Chapter 2
Three Weeks Time
“Okay,” Harry thought to himself as he shifted through the papers on his desk, “Hurst can handle the MacDillard case, but I’ll be wanting to handle the Jeffrey investigation myself. Can Ron possibly finish out the details for the Keller paperwork without me? If he can, maybe I can get out early and take James to the park before it gets dark-”
“Mr. Potter,” Harry heard the office secretary say as she stood in front of his desk. “Mr. Noble is asking for you.”
“Mr. Noble?” Harry wondered, raising a suspicious eyebrow, “What does he want?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Potter. I’m just the messenger,” she answered, waiting for Harry to follow her.
As the secretary tapped her foot sharply against the floor, Harry put his papers in some degree of order and pushed himself away from the desk. Mr. Noble was Head of the Auror office with Harry in the position just under his. Normally Mr. Noble trusted Harry to handle matters in the office himself, and Harry had not seen him in person for nearly three months.
When he was finally shown into the office, Harry was at the peak of his strain. Behind the desk sat Reginald Noble, a middle-aged, slightly balding wizard well past his prime for the undertaking of any of the missions Harry had come to think of as everyday regularities. A man who now spent his days in his rather plain, very dull office, thinking of his glory days, watching the clock and waiting for any form of distraction.
Noticing Harry’s stiff stance, Mr. Noble offered a soft smile and gestured towards the chair in front of him.
“Mr. Potter, please sit down.”
Harry took the seat, but it did little to assuage his discomfort. Normally, whenever he had spoken to Mr. Noble before, the old man’s eyes would be unfocused and his tone trance-like, as though he were only half-conscious during the work day. But today, there was a distinct fervor in his expression, a type of excitement Harry did not know his boss was capable of possessing.
“I hear Professor McGonagall has recently told you about the Education Compensation Act.”
As Noble spoke, Harry noticed an open file resting on the desk. The pages were bent and ruffled as though the file had been read over and over again; certainly having been given much attention.
“Yes, sir,” Harry answered, feeling himself take on the glazed, half gone expression that normally resided with Mr. Noble.
“I have also been informed that you know of a letter sent by one...Nathaniel Rivers," he said, eyes darting over the file, "Residence...New York City.”
“That is also true, sir,” Harry replied.
“Well, then you probably also know that no one has heard of this school he claims he will be attending this fall,” he said, passing the folder to Harry.
Again, Harry nodded, biting against his own cheek to keep himself from talking. In the past half-week, he had heard more about the state of American education than he felt he would ever need to know. Merlin forbid Mr. Noble actually worried about the stack of investigation on his desk that were taking place in Britain and under his jurisdiction.
“And also, the only other students being offered acceptance at this school are only those who fall under the jurisdiction of the Education Compensation Act.”
Harry nodded, not completely sure if he knew where this was going. He also began to wonder what was so interesting about that file that it had gotten so much attention in the past few days.
“And that even though the Board of Directors at the Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic has given numerous correspondences with Professor McGonagall, no one at Hogwarts or this office has been able to contact them.”
“Mr. Noble,” Harry stopped him, “where is this conversation going?”
“There are forces at work here, Mr. Potter. What type of forces, we are not yet sure,” Mr. Noble explained. “The way this is being viewed, is that this scenario can only end one of two ways. At the least of our worries, this school does not exist and we merely have a few students who are in on this little Skat…prank. But if that is not the case, then we have much greater worries about who is running this so called school on our hands.”
“What are you saying?” Harry asked, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.
“Mr. Potter, the System is launching a formal investigation against this school, to see whether their suspicions have warrant,” Mr. Noble told him, that same fervor of excitement lacing his words. “I want you and your partner to personally investigate this school and make sure it has a sound foundation.”
“What?” exclaimed Harry, forgetting all about his previous attempts to censor his words. “Mr. Noble, are you sure this is the type of thing our office should even be concerned with?”
“The activities of possible dark wizards are not the concern of this office?” Mr. Noble asked with a curl of his lip. “Mr. Potter, do remember what office this is exactly?”
“It’s the office of Aurors,” Harry answered. “But our job is to investigate dark wizards that we know are a threat, not to go chasing halfway around the world after faceless boogiemen!”
“What I mean to say is,” Harry rephrased his words, “I have heard rumors of possible activity, but what I haven’t seen is any hard evidence that there is any. Are you sure you want to use extensive office resources on this matter just yet?”
“Well, what would you suggest, Mr. Potter?” Mr. Noble asked, leaning back in his chair.
