Bella flicked the ash off her cigarette, regarding the quaint cottages of Forks High School with a skeptical eye. Why did adults feel the need to make schools so kitschy?

First there was that lower form school back home in England, Miss Darby's School for Girls. She shuddered at the memory of the doilies that had covered every possible surface. So Umbridge, so awful.

Then Hogwarts, with its rickety boarding school charm – all crooked towers and wandering staircases. The bathrooms were hardly ever in the same place! That was just inconvenient and impractical, like so much of the magic she had learned over the years.

When her sister, Hermione, had sent her into hiding four years ago, Bella had been hopeful her new American school would look normal. Really, Americans were so into new things they had probably destroyed and rebuilt the entirety of Salem three times in the last one hundred years. Oh, how wrong she was. Salem Witches' Academy looked like the Pilgrims had only stepped out for a moment, leaving behind their crumbling brick fireplaces and frumpy clothes.

As a girl who lived in jeans, she loathed the wool skirts forced upon her for years by both magical institutions. Really, the ability to wear Muggle clothing on a day to day basis was Forks' sole advantage over anywhere else in the world.

That, and the fact that she doubted Lucius Malfoy and his pureblood Death Eaters would ever think to look for her in Bumfuck, Washington.

She took another drag of her cigarette. The first day of school was going to be hell, and she wished her mom was here.

Distantly, a bell rang. She sighed and wandlessly vanished her cigarette before exiting her red '98 Ford Ranger (manual, thank you very much). Rain immediately pelted her braided brown hair, causing it to frizz horribly.

Damn but she hated this place.


A/N: Yeah. Yeah. I know. I'm sorry, this muse wouldn't leave me alone. I'm going to speed through this one – the next like 4 chapters are already written – so watch for regular updates unless I say otherwise. By Candlelight and Invisible Lines aren't abandoned, their muses are just on holiday. For realsies.