3rd September 1989 – Hogwarts Castle.
“Uhhhh… hello?” said the intruder into what I believed to be my private sanctuary.
“Good afternoon,” I replied in my poshest accent after composing myself. “I had not expected anyone else to know of this place.”
Just looking at the boy he didn’t look capable of violence, but looks could be deceiving and as a Slytherin deception was in his character so I kept a firm grip on my wand behind my back.
Shaking his head slightly as if to dissipate the surprise, his pale eyebrows scrunched into a frown and his own grip tightened on the stack of books he was carrying under his shoulder. His silvery hair and handsome features clashed with the bookish air he gave off and I got the impression he was equally irritated that his place of privacy had been discovered.
“I would say the same thing, especially a first year.” He said, slipping into a tone not dissimilar from my own. “I presume your parents told you of it?”
They hadn’t but I inclined my head in a way that many would assume was answering in the affirmative. “And you?” I asked him.
He sniffed and raised his chin slightly. “I found it myself. There is many a mention of it in the castle's history, if one knows where to look.”
I raised an eyebrow. He could be lying, but if he wasn’t then it was a moderately impressive feat, assuming he hadn’t just stumbled into it by accident like most who found the room of requirement.
Silence reigned in the room for a time as neither of us could think of what to say, stretching into awkwardness as conversations between two distinctively anti-social individuals tend to do.
“We have a problem then,” I stated after a time.
“Yes.” Came the curt reply from the intruder.
“Both of us wish to use the room in private.”
“Presumably.”
“I have no desire to fight with you over it.”
“Neither.”
“So we must come to an agreement.”
“That would be the obvious conclusion.”
“We each use it on alternating days, with today being mine and yours tomorrow.”
He pondered that for a moment as his eyes looked past me in thought before refocusing. “Today is mine and yours tomorrow, with the option of switching days should either one of us provide ample time and reason.”
Whilst disrupting my plans for the evening it wasn’t the end of the world and wasn’t worth haggling over. “That is acceptable. We tell no one else of the room.”
“Obviously.” He replied.
“I’m Victor. Victor Thorneheart.” I introduced myself, closing half the distance between us and holding out my left hand, my right still clutching my wand behind my back.
He closed the rest of the distance and shook my hand with a surprisingly gentle grip considering he was significantly taller and no doubt stronger than me despite his lanky frame.
“Lucon Devire, a pleasure. Rare is it to find one so well-mannered and to the point.” He introduced himself.
“Quite so. Good luck with your studies, Mr Devire.” I said, quickly gathering up my things and turning to leave.
“And you, Mr Thorneheart.” He said as I was shutting the door behind me.
My short conversation with Lucon had been refreshing and I’d almost forgotten the reason I’d gone looking for the room in the first place; namely stress relief.
I couldn’t very well practice my magic in the halls, or really anywhere else if I wanted a degree of privacy. I concluded I’d just have to do something else for the evening, and decided it was high time I began doing some proper exercise.
There was, I was moderately surprised to learn, a gymnasium in Hogwarts. For some reason, I’d never really imagined there to be something so mundane in a magical school but it did make sense. After returning to Ravenclaw tower to slip into something more appropriate, and dodging a conversation with Uriel and two other boys from my room; Derek, the snorer, and a Scottish boy named Matthew, I set about finding the gym.
A short conversation with the first prefect I found provided me with the directions I needed. There was no Ravenclaw exclusive gym, the entire castle shared the same one, and it was placed far out of the way of the more ‘important’ rooms on the first floor. When I arrived it was empty, though I couldn’t say for sure if that was because of the hour at which I arrived, an hour or so before dinner, or because no one else deemed to use it.
That was fine by me, however, and though the equipment was lacking to say the least, some of it looked literal centuries old, I had made do with far less on deployments so it would suffice. What followed was thoroughly embarrassing as I discovered this body's pathetic limits in both endurance and strength. Compared to my peak form as a world-class athlete in my past life, it was truly disheartening.
But it was a start, and I knew with discipline and time I would regain my old prowess. If I was old enough to learn magic then I was old enough to work out I decided, no more excuses. I silently thanked Lucon’s interruption for leading me to the gym and continued pushing my body as hard as I could whilst avoiding injury.
The burning of my muscles was a welcome familiarity and by the time I called it a day an hour and a half later I found myself in a remarkably good mood. The day had not been ideal for several reasons, but life rarely went how one expected it to. I prided myself on my ability to make the most of such unfortunate turns and not turn them into even bigger problems than they had to be.
