Author Note: Short chapter here just to get something posted, I've already started work on the next chapter so hopefully the wait shouldn't be as long. Thanks to Suzotchka1 belanna30, Kaylee and Kuroima for the reviews on the last chapter!

Chapter 6

Elizabeth was just locking the door to her room when she heard Carlie's voice behind her. She turned around in surprise, she hadn't expected that Carlie would ever venture into the regular student dorms. One look at her face though told her that her sister was a girl on a mission, she looked angry and determined, a combination she usually had when she wasn't getting her own way.

"Carlie," Elizabeth greeted.

"We need to talk," Carlie told her.

"I'm just on my way out so you'll have to talk and walk," Elizabeth told her.

"No, in private and right now," Carlie stated and Elizabeth raised an eyebrow but she could tell her sister wasn't going to let this go until she got what she wanted to she sighed and unlocked her door again.

"Is it true?" Carlie whirled around on her as soon they were both shut into the privacy of her room.

"Is what true?" Elizabeth questioned wondering if she'd blacked out and missed part of the conversation somewhere.

"Don't play dumb with me Elizabeth," Carlie demanded, "you know exactly what I'm talking about."

"I really don't," Elizabeth shook her head in confusion.

"The drugs Elizabeth," Carlie stated. "I've heard the rumours going around, you and your friends took that Allinyas drug and when you got caught you tried to blame someone else."

Elizabeth could physically feel the colour drain out of her face; she had hoped to keep that part of her magic school experience from her family. It hadn't even come up over the summer, they weren't interested in knowing about her year and she didn't feel any need to tell them about it. She knew the rumours were still circulating, thought not to the extent they had the year before, it was just a few whispers here and there. She should have known that sooner or later Carlie would hear about it, she should have been prepared for this. She just wanted to forget about it though, at least as much as she could.

"I was drugged Carlie," Elizabeth told her. "Someone who was pretending to be my friend spiked my drinks so that I'd get addicted and seek out a way to buy the drugs myself."

"Really Elizabeth?" Carlie's tone was patronising, her tone disbelieving and Elizabeth found herself getting angry. She'd been through all of this once, she didn't need it again now.

"Yes Carlie, really," she raised her voice a little. "The person who did it is in jail awaiting trial, me and my friends weren't the only ones he did it to. If you need proof why don't you go and talk to the police."

"Well then why did you keep it a secret?" Carlie questioned, trying to retain the high ground in the conversation.

"Because I didn't need this, from you or from our father," Elizabeth replied and then walked towards the door. "If you don't mind, I have places to be."

Carlie looked taken aback; it was rare that Elizabeth talked to her that way. She would usually just nod and go along with whatever she wanted, it was the easiest thing to do, constantly battling with her wasn't worth it, not when their father always came down on Carlie's side. She could see her sister wanted to protest, wanted to push the matter further but Elizabeth was in no mood to deal with it.

"I'm serious Carlie, you're going to make me late," Elizabeth stated before her sister could verbalise any of her protests and Carlie reluctantly left the room. Elizabeth waited a minute before she left as well, not wanting to catch up to her sister on the way out. She headed straight for the cafeteria, knowing she wouldn't have time to eat before classes now.

"Are you alright?" John questioned as she sat in the seat beside him.

She took a breath to calm herself, pushing the incident to the back of her mind, before answering. "I'm fine, just Carlie stuff."

John gave her a concerned look but let the matter drop and pushed the remainder of his breakfast towards her. She picked up a slice of bacon gratefully, it wasn't much but it would be enough to get her through until her free period.

Jack picked up the pile of clothes that had been left on his bed by housekeeping, his laundry done for him as always. He put it away before emptying his books out of his bag and replacing them with the ones he needed for the afternoon. He went back to the cafeteria, making a mental note of where his friends were sitting as he headed straight for the cafeteria queue. He got his dinner and headed back to the table, sitting in the empty chair next to Sam and trading smiles with her. They still hadn't found their balance with each other yet, there were still a lot of awkward smiles and quick glances.

"No cake?" Sam questioned.

"Sadly no," Jack told her. "Just as well really, I'm watching my figure."

Jack gave himself a mental pat on the back as Sam laughed. "The cheese burgers really give that away."

"I said I was watching my figure, I didn't say what I was going to watch it do," Jack told her with a shrug as he took a bite out of his burger. Sam rolled her eyes and turned to Vala who was asking her a question. Rodney dropped into the chair opposite him with a heavy sigh, Radek sitting next to him looking frustrated.