“Why not only send a few investigators before the Ministry and the System launch a formal investigation,” Harry responded, even though he could feel his own words getting away from him, “That way, they can investigate these claims, report back to this office, and then the decision on whether to launch a formal investigation will have a much sounder foundation.”
“Investigators such as yourself, Mr. Potter?” Mr. Noble asked, looking as though he were seeing the reason in Harry’s words.
“If that would satisfy the System and all those involved.”
Mr. Noble leaned back in his chain once again, twittling his fingers and considering Harry’s words.
“Very well, Mr. Potter. I’ll humor you,” Mr. Noble agreed, “You will personally go to investigate the claims of the school, and personally speak with this Nathaniel Rivers. And if you tell me that everything is on the up and up, I’ll take your word for it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Noble.”
“But if you find one thing that even hints of suspicious activity,” Mr. Noble warned, picking up a quill and pointing it in Harry’s direction, “then the previously proposed investigation is moving forward at full force. I won’t have it hitting the Daily Prophet that an institute was suspected by the System, and I let it continue right under my nose.
Harry nodded curtly, still trying to understand how he had gotten himself into a matter he had been hoping to avoid entirely before.
“Besides,” Noble added, making a few more notations on the file before Harry left the office, “that new partner of yours is still a little green around the gills. This will be a good first mission for him.”
For the rest of the day, Harry just sat behind his desk, devoting all of his attention to the pile of paperwork that he had accumulated. It was all he could do to keep from taking his frustrations out on everyone he passed. Only he could have gone from knowing anything and not wanting to know nothing to becoming a Ministry-entrusted expert on the subject in the course of one conversation. It would have been easy to blame it on Lucius Malfoy, the paranoid System, Mr. Noble, or the girl who brought coffee every afternoon, but in the end, Harry knew that it was truly his own big mouth that had gotten him into this. Him and Ron! Oh, would he be happy to hear about this new mission, on top of everything else he had been dealing with.
Speaking of which, Harry had to make sure to tell Ron all about this as soon as he got home. Wouldn’t Hermione be happy to hear this?
It was only when the work day ended that Harry finally began to feel some of his anger at his own stupidity subside. The mental image of both Ginny and James waiting for him at home was enough to lift even his darkest moods.
"I hear you will be taking a little bit of a trip soon, Mr. Potter."
Harry turned his head to see a very smug Lucius Malfoy standing behind him.
"What," Harry nearly growled, "do you want?"
"Can I not wish a fond farewell to one of Britain's finest before he embarks on what could be a very dangerous mission?"
“Dangerous?” Harry snorted, “This load of tripe is costing the Ministry gold everyday by buying to the System’s inability to handle not being everyone’s Big Brother. And it is hardly helping that those who should be voices of reason in this matter are only helping to fuel the paranoia fire.”
That last statement was said with a heavy emphasis toward Lucius Malfoy. And it was clear that he could tell by the way he pursed his lips together and tightened the grip on his cane.
"You may not think very much of me, Mr. Potter," Lucius admitted, "or of anyone else who may have been sorted into Slytherin. But my years there have taught me one thing: how to smell a rat. And if this Skat-Hatokha school really does turn out to be a legitimate educational facility...well, I think we both know the answer to that."
It was Harry's turn to remain silent. Not because he couldn't think of anything to say, but because he did not trust himself to filter whatever words might come to his mind.
"Enjoy New York, Mr. Potter." Lucius added as he turned away. "And please, do give my regards to Mrs. Potter."
Infuriated, both by Lucius' comment about Ginny and his exit before Harry could make an appropriately stinging reply, Harry stormed over to the fireplace to Floo, not even noticing two wizards he knocked into on his way there.
Later that night, while Ginny was putting James to bed in the nursery, Harry sat awake in bed, reading Quidditch Through the Ages: a special copy that Ginny had had autographed by her entire team before her retirement. Even as he attempted to relax for the evening, he found himself only able to focus on a few sentences at a time.
He hadn't told Ginny about the events that had occurred that day at work. He tried to behave as though everything was completely normal; something that hadn't been easy since earlier that evening when Ginny informed him that he had spent seven minutes trying to cut his steak with a spoon.
“Alright!” Ginny stormed into the bedroom, hands on her hips. “What’s going on?”
At first, Harry pretended he didn't know what his wife was talking about, but Ginny sank down on top of the red covers and glared into Harry's eyes with that intense stare of hers. And so, slowly, Harry began to unveil the events of the day.
