Chapter 1: The Magic Beyond

Taroma, your average 11-year-old girl, never stopped reading Harry Potter. She read books 1-7 again and again, usually watched by her 11 year old twin brother Arcius. Originally, Arcius would peek over Taroma's shoulder, sometimes asking questions like, "Who's Sirius?" or, "Why can't Hagrid be cursed?", but without real interest. Eventually, he started to mature and read the first book and, like his sister, couldn't stop. At mealtimes they would theorize and suggest good ideas if JK were to write an 8th book.

For their 10th birthdays, they both got their own laptops, as their father worked in an oil company, they could easily afford them.

One day, about 3 months after they turned 10, Taroma found the website . (If you're a serious HP fan, you'll know that Alivans specializes in real wood wands, along with other wizarding needs.) Obviously, this interested them greatly. So, for Xmas, they both got Solitaire Collection wands (Alivans sells two types of wands: wands that anyone can buy, all hand-turned but not special in design, and solitaire wands, which are special and one-of-a-kind) and Scarlet Falcon broomsticks. Taroma got Bloodwood and Ebony with "phoenix feather core" and Arcius got Holly and Padauk, "dragon heartstring" core. So off they went, playing with their wands, pretending to levitate snowballs when they were just throwing them up in the air, and everyone was happy.

Until their 11th birthdays.

Taroma was checking on Alivan's to see what new wands they had, when she noticed something that had never been there before: A "click me for Hogwarts" button. At first she just though it was an ad, until it completely overtook her screen...and kept getting bigger. She then noticed a small picture of Diagon Alley. Then her feet left the floor.

Taroma was flying, flying strait towards Diagon Alley. By the sound of yells of fear and joy, Arcius was right behind her. The street was getting bigger...she was going to crash...

But at the last second, she leveled out and touched the ground like a feather. Arcius landed right next to her. They gasped.

Hagrid was pointing his wand at them with a grin on his face. The books described him exactly right. Hands the size of trash can lids, twice as tall and three times as wide as a normal man, with a grizzly black beard. They noticed a small amount of gray hair mixed in with the black, and quite a few more wrinkles on his face.

"Hagrid!" screamed Taroma.

"Know me name, do yeh? Strange, ain't it, how all the li'l muggle-borns seem to know me," said Hagrid, still grinning.

"Of course we do, Hagrid! Haven't you read the Harry Potter books?" said Arcius.

"Well, I know Harry Potter personally, meself, an' o' course there are books 'bout him, probably hundreds by now."

"But the books, Hagrid! Don't you know about Harry fully? All his adventures?" said Taroma, eyeing Hagrid, not know whether to believe he was real.

"Books? What books? What are you going on abou'..." said Hagrid, as a look of comprehension was dawning on his face, "The muggle...wha' was 'er name? Er...Rawping...no, Rufing...oh, yeah! Rowling! JK Rowling! Wouldn't give us 'er full name...she saw all of Diagon Alley, an' some bloke comes along and puts a bad Memory Charm on her, apparently it didn't hold...but she can't know all about Harry...there's no way she could know everythin'. Unless, o' course, she's not a complete muggle, and has Seer blood...Nah...

"Well," he continued, "don' matter, don' matter….well! You might be wondering why you're here! Well, like I hinted before, you're muggle-borns. An' Dumbledore set it up so that I could use magic through the…wha' was it? Umpernet….no, no…Earpernet…

"Internet?" suggested Arcius helpfully.

"Yeah, yeah! Well, he said-"

"Wait! Did you say Dumbledore?" Taroma said quickly, "He's dead, isn't he?"

She expected Hagrid's face to sink, say he was just joking, but instead it lit up.



"Aaaah, he was! So Rowling did know 'er stuff! Yeah, he was dead! But the Ministry decided to give our dear Mr. Potter a more thorough look of the Department of Mysteries, and turns out that the Ministry had pure Time in a glass egg, so Harry used some on Dumbledore and it reversed the effect of death and brought him back! Neat, eh? But the Ministry kept it secret what Time could do, there wasn't enough for all the dead people, so they just said that Snape used a spell to stop his heart so everyone thought he was dead and all that other rubbish." Said Hagrid so fast that it took Taroma and her brother a minute to figure out what he said.

Then Taroma noticed a few different things about Hagrid.

"Hagrid, how did you get a wand? I thought yours was snapped in half!" she said.

"Aye, but once again Harry shined through onto his friends. Proved to the ministry that I was wrongly expelled, so I got my wand repaired by somethin' in the Department of Mysteries to fix it, and I got private magic lessons!"

"Oh, and I also noticed you're speaking better English," she said.

"Oh, turns out the reason my English was messed up was from the shock of expulsion or somethin' like that," he said happily, "well, let's get shopping!"

And so they did. Flourish and Blotts was real, as was the Apothecary, the Owl Emporium, and every other shop. As they passed Quality Quidditch Supplies, they saw a beautiful broomstick that turned out to be the Scarlet Falcon. A little sign under the broom said: The Scarlet Falcon is the newest in fast, affordable wizard racing brooms. Made of oak with mahogany finish and birch twigs for tail. Made by Alivan's.

Taroma read this sign without really registering, then did a double-take. Scarlet Falcon? Alivan's? Could it be that-?

"Ah, there's Gringotts!" said Hagrid.

So the trio went inside to be greeted by an enthusiastic goblin, something they had never imagined.

"Keys please! By god!" he jumped, "You two must be Taroma and Arcius! Yes, we've been expecting you…I'm Shackleworth, pleased to meet you!" he bowed.

The goblin Shackleworth took them down to vault 613, right next to-

"The vault of the Sorcerer's Stone!" the twins said together.

"God, you two know way too much!" Hagrid grinned.

Arcius just realized something.

"Hagrid, we don't have any money!"

"Actually, you do. We Confunded your parents work boss, so that he gave them a paycheck 500 off the normal pay, and we turned the dollars into wizard gold," said Hagrid.

"Just out of curiosity, how many dollars are there to a Galleon?" Taroma asked eagerly.

"No exact amount, we wizards think roughly 10 is one Galleon."

"So, if we do the math, we have roughly 66,000 Galleons??" Arcius said, astonished.

"You got it," said Hagrid, grinning wider than ever.

The vault suddenly opened to reveal huge piles of gold, so when the twins filled their money bags and left, their pockets jingled happily.

"Now, off ter buy your stuff!"