Chapter 4
During the rest of the holidays the blonde witch had a strict food and exercise schedule, she had never been good at sports but extended and regular walks through the city brought slow but steady the results she wanted. Marianne also practiced her guitar play diligently; her fingers had been completely unused to the different finger movements, it fast became a sort of release for her, a way to cope with the sudden displacement and COMPLETE change of her routine. The former teacher started to remember a lot of the songs that she had learned throughout her college education and wrote down the notes she could remember.
Marianne still couldn't rap her mind completely around the fact that she was now a resident in the Harry Potter universe, maybe even forever but she tried her best to get used to all the strange things around her. She slowly but steadily became Marianne Abbott and then started to change the way her family saw her. To them it looked like the youngest member of the Abbotts was gaining confidence and finally coming out of her shell.
The Muggle part in Marianne was endlessly excited about being a witch and so she studied throughout the summer a lot of the material the witch had learned the four years prior. This had the positive effect of repeating and cementing the witch's knowledge. Especially Runes fascinated Marianne immensely, it was more like a secret language that only a handful of people understood then anything else, it also helped that it was one of the witch's favorite subjects at Hogwarts.
Throughout the summer Marianne also kept up her visits to the Muggle world; she enjoyed window shopping and had purchased some clothes so that she would fit right in with the muggles. Secretly she hoped that her father would allow her to visit a dance school next summer so that she could learn the more relaxed muggle dances additional to the standard wizard dances. The muggle in her regretted to never have learned them now that she had the knowledge of how much fun dancing was from the witch.
At the end of the summer the blonde witch had lost most of her overweight. She would never be rail thin like those supermodel types but didn't bother her that much after all Marianne enjoyed EATING and she had learned through various documentaries what those girls put themselves through, NO THANKS!
And so she happily celebrated her accomplishment with shopping at Twillfit and Tatting's, a Wizarding cloth shop for the more wealthy families. There she bought herself new underwear as well as some nice robes, skirts and dresses because as much as she would love to wear jeans and t-shirt, the Wizarding world was very conservative concerning clothes and at least twenty years behind Muggles in fashion at any time. Marianne was only glad that her other self, of whom she had taken over a lot of qualities, was quite comfortable in this style and so she had no problems with the current fashion. After finishing her shopping at that shop the Abbott made a quick stop at Madame Malkin's to get her school uniform adjusted, after all it was the official Hogwarts outfitter in Britain.
At Madame Malkin's Marianne had a run in with one of her fellow Hufflepuffs. Katherine Macmillan or Kate for short had not recognized her at first but after she finally did Kate had complimented her for the loss of weight and the two ended up talking about their holidays while they made their way through Diagon Ally. The fellow blonde witch had always been nice to Marianne even when they hadn't been close. During their conversation about the holidays Marianne learned that her house mate had spent her time with her family in Sweden where they had relatives. Marianne enjoyed the relaxed small talk and the two only split up at Flourish and Blott's because Kate's brothers waited there for her.
Marianne spend the rest of the day window shopping and picking up small gadgets before she made her way back to the Leaky Cauldron where Michael had promised to pick her up. They would probably have dinner with their father in one of the more high priced restaurants to celebrate the end of the summer just like the years before.
Marianne was only a few meters away from the entrance to the Leaky cauldron when she recognized James Potter and Sirius Black in front of her. The two Marauders were joking and laughing behind what she recognized as the Potter seniors, who shook their heads indulgently while they made their way down the street. Marianne came to a somewhat abrupt stop in front of a knick knack shop and acted as if she was interested in something in the shop window. Her hair had fallen in front of her face like a curtain and so prevented the two Gryffindors from seeing her red cheeks and shy glances. Inside the muggle Marianne was squealing and jumping around, she had finally encountered the MARAUDERS! After Prongs and Padfoot had passed her, Marianne made her way to meet her father and brother. She still had slightly red cheeks and wore a dazed gaze when she came to a stop in front of Michael, thankfully her older brother didn't seem to have noticed her state. As predicted their father met them only five minutes later and the three of them had a nice lunch in the Gypsy, an upper class café house before making their way home.
On the next day it was only Michael who accompanied her to the train station their father had his shift in St. Mungos and couldn't get out of it. A quick hug and goodbye later, the now fourteen year old dimension traveler sat in the Hogwarts express in direction of Scotland.