2Authour's Note: This is another attempt at the HP world. I'm not British, so please excuse mistakes in geography, slang, or British culture in general. This is post DH and don't worry, it's not an HP/OC fic. It's an OC/undisclosed canon character fic. :D Please don't let the fact that it has an OC dissuade you from reading. I really am proud of the start I have on this story.
Aysa woke up with a start, her mind racing in circles she didn't understand. She listened to the sound of rain outside her window as she tried to put her mind in order, but the endless circle of words made even less sense when she tried to understand it. She gave up trying and blinked a few times to get used to the early morning darkness.
She looked around her room with a sigh and decided to distract herself from the nonsense in her mind. She flipped on her computer and sat down at it, playing mindless techno music until her mind calmed and she could just listen to the beat. She had graduated from a small Magic academy in Las Vegas not long ago, and even so, she found little she was able to do. She had no interest in pursuing a career in the Wizarding World, and the Muggle World was more interesting. Of course, that was assuming whe even knew what she wanted to do with her life, which she didn't.
She tapped her fingers absently to the beat of the music, and thought for a while. Her Magic Academy had taught her General Studies in Muggle Specialties that everyone in the States was required to take made it so that she had a decent GPA if she wanted to pursue a Muggle university.
Aysa had always wanted to study abroad since she had first started High School, but her mother hadn't let her. Her mother, Kimiko, had lived in Britain for a while when she was younger and told her daughter to wait until she was a few years older before trying to go study in Britian. Of course Aysa had taken that to be an outright no, so she was more than surprised when her mother's graduation present to her had been her mother telling her that she had arranged an assistant teaching position for Aysa in Britain. Well, it was more like Scotland, but they were close.
Plus, it seemed like all the turmoil and craziness that had been going on in Britain had ended hardly a month before Aysa graduated. Aysa was a little glad her mother had made her wait to go to Europe,especially since not long after Aysa had brought up wanting to go to the place her mother had lived for a few years, Europe had gone into chaos with freak hurricanes and bridges snapping like twigs.
Her mother was a math teacher at a Muggle school, even though she was a witch and could easily have gotten work behind the scenes at any of Vegas' shows to help with the special effects. Her mother preferred something quieter, and her father was actually her stepfather and a Muggle. He knew her mother was a witch, but her mother didn't do much besides housework with her magic anymore and the house was generally very peaceful.
Aysa paused her music for a moment to listen for possible disturbance to her parents, but heard silence. She sighed, looking at the time before shutting off her computer. It was four in the morning, so she pulled on some clothes and walked into her kitchen, making breakfast.
She was looking forward to her stayover in Britain, if only because it would get her out of the house and into somewhere new. She had exchanged web chat with the people she would be staying with a few months before she headed off to her assistant teaching position and they seemed really nice; a man named Vernon and a woman named Petunia. They had a son a year older than her that had just left home and they were looking forward to hosting her for a few months before she moved on to an assisting teaching position at a private school in Scotland.
She ate her breakfast as her mother came out of her room, bleary eyed.
"Why are you up so early, Ai?" Kimiko said sleepily.
"Why are you up so early, mom?" Aysa countered. Her mother shook her head and sat heavily next to Aysa after pouring herself a cup of coffee.
"I couldn't sleep. My baby is leaving me today," she said, a hint of tears in her voice. Aysa smiled and patted her mother's shoulders.
"Not for a few hours." She sighed. "You said that all the details were arranged then?"
"Yes. I have a friend who lived in the UK, and she helped set up the whole thing." Her mother eyed her. "But I've only told you that about a hundred times already."
Aysa giggled. "I know. I just… I can't believe this is happening." She admitted.
Her mother hugged her after setting down her mug of coffee. "Lots to do today."
As the plane lifted off the tarmac, Aysa fought off tears. She knew she was leaving her heart behind in Las Vegas, in the dry sunny desert where she had grown up. She had done a bit of research on Britain and Scotland, and all she knew was that it was a lot more humid, the English was different, and there was a small wizarding population. Not that information on the wizarding population was on the Internet like the other information had been. The British wizards seemed not to associate with Muggle technology much, which Aysa thought was a shame.
She looked out her window and saw the hazy outline of the strip slowly change as the plane gained altitude and distance. Before she had finished saying goodbye, it was gone. She let the tears slide down her face as she turned on her mini boombox, and put in her headphones. She planned on sleeping during as much of the journey as she could. It was a ten hour flight, and she had taken a sleeping pill so the journey would seem faster. She hated traveling becuse it went on forever. She would much rather sleep than have to sit for hours on end idly waiting to get somewhere.
