For a moment after I woke up, I wasn't sure where I was. Dimly, I recognized that I was still half asleep, but my brain was functioning much too slow to know what that meant. I lay in the dark, completely terrified, for a few moments. Slowly, my senses started coming back. Why was I scared? Probably a dream. I couldn't remember it, but it wasn't an extremely rare occurrence. Weird dreams were normal. At least, for me.

As I sat in the dark, trying to get my heartbeat back to normal, I suddenly remembered that it was my birthday. Today was the day I turned eleven. It practically marked eleven years here. I smiled slightly to myself. No one would remember it, of course. They never did. But it was still nice being eleven, instead of plain, boring ten.

Any minute now, the normal, incessant knocking would start up. I was too comfortable to stand up and turn on the lights, so I sat in the darkness waiting for my foster sister, Mara, to start pounding on the door.

For as long as I could remember, I'd lived here. Well, not here, in this room, exactly. This had happened seven years ago, when the twins were born. But I'd lived here, in this house, with the Lewises, for most of my life. My birth parents gave me up, or weren't able to take care of me properly, or something. No one seemed to know, and my whole life I'd been warned against asking too many questions. The point is, eleven long years ago, I got thrown into that wonderful beast they call the British foster care system.

The Lewises were my long-term foster parents. When I first came to them, as a newborn, the only child they had was Mara, a bratty two-year-old who wasn't incredibly happy to get a sister. My foster parents were delighted, at the time, though. My foster mum had been told that, after she got sick giving birth to Mara, she wouldn't be able to have more children. Sure, my foster dad had wanted a boy, but he had been content with two beautiful princesses.

I wish it had stayed that way.

Mara started pounding on my door, startling me out of my thoughts. I was tempted to push the door open and hit her in the face with it, but, of course, that would just land me in trouble. I waited until the banging stopped, then gently pushed the door open and slipped out. As soon as I did, Mara grabbed my wrist and dragged me into her room. She plopped down on a stool and airily pointed to a brush on her dresser, then got too absorbed in a texting conversation to pay any more attention to me. She got that phone on her seventh birthday, and the twins each got one when they turned five. I wasn't allowed to have one, in case I turned into "more of a bad influence." As if I was one already.

I pulled Mara's hair as tight as I could, making her grimace, but she didn't complain. If there was one thing I was good at, it was taming my sister's unruly black curls, and she knew it.

After she was satisfied with her braid, Mara waved me out of her room and I slipped down to the kitchen. Mum rolled her eyes when she saw me. "What are you doing down here? Go help Blaise get dressed." I turned on my heel and ran back upstairs, ignoring the impulse to roll my eyes. If she thought I was going too slow, I'd get smacked for sure.

Blaise and Cameron were born when I was four. I was incredibly excited about it, because maybe for once I wouldn't be the one getting in trouble! I'd always been blamed in every fight Mara and I had. I had naively thought it was just because I was the youngest.

However, even while my foster parents were celebrating, they were realizing that I was not the sort of child to be around babies. If it wasn't for the check they got from the government for taking care of me, they may have given me away right then.

Cameron and Blaise were born happy and healthy. I made the comment that Cameron's nose was crooked and got smacked for it, but we were all thinking it. Mara took to being the twin's older sister like a fish to water, and that probably should have tipped me off about how she felt about me. Until then, I had lived through four years of torture at her hands.

When the twins came, I got kicked out of my room so Cameron could have a place to sleep. This didn't bother me until that night, when Mara absolutely refused to let me enter her room. Dad wouldn't let me share with Blaise, either. In the end, I set up my few belongings on the floor in the hall closet out of spite, and found to my surprise that everyone else was perfectly fine with that. It wasn't very big, but neither was I.  I could stand up, and there was a light, even if I couldn't reach the string to turn it on. It was a bit cramped by the time I turned eleven, of course. I was starting to resent my four-year-old self's stubbornness. Not that I'd lost any of it by then.

