Orphan of Hogwarts

Alaina White sat under her covers with her legs crisscrossed and a flashlight lighting her tent as she scribbled away in her journal. It seemed to be the only entity in the world that understood her in the least, and she clung to it like glue to paper. It was a simple, red, five-subject spiral notebook with lined notebook pages and extra sheets of paper added to its folders. There was nothing special about it on the outside. Her pen was a plain, blue, ballpoint pen, and there was absolutely nothing about it that was special either. However, these two items meant more to her than anything else on the planet. They alone held her story of torture throughout her years at that lonely orphanage in London.

That orphanage had been her hell for as long as she could remember. She had never fit in with the other children. They taunted her frequently, calling her as "the weird girl" rather than by her own name. She doubted that any of them knew her name, anyway. Maybe a few, but they never said it aloud. Maybe they were afraid to use it, or maybe they were just scornful little children that disliked her because she was different. Perhaps they thought the fact that things broke around her when she was angry funny. Maybe it frightened them. It could have also fascinated them; they certainly pointed at her more than enough.

It was after midnight on that stormy August night. Alaina was just finishing up her entry on the past twenty-four hours with a wish that she could go somewhere else and be someone different. She read quickly over her entry before shutting off her flashlight and lying down with her journal. She allowed her head to poke back out from under the thin sheets covering her rock-hard bed, and she gasped. One of the workers was standing over her.

"Well," she said, crossing her arms and raising her eyebrows. "It looks like we're going to have a problem, Miss White."

"I - I'm sorry..." Alaina said. "I was o-only -"

"Don't give me any excuses," she said. "You can take this one up with Mrs. Helens."

Alaina flinched a little. Mrs. Helens was the strict head of the orphanage. The time for lights out was eight o' clock, which Alaina had been exceeding since she learned to read and write. She had been caught up before, but she never thought it would go to any higher level than being grounded from leaving her sleeping quarters; that had always been her punishment in the past. It never affected her; she preferred to be alone. The other children at the orphanage were cruel enough to her that she never wanted to leave in the morning to go downstairs with them.

"Yes, ma'am," Alaina said obediently.

"Good," she said. "Then come on, get up and get going!"

"N-now?"

"Yes, now, you stupid girl! Up!"

Alaina left her notebook under her covers and stood up. Her white nightgown with blue pinstripes was a little too long for her, so she knew she was bound to trip over it and get yelled at again. She slipped on her thin, ragged slippers and followed the worker woman out of the room.

The walk down the stairs to the first floor felt as though it took forever. The suspense hung in a low, foreboding cloud over Alaina's head, and it seemed to make the darkness appear even darker. The step onto the first floor landing made her shiver a little in both fear and coldness; the first floor of the orphanage was always much colder than the second. She followed the worker into a door she'd never been through before; the office of the head of the orphanage.

Mrs. Helens was sitting behind her desk in a tidy, plain women's suit with a long skirt when Alaina entered the office. The worker pushed her a few steps in, then shut the door behind her. Alaina looked around the large office, her eyes wide with fear.

"Don't stand there like you're stupid, sit."

Mrs. Helens was looking over the top of the rims of her glasses at an open filing folder. Alaina clearly saw her own name printed across its tab in neat handwriting. Alaina walked over to the chair in front of the desk carefully, afraid of falling and making a bigger fool of herself. It seemed that it would be a hard task to be able to do such a thing, but she was sure, after all the years she had spent in the orphanage, that it could be done. Mrs. Helens set the folder on her orderly desk and looked at Alaina.

"I've gotten far more trouble from you than any other child in this facility, Miss White," Mrs. Helens said. "Allow me to get straight to my point, if you will. If you continue to cause trouble, then you will be transferred."

"But I haven't done -"

"Don't start with that!" Mrs. Helens said. "Do you expect me to believe that everything has just been breaking of its own accord when you come near it? Or that you're fighting off monsters under your covers in bed in the middle of the night? I don't want to hear any more excuses. I don't know what has made you want to cause so many problems here, but I will not stand for it. I have the courtesy to take care of fifty and more children here, and none of them have caused me half of the stress that you have. And other children admit when they've broken something or gotten into a fight, while you always manage to come up with a farfetched excuse about it. I know that the string on Adam's yo-yo didn't sever its own string itself. I know that Lacey's didn't cut her own pigtails off. And I know that you are a pathologically compulsive liar. The only way to end that is to train yourself to start telling the truth, child!"

"But I didn't -"

"That's quite enough," she said firmly. "I want you to be honest from now on. No more lying, and no more causing trouble. Understood?"

"I swear -"

"I said 'Understood?'"

Alaina swallowed her pride for long enough to make a reasonable response.

"Yes, Mrs. Helens..." she said.