When Aysa woke up, it was early afternoon and the plane was touching down. She navigated through the foreign airport, getting her passport stamped and her luggage picked up before pulling out her cell and checking to see if it had service. It did, and she called her exchange family. Petunia answered and told her they were already there and waiting for her, so she headed to the place where she was told they would be.
Petunia was an average woman, who had to be in her late thirties or early forties, and Vernon was a beefy man that looked to be about the same age. They greeted her with beaming smiles and asked her about the flight and her time in Britain so far. She smiled at them and answered their questions politely. As they spoke to her and she got used to the rhythm of their accents, it got easier to understand the different stresses in words and stuff. Aysa even tried saying a few words like she heard them saying them in hopes that she would get used to British English faster.
Petunia commented on it by the time the car had stopped in the driveway, and they stepped out of the car in front of a small house.
"Have you lived in Britain before, Aysa?" she asked.
Aysa smiled. "No. I just don't want to sound like a stupid American. I know we American have a bad rep here." She knew she would probably have to adjust to British slang as well.
Petunia laughed. "Oh, it could be a lot worse. You could be French." Aysa laughed with her, and they walked into the house as Vernon insisted on carrying Aysa's luggage to her new room. It would only be her room for a short time, but it was hers all the same, so she quickly made herself at home while the middle aged couple left her to her own devices.
She could tell that this room had not been empty long, but it had a feel of disuse to it, like it wasn't used that much even by the original owner. It was clean and empty though, with sheets and blankets on the bed. Closing her door, Aysa pulled her wand from in her suitcase. She didn't use it much, but she didn't really feel like unpacking. Even though she had slept for so long, she was exhausted.
With a wave and a nonverbal spell, all of her clothes flew from her suitcase and into the closet onto hangers. She appraised the results before pulling out what looked like a toy suitcase from her large suitcase and enlarging it. She did the same with those clothes as well, but not before casting a glamour on them so that they didn't look like witch's robes.
She was done and lounging on her bed with her wand hidden in the pocket of one of her coats in her closet when she heard Petunia calling her down for a late lunch. She hadn't eaten since she had left Vegas, so she happily went downstairs and ate a light lunch of sandwiches.
Aysa made sure to ask Petunia about her family, and Petunia was only too happy to tell her about her only son. Dudley was eighteen, and attending Oxford. When Aysa asked if Petunia had any siblings she talked about a sister she had lost contact with, although Aysa could tell it was a tender subject, so she avoided it.
Her time with the Dursleys passed quickly. Aysa spent most of her time with Petunia, learning what she could about British culture, and spent the rest of her time either on the Internet, walking around the countryside with an effective notice-me-not charm on, or sitting in the library, reading books she had never even heard of in the states.
She was lounging in her room when she got seized by the urge to search the room for clues about the previous inhabitant. Dudley's room was the one next to hers, and it was still filled with a lot of his things, so she had to wonder who had lived in the room she currently resided in.
She found nothing until she had crawled under the bed and reached to the very back. Her fingers touched upon something small that turned out to be a photo when she pulled it out. But not just a photo. It moved. Aysa's pulse quickened for the first time since she had gotten to the Dursley's home. The Dursleys were Muggles. Aysa knew that for a fact, so she had to wonder what a moving photo was doing in the unused bedroom.
In the photo were three people. A boy with a shock of red hair, a girl with a bush of curly brown hair, and a green-eyed boy with plain messy black hair waved at the camera. The black haired boy wore glasses, and he had a curious scar on his forehead that Aysa took note of. The scar was strangely shaped, almost like a lightning bolt.
A/N: Review! I can't know if you liked it otherwise, although I will understand if you are holding reservations until I have posted more fo the story. As this is only an introduction, I know that it will be hard to pass judgement on it just yet. I'm going to get this BETA'd and fixed very soon. . I just wanted to post it while it was still fresh in my mind. Scratch that. The amazing and wonderful Miriam1 has BETAed this chapter. The next few chapters are done, but they won't be posted until they've been fully BETAed, picked apart, and sewn back together. Thanks for reading!
Originally posted: 22:25 MST 7/20/11
Edited and reposted: 10:37 MST 8/3/11