A/N: Everything you need to know is in chapter 1. Go look there if you really want to know.

Ch. 2: Almost

Monday morning came much too soon for Sora. It had been over two years since he had even thought about school, let alone attended. The sounds of alarm clocks going off all over the dorms woke the tired boy and forced him to pull himself out of bed. He was glad to see he wasn't the only person who hated waking up. In fact, it appeared most of his dorm would love nothing more than to stab the alarm clocks and go back to sleep.

Sora stared at the nearest one and honestly considered doing just that.

He finally sighed and got out of bed, stretching tiredly. He looked down at the pajamas that he was borrowing from the hospital wing since he didn't have any of his own. In fact, all of his things, except his normal clothes, had been borrowed. He looked down at what he was supposed to wear to his classes and sighed.

School uniforms. He was not going to enjoy this.

Donald, who was in the bed next to Sora, was muttering oaths under his breath as he pulled the robes on over his normal attire. Considering his size (and shape) they didn't have a school uniform for him so he and Goofy both were allowed to wear their normal clothes. Sora, unfortunately, was close to the same size as Harry and they had, had no problem finding him a uniform.

The spiky haired boy pulled on his button up shirt and stared at the tie in his hand, trying very hard to remember how you were supposed to put them on. He looked at his other dorm mates and noticed most of them not bothering to put on the tie or the vest, which made Sora very happy. He finished tying his dress shoes (which were very uncomfortable compared to his sneakers) and pulled on his robe. He grabbed his book bag and walked out, Donald right behind him.

The two of them only got as far as the Defense Against the Dart Arts classroom (which Harry, Ron, and Hermione had pointed out to them on their way to the Gryffindor tower the first night) when they were stopped by a woman that Sora had seen sitting at the teacher's table.

She was a rather round, toad looking woman. Her mouth was stretched across her face in a manner that made Sora very glad he wasn't a fly. She had pudgy hands with a ton of rings on her fingers. The woman was wearing all pink and to top it all off was a fluffy cardigan.

Needless to say Sora and Donald were too shocked by her appearance to even hear what she was saying.

"Sorry, what?" Sora asked as soon as she realized her mouth was moving.

"I asked where you two have transferred from," the woman replied in an overly sweet voice that made Sora's teeth hurt.

"We come from-"

"We were trained with Yen Sid," Donald cut across Sora.

Sora grinned and nodded, "Yup, he taught us out magic."

"Lovely," the woman said before making a note on her clipboard and walking down the staircase.

Sora and Donald turned as they heard someone running up behind them. The culprits were revealed as Harry, Ron, and Hermione, all three looking worried and a little out of breath.

"What did she say?" Hermione asked, sounding worried.

"She wanted to know where we transferred from," Sora answered.

"Stupid toad," Ron spat bitterly.

"It's a reasonable question Ron," Hermione said, though her tone suggested that she agreed with Ron.

"It's not her business, she's not the Headmaster," Harry nearly growled as he continued down the stairs.

"Uh…?" Sora said as he and Donald followed the trio.

"You should try and stay away from her, she's a horrible woman," Hermione said in answer to his unasked question.

"How so?" Donald asked.

Ron grabbed Harry's hand (the one Sora had noticed bleeding the first night he arrived), which caused the boy to gasp in pain, and angled it so that Sora and Donald could see it. Carved into the boy's hand were the words I must not tell lies. Harry pulled his hand back from Ron who looked a little sheepish as Harry glared at him. The raven-haired boy massaged his aching hand while Sora looked confused.

Hermione took pity on him, "For her detentions she makes you use a quill that carves into your hand and makes you write in your own blood."

Sora blanched at that and Donald started jumping up and down squawking like mad (which caused the trio to back away from him), "That's dark magic!"

"Dark magic," Sora repeated quietly and looking down at the ground, "Do you think that…?"

What ever they thought was put on hold, however, as the bell suddenly rang.

"We missed breakfast," Ron said gloomily.

"DADA first," Harry spat bitterly.

"This should be fun," Hermione said, sarcasm dripping from her tone as the three lead the way to class.


"Good morning class."

"Good morning Professor Umbridge," the class replied, sounding rather like they were being tortured.

"Wands away," Umbridge instructed as she turned to face the class, "Please read chapter six today. There-"

"-will be no need to talk," Harry, Hermione, and Ron said in unison under their breaths.

Sora flipped to the chapter in his borrowed book and stared at the title for a full minute before he realized what he was reading. Donald snorted and shut the book, leaning back into his seat. Sora rather agreed with the duck, he didn't feel the urge to read Theories to Defeating Dark Arts either. He glanced around the room. Harry was drawing in the margins of the book. Ron had his eyes closed with his book propped up to hide him. Hermione was sitting in a position similar to Donald's. Clearly this was a regular occurrence since most of the class wasn't even on the right page.

Sora frowned at that, if what Harry said was true (and Sora could see no reason to not believe the boy) then these kids needed to know how to fight, and they clearly weren't learning.

"Excuse me," Sora said, which caused everyone to look at him, thrilled to have something else to do other than read.

"Students will raise their hands in my class," Umbridge replied.

Sora sighed and put his arm in the air, only to be ignored. The boy gawked at the woman as she pointedly ignored his hand. He clenched his jaw shut and forced himself to be polite, he was, after all, a guest here.

"Excuse me," Sora repeated, hand still in the air.

"I do believe I said there would be no need to talk," the teacher replied.

Harry watched Sora try to keep from exploding at the woman and had to give the kid his props. He was lasting much longer than the rest of them had.

