First Breakfast Back {Darko, then open}

[Caitlin Collins]

Caitlin slowly made her way down the stairs into the entrance hall of Hogwarts, winding her way around the other students bustling about. It was a little odd being back. At home she’d gotten used to the quiet, with just her brothers and parents in their fairly large house in Devon. Of course, Andrew and Jake could be very noisy when they wanted to, but it was nothing compared to the constant stir of life at Hogwarts.

But at least she was back. When she’d decided on telling her parents what was going on at Hogwarts, she’d known they would probably – actually, almost certainly – take it badly. She’d considered the idea that they might want to protect her, but hadn’t truly thought it a real possibility that they would withdraw her from Hogwarts for any great length of time. A few days, maybe. It had occurred to her when Alessandro had been withdrawn that a similar thing might happen to her if her parents found out.

But after what had happened with Mallan, and then D’rorah’s near-corruption, she’d realised just how dangerous this war was. She couldn’t just not tell anyone and then leave them to be told when she got hurt, or even killed. So she’d gone home for the weekend and told them... most of it. They were shocked to hear of dark creatures in the forest – “Right next to the school!” her mum had exclaimed in horror. But when she got to the part about students, her friends, being killed and injured, they’d stopped her. Said it was late – it wasn’t that late, only about 10pm – she should go to sleep and they’d finish talking in the morning. The next day, she found that they’d sent a letter to the headmistress. They were removing her from the school. She’d tried to fight against it. That had been quite an argument. But they were resolute; she couldn’t be around such dangerous things.

Except not only had they removed her from Hogwarts, they’d also removed her from all things magical. Taken her wand away, her books, sent her to a muggle secondary school where she was abysmally far behind. All those subjects they learnt, like Chemistry and French. How was she supposed to keep up when she’d never been taught those things before? Andrew was better than her, and he was two years younger! She’d had to go to him for help with her homework, and he hadn’t stopped gloating the whole time. He’d always been a little bitter that she had magic while he was just normal, and as far as he was concerned, this was payback time. Biology in particular, she hated. At the time, they had been going through muggle medical conditions and diseases, which supposedly took a lot of treatment to cure. A flick of a wand and it would be fixed, but not in the muggle world...

She’d tried arguing with her parents again, but no. They were convinced that magic would harm her, and refused to budge. At first she wasn’t even sure she wanted to go back anyway. But then she thought about all the other lightfighters. They couldn’t afford to lose another Shadow Warrior, even one as untrained and inexperienced as her, and she couldn’t just pretend that the war wasn’t going on. If Dark Phoenix won, it wouldn’t just affect the wizarding world; all the muggles would be affected too. She thought about it one night and realised that if this carried on, with her at home and no contact with the lightfighters, she wouldn’t know until it was too late. For all she knew, there could have been a huge battle in the time she had been gone. Her friends could be dead, and she didn’t know.

Two weeks passed and she managed to get her parents to talk about it without ending in an argument. Three weeks and she was beginning to persuade them. Almost exactly a month after she’d first gone home, they agreed. As much as they disliked it, she’d convinced them that she needed to be among the other lightfighters, that she’d be safer at Hogwarts. Of course, there were various conditions that she would need to keep. Write home and tell them exactly what was going on, at least once a week. And she had been ordered that she was not allowed to go to “that training place in China” where Mallan had killed himself. That wasn’t something she was planning on doing anytime soon anyway. From all that she knew of the place – which, admittedly, wasn’t a lot to go on – it wasn’t an experience that would be easy to get through.

So, she had come back to Hogwarts a month behind in all her subjects, and having been unable to tell any of her classmates where she had gone. She hadn’t even told anyone she was going home for the weekend, so it was with trepidation that she entered the Great Hall for some breakfast. She’d arrived back late last night and had not seen anyone then. Sitting down at the end of the Hufflepuff table she took a couple of pieces of toast from the nearest plate and buttered them, glancing around to see if there was anyone she knew. It was a Saturday, so there were no lessons – she would at least have a couple of days to catch up on subjects before plunged back into reality. But before that, she desperately wanted to seek out one of the lightfighters and find out if she had missed anything. How was D’rorah now? When she’d left the older girl had not been in the greatest condition, having come so close to corruption. And she couldn’t put it off much longer; she needed to start training properly. If there was another incident, she didn’t want to have to rely on Keaira being there and transferring memories. Because if both Dee and Keaira were out of action, there wouldn’t be much hope.

[Alessandro Darko]

It was a groggy Saturday morning when he decided to roll out of bed. He was dreaming again, this time it was something very odd and undecipherable. He was standing on a long, cement bridge with no railings. In his hand was a red doll, its features he was unable to distinguish, no matter how hard he looked at it. Up ahead of him here his friends, D'rorah, Dylan, Zane, Keaira, Susan, and Cait. They were sitting on the bridge, and Cait was sitting on the edge, her leg swinging over the side. He became instantly frightened that she was going to fall, so he ran at them, waving his hands trying to get her attention, but he tripped. He fell forward onto the edge of the bridge and wrapped his arm around the side trying to brace himself, only that threw him off the ledge and he saw the scenery fly away from him, almost like he was out of his body, watching himself now.

