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.
Harry Potter and the Skat-Hatokha Reaction by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Nate receives another letter from Misters Dewey, Chetham, and Howe, inviting him to visit the famous Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic. Meanwhile, in England, Harry is having his own share of problems between work and family.
Thank you to my beta girls: Joanna, Alex, and Emma!