Thank you to Hadeer and Joanna for beta'ing this chapter!
Chapter Two: I'm a What?
A tapping noise distracted the three Reeveses from their fight and Leah glanced around to find the source of the noise. Margaret shrieked suddenly. A brown owl pecked at the window furiously, an envelope held tightly in its claws.
Leah, more curious than scared, opened the window and the owl flew swiftly into the room, landed on the back of the lounge. Matthew raised his hands, preparing to shoo the horrid animal away, but Leah stopped him, her eyes on the letter.
Once Leah had the letter, the owl took of immediately, straight over the top of Matthew’s head and leaving a certain type of present on his shoulder. Leah gave a weak, half smile before opening the letter slowly. She had only read the first few sentences when she gasped loudly and Margaret snatched the letter from her, narrowing her eyes at the small writing. Her mouth dropped opened as he eyes passed over the words, however she didn’t read it aloud.
Matthew grabbed, rather rudely, the letter from his wife and read through it himself, impatient with Margaret’s slowness. Margaret had taken a seat on the lounge, looking about to faint. Leah simply stood where she had taken the letter from the owl, now long gone in the distance.
She watched her father toss the letter away from him, although it had burnt him and Leah snatched it up at once, reading through it herself finally.
Dear Mr and Mrs Reeves, I am pleased to inform you that your daughter Leah Reeves is a witch and therefore has a place at my school Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where she will join other magical students to learn. I will be dropping around your house in approximately half an hour to explain more and answer any questions you may have and to give Leah her supplies list. Sincerely, Professor Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
So was this why things had been happening to her? Long ago at the Orphanage, all the things unexplained? And today, with Myra and her bag? Questions raced through her mind, memories of past unexplainable things coming to memory. Was this letter for real? Was she a witch and someone would be here in half an hour to explain everything?
“This is nonsense, Margaret,” spluttered Matthew suddenly. “Someone is playing a cruel joke on us; you know, Mrs Patricks from the Country Club never liked us.”
Margaret considered this but Leah knew it was wrong and she blurted out, “But it came by owl! Who do you know that has an owl?”
Matthew shut his mouth, unable to think of an answer. They would just have to wait half an hour to see if this Dumberton man showed.
The half hour was approaching fast and the three Reeveses sat tight-lipped and separated from each other in the Family Room. The time for the man to come passed and Matthew now stood over Leah, triumphant.
“See, I told you it was all a joke on us.” he said, spitting droplets in the air. “Mrs Patricks is probably having a good laugh right now because of you!”
The doorbell rang and the sound of Mrs Roberts walking to the door to answer met their ears. They were all still, listening carefully.
“Good afternoon, madam, my name is Albus Dumbledore,” said a deep voice from the doorway. “Mr, Mrs and Miss Reeves are expecting me.”
Leah got to her feet and rushed to the door. She rushed to Mrs Roberts, who stood there dumbstruck, and poked her head out from behind her. An old man with a long white beard and half moon spectacles stood on the doorstep. He was dressed in a most peculiar way, in a suit of deep plum and Leah couldn’t help but giggle at it.
Dumbledore caught Leah giggling and chuckled himself. Mrs Roberts looked, confused, from Leah to Albus.
“It’s ok, Mrs Roberts, we received a letter saying he was coming,” Leah explained. “You can let him in.”
Mrs Roberts slowly side-stepped and Dumbledore entered the house, closing the door gently behind him. Leah led him silently into the family room where her parents still stood. She was bursting to ask questions but contained herself. The four of them stood until Leah stumbled over her words and said, “Would you like to sit Mr Dumbledore?”
Dumbledore smiled and took up her offer and sat neatly on the lounge. The rest of them sat also, Margaret pulling Leah away from Dumbledore to sit next to her.
“Am I really a witch? I always knew I was different. I could make things happen, like today, I made my book fly back to me and Myra and her friends fall over without touching them.” she blurted out, simply exploding with excitement.
Dumbledore chuckled slightly and said, “When magical children are younger, before they are old enough to go to Hogwarts, magic can explode uncontrollably from them, but once you start Hogwarts, you are not allowed to use magic outside school otherwise-”
Matthew immediately cut his words. “Leah isn’t going anywhere; we paid too much for her to go to the London Institute for Young Girls. We are not paying for her to go and say ‘Abracadabra’! Plus, how do we even know you are telling the truth and magic is real?”
Dumbledore sighed and pulled a long, slender piece of wood from his suit. He pointed it at the shattered lamp and muttered something under his breath. Her parents screamed but Leah merely stared amazed at the lamp, which had reformed.
He then waved the magic wand again and four glasses of liquid appeared. Leah grabbed one at once and downed it as Margaret shouted for her not to. It was only water. No harm done. Leah then eyed the stick excitedly and said, “I would love to go to Hogwarts! It’s probably better than the Institute I go to now, it’s horrible. And all the things I could learn! When do I get one of those?”
Dumbledore didn’t answer because Margaret was struggling to say something.
