Chapter 1: Coffee Break
"Come on, Filly. You'd have more fun this year than any other. All you have to do is sign your name," Allegra muttered smirking at her sister, her elbows resting on the bench between them, her hands cupping her own face.
"I don't know, sis, every stupid thing you convince me of seems fun beforehand, but in retrospect, was probably the worst course of action I could have taken," Ophelia retorted as she brewed her sister's third coffee for the day.
"That's 'cause you always go off script! If you just did what I told you to, you'd, nine times out of ten, have more fun with your life."
Sighing, Ophelia handed the freshly brewed coffee over to her sister before beginning the next order, which was just a hot chocolate. It was rather late for coffee. "I'm just not sure, Al. Wouldn't my last year be better spent at Salem, you know, studying and stuff?"
"Please, like you study," Allegra scoffed shaking her head. "All you do most of the time is either fly, spend your time gazing around smoke filled rooms defogging the future, or working here," Flipping her hand around the small, almost deserted, coffee shop, Allegra cocked her head to one-side. "It's not like you've got much of a life to leave behind, and you always pass your exams with flying colours. Woman up and sign the damn permission notice."
"Hey, I have a life! I'd be leaving Amy and Mel behind, and Mel would shoot me if I ran out on her in our last year of Duel Club! She might miss her chance to be scouted for a duelling company if I wasn't here to be her second and practice her posture."
"Both Mirrow and Lalanee have signed up for the trip. And from what I hear, Mirrow's a dead ringer to get it. She's on every sports team Salem has, takes both Dark Arts and the Defence against it, and gets almost perfect grades in every subject. To top it all off she's the most athletic student Salem has," Allegra deadpanned.
"Yeah, yeah, we all know how perfect Mel is. So, she's the most likely to be chosen to go and, once there, the most likely to become our champion. Why do I have to go?"
"Because, if there's one person who'd do it better, it's you. You get just the same if not better marks in all your subjects as Mirrow, and you have a better range of subjects for it. I mean, what's Mirrow take? Dark Arts and its Defence as well as what? Potions, Herbology and Muggle studies?"
"Potions, Care of Magical Creatures, and History, Al. That's not a bad mix in all honesty."
"Yes, well, it's got nothing on you Filly. Curses, Charms, Enchantments, Dark Arts, and Divination, three of those are hugely content based and are almost impossible to keep up with. But look at you, getting near perfect scores in all of them."
"Yeah, near perfect. Not perfect. Not like you," Ophelia muttered as she handed out what would be the last order of the day. Something crept into her voice as she said it, not anger, or sadness, or jealousy but something akin to acceptance. As if long ago, she had accepted that her sister would always be the shining star of the Wilde family, and she was okay with that.
"Sure, but I had like no life in school. You have a small one, so you're forgiven," Allegra joked, smiling politely at the younger boy who took his hot chocolate form her sister and scrambled out of the shop.
Shaking her head, Ophelia went back to cleaning and ignoring her sister. For a few moments they sat in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
"You should do it though. Whether you get it or not, it'd be a nice experience to have. Merlin knows I would have loved to do it during my schooling, but, alas, it was not to be," sighing dramatically, Allegra mocked fainting, bringing a smile to her sisters face.
"Hey, I'm the one named after a Shakespearean character here. You leave the dramatics to me you here," pointing a dishcloth at her sister, Ophelia gave her a mock glare, but the effects were lessened as a smile broke across her face.
"Whatever, oh doomed child. Anyway, isn't your shift meant to end soon? I though you got off at six?"
"Yeah, I was meant to, but boss lady asked me to stay back till seven. There was more of a rush today than usual. Plus, you know that you're not meant to drink coffee this late, right?"
"Meh, got a stake out tonight, so I need the boost of caffeine."
"Yeah, what's it this time?"
"Actual it's rather unusual," Allegra shrugged her shoulders, finishing up her coffee. "Drug bust out in the witching woods, you know the place right? It's were all the little girls from Salem and all the magical community in Salem go to do everything illegal. Honestly you'd think people learned at some point."
"What are they pedaling?"
Glancing sideways at her sister, Allegra narrowed her eyes at her sister, and Ophelia could feel the suspicion radiating of her sister. "A form of fungi, they've been selling to Muggles and calling it a new strain of Magic Mushroom, only the magic parts are a bit more real than usual. It's grown in a mixed fertilizer of dragon and unicorn dung. The unicorn makes everything shiny, while the Dragon gives it more of a kick. My unit doesn't really bother with drug busts nowadays, but we've had a few dozen Muggles brought in over the last month alone who have either overdosed on it, or when they've crashed they've crashed hard, hasn't been a lot left. On the inside. Mainly just goo. It hasn't been pretty."
Ophelia scrunched her face up at the not so pleasant answer her sister gave her. "Yuck. So why are you and your unit looking into it then? I mean you deal more with the big guys, don't you? Witches and Wizards who want to control the world, Mob leaders, magical threats to national security, and Magical terrorists right? What are you doing on a drug bust?" Ophelia asked, watching her sister pulling her coat on.
"See, the drugs have been showing up all over the nations: Florida, Louisiana, Washington, Arizona, and even in New York. The very tippy-top of the pecking order wants this investigated, so my unit and I were called in to deal with it. Although, it does help that it's only been sold to Muggles, gives more of a reason for the kiddies and me to get involved. The boss is calling it 'an act of terror against muggles.' Not to mention, the drug popped up originally in Salem. So, we're going after them first in the hope we can get to the ring leaders out of it…. Lalanee wouldn't have anything to do with this would she?"
