Chapter 1
The Notebook Paper Rejection


The sun shone through the clouds hazily that muggy mid-June morning. The life in a small, West Country village was just beginning to stir from the night’s sleep. It was already warm, even though the true heat of the day had yet to take its effect. Down one particular street, there was one cottage known by everyone. Like all other homes in Godric’s Hollow, it was a cosy house of red bricks, some appearing newer than the others. A small lawn surrounded it, the trees full and green and the flowers slightly larger than their spring buds. The memories of this place and what had happened there had held it in silence for many years. This morning, however…

“Ginny, have you seen my tie?”

“On the doorknob, Harry.”

At seven in the morning, this had been the typical scene for several months. Downstairs in the kitchen, Ginny Potter would be alternating between cooking breakfast, looking over her notes from last night's Quidditch match, or taking care of one of a million other things she had to do in and around the house, including her young son, James. Harry, on the other hand, would be upstairs, getting a late start as usual.

Becoming more and more panicked every minute, he glanced at his watch and fumbled on the bathroom counter between the toothbrush and the comb, taking minimum glances in the mirror. At twenty-four, his hair still stuck up all over the place, something he now felt he would never outgrow.

When Harry and Ginny had first moved into his parents’ old house, a lot of people questioned the wisdom of it. It had been left in disrepair as a type of monument to James and Lily for so many years. Some even called it disrespectful of Harry and his young family to live there. But whenever Harry heard this, he would just smile and explain that Voldemort had already taken too much from him in his life, and that it was high time he started taking back what was rightfully his.

Besides, once all the repairs had been finished, it really was a wonderful place to live. The house was snug, certainly a lot cheerier than Number Twelve Grimmauld Place.

“Morning, Ginny," Harry half-shouted as he scrambled down the polished wooden stairs. "I’m late, no time for breakfast!”

“Sit!” she ordered before he could pass by the kitchen, pointing at him with the spatula. “You haven’t been home for more than five hours this week. Sit down and have breakfast with your wife and son.”

As much of a hurry as Harry was in, he still found he could never say no to his wife. She had given him a beautiful son, and stood by him through a war and seven years of his stupidity.

With a show of fake reluctance, Harry sauntered into the warm kitchen and through to the dining room. The air was thick with the smell of both breakfast and dish soap. Harry removed his wand from his back pocket and took a comfortable seat at the far end of the oak table, allowing himself a few moments' peace allotted him for the rest of the day.

“I have an article I need to finish by the end of the day,” Ginny told Harry as she piled the plate in front of him with fried eggs, “so I’ll be dropping James off at Luna’s…Don’t make that face, Harry!”

“Well, what if she leaves him in the garden so he can play with the gnomes, and they carry him off?”

“That only happened once, Harry!”

“Three times,” Harry muttered under his breath.

“And don’t forget, Andromeda is dropping Teddy off here for dinner tonight. She’ll be back to pick him up around nine.”

“I won’t,” Harry assured her, taking one last bite of food to satisfy her. “Great breakfast, sweetie.”

Harry was about to make another run for the front door, having to also double back for his wand when he remembered he had almost forgotten something even more important. In a blue highchair, set not far from where Ginny could keep an eye on him, was another of the most important people in his new life, right along with Ginny. James looked back up at him with his bright brown eyes, as though he also knew his father had forgotten something.

“See you, James,” Harry said, kneeling down to eye level with his fifteen month old son. “Can you say ‘bye-bye’?”

“Bye, Da-ddy,” James smiled, shoving a fistful of cereal into his mouth.

Harry smiled and ruffled the mop of jet black hair on top of his son’s head, almost tempted to forget about work entirely and spend the entire day playing horsie and peek-a-boo. One more glace at his watch, however, made him speed off like a rampaging Hippogryff. Harry skidded down the hallway, slid past a cupboard under the staircase that, along with Ginny's help, Harry had boarded up almost as soon as they moved in, nearly running headlong into the front door before opening it and sprinting out.

---

“Harry…HARRY!”

“Sorry, Ron. What is it?”

“What do you think is wrong with Hermione?” Ron repeated once again in a very frustrated tone.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know! One minute she's going on and on about how happy she is that I’m finally an Auror, then she’s yelling at me, saying I never come home anymore, and then she starts crying and saying she’s a terrible wife.”

“That's odd. But this career change is a pretty big transition, Ron,” suggested Harry. “You’ve got to give her time to get used to it.”

Walking through the Ministry of Magic on such a busy morning, Harry was surprised the two of them could even keep up a conversation, what with people whooshing in and out of the Floo, office doors opening and closing, lifts clanging, the Minister of Magic's latest speech being broadcast and nearly a thousand voices buzzing all around them. The entire Ministry was like one giant hive. Harry also wondered how he had ever been able to get used to it.

“How about tonight you bring her home some flowers and take her out to dinner so she doesn’t have to cook?” Harry offered, feeling himself that this was pretty useless advice. “Maybe you just need to spend some time together to talk about things.”

“They honestly don’t expect us to swallow this-” shouted a cold voice coming from in front of them.

“Mr. Malfoy, please calm down!”

Harry and Ron instantly stopped in their tracks. Standing in front of them were two familiar people, one of whom they had come to simultaneously respect and fear in their years at Hogwarts: Minerva McGonagall. And she was arguing with none other than the infamous Lucius Malfoy.

Seven years after the fall of Voldemort, the Malfoys were free, but struggling to refurbish their family name, especially Lucius. With the family's money gone and their influence along with it, Harry knew there was no danger of Lucius Malfoy ever having power over anything every again.

But today, the normally calm and collected Lucius Malfoy was standing in the middle of the floor at the Ministry of Magic, red in the face and screaming his lungs out.

“You are the headmistress of one of the finest schools of witchcraft and wizardry in the world! Don’t tell me that for one minute you actually see nothing wrong with this!”

Lucius waved a very battered and worn piece of notebook paper in front of Professor McGonagall.

“Why would I?”

“BECAUSE THEY’RE CRIMINALS!”

“Juvenile offenders, Mr. Malfoy.” Professor McGonagall corrected, with a raised eyebrow at Lucius' last remark.

Criminals at Hogwarts? Now Harry had to know what was going on.

“Mr. Malfoy, I am not required to come to you with every letter of refusal I get. The System's act simply stated that these children have to actively pursue some form of education. It doesn’t have to be Hogwarts. We have already received several letters of intent for other schools-”

“YES!” shouted Lucius, as though Professor McGonagall were as dense as a lead wall. “For Durmstrang, Beauxbatons, schools people have actually heard of! BUT WHAT FOR MERLIN'S SAKE IS THE SKAT-HATOKHA ACADEMY OF MAGIC?”

“I assume it is a school,” Professor McGonagall explained frigidly. “You can tell because it has the word ‘academy’ in it.”

Lucius Malfoy was rendered speechless for a moment, trying to recover from this latest insult to his intelligence.

“Professor McGonagall, that country has no history of even trying to keep a rein of control on-”

“Well, maybe they are trying to remedy that situation,” Professor McGonagall interrupted, clearly becoming annoyed with the whole conversation. “Have you considered that, Mr. Malfoy?”

But Lucius Malfoy was refusing to let this argument go.

“If this school even is credible, how do we know the student who sent this letter has even been accepted there?”

Professor McGonagall answered this latest challenge by pulling several different parchments out of her robes and handing them to Mr. Malfoy.

“Delivered to my office this morning.” she showed them to him. “Letters from the board of directors, a pamphlet containing information on the school and its courses of study; they even sent me a very nice coffee mug that I have sitting on my desk right now. I would say everything is in order, wouldn’t you, Mr. Malfoy?

“And as you have mentioned before, Mr. Malfoy, I am the headmistress of one of the finest schools of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. So by the power vested in me," she annonced in a somewhat sarcastic tone, "I hereby declare this matter closed. Good day!”

Lucius Malfoy turned around in a huff and stormed past Harry and Ron.

“Good morning, Lucius,” smirked Ron, incapable of suppressing a laugh.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he snapped.

“Shouldn’t you be in Azkaban?” retorted Harry.

Either Lucius Malfoy didn’t hear him or simply didn’t care, because he continued on his way, stomping against the dark stone floor. Professor McGonagall, on the other hand, stayed where she was, looking completely exhausted from the conversation.

“Professor McGonagall…” Harry softly tried to get her attention.

“Oh, Harry!” gasped Professor McGonagall, jumping slightly as she spun around. “I didn’t even see you there. And Ron too, how are you both doing? And how are Ginny and Hermione?”

"Very well, thank you,” Harry answered. “Professor McGonagall, if you don’t mind me asking, what was that all about?”

Oh, it was nothing, really,” Professor McGonagall assured him. “Mr. Malfoy was simply throwing a temper tantrum over a certain aspect of the System’s Education Compensation Act that he doesn’t happen to agree with.”

“Excuse me, Professor,” Harry interjected. “The what?”

“I’m sorry,” Professor McGonagall apologized. “The System…well, think of it as a sort of International Wizarding Education Organization. They oversee various aspects and enforcements in international education. Hogwarts, luckily enough, as been able to avoid much of the scrutiny that the System is capable of handing out."

A proud, somewhat triumphant smile crossed Professor McGonagall's face as she paused for a moment.

"But meanwhile, the System has set their sights on the American Ministry of Magic and their current problems. And the Education Compensation Act is a law that the System recently passed in the United States giving ‘certain’ young people in that country the opportunity to attend schools such as Hogwarts. Mr. Malfoy has been very involved in this movement. I suppose in his twisted mind, it’s some sort of good deed.”

“Why don’t they just go to schools in their own country?” Harry asked.

“Is there even a school in America?" asked Ron.

“There has to be, Ron,” Harry said. “Don’t you remember at the Quidditch World Cup when we saw those witches from the Salem Witches' Institute?”

“I remember Veelas…” Ron replied, sounding slightly guilty.

“Well, there is a problem with that, Mr. Potter,” Professor McGonagall told him. “It's true, there are many fine educational facilities in the United States: the Salem Witches Institute, the Bell Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the Hardscrabble Creek School of Magical Arts, the Kailani Shamanic Institute, but it is not these schools that are causing concern for the System."

"Well, what is it?" Harry asked, feeling as though he were going deeper than he truly wanted to go.

"Well, as you may already know, all young wizarding children are kept a very close eye on in the United States. When they are of age eleven, they are invited to attend the school they reside closest to. But also, just like in Britain, children are not forced to attend these schools. Some wizarding children are taught at home, some students have families with connections overseas and are sent to school..., they have many options as far as their wizarding education goes. But it is the students that the System feels are in most need of supervision that are causing the concern. Students who have records that prove they are irresponsible with their magic."

"Criminal records?” Ron gulped.

"Some, yes," "Others are just labeled as 'people of interest', which can mean anything the American Ministy wants it to. Now, thanks to these new regulations, every little delinquent in the United States will become the problems of every school in Europe as well. Places of long histories and strong curriculums providing just the kind of stable environment the students need in order to reform and succeed."

It was becoming clear by the tone of Professor McGonagall's voice that she herself was not fan of these new regulations.

“But what was Mr. Malfoy so mad about?” asked Harry. “If he’s been involved from the beginning and this Act is becoming a reality, isn’t he getting exactly what he wants?”

“Well, a couple of weeks ago, Hogwarts recieved a letter sent to me personally before a professor could be sent as a liaison. I personally do not even know how Mr. Malfoy found out about it,” she told him, showing him the crumpled piece of notebook paper from before. “It’s a letter of intent to attend a school other than Hogwarts. The only problem is no one seems to have heard of the school.

"Another cause for concern is that this school has only invited the students under the juristiction of the Education Compensation Act, in other words, the young wizards records.."

Harry took the letter and held it up so Ron could read it too.



Dear Professor McGonagall,

I received your letter of invitation, and first of all, I would like to thank you for inviting me to your prestigious school of wizardry. I am honored that despite my somewhat questionable record you would still consider me as a student.

However, I regret to inform you that I will not be joining you this fall. I am however, aware of the new standards imposed by both the System and the Ministry of Magic in regards to students in my particular situation. That is why I am hereby sending my letter of intent to attend the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic. Please refer any further questions on the subject of my future education to the board of directors: Mark Dewey, Patrick Cheatham, and Joseph Howe.



Below, written in completely different handwriting, a name was signed.



Nathaniel Jacob Rivers



“Look, it spells SHAM,” remarked Ron, amused, “S-H-A-M.”

“Where is this Skat...place?” asked Harry. He had never heard of it either.

“I don’t know, and quite frankly, Mr. Potter, I don’t care!” Professor McGonagall huffed. “These new regulations have professors flying all over creation, and most of us are not greeted with the warmest of welcomes. Professor Flitwick went to go speak with parents of a wizard in Texas, and was shot at three times!”

“Is all this legitimate?” asked Harry. “I mean, we don’t even enforce compulsory school for wizarding children in Britain. Can this System really enforce this kind of act?”

“Criminals, Mr. Potter,” Professor McGonagall emphasized. “Children who have been in trouble with the law before they are even old enough to drink. For the most part, it’s going to be an entire class of Potters!”

Harry could feel his face turn the slightest hint of red with that last remark.

“All this letter means to me," she continued, turning on her heels to walk away as she did, "is that young Mr. Rivers is no longer my concern.”

And with that, Professor McGonagall left Harry and Ron to finish their day, allowing them the belief that the matter was closed. But even as he and Ron continued on their way, Harry could not stop mulling the conversation over in his head. No matter how hard he tried, however, he could not shake it. It wasn't as though matters of international education would intersect with his career as an Auror, so these thoughts should have been as far as they could be from his mind. Emphasis on 'should have'.

Chapter 2
Three Weeks Time


“Okay,” Harry thought to himself as he shifted through the papers on his desk, “Hurst can handle the MacDillard case, but I’ll be wanting to handle the Jeffrey investigation myself. Can Ron possibly finish out the details for the Keller paperwork without me? If he can, maybe I can get out early and take James to the park before it gets dark�””

“Mr. Potter,” Harry heard the office secretary say as she stood in front of his desk. “Mr. Robards is asking for you.”

“Mr. Robards?” Harry wondered, raising a suspicious eyebrow, “What does he want?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Potter. I’m just the messenger,” she answered, waiting for Harry to follow her.

As the secretary tapped her foot sharply against the floor, Harry put his papers in some degree of order and pushed himself away from the desk. Mr. Robards was Head of the Auror office with Harry in the position just under his. Normally Mr. Robards trusted Harry to handle matters in the office himself, and Harry had not seen him in person for nearly three months.

When he was finally shown into the office, Harry was at the peak of his strain. Behind the desk sat Gawain Robards, a middle-aged, slightly balding wizard well past his prime for the undertaking of any of the missions Harry had come to think of as everyday regularities. A man who now spent his days in his rather plain, very dull office, thinking of his glory days, watching the clock and waiting for any form of distraction.

Noticing Harry’s stiff stance, Mr. Robards offered a soft smile and gestured towards the chair in front of him.

“Mr. Potter, please sit down.”

Harry took the seat, but it did little to assuage his discomfort. Normally, whenever he had spoken to Mr. Robards before, the old man’s eyes would be unfocused and his tone trance-like, as though he were only half-conscious during the work day. But today, there was a distinct fervor in his expression, a type of excitement Harry did not know his boss was capable of possessing.

“I hear Professor McGonagall has recently told you about the Education Compensation Act.”

As Robards spoke, Harry noticed an open file resting on the desk. The pages were bent and ruffled as though the file had been read over and over again; certainly having been given much attention.

“Yes, sir,” Harry answered, feeling himself take on the glazed, half gone expression that normally resided with Mr. Robards.

“I have also been informed that you know of a letter sent by one...Nathaniel Rivers," he said, eyes darting over the file, "Residence...New York City.”

“That is also true, sir,” Harry replied.

“Well, then you probably also know that no one has heard of this school he claims he will be attending this fall,” he said, passing the folder to Harry.

Again, Harry nodded, biting against his own cheek to keep himself from talking. In the past half-week, he had heard more about the state of American education than he felt he would ever need to know. Merlin forbid Mr. Robards actually worried about the stack of investigation on his desk that were taking place in Britain and under his jurisdiction.

“And also, the only other students being offered acceptance at this school are only those who fall under the jurisdiction of the Education Compensation Act.”

Harry nodded, not completely sure if he knew where this was going. He also began to wonder what was so interesting about that file that it had gotten so much attention in the past few days.

“And that even though the Board of Directors at the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic has given numerous correspondences with Professor McGonagall, no one at Hogwarts or this office has been able to contact them.”

“Mr. Robards,” Harry stopped him, “where is this conversation going?”

“There are forces at work here, Mr. Potter. What type of forces, we are not yet sure,” Mr. Robards explained. “The way this is being viewed, is that this scenario can only end one of two ways. At the least of our worries, this school does not exist and we merely have a few students who are in on this little Skat…prank. But if that is not the case, then we have much greater worries about who is running this so called school on our hands.”

“What are you saying?” Harry asked, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

“Mr. Potter, the System is launching a formal investigation against this school, to see whether their suspicions have warrant,” Mr. Robards told him, that same fervor of excitement lacing his words. “I want you and your partner to personally investigate this school and make sure it has a sound foundation.”

“What?” exclaimed Harry, forgetting all about his previous attempts to censor his words. “Mr. Robards, are you sure this is the type of thing our office should even be concerned with?”

“The activities of possible dark wizards are not the concern of this office?” Mr. Robards asked with a curl of his lip. “Mr. Potter, do remember what office this is exactly?”

“It’s the office of Aurors,” Harry answered. “But our job is to investigate dark wizards that we know are a threat, not to go chasing halfway around the world after faceless boogiemen!”

“What I mean to say is,” Harry rephrased his words, “I have heard rumors of possible activity, but what I haven’t seen is any hard evidence that there is any. Are you sure you want to use extensive office resources on this matter just yet?”

“Well, what would you suggest, Mr. Potter?” Mr. Robards asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Why not only send a few investigators before the Ministry and the System launch a formal investigation,” Harry responded, even though he could feel his own words getting away from him, “That way, they can investigate these claims, report back to this office, and then the decision on whether to launch a formal investigation will have a much sounder foundation.”

“Investigators such as yourself, Mr. Potter?” Mr. Robards asked, looking as though he were seeing the reason in Harry’s words.

“If that would satisfy the System and all those involved.”

Mr. Robards leaned back in his chain once again, twittling his fingers and considering Harry’s words.

“Very well, Mr. Potter. I’ll humor you,” Mr. Robards agreed, “You will personally go to investigate the claims of the school, and personally speak with this Nathaniel Rivers. And if you tell me that everything is on the up and up, I’ll take your word for it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Robards.”

“But if you find one thing that even hints of suspicious activity,” Mr. Robards warned, picking up a quill and pointing it in Harry’s direction, “then the previously proposed investigation is moving forward at full force. I won’t have it hitting the Daily Prophet that an institute was suspected by the System, and I let it continue right under my nose.

Harry nodded curtly, still trying to understand how he had gotten himself into a matter he had been hoping to avoid entirely before.

“Besides,” Robards added, making a few more notations on the file before Harry left the office, “that new partner of yours is still a little green around the gills. This will be a good first mission for him.”

---

For the rest of the day, Harry just sat behind his desk, devoting all of his attention to the pile of paperwork that he had accumulated. It was all he could do to keep from taking his frustrations out on everyone he passed. Only he could have gone from knowing anything and not wanting to know nothing to becoming a Ministry-entrusted expert on the subject in the course of one conversation. It would have been easy to blame it on Lucius Malfoy, the paranoid System, Mr. Robards, or the girl who brought coffee every afternoon, but in the end, Harry knew that it was truly his own big mouth that had gotten him into this. Him and Ron! Oh, would he be happy to hear about this new mission, on top of everything else he had been dealing with.

Speaking of which, Harry had to make sure to tell Ron all about this as soon as he got home. Wouldn’t Hermione be happy to hear this?

It was only when the work day ended that Harry finally began to feel some of his anger at his own stupidity subside. The mental image of both Ginny and James waiting for him at home was enough to lift even his darkest moods.

"I hear you will be taking a little bit of a trip soon, Mr. Potter."

Harry turned his head to see a very smug Lucius Malfoy standing behind him.

"What," Harry nearly growled, "do you want?"

"Can I not wish a fond farewell to one of Britain's finest before he embarks on what could be a very dangerous mission?"

“Dangerous?” Harry snorted, “This load of tripe is costing the Ministry gold everyday by buying to the System’s inability to handle not being everyone’s Big Brother. And it is hardly helping that those who should be voices of reason in this matter are only helping to fuel the paranoia fire.”

That last statement was said with a heavy emphasis toward Lucius Malfoy. And it was clear that he could tell by the way he pursed his lips together and tightened the grip on his cane.

"You may not think very much of me, Mr. Potter," Lucius admitted, "or of anyone else who may have been sorted into Slytherin. But my years there have taught me one thing: how to smell a rat. And if this Skat-Hatokha school really does turn out to be a legitimate educational facility...well, I think we both know the answer to that."

It was Harry's turn to remain silent. Not because he couldn't think of anything to say, but because he did not trust himself to filter whatever words might come to his mind.

"Enjoy New York, Mr. Potter." Lucius added as he turned away. "And please, do give my regards to Mrs. Potter."

Infuriated, both by Lucius' comment about Ginny and his exit before Harry could make an appropriately stinging reply, Harry stormed over to the fireplace to Floo, not even noticing two wizards he knocked into on his way there.

---

Later that night, while Ginny was putting James to bed in the nursery, Harry sat awake in bed, reading Quidditch Through the Ages: a special copy that Ginny had had autographed by her entire team before her retirement. Even as he attempted to relax for the evening, he found himself only able to focus on a few sentences at a time.

He hadn't told Ginny about the events that had occurred that day at work. He tried to behave as though everything was completely normal; something that hadn't been easy since earlier that evening when Ginny informed him that he had spent seven minutes trying to cut his steak with a spoon.

“Alright!” Ginny stormed into the bedroom, hands on her hips. “What’s going on?”

At first, Harry pretended he didn't know what his wife was talking about, but Ginny sank down on top of the red covers and glared into Harry's eyes with that intense stare of hers. And so, slowly, Harry began to unveil the events of the day.

“The Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic,” Ginny remarked, her expression softening now that she had gotten what she wanted. “Well, trying to interfere with other people’s happiness definitely sounds like Lucius Malfoy. And don’t look at me, Harry. I spent my entire career trying to avoid the Ministry of Magic."

“It’s not Lucius and it’s not the Ministry that’s causing this giant headache,” Harry told Ginny as she sunk into bed next to him, “It’s the bloody System!”

“That’s what I said, Harry.”

“No, not the system of the British Ministry of Magic,” Harry explained, setting the book down. “The System, that can’t stand not to know everything about a school three thousand miles away!”

Ginny frowned and allowed her chin to rest in the palm of her hand, not understanding.

“Well, from what you told me, if you hadn’t said anything, it would have just ended up being a much bigger headache a little while from now.”

“I supposed,” Harry agreed.

“And that instead of only being away for few days, this mess may have consumed your days and possibly nights for what could be months.”

“That’s also true,” Harry acknowledged, being thankful for the fact that Ginny could make life seem so simple.

“So exactly how is this going to be any more painfully horrible than the work you would do on any other given day?”

Suddenly, a sharp cry from James’ nursery interrupted the conversation.

“I’ll take care of him,” Harry said, half reluctant to get out of bed, half happy to have the conversation be over.

“Trust me, Harry,” Ginny assured him as he left the bedroom. “All you’re really going to have to do is prove this Skat-Hatokha school exists, and that’s the last we’ll hear of all this.”

---

---

Three weeks earlier…


“Okay, everybody line up for your graduation presents; we only have so much time.”
Under the smog of the Bronx, resting between businesses, skyscrapers, and streets upon streets, stood a square-shaped building of old brick and dirty windows. Surrounded by a blacktop and basketball courts that now rested quiet, there was an inner feeling of unrest as more than a thousand students took turns glancing at the clock, waiting for the bell to finally set them free for good. But inside one of the dingy classrooms, stood a line of anxious and somewhat confused middle school students waiting to stand in front of a camera.

“Okay, doll face. Say, ‘Legal’.”

“Legal!”

The Polaroid camera set up in front of the blackboard flashed and snapped before a small card ejected, being shaken a couple times by the photographer, Nate Rivers, before it began to develop.

“Beautiful! Next!”

To a stranger, Nate Rivers might have appeared to be no different than any other eighth grader one would pass on the street. Baggy skater clothes, too-long brown hair that should have been washed more often, and a smirk that simply went along with being fourteen years old. Someone the older generation might call the cops on for no apparent reason, but certainly not anyone dangerous.

In fact, upon first glance, Nate might appear average in every sense of the word. But that’s the funny thing about the word ‘might’…

“Alright, dude. Say ‘Cheers’.”

“Cheers!”

Another flash and snap, and another small card appeared out of the camera.

“Sweet! Okay, next!”

To anyone who knew him for more than five minutes, he was the scheming, smart-talking, always in trouble but rarely caught, self-proclaimed ‘Wizard of P.S. 141’. Well, soon to be ‘formerly’, anyway. Today was the last day of middle school and then literally everyone Nate had known growing up would be scattered to the four corners of New York City. And he had no intention of letting them go without a memento of him. Failing that, at least he would spread around the evidence if the worst came to worst.

Suddenly, there was a simultaneous jump among the students as the classroom door opened. An immediate sigh of relief followed when they saw it was only a chubby eighth grader sporting thick glasses and orthopedic shoes.

“Nate,” the boy called, pausing when he noticed the immense crowd. “Nate, what…the hell are you doing?”

“Hey, Graham, you’re just in time for your graduation present,” Nate smiled excitedly, changing direction and holding up the camera once again. "Say, ‘Bon voyage’!”

“Bon voyage?”

A split second later, the flash went off by itself.

“Ow! Why with the flash�”” exclaimed Graham, rubbing his eyes underneath his glasses.

“When you’re not blind anymore, I really think you’re gonna like what you see.” Nate told him, shoving something into his right hand.

“What the-” started Graham as his vision came back, taking turns looking between the fifteen-year-old camera his friend was holding and the perfect forgery of an international passport that had just slipped out of it.<

“Ain’t she a beauty, Graham?” Nate beamed, holding up his latest creation, and pointing to the results. “Go ahead, I dare you to find one mistake on that thing!”

“Another one, Nate?” Graham sighed, eyeing his friend’s latest mechanism for causing trouble.

“What can I say? I’ve been on a roll lately.” Nate shrugged. “And you can’t blame me for wanting to go out with a bang!”

Not that bringing a little toy like this to school was unusual for Nate. He was always having ideas popping into his head, mostly out of nowhere, and always ideas about how he could change something, be it how to make an eraser with a laser pointer or a pair of shoes play mp3s.

“And in order to do that, you decided to contribute to the delinquency of minors by inventing a camera that takes pictures in the form of fake IDs?”

“And possibly green cards,” Nate added, as though he thought his latest invention was being sold short. “I just haven’t figured out the word for that function.”

“Don’t you think people are all going to wonder how a camera they stopped making five years ago is printing out perfect copies of fake IDs?”

“Yo quiero taco!” Nate shouted at the camera, ignoring the question.

“NATE!” Graham shouted at the top of his lungs, “YOU KEEP THIS UP, AND EVENTUALLY, SOMEONE IS GOING TO FIGURE OUT YOU’RE A W�””

As soon as Nate sensed the W-word coming, he spun back around and clamped his hand over his friend’s mouth. Then offered a fake toothy smile to his onlookers and he and Graham shuffled backward, hiding the both of them under a pull-down map of New York State.

Once they were safe from gawking eyes, Nate let go of Graham and half-whispered, “What have I told about saying the izard-wei word in front of people!”

“But you’re using magic in front of�””

“Article 23-7 of the Department of Magic’s Decree of Non-Magical Artifact Modification states that magically-enhance objects may be used in the presence of those of non-magical status as long as the exterior of said object has not been tampered with and those of non-magical status remain uninformed of said object’s true nature.”

“You have that whole law memorized word for word but you can’t remember the capital is Albany?” Graham replied, exasperated, as he rolled the map back up with a snap.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, buddy,” Nate replied, winking his one blue eye, which he called his ‘shifty eye’, “As long as they get what they’re paying for, no one’s gonna to care about the ‘how’.”

“Yeah, students aren't going think anything strange is going on, but I don’t think an underpaid state employee will take the same attitude,” Graham reminded his friend, “Every day, the teachers take turns patrolling the empty classroom to make sure the students aren’t doing crack or having sex. How much worse of a reaction do you think they’re going to have on witchcraft?”

“Really?” asked Nate, his eyes beginning to widen just slightly. “Wow, that would be bad!”

“Well, it’s going to happen in a few minutes, so what do you plan to do?”

“Okay, okay! Think, think!” Nate stammered, looking around the room and trying not to panic.

As his eyes raced, they kept falling on four things: the clock, the position of the door, a yellow backpack, and the backpack’s owner who was wearing a shirt just loose enough for this to work.

“Okay, here’s what we do. Um…Darcy, get over here; I got a job for you!”

---

“...and so, if you want to keep the boys and the girls off one another, you have to put the fear of God into them,” an older teacher told a younger one as they made their round through the hallway, coming closer and closer to the door Nate and all the others were waiting behind. “The problem today is that kids are looking at their bodies and not�””

Just then, a sharp series of bells broke through all possible conversation, followed by a calm that was so silent; every noise from every corner of the school could have been heard.

“Oh, my...God...” the older teacher said in a hushed tone.

A soft rumble gradually grew louder and louder and began to shake the very floors. Almost simultaneously, the classroom doors all along the hallway flew open, including one that hit the older teacher right in the face, knocking him backwards, and onto the floor. Out of the doors, a steady stream of students, just released from their long captivity, screamed, shouted, and ran for anything that could be presumed as an exit. The younger teacher stood as far away from it all as he could, back against the wall, eyes wide as though he was watching a stampede of wild animals.

Only when the flow of students had slowed to a trickle and the feats of wild destruction had moved to the floor below, did a horrified Graham and a satisfied Nate emerge from the classroom that would not see human life for another three months.

“Mr. Waxton, somehow, this is exactly how I envisioned the last time I would ever see you.” Nate smiled as he spoke in the mocking tone he saved exclusively for the teacher of his most hated subject. “And let me just say from the bottom of my heart, I’m really going to miss getting all those wrong answers in algebra class.”

“Shut up!” Mr. Waxton said, pointing a finger at Nate, but still flat on his back. “Go home. Never come back here!”<

Nate shrugged his shoulders, but kept that same smile, “Sounds good to me. C’mon Graham, time waits for no one!”

“Good-bye, Mr. Jenkins,” Graham said quickly to the younger teacher, who taught advanced English, a class Nate never even imagined setting foot in.

The last student out of the classroom, following a few steps behind Nate and Graham, was a girl with curly brown hair and a green striped shirt stretched very tightly over her swollen stomach.

“What did I tell you,” Mr. Waxton practically shouted, pointing at Darcy as she followed Nate around the corner. “Damned teenagers!”

“Relax, Morton,” Nate heard the younger teacher say after they were already out of sight. “She’s the high school’s problem now.”

Nate was leaning leisurely against the peeling paint of the lockers when Darcy caught up to them, the sly look of someone who had just defeated “the man” plastered all over her face. Nate sauntered over to the girl, giving her a high five as a show for three passing teachers. As soon as they had disappeared, she reached behind her back and Nate heard two buckles snap before Darcy’s yellow backpack dropped out from under her shirt and into his waiting hands.

“Thanks Darcy,” Nate said, yanking one of the zippers and pulling his camera out of the bag. “I owe you one.”

“Well, I know how you can repay me.” Darcy smiled coyly, pointing to Nate’s left pocket.

“Fine.” Nate sighed and shook his head, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a driver's license that identified Darcy as nineteen-year-old Yolanda Foster, of Providence, Rhode Island.

“Here you go,” he said as he pushed the card into her hand. “Go to Florida and marry what’s-his-name.”

Darcy smiled and skipped off with unconcealed joy while Nate dropped the camera strap onto his neck.

“Nate, do you have any idea how close you just came to being exposed?”

“No, but I bet you’re gonna tell me.”

Nate listened to the first few words of Graham’s lecture of everything bad that could have happened, mostly the legal ramifications of fake IDs, before he began to ignore him completely.

Graham was much too nervous a person for Nate's taste, but Nate also knew he wasn’t really in a position to be picky about who would put up with him, and even less to whom he could reveal his wizarding nature. One of the reasons Graham made such a perfect person to involve in Nate's crazy schemes was because he didn’t have anyone to tell. He was a tall kid, a chubby kid; he had pimples, the wrong clothes, the wrong shoes, and two dads. In short, Nate felt nothing less than amazement that Graham was picked on the way he was, and still had lived to see graduation. But through the thick of it, Graham had been a loyal friend to him and had kept his secret since they started middle school.

“…and they’ll take you away to where they’re hiding the Roswell aliens and the little mermaid!”

“God, now you sound like Lorelei!”

Now Lorelei was a different story entirely. Lorelei Macalister was Nate’s oldest and probably dearest friend who had been born suspicious of the world. And like Nate, she also had powers that always seemed to get her into trouble; although her talents were more geared toward breaking things. Lorelei didn’t have many friends either, but that was by her own design.

To most people, Lorelei Macalister was a cold, calculating, soulless child with less compassion and empathy than Hannibal Lecter. But she seemed nice enough when she was around Nate, even if she wasn’t remotely pleasant to anyone else. Another upside was Lorelei went to St. Vincent’s Catholic School in Manhattan, so she was never there to look down her nose on most of the things Nate did.

“Well, maybe if I were Lorelei, you would actually listen to me for a change!”

“Damn locker always sticks!” Nate grumbled as he yanked on the door with all his strength. “I'm beginning to think you’re right; it is the skateboard.”

“Nate,” Graham tried again, his voice an inch away from pleading. “It’s just that you’re a really good friend, not to mention the whole freaky powers thing is pretty cool; I just don’t want to see you become a convict before you’re old enough to get a driver’s license.”

“Dude, what would make you think I’m ever going to be sent away anywhere?”

With one final tug that sent Nate himself tumbling backwards onto the tile floor, his locker finally opened, which today, could have been a mixed blessing. At least seventy letters written on heavy parchment spilled out of his locker and spread all the way to the opposite side of the hallway. On any other day, people might have stared, but today was the last day of school and nobody cared about anybody.

“Oh, goodie!” Nate groaned, rolling his eyes over the letters that had spilled onto his lap. “More of them.”

---

“Dear Mr. Rivers,” Graham read aloud, in an empty science classroom. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In keeping with new sanctions set forth by the System�””

“Give me that!” interrupted Nate as he tried to snatch the letter away so he could add it to the garbage bag full of letters he had already ripped up.

“�”all young American witches and wizards of your current legal standing are required to provide for themselves an education meeting the standards of the�””

“I said ‘Gimmee’!” Nate repeated loudly, jumping at his friend.

“Failure to do so,” shouted Graham as he struggled to finish, “will be considered tantamount to truancy and will be met with serious consequences!”

“Gotcha!” Nate shouted when he finally snatched the letter from Graham’s hand.

“Uh, Nate,” said Graham, eyeing the about-ready-to-burst garbage bag Nate had been stuffing his torn letters into. “How many of these letters have you gotten so far?”

“I stopped counting after a hundred thirty-six.” he responded, tearing up the last three.

“And…you still think it’s just someone pulling your leg?”