"You guys alright?" Jack questioned and Rodney looked up from the table to glare at him.

"Don't mind him," Sam said quickly. "He's just upset because his potion blew up."

"It wasn't my fault; my partner clearly didn't know what he was doing," Rodney told them.

"He wasn't the one measuring out the ingredients," Radek pointed out only for Rodney to turn his glare on him instead. "That's getting old Rodney."

"Look Rodney, you had a bad class, happens to the best of us," Sam said with a shrug. "Now get over it and stop sulking."

Rodney made no effort to stop sulking and Jack decided it would be best just to leave him to it until he decided he wanted to get involved with the group again.

"Hey guys," Cameron said as he took a seat at the table. "I just ran into Kieran, he's taking over running the Atala guild this year. He says they've selected most of the first years they're going to approach, they should start handing out the approach notes sometime next week."

"That was quick," Sam replied. "It's exciting though, new people coming in. It's weird though, last year we were the ones getting the notes and this year we're just sitting around waiting to hear about them."

"Hopefully it won't be long before the meetings start up again, I've kinda missed them," Jack said as he took another bite of his burger.

"You won't be saying that when we've got school work piling up, exams to study for and the guild competition to prepare for, the end of last year was manic, we had no time," Sam pointed out and Jack shrugged conceding the point, they were all run pretty ragged at the end of last year.

They had been working on their magical ethics assignment for over two hours. Elizabeth and Teyla had gone straight up the stairs to look for books when they'd arrived in the library and hadn't come back down for nearly fifteen minutes carrying at least their body weight in books. They were taking the assignment very seriously, not that Jack and John weren't, they were just a little bit more laid back out the whole thing. Elizabeth had reminded them that it was forty percent of their final grade and both men had put their working heads on then.

"Here it is," Teyla pointed to a paragraph in the middle of the very thick book with tiny writing she'd been reading through. They'd been given several magical social issues to work on for their assignment and after comparing with their friends they realised not all groups had the same ones. Their seemed to be four different sets of issues around, some much harder than others.

"What is it?" Jack questioned, trying to look across from the opposite side of the table.

"This case I was looking for, a man who was turned down for proper magical training and found a way around the system. He got trained by a group who were training people that hadn't gotten into the schools for money, they were doing it for years, made a fortune before they were caught," Teyla explained. "Anyway, because he wasn't trained properly and because there are reasons people get rejected from magic schools, he lost control of his magic, it drove him insane, he killed four people."

"All because he wasn't trained by a school?" John questioned.

"The school has ways of teaching us, subtle things, and they do it slowly. They do it that way for a reason. This man got a crash course, in less than a year he learned what takes us at least the first three years of magic school to learn. His mind and body couldn't handle it and that was the result," Teyla continued to explain. "It didn't help that the reason he was rejected from magic schools was because of mental and physical weaknesses."

"So that's why we have to go through a medical exam to get in here," John said.

"Didn't you read your conditional acceptance letter?" Elizabeth questioned, finally sticking her head up from the book she'd been reading for the last twenty minutes and showing that she had in fact been listening the entire time. John was impressed by the ability of some people to multi-task. "It was all explained in there."

"I skimmed it," John said.

"That explains a lot," Elizabeth said and John glared at her for a moment.

"Alright, so I think we should use this case to lead into the section on people using unofficial means to learn magic," Teyla suggested.

John nodded and then sighed. "Why did we have to get that issue, it's got to be the most difficult one to deal with it?"

"No one said this was going to be easy," Elizabeth stated.

"No one said it was going to be this hard either," John replied.

"Yes they did," Elizabeth said. "Oh wait, that was in the acceptance letter too, never mind."

John glared at her again. "Are you just out to get me today?"

"Not at all," Elizabeth smiled and went back to her book. John continued to glare at her for a few more seconds until she turned the page and looked up at the group triumphantly. "Finally, I found it."

"Found what?" John questioned.

"After the case that Teyla was talking about there was a crack down on unofficial magical training, mostly in Alteran City but there were massive efforts all across Atlantis to deal with the issue," Elizabeth told them, clearly pleased with her find. "They tried a number of different things, from increased law enforcement and harsher penalties to better public education on the matter. Some things were successful, others weren't but I figured since are assignment is to find potential solutions to the problems, a good place to start would be things that had already been tried."

"Let's take a look," Jack said and Elizabeth moved the book so everyone at the table could see it.

TBC