A/N: This is my first fanfic that I actually wrote out. Here’s the full summary thing:

Muggle-born American witch Tantiana Miller is looking forward to Hogwarts, and getting away from her careless father. At her magical summer foster home, her habit of eavesdropping and snooping around constantly get her in trouble. Before she boards the train, everyone reminds her to behave. Of course, being good is hard to do when your best friends with Fred and George Weasley. R&R!

Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own characters and Elliott the racoon.

“Leah, get your little butt down here!” said the man, who, unfortunately, was my father.

I stepped rather cautiously down the stairs. It was late, and he had been drinking. Again. He gets angry when he drinks. My dad rarely beats me, only when he’s had a bad day at work, after drinking, or when I do something that really gets on his nerves. Its not that he hates me...he could just care less about me.

He tends not to notice whether I’m home or gone, healthy or sick. I usually make my own dinner, generally cereal, and do my own laundry. When I need something, he just grunts and gives me five bucks. The strange thing is, as much as he doesn’t notice things he still manages to know when I’ve done something strange.

You see, when I was five, I discovered I had an…ability. I could change the length and color of my hair, the color of my eyes, my skin tone...nearly everything about my physical appearance. At that point, I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew it was special. Trust my luck to have Dad walk in on me testing my “ability” the first day I figured it out.

I was amazed at his anger. He screamed and shouted and threw me against a wall, bruising most of my body and spraining my ankle. I was lucky not to have broken a bone. Worst part is, I could never figure out just what he was shouting about. I was too caught up in the pain.

That night scarred me for life. I never said a word for the next few months to anyone. I learned that year to be sneaky and silent, never, ever coming in contact with my father on his “off” days. I tried not to use my ability, but most of the time I couldn’t help it. It was like I couldn’t hold it in at first, but over the years I got better. I’m ten now, and have near total control over it.

And where is my mother in all this? According to my dad, she died “When you were a baby by the fault of others,” and that’s all I could ever get out of him. I don’t pester him, for obvious reasons. I also know that my mother was British. I discovered this by chance one day when I was shuffling through the filing cabinet looking for a pad of paper. I found out that her name was Grace Miller Smithy and that she was born in Liverpool.

I’m, by the way, 99 American, as I was born in Britain but raised in America. I live in Manhattan, New York at the heart of NYC. My father and I live in a shabby little apartment in Soho (South of the main part of the Island). I’m your typical city girl. Love my hotdogs, find the subway the only way to travel, and know the streets by heart.

Anyway, I stepped cautiously and quietly down the steps. Something told me he had had a bad day at work (he was a factory worker at Leather/Suede, a shoe-making company). His bulky body was sweaty, and you could see the frustration in his tanned face.

Thank goodness we didn’t look anything alike. He was short, fat, and balding, with olive green eyes. I, on the other hand, was tall for my age and gawky, with bleach blonde hair in a ponytail. Since I could change my eye color I preferred to keep them gray. I was pretty pale, with a heart-shaped face. Dad was just...round.

“What the heck did you do to my jacket?” he shouted angrily. I honestly had no idea what he was talking about. His jacket was his prized possession. It was old worn leather. He’d had it for years and loved to show it off to anyone and everyone. “This one cost me five months salary,” he would brag. The only reason you would want to mess with his jacket was if you were ready to die.

“W-what do you mean? I didn’t do anyth-thing...” I stuttered. My confidence always went right down the drain when he got mad. I hadn’t been beaten for quite a while, nearly a year now. I was quiet and sneaky, and always managed to slip out of the room when he came home drunk.

“Oh, I suppose you’re gonna need to see exactly what you did?” he shouted, his voice dripping with sarcasm. He started to pull his precious jacket out of a Walmart bag.

“Look, I-I told you, I never-,” I began.

“Look for yourself,” he said. He held it up. It looked fine.

“I don’t really see any d-difference...” I said. He slowly turned it around. Someone had slashed open the back in many different places. It looked like it had been through a paper shredder. He glared at me through cold eyes.

“No difference, huh? And I suppose you won’t look any different with every inch of your skin covered in bruises.” I froze in panic, unsure of what to do. I could feel the blood draining from my face. He walked toward me in heavy strides.

“You’re going to pay for what you did!” he screamed. I cowered against the wall, preparing for the worst. He grabbed his beer bottle from the table and threw it at my head. It hit me straight in the face. I felt hot, sticky liquid running down my face. I suddenly became aware of the staggering pain in my forehead, the taste of beer in my mouth, and the shards of glass that littered the area around me.

