A/N: Well, it's my first time trying my hand at the Wonderful World of HP, and I can only hope I do JKR justice since I'm merely playing with her toys (safe to say that anything you recognize isn't mine). I've seen stories similar to this before, but I've yet to find one that progresses the way mine does. That said, there are about 41000 DM/HG stories out there and I haven't quite made it through them all so please bear with me if some of it sounds a bit familiar, plot-wise, at first. :p It's a bit of a slow start (yes, the first couple of chapters are meant to be a bit confusing), but I do promise to explain everything as I go along. Enjoy!

*** 1 – Strangers in the Park ***

Liz Cooper spread her old blanket out on the ground and gracefully laid herself down on it. It was a beautiful summer day, and she was not going to waste it inside. Her summer had been so boring since she couldn't afford to leave her small hometown near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, but she had managed to keep herself somewhat occupied. Now the summer was ending and she had a few days off before school started again. So she had tossed her favourite book into her purse and grabbed her favourite blanket, and walked up to her old elementary school park. Normally it was a wonderfully quiet place to be, but the warm weather had brought out all kinds of people to her small hiding place. There were kids playing on the swings, adults walking their dogs on the paths, and a trio of young men playing baseball on one of the diamonds.

Sighing, Liz opened her book and resigned herself to the fact that this would not be a quiet day for her. Nevertheless, she found her place, and began to lose herself in the literary world as she kicked her sandals off her feet. She became so immersed in her novel that she didn't realize that several people were glancing at her frequently out of the corners of their eyes. She missed the strangers' eyes that gazed upon her 24-year-old frame. These eyes saw the curly honey coloured hair falling down her back from where it was held securely by a hair elastic and some bobby pins, the warm and curious brown eyes that ran along the pages of her book, and the slender figure and long legs encased in her favourite summer outfit of capris and a red tank top. But she saw none of this, she was so deep into the plot of her novel.

"Heads up!" The sudden shout brought Liz back to reality, and she gasped as a baseball struck the ground about 5 feet from where she was sprawled. It bounced once, and its momentum sent it straight for her. Not even thinking, she dropped her book and raised her hands in time to catch it. With a sigh of relief, she briefly closed her eyes, only to find three young men running towards her when she reopened them.

"Are you alright?" the blond man in the group asked, a concerned tone accentuating his thick British accent. His startlingly gray eyes seemed familiar, but Liz brushed it off quickly. She'd never known anyone with gray eyes before.

Smiling softly, she nodded her head and held the ball out to him. "I'm good. After ten years of playing baseball, I would have been fairly disappointed if I'd missed that catch," she replied, her own smile widening as he gave her one in return. Kneeling down to be at her eye level, he took the ball from her, and she felt a rush of warmth run through her fingers when they touched his.

"I'm so sorry about that." Another British voice broke her trance-like state, and she looked away from the blond man and into a pair of bright green eyes. Attached to those eyes was a young man with messy dark hair, a small scar on his forehead and round glasses adorning his face. "This git likes to close his eyes when he swings the bat," he continued, pointing at the third person with them, a young man with bright red hair, freckles, and a pair of clear blue eyes.

The redhead rolled his eyes. "Well excuse me for concentrating on what I was doing."

Liz smiled at their banter. They reminded her so much of her friends Sam and Isaac. They had a very similar relationship. The blond man had been watching her intently the entire time, but at the redhead's comment, he allowed a smile to grace his handsome face as he looked at his fellow players.

"Alright you goons, let's leave the lady to her reading and get back to our game," he said as he stood. Looking back down at Liz, he smiled softly. "Again, we're really sorry about the ball, and for making you lose your place in your book."

"That's ok," Liz replied as she picked up her book. "I've read it so many times that I can easily pick up where I left off." With that, she opened her book up, and quickly found the part of the story where she had last been.

Giving her one last smile, the blond stranger walked off with his comrades and resumed their game. Liz read a couple sentences in her book, and then glanced up at where the boys were playing when she heard a great crack of a bat hitting a ball. She watched over the top of her book as the redhead stumbled somewhat clumsily around the bases. She saw the dark haired man and the blond both race with ease for the ball that he had hit this time. With incredible agility, they both jumped into the air, lunging for the ball. They captured it together, the ball held between them in both their gloves. Liz could hear them shouting at each other in their warm, foreign voices. She had always loved talking to people with accents, mainly because she wished she had one.