“It has to be,” he laughed, pulling the very first letter that he had gotten out of the side pocket of his backpack, holding up the envelope for Graham to read. “I mean, seriously, Hogwarts? That sounds made up!”

“It just seems like a lot of work for someone to go through just to pull a practical joke on you.”

“Yup,” Nate agreed, rising to his feet, garbage bag hoisted over one shoulder, skateboard and helmet tucked under the other arm. “You coming or what?”

“I’m serious, Nate!” Graham warned as he lagged behind. “What if this isn’t a hoax and someone somewhere is getting really, really pissed off?”

“Don’t worry, dude,” Nate insisted, putting his arm around his friend’s shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere. There’s no way I’m leaving you to face the demons of high school alone.”

“Not to mention leaving Alaia Grace,” Graham responded, pointing towards the staircase and toward a pretty blonde girl that seemed to glow among her friends.

Nate couldn’t suppress a goofy smile; a reaction most boys at P.S. 141 got whenever they heard those two blessed words. Even with her back to them, Nate could recognize her shape anywhere. The girl had shiny hair, perfect eyes, and a dazzling smile. Simply put, Alaia Grace was easily the prettiest girl in their school, maybe even the city.

On top of that, she was a preacher’s stepdaughter: a perfect, obedient little girl who would never hang out with the wrong crowd, making her untouchable for the better part of her middle school years and all the more desirable. Especially to Nate and anyone who employed his ‘services’.

But this year, after seven years of ignoring him, Alaia had started trying to be friendly with him. Not just friendly with him...flirting with him. If Nate even truly understood what flirting was. So to make things even better, now she was a preacher’s stepdaughter going bad! Well, not quite, but still, Nate wanted her so badly!

She had even invited him to her family’s church a few times at the insistence of her stepfather. Strangely, every time he went, the sermon would always be about ‘deliverance from witchcraft’. But Nate could sit through an hour of hearing about how his flesh was going to burn if he could spend it sitting next to the current object of his affection.

“Nate!” Alaia smiled upon noticing him, leaving her friends and running over.

“Be cool!” Nate muttered to Graham under his breath.

“Sure, this from the kid who once faked an ulcer to get out of an oral report!”

“Nate, hi!” smiled Alaia when she finally approached the two of them.

“Hey, Alaia,” he stammered while at the same time trying to keep his cool. “Say, you know Graham Schuler, don’t you?”

“Um, no, I don’t think I do.”

“Sure you do,” Nate reminded her, oblivious to Graham's growing embarrassment. “He was one of the kids who reenacted that scene from Macbeth in a spacey theme for the talent show. He was the main character”

“Oh, yeah! Now I remember,” Alaia remarked as Graham’s face grew redder and redder. “You were booed off the stage!”

“That I was,” Graham smiled through clenched teeth.

“But anyway, Nate,” Alaia turned her attention back to him. “My youth group is having a barbeque tonight to celebrate the last day of school and I was wondering if you wanted to come.

“It’s not an obligation to join the church or anything,” she quickly added. “I just thought it’d be more fun if you were there.”

“Oh, I'd love to, but I actually promised my friend, Lorelei, I’d check in with her tonight,” Nate remorsefully answered. “You remember her, don’t you: Lorelei Macalister?”

“Oh, yes,” Alaia replied, becoming very uneasy at the mention of the name. “How is she these days?”

Nate didn’t really blame Alaia for her attitude. He had taken Lorelei with him to the church once, but she had been in a terrible mood from the moment she had walked through the doors. It didn’t exactly help that in that day’s sermon, Reverend Grace also castigated the ‘Catholic pagans’. As soon as the sermon started, Lorelei stormed like an angry animal out the sanctuary doors, but not before the platform under the minister mysteriously caved in under him. Secretly, Nate thought Alaia was the real object behind Lorelei's anger; and Lorelei was just looking for an excuse to break something.

Lorelei and Alaia's occasions of seeing each other were rare after that. Nate made sure to plan it that way. This jealousy was a new aspect of Lorelei's personality and he did not want it to manifest itself very often.

“So,” Alaia asked, changing the subject. “What's in the bag?”

“Confetti,” Nate answered quickly, almost fearfully. “You know, to celebrate the last day here.”

“Mind if I have a handful?” Alaia asked, extending her hand. “To celebrate the last day here, I mean.”

“Sure,” said Nate, opening the bag and praying he tore the letters into small enough pieces.”

“Thanks,” said Alaia, taking her confetti and turning around. “I’ll see you this summer”

Nate watched wide-eyed as Alaia skipped away, over to the stairwell, and let the torn letters fly with a girlish giggle.

“She so digs me,” Nate said, mostly to himself, once he and Graham began to make their way outside.

“Gotta admit,” Graham agreed as he pushed the heavy front doors open. “I wouldn’t want to leave that behind either.”

“Now I just have to ask her out on a real date,” Nate said as he fastened his helmet buckle, while at the same time, maintaining a firm hold on his skateboard.

“And make sure Lorelei doesn’t snap her neck before the date.”

Nate might have laughed along with that joke if he didn’t know there was a chance that Lorelei was actually capable of something like that.

“Well, see ya when I see ya!” Nate shouted over his shoulder as he balanced himself on his board and gave himself a kicking start, leaving the rest of the confetti for Graham to enjoy.

As Nate rolled and swerved down the cracked sidewalk, he began to think. He had lied to Graham before. True, he really hadn’t ever heard of this Hogwarts place, but it wasn’t as though magic schools themselves were made up. He knew for a fact there were magic schools in the United States, because there had once been a time when he had been invited to one: the Hardscrabble Creek School of Magical Arts. It was the exact same school that his older brother had gone to.

But even as an eleven year old, Nate had been dead set against going, an idea that thoroughly shocked his parents and everyone else who had been planning for this. Nate had been an adventurous boy from the time he could crawl, and he had certainly displayed a natural talent for magic. His whole family had believed Nate would be counting the days until he could hold his first wand, be among other wizarding children, and finally joined his own kind.

But from the day the letter came in the mail, Nate had flat out refused to leave, threatening to weld himself to a traffic light if anyone tried to force him. At the time, his main excuse was that he would be separated from Lorelei, whose letter came from the Salem Witches Institute, an all-girls school. His parents tried to change his mind, even pull some strings to see if Hardscrabble Creek would accept Lorelei too: a plan which might have worked if Lorelei wasn’t so stubbornly refusing to attend any magic school, anywhere. Her father accused her of being contrary and weak-willed, and Lorelei responded by shattering every window in the house in three seconds flat.

His parents tried to persuade Nate, telling him about how much more exciting a wizard school would be than a middle school, his brother warned him he was signing his own warrant to the life of a Squib, but either way, there was no law that could force any child to go to wizard school. So come that September, Nate was enrolled in P.S. 144 and Lorelei stayed at her old school in Manhattan: magically-gifted Squibs, Nate’s brother called them, but magically-gifted Squibs who had gotten their own way.

Nate didn’t tell his parents at the time, but he knew he couldn’t leave for this school. Even all the persuasion from his parents and stories from his older brother could not shake the inner command to stay where he was. But now, it hardly seemed to matter that he hadn’t chosen to go. And besides, now he had many friends who knew nothing of his powers or that magic even existed. He couldn’t even envision his life if he chosen to enclose himself in the world of magic and cut himself off from the world he had grown up in.

Life just seemed much simpler when magic didn’t seem to be a big deal.

---

Nate’s townhouse stood on West 252nd Street, just on the boundary between the true city and the true suburbs. Nate’s parents had always been New Yorkers at heart, but while they didn’t want to resign themselves to the life of suburbia that most of Riverdale had experienced, they didn’t want Nate to spend his school years being plagued by drug dealers and prostitutes either.

Besides, it was also the one place in New York where the rules of so-called normalcy was scattered to the winds. The Donavan family had about twelve of the biggest, ugliest cats Nate had ever seen: cats who seemed able to tell whether or not Nate was smuggling anything in his backpack on any given day. And then there was Ms. Yao, who had people coming and going at all hours of the night: people who showed up in the strangest outfits.

But the neighborhood's whole arrangement worked for Nate, too. No one called the police if they heard loud explosions coming from his bedroom at three in the morning, or even that time he tried to create a purer form of Pixie Stick that got mixed in with the lawn fertilizer and turned the grass purple for a week. Nate wasn't sure if any of his strange neighbors were wizards too; but if they were, it certainly explained a lot.

Before making his way up the stoop, Nate stopped by the mailbox. It contained a heavy load of letters today, but now that school was over, he wouldn’t have to spend any time sifting for letters about him.

When Nate opened the front door, the phone was already ringing. Setting the letters down on a nearby end table, he checked the caller ID and smiled: Macalister Residence. Sometimes, it seemed like Lorelei knew Nate better than he knew himself.

“Hey, Lore.”

“Nate, did you just get out of school?” Lorelei voice resonated clearly over the phone line.

“Yeah, I stayed late at school,” Nate told her, turning back to the door to turn and snap the four sets of locks.

“You were hanging out with the stripper again, weren’t you?” she asked, not trying to hide her disdain.

Nate laughed at Lorelei’s latest nickname for Alaia, but had learned from experience it was better not to mention her when they were talking.

“No, I was printing fake IDs as graduation presents.”

“You’re going to get arrested someday,” she warned in that tired-sounding voice of hers.

“Been there, done that, Lore,” Nate told her, picking up the stack of mail he had just set down, “Say, your last day of school was today too, right? Think you can make it down to 5th Street Theater? Word has it, the night manager doesn’t believe in the ratings system.”

“Can’t,” Lorelei answered, just a hint of anger creeping into her voice. “Delia’s got an all-night gig at some jazz club in Chelsea, so I’m on baby-sitting duty.”

Nate let out a deep sigh, knowing Lorelei was going to use the next five or ten minutes to vent all the borderline rage she was feeling. And Delia, her ‘so-called mother’ as she put it, was one of her favorite subjects. Nate had learned he could get through this time with the occasional “uh-huh” and “nuh” while focusing his mind on something else.<

Today, it was looking through his parents’ mail: electric bill, credit card bill, wedding invitation for some person he had never heard of, another credit card bill, a late birthday card from his grandmother with clearly no money in it, something sent from the middle school that he would hide and claim to be lost…

“You get any more of those letters today?”

It took Nate a couple of seconds to remember what Lorelei was talking about.

“Yeah, I had like seventy shoved in my locker after last bell,” he told her, taking a break from sorting through the actual mail.

“And what did you do with those?”

“Last day of middle school confetti.”

“Of course you did,” Lorelei answered, a slight grimness in her voice. “God forbid you should actually find out who’s killing the rainforest to send you these letters.”

“Uh, make that seventy-one,” Nate interrupted, setting the remaining mail on the hall table. “I got another one in today's mail.”

“Wow, the mail,” Lorelei replied with sarcastic shock, “They’re not even trying anymore, are they?”

“Cool, this one’s red.” he said, tearing the envelope open. “But, hey, if you can’t get out of the house tonight, that’s cool. Maybe we can just order pizza and watch pay-per-view; as long as it isn’t one of those gay chick fli�””

“NATHANIEL RIVERS,” the letter literally shouted.

Nate tumbled backward onto the floor as though he’d been shot. He could not believe what was happing. A letter, a piece of paper, was floating in mid-air, actually shouting at him!

“AS OF TODAY, HOGWARTS HAS SENT YOU MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED LETTERS AND YOU HAVE EITHER IGNORED THEM, DESTROYED THEM, OR, IN ONE INSTANCE, DONATED THEM TO THE HOMELESS!”

“How does she know that?” Nate panicked to himself. “Wait, why am I calling it a she? It’s a freakin’ letter!”

“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, NATHANIEL?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“YOU MAY THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE YOUR ACTIONS AS OF YET HAVE HAD NO REAL CONSEQUENCES, THAT IT IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE FOR YOU AND ALL YOUR LITTLE FRIENDS TO RUN WILD, BUT YOU ARE SADLY MISTAKEN, YOUNG MAN! THE NEW TERM STARTS ON SEPTEMBER FIRST AND YOU WILL EITHER SHOW UP WILLINGLY, OR WE WILL SEND SOMEONE TO TAKE YOU, TO COIN THE PHRASE, KICKING AND SCREAMING!”

As soon as the letter stopped shouting, it hovered in mid-air for a moment before it began to burn to ash from the edges inward right in front of Nate, who was still sprawled out on the floor.

“Nate!” he heard Lorelei shout from the phone, “Nate, are you okay? What’s happening?”

Nate took a moment to catch his breath. His hands and calves had carpet burns, the remaining letters had been scattered all over the floor, the phone out of which his best friend was still screaming was in the middle, and there was a faint smell of smoke in the air.

Finally pulling himself together, Nate reached for the phone again, feeling his hand shake as he did.

“Hey, Lore,” he said weakly.

“Nate, what’s going on over there? Who was that lady screaming at you?”

“So is that a yes to hanging at your place tonight?”

Chapter 3
Bernie’s 24-Hour Waffle Hut


“OW!” screamed Ron, sucking on his injured index finger.

How does a man stab himself with his own tie pin? Harry wondered to himself. Five times!

That next morning, instead of reporting to their usual duties of shuffling paperwork and maybe one mission run to somewhere in Britain, Harry and Ron had locked themselves in an empty cupboard while they changed into their Muggle disguises. Well, actually, it was only Ron who was still trying to get dressed. Harry sat off to the side, looking over the file that had already been given so much attention by Mr. Robards just yesterday.

The file was only a copy sent by owl post. The original remained with the American Ministry of Magic. However, even with the plethora of information at his fingertips, Harry spent most of his time looking at the boy’s picture. It was a black and white shot of an unmoving boy that gave the overall effect of a school portrait. Harry was not sure he had actually expected the American government to send him a mug shot of a minor, but at the same time, it was an unnerving idea to investigate this boy with what he had as his first mental picture of him.

“Hermione says she’ll be at your house as soon as she finishes work tonight,” Ron said as he struggled with his tie, growing more and more frustrated as his fingers got caught in the knot. “She says she and Ginny will probably have a girls’ night in.”

“Why does Hermione want to stay over with Ginny?” Harry asked, buttoning the suit he wore as his Muggle disguise. It had taken Harry a lot less time to get his clothes in order than it was taking Ron.

“I asked her to,” Ron gave up and threw the tie to the ground. “She seems to be getting worse these days. Last night for dinner, she made spaghetti with maple syrup in the sauce, and she had three helpings!”

“And what exactly do you think she’s sick with?” Harry asked, fighting to suppress the urge to laugh. This was beginning to sound quite similar to an ‘illness’ Ginny had about two years ago.

“I still don’t know!” Ron shouted, angrier at the world than at Harry. “And every time I bring up the subject of a Healer, she either becomes the ‘I hate you, Ron’ woman, or the ‘What if I’m dying’ woman!”

Shame on Hermione for putting Ron through the loop like this. Harry thought to himself. Harry knew his friend, and even through what she was going through, there might be a little desire behind all this to just watch Ron squirm.

But at the same time, Harry had put a lot of trust in what Mr. Robards and Ginny had told him. That this mission would be one of the shorter ones he had ever experienced. Spend maybe an hour at the British Wizarding Embassy, three hours looking for Nathaniel Rives, an hour of questioning to prove nothing out of the ordinary was going on, and he would be home before it was time to tuck James in.

“How are we getting there?” Ron asked.

“Floo network,” he answered. “If we Apparate and someone mistakes it for a gun, we could have a big problem on our hands.”

“Oh yeah!” Ron agreed.

Walking through the Ministry halls, Harry vaguely thought Ron might be skipping. He was probably convinced that this would be one of the most exciting missions of their career; not just some half-bit upper level favor to a man they both despised. Nevertheless, making a promise to himself that he would not rain on his best friend’s parade, Harry continued to smile and nod right along with Ron.

“Do want to go first, or should I?”

“I’m sorry; what?” said Harry, trying to bring himself back to the present.

“The Floo Network,” Ron repeated. “Do you want to go first, or should I?”

“Um, you go ahead, Ron.” Harry gestured towards the fireplace.

“British Wizarding Embassy, New York City,” Ron shouted, before he became enveloped in the green flames.

Before stepping into the fireplace himself, Harry took a moment to look at his pocket watch. It was two o’clock now, and Ginny normally put James down for bed at eight. This gave him less than six hours to track down their target, question him about his school for a half hour at the most, and then Apparate back home. The whole mission seemed simple enough when he thought about it as he grabbed a handful of Floo powder and ducked into the fireplace.

“Six hours,” he reminded himself quietly.

Feeling a few sifts of powder slipped through his fingers; Harry threw the rest to the grate with a rather unnecessary amount of force.

“British Wizarding Embassy, New York City, “Harry shouted, shutting his eyes against the ash and heat.

---

---

“Not a hoax, Lore,” Nate panicked as he paced across his best friend’s bedroom floor, “Not a hoax! VERY, VERY much not a hoax!”

Lorelei traced her fingers through the fragmented piece of burnt parchment, her lips pressing tight together, and her mouth twisting into an odd sort of grimace. She still hadn't changed out of her school uniform or even kicked off the mary janes she vocally despised. In fact, she had yet to say anything about her own opinions or what she intended to do.

Lorelei was what Nate’s mother called a ‘classic beauty’. Nate always assumed that meant she looked like a living, breathing black and white photograph. Lorelei had always had a pale, almost sickly looking completion, even though he had never known her to be ill a day in her life. Her face was unmarked by freckles or childhood scars and held a permanent look of suspicion. She also had dark gray eyes surrounded by tired dark circles and black hair that laid thick and sleek like seal fur.

Nate and Lorelei had known each other since before they could talk. In fact, the reason their parents were friends was because Nate and Lorelei had been adopted from the same agency. And Nate’s parents especially thought it would be so cute if the two of them fell in love, got married, and had a lot of little witches and wizards running around causing random acts of destruction. An idea that Nate and Lorelei actively resisted. They had known each other for so long, they almost felt like brother and sister. Even though Nate’s parents assured them that there was no possible way they were related to each other, the idea of it all still made them cringe.

“So the letter…” she began, as though not sure of her own words “spoke to you?”

“Not spoke, screamed,” Nate corrected, becoming even more frantic. “It knew things about me.”

Lorelei shrugged. “I guess this means they really mean business now.”

“How can you talk like that?” Nate practically screamed. “Some stranger is going to come and haul me out of my own house come September! What do you plan to do about that?”

“Maybe you just haven’t been keeping a low enough profile,” Lorelei offered. “Like this afternoon for instance.”

“Me,” Nate stopped her. “You’re the one who once destroyed a confessional at your school because you didn’t want to tell the priest you said the f-word!”

“Ha,” laughed Lorelei. “If you’re going to call me out, at least make it a challenge. On the first day of fifth grade, you decided to build a jet pack out of a fire extinguisher and planned to fly it around at recess because you thought it would be ‘badass’!”

“Oh, c’mon, that invention didn’t even work,” Nate replied, even though it pained him to admit. “The first time you used magic, you knocked a man to the ground and broke both of his legs!”

“Well you have a criminal record!”

“The fact that you just haven’t been caught yet does not make you any better than me!” Nate shouted at his best friend, who he secretly believed should have been diagnosed as a sociopath by now.

“Your mom and dad are going to flip!”

“I know, I know,” Nate answered, beginning to pace again, “Just give me some time, and maybe I can explain it in a way they’ll understand.”

---

“You’re really going to have to do a better job of explaining this, because I don’t understand,” his father said a supper the next night. “You told us three years ago if we made you go to the school that accepted you, you were going to chain yourself to the top of a traffic light.”

His mother agreed. “Exactly where is all this coming from?”

Saying Nate’s parents were understanding when it came to matters of magic was probably the understatement of the century. After the birth of their first son, Carter, whom Nate had heard some people call a Muggle-born-whatever that was-Mr. and Mrs. Rivers made it a personal mission to learn everything they could about magic and the world in which their son would have to grow up. They even adopted Nate, knowing from the beginning, he would be a wizard too.

But even they were having trouble understanding why, suddenly, out of the blue, Nate wanted to be shipped off to a wizard boarding school in Scotland, despite all they knew about magic. Especially since Nate had already fought and refused to go to a much closer school exactly like this three years ago.

The only person in the room who seemed to be in the remotest sense of ease was Lorelei, joining the Rivers family for dinner, as she had on many occasions. Tonight, she sat across from Nate, cutting her pork chop into small pieces and biting her cheek as she watched Nate’s ridiculous plan unfold.

“Well, you see, Dad,” Nate tried to spin. “Hogwarts really is one of the best schools for wizardry in the world. They only seek the people who they think have the greatest potential.”

Nate pulled the one Hogwarts letter he had left out of his pocket and passed it to his parents.

“So really, being asked to go to school here is actually quite an honor. And I know you guys are always worrying about my future as a wizard.”

“But what’s all this 'failure to do so business'?” asked Malcolm Rivers, a slightly balding man who dressed far too young for his age, “When a school invites you to attend because they want you, don’t the usually beg instead of threaten?”

“And no offence, Nate,” added his wife, Jillian, who dyed her hair bright red in an attempt to hide the growing amount of gray, “but you don’t really seem to be the type to be invited to a prestigious school. Don’t get me wrong, I think your inventions are something special, it’s just that you yourself are…”

“Lazy, unmotivated,” Lorelei filled in the blank as she cut her green beans. “A wise ass, a C+ student at best-”

“We get it, Lore,” Nate interrupted, a little irked at his friend's contribution to the conversation.

“But, Nate, you can understand our confusion,” his father tried to explain. “I mean, of all the many, many students for them to pick and for them to choose you-it just seems�””

“Well, you know what, Dad? Maybe they’re not giving me a choice!” Nate finally erupted.

Lorelei half-choked on her milk.

The boxy dining room fell silent for what seemed like an eternity.

“What are you saying, Nate?” his mother finally asked.

“They’re…” Nate sighed. “They’re giving you guys until the end of August to send me yourselves before they send someone to get me.”

Nate’s parents were still silent, as if they were still trying to wrap their heads around what their son was trying to tell them.

“But…surely you have other options,” his mother argued, “I mean, they’re not making Lorelei go.”

“Because I’m not a criminal,” she reminded them, bluntly.

Mr. Rivers groaned; the family did not like to be reminded that if Nate hadn’t been tried by the Department of Magic, he would be a convicted felon at the age of fourteen in the eyes of Muggles as well.

“I knew that whole business was going to come back to bite us in the ass one day!”

“Oh, Lord,” exclaimed Mrs. Rivers, racing to another subject. “What are Walter and Delia going to say when they find out?”

At the last comment, Lorelei gave a snicker that went unheard by Nate’s parents. Walter and Delia were Lorelei’s adoptive parents, who had divorced when she was ten, just before she had moved out of Riverdale and into the East Village. Walter Macalister lived somewhere in Boston now, and would throw however much alimony it took to pretend his children didn’t exist. And Delia Macalister: Nate wasn’t a hundred percent aware she even noticed what was going on half the time, be it all the ‘unusual’ things that happened around her two daughters, or the electricity being shut off.

“Maybe we can call Carter,” suggested his mother. “Ask him what our options are! I mean, he works right in there with the Department of Magic, and if he can’t pull a few strings for us-”

“Mom, it’s not just the Department of Magic that’s ordering this,” Nate interrupted before his mother could be too swept up in the idea. “It’s also this…System thing that’s helping to make this law reality. They’re the ones packing all the guns in the enforcement part. And between taking on us and taking on the Big Brother of the wizarding world, who do you think the Department’s going to choose?”

At these last words from her son, Mrs. Rivers’ eye began to well, her mascara just on the verge of running, and gasping to hold back the sobs.

“I’m going to go call your brother,” she said tearfully, excusing herself from the table.

As Nate’s mother stood up to leave the table, Lorelei stared wordlessly down at her plate, mixing her food into mush.

“Well, I don’t care what these people are telling you, Nate,” said his father, pushing himself away from the table. “You’re my son; and I’m not just handing you over to a bunch of strangers.”

Soon enough, Nate and Lorelei were left alone with a table full of food and that terrible silence returning. With a sigh of desperation, Nate let his head drop to the hard surface of the table.

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” Lorelei remarked, wiping her mouth with her napkin.

“Shut up!” Nate shouted, forehead still flat against the table.

---

---

The first thing that Harry was aware of when he emerged from the fireplace was a sharp pain at the very top of his head. The next thing that drifted into his awareness was the sound of Ron groaning right next to him. Then, for some reason, the pointed end of a shoe prodding him in the back and a distant sounding voice from above speaking to him.

“No one told you they wax the floors in the morning, did they?

Looking up, Harry saw the silhouette of a woman holding a paper bag in one hand, a Styrofoam coffee cup in the other, tapping the foot that had poked him.

“Are we going to be getting up any time soon?” she asked them, pointing her chin towards Ron, who, from the looks of the soot trailing across the floor, had crashed head-first into the marble fountain and now lay sprawled out, groaning and clutching at the top of his head.

Even though he was not quite sure of his balance, Harry pulled himself to his feet and walked over to Ron to give him a hand up. After about three attempts, Ron was finally able to stand on his own, even though one hand still remained rubbing his aching skull.

“Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley.” The woman extended her hand to both of them. “It is very nice to meet you. My name is Vanessa Montoya of the Office of Internal Affairs of the American Department of Magic. Let me just say it is a pleasure to meet both of you.”

“Thank you, Ms. Montoya,” Ron said, shaking her hand and still rubbing his head. “You look lovely this morning.”

“Mr. Weasley,” Vanessa answered shortly, as though Ron had just insulted her. “I had to wake up at four in the morning, drive clear across the Bronx, and come in before the janitors just to play your baby-sitter. You really don’t want to push me today.”

Harry blinked and shook his head. That was certainly unexpected. It was not as though it was a lie. With her long, dark hair, dark eyes, and soft features, she was quite pretty. Even though her personality and attitude were anything but soft. Harry made a quick mental note not to tell any woman in this country that she looked nice.

“I’m in a bit of a hurry today,” she told them curtly, “so if you don’t mind, let’s walk and talk.”

Without waiting for an answer, Vanessa Montoya spun and began to walk at a rapid pace, her heels clicking sharply against the freshly waxed floor. Getting the impression that she was not going to wait up for them, Harry and Ron followed after her, Ron having some difficulties keeping up.

“Ms. Montoya,” Harry began, making sure to keep his words strictly business, “I assume that if you’re here, you already know why we are here.”

“Yes, I have been well briefed on the investigation, and let me assure you, you have the Department’s full cooperation in whatever matters you may need.”

While Vanessa spoke, she didn’t turn around to make eye contact. Her eyes remained directly on the path in front of her. Eventually, they reached a set of black, metal staircase that didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the Embassy’s polished decor.

“How is it no one in the Department thought to investigate this school?” Harry asked hoping to get as much information as he could from Vanessa while they still had time.

Once again, Vanessa sighed as though she herself had been insulted. “You have to understand, the government does try to keep tab on the accreditation status of the schools our nation’s children attend. But most magic schools in the United States operate in the private sector, and if an institution is not supported by tax dollars, we have relatively little say in where a school opens or what it teaches.”

“There are no standards whatsoever?” Harry asked, feeling somewhat shocked after all the influence the Ministry had had over his own education.

“Of course, we have guidelines for a school’s accreditation,” Vanessa answered, quickening her pace up the stairs. “But in reality, all a school needs to be accredited in this country is a facility, a curriculum, and a faculty. I’m sure you’ve been told about the four other major schools for magic in our country?”

“Salem, Bell, Hardscrabble Creek,” Harry recited, “and…Kailani, correct?”

“Yes, those are our four largest schools, but they are not our only ones,” Vanessa told him. “In some areas of the country, smaller day schools for magic are popping up faster than we can keep track of them.

“I suppose that is why the Education Division hasn’t bothered to investigate this Skat-Hatokha school you were talking about,” Vanessa confessed. “We just assumed it was another day school wanting to keep the international government out of its business.”

“You really think so?” Harry asked.

“It’s much simpler to believe that someone out there is actually crazy enough to round up every uneducated juvy in the country and stick them in a room together.”

Finally, they climbed the last flight of stairs to reach a locked, steel door. Through the tiny barred window, Harry could see the streetlights were still on and the sun was just barely peeking over the skyline.

“What time is it here?” Ron asked, making note of how empty the building was.

“Five in the morning,” Vanessa told them, placing her hands on their shoulders. “And that being said, I wish you both the best of luck.”

And with that, she gave Ron and Harry a somewhat violent shove out the door before she slammed it shut.

“Maybe she’s just not a morning person?” Ron suggested as he heard the lock snap back into place.

“Sure,” Harry nodded halfheartedly. “We’ll go with that.”

Right now, Harry was looking at the exterior of the Embassy itself. The fading bricks seemed old as New York, covered with graffiti, and nearly every window on the upper level was broken and yellow with age. Muggle tourists and locals alike could stare and stare at this building, and never know of the magical liaison office operated just a few floors down.

“So,” Ron said, breaking the silence. “No one is bound to be up for hours. What are we supposed to do in the mean time?”

It was at that moment, Harry noticed something in the breast pocket of his jacket. It was a small business card for a restaurant with handwriting on the back that had to belong to Vanessa. She must have slipped it into his pocket when her hand was on his shoulder…just before she pushed him out into the alley.

“There’s a known hub right near here that’s supposed to cater to wizards from out of the country, according to this,” Harry struggled to read the somewhat smudged ink. “They also serve breakfast.”

“Wonderful!” Ron winced, still rubbing his head. That must have been quite a collision. “Which way is it?”

Unbeknownst to them however, hiding behind a trashcan, sat a man in rags, rubbing his eyes and refusing to believe he just saw two British men in fine suits appear out of a condemned building.

“That’s it,” he shouted, tossing an amber bottle over his shoulder and against the brick wall. “I’m officially back on the wagon!”

---

The known hub of underground magic in New York City, better known to the public as Bernie’s 24-Hour Waffle Hut, hardly seemed to be a hub of any kind. In fact, it was near empty, except for a cook at the counter and a black girl wearing a waitress’ uniform sitting at one of the booths with a steaming plate of waffles in front of her, a dirty coffee cup in her hands, and what appeared to be a chemistry book left off to the side, ignored.

The bells above the door chimed as Ron and Harry walked inside. Other than a second long glance given to them by the cook, they were otherwise nearly ignored. The black girl now set her coffee cup down, watching them intently, as though she expected something to happen. Harry and Ron walked forward: her eyes followed them. They walked off to the left: her eyes followed them there, too.

Feeling somewhat disturbed by the constant stare, he led Ron to the counter so they could sit with their back to her.

“So where do we begin?” asked Ron, turning his spinning stool from side to side.

“This file has everything we need to know on the student who sent Professor McGonagall that letter,” Harry said, pulling the papers out from his coat and flipping them open. “It would do us good to do some reading up before we go looking for him ourselves.”



Legal Name: Nathaniel Jacob Rivers
Nickname/Aliases: Nate, the Wizard of P.S. 144
DOB: March 3, 1991 (Santa Barbara, CA)
Hair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Mixed
Distinguishable Marks: None
Immediate Family: Father: Malcolm Rivers (51); Mother: Jillian Rivers (49);
Brother: Carter Rivers (23)
Blood Status: Unknown
Current Residence: 285 West 252nd St. Riverdale, Bronx County, New York City, NY
Current School and Expected Date of Graduation: P.S. 144, 2010


Criminal Offences:

10/04/04: Grand Theft Auto by use of Magic; Underage Driver, Magic in the presence of a person of Non-Magical Status
Arresting Officer: Agent Carter Rivers
Sentence: Probation


Current Legal Status: On Probation until March 3, 2010
Likelihood to Reoffend: High


Known Associates:

Lorelei Augustine Macalister
Status: Witch

Graham Phineas Schuler
Status: Non-magical

Alaia Bianca Grace
Status: Non-magical




Harry soon became aware of a shadow over the file. Looking up, he saw the cook standing over them, hair oiled down under a paper hat, an apron that looked too clean for someone who worked in a restaurant, and a big toothy smile.

“Um, I’m sorry, sir,” Harry told the man trying to go away. “My friend and I aren’t quite ready to order yet.”

“Welcome to Bernie’s 24-Hour Waffle Hut,” the cook said in a voice that, despite the large smile, was completely devoid of emotion, “For daily specials, please read the white board and our friendly waiting staff will be more than happy to take your order.”

“Excuse me?” Harry asked. The man him seemed to stare right through him.

“We accept all major credit cards, but no out-of-state checks.”

“Sir, are you okay?” Ron asked, sensing too that something was not right.

“Ma’am, we do not have fat free waffles and screaming at me is not going to make them magically appear on the menu.”

“He can’t understand what you’re saying,” a flat voice from behind said. “He can’t even understand what he’s saying.”

Harry and Ron both spun around to see the black waitress who had been staring at them before; hands at her sides and an expression comprised of both annoyance and boredom. In her uniform pocket, Harry noticed a wand poking out: longer and thinner than he was used to seeing, but still unmistakable in shape.

“Ricardo,” the girl ordered, leaning forward on the counter, sliding the wand out of her apron pocket “Ricardo, look at me!”

The cook remained motionless, but turned his head towards the waitress, a blank look in his eyes and that same cheesy smile on his face.

“We have two customers who would each like the number three special,” she said slowly while gliding her wand in front of his eyes.

“We have two customers who would each like the number three special,” Ricardo repeated word for word.

Harry and Ron watched in silence as the girl said the mantra that the cook repeated. It all sounded very much rehearsed and well-practiced. Harry wondered how it was possible for a girl who seemed to be a civilian.

“And Chantal has another hour left on her break,” she continued, still tracing her wand in front of the cook’s face.

“And Chantal has another hour left on her break.”

Ricardo the cook spun around on one foot and marched back to the kitchen. After he was gone, the waitress, Chantal, took a few moments to shake her head and mutter to herself. Her self-imposed rant covered every topic from ‘useless cooks’ to ‘retarded customers’ and even ‘shoddy Chinese uniform’.

“And now you will brew her a fresh cup of coffee because she’s been here since three in the morning, staring at the bums and the hookers,” she suddenly remembered, shouting back into the kitchen

“And now I will brew her a fresh cup of coffee because she’s been here since three in the morning, staring at the bums and the hookers,” Ricardo shouted back, even though he could not be seen.

Finally, the waitress looked up and turned towards Harry and Ron as though she had just noticed they were there.

“Hello,” she told them in a voice that seemed devoid of any real welcome, and gestured back towards her booth. “Have a seat. We should probably talk.”

Without waiting for an answer, Chantal made her way back towards her booth. Unsure of how else to respond to this girl, Harry and Ron followed her across the dingy tile floor.

“Excuse me, miss,” Ron tried to say. “Maybe you could�””

“How about some coffee?” she asked, detouring behind the busboy station to grab two extra cups. “I order the bottomless urn, so it’s not like you’d be imposing or anything.”

“Look, miss,” Harry said more firmly. “My friend and I really aren’t here for social reasons. We just need a quiet place to work.”

“This place is not Unplottable,” Chantal hissed, keeping a fake-sugar smile on her face as though she expected them to be interrupted. “No cloaking charms, no nothing to keep anyone without magic from coming in. They can and they do come in here, all the time. And we never know when, so just take the damn coffee cups and shut the hell up!”

And with that, the girl shoved the cups quite viciously into Ron and Harry’s hands. Harry was even sure he heard Ron yelp.

“Now let’s have a seat and chat for a while, shall we?” she spoke in a voice dripping with fake sweetness that matched her smile.