"Good," Mrs. Helens said. "Then back to bed with you. And seeing as it was lights out at eight o' clock and it's after midnight now, you had best be getting to sleep, or it's away with you."

"Yes, ma'am."

Alaina stood up, her legs shaking with her persistent nervousness, and left the room. She clung to the railing on the stairs as she walked back up them to her sleeping quarters. As she approached the door, she heard giggling. Her heart stopped. They'd found her journal. The other girls had found her journal, and they were reading it. She knew that was what they were laughing at. She walked to the door quietly and listened with her ear to the cold wood.

"'What if I am different?'" Alaina heard a voice reading. "'What if they're all right about me? They all call me weird girl and they won't stop. Today, a vase fell off the dresser when Timothy was making fun of me and I think I did it somehow! They all hate me.... I don't like them, either. They're -'"

Lacey stopped reading as Alaina opened the door. The rest of the girls began giggling and pointing at Alaina, who quickly shut the door behind her. She walked over to Lacey and grabbed her journal. Alaina's face was even redder than her hair as she lay back down in her bed. She kept her journal with her rather than put it in her hiding place while they were all awake. She shut her eyes tightly, feeling tears streaming down her face, and tried as hard as she could to fall asleep that night.

The next morning, when everyone else was forced to rise for breakfast, Alaina stayed in bed. She didn't want to move. She wasn't hungry, nor did she much feel like listening to the other girls taunting her about the entries in her journal. She got dressed and stayed in the girls' sleeping quarters, reading one of the few books that were accessible to the children at the orphanage: a fictional novel about a "dragon slayer." She'd read through every book that was there at least ten times each, but there was nothing better to do, so she kept rereading them every change she got. She didn't mind having no new reading material. She'd do anything to pass the time and keep out of the view of the other children who seemed to hate her so.

The same worker from the night before came upstairs to retrieve Alaina at around noon. Breakfast had been finished, and Alaina had not been seen anywhere, so some measures of action had to be taken. Alaina had expected this to happen sooner or later. She had been hoping later, but it was an empty wish.

"Child, what are you still doing up here?" the worker said. "There's a visitor downstairs looking for someone and she didn't think it was any of the children downstairs already, get down there now!"

"Why would it be me?" Alaina asked, standing up from where she'd been sitting on her bed.

"Thank heavens you're dressed at least..." the worker said, ignoring Alaina and rushing to the door. She held it open. "Come, now! Hurry, hurry!"

Alaina walked quickly to the door and out into the hallway. She looked down the stairs at the girls gathered near the door. In front of the group stood Mrs. Helens. She stood next to a younger woman who was most likely in her late twenties or early thirties. Alaina heard them talking as she neared the bottom of the staircase.

"I'm telling you, Miss Hopkirk, the only girl left in this facility is one who is far too disobedient to have been accepted into any formal school, she's been getting into trouble since she knew what trouble was."

The worker rushed past Alaina and bumped into her discourteously, nearly knocking her down the stairs. She hurried quickly over to Mrs. Helens.

"Mrs. Helens," she said.

She pointed up to the stairs at Alaina when she had Mrs. Helens's attention. Alaina kept her head declined and was immediately scolded.

"Pick your head up, child!" Mrs. Helens instructed Alaina.

Alaina looked up, her eyes wide as ever with her regular fear.

"That's her!" Miss Hopkirk said. "No doubting it! Mrs. Helens, do you happen to have a private room or office of some kind within the facility? I need to ask Miss...?"

"White," Mrs. Helens said, as though the name brought an awful taste to her mouth just by speaking it. "Alaina White."

"Yes, yes, I need to ask Miss White a few questions."

"Of course," Mrs. Helens said. "You may use my office."

"Thank you so much, Mrs. Helens," Miss Hopkirk said kindly. Mrs. Helens gave a small 'humph...' as a reply. "Come on, Miss White," Miss Hopkirk added to Alaina. "Time is short."

Alaina followed Miss Hopkirk and Mrs. Helens to her office. Mrs. Helens held the door open for both of them, then shut it after them. Alaina sat down in the same chair she'd been sitting in the night before. Her heart pounded as she wondered what in the world she could have possibly done now.

"I apologize for the fuss," Miss Hopkirk said with a laugh. "The school couldn't even give me your name, they only sent me on my way with a picture. At least I came to the right orphanage on my first stop.

"Now, let me tell you this right now," Miss Hopkirk said. "The information I am about to disclose to you, Miss White, is something I cannot take back. It is the solid truth, and questioning it wouldn't be worth the trouble. Considering where you've been raised your whole life, it might be a little hard for you to take in, but I do hope that you won't have too much of a problem with it. I even hope that you're happy to find out who you are."

"Wh... who I am?" Alaina said. "What's that mean?"

