A/N: This is the first chapter of Jane's first year, titled "Year 1—The Forbidden Corridor."

In light of what has recently been revealed in Year 7 (spoilers if you haven't played/followed the Hogwarts Mystery game), I have updated this entire first year, so several chapters have been rewritten.

Chapter 1: The Story Begins

"Got your letter, Jane?"

I had to admit I was nervous, but I was also incredibly excited. Here I was, being led through the famous wizard pub, only known as the Leaky Cauldron, to the back of the building where the most famous alley in all of Wizard history was located…

Except when my mum led me through the back door, all I saw was a solid brick wall separating us and, presumably, the next building on the other side.

"Yeah, Mum, I've got it here," I told her as I pulled out my acceptance letter that I had received three months ago out of my front pocket.

I about leapt myself right through the ceiling of my room when I finally got my acceptance letter for the first time, and Mum was so proud when I'd run downstairs to tell her the good news. Before that, when my brother first got his, I had been counting down the years—and eventually days—until I received mine. I was so jealous after we had dropped him off at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, where he would be off to school in a majestic castle in the middle of nowhere up North, and I had pleaded with my mum to let me go with him, but she had refused and told me I wasn't old enough yet to attend. I had gotten my letter the day after I'd just turned eleven, and it had become the best birthday present of my life.

And now I was finally to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in just less than four days from today.

"Do I really have to do this by myself?" I asked nervously, feeling my palms slick with sweat and my legs feeling like jelly. "Diagon Alley is so baffling. I don't even know where to start. Why can't you come with me?"

I had remembered the first time I had come to Diagon Alley with Mum when my brother was to start his first year at Hogwarts. I was so overwhelmed when I stepped through the magical barrier that was supposedly the brick wall I was standing in front of now. At the time, school was about to resume, and the Alley was almost completely crowded with witches and wizards doing their last minute shopping. I swear, I had almost fainted when I realized how busy and how unbelievably amazing it was. I honestly didn't know what to expect this time round—especially after what had happened with my brother—and didn't want a repeat of the last time I was here, but that was before my brother's incident.

"Because this will be a good learning experience for you," Mum answered.

"How so?" I asked, puzzled. How was walking, by myself, through a narrow alley crowded down-and-back with witches and wizards I didn't know—who would know about my brother's incident and might question me about it, and I would be expected to just talk it out like it was not a big deal, even though it was—to be a learning experience? "I don't even know where everything is, and you know Diagon Alley much better than me."

"True. However, you won't know anything unless you learn it for yourself," she explained. "That is what school is all about. When you go to Hogwarts in just three days' time, you won't be expecting me to accompany you. I've already gone and graduated, so you'll be on your own. But you won't be completely alone. There will be many other students there with you, and some of them may even be your age and will most likely be just as nervous as you are. It is perfectly normal to be nervous for your first day of school, especially to one without me there to aid you. I remember how nervous Jacob was during his first week at Hogwarts." She paused, and I could suddenly sense her disappointment towards the terrible choices my brother had made when he was still in school.

"But that's what friends are for," she continued before the tension between us could escalate. "I reckon, after this experience, you'll meet someone who is very knowledgeable and would be willing to help you out if needed, and you'll become the best of friends before you even get to Hogwarts."

"You think so?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. I doubted I would instantly decide to be friends with someone right after I met them, or vice versa. Who is to say they would not be attending Hogwarts when I start? What if they would recognize me as the younger sister of the 'cursed' boy that put all of Hogwarts in danger during his last year before he was expelled and would think I was 'cursed' too?

"I know so," my mother said with much confidence. "I promise you, once you meet your first friend, you won't have to worry about anything else whilst you're away from me. You can always send me an owl if absolutely necessary." She said this with a hopeful tone in her voice. I remembered her often sending my brother tons of owls while he was still at school, and I sensed her hoping that I would do the same whilst I was away. "But only as a last resort," she added. "There are many brilliant professors teaching at Hogwarts, and of course there are your fellow peers to look to for help as well. Filius Flitwick was my favorite teacher at Hogwarts. I always went to him whenever I struggled with Charms. Did you know he was once a famous dueling champion back in his days?"

