Chapter Text
Many people gathered at the small church for the funeral. Most of them were noticeably red-headed. The deceased was one of their own, a Weasley. Among the many grievers in the church, quite a few of them looked to one particular little girl sitting quietly with her adoptive parents.
Nathaniel Weasley had left a daughter, who was now living with a very distant uncle and aunt, adopted. She barely knew her late father, when she was very small he had dropped her off at a home for wizard children claiming that he couldn’t raise a child. She was thirteen years old now with strawberry blonde hair and blue eyes. She wore a simple black dress and flat black shoes and she stared down at her lap.
After the service many people came to her expressing sympathy, seeming to assume how she must feel. So many ‘I’m sorry' and hugs before she ran out of the room and hurried to a bathroom stall and locked herself in. Her parents allowed her a bit of time before they came to retrieve her.
Why was everyone assuming how she felt? She didn’t know the man. She hated it when strange people touched her. There were so many people out there and they all felt the need to hug her and tell her it would be alright. She also wondered why she shed tears for a man who had left her as a baby.
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It was somewhere between afternoon and evening and the big family barbeque was still going strong. They were having it at Aunt Sharon and Uncle Wesley’s house this time, with the giant porch and the pool. A few kids were playing Quadpot further out in the gigantic yard, on broomsticks designed to hover only six feet up. A few of the adults were watching the kids play in fold chairs and shouting directions or encouragement. On a table were all the foods brought to the event laid out for people to eat like a buffet.
Elizabeth Weasley, Lizzie to most, was wandering around looking for somewhere private to sit while she read one of her favorite comic books. She pulled up a folding chair in a corner of the backyard and started reading the latest adventures of all her favorite characters. She had started to get into it when she overheard her father and Uncle Wesley talking.
At the reading of the will they discovered that her biological father wished for her to study at Hogwarts.
“You’re seriously just going to do what he asks? That’s fella’s been gone all her life and suddenly he’s making demands for what school she should go to?.”
Lizzie couldn’t resist trying to listen, knowing they were talking about her.
“It’s not….For one, I think it’s a great opportunity for her to get her out of her comfort zone and experience things. She’s so stubborn about doing things her way, and she’s lonely but she doesn’t want to risk changing anything she’s comfortable with, even if it means she’ll keep being lonely.”
Lizzie seethed. That wasn’t it at all. She had tried to be friends with other kids at her school , she really had. But they didn’t want any of it and they bullied her. She was done being nice to them. Why couldn’t he understand that? He just had to listen to her!
“What makes you think goin’ to Hogwarts will make things any better? She’ll be an American going to some fancy British school. She’ll be just as lonely as before and resent you for making her.”
“The classes she’s in barely teach her anything other than the basics. She’s still in first year level lessons. They put her in a class with kids who are...well a little behind and I know she’s a rambunctious kid and challenging, but she’s smart enough to be with well... normal kids. I want her to learn something in a year’s time and have something more to show for it, more than being able to wave a wand or set up a cauldron!”
“Right. You don’t want your kid with the slow kids-”
“Now I didn’t say slow-”
“You don’t have to. Look, your girl’s ...well...a little different. And as a parent that’s hard to handle. But at some point you gotta accept that “
“I don’t think you understand...this isn’t- we’ve gotten involved with the school, tried teaching her more at home but-”
Lizzie turned away from the conversation and went back to reading, though now it was harder to focus. Her father thought her class was beneath her, did he? Crushing her magazine in her grip she made her way into the house, and buried herself on the couch under blankets for most of the rest of the night.
She hated being so different.
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In an office that smelled of some kind of fancy wood, full of soft chairs and couches, Six-year-old Lizzie occupied herself with the toys while in the other room her parents were talking to a doctor. She kept an ear out occasionally listening, because they were talking about her. She didn’t understand a lot of it though. She thought she was just fine, she had always been the way she was.
“Her accidental magic is explosive sometimes.” Sawyer Weasley admitted. “And you can feel her aura when she’s upset. It’s like she’s radiating magic and you know something’s about to happen.”
“Yes, it’s common. When an autistic young witch feels upset she loses control of her emotions. She can’t find a way to communicate her feelings so they build up and explode. “ the doctor said. “How does she relate with other children?”
“She-she doesn’t. She doesn’t want anything to do with other kids, she’s in her own little world. “ Sarah Weasley said. She was a muggleborn, not entirely knowledgeable in the ways of wizard children and the wizarding community.
“When we adopted her, the woman at the home told us that she didn’t normally get along with other children. There was a history of bullying from older children. We also wondered how busy the home was, if she was paid proper attention by the caretakers.” Sawyer explained.