"Amy's not stupid, Al. She deals more in the answers to test and bets on varies outcomes with sports teams. On occasion she's been known to dabble with different potions and the selling of them, but never anything dangerous."
Grinning crookedly at her younger sister, Allegra stood up. "I've heard Salem had a bit of trouble with Felix Felicis last year. Was that her doing at all?"
"I will neither confirm nor deny that."
"Well, keep an eye on her for me. The Lalanee's own half the Magical and a slither of the Muggle underbellies. She'll be the next King pin, you hear me."
"Yeah, yeah, you tell me this once a week," Ophelia muttered. She knew what kind of family Amy came from, and she knew about her friends dreams of taking over from her mum, but Amy wasn't a bad person. She just had goals. Illegal, sometimes deadly goals.
Glancing at the clock, Ophelia noted that she only had about fifteen minutes left. She'd have to race across Salem in the hope that the Institute hadn't locked its gates by the time she got there.
Noticing her sisters gaze, Allegra smiled softly. "Salem will lock you out if you're any later than seven-thirty, right? You'd better get thee self to a nunnery as quickly as possible little sister."
"Oh hardy har har. You're so funny. Make fun of the cursed child why don'tcha?"
"I am," she clipped back.
"Oh, shoo, you. Go track down those drug dealers of yours."
"Technically Benson's leading the case, so they're her drug dealers," Rosaline Benson was the head of a unit that worked in the same field as Allegra. Benson hated the younger investigator as she had climbed the ranks to quickly, barley being in the force for a year before she had started receiving promotions. Suffice to say that Allegra wasn't her biggest fan either.
"Wow. And you haven't Avada Kedavra her yet? I'm impressed Al. You're really growing up."
Rolling her eyes, Allegra headed towards the coffee houses exit. "Right then, I'm off. Don't forget what I told you Filly. You'd have the time of your life."
"If I didn't die in the process."
"Have some faith in yourself little sister!" and with that Allegra was gone.
Rolling her eyes, Ophelia returned to cleaning up the small coffee house that she worked at during the school year.
Her sister could be right, it wasn't every day that an all-expense paid trip to another continent opened up before you. She didn't even have to put her name into the deadly game that they were going for if she didn't want to. She could just go and experience the culture, maybe have some fun in the process. It was all up in the air.
That was until the world blurred around the edges and her heart stopped beating for a moment. Everything narrowed into a single point, and then the world was gone. Only to come rushing back completely different. Gone were the coffee grinders and the two blenders they used to make thick shakes and milkshakes. The tables and booths that scattered about the small shop had also disappeared only to be replaced with four impossible long wooden tables, with hundreds of kids seated all around. Most of them wore black robes with the same white shirt, jumper combo, as Ophelia focused closer on them she saw that each table had a different coloured tie combo with different symbols on each of their jumpers.
While she had no idea who the black cloaked people were, she knew the set in the Blue Blazers. She'd met a few of them at dueling competitions and had watched Mel play them a few times with different sports teams. Her cousin all so attended their school, and on the few times they saw each other a year he would remind her of their inter-school rivalry. It was the boys from the Louisiana Wizarding Academy, the only other single sexed school in the United States. Ophelia had heard a rumour that both the Salem Witches Institute and the Louisiana Wizarding Academy had been invited, but hadn't believed it till that moment. They had scattered themselves amongst the tables, with a few clustered here and there.
Another group was scattered around the image. Far more blurry then the rest of the image, and far more smaller as well, making it almost impossible for Ophelia to get a read on it. From what she could make out of them they were just white and red blurs, with the most basic shape of a human to them. Nothing stood out about them, nothing screamed for her attention, which was what made Ophelia so fascinated by them. The fact that she couldn't see them.
The last group in the image were witches from Salem. She could make out the outline of the formal 'uniform' that they wore when attending events throughout the school year. The black capes that they wore, with three white buttons, each embellished with the founders symbol used to keep the cape closed. White lace around the collar and a vivid purple ribbon tied loosely under the collar.
For a second, Ophelia had no idea why she was seeing this, until her vision narrowed onto one of the tables and she saw Amy Lalanee and Melody Mirrow. Seated between the two of them, was herself smiling widely and staring at the slightly raised end of the vision, where Ophelia could see the a few teaches of Salem and some she didn't recognize, all seated at a table that occupied most of the visions width. In front of the professors, talking to the gathered students, was an elderly woman dressed in deep emerald robes.
Around her the vision hummed with emotion. Excitement, fear, joy, jealousy everything you would usually feel in a school, only amped up. Something was going to happen soon, and Ophelia had a fairly good idea of what it was.
Just as quickly as the image had come, it was gone. Once again, Ophelia stood in the small coffee house, still holding a coffee cup in her hand. Glancing at the clock, Ophelia noted that only a few seconds had passed between the beginning of her vision and its end. They had started speeding up.
No-one was around, as she was the only employ on, and only her sister and a few stragglers had shown up with in the last few hours, and her boss was in the back, counting up the days earning, so no-one had notice her back become stiff and her shoulders square.
Slowly, she placed the cup on the bench, hunching her shoulders she grabbed the bench's edges in a death grip, so tight that her hands began to turn white, and inhaling deeply, Ophelia let an enormous sigh escape her.
"Well, it looks like I'm going."
(Wow it has been a long time since I wrote anything. Like so long. Sorry if u got an update from me hoping for one of my unfished stories, but meh.
I hope everyone liked this, as it's an idea that's been floating around for a while, I'm not sure if I should continue this, as I'm not fully happy with it at the mo, but we'll see where this goes.
Give me a shout if you liked it, and can offer up any suggestions for what'd be cool to be done.)