He stared at his work. He stepped back and then came rushing toward me like a football player. I wasn’t ready for this. I buried my head under my arms, the best defensive position I could muster, and prepared for the pain. But it never hit me.

I heard my father yell in frustration. I opened my eyes to see him on the ground a couple of feet away from me. How the heck did he end up there? He looked up at me with cold eyes.

“What are you doing?!” he screamed, scrambling up. I couldn’t answer, I was too shocked. Behind him, items began to hover in the air. No way. That couldn’t be possible.

Could it?

Everything, and I mean everything, flew into the air. Dad finally noticed. I wasn’t expecting this reaction. His mouth opened but no sound came out. He cowered on the floor, every bit of him trembling.

I stood up a little taller, my back off the wall. Maybe he wasn’t used to something strange, but I was. I figured I was your definition of strange. The mess of objects, the papers, the mugs, the chairs, and the table, all started to spin around the room.

They slowly gained power, moving faster and faster. The loop of flying objects was also getting smaller, closing in around my father. Whoa. His expression was pure fear. Closer and closer, faster and faster. They pulled back for a second, and then-

They all slammed into my father at full force with the biggest noise I’d ever heard. The last thing I heard from Dad was a muffled cry of fear.

Dust rose. I couldn’t see anything. I began coughing and moving blindly toward Dad. The air began to clear. The objects were all over the floor, still once again. My father was buried under everything, and for once, his skin was covered in bruises. Most of him was covered with junk. Oh, no. A shiver of fear coursed through my body. What would he do when he woke up? Would the police come? Did I kill him?

As fast as I could, I cleared some debris off of his head. The table was covering the rest of him. He wasn’t in horrible shape, just really rumpled. The worst thing appeared to be a blow to his forehead. But couldn’t that be a concussion? At least he was out cold at the moment; otherwise I’d be picking out my tombstone. I held two fingers to his beefy wrist hanging out from under the table. I wasn’t worth crap at finding pulses, but I thought I felt something.

I backed away. Now what? If I stayed here, I was dead meat in an hour or so. ‘Or maybe sooner,’ I thought as he wiggled a little. But where could I go? I’d often seen the homeless people in the streets and in central park. But…a life like that was just so...dirty. No thank you.

Maybe I could run away to somewhere cool, like in The Mixed up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankwiler or something. Yep, now that I thought about it, I knew a great place. Every kid’s dreamland.

The only problem? My head was still throbbing with pain from the bottle he had thrown. The blood had caked up, and some was still coming. The first thing I did was take a few minutes cleaning up the blood in the bathroom. I was mostly clean, but the bruise on my head was still prominent. I figured I could put on my Yankees cap and hide it when I hit the streets.

I quickly and quietly made my way up the stairs to my little bedroom. It was nothing special: white carpet, blue walls, a bed and a dresser. I grabbed my school backpack from under the bed and dumped out all of the books. I threw in everything a kid could need. My life savings of candy (I love Mike and Ikes) and money, for one. My favorite book, The Rats of N.I.H.M., and my stuffed raccoon, Elliott.

I didn’t think much about clothes, but I tossed in an old tee and shorts and put on a baggy maroon sweatshirt. I grabbed my Yankees cap and added my journal and a pen. That was it for a 10-year-old’s necessities.

With one final adjustment of my Yankees cap, I walked down the stairs. I was now ready for anything. I strode confidently around my father to the door. My fingers grasped the silver metal knob. On a whim, I quickly turned around and went to the filing cabinet. I dug through the papers, eventually coming across that old manila envelope. This was the file with everything about my mom. Now I was ready.

There was just one issue, though. Before I could go and open the door myself, someone else did.

Oh, crap.

I was frozen in place for a split second, before my instincts kicked in. I pressed myself against the wall and hastily snuck to the top of the stairs as the door opened wider. I would watch the strangers, who, with my luck, were probably police. I had problems staying still. All of me was, once again, shaking in fear.

“This is the New York City Police Department, here to investigate some claims,” said a deep masculine voice. I said nothing. “Okay, we’re coming in,” he said calmly. What would they do? Arrest me? Would they know I did something weird and take to me to some kind of lab? I was more scared now than ever before.

Through the door came three people in uniform, but they didn’t really look like policemen. There were two men and one woman dressed in purple. The woman was older with graying blonde hair and a stern face. The youngest man had thin brown hair and a big nose, and the other man had thick auburn hair. The strangest thing that I could see was that none of them were armed. Could these guys really be policemen?

