Author Note: Please go to chapter selection and choose "Chapter One: The Girl Who Lived." (I accidentally deleted it, and I don't think I can rearrange them so it's first. If there's a way to do it, I can't figure it out. Oops.)

The first chapter is the ONLY chapter that has been edited, so if you continue reading from here, you will find continuity errors. Also, a great deal of this will get cleaned up and changed.

/-wujy

Chapter Two – The Flying Motorcycle

Crying without making a sound can be an art form. It's all about taking the energy your heart is screaming for you to throw away and pulling it inside instead. You shred that hurt into tiny pieces rather than allowing it to grow unchecked and spill from you. It was something Whitney had years of practice doing. She hated for the Dursleys to know that she had been crying. She hated the smug looks on their faces when they knew they had succeeded in defeating her.

Whitney trembled through her sobs, burying her face in her pillow whenever she needed to draw a sharp breath. Her fingers shook and twitched from the effort of remaining silent and she curled her body into a defensive ball beneath her blanket. Eventually, from lack of sleep and pure exhaustion, her body shut down and drew her into a fitful sleep.

The girl lost track of how many days she was confined to the cupboard and wondered if it had been weeks. Being isolated from the Dursleys wasn't necessarily the problem, but her stomach began to protest its isolation from food. By the time Aunt Petunia finally let her out, Whitney had been eyeing her pillow cover and wondering if it would go down all right if it were torn into strips.

She drank down the cold soup Aunt Petunia offered in two mouthfuls, broth dribbling down from one corner of her mouth, aggravating her face where it was still burned from Dudley's birthday. She wiped the broth up with one finger and then licked it off while her stomach screamed in barely-improved protest.

"You'll make breakfast," Aunt Petunia said before leaving the room.

Whitney stared at her as she left, her mouth hanging open slightly, but she soon regained control of herself and began preparing breakfast, grumbling under her breath. As she cooked, the smell of the bacon practically caused her pain and she longed to knick a piece to silence her stomach, but resisted the temptation. Maybe she'd sneak something while Aunt Petunia was grocery shopping later.

When she had finished cooking, she put everything on the table and skipped out to take a shower. She was feeling quite grimy after so long in the cupboard. A schlick-clack noise caught her attention and she turned her head to see the mail falling through the slot onto the small rug in front of the door. Quickly, she walked over to grab it and place it in next to Uncle Vernon's breakfast plate, but she paused when she saw her own name in a flash of green ink.

She frowned slightly when she saw that it was addressed to her at 'the cupboard under the stairs,' but tore open the paper immediately and began reading the letter inside. Her frown deepened and she gathered the letter and torn envelope, tossing them in the bin as she set the rest of the mail next to her uncle.

"What's that?" her uncle demanded, gesturing to the bin.

The wild urge to tell him that it was, in fact, a waste receptacle was unusually strong, but Whitney just shrugged and said nothing as she walked away again to take a shower. When she came back downstairs, she was still dressed in too-large clothes, but she was much cleaner and in a considerably better mood. She'd had to take great care with the burns on her face, but she was humming to herself absently as she walked toward the kitchen to see if her aunt had left yet. Angry voices coming from the living room caught her attention and she changed directions. When she drew closer, the words being spoken made her stop and listen.

"—will NOT go to some private school so some old codger can teach her magic. She'll be staying here where we can properly beat that nonsense out of—"

Uncle Vernon's tirade ended abruptly in a girly squeal from Dudley and a strangled outburst from a voice that almost sounded familiar to her.

"You will NOT insult Albus Dumbledore in front of me!" the new voice roared.

Whitney inched forward, though every molecule in her body was screaming at her to stop and run from the shouting. She hated shouting and this man was louder than she had ever heard Vernon be. A floorboard beneath her creaked long and low, and she froze where she was, looking up just as a shaggy head appeared around the corner. Whitney squeaked and fell back hard on her rear, putting a defensive hand up.

The head grinned at her and said in a much gentler voice, "Come 'round, Whitney. I 'ave sommat ter tell ya. Tha's a good lass," he said as Whitney pulled herself up from the floor and walked shakily toward him.

When she stepped into the living room, she saw a near-purple Uncle Vernon standing close to Aunt Petunia, who was hovering over a sobbing Dudley. She was trying to hush him, but Dudley was not nearly as practiced with being quiet as Whitney was.

"'Ave a seat!" the giant man said in a booming voice that probably would have passed as happy if everyone always spoke in as loud a voice as he did. Whitney simply stared at him, lost for words. The man waited for a couple of awkward moments before deciding that he wasn't going to convince her to sit. "All righ', then," he said, gripping the handle of a pink umbrella. "Anyway, I s'pose yer wonderin' why I'm here… in yer house."

He cleared his throat and rocked forward on the balls of his feet. The top of his bushy head touched the ceiling before he rolled back onto his heels. "Blimey," he said to no one in particular. "This'd be easier if yeh were a boy."

Whitney had no idea what to say to that, so she didn't. Instead, she asked, "Is it about… H-Hogwarts?"

"Good!" Hagrid boomed, causing Whitney and her uncle both to take a step back from him. "Yeh already know! Good. Well, o' course you know. Yeh read the letter. Detection spell said yeh had. That's why I'm… Why I'm here. Makes this a mite easier on me. Me…? Oh, me! I forgot to in'roduce myself. I am Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts."

