Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor am I JK Rowling, a publisher, or any such agency or person. … And I don't get paid for publishing on-time so, sorry…

September 1, 1971

Charisse and Harald were going spare. Their oldest child, James was to leave from King's Cross station later today to Hogwarts for the very first time. The house was in utter disarray. Harald was lecturing his son, attempting to convince him not to bring so many practical joke supplies to school.

"But Dad! You let me buy them, what did you think I was going to do with them? Leave them here where they aren't any use?"

"I only let you buy them because arguing wasn't worth the headache! You will unpack them this instant…"

"But Dad…" whined James. At 11 years old, he had messy dark brown hair, and brown eyes hidden behind glasses. He had acquired the slim figure of his mother, rather than his father's broad shoulders. Who he had inherited the mischief-gene from was, however, a complete mystery.

Meanwhile Charisse was fumbling through the freshly folded laundry making sure that she hadn't allowed James to skip packing anything necessary, like undergarments. Lord knows when she'd last allowed James to pack for himself for a camping trip, in the back acres of their home in the countryside of Wales, he'd forgotten undergarments, flashlight, and the tent. He had only taken a snack and a change of clothes. He'd been back within half an hour, and that just wouldn't do for school.

With the small stack of laundry in her arms, Charisse ran through the kitchen where her husband was losing the argument with their son. The trunk was still sitting on the floor, fully stuffed with Fizzing Whizbees, Exploding Quills and Color-Changing Sweets. Bending down, she reached to remove the offending items and place the clothing in their place, when Diara interrupted her.

Diara, now 8, with messy black hair, and bright green eyes circled by golden-rimmed glasses sat at the table eating the tail end of her oatmeal. "Don't bother removing those Mum. He'll find a way to get more within a month. Although…he'll just blow up his own essays with the Exploding Quills. Professor Alehard won't be very pleased."

Charisse looked at her daughter, who had an uncanny ability to predict things. Seeing the look in her daughter's eyes, she sighed and didn't bother removing any of the items. When Diara had first learned to speak at two and a half, she had begun to say the oddest things. "Dad home!" she smiled when he came home from work every day, but one day she had said it half an hour early, before his shift had ended, let alone before the Floo sounded. Yet…he had arrived just moments later. That was the first time her oddness had been revealed.

At four she had cried "Don't go, don't go! Bad dog, bad dog," and clung to her brother's leg. James hadn't listened to her, and went outside to play. That day he had played with a Muggle child and teased a dog that had then chased him, snarling. It was only thanks to Harald going to check on James, because of Diara's insistent crying, that Harald had been able to prevent James from being bitten.

The events had begun to pile up from there. On her fifth birthday she said she didn't have to unwrap her birthday gifts, because she already knew what they were. She would set the table with an extra setting when Abbott showed up for dinner, unexpectedly. Only a few months before she had insisted on setting a bag by the fireplace filled Charisse's clothes—that night her mom had gone to bed with a very bad headache, and woken up during the night very sick. Her lumbago had gotten bad enough that all of her joints were swollen up, and painful to move, and an illness had set in because the lumbago had also compromised her immunity.

Now it was accepted within the family that Diara was a seer. Harald and James stopped arguing upon Diara's prophecy, James with a smirk. "HA! Thanks Sis," James crowed and hurriedly moved to lock up his case before anyone could change his or her minds. Diara just shrugged her shoulders with a small smile.

Soon enough the family was loaded up and ready to drive off in the truck, a rickety old thing that was useful since a Muggle community had grown larger in the nearby community, and a family living off the beaten track with no vehicle was noteworthy. The Potter family was little spoke of in the nearby town, but known of. James had certainly made his mark, tearing around town like a little hooligan at times. The town thought both Harald and Charisse to be retired, and raising their grandchildren. They had never once guessed that little Diara, who they rarely saw, was adopted, nor that the two adults in the home were in fact parents to the children. The town was effectively snowballed.

James was nearly late for his train by the time they had parked, gotten a trolley and pushed James' trunk toward Platform 9 3/4s. James was looking around, every ounce the excited boy about leaving his family. Harald wasn't having any such behavior from his son. "Now look here James. Behave, okay? I don't want letters home, other than those written by you? Got it?"

"Yes Dad; don't get in so much trouble they write letters home. Got it," James nodded solemnly, knowing his parents were pushovers. They yelled, and they tried to stop him. They occasionally even grounded him. For one day. The only thing he ever got in trouble for, serious trouble for, was messing with Diara too much. The day he had put worms in her bed, when she was four, he'd gotten in so much trouble…

Charisse gave her son a dirty look, and then softened as a tear dribbled from the corner of her eye. "Oh! Harald! Our little boy is all grown up going off to school…." And she gave her son a great big hug, while he struggled to get away. Harald pulled his wife back, gently, and she pulled herself together. "Have a good year at school, then…write lots."

As James turned to go, Diara tapped his shoulder. "Don't tell the marauders about my secret." His face assumed a general confused look, and Diara chuckled at him.

"Which secret? You being a know-it-all? And who are the marauders?"

Harald and Charisse gave James a dirty look and moved to lecture him, about calling his sister mean things. But Diara, all of eight years old, just pouted for a minute. "No, toe-rag, about me being you know-adopted," she whispered.

The siblings had learned the truth one day when Charisse was putting photos of James and Diara into a photo album. James and Diara, playing with paints (Diara making a rainbow, James painting his arms with tiger stripes) had been sitting at the table next to her as she worked. One photo had caught James' attention, short as it was. "Wow, you were really fat!" Charisse had given her son a dirty look, and explained that women who were pregnant, as she had been with James in her stomach, looked like that. James had laughed and laughed, and eventually Diara had told him that the picture must have been of him in Mum's belly, because it could have only been his big head making their mum that fat. In the end, Charisse had told them the truth, when the children had asked where the pictures of Diara were. Knowing that Diara was adopted had changed little in their relationship—only now James was serious when he would say that perhaps she had been left by the faeries.

James promised his sister that he wouldn't even think to tell anyone that she was adopted—it didn't matter to him at all (of course he moaned that she wouldn't tell him who the marauders were). As he loaded himself onto the train, Harald turned to his daughter, "Toe-rag?" he murmured.

"It'll be his nickname pretty soon. I'd say in about ten minutes. He might as well get used to it," Diara quipped.

"You'd better just be glad your mother didn't hear that." Rules were pretty lax around the Potter home, with few punishments being meted out (thus James got away with murder). But the one solid rule was for James and Diara to be nice to each other. Sibling arguing was normal but…Charisse got angry when they fought too much.

Taking the hands of both parents Diara grinned. "Can I pick the paper we wrap his socks in? He hasn't remembered a single pair."

Her parents stopped and turned to her. "Why didn't you so earlier?"

"Because I like the paper that I send his socks to him in," she replied, as if the paper were already chosen. She had, after all, Seen James receiving a parcel by owl the next morning, filled with socks. The parcel had been wrapped in teddy bear gift-wrap.