The last few weeks at home continued to eat at William in a way that was hard to explain. As always, his school books gave him something new to look over but more importantly they reminded him of what it was he couldn't do. Whenever he cracked open one of his textbooks William found his eyes turning toward his wand and wondering if just maybe he could cast a spell.
His fight in Dragon's Plaza clearly indicated that the school wasn't constantly watching over him, or the government, or whoever it was that was in charge of young witches and wizards when they were at home. If they didn't come storming down on him after a full-fledged magical brawl in public then why would they mind if he practiced a few cleaning charms. Every time his fingers touched the wood of his wand, the warmth of magic flowed through his arm and he felt a sense of rightness. All William wanted to do was cast spells and it was the only thing he was certain he shouldn't be doing.
Instead he spent the last few days before the return trip to school trying to wrap his head around the entirely theoretical aspects of magic that he had apparently signed the next year of his life away to studying. Precepts of Magic was interesting but dry, every page seemingly dedicated to boring the reader into accepting what it had to say. Ethics was an extremely dense read, and for the first time in his life, William found himself rereading sentences for the fourth or fifth time as he tried to comprehend what was going on. That's why William started to find Spectrum of Magic to be his favorite book.
Newton Butler wrote accessibly and plainly, though William wasn't entirely sure what the old wizard was trying to get at. William felt like the entire first chapter of the book was spent responding to something he hadn't read, and arguing against countless people William was supposed to be familiar with. As one passage read, "Some would have us believe that spells can be broken down into categories. That there are distinct classifications and subjects that magic can be broken down into. As if each and every gesture and incantation had been set in stone since the very beginning of time, and with it every manner in which a spell can be used. I am certain that such people will continue to propose these notions even after this book is published. Perhaps for centuries after it is published, but I write this under the burden of future generations and their need to develop what their forefathers refused to." The whole paragraph made William think that Butler was rebutting people, but who and why were complete mysteries. Still, the words of the now dead wizard kept him occupied at night as he tried to understand the apparently radical words.
Finally though, at a pace that would make a tortoise seem like they were strapped to a rocket, the day to return to Salem had arrived.
William awoke to the blue haze of a false dawn, and quickly dressed in a pair of robes. He couldn't help but stare at his reflection in the mirror. His mother had made him get a hair cut a few days before hand, and he wasn't sure how to feel about his newly shortened hair. He had begun to like the length of his hair, and found himself involuntarily frowning at the shorter length of his sandy mop. Reasoning that it wouldn't be cut for some time at the very least, William stopped frowning and finished his last minute packing.
Spectrum was the last book to be put away, and William found himself smiling as he slid the thin book into his chest, his finger moving swiftly down its leathery spine.
William shut the traveling trunk tight with a thud, and then lifted it up with a loud heave. Very carefully and slowly, William brought it out of his room and downstairs. With each step through his childhood home, William felt his arms strain and his knees wobble ever-so-slightly. If only, he began to think to himself as he made his way down the stairs, he could use magic, then this would go much more smoothly. Soon, William comforted himself, soon there would be a lot less restrictions on what he could do while at home.
With the trunk set down by the front door, William turned to see his father standing in the doorway to the kitchen. His father had a strange look on his face as he stared at his robed son setting a trunk down on the floor. "I could have helped you with that, William," Mr. Fraser said softly as he watched William carefully shake out his arms.
William shrugged, "I know, I just wanted to get everything ready."
His father gave a slow nod, before speaking, "Your mother went out and got some bagels." Mr. Fraser's hand casually went over his shoulder to the room behind him gesturing to the bagels that presumably sat on the kitchen table.
William smiled as he crossed the distance that separated him from his dad, and quickly gave him a broad hug. William wasn't sure why in the soft early morning light that he had hugged his father, but it had just felt right, especially as his dad returned the hug with a large amount of warmth.
The pair entered the kitchen where William's mother was standing next to the coffee machine, her back turned to them. When they entered, William couldn't help but hear his mother suck in a deep breath before she turned around with a smile, "Coffee's almost ready. Did you want some juice, William?"