“We don’t know if she was even held as a baby.” The conversation continued and Lizzie tuned out, finding the toys much more interesting than the adults’ talk. She was fine. There was nothing wrong with her. So what if everyone wasn’t like her? Everyone was supposed to be different, right?
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It was the night before she was to be taken to the station to go to England by the Trans-Atlantic Bus, a magical underwater bus that went across the Atlantic and took people between the United States and England. Lizzie’s room was a bit haphazard but organized in a way she understood best. She had already packed her necessities.
The boring stuff. Clothes, socks , underwear. Blah, blah, blah.
She eagerly moved to her giant bookshelf of comic books.
She pulled over her new trunk, one that her late biological father had left her and peered inside it to see a deep abyss with a kind of wheel lever on the interior side. She reached over to pull it and a horizontal shelf rose up from the dark pit inside. She turned the wheel more and the shelf flipped over to the other side.
"Awesome!"
"That's interesting," she turned to see her father standing in the doorway. "It would be useful for storing your textbooks."
"Eh, I can fit my textbooks in my regular trunk" she said, tinkering with the lever.
"Do you really think you're going to have the time to read comics at Hogwarts?" He asked .
Lizzie gave him what she hoped was a very intense glare. "I want something to enjoy there, are you trying to make it as miserable as possible?"
Her father sighed. "I want you to learn something there."
"And to not embarrass you by being with the dumb kids, right?" She said with icy anger.
"Elizabeth….that's not what I mean." He said.
"Is too." she muttered resentfully.
"I know you're upset about leaving-" he said, coming to sit down on her bed.
"Of course I am! I don't want to go to some fancy British school! And what if I can't keep up with the other kids and they kick me out and send me back here?". Her voice shook, betraying what she had been most afraid of since the will reading. "What then? Are you going to just tell people you have a stupid, messed up kid? Or are you going to send me back with a little note saying I'm too much for you to handle?"
Her father held her close as she started crying. Despite her anger she didn't turn away from comfort.
"You know we'd never do that. You're our daughter no matter what." He rubbed her back in a circular motion. "Is that why you've been so upset?"
"k-kind of" she admitted. "I don't want to be embarrassing to you...and sometimes it kind of feels like I am."
"Elizabeth, you're not embarrassing to us. I just want you to have a proper chance at an education, and your school won't give you that." He said. "Your mother and I have been doing our best to try and get them too but we can't change the whole school system."
Lizzie pouted but didn't say anything.
"You're not going to be kicked out for struggling. And we know you're smart enough. " He rubbed her back as she laid in his lap.
"How do you know?" She said thickly through tears. "Maybe if everyone around me at school thinks I'm dumb-"
"The popularity of an opinion doesn't make it any more right. Are you going to let a bunch of kids who don't know you define you?"
There he went with that 'let' talk again. It wasn't about "letting" anything! Why couldn't he get that?
"I understand if you need familiar things to handle this. Just make sure you do your schoolwork. If you do well on your final exams I might get something for you ." Her father said. "You've been wanting a computer right?"
She gasped and shot up. "R-really?! My own computer?"
"I'll see what I can find at work . That is if you do your best on your exams." He said with a chuckle.
"I promise!". She said, hugging him tightly. "Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"
"You're welcome". He patted her on the head and pulled himself up. "Now finish getting ready and go to bed on time.".
Lizzie nodded. Her father left and she turned back to her comic shelf, grabbing multiple volumes of her comics and loading them into the special trunk. She discovered, upon turning the shelf inside the trunk, that the shelves were enchanted to hold the contents in place. Once she finished loading her collection of comic books she started loading the next shelf with her notebooks and sketchbooks.
Finally she put in all the music cassettes she had, which weren't the many.
As she turned the wheel rotating the shelves she found herself thinking about her father's suggestion.
She had plenty of room. She certainly could fit her textbooks in the book trunk.
She moved on to packing away and stuffing her bedsheets in her trunk after using a charm her father had taught her to compress them away. She looked over to her stuffed animals hesitating.
She was already taunted mercilessly at her last school about being childish, a grave sin when you're middle school aged. She sighed. She'd have to survive without them.
What kind of thirteen-almost- fourteen year old still slept with a stuffed toy?
She picked one up and hugged it, whispering "I'm sorry." She knew it was silly. But it made her feel sad to think about leaving them all behind.
She compiled all of her art supplies and put them in a storage box she recently bought and set it with a pile of blank sketchbooks, in the trunk.