Take the detention for example. I could get angry at Rebecca, I had every right to, but it wouldn’t achieve anything except upsetting her, and then upsetting myself for inflicting my anger on a child. Even though it put me on McGonagall’s radar counter to my initial goal of avoiding such an outcome, I’d faced my share of life and death situations, seen my comrades gunned down by scum that truly aroused my anger, and in comparison, the whole situation felt utterly insignificant.
Such a perspective was a hard-won thing, but it tended to lend one more patience than most for everyday disappointments, and a capacity for forgiveness for such things.
So once I showered in Ravenclaw tower and put on a fresh pair of robes I was practically skipping into the great hall for dinner. I saw Rebecca sitting with the Gryffindor students looking particularly glum as she was ignored by her housemates and gave her a friendly smile when she looked my way, which she returned with a wave.
Unfortunately, the houses were distinctly split during dinner so I sat with my own housemates. I blamed my good mood on the fact I actually engaged with some of them properly for the first time. Leading the conversation between the 1st year Ravenclaw boys was, of course, Uriel, who seemed to have already drawn something of a clique to him without even trying.
They were discussing the likely hood of certain magical creatures beating others in a fight, a topic I found myself both amused and legitimately interested in. No matter how old you got, boy talk was still boy talk and so with a grin I joined in by playing the devil's advocate and saying that, of course a basilisk could take on a dragon.
The food was delicious and the company pleasant enough but by the time we returned to our dorm my social battery was thoroughly depleted so whilst the other boys continued the discussion well into the night I instead retreated to my bed and fell asleep.
That night I dreamt of war. I woke in the depths of the night in a cold sweat and with a thumping heart. In the way of dreams all memory of what I saw quickly faded but I was left with a lingering sense of terror that kept my hands shaking even after I reached the bathroom and splashed my face with some chilly water.
I found myself thankful that I didn’t recall whatever it was I dreamt about, the strange thought coming about unbidden but ringing true. Ever since my memories of my past life had stopped coming to me I had been left with a sense that they were incomplete, as I had witnessed no ‘conclusion’ so to speak. I had been curious as to what I was missing, but now I considered that it was perhaps for the best that I didn’t remember.
Despite my youthful face, as I stared into the mirror and took slow, deep breaths in an attempt to get my thundering heart under control, all I saw were the haunted eyes of someone who had seen far too much.
I had been getting better, ever since the unicorn and Mr Mudoil I’d not had an episode and my dreams had been relatively tame, or I’d not dreamt at all. But I’d known it couldn’t last forever and the bill was coming due tonight it seemed.
My magic didn’t feel like it was going to spark wildly, which was a small mercy. The control I had gained over it held, and I’d left my wand by my bed just in case.
“Are you alright?” came a concerned young voice from behind me, and I quickly spun around to see Uriel standing in the door in his pyjamas with a tired but worried look on his face. His cat familiar, which I had since learned was named Merlin, clutched in his arms.
I hastily tucked my quivering hands behind my back so as not to alarm the boy and took on a more dignified pose, though I could do little to stop the rampant adrenaline in my veins that had absolutely no reason to be there.
“Just a bad dream Uriel, nothing to worry about. I apologize if I woke you.” I said with a shaky voice that betrayed me despite my efforts to come across as calm.
The boy shrugged, stepping further into the bathroom and letting Merlin down. “You didn’t, I wasn’t asleep.”
“Missing home?” I asked. It wasn’t a problem I’d ever had to deal with, but I remembered some of the lads right at the start of basic training having left home for the first time in their lives. Homesickness had hit them hard, and it must surely have been harder for an eleven-year-old.
He nodded quietly in reply. “Yeah. I like Hogwarts but it's scary, you know? I miss Mum and Dad.”
I smiled softly at the boy and nodded as I thought of my own parents and especially my sister. I did miss little Emelia I’d found; I missed making her laugh and her bright smile when I pulled silly faces. It was mostly a new sensation for me, I’d never really had anything to miss in my past life.
“Yeah. Me too, Uriel. But it’s a part of growing up, isn’t it? You can’t stay at home forever. Besides, you’ll see them again at Christmas I’m sure.” I told him.
He nodded once more. “I know, it doesn’t make it easier though.” Having since gotten closer, he glanced towards the mirrors and paused, a frown coming over his face.
