1: Toph

"Miss! Please, wake up! You need to catch the train!"

With a light thump, Toph Beifong rolled out of bed and dragged herself to her closet. "Okay, I got it!" She dismissed the lingering servant with a wave of her hand, and then pulled her brand new uniform out of the closet.

There was this vague knot in her throat; it had been a long time since she'd been truly excited for something. Last year, when she got her notification of acceptance into Hogwarts, her parents did the unthinkable; they refused. Though the Beifong lineage was in ancient times pureblooded, in recent years, the diluting of magical blood had resulted in relatively squibbish folk; it was so common for their family now, in fact, that they pretty much functioned as Muggles though they maintained close affiliations with the magical world. Her parents had been slightly horrified, in fact, when they found out years back that Toph was magical. This had involved an incident with another toddler making fun of her blindness, and then Toph sending the child hurtling back with a sudden rock jutting out of the earth. Since then, her father had agreed to put her under minimal magical training so as not to hurt anyone else. Toph had looked forward to finally attending Hogwarts, a real magicking school, for years, but when the time came, her parents deemed it too dangerous for a "little blind girl with no one to care for her".

Finally though, after much persuading as well as several displays of her defensive hexing skills, her parents had agreed to send her off to Hogwarts. A year late, yes, but at least she was finally going. The extra credit work she did over the summer ensured that she would be allowed to enter second year along with her own age group.

She buttoned up the white dress shirt and pulled on the scratchy vest. Then, she wiggled into the skirt, making sure that everything was perfectly in place. You know, until her parents dropped her off. Grimacing, Toph reluctantly shoved her foot into the knee-high black socks and then stomped around in her new shoes until they fit.

"Toph!" Her father yelled from downstairs, "It's time to go!"

"Yes, father," she muttered under her breath. With one last inhale of home, she hurried down the stairs and out the door, where the butler was closing the back trunk after moving her luggage into the back.

"We'll miss you, Miss Toph," he said to her as she jogged past him to the door.

"I know." With that, the door was shut and the car pulled away from the Beifong mansion.


2: Sokka & Katara

"SOKKA, WAKE UP!"

His fourteen-year-old sister's roar rang throughout the apartment.

"Shut uuuuuup," Sokka grumbled, blindly fumbling for his boomerang to throw at the doorway. He managed to throw it halfway there before it rebounded and smacked him in the face right as he sat up.

Katara passed his room again. "Ten minutes," she sing-songed, "Or Gran Gran'll leave without you."

Climbing out of bed, he snorted. "I don't need Gran Gran to drive me. Wood can probably pick me up on the way there."

"Oliver isn't old enough to drive," Katara retorted. She dragged her bags towards the stairs, passing Sokka's room again. Their tiny apartment seemed even tinier this particular morning, what with Katara's clothing strewn everywhere and Sokka's sporting gear and books all over the place. It was a common sight at their household every year when it came time to pack for their return to Hogwarts.

Gran Gran's voice rang out from downstairs. "Sokka, you'd better get your lazy bum down here before I accompany you onto the train."

Katara let out a giggle as Sokka's eyes widened in horror at the thought of his Quidditch teammates seeing their grandmother walking Sokka onto the train, handing him a lunch bag and sunscreen―

"Coming, Gran Gran," he called out quickly, running to the washroom.


3: Aang

Finally, it's time to go back to school~ Back to school, back to school!

Aang cheerily hummed the improvised song to himself as he danced around the kitchen preparing breakfast while Momo scampered around him.

"Momo, aren't you excited? I can't wait to see Katara again! I mean, Katara and Sokka... And you know, other people. And Harry. But Katara most of all." His face flushed red even though there wasn't anyone in the room to hear him, and shaking the thoughts out of his head, the young boy skipped to the fridge and grabbed some milk for his cereal.

Honestly though, the summer had been a drag. Even though he, Katara, and Sokka stuck together for most of the year (or at least as much as you could with that grade separation), the siblings always went back home by the sea to live with their grandmother for the summer. They always had a sliver of hope that their father, a captain in the Navy, would be back for a surprise visit. It rarely happened.

They had invited Aang to stay with them for the summer, but Aang didn't want to impose upon them and ended up spending his entire summer cooped up in the attic that he'd rented for cheap. His whole family had passed away some years ago during a fire when Aang had been off on one of his childish adventures. Since then, it'd taken some evasive tactics to avoid the orphanage. He had figured out that it was best to be untraceable by humans, and so he spent his time in either the attic of a barn out in the countryside where there were great distances between him and the prying eyes of nosy neighbours, or back in the wizarding world. His flying bison, Appa, who he'd encountered with Hagrid and who eventually followed him home, was guarded by Hagrid back in the wizarding world. A winged lemur could be hidden in the human world; a massive bison, not so much.

Downing his cereal within five seconds, Aang quickly scrubbed the bowl clean and then shoved it back into the tiny shelf that held all his home belongings.

"Time to go then." Propping the window open, Aang shoved his broomstick out into the open air before jumping on, and in another moment, Momo was out and following the boy higher into the skies, into the cover of the clouds.


4: Zuko

"Hey, who's that old man out there?" A group of older Slytherin boys laughed obnoxiously and made crude gestures out the window before passing on to the next section.

It took all Zuko had to keep from hexing them. Eyebrows pulled tight together, he nodded out the window to his uncle Iroh.

A sudden, unfortunately familiar female voice chilled Zuko to the core. "Oh, Zuzu. You're so cute. Did you really need Uncle to babysit you all the way here?"

Jolting upright, Zuko turned to see that his younger sister Azula was flanked by her two usual cronies, Ty Lee and Mai. Oh, Mai. She made sure to avoid eye contact, deciding instead that the seats of his particular compartment were extremely interesting. Zuko felt the blood rushing to his cheeks as Iroh waved good-naturedly to Azula through the window. Raising an eyebrow, the girl pulled out her wand, and with a sharp flick of the hand, his curtains flew shut, blocking Iroh from view.

"What do you want?!" Zuko snapped, his temper bursting suddenly.

"Look, I have a message from Dad. No need to be so hostile, Dum-dum." Azula's grin terrified Zuko even though he kept his eyes defiantly locked on hers, only praying that his nausea wouldn't betray him.

"He says, you need to get your crap out of the house." Her smile growing ever wider, his sister sauntered back, reached around the door, and with a flourish, dumped a box full of musty belongings onto the ground in front of Zuko. "See you when we get to school, Zuzu." Turning on her heel, Azula marched out. Ty Lee scurried after her, looking a little sorry for Zuko.

Mai, however, lingered. "Look, Zuko..."

"Get out." He kept his eyes fixed on the box. These were the last things he still had at home; things that, in his mind, kept his spot saved for him.

When he finally looked up an eternity later, she was gone.