Lizzie sat on the bed looking over everything. Her bed looked so empty without the usual loud and colorful rainbow bed sheets.
Sighing she pulled over her throw blanket and fuzzy pillow, and curled up to sleep.
She tried to think of the positives. She was going to see England! That was exciting!
But she knew she would miss home.
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“Who’s Uncle Nathaniel and why haven’t we heard of him?” Ron Weasley asked at dinner that night. He had heard the mutterings all summer about this as of yet unknown uncle having died and left behind a daughter.
“He...he was the youngest of my brothers,” His father said. “He was born when my mother had gotten a bit older, and perhaps because of that he turned out a bit...well unusual.”
“More than Uncle Billius?” Fred asked. “It’s not like he’s normal”
“Fred!” Their mother admonished them. Arthur Weasley just chuckled.
“Billius has always been eccentric. But Nathaniel was ill in a way that we didn’t understand. He was an unusual and sometimes difficult child, and then when he got older, he became moody and driven by emotion, lashing out at everyone around him. He got in trouble at times at school and then, in his seventh year, he left.” Mr. Weasley spoke quietly now, heavily.
“He- he just...left?” George asked. “Did he ever say why?”
“Not at the time… but at one point before he began lashing out at us, he felt as if he would never understand the people around him, and he felt as if there was something wrong with him.” Mr. Weasley said solemnly. “He lashed out, and then left because he felt he didn’t belong. I exchanged letters with my cousins in the United States. They say he had certain conditions and illnesses that in our time, among wizards, we had no name for, or concept of.”
"So what happened?" Ginny asked leaning forward.
"He died recently." Mr Weasley said. "And it was in his will that his daughter attend Hogwarts."
"She'll be arriving within days now " Mrs. Weasley said.
"She's coming here?" Ron asked "but we don't-"
"We'll manage. She's family." Mrs. Weasley said.
"My American cousins have sent along money to cover her school things" Mr. Weasley assuredly. "She'll be going to America for most of the summer holidays and most of her time will be spent staying at Hogwarts."
Ron started to say something but Ginny elbowed him. "She can stay in my room. How old is she?" She asked excitedly.
"I've been told she's almost Ron's age. But she's got an autumn birthday, so she'll be attending your year."
"But what about Hermione!" Ron said
"Hermione won't mind," Ginny said, "She's sensible...unlike some people…"
"OI!". Ron's face burned as the twins roared with laughter.
----
Lizzie watched out the window as her father drove up to the Trans-Atlantic Bus station. The station was a large building that hid the bus loading dock behind it. It was early morning and the station parking lot was almost empty.
She held back a yawn. "Why did we have to come so early?" she said.
"Well for one the time difference. But also with the Quidditch World Cup this August, people are going to start coming in droves to get a head start." Her father said getting out.
She got out as well, enjoying the summer morning air.
Her father opened the trunk door and pulled out the largest trunk, then helped her in pulling out her book trunk and remaining duffel that held a few extra things and her medical potions and pills.
They walked into the station, and it was notably huge inside, feeling much bigger than the building she saw from the outside. Behind the check in desk there were numerous stalls for travel things, books and small restaurant stalls selling snacks and boxed meals.
Once they were checked in, he brought her to a small breakfast eatery where they had bagel burgers and chips. Her father told her about the family she'd be staying with.
"They have seven kids!" Lizzie exclaimed. "Wow that's a lot. Will there be room for me?"
"Yes. Their oldest two sons are out of the house and I hear the third oldest is on his way. You'll be staying with their daughter, Ginny , she's your age. Uncle Arthur says one of their boys' friends will be joining you later in the summer."
Lizzie nodded. There was a girl her age. A peer. While he probably meant as a comfort of some sorts but Lizzie was nervous. What if the other girl didn't like her. She didn't exactly have the greatest track record with her peers.
By her experiences, the other girl would probably either actively dislike her, or pity her. She wasn't sure which she liked less.
She nodded.
"Now I'm going to give you your Gringotts key. That money is yours now. But be smart about how you use it. You won't have to pay for school necessities. But if you want an owl or cat you'll have to pay for that yourself." He told her as they walked out to the bus dock.
"Ok" she said. He handed her the key. It was big and old looking. But intricately, elegantly designed. She tucked it in her duffel bag with her extra things.
At the bus dock a few wizards were out working. The bus door was slid open but nobody was there to come in. Her father handed her an envelope.
"Here's some money for the trip. Remember to take your medicine and be good for your aunt and uncle, please.".