William nodded, and soon enough the three of them were quickly bantering over a simple breakfast of bagels and cream cheese. Elizabeth joined them shortly after they got started, and William suddenly found himself curious as to how he could ever not miss being at home. Even now with Salem so close, William couldn't help but realize what it was that he left behind every year. Every year, his family was left incomplete while he was away throwing himself into subjects that he couldn't even begin to explain to any of them.
Then, they all stood and prepared to head out for Manhattan as the sun was peaking its head over the suburban roofs, and perfectly maintained trees that made up their neighborhood. As William rose he felt his wand thump against his thigh.
That simple motion of magically-attuned wood hitting his body made William realize why everything was the way it was. He was a wizard, and they weren't. Slowly, but surely, this would stop being his world entirely. William frowned as he shoved his trunk into the car. One day, sooner than he thought, the rift between himself and his family's lives would become insurmountable.
As the trees that lined the sleepy early morning highway began to give way to buildings and sound barriers, William began to dismiss his earlier, more depressing thoughts. He couldn't worry about his future as a wizard, and what that would mean in regards to his family right now. It was hard to focus on something so monumental and grim when in just a few hours, he would be back at the Salem Institute for Magical Study.
A sprawling campus nestled in New England, the exact location never quite clear, where students learned not the boring subjects that filled the minds of muggles, but the nuances of wand gestures and incantation pronunciation. Classes that allowed their students to seemingly disregard the laws of physics. Classes that turned their students from people to wizards.
Even while his head began to fill with all that he would learn and be able to do by the end of the year, William's mind quickly turned to his friends. In elementary school, William's sole companion had been the equally nerdy and picked-upon Megan O'Rourke. At Salem though, while his circle of friends wasn't particularly wide, it was far more than one.
The problems of Salem flashed through William's mind in the blink of an eye, and a twitch of a muscle in his leg. Dark wizards, and bullies were banished from his mind with the simple remembrance of last year's Quidditch finals.
By the time that William was making his final goodbyes with his family on the train platform, he was eager to break away from them and join his friends. With the last tight embrace between himself and his mother, William was off like a shot onto the train.
Those first few moments on the train were often the most difficult. Looking around compartments for any glimpse of his friends, and hoping he didn't stumble into older students searching for privacy, or worse, the pair of bullies that had been haunting him from the very beginning of his time at Salem.
As William twisted his way down train cars, he began to listen to conversations of the people he passed. Snippets of conversation floated around him, and for the most part it was the standard ramblings between old friends that he was expecting. As he passed through some of the cars though, William began to notice one event that continued to crop up.
"...heard one of them burned a building down..."
"Eighth graders can't burn down buildings..."
"...Yeah, three Eighth Graders dueled right in the center of Dragon's Plaza, I was there, man..."
"They're probably all going to be expelled I bet..."
"Surprised the government didn't break their wands and obliviate them..."
"...I heard that all three of them were obliviated on the spot for everyone to see..."
A lump had formed in William's throat by the time he finally spotted Chris in a compartment. Chris was dressed in a set of dark blue school robes as he leaned outside of the compartment window looking up and down the platform in earnest. Every so often William noticed him wave but mostly he was looking for someone.
William took a deep breath and knocked on the door and said, "Hey, Chris."
Chris immediately yanked himself out of the window and turned, "William! I've been looking for you! I still haven't spotted Nick, and I was starting to get worried."
William laughed, "Worried about what?"
Chris' eyes turned wide, "You haven't heard?"
William frowned, unsure of exactly what Chris was asking him.
"Everyone's talking about this crazy duel between a bunch of eighth graders. Someone said that one of them was using curses, and other really Dark stuff..." Chris began to ramble, "A guy who had a friend that was in Dragon's Plaza when it happened said that one of them went wild and just started performing Wandless Magic. And there's even a rumor going around that the Marshals were called in to deal with it..."
William continued to blink as Chris regurgitated every story that had come out of the Salem rumor mill in just the past hour. William finally sat down and looked at his roommate, before asking firmly, "Chris, why would that make you worried?"
Chris paused taking a deep breath before announcing, "Because they'd be expelled! I just..." Chris then sat down in a huff, "I figured eighth graders, and dueling. Well, it had to be you or Nick, and with all the other problems Nick has it wouldn't take much for them to..." Chris frowned as he thought about it.