Over the months after the twins were born, I started to realize something that quite broke my four-year-old heart. Seeing Mum catering to every whim of Mara's, and doing everything she could for the twins, and seeing Mara's room fill up with toys from relatives who "worried that poor little Mara might feel neglected," I realized that no one was going to do that for me. No one cared about Astra; as long as she stayed in her closet, everyone was happy. For a few days I acted incredibly sulky about this, but by the eighth lecture and fifth slap, I decided to not show my emotions.

I spent the next seven years at my heartless older sister's mercy, and being annoyed by the twins, who I came to resent. Blaise's lisp annoyed me when she whined (every hour of every day), and Cameron's bossy attitude made me want him to step on a Lego.

I quickly mounted the stairs and ran to my sister's room. "Athtra!" Blaise cried. "I need help!"

And she certainly did. Somehow, Blaise had managed to get her head through the arm of her shirt, but couldn't figure out what to do after that. Her pants were on backwards, too, I noticed. I sighed and helped her take her shirt off, only to put it on again.

"What'th for breakfatht?" Blaise asked.

"I don't know," I said shortly. I honestly didn't care about anything right then. I was in a bad mood already, because of my forgotten birthday, and Blaise's morning clothing adventures always annoyed me.

"But I want breakfatht," Blaise whined. "You can't thtop me."

"And I don't want to," I snapped.

Blaise stomped her foot. "I'm going to get Mummy," she threatened.

"Say your name."

"Blaithe," she said automatically, and I cracked up. Maybe not the best idea, in hindsight, but she was going to call Mum anyway, so might as well get a little fun out of it.

Blaise started crying, an obvious fake cry that Mum fell for every time, and ran past me out of the room. I heard her as she pounded down the stairs, yelling, "MUMMY! ATHTRA ITH MAKING FUN OF ME!"

I rolled my eyes, and turned to go to the kitchen, only to find my path blocked Mara.

"Move," I muttered.

She crossed her arms. "You don't talk that way to me. And you don't treat Blaise that way. Understand?" I tried to push past her, but she shoved me, and I fell backwards, landing hard on the floor. "UNDERSTAND?"

I glared at her, but nodded. She smirked as she glided out of the door, and down to the kitchen, just as Mum's voice floated up, yelling for me down in the kitchen.

As Mara flounced away, and I glared at the back of her head, I noticed her hair starting to smoke.

Oh no.

I quickly look away and tried to calm myself down. I didn't need this today.

Breathe in, breathe out. Calm, Astra, calm. Focus on anything except Mara.

Too late.

Mara's scream rang throughout the house, and I bolted out to the hallway to see exactly what had happened. The sight shocked even me.

There was a small flame licking at Mara's hair. I froze in place, unsure of what to do. Mara was going into hysterics. Luckily, Dad came storming out of his bedroom to see what all the noise was about.

"What's going on?" he yelled, before noticing the fire that was quickly taking over Mara's hair. Dad dashed over to my closet and pulled the fire extinguisher down from the top shelf. He turned it towards Mara and unleashed a storm of white foam on her.

It took ten minutes to get her to calm down enough to say what happened, and even then, all she could do was point at me. Lovely.

It wasn't like this was the first time something like this happened. Every few months, I would cause something strange, and I still didn't know why. No one did. The Lewises tried to keep it a closely guarded secret, which worked well until I accidentally changed the substitute teacher's hair purple, or made a neighbor's cat turn into a balloon.

The last time this has happened, though, had been several months before, and I'd started to hope that maybe I was past causing impossible things. The Christmas when I was ten, Dad decided I didn't need to be in the family Christmas picture, since I wasn't technically a Lewis. I sat there, glowering at everyone, as the family smiled cheerily. I was glaring at the camera when it exploded. I got grounded until February for that. And nothing had happened since. Until today.