Following his gaze I realised he could see my hands shaking behind my back in the mirror as I struggled and failed to get them to stop. “Are you sure you’re alright Victor?” He asked for a second time, meeting my eye with a look of genuine concern.
It may not be entirely surprising to learn that I was not used to people showing legitimate concern for my well-being, or at least not my mental well-being. It was just expected you’d suck it up in my past life, and though my parents were the exception I’d never wanted to overly worry them, especially mother who had enough of her own problems to deal with.
So I felt strangely emotional when this near complete stranger was showing such concern with childlike innocence. I chuckled at my own weakness even as a tear fell unbidden down one of my cheeks, which I quickly wiped away with a trembling hand.
“To be honest with you Uriel, no, not at the moment,” I admitted, surprising myself somewhat.
Uriel looked stumped at what to do. “Should I go get the nurse?” he questioned.
I chuckled again and shook my head. “No, thank you Uriel but it is nothing she could help me with. I’ll be better come the morning, so why don’t you just go back to bed.”
Instead of answering he walked past me and sat down on the floor next to his cat, leaning against one of the shower walls. “I told you; I can’t sleep. I’d rather stay awake in here with you than alone in my bed.”
I stared at the boy in bafflement before walking over and leaning against the wall next to him. I tucked my hands underneath my knees to hide their shaking as I spoke. “So…” I started, reluctant to talk but deciding it was better than stewing in my own thoughts all night. “What are your parents like?”
Uriel obliged me and told me of his parents, then the rest of his family and his home. He was from a half-blood family much like my own, though far from as wealthy and less rooted in tradition. His parents were magical historians slash archaeologists, though thanks to the wonders of magic always managed to come home in time for tea each night. He expressed his desire to follow in their footsteps, and that had started when he was sorted into Ravenclaw like his parents.
I then shared my own story, though leaving out many of the grisly details of the events near the end of the wizarding war. Without a clock, it was difficult to get a sense of just how long we talked, but eventually my hands stopped shaking and I returned to my bed as Uriel did the same.
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Despite having calmed down I still found myself too scared to go to back to sleep, though I felt like a coward admitting it. So I just lay awake, staring up into the darkness trying, and failing, not to worry about the future.
Come the morning I was exhausted, both physically from not sleeping after my first real workout in this life and emotionally from my episode and the hours of contemplation that followed.
It was safe to say that any semblance of my good mood from the night before was well and truly gone, and I was feeling particularly grumpy, even more so than usual.
But appearances had to be maintained, so after nodding meaningfully to Uriel as we were both getting dressed I headed off to breakfast and sought out Rebecca doing my best to keep my face neutral lest she think I was angry at her.
To my surprise, however, it appeared as though I had arrived before her. So I found a place to sit on my lonesome and ate in silence as I waited for her. Her absence made me feel like something was missing from my morning, and I realised that perhaps our friendship wasn’t as one-sided as I’d imagined.
I didn’t notice her when she did eventually arrive near the end of breakfast until she sat down across from me.
“Good morning,” I said as she sat down and began piling food on her plate.
“Morning.” She said quietly, failing to meet my gaze.
“Excited for the flying lesson later?” I asked, and by the way her eyes widened that she was and she nodded furiously.
“Potions and transfiguration first though.” She pouted.
“And detention after,” I added in case she forgot, and watched as her face fell.
“Are you angry?” she asked tentatively after a moment.
I shook my head. “Why would I be?”
“Because it's my fault we’re in detention?” she blurted out.
“No,” I said. “It's your fault that you’re in detention. It's my fault that I’m in detention. I chose to walk go into the forbidden forest and I accept the consequences.”
“But only because you were following me.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter. Do you want me to be angry at you? Because you seem to be arguing against yourself.”
“No, of course not.” She furiously shook her head. “But you really aren’t angry?”
“No,” I said once again, fighting the urge to roll my eyes.
With that, a smile returned to her face and the tension left her body. We made amicable small talk, mostly about what flying on a broom would be like, whilst we finished our breakfast.
Afterwards, we went swiftly to the first lesson of the day; potions. Other than Snape giving us more glares than the other students, no doubt because of the speed at which we had gained detention with him, it passed uneventfully. Despite my lack of sleep I still found myself keeping Rebecca awake during Snape's admittedly dull explanations. We did a little more hands-on work, practising with some of the tools we’d be using in the future, but no potions yet.
