Yeah, maybe," Ron said, not sounding very interested and trying to straighten the poster where Harry's ball had creased it.

"Ah, come on. Let's go and look for them in your father's garage. There's nothing else to do anyway," Harry said and he got up and left the room. Sighing, Ron made a last smoothing movement over the poster and then got off the bed to follow him.

Harry had already stamped down half the stairs and was knocking on the bathroom door:

"Oi! Hermione!" he said and the sound of clattering water made by the shower stopped for a moment. "We're going to the garage for a sec, okay?"

"What are you going to-" said Hermione's muffled voice through the wooden door, but Harry had already continued going down the stairs. Ron shrugged and joined Harry downstairs at the backdoor. When Harry pushed the door open, the fresh green smell of wet grass greeted them as a gust of chilly wind brushed against their faces. Ron shivered and reluctantly closed the door again when they had stepped outside.

After having crossed the garden with big steps, Harry fumbled at the door of the garage, but it wouldn't open. "It's locked… Won't your father let you in anymore after we used the car in our second year?" Harry asked.

"No," Ron answered, "it's mum he's worried about. He doesn't want her to see all the Muggle stuff he's keeping here. She's the one who went mad about the car. It's all right, I'll just open it. Alohomora," he muttered and the door sprang open with a click. It revealed a space totally filled up with objects. The room was a warm brown with a dusty red carpet and the walls were lined with boxes of different sizes and all kinds of electronics lay spread across the floor. In the middle of the room, there stood a big wooden table with a Muggle toolbox on it, with several screwdrivers and an radio dissembled in many pieces next to it. The antenna was twitching and threw a screw of the table.

"Wow," Harry said, "your dad's got quite a collection here…" He walked towards the table and picked up the screw to put it back on its place, wondering at all the Muggle objects on the floor. Ron's dad had collected an extraordinary amount of plugs…

"Yeah. I haven't been here for a long time you know. I'd forgotten how much stuff's here," Ron said as his eyes slid past the boxes. "We could actually have a lot of fun with all of this!" he said cheerfully and took an old-looking big brown case out of one of the piles. Greedily, he opened it and looked at its contents with interest.

"What's this supposed to be?" Ron grinned, lifting a fan from the case and propelling it with his other hand. Harry laughed, and Ron got out other items, his grin turning into progressively louder laughing as he encountered a handful of pens, a calculating machine, a box of matches and a flashlight, with which he flickered light wildly across the garage when he had discovered the on-off switch. It was hilarious for Harry to watch Ron study and try out the objects as though they had just fallen down from Mars and Harry rummaged through the case to find even funnier objects. As he pushed aside a remote control, stapler and hairspray, he saw a large book. He took it out from under the other stuff and laid it on his lap. On the cover, two proud looking men stood before a castle, a dark-haired woman behind them with her hand on the shoulder of the right man. The armour of the men was printed in shining silver and the elaborate dress of the woman in gold. The dark castle behind them loomed over them ominously in black ink. With the remote control, Harry poked Ron, who was laughing frantically while he pushed the buttons of the calculator with five fingers at a time.

"Hey Ron, look at this book here," Harry said, shoving the book under Ron's nose. Ron looked up from the calculating machine and tried to swallow his laughter, only succeeding half in doing it, and fell back into an uncontrollable fit of laughter as he read the title.

"The Princes of the House of Woldshire and the Dark Wizard! The Dark wizard!" Ron hiccupped, "ooh, scary wizards threatening noble Muggles!" Together Harry and Ron rolled over the red carpet, roaring so hard they didn't hear the door of the garage open.

"And just what are you two doing?" Hermione stood in the door opening looking at the two boys on the floor. An amused smile played across the corners of her mouth.

Flustered, both of them got up. "Here Hermione, take a look at this," Ron said, holding out the book with a big smile.

Hermione reached out to take it, but then recoiled her hand. She looked at the book with distrusting interest. "Isn't this Arthur's bewitched Muggle stuff? Don't you think it's better to keep off it-"

"Really, it's fine," Ron interrupted her, "it's not like he keeps dangerous stuff in here. Nothing really dangerous anyway," Ron sniggered and laid his hand on the cover. "Look, this is a story made by scared Muggles." He looked at her, hoping to see her smile, and then opened the book. A waft of the smell of very old paper filled their nostrils. On the first page of the book, an illustration of a large, ancient looking door greeted them. Beneath it, graceful writing read: Enter into this magical world. Ron managed to chuckle at this text once, before all three of them had a strange sensation after reading this: the book left Ron's hands and stood up in front of them. All of their sight was filled with yellowish paper as the book grew and grew until it reached up to the ceiling. The ancient door drawn in ink was now as big as any normal door and it opened to reveal a pitch-black darkness. The smiles vanished from their faces and they froze, their eyes growing wide. Then the book closed and its cover slammed against their backs. They tripped over the doorstep, and fell into a pit of blackness.