“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, miss,” Ron began as he slid into the booth. “Your cook…”

“Ricardo’s a golem,” Chantal answered reclining back against the vinyl seat and putting her feet up. “Mr. Goldman, the owner, made him to work the graveyard shift. He has clay for a body and an old pastrami sandwich for a brain. So you can imagine what wonderful company he is.”

Once Harry and Ron were both sitting across from her, Chantal took a quick glance at the surrounding windows, pulled her breakfast plate closer to her, and took on a very business-like expression.

“Okay, I suppose first things first,” she said, wiping her fork with a napkin. “My name is Chantal.”

“Well, hello Chantal. My name is Harry Po-”

“Please, no last names,” she stopped him, pointing the fork directly in Harry’s face. “It’s not good in my line of work.”

Harry felt his voice get stuck in his throat. With everything that had happened since he and Ron enter this place, he was not sure whether to trust Chantal or be terrified of her.

“So your name is Harry,” Chantal continued to point with her silverware “And yours is…”

“Ron.”

“Wonderful,” she breathed with what might be construed as a smile. “Now that we all know each other, we can get down to the real conversation. For example, what are you doing here?”

With that question, all the previous politeness that that had lingered on Chantal’s voice dissipated to make way for her true, blade-like tone that she had been masking until now.

“Ron and I are both Aurors, and, not that anyone in your position has the right to ask, we are here on official Ministry-”

“New Zealand.”

Harry stopped and watched Chantal mash her waffles and maple syrup into a soggy mess.

“Excuse me?”

“New Zealand,” Chantal repeated, taking a bite from the section of the waffle she had not yet destroyed. “You two are from New Zealand, right?”

“No, Britain,” Harry corrected.

“Damn, I was sure by now I had these accents memorized.”

“We’ve told you who we are, young lady,” Harry said, trying as hard as he could to keep his calm, business-like demeanor “Now maybe you can tell us why you-”

“Don’t call me ‘young lady’!” Chantal snapped, looking as though she had just been extremely offended. “I’m eighteen years old, and you have, what, five years on me? And I work for the Department of Magic too, so don’t you get all high and mighty with me!”

“The Department of Magic?” Ron question. He had not participated in Chantal’s monologue until now.

“Your country calls it the Ministry of Magic,” Chantal explained, beginning to calm down just a little. “Department of Magic, Secretary of Magic, they’re all basically the same things you have back in England. I personally think they all just come up with different names for things just to annoy everyone.”

Harry was shocked. This girl was so young, and she was already employed as a foreign liaison for her country’s Ministry. It was also easy to see why she had been so offended by their tone with her before.

“So you aren’t a waitress,” Ron reasoned, his voice mixed with apology and surprise “You’re an ambassador to foreign wizards who come through here.”

“Ambassador?” Chantal laughed. “For ten bucks an hour? I’m more like a glorified tour guide. By the way, I don’t give tour, and I’m technically not even required to leave this booth.”

“But essentially,” Harry asked. “You just sit here all day and watch for the witches and wizards that might come in here?”

“No,” she answered, cutting her waffle into smaller pieces. “Just from three in the morning until seven. Then I go to school and Franco comes in and takes a shift.”

While immersed in the conversation, no one at the table even noticed when Ricardo came until he set the plate down with a loud clang, causing everyone to jump. Nevertheless, Ricardo kept the same smile on his face, truly unaware of his surroundings.

“Coffee,” Ricardo said as he held the steaming cup in front of Chantal.

Thanks, Ricardo.” She smiled and breathed the aroma deeply.

“Coffee,” Ricardo repeated, like a tape player that was stuck.

Chantal groaned and took out her wand, yet again, waving it in front of Ricardo’s eyes.

“You will go away now,” she ordered.

“I will go away now,” Ricardo repeated, once again spinning on one foot.

Ricardo might have made it back into the kitchen, if the counter had not been in his way. But instead of moving to the side where the counter was open, he simply back up and walked into the counter once again. Again and again, Ricardo bumped into the counter, backed up and bumped into the counter again. Chantal sighed, but allowed Ricardo to carry on as she stirred cream and sweetener into her coffee.

“He’ll do that for about an hour,” Chantal chuckled. “It’s actually kinda funny.”

Again, Ron and Harry were silent. If this girl’s sense of humour was based on the suffering of others, they could still not be a hundred percent sure of what to make of her.

“But as the Bernie’s 24-Hour Waffle Hut’s sitting person,” she began, once again in a very much rehearsed tone. “One of the things I am required to do is leave you with a few words of what I believe is helpful advice.”

Harry and Ron leaned close so that they would catch every word.

“If you pass someone on the street that’s rambling about witches and dragons, but wear clothes you wouldn’t even use to scrub your bathroom floor, don’t stop and talk to them. They’re not real wizards.”

Harry gave a little laughing snort. This girl was obviously used to dealing with purebloods. However, he looked to his side and saw Ron nodding and taking in every word.

“If you need ‘supplies’ while you’re here, you’ll find a bunch of stores anywhere that say they sell the real thing, but if you go up to the counter and ask, ‘Do you have any items of interest? I’m looking to buy’ they’ll let you in the back where they keep the real stuff. You might have to use Alohomora if the owners are especially paranoid.

“And lastly.” Chantal took a long sip of her fresh coffee. “If you ever find yourselves in trouble or in need, just come back here. I can’t guarantee it will be me, but someone from the Department is always hanging out here.

“Are we good?” she asked the both of them.

Harry and Ron both nodded their heads, more out of wanting to leave than in agreement.

“Good.” Chantal smiled, reaching for her previously ignored chemistry book. “Now get out of here! I have an exam in four hours, and tonight’s the first night I’ve even opened the book.”

Harry could have lectured her about her study habits; he knew Hermione would have. But having seen Chantal’s previous temper, Harry and Ron silently agreed it would be better to just go.

Halfway to the door, Harry turned around and noticed Ricardo still attempting to walk through the very solid counter.

“Shouldn’t we do something about Ricardo?” Harry asked, pointing to the cook.

“Eh, let Chantal do it,” Ron answered as he pushed the door open. “It’s what she’s barely paid for.”

---

---

“We’re totally screwed.” Lorelei sighed, sprawled out upside down on Nate’s bed.

“Maybe we can think of some kind of disability that can get me out of going,” suggested Nate, momentarily stopping spinning in his chair.

“And what kind of disability would that be?”

“I really, really hate tea!”

Lorelei snorted and let her arms drop dramatically over the side of the bed.

“We’re totally screwed!” she repeated once again.

Nate swiveled the chair from side to side and wondered where this whole ‘we’ talk was coming from. He was the one being sent halfway around the world. Lorelei would lose him, but everything else would stay exactly the same for her. But he didn’t want to think about leaving his best friend anymore. Thinking about anything that had to do with those letters was just too depressing.

This was exactly how it had been. Days later, Nate and Lorelei were still racking their brains trying to figure out what to do. Nate’s middle school graduation had come and gone yesterday afternoon. Lorelei had been there with his parents, but no one really felt like celebrating. For everyone, it just served as another reminder that very soon, some British stranger would come breaking down the door to drag him off.

Nate’s parents had tried to talk to his older brother, but he wasn’t home, and he wasn’t answering his phone. Besides, everyone knew the System was next to useless in reality. They didn’t even know Nate existed until he was arrested, and he was pretty sure they knew nothing about Lorelei, or her little sister, Rae, who also had magic. There was nothing they could do to you as long as they could prove you existed. It really didn’t take a lot of effort to stay off the grid, so it figured Nate would blow it.

Nate was soon distracted from his own racing thoughts by a tapping sound at the window above his bed. This even got Lorelei’s attention. She pushed herself up, let loose a scream, and fell to the floor. Nate jump out of the chair and over his now cranky friend to see what happened. Outside his window, there was an owl. An owl flying around New York City, with an envelope in its mouth, pecking the glass.

Against what might have been better judgment, Nate lifted the window open, only for the owl to swoop in and land on his dresser, shaking the evening mist from its feathers.

“Go away!” Lorelei ordered, waving her arms at the scruffy-looking bird.

Nate instead approached the bird, in a cautious, but almost casual manner. He reached up, having to wrestle somewhat, and took the letter from the owl.

“What is it?” his friend asked, in a quiet, inquisitive voice.

He turned back to Lorelei and, with a puzzled look on his face, began to read the letter aloud.

Chapter 4
Deception, Sleep Deprivation, and Dropping Dead


“The Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic?” exclaimed Graham, both eyebrows raised. “You do know that makes your school sham, right? S-H-A-M.”

“Hey, I didn’t name it,” shrugged Nate, leaning against the stoop rail. “But whatever I did do, it worked. It’s been almost a month and not one letter!”

It was the third week of June, and all of New York was in summer mode. The Riverdale scenery had shifted to images of kids playing ball in the street while hotdog vendors and ice cream trucks shouted over one another for business. A broken fire hydrant sprayed over the sidewalk while Lorelei’s little sister, Rae, splashed water at five other kindergartners.

And about every other stoop on the street was littered with bored teenagers sprawled out on the steps, looking as though they were five minutes from death. And the stoop in front of Graham’s house was no different. Graham downed soda, can after can, which were beginning to stack into a pyramid. Lorelei fanned herself with this morning’s edition of the Village Voice, and Nate on the very bottom step, pushed his skateboard back and forth with his right foot, debating whether or not to actually ride it.

Nate’s shifting thoughts were soon interrupted by soaking wet, little munchkin crawling over him in an attempt to get to Lorelei.

“Hey, watch it, Short Stack!” he protested, wiping the water drops from his shorts before they could soak into the fabric. “If I want to get wet, don’t you think I would have run into that fire hydrant right after you?”

She turned around and stared at Nate with large, honey-colored eyes. Her expression was one of quiet thoughtfulness that was almost never seen on a child her age. She stared as though she couldn’t quite tell whether he was teasing her or if he was serious.

“Oh, so you’re ignoring me again today?” he teased.

At that last statement, the little girl threw her head back and laughed an almost cackling laugh, her hair clinging around her face in dirty blonde strings.

“Rae, get back here,” Lorelei ordered softly as she proceeded to dry her little sister’s hair.

Rae Macalister always reminded Nate of the creepy little kids that always appeared in bad horror movies. She was small for her age, much too quiet, and he was certain that she was aware of a lot more than she was letting on. Whenever he told this to Lorelei, though, she would remind him that Rae was a witch too, and being a scary little kid simply went along with the territory. She would also argue that he should be used to Rae by now anyway, since Lorelei took her pretty much everywhere she went.

This was the one part of the sisters’ relationship that Nate found odd. Lorelei and Rae were the exact number of year apart that Nate and his own brother, Carter, were; yet he could see absolutely no resemblance between the two sets of siblings. Before Carter had moved out, he could remember the two of them fighting, getting each other in trouble, and constantly telling one another to stay out of their business: what Nate considered to be a normal relationship between siblings. Lorelei, however, seemed to behave more like Rae’s mother than her older sister. She would walk her to and from school, make sure she had clothes, food, and everything else little kids were supposed to have. Lorelei would even take Rae with her most times when she left the house because she didn’t trust her own mother to watch her. It had been like that for years…

Who could say? Maybe it was a girl thing.

“Ice cream cake or pizza?” Graham asked suddenly, breaking Nate away from his thoughts.

“For what?” Nate wrinkled his nose. “Breakfast?”

“No, Nate,” Graham reiterated. “Which one do you want for your good-bye party?”

“What good-bye party?”

“Well, for you,” Graham clarified. “You see, in most cultures, when a friend leaves home for an extended period of time, those close to him throw a party to remember all the good times they had together. You are leaving for a new school this fall, right?”

At this, Lorelei gave a smug laugh.

“No, he’s not,” she interrupted as she wrapped a towel around her little sister.

“What?” Graham turned his attention towards Lorelei’s step, confused.

“Nate’s not actually going to go this school,” Lorelei explained condescendingly, as though Graham were an idiot for not having figured it out for himself. “He’s letting these people think he is, so the wheels of bureaucracy can continue to turn without anyone noticing. But his brilliant plan took about five minutes for him to come up with, so I’m still not sure how it will work.”

As with every long-winded explanation that came out of Lorelei’s mouth, a long moment of deathly silence was shared among all those who heard it.

“You’re really not going?” Graham finally said.

“Nope,” Nate answered plainly, as though they were talking about any boring subject.

“So, Nate, have you told your parents that you’re not leaving the country after all?” asked Graham.

This was followed by even more silence. The background noise from streets carried an almost eerie echo.

“No, not yet. I haven’t quite figured out how to explain all this away,” he replied, shifting himself up. “I feel kinda bad. Dad’s been calling everyone he can think of, and I’m pretty sure I’ve heard my mom crying at night.”

“Well, if you feel so bad, why don’t you just tell them to stop worrying?” asked Lorelei, allowing Rae to settle on her lap. “Or at least just tell your mom so she’ll stop being sad.”

“Because as soon as I do, Mom will tell Dad, and Dad will tell Carter, and Carter will be on my ass like white on the KKK.”

Once again, Lorelei laughed, but with a more sincere sound to it.

“Yeah, that tends to be the problem with trying to screw with the government.” Lorelei smirked “It’s not the kind of thing you can keep quiet.”

“Oh, yeah; then why haven’t you told your parents about Skat-Hatokha yet, Lore? You’re just as much a part of all this!”

“Please, Nate! Delia wouldn’t notice if I shaved my head and showed up at the breakfast table chanting ‘Hare Krishna’!”

“Who’s joining the Hare Krishna’s?” a light voice asked from off to the side.

Nate swiftly turned his head when he recognized the voice. Sure enough, Alaia Grace stood leaning the railing, standing quietly as though she had been there all along, and relaxed, as though she believed she was as much a part of the group as anyone of them.

“Your mother is,” Lorelei answered sharply, but without even making eye contact.

Alaia scowled slightly in Lorelei direction, chewing on a piece of her hair. But after she realized Lorelei wasn’t going to notice her, she turn her attention to someone who most certainly would.

“I can’t believe how slow summer is going,” Alaia mused. “Why is it we always end up looking forward to school again?”

Nate nodded and laughed nervously. He then felt a sharp kick in his spine followed a disgusted sounding snort from Lorelei. It was no secret that she didn’t care for Alaia or the way she made Nate act. Alaia was beginning to notice this, and although she was very good at not showing it, Nate felt as though she relished in Lorelei’s spiteful feelings.

Suddenly, Rae’s ears perks at the sound of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ coming from down the street. Within minutes, a painfully white van plastered with Popsicle stickers appeared on the street. It had to stop every few feet, however, for every crowd of kids that ran in front of it.

“Ice cream truck’s here!” Alaia jumped to her feet, seeming more excited than Rae did. “My dad finally gave me my baby-sitting money before I left the house, so I’ll go buy us some treats.”

Once Alaia was out of earshot, Lorelei finally decided to speak up.

“Remind me why we’re letting the stripper hang out with us.”

“Stop calling her that!” Nate shouted in a tone that he rarely used on his best friend. “Alaia’s not a stripper”

“She named after one!” Lorelei shouted back, proving she was just as capable of fighting as Nate was. “And her mother-”

“SHUT UP!” Nate yelled, startling everyone around him. Lorelei shut her mouth and clamped her jaw tightly. As soon as Nate saw his friend’s expression, he knew he made a mistake in his words.

“You just don’t like her because of that bit her stepdad did about the ‘Catholic pagans’,” he laughed it off, as though he had been kidding the whole time.

Lorelei’s expression softened somewhat, but still remained cross as she glared at him. It was clear that she needed some time to cool off. Nate stood up, jumped onto his skateboard, and kicked down the sidewalk.

“Hey, Nate, where ya going?” Graham asked as his friend hopped on his skateboard, “
As Nate sped down the sidewalk, he shouted an answer that caused Lorelei to wrinkle her nose and brow so deeply, Nate saw the expression even as she became smaller and smaller.

“Lovely, Nate,” called a disgusted Lorelei, while drying off her little sister’s hair. Nate waved back to her, and even waved to Alaia as he rode past her.

---

---

“…he’d probably be around fourteen years old,” Ron explained to the man behind the hotdog cart. “He has brown hair. He may have been a customer of yours…”

While his friend tried to force every bit of broken English he could out of the hotdog salesman, Harry watched the crowds of children running up and down the street, searching for anyone who vaguely fit the description of the boy known as Nathaniel Rivers.

How hard could it be to find one fourteen-year-old felon? Normally everyone made it their business to know the neighborhood criminal at every moment of the day. Yet no one they had spoken to seemed to even know who Nathaniel Rivers was. None of the vendors spoke fluent English, most of the children they spoke to ran away from them, and everyone else they spoke with just laughed at their accents.

“Who is it that you’re looking for?” a light voice asked them.

To their left, just finishing trading several fistfuls of change for a half dozen ice cream bars, was a young girl. Her heart-shaped face was framed by styled blonde hair, and bright blue eyes looked over to them in a type of innocent trust. She was the first person they met who expressed an honest interest in helping them.

“I’m sorry, miss,” Harry clarified, to make sure she would be an honest lead. “What is that you are saying?”

“Well, I’m fourteen, and I know pretty much most of the kids my age from this neighborhood,” she explained to him. “So if you told me who you’re looking for, maybe I know him.”

“That’s very sweet of you, miss,” Harry answered. “The boy we’re looking for is named Rivers. Do you know anyone with that name?”

A funny little expression took over the girls face. One corner of her mouth turned up and her eyes looked upwards, as though she were looking for the answer to be spelled out in the clouds.

“Rivers?” she repeated, as the puzzled look on her face took on one of sudden recognition. “Oh, Nate! You must mean Nate.”

“Yes, Nate.” Harry nodded, relieved that they may have finally found a true lead. “Can you tell me where he is?”

“No problem,” she chirped. “He just left for the waffle restaurant down the street.”

“Bernie’s?”

The waffle restaurant that served as a meeting place for the wizards of the city? Harry could almost kick himself as he thought about how much easier life would have been if he and Ron had just stayed there drinking coffee and eating waffles with Chantal.

“That’s the one!” Alaia smiled at him. “If you leave now, he’ll probably still be there.”

“Thank you, miss,” he told her.

“You’re welcome!” she shouted back at him as she left them.

“Chipper little thing, isn’t she?” said Ron, as the girl skipped down the pavement.

Harry and Ron raced back down the sidewalk. They pushed their way through the crowds of children and flowing fire hydrants, making the journey that had taken them five hours just this morning in about fifteen minutes.

Bernie’s was more or less the same as it had been when he and Ron had first been there. There were a few more waitresses now, and after the cook tried handing out his number to a young woman at the counter, he was fairly sure he was human. A few of the booths were crowded with customers, and several of the stools were occupied, but the restaurant could hardly be considered bustling.

Harry scanned over the heads of everyone breathing in the building, searching for anyone who vaguely resembled the poor quality photograph he and Ron had been given at the Ministry. The first booth was filled with women, the next booth held an old man with a walker off to the side, and the family in the third booth spoke Korean. At the counter, all the occupants were male, but were either too old or too young to be Nate Rivers. And the cook at the counter was over forty, over weight, and had a beard, so he clearly was not Nate Rivers.

“Alright,” the cook called out as he began stacking plates on the counter. “I have a number three with strawberries and whipped cream…”

“Mine,” a waitress with graying hair that seemed to be lacquered into place called out, reaching out to balance the plate with a waiting hand.

“…Irish platter with an Irish coffee…”

“Mine also,” she answered, reaching for the plate with the other hand.

“…and one root beer float, brick style.”

“Over here, Franco,” someone called from an alcove towards the back of the restaurant.

Harry and Ron turned just in time to see the teenage owner of the voice race to the counter, in between them to one of the unoccupied stools.

“And, Rivers,” the cook told him as he handed him the ice cream drink. “You’re still three weeks late on paying your tab!”

“Bite me, Franco!” he retorted in a tone one might use in pleasant conversation.

Rivers? The one they had been running around all morning looking for? And now within thirty seconds of arriving at the restaurant, he came right up to them. The boy stirred the melting ice cream with a straw and slurped at the drink loudly. There couldn’t be that many Rivers boys running around in one neighborhood.

“Excuse me,” said Harry, approaching the boy slowly. “Might you be Nathaniel Rivers?”

“Who ‘ants ‘a know?” the boy asked before taking a huge gulp.

“My name is Harry Potter, and this is my friend, Ron Weasley. We are both Aurors from the Ministry of Magic.”

“Say wha’?” remarked Nate, raising one of his eyebrows.

“I’m sorry. We’ve come here to talk to about a school that is currently under Ministry investigation. One that we’ve recently been informed that you plan to be attending this autumn”

At that explanation, Nate grabbed hold of the counter and spun around, still holding the drink in his hand. When he made eye contact with Harry, he noticed that Nate had one bright brown eye and one blue. It had a very startling effect when Harry first saw it, and it took a moment for him to shift back into the conversation.

“You see, Mr. Rivers,” Harry took a seat on the stool next to Nate, trying to make the conversation seem a lot more casual to the watching restaurant patrons, “a lot of American student who fall under the new Education Compensation Act have received letters from this school, the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic. The only problem is that no one seems to have heard of it, and we just need to ask you a few routine quest-”

Harry’s words, though, were suddenly interrupted by the sound of the ice cream glass crashing against the tile floor. The broken shards and leftover remains of the drink scattered all around Nate’s sandaled feet, but he didn’t even seem to notice as his breath quickened and his hands began to shake. In fact, he was starting to look quite literally ill.

“Mr. Rivers,” Harry asked him. “Are you feeling alright?”

Still, not a word was spoken on Nate Rivers’ part.

“Didn’t you hear me, Nate?” Harry tried again. “I asked if you were alrigh-”

“YOU’RE NOT TAKING ME ALIVE!” he shouted, throwing himself from the stool onto the floor, loosing his footing on the way down and sprawling out across the dirty tile. But once on solid ground, Nate pushed himself to his feet and ran for the door.

Oh no, you don’t! Harry thought to himself as he pointed his concealed wand. He had already wasted enough time on this frivolous mission; he would be damned him this Rivers boy dragged this out any longer than need be.

With a wordless spell, Nate feel forward once again, this time sprawling across a round table in the middle of the floor, sending the family’s breakfast down to the floor with him. The father’s eyes first went down to Nate, who had just pulled himself back up to his knees, his face covered with maple syrup. But the, without a moments hesitations, the fathers eyes flashed straight towards Harry and the sleeve concealing his wand. It was becoming abundantly clear that this man was not one of those Muggles who simply wandered into the wizards’ restaurant, especially when he pulled a wand of his own.

While Harry tried to calm the hot-tempered man, trying to quell the growing levels of chaos, Nate, although dazed, realize the wonderful opportunity to escape. Only he forgot that from the inside of Bernie’s, you needed to pull the door open, and ran face first into the steal doorframe. He doubled back, swearing and sputtering as the blood poured from his nose. The other restaurant patrons found the situation hilarious. Harry might have thought so too, if the behavior didn’t seem so bizarre. Nate Rivers was not under arrest, or wanted for questioning or otherwise.

Seeing no alternative, Harry and Ron followed after him, remembering to pull the door open. Being completely surrounded by Muggles, using magic to catch up with the boy was simply not an option, especially given the gigantic gap between them. Having already gotten a vast head start, despite his injuries, Nate only continued to run farther and farther out of their line of vision. After running for two city blocks, he had completely vanished from sight, but still Harry and Ron ran forward until they had run out of breath, sprawled over and gasping on the sidewalk.

“Okay, my turn!” A familiar, light voice caused Harry to turn to his left, towards a townhouse stoop.

Sprawled out on the steps, were three kids who looked to be about Nate’s age, and a wet, little girl who couldn’t have been more than five. He recognized one of the older children as the blonde girl from before who had pointed him and Ron in Nate’s direction. The other two consisted of a tall, chubby boy with clothes much too warm for the weather, and a sour-faced girl with black hair who was drying the little girl’s hair with a beach towel.

“Okay,” the chubby boy said, tapping the blonde girl on the shoulder. “Would you rather…bite the head off a live tarantula or let a three-year-old pierce your lip?”

“One of those genius three-year-olds?” the blonde girl asked, chewing on her index nail.

“Nope, normal three-year-old.”

“Can he use professional equipment or are we just giving him a nail we found on the street?”

“Hmm,” the boy thought to himself, trying to decide on what would be fair. “They can use the piercing gun, but no antiseptic.”

“This is idiotic,” the black-haired girl grumbled, mostly to herself.

Harry almost found himself laughing at the game the kids were playing, and also felt himself relax. They already knew this blonde girl was Nate’s friend; he would surely speak to her again. All he and Ron would have to do was find her again and enquire as to his whereabouts.

Talking a break from the disgusting word game, the blonde girl stood up on her step and hung over the right side of the stoop, peering down behind a stack of garbage cans.

“Has the bleeding stopped yet?” she asked over the side of the railing.

Before Harry could fully process what she said, Nate Rivers sprung out from his hiding place and out into the busy street, cars honking as he raced through traffic. While running, he turned his head to measure the distance between him and Ron and Harry. Dried blood streaked across his face and he gulped for every breath.

“Should we make sure he’s okay?” asked the blonde.

“After ice cream,” answered the girl with black hair, taking an actual bite out of her vanilla bar.

---

---

Three days. Three days on the lam and Nate hadn’t stopped, slept, or blink. Those guys from the Ministry had almost caught him a few times. It had taken a couple tries, but Nate finally figured out how he could evade them.

At the same time, he also knew he couldn’t keep going like this.

That was what brought him to where he was now; sitting on a sidewalk bench, his head in his hands, on the verge of crying for the first time since he was seven and he broke his arm falling from the tree at the end of the block. One this very neighborhood, on this very street, in front of this very building-

“Nate, where have you been?”

Nate pulled his head out of his hands and looked up to the voice. To his right, stood none other than Lorelei, arms crossed in front of her, a white grocery bag in each hand. What were the chances of Lorelei finishing her grocery shopping just in time for her to meet her in front of her building? For that matter, who actually went grocery shopping at one in the morning? But Lorelei was here, so he really didn’t care about the why.

“Nate!” Lorelei exclaimed upon seeing the state of her friend, pulling him up off the bench and onto his feet. “What’s been going on? That Alaia girl can’t find you, so now she’s bugging me. You’re never home, and you look like you haven’t slept in three days!”

“Can’t sleep,” he explained in a shaken tone, “Magic Police after me.”

“Oh, Christ!” Lorelei groaned as she rolled her eyes.

“Can’t sleep,” he went on as his best friend led him into the back ally and up the metal staircase, “they’ll find me. Always find me.”

“Yes, Nate.” Lorelei agreed as she fumbled for her keys. “Well, you must have lost them, because they haven’t found you yet.”

“They know everything,” he stammered as Lorelei opened the door and led him inside. “I’m gonna go to jail!”

He buried his head in his hands and continued to panic, even as Lorelei continued to drag him towards the elevator doors, “I’m gonna go to jail! I’m gonna go to jail!”

“Nate, nobody’s going to jail, and there are no magic police.”

“Yes, there is,” insisted Nate, aware of how delusional he must have sounded as the elevator door closed. “I saw them. They wear robes, and have funny accents, and say things like ‘blimey’ and ‘ever-so’ and…Oh, Lore I wouldn’t survive in prison! I sort-of read The Shawshank Redemption!”

He was vaguely aware of Lorelei telling him to ‘grow a damn spine for God’s sake’, but finally was brought back to reality by a well-placed slap across his face. Nate was able to bring himself into a somewhat calmed state just in time to hear the elevator ding for the third floor. Again, Lorelei led him not far down the hallway, stopping in front of apartment 3-B.

“Hmm, why isn’t my key working?” Lorelei muttered to herself as she struggle with the doorknob. Finally, Lorelei simply turned the knob, finding the door unlocked. “Rae, did you unlock the door?”

Rae didn’t answer her. But maybe she couldn’t hear her. The TV was on in the living room and Nate could hear Lorelei’s radio playing from her bedroom. But the inside of the apartment itself was empty, as it was most nights when Lorelei’s mother wasn’t home. Nate wondered where she was performing tonight. Lorelei sat Nate down at the breakfast bar, steadying him to make sure he wouldn’t fall off the chair as soon as she left. Once she was sure, she began rummaging through the various kitchen cupboards while asking question after question.

“So these ‘Magic Police’, Nate; they started chasing you after you hit your head against the hard metal beam?”

“No, Lore,” he argued. “I hit my nose against the door frame. And the Magic Police were there before I hit my head!”

Lorelei jumped off the kitchen counter, holding what appeared to be a small spice jar. “My mistake. What exactly did the Magic Police say to you?”

Nate took a deep breath and began regaling his best friend with the entire sordid tale, right down to what country they were from and what agency they were from. Lorelei listened intently as she mixed various ingredients into a mug. She regarded him with a healthy dose of skepticism in her gaze, but there was also a kindness there too. Even if he couldn’t tell if she believed them, the kindness in her expression let him no any hostility they held towards each other yesterday were long since dissolved.

“Lore…” Nate groaned.

“Hmm…”

“Hey, Lorelei…” Rae’s quiet voice came hidden from the hallway.

“In a minute, Rae,” Lorelei shouted her sister. “I’m sorry, Nate. What were you saying?”

“You think I’m making this all up, don’t you?”

Lorelei shifted uncomfortably where she stood, stirring the mug in her hand. “It’s not that, Nate. It’s that these ‘Magic Police’ of yours sound like imaginary friends.”

“Magic Police are not our friends, Lore!” Nate shouted.

“Good enough, Nate,” Lorelei said, handing him the steaming mug. “Here, you can make friends with this.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” Lorelei shrugged. “Your brother told me about it. Mixed with other ingredients, it makes many different sleeping potions. But by itself, it’s still a powerful sedative.”

“When did you and Carter talk about potion ingredients?”

“Do you really care at this point?” Lorelei asked him, shaking the mug three inches away from his face.

Nate shook his head no, and accepted the offered drink. As he gulped it down, he noticed Rae had wondered into the kitchen.

“Lorelei, can policemen be burglars?”

“What are you talking about, Rae?” Lorelei asked, shaking her head, as though she couldn’t stand any more talk of imaginary friends.

“I just saw two men come out of my bedroom,” Rae explained in her uncharacteristic alto. “When burglars are in your house, you’re supposed to call the police, but the men said they are the police. Who do we call then?”

“Rae, have you be-”

Lorelei was suddenly interrupted by a crash and the sound of breaking glass. She glared off towards the direction of the noise. Slowly, she stepped backward towards the coat closet. Reaching inside, she pulled out a solid oak baseball bat and crept back forward.

“Rae, listen to me,” she told her sister. “I want you to go to the neighbors and tell them I said this was an emergency. Don’t come back to the apartment until I come and get you!”

Rae nodded in agreement and raced out the front door, slamming it behind her. Slowly, Lorelei crept down the hallway, bat hoisted high, a look that hungered for blood plastered across her face.

“Those poor ba…,” was Nate’s last conscious thought came to him as he drifted off to sleep.

Chapter 5
The Macalister Girls


“…and that how I come to America,” the Ethiopian cab driver finished his long-winded story. “So, if anyone ever try to tell you that you cannot fly across the ocean in a hot air balloon you make yourself, they lying.”

The talkative taxi driver had been eating dinner on the curb when Harry and Ron walked passed him, talking about Nate Rivers. He jumped up and stopped them, informing them that he knew exactly who they were talking about. Apparently it was not uncommon for people to have a favorite specific taxi driver, and this cabbie had been shuttling Nate around for a number of years. So when he told Harry and Ron that he had a pretty good hunch of where Nate was going, they leapt at the chance to be taken there.

Streetlights streaked across the windshield, offering brief moments of vision inside the cab. Along the sidewalks, a few stores kept their lights on and a few windows were lit with neon signs, but for the most part the streets were still. And the people who were out walking kept their heads cast down and gave off every impression that they would not be willing to talk.

“Here we are!” The taxi driver slammed on the breaks very suddenly, sending everyone in the cab flying forward, the seatbelts cutting sharply across their middles. “Boy Nate Rivers always has me drop him off here.”

The building they had been brought to was a store called Threadstock. Through the grimy glass windows, Harry could see various displays of clothes that, even as a wizard, he could tell were horribly out-of-date. And the store, like most of the other shops on the street, was bit dark and obviously closed.

“Wonderful!” groaned Ron. “Now we know where he buys his clothes. We can start a stakeout tonight!”

“No, no, no. Not clothes store,” the taxi driver corrected him as he pointed into the back alley. “Apartments above clothes store. Door is back in alley.”

Looking up, Harry could see a few windows dotted with light. Although there was no sigh of movement through the glass panes, it was enough of a sign of life for Harry. He reached into his coat pocket, finding the supply of American Muggle money and tossing it to the driver without even counting. Harry stepped out onto the sidewalk and Ron barely had both feet on the pavement before the bright yellow cab screeched down the tar road, tires squealing as he ran a red light to turn a sharp left.

In the alleyway, the dim streetlights barely offered any aid, causing numerous stumbles over scattered litter and the metal staircase up to the apartment doorway. All of it only to find a very much locked door. Harry slowly pulled his conceal wand from his sleeve, debating where to begin in the series of steel locks.

“Excuse me, sir,” he heard somewhat shrill-sounding voice behind him and Ron. “Can I help you with something?”

Ron and Harry both reached for their concealed wands out of reflex beaten into them through years of training. But it wasn’t very long before that hardly seemed necessary and the wands remained in their jacket sleeves. Standing behind them was quite possibly the least intimidating figure in the entire city: a small, frail-looking old woman, bundled down in a dowdy jacket and scuffed leather shoes. Her sleek, silvery hair was tied back into a knot at the nape of her neck. In one arm, she balanced a brown, paper grocery bag from a twenty-four hour market, containing only a single bag of birdseed.

Certainly capable of sneaking up and startling someone near to death, but hardly anyone who could prove to be a threat to two fairly competent Aurors.

“Thank you, ma’am, yes,” Harry answered. “We’re looking for a boy named Nate Rivers, and we’ve received information that he often visits this location.”

The sound of that particular name caused the old woman’s face to grow long and her eyes to become cross. In Harry’s opinion, it was a look usually only bestowed upon bill collectors, candy bar-selling children, and anyone else who appeared at someone’s door unwelcome.

“Oh, I see.” The woman shook her heard in an exasperated sort of way. “I should have known you were here about the Macalister girls.”

She pushed her way past Harry and Ron, pushing her key into one lock after another, all the while continuing to rant about her upstairs neighbors.

“I tell you, it was only a matter of time before someone called in the authorities about that family.”

“Why do you say that?” Ron asked, jumping when the woman used her shoulder to ram the door open in a surprising show of strength.

“Those girls have been a nuisance ever since the day the moved in here.” The woman wiped her shoes against a ratty-looking doormat just inside the hallway, and offered disapproving looks at Harry and Ron when they did not do the same. “That mother of theirs coming and going at all hours, leaving them alone more than she’s with them. Who knows what they get up to when no one’s watching them!

“And I know for a fact the little one has been in my apartment. She comes in and lets my canaries out of their cages whenever I’m out,” The woman’s pitch seemed to rise into almost more of a squawk the angry she got talking about the children who ran wild in her building. “And the older one…well, you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. After the first eighteen years of his life, he doubted anything, even the things he saw as an Auror, could shock him anymore. “Why don’t you tell me anyway?”

“Well, believe me, I know it sounds crazy, but I think she practices witchcraft!”

Out of the corner of eyes, Harry could see Ron’s eyes widen slightly.

“Witchcraft?” Ron’s voice managed to crack. “What would make you think that, ma’am?”