I had no idea that after today, nothing would ever be the same.

~~~~

After scrubbing down every toilet in this house, and cleaning the kitchen until it was so sparkling white that it hurt your eyes to look at it, I had to say, this was my second worst birthday. The worst was when Dad had called the cops on me because I "strangled" Mara, also know as tripped over Cameron's outstretched foot and falling on her.

Mum passed out our plates at dinner, making sure I got noticeably less than my most beloved siblings. I was used to that. I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as I ate my supper. I was basically trying to get through the day without drawing any more attention to myself.

Mara launched into an animated, obviously rehearsed monologue about this new shop in the mall she wanted to visit, and Mum promised to take her there as soon as she could. I hated shopping. Clothes, shoes, jewelry. That might just have been because I was never actually allowed to get anything.

Dad talked about his boring job as an office manager for some huge corporation. Mum complained about her friends, the ones she met for lunch every Saturday. Blaise and Cameron made a huge mess fighting, spilling Cameron's coke everywhere. Dad made me clean it up. Normal.

And then something happened that wasn't normal. In fact, it was so unusual that you might go so far as to call it insane. As Mum was setting out a tray of cookies in the middle of the table, an owl came crashing down our chimney.

It hit the ground, and immediately flew up and landed on the table. I didn't think it was too good at landing because it flapped its wings around, upsetting everyone's drinks, and sent the tray of cookies flying.

Everyone screamed, and in the chaos, I was the first one to notice the scroll attached to its foot. As Mum jumped up to grab the flyswatter, I reached across the table and snatched the parchment. As Blaise screamed about aliens attacking, I quickly looked at the letter.

It was addressed in green ink to Ms. A. Lewis, The Linen Closet, 4326 St. Anthony Dr, London. I stared at it, briefly wondering how this person knew where I slept, and then quickly opened it.

~Hogwarts School of Withcraft and Wizardry~
Headmistress: Minerva McGonagall

Dear Ms. Lewis,
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.

"What's Astra got?" Cameron cut in.

I quickly hid the letter under the table, but it was too late, Dad had seen it. "Give that to me," he said. I shook my head. "What?" He sounded stunned, and I didn't blame him. I wasn't normally openly rebellious. I tended to hide my stubborn streak as often as possible.

"It's addressed to me," I stated, frowning. I'd never gotten a letter before (especially never by owl), and I was keeping this one. The owl looked at me curiously. I thought it was waiting for a reply.

"Give-that-to-me!" Dad repeated. I shook my head, and he stood up menacingly. I shrunk a bit in my seat. He stomped over to behind my chair and ripped the letter out of my hands, then triumphantly sauntered back to his seat at the head of the table.

I smiled a little as I saw his eyes bulge in surprise at the content. He beckoned Mum over, and her reaction was just as funny. She glanced at the owl like it might be poisonous.

"Can I go?" The words slipped out of my mouth.

Dad took a moment to collect himself. "Of course not," he said sharply. "This is probably some practical joke."

"Well then, you'd be able to get rid of me. Sounds like a win-win situation," I answered hotly. A part of me was surprised at myself. Sure, I'd been thinking these things all my life, but I'd never actually said anything out loud.

"What's going on?" Mara asked bitterly, obviously a bit hurt that I knew something she didn't.

Dad ignored her. "There is no such thing as magic!" he said, making Blaise cry. Her whole life revolves around Tinkerbell, Frozen, and Santa Claus.

"Well then, explain how an owl just flew down our chimney to deliver a letter." I folded my arms and smirked. "It even says where I sleep!"

Mara stared at me like she didn't know me.

"No. Not happening. This is a joke." Dad tore the letter up and threw it away, then had Mum open the back door while he pushed the owl out into the night. It took several minutes, filled with frustrated grunts, flapping wings, and flying feathers.

I sighed and slumped down in my chair. Well, there went my small chance at freedom.

