Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters, settings, or worlds within this work, outside of a few OC's. Any recognizable characters are not mine; I'm just playing with them. Harry Potter and its associated works belongs to J.K. Rowling. X-men and Marvel belongs to... er... Disney, I suppose? I am not making any money off of this fan work, nor do I wish to.

AN: I finally got a couple reviews, yay! I have answered one of the reviews in the Author's Note at the end of this chapter, because the reviewer's settings don't allow private messaging and this answer is too long to have at the top of the work.

I'll be writing the final character-based chapter soon, which will also be the chapter that kicks off the plot, but I wanted to write a few extra scenes involving our characters first; these are scenes which are fairly relevant as a part of the story, but wouldn't really fit if I put them anywhere after writing the next chapter, because, like the character chapters, all these scenes happen pre-plot, and it would be weird "going back in time" within the story to write them. So. Yeah.

Here! Have a bunch of random scenes that I didn't have a place for in the character chapters! :)

Interlude

As Luna walked into her first Herbology lesson, she saw something that rather surprised her. One or two of the plants from other classes had a familiar energy-residue on them. It was a bit muggy and hard to make out, because the magic that shone from within the plants themselves was masking it a bit, but it was still visible to her.

It was the same as what she'd seen in herself, and the Coloring Girl from the library. The energy which, from her meager observations, seemed to indicate that this person was not a regular muggle or wizard, but had a little something more to them. There were a few minor differences between the Coloring Girl, her father's, and this new manifestation of this energy, of course. They were from different people, after all... But it was like the difference between a red apple and a yellow apple- they look and taste a bit different, but at the end of the day, they're both apples.

Luna felt a little bubble of excitement. Finally, someone else who was like her! She wondered who they were, which year they were in, what special abilities they had... She'd been waiting for this moment for two years.

"Miss Lovegood..."

The rather put-upon voice of a middle-aged woman began to pierce through Luna's focus.

"Miss Lovegood."

Oh dear. She was so zoomed-in on the possibility of others like her at Hogwarts that she forgot to pay attention to the class.

*ahem*

She should probably actually listen to the teacher-

"MISS LOVEGOOD!"

Luna blinked up at Pomona Sprout. "I'm sorry, Professor. What were you saying?"

She would just have to resolve the mystery of who those lovely plants belonged to some other day. There was a whole school year ahead of her after all- no need to rush it all at once. She didn't want to scare the others off, after all.

So, she returned her attention to Herbology... For now.

Cedric was in a hidden corner of the library, playing with some parchment which he'd folded into fourths. Once that horrible day was over with, and he'd had some time to think about what had happened in the dorm room- and been happening over the last several months- he figured he might as well experiment with his new powers, see what he could do.

And here he was now, playing with his homework (the graded papers, not his current homework; he wasn't that stupid). Student of the year, everyone!

It was a natural interest, though. After all, who wouldn't be curious about what they were capable of if they suddenly discovered they had some sort of weird mental connection with specific lightweight materials? At least, he thought it was with lightweight materials... It was a little tricky to predict what he'd be able to connect to and what he wouldn't, really. His powers were... somewhat confusing.

Anyway, he'd been secretly experimenting, and he'd figured out that if he folded a page in half, it was easier to maneuver in other ways beyond the generic default "make it float around" because it didn't catch the air as much. So, he was trying out different ways of folding it, seeing what kinds of shapes would work best.

Hmm. All four corners folded in worked all right if he wanted to make it stand up like a piece of furniture or something, but not so much for walking around, what with the corners all bent in different ways...

"Whatcha doin'?" a voice piped up behind him.

"AAAAAGH!" Cedric screamed, whirling around, coming face-to-face with-

A third-year Ravenclaw?

"Because if you're doing origami," the girl said, "you're not even starting it right."

Cedric blinked. "O-origami? What's origami?"

Cho Chang nodded to the pieces of parchment which had sprung into the air right along with him in his fright. "It's an art form where you fold paper in special ways to make different designs. I've never learned it myself- wizards don't use much paper, after all- but there are people in my family who like that sort of thing."

"Oh. That... that makes sense, I guess."

"So... do you want to learn origami?" Cho asked.

Cedric frowned. "I thought you said you never learned it?"

"Well no, but I could get you some books about it if you're interested. And who knows, maybe we could learn it together! It's always a good idea to keep developing new skills."

Cedric thought about that for a moment. An art that involved folding paper?

Learning how to fold paper with a nice girl he just met?

He grinned. "Sure, let's do it."

"Great! You should probably release the charm before your stuff floats away."

"The what?"

"You know, the levitation spell you've got on those parchments- they're going to get away if you don't drop them soon."

"Oh... Oh! Right!"

Harry was growing paranoid.

Ever since he realized he had mutant powers, he had become hypersensitive to every single gust of air that blew in his general vicinity. Whenever a breeze drifted past, he found himself checking in on that little switch in the back of his mind, just to make sure it wasn't coming from him. It didn't help his newfound hyper-vigilance when he found that at least a third of the time, those puffs of wind were actually his fault.