Whitney's bottom lip started to quiver and she didn't seem to be able to make it stop, so she chewed on it for a moment before asking, "It… it's real?"

"Real!" Hagrid shouted. "Real enough! I had no idea these sorry excuses for Muggles weren't teachin' yeh about where ya come from. About who yer parents were."

Whitney inferred from context that 'Muggle,' meant 'jerk,' and didn't ask about it. At the mention of her parents, however, her eyes grew wide and her fear all but vanished. "You knew my parents?" she asked suddenly. "What were they like? What did they look like? How did they die?"

Hagrid stared at the girl with his mouth hanging open for a moment before snapping it shut. "How? How did they die?" Hagrid asked, looking completely confused. "Blimey, didn't they tell ya who murdered yer parents?"

"M-murdered them?" Whitney asked, her voice croaking at the word. "They don't talk about them at all. S-someone killed them?"

Whitney made a frightened noise and backed away from the huge man as he roared at her aunt and uncle.

"Yeh didn't tell her how her parents died? They didn't-! You-!" The man seemed to be absolutely lost for words and furious for it. "How could yeh not tell 'er anythin'? How can yeh call yerselves her family an' keep all this from her? Doesn' even know she's a witch! Abou' the world her parents come from?"

Vernon had taken a step closer to his wife during this outburst, and so was taken by surprise when Petunia suddenly stood up and whirled around to glare at Hagrid over her pointed nose. "Don't you talk about that… that filth in my home! We'll have none of that here. No magic. My parents never understood that my sister—my sister, the witch—was just a dangerous freak!"

"STOP IT!"

Hagrid, who had drawn in a deep breath to shout at the woman, was startled into silence when Whitney screamed with all of her might. Petunia, too, had not been expecting the outburst and looked down at Whitney with a stunned expression. Whitney had never shouted or raised her voice before, and now she had her hands over her ears, looking distressed. She never had responded well when Vernon or Petunia were screaming at her, and now that there was a giant man in the room to add to the volume, she was almost shaking.

When Whitney did finally realize that the quiet she'd demanded had been given to her, she looked up at everyone in the room, her eyes settling on her aunt. They were glazed with tears.

"You knew that… that I'm a witch?" she asked, looking hurt. "You knew my parents w… were murdered? What… What else?"

Petunia didn't seem to be able to answer the girl who looked so much like her sister. She made a half-strangled noise, and then snapped her mouth shut. After a moment, Whitney looked away, releasing her aunt from her gaze. She turned her eyes to Hagrid and said, "This school… it's like a private school?"

"'At's right! Hagrid said loudly, but decidedly cheerily. "Finest school of magic in the—"

"Do the students live there?" Whitney asked, interrupting him. This caught him off guard and he didn't answer right away, so she repeated herself, elaborating. "Do you live at the school while you go there?"

Hagrid nodded. "Well, yeah—"

"When can we go?" Whitney asked, interrupting him again. A notion had taken her and she was too hurt to listen to explanations or excuses. Not that Petunia would offer either.

Hagrid met her eyes and was struck by just how tired she looked for someone so young, and for the first time, he detected the faint traces of mostly-healed burns on her face.

"Well… I'm ter take yeh ter get yer school supplies today, and the train teh school leaves the first o' September," Hagrid answered her question, his voice at a much more reasonable tone.

Whitney nodded, "Okay."

Without another word, she walked out of the house and out into the yard to wait for Hagrid to follow her. She shoved her hands in her pockets while she waited. Hagrid ducked through the doorway after her wearing an expression like a scolded puppy.

"Ah… 'Preciate it if you didn't tell abou' what happened t'yer cousin," Hagrid said, looking down at his wringing hands.

Whitney looked confused, "What happened to Dudley?"

"Yeh didn't, er… yeh didn' see…?" He broke off and shook his head. "Nevermind," he said. "S'pose yeh'll find out when you get back. Anyway, are ya ready?"

Whitney looked up at him and nodded. He nodded back and lifted his umbrella to point into thin air above a section of the road outside her aunt and uncle's house. Slowly, as though being unveiled, a motorcycle and sidecar materialized out of thin air.

"There we are," he said proudly, walking over and sitting astride the large seat. Whitney followed him and folded herself into the sidecar, looking a little sullen. Hagrid started the motorcycle with a roar and fiddled around with the buttons and levers as though confused. "Sorry," he apologized. "Flyin' it takes differen' buttons than drivin' it."

This caught Whitney's attention. "Flying it?" she asked, looking more interested. "It can fly?"

"'Course it can," Hagrid said as though all motorcycles could fly.

"Can we… can we fly it?" she asked, perking up a bit.

"Stric'ly speakin', I'm not s'posed ter…" Hagrid stopped and looked at her for a moment, and decided that he couldn't watch her happy face turn back into a disappointed one. He leaned down and smiled at her. "Hold on to sommat," he told her in a low voice, winking as he flipped a switch on the bike and it lifted straight up into the sky. For a moment, Whitney was pressed down against the floor of the sidecar, but when they started to reach a good height, their ascent slowed and she was able to get a peek over the side of the car.

Her face lit up when she looked down over Privet Drive and saw just how small the house really was. She imagined a teensy ant-sized Uncle Vernon running out into the yard, shaking his fist at them. Then, she imagined squeezing ant-sized Uncle Vernon between her thumb and forefinger until he smushed. She smiled the whole way to London.