An Outsider's View
By: Storm Karstark
A/N: I don't own, nor do I pretend to own, the characters, world, or setting of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter.
Chapter 1: Parchment
The gentle metallic fwip of the mail slot was heard around the house. Barbara Lapitske looked up from the fry pan full of sausages she had decided to make for breakfast that morning.
"Jonathan! Jonny, dear, could you go get the post?" she called up the stairs.
"Yes, mum," came the reply from her youngest child's bedroom. A door opened, closed, and the sound of sock feet running was muffled not a whit by the wall plaster. Seconds later, 7-year old Jonathan appeared, in his dinosaur pajamas, dark head bent over the daily post.
"Did you get the paper, as well?" He absently pushed it on the kitchen table. Barbara turned her attention back to the sausages.
"Mm-hm. Uh…catalog, dunno, dunno, 'nother catalog, this one's for you…whoa, this is weird!" She looked up. Jonathan was turning a peculiar-looking letter over in his hands. She frowned curiously.
"Well, what is it? To whom is it addressed?" He obediently proffered it up for her perusal. She took it and inspected it. Is that parchment? No, it can't be… But it was: an envelope made of thick, yellowy parchment. How bizarre…
"It's for Jillian," he said innocently. Indeed, the first thing she saw was, in emerald green ink, Jillian Lapitske. She flipped it over, looking for a return address. All she saw was that was sealed with honest-to-goodness sealing wax. Pressed into the wax was a big letter 'H' with minute designs around it that she could see without the aid of her reading glasses.
"How strange! Ryan," she called up the staircase again, raising her voice slightly, "you've got a post!" There was a yell of joy from upstairs, and the rapid thumpthumpthump as her daughter dashed down the stairs and threw herself into the kitchen, panting from exertion.
"Where, where is it? Who's it from?" She snatched it, looked at it for a moment, then shrugged and ripped through the wax seal. Over the sound of tearing parchment, Jon took the opportunity to make his opinion known.
"Why would anyone write to you? You haven't heard from that pen-pal of yours in ages, you know. She's not writing back."
"Fat lot you know," she said, pausing long enough to stick her tongue out at her younger brother, "Jane has to write back, it's a school assignment, so there!" Barbara, impatient to see what the letter contained, separated them before Jon could say anything else.
"Please stop bickering! Ryan, open your letter. Jon," she took a piece of toast and shoved it into his still-open mouth. "Eat!" Chewing sulkily, he sat at the table and picked up his comic book. Ryan finally wrested the letter from the envelope and read aloud:
"'Dear Miss Jillian Lapitske,'" (she scowled at the use of her proper name, and her eyes widened when the ink melted away and came back as 'Ryan'.) "'We are pleased to announce that you have been accepted into the Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!'" Silence would have reigned in the kitchen, except that Jon began to choke on the bite of toast he had been swallowing. Ryan's mother looked faint.
"It's a joke," she said, much more firmly than she felt, "A prank, that's all…" Ryan thrust the envelope up so her mother could see it more clearly. Instinctively, Barbara recoiled away from it and busied herself pounding on Jon's back.
"Look, mum, you have to look! The ink changed my name, see? It says 'Ryan' now, and it said 'Jillian' before! Isn't this exciting? I'm going to be a wizard!" Her mother continued to pound on Jon's back, despite the fact that he was no longer choking, causing his words to be slightly choppy.
"I think—the correct—term is—witch. Mum, stop, I'm fine."
"It's all a joke," she declared, "a hoax! And that's all there is to it!" Ryan shrugged, supremely unperturbed.
"Then it's a very clever and thorough one, you must admit. Look, a supply list: 1 pointed hat, black, for day-wear. 1 black cloak, silver fastenings, for winter. 1 wand. And an entire list of spellbooks! Look, here, at the bottom, it says that 'students may bring either a cat OR owl OR toad'! Can I bring Tabitha? Oh, please say yes!"
"Honey, honey, can't you see it's all a prank? There's no such thing as Hogwarts, or magic, or witches, or any of it!" Ryan got a defiant tilt to her chin.
"Fine, then. Go to London and prove it!" Her mother frowned.
"London? Is that where this…Hogwarts…is?"
"No. But it says here to go to the Leaky Cauldron pub, London, and ask for Tom."
"A-ha! There's no such place as the Leaky Cauldron in London!"
"Prove it!" shot Ryan. She was getting exasperated with her mother's refusal to believe. Her mother heaved a sigh.
"All right. I'll humour you. We've got little else to do, and it's better than you kids lying around the house all day. We'll go into London and look for this pub of yours, though you know I don't approve of such places for children. I could do with some shopping, though." While they had been arguing, Jon had taken charge of the sausages. He had rescued them from burning, and had been steadily munching while watching his mother and older sister argue. At this news, though, he swallowed and began bouncing up and down in his seat.
"Wicked! We're going to London, and Ryan's going to be a witch! Do you think I'll be a wizard when I'm eleven, too?" Ryan shrugged, her normal response to a question, and selected some sausage from what her brother had left and started pouring ketchup on them. She bolted her breakfast, and then ran upstairs. She slammed her bedroom door shut and reached under her bed, pulling out her enormously fat and fluffy tabby cat, Tabby the tabby, out by the tail.
"Guess what, Tabby? We're going to Hogwarts come September, and I'll be a witch. How's that sound?" Tabitha just flopped on the bed and went to sleep. Ryan shrugged and pulled on some clothes comfortable enough for a day of shopping in the London summertime. Then she dashed downstairs, wriggling with badly held anticipation.
It was almost dusk, and Ryan was beginning to lose hope. They had investigated every nook and cranny of London, it seemed to her, and there wasn't hide nor hair of the Leaky Cauldron. They had asked in every shop, and had thus far gotten no more than blank stares, and polite inquiries as to whether they were sure they had the name correct.
Thoroughly despondent, Ryan followed her mother and brother out of the music store. She stared blankly ahead, at the bare stretch of wall next to them…then blinked rapidly. The vision was still there. She yanked on her mother's sleeve and pointed excitedly.
"Mum, look! Mum, there it is! It's the Leaky Cauldron!" Her mother frowned.
"Nonsense, love, there's nothing there, it's a blank wall!" But Ryan could see the dingy pub quite clearly. She took her mother's hand and reverently touched the rotten-looking wood of the door frame. Her mother yanked her hand away and took a step backward, blinking owlishly, much as Ryan had been doing a moment earlier.
"I will swear unto my grave that there was nothing there a moment ago…" Ryan snatched Jon by the hand and ran in, eager with renewed hope.
"That's because it's magic! Come on, mum, hurry! I'm going to be a witch!"