“Strange smells, lights flashing from the windows, explosions going off every other day,” she listed off. “My apartment is right below theirs, so I’m witness to every single one of these little incidents.

“And adding that horrid boy in with everything else!” she told them, Harry knowing she was referring to Nate. “No respect for his elders, that damn skateboard knocking over anything that gets in his way, and everything seems to get worse whenever he comes sniffing around. You know, if that girl is a witch, it wouldn’t shock me if the boy is too!”

“Have you told anyone about this?” Harry asked as he and Ron followed her up the inside stairs.

“Well, I’ve called the police on numerous occasions, but apparently until some gets killed, strange behaviors are not against the law. And of course, I’ve tried calling social services so I could at least get the girls moved somewhere else, but they say unless they can find evidence of abuse or neglect, there’s nothing they can do.

“No case for neglect?” The woman snorted a sharp laughter. “Those girls are home alone twenty hours a day, and that’s not neglect? You know, I’ll bet it was that older girl, Lorelei. She probably puts some sort of spell on every social worker who comes through their door.”

There was still on last case of stairs leading upward, but the old woman instead walked out into the burgundy-carpeted hallway, pulling out her keys to open one of the doorways in a row down the walls.

“So these Macalister girls,” Harry asked, pointing upwards. “They live just up on the next floor up?”

“Exactly,” the woman replied. “I live in apartment 2-B; the Macalisters live in apartment 3-B. Good luck to both of you.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Harry replied. “My friend and I will certainly check on everything you said.”

“You’re welcome,” she sighed, beginning to shut the door, but still speaking through the cracked opening. “I suppose it’s too much to ask to have a fourteen-year-old who just smokes cigarettes and dresses like a tramp these days.”

And with that, she slammed the door shut, leaving Ron and Harry alone in the hallway.

“What kind of kids are they breeding in this country?” Ron hissed as he followed Harry up the last flight of stairs. “The boys are all felons and the girls use magic in front of Muggles without so much as a second thought.”

“Neighborhood gossip,” Harry assured his friend. “People can talk about their neighbors being wizards, but unless they actually see something to prove it, there’s no reason to panic. I can tell you how many calls I’ve gone on where Muggles simply accuse somebody of being a witch. Let’s hope you never have to tag along on one of those cases. Dreadfully boring and just a general pain.”

Ron nodded and with only three steps left, they were final on the top floor of the complex. And to their right, sure enough, was apartment 3-B, right above where they had spoken to the elderly woman just moments before.

“Hello?” Harry knocked sharply against the solid oak door. “Miss Macalister, are you in there?”

Nothing. No one came to the door, not even any of the neighbors across the hall coming out complain about the noise at such a late hour.

“I hear music playing inside,” Ron whispered. “And the lights are on. Somebody’s home.”

“Their mother probably has a rule against opening the door when she’s not home,” Harry told him.

Suddenly, as though on cue, the light sound of feet pattering across the floor echoed of the softly playing blues music, soon followed by a slamming door.

“It sounds like someone’s running around inside,” Ron remarked in the same hushed tone he had been using all along.

“It sounds like extenuating circumstances,” Harry said as he pulled his wand from his pocket. “Alohomora!”

One after another, there was the sound of the four locks sealing the apartment door shut snapping open. Carefully, Harry reached for the doorknob and turned it open, pushing the door open ajar slowly on the off chance that whoever was inside would be right against the wall waiting for them.

Inside, the flat was fully lit, but completely still. The television was set on mute and a reading lamp was turned on over the sofa, a paperback resting open across the arm. Music was playing down one of the hallways, behind one of the shut doors. The whole room gave the feeling that its occupants had all vanished mere seconds before the front door opened. But there was something else that made the entire scene so eerie.

Having a son of his own, Harry’s house was a constant mess with toys scattered throughout every room in the house, the occasional piece of abandoned laundry, and even a few things he and Ginny had contributed to the mess. This flat, however, was so orderly, it was disturbing. The hardwood floors were polished to the point where Harry could nearly see his reflection; the walls were covered with various pieces of obscure art, but no family photos. The TV tucked in the corner didn’t even have on video that would interest anyone under the age of twenty, and the surface of the refrigerator was completely empty, devoid of souvenir magnets or report cards. The entire feel of the place seemed wrong for the people Harry had been told lived here: a single mother with two children.

Harry and Ron made their way down the hallway, walking to the first door on the right and gently pushing it open. The interior was silent and left little hope that anyone was inside.

The room it had led them to looked as though it belonged to a little girl. It was small, cluttered, but full of color, from the bedspread to what had to be at least three dozen drawings taped to the plain beige walls. It seemed to be more a mess than the rest of the flat, dolls scatted alongside singular crayons and scraps of yellowed drawing paper. Harry involuntarily jumped at the sound of a snap, only to look down and see that the noise had been caused by his foot stepping on a peach-colored crayon.

The room as a whole seemed to exist as an entire separate entity from the rest of what he and Ron had seen, as though whoever lived in this room lived a life without any interference or support from any of the other inhabitants of the flat.

Then, a muffled cough caused Harry to turn around, only to curse himself for being so jumpy when there had been absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

Waiting on just the other side of the door was a little girl with dirty blond hair, and large honey-colored eyes. She looked up at the two strangers, not afraid, not even wary of their presence. She simply stared in quiet observance, a thoughtful look on her face, but no signs of any real emotion.

“Hello, cutie,” Harry tried to say in as friendly a voice as possible. “My name is Harry, and this my friend, Ron. We’re…policemen.”

The girl remained silent, looking up at the both of them with a stare of quiet awe. Her head cocked to the side slightly, but still, she said nothing to them; not even to ask how they had gotten into her home.

If this even was her home…

“Maybe you can help us. We’re trying to find a boy named Nate Rivers. Do you know anyone with that name?

She put her thumb to her mouth, as though debating whether or not to suck it, but still didn’t say a word. As horrible as it sounded, Harry found himself wishing the little girl would cry, or scream, or do something. There was something about her behavior that just seemed unnatural.

“We’ll give you a Chocolate Frog if you do,” tried Ron when she still hadn’t given an answer.

As though she had finally lost interest, the little girl stepped backward into the hallway toward the glass-panel doors just behind her. She pulled one open just a crack, slid in, and sat down on the floor, watching the two of them as though they were animals in the zoo.

“That is one creepy little kid.” Ron remarked as the little girl pressed her nose to the glass.

“This flat doesn’t even look like any children live here,” Harry added as he surveyed the rest of the flat’s open area. Other than the glass-panel doors directly across from them, there was a door open slightly ajar, leading to a bathroom, and one more shut door at the far end of the hallway; the last doorway, leaving nowhere else for any other surprise guests to hide.

Out through the hallway, a pair of honey-brown eyes followed as he did so, still showing no fear, no panic, nothing. Harry pushed the door open quite easily, the door being just barely latched, and walked inside. He turned, banging his leg into the glass-top desk resting next to the door, causing him to swear sharply under his breath.

“Harry, are you okay?”

Harry nodded with his teeth clenched, rubbing the injured spot on his thigh while looking around the room. This one, too, seemed to belong to a girl, but not a little girl like the honey-eyed one hiding behind the glass. The one brick wall across from them was covered with school certificates, glossy posters of European cities and Asian gardens, and of bands he had never heard of; none of them moving. A radio on the end table next to the bed proved to be the source of the blues music they had heard in the hallway, actually quite loud when they were in the same room with it. Like the bedroom opposite it, it seemed to exist in the pattern of having itself cut off from the rest of the flat, existing in its own little universe.

Ron walked over to a bed tucked in the corner. The violet sheets were perfectly made, but the covers were rumpled, as though someone had been jumping up and down on the bed.

“There’s a fire escape out here, Harry,” Ron pointed out, and then pointed to the bed. “It wouldn’t be that difficult for him to come and go as he pleased.”

Harry glanced out the window, but even from as far away as he was, he could see the view of the city lights and even the river offered from the fire escape. It wasn’t hard to understand why anyone would want to spend a fair amount of time out there.

“Do you think he would try to hide here?” Ron turned on the lamp resting on the side table. “The place hardly seems the type for a teenage boy to come to very often.”

“It’s likely. He obviously feels safe here,” answered Harry, who had moved his way over to the bureau. “Look at this.”

In Harry’s hand was a framed photograph. In the photograph, was Nate Rivers, laughing and making faces at the camera. Sitting beside him was a pale, dark-haired girl, harder to recognize with the sour-expression on her face, but there was little doubt as to who it was. It was one of the girls that had been on the stoop earlier that afternoon; one of the children who seemed to know Nate.

But unlike Nate, she was sitting stiffly off to the side, rolling her eyes and shaking her head, and occasionally laughing at something Nate did. The moving photograph, despite all the Muggle decorations in the bedroom, offered proof that the old woman downstairs had been right in her suspicions: the older of the Macalister girls was a witch.

“Hello, Miss Macalister,” Harry said to the photograph as Nate threw an arm around her shoulder.

Harry set the photo down and began to look through the collection of photographs scattered atop the bureau. As he went from frame to frame, he noticed they were all photos of the same two children. Nate Rivers and Lorelei Macalister at a park, bundled in jackets against the cold wind, pushing the little blonde girl on the swing. A very old picture of Nate in a suit and Lorelei in a frilly white dress, the pair of them looking no older than seven. And even a picture of the two of them sitting outside on that very same fire escape, watching the lights come on over the city. Harry wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all.

“She has a diary.” Ron pointed out as held up the tiny spiral notebook.

“I think,” Ron added, straining as he read over the last few passages that had been written. “…wind blows in hot over the city as the last days of school are over. I don’t sleep during those times. Not that I truly sleep at any time of the year. Nate thinks this all a good idea, and given the right people come along, it could start to breath. But I’d rip it apart at its core first. Nate would think it’s funny. Nate would think that can make us safe.

Nose wrinkled, Ron looked up at Harry, the diary still open to the same page, a confused expression on his face.

“Is that helpful?”

“Not really, Ron,” Harry answered, taking the journal and flipping through the pages himself. But all of it just seemed like nonsense written down to confuse whoever tried to read it.

Harry ran his fingertips over the page, observing the handwriting itself. For a passage that seemed written for the sake of confusing the reader, the rushed quality of the letters looked as though whoever wrote them could not get them on the page fast enough. But at the same time, he noticed a definite practiced quality to the rabid script. In fact, the longer the Harry stared at it, the more Harry began to notice: a too-thin loop on several of the letter, a heavy flourish on the last stroke of every word. The more familiarities he noted, the clearer it became to where he had seen them before.

“Ron, look at the writing!” Harry raced over to the doorway where Ron was looking over objects on the glass-top desk. “What does it tell you?”

Ron looked over the diary, not taking it, though. But he didn’t seem to notice anything particularly odd about the handwriting.

“Two very creepy kids live here?” Ron commented.

Harry fished into his pockets, searching until finally found what he was looking for: an old, crumpled letter that had been a thorn in Harry’s side for more than a week now.

“How about now?” Harry asked, showing it to Ron.

As Ron began to compare the two pieces of paper, his eyes began to widen with recognition, and Harry already knew why. This was the letter that had been sent to Professor McGonagall by Nate Rivers, the one that had started this whole bloody headache.

The letter had seemed so out of the blue when it had arrived, that he had hardly thought to look at the handwriting. It did seem like the signature was different than the hand that had written the body of the letter, but Harry had been running and rushing so much lately, he hadn’t stopped to dwell on it. He hadn’t stopped to consider who had written the letter for Nate, or even if it had been anyone other than Nate.

“The girl who owns this journal also wrote that letter to Professor McGonagall,” Harry thought aloud, walking back towards the window, eyes still spread across the pages. They collaborated with each other!”

Ron didn’t answer or respond in any way to what Harry felt was an amazing discovery. He was about to say something when he heard a very distinct-sounding crack and Ron crumpled to the floor. And then another crack, and another, and another, and another…

“HARRY!” Ron shouted, as the sound of more cracking blows rained down on him. “GET HER OFF! GET HER OFF, PLEASE!”

Harry spun around rapidly to see his best mate crouched on the floor, trying in vain to fend off the smashing blows of a bat wielded by a girl swinging as though she were going for a record.

It took a moment for Harry to realize it, but he recognized the girl wielding the bat. It was the sour-faced girl on the stoop, the older of the Macalister sisters, Lorelei. And, as recently discovered, the author of a certain letter that had been causing Harry far too many migraines as of late.

But Ron seemed to be the one she was causing more at the moment…in his head, and his shoulders, and his shins, and his back…

“YOU…DIRTY…THEIVING…SON OF A BI-”

“Expelliarmus!” Harry pointed his wand at the wildly-crazy girl, sending the bat flying out of her hand and over her head, creating a very loud clank as it crashed to the floor unseen.

“Holy hell!” she screamed as she tried to scramble back up to her feet. “NATE!”

She disappeared around the corner and out of sight. Harry raced out of the bedroom after her, leaving Ron behind, finding it hard to believe any worse could happen to him tonight. However, fearing the volume factor only getting louder the longer this went on, Harry swiftly cast a Silencing Charm as he moved. The last thing he and Ron needed was to give the old woman from downstairs yet another reason to call the police; especially if the commotion upstairs caused enough ruckus to actually convince them to come.

Arriving in the adjoining living room and kitchen, he found a baggy-clothed figure slumped over on the breakfast bar. There, in a drugged-looking state of sleep, was Nate Rivers.

“NATE!” Lorelei shouted in her friend’s face, yanking him up by his hair. “Nate Rivers, wakey-wakey! Your best friend needs you!”

It was a dramatically loud smack across the face, causing Nate to topple backwards on the stool, which finally brought Nate to his senses in a fit of stuttering and jerky movement. It was only when his eyes finally focused on Ron and Harry that he finally seemed to be brought completely back to reality.

“MAGIC POLICE!” Nate shouted near to the point of screeching, scrambling onto the toppled stool and pulling himself back to his friend’s side. “You see, Lore? I told you they were following me!”

“Wait,” Lorelei stopped her friend, pointing towards Ron and Harry. “There actually are magic police?”

Nate began to nod, only to be pushed to the floor, stool and all, by the furious-looking girl. “And you led them back here?!”

With so many rapid emotions circling the room, Harry was certain he didn’t trust the girl to be hanging onto a solid metal weapon at the moment; even more so now that he saw the treatment she gave to people she considered her friends. With his wand still concealed, a wordless charm sent a few idle knives into a drawer resting below the sink, along with a few forks and a meat tenderizing hammer just for good measure.

Lorelei’s eyes, indicating that she had heard the sound of sliding metal, flicked over to the sink drawer, and then, more slowly, back to Harry. Her expression displayed a variety of different emotions: confusion as to why the bat had been taken from her, annoyance that it had been taken from her, and barely suppressed anger at the two invading strangers in her home and her supposed friend who had led them there.

The one thing she didn’t seem to appear was afraid.

“Now,” Harry began, making sure to keep his movements fluid and his voice low; behavior usually reserved only for when one was approaching a wild animal. “No one is in trouble, and no one is being arrested.”

Harry made sure to stress that point when he noticed the two children tense as he approached them. Even as he watched his movement as carefully as he did, Lorelei continued to move further away, back into the kitchen area. Nate stayed put, but his feet seemed to twitch underneath him, as though he wanted nothing more than to run, even straight out the window.

“This should have gone a lot easier and a lot faster if you weren’t so quick to run, Mr. Rivers.”

Nate offered a disgusted look as he sensed the beginning of lecture in Harry’s voice. “But nobody’s in any trouble here; we don’t even have to leave the flat. We are, however, going to have to have you answer to a few of our questions about Skat-Hatok-”

“Ahhhh!” Ron shouted as a shot of icy water sprayed over his front. “COLD! Really cold!”

Harry had been so focused on keeping his eyes on Nate that he hadn’t even noticed Lorelei creeping back towards the sink. In a small window of opportunity, she reached for the spray nozzle in the sink and began spraying it all over the kitchen. Whether she was merely trying to create a distraction, or if she actually though it might actually do something remained to be seen.

“Oh, for the love of God, Lore!” Nate shouted at his friend. “He’s not the frickin’ Witch of the West!”

It was becoming more and more obvious that these two were not feeling the spirit of cooperation. Neither of them seemed willing to sit down and discuss the situation calmly; the only thing that appeared to garner any sense of respect was when they were staring down the surface of an opposing wand. Harry pulled his wand from his sleeve, making it very visible to the two teenagers. The two didn’t come close to submitting, but there did seem to be a significant decrease in their impulsive desire to fight.

It was a rarity when Harry ever had to pull his wand on a suspect, and in actuality, he had no intention of casting any hex on the two children in front of him. But he could hardly argue with the results.

But there was barely any opportunity for the two teenagers to see the pointed wands, because both his wand and Ron’s, which he hadn’t even drawn yet, flew backwards, over their shoulder, as though attracted by a magnet. The two rods flew right into the waiting hands of a small child with dirty blonde waves and bed-rumpled pajamas. The little girl laughed, tapping the two wands together at the tips. Multi-colored sparks danced from the wands, the little’s girl’s honey brown eyes growing wide with wonder, an awed sigh escaping her lips.

“RAE!” Lorelei shouted. “I told you to go to the neighbors!”

The small child, Rae, looked up at Lorelei, back to Harry and Ron, then back to the two teenagers cowering back in the open kitchen area. She met both opposing parties with a gaze of curiosity and some sort of quiet understanding. But, like Lorelei, she showed no signs of any fear towards the situation.

In the brief moment that their eyes had been averted, Lorelei Macalister had snuck across the room, quietly retrieved the bat, and crept up from behind them to smash Harry right in the back of the knees, sending him crashing to the hard surface of the floor.

“Rae, hide!” Lorelei ordered the younger child.

Harry looked up just in time to see Rae dash off behind the kitchen counter and hear a cabinet door open and close. Nate, in all this madness, had the perfect opportunity to run, but to Harry’s shock, he hadn’t moved from the spot he had been in when Lorelei had first started swinging. And his eyes had never left his friend, who seemed to be the only person in the room who did not put him at unease. He watched her attack with the calm of someone observing something as mundane as a pigeon on the sidewalk; as though this sort of behavior were not only acceptable from his friend, but perfectly ordinary.

What finally did cause him to react was when Lorelei attempted to swing the bat at Ron’s shoulder, missed and fell onto an end table; one of the dark walnut legs cracking and breaking as she went down. Then, he bolted across the living room and dropped to his friend’s side, allowing Harry enough of a diversion to seek after Rae and the wand.

Once on the opposite side of the breakfast bar, he could hear pots, pans, and various metal clanging as Rae crawled through the cabinets. Slowly, stepping softly, Harry followed alongside Rae as she crawled through the shelves, wondering how long it would be before the two teenagers on the opposite end of the flat finally ganged up on him with that Merlin-be-damned bat.

Luckily, though, before that could happen, Rae finally emerged from one of the cabinet doors, looking from side to side, but not seeing Harry standing right behind her. And with an overly large amount of ease, he snatched the two wands out of the girl’s loose grip.

“Thank you, young lady,” Harry remarked, taking one wand and tossing the other to Ron, not seven feet away. Nate and Lorelei had not moved from their crouched positions on the floor, against the wall.

Suddenly, jumping to his feet and making leaps and bounds across the planked floors, he sprinted for the front door.

“Colloportus!” Harry shouted, pointing his wand towards the door, effectively sealing it in place. Ordinarily, opting for such a simple charm would have been a poor decision. But as he had yet to see either of the two children extract a wand, Harry began to have serious doubts as to whether either of them even had a wand. They had clearly seen him use a charm to shut them in, but still neither of them employed the use of magic.

Still, Nate strained and pulled at the doorknob, as though he still thought he might be able to force the door open. Lorelei, on the other hand stood stiff, still and rigid, nearly shaking.

But instead, she let out an angry, piercing scream so loud, it could have shattered glass. Actually, glass did shatter. The glass panes from the three living room windows fractured with deep cracks before the shattered fragments scattered across the hardwood floors. Then a loud crack caused Nate to jump back against the walls, doing so just in time to watch the front door fly inches in front of his face, bits of plaster still clinging to the ripped hinges. Soon, several identical rips and crashes told Harry that the rest of the flats doors had been ripped down too.

Unintentional or not, things were getting entirely out of hand. Harry pointed his wand, and a wordless silencing charm quickly ended Lorelei’s shrieks. Once her voice was lost, the girl clutched at her throat and made a desperate effort to speak, but unable to utter more than a few rasping breaths of air.

Still, the entire building shook with the aftershock, coming to an end only after the light surged, flickered and the entire street was plunged into darkness.

For a moment that seemed to last longer than it actually was, the entire apartment was dead silent. Not even the sounds of whispers, movement, or breathing could be heard. Harry found himself confused. Not by the fact that he hadn’t seen either of the older children use magic until now, but by the fact that someone Lorelei’s age was still having fits of uncontrollable magic, at fourteen, possibly fifteen.

“Lumos,” Harry whispered, waving his wand across the room. Also whispering a quick “Reparo” on the windows, lifting the broken glass of the floor, he hoped against hope that the vanishing electricity would simply be attributed to a power outage and that the American Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee would not need to be called in.

Now all they had to do was attempt to handle the inward situation themselves. Rae peaked out from behind the counter, and soon popped right back behind it as soon as they made eye contact. Brief flashes of movement lurked throughout the flat, taking turns racing between pieces of furniture, but never staying still long enough to be seen.

“911 emergency,” Harry heard a soft, but low voice coming from off to the side. “Please state the nature of your problem.”

While Harry had been distracted, Rae had found a phone hidden somewhere, and was now calling the Muggle police for help, as though they were actually equipped to handle the situation.

“Hello,” she whispered into the phone. “Magic Police are attacking my house.”

“No, no! Not Magic Police!” Nate leapt out from behind the couch and snatched the phone out of Rae’s hand, trying to stop the phone operator from hanging up. “We just found burglars in the house, and they know we’re calling for help right now, so can you please send a car or a SWAT team or somebody!”

Now Harry was simply getting fed up. He had been indulging them as of this moment, because he thought this matter was one that could be solved with a relatively little amount of effort, but now things were simply getting ridiculous.

“That’s it!” Harry shouted, stomping towards Nate with his hand out. “You give that to me right now!”

Instead, demonstrating a complete in ability to learn cause and effect, Nate once again ran for the ripped opening in the wall where the front door had once stood. A Leg Locker Curse, though, quickly put an end to that and sent Nate falling, rather painfully, to the hardwood floor. The phone, however, only landed about a foot from his face, still leaving him with the ability to shout into the receiver with his arms bound at his sides.

“Armed?” Nate repeated what the phone operator asked him, looking up and noting the retrieved wands. “Oh, yeah; they’re armed!”

Crawling between Harry’s legs and grabbing the phone before he could reach of it, Rae snatched and quickly scooted back on her knees.

The cell phone was precious inches away from Rae’s ear when an electronic voice chimed, “Incoming phone call. Would you like to select Call Waiting?”

“Uh, hold on,” Rae told the 911 operator, pressing a button that ended the call and brought the panic sounding mumbles of this new stranger.

“Hello,” Rae spoke to the new stranger, looking as though she were confused. “You tell me first.”

This time, the mumbling voice spoke louder and very quickly. “Look, little girl; either Ron Weasley is there or he isn’t. Just let me know, and let me know RIGHT NOW!”

It was Hermione. This recognition seemed to dawn with Ron first, who quickly raced across the floor and snatched the phone out of Rae’s hand, but not before Rae could playfully reach for the speaker button so everyone would be able to hear what should have been a private conversation.

“Hermione? What’s going on?” Ron gasped, becoming suddenly oblivious the conflict that had just bee accruing around him. “How did you know where I was? How did you think to use the tele-ma-phono?”

Lorelei snorted and raised an eyebrow, and Nate began rolling and thrashing around on the floor in an effort to break the Leg Locking Curse.

“I’ll tell you later.” Hermione’s voice rang clearly over the receiver.

“Hermione,” Ron said, eyes flashing over the scene. “This really isn’t a good time.”

“I wanted to tell you in person, but,” Hermione spoke over the phone, “I can’t put it off anymore. It’s not healthy.”

“Um,” Nate wriggled on the floor, as though trying to wave in an effort to gain the attention of the two Aurors. “Remember us?”

However, while Harry noticed this, Ron didn’t seem to defer at all from his squabble with his wife.

“Hermione,” Ron began again, “I know this has never an official rule, but I can’t have you tracking me down and calling me on people’s tele-ma-phonos when I’m on a case-”

“I’m pregnant!”

Ron’s mouth fell open in shock, and Harry stood motionless off to the side. Rae began to clap and smile at what she thought was good news, but slowed and finally stopped when she noticing the conflicting reactions around the room.

“Ron,” Hermione began to panic when she did not hear a response. “Ron, you’re speechless, right? Ron?”

Finally, in a dramatic reaction normally only reserved for over-the-top movies, Ron fell to the floor and did not get up, his eyes shut and a gentle groan escaping from his mouth.

“RON,” Hermione screamed into the phone, “RON, SAY SOMETHING!”

Lorelei walked over to Ron and picked up the phone, holding it up to her ear before remembering that the Silencing Charm was still in effect. Carefully, Harry took the phone from her before she could remember it was Harry that had taken her voice in the first place.

“Um…hello, Hermione; it’s Harry,” he spoke into the phone. “Ron’s going to have to call you back, alright?”

With Hermione still yelling, Harry handed the phone back to Lorelei, who was standing right next to him with her hand out. Stiffly, she snapped the phone shut and pointed to her throat and then to her friend wriggling on the floor. Warily, Harry lifted the effects of the respective charms and breathed a sigh of relief when neither of them ran. Lorelei pulled a still-struggling Nate to his feet, and then tapped her bare foot against Ron’s shoulder.

Nothing. Maybe things had just become too interesting for either of them to leave now.

“I’m…gonna go clean the kitchen,” Lorelei said as she passed the phone off to Nate.

“And,” Nate though as he watched his friend walk away and turned back to Harry, “I’m gonna go reattach all the doors.”

And with Ron sprawled out on the floor, not moving, Harry was left alone with little Rae, staring at the phone as though it were some new toy.

“I’m hungry,” Rae muttered sweetly and smiled up at Harry, as though oblivious to the scene that had just played out.

Chapter 6
Dewey, Chetham, and Howe


Nate raced for the front door. Throwing himself around the corner of the hallway, he leapt at the entrance to stop what he could predict was about to happen. Don’t knock! Don’t knock! Don’t knock! he thought to himself in a panic.

But it was too late. It only took two pounds on the door for it to come crashing back down to the entryway floor, just in time for Nate to see it. The Chinese delivery man stared down at the floor, confused, and then looked up at Nate as though Nate would give him some clue as to what had just happened. Nate simply shrugged; it had been shoddy workmanship, sure, but there was only so much a person could do when their only supplies were duct tape and chewing gum.

Just pretend nothing is going on. If you say nothing strange is going on, then nothing is. This was the single useful piece of information he could ever remember his older brother giving him. It was something he had also had plenty of opportunity to put into practice in his life. The Department of Magic wouldn’t normally get involved unless there was a huge disaster.

“How much?” Nate asked, stepping carefully onto the door so he could get to the opening in the wall where the delivery man stood waiting.

“Um,” the man stammered unable to take his eyes off that fallen door, looking further into the apartment to see if he could find any more damage to the Macalister home. “Fifteen ninety-six.”

While the delivery man looked in over his head, Nate dug into the pockets of his baggy jeans for crumpled bills. Under the critical gaze, Nate tried his hardest to keep up the façade of normalcy he had answered the door with. Though, he had to admit to himself that this was not the easiest thing to do, especially with all that had happened in the apartment in the past night and everything that had led up to it.

“Here you go,” Nate said, shoving the dollar bills into the delivery man’s hand and snatching the food containers away. “Keep the rest.”

“This is only ten�””

But the delivery man never got a chance to finish his complaint, as Nate was already racing across the freshly swept floors and back to the scene of the action. In the back of his mind, Nate wondered why the delivery man did not follow him into the apartment to get the rest of his money, but then he remembered that what just happened to this man must have been the start of ever horror movie ever made. Nate was sure that this man believed as soon as he followed Nate through the doorway, he would fall through a trapdoor into a coal shaft and be torn to pieces by burning charcoal midgets.

“Okay,” Nate gasped as he jumped over the armrest of the couch and onto the cushions. “What’d I miss?” Nate then suddenly realized he had landed on a sharp corner of the TV remote, but he was too enthralled in what was happening in front of him to do anything about it.

“Did you make sure he gave us extra dumplings?” Lorelei asked, taking on of the mooshus from him. She weighed two of them in her hands and then handed the smaller to Rae, who was leaning against her.

“Yeah, yeah, now what happened?”

“Well,” Lorelei began as she snapped her chopsticks apart and took her first bite of lo mein, “the guy just woke up from the coma, and his best friend reminded him of everything that happened, and now he’s practically crying!”

“What!” Nate exclaimed, mouth half full of crab Rangoon. “I was only gone for a minute!”

On the television, the ancient, rather dull cartoons that signaled the beginning of a new day just as much as the rising sun did were playing in an attempt to occupy Rae, but even she could not be distracted from the scene playing just off to the side.

“This can’t be happening,” gasped the redheaded man, Ron. “What was the universe thinking, putting me in charge of another human life?”

“Calm down, Ron,” Harry, the Auror with round glasses, tried to reassure his best friend. “Look, it’s not half as bad as you’re making it out to be. I mean, you’ve been very involved in Teddy’s life, and you’re great with James.”

“Yeah, that’s because at the end of the day, I can give Teddy and James back!”

Nate and Lorelei had been watching this ‘entertainment’ for several hours now. Nate had no idea what they were talking about half the time. It was almost like watching Mexican soap operas even when you didn’t speak any Spanish.

Despite the fact he had been more or less ignored this whole time, Nate had learned quite a bit about the people who had broken into his best friend’s apartment. So far, he had gathered that the redhead having a nervous breakdown on the living room floor was Ron Weasley. He was married to some chick named Hermione (or not, which might be why he was acting the way he did).

The dark-haired one with glasses was Harry Potter. He had a wife named Ginny, who was either Ron’s sister or cousin, or possibly both, giving Nate a very creepy hillbilly feeling. Harry already had a kid name James, and apparently there was another kid named Teddy that he had his wife fed several times a week for some reason.

Anyway, right after this Ron guy had passed out, the other one, Harry, seemed to have completely forgotten the three other children there. Had this been any other type of home invasion, Nate and Lorelei probably would have had the good sense to grab Rae, bolt out the door, and not stop running until they reached Niagara Falls. But all this drama was just too juicy to not grab a front row seat. Besides, British people were funny when they swore. And now that Ron was finally contributing, it was all the more entertaining.

So much better than early morning cartoons!

Rae, who had been watching the scene in a distracted sort of manner up until now, pushed herself up off the sofa cushions, the plastic wrap from her fortune cookie crinkling as she tore it apart. Poking Ron in the shoulder, she was able to stop the pathetic hysteric long enough to get her message across.

“You can have my cookie.” she said, holding up her open palm, in her childish attempt to cheer him up.

“Thanks,” he answered, breaking the treat in half and reading the message inside. “Bright new beginnings bringing both joys and sorrows await you. OH, MERLIN!”

Ron threw his arms around the little girl and Rae stumbled violently as she struggled to keep her balance against the hysterical man in her living room. Nate’s eyes widened in the same sort of shocked expression one would see on faces in a movie theater and Lorelei jumped up to the back of the sofa and sat perched there like a cat. Rae glanced back at the two older children, confused, silently begging for some silent clue of what to do. But Nate had never had to encounter anything like this in fourteen years of life, and he doubted there was anything remotely useful he could have told his friend’s sister.

But Lorelei did not seem to enjoy the idea of contemplating any situation, and chucked a crinkled magazine at Ron’s forehead. The corner of it cracked sharply, and Ron yelped. “What is the matter with you?”

“You tell me. You’re both still in my house, and neither of you have been shot,” Lorelei snapped, earning a frightened, wide-eyed look from both of the men.

“You would have shot us?”

“Legally, she could have, and gotten off scot-free,” Nate answered in a tone that might have been better suited in a more casual conversation. “And Lore’s a sociopath. If anyone could shoot a guy without needing to think about it, she could.”

Lorelei offered a stiff smile and a forced-sounding giggle. “Oh, you’re just saying that.” She spoke almost as though Nate had paid her a compliment. Ron’s eyes grew even wider, his face paling, creating a stark contrast with the freckles on his face. Most likely, the fear Lorelei had instilled in the man had been solely for her own amusement.

“Mr. Rivers.” Harry stood his feet, the vast height difference towering over him. Harry did not seem as easily shaken by Lorelei’s little mind games. “If you would not mind.”

“‘Kay.” Nate reclined back against the sofa. “Ron, Harry, let’s do this.”

“Mr. Weasley,” Harry corrected him before pointing to himself, “and Mr. Potter.”

“Whatevers,” Lorelei groaned as she leaned back against the wall.

The newly deemed Mr. Potter looked up at Lorelei as though he had just realize she was there.

“Miss Macalister,” the Auror, Harry, directed at her, “if you wouldn’t mind…”

Lorelei looked pointedly at the British Auror, chopsticks pressed against her lips, waiting for him to spell out what he wanted in specifics.

“We have some rather delicate topics to cover with Mr. Rivers, so if you would not mind leaving us alone to discuss them…”

“It’s my house.” Lorelei answered sternly, glaring up at him, appearing as far from intimidated as a person could possibly be. If the nuns at her school couldn’t get her to play well with others, these two strangers certainly didn’t have a chance.

“Lore, please,” Nate pleaded his friend as he looked up to meet her. “With these guys, it’s always just easier to let them have their way.

Lorelei cast him with a critical gaze before finally releasing a sigh of resignation as she slide down from her perch.

“Rae, you know what we haven’t done in ages?” Lorelei said, yanking her sister away from Mr. Weasley. “Go to six A.M. mass.”

“We’ve never done that.” Rae answered, rubbing her eyes and stifling a yawn.

“All the more reason to start.” Lorelei herded her sister into the hallway. “After all that’s happened tonight, we have a lot to ask forgiveness for. C’mon, go get dressed.”

To be honest, Nate was surprised that Lorelei had gone along with it as easily as she had. He hadn’t been kidding when he said his she could have shot someone. In the third grade, she once tackled the class bully to the pavement and rubbed his face into a pile of dog crap because he put a gum wrapper in her hair. In a way, it was kind of disappointing that nothing entertaining happened. He bet that other sociopaths didn’t get people breaking into their homes.

For a long time, they waited for the sisters to emerge from their room and leave through the front (and only) door. Nate could only imagine that she and Rae were hauled up in one of their rooms with their ears pressed against the door. Not that the two Aurors looking down at him had to know that.

“Mr. Rivers,” Mr. Potter got his attention once he finally decided that the girls had been given enough time, “do you have anything you would like to tell us?”

Nate ground his teeth as he turned his head as slowly as possible, looking up to meet the increasingly annoyed looking officer. Thank God the other one, Mr. Weasley, was still pretty shaken; Mr. Potter was doing well playing the role of interrogator all on his own.

“Like?” Nate asked, soon being reminded very quickly that members of the law enforcement community did not appreciate a sense of humor. “Okay, okay, relax.”

---

---

Dear, Nathaniel Rivers,

We are pleased to inform you that you have earned a spot at the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic. We are aware that you, along with many other American students, now fall under the new Education Compensation Act, and we are more than happy to open our doors to as many of those who are willing.