They scanned the room, finally settling on the pile of crap on top of my father. The woman looked the most surprised at the state of everything. The auburn haired man was just unusually calm. He had an air of authority around him. That and he was a head taller than the other two “cops”.

“Is this the kind of evidence we need, Emerson?” asked the woman, looking up the tallest man. That must be Emerson, then. All three of them exchanged glances.

Emerson nodded. “This,” he said, “is exactly what we’re here for. It doesn’t look like a muggle mess to me.” He had a deep, calming voice. He must have been the one who called through the door.

Before I had time to ponder the word “muggle”, they did something I really wasn’t expecting. Each of them pulled something out of their pockets. They were long, slender, wooden rods. Almost...like a wand? They held them up as if they were very important and seemed cautious about where they put them.

“You don’t think the girl ran off, do you?” said the young man, walking around the room. The woman began to uncover my father from the rubbish that was piled on top of him. Emerson just stood and listened, scanning the room from his place.

Part of me was still in panic. They knew about me? They definitely weren’t cops. How’d they figure out who I was? I’d never been in trouble with the law before or anything. The part of me that wasn’t in panic was curious. How did these people get here so soon after the “incident”? And what in the heck were those sticks?

Get this. The young man pointed the stick and muttered something. I was ready to laugh; did he really think that would work?

Holy. Crap.

Using his “wand”, he was levitating the kitchen table off of my father. I’m serious. Wherever he pointed that thing the table followed in mid-air. It was like what I had done a few minutes ago, only this guy...this guy had control!

The woman bent down and cleared some of the smaller things off dad. She and the man hung over him. My best guess was that they were trying to figure out what was wrong with him. The man took his pulse while the woman inspected his head.

“Anything bad?” said Emerson. He eyed the scene as a whole, still scanning the entire area.

“Naw, he’ll be fine in a bit. He’ll just need to take a lot of Lymatol, I think.” This was the younger man talking in a good-humored voice, still looking over the man. What the heck was Lymatol?

The woman sighed. “Tylenol, Nelson, Tylenol. Get it right.” The woman seem exasperated, as if they had gone through this before. I had to wonder, who didn’t know what Tylenol was? Emerson nodded solemnly.

“I see. As soon as we find Miss. Smithy, we’ll have to see if he requires memory modification or not,” Emerson stated. A cold chill ran through my body. Memory modification?! These strange people were beginning to scare me. Even more, I mean.

Oh, no. Emerson was looking right at me. I was dead.

“Ahh, speaking of Miss. Smithy, I seem to have found her,” Nelson and the woman followed where Emerson was looking. Holy Crap. Holy Crap! They. Were. All. Looking. At. Me. I realized I wasn’t breathing and gasped in some air. They found me; I didn’t have to be quiet anymore.

“Miss. Smithy, could you please join us?” asked Emerson courteously. I stumbled a little, half falling down the stairs. I mean, there was no way I could refuse. These “people” could do all kinds of freaky things. Then again, I could, too. Changing my appearance was my deepest secret. Could these guys do it, too?

I worked my way slowly forward, stopping a few feet away from them. All three of them were standing now, in a tight group. They still had their “wands” out. And they were pointed at me. The stares seemed to sink through my skin. These guys could be pretty dang creepy. I stood there for a second, attempting to look Emerson in the eye. I finally figured out my mouth was hanging open. I must have looked like an idiot. I abruptly snapped it shut.

“You are indeed Leah Smithy, correct?” Emerson said brightly.

“Y-y-yes, sir,” I replied nervously. He smiled. I was officially flabbergasted. I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life, and this cuckoo was smiling?

“Well Miss Smithy, we have some good news for you,” Emerson stated cheerfully. Scratch that. Now I was more scared than ever before. What in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks was going on? All of them, these…these…nutters smiling and skip-a-dee-do-da. Were they getting pleasure from my cold, hard fear? Oh my gosh. I was going to faint.

“Well young lady, I am assuming that you made all of this,” Emerson waved his arms, indicating the mess of objects, “fly around the room. Am I correct?”

It would be nice if this guy just got to the point. I nodded nervously.

“Would I also be correct in assuming you watched my co-workers make things levitate?” Emerson inquired. Again, I nodded.

“Good, good. This talent is something very few have. My co-workers and I are among those few. Nelson and I are wizards, and Paxton is a witch.”

Yeah, I thought. They had really lost it. He continued. “My dear, Paxton is not the only witch in this room. By that, I mean you. You are a witch.”

Before I could comprehend how rude that sounded, I fainted.

A/N: Yes? No? Eh? Give me some input, please! Thanks- Cinders