Jane had a strange dream.
It consisted of a man in a dark robe, a flashing green light, a blood-curdling scream, two babies crying, the loud revving of a motorbike, and a face of an old man with a long beard and half-moon glasses.
Definitely strange. But definitely familiar.
"Jane!" a stern called from the kitchen. "Get your arse out of bed!"
Jane sighed, sitting up in her small, creaky bed, glancing around her tiny room. "Yes Aunt Gertie," she called back, rubbing her eyes to rid them of their sleepy haze.
Jane reluctantly pulled the covers off her body and got dressed in an old flannel and ripped up jeans before hobbling down the stairs, nearly tripping over her own feet. There, at the foot of the stairs, stood Gertrude Tyler, lips pursed and arms crossed.
To Jane's knowledge, parents died due to unknown circumstances when she was a baby. So, she was mysteriously dropped off at the doorstep of her Aunt Gertrude.
The woman had a pointy face with a beak nose and small thin lips, stuck in a permanent scowl. Her hair was a pale blonde color, her eyes an icy blue, residing behind a pair of cream colored horn-rimmed glasses. Gertrude and Jane didn't get along most of the time due to her stern and cold personality, as well as her elusiveness about Jane's parents. For some reason she didn't reveal much about her brother and Jane's father, Samuel, only to the extent of saying he always got everything he wanted because he was a "spoiled, troublesome brat." Gertrude also rarely mentioned Jane's mother, Margaret, and whenever she did she did so in an angry and bitter fashion, often using these rare moments to blame Margaret for her and Samuel's mysterious demise. Of course Jane didn't believe her, because why would she? If Gertrude had a personal grudge against her parents then of course she was going to be biased about her perception of them.
However little her aunt spoke of her parents, Jane has learned that she is the spitting image of her mother, with her heart-shaped face, pale skin, hazel eyes, and abundance of freckles dotting her nose and upper cheeks, her long and wavy honey blonde hair being the only thing contributed from her father's half of Jane's DNA. Jane only discovered these details from limited information from her aunt and from photos she dug up from cleaning the basement. They were slightly ruined from water damage and time, but they were all Jane had to reference to.
Her mother did in fact look incredibly similar to Jane, only with dark brown, curly hair that went down to her collar bone. Her smile was warm, and her eyes seemed all-knowing and mischievous. Jane often imagined if her mother was like her in any way, considering they looked so much alike. But it seemed she'd never truly know.
Her father, on the other hand, looked kind and light-spirited with a wide and bright smile, and friendly, sparkling blue eyes. His skin was much tanner than Margaret's, as if he lived his whole life in he sunlight. Jane liked to think he was more adventurous than her mother, and made her mother see things differently when they fell in love.
She didn't even know if they were in love, but telling by the photo of the two of them with a baby Jane cradled in Margaret's arms, she'd like to think they were. They were close to each other and looked happy. What changed? Did anything change? What happened? Sadly, Jane knew none of the answers to any of her questions, leading her to hold spite against her aunt for not giving these answers she was sure she knew.
In Jane's mind, Gertrude hated her because of Jane's knack for getting in trouble. She's often defiant, not always follow orders which Gertrude despises, and her always getting in trouble at school. In the previous April, for example, a mean girl named Susan Sprayberry was spreading rumors about Jane, saying she cheated on tests and stole from teachers. Jane told her if she kept on lying, her pants would catch on fire. Susan laughed and called her stupid, only for her skirt to go up in flames. Jane tried to tell her Aunt Gertrude she had nothing to do with it, but she didn't believe her and grounded her for a week, lecturing that she needed to control herself.
"It's almost eleven o'clock in the morning, why weren't you up?" Gertrude asked, looking at Jane's attire up and down with disapproval.
"I had a nightmare," Jane replied.
"That's a poor excuse to be lazy, Jane," Gertrude reprimanded. "There is work to be done and I can't have you slacking off because of something as silly as a dream."
Gertrude had a particular obsession with cleanliness. She wasn't necessarily afraid of germs, but she was no fan of filth. Therefore, she enlisted Jane to essentially be an unpaid housekeeper all day every day during the summer while she worked at her boutique in town.
