Chapter 1: The Letter

ΔOl

'Hey, Danny? Danny! You've got a letter!'

Danny jolted from where he had been staring listlessly at the wall of his bedroom. His best friend, Tucker, was waving a hand wildly at his face, staring at him from behind a pair of thick square glasses.

"What?" Danny asked intelligently.

Tucker rolled his eyes, adjusting his customary red knit-cap from where it was perched on his head and pointed outside. Glancing at the window, Danny spotted his sorrily-named owl, Spooky, whose feathers were drooping rather pathetically in the humid evening air. Quickly he stood and strode toward the window, prying it open and allowing Spooky to hop inside, looking disgruntled as she extended a leg. There was an envelope, his name scrawled on the front in precise handwriting he didn't recognise.

'What is it?' Tucker asked from Danny's desk where a miniature battlefield was splayed out.

They had been locked away upstairs for the better part of the last few days, spending the final week of summer vacation playing their favourite game, Doom. It wasn't meant to be a board game, but Danny's magic had a nasty habit of shorting out electronics and Tucker had banned him from playing with him after he had destroyed his favourite console when they were twelve. It had taken weeks for Tucker to forgive Danny, and that was only after he had figured out how to use his magic to make a real-life version of the game, complete with tiny lifelike characters that took fervour in hacking each other's heads off.

Danny fingered the envelope in his grip. It was made of thick parchment much like the MACUSA liked to use, 'I don't know.'

Untying the letter from Spooky's ankle he gave her a happy scratch under the chin, who gave a hoot as he lowered her to the desk beside the battlefield where his level-nine mage lay decapitated and twitching. She waddled over to Tucker, cooing softly to him, before snatching the last slice of his mega-mighty-meat pizza right out of his hands.

Danny ignored Tucker's outraged cry, flipping the envelope over. It was old and yellowed, with a crimson wax seal forming the letter H. Slipping a thumb under the lip he tugged it open. A piece of parchment slipped out, with small neat handwriting scrawled across it.

ΔOl

Dear Mr Fenton,

I am personally writing to you to request your attendance to this school year's upcoming Tetrawizard tournament, along with your classmates and the delegates from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. The tournament is to be held at Hogwarts from October the 30th. Wizards over the age of seventeen may compete in the trials where the winner will be rewarded one thousand galleons and the promise of eternal glory.

I look forward to meeting you,

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore,

Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

ΔOl

Tucker had been reading over his shoulder, 'Hogwarts? What kind of name is that for a school?'

But Danny wasn't interested in that. Flopping onto his bed he turned the parchment over, hoping to glimpse anything else, but it was blank.

'Albus Dumbledore… Do you think the Headmaster personally invites everyone to this thing?'

'Mustn't have much to do if he's writing invitations to every wizard in town.' Tucker rolled his eyes, 'Who is he?'

'Don't really remember. He sounds familiar – probably saw him on a chocolate frog or something. I'd have to ask Sam.'

Tucker didn't reply. He didn't really like to talk about Sam. In fact, Danny knew he didn't really like her at all. Sam was a pale, dark-haired girl who didn't know the first thing about no-maj's, although she took great flourish in teaching the uninitiated all about the wonders of magic, which annoyed Tucker to no end.

There had always been an underlying layer of jealousy since Danny received his letter for Casper Magical Seminary on his eleventh birthday. Tucker had glowered at him for weeks following the invitation, hissing under his breath until Danny had simply learned to not mention anything about magic.

Sam, however, had no qualms and constantly put it upon herself to teach Tucker everything there was to know about the wonders of the wizarding world. Danny knew she never intended to be malicious or cruel, it was just simply that she didn't understand what it was like to live without magic.

Danny had met Sam in his first year at Casper. She was loud and brash and didn't like anyone disagreeing with her. She came from a long line of famous seers and had an annoying habit of 'getting lost in the sight' whenever Danny told her something she didn't want to hear. But despite that, she had been one of Danny's best friends since the moment they met despite his less-than-illustrious background.

It was still rare to see a maji-born in America. After all, interactions with them had been banned by the MACUSA following an upsurge of witch hunts in the1920ss. It wasn't until the capture of the infamous dark wizard, Gellert Grindelwald, in 1945 that the Congress had even considered allowing wizards to befriend a no-maj; and still almost fifty years later the magical world was both frightened and angry with no-maj's. In result, education available for maji-borns, wizards born of non-magical parents, was rare and far between. When Danny had started school, he hadn't been aware of this. So, fresh-faced and eager to learn, he had arrived at Casper only to be met with the scorn of his fellow classmates and many of his teachers.

Sam had been the only person to offer her hand in friendship. It wasn't uncommon for Danny to be stuffed into lockers or tripped in the hallways – some of the students even found it funny to fling curses or jinxes at his back that often sent him hobbling to the healer's room. The first time Danny had met Sam, he had been strung up on a wall sconce, two metres high without his wand and fifteen minutes late for Charms. With a quick mutter of 'Wingardium Leviosa', Sam had floated him safely to the ground with a curious smile.

Danny didn't know if she had pitied him or just saw him as an interesting project, but she was smart and had a wicked sense of humour. He refused to acknowledge how pretty she was though, even now as his stomach flipped at the thought of her.

Tucker tugged the letter from his grasp and asked with a hint of jealousy in his tone, 'What about this tournament? D'you think you're gonna join? Eternal glory sounds pretty nice.'

Danny gave a short, sarcastic bark, snatching the parchment back, 'Why? Just to give Dash and the rest of his cronies another reason to laugh at me? No thanks."

Crumpling the letter, he flung it at the wastebasket by his desk. It missed.

ΔOl

This is the alternate perspective of Danny Fenton from my other story 'Harry Potter and the Phantom Calling'. I was a little bit frustrated with how I had written the previous story as I felt it was missing some creative essence and was majority just paraphrased text, so I'm taking this opportunity to really flesh out the world.

If you haven't read my other story, don't worry - this one will be rehashing the existing story from Harry's perspective in a much clearer light, and, if you do end up reading 'The Phantom Calling' later, you'll be able to get some fun teasing correlation between the two. Enjoy!