William frowned as well, and then shook his head, "I doubt Nick was involved."
"Yeah, you're right," Chris replied, "Besides, he's always got those guys following him around anyway." Christ then laughed, and added, "And you wouldn't just go brawling in the streets, either."
"Yep," William said with as much sincerity as he could muster.
Luckily before Chris could possibly notice, Nick was standing at the doorway to their compartment. As he always had since he was bitten, Nick seemed a little run-down. His robes were already looking a little too short on his tall frame, but they hung loosely on him as if he never quite had the right amount of fat or muscle on him that a normal person would have. While Nick entered, William's eyes were drawn to where the sleeve of his robe hitched up revealing a number of slowly fading bite scars. At first glance, Nick looked like a very troubled young teen who needed to speak with just about anyone about what was going on in his head. But when he caught his eyes, William couldn't help but notice that Nick looked happy. In fact, as they locked eyes on each other, Nick's face broke into a broad grin, and he said, "Hey guys. Sorry it took me so long, but you know how it is."
Chris and William both nodded and quickly agreed, none of the trio wanting to face the awkwardness of reality; that they didn't know what it was like to be a werewolf. Nick quickly changed the topic however, asking, "Did you guys hear those rumors flying around about the guys who dueled in Dragon's Plaza?"
"Yeah," Chris responded, "We were just talking about it."
"I doubt they were really duelists," Nick began as he took his seat, beginning to offer his theory on what would separate a member of the dueling club from the common students.
William barely participated in the conversation as the ancient train finally began to pull out of the station. With the rumors flying around, William couldn't help but wonder what would become of him when he got back to school. Surely, someone would know what he had done, and there had to be some kind of punishment. William swallowed the heavy lump that formed in his throat as he remembered how much of Salem's code of conduct he had broken when dueling in the streets.
Luckily though, the conversation quickly changed from the mysterious duelists and to what had actually occurred over the summer. While all of them had seen each other briefly, and exchanged letters, there was something comforting in being able to sit and talk to each other about what had happened.
Except that most of their stories were relating tales of the boredom they felt at home now. William was certainly not the only one who was beginning to feel the distance between his former life and the one he lived now. Even Chris, who had tread the line about keeping magic a secret by flying brooms when he shouldn't, began to admit that things were becoming different.
"It's becoming really hard just to get some broom time, you know?" Chris continued to expound as he sat back in his seat, his broad frame stretched as he laid his arms over the chairs on either side of him. "All I really want is to make the quodpot team, and both my mom and dad know that but..." Chris let out a frustrated sigh.
"Where can you go?" Nick offered for him.
"Exactly," Chris replied with a pointed finger, shaking it up and down in agreement. "How am I supposed to make the team, when I always have to be worried about boy scouts, or day hikers, or whatever!"
William heaved a long sigh of agreement, and both of his friends turned toward him. "I don't even know how other wizards do it," He found himself saying, "I mean, to always be surrounded by muggles? How do we do any magic if they're not allowed to know?"
"I don't know," Nick replied, "I guess we'll find out by the end of this year though, right?"
"That's true," Chris responded, his face breaking into a full smile.
William grinned as he then asked the pair, "Are you guys sure that most of the casting restrictions are lifted between 8th and 9th grade?"
"That's what everybody says," Nick answered, "I mean, I know we're not allowed to work any big spells or the like but just..." He smiled thinking about it, "Just being able to light the tip of my wand would be enough some days."
"Yeah," both William and Chris assented in one breath.
The train was quickly plugging away into the countryside, when the door to their compartment opened, and Sarah paused only to look outside in the hallway before shutting the door quickly behind her. She leaned her frame against the thin train compartment door and breathed a sigh of relief, then she smiled at all of them, "I finally ditched my brother."
All three wizards laughed as Sarah stepped further into the compartment, and sat herself between William and Nick, leaving Chris all on his own opposite them. Chris then asked her, "Did it really take you that long?"
"You have no idea," Sarah replied as she shook her head, "He just had so many questions. You'd think he would want to go meet kids his own age, but nope..."
"How'd you get rid of him?" William finally asked, thinking about the simple methods his sister had used to ditch him over the years.