“The Skat-Hatokha Academy of Magic,” Ginny remarked, her expression softening now that she had gotten what she wanted. “Well, trying to interfere with other people’s happiness definitely sounds like Lucius Malfoy. And don’t look at me, Harry. I spent my entire career trying to avoid the Ministry of Magic."
“It’s not Lucius and it’s not the Ministry that’s causing this giant headache,” Harry told Ginny as she sunk into bed next to him, “It’s the bloody System!”
“That’s what I said, Harry.”
“No, not the system of the British Ministry of Magic,” Harry explained, setting the book down. “The System, that can’t stand not to know everything about a school three thousand miles away!”
Ginny frowned and allowed her chin to rest in the palm of her hand, not understanding.
“Well, from what you told me, if you hadn’t said anything, it would have just ended up being a much bigger headache a little while from now.”
“I supposed,” Harry agreed.
“And that instead of only being away for few days, this mess may have consumed your days and possibly nights for what could be months.”
“That’s also true,” Harry acknowledged, being thankful for the fact that Ginny could make life seem so simple.
“So exactly how is this going to be any more painfully horrible than the work you would do on any other given day?”
Suddenly, a sharp cry from James’ nursery interrupted the conversation.
“I’ll take care of him,” Harry said, half reluctant to get out of bed, half happy to have the conversation be over.
“Trust me, Harry,” Ginny assured him as he left the bedroom. “All you’re really going to have to do is prove this Skat-Hatokha school exists, and that’s the last we’ll hear of all this.”
Three weeks earlier…
“Okay, everybody line up for your graduation presents; we only have so much time.”
Under the smog of the Bronx, resting between businesses, skyscrapers, and streets upon streets, stood a square-shaped building of old brick and dirty windows. Surrounded by a blacktop and basketball courts that now rested quiet, there was an inner feeling of unrest as more than a thousand students took turns glancing at the clock, waiting for the bell to finally set them free for good. But inside one of the dingy classrooms, stood a line of anxious and somewhat confused middle school students waiting to stand in front of a camera.
“Okay, doll face. Say, ‘Legal’.”
“Legal!”
The Polaroid camera set up in front of the blackboard flashed and snapped before a small card ejected, being shaken a couple times by the photographer, Nate Rivers, before it began to develop.
“Beautiful! Next!”
To a stranger, Nate Rivers might have appeared to be no different than any other eighth grader one would pass on the street. Baggy skater clothes, too-long brown hair that should have been washed more often, and a smirk that simply went along with being fourteen years old. Someone the older generation might call the cops on for no apparent reason, but certainly not anyone dangerous.
In fact, upon first glance, Nate might appear average in every sense of the word. But that’s the funny thing about the word ‘might’…
“Alright, dude. Say ‘Cheers’.”
“Cheers!”
Another flash and snap, and another small card appeared out of the camera.
“Sweet! Okay, next!”
To anyone who knew him for more than five minutes, he was the scheming, smart-talking, always in trouble but rarely caught, self-proclaimed ‘Wizard of P.S. 141’. Well, soon to be ‘formerly’, anyway. Today was the last day of middle school and then literally everyone Nate had known growing up would be scattered to the four corners of New York City. And he had no intention of letting them go without a memento of him. Failing that, at least he would spread around the evidence if the worst came to worst.
Suddenly, there was a simultaneous jump among the students as the classroom door opened. An immediate sigh of relief followed when they saw it was only a chubby eighth grader sporting thick glasses and orthopedic shoes.
“Nate,” the boy called, pausing when he noticed the immense crowd. “Nate, what…the hell are you doing?”
“Hey, Graham, you’re just in time for your graduation present,” Nate smiled excitedly, changing direction and holding up the camera once again. "Say, ‘Bon voyage’!”
“Bon voyage?”
A split second later, the flash went off by itself.
“Ow! Why with the flash-” exclaimed Graham, rubbing his eyes underneath his glasses.
“When you’re not blind anymore, I really think you’re gonna like what you see.” Nate told him, shoving something into his right hand.
“What the-” started Graham as his vision came back, taking turns looking between the fifteen-year-old camera his friend was holding and the perfect forgery of an international passport that had just slipped out of it.
“Ain’t she a beauty, Graham?” Nate beamed, holding up his latest creation, and pointing to the results. “Go ahead, I dare you to find one mistake on that thing!”
“Another one, Nate?” Graham sighed, eyeing his friend’s latest mechanism for causing trouble.
“What can I say? I’ve been on a roll lately.” Nate shrugged. “And you can’t blame me for wanting to go out with a bang!”
