Chapter One Acceptance
Dear Miss Bishu,
Hogwarts is pleased to announce you have been accepted as an exchange student for the fall term beginning September 1 of this year.
We understand the most unusual circumstances beginning your late education and have made such allowances as possible for your situation.
Please meet with our liaison in London at the appointed time enclosed with the fully detailed attachment.
Best of luck,
Headmistress Minerva Mcgonagle
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
I clutched the letter in my hand, smoothing it out the wrinkles and reading it over and over and eventually flipping to the attachment it spoke of and poured over it's details again as well. I'd read the letter so many times that summer, and even after speaking on the phone with the Headmistress herself I could hardly believe this was actually happening.
I was thankful that the elderly gentleman beside me had fallen asleep fairly quickly in the flight overseas. It gave me more time to consider everything. Part of me still mistrusted everything, this could be some horrible trap- you'd hear stories of job offers for positions overseas and no one would ever hear from the young women again- sold into the slave trade. I pushed the thought down, I'd already seen too much this summer to give the notion any real consideration, too much had happened.
A number of days before my birthday, in the midst of June I'd been attending a powwow with some of my closest mates when all hell had broken loose. It was late into the night, just after midnight, the drums had been sounding for three days, and we had camped out in a small tent and gorging ourselves on moose meat and other local delicacies. We had stayed up late, cracking into our third case of beer someone had run into town for earlier that day, and sat around the bonfires. Some danced, and when we had enough beer ourselves, we joined them. I had been up and dancing, it felt good to dance, my inhibitions low once the alcohol had loosened me up and the flames called. I no longer felt an outsider, though I had more First Nations blood in me then two of my fellows that had come with, I was paler then most white folk, and had long given over to dying my copper waist-length hair red so that I looked more Irish then native. The flames and the beat called, and so I pounded my feet in the dust, becoming one with the fire and the music. I watched the other circling forms, they too were one with the flame, and then..they were aflame.
I would learn later that wandless, wordless magic came only naturally to children before they reached a certain age, and began to learn real magic, but that night my drunken revelry caused havoc. I knew not that it was my own doing, and had panicked along with the rest of them, diving towards the closest of them and rolling them in the dirt until the flames extinguished. Several people were moderately injured after they caught fire and one of the elder shamans were awoken and brought to the scene. They did not have formal medical training known to the western world, but were still trusted to complete first aid until help arrived.
I ducked into the main tent where the injured were having their clothing cut away from them, the elder shaman sat over the gravest injury and raised his rattles skyward in the dark enclosure and cried his haunting healing song. I sat next to another patient and tried to sooth them with a dampened and clean cloth. Suddenly I noticed a younger man hiding in the shadows of the tent, he was clutching an old carved staff and muttering incantations of his own under his breath. Suddenly my hands stopped moving, the air seemed to still and I could hear everything he said as though he whispered in my ear. His focus was on the patient the elder was seeing to. I heard myself echoing the strangely seeming words that I understood not, and even as he stamped his staff on the ground I could feel a sudden vibration in the air.
I gasped as I looked over to the patient the elder was seeing to- his burns had almost completely cleared away, and he was breathing easier now. The elder got up and moved to the next man, his burns were less, but still problematic, the younger man followed him with his eyes and repeated the strange ritual. Again I found myself echoing his words, my hearing had become almost super-sensory in the dark and the vibration after the staff pounded the dirt on the floor did a double echo this time, as I felt another ripple ebbing outwards from my own self. I looked down and found the patient I was kneeling beside had also healed. Just as I sensed his own magic, the young man looked up suddenly at me and locked gazes.
He then approached the elder, and pulled him out of the tent to speak with him. It was only moments later when several elders approached me and near dragged me out of the tent. We crossed the large field that held the encampment and moved towards the treeline. I tried to protest but I was so shocked by what was going on that I made little defense.
It was near dawn before enough had become clear to all. I had been the one that caused the fires. I felt nothing but numbness at this point. Shock, disbelief. But I had felt my own magic coming forth to heal. I could give no explanation to them, and so they searched my aura and my memories. I could feel them entering my mind roughly, but I had no defense, and was almost happy to show them I hadn't done any of this on purpose.
I was allowed to go home the next day, but with a guard of sorts, the same young man that had noticed me in the tent. They were all kinder to me then at first once they realized I had no idea what was going on. My personal guard was the kindest still, Joe Onestaff was his name, and he explained everything he could. He had studied magic at a university in Salem, I had laughed a bit at this, but he was quite serious. The friends I had arrived with seemed to have no memory of the events the night before, and only the lesser patients that had not been magically treated had been given over to the paramedics once they arrived. He explained that their memories had been magically tampered with and would only think they had gotten too drunk and passed out. I was embarrassed and slightly grateful that I would not have to explain myself to them, though it was awkward enough having Joe follow us home. My mates all had the impression that I had taken to Joe and was romantically inclined- this was hardly the case, but I couldn't very well disabuse them of the notion.
I received a letter a week later from a raven that had damn near broken the glass to my patio door 7 stories up in my apartment, before Joe explained that it was carrying a message for me.
The letter read fairly simply, an account for my late blooming magic due to a historical curse placed on my lineage that had finally broken that solstice. It also included an offer to attend a European wizarding school en gratis. Joe seemed delighted that I had received a scholarship to a very prestigious school, but had laughed and explained that it wasn't exactly for merit on my own part- but rather that the First Nations council had been badgered for some time by one of the Professors there to send an exchange student so that some of their own ranks could study our way of shamanism. I was being offered up as a sacrificial lamb of sorts, but he said not to take it too hard- it was no prejudice against myself, just an easy answer to their dilemma. I could of course stay here and learn to control magic within my own country if I wanted.
The week had passed less awkwardly then I imagined, my friends had went home, and my vacation from work over- I returned to my dead-end job I so hated. Joe was a polite house guest and mostly stayed out of my way, spending most of his time reading through my books and delighting in using my spare computer. I still felt very poor, as the job did not pay well, and the accommodations were rather shabby for the unexpected guest. It gnawed at my brain that I was so used to living this poor solitary life, and that I had so little to offer Joe in way of good food or entertainment, I could hardly imagine finding time for magical training and still working enough hours to pay rent. The en gratis, scholarship whispered invitingly.
My lease had been up since the previous fall, my job I hated, my parents I rarely ever saw, and my few friends had their own lives to look after. I could do it. I could pick up and leave with hardly any regrets. I finally came to the conclusion that to accept the offer was the best thing that could happen to me. I'd always wanted to see Europe, I didn't know exactly where the school was, but it hardly mattered. I finally told Joe my decision and he grinned and called his own familiar to him from my balcony. His was an old barn owl, tawny and cranky and being summoned during the day. He fastened my return letter to it's leg and let it go.
Joe Onestaff stayed with me right up until I boarded the plane. He said he could teach me no magic, as he was not a qualified teacher, but imparted to me the many legends he had memorized in his youth- including one esoteric story about the family of skinwalkers cursed for a thousand years, stripped of all magic. He told me the story on purpose, letting me divine my own insights and revelations on my history. He had warned me thusly of darker magics, of wars amongst our kind, and parted with this knowledge he bade me be careful, learn all I could yes, but be safe.
So it was that I was sitting here in First Class as the plane began to gently bank towards the London airport, reading my Hogwarts School letter. The final leg of this incredible journey I had undertaken was to stay for one night at a local hotel, and then meet up at a small pub known as The Leaky Cauldron- I groaned inwardly at the name, but I supposed even the magical folk could have a tawdry sense of humor.