Seeing as the letter is quite late in arrival, we understand you may desire some time to consider your decision. If you have already sent a conformation letter to an alternative school, please state so in your letter.

Conversely, it will be proper to send any letters to any other schools informing them that they will not be seeing you in the coming semester, should you instead prefer to attend Skat-Hatokha.

Mark Dewey, Patrick Chetham, and Joseph Howe


In school, Nate had prided himself on never reading anything anymore than he had to. This one letter, however, must have been read over more than a dozen times, and Nate still wasn’t completely sure he understood what the message was trying to convey

“No way mom and dad are letting me keep this,” said Nate, glancing back at the ruffled little bird. And this is what I worry about first? he soon thought to himself afterwards.

“Don’t look at me,” Lorelei told him. “I couldn’t even to keep sea monkeys alive for more than a week.”

The scruffy little bird swanked and scratched at the dresser while Nate went back to his seat at the desk. He sat down heavily and look around from the scratches he had doodled onto the oak, including his an Lorelei’s initials, the cups of pens and the stack of papers, almost dusty from lack of use, to the old backpack he had used all through middle school, scuffed, torn, and covered in scribbles.

“Well,” Lorelei asked expectantly, “what does it say?”

But Lorelei never got a verbal answer. Nate found himself in a clouded fog of thought. Large, complicated words never really sat well with him. Even in his own brain, thoughts rarely appeared as anything that could remotely resemble anything concrete. Usually his ideas and all other things that began inside his head could only be described as nonsense action-words one would normally only encounter in bad comic books.

Like right now.

All of a sudden, Nate felt a little spark inside his head; the same little spark he got whenever he got a good idea for an invention. It was all placed directly in front of him, just waiting for him to piece it all together. It would have been a crime not to act on the impulses spinning in his head this time.

Before Nate could completely get a grasp on what he was doing,one of his barely used notebooks was thrown open in front of him and he was scribbling across the clean lines of paper.


Dear Minerva McGonigal,
While I apprsiate the guesture of inviting me to attend your�”


“Say, Lore,” Nate called over his shoulder. “What’s a big word for fancy, caviar-snorting boarding school?”

“Um…prestigious.”


�”presstigus school of wizardry, I regret to inform you that I will not be joining your student body this fall. In being aware of the new education guidelines that the Minestry of Magic is imposeing, I here by offer my letter of intent to attend�”


Eventually, Lorelei was beginning to realize that this was clearly not a letter being written in resignation. Her curiosity perked, she slid off the side of the bed and sauntered her way to Nate’s side.

“Nate, what exactly do you think you’re doing?” asked Lorelei, poking her head over his shoulder.


�”the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic.


“Oh, I KNOW you are not serious!” Lorelei exclaimed, taking a few steps back, as though whatever Nate was thinking was contagious.

“Read the letters, Lore,” Nate explained, spinning his chair around, “The letter said I have to attend a school. They never said I have to attend this Hogwarts place. As long as they have it down that I'm going somewhere, they’ll leave us alone!”

Us? Wasn’t it just a little while ago that Nate had criticized his friend for her use of ‘we’ when she spoke of the situation? Now he himself was doing it.

“But Nate, this place isn’t even real! It’s fraud,” Lorelei insisted, glancing back down at Nate’s summer reading. “And I’m pretty sure just by being in the room with you, I’m an accessory.”

But Nate didn’t listen, still overcome with what he thought was the brilliance of his own plan.


Nathaniel Jacob Rivers


“This is without a doubt the most half-baked idea you’ve ever had,” Lorelei told him, ripping the written note out of the notebook and crumpling it in her fist. “And it would be just plain irresponsible to stand by and allow you to go through with this!”
“So, you’re not going to let me do it?” asked Nate, confused at why his friend couldn’t see what he saw.

“No, I just want it on the record.” she replied, turning the notebook toward her.

At first, Nate was unsure of what his best friend was planning to do. But slowly, he watched as Lorelei, in her neat script, wrote out a new, much better letter to be delivered to these strangers. Nate’s face took on a broad smile as he leaned back in his chair and watched her write.


Dear Minerva McGonagall,

I received your letter of invitation, and first of all, I would like to thank you for inviting me to your prestigious school. I am honored that despite my somewhat questionable record�”


“Hey!” Nate interrupted, irked by the insult.

“Yes?” Lorelei asked, as though she half-heartedly expected some kind of defense.

“I got nothin’,” he confessed after a moment’s thought. “Continue.”


�”that you would consider me as a student.

However, I regret to inform you that I will not be joining you this fall. I am however, aware of the new standards imposed by both in the System and the Ministry of Magic in regards to students in my particular situation. That is why I am hereby sending my letter of intent to attend the�”


Left alone, at least in the metaphorical sense, Nate had no choice but to think about the plan. Of course, the more mechanical ideas had yet to come to him, such as how he would pull off the finer details of explaining this new school to the people in his life and what he would do if it all fell through. But at the moment, he was simply flying too high in his own mind to dwell on such depressing thoughts.

Nate was distracted from this little escapade once again by the noisy squawk and scratches coming from his dresser. The scruffy spotted owl scratched its talons across the dresser, tilting its head as though staring critically at the goings-on in the room.

"You better not squeal on us," he sharply instructed the screech owl. "Or...squawk, or...whatever it is you do!"

The bird ignored the threat, turning its head down to clean its feathers.


�”Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic. Please refer any further questions on the subject of my future education to the board of directors: Mark Dewey, Patrick Cheatham, and Joseph Howe.


Sighing, Lorelei reached back towards Nate, the pen still in her hand. “Sign, please.”

Snatching the pen from her fingers, Nate bent over the desk and carefully wrote his bolding printed signature below Lorelei’s script.

“So…we just give it to her?” wondered Lorelei aloud, glancing back towards the window and to the tawny colored owl,

“I guess.” answered Nate, taking the letter and signing his name once again.

Nate made his way towards the owl, slowly, folding the letter into thirds and hoping the owl knew where it was going. He held the letter an inch in front of its beak, and jumped back when the bird snapped at him for the letter.

“Um…go get ‘em, buddy!” Nate ordered, gesturing largely with his arms.

The owl turned, and in a slightly clumsy and bulky way, flew through the window and out over the New York skyline. Nate ran after it, and threw himself through the open window so fast, Lorelei was sure he was going to fall out.

“Oh, my God,” Nate exclaimed as he hung out his window. “The frickin’ owl is actually delivering the letter!”

This shouldn’t have really been a shock to Nate. When he was younger, he would watch his older brother, Carter, get mail delivered by owl all the time. Owls still came to the house from time to time, but Nate couldn’t recall when he had last used the owl post himself.

As Nate watch the little owl slowly become smaller and smaller, Lorelei stood back against the opposite wall and sighed, her mouth twisting into not quite a smile while at the same time, gritting her teeth.

“This is either going to end really bad, or really, really bad.”

---

---

As soon as he was sure he had told everything there was to tell, Nate took a deep breath and reclined back against the couch. The longer he told the story, the more ridiculous it began to sound, even to him. And he had actually been there when it had all happened.

“Mr. Rivers,” Mr. Potter said, rubbing the space between his eyes, the same way he had seen his parents do whenever they had asked him for an explanation on any subject. “That is…quite a story.”

Nate shrugged. He knew it was the truth. He could find a way to make a blender shoot ninja stars, but over the years, he had learned that he could not make up a decent lie to save his soul. He had a permanent record full of outlandish excuses to attest to that.

“You know that given your…record, you could get into a lot of trouble for lying to law enforcement.” Ron�”Mr. Weasley�”finally joined in on the interrogation. Not nearly as intimidating as Mr. Potter had been moments before, but still making his presence known in his own way.

“The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God, or my ass gets packed off to juvie.”

“Have you heard back from this Board of Directors yet?” Mr. Potter asked him.

Nate shook his head. It had already been more than two weeks since he sent that letter. It already felt like such a long time ago.

“Do you know where this Skat-Hatokha school is?” he pressed further.

Again, Nate did not have an answer. He could already tell things were starting to look bad on his part. This story seemed so much more believable when it was actually happening.

“How do you plan on getting there?” Mr. Potter was refusing to leave no stone unturned.

“I dunno,” Nate replied, shrugging his shoulders and trying to look calm and collected. “I guess when it gets closer to the school year, they’ll tell me.”

“Along with sending you your list of books and school supplies?”

“If that’s what schools do.” Nate didn’t really know how this thing worked. He had been two years old when his brother started at Hardscabble Creek, and eight when the last letter came. But by the time Nate had actually been old enough to understand what those letters were all about, he and Carter barely had anything to say to one another.

“Even though they have yet to contact you about you accepting your place in their school?”

Alright, things had just gone from looking kinda bad to being really bad.

“Mr. Rivers, it has been a very long week. And to be honest, I have felt from the beginning that this investigation has been a waste of time. I would not even be here if it weren’t for the higher-ups in the Ministry who could see a conspiracy in a lemonade stand.”

Or maybe not so bad.

“I don’t think there is anything criminal occurring in this situation,” Mr. Potter confessed lightly, then taking on his more serious tone once again. “Is there anything criminal you would like to confess to now? If you lie to me again, I promise that I will do everything possible to make sure whatever justice system takes you will not go easy on you.”

“I didn’t break any laws,” Nate answered as calmly as he possibly could.

“Are you certain?” Mr. Weasley finally took another turn to speak.

“Scout’s honor.” Nate was never a scout either.

“Well then, I believe that is all,” Mr. Potter said as he brushed his Muggle clothes. “Do you have anything else you want to ask?”

“Yeah,” Nate answered as he pointed to the fallen front door in the entryway. “The duct tape and the gum really isn’t going to cut it.”

Mr. Potter pulled his wand from his sleeve, and with a wordless charm, the front door flew back up to rest securely along the hinges. The duct tape and chewed gum fell uselessly to the floor.

“We cool?” Nate asked.

“Um, certainly,” Mr. Weasley answered, though sounding unsure if he had answered the sentence correctly. “Although don’t be surprised if we contact you later with some follow-up questions.

“But between you and me,” Mr. Potter confessed in a hushed tone, “the chances of that happening are slim to none.”

“Sweetness!” Nate breathed, feeling much more relieved. “So…you’re leaving now?”

Without answering, a loud crack filled the room, and the two Aurors disappeared instantly from his vision, almost as though they were as anxious to leave the apartment as Nate was to see them leave.

For the first time in his life. Nate had no idea how to feel. Nothing about this situation had played out the way any person would believe a police investigation was supposed to go. Nate had been hunted down like a dog, and then the men had simply just taken his word for everything he said and left him like a couple of twelve-year-olds racing out of school at the last bell.

All that panic, all that worry, and…nothing happened. He still wasn’t getting packed off to the U.K., and for another thing, he was not being arrested, which made any day a good day. On the other hand, he had also gotten a bloody nose, nearly been run over by New York traffic, been in a forced state of paranoid alertness for eighty-six hours straight, and drugged with who knows what at the hands of a sociopath because of all of this. He didn’t know whether to feel relieved or pissed off.

Then, the front door opened, creaking, but it didn’t fall down like it had been doing all night. The Aurors really had fixed the door a lot better than he had managed to. He really had to get his hands on a wand at the very least.

“They gone?” Lorelei asked, poking her head through the cracked doorway. Below her, the blond crown of Rae’s head poked through the crack as well.

Nate nodded, and Lorelei and Rae entered their apartment. They had changed out of their pajamas into the expensive-looking designer celebrity’s kids’ clothes that only got taken out for church and when someone died. The two of them must have gone out through the fire escape. Lorelei would leave her home that way even when she didn’t have to.

“Is Delia home yet?” Lorelei asked, kicking her shoes into the kitchen.

Nate shook his head no. Up until then, the thought of where Ms. Macalister was had not even entered his mind. Lorelei made an observant hum as she took a seat beside him on the couch, a sound that seemed completely devoid of worry or concern over where her mother might be.

“Rae, go back to bed,” Lorelei ordered her sister in a soft tone as she took a seat beside Nate on the sofa. “It’s been a long night.”

In an odd display for a five-year-old child, Rae did not whine or complain. She simply nodded and made a loud yawn as she stumbled her way down the hall.

“Delia said she’d be home before five,” Lorelei said, though it seemed to be more to herself than to her friend beside her. “Although, with everything that happened last night, her flakiness is probably a good thing.”

“You look nice,” Nate complimented his friend’s appearance. “And you smell like church.” Incense, acidic wine, and fig perfume transferred from old ladies.

“Thanks.” Lorelei offered Nate a soft, yet exhausted-looking smile. “Do you want coffee?”

Nate nodded, knowing Lorelei would still brew whether he wanted any or not. Truth be told, he still could not stand the taste of coffee. All the adults in his life told him it was an acquired taste, and he could now stand to drink about three swallows of the brew before he felt like gagging. Lorelei, however, could drink coffee by the gallon. He wondered how long it had taken her to get used to it.

The morning news had started and Nate flipped to his favorite station: the one that had really liberal standards about what the weather girl was allowed to wear on the air. Soon enough, the apartment was thick with the smell of roasted coffee beans and the steam from the hot water had begun to create a light condensation over the entire kitchen.

Lorelei took a seat beside him and set her cup down on the coffee table to wipe a damp strand of hair out of her eyes.

Suddenly, the newly-fixed front door opened once again. The sound brought a reaction of panic to Nate’s body, but he relaxed once he saw it was a woman this time. Strands of brown hair flew all around her face in messy curls and she wore a short black dress that most women could only wish that they could still wear in public. She was wobbly on her feet, but in no way appeared drunk.

“Morning, Delia,” Lorelei greeted her mother without looking up.

Delia Macalister looked over to her daughter on the sofa with an almost puzzled look on her face, as though even at this point in her life, she still found it surprising that she even had children.

“Lorelei, you’re up early,” Ms. Macalister remarked, showing no annoyance that most parents would have felt towards their child using their first name. She rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, smearing her black makeup from cheek to cheek like streaks of coal.

“Rae and I went to mass. Father Powell asked us when the three of us are all going to show up together.”

“When Father Powell is a single, working mother, then he can lecture me about my church attendance,” Ms. Macalister sniped as she glanced around the kitchen, pulling her heels off her feet. “Is there any coffee still?”

Lorelei pointed to the coffee maker, still having yet to make actual eye contact.

“Oh, Nate! It’s so nice to see you! Have you been here all night?”

“No, Ms. Macalister. I just came for breakfast,” he answered, even though he had actually shown up at the Macalister apartment six hours before breakfast had even been a thought.

Ms. Macalister had always posed several mysteries to Nate. She and his own mother had always been friendly with one another, but the age difference between the two women seemed to stop them from becoming truly friends. This, though, was not the sole reason why his best friend’s mother always seemed an arm’s length away from him. For one thing, in all the times he had come over to visit Lorelei, it would be a rare occasion for Ms. Macalister to be there as well. And this did not change after her divorce from her husband.

In many ways, Delia Macalister seemed more to Lorelei like a roommate than a mother. In fact, it was Lorelei herself that first made this observation to Nate.

“I think I’m going to take my coffee to my room and read the paper. Then I really should try and get some sleep. You girls and Nate don’t need a ride anywhere today, do you?”

Lorelei shook her head.

“School forms I need to sign?” she asked.

“It’s summer.” Lorelei snapped cynically.

“Money for groceries?”

“I went shopping last night.”

“Anything I might have forgotten?”

Lorelei took a moments to think. Ordinary teenagers might have used such an opportune question to garner extra allowance or permission to stay out late. Lorelei Macalister did not think like an ordinary teenager.

“Rae says her shoes are pinching her. I’m gonna need some money so I can take her to buy new ones.”

Ms. Macalister blew vapors of steam from the surface of her coffee and took a sip herself. “Are you going today?

“No.”

“Well, I’ll remember to leave you some money before I go out tonight.”

“I’ll leave you a note,” Lorelei told her mother.

“Has your father’s check come yet?” her mother asked expectantly, almost resembling a child asking how many days until their birthday.

“Nope.”

“Well, it will probably be here in the next few days.”

“Whatevers.” Lorelei leaned back against the sofa cushions, finishing off the last of her own coffee.

“I’ll see you later, Lorelei,” Ms. Macalister called to her daughter as she made her way down the hallway. “You and Nate have a nice morning.”

“Yup,” Lorelei answered.

From across the apartment, a door slammed loudly, soon followed by the previous silence the Macalister household had been held in.

“She didn’t notice anything was wrong,” Nate commented once Ms. Macalister had left with her coffee. “At least those British guys did a good job cleaning up.”

“Yes, that is officially the new Macalister family standard considering break-ins,” Lorelei replied. “They’re welcome as long as they clean up after themselves once their done stealing everything we own.”

Nate didn’t have an answer to that, so he just drank his coffee and made a face. It tasted like boiled erasers. “But it did sound like they believe this school exists too. That means they’re not going to be coming back at least.

“They won’t be breaking into your house anymore,” he added, thinking that would somehow make Lorelei able to see the positive.

“Too bad,” Lorelei breathed, taking a quiet sip of her coffee. “It was probably the closest thing Rae has had to parental supervision since…ever.”

“Oh, God!” Nate suddenly realized, the word ‘parental’ triggering a panic. “I haven’t been home all this time! I thought those dudes might come looking for me there, and I didn’t even call my parents! They’ve probably called the police, and there’s an Amber Alert, and the borders are closed, and there’s�””

“Chill,” Lorelei stopped him before he could have a fourteen-year-old heart attack. “Your parents called my house the first night you were gone. I told them Rae and I had a visitation week with Walter in Boston and you were coming with us. It’s not like Delia will be hanging around to tell them any different.”

Upon hearing this news, Nate felt his heart rate slow back into a more comfortable pace.

“Thanks, Lore,” Nate said, grateful at first, but then eyeing his friend suspiciously. “What’s all this going to cost me?”

“You’re still not going to this Skat-place, right?

“Nah,” Nate answered, gagging on his last swallow of coffee, his taste buds informing him that he had had enough for one day.

“Good.” Lorelei took a long, relaxed sip of her own drink and reclined against the back of the sofa. Her cup was empty now, so Nate gave her his to finish.

Chapter 7
Another Letter


Harry let out a deep sigh as he walked past the receptionist’s desk. “I’m going home.”

“Have a good weekend, Mr. Potter.”

Ron had left hours ago, to take Hermione to an appointment with her Healer. Truthfully, Harry was quite relieved about that. Ron had been distracted ever since he had left the United States�”and when Hermione informed him he was going to be a father�”and it was starting to affect his work. Harry had already spent the last two hours rewriting a report in which Ron had recently named a convicted Irish Dark wizard as ‘that bloody wanker, Halter, who wants seventy Galleons to decorate a nursery!’ From what Harry could tell, Ron had not quite made his peace with his impending future.

Speaking of which…

Harry was about to step out the door when a thought suddenly came to his mind. It was a question; the same one he had been asking for the past couple of weeks. So far, nothing had come of it, but Harry wasn’t sure how much longer this run of luck would last.

“Have any messages come in?”

“Just the ones I already put on your desk at lunch. Nothing new since then.”

“How about anything international?”

“No,” she told him. “Nothing today, at least. Why? Are you expecting something?”

“No,” Harry replied, his overall tone becoming much more relaxed. “Not at all.”

As Harry made his way out of the office for the weekend, he could not help but saunter a bit as he walked. It had been more than two weeks since he and Ron had been to New York City, and he had not heard a word from Nate Rivers or anyone else from the United States Department of Magic. Life had been good as of late.

Had this been a more typical investigation in any sense, Harry most certainly would have made several follow-up visits, tried harder to get in touch with someone from this school, and even begun interviewing dozens of people in Nate’s life to get a better idea of what sort of person the boy really was. But aside from the great distance and Harry’s own dislike of being manipulated by anyone in authority, there was nothing in Harry’s instincts that told him anything was really wrong. He had serious doubts that criminal children were being recruited for some purpose that the office of Aurors needed to concern themselves with. Besides, despite his arguing record, Nate Rivers hardly seemed like he was a danger to anyone except possibly himself.

Something else Harry had noticed was that Gawain Robards, the Head of the Auror Office, seemed to be completely satisfied with Harry’s reports. He did not pester Harry or Ron with requests for follow-up investigations, and seemed not to even want to hear about this Skat-Hatokha school anymore than Harry wanted to investigate it. The matter seemed, at last, put to bed.

---

---

“C’mon, Nate!” Alaia ran ahead of him into the house.

Nate smiled and nodded along with the conversation, but he was having difficulty concentrating on the exact words being said. Maybe he really did have ADD, but more likely he was still trying to wrap his head around the idea that Alaia Grace was actually on a date with him, and she had been all afternoon.

This particular date had not been especially romantic (not that Nate really had a lot to compare it to). They had gone to the park, bought lunch from a cart with questionable hygiene standards, and talked about how drastically their lives would change once they finally got to high school. Honestly, Lorelei, or even Graham, could have replaced Alaia and the day would have still held the same levels of intimacy. But after more than a year of waiting for this day to come, Nate was hardly going to complain.

Especially since he was able to get her into his house, and neither of his parents were home. Two teenagers, all by themselves in a big house; God bless poor parental supervision!

Granted, Nate’s parents probably didn’t know that their son would be bringing a girl over this afternoon. Although, with all the times Lorelei had been over, maybe his parents just didn’t think anything would ever happen with him and a girl alone. What ever the reason, Nate resolved not to question that matter any further. He most certainly wasn’t going to tempt fate on this little scenario.

“So what do you want to now?” Alaia asked Nate as he fumbled with the lock and his keys.

Nate’s facial expression twitched a bit as he tried to come up with an idea. “Well…um, there’s food, my mom just went shopping so there’s a lot to eat. There are games and stuff downstairs, or we could just�””

Just above their heads, Nate and Alaia both heard the sound of something breaking, something that sounded potentially expensive. And the fact that they were the only people in the house made it all the more unnerving.

“I…” Nate voice trailed mainly because he didn’t want to leave the blonde beauty beside him. “…should probably go see what that was.”

Noting a nervous expression take over Alaia’s face, Nate worked quickly to reconfigure his words. “I just got a new pet bird from my Uncle Tony!” he blurted out before he could completely understand his own words. “A big, BIG bird. It gets out of its cage a lot and breaks things. And it hates strangers. If you come up with me, it will only make it worse.”

It was a horrible explanation, even Nate could tell that, but still, it was one that Alaia Grace accepted. “Alright,” she responded, taking her perch on one of the couches. “Please be careful.”

In truth, Nate had no idea what was making this noise in his house. But as he made his way up the townhouse staircase, he told himself that he didn’t care what it was waiting for him. It could be burglars, wild animals, and six-foot gator mutants from the sewer; but it would take a great deal more than that to keep him from getting as far as he could with Alaia Grace. Alaia Grace, Alaia Grace, Alaia Grace… he whispered to himself as he reached for his bedroom doorknob, from behind where the racket was coming from.

“Hi!” came a voice that sounded more furious than happy to see him.

It was Lorelei, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, looking almost like a wife waiting for her cheating husband to come home. The analogy sent a nasty prickle across Nate’s skin as soon as it came to his mind.

I might have been better off with the six-foot gator mutants, Nate thought to himself.

But after he shook his head clear, he was able to start wondering how exactly Lorelei got in his house. This was New York City. No one left their doors unlocked. And it wasn’t as though Lorelei was a proper witch with a wand who simply could have charmed her way in. Although, if she had managed to get here before his parents had left for work, they would have thought nothing of allowing her inside to wait for Nate. She spent just as much time at his home as she did at her own.

But it was disturbing that Lorelei would stay alone in his house for so long just so she could have the opportunity to chew him out.

“Well?” Lorelei pressed, beginning to tap her foot impatiently.

“Nate,” Alaia’s voice came from the staircase. “Nate, what are you doing up there?”

“Hide!” Nate finally exclaimed, pushing his friend inside his room. “Please!”

Lorelei looked positively furious. There were so many things she could have done at this point to put a wrench into the works, but instead, she remained perfectly silent, even after Nate slammed the door right in her face, hiding her himself.

“Who was talking?” Alaia asked him, when Nate could finally see her coming up the stairs.

“No one,” Nate answered quickly. “I…um, left the TV on in my room.”

Nate prayed that Alaia didn’t want to watch television with him now that he had said this. He didn’t have a TV in his room, but he did have another girl in there who could not be entirely trusted to keep her lips sealed about what she might be doing there.

“I don’t like television very much, anyway,” Alaia told him, relaxed. “It is all the same to me.”

“Me too!” Nate agreed, not out of honesty, but out of a combination of wanting Alaia to believe they shared something in common, but more so to keep her away from the ‘other woman’.

“Well, I had a wonderful day,” Alaia said in an airy tone. “We will have to get together again.”

Nate nodded, but felt suddenly saddened when he saw Alaia moving towards the door. She was leaving already? Maybe she didn’t believe him about the pet bird and the television after all. Then again, Alaia Grace really didn’t seem to be the type who would be instantly suspicious of people. That’s what he had Lorelei for.

Oh, God! Lorelei!

Nate wished Alaia his happy good-byes, pushing her a bit out the door before slamming the door shut. Suddenly, Alaia was the one having the day ended on someone else’s terms. Nate smiled at this as he raced up the stairs and threw open his bedroom door.

“Have fun?”

Standing nose to nose, Lorelei was waiting for him to answer her, just inches away from the bedroom door.

“Still waiting!” she said, tapping her foot on top of a small pile of dirty laundry.

But Nate had other things on his mind at the moment. “Lore, how the hell did you get in my house?” If Alaia had wandered up there by herself and been the one to find Lorelei, who knew what kind of bloodshed could have spread then.

“Don’t change the subject!” Lorelei snapped at him. “Where were you all day?”

Nate was about to give her a straight forward answer, but, of course, his stupid teenage hormones got in the way of having a serious attitude towards the matter. “We were on a da-aaaaaaattte…” This sentence ended with an even longer string of Goofy-style giggles. Apparently, there would be no such thing as a civil conversation between the two friends: between Nate’s head-over-heels, better-than-drugs attitude towards love and Lorelei’s feeling on the subject of romance that came along with a thirst for blood.

“I see,” Lorelei trolled coyly. “Spent a lovely afternoon in the park with Preacher Girl Barbie. I hope you didn’t try to get under her bra. You know that they say about those girls; all plastic.”

There wasn’t even any creativity behind the insult, not in a way he could see that applied to Alaia. It was just mean; just mean, and very unlike Lorelei’s usual style of describing people she despised.

Nate had to dig deeper. “What is it you have against Alaia?”

“She�”” Lorelei stammered, not expecting such a sudden attack. “She�”she’s all wrong for you!”

“How so?” Nate asked cocking his head. This would most certainly be more difficult for Lorelei. It was clear to anyone that she disliked Alaia, but she had crossed the line into saying she would be a bad match for Nate as well. She would have to conjure up some evidence this time. But for all of Lorelei’s anger pacing and contorted expressions, she didn’t have any answers for Nate.

“There�”are,” Lorelei stammered. “I don’t know! Lots of girls out there!”

“And who would you have arranged for me then?” Nate snapped back. “You?”

Lorelei stumbled as she spun around, looking quite sickened to her stomach, as though the very thought of it made her physically ill. For a moment, Nate felt his own lunch lurch.

“No!” Lorelei spat the answer. “But there are plenty of pretty girls in the city. Pretty girls who have much more to them than just their looks: intelligence, creative spirit, basic conversational skills!”

“And just how long have you had to think about all these things?” Nate asked, “While you’ve been in my house, uninvited?”

“Well, don’t you worry about me,” Lorelei told him, tilting her head to one corner of the room. “I’ve been kept company.”

In all the heavy emotions in the room, Nate had not even noting anything else in his surroundings. Sure enough, sidestepping back and forth across his dresser, was a small spotted owl. Nate never could understand how some wizards could tell their own owls from every other owl in the world, but as soon as he saw the envelope clenched in the bird’s talons, he knew instantly whose it was.

“Hooters!” he exclaimed, as Lorelei rolled her eyes at the name her friend had chosen for the little spotty. But it was the first name he could think of for the little creature. It was the same owl that had been flying back and forth between Nate and his supposed school ever since the first letter. He wasn’t sure if it was really good form to name an owl that didn’t technically belong to you, but he had needed some word to associate with the owl when he thought of it in his own mind.

But the owl had learned to respond to the name, and even to Nate, nudging affectionately at the back of his hand.

“Why don’t you take a look at what he brought you?” Lorelei said, pointing to the letter.

“You didn’t open it and read it yourself?” Nate asked as he eased the envelope out of Hooters’ talons.

Lorelei shook her head and reclined back on the bed. “It’s a federal offence to open other people’s mail.”

Since when has the law ever stopped you from wanting to do anything? Nate thought to himself as he picked up the letter and began tearing the envelope open. Hooters, now that Nate was finally close enough, climbed up his back and took a perch on his shoulder. It was amazing. The little owl had only been to his house a handful of times, and it already acted as though he were Nate’s pet. Nate had never had a pet that was a level above goldfish, so he didn’t know if an animal bonding this quickly with a human was normal.

“Well,” Lorelei said, bring Nate back to reality, “are you going to tell me what it says, or aren’t you?”


Dear Mr. Nathaniel Rivers,

It has recently come to our attention that there may be concerns as to the location of our academy. We are sure that you understand the secrecy necessary in terms of location in a Wizarding school, but we also understand that these circumstances are not typical either.

As of today, the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic is accessible by means of the Floo Network, although keep in mind that this is not a means of arriving at the academy when the school year starts (one can imagine the back-up in Floo traffic it would create). So by all means, come to our school and take a look around for yourself.

Mark Dewey, Patrick Chetham, and Joseph Howe


“How nice of them!” Lorelei remarked, finishing the letter a split second before Nate did.

Hooters had made her (Nate had only discovered recently) way down to Nate’s jacket pocket, discovering a packet of ketchup and trying her best to work it open with her beak and talons, when Nate decided to take the invitation seriously.

“Let’s go see it!” Nate suggested suddenly. Lorelei spun abruptly at this, but Nate explained further. “What? Schools have open houses before the school year starts.”

Lorelei snorted. “But I’m pretty sure you can’t schedule them yourself.”

But Nate had already shooed Hooters off of his clothes and threw the door open. “So? I wanna go see this place for myself, and those dudes in the letter said it was okay.”

Lorelei shook her head in a condescending sort of way, but made her way to the door all the same. “Listening to you talk, you’d think you believe this place actually exists.”

Nate laughed along with his friend, but it was a more edgy sort of laughter. Maybe a small part of him really did believe. Or at least needed to.

---

After nine and a half minutes of desperate pounding, the front door of 253 West 252nd Street was opened by the exact person they had needed to open it: Graham Schuler.

Graham surveyed the new guests with a healthy dose of apprehension. Nate with his handy, travel-friendly toolkit, and Lorelei with a backpack full of who-knows-what slung over her shoulder. Whatever was about to come could not be anything good.

Nate’s explanation was delivered soon enough. “I need your fireplace.”

---

---

“Mr. Potter,” came a familiar, despised drawl, “I must confess that I did not expect to see you back in London so soon.”

Harry fought to suppress a groan as he heard the footsteps coming up behind him. He knew it had been too easy. And he had literally been three steps away from the door!

A large part of him wanted to believe that if he didn’t turn around, Lucius would just disappear. But Lucius didn’t wait for him, walking around him so he could stand face to face with Harry. He tapped his cane against the stone floor, his sneer just inches away from Harry’s own face.

“Hello, Lucius,” Harry greeted while still attempting to sidestep the older man. “And yet, here I am.”

But Lucius was not about to let Harry get away with an answer so incomplete as that. “That usually means an assignment was either a great success or an embarrassing failure,” Lucius went on. “Tell me, Mr. Potter, which was it?”

Harry couldn’t help but feel a bit insulted by Lucius’ words, even though he knew their only purpose was to push his buttons. “I do take some amount of pride in my work, Lucius,” he replied. “I would never have left an assignment half completed, as you seem to be suggesting, and I doubt anyone in my office would allow such subpar work either.”

Once again, Harry tried to make his way to the door, hoping that the conversation was over, but now that Lucius had gotten a small sniff of blood, he was all the more interested in the hunt; almost like a shark. Lucius actually seemed pleasantly surprised.

“You actually were able to find this Nathaniel Rivers?” he asked, raising one eyebrow slightly.

“Yes,” Harry answered.

“And you spoke with him?”

“Yes.”

This time, Harry was the one enjoying the manipulation, smirking slightly to himself as Lucius tapped his cane impatiently. “Well?”

Harry faked confusion. “Well, what?”

“Did anything come of it?” Lucius asked, beginning to sound slightly annoyed. “Were any of the Ministry suspicions confirmed?”

“I hardly think I should be discussing a Ministry investigation with a civilian, Lucius.”

Harry noticed that he was becoming slightly reminiscent of the man in front of him that he so despised. Still, it wasn’t enough to stop him.

Lucius reached into one of the pockets of his robes and extracted a leather money bag, heavy with what Harry assumed was all gold. “You had to be a man who was above bribery, didn’t you?” He allowed the bag to jiggle a bit with the heavy weight of its content, just in case there was even the smallest chance that he was wrong. But when Harry showed absolutely no reaction, the leather sack went back into Lucius’ pocket. “All the same, Mr. Potter, there must be something you would be able to tell me that would not cause your investigation to implode.”

“Alright,” Harry began thinking of the most random information that he possibly could. “He enjoys beef chop suey. He appears quite adapted to Muggle life, especially when it comes to skateboarding and some type of game he calls ‘Grand Theft Auto’. There’s a girl named Alaia that he is apparently quite fond of, but he’s insecure about whether or not she returns his feelings…”

Harry trailed off when he could no longer keep a straight face as he watched Lucius Malfoy’s face contort through various stages of frustration. “But those sorts of things aren’t of any interest to you, are they, Lucius?”

This time, Harry allowed himself to smirk a bit as he spoke. “Luckily, it is not my duty as an Auror to entertain you.”

Lucius’ jaw locked in a very uncomfortable-looking manner. “Is,” Lucius nearly growled, “the boy, Nathaniel Rivers, what you would consider a danger? Would you consider him a conspirator with those who have been interfering with the System’s Education Compensation Act?”

“Oh, that,” Harry remarked, as though he had had no idea up until now, “well, apparently he knows nothing. Even if he is, I’m not especially worried. If Mr. Rivers is the best that the future of Dark Magic has to offer, then the later years of my career will likely be very boring.”

“I hope you are not letting his age cloud your judgment. May I remind you, Mr. Potter, that you were hardly what could be considered naïve at that age.”

“With all due respect, Lucius, you did not meet this boy,” Harry told him. “And while I mean this in the best possible way, naïve is not the best word to describe Mr. Nate Rivers. Absent-minded, accident-prone, over-impulsive; now those would all be quite accurate. Although, they are hardly traits that go along with an insidious criminal mind.”

At least not the kind that would go very long before they were caught. And clearly, Nate had already been caught once before. Despite the fact that Nate Rivers was far from being an angel, he was hardly the type of person Harry had come to associate with evil in his life.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a wife waiting at home,” Harry said, trying once again to sidestep his way to the exit, “and if you delay me any further, I can’t promise that I can protect you from her!”

This time, when Harry tried to leave, the older man actually allowed him. And once he was out of Lucius’ sight, Harry moved as fast as he could, lest anyone else tried to delay his trek home.