Needless to say, Jane wasn't exactly a fan, and made many excuses to try and find a way out of it. "Come on, Gertie, can't I just have a few days off?"
"Now why on earth should you deserve such a thing?"
"Well..." Jane trailed off, thinking of a reason. "My birthday is in a week or so," she said with a small smirk, "and I'd like some free time to celebrate it."
Gertrude's eyes widened. Normally she'd simply say a bland "I don't think so" before giving Jane a list of tasks she's required to do for the day, but today she looked unnerved, startled even, but the look only lasted three seconds before she composed herself.
"How old? Ten?" she asked flippantly, opening the door to a cleaning cupboard getting out a sponge and some soap.
"No," Jane scoffed, annoyed at her aunt's forgetfulness of her own niece's birthday. "Eleven."
Gertrude stopped in her tracks, dropping the soap and sponge. Jane rose an eyebrow at her aunt.
"Aunt Gertrude?" she inquired, slightly worried the woman was having a stroke or something.
Gertrude blinked before returning to her regular unbothered expression, scooping up the cleaning supplies from the floor. She turned to her niece and said, "Clean the sink, then the counters, then mop the floors. I want it all done by the time I return." She plopped the sponge and soap in Jane's hands before leaving the house.
Jane sighed in frustration and defeat before leaving to clean the sink and counter tops.
What a hag.
-+-
Later that day, Jane returned to the cleaning cupboard in the hallway for a mop, when she noticed a letter shoot out of the mail slot on the door.
Jane furrowed her eyebrows before picking it up and looking at who it was addressed to, and her jaw fell slack when she realized it was for her.
Jane never got mail. Ever. She had no real friends, only mere acquaintances who never really associated with her outside of class. But it didn't seem to be any normal letter. It was thick and heavy, made of a yellowish parchment material, and the writing was in an emerald green ink. There was no stamp in sight.
To add to the weirdness, the address was creepily accurate:
Ms. J. Tyler
The Last Room on the Second Floor
13 Willow Road
Hendrickson
Kent
Curious, Jane thought to herself.
She glanced up at the stairs leading to her room, which was as you would guess, the last room on the floor. It was meant to be a small office, but when Jane moved in it soon became her bedroom. It had a small, old wicker bed that used to be her aunt's when she was a little girl, and the floor boards were loose so when she'd walk across the room it'd squeak in agony. She had a small, white dresser diagonal from the bed, and a box under the bed as a personal storage space. That's all that really fit in the room, Jane didn't mind. She didn't have much of an interest for toys and things, and it's not like she was sleeping on the porch.
Jane flipped the letter over, and there seemed to be a purple wax seal with a lion, snake, badger, and eagle surrounding the letter H.
"What do you have there?" Jane heard Gertrude's voice squawk from behind her. Before she had the chance to reply, the letter was being snatched from her grasp and ripped open. Gertrude opened up the contents of the letter, and skimming over it her eyes widened with fear. "No," she whispered to herself.
"Aunt G-"
"Go to your room," she demanded.
"But I-"
"Go. To. Your. Room. Jane," she uttered with teeth clenched and eyes beady. "Now."
Jane glared at her aunt, but did as she was told.
That was only the first of the many letters she would receive.
-+-
In the days that followed, Jane had never seen her aunt so on edge.
Gertrude eyed the door like a hawk every morning, and would scoop the mail up as soon as delivered. She'd flip through the various magazines and bills in the hope that she wouldn't find another letter, and when she didn't, she sigh in relief before tossing the mail on the counter and promptly leaving the house.
However, after a few days, more letters arrived. Whenever one did, Gertrude would panic before tearing them up and binning them, as if in denial they arrived at all. Once they were thoroughly destroyed, she'd go on her merry way. But, as if whoever sent the odd letter knew what she was doing, they kept in arriving in vast quantities. This seemed to only unnerve her even more, as she went to more extreme measures like burning or shredding the letters, mumbling to herself odd things like, "not this time," or "I simply won't allow it," or "it's better this way."
Jane noticed that the more letters they'd get, the more birds sat perched outside the house. And not just any normal birds like robins or blue jays, but rather owls. In the daytime.
Gertrude became more and more paranoid as more and more letters arrived. And finally, the day before Jane's birthday, she'd reach a breaking point.