“But how is it she’s a witch? Her biological parents?” she asked. “And why weren’t we told before we adopted her?”
Leah looked down when she finished speaking. Would they have adopted her if they knew? Probably not, they would have thought she was a little freak and nobody would have adopted her.
“Yes, her biological parents would have been either both a witch and a wizard or only one would have been magical, the other would have been a Muggleborn or Muggle such as yourselves,” he said calmly. “A Muggle is a person without magical powers.” he added, seeing their confusion.
“I don’t care if this is all real,” exploded Matthew suddenly. “Leah is not going.”
Leah let out a shout of frustration and they all looked at her. Her face was a bright red and she glared angrily at Matthew.
“YOU NEVER LET ME DO ANYTHING I WANT!” Leah screamed, her face wild. “I HATE YOU!”
The lamp Dumbledore had just repaired shattered again and she stopped and shrieked as glass rained over her. Dumbledore simply waved his wand and repaired it again.
“Please, give me this one thing,” Leah begged her mother, who had been quiet for a while. “Let me go to Hogwarts. I belong there, with my own kind! I don’t belong at the Institute for Young Girls. If this gets out, I’ll be considered even more of a freak. I’ll never fit in!”
Margaret moved forward again. She took a deep breath and said, “You really want to go?”
When Leah said yes, Margaret knew there was no other answer she could give without starting another screaming match. Margaret nodded slowly and before Matthew could argue, Leah had launched herself at her mother and was hugging her tightly. The matter was settled. Their daughter was a witch and was going off to a school of magic.
“Well, that’s settled then. Leah, I will be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning to take you to buy your things for Hogwarts,” Dumbledore said, his blue eyes twinkling behind his half-moon spectacles. “Then, on the first of September, which is two days away, you are to board the Hogwarts Express at Kings Cross. I’m sure your parents can escort you to the station, but I will arrange for someone to help you onto the platform, it is not your usual platform you see. You must go through the barrier between platform nine and ten.”
Leah squealed with delight and hugged Dumbledore with happiness. Her parents stood back and watched as their only child tore herself away from them.
The next day, Dumbledore arrived; precisely when the old grandfather clock made its musical note to announce it was ten. There had been a loud crack, and he had appeared out of nowhere, causing Matthew to tumble off his chair, Margaret to shriek, and Leah to ask when she would learn to do that. She was disappointed to discover she wouldn’t be able to learn to Apparate until she was seventeen.
She cheered up when Dumbledore told her that they would be doing a Side-Along Apparition to get to where they needed to.
She kissed her mother goodbye on the cheek and hugged her father stiffly before standing next to Dumbledore. She gripped his arm tightly and they spun on the spot. Suddenly, she couldn’t breathe. It was as though she was in a tight, rubber tube.
And then she was free and she took in large gulps of fresh air. She turned to Dumbledore and said, breathing deeply still, “I don’t think traveling that way is as cool as it first seemed.” she said, and Dumbledore chuckled.
Dumbledore pulled a thick envelope from a pocket that seemed to be strangely deep. He slid his finger beneath the slip at the top and it opened. Dumbledore pulled a piece of parchment from the envelope and passed it to Leah, who read it eagerly.
“We can get all of this here?” asked Leah as they stepped through a doorway and into a small, dingy little bar with hardly any people.
She caught sight of a battered and dirty sign hanging from the wall which read in letters hardly recognizable: The Leaky Cauldron. She looked positively thrilled at the name of the bar and craned her neck to see who was in the bar. A few men sat in a cramped table near the back, clear of any doors and windows. As one opened his mouth to speak, Leah was sure she saw fangs in his mouth and her face lit up excitedly at the sight of the dark, red liquid in their glasses.
Dumbledore hurried her through the bar, nodding curtly to the barkeeper before steering Leah into the backyard where there was only a brick wall.
Before Leah could say anything, Dumbledore had pulled his wand from his robes again and started tapping at the bricks. Leah’s jaw dropped as the bricks started to move and soon formed an archway into a street with busy shops and happy customers.
“Welcome, Leah,” Dumbledore said merrily. “To Diagon Alley.”
She had the sudden urge to jump happily, but knew that that would probably get some strange looks directed at her.
Dumbledore pulled her out of the way of bustling shoppers and off to the side of the busy street. Leah tried to make it look like she was paying attention to what he was about to say but she couldn’t help but stare at everything but Dumbledore.
“Now Leah, I understand you have Muggle money?” Dumbledore said and Leah nodded, her eyes now upon a stall selling frog eyes. “Then we must exchange it for our own currency at Gringotts Wizarding Bank.”
At the end of the street Dumbledore led her down was a large, white coloured building. They had barely stepped through the bronze doors when Leah jumped up and down with excitement and pointed furiously at something in scarlet and gold clothing.
“That would be a Goblin.” Dumbledore said as they passed the goblin. It stared, eyebrow raised at her reaction to him. “Goblins run the bank.”