---

Harry had not been entirely kidding when he had spoken to Lucius about Ginny. As he crept in through the back kitchen door, the increasingly familiar sound of the soon-to-come Terrible Twos was ringing quite clear. Normally, Ginny was not one to crumble under something as simple as a temper tantrum, but lately, as James was getting closer and closer to his second birthday, they were becoming more and more frequent. She become more and more worn by the time Harry was home from work. And as such, it was becoming an instinct for Harry to tread lightly in his first few moments home.

“Harry!”

Harry didn’t have time to react before the wind was knocked out of him by a high speed hug and a certain eight-year-old’s chin poking into his abdomen.

“Teddy!” he exclaimed, quite breathlessly. “How long have you been here?”

“It wasn’t so bad,” the boy assured him. “Hey, look what I can do!”

Despite the screams he was still hearing from the next room over, Harry turned his attention on his godson, making sure to take deep breaths to replenish his lost oxygen. No matter what time of the day or night it was, he always made a point to give Teddy his undivided attention. Andromeda said he was overcompensating, trying to give Teddy a perfect father figure. Hermione liked to offer a more psychological insight, saying Harry was seeing himself as a boy in Teddy, and was subconsciously trying to make up for his own horrible childhood through rearing his godson. Ginny…well, right now she was saying ‘Harry, take this baby now, before I do something I’ll regret!’

“Guess who I am!” Teddy said quickly, finishing off his morph: large ears, Weasley-red hair, and freckles dotted all across his face. “I’ll give you a hint. ‘Why me? I’m not a father! I’m an argument for human neutering!’”

Harry couldn’t help but snicker a bit. Apparently, Ron had been over sometime today, and had not been censoring himself for the young boy. “Teddy, you leave Ron alone.”

But the smile and the slight snicker in Harry’s tone let Teddy know he wasn’t in too much trouble. All the same, the boy let his hair shift back to its usual turquoise and his ears shrink back to normal size.

“HARRY!” he heard the shout once again, causing Harry to cringe slightly.

The sound of his firstborn’s fuss became louder as Ginny made her way into the kitchen. In her arms, James was throwing a holy fit: pulling hair, screaming at the top of his lungs, and kicking at anything he could reach. And Ginny looked positively frazzled, though it was easy to see why.

“Didn’t you hear me?” she gasped, strands of fiery hair falling over her wild eyes. “I’ve been calling for you since the moment you walked through the door! At the very least, you should have heard your son crying!”

Harry had learned from experience that whenever he came home to Ginny like this, it was common sense not to complain about how his own day had been.

“Here.” Harry held out his arms to take the fussing toddler, keeping his voice, above all, calm. “Let me give it a try.”

Ginny made a slight whimpering sound as the squirming infant was removed from her arms. But once her son was in the hands of his father, she did relax heavily.

“I’m sorry, Harry,” she apologized. “I-it’s just that James has not let up once all day. Teddy is here, neither of the boys have eaten yet…”

“Why don’t I take care of the boys for tonight?” Harry offered, settling his son on his hip, even though James was doing everything possible to get away. “You can relax, do whatever you want, pretend for the night that you don’t even have children.”

Ginny seemed unsure, as though agreeing to such a deal would make her a bad mother and godmother. But at the same time, the level of her exhaustion was so great, she could not refuse and still be considered sane.

“Alright, alright, I think I will. I’m going upstairs,” she relented, the volume of her voice finally going down. “…take a bath, maybe even go to bed early.”

Bed? That was a whole other thing entirely; meaning Harry would really and truly be alone for the night. It was only five o’clock, and neither of the boys had eaten yet. Harry had never been one for gourmet cooking, but luckily, small children weren’t ones for gourmet eating. Besides, if he recanted his offer now, he truly would be unleashing the wrath of hell that came along with a woman scorned.

“You go right ahead,” Harry assured her, bouncing his son in an effort to quiet him. “I’ll take care of everything tonight. Don’t you worry.”

This time, Ginny didn’t respond verbally at all. She exhaled deeply, as though she had been holding her breath since noon and made her way up the stairs, groaning every time she made her way up a new step.

“Well, I had a long day,” Harry said to the boys, knowing that it was actually safe to. “Why don’t we sit down and relax for a bit?”

With that, Harry carried James into the living room, hoping he could get a better handle on calming the boy once he sat down.

“Ginny’s upset,” Teddy informed him, swaying back and forth on his feet.

“Really?” Harry asked, making some room for his godson to sit beside him. “Why do you say that?”

Teddy lunged at the couch cushions and bounced as he landed, which actually seemed to work in Harry’s favor, as James took a break from his tantrum long enough to giggle.

“She’s cranky like she needs a nap,” the boy elaborated. “And she’s getting sick too.”

“Sick?” Harry asked, as James started up crying again, although it wasn’t nearly as strong a fit as the baby had been throwing before.

“Her stomach’s been doing flip-flops, and she doesn’t want to eat. She says everything smells bad.” Teddy tried to get James’ attention by making his nose shoot out long like Pinocchio’s. “And she says everything is sore.”

Now Harry was really beginning to feel guilty. Ginny had been appearing more worn down these past few days coming home. He would really have to do something to make it up to her this coming weekend, if she even wanted to leave the bed that weekend.

“She probably had a hard day with James,” Harry reasoned, turning to his now quieting son to face him. “You can be quite the little terror when you want to be.”

James looked up at his father with those big brown eyes of his, as though he had no idea what his father could be talking about. “Juice!” the little boy demanded.

“Yes, I thought as much.” He pushed himself up to his feet, and turned back to look at his godson. “What about you, Teddy? Do you want anything?”

“Can I have pumpkin juice, please?” Teddy pleaded, his eyes shifting to the exact same shade of brown as James’, as though it might improve his chances of getting his drink. Harry wondered to himself whether or not this action was intentional.

While Harry made his way to the kitchen, Teddy entertained the toddler by morphing his nose into the shapes of various farm animals. Once the two children had their drinks, Harry set about brewing a cup of tea for himself. While he did so, he couldn’t help but notice a parallel between himself now and every adult he had ever seen in his childhood. Every time a moment of stress arose, it was always straight to the kettle, as though it were some sort of drug. He couldn’t believe it; he was growing old at the age of twenty-four! And in only a couple of weeks, he would be twenty-five! Now he really needed that tea!

Of course, by the time the brew was finished, the two boys had both finished their juice and demanding to be entertained. It was at that point that Harry plopped the two of them outside, so Ginny would not be disturbed them, but the rest of the village certainly would.

While Harry sipped on a hot, rather large cup of tea, Teddy and James flew around the gardens on their broomsticks. James had a small toy broomstick, capable of floating only a few feet off the ground and not terribly fast. Teddy, on the other hand, had a real broom, a Cleansweep he had gotten for his last birthday. He spent his evening flying higher and riding circles around James, as though to tease him. Harry, on the other hand, reclined back and waited for the boys to reach the point where they had exhausted all that reserved energy and would gently float back down to the ground, slumped over their broomsticks, fast asleep.

---

---

As soon as the bright green flames lowered, Nate got his first look at the destination, feeling an instant sense of shock and disappointment. “Aw�””

“God!” Lorelei finished his sentence. In truth, Nate probably would have chosen a stronger word than that, but he knew, looking around, that he wasn’t going to finish anyway.

The room in no way resembled what Nate imagined the school to be like. True, Nate had never seen a Wizarding school before, but he was fairly certain that they didn’t look like this. The room the Floo had brought them to was completely empty, and had most likely been that way for some time. It was filthy, the furniture littered with dust and the floor with bits of trash, and bars over the windows casting a clichéd, yet ominous, sense.

“This is not a school,” Graham illuminated the obvious.

“No,” Nate replied, walking out onto the floor, soon followed by Lorelei. “No, it is not.”

Not wanting to detect attention from his parents, or anyone that could have told them, Nate and Lorelei had elected to use Graham’s fireplace to travel on the Floo Network. A latchkey key kid, Graham Schuler could always be counted on to be home alone with no one who could tell on them, leaving them with the best chance of not being caught by anyone.

“Wait, guys,” Graham called out, keeping his feet firmly planted in the hearth, “we’re not actually going into this place, are we?”

“C’mon, Graham,” Nate pressed, “don’t be scared.”

Graham laughed, that nervous sort laughter people had whenever they were truly afraid, but desperate not to show it. “Scared? I’m not scared. What kind of person is afraid of an empty room? Maybe it’s you guys who are scared.”

Lorelei snorted. “Graham, you’re scared of chipmunks!”

“I am not scared of chipmunks!” he retorted. “It crawled down my pants. Anyone would have screamed!”

Nate didn’t know this story, and had his suspicions that he did not want to know.

Lorelei tapped one of the window bars with her knuckles. “Even by New York City standards, this isn’t a school, Nate.”

Even though every school Nate had ever attended had been built like a prison, the place that they had been brought to was built to look like one most likely because it was one. Through the bars, the setting sun offered just enough light so one could see the barbed wire lacing over the fences, high guard towers top with sirens to answer a potential jailbreak.

The room they paced was at least carpeted and had painted walls (it had probably been the warden’s office at some point). All the same, it was otherwise in complete disarray and filled with cobwebs and live spiders to go along with them. When Nate joined Lorelei at the barred window, he could see out into the yard and the stone walls and guard towers that surrounded it, which had also suffered from years of neglect. This prison had not been home to anyone for years, which, in a way, offered Nate a bit of relief.

Though that same relief vanished rather quickly once Nate realized there was no way the ‘Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic’ was intended to be a school for anyone. That probably would have been obvious after the first few seconds in the room, but the three of them all stayed, long after the sun had gone down.

“It’s a prison,” Lorelei remarked, glancing thoughtfully around the room. “What an oddly fitting way to screw with us.”

Nate wasn’t really paying attention, though. Leaning against the desk, he ran a finger through the thick coat of dust, creating a clean line and eventually writing his name. Lorelei kicked to try and shake a piece of scrap paper off the bottom of her shoe. “But really, Nate, what did you expect to find here?”

But Nate’s over-active imagination had been contemplating this for some time now. “Maybe we are in the right place,” Nate said, as though not completely convinced of that. “The letter said not to come until the twenty-eighth of August; maybe the school just doesn’t look like a school until then. You know, to keep people away from it in the summer while no one’s here. Magic does all kinds of strange things.”

“Face it, Nate,” Graham told him. “You’ve been screwed.”

Nate was about to list off all the other excuses he had come up with, but the serious, skeptical looks on the faces of Graham and Lorelei told him he would be better off saving his breath.

“Can we leave now?” Lorelei asked. “I left Rae at home with a video of Dora, the Explorer, and I can’t help but feel like a hypocrite after all the times I’ve said the TV is not a baby-sitter.”

Nate drew a few more lines in the dust. “Fine,” he agreed.

But even after Nate relented, the three of them did not leave the room, even though Graham made several not-so-subtle attempts to remind them. The sun went down, and the office went pitch-black. Phones and music devices were brought out for light sources, but even then, they did not leave.

“Even if it’s not a school, this place would be a cool sort of clubhouse,” Graham suggested, earning a wrinkled nose from Lorelei for his use of the word ‘clubhouse’.

“So what now?” she asked Nate.

Nate sighed and slumped his shoulders. “There’s no school, so there’s nowhere for me to go this fall,” he told her. “I still have that Harry Potter’s card. I’ll have to go track him down.”

“Yeah,” Lorelei said, “or, we could not.”

“Probation,” Nate reminded her. “I gotta be good, or else I’ll go to jail.”

“Oh, right,” Lorelei recalled, as though it were something that had not affected Nate’s life for nearly a year. “You just had to try and get under that girl’s sweater, didn’t you?”

Nate groaned, reminded of the misfortune that he had brought upon himself. As much as it sounded like it, and probably as much as Lorelei wished she was, she was not talking about Alaia Grace. No, this girl was the one who had been there to witness his very first arrest. Jewel Sullivan: one of those girls who came to school in belly shirts, tight shorts, and way too much make-up; one of those girls with a certain ‘reputation’.

Nate had never wanted a real relationship with Jewel, not in the way he wanted one with Alaia; he was just hoping to get lucky. But he had hardly had to jump through hoops to get Jewel’s attention the way he had with Alaia. Jewel Sullivan was not a complex individual, liked bad boys and fast cars. Nate had neither, but it was easy enough to fake both. Of course, it was also the sort of thing that was illegal in most states and also the sort of thing that that got most people arrested, regardless of age. And it was also because of this girl that Nate learned that ‘I was just borrowing it’ was not a valid legal defense.

It was because of this reminder, though, that Nate couldn’t help but say, “I’ll bet Alaia’s looking pretty good right now, huh?”

Lorelei didn’t have any snide comebacks to the sudden remark, and Nate was feeling pretty proud of himself. At least until the flames shot up around them once again, and he felt a hand smack him upside the head.

---

---

Diagon Alley was densely crowded on the beautiful day, but the Potter family was missing one of its members, thankfully not adding as much to the crowd as they could have. Molly Weasley was taking care of James for the day, complaining that she was never allowed to spend any time with her grandson anyway. It wasn’t until Harry became a parent himself that he truly came to appreciate his mother-in-law’s near superhuman abilities when it came to caring for children. When Harry had asked Molly if she could watch his son, Bill’s three children were already there for the day, and Angelina was in the kitchen trying to enlist reinforcements for help in soothing baby Roxanne’s colic. And she was more than willing to take James on as well!

Yes, Molly Weasley was an amazing woman. Now if only she could work some of that magic of hers on Ron and Hermione.

Very little had change in the situation of Harry’s best friends. Ron had not been coming to terms with the idea of being an expectant father very well. He would cover his ears and shout ‘la la la la la’ whenever anyone tried to remind him of his soon-to-be fate, and he avoided James as though the child had some sort of deadly, infectious disease. He still seemed to be rather in the denial stage of his fatherhood.

But, of course, matters were becoming increasingly worse in the sense that Hermione’s pregnancy hormones were beginning to kick in. And even though Harry had not seen Hermione since his return to Britain, he had been told that they had been hitting full force. Her entire spectrum of emotion had stretched to a point Harry had not even thought was possible. When Ron first arrived home from New York City, he offered to make Hermione a special dinner to celebrate her pregnancy. Unfortunately, that special dinner was lobster, and apparently, Hermione had not been fully aware that in order to cook lobster, you had to boil them alive. As soon as she learned this, she burst into wild, blubbering tears and then became furious at Ron for intending to kill the creatures in such a barbaric way.

Harry was sure that one day this would be a very funny story, but likely not until the Weasley firstborn was old enough to read.

“Thank you for getting me out of the house, Harry,” Ginny said as they took their seats at a table just outside Fortescus and Son’s Fabulous Ice Cream. “Oh, am I a bad mother for saying that? Wanting to get away from my own child?”

“No, Ginny, of course not!” Harry assured her. “I leave James with you everyday when I go to work. I’ve even left you with him a couple times just so I could go out with Ron or just by myself. Does that make me a bad father?”

Harry knew he was taking a chance with that statement, depending on Ginny’s mood. Even he could see how easy it would be to have his own words manipulated against him.

“You’re right,” Ginny instead replied calmly, exhaling a deep breath of air. “I guess I’ve just been so tired lately.”

Harry leaned against the back of his own metal chair. “Life can have its ways of wearing you down. Remember last year when I was working that string of cases where we had to keep working with the Austrian Ministry of Magic? I don’t think I had a proper night’s sleep for at least two weeks then; I was near ready to go mad!”

Then, he pressed further, leaning over the tabletop. “Has anything been troubling you lately?”

If Harry was lucky enough, whatever was bothering his wife would be something singular that could actually be fixed through action. He couldn’t stand those situations where a person just had to sit and wait for the problem to solve itself.

“Harry, I have something to tell you,” Ginny told him, twisting a paper napkin in her fingers. “Possibly very good news.”

It was amazing how the word ‘possibly’ had the ability to make a sentence mean just about anything. “Alright. What is it?”

“I received an owl this morning,” she said rather quickly. “The governors of Hogwarts have finally agreed to place Professor Snape’s portrait in the Headmaster’s office. They’re going to be commissioning an artist within the month.”

Harry couldn’t believe it. He had been complaining to the Hogwarts Governors for years now to have Severus Snape’s portrait install in the headmasters office right alongside all the others. Besides the fact that his former Potions teacher had been a headmaster, no matter how he had gained the position, the whole world now knew what his true intentions had been the whole time, and Harry believed with his whole heart that the man deserved recognition for it.

“Ginny,” he exclaimed, shocked, “that is wonderful news. You know how long I have been working towards this, so many people have!”

Ginny smiled a tight sort of smile, trying hard to look happy, showing there was more to say that might not be so nice.

“Well,” she continued, “that’s not the end of the news. There’s something else I need to tell you.”

But Ginny was soon interrupted, saving her from having to divulge anything. At the side of the table, a bowl clanged on the surface and a chair scraped across the stone ground. A blond-haired girl sat between them, as though she had every right in the world, with a dish of ruby red ice cream, quietly observing the discussion the two adults were having. Her hair was mussed and she kept rubbing at her eyes, as though she had been pulled out of bed and dragged here in a great hurry.

“Hi, Mr. Potter,” she said sweetly when she noticed Harry staring at her.

Harry blinked back surprise. “Rae Macalister?”

The little girl smiled sweetly and took a very large spoonful of her ice cream, grimacing in pain the moment the brain freeze hit. Harry rubbed at his eyes underneath his eyeglasses, just in case he could not trust his own vision.

“Harry,” Ginny asked, shifting her eyes back and forth between the two of them, “who is your friend?”

Rae looked up at Harry, as even she was anxious to hear how he was going to explain this.

“She…” he stammered as he considered what would be the best way to go about explaining what would no doubt be a very long story. “She’s…”

Harry was soon saved from his own explanation by two rather load interruptions: Ron and Hermione. Hermione’s arms were notably empty, save for a very long piece of parchment dangling only an inch or so above the ground, while Ron was loaded down with bags from several different shops.

“Ron! Ron!” Harry called his friend and partner over to his table. “Come over her for a moment!”

No matter how much Ron might have on his plate right now, he was Harry’s partner as an Auror and he had gone into the Macalister flat right along with Harry. He was just as responsible for taking care of whatever mess this turned out to be.

“Hermione!” Ginny waved wildly and took her sister-in-law’s hand as soon as she came close enough. “Harry told me your good news, I hope you aren’t mad. I am just so happy for you, you wouldn’t even believe it! You are absolutely glowing!”

“Thank you so much,” Hermione answered contentedly. “But we can’t stay for very long. Ron and I still have about twelve inches to go on this list, and we haven’t even started on everything we need to do back home!”

Ginny looked over the large number of heavy-looking bags draped over her brother’s arms. “You do know there are shrinking spells that could make all that a lot easier.”

Hermione answer for her husband by practically jumping forward and shaking her head, her bushy mop of hair moving with her. “No, no! We’re not using magic on anything that is going to belong to the baby! I just read an article by a St. Mungo’s Healer who says too much early exposure to magic can have an adverse effect on the baby’s development!”

Ron’s shoulders began to shake, and under his breath was nearly a whimper. “Harry!” he pled as though he had been walking a thousand miles. “Help!”

“Ron!” Harry pointed down at the chair beside him. “Look who came for a visit!”

With Ron slouched down under the weight of his parcels, he was already at Rae’s eye-level. So it did not take him very long to see which person at the table didn’t belong.

“Hi, Mr. Weasley!” the little girl turned to greet Ron, showing off her ice cream dish. “I got ketchup ice cream…I think.” Rae stared into the ice cream dish as though it were a crystal ball that was going to give her the answer.

Ron’s eyes were wide and his mouth was hanging open. “How did Rae Macalister end up here?”

“And who exactly is Rae Macalister?” Hermione asked with her hand on her hips. It was almost funny, Harry thought to himself. The way Hermione was talking, it was almost as though she suspected Rae was some sort of lovechild that had just been dropped off by her tramp of a mother.

“Hey, you’re the pregnant lady!” Rae remarked in that perfect honesty that all small children seemed to have.

Ginny’s face became pale and her eyes widened. “How did you know that?”

At that sudden statement, the entire party turned their attention to Ginny. Rae might have been talking about Hermione, but Harry was fairly certain Ginny wasn’t.

“What are you talking about, Ginny?” Harry asked his wife, not entirely sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“Who’s Rae Macalister?” Ginny asked again, as though she was desperate to change the subject.

“She lives at the apartment where I found that student, Nate Rivers,” Harry explained, trying to get the little girl’s attention once again. “Rae, how did you get here?”

“Lorelei brought me,” she answered simply, between spoonfuls of her red ice cream.

“Why is Lorelei here?”

“Nate brought her.”

“And why is Nate here?”

This time, Rae simply shrugged her shoulders, informing the table that she did not know.

“Alright then,” Harry tried another tactic. “Where is Lorelei?”

Rae turned to look over her shoulder and pointed at a small crowd of people just outside the ice cream shop. Sure enough, Lorelei was standing among them in her obviously Muggle clothes. She was wandering around in circles, her hand clasped around something she was holding up into the air, and she was muttering to it. What’s more, she was beginning to draw attention and gazes from everyone around her. Just like wizards in their strange clothes and behaviors attracted attention in Muggle places, Muggles in their strange clothes and behaviors attracted attention in wizard places.

Harry pushed himself away from the table to make his way to the teenage girl, soon finding himself followed by Ginny, as well as Ron and Hermione. Lorelei Macalister, however, remained so absorbed with the Muggle device in her hand, she did not even notice that she was being advanced on.

“Lorelei,” Harry tried to get the girl’s attention. “Lorelei Macalister, it’s Mr. Potter. Do you remember me?”

But Lorelei went right on ignoring him, playing with the flipping, buttoned piece of metal, which Harry now recognized as a cell phone, in her hand.

“Miss Macalister?” Harry placed his hand on her shoulder and shook her a little bit.

“Work!” she growled. “I hate you! You suck!”

“Don’t you talk to my husband in that tone!” Ginny snapped at the girl. “He didn’t do anything to you!”

Lorelei titled her head slowly in Ginny’s direction and rolled her eyes upwards to meet hers. “Good to know, honey. But I was talking to the cell phone,” Lorelei informed her. “Why can’t I get any bars here?”

“Miss Macalister, cell phones and things that need electricity don’t work in wizard dominated areas.” He couldn’t believe Lorelei didn’t know this for herself. What kind of sheltered existence had this witch been leading?

Lorelei snapped the phone shut. “Of course they don’t!”

It was obvious that Lorelei Macalister had very little experience in terms of how to behave in wizard places; and not just in terms of using Muggle terms and devices.

“Would you like to share why you chose to make such an impromptu trip overseas?” Harry asked.

“Nate had to see you,” she said, fidgeting on the back of her heels. “And I couldn’t get a baby-sitter, so I had to take Rae too.”

“I know,” Harry told her, sounding slightly older than he would have liked. “She just came up to my wife and me. You can imagine our surprise.”

Lorelei blinked and her eyes widened slightly, but she didn’t appear overly distressed by the news.

“Okay,” she replied, though slightly too uncaring. “So, where is she now?”

Harry glanced from side to side, becoming frantic when he noticed that Rae had not followed them to find her older sister. Ron was missing too. But suddenly, he came racing back around the corner with Rae in his arms, her limbs swinging wildly as he held her

“I am so, so sorry!” Ron apologized to the five-year-old. “You’re not going to tell my kid about this, are you?”

Not speaking, Rae instead offered Ron a spoonful of her ice cream in acceptance of his words. Ron took a bite, but made a face as though Rae did indeed have ketchup-flavored ice cream.

“But I suppose Nate’s the one you’ll be wantin’ to talk to, right?” Lorelei asked.

Harry nodded, though it should have been obvious that he would need to speak to Nate. If he had chosen to come and speak to him in person rather than going through Ministry channels, it was likely to be important.

“One sec,” Lorelei said before shouting, “NATE!”

Harry was fairly confident that Nate had heard her; all of Diagon Alley had heard her. It took more than a few moments, though, for Nate to come running out of the shop that Lorelei had her back to. In more baggy clothes and another stocking hat in spite of the summer heat, he struggled to steady his feet, heavily frazzled by his friends screams. Once he saw the reason behind it, though, he instantly sobered and straightened up.

“Oh,” he remarked quietly. “You found them.”

“It’s what we came for, isn’t it?” Lorelei said, walking up to Ron and taking her sister from him. “Well, do what you came to do.”

Lorelei took a seat on a discarded crate, settling her sister in her lap while she waited for her friend to say his piece. With several sets of eyes all on him, Nate River took a deep breath and proceeded to speak.

Chapter 8
The Biting Envelopes


Nate chewed on the inside of his cheek as he tried to think of the best way to inform the British Aurors that he had been played by three men who may not even exist. If they even would believe him, that is. He had a very distinct feeling that somehow, this would be made out to be his fault.

The three of them had taken this trip with the intention of making it as quiet, short, and private as possible. But when the Ministry elevator took them from the International Floo station to a floor filled with empty offices, it was very clear that there was no hope of that happening. They had though it would have meant they would either wait until Monday �”Tuesday in New York City�”and come back, or they would somehow find out where they lived and deliver the bad news to their home. At any rate though, it was something that they had been sure they would be able to put off for a little while at least.

But when Lorelei had screamed bloody murder for Nate to run back out into the alley, he hardly expected it to be because Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley had found them, Mr. Weasley loaded down with at least a half-dozen very large shopping bags. And just like if they had come to their homes, he got to deliver the messages of his profound stupidity to their whole families as well.

“To start with, how did you even know where to find us?” Mr. Potter asked, starting the conversation for Nate. “There’s no one at the Ministry on the weekend.”

“Yeah, we noticed when we got there.” Lorelei stood to her feet, adjusting Rae to rest on her hip. Lorelei had made her…disappointment about the empty office quite vocal, especially after the complication of taking Floo after Floo to travel on the International Network, all the while touting a very cranky five-year-old.

Nate shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Well, we were, but when we got to the Ministry entrance, we found out it was actually Saturday here instead of Friday�””

“International dateline,” Lorelei said in a taunting manner.

“Right. And…” Nate suddenly laughed nervously, “you know what’s really funny? We actually weren’t looking for you guys when we came here. Lorelei was having a hard time getting Rae out of bed, so I promised her if she came with us, we would take her to a wizard candy store. But we couldn’t find one, so we brought her ice cream to keep her happy while we asked for directions…”

Nate’s snickering died off when he noticed that Mr. Potter’s and Mr. Weasley’s expression were as far from amused as could possibly be.

“But you don’t care about any of that, right?” he ventured to guess, getting the very distinct feeling that small talk and procrastination was not going to work for very long.

Lorelei bounced impatiently from side to side, and Rae’s eyes took on a bored, glassy look as she blinked sleepily. “Tell them about the letter,” she told him in the manner someone might use to talk a preschooler into doing something.

“Letter?” Mr. Potter remarked. “What sort of letter?

Nate couldn’t help but cringe a bit at the sudden push. Leave it to Lorelei to antagonize a situation when she didn’t have to deal with it herself.

“Yeah, about that,” he said. “That’s what I came to talk to you about. I finally got another letter from the Skat-place.”

That was what finally seemed to perk the interest of the two British Aurors to the point where they might actually take what Nate said seriously. As though Nate had come all the way to London in the dead of night just for a social call!

“They said that if we wanted to, we could visit the school by means of Floo,” Nate explained. “So we did.”

Mr. Potter became more and more interested, while Mr. Weasley just looked pained from the heavy sacks strung over his arms. Their wives, however, stood off to the side, perfectly lost and confused.

“There actually is a school?” Mr. Weasley asked, finally dropping his handful of shopping bags to the ground when the weight got to be too much. “An actual, physical building that you were able to go to?”

“Yeah.” Technically, it wasn’t a lie.

Mr. Potter nodded slightly. “Oh, so then Mr. Weasley and I will be able to visit the school for ourselves.”

“You can’t!”

Everyone in the group jumped at the sudden response and turned in the direction of the source. Lorelei shrieked her response and darted forward to make herself an active part of the conversation.

Both of the British Aurors appeared quite shocked at Lorelei’s sudden outburst. Mr. Potter raised an eyebrow over the rim of his glasses and Mr. Weasley blinked rapidly in surprise. “Why not?” Mr. Weasley finally spoke.

Lorelei didn’t even pause as the lies spun from her lips. “The letters were only supposed to be seen by students; people who are actually going to the academy,” she told them smoothly. “If either of you two showed up, Nate and I will probably get into a lot of trouble.”

“And you really want us to start our school year at a new school on a bad foot?” she asked them, an almost light tone to her voice.

“We? Us?” Harry asked, noting the change in tense. “Miss Macalister, will you be attending the Skat-Hatokha Academy as well?”

“Why not?” she said, draping a casual arm around her best friend’s shoulder. “I have plenty I could learn as well. And if they’ll take Nate, they’ll probably take anybody.”

Nate stood on the sidelines and watched his best friend tell lie after effortless lie to the British Auror. She made up details flawlessly, from the date of the first day of school to why their supply lists had yet to arrive. It was all that Nate could do to keep his mouth from hanging opening in dumbfounded shock as Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley shook their hands and wished them well as they sent them on their way.

Lorelei smiled sweetly as they said their good-byes, in a way that was so out of character, it was frightening. The only course of action Nate could see was getting Lorelei as far away from those men as possible before she talked them into an even deeper hole than she already had.

All the way down the alley way Nate dragged Lorelei by the crook of her arm with Rae at her heels, rushing to gulp down the rest of her remaining ice cream. Plastered across Lorelei’s face was a contented, accomplished-looking smile. After what seemed like an endless maze of twists and turns, and a wall of shifting bricks, accompanied by a very fun game of ‘I don’t know the password’, Nate finally recognized the place where they had exited out to Diagon Alley in the first place: the Leaky Caudron. Normally, Nate would never have been allowed to go into any place that served alcohol�”another lovely condition of his probation�”but since they weren’t even in the United States, and the pub also a popular stop on the Floo Network, Nate imagined it must have been an exception.

Besides, laws were different in Britain. According Lorelei, in Europe, if you could see over the bar, you were old enough to order a drink. Of course, he couldn’t be sure just how true this was.

“Are you freaking insane?” he finally had to ask her, taking a handful of Floo Powder from his personal supply.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Lorelei replied with fake innocence as she followed him into the fire place, taking his hand and then taking Rae’s.

“You just lied to a cop!” Nate tried to explain to her, raising his closed fist. “Which is bad!”

Suddenly, Nate cringed as he began to notice all the faces that were suddenly staring his direction. Saving the trio from further scrutinization on behave of the pub patrons, Nate shouted out the British International Floo Station and let the Floo powder drop to the hearth floor, green flames shooting up around them. As soon as they stepped out into the crowded Floo station, their conversation resumed as though it had never been interrupted.

“Mr. Potter’s not a cop!” Lorelei argued as they made their way to another empty fireplace. “And lies? How was it exactly that I lied Nate?”

“There is no Skat-Hatokha!” Nate took out another handful of the shimmering powder. “There is no school for either of us to go to this fall!” Green flames shot up once again, this time bring them to the International Station in the American Department of Magic in Washington D.C.

“Lorelei, my tummy hurts,” Rae whined. The little girl was not used to taking any form of Wizarding travel, and the numerous channels necessary for international Floo travel was not a good place to start. Lorelei led the group over to one of the stone benches in the middle of the station and took her little sister into her lap once again.

“Lorelei!” Nate shouted, this time not caring about all the strangers who were staring.

“We don’t know that Skat-Hatokha doesn’t exist, Nate,” Lorelei said, smoothing Rae’s tangled hair off of her damp forehead. “We have been receiving some pretty official looking letters from people who say we have a place at a school, and even allowed us to visit the actual physical structure where they say it will be. At worst, we are just the innocent victims of a highly elaborate fraud scheme.”

Nate rubbed at his forehead as another headache induced by big words set in. It was the same with all lawyer’s kids; Lorelei had sat at her father’s knee, learning all about legal jargon the way other children might learn treasured family stories, right up until the date of her parents’ divorced. Then the family court system and Lorelei’s own personal attorney taught her even more. All Nate understood about the laws was that you do bad things, you go to jail.

“Feeling better, sweetie?” Lorelei asked her sister, both of them standing to their feet when the little girl nodded.

“But, Lore,” Nate argued as they made their way back to the series of fireplaces along the wall, “what do we do when one of them eventually does come back and we’re still hanging around New York City?” Because whether it had been done intentionally or not, Lorelei was now in just as deep as Nate was.

“They’re not going to check on us again,” Lorelei answered smugly. “We’re halfway around the world. Neither of them are going to bother dropping in if they think everything is fine.”

“We came all that way!” Granted, it had been a very long and annoying trip, leaving Nate wanting nothing more than to barf his lunch into anything that would sit still long enough. All the same, it was hardly an impossible or far-fetched idea that Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley would come looking for them again.

“They have lives, Nate,” Lorelei reasoned, leaning against the back of the fireplace so though she were auditioning for a part in a movie. “We don’t.”

Nate took up the last of his Floo powder to the hearth and they stepped out into New York City. At least, they had asked to be sent to New York City. It was just another very long hall of fireplaces in a room with no windows, dozens of witches and wizards rushing in and out of the flames. There would only be one stop left.

“So your ingenious plan,” Nate tried to understand, “is just to let the lie sit, let everyone in the world go about their lives, and hope the every little detail of this investigation just goes away.”

“That is my plan, yes,” Lorelei answer, leading the way into the last fireplace. “And don’t you dare stand there and tell me you could have come up with a better one!”

Nate grumbled under his breath as he followed his friend into the fireplace, but on some level, he knew she was right. At the very least, Nate knew he would never be able to come up with a convincing lie right on the spot. It was one of the leading reasons behind every scrap of trouble he had ever been in.

And so, the last trace of Nate’s personal supply of Floo Powder went into the fire and green flames engulfed them. This time, however, they were greeted by the sight of a chubby teenage in penguin pajamas falling off the couch screaming, his bowl of Fruit Loops going flying through the air.

“Hi, Graham,” Nate greeted his milk-drenched friend as he stepped out of the fireplace.

Grasping at the couch cushions, Graham pulled himself up to meet them face to face, his cereal bowl balanced lopsided on his head like a hat. “You two could at least ask before you use my fireplace for your Floo thing!” he growled, brightly colored loops leaking down his cheeks.

Nate couldn’t help but snicker. “And miss this?”

---

---

The moment Harry and Ginny arrived home, Ginny rushed straight for the door, throwing it open as though there were someone after her.

“Ginny!” Harry called after her as soon as he stepped into the house himself. Ginny froze where she stood, but she did not turn around. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Finally turning to face her husband, Ginny’s face was plastered with an expression of pretend naivety. “I don’t know what you mean.”

But Harry wasn’t fooled, and he hadn’t forgotten.

“At Diagon Alley, when Rae called Hermione ‘the pregnant lady’?” he reminded her. “I’m fairly certain I could guess, but I’d still like it if you would tell me yourself.

Ginny stared down at the kitchen floor, fidgeting with her fingers. “I’m pregnant. I just found out yesterday.” Ginny’s eyes peered up through her red orange fringe. “Surprise!”

The confession had Harry taken slightly aback and inhale a little more deeply than usual. Even though he had had a pretty good idea that this was the answer, it was still a bit of a shock to hear it said out loud.

“Ginny, why wouldn’t you tell me?” he asked, still somewhat overcome by shock.

Ginny threw her hands to her side and looked up to the ceiling. “I don’t know. We just heard about Ron and Hermione, and James is still so young…” Ginny’s voice trailed off as her eyes shifted back to meet her husband. “I just didn’t know whether this was good news or not.”

Harry stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his wife’s shoulders. “Ginny, of course it’s good news,” he assured her.