As Jane sat sitting on the porch of the house, drinking orange juice as she took a break from sweeping, a large tawny owl came swooping down from the sky. Jane yelled in surprise and dropped her orange juice, the glass shattering on the ground. The owl dropped a letter at the girl's feet before flying away to join the other owls on the rooftops of houses and the tops of mailboxes.
Jane picked up the letter and stared at it a moment, coming to a realization as she looked up at the owl in awe. It stared back at her with its big yellow eyes.
The owls were delivering the letters.
Jane didn't have much time to process this as she heard her Aunt Gertrude approach the front door. Jane stood up quickly and hid the letter behind her back as stormed onto the porch. She took one look at the broken glass and spilled juice and scowled.
"Look at what you've done, you clumsy girl!" Gertrude chastised, gesturing at the mess on the ground.
"Sorry, Gertie. I'll clean that right up," Jane spouted, not turning around.
Gertrude glared at her suspiciously. "What's behind your back?"
"Nothing," the girl said a little too quickly.
"Liar, give it here."
"No," Jane said, edging her way towards the door.
"Excuse me? I said, give it here!" Gertrude yelled.
"No," Jane retorted, backing into the hallway.
Gertrude flared her nostrils before reaching behind her, snatching the letter from her hands before Jane could dodge her.
She glared at the letter, then at Jane. "Think you could hide them from me, did you?" she sneered.
Jane gave an exasperated groan. "Why can't I just-"
"No," Aunt Gertrude snapped. "You will never ever be apart of this... this load of nonsense that will only begin to happen if you open this letter, got it?"
"No, I don't!" Jane yelled. "My entire life, all I've ever done is hide things from me. You never tell me anything, always keeping everything about me in the dark! It doesn't make any sense why I can't just-"
"NO! NO YOU CAN'T 'JUST', YOU HEAR ME?" she screamed. "Now go to your room."
Filling up with rage, Jane gave a resounding, "NO!" before snatching the letter from her aunt's hands and sprinting up the stairs.
Aunt Gertrude gave out a large shriek. "Get back here young lady! STOP!"
Jane bounded up the stairs, Gertrude hot on her heels. Jane stopped in front of her bedroom door to open in for just a second, but Gertrude grabbed a chunk of her blonde hair and pulled Jane towards her. Jane let out a cry at her aunt's sudden harshness.
"Give me that!" Gertrude shrieked.
"It's my letter! I want to read it!" Jane yelled back, keeping the letter just out of her reach.
"NO, YOU JUST CAN'T GET INV—"
"Just get your stupid, fat nose out of my business!" Jane screamed, causing her aunt to shriek in fury.
Then, something happened. Gertrude froze as her nose grew larger. And larger. And larger.
She let Jane go in a panic, shoving her to the side. The woman grabbed her beak-like nose which seemed to be swelling to the size of a squash. Jane's eyes widened, her jaw dropping as a terrifying thought came to mind.
Did I do that?
It just got bigger and bigger, and finally stopped swelling when it was the size of an average pumpkin. Her aunt's eyes blazed in fury with a hint of fear.
"WHY YOU-" she screamed, lunging towards the young girl.
Before she could touch her, Gertrude's nose popped like a balloon filled with air. It blew her backwards, crashing her into the walls and ceilings as her nose deflated, making her fly around the hallway. Jane's eyes widened when her aunt began flying towards her. Jane quickly opened the door to her room behind her and ducked as she went crashing into the far wall of the room, flopping onto Jane's bed as the air fully deflated from her nose.
Jane's jaw dropped as she witnessed her aunt's nose return to its normal beak-ish state, Gertrude grabbing her head in a dizzy daze.
"That's. IT."
She sprung up from Jane's bed and grabbed the letter from her hands, ripping it up into pieces with every word, "YOU. WILL. NEVER. BE. ONE. OF. THEM!"
Tears sprung up in Jane's eyes as she took all the bits of paper and bounded over to the bathroom, flushing them down the toilet in a rage.
Gertrude whipped back around, pointing a finger at the child as she said, "You listen here, you urchin. You will never, ever be one of... one of them, you hear me? I will not allow it, not now, not ever, you hear me? For now on you do what I say, when I say it. Got it?!"