"It means that you aren't like the rest of the children, Miss White."

"How am I not like them?"

"Have you never thought that you might be different? Nothing strange has ever happened around you before? Nothing even a little out of the ordinary?"

"Erm..." Alaina said, a little afraid to respond truthfully. She decided not to answer truthfully, for fear of more judgement. "I'm... I don't really know what you mean, M-Miss Hopkirk..."

"There's no need to be frightened," Miss Hopkirk said with a dismissive wave of her hand and a casual laugh. "You are perfectly normal, but in your living situation, you aren't. The other children are different from you, sure, but you are just as normal as they are."

"Have I been diagnosed with some sort of terminal illness?" Alaina asked curiously.

Miss Hopkirk laughed again. "Oh, no, it's nothing like that. It's quite different. Would you like to know why I'm here to speak to you, Miss White?"

"Yes, ma'am," Alaina said.

"Well," Miss Hopkirk said. "My name is Mafalda Hopkirk. I was sent here from the Department of Underage Sorcery of the Ministry of Magic."

Alaina stared at Miss Hopkirk blankly.

"A school called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry has asked me to come here and explain something very important about you, to you. As I said, it is nothing bad, and it is also nothing out of the norm. You aren't any different from the children out there, except that you were born with different abilities than they were."

"A... abilities?"

Alaina was horribly confused now. She wasn't sure that she could understand what Miss Hopkirk was telling her, but at the same time, she had an odd comprehension of it. What was she, Alaina, if not a one of the other children? How could she have been different if she looked the same as them, breathed the same air and ate the same foods?

"You harness the ability to use magic," Mafalda Hopkirk said. "Of course, this shouldn't come as any surprise at all to you. We've seen all sorts of magical activity coming from this vicinity at the Ministry in my department, never knew what was causing it. We figured there just had to be a magic user in the vicinity, but then we pinpointed every spell to this orphanage, and things got a little more confusing. The Ministry and Hogwarts managed to figure out who the child exerting magical abilities was, although it may not have been a very easy task. They were only able to get a picture of you, but that's obviously more than enough, seeing as we've found you."

"Whats Hogwarts again?" Alaina asked curiously.

"Hogwarts is a school of sorcery."

"Meaning... magic?" Alaina asked. "What do they have to do with me? Do they want to teach me magic?"

"Yes, they do, Miss White," Miss Hopkirk said. "After all the time they took to find you, I would hope they plan to teach you magic. Do you know just how long they spent looking for you, Alaina?"

"How long?" Alaina asked.

"Two years," Miss Hopkirk said. "You'd think with the usage of magic it wouldn't take so long, but there's a law that we're not aloud to use magic in front of Muggles, so that made things a little harder on us all. We had to use muggle cameras, muggle -"

"What's a muggle?" Alaina asked curiously.

"Non-magic users," Miss Hopkirk said. "Official name by the guidelines in the Ministry laws."

"It sounds funny," Alaina said. "Does that mean that they're all muggles out there?"

"That's exactly what it means.

"Now, as I was saying," Miss Hopkirk continued. "We at the ministry mostly aren't used to using muggle equiptment, so it made things a bit harder on us. We've been sending in representatives that whole time as 'guests' here to take pictures and set up cameras everywhere within this facility. We had to link them to the rooms where we can detect the usage of magic from and pinpoint you the moment you used magic by locating you within the orphanage on the cameras at the same time your usage of magic showed up in our detections. Naturally, for us, it got confusing, and it took quite a while, but we got a good view of a lamp falling off of a table when one of the boys made you angry. We had to send someone else back to actually get a picture of you, and once we did, I had to come here and find you by the picture.

"I'm still confused. What's the Ministry of Magic?"

"It's like the British Parliament," Miss Hopkirk explained. "The only difference is that we govern the magical world. Our job gets a little harder sometimes. We have the same basic laws as muggles, but then there are laws of magic to take in on top of those, so we have twice as many departments. The hardest part of it all, I think, is keeping the Muggle world completely ignorant to the existence of magic. They can't know about magic, or else we'll be in for it."

"Why?"

"Have you heard of the Salem Witch Trials, Miss White?"

"Of course," Alaina said. "There's a book about it here, I found it interesting, I read it more often than any of the other books. Why? Was it actually real?"

"Well, it did take place, but most of those found to be witches weren't. When witches were found, all they had to do was cast a freezing charm on themselves and pretend to be in pain, no big deal there. However, as you can see, people tend to overreact to the unknown coming into sudden reality, and that could cause problems between our two races, lead to war and destruction, and et cetera, if you understand what I mean."

"So... what exactly does this mean for... for me?" Alaina asked. "I still don't really... completely understand."

"You, Miss White," Miss Hopkirk said slowly and dramatically, "are a witch."