We spent our free time before our transfiguration in the library once again as I continued to read through Flitwick’s recommendations and got through a good chunk of Visualisation and Incantation. Rebecca began researching some of the creatures that could be found within the forbidden forest and visibly paled when she learned I hadn’t been joking about the giant spiders.
Before long we were off to our lesson with McGonagall. As we walked in I had to literally pull Rebecca away from walking up to and stroking the cat sitting on the desk at the front of the room.
The look of pure awe on her face when the cat transformed into the stern Scottish professor that had given us a telling-off only the day before was certainly humorous though I was too tired to crack a smile. I learned nothing new in that first lesson but did my best to come across as attentive to try and get out of her bad books, especially considering she chose to pick on myself and Rebecca in particular to answer her questions.
After that, it was back to the library, where I finally finished Visualisation and Incantation, and then before we knew it we walked outside to the training grounds. It was, fortunately, a nice day, with barely a cloud in the sky and little wind to speak of, which dealt with the worst of my fears.
Just looking at the brooms lying on the grass waiting for us was enough to make me blanch, however, much to Rebecca’s amusement. The damn things were death traps.
Your centre of mass was balanced on a thin piece of wood that would send you spinning down if you lost balance for even a moment. There were no straps, seatbelts or safety mechanisms other than perhaps the stirrups. It was the single most unsafe vehicle I had ever laid my eyes upon. And I was about to climb on one and part from the safety of solid ground.
Swallowing my nervousness, I waited with an excited Rebecca as the rest of the students arrived and the lesson began. For the first time in a lesson, I struggled to get my magic to do as I commanded it when we were ordered to call our brooms to our hands.
It wasn’t that I lacked understanding of how to perform such a feat, but I was so thoroughly against the idea of using a broom that my magic couldn’t decide if calling the broom was what I wanted or not when I ordered it to.
Rebecca’s broom, on the other hand, had shot into her hands the instant the Professor had let us do so. I could hear her struggling to hold back her laughter as I gritted my teeth and eventually forced my magic to listen and call the stupid broom, and it slowly but surely rose to my hand.
I wasn’t the worst case in the class, but I was definitely one of them. Uriel was there, as he was in most of our lessons, and he got it almost as quickly as Rebecca. There was another Gryffindor boy there, who based on the frowns Rebecca was sending his way I guessed to be Will, though he seemed to be ignoring her as opposed to antagonising her.
He was a handsome young man, with curly blonde hair and piercing blue eyes, looking more like a surfer dude than a supremacist bully. At least he wasn’t as comically villainous as Draco, though it perhaps showed a greater intelligence than the infamous Slytherin that he wasn’t acknowledging Rebecca before a Professor, or his peers for that matter.
Either way, I resolved to keep an eye on him, and the several other Gryffindors he had arrived with, though he was beaten by Uriel on the popularity front, at least in our current class.
By the end of the class, most students were confidently hovering whilst Rebecca and Uriel were swooping through the practice grounds much to the irritation, and silent pride I suspected, of the professor. My feet, however, had yet to leave the ground besides from my vain attempts at jumping. My magic was listening to my heart rather than my head and was refusing to animate the broom as I commanded it. I couldn’t find it in myself to be particularly annoyed, both because I was too tired and because I was secretly glad. Which I supposed was the problem.
There were fortunately no shenanigans nor near-death experiences as in Harry’s first flying lesson and everyone managed to make it to the end without injury, barring a few bruises and wounded prides.
After that it was straight to detention for Rebecca and I. Snape was doing some paperwork when we tentatively entered and barely said three words to us after pointing us to the task at hand; cleaning cauldrons.
In those two hours, I learned to hate how stubborn various magical stains could be, and I was almost certain we weren’t given the proper tools as I didn’t see the Professor spending 40 minutes cleaning a single cauldron when he ran out of students to put in detention.
Now that I thought of it, maybe he didn’t. Perhaps he gave out detentions so willy-nilly just to have someone to do the job for him. I certainly would in his position.
It wouldn’t have been too bad but Snape demanded complete silence so Rebecca and I could only communicate through various frowns, eye rolls and the occasional funny face as we tried to make the two hours pass just a little quicker.