Although Harry was not about to deny that he himself had not even considered the possibility of having a second child in the here and now. Little James was already such a handful, and he had not even reached the Terrible Twos. Harry and Ginny were both attempting to advance their careers, which, of course, took time and effort. And then there was Teddy, who Harry had already worried would have too much of his godfather’s attention taken away from him after James was born. How would the little boy react to the news that the Potters were having a second baby?

“How…” Harry stopped himself when he realized how stupid he was about to sound. “When did this happen?”

Ginny’s face pinked slightly and she began chewing at the corner of her mouth.

“I think it was the night before you were about to leave for New York City,” she told him. “We didn’t know how long you were going to be away, so we…”

Ginny’s voiced trailed off before she could go into any more detail, but Harry had a pretty good idea of the incident that Ginny was referring to. He himself could feel a fair bit of blood rushing to his face as he began to further recall.

But eventually, Harry brought his arms around his wife’s shoulder, hugging her gently, holding his forehead to hers.

“We should really go get James,” Ginny said, her face pointed downward, though she made no move to break the embrace.

“We will,” Harry assured his wife, patting her back reassuringly. “Eventually.”

Ginny brought her gaze up to meet her husbands, bright brown eyes shiny, and the faintest hint of a mother’s glow on her face.

“We’re going to have two of them soon, aren’t we?” Harry reasoned. “I think for now, it would do us a world of good to just have a few moments to ourselves.”

Ginny sighed and rested her head against Harry’s chest. “You know, it really isn’t just ourselves now,” she whispered faintly.

Harry sighed and nodded his head. “I suppose I’ll have to get used to that sort of thinking again, won’t I?”

---

---

“Mail call!”

Nate looked up from the couch, making sure to take his feet off the coffee table the moment his mother came through the door. Surprisingly, Nate was the first person his mother tracked down, handing him a very thick parcel, wrapped in brown paper and sealed tightly. There was no return address; only a seal he could not recognize.

“My, Nate, you certainly seem to be becoming popular these days,” his dad said as he made it in from the kitchen. He was sweaty and held onto a water bottle for dear life, but it was easy to see that he had not been exercising. More like he had gone to the parks so he could observe the morning fitness routines of the young woman of the neighborhood: blonde college students running together in tight spandex, hippie chicks doing yoga and stretching to the sun and for anyone else who wanted to watch. And then there were the teenage girls who would play their music as loud as they could and dance in a way that seemed to be just to find out how much energy it was possible to burn.

Before anymore dirty imaginings could be associated with his father, Nate snatched the brown wrapped parcel and sidestepped his way out of the living room. The writing on the wrapper had had it addressed to ‘The Messy Bedroom Facing the Backyard’ and there was no return address, so he could only guess who this little present was from. Nate rushed to get to his room, snatching the telephone on his way up. He already knew that whatever it was that had been sent to, he would need his best friends’ input very soon.

Slamming his bedroom door shut behind them, Nate kicked scattered pieces of dirty clothes out of the way to clear an open spot on the floor. When he finally tore the paper off the parcel, it was several letters all bound together, dropping heavily to the floor. These new letters were sealed in deep brown envelopes, with that same seal and written in all-gold letters. It was all over official looking. Granted, all the letters Nate had been sent before had been official in a sense, but these were doing a much better job of looking it. While the envelopes didn’t have any smoke coming from the edges and he saw no bright red paper, chances were very good there was going to be some sort of little surprise for him, courtesy of the Wizarding world.

Nate began spreading each letter across his floor, as so get a better look at them. But to his surprise, none of these letters were addressed to him. They didn’t even have the real names of anyone on them: Dean of Students, Professor of Wandwork, Professor of Potions, Professor of Herbology, Professor of Defensive Magic, Professor of Shamaism…on and on and on, each of these letters seem to have a very clear idea of who they belonged to, even if they didn’t seem to have any names for them to go on.

Why they had been sent to Nate, he had no idea. Was he expected to find all these supposed people? He doubted it had been a mistake, seeing as every other letter he had gotten from Skat-Hatokha had been very deliberate. And whoever it was that was sending these things care of Skat-Hatokha, he had to give them credit. It had taken the British Ministry of Magic three weeks to follow their actions, but it had only taken Skat-Hatokha three day to follow theirs.

“NATHANIEL JACOB RIVERS!!” a sudden shout came from the bottom of the stairs

Nate cringed at the easily recognizable yell coming from his father and a feeling that another sort of letter from another school had come in the mail today. “What D+ in History?” he yelled out.

---

Through not being grounded (and most likely the grace of God), an hour later, Nate found himself out in his tiny backyard. Standing on top of the picnic table, Nate kept an eye out for who he was waiting for.

“You made it!” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet as Lorelei strolled into his backyard.

“Yeah, yeah,” she said, throwing her things onto the surface of the picnic table. “What’s up?”

Nate sunk back down to his seat and began gathering up the pile of letters and pushing them in Lorelei’s direction. “Take a look at what came in the mail this morning,” he told her, picking one of them up and holding it in front of her face.

Lorelei snatched the envelope right out of his hand and read the address mere inches away from her nose before taking up another one from the pile.

“Care of Magical Creatures…” she read aloud, continuing to fish out even more letters still. “Voodoo…Practical Integration…Divination…”

“They’re class subjects,” Nate told her. “You know, at Wizarding schools.”

“I could have guessed that.” She set down all the envelopes except for one, turning it over in her hands. “What do they say?”

“I don’t know,” Nate admitted. “I haven’t opened any of them yet. It not like I want to be Professor of…Home and Hearth Magic,” he read off yet another of the envelopes.

Lorelei allowed her own collection to drop back into the pile, except for one, which she thrust in Nate’s direction.

“So open one,” Lorelei prompted. “They were sent to you, after all.”

Shrugging his shoulders and agreeing without a second thought, Nate took the letter, beginning to tear at the envelope with his index finger. When a sharp pain traced across his hand in a straight line, his subconscious mind scolded him for not expecting some sort of surprise from a magical object, no matter how ordinary it might seem on the outside. His second instinct was to scream, loud, with Lorelei clamping her hand over his mouth to keep from attracting attention, still holding tight even as Nate’s teeth sunk into her skin.

Despite the excruciating and surprising pain, Nate did manage to peer down and see what had happened. Biting harder at his best friend’s hand, though she still did nothing to pull away, he pinched at the flaps of the envelope to lift it up. Through the blood, he could make out a fine layer of very sharp little teeth, like someone might see on a piranha. And now, Nate never had to get bitten by a piranha, because he imagined it would be a lot like this. But there was a very sick part of him that could not help but admire the ingenuity of the envelopes and how they kept unwelcome readers from opening them. Especially since he couldn’t vocally express anything he was feeling.

Finally, though, Lorelei did pull her hand away, angry red teeth marks tracing across the pale flesh, though Lorelei did not appear pained in the least. Nate, however…

“GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!”

Nate probably should have considered how Lorelei would respond to the challenge under such duress. Before he had time to react to the situation, Lorelei grabbed a stick up off the ground and wacked the bleeding patch of skin were the envelope had its teeth sunk in. It did absolutely nothing to help the situation; in fact, the impact seemed to make the teeth sink in deeper.

“OW!” Nate yelled at the sudden sting. “LORE, WHY?”

Of course, Nate could hardly be considered any more intelligent when he started hitting his own hand against the picnic table…more than once. Why, oh why, was it a human’s instinct to fix something by first whacking it with something?

“Calm down,” Lorelei finally ordered him. “Let me see it.”

Nate strained to hold still as Lorelei took hold of his hand, the envelope flopped around like a piranha out of water. She too pulled the envelope as far apart as she could, the tiny white teeth around the edge still perfectly visible and blood continued to pump from Nate’s hand. But this time, Lorelei seemed to do nothing more with the letter, though she stared intensely at the point where the teeth and skin met. At long last, the teeth let go of Nate’s hand and Lorelei held it away with two pinched fingers. The flapping ‘jaws’ of the envelope folded back into place, and aside from the small traces of blood along the flap, nothing appeared disturbed or out of place.

“How did you do that?” Nate gasped, both from surprise and the still-lingering pain as he cradled his hand against his chest.

Lorelei shrugged, but began a somewhat rambling explanation about finding the place where two points met and breaking the link; an explanation that made no sense to Nate. Then again, push came to shove, he could never really explain how most of his inventions worked either, most of which his brother, Carter, argued that violated the very laws of physics. Things all just fell together, and that was the way it had always been.

“Go inside and take care of that hand,” Lorelei told him as she moved away from the picnic table, “and then go get your shoes.”

“Huh?” Nate gaped with his mouth hanging open.

“Well, we can’t keep these things here,” Lorelei reasoned. “It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen, or a visit from the Department of Magic if a Muggle finds them. Worse yet, what would happen if your parents or your brother found out you have them?”

That last point was all it took to convince Nate, as he pushed himself up off his seat and rushed to the patio door. Lorelei strolled casually behind him, a small grin gradually spreading wider and wider across her face.

“What?” he asked cautiously. Lorelei smiling could be either a good thing or a bad thing.

Lorelei turned to him with that same smirking grin. “It’s starting to look less and less likely that Skat-Hatokha isn’t real, isn’t it?”

---

“Here, have this letter of employment,” Nate said, passing the letter to the tattered-looking man on the sidewalk, “complementary with your free sandwich.”

The man snatched the sandwich eagerly, and then reached for the letter as an afterthought. But as soon as the letter left Nate’s hand, the homeless man yelped as the row of tiny teeth along the flap of the envelope snapped down on his fingers before scrambling away and throwing the letter to the wind. Then, as though by magic (what was he thinking ‘as though’?), the envelope flew straight back to Nate’s hand and landed in his open palm. Just like it had done five times before that afternoon.

Behind him, Lorelei groaned loudly, “Nate, I don’t think this is going to work. How many more of New York City’s homeless are going to have to suffer before you can get that through your thick skull?”

Nate knew he should have been offended by his best friend’s words, except for the fact that they were true.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to just hand them out to anyone we see,” Lorelei reasoned as she stepped closer to join Nate at his side. “I think we have to actually give them to people who would probably be able to do the job on the letter.”

There was only one problem with that sort of reasoning from Nate’s prospective.

“Lorelei, the only wizards I know are my brother and my probation officer,” he said to her. “And I don’t think either of them would be willing to take us up on the offer.”

Lorelei shrugged her shoulders, indifferent. “So we’ll just find someone else.”

“Oh, really?” Nate remarked. “And just how many wizards do you know?”

Nate should have known better than to issue such a challenge, especially as that same smirk from before began to once again spread over Lorelei’s face.

---

Nate cringed away as a five-year-old hacked directly in the direction of his eyes. He was sitting on an uncomfortable plastic chair that was sticky for some reason Nate was not willing to guess.

“Lorelei! That funny-looking kid coughed on me!”

“No one likes a whiner, Nate,” Lorelei told him as she scrolled her way through a sheet on a clipboard.

The place Lorelei had chosen to go ‘Wizard Hunting’ was hardly spectacular: the West Seneca Free Clinic, exactly three blocks from the Macalister apartment.

“How do you even know about this place?” Nate asked as he continued to shift in his chair, staring around the over-crowded waiting room. “Your family has enough money not to need to go to a free clinic.”

“Me and Rae used to come here a lot when we were younger and Delia wasn’t around,” she explained, shuddering as the old man beside her blew his nose loudly into a Kleenex. “They didn’t need insurance, I never had to worry about the bill, plus we could walk there. It was all around just easier in the long run.

“Besides,” she went on to say as she filled out the last of the form, “every now and then, something comes along that needs to be treated, but you don’t necessarily want on your medical records. In this place, you don’t even have to tell them your real name.”

Lorelei left her seat momentarily to hand the form in to the overtired nurse standing guard at the exam room door. While she was away, Nate continue to observe his surroundings: already sick people crammed together like sardines, small children fighting over germy toys in the corner, a fuzzy television set tuned into a baseball game, and the overpowering smell of chalky medicine, latex, and disinfectant. He still had difficulty believing he and Lorelei were not the only witch and wizard for miles.

“Rivers and Macalister!” the nurse called out over the crowd, signaling them into the exam room. Lorelei and Nate left the disgusting waiting area without a backwards glance, being shut up in the pure white exam room.

As a whole, Nate had noticed that Wizarding society loved to brag about how much better they were than Muggles. Magic could fix everything that made Muggle life such a hardship, and that Muggles were metaphorically just sitting in piles of their own filth the way they lived their lives. Nate couldn’t even imagine what a member of Wizarding society would be doing here. Aside from him and Lorelei, of course.

Soon enough, however, Nate was distracted from his musings as the door flew open and the doctor let himself in. Right away, there was nothing about the man that seemed particularly magical. He wore a white coat, scrubs stained with various bodily fluids, and a distinct dead-eyed expression. Yes, a very typical example of the American medical industry.

“Okay, before we begin, let me lay down a few ground rules,” the doctor said to them in a fast-paced tone. “I will be prescribing you no opiates, no sleeping pills, and no medical marijuana. There will be no notes getting you out of gym, chemistry, or home ec, and if you came in here and wasted my time just because you didn’t feel like attending school today, I swear to God, I will shove a half-dozen very large needles into the most sensitive parts of your body.”

As soon as he finished his speech, he looked back and forth between the two teenagers and drew his own conclusions. “Let me guess. Girly wants to go on the pill?”

“No!” Lorelei snapped before Nate could respond himself.

The doctor turned his attention to Nate. “Then you want to go on the pill?”

“I’m not a girl!” Nate snapped this time.

“Then get a haircut, Shirley.”

It was, at this point, taking Nate everything he had to keep from searching the room for a scalpel and going straight for the throat. He turned his gaze towards Lorelei to see if his friend had already beat him to the punch. But in a most uncharacteristic manner, Lorelei held herself perfectly composed, letting no amount of her natural aggression show. “You’re a wizard,” she finally said coolly.

The doctor looked up from his chart, but he hardly appeared overcome with shock or guilt as most people did when confronted with a secret.

“No drugs for you,” he finally said, looking back down at his chart. “You’re clearly already on something pretty strong.”

Without warning, Lorelei lunged smoothly at the doctor, not to attack him, but to dig into his coat pocket.

“Whao, honey!” the doctor exclaimed. “I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be legal for at least a few more years!”

Then, a small smile came to Lorelei’s lips as she found whatever it was had been looking for. Finally, she extracted a long wooden rod that had been concealed in the doctor’s pocket.: a wizard’s wand.

“Please don’t make me make a really dirty ‘wood’ joke,” she pleaded, but with no real begging in her tone.

The man snarled down at Lorelei, but nothing could take away the joy of Lorelei’s victory, no matter how small it was. The doctor snatched back the wand and deposited it back in his pocket. Nate could not help but notice how the pocket appeared much too shallow to have concealed the long rod. And yet, somehow it did.

“Alright,” the doctor relented, crossing his arms over his chest. “What’s all this about?”

“Relax, doc,” Lorelei assured him first. “My friend and I are wizards too. No need to call in the Department on any silent alarms.”

The doctor actually did relax slightly, although he still appeared quite on edge and suspicious of the two teenagers in his exam room.

“Actually, we’re here because we have something for you.” Nate reached into his pocket and extracted one of the thoroughly crumpled envelopes. “Here you go.”

Please don’t bite, were the last words that went through Nate’s mind as the doctor took the envelope from him. But to his extreme shock, once the letter was gone from his hand, nothing happened. The doctor turned it over and over in his hands, but he wasn’t bitten or snapped at like everyone else had been. “What is this exactly?”

“It’s an invitation,” Nate told him, “to accept a teaching job…at the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow when he did not recognize the name. “We’re new,” Nate explained.

Still, the doctor turned the letter over in his hands as though he suspected it might be poisoned. “And what would I be teaching exactly?”

Lorelei spoke up. “Why don’t you try opening it and reading it yourself?”

The doctor glared up at Lorelei for her snide remark, but she did not allow herself to be intimidated by a stare-down, for which Nate was very grateful. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could have come up with answers that still sounded convincing. But it worked; the doctor finally tore the envelope open and began reading the letter, something Nate had not been able to do himself.

“Potions,” the doctor read. “Tempting, but I still have to wonder what this…‘new school’ of yours is doing sending its own students out to deliver these letters. Don’t they have any adult employees that can do this? Maybe every owl in the United States died off while I wasn’t looking?”

“Summer homework,” Lorelei answered sarcastically. “Are you going to give us an answer or no?”

The doctor took turns sneering at the both of them, looking almost as though he were watching a tennis match. “And can you give me an acceptable reason why I should?”

Suddenly, the same tired-looking nurse who had been guarding the doorway threw the door open, a frantic looking on her face.

“Dr. Leslie,” she shouted at him, “whatever you are doing in here, finish up fast. We have a food poisoning case in the waiting room, and it’s a spewer! And they’re saying they just came from the Thai restaurant down the street, so we can certainly expect more on the way!”

The doctor, now known officially as Dr. Leslie, slowly turned his head back to Nate and Lorelei, and then back down to the letter he had just opened.

Finally, he asked, “Is there a way for me to be able to contact you when I do make up my mind?”

Lorelei and Nate looked at one another, not really having any answer to give. “We don’t know,” Nate finally confessed. “The board of directors just kinda contacts you when they want to talk to you.”

“It’s an evolving system,” Lorelei finished quickly as Dr. Leslie met them with a less than believing gaze. For a long time, the three figures stood in complete silence, the echoing sounds of the waiting room buzzing in the background.

---

“It worked,” Nate said, starring into the plate below him. “It actually frickin’ worked!”

After the sun had gone down, Nate and Lorelei found themselves sitting in Bernie’s 24-Hour Waffle Hut, a well-known New York City hub for wizards both local and visiting. Given their latest victory, Nate found himself oddly craving the company of other magical folk.

Dr. Leslie actually seemed to be seriously considering the prospect of the teaching job that Skat-Hatokha had to offer him. He had not outright accepted or declined the job offer, at least not to Nate’ or Lorelei’s knowledge, but he hadn’t straight away called the department to have the two teenagers hauled in.

“Why twenty-four hours?” Lorelei asked, stealing the food-filled fork from Nate. “Who actually wants waffles at eleven at night?”

“It’s really more for the wizards coming in and out of here,” Nate told her, taking back his fork. “All the different time zones, after all.”

Lorelei offered a small shrug, taking his word for it, and taking up her chipped cup of coffee.

Sitting in Bernie’s, Nate couldn’t help but feel a slight sense of satisfaction, No matter what, he could always count on the fact that he knew at least a little bit more about the Wizarding world than his best friend did. Lorelei didn’t even know how to find Bernie’s. It was a feeling that Nate should have felt guilty about having, but at the same time, it made him feel slightly less like a Muggle than Lorelei was.

“Should you two really be out this late?”

Nate quickly turned to his side, met with the form of a very beautiful woman; thick dark hair and bronze skin, black high heels and smoky leggings. Her face was lined and shaded perfectly with her make-up, and her bright eyes stared down suspiciously at the two teenagers. “Do your parents allow you two to be out together unsupervised?”

“No one asked you, lady!” Lorelei snapped.

The pretty woman flinched back slightly, but she did not leave. She didn’t even look away. Her attention remained very much focused on the small collection of letters resting on the tabletop.

“What are these you have here?” she asked, reaching for one of the official brown envelopes.

“Don’t touch it!” Nate shouted.

But the woman was not screaming and she was not in pain. Taking a cautious step back from the teenagers, her fingertips pinched at the edge of the envelope. It wasn’t biting her, wasn’t attacking her; it was just an ordinary envelope.

And blatantly ignoring the fact that it had gotten him into trouble so many times before, Nate began pulling words out of nowhere. Not the same as lying, just his mouth getting a head start of his brain. “Can you tell me your name, ma’am?”

“Vanessa Montoya.” She still wouldn’t let go of the envelope.

“What a coincidence!” Nate went on, faking surprise. “We have been looking for you all day!”

“You have?” she asked, raising her arched eyebrows.

“Yes!” Nate insisted. “My associate and I are messengers hired to deliver…that envelope to you.”

Lorelei’s eyes widened a bit at being pulled into the conversation, but didn’t say anything, seeming much more interested in being entertained by the situation in front of her. And Nate felt no obligation to stop. Lorelei had already put herself into this whole mess, and she had no right to complain about Nate further weaving on the tale.

The woman at their tableside remained somewhat skeptic. “They why didn’t you just deliver it to me at work?”

Nate shrugged his shoulders. “Hey, if the school wanted the job done professionally, they would have hired professionals. But they didn’t; they hired us.” Nate couldn’t help but feel a bit proud of himself for how much more effortlessly he was able to spin these tales on such short notice. True, it was not something that a person should be proud of, but he still could deny the feelings.

“School?” the woman asked, noting who Nate said it was that was employing them to deliver all these letters.

“The Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic,” Lorelei told her, interested in seeing the reaction.

Surprisingly, however, the woman known as Vanessa Montoya offered a small smile and an expression sounding almost like recognition. “Oh, I see.”

Using one of her manicured nails, she sliced the envelope open and extracted the parchment inside. She took a few moments to read silently to herself before looking back to the two messengers in the booth. “Well, this is most certainly one of the most interesting messages I have ever received. Thank you so much.”

And with that, she hoisted her purse over her shoulder and Vanessa Montoya left the waffle restaurant, still reading the letter. Nate breathed a sigh of relief and Lorelei sulked from the lack of a show. “We’re out of coffee,” Lorelei finally said, reaching for their coffee urn. Nate wondered how this could possibly be since she was the only one who had been drinking it. The girl had a problem.

Still, Nate followed her to the counter, where Franco the head cook was wiping the counter. “Yo, waffle-jockey!” Lorelei shouted at him. “We need a refill of your crap-tacular coffee!”

Nate cringed slightly as Franco looked up to face her. He had already learned from experience that you never ever mess with those whose job was to handle your food. And he had a feeling Franco was going to be making sure that Lorelei learned this lesson quite well. But in the way that Nate expected.

The cook regarded the two of them with a very smug expression. “You’ve never heard of Vanessa Montoya.”

Another thing Nate had come to learn over the years; cooks, clerks, and anyone who worked minimum wage heard every single word you and your friends said to one another, even when you thought they weren’t listening.

Lorelei snatched another envelope from the stack and dangled it in front of him. “This little baby right here says we have.”

Franco regarded her for a second, then snatched the letter out of her hand. Nate was half convinced Lorelei had just given it to the man out of spite and she wanted to see him get bit. But, once again, the Biting Envelopes had deemed this particular person fit to possess one of these officially-looking letters, and he was able to open it without a huge production. While he was distracted, Nate took Lorelei by the arm and led her out of the restaurant before she could do or say anything that would land them right back where they started with the waffle cook.

Once they were back out on the sidewalk, Nate extracted the rest of the envelopes. “I suppose we really are expected to do the hiring for the Skat-Hatokha place,” he reasoned. “I just wish we could actually read these things for ourselves so we could have a better idea of what we are dealing with.”

“I have a feeling we wouldn’t want to know anyway,” Lorelei told him as she walked by his side.

“How do you figure?”

Lorelei set in with her legal jargon once again. “From a legal standpoint, the less details we know, the better. It makes us far less culpable in the long run.”

“So now you don’t think Skat-Hatokha is real?” Nate ask, starting to feel a bit panicked. “You said this morning that getting these letters proved that the place is real!”

Lorelei shook her head. “We know very little for sure.”

Nate was getting ready to pull his hair out from the lack of straight-forward answers he was getting from his right hand. Just get to the point already!

“We have a place that for all intensive purposes will be a school (despite all the faces Nate was make to the distinction). We have teachers hired and coming at a set date, so most likely students will be coming after that. This Skat-Hatokha School is coming whether we like it or not.”

Instead of Nate feeling better, though, he was starting to feel his stomach tighten into a very uncomfortable knot. Other kids? he hadn’t even considered that possibility yet! What was he going to do when that point in time finally came?

“And we can either get out of its way….” Lorelei’s expression became slightly more devious. “Or we can ‘accidentally on purpose’ pull a few strings of our own.”

The longer Nate knew Lorelei, the more he suspected she might one day grow up to be a criminal genius. This whole Skat-Hatokha thing only served as a medium for her. If only she could be certain whether or not she was Italian. She would have made an excellent addition to the mob.

Nate split the stack in half and pushed one pile into Lorelei’s hands. “These can be your responsibility.”

---

---

There were certain mornings one went into work, and they knew it was going to be a miserable day the moment they walked through the door. For Harry, today was one of those days. Though when he first arrived at the Ministry of Magic, he couldn’t be sure just what kind of fresh torture this would be. Perhaps there was a mass prison break at Azkaban last night and he would now get to spend the rest of his week chasing escaped criminals all over Britain. Given all had been involved with in the past few weeks, however, such a task might have come as a welcome break to all the ‘official’, intercontinental business he had been involved with.

But it was the receptionist at the Aurors office that offered Harry his first clue as to what might be waiting for him. “Mr. Potter, you have someone from the American Department of Magic here to see you,” she said, pointing vaguely down to the end of the office. “I told her to wait at your desk.”

Of course! he thought grimly to himself. Harry could only imagine what little surprise this visitor might have for him. If it was another reporter, though, Merlin help him, he was going to throw her out of the Ministry himself! Despite the fact that the whole Boy-Who-Lived image had certainly been lost after he became a father, that still didn’t stop the sleazier reporters from following his coattails and snapping pictures at the most boring details of his life, much like the Muggle celebrities in various tabloids.

In the Ministry, they were more or less safe from any real danger or retribution, but Harry was certain the moment one of those vultures actually did follow him home, he was going to hex them back to the Second War and back again!

However, when Harry finally did arrive on the scene, he saw Ron was standing beside his desk, frantically conversing with a young woman who looked just barely out of school sitting in a chair in front of his desk, tapping her fingers against her knees. She answered him nervously in a high-pitched voice, her movements quick and flinty like a hummingbird. And as nervous as Ron would get whenever he got into an argument, this young woman was much worse. Her hair and even the material of her robes shook with her and her movements.

“Hello,” Harry finally said, getting the pair’s attention. “Can I help you with something?”

“Mr. Potter!” the young witch exclaimed, jumping to her feet. “I’m sorry if I’m appearing so frazzled, but I have been running all over creation today catching up with all of Miss Montoya’s contacts. And there are a lot of them!”

Harry’s eyes widened when he recognized the name. “Miss Montoya? Vanessa Montoya?” The young woman nodded, still anxiously smoothing her hair. Harry then pressed, “What? What has happened?”

All kinds of possibilities were going through Harry’s head. He had been an Auror long enough to know that whenever an official government employee was the one sent to deliver news, it was bound to be horrible. An assassination, a mass terrorist attack, some American Dark Lord that no one had informed him of…

“Miss Montoya is no longer an employee of the American Department of Magic,” the young woman told him, “as of nine thirty-seven Eastern Standard Time.”

Harry’s eyes went wide as he blinked back surprise. It actually took him a few moments to recover from the initial shock, it finally dawned on him as to just how serious the situation actually was.

“Excuse me?” he finally asked, his voice catching slightly.

“I am so sorry you had to be told like this,” the young witch continued, flinching back slightly as though she were afraid any anger Harry might be feeling was going be taken out on her, “But Miss Montoya’s resignation was quite sudden and, frankly, very unexpected. The Department of Magic’s International Relations Office has been doing its very best to make sure all her contacts are informed and compensated as well as can possibly be.”

At first, Harry felt somewhat relieved that the news was not one of the more horrible scenarios that had been circling in his mind. But then, he suddenly recalled that it was Vanessa Montoya who had been the one to meet them at the British Wizarding Embassy; it was she who was the one who had likely been the one who had all the proof they were ever going to need that the whole Skat-Hatokha mess was nothing for anyone anywhere to get up in arms about. Everything had been so quiet lately, at least in terms of what the Aurors Office had been asking him and Ron to do in investigating. But chances were, now that Vanessa Montoya had left the American Department of Magic under ‘suspicious circumstances’, someone was going to trudge up the cold investigation once again.

Apparently, this was something that had already occurred to Ron, which was why he was so nervous when Harry had first arrived. When Harry finally glanced over in Ron’s direction, his friend was already trying to come up with some alternative explanation.

“Maybe it’s just temporary,” Ron suggested. “Maybe it’s just some sort extended leave. She might very well come back.”

The young woman from the American Department of Magic shook her head, keeping her eyes cast on the floor. “No, not the way she quit.”

The young witch’s eyes went wide as well, as though recalling some horrid memory of exactly how Vanessa Montoya had gone about leaving the American Department of Magic.

“I should go,” the young woman said suddenly, gathering her jacket up in her arms. “I still have many, many places to go and people to find.”

And with that, the little representative rushed away in a shuffling sort of run, shoulders clenched as though she were now afraid of being cursed from behind, leaving Harry and Ron still very much in a state of shock and quite certain that they were now going to have a very large mess to clean up.

Chapter 9
Hieging Place


Nate Rivers sat at the breakfast table, staring down at the margins of the morning newspaper that he had been scribbling on. It was the world news section; Nate’s dad had already moved onto the sports section, the top of his balding head peaking over the top as he occasionally reached for his coffee.

“Nate,” his mother lectured him from her spot in front of the sink, “popsicles are not for breakfast.”

Nate nodded to at least show his mother that he’d heard her, but there was no way he was going to give up his grape flavored excuse for nutrition.

Suddenly, the River’s family ‘breakfast’ was interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell…and then it rang again…again and again in a rapid series in the manner of someone absolutely desperate to get into the house. And just as they did every time the doorbell or the phone rang, Nate’s parents locked eyes for their usual staring contest. Nate sat back against his chair and watched. There was no telling how long it might have gone on for were it not for the particle of dust that landed in Mr. River’s eye, because he suddenly yelped like an injured puppy and both his hands went to his left eye, rubbing at it like mad. Mrs. Rivers allowed herself a victory blink as a triumphant smile spread across her waxy, colored lips.

“I’ve got it,” Nate’s dad finally relented, allowing his paper to drop to the tabletop. He left the table still rubbing at his troubled eye.

With Nate’s father gone from the room, his mother was able to go back to her previous activity of staring disdainfully at her son’s choice of morning nutrition. Nate found himself hoping whatever it was that was at the door would require both his parents’ attention so his mother’s award winning stare could be used on someone else.

That thinking didn’t last for very long.

“Oh! Hey, Lorelei!” Nate could hear his dad say from the front door. “It’s very nice to see�””

Nate’s father didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence as Nate heard his best friend storm through the front door and into the kitchen. Her eyes were large, and her fist was clamped in a deathly grip around a crumpled piece of yellowed paper. One thing was very certain: whatever it was that was bothering Lorelei, Nate was going to be a dead man because of it.

“Alright, I’m going to be late for work!” Nate’s mother suddenly announced once his father had joined them back in the kitchen. “And your dad’s car is still in the shop, so we’re both going to be leaving right now, Nate. You have a good day.”

“No! Mom, Dad,” Nate began to beg. “You can’t leave me here alone! I’m serious!”
But Nate’s parents didn’t listen. They just made their way out the door, leaving Nate alone in his kitchen which had just become the lair of the Beast.

“You know, Nate, I have my morning routine down to the point where I could do it on…pretty much any sort of mind-altering substance that can be put into your system.” Lorelei continued to smooth the parchment, which turned out to actually be a torn envelope, against the palm of her hand. “And getting a five-year-old to follow a routine is not easy. All the books say they need it, but the five-year-old will do everything in their power to fight you.”

Finally, when the paper appeared to meet her satisfaction, she thrust it in Nate’s face, less than an inch from his nose.

“So you can imagine just how big a wrench was thrown into the works when an owl showed up tapping at the living room window with THIS in its beak.”

Nate was nearly cross-eyed from the close distance of the paper, but he could still make out of key details of the object: a heavy parchment envelope with brilliant gold ink. An envelope written in the exact same style of every letter Nate had received from the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic. This was confirmed as soon as Nate backed away and was able to read the return address: Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic.

“A letter as interesting as this certainly raised a lot of questions for Rae. Lorelei, what does it say? Lorelei, what’s a wizard school? Lorelei, why didn’t you tell me you were leaving? And these questions were quite difficult to answer, because I have no answers for them, and that is because I have no idea how your little wizard school even got my name and WHY they seem to think I will be packing up to go there!”

Nate moved backwards until his back was against the table. “Well, Lorelei…” Nate began slowly, carefully, “…you did tell Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley that you would be going to Skat-Hatokha.”

“I was LYING, retard! But apparently your little friends at Skat-Hatokha don’t seem to understand that.” Lorelei slammed her letter down on the countertop, as though she were trying to kill it. “And since you seem to be so very close with these people, you are going to inform them of this fact.”

Nate stared down at his shoes. “I can’t, Lore,” he said softly. “You can’t contact these people. They come to you. They must have somehow heard that you told Mr. Potter that you were going to Skat-Hatokha too, and just put your name on the list that they have.”

Lorelei’s arms flew wildly, but her fingers still grasped at the letter. “So now you have people watching you, Nate?” she shouted. “I thought no one could find these people; that they were no where.”

Nate shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Lorelei stomped her feet angrily. “Don’t say ‘I don’t know,’ Nate! ‘I don’t know’ implies that you have no control over the situation. And you cannot have no control over the situation, because you are the one who got me into this, and now you are going to be the one to get me out of it.”

Finally, Lorelei let the letter go, as though she were preparing to use her hands for something else, potentially something more violent if need be. “Now what is it that you are going to do about it?” she asked, her hands going to her hips.

“I don’t know,” Nate replied once again, instantly regretting his choice of words.

“NATE!”

Then, no longer caring if he would be perceived for the rest of his life as a little girl, Nate ran screaming for the back kitchen door, slamming first into the sliding glass door. At the very least, the act left Lorelei too dumbfounded to chase after him.

---

Roughly an hour later, Nate arrived back at his house with backup. If Graham wielding a nine-iron could even be considered backup, that is.

Nate slid the glass door open slightly wider to accommodate his friends much heavier form, along with the golf club. The two boys stepped lightly as they could, waiting to be obstructed by broken glass, smashed furniture, and dismembered bodies.

But the house was relatively quiet and orderly. Lorelei didn’t kill anyone, of course. She didn’t set anything on fire, and anything she broke was hidden out of sight when Nate and Graham came through the back door. When the two boys finally did find her, she was laying sprawled out on the living room couch staring up at the ceiling, as though she were in a therapist’s office.

“Hey, Lorelei,” Nate called out warily. “It’s me, Nate. And I brought Graham with me. Say hello to Graham.”

“Hey,” Lorelei remarked lazily, offering a half-hearted wave.

“Graham,” Nate suddenly remembered the weapon the boy was wielding, “don’t you think you should put the golf club down?”

“Nope!” Graham shook his head vehemently as he took a step backward and raised the club higher. “I don’t think so!”

In all honesty, Nate might have exaggerated the situation a bit. Graham’s dads wouldn’t even allow Lorelei into their house because according to Graham who had heard stories from Nate, Lorelei was a budding serial killer who would maim at the drop of a hat.

“Soooo…,” Nate began casually, “you got one of those Skat-Hatokha letters too?”

Lorelei nodded, still staring blankly up at the ceiling.

“And you…” he continued, “said they had a list for you to give to me too?”

Again, Lorelei nodded.

“Can I see it?”

Emotionlessly, Lorelei separated a piece of paper from the small stack and tossed it in Nate’s direction, the parchment flying wildly through the air with Nate struggling to catch it. Nate even found himself clutching the paper slightly to his chest once he had caught it, before holding it up to read.