At that moment, two things happened. One, someone knocked on the back door. Two, about fifty letters came shooting down the fire place and exploded out into the kitchen, bringing a lot of soot with them. As my siblings coughed and spluttered, I grabbed one letter and hid it under my shirt, then turned to see who our visitor was.

The woman standing in our kitchen was by far the strangest I'd seen. She had long, flame-red hair that probably fell to her waist. A pointed hat, like a witch's hat, was perched on her head. She was wearing a dark blue cloak, and it looked very out of place in Mum's newly-sootified but perfectly normal kitchen. She smiled at me, and I could see that she was quite pretty.

Dad looked very disturbed.

"Who are you?" he demanded immediately.

"Ginny Potter, a representative of Hogwarts. We had a feeling there might be some trouble getting your daughter to the school."

"There bloody well will be some trouble, because she's not going," Dad said stubbornly, crossing his arms. I didn't know how he even had the courage to do that, standing in his chaos-filled, letter-and-soot-covered kitchen. The Lewises prized orderliness over anything else, and having a stranger see their kitchen like this must have been tough.

"Let me just tell you," Ginny continued, completely ignoring my dad, "that your daughter is one of the most qualified witches that will ever pass through Hogwart's doors. She is very powerful, based on what we've heard. You must be proud."

"What?" Dad sputtered. "A-a witch?!" He looked at me for an explanation, but this was news to me too. "First off, let me tell you, that...that thing is not my daughter! And why would I be proud to have a witch under my roof?! Huh? Tell me that? Why should I be—"

"I was afraid something like this would happen," the witch said, sighing, and pulled out a strip of wood that I guessed to be a wand.

Immediately on the alert, Dad stuttered, "W-what...what is that?" Mara was hiding behind Mum, and twins were behind her. Only I remained in my seat.

"This? It's a wand, of course. And I might be forced to use it if your daughter is unable to come to the school..." she trailed off, and whisked it around a bit casually.

Dad watched with growing horror, then turned on me. "IF YOU GO TO THAT SCHOOL, YOU'RE NEVER COMING BACK. NOW GO, AND GOOD RIDDANCE!" I staggered backwards. I hadn't expected that. I glanced at Ms. Potter.

"You might want to pack your things, then," she said calmly.

I quickly ran up the stairs, chased by Dad's, or my former dad's, yell that "THAT BETTER TAKE LESS THAN TEN MINUTES."

All in all, it took about three minutes. I heaved one battered suitcase down the stairs, containing a few sets of clothes and my entire life's savings: about three pounds. I walked into the kitchen, giddy with excitement.

The Lewises were all huddled together, Dad in front. There'd obviously been an awkward silence, and Ginny looked very relieved when I walk in. "Ready?"

"Wait!" Mum cried. For a second, I hoped that maybe she'd hug me, or say she loved me, or something motherly like that. My hopes were dashed to pieces when she ran over to a cupboard and pulled out a small bag. "Take this," she said, shoving it at me. "It's your birth certificate and things. Pictures of your parents. I don't want it."

I frowned. "Thank you," I said coldly, then quickly turned back to Ginny. She smiled.

"Now are we ready?" I nodded. "All right, let's go." She took my hand and led me outside, and I realized just how crazy this was. I was never coming back here. I was going with a strange woman to who knew where, and I was going to learn magic and be a witch. And I couldn't have been happier.

~~~~

New fandom, new fanfic. That's how it works, right?

No?

Well, to initiate myself into the Harry Potter fandom, I've decided to write my own fanfic. At the moment that I'm writing this, I am currently halfway through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but I kinda started the series six days ago...so I think I'm just the tiniest bit obsessed.

Anyway, I decided to do this fanfic right, so after researching everything from the British foster care system to name meanings for every character (for example, Blaise means lisp...) to floor plans of nineteenth century London homes, I think I'm doing pretty well.

Anyway, I'm putting so much work into this and I'd really appreciate some feedback! Anything you can think of that could make this story the tiniest bit better, don't hesitate to tell me!

Anyway, thanks for reading, and commenting and voting! Amazing trailer for this book by channelsurfing:

Thanks, C! This is so beautiful, and I had to add it to this first chapter so you could all see it!

~Ellie