I was rewarded by a magical smack to the back of the head when I mistakenly thought Snape wasn’t looking as I wiggled my eyebrows at Rebecca. She managed to escape the detention with only stern looks shot her way, but I was beginning to understand why the man was so hated.
I’d had worse drill sergeants, however, so I wasn’t all that bothered. Once it was over I parted ways with Rebecca to go spend what time was left in the day in the room of requirement.
True to his word, I went uninterrupted by Lucon that night, though he had left a note behind to my surprise. I was even more surprised when I realised he had shared with me some notes about Visualisation and Incantation that he’d made and offered some suggestions for further reading material on the same topic.
I was a little paranoid about the purpose of such a note considering he had been of Slytherin house and they weren’t known for their kindness. However, if he was trying to psychologically indebt me to himself he’d have to try harder than that, I had done far worse things than being merely ungrateful.
That being said, I was willing to take it at face value for the time being. He seemed like a decent sort and it was entirely possible he was just trying to help me out.
I was too tired to read so I decided to use the last of my energy abusing the dummy. The spell on my mind was the famous disarming charm, Harry’s signature spell. I incorporated what I had learnt, trying several methods of visualising the spell. My first attempts fizzled and failed but I adjusted and tried some other recommended methods and got better results.
In a way, it wasn’t dissimilar to how I had learnt to shoot. Fire, adjust, fire again. With more complex spells it was like using a more complex rifle. The wand-lighting charm was like a sidearm in comparison to the disarming charm which id compare to a sniper rifle. It was the same basic steps of channelling magic with the correct pronunciation and movement, like aiming and pulling the trigger, but the latter was far more nuanced and a small deviation resulted in a larger degree of failure. It didn’t help that I was practically dead on my feet, but I’d been awake for longer before and kept up my focus.
After the complete failures, I suffered from both terrible accuracy and casting speed, with the effect usually being too weak, sometimes even to knock the practice wand, which was just a stick, from the dummy’s hand. But progress was still progress.
By the time I decided to call it a night I had successfully cast the disarming charm at great enough strength and accuracy to knock a wand from the dummy’s weak grip maybe one times out of twenty. It was a testament to the efficacy of the theory I had been applying that I had reached such a standard in a few short hours in comparison to the general counter-spell, although it was somewhat easier to visualise from the get-go.
For the first time in a while I was feeling truly magically drained, the spell taking more out of me than any I had previously cast with my wand. The extra layer of exhaustion encouraged me to skip dinner yet again and instead I dragged myself up Ravenclaw tower and crawled into bed.
Though my dreams were far from peaceful, I thankfully didn’t wake until the light of dawn shone in from behind the blinds in our dorm.
That day we had charms and magical theory, with many of my classmates casting their first spell in that first lesson, and was thankfully void of any magical accidents. Flitwick pulled me aside for a word near the end, stating his disappointment at my detention and then asking how my reading was going.
I didn’t inform him of my success with the disarming charm but did, truthfully, express that his recommendations were helping considerably.
As was quickly becoming routine, I headed to the library with Rebecca after and we spent the time there until magical theory. Unlike most of my lessons, I did learn something new as the focus was not on visualisation nor incantation but rather on the nature of magic in general.
Though interesting, the lesson didn’t go into significant detail considering it was the first taste many of the students were getting into the topic, but it did leave me excited for the next lesson.
After that was detention, much the same as the day before in Snape’s dreary classroom. I spent the evening with Rebecca seeing as it was Lucon’s turn in the room of requirement. I had left him a note thanking him for his help, though made no promises to return in kind. Not that I believed there was much I could do to help a fifth year.
I even managed to drag her to the gym, which was similarly abandoned as before, which she took to with surprising gusto and though she was bigger than I, she was equally unfit and somewhat less willing to push herself to the extremes I had, which was understandable. One had to be at least slightly insane to suffer through the levels of punishment that were expected from the special forces and though I enforced such strict standards on myself I wouldn’t press them on Rebecca, especially considering she was just a child.
I had a restful enough sleep that night and then it was potions on Friday morning. We actually made our first potions, or at least many of us tried to. I was one of the few to actually succeed, meanwhile, Rebecca somehow managed to get her cauldron to blow up in her face, thankfully causing only covering her face and hair in soot leaving her otherwise uninjured. The scathing insult Snape gave her over the drastic failure was rather more upsetting to the girl and she glared daggers at the professor until the end of the extended lesson.
Immediately after was herbology, which was a fight against boredom, although Rebecca seemed to be particularly fascinated for some reason. To each their own.