Immediately he woke up, having suffered an explosion of adrenaline and fear from his core, spreading through his entire body. He actually felt like he was falling and his whole body jerked itself awake from the sensation. Blinking several times after drawing in several deep breaths of air, he slipped out of bed and threw on some track pants and a long sleeved shirt. He grabbed one of his black robes before he exited his dormitory.

His mind was still reeling from the dream. What exactly did it mean? Who were those people at the end? Was it D'rorah? The girl they had recently saved from a strange darkness? and the other one he recognized, Cassy? Was it? No, Caitlin. Her name was Cait. Odd, he barely knew these people and already he was having strange dreams about them, well, he had engaged in some pretty radical scenarios with them in the Forbidden Forest. Finally meandering into the Great Hall, he noticed Caitlin at the Hufflepuff table. He felt his heart flip flop as he remembered how he felt from the dream. Walking over to her, he plopped down right beside her in a strange, automatic-comfortable manner.

"Hey..." He said still looking down at the table. He reached up and grabbed a piece of toast, beginning to munch on it without having any butter or jam.

"You've been away..." He murmured slowly, eyes transfixed on the table as he did in fact notice a lack of her presence around Hogwarts.

[Caitlin Collins]

Taking a bite out of the toast, she found it a little lacking in flavour and glanced around the table again for anything close that might make it a bit better. Seeing a pot of strawberry jam that was still half full, she reached for it, a tiny frown coming onto her face when her sleeve went into the butter, and began to spread it slowly over the toast. Placing it back on the table, she brought her arm up and turned it around so she could examine the accidently buttered sleeve. As she attempted to wipe it off manually, she suddenly remembered that she could perform that task easily enough using magic. Retrieving her wand from her pocket she pointed it at the offending material.

“Tergeo,” she murmured quietly, trying not to attract any attention. She had a feeling that the “no magic in the corridors” rule, however often it was broken anyway, did in fact extend to the Great Hall as well. No one seemed to have noticed though, luckily. Re-examining the sleeve, she found the spell had not completely worked; it was still stained with grease. Only a month of not having access to her wand or magic had had a bad effect, it seemed. And it was worrying just how quickly she had gotten used to living in the muggle world again, forgetting the convenience of charms she had known since she was 11, first learning them in India. Tergeo was especially useful considering the lack of cleanliness in the slums of Hyderabad, where Vijay had often taken her to practice spells. There, surprisingly, magic was in abundance compared to the richer parts of the city. The two girls she had studied with – Shreya and Yamini – had both originally lived in a poorer part of the city, not quite the slums, before being taken under the tutor’s wing. Catching her mind wandering she forced it back to the subject at hand, placing her wand on the table beside her as if to remind her that she could use it. Unfortunately, the fact remained that despite learning the charm years ago and having always found it fairly easy, a month away had decreased her magical stability. Wondering how long this would last, she felt her heart sink a little as she ate breakfast.

Lost in her own thoughts, Caitlin didn’t notice Alessandro approach until he sat down right next to her, making her jump in her seat and turn wide-eyed to him as he spoke.

”Hey... You’ve been away,” he said, taking some toast for himself and beginning to eat it without any of the butter or jam she had just used.

“Hi, Alessandro,” she greeted him, breathing out slowly the gasp of air she had just taken in when she jumped. She tried to think of the last time she had seen him and concluded that it must have been the potions lesson... that, or Dee’s near-corruption. To be honest, her mind had been in such a haze immediately following the news of Mallan’s death that she wasn’t sure of the order of events between getting the letter and being pulled out of Hogwarts. She could remember what happened, to some extent, but not when. The mental reminder and reaction to Mallan’s demise showed she was at least somewhat recovered; it was more a gentle lapping of sadness that overcame her, rather than being engulfed by it. She had spent much of the time at home trying to come to terms with it, and had partly succeeded in that she had at least accepted what had happened. Not why – that was still a mystery to her – but she knew he wasn’t coming back from China.

“Yeah,” she nodded, “I went home for the weekend. Told my parents about what was going on... they didn’t like it much and pulled me out without even telling me,” she scowled. “Kinda like – “ At that point she stopped, remembering the reaction she had received last time she’d mentioned his parents taking the same actions as hers had. She was just glad to be back and talking to her friends to want to bring up touchy subjects like that. In fact, was he having any more success at recalling her as a friend? When he’d sat down and started talking, it had almost seemed like old times. He’d been the first people she’d met upon arriving at Hogwarts for the first time, and it had turned out he was also one of the lightfighters. But then he’d disappeared, and when he finally came back he had no memory... She found herself with the same indecisive feeling she’d been experiencing so often lately – should she inquire as to whether he’d recovered any of his memories, or just leave that topic alone? “How – “ she began, then biting her lip and falling silent, changing her mind a moment after she spoke. “Never mind,” she murmured.