SKAT-HATOKHA
ACADEMY of MAGIC
~~~~~~~~~

UNIFORM
Please mention the name ‘Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic’ for correct style.
*Forest green robes
*White linen shirts
*Khaki trousers (boys) and skirts (girls)
*Forest green winter robes (fisherman’s wool)
All students require a minimum of three uniforms. Uniforms must be worn during school hours, no exceptions, as well as for official school functions. Personal clothing may be brought to be worn at other times. Students are reminded to pack for the seasons in a humid continental climate. All students’ clothing is subject to teacher approval.

Please also note that all students’ clothing should have their name written on it. No one wants to get someone else’s underwear!


TEXTBOOKS
All fourth-years will need to bring a copy of the following:
* Standard Book of Spells (Grade 4) by Miranda Goshawk
* A New World History of Magic by Harriet Adams
* Magical Theory by Albert Waffling
* Transfigured Charms: Wandwork for the Intermediate by Leon Little
* Plants and Fungi: Magical and Mundane by Matthew Green
* Doubly Bubbling: An Intermediate Approach to Potion-making by Martin Effervesce
* Beasts, Beings, and Everything in Between by Bindu Unai
* Principles of Defensive Magic: Intermediate Edition by Simon V. Dragunov

Fourth-years will need the following books for elective classes:
* Ancient Runes: Keystones in Translating Runes by James Horton
* Arithmacy: It All Adds Up: a Comprehensive Guide to Arithmacy by Mathema Denominatopoulos
* Care of Magical Creatures: Where are the Wild Things? by Arnold Burrows
* Divination: Divine Divination by Cristóbal Espejo
* Fine Arts: The Essential Student Art Kit and Guide by Vincent Sansoreille
* Home and Hearth Magic: Making a House a Magical Home by Hecate Brown
* Mineralogy: Stone Cold Facts by Peter Fields
* Practical Integration: The People Who Look and Think You’re You by Kathleen Forester
* Voodoo: Voodoo, You Do by Maléfique Marionnettiste
Other equipment will be provided or special-ordered once at school.

OTHER EQUIPMENT
(A student may already possess certain items on this list. It is not necessary to go out and buy new.)
* 1 wand
* 1 cauldron (pewter, standard size two)
Beginner students are advised to buy a used cauldron.
* 1 telescope
* 1-3 sets of glass phials (possibly more)
* 1 set of brass scales
All students must write in advance to have permission to bring a pet. Owls are the only exception to this rule.

THE FOLLOWING ARE NOT ALLOWED AT SKAT-HATOKHA
* No Muggle electronic devices (such as cellular telephones, i-Pids, Gaming Boys, etc.)
* No Fanged Frisbees, Tormenting Twitchers, Skirt Shifters and Lifters, Acid Attack pellets, or related products
* No products from Binkos Biological Necessities or Jack ‘o’ all Trades Jokes
* No live Quods other than what is school issued. Students providing their own Quodpot equipment must have it inspected by school staff before use.
* No weapons, modern or medieval
This list may be subject to change.


Lorelei’s own list of school supplies was being laced through her fingers. Her index finger was tapping against it and she was staring intently at the floor in front of her feet.

“Well,” Nate began, trying to come off with a bit of humor, “I don’t have a single thing on this list. Do you?”

Lorelei shook her head. Of course she and Nate didn’t have wands, cauldrons, or anything else like that. They had both been raised by Muggle parents and neither of them had gone to any sort of wizarding school until now. What use would they have for such things? Even with an older wizard brother, Nate had very little idea of how to use many of the tools that other wizards thought of as everyday objects.

“Lore,” Nate asked his friend when she still hadn’t given him a verbal response, “you okay?”

Lorelei shrugged her shoulders and sighed, finally pushing herself up into a seated position. “I guess I’m just confused,” Lorelei confessed. “I mean, do we pack? Do we not pack? Do we go out and buy all these things? Is there really going to be a wizard school that we’ll be going to this fall?”

“I…still don’t know,” Nate said, hoping the previous rule about not saying that phrase was still in place. “My best guess is that we should just go ahead and get all these things so we’ll be ready for whatever does happen. I mean, we’re wizards! Even if we don’t end up going to any school, we’ll probably be able to use them for something.”

“And where do you plan on getting these?” Graham finally let his golf club drop to the floor. “In fourteen years of living in New York, I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen any place where you can get these kinds of things.”

Nate began to chew on his bottom lip and shuffled nervously on his feet. He knew exactly where to get all these things, and Lorelei did too, which was why she shot up from her spot on the couch and began shaking her head.

“Oh, no!” she insisted quite vehemently. “No, no, no, no, no! We are not going back there again.”

“But it’s right in the city and we know how to get there!” Nate tried to argue. “Besides, I don’t know where else we could get these kinds of things.”

Graham stood stupidly on the sidelines of the conversation. “What are you two talking about?”

Lorelei glanced over to the side so she could look Graham in the eyes as she spoke. “Hieging Place,” she told him plainly, “and the two of us burned way too many bridges to ever go back there again!”

Graham was still confused though. It was at that point that Nate realized that there were many aspects of the wizarding world that he had never told Graham about, and Hieging Place was certainly one of those things.

“Hieging Place is the wizard market in New York City,” Nate explained to Graham. “It’s where you go to get wands, potion things, all kinds of magical stuff.”

Graham’s expression was more or less blank, but he did appear to be blinking a great deal. “And you’ve actually been there?” he asked, mouth gaping slightly. “I mean, you’ve actually seen this place.”

“Of course, I’ve been there!” Nate assured his friend. “You know how much time I spend at Bernies.”

The poor boy did not see any connection between the two. Nate could have tried to explain it all to his Muggle friend, but in the long run, it would have just been faster to show him.

“Get your purse and stuff, Lore,” Nate finally ordered her. “We’re going there right now.”

Graham’s expression became one of pure and utter confusion, while Lorelei still remained annoyed and stubbornly set against the idea of going to Hieging Place. She, however, understood the connection between the waffle restaurant and the supposed wizarding market.

This was most certainly going to be a very educational afternoon for all three of them.

---

“Do you two know where you are going?” Graham asked after three blocks of seeing nothing more than the same Riverdale neighborhood he and Nate walked everyday.

“Of course!” Nate argued, though not very convincingly. “Kinda…sorta…”

“Well, which is it?” Graham pressed, then coming to another conclusion. “When was the last time you actually went to this place?”

Nate could feel his toes curling inside his shoes as he prepared to confess. “Well, neither me or Lorelei have actually been to Hieging Place in more than seven years.”

“Why so long?”

Soon, Nate’s old habit of biting his nails came back to him as he began chewing on his index finger. “There was an…incident the last time me and Lorelei were there.”

But since such a vague explanation didn’t appear to be enough to satisfy Graham, Nate went on. “We sort of attacked a man in the apothecary�”the potion ingredients-selling place�”and then we tricked the entire store into believing he was trying to kidnap us.”

“All in less than three minutes,” Lorelei finished the story. “That was the day Carter first started insisting the two of us would grow up to be criminals.”

Lorelei turned to meet Graham’s rapidly paling expression with a smirk and a shrug of her shoulders. “Hey, he wasn’t wrong.”

“Anyway,” Nate took over the conversation once again, “every time I ever wanted or needed some wizard thing, Carter would just go and get it for me.”

During the course of the walk, Lorelei and come into pace with Nate and had even begun laughing along with the group, a far cry from her earlier version which had such a violent thirst for blood.

“You okay, Lore?” he finally dared to ask. “You know, about Hieging Place and all.”

Lorelei shrugged her shoulders. “I guess no one will be there who could actually recognize us as seven-year-olds.” As though all she had been worried about before was being embarrassed by her behavior years ago.

She remained at Nate’s side and said nothing further. Nothing about her previous anger, and no more words about her supposed ‘acceptance’ to this school for young wizard criminals.

Nate unwisely tried to reopen the old wound. “So…you’re not mad about the letter anymore?”

Lorelei shot her friend a look that was rather hard to read.

“No, I’m still mad,” Lorelei told him. “I’m just choosing not to take it out on you anymore. I’ll wait till we actually get to this school to be angry again.”

Nate felt somewhat relieved by his best friend’s answer, but he still took one rather notable step to the side, just in case the sudden pleasant disposition took a change for the worse.

The bell rang over their heads as Nate held the restaurant door open for his friends before entering himself. Bernie’s 24-Hour Waffle Hut was just about as ordinary as ever. Waitresses were rushing and running around as though the building was on fire, cooks were yelling so loud, they could be heard even through the kitchen walls, and a small crowd of people were huddled over their plates and fighting over the containers of maple syrup. There was absolutely nothing that could be considered magical about the place, at least to the untrained eye.

The group of three made their way past the counter and through the kitchen doors without attracting the smallest bit of attention from either the customers or the restaurant staff, something that seemed to greatly disturb Graham.

“That�”they didn’t even stop us!” Graham stammered when he noticed none of the restaurant employees were paying them any mind. “Why didn’t they stop us?”

Graham was shaking Nate by the shoulder, his questions becoming more frantic by the second, the poor boy convinced that Nate was just ignoring him. He just kept telling himself that Graham would be getting all the answers he wanted on his own in just a few moments as they made their way further into the kitchen.

Amidst all the busy chefs and grimy dishwashers, Graham’s eyes darted wildly, looking for any clues he could find that could tell him what was happening here. “Remind me what it is that we’re doing again.”

Nate groaned at having to repeat himself again and again. “We’re going to Hieging Place.”

Graham met Nate’s gaze with an almost stupid sort of skepticism. “Hieging Place is in the kitchen?”

Nate fought the strong urge to roll his eyes at all the wrong guesses that Graham was coming up with. Nate had always promised himself that he would never become one of those wizards, the sort who would regard Muggles with that ‘how sweet’ mentality. After all, his parents were Muggles, Graham was a Muggle, and, of course, Alaia Grace was a Muggle. But having to hold Graham’s hand through this whole process, he could not help but begin to understand why some wizards held the mentality they did.

Finally, though, the group of three arrived at the entrance to the wizarding market, and what was finally going to put an end to Graham’s continuous questions. “Tah dah!” Nate said dramatically, holding his arms out in front of him in a sweeping gesture.

Graham, however, remained just as confused as ever. The only thing in front of them was an oven, a rather old oven covered in grease and burnt waffle batter. Eventually, Graham’s eyes began to drift around the room, looking for whatever else Nate could possibly be referring to.

“Is that the door?” Graham asked, pointing to the back kitchen door. “Is Hieging Place hiding behind there?”

“No,” Nate replied, walking up to his friend and turning his heads so the old oven would rest right in his center vision, “we get there through this door.”

The corner of Graham’s mouth twitched upward and he wrinkled his nose, as though convinced this were all some kind of joke. He tried looking to Lorelei for any sort of confirmation, but Lorelei was staring up at the ceiling, bored, waiting for everyone to move on.

Nate tried to clarify the situation better for his Muggle friend. “You have to crawl through the oven to get there,” Nate explained through the use of slow words and vast amounts of hand gestures. The only way he could have explained it any clearer would have been to draw a picture on the countertop with a maple syrup bottle.

Finally, however, Graham appeared to at last be beginning to understand, as irrational as the concept must have seemed to him. “We,” he tried to clarify, “are all going to crawl into the oven of a working restaurant? Neither of you ever stopped to consider those fairytales about children being cooked might have something to do with this?”

Nate huffed to himself, a strand of hair flying up and away from his face. “Graham, it’s not connected to anything! I mean, this is a waffle restaurant; what do they even need an oven for?” he said, exasperated. “I don’t even think it’s a real oven. It’s a tunnel…thing where the entrance just looks like an oven for the Muggles who come back here.”

A puzzled look was beginning to make its home on Graham’s face. “That happens a lot?”

Now that his blood pressure was finally starting to go back down, Nate was able to answer his friend more calmly. “Not a lot, but enough so that they had to build the oven-thing.”

Confident in what seemed to be so impossible, Nate made his way over to the oven and let the door drop open. None of the cooks paid them any attention as he did so, signaling that they were all far too used to this sort of scene. “After you,” he said to both his friends.

But Lorelei backed away, shaking her head. “Oh, no!” she made her protests quite clear. “Four years in Catholic school has taught me that all boys everywhere want to look up your skirt.”

Lorelei’s face was turning bright red, either from anger coming from the slow pace the boys took in obeying her, or embarrassment at the prospect of the two of them seeing her underwear. “You two are going first!”

Not wanting to put any more delay on the trip than there had already been, Nate knelt down first to crawl into the oven, probably fittingly, as he was the one with the most experience with this method of transportation. One after the other, the three teenagers began crawling into the oven, further into the dark, but the oven itself did not end, long after it should. Nate was still not quite sure how it all worked, but he had learned with some things, it was just better to say ‘It’s magic,’ and leave it at that.

Nate remembered the actual process of getting to Hieging Place as being a lot more fun than this. Of course, Nate had been younger and more easily entertained back then. Now, he was far more preoccupied with his stinging elbows that kept bumping into the sides of the tunnels, the friction against his stomach, and worries that at some point, the overweight Graham would get stuck and Lorelei might try something drastic to get through him.

He soon found himself painfully brought out of his worries, however, by a rather hard bump on the head and what had to be a tremendously comical crash as the train of teenagers came to a crashing halt.

“Nate, I think we got lost,” he heard Graham call out from behind.

Nate straightened himself up so that he could push against the barrier easier. “No, this is the end of the tunnel. The door just sticks sometimes.”

But even pushing about as hard as he could, Nate could not manage to even shake the wall a little bit. “Graham, get up here and help me out!” Nate rolled over to the side and sucked in his stomach so that Graham could slide up just a little bit, so that at least his fingertips could touch up against the end of the tunnel. Though, as could have been guessed, this did very little to help Nate in getting the three of them out of the oven tunnel, and now he could feel his ribs poking into his lungs.

“Lorelei, help us out, would you?” he shouted, his breath catching just a little bit.

“Okay,” Lorelei answered, but Nate did not hear her move forward to join them.

A split second later, Graham and Nate went tumbling into the bright light of the bank after a kangaroo-style kick at their backsides on Lorelei’s behalf. Nate never liked to give Graham any grief about his weight, but if he had to lie under the boy for one more minute, all his internal organs were going to pop like balloons. Clawing at the uneven floor tiles, Nate managed to pry himself out from under the boy, kicking him off of him completely with one last movement.

By the time Nate had finally managed to clabber up to his feet, he was breathing hard and glancing around the scenery, trying to see if any part of it rang with his childhood memories. Gringotts was a massive building of white marble, leading it to more resembled Congress than a bank, and it was always the first place he and Carter would stop at because they would always take the entrance at Bernie’s. One year, when Nate had been four and Carter was thirteen, they had unwisely tried to race through the oven tunnel and ended up getting stuck three feet from the end. The goblin who had pried them out had not been happy.

Speaking of goblins, the moment the three of them reached the nearest bank window, Graham let out an ear-piercing and embarrassingly high-pitched shriek when he set eyes on the tiny goblin teller in his formal little black suit. On this front, Nate was a bit more understanding of his Muggle friend. Goblins were creepy-looking, and Nate doubted that there was anyone on Earth who would disagree. Even Lorelei didn’t appear intent on getting too close to the creature, as she took a few wary steps backwards.

The goblin, however, ignored Graham’s outburst and the general uneasiness among the others, almost as though he was used to this sort of thing. “What might you be needing?” he asked them in a crackly, slightly disturbing voice.

“Yeah, um, we need to exchange our money,” Nate told him, trying to remember exactly how this was done. “You know, Muggle money for wizard money.”

The goblin remained stiff and still, like a creepy little statue. “The current exchange is ten point twenty-eight American dollars to the Galleon. Please place your money on the counter to begin the transaction.”

Lorelei moved first, reaching into her purse for her pocketbook, eventually sliding a few bills over to the teller. Even though she wasn’t as plainly nervous as Graham was about the non-human bankers, she did appear to be a bit apprehensive as she slid the stack of bills against the counter surface.

Then another loud scream was heard on Graham’s part when a second pair of goblin hands seemed to pop up out of nowhere and snatched the money off the surface of the counter. The first goblin teller remained seated with his hands folded in front of him in a poised sort of fashion. Nate began to wonder what Graham was going to have to do to get a reaction out this creature.

It was only a matter of moments, and possibly magic, before the second goblin was back again, placing a thick leather pouch back on the countertop. It clunked heavily against the surface and Lorelei strained a bit as she picked it up, trying to figure out just how to go about carrying it.

“Alimony check came yesterday,” she exclaimed as something of a smirk spread across her face.

“Next, please!” the first goblin called out, his long fingernails tapping against the counter. Graham clearly had no use for wizard money, so Nate went next and emptied his pockets of the crumpled green bills he had brought with him. The phantom goblin hands scooped these up as well before disappearing once again. “Do either of you have a bank account, or are interested in opening one?” the first goblin asked them.

Both Nate and Lorelei shook their heads. Nate certainly didn’t have a steady source of wizarding income, and he wasn’t sure what the Gringotts policy on holding Muggle money was. Probably that they didn’t hold it at all.

It didn’t take very long before the second goblin was back with another leather sack for Nate, leading him to wonder how exactly the creatures went about converting the money as just a fast clip. And like Lorelei, Nate regarded his own wizard ‘wallet’ with absolutely no idea of what to do with it. Muggle-bred, they were indeed!

“Alright,” Graham finally said once the three teenagers walked away from the counter, “I understand how Lorelei can have that kind of money, but where do you get it, Nate? I’ve never seen you able to hold on to your allowance for more than an hour!”

Nate shrugged his shoulders and offered what he felt was a very simple explanation. “Selling my inventions on E-bay.”

Lorelei blinked back surprise. “You can do that?”

“You can sell anything on E-bay, Lore,” Nate said. “Remember that one kid who auctioned himself off as a prom date?”

At this statement, Graham burst out laughing, as though what Nate had just said was far too unbelievable to possibly be true. “But the things you come up with, Nate? How exactly do you go about selling a ninja star-spitting blender without drawing any sort of attention?” he asked, bursts of laughter popping out along with the rather sarcastic question. “Or that I.D.-printing camera? How does that not break a thousand wizard-laws?”

Graham kept laughing, but Nate’s expression, for once, was completely non-joking and serious, which caused Graham’s laughter to die down slowly like a fan turning off.

Now Graham was beginning to get nervous once again. “Where is that camera now?”

“Juarez.”

Graham’s face began to turn white again, signaling all the horrid thoughts and scenarios that must have been going through his head.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Nate reminded his friend as the three of them made their way down the bank stairs.

---

---

“She quit!” Ron exclaimed, his hands shaking as he held his teacup. “She quit, she quit, she quit! Oh, Harry, this is bad!”

Harry sat at his desk chair while Ron paced in front of him, going faster and faster with every turn he made. It had been just another thing Ron had added to his current list of obsessions: the coming baby when he was at home, and Miss Montoya’s sudden departure from the Department of Magic. Harry had tried to remain calm about the whole incident, not to mention his own news of a new baby on the way, but his best friend and brother-in-law was not making it easy for him.

“Calm down, Ron!”Harry said, trying to make himself the voice of reason. “She just quit her job. She was hardly dragged off in the night by some mysterious darkness!”

Harry kept going, hoping something he said would strike a chord. “You saw her, Ron. Miss Montoya hardly seemed like the type of woman who enjoyed her work. She had probably planned on quitting for a long time, and a few days ago, she just happened to be given a reason to finally do it. Maybe she got engaged, or a relative died and left her a small fortune.”

“Or maybe whoever is behind this whole Skat-Hatokha mess heard we were talking to her and decided to get rid of her before she told us too much!”

“Will you stop talking like that?” Harry nearly shouted. “Nobel might hear you and then your paranoia will spread throughout the entire office!”

But Harry just kept insisting his own points vehemently. No matter what, he refused to be sucked into a state of paranoia where none was deserved, and it wasn’t just here. Even after Voldemort was dead and gone, the culture of fear that his presence had created still remained. From Harry’s very first days in the Aurors Office, he and his colleagues would be sent all over creation to investigate signs of ‘Dark magic’; incidents that were either reported by British citizens or orders that came from Mr. Robards himself, who never seemed to truly have recovered from the trauma that had been instilled in him by the Second War.

Actually, things had been notably calmer up until this whole Skat-Hatokha fiasco, and Harry was determined not to give this completely pointless case any more momentum than it had already gotten without his help. And truthfully, if Nate Rivers was an example of what the future of Dark magic had in store, Harry was going to be in for a very dull career. Not that the life ambitions of Nate Rivers should have been any concern of Harry’s to begin with when there was an entire ocean separating the two of them.

Though, for now, Harry was willing to settle for getting Ron to calm down. Merlin knew that the poor man had enough on his plate without having this to worry about as well.

Finally, though, Harry managed to get Ron to sit down in a chair with a cup of coffee and taking deep breaths. Finally, some of Ron’s natural color began to return to his face and his voice quit shaking.

“Thanks, mate,” Ron finally managed in a somewhat calm voice between sips of coffee. “I can’t believe I could let myself get so unhinged at something like this.”

Oh, I can imagine it, Harry thought to himself, though he did not say this out loud for the sake of his friend.

“I suppose with everything that has been piling up at home and at work, I must have let it all get the best of me.,” Ron confessed as he played with his coffee stirrer. “Hermione has gone into full-fledged baby mode. It’s all she reads about, it’s all she talks about. It’s driving me mad, but it’s almost like she thrives on it all!”

Then Ron laughed to himself. “I’ve actually been contemplating taking the two of us to visit my mum for a while. One week at the Molly Weasley School of Parenting should kill that attitude dead!”

Harry couldn’t help but join in the laughter. Somehow, he had always imagined that pregnant Hermione would be exactly as Ron was describing her right now.

“The first one is always the hardest,” Harry told his friend, taking a seat himself, “but I promise you, there is only one ‘first.’”

Suddenly, Ron perked up as though remembering something. “Oh, right!” Hermione just told me that you and Ginny are expecting Baby Potter number two. Congratulations are in order! Just please tell me you know from experience that the second pregnancy is a lot easier!”

A crueler person might have taken the opportunity to torment Ron back into his previous state, but luckily for the soon-to-be father, Harry was not one of those people. Truth be told, Ginny had been remarkably at ease with the idea of being pregnant ever sense she had first announced it, and so was Harry for that matter, even though the pregnancy itself was not something they had planned.

Harry might have moved on to get Ron through this first baby were it not for at that moment, one of the Office secretaries poked her head around the corner as though what she were about to say might get her into trouble.

“Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley,” she told them, “Mr. Robards sent me. He wants both of you to come to his office right now. He says it’s urgent.”

After she was gone, Harry groaned inwardly as he began to hear Ron’s pacing steps and nervous mutterings from behind him once again.

---

---

Nate could only remember Hieging Place in bits and pieces; he hadn’t been there since he was seven, after all. The tightly packed square was crammed with brick storefronts constructed in a style that had not been seen in New York City for probably centuries, though some stores had chosen to give themselves a more modern appearance by painting over the bricks in brightly-colored shapes and swirls. Every now and then, there would be a sharp smell or a familiar word being shouted over the crowd that would trigger a feeling of familiarity, but for the most part, Nate felt himself an alien in a strange land, with Lorelei and Graham even more so.

“Okay,” Nate said, his eyes spanning over the square, “where do we start?”

Lorelei shrugged her shoulders. “What does the list say first?”

Reaching into his pocket, Nate unfolded his own copy of the supply list, and glanced up to the top. “Uniforms,” he said. “They say that all we have to do is give them the school’s name, and they’ll know what to give us.”

“So I suppose we’ll be able to know for sure whether or not the school exists,” Lorelei answered him in a slightly laughing tone, “if they have clothes for us.”

Nate nodded and rush ahead to scan over the storefronts. Nate hated shopping for normal clothes, so there was no way he would have wasted time in a wizard market looking at them.

The only problem with that was now they had no idea of where to go to get school robes. Hieging Place had several clothing stores, though they seemed to be for either old ladies or boutiques specializing in ‘trendy’ wizard clothing that Nate noticed a lot of older people staring at with disgust.

After circling the entire square, the group finally decided that their best bet would be a store called Filipe’s Fine Robes. It hadn’t been there when he and Lorelei were seven. Nate was fairly certain he would remember the bright neon paint splashed across the brick storefront and the glowing sign being lit by something other than electricity. And when they opened the door, the chimes ringing above them played a song that was just a little bit too happy to just be signaling the arrival of customers. The song had been over for barely a second when the three of them were jumped from the side by what appeared to be a man dressed in robes with so many colors, it looked like someone had vomited a rainbow.

“Hello, hello!” he greeted them in a painfully flamboyant voice. “Welcome, welcome, welcome to Filipe’s Fine Robes! I am Filipe, of course! What can I do for you today?”

“Um,” Nate drawled as he tried to think of what to say. “My friend, Lorelei, and I, we both need robes.”

“Ah, yes. Needing school uniforms, I believe?” he asked them, a smile spreading across his face as Nate and Lorelei nodded their heads. “Ha! I knew it! Now, why don’t you tell me what school it is you two attend?”

“The Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic,” Nate told him.

It was slightly discouraging, however, when a confused expression spread across the robe-maker’s face, the same one that had been seen on the faces of everyone who had never heard of the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic.

“We’re new,” he said, reaching into his pocket for the school letter that he had gotten just this morning. “They gave us a list of what we will need.”

The brightly colored man known as Filipe took the list, though it apparently wasn’t very helpful.

“Normally we have designers send in patterns for school uniforms, but I don’t believe I have been sent anything for your Skat-Hatokha school,” the man said, his face suddenly lighting up as though he had just realized something. “Unless…you just want me to design your school robes!”

Nate didn’t have an immediate answer, but it didn’t matter, because Filipe rushed up on him, grabbing Nate’s hands in his and falling to his knees in a classic begging position. “Oh, please, please say yes!” he pleaded. “I have been dying for an opportunity like this for you don’t know how long!”

Nate had never been in this kind of situation before, so he had no idea of how to react. “Umm…,” he stammered, “sure. Why not?”

Filipe, the flamboyant robe-maker, jumped to his feet and began clapping his hands like an excited little girl. “Alright, we’ll just get you two to stand up here so we can get started,” he clambered, directing Nate and Lorelei to stand on two platform-like stools. “Now, what are the colors we have to start with? Khaki and linen with forest green robes; any preference on the material of the robes or anything about the climate I should take into consideration.”

Again, Nate had no idea of what to say, or why he was suddenly in charge of determining the design of he and Lorelei’s ‘school uniforms.’ “Uh, I don’t know.”

Graham spoke up from his spot beside the door. “The letter said humid continental, if that helps?”

The designer shook his head. Apparently, it did not.

“Very well, then! I’ll just wing it!” he decided. “Now, since you are a new school, I was thinking we would go with something a bit more modern for the general concept.”

Extracting a wand from his pocket, Filipe summoned a measuring tape to his hand in a snap and began racing about Nate and Lorelei, measuring various things that Nate had no idea what clothes would have to do with.

“I think we will start out with designing your robes as glamours to start with,” Filipe told them, making Lorelei jump when he snuck up from behind her and measured her neck in a way that would have frightened anyone. “That way we will have the freedom to work through any adjustments we need to.”

Nate nodded, though he didn’t really feel like remaining in the robe shop any longer than was absolutely necessary, especially given where the tape currently rested on him.

“And…,”Filipe said, waving his wand this way as he finished off the last touches, “there we are!”

In a flouncing, Cinderella’s fairy godmother-like fashion, a set of wizards and witches robes appeared over Nate and Lorelei’s clothes while Graham’s jaw nearly dropped to the floor, a reaction Nate and Lorelei couldn’t help laughing at just a little bit before looking in the mirror to examine Filipe’s handiwork.

The robes were in what Nate assumed was ‘forest-green’ and short, not even reaching their knees, making Nate thankful that the school had specified what students were supposed to wear under their robes as well. He had heard more than enough horror stories about wizards who chose to go without regular clothes underneath their robes. Nate and Lorelei looked to one another as though they would find some clue for how to react to the design. They knew coming into that neither of them were experts in the field of wizarding design.

Filipe stepped back with his hands over his heart as if the designs had beauty enough to take his breath away. “Now keep in mind, these are just glamours, and I’ll be getting to the real robes in a moment. If these current designs meet with your satisfaction, of course.”

Again, all Nate wanted was to get out of the shop as quickly as possible. “Hey, it’s their own fault for being late in sending you the designs.”

“True, that!” Filipe exclaimed, jumping up and down as though his birthday had come early. “I hope I’ll be able to continue to work with you in the future, and not just for school uniforms!”

Immediately, Filipe rushed to the counter beside the cash register and began scribbling his way madly through a stack of parchment.

“If you still have some more shopping to do, your robes should be finished within the next few hours,” he told them, not looking up from his work. “And if you find yourself wanting more robes to wear when you are not in class, I could show you a few other designs I have been working on.”

“No, no,” Nate insisted quiet vehemently. “We’ll just take the school stuff for now.”

Filipe set his quill down and begged them the whole time they made their way to the door, with the three teenagers holding their hands up and insisting that they needed nothing else, and Graham trying to explain that he would never even have an opportunity to wear wizard robes.

The rest of Hieging Place proved to be far more normal, if a wizarding marketplace could even be called normal in the first place. In Double Toil Tools, they were able to buy their cauldrons, telescopes, several sets of phials, and nearly every other magic related tool that was on their list. In The Magic Word, a bookstore, they worked their way through hunting for all their school books, including browsing through some more interesting ‘recreational’ reading that appeared to make Graham a bit nervous. They even visited that same apothecary where they had seen to it that they would never return to Hieging Place again until this day. Nate vaguely remembered the excitable old man who sold them their school kits, though he didn’t seem to remember them.

Nate even tried to throw off some of the unease of the group by taking them to places that had nothing to do with shopping for Skat-Hatokha. In Goldstein and Son, which had to be the most amazing candy store on the face of the earth, Nate and Lorelei bought enough wizarding treats for Rae to get her through elementary school. They never did find that candy store for her in London like they had promised. And Nate himself spent a good hour in Talltrees’ Owls looking for treats for Hooters, should she ever come back.

“She always expects something for delivering the mail,” Nate explained, “and I really don’t think it’s a good idea to feed her anymore Captain Crunch.”

Graham even appeared to be slightly more at ease with his surroundings in the wizard-crowded shopping area, though he was by no means ‘at home’ just yet.

Even though they had been in the market for hours, according to the high clock above Gringotts Bank, for some reason, it didn’t feel like it. And magic and whimsy aside, Nate really hadn’t come to Hieging Place expecting he and his friends to have a good time.

“Do we have anything left on the list?” Nate asked as he strained to watch the second hand on the Gringotts clock.

“Wands,” Lorelei read aloud as she shifted her bundles more comfortably under her arm. “They’re the last thing on the list.”

In the very back corner of the square stood a shop called Ariacos Wands with an idiot-proof sign proclaiming that they had been supplying the city with wands since New York was New Amsterdam. Inside the shop, the group found what had to be the least magical-looking store they had visited that day, a lantern-lit room decorated in dark-stained wood with none of the moving paintings or animated magical toys that seemed to grace so many stores. Despite the rather aged appearance, it appeared ordinary in every sense of the word.

“Hello?” Nate called out. “Hello?”

“We need wands!” Lorelei shouted into the back.

Out came a middle-aged man who spoke in a European accent that Nate couldn’t place. “Yes, I am Joseph Ariacos. What can I do for you?”

Nate led the conversation, just as he had in every other store. “Yeah, we need wands; me and my friend, Lorelei.”

The man nodded thoughtfully. “Just one moment, I have to take a few measurements,” he said, making both Nate and Lorelei just a little bit nervous at the word ‘measurements’ from memory of Filipe’s. “And I’ll need to ask you a few questions while I do so.”

Like Filipe, the man called Joseph Ariacos didn’t ask permission to whip out the measuring tape, though his method of measuring was slightly less violating than when the two friends had been measured for clothes.

“Can you tell me your favorite colors?” the wand-maker asked them sudden as he started measuring the circumference of their wrists.

Nate was caught off guard. “Uh, orange.”

“Violet,” Lorelei answered slightly more confidently.

“Do consider yourselves more creative or more logical?”

Nate answered for both of them this time. “I guess were both a little bit of each.”

Mr. Ariacos moved on to measuring the length of their arms. “Favorite beetle?”

Lorelei wrinkled her nose. “People have favorite beetles?”

Nate was equally at loss. “I dunno, the one who married the Japanese chick and got shot?”

It went on like that for at least fifteen minutes; Mr. Ariacos measuring and asking the most obscure questions that Nate and Lorelei struggled to answer, and then moving on to another question as soon as they had.

Finally, the measuring tape snapped back into a tight little roll that the wandsmith placed into the pocket of his worn robes, a look of satisfaction spreading across his face.

“Alright!” the man said, tossing his quill away, with it somehow landing back in the same container it had come from. “I believe I have everything I need here.”

And it was with that, the wand-maker disappeared back behind the curtain, leaving the group of three all alone in the store, and Nate and Lorelei still very much without wands.

“Hey, yo!” Nate shouted over the counter. “We still need wands back here!”

It took only a moment for the man to appear again, this time with a rather knowing look on his face. “You and your little friend are Muggle-born, aren’t you?”

Nate and Lorelei shifted uncomfortably on their feet. This was always a complicated question for them. Part of being adopted was that you had no idea who your real parents where, but moreover, that you had no idea what your ‘blood status’ in the wizarding world was. But Nate and Lorelei knew for certain that neither of them were Muggle-borns; they never would have been placed in a wizarding adoption agency unless at least one of their parents was magical. But for all they knew about the wizarding world, they might as well have been Muggle-born, even if they were only truly Muggle-bred, as Nate had heard his brother say before.

Of course, answering this question was quite difficult. If they said they were indeed Muggle-born, they risked being snubbed by pureblood elitists, or possibly worse. But if they said they were not, they would be certain to be diving in way over their heads, regardless of what the topic may be.

Nate chose his answer quick. “Sure, why not?” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “But also, we’ve just never had wands until now.”

The man took a few steps closer, a confused expression spreading across his face. “Aren’t you two a little old to be getting your first wands?”

“And how is that any of your business?” Lorelei snapped in a way that caused the man to jump back as though he were confronting by a growling dog.

Nate laughed through his nose and raised one of his eyebrows. “Never comment on a lady’s age, and never comment on her weight, dude.”

This gesture appeared to be enough to get the man to calm down just enough to explain. “I don’t have any wands here in the shop that you can just take with you right now,” he told them. “All Adiacos wands are custom made with exact specifications to the witch or wizard they are made for. What I will do is take the information I have collected today, and build your wands based on that. I will then send you an owl once they are complete, which should be in roughly a week.”

Nate nodded at the explanation, but the questioning look on the man’s face before he disappeared back behind him made Nate feel the most insecure about how he was raised that he had felt in months. Surrounded by Muggles the way he was, it was rare for Nate to feel this way, but when it did happen, it was always horrible, almost like the magic inside him was turning into fire ants and eating him from the inside out.

Lorelei snapped him out of this, though, by shaking Nate by the shoulder quite roughly. “Hey, can you get that quill-thing for me? I want to cross off wands too.”

Somewhat absentmindedly, Nate walked over to the counter and retrieved the quill for his friend. And in a rather ceremonious manner, Lorelei crossed ‘wands’ off the supply list, creating a perfect column of black ink on the parchment, and on her face was the closest thing to a smile that Nate had seen on his best friend all day.