Jane said nothing as a tear rolled down her face before she angrily wiped it away. She stormed into her room and slammed the door shut, kicking her dresser and letting out a small scream. In that moment, it seemed her aunt had confirmed her hatred for her, and vice versa.
She didn't know what she did to deserve this, but it left her furious and upset. How dare she take away the only good thing that's ever happened to her? How dare she keep all these secrets about her parents and her life? Her own life? How dare she have the audacity to try and control her and what she can and can't know about? How... dare she?
Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the door, Gertrude sighed frustratingly, nerves and guilt kicking in, before adjusting her glasses her now crooked glasses and wincing as her body hurt from being thrashed around the hallway.
She can't end up like Sam, Gertrude thought to herself. This is for the best.
-+-
The next day it was finally, July 24th. Jane's eleventh birthday.
Gertrude didn't speak a word to the child the whole day, her only acknowledgment of her niece's birthday being the "No chores today" note left on the counter of the kitchen. Jane didn't expect any more of her aunt, still incredibly furious about the events that occurred the day prior. But that didn't matter.
What mattered was that it was her birthday, and no one, not even her aunt, was going to this day away from her. Her lack of chores and her aunt's ignorance of her existence gave her plenty of time to enjoy herself as she watched the telly and treat herself to her own baked desert.
Jane woke up extra early the day before while her Aunt Gertrude was asleep so she could make a small chocolate cupcake for herself with some sticky white frosting messily coating the top. It was the best Jane could do, because after messing up the ingredients and having to start over, almost burning herself twice, and actually burning herself the third time, Jane made the conclusion that she was not the best person to be making a full blown cake, nor was she ever destined to become a baker at any time.
After Gertrude went to work, Jane salvaged her cupcake from the very back of the fridge and plopped it on the dining table. She got out a thin birthday candle that she bought grocery shopping a few years ago and stuck it in the center of the cupcake. The white and blue wax was almost all melted off considering the amount of times she's used it for previous birthdays, but it was still able to used again.
Jane then shuffled through some drawers for some matches before quickly lighting the candle. After I putting the matches back where they belonged, Jane rushed back to her seat at the table, placing her folded arms on it, setting her blonde head atop them, watching the flame flicker back and forth.
"Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you," she sang to herself, her voice cracking ever so slightly as she felt incredibly lonely, having no one to share this moment with. "Happy Birthday dear Ja-ane. Happy Birthday to you..."
Jane sighed to herself before adjusting her head so her chin could rest on her folded arm. She shut her eyes and made a wish:
I wish that I will finally find a place where I belong.
Jane blew out the candle.
BANG BANG BANG
Three rather large knocks came from the doorway of the house, causing Jane to whip her head around in a panic. She quickly grabbed a nearby broom and walked carefully up to the door.
BANG BANG BANG.
"W-who is it?" Jane asked, her voiced shaking so much she wasn't even sure if they could hear her. She wasn't expecting company, and her aunt was at work and had a key to get in. Who was it?
BANG BANG.
"Anybody in ther'?" a gruff voice asked from the other side of the door.
Mustering up all the courage she could, Jane whipped the door open, her broom at the ready to attack any possible intruder.
In the open doorway stood a giant man nearly 8 feet tall with a long shaggy mane of hair and a wild tangled up beard. You could see his eyes, which were glinting like black beetles.
"Now ther's no need teh attack!" the big man said with a chuckle, "Yeh must be Lil' Jane!"
Jane's eyes widened as he said her name. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"
"Nah, but I know yeh! Known yeh ever since yeh was a tiny baby, tha's the truth!"
The big man held out a large, burly hand out for the young girl to shake. "Name's Rubeus Hagrid. Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. Everyone jus' calls me Hagrid though," he chuckled.
Jane hesitantly shook his hand, his large fingers encompassed her entire hand in his as he shook it.
"Been waitin' a long time to see yeh again, I have. Last I saw yeh, I was takin' yeh from the Potter house teh Dumbledore, I was. Then he took yeh here, I 'spose, to yer Aun' Gertrude's. Gertrude was the lass' name, amirite? Don' 'spect 'er to be here, nasty ol' bird."
