Chapter One- Kara Jubiya
"...and that class," the history teacher droned on, "Is how some people believe the Ice Age came to be."
The bell rang loud and clear as the grateful students ran out of the class room. Kara sleepily stood up from her own desk and stretched while she yawned.
"Beautiful speech, Mrs. Caleb. I'll be looking forward to another one just like it again sometime." Kara managed to say in her yawn and her teacher put her hands on her hips disapprovingly as Kara walked out the door.
"That seemed to take forever to be over, but now finally marks the end of my sentence to summer school!" Kara grinned wickedly over to her friend Tailor who had waited for her outside of school.
"Took long enough. You do realize that while you're in summer school, I'm punished too? I don't do anything until about August, so that doesn't give us much time to hang out together now. I was bored out of my mind! Can't you ever pay attention enough in class to not have to go to summer school?" Tailor asked, walking next to her friend on their way home.
"Sorry, Tally. No can do. S'not my fault anyway. The school just needs better teachers, or subjects, or lessons or something." Kara shrugged her shoulders.
"Oh, pardon me. I forgot that nothing can be your fault!" Tailor rolled her eyes.
"That's okay. I'll forgive you just because that's the kind of person I am." Kara grinned while Tailor raised an eyebrow up at her and shook her head.
"So conceited." she seemed to mutter. "Next year should be better though, 'cause we'll be seniors."
After a while, Tailor and Kara reached a library where Kara's grandfather worked. He wasn't really her grandfather, but he was old enough to be and was now her legal guardian. He was really her dad's godfather, but Kara loved him anyway. He owned this library and the house where Kara and he lived was in the back part of the big library.
"Hey Jack." Kara came into the library with Tailor from the back entrance and threw her book bag onto a small table.
"Hello Mr. Herold." Tailor followed.
"Hey girls." An old, but kind looking man with a big smile on his face came in from the next room. "How was the last day of summer school?"
"Fine, I guess." Kara told him, looking at her hangnail intently and bitting down on it.
"What'd you like best?" he persisted.
"The end." Kara grinned and Jack Herold laughed while Tailor snorted almost choking on her milk she was guzzling down.
"Ah, yes. That's my girl." he sighed and walked back into the main part of the library.
After the girls had walked down to the little theater at the corner, and watched the fifth Harry Potter movie, being as that was one of Kara's all time favorite movie series, and they had joked about how the books were tons better than the movies, Tailor said that she had to go home to pack for her family vacation to Greece for the rest of the summer and part of the following year.
"I'll get you something really nice from there! I promise. And I'll take tons of pictures." Tailor insisted.
"Fine. I wish I was going with you though." Kara sighed. "If I'd have known you were going to Greece from the beginning of the year, I wouldn't have planned to goof off and get landed into summer school. But no!" Tailor laughed and hugged her friend.
"You and I both know you don't plan this. You do what you can to do your best practical jokes of the year, and you and just end up getting completely busted for it. I don't think you planned for this years trick, or last years for that matter, to get as out of hand as it did. I don't think they should've sent you to summer school for it anyway." Tailor said.
"Actually, I think I was in summer school for bad grades. Only in history though, and it was a D plus. Hmm." Kara thought. "Perhaps it was the prank. I don't know why though. Principal Fisk eventually got his car off the roof." Kara grinned in memory.
"Oh yeah, I remember that prank! I was talking about how you turned up the air conditioning in the bathrooms so much, that the jellow you put in the toilets hardened and no one could use the bathrooms." Tailor said, and Kara nodded.
"Yep. There was that one..." she said.
"Well, I should really get going. See you in October! And don't worry. I'll send you mail and everything." Tailor hugged Kara one last time before she headed out the door and walked home.
Kara let out a breathe of exhaustion and sadness as she slumped down into a comfortable armchair. After sitting there quietly for about ten minutes, she pulled out the seventh Harry Potter book and looked at it, running her hands over the cover.
"How many times have you read that now?" Jack asked as he walked into the room and sat down across from her.
"Only once... I think I might read it again though. It was a good book, and I might pick up something different this time reading it.
"To have read it once already is still good though, what with summer school going on when it came out last Friday. Today's just Tuesday." he told her.
"I know. But you know how I am when a book is good!" she said, and he chuckled.
"Yes, yes I do know." he answered after a quick moment. "So how are you feeling about Tailor being gone for so long?"
"Terrible. They shouldn't have sent me to summer school just for a few pranks! If I could use magic and everything like in J. K. Rowling's books I might've been able to get away with it all." Kara scrunched up her nose in disgust.
"Well, I've always been one for a good prank." he said. Then he looked at her with interest while he thought to himself.
"What?" Kara sat up.
"Oh, nothing. You might not be interested." he said looking away.
