me: OMG IM GOING TO FINISH THIS EARLY AND GET TO BED EARLY

brain: no

"Are you excited about your first day at Hogwarts, Miss Mathilda?"

Mathilda pushed her scrambled eggs around her plate with her fork.

"Yes," she said, just to make Jez, the house elf who had helped raise her since birth, take that worried look off her tiny wrinkled face.

In truth, she was much more nervous than she was excited. Going away to Hogwarts was a very big event. When she was younger she had begged her parents to let her go now, why couldn't she go now, and get her wand and learn the spells her parents used, and come home with just as many funny stories as they had from their days?

But over the past couple of months, ever since her letter had arrived confirming her registration at Hogwarts, she had been thinking about Hogwarts more. Half a sheaf of parchment in her room was covered in neat lists of pros and cons. She kept hiding it whenever her parents approached ( she'd sworn Jez to secrecy so that was ok) because Hogwarts was just where you went. Well, hypothetically her parents could have got her into Durmstrang or Koldovstoretz, since they had different entry requirement to Hogwarts, which demanded all students be born in Britain, but that wasn't the point. The point was the going to school bit.

Going to Hogwarts meant leaving this house for the vast majoriy of a year, every year for the next seven years of her life. She would be nearly eighteen when she finished. Eighteen. She couldn't imagine being eighteen. More importantly, she couldn't imagine spending that long away from home.

It wasn't that she was glued to her parents' side or anything. Her father worked long hours at the Ministry and her mother wrote so many voluntary articles for the Prophet on broomcare that it was virtually a full-time job from her sitting-room. On top of that, there hadn't been enough pureblood families locally to give her a daily school environment: instead there had only been boring governess Emilia and a few Portkey visits to and by other pureblood children. Once or twice, walking around the edge of the grounds, Mathilda had come across half-blood wizarding children. She knew for certain that was what they were because she had never met them before so they weren't purebloods, and one of them had been trying to keep hold of a Kneazle, so they were wizarding children.

So she had spent the vast majority of her eleven year-old life in this one house, with mainly the same people. The idea of going away for months and months and months … the idea of having to find her way to classes and carry her books with her, no rummaging around under her bed for them mid-lesson any more … the idea of sleeping in the same room as even one person, let alone an entire dormitory full … of not having her own personal private locked space that she could retreat to … it was just a lot to think about, ok?

She put a forkful of scrambled eggs in her mouth and swallowed them without tasting.

Oh, and that was another thing! What if she didn't like the food? Her father had written down how she could get to the kitchen to discuss it with the Hogwarts house elves, but she still had horrible thoughts of staring at a full plate of food and not eating any of it at all.

Later that afternoon, she sat on her bed and looked at everything. Jez had laid it all out earlier on in the day: she was just waiting for Mathilda to pick her favourite day robes and underwear to go in before she packed it. That was a nice thing Jez did, she appreciated that Mathilda got overly attached to inanimate objects like clothes and let her deal with it. This was the exact opposite approach to Mathilda's mother, who had once got so frustrated with this silly, illogical childish behaviour that she had Vanished a particularly beloved pair of comfy shoes. Mathilda still hadn't really forgiven her for that and it had been a year ago.

Her regulation plain black school robes were … well, just that. Plain. She was used to wearing brightly coloured robes in green, purple or pink. Sometimes with embroidery. Once she'd tried her own embroidery, but that hadn't gone well. At least the fabric was good quality and nice to touch. Her mother had made an embarrassingly big deal about walking straight past Madam Malkins, which had been crowded with other children who looked her age (she'd felt simultaneously excited and sick at seeing them) and into Twilfitt and Tattings instead. "They keep the riff-raff out in here," her mother had said, then laughed so merrily that Mathilda had joined in.

The textbook list had made her roll her eyes. Her family's speciality had been Charms, in her grandmother's era, and so she had read many more advanced books by now than Grade One. Transfiguration, too. Oh well, at least Potions and Astronomy with an actual telescope would be new. And of course, maybe Charms and Transfiguration would be completely different when she wasn't stealing her mother's wand while she was in the shower, and trying to read the movement instructions as quickly as possible.

Her wand. She picked it up again and squeezed it. It felt warm and smooth and comforting. Eight inches long, and made from alder wood with a unicorn tail hair core. It was just a little bit springy, enough to be fun to wave around, and not so much that she felt compelled to bend it as far as it could go. Her mother had been very pleased and proud when that wand had chosen Mathilda, since her mother's wand wood was alder too (twelve inches, rigid, dragon heartstring core).

All opinions welcome!

xIlbx