Jane's eyes practically bugged out of her head. "Wait, you know Aunt Gertie? Who's Dumbledore, who are the Potters, I... what?"
Hagrid's face, buried underneath all that hair, crinkled in concern. "Ah, don' tell me yeh aun' never told'dya 'bout the Potters? 'Bout how they were..." he trailed off as he realized just how confused and baffled Jane looked. He grew quite angry, "Tha' rotten hag! Didn' tell yeh nothin' 'bout nothin'!"
"I, uh..." Jane trailed off. She shook her head as she collected her thoughts. She, seemingly, had two options here. 1) She tells the giant, hairy bloke to bugger off because he keeps mumbling nonsense about her family or 2) invite him in and ask him questions to learn more. The second option seemed oh-so stupid and dangerous, as she had no idea who this person was. But for some reason she couldn't help but trust him. It was like anything different just wasn't meant to be. She just... knew she could.
"Uh... Hagrid," Jane said sweetly, "would you like to come inside? It seems we got a lot to, uh, discuss."
Hagrid's face immediately lit up. "O' course I would like teh!" He was about to head inside when he remembered, "Oh, I gotcha a lil' summat fer yeh Jane, fer yeh birthday yeh see."
Hagrid began ruffling through his coat, saying, "Not sure which one I sat on, but either way, it'll taste fine." He ended up fishing out a box, he opened it slightly just to check, before smiling and handing it to me. "Looks like 'Arry will be gettin' the sat on one, ha!"
I gingerly took the box from his big, meaty hands before stepping aside to allow him to duck in. I peered inside as he passed me. There was a large sticky chocolate cake inside saying Happy Birthday Jane in blue icing.
Jane's jaw dropped slightly as her heart filled with warmth. Jane's never been given a proper present before, let alone a whole cake.
Jane smiled and made her way over to Hagrid, who was making himself comfortable on the couch, which dwarfed in comparison to himself as he took up the whole thing.
"Thank you very much!" Jane chirped gratefully as she took a seat in the loveseat across from the burly man.
"Anythin' for yeh, Jane. Now, let's dig into tha' cake! It won't last forever you know."
Jane nodded and placed the box of cake on the coffee table between them, gingerly taking a piece for herself and settling into the loveseat.
"I'm sorry, sir," Jane said politely, "but I still haven't the foggiest idea who you are."
"I told yeh," Hagrid said, taking a giant chunk of cake with his large hands, "I work at Hogwarts--'course yeh know all 'bout Hogwarts, eh?"
"Uh, well, no."
Hagrid dropped the sticky cake in his lap from shock.
"Yeh don't know wha' Hogwarts is? Yeh don't know--" He shot up in his seat, the cake falling from the floor and onto the carpet. "Why I outta—"
Before Hagrid could say anything else, the door opened once again, as Gertrude came home for her lunch break. Upon seeing Jane and a fuming Hagrid in the main room, she squeaked in surprise and jumped nearly two feet in the air.
"What the devil are you doing here?!" she screeched at Hagrid.
"Oh, cram it yeh ol' hag!" Hagrid bellowed back. "I knew yeh wasn' 'zactly a sweet ol' lady, but not tellin' her 'bout Hogwarts? How cou—"
"Wait," Jane interrupted, "you two know each other?"
Hagrid ignored her, "Yeh never once thought 'bout tellin' her, did yeh? Did yeh! Yeh ol' bird!"
"Telling me what?" Jane asked, confused.
Aunt Gertrude was furious. "Don't you dare say a word to her you-"
"Yeh didn't tell 'er 'bout her parents? Yeh didn't tell 'er how honorable they was, how they went down fightin' for wha' they believed in! Yeh didn't tell 'er 'bout the Potters an' what they done for 'er? YEH TOLD HER NOTHIN'! NOTHIN' 'BOUT ANYTHIN'!"
"Tell me what?" Jane asked again, getting impatient.
"I'm warning you, you big oaf-" her aunt squawked.
"Ah, shut it, beaky!" Hagrid yelled, before turning to look at Jane and blurting out, "Jane, yer a witch."
Jane froze in her seat. "I'm a... what?"
