Chapter two?
I stumbled on the worn stones that made up this ancient amphitheatre. Coarse tufts of grass had sprung up all around the weathered rock, giving the impression that the roughly hewn blocks had grown directly out of the hill itself. They could have, for all I knew. Three years of magical education had taught me, if nothing else, that nothing is ever quite as it seems.
Speaking of magic, this place tingled with an electrified energy, as if the memory of magic once performed still lingered enticingly on the air, sending shivers down my spine. Nervous though this made me, I couldn't help but entertain a morbid fascination with this place. I longed to descend the bleached grey steps and investigate a stain on the very lowest platform that looked suspiciously like blood.
"James!"
The voice floated eerily around me. It was magnified to a magnificent volume by the shape of the theatre, yet it was somehow still detached and not quite there.
I felt myself soaring upwards and falling rapidly at the same time. With a painful jerk I found myself back in my bedroom at home, sprawled out across the floor with my duvet tangled clumsily around my legs.
Oh. A dream then.
This thought made me inconsolably sad. I didn't know why.
Much as I would have liked to muse further on this subject, I knew that I only had minutes until my mother barged into my room, demanding that I get up, and (if I'm honest) she scares me.
A lot.
I dressed hurriedly and was already half way down the stairs before I heard the murmur of voices. Multiple voices.
I groaned loudly. Too loudly, apparently, as my mother burst through the door in the hallway and started yelling at me for "sabotaging the atmosphere" of our "rare but wonderful" family gathering.
Honestly, she REALLY needs to calm down a little. My little groan was completely harmless. Unfortunately, her little tirade on the subject of letting down the family was loud enough by itself, let alone with the addition of the terrible screeches of Ms. Black, the formidable portrait that still occupied the hallway in our London house and occasional home.
By the time we had managed to force the curtains closed, the entire house was awake, and all of the relatives who had manifested themselves in the kitchen were sadly aware of my awake status.
All in all, it wasn't the ideal start to the day. And this day was not about to get better. After the interminable rounds of greetings and exclamations of my growth that occurred without fail every time we had one of our "family gatherings", I was forced to interact with the younger members of my family for the hours before lunch while the adults caught up on all the gossip about their boring lives.
Talking to five year old children is not fun. Nor is it a useful experience, as my mother claims.
Lunch was the usual fiasco, with everyone being nauseatingly cheerful and generally annoying. I sat wedged between my sister Lily and my uncle Ron, the only two people who seemed to share my views on this particular gathering.
Don't get me wrong, I love my family (well, most of them), but I can't deal with their blatant efforts to ignore everything that's changed.
A/N: I know, it's horribly short and I'm sorry, but I couldn't manage any more tonight and it's been too long since I updated anyway. I wasn't planning to continue with this at all, but I got a couple of reviews asking me to and I felt guilty for some reason. Anyway, thanks for reading this and please review, it makes me happy.