Not that bringing a little toy like this to school was unusual for Nate. He was always having ideas popping into his head, mostly out of nowhere, and always ideas about how he could change something, be it how to make an eraser with a laser pointer or a pair of shoes play mp3s.
“And in order to do that, you decided to contribute to the delinquency of minors by inventing a camera that takes pictures in the form of fake IDs?”
“And possibly green cards,” Nate added, as though he thought his latest invention was being sold short. “I just haven’t figured out the word for that function.”
“Don’t you think people are all going to wonder how a camera they stopped making five years ago is printing out perfect copies of fake IDs?”
“Yo Quiero taco!” Nate shouted at the camera, ignoring the question.
“NATE!” Graham shouted at the top of his lungs, “YOU KEEP THIS UP, AND EVENTUALLY, SOMEONE IS GOING TO FIGURE OUT YOU’RE A W-”
As soon as Nate sensed the W-word coming, he spun back around and clamped his hand over his friend’s mouth. Then offered a fake toothy smile to his onlookers and he and Graham shuffled backward, hiding the both of them under a pull-down map of New York State.
Once they were safe from gawking eyes, Nate let go of Graham and half-whispered, “What have I told about saying the izard-wei word in front of people!”
“But you’re using magic in front of-”
“Article 23-7 of the Department of Magic’s Decree of Non-Magical Artifact Modification states that magically-enhance objects may be used in the presence of those of non-magical status as long as the exterior of said object has not been tampered with and those of non-magical status remain uninformed of said object’s true nature.”
“You have that whole law memorized word for word but you can’t remember the capital is Albany?” Graham replied, exasperated, as he rolled the map back up with a snap.
“Don’t ask, don’t tell, buddy,” Nate replied, winking his one blue eye, which he called his ‘shifty eye’, “As long as they get what they’re paying for, no one’s gonna to care about the ‘how’.”
“Yeah, students aren't going think anything strange is going on, but I don’t think an underpaid state employee will take the same attitude,” Graham reminded his friend, “Every day, the teachers take turns patrolling the empty classroom to make sure the students aren’t doing crack or having sex. How much worse of a reaction do you think they’re going to have on witchcraft?”
“Really?” asked Nate, his eyes beginning to widen just slightly. “Wow, that would be bad!”
“Well, it’s going to happen in a few minutes, so what do you plan to do?”
“Okay, okay. Think, think,” Nate stammered, looking around the room and trying not to panic.
As his eyes raced, they kept falling on four things: the clock, the position of the door, a yellow backpack, and the backpack’s owner who was wearing a shirt just loose enough for this to work.
“Okay, here’s what we do. Um…Darcy, get over here; I got a job for you!”
“...and so, if you want to keep the boys and the girls off one another, you have to put the fear of God into them,” an older teacher told a younger one as they made their round through the hallway, coming closer and closer to the door Nate and all the others were waiting behind. “The problem today is that kids are looking at their bodies and not-”
Just then, a sharp series of bells broke through all possible conversation, followed by a calm that was so silent; every noise from every corner of the school could have been heard.
“Oh,my...God...” the older teacher said in a hushed tone.
A soft rumble gradually grew louder and louder and began to shake the very floors. Almost simultaneously, the classroom doors all along the hallway flew open, including one that hit the older teacher right in the face, knocking him backwards, and onto the floor. Out of the doors, a steady stream of students, just released from their long captivity, screamed, shouted, and ran for anything that could be presumed as an exit. The younger teacher stood as far away from it all as he could, back against the wall, eyes wide as though he was watching a stampede of wild animals.
Only when the flow of students had slowed to a trickle and the feats of wild destruction had moved to the floor below, did a horrified Graham and a satisfied Nate emerge from the classroom that would not see human life for another three months.
“Mr. Waxton, somehow, this is exactly how I envisioned the last time I would ever see you.” Nate smiled as he spoke in the mocking tone he saved exclusively for the teacher of his most hated subject. “And let me just say from the bottom of my heart, I’m really going to miss getting all those wrong answers in algebra class.”
“Shut up!” Mr. Waxton said, pointing a finger at Nate, but still flat on his back. “Go home. Never come back here!”
Nate shrugged his shoulders, but kept that same smile, “Sounds good to me. C’mon Graham, time waits for no one!”
“Good-bye, Mr. Jenkins,” Graham said quickly to the younger teacher, who taught advanced English, a class Nate never even imagined setting foot in.
The last student out of the classroom, following a few steps behind Nate and Graham, was a girl with curly brown hair and a green striped shirt stretched very tightly over her swollen stomach.