"A witch, an' a pretty good one I presume, once yeh get trained correc'ly," he replied, digging into his coat and getting out yet another one of those mysterious letters. "I think it's 'bout time yeh read yer letter."
Jane took it from his hands and opened it up. There were two pieces of paper inside, one looked like a shopping list and the other an actual letter.
"Jane Lily Tyler, don't you dare!" Gertrude yelled in a panic.
Jane ignored her and read the letter aloud:
Dear Ms. Tyler,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Jane just sat there in shock, staring at the letter. She had a suspicion that the letters were being delivered by owl, but what if its all some sort of sick joke? What if it's not real? Her head felt like it was spinning with questions— even more so than usual.
"I-I," she stammered out, "I don't understand."
"Now that's enough with all this nonsense," Gertrude said. "She isn't going to that stupid witchy school, and that's final!"
Jane's head snapped in her direction. "You knew?!" she yelled, baffled. "You knew I was a... a witch!"
"I— Of course I knew! When your father got his letter, he was praised like a god! Ha, as if! It seemed I was the only sane person in the family. The only normal one. The lot of his kind were all ridiculous, showboating... freaks! And then he got himself killed, fighting with that Green girl. And for what?"
"Died fighting?" Jane practically screamed. "Why wouldn't you tell me?! You said no one knew how they died, not even you! That they had to have disappeared!"
"Disappeared! No one knows!" Hagrid bellowed angrily. "Why tha' is a bunch of goblin dung, and yeh know it! Everyone in our world knows how they died, everyone but their own daugh'er. She is near famous in our world! She and 'Arry both!"
Near famous? Who's Harry? Why were they fighting? Jane was near speechless as she watched her aunt get more and more angry and anxious.
"She will not be going," Gertrude said stubbornly. "I refuse-"
"Ah quit yer squawking!" Hagrid said. Hagrid fished out a tattered pink umbrella from his coat and pointed it at my aunt. A shot of light came out the end and hit Gertrude, a beak forming on her face out of her mouth and nose. Feathers began growing from her arms as she let out squawks of distress, running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Hell, she looked like a chicken.
Jane let out a shocked laugh as she watched her aunt run up the stairs, letting out loud goose-like squawks all the way up.
Hagrid looked nervous as he stuck his umbrella back in his jacket. "Er--don't tell anybody 'bout that', all right? I'm not really allowed to use magic..."
Jane nodded her head, a ghost of a smile still lingering on her face before clearing her throat. "So, uh, Hagrid?" she began. "So, how did my parents die? Who were they fighting?"
Hagrid seemed a bit more nervous. "I--er, I don't know if I should be the one sayin' anythin'. I-I'm not very good at explanations."
"Please, Hagrid. I'm desperate."
Hagrid seemed a bit apprehensive, before he ended up giving in and sitting on the couch. "Okay... okay, jus' 'member this, Jane. It's very impor'ant. Not all witches and wizards are good. Some go dark, like this one 'bout ten years ago, and his name was V-" Hagrid seemed a bit hesitant to say the name, almost as if he was afraid. "V- ah," he leaned in and whispered, "Voldemort."
"Voldemort?" Jane asked, apparently too loud because he shushed the young girl.
"Don' say his name!"
"Why not? It's just a name," Jane said stubbornly.
"Yes, but yeh must un'erstand, this wizard was very dark and very scary, and us magic folk don' make it a habit to say his name," he explained. Hagrid sighed, "Anyway, 'bout ten years ago, V--You-Know-Who, came into power.
"Soon, he began attractin' followers, other dark witches and wizards who love to cause trouble. And yer parents, Jane, fought agains' 'im. They were summat called Aurors, or dark wizard catchers. Like tha police in tha Muggle world-"
"Muggle?" Jane asked.
"Non-magic folk," he waved off before continuing. "An' so they fough' You-Know-Who's forces. Yer mum and dad, Maggie and Sam, they were very powerful, very powerful. They even fought You-Know-Who himself.
"They was seen as threats in the Dark Lor's eyes, so he killed them in bat'le. 'Course, no one truly survived once he decided ter kill 'em. Yer mum knew that You-Know-Who would go af'er 'em, so yeh was taken under the care o' the Potters. That's where yeh met 'Arry. He's 'bout yer age, gon' turn eleven on the 31st.
