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.
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.