“What did I tell you,” Mr. Waxton practically shouted, pointing at Darcy as she followed Nate around the corner. “Damned teenagers!”
“Relax, Morton,” Nate heard the younger teacher say after they were already out of sight. “She’s the high school’s problem now.”
Nate was leaning leisurely against the peeling paint of the lockers when Darcy caught up to them, the sly look of someone who had just defeated “the man” plastered all over her face. Nate sauntered over to the girl, giving her a high five as a show for three passing teachers. As soon as they had disappeared, she reached behind her back and Nate heard two buckles snap before Darcy’s yellow backpack dropped out from under her shirt and into his waiting hands.
“Thanks Darcy,” Nate said, yanking one of the zippers and pulling his camera out of the bag. “I owe you one.”
“Well, I know how you can repay me.” Darcy smiled coyly, pointing to Nate’s left pocket.
“Fine.” Nate sighed and shook his head, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a driver's license that identified Darcy as nineteen-year-old Yolanda Foster, of Providence, Rhode Island.
“Here you go,” he said as he pushed the card into her hand. “Go to Florida and marry what’s-his-name.”
Darcy smiled and skipped off with unconcealed joy while Nate dropped the camera strap onto his neck.
“Nate, do you have any idea how close you just came to being exposed?”
“No, but I bet you’re gonna tell me.”
Nate listened to the first few words of Graham’s lecture of everything bad that could have happened, mostly the legal ramifications of fake IDs, before he began to ignore him completely.
Graham was much too nervous a person for Nate's taste, but Nate also knew he wasn’t really in a position to be picky about who would put up with him, and even less to whom he could reveal his wizarding nature. One of the reasons Graham made such a perfect person to involve in Nate's crazy schemes was because he didn’t have anyone to tell. He was a tall kid, a chubby kid; he had pimples, the wrong clothes, the wrong shoes, and two dads. In short, Nate felt nothing less than amazement that Graham was picked on the way he was, and still had lived to see graduation. But through the thick of it, Graham had been a loyal friend to him and had kept his secret since they started middle school.
“…and they’ll take you away to where they’re hiding the Roswell aliens and the little mermaid!”
“God, now you sound like Lorelei!”
Now Lorelei was a different story entirely. Lorelei Macalister was Nate’s oldest and probably dearest friend who had been born suspicious of the world. And like Nate, she also had powers that always seemed to get her into trouble; although her talents were more geared toward breaking things. Lorelei didn’t have many friends either, but that was by her own design.
To most people, Lorelei Macalister was a cold, calculating, soulless child with less compassion and empathy than Hannibal Lecter. But she seemed nice enough when she was around Nate, even if she wasn’t remotely pleasant to anyone else. Another upside was Lorelei went to St. Vincent’s Catholic School in Manhattan, so she was never there to look down her nose on most of the things Nate did.
“Well, maybe if I were Lorelei, you would actually listen to me for a change!”
“Damn locker always sticks!” Nate grumbled as he yanked on the door with all his strength. “I'm beginning to think you’re right; it is the skateboard.”
“Nate,” Graham tried again, his voice an inch away from pleading. “It’s just that you’re a really good friend, not to mention the whole freaky powers thing is pretty cool; I just don’t want to see you become a convict before you’re old enough to get a driver’s license.”
“Dude, what would make you think I’m ever going to be sent away anywhere?”
With one final tug that sent Nate himself tumbling backwards onto the tile floor, his locker finally opened, which today, could have been a mixed blessing. At least seventy letters written on heavy parchment spilled out of his locker and spread all the way to the opposite side of the hallway. On any other day, people might have stared, but today was the last day of school and nobody cared about anybody.
“Oh, goodie!” Nate groaned, rolling his eyes over the letters that had spilled onto his lap. “More of them.”
“Dear Mr. Rivers,” Graham read aloud, in an empty science classroom. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In keeping with new sanctions set forth by the System-”
“Give me that!” interrupted Nate as he tried to snatch the letter away so he could add it to the garbage bag full of letters he had already ripped up.
“-all young American witches and wizards of your current legal standing are required to provide for themselves an education meeting the standards of the-”
“I said ‘Gimmee’!” Nate repeated loudly, jumping at his friend.
“Failure to do so,” shouted Graham as he struggled to finish, “will be considered tantamount to truancy and will be met with serious consequences!”
“Gotcha!” Nate shouted when he finally snatched the letter from Graham’s hand.