"But 'Arry's parents also fought 'gainst You-Know-Who, an' like I said, no one lived once he decided ter kill 'em. So he broke into the Potter home, killed James and Lily Potter, but when he got to yeh and Harry, summat stopped him.
"Now, mos' people thinkin' it was Harry tha' stopped 'im, 'cuz he's got this lightnin' shaped scar on his forehead. Summat like that means yer touched by a curse, an evil curse at that. But they be thinkin' that You-Know-Who came lookin' for the remainin' Tyler, so yeh wouldn't be a threat when yer older, but summat 'bout the both of you kept him from killin' yeh.
"That's why yer famous. That's why everybody knows who yeh are, Harry too. Yeh somehow managed to survive the killin'.
"'Course without the Potters, the two of yeh needed care. So I took yeh an' Harry to his aunt, uncle, and cousin, the Dursleys. Took yeh myself actually, Dumbledore's orders. I'm guessin' he took yeh to that bloody aunt o' yers."
Jane was greatly confused. In the letter it said something about Albus Dumbledore being the headmaster at Hogwarts, right at the top of the letter. She figured he must be Hagrid's boss.
Regardless, even with Hagrid's run down, it didn't explain how she managed to escape Voldemort unscathed, while Harry walked away with a scar on his head. It didn't make much sense. Did he not even cast the spell on her? Was he too weak to? What about Jane could've possibly stopped him? If Harry was hit full blast, giving him the scar, then how did Jane leave with nothing? What stopped him? Could it really have been only Harry, who was only a baby at the time?
Questions like that swirled around in Jane's head, but nothing managed to stumble out other than, "What happened to him? To V-- You-Know-Who?"
"Dunno," Hagrid responded, taking another handful of sticky cake, "disappeared. Vanished. Some say he died. I don' think so. I think he's still out there, too weak to carry on."
Jane nodded, before taking a chunk of cake herself. She found it to actually be really good. Wasn't too dry. "So, what about Harry? Harry's a wizard too?"
"Yup. Gon' visit 'im myself and take 'im to Diagon Alley to get some supplies fer school. Yeh can come with if yeh like?"
"Oh yes please," Jane excitedly agreed. "I'd love to meet Harry."
"All righty," he replied with a smile. He wiped his chocolate hands on his coat before getting up."I'll pick up Harry, send yer acceptation to Hogwarts, then we'll pick yeh up in Muggle transport on July 31st, how's that sound?"
"Sounds good," Jane replied, before a thought crossed her mind, "but Hagrid, Aunt Gertrude won't pay for me to go. She doesn't want me to."
"Well unless she'd like ter become a chicken, then I be thinkin' she'd let yeh go," Hagrid smirked. "An' don' worry 'bout the money. Yer parents didn't leave yeh with nothin'."
Hagrid opened his arms wide, almost knocking over a lamp in the process. Jane immediately jumped up and gave him a hug, making his chest rumble with chuckles.
"It was nice meeting you, Hagrid," Jane said sincerely, my voice muffled into his chest.
"An' you as well, Jane!" he bellowed happily.
When we ended up parting, Hagrid having to duck his head to exit the house, Jane heard the rumble of a motorbike, reminding her immensely of her dream. She peeked out the window to see Hagrid's giant figure fly away on a magic motorbike. Jane smiled in pure happiness, excitement, and just overall every gleeful emotion.
She glanced back towards the little cupcake, with the sad, half-melted candle on top and giggled to herself.
My wish came true.
A/N: woah, didn't think i'd be publishing a fanfiction anytime soon. not mad at it though.
but yeah, harry potter ff. this is book one of two and i can't promise consistent updates because i'm an ap student and i have a lot of work constantly, but since its summer it should be easier to get a head start.
the picture above is what jane looks like as an eleven year old, its not gabriella cause i couldn't find a picture of her when she was that young or looked that young, but just use your imagination okay?
i hope you guys like this story, i'm transferring it from my quotev because this site is easier to use and no one really reads fanfiction on quotev anymore since the horrible update, but yeah. enjoy!
edit: that took a while, glad it's over. lmao, enjoy the new jane tyler!