Through another set of doors was a large, marble hall with a long desk on one side and on the other side of the desk, sat hundreds of goblins, busy at work. Doors lined the other walls and goblins and other people were filing in and out of them. Dumbledore led her up to one of the goblins at the desk and they stood behind another person who was talking in hushed tones to the goblin.
The goblin placed glowing jewels in a small bag and the man took it and hurried off. Dumbledore stepped forwards with Leah right behind him.
“I need to exchange Muggle money please.” Dumbledore said, holding a hand out to Leah who reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a large amount of notes and gave it to Dumbledore who passed it to the goblin.
The goblin took the notes and disappeared from his stool for a few moments, returned with a bag of jingling coins. Dumbledore thanked the goblin and handed the bag to Leah. She immediately pulled a fat, gold coin out and was examining it.
“The silver coins are called Sickles, the old are Galleons and the bronze are called Knuts. Now, do you wish for me to join you while you shop?” Dumbledore said as they exited Gringotts into the bright sunshine.
She thought for a moment, and then grinned excitedly. “It’s all right, Professor. I’ll do okay by myself.”
***
Leah entered a shop for robes. She read her letter again nervously. According to the letter, she needed three sets of plain, black robes. A small, smiling woman in robes of dark blue bustled out from the backroom of the shop.
“Hogwarts too, dear?” she asked, and before Leah could nod, she was pushed up onto a little stool and the woman who Leah suspected was Madam Malkin started waving her wand, which made black robes and pins start to whiz around Leah busily.
Leah heard the musical sound of a bell ringing, announcing the arrival of another student in need of robes. Leah craned her head to see the person and found her eyes locked with warm, kind green eyes that held intelligence behind them, despite the boy being obviously only eleven years old, too.
The boy looked away from Leah, whose mouth was slightly open. Madam Malkin gestured for the boy to stand on a stool next to Leah. Once he had, she rushed to the backroom to find something, and the boy took this moment to introduce himself to Leah and held out a hand for her to shake.
“I’m Colin Alistair. Pleased to meet you.” he said with a large smile. “And you are?”
She swallowed the saliva that had been forming in her mouth, and she licked her dry lips before saying quickly, “Leah Reeves. Nice to meet you as well.” She shook his outstretched hand and shook nervously. She couldn’t help but like him, he was kind of cute! And plus, she was a girl after all. She was past the stage of saying, “Ew, boy germs!” and she had been finding herself glancing over a few boys she saw around her.
She stared in his green eyes, as though waiting for him to say he felt the tingling as well. He opened his mouth to say something else but Madam Malkin had hurried back into the room. They both stood in silence until Madam Malkin had finished with Leah. She paid hastily.
Before she exited the shop, she turned to face Colin whose eyes twinkled, and she said, mouth dry again, “See you at Hogwarts, I guess.”
The final shop she needed to go to was the one she had been anticipating. Dumbledore accompanied her to Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC,.
An elderly man was waiting within the shelves of long boxes filled with wands. She found his appearance slightly creepy and his eyes were disturbing. He looked her up and down and Leah managed a small smile at her as he approached her and Dumbledore.
Dumbledore conjured a seat and sat comfortably in it in a corner of the shop, watching over the top of his half-moon spectacles.
Mr Ollivander took her measurements, even the length of her nose. He then pulled around a dozen boxes of wands from the shelf and spilled them messily across the front desk. He opened a box and pulled a slender wand of dark wood.
He handed it to her and said, “Maple, dragon heartstring and seven inches. Try and wave it around, my dear.”
Leah did as she was told but when nothing happened, Ollivander sighed impatiently and snatched the wand from her. He handed her another one and she pointed it randomly at a vase on the table. The vase shattered and Dumbledore, acting fast, brandished his own wand, and the glass seemed to glue itself back together, and the water and flowers poured back into it without even touching the ground.
Ollivander smiled toothily at Dumbledore as he placed his wand within his robes again and said proudly, “Very proud of the wand I made you. Such talent and a powerful wand.”
“Try this one, the other was a little too powerful and unstable for you, this one is holly and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches,” he said, and she flicked the wand, frightened at what might happen.
A sort of tingling warmth spread from the wand through her arm and hand. Red and gold sparks burst noisily in the air before her, rather like firecrackers at her parent’s New Year’s Eve party the previous year. She had never been able to join the adults and instead spent the night in the kitchen with Mrs Roberts cooking the food, or curled up in the family room in front of the fireplace with a book.
Most of the time, her parents friends left their children at home to be taken care of my the Nanny but when they came, Leah stayed as far away as possible. They were like miniature versions of her parents.
Ollivander gave a cry and clapped loudly and with enthusiasm, and Dumbledore clapped politely, a smile on his face.
***
Leah arrived home later that day. As she said goodbye to Dumbledore, he gave her a ticket that read in bold letters Hogwarts Express: Platform Nine and Three Quarters. When she had asked where exactly this platform was, he had told her that someone would meet her at King’s Cross to take her to the platform. Without another word, he had spun on the spot gracefully and disappeared with a crack.
Leah went to sleep with dreams of the school and her eagerness of soaking up the knowledge within its walls.