After the fight with the basilisk- the first time he ever brought out his wind to such a powerful degree- it seemed to have grown a lot stronger than before, and had a tendency to react to his moods. He was happy? Little gentle breezes brushed over his robes and played with Ron and Hermione's hair. He was feeling a bit down? The air pressure in the room dropped as well. He gets agitated about something? Suddenly the room is getting very drafty, and he has to remind himself to calm down before he accidentally outs himself as the originator of the problem.

It's been a bit stressful.

Thankfully, so far he's managed to avoid having a full-fledged power surge in public. Oh, there've been a few accidents here and there, but nothing that couldn't be waved off as something else. There was one close call one day before potions- Malfoy said something that triggered his temper which nearly set his wind whirling about in a fury, and it was all Harry could do to get to an abandoned classroom before his mutation made that decision for him- but he had made it. Barely. And gotten a detention with Snape for "skipping class," but what else was new?

He just hoped nothing too bad happened at the Dursley's this summer. He really didn't need "mutant freak" to be added to his repertoire of nicknames.

The beginning of third year, the night before the first day of classes

Draco stared at his curtains as he lay in bed in the Slytherin dorms waiting to fall asleep.

He felt...a bit weird.

Not bad weird, not sick or anything, just... weird.

He'd been getting odd feelings over the last couple days- a tingling prickle in his fingers and hands, a heightened awareness of his body, a feeling like he was developing an internal connection to something that wasn't quite there yet. It was as if something was slowly forming underneath his skin, like some part of him was shifting, growing, and wanting to show itself but not quite knowing how to start. It was a bizarre sensation and, frankly, a little unsettling.

He could have brought it up with Mother, he supposed, but... it really hadn't felt like much of anything at the time. It wouldn't have been bothering him even now, had it not been for the arrival of the dementors on the Hogwarts Express earlier that day. Their presence had somehow drawn these strange feelings a lot closer to the surface, taking what had been a vague niggling at the edge of his thoughts and bringing them into the foreground.

And now he couldn't sleep, because his skin was prickling with the need to... to... to something.

He sighed. It was probably nothing serious. Dumbledore had mentioned that the dementors were to be stationed around the school for the time being while the Ministry searched for the notorious Sirius Black, hadn't he? It was probably just... some odd restlessness caused by continued exposure. Once he adjusted to their presence, he'd be fine, and this confusing awareness of nothing would go away, and he could get back to feeling normal again.

...Right?

Well. If he wasn't feeling more settled in a couple of days, he could always go to the hospital wing. Such as it was.

Author's Note

Since I don't plan on actually writing this in, I will mention that in this story, Harry's loss of temper with Aunt Marge does involve a bunch of wind along with puffing her up like a balloon, but the Dursleys and everyone else involved besides Harry attribute it to the accidental magic. And while the wind is pretty significant for the inside of a house, he did manage to reign it in just enough to avoid mass living-room destruction.

Review Reply: erezoth wrote that they were wondering "where this novel is going, can it be considered a novel?" and that it feels like filler chapters.

Well here's my attempt at an answer to that question, because I totally relate to that feeling:

1. Yes, I know it's a bit fillery. And doesn't quite seem to be going anywhere just yet. I'm sorry if it's confusing. I promise I did start this fic with a specific idea of what I wanted to write, and it wasn't "filler one-shots."
The main issue is, I've been coming up with fanfic in my head for a long time, but I've never actually put it on paper before. I'm still working out how to write for actual characters that exist somewhere other than as pictures and impressions in my head, particularly ones that have already gotten development/personalities/character-arcs as part of an established work.
So, part if it is because I'm using these opening chapters as a chance to wet my feet and work out how to portray these characters with my own writing voice while trying not to go too OOC from their canonically-established selves, at least not without developing them a bit myself first.

2. I am hoping to make it into a coherent narrative of sorts, and I'm going to try to tie it all together, but it might tend to be a bit weird and unintentionally filler-ish for a while because:
A) I'm still experimenting with writing on here in the first place; it's been a long time since I tried writing anything, this is my first time writing anything like this that wasn't for school, and it certainly is the most I've ever written for anything within one week.
B) I'm not used to actually having to make one section of a story flow into another. This is largely because writing stuff in your head makes it very easy to just bounce from one part to another part without having to come up with an "in-between."
C) I have a basic idea for where I want this fic to go and I know some of what I want to happen, but a lot of this is story is still in its infant stages in the back of my head as I go along, so it might be a bit rocky until I officially establish what I'm doing and where I'm going. Maybe it'd be better if I figured it out before I actually write the story... but I know myself. If I did that, I'd never actually bother to get this story off the ground. At least this way I've got my wheels to the runway and am working on getting the plane up to speed.

3. The other reason why it's been kinda fillery so far is because I wanted to show Luna, Neville, Harry, and Cedric getting their mutant powers before the actual official plot starts... but I didn't want to do it with flashbacks. So I am giving them each their own chapters as a sort of introduction section- both introducing the readers to their characters and powers, and introducing me to what it's like to be a fanfic writer who's trying to actually get their chapters out so that the story can move forward.

After this chapter, the story should become less like filler and more like an actual coherent narrative. I hope. *crosses fingers*

No absolute promises that it won't still have some filler-ish tendencies, though. :P