I shook my head as she continued, "I also received top grades in Transfiguration during my second year because of Professor Minerva McGonagall. She was a magnificent witch. Very sharp temper, though, mind you. She's the head of Gryffindor House, which was my house back in my days, as was your father's."

My father… Just the very thought of him made me feel like someone had taken the sharpest knife and stabbed me in the heart with it. Never in my entire life would I have thought she would bring him up again, especially after he'd left us for another woman when I was seven and Jacob was twelve.

"Of course there are some professors you may not like," Mum said after a minute of uneasiness at the mention of my father. "I can't really think of any particular professors I hated back in the day. But even if that changed, I'm sure you'll learn to deal with them and learn to still focus on your studies, even if they seem to give you a hard time."

I could feel my nervousness increasing gradually as Mum continued talking about her times at Hogwarts and the obstacles she had faced there, and I thought of myself facing those exact same obstacles, assuming they still existed even after she had graduated.

I was honestly a little anxious to leave Mum to attend a school seemingly far away from her. After my brother's expulsion and unexpected disappearance, I had had a fear of leaving her side. I remembered after his first year at Hogwarts, my brother had told me he was highly convinced that there were vaults hidden in and around the school, containing cursed treasures and artifacts from before Hogwarts existed, and he had spent all year searching for them but had never found them. Before he had gone back to school the next year, he had made a personal oath to himself that he would find these so-called 'Cursed Vaults' and bring back the treasure and show everyone that they exist and are not just a legend like everyone thought. People thought he was mad from this obsession, and for a long time I had believed that too, even when I was just a kid. I tried telling him that these vaults must be cursed for a reason and that he shouldn't go looking for them, not knowing what would happen to him should he end up finding them, but he kept saying that nothing would happen to him as long as he didn't get caught, but in the end that ended up being the result of his expulsion.

I remembered how unbelievably upset Mum was when she had received the letter from the Headmaster of Hogwarts, saying that my brother had been expelled from school for not only breaking many school rules and putting all of Hogwarts in danger but also for allegedly murdering one of his best friends—a boy named Duncan Ashe—which shocked me to my core when I found out. After Jacob was sent home, Mum reprimanded him for hours, and I listened in through the bars of our staircase. We couldn't believe he had killed a student—one that was his best friend—even when he claimed it was an accident, but even then Mum was having none of it. He eventually couldn't take it anymore, and he went to his room, and I tried talking to him, but he refused to talk even to me. Little did I know that was the last time I would ever hear his voice, not knowing that he'd had plans to run away from home later that very same night, seemingly without reason. He had been missing ever since.

Shortly after his disappearance, the news of the incident appeared in the Daily Prophet, but I didn't bother reading it because I didn't see the point in reading something that would disgrace our family's well-being. That, and I didn't want to be even angrier than I had already been when I first found out about his best friend's untimely death and Jacob's involvement in the murder.

And in just three days' time, I was to attend the same school where my brother got expelled and be treated like a freak like he was.

"But what about…Jacob?" I asked nervously. "Everyone at school is going to know what he did. People will think I'm weird and wouldn't want to be my friend, thinking they'll be cursed if they stay too close to me."

Suddenly looking close to tears, Mum shook her head and said, "No, Jane. Don't ever think that you're weird." She placed a shaky hand on my shoulder as she continued, "If anyone happens to give you a hard time, you stand up to them. Never let a Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, or especially a Slytherin, ruin your sparkle. As a fellow Gryffindor, I was very brave and chivalrous in my days at Hogwarts. Jacob, on the other hand…well, let's just say his chivalry didn't work out in his favor. If you get put in Gryffindor, and I hope that you will, you will be just as brave as I was in my times at Hogwarts."

I honestly never really thought of myself as brave or chivalrous, which happened to be the star qualities of Gryffindor House. Growing up as a Pure-Blood, I never had many friends, at least that were young witches and wizards that came from a Wizard family, like me. We lived in the Muggle town of Bristol, and most of the kids that were my age had no magic, so it wasn't like I could make friends and have them ask about how I can seemingly make an object move with my mind without really knowing I was doing it; using magic in front of Muggles was against Magical Law. Because of my magical abilities, and knowing of the Law against using magic in the presence of a Muggle, I was too afraid to approach Muggle children, or any Muggle really. I didn't like the idea of drawing a lot of attention to myself, and that was the number one thing I feared would happen at Hogwarts.