"I will". Lizzie said. She felt like an adult and while it half felt good it also felt a bit scary. "I love you, Daddy. I'll get an owl that can travel a long way and I'll write to you every week!"
Her father chuckled and hugged her. "I love you too. You'll do great here, if you set your mind to it."
"I hope so". Giving her father one last hug, she piled one of the carts near the back wall and loaded it up with her things.
She walked up a ramp into the bus, waving goodbye one last time.
Inside the Trans-Atlantic Bus, it felt much bigger on the inside. There was copious aisle space as she dragged her luggage cart through the aisles, spotting a few vending machines in the common area.
She found a number of compartments behind the common area. They had a bunk bed built into the wall, a small seat and table, and ample luggage space.
She put up her luggage and sat down with a sigh.
She couldn't bring herself to look at her father as the bus finally started to depart, knowing she would definitely start crying.
She curled up to sleep in the rather comfy seats for good while as she felt the bus start to move. For the next half hour, though it seemed longer, Lizzie slept to the soothing movements of the underwater bus.
She yawned as she pulled herself, body aching and sluggish, and looked out the window, all so suddenly breath taken. The window showed the view of deep underwater, fish swimming in schools and alien-like underwater plants. She took in the view of the window before the compartment door slid open and a middle aged witch pushing a cart looked in.
“It's beautiful isn’t it, honey?” she said.
Lizzie turned around. “Oh Uh..oh yeah” She looked over the offerings on the cart and pulled out her money envelope. There were bento style boxes with lunches in them, and a number of snacks and sweets with bottles of cider in multiple flavors.
“Ohhhh!” she said, pulling out her money “it all looks so good” She bought a lunchbox, then picked out a selection of her favorite candy. As the cart left, her table was piled high with a number of treats, and snacks.
A flavored, bubble pipe, Bubblesticks and smokesticks; applesnacks, pecan tarts, chocolate gems and candy baubles, a few rock candy wands,caramel owls, and choco cats, sugar wings, heart candy, cat crackers, shooting stars, and a unicorn horn. Bubble brews and Carly Ray’s sat next to bottles of cider.
She was glad her father couldn’t see how much candy she had gotten. She pulled out a thick omnibus collection of one of her comics and a notebook covered in colorful Laurie Ferris stickers.
She opened up the lunch starting on one of the tuna salad sandwiches as she began to read and occasionally jot down ideas of her own. Through bites of sandwich, carrot sticks dipped in sauce, and other bits until she finished the box.
Hours flew like minutes as she kept herself entertained with her comic and her notebook. She later brought out her markers and doodled in the notebook while enjoying a number of snacks. She laid back and napped again for a bit. In-between intervals of napping and reading or drawing she kept herself entertained. At one point she got up, locked her compartment and went to the compartment where she found the vending machines, leftover money in hand. She looked over the offerings of snacks there.
The glint of the shimmering glitter package of Garden Blossoms. She eagerly fed a Note in and jammed the button. A package dropped down below and she reached to get it. She returned to her compartment and unlocked it, itching to open the package and see. Other kids had been talking about these, they were fairly new and they had always looked so pretty.
She gently pulled the sugar spun blossoms out of the package, as they caught the light , showing off beautiful colors and gleams.
She savored them, eating them one by one ,petal by petal and then giving a gasp of delight as a small vine sprouted from her fingertip. The blossoms gave her a good bit of joy and entertainment before she fell asleep again after finishing them.
She awoke to an intercom announcing their arrival to port. Lizzie scrambled to put away all of her things and stuff all of the leftover candies into a trunk. She could feel the bus coming up to land as she gathered her trunks and luggage. She opened the compartment door with butterflies in her stomach. The early morning light slowly illuminated the English port as she walked out, a bus attendant coming to assist her with her things.
She stepped down the steps into the busy boardwalk port where muggles around them went about their business. In a parking lot nearby was a redheaded couple in wizarding robes. She walked over to them as they called out to her.
“Elizabeth, dear.” The motherly looking witch asked fondly. “How was your journey?”
“Uh Lizzie actually. It was nice!”
They made small talk with her as before Uncle Arthur instructed her to hold on to a rusty old tin can. With a jerk behind her belly button they, and her luggage were whisked away to a towering house in the countryside. The sun was starting to come up as Aunt Molly called out her sons to help when they crossed through the front gate. A pair of identical red haired twins hurried out followed by a younger boy and a girl her age.
For once Lizzie found herself in the position of quietly listening while the girl , Ginny, chatted to her excitedly about Hogwarts and the Cup and how excited she was to have another girl in the house.