The Lost Witch

Chapter 1

Mach 27, 1978

"Josephine Euphemia Potter, don't tell me you got a tattoo on your leg!" Euphemia Potter fumed, not even trying to conceal her anger.

She who was once a happy little girl now turned rebellious or so her mother said.

In all honesty, Jo was not as rebellious as her mother thought. And, for the record, she was nowhere near as rebellious as her brother.

Jo did everything right: she studied, got mostly all the outstandings on her OWLs, took as many NEWT classes as she could. She seemed like the perfect representation of what a perfect child should be.

But she wasn't. Or at least Jo didn't think so.

She wasn't originally chosen for prefect or Head Girl. Lily was. It was little condolence when Jo was picked to be a replacement prefect since Lily was becoming Head Girl, leaving a gap.

Jo was happy for Lily.  Really she was, Lily deserved it. Lily was her best friend, they had gone through tons together. It just stung a bit that Lily kept getting the roles Jo dreamt of.

But what really made her mad was the fact that her stupid brother, who had never gotten prefect mind you, had became Head Boy.

It just sucked that no matter what Jo did, she was always outshined by her only-three-minute older brother. He got on the Quidditch team while she was in the library, he became head boy and was Quidditch captain when Jo was studying and cramming for upcoming tests. .

It wasn't even as if Jo didn't understand Quidditch, she helped James come up with some of his best strategies after all. She just was too involved with her studies to dedicate any real time to playing.

So the one time she wanted to do something for herself, she couldn't do it.

In her Defense Against the Dark Arts class, she had learned how to produce a Patronus charm. It was a bit difficult at first, but after some practice she was able to master it.

Even when Jo was first practicing the spell, it was clear that the wispy figure coming out of her wand was a dove.

She thought it was perfect.  And to honor her new little friend, Jo knew she had to do something special.

Countless hours spent in the library led to Jo learning dozens of spells and useless trivia.  One of the spells that she remembered reading about was a spell that would add permanent ink to her skin. It was basically a tattoo but less painful than the muggle method.

She made the mistake of mentioning her idea to James who immediately begged her to include him in her plan. Initially she said no, but after some impressive feats of flattery and promises that the Marauders would stop pranking her, she gave him the spell.

It was a bit of a difficult spell, but if James messed it up it was his own fault and he could deal with the consequences. She did help here and there though, it would not be a good thing to be related to the weirdo with the botched tattoo.

And so on Jo's eighteenth birthday, she got a simple dove and some fluttering leaves tattooed on her ankle.

Jo loved it. She was enamored with how it came out and as soon as she saw it, she promptly labeled it the best decision she had ever made in her life.  And as loathe as she was to admit it, James's stag tattoo didn't come out half bad.

Her mother, on the other hand, was less than pleased.

"So what if I got a tattoo!" Jo yelled, furious. She couldn't believe the audacity of her mother. She was eighteen now, she had been a legal adult for a year now. "James got one too, it's a stag if you cared. Are you going to yell at him too?"