I actually saw myself as a Hufflepuff, mainly because Mum was impressed with my kindness towards others, even if they were Muggles. One time, I was in my room, reading a book on magical creatures in the sixteenth century, when I'd heard a little girl crying just outside the house. I looked outside and saw the Muggle girl sitting on the pavement with a skinned knee and a broken tricycle toppled over next to her. Apparently she had been riding along when the trike had somehow fallen over when it had rolled onto the uneven slab, taking the girl with it, and she had ended up scraping her knee during the fall and had started crying in pain as a result. I knew I couldn't just leave her suffering like that, so I yelled for Mum, and we both ran outside to aid the injured girl. We knew the girl to be the daughter of one of our Muggle neighbors—Rosie was her name—and I often babysat her during the holidays. While Mum brought the tricycle into the garage to 'fix' it—really she was just going to fix it with a simple spell and wasn't going to use magic in broad daylight and in front of Muggle Rosie—I stayed outside with Rosie to comfort her. Eventually Mum came back outside with the tricycle fully repaired, and Rosie had luckily stopped crying and rode off back home, but not before asking Mum how she had fixed the trike so quickly. "Just a clever trick up my sleeve," she had said to her, and I couldn't help but laugh. Shortly after the incident, Mum was so proud of me and said something about this kind act as something a true Hufflepuff would do, but she also said it was one of a true Gryffindor too, because I was brave enough to choose to go outside and help the Muggle girl rather than stay in my room and ignore the situation. I honestly thought it was more out of kindness than bravery, but apparently Mum thought differently.

"I'll try," I finally said after returning to the present moment.

"That's my girl," Mum said with a smile as she wrapped me up in a tight embrace. After she released me, she asked, "Now, are you ready for this?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," I said with a nervous sigh. Ready to embrace the extravagance and insanity of Diagon Alley and see if it kills me like last time. If I was going to make a total fool of myself, I would've rather done it here than at school.

"Good. Then stand back."

I frowned quizzically as Mum took out her wand and started tapping in seemingly random places on the brick wall. Milliseconds after her final tap, the bricks suddenly started moving by themselves and rotated to the left and right, creating a seemingly impossible doorway. Through the 'doorway' was the infamous Diagon Alley, with its ancient-looking buildings on either side of a brick walkway made of possibly the same stone as the wall that had literally moved aside for me.

Diagon Alley was just as I had remembered it, but luckily it didn't seem as busy as the last time I was here. Maybe that was because at the time that my brother attended Hogwarts, there were a lot more children in his year than there will be in mine. I wasn't entirely sure, but it hardly mattered. I was back, and somehow I felt braver than before, though I'd probably just expected there to be thousands of witches and wizards like last time, but instead I had discovered much less than expected, which was a relief. Or it could've been because I was returning to a place I had visited before, and usually the first time was much scarier than the next.

At the time that the bricks were moving aside for me, I briefly heard my mother wish me luck and say something about meeting her back in the Leaky Cauldron after I had gotten most of my supplies, and then she was going to take me into Gringotts to get me some more money to take to school; she had given me a small pouch of coins to spend on my own when getting my books, robes, wand, and whatnot. I thought I heard her ask me to say 'hi' to Mr. Ollivander when I saw him as well, but I hadn't been paying attention because I was too fascinated by the self-moving bricks.

After the bricks solidified back into walls, now on either side with a wide 'doorway' in the middle, I turned back to Mum to see if she was going to follow me, but she had already disappeared back into the Leaky Cauldron. I felt a pang of nervousness for wandering into Diagon Alley alone, but then I told myself, no, you are not alone. There must be other witches and wizards here that are about to start over at Hogwarts too, who are probably just as nervous as you are. You can do this. Be brave, like a Gryffindor.

I suddenly frowned at that last thought, but then that frown morphed into a slight smile. Huh, maybe I do see myself as a Gryffindor after all.