Imagine being only eleven years old when your parents sit you down and tell you that you're different.
I mean, kids around the neighbourhood had been calling me names for as long as I could remember. Weird, freak, creep...the list goes on. So, when my parents sat me down and told me pretty much the same thing that everyone else had been, I was a little taken aback.
For the first year or so I had shrugged it off as bullying, but then I started to become, well...a freak. It was hard to explain, but all I can say is that I just knew I was, as my parents put it, different.
I remember it very clearly now, like it was yesterday; however, it wasn't really that long ago. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon and the kids in the neighbourhood were running around as I watched from my living room window, wishing I could throw on my shoes and join in. Not long after, my parents sat me down and told me that I was different, soon after changing the term to 'special.'
Long story short, they said that there was a reason why I felt separated from the other kids, besides the fact that they simply wouldn't play with me, and I would be attending a special school with other kids just like me.
Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry was the name of the place, and at first, I was scared. I was old enough to know that being sent away wasn't normally a good thing. Plus, being away from my parents for an entire school year with visits on only holidays seemed terrifying, especially since my parents were pretty much my only friends; but they assured me that it would be good and that I would have fun, so I decided at the very smart, young age of eleven, that I would trust them.
On that sunny Saturday afternoon I found out that I, just like my parents, was a wizard─or a witch─or something.
It was a lot to take in on such short notice, but soon after I was rushed out to a special part of town where I could purchase everything I would need. Being an only child, this was my parents first and only time sending a kid away to Hogwarts, so they were ten times more excited than I was as we rushed in and out of shops in a small town like area called Diagon Alley.
The town was full of other kids as well, some just like me, confused and in awe, and others were older, navigating their own way to where they needed to be with ease.
My parents filled my head with stories from their time attending the school and my arms with books. My favourite part though was choosing my pet. I wasn't quite sure why I needed a pet to bring to school, as animals weren't allowed in my normal school, but my parents just told me that everyone had one, so I quickly decided on a beautiful owl which I named Sonia after a character in one of my favourite books.
I also had to pick out a wand, or more, the wand had to pick out me; but never the less, I as a young girl thought it was pretty cool considering all my life wands had been made-up things that made-up wizards used in made-up stories. To say the least, I felt like I was pretty much living in a fairy-tale or something.
I was filled with excitement and fear when the day finally arrived on the first of September and I was standing in front of the large train, the Hogwarts Express, saying goodbye to my parents; but little did I know, that I would be doing more than just learning magic over my seven years at Hogwarts.