“Uh, Nate,” said Graham, eyeing the about-ready-to-burst garbage bag Nate had been stuffing his torn letters into. “How many of these letters have you gotten so far?”
“I stopped counting after a hundred thirty-six.” he responded, tearing up the last three.
“And…you still think it’s just someone pulling your leg?”
“It has to be,” he laughed, pulling the very first letter that he had gotten out of the side pocket of his backpack, holding up the envelope for Graham to read. “I mean, seriously, Hogwarts? That sounds made up!”
“It just seems like a lot of work for someone to go through just to pull a practical joke on you.”
“Yup,” Nate agreed, rising to his feet, garbage bag hoisted over one shoulder, skateboard and helmet tucked under the other arm. “You coming or what?”
“I’m serious, Nate!” Graham warned as he lagged behind. “What if this isn’t a hoax and someone somewhere is getting really, really pissed off?”
“Don’t worry, dude,” Nate insisted, putting his arm around his friend’s shoulder. “I’m not going anywhere. There’s no way I’m leaving you to face the demons of high school alone.”
“Not to mention leaving Alaia Grace,” Graham responded, pointing towards the staircase and toward a pretty blonde girl that seemed to glow among her friends.
Nate couldn’t suppress a goofy smile; a reaction most boys at P.S. 141 got whenever they heard those two blessed words. Even with her back to them, Nate could recognize her shape anywhere. The girl had shiny hair, perfect eyes, and a dazzling smile. Simply put, Alaia Grace was easily the prettiest girl in their school, maybe even the city.
On top of that, she was a preacher’s stepdaughter: a perfect, obedient little girl who would never hang out with the wrong crowd, making her untouchable for the better part of her middle school years and all the more desirable. Especially to Nate and anyone who employed his ‘services’.
But this year, after seven years of ignoring him, Alaia had started trying to be friendly with him. Not just friendly with him...flirting with him. If Nate even truly understood what flirting was. So to make things even better, now she was a preacher’s stepdaughter going bad! Well, not quite, but still, Nate wanted her so badly!
She had even invited him to her family’s church a few times at the insistence of her stepfather. Strangely, every time he went, the sermon would always be about ‘deliverance from witchcraft’. But Nate could sit through an hour of hearing about how his flesh was going to burn if he could spend it sitting next to the current object of his affection.
“Nate!” Alaia smiled upon noticing him, leaving her friends and running over.
“Be cool.” Nate muttered to Graham under his breath.
“Sure, this from the kid who once faked an ulcer to get out of an oral report!”
“Nate, hi!” smiled Alaia when she finally approached the two of them.
“Hey, Alaia,” he stammered while at the same time trying to keep his cool. “Say, you know Graham Schuler, don’t you?”
“Um, no, I don’t think I do.”
“Sure you do,” Nate reminded her, oblivious to Graham's growing embarrassment. “He was one of the kids who reenacted that scene from Macbeth in a spacey theme for the talent show. He was the main character”
“Oh, yeah! Now I remember,” Alaia remarked as Graham’s face grew redder and redder. “You were booed off the stage!”
“That I was,” Graham smiled through clenched teeth.
“But anyway, Nate,” Alaia turned her attention back to him. “My youth group is having a barbeque tonight to celebrate the last day of school and I was wondering if you wanted to come.
“It’s not an obligation to join the church or anything,” she quickly added. “I just though it’d be more fun if you were there.”
“Oh, I'd love to, but I actually promised my friend Lorelei I’d check in with her tonight,” Nate remorsefully answered. “You remember her, don’t you: Lorelei Macalister?”
“Oh, yes,” Alaia replied, becoming very uneasy at the mention of the name. “How is she these days?”
Nate didn’t really blame Alaia for her attitude. He had taken Lorelei with him to the church once, but she had been in a terrible mood from the moment she had walked through the doors. It didn’t exactly help that in that day’s sermon, Reverend Grace also castigated the ‘Catholic pagans’. As soon as the sermon started, Lorelei stormed like an angry animal out the sanctuary doors, but not before the platform under the minister mysteriously caved in under him. Secretly, Nate thought Alaia was the real object behind Lorelei's anger; and Lorelei was just looking for an excuse to break something.
Lorelei and Alaia's occasions of seeing each other were rare after that. Nate made sure to plan it that way. This jealousy was a new aspect of Lorelei's personality and he did not want it to manifest itself very often.
“So,” Alaia asked, changing the subject. “What's in the bag?”
“Confetti,” Nate answered quickly, almost fearfully. “You know, to celebrate the last day here.”