Liz smiled as she returned her attention to her page, only to notice that there were a few marks on it that hadn't been there before. She watched as a few more added themselves to the collection. It was only then that she realized it had started to rain. She glanced up, and wondered how she had missed it becoming so cloudy.

Liz quickly closed her book, and grabbed her purse and blanket as she pulled her shoes back on. She threw her blanket over her head as the rain really began to come down. Normally she adored the rain, just not when she was caught in it with her books. She looked around for shelter, and instinctively ran for cover under a tree. As she got there, she pulled the blanket off her head to find her three baseball players underneath the tree as well.

"Fancy meeting you guys here," she joked, bringing smiles to their faces as she shook some of the rain from her curls.

"Nice day this turned out to be," replied the blond man with a smirk. Liz smiled back at him and looked out from under the tree's branches while her hands subconsciously put her book back into her purse.

"I don't know how it got so dark so quickly," she admitted. "It is a bit strange."

"That seems to happen a lot around us," the redhead muttered, trying to keep his voice down. Liz's head whipped around in time to see the blond man elbow his friend in the chest. "The way things creep up on us, I mean. We get so into some things that we don't realize when things around us change."

"Like Quidditch," the dark haired man replied, just before his eyes widened and he clamped his mouth shut. The blond man shot him a deadly look, and Liz caught this despite her definite confusion.

"Like what?" she asked them.

The men all looked at her, and the dark haired man spoke up first. "It's just a game we made up. It's a cross between football and basketball, and played outside on broo—broad hills."

He had been speaking very quickly, and this caused Liz's shields to go up. Something wasn't right about this explanation, especially since she could tell that 'broad hills' was not what he had originally meant to say.

"It sounds interesting," she said, trying to keep her tone neutral. "Which type of football do you mean, though? British or American?"

"British," the redhead replied quickly.

"The teams are smaller, like our football," the dark haired man further explained. "American style football doesn't make much sense to us, frankly."

"Me neither. I don't understand the appeal of it at all," Liz said honestly. The blond man had been very quiet during this whole exchange, and she only now noticed that his intense gaze was focused solely on her. As her eyes met his, she felt that warmth trickle down her spine again. It was inexplicable, but she really felt that she knew him. This scared her a little, especially with his eyes always watching her. She almost missed what the redhead said in response to her football comment, but the strangeness of it drew her attention away from the blond man's stare.

"Yeah, stupid muggles just love seeing each other get beat up over a ball. At least our game requires skills." He didn't seem to register what he had just said, but the other two did. The dark haired man's eyes widened again, and the blond let out a soft growl of frustration.

"Stupid what?" she asked quietly, turning away from the blonde's gaze to look at the redhead. She was starting to get severely creeped out by this group. There was something familiar about them, but the way they were speaking unnerved her. The three men desperately searched for something to say, but Liz cut them off before they could make an attempt. "You know what, I think I'm going to try and make a run for it before it gets worse." And with that, she threw the blanket back over her head and bolted from the shelter of the tree and into the pounding rain.

"Nice going Harry," the redhead muttered angrily. "We finally get to talk to her, and you blow it by mentioning Quidditch. Poor thing looked petrified at that."

"Well your mentioning strange occurrences happening around us a lot probably didn't help matters either. And what the bloody hell did you think you were doing mentioning muggles so casually like that? No wonder she was scared, she doesn't know what a muggle is!" Harry Potter replied to his best friend. Ron Weasley's face flushed a crimson colour that clashed terribly with his hair as he realized that his friend was right.

"At least we got to talk to her," came a quiet voice from behind them. The blond man stared longingly in the direction that Liz had run, wanting so badly to run after her, but knowing he couldn't. "She's alright, for now."

"You can't beat yourself up over this mate," Ron told him. "You know what has to happen for this to work."

"We all want her back," Harry added. "We just need to be patient. The thought of her running into danger like this sickens me, but she won't be alone."

Nodding softly, Draco Malfoy let out a sigh when he realized that he could no longer see her form running in the rain. Turning to his friends, he nodded again. "Time to go," he said as he pulled his wand from his pocket. The other two mimicked his actions, and with three small pops, they were gone.