"No, tell me." she hated when he did this to her.
"No, it's nothing." he shrugged it off.
"Tell me now! You've already started talking, so now you have to tell me." Kara said indifferently.
"Alright then. Come with me." he stood up and Kara curiously followed him. "Bring Harry Potter with you." he said, and Kara, still rather confused grabbed it as she followed.
He walked right into the library and over to the front desk. Behind the desk there was a very dark red rug that the chair sat on top of. He moved the chair and the rug to reveal a square block cut out into the carpeting of the library floor. There was a metal indentation where you would put your fingers in to open up the trap door, and Jack did so. When the door creaked open, there was a small flight of wooden stairs leading down into the darkness. Jack felt around underneath the sides all around the square hole until he had found a light switch and turned it on.
"After you," he said, gesturing for Kara to go first. "But don't touch anything until I get down there."
Kara obediently walked down the old wooden stairs into the lit up room. She was completely amazed that there was a whole other room in the library, in her house that she had never knew was there. It had a clean white carpet, and navy blue walls. There were two twin beds on the wall closest to the stairs, and there was a little TV and a computer on a little desk in the room. On the far side of the room, there was a large, old looking, beat up red armchair that had a lamp over top of it.
"What is this place..." Kara asked with amazement as she continued to gawk at the room. Jack only chuckled.
"This used to be a bomb shelter, but being as I thought we were pretty safe from that, but hated to waste the space, set it up like this. That old chair in the back, it was in the attic of this library before I even got here. It's a lot more comfortable than it looks." he said. "Go ahead, try it out."
Kara walked over to the chair and felt the fabric of the old armchair underneath her fingertips. It was soft and had rides in it like corduroy pants. Kara slowly let herself sit down on its large cushion before completely collapsing into it. She let out a deep sigh of comfort.
"This has got to be the most comfortable chair I have ever been on." she said, and Jack let out a loud laugh.
"I thought you'd like it." he told her.
"So, this is it? You only brought me down here to show me a chair?" she asked confused.
"This is a very special chair though. I've always thought that reading in it was the best. It seems to really," he paused in thought momentarily. "Put you right into the book you're reading." He then smiled at her and walked back up the stairs leaving Kara watching him with a curious look on her face. She then shrugged, thinking nothing of it and opened up the first page of the book.
"The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane..."
The first sentence of the book had only just been read when Kara felt the room spin around her and she was so afraid at what was happening, she didn't even let out a sound. She couldn't even seem to breath.
She landed in some unknown place and her hands caught herself from falling face first into the grass. Kara looked around at the unfamiliar place in fright. She had the book still with her, and her hand clutched very tightly to it. She heard voices from the other side of the bush she had landed next to, and cautiously peered around it. She almost let out a cry of surprise, delight and fear at what she saw.
"...well, Lucius. Peacocks..." One of them said, and Kara saw him put a stick like object back into his cloak while he made a small snort.
Kara's face seemed to be right next to their legs and she crept further back into the bushes. The men she saw were the same two men from the beginning of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! Snape and Yaxley stood right before her. Yaxely had never been in one of the Harry Potter movies before, but the Snape that stood so close to her now looked exactly like he had in the movies.
"Crap!" Kara mouthed. She glared at the memory in her head when Jack said 'It seems to really, put you right into the book you're reading.'
As Kara thought about how on Earth she was to get out of, not only Britain and Malfoy's Manor, but out of this book, she heard someone else coming. She let out a gasp and pulled her bare ankle into the bush further.
"What was that?" one of the people asked.
"Peacock most likely." the other answered dully. "Come. The Dark Lord does not like it when his servants are late. Do you want us to be punished?"
"No..." the other grumbled. "But what if it was a filthy Mudblood Muggle?"
"What do you think you saw, exactly? They shouldn't be here. Not with the spells on this house." Kara held her breath as the two witches stopped.
"A foot I think... I could be wrong. This bloody heat keeps fogging up my glasses." the one witch took off her glasses and began to polish them with her robes.
"Wait a minute..." the other witch started to walk over to the bush where Kara was, and as she moved aside the branches, she gasped.
"Mudblood!" she cried out, and Kara lunged out of her hiding place and made a grab for the witches wand. "Get it you idiot!"
"Avada Kedavra!" the witch with glasses said, and the killing curse hit Kara right in the back right after she grabbed the wand, and her body fell limply to the ground dead.
"What was that?" one wizard came outside the house.
"Oh, nothing. Some stupid Muggle or something. Dead now." the witch brushed herself off. "Where's my wand!" she looked around frantically.
"Not now! If you don't want the Dark Lord to use that curse on us, we must be going! We'll search the body later." and with that, the witch with the glasses pulled her friend inside after the wizard.