We shared lunch and then dragged ourselves off to our detention for the next two hours. Rather than going straight to the room of requirement, I spent several hours with Rebecca in the library as we decided to get the bulk of our homework out of the way before the weekend so we could spend it without work.
It took longer than expected but then I slunk off to the room of the requirement, leaving an increasingly suspicious Rebecca behind to finish the homework which I had completed far faster than her.
There was no further note from Lucon, so I spent the bulk of my time reading the second book I had borrowed from Flitwick’s list; Mind over Magic: Methods for efficient spellcasting.
It was a fascinating read, discussing methods to reduce the strain certain spells exerted upon the caster and to a lesser extent how to increase the speed of casting. But I did eventually sit up and return to practising the disarming charm.
The methods in my new reading project were of little use to me at the moment as I was just focusing on doing it right rather than particularly efficiently, but I had resolved to build habits to do things as efficiently as possible to make it easier when I eventually did get the basics down.
I experimented a little as I cast the disarming charm, mostly with my attempts to ‘overcharge’ the spell, so to speak, by channelling my anger to guide the magic and take the strain off the wand. On one hand, it made the spell significantly more powerful than I’d done two days prior when I’d been too drained to put any emotion into my casting but on the other hand it decreased my success rate overall as the flare of emotion disrupted my ability to properly visualise the effect.
“Expelliarmus” I tried out of curiosity without my wand before I called it a day, channelling a great deal of rage as I recalled the time two American marines had pissed on the corpses of some civilians that had been caught in the crossfire. It had been my hope that sufficient emotion would make up for the loss of the focus granted by the wand.
Well, it didn’t ‘fail’ so to speak. A huge surge of my magic rushed into my hand at the deep fury that came to mind, although any hope I’d had of maintaining focus was shattered immediately. But the magic surged too thick and fast to stop and an explosion of red light appeared at my fingertips and sent me flying backwards, slamming hard into the stone walls of the room of requirement and smashing the back of my head with enough force that I think I fell unconscious for a good hour or so.
When I woke up groaning in pain, I did a quick check of my body and noted with a thankful sigh that nothing was broken, not even my fingers. I was probably sporting at least a mild concussion however so I was going to have to subject myself to another sleepless night. At least it was Saturday tomorrow.
As I picked up my wand from the desk where I had left it I got the distinct impression it was laughing at me, though whether that was just my concussed imagination or the actual intelligence in the wand was hard to say.
I was late to dinner and got a funny look from Uriel for the lump I was sporting on my head, not to mention the furious headache that left me wincing at every raised word of those sitting next to me. I suspected I was even more antisocial than usual, dodging Uriel’s usual attempts to drag me into conversation with significantly less subtlety than I had been doing.
My last lesson of the week was astronomy that evening. It was not a topic I put much stock in but it was at least relaxing having a lesson beneath the night sky, albeit cold. Rebecca was similarly more focused on the fortunately clear sky than the contents of the lesson and we used it as an excuse to enjoy one another’s company and quiet conversation more than learning.
“Thank you,” Rebecca whispered to me near the end of the lesson as she tucked herself into her robes.
“What for?” I asked with a frown she couldn’t see.
“For being my friend.” She replied.
“You don’t have to thank me for that,” I responded. “You’re pretty awesome to be friends with.” In the short week I had known Rebecca she had grown on me. She was stubborn, adventurous, surprisingly self-confident when she wanted to and still dedicated to her studies, even if she needed some prompting here and there. All in all, she had made my time at Hogwarts considerably less boring that It might otherwise have been, although she had at times been something of a distraction from my own studies.
I found she was a distraction I could tolerate however; I wasn’t a robot. If all I did was work, even if it was my life’s dream it was still work, I’d burn out sooner or later. One needed a little distraction to keep themselves sane, and I decided my friendship with Rebecca would be that distraction, having finally recognised it for what it is.
She giggled quietly at my words. “Do you think it was fate? Us meeting on the Hogwarts Express?” she asked as we looked up at the stars.
I snorted at that. “I don’t believe in fate or destiny, but I’m glad we did.”
“Well, I think it was.” She stated.
As we looked up into the sky a bright flash streaked across our sight.
Rebecca gasped. “A shooting star! Quick, make a wish!”
I wished for a future without Voldemort. Somehow, I doubted my wish would come true.