Daydreamer - The Girl Who Lived

Chapter 1

It was uncommon for a cat to have been sat, unmoving, on a wall all day. No matter what noise was produced, how many people in the neighbourhood went to chase it away, not even when two owls swooped dangerously low, the cat never moved a muscle. It only stared at the Dursley family and their home on Privet Drive, hating them more and more as the hours in the day drew on. The cat found the family cruel and thought that they spoilt their child.

It was midnight when the cat finally moved, twitching its tail when the strangest of men had appeared suddenly and silently. A tall, thin man with long silver hair and beard, wearing a purple cloak and long robes, half-moon spectacles perched on his nose. An old man who was most definitely unwelcome in this neighbourhood... not that he cared, he was too busy rummaging around in his cloak.

After a moment, he seemed to know he was being watched. He chuckled when he saw the cat and muttered, "I should have known."

Successfully retrieving the item he was looking for, he pulled out what appeared to be a silver lighter, though it was anything but. When he held it to the air and flicked it open, the street lamps started to lose their lights, one by one with a click of the device. Soon, the entire street was plunged into darkness, nobody would be able to see anything if they looked out of their windows.

The man put the device away and walked over to the wall, taking a seat next to the cat and addressing it fondly, "Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall."

It was no longer a cat he was sat next to, instead a strict looking woman in an emerald cloak. "How did you know it was me?" She asked him, since she had been the perfect image of a cat.

"My dear Professor, I've never seen a cat sit so stiffly."

"You'd be stiff if you'd been sitting on a brick wall all day," McGonagall pointed out to him, since it wasn't the comfiest of seats.

"All day? When you could have been celebrating? I must have passed a dozen feasts and parties on my way here."

McGonagall angrily scoffed. "Oh yes, celebrating, all right," she said impatiently. "You'd think they'd be a bit more careful, but no! Even the Muggles have noticed something's going on. It was on their news. I heard it. Flocks of owls... shooting stars... Well, they're not completely stupid. They were bound to notice something. Shooting stars down in Kent! I'll bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never had much sense."

"You can't blame them," said the man gently. "We've had precious little to celebrate for eleven years."

"I know that," responded McGonagall, rather irritably. "But that's no reason to lose our heads. People are being downright careless, out on the streets in broad daylight, not even dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping rumours." She glanced at the man next to her rather sharply, waiting for him to give an input to the conversation, but he didn't, so she continued. "A fine thing it would be if, on the very day You-Know-Who seems to have disappeared at last, the Muggles found out about us all. I suppose he really has gone, Dumbledore?"

"It certainly seems so," said Dumbledore, the man not clarifying either way. "We have much to be thankful for. Would you care for a lemon drop?"

"A what?" McGonagall was taken aback by the sudden conversation change.

"A lemon drop. They're a kind of Muggle sweet I'm rather fond of."

"No, thank you," The woman's voice was cold, this wasn't a time for sweets. "As I say, even if You-Know-Who has gone..."

"My dear Professor, surely a sensible person like yourself can call him by his name? All this 'You-Know-Who' nonsense, for eleven years I have been trying to persuade people to call him by his proper name: Voldemort." McGonagall flinched at the mere mention of the name. "It all gets so confusing if we keep saying 'You-Know-Who.' I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort's name."