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Chapter 1- Announcement
"Adelaide!"
The woman's voice projected through the entire house, trying to get through to her daughter's thoughts and convince her that school was more important than whatever fantasy she was dreaming up now. As a mother, Julie Marcus was talented with these things, but getting through to her daughter was becoming a stretch even for her these days.
Suddenly, feet could be heard pounding down the stairs. Apparently she had succeeded in grasping her young one's attention. The sound of footsteps ceased, and in the doorway stood a flustered, windswept girl, no older than eleven. She had dark brown hair and glasses framed her green eyes, giving her an intelligent look, positively enforced by the thoughtful expression on her face. Adelaide Marcus stood there, panting slightly from sprinting down the stairs.
"Honey, what has gotten into you?" Walking over to her daughter with a worried look on her face, Mrs. Marcus dried her hands on a towel, having just cut up an apple for breakfast. "I just wanted you to start getting ready for school, this is not the military!"
"You sounded scared or something," Adelaide said. "I can see that nothing's wrong, but it sounded like you had chopped your finger off."
Laughing quietly under her breath, the older woman went back to her work, motioning for her daughter's help. "You need to stop worrying so much. You're only eleven years old. I've never met an eleven year old girl as tense as you."
Adelaide did not find this very funny. After what had happened to their family, her mother, of all people, should have understood her stress.
"I'm going to get the mail."
Leaving her mother nodding appreciatively, Adelaide left the kitchen and started down the hall towards the front door, muttering under her breath about her mother's inconsiderate nature. As a mother, shouldn't she feel stress just as much as Adelaide, if not more?
Reaching the door, Adelaide unlocked it and walked down the path, feeling the warm summer air on her bare arms. If only she could truly enjoy the summer. Why does mother have to support year-round school? Adelaide thought. I could be out doing summer things if not for that daily torture.
At the end of the walk, the mailbox stood protectively over a circle of pansies, making for beautiful decoration. The mail inside had looked increasingly boring to Adelaide over the last few years- always bills, bills and more bills. If not for the accident, half of those bills wouldn't be necessary. And if not for the accident, her brother would be doing this; not her.
Yes, if not for the accident Robin would be outside with her. Instead, he was in the house, trying to recover from his injury. As the bills had grown increasingly boring, Robin's situation had grown steadily worse. Two years it had been. Two years since the Marcus family's world had been turned upside down and inside out.
The accident was the reason why so many things in Adelaide's life had taken a turn for the worst- not only in her family, but in her mind too. She had begun to imagine things from a different lifestyle and civilization, completely and utterly insane compared to that of her society. She had started believing in things like spells and hexes, and creatures such as centaurs and goblins. Before the accident, the fact that these things didn't exist had always seemed obvious. But now, the more she thought about it, the more Adelaide was convinced that the fact that they were not real was not as obvious as it had always seemed, but incomprehensible and strange. She even found herself wondering if it was the idea that such things did not exist that was fiction, rather than the things in her imagination.
Her parents had tried to talk sense into her, teach her that these fantasies were just the products of an overactive imagination. All of their pep talks and private sessions had had no avail, though, as Adelaide had refused to believe that her friends - as she had come to think of these extraordinary creatures and ideas - were wrong and imperfect.
As she flipped through the mail, Adelaide thought back to the night of the accident. She remembered the horror that had filled her mind as the truck had struck the side of her family's van. She remembered watching Robin as he had fallen and passed out, and the pain that had shot through her like a rocket when her arm had been rammed into a corner. She thought of the ride in the ambulance, covered in blood, wondering what would become of her and her family.
That night had been a horrible one for Adelaide, and she never wanted to go through anything with anywhere near as horrific an ending. Robin's health had slowly improved, at least, after those first few weeks, where his temperature had spiked and he had been dehydrated. That had been the scariest time of Adelaide's life, and she was very happy when he had finally started getting better.
Now, Robin was becoming worse every day, and the doctors had yet to understand completely what was going on. They never listened to a little girl like Adelaide, though, or she was sure she could help.
That was one thing that hadn't changed about her since the accident- her intellect. Her parents and teachers had always thought her to be bright, and she worked hard to keep things that way. Her youngest brother, Caleb, had always been good at sports. Often whenever he had games, she felt ignored. She needed something to be good at, too. That was where her innate intelligence came in. It made up for her clumsiness and inability to be athletic.
Between thinking about all these things, Adelaide kept sorting the mail. Something caught her eye, and brought her out of her daydream. It was a stamp on one of the letters, but not any ordinary stamp. Something almost... medieval. It looked as though it had been done by hand, and was thicker than a regular stamp. Looking more closely now, Adelaide realized it was wax; red wax, with words and a picture of what seemed to be a castle on it.
Squinting in the sunlight, Adelaide looked closer at her discovery. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was printed on the wax. What was this Hogwarts? Where had that name come from? It was an awfully strange name for a school. And 'School of Witchcraft and Wizardry'? What was that about? Was it true?
Pondering this thought, Adelaide sprinted back up the path and slammed the door behind her. She wanted answers, and she wanted them now. What if this 'school' was... No! That would be cruel, to play on her dreams like that! What if her parents wanted to send her to an insane asylum? They couldn't possibly think that she was that delusional just for being interested in magical creatures and ideas.