"I just said I had to go to the bathroom, and then ducked out of there as fast as I could," Sarah explained before groaning in realization, "I'm going to have to go back there for my stuff later but I just needed time away from him." With one last exasperated sigh, she added, "He's so annoying!"
"I can't imagine going to school with a little brother or sister," Nick said plainly.
"It's going to be terrible," Sarah began, "These past two years have been great. Now, now he's here for the rest of my time at Salem."
"Well," William began, "At least you won't have to see him much. His dorm will be on the other side of campus, and you'll never take a class together."
"That is the only comfort," Sarah said as she leaned back against her chair, clearly relishing the respite away from her younger brother.
The boys continued to discuss their summers with Sarah only chiming in from time to time as she sat half-asleep between Nick and William. As the train finally began to slow down, approaching Salem as it always did in the mid-afternoon, Sarah slowly came back to a full attention. As she rose, and stretched before making her way to the door, she asked them, "Have any of you guys seen Alexandria?"
They all responded with a simple negative, and Sarah nodded before flippantly saying, "She's probably off hob-knobbing with whoever of the whatever wherevers. I'll see you guys at Dinner?"
"Sure," William answered for the group, while Sarah nodded, leaving while she stifled a yawn.
The train finally pulled into the small station that sat down the hill from the Salem campus proper. Very quickly William and his friends had their wands out, and were magically guiding their luggage out of the train. On the train platform itself, students of all ages were quickly gathering up their belongings and moving across the expansive lawn toward Salem's well-maintained brick walls.
The sixth graders were left in the wake of the older students, as they ascended the hill. Before William could believe it, he and his friends were making their way across the well-worn brick paths onto campus. The main building with the long ivy that crawled up its brick walls, with the shutters and doors whose paint never peeled seemed to greet William from afar.
Walking across the old paths, seeing the lawns spread out, and hearing the sound of students as they made their way back to their own dorms, filled William with a sense of rightness. The magic here just seemed to flow smoothly through him, focused by his will and wand. Everything about Salem seemed to just come into a sharper focus, and be somehow more wonderful than it was otherwise. William swore he could feel the whole of the campus at that moment, from the far wall where he once dueled with an evil wizard for all of a minute, to the deep caverns where he confronted the beast that continued to dwell within his best friend, and through all of the academic buildings and dorms in between.
He quickly turned toward Corey Hall, the squat one-story building that had been his home for the past two years on campus. His future home for the next five years. As he walked through the halls, William could hear the sounds of people unpacking. Already, rumors were giving way to arguments about where to put things or when to venture toward the dining hall. Wizard wirelesses were bursting to life in the lounges and rooms that he passed, delivering news and music from around the country.
William and Chris opened the door to Corey 131, the dorm room that they had shared. Immediately their trunks were open and books were being put away, posters hung, and pictures affixed to the walls. As always, William found his schedule on top of the writing desk and he immediately pinned it to the wall above his desk.
It didn't take very long before the whole room was starting to look and feel like home again. Chris' side of the room decorated in an ever-increasing array of over-the-top quodpot paraphernalia, though his pads and personal broomstick had taken a more prominent role in his decoration this year than in years before. William's side was plain by comparison, with just a few books and personal items adorning the walls and shelves, along with the cage of his owl Asimov. Still, even with their difference in tastes and focus, it felt good to William to just lay down on the surprisingly comfortable mattress and realize that he was back at Salem. As it was with every year, William found himself overjoyed with the realization that he hadn't just gone crazy, that he really was a wizard.
"Do you think we should head out now? Try to beat the rush at the dining hall?" Chris asked from where he was seated at his desk.
"Yeah, probably," William replied, checking his pocket watch for the time. The hours had passed far quicker than he remembered them doing so before, but it didn't matter. William swung off of his mattress, "We should go get everyone else too."
"Probably," Chris said as he also rose from his seat.
As they walked out, William was surprised to see that Chris had apparently been working on minor transfigurations. A number of pencils were arrayed on his desk, but they had been transformed into other items; pens, mostly, but a pair of scissors, a butter knife, a simple bracelet. William shrugged, not giving it another thought as he and Chris went to collect the rest of their friends for dinner.