"I just had a question about this class since I'm new to it," Sora ground out, almost painfully.

Umbridge finally looked up at the boy, "And what can I help you with Mr. Hikari?"

"I don't understand-" Sora started, only to be cut off.

"If you finish the reading it will make more sense."

"This isn't about the reading. This is about-"

"But we're doing the reading right now so that is all you need to worry about."

Harry swore that for a second that the air around Sora's hand glowed, but it was too brief a moment for Harry to be sure. Apparently the boy had, had enough though because he exploded.

"I thought this was a Defense Against the Dark Arts class?"

"It is, can't you see by the title of the book?"

Snickers came from the Slytherin side of the room, but Sora ignored them, "Then why are we reading a book on theories? Are we going to test them or something?"

Silence filled the room, followed by a tension that made it hard to breathe. The kid who was new to the school, and the class (not to mention the wizarding world, not that the rest of the class knew that) had seen the problem with the book a few minutes into class. Harry doubted this would end well for any of them.

"Test them?" Umbridge said as though it was something horrifying, "Why on earth would we test them?"

Sora gave her an 'are-you-a-complete-idiot?' look, "Why read about a theory if you aren't going to prove the theory and show how and why it works?"

"Of course it's right," Umbridge said in her 'I'm-talking-to-a-5-year-old' tone, "it's in the book, isn't it?"

"Doesn't make it true," Sora said in a 'duh' tone, "these books look like they've been around for fifty years. Surely you have moved forward since then?"

"Are you implying that-?"

This time Sora cut her off, "I'm saying that these are useless and will do nothing in battle. If you want to learn how to defend yourself-"

"We are not talking about in battle! This is a classroom!" Umbridge fairly screamed.

Harry could sit quiet no longer; he had to add his two cents, "Well this class is supposed to prepare us for when we're out of school! If you aren't teaching us how to protect ourselves after school, then what's the point of having the class?"

"Detention!" the toad woman screamed, "Detention for both of you! Tonight, my office, seven o'clock."

Harry shrugged, not caring at this point. Sora, however, was having none of it.

"For what? Pointing out the pointlessness of this class and your teaching technique? It's called criticism, it's supposed to make you a better person," Sora spat at her.

A snort of laughter came from Hermione and Ron whispered something that sounded a lot like 'nothing could make her a better person'.

"I don't know how things worked at your school Hikari, but here we listen to our teachers and do what we're told."

"Then be a teacher!" Dean Thomas snapped from the back of the room at the same time that Seamus Finnegan cried out, "You have to teach us something to be a teacher."

The explosion of shouts that followed was deafening. Every single student stood and started yelling at her to teach them to defend themselves and to actually act like a teacher.

"ENOUGH!" Umbridge yelled over all of them which caused most of them to go into a shocked silence, "I am the teacher and you will do as I say, now read chapter six and that is a detention for Potter, Hikari, Thomas, and Finnegan tonight!"

The rest of the class was spent in perfect silence.


"You didn't have to do that you know."

Harry looked up from his lunch to Sora confused, "Do what?"

"Jump in like that."

Harry snorted, "You joking? I've been getting in fights with her every class."

Sora looked up surprised, "Really?"

"You should have seen the first day of class, mate. Even 'Mione was screaming at her," Ron said with a grin.

Sora looked at Hermione who blushed ever so slightly, "I was not screaming at her."

"Uh huh," Harry said in a disbelieving tone.

"So… then class is always like that?" Sora asked after a few moments of silence.

"Yup, everyday we read another chapter," Ron said with false cheerfulness.

This caused Sora to groan, "Aw man…"

Donald crossed his arms, "You should control your temper more Sora."

"Look who's talking," Sora said with a grin.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," Sora said in an innocent tone.

Donald crossed his arms and muttered under his breath, which caused the others to start laughing. Donald glared at the lot of them for the rest of lunch.


The rest of Sora's classes weren't worth remembering. Well, ok, that wasn't true. Transforming mice into tissues was kind of cool (not to mention weird) and he supposed knowing what plants could and couldn't kill you were something good to know, but they just weren't useful. Sora wanted to know how to fight; he wanted to learn more magic. So far he had been rather disappointed.

"What's wrong Sora?" Goofy asked as he, Sora, and Donald lounged by the lake during the time in between their last class and dinner.

"I'm worried," Sora admitted, "We're stuck here and there doesn't seem to be any Heartless here so we're just wasting time. The others need our help."

"Well, we're learning more magic," Goofy offered.

Donald scoffed, "I didn't learn one useful thing today."

"Charms class is useful," Goofy muttered, almost to himself.

"Where do you think they are?" Sora asked rather suddenly.

"You mean the King, Riku, and Kairi?" Donald asked and Sora nodded, "Who knows? They could be at any of the worlds."

"Think they'll come looking for us if we're gone long enough?"

Silence fell for a long moment while they thought over the possibility of never being found before Goofy spoke up again, "Course they will."

Sora smiled, "Yeah, you're right."

"It's getting dark," Donald said after a few more minutes.

Sora closed his eyes, "I want to stay out here a little longer. You guys go on ahead."

"You sure?" Goofy asked, receiving a nod from the brunette in response.

"Alright," Donald said slowly, "we'll be back if you don't come in for dinner though."

"Alright," Sora said in response, not opening his eyes.

He lay there by himself on the bank of the lake, and for a moment he could pretend he was back on Destiny Island, napping on the beach. He could almost hear Kairi calling him in an attempt to wake him up. He could almost feel Riku sitting next to him and mocking him for being lazy. Almost… almost…