“Mind if I have a handful?” Alaia asked, extending her hand. “To celebrate the last day here, I mean.”
“Sure,” said Nate, opening the bag and praying he tore the letters into small enough pieces.”
“Thanks,” said Alaia, taking her confetti and turning around. “I’ll see you this summer”
Nate watched wide-eyed as Alaia skipped away, over to the stairwell, and let the torn letters fly with a girlish giggle.
“She so digs me,” Nate said, mostly to himself, once he and Graham began to make their way outside.
“Gotta admit,” Graham agreed as he pushed the heavy front doors open. “I wouldn’t want to leave that behind either.”
“Now I just have to ask her out on a real date,” Nate said as he fastened his helmet buckle, while at the same time, maintaining a firm hold on his skateboard.
“And make sure Lorelei doesn’t snap her neck before the date.”
Nate might have laughed along with that joke if he didn’t know there was a chance that Lorelei was actually capable of something like that.
“Well, see ya when I see ya!” Nate shouted over his shoulder as he balanced himself on his board and gave himself a kicking start, leaving the rest of the confetti for Graham to enjoy.
As Nate rolled and swerved down the cracked sidewalk, he began to think. He had lied to Graham before. True, he really hadn’t ever heard of this Hogwarts place, but it wasn’t as though magic schools themselves were made up. He knew for a fact there were magic schools in the United States, because there had once been a time when he had been invited to one: the Hardscrabble Creek School of Magical Arts. It was the exact same school that his older brother had gone to.
But even as an eleven year old, Nate had been dead set against going, an idea that thoroughly shocked his parents and everyone else who had been planning for this. Nate had been an adventurous boy from the time he could crawl, and he had certainly displayed a natural talent for magic. His whole family had believed Nate would be counting the days until he could hold his first wand, be among other wizarding children, and finally joined his own kind.
But from the day the letter came in the mail, Nate had flat out refused to leave, threatening to weld himself to a traffic light if anyone tried to force him. At the time, his main excuse was that he would be separated from Lorelei, whose letter came from the Salem Witches Institute, an all-girls school. His parents tried to change his mind, even pull some strings to see if Hardscrabble Creek would accept Lorelei too: a plan which might have worked if Lorelei wasn’t so stubbornly refusing to attend any magic school, anywhere. Her father accused her of being contrary and weak-willed, and Lorelei responded by shattering every window in the house in three seconds flat.
His parents tried to persuade Nate, telling him about how much more exciting a wizard school would be than a middle school, his brother warned him he was signing his own warrant to the life of a Squib, but either way, there was no law that could force any child to go to wizard school. So come that September, Nate was enrolled in P.S. 144 and Lorelei stayed at her old school in Manhattan: magically-gifted Squibs, Nate’s brother called them, but magically-gifted Squibs who had gotten their own way.
Nate didn’t tell his parents at the time, but he knew he couldn’t leave for this school. Even all the persuasion from his parents and stories from his older brother could not shake the inner command to stay where he was. But now, it hardly seemed to matter that he hadn’t chosen to go. And besides, now he had many friends who knew nothing of his powers or that magic even existed. He couldn’t even envision his life if he chosen to enclose himself in the world of magic and cut himself off from the world he had grown up in.
Life just seemed much simpler when magic didn’t seem to be a big deal.
Nate’s townhouse stood on West 252nd Street, just on the boundary between the true city and the true suburbs. Nate’s parents had always been New Yorkers at heart, but while they didn’t want to resign themselves to the life of suburbia that most of Riverdale had experienced, they didn’t want Nate to spend his school years being plagued by drug dealers and prostitutes either.
Besides, it was also the one place in New York where the rules of so-called normalcy was scattered to the winds. The Donavan family had about twelve of the biggest, ugliest cats Nate had ever seen: cats who seemed able to tell whether or not Nate was smuggling anything in his backpack on any given day. And then there was Ms. Yao, who had people coming and going at all hours of the night: people who showed up in the strangest outfits.
But the neighborhood's whole arrangement worked for Nate, too. No one called the police if they heard loud explosions coming from his bedroom at three in the morning, or even that time he tried to create a purer form of Pixie Stick that got mixed in with the lawn fertilizer and turned the grass purple for a week. Nate wasn't sure if any of his strange neighbors were wizards too; but if they were, it certainly explained a lot.
Before making his way up the stoop, Nate stopped by the mailbox. It contained a heavy load of letters today, but now that school was over, he wouldn’t have to spend any time sifting for letters about him.