Hearing her daughter bounding through the halls, Mrs. Marcus looked up from her cutting board just in time to catch the letter that was thrown at her. "What's this, honey?"
"Why did we get a letter from a school?" Adelaide demanded. "Are you sending me away?"
Looking down at the envelope that had caused her daughter to sprint for the second time that day, Julie shook her head slowly. "I've never heard of any school of 'witchcraft and wizardry.'"
They heard a toilet flush upstairs; Adelaide's father was awake. As a prestigious lawyer, he was able to choose his own hours, and being the night owl he was, he had, as usual, decided not to go to work at the normal time. Slinking lazily down the stairs, he arrived in the kitchen moments later, just in time to witness the confusion of his wife and daughter.
"Howard," Adelaide's mother inquired, "Did you apply to any schools?"
"Me? No. Why?"
"Adelaide just got the mail, and was very upset to find that we have received a letter from a 'Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.'"
The look on the man's face told the entire story. It seemed that neither of the adults in the room had any idea where the letter had come from. "Why don't we open it up and see what it says?"
Mr. Marcus walked around the island in the center of the room and opened a drawer. From it, he withdrew a butter knife and a pen. Seeing the confused looks on his family's faces, he said, "We don't want to damage it if it was accidentally sent to the wrong address."
He slid into a chair at the long dining table, and retrieved the letter from his wife. Adelaide plopped down in the seat next to him, and Mrs. Marcus gracefully sat down across from the pair of them. With nimble fingers, Howard sliced the wax neatly with the butter knife, and emptied the contents of the envelope in front of him.
The first thing they saw was a precisely folded piece of paper. Upon opening it, they found it covered in orderly slanted handwriting. Adelaide's father cleared his throat and began to read in a loud, clear voice.
"Dear Miss Marcus,
"We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at 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,
Zinnia Templesmith, Deputy Headmistress"
After he was done reading, Adelaide's father kept staring at the piece of paper before him. Finally, her mother cleared her throat and he looked up. "Is this some kind of joke you'd care to explain to us, Adelaide?" he asked, very seriously.
Adelaide locked eyes with her father and said quietly, "You think it's a joke?"
"Absolutely!" he answered, in a shocked tone of voice. "How could witchcraft and wizardry be taken seriously?"
Taken aback, Adelaide ducked her head. She had never seen her father acting with such hostility over something in the mail. Looking up again, she said, "I think it should be taken seriously."
Just then, the doorbell rang shrilly, breaking the tension in the room. Adelaide's mother got up to answer it, and Howard left the room to change into something presentable, mumbling under his breath. Adelaide heard him say, "Now, who would be here at this time of the morning... on a work day no less..."
Adelaide followed her mother to the door after a quick check of the kitchen to make sure that her mother hadn't left anything unattended on the stove. She had a tendency to forget things she was cooking, and Adelaide liked to check and make sure there was nothing being left to burn before she left the kitchen. Thankfully, there was nothing burning, left out, or otherwise causing mischief, and the girl was free to continue on her way to see what the matter was at the door.
Upon arriving at her mother's side, Adelaide saw that it was a woman who had rung their bell at this early hour. Oh, and a strange woman she was. It was difficult for Adelaide to tell the woman's age. She didn't look much older than Adelaide's mother, but dressed as if she was from a different era altogether.
Even though it was warm outside, she was wearing a thick blue wool cloak that must have been awfully warm. She had a pointed hat as well, so tall that it almost touched the ceiling as the woman stepped through the doorway into the hall. Adelaide gasped. The woman looked just like a picture of a witch that she had once seen in a book!
If Adelaide had had to guess at the woman's age, she would have said that she was about forty, but Adelaide highly doubted her judgment. She had never been good with guessing people's ages. She must have been staring, because when she glanced away quickly, her mother was giving her a look that seemed to say, stop staring - it's rude. Adelaide hurriedly averted her gaze to the potted perennials on the coffee table. She didn't want her mother to be upset with her.
"Hello, Mrs. Marcus."
The strange woman's tone was odd to Adelaide. It sounded as though she were speaking to a young child. "And this must be Adelaide."
"How do you know who we are?" Her mother sounded harsh and overprotective, scaring Adelaide a little bit. Her mother never spoke this rudely in front of people she thought to be important, and just the fact that she hadn't immediately sent this woman away showed that she thought this woman was. Adelaide knew her mother disapproved of unannounced visitors, and she allowed them to stay only when she thought it was something important.
"My dear," said the woman in the same tone of voice. She walked into the sitting room off the hall as if she owned the place and sat down on the sofa, tucking her cloak underneath her. "I have come to speak to you about your daughter. She is, if you will, special."
"Does this have anything to do with," Adelaide's mother's voice was softer than it had been previously, and she sounded frightened at the prospect of what she was about to say, "The letter?"
"Everything."
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Crashing Down Around Them by ravenclaw1997
Chapter Notes: Sorry this took a while to get out- I had to poke my wonderful beta, Bookworm! Thanks for all of your help, even if you did require poking.
Chapter Endnotes: I know, I'm evil, yadda yadda yadda... It's not that bad of a cliffhanger, though, is it? I love reviews, and I still have cookies... Your choice of chocolate chip and this cinnamon thing that my math teacher makes. :-D