When Nate opened the front door, the phone was already ringing. Setting the letters down on a nearby end table, he checked the caller ID and smiled: Macalister Residence. Sometimes, it seemed like Lorelei knew Nate better than he knew himself.
“Hey, Lore.”
“Nate, did you just get out of school?” Lorelei voice resonated clearly over the phone line.
“Yeah, I stayed late at school,” Nate told her, turning back to the door to turn and snap the four sets of locks.
“You were hanging out with the stripper again, weren’t you?” she asked, not trying to hide her disdain.
Nate laughed at Lorelei’s latest nickname for Alaia, but had learned from experience it was better not to mention her when they were talking.
“No, I was printing fake IDs as graduation presents.”
“You’re going to get arrested someday,” she warned in that tired-sounding voice of hers.
“Been there, done that, Lore,” Nate told her, picking up the stack of mail he had just set down, “Say, your last day of school was today too, right? Think you can make it down to 5th Street Theater? Word has it, the night manager doesn’t believe in the ratings system.”
“Can’t,” Lorelei answered, just a hint of anger creeping into her voice. “Delia’s got an all-night gig at some jazz club in Chelsea, so I’m on baby-sitting duty.”
Nate let out a deep sigh, knowing Lorelei was going to use the next five or ten minutes to vent all the borderline rage she was feeling. And Delia, her ‘so-called mother’ as she put it, was one of her favorite subjects. Nate had learned he could get through this time with the occasional “uh-huh” and “nuh” while focusing his mind on something else.
Today, it was looking through his parents’ mail: electric bill, credit card bill, wedding invitation for some person he had never heard of, another credit card bill, a late birthday card from his grandmother with clearly no money in it, something sent from the middle school that he would hide and claim to be lost…
“You got anymore of those letters today?”
It took Nate a couple of seconds to remember what Lorelei was talking about.
“Yeah, I had like seventy shoved in my locker after last bell,” he told her, taking a break from sorting through the actual mail.
“And what did you do with those?”
“Last day of middle school confetti.”
“Of course you did,” Lorelei answered, a slight grimness in her voice. “God forbid you should actually find out who’s killing the rainforest to send you these letters.”
“Uh, make that seventy-one,” Nate interrupted, setting the remaining mail on the hall table. “I got another one in today's mail.”
“Wow, the mail,” Lorelei replied with sarcastic shock, “They’re not even trying anymore, are they?”
“Cool, this one’s red.” he said, tearing the envelope open. “But, hey, if you can’t get out of the house tonight, that’s cool. Maybe we can just order pizza and watch pay-per-view; as long as it isn’t one of those gay chick fli-”
“NATHANIEL RIVERS,” the letter literally shouted.
Nate tumbled backward onto the floor as though he’d been shot. He could not believe what was happing. A letter, a piece of paper, was floating in mid-air, actually shouting at him!
“AS OF TODAY, HOGWARTS HAS SENT YOU MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED LETTERS AND YOU HAVE EITHER IGNORED THEM, DESTROYED THEM, OR, IN ONE INSTANCE, DONATED THEM TO THE HOMELESS!”
“How does she know that?” Nate panicked to himself. “Wait, why am I calling it a she? It’s a freakin’ letter!”
“ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME, NATHANIEL?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“YOU MAY THINK THAT JUST BECAUSE YOUR ACTIONS AS OF YET HAVE HAD NO REAL CONSEQUENCES, THAT IT IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE FOR YOU AND ALL YOUR LITTLE FRIENDS TO RUN WILD, BUT YOU ARE SADLY MISTAKEN, YOUNG MAN! THE NEW TERM STARTS ON SEPTEMBER FIRST AND YOU WILL EITHER SHOW UP WILLINGLY, OR WE WILL SEND SOMEONE TO TAKE YOU, TO COIN THE PHRASE, KICKING AND SCREAMING!”
As soon as the letter stopped shouting, it hovered in mid-air for a moment before it began to burn to ash from the edges inward right in front of Nate, who was still sprawled out on the floor.
“Nate!” he heard Lorelei shout from the phone, “Nate, are you okay? What’s happening?”
Nate took a moment to catch his breath. His hands and calves had carpet burns, the remaining letters had been scattered all over the floor, the phone out of which his best friend was still screaming was in the middle, and there was a faint smell of smoke in the air.
Finally pulling himself together, Nate reached for the phone again, feeling his hand shake as he did.
“Hey, Lore,” he said weakly.
“Nate, what’s going on over there? Who was that lady screaming at you?”
“So is that a yes to hanging at your place tonight?”
