"Merula, I don't see why you're letting THAT idiot tag along with us. Especially after last year? He's lucky I refuse to cast the Cruciatus curse on those who serve the Dark Lord."

Merula rolled her eyes at Ismelda, ignoring her complaints about Barnaby, who was following behind them sheepishly. It was true that Barnaby had decided to befriend Barton last year and turn on the two girls, but Barnaby was a massive idiot. He really had no will ill against the two, and eventually found out that Barton and his crew weren't that different from Merula's, except she wasn't forcing him to go on stupid life threatening adventures. It also helped that he did fancy Ismelda quite a bit, too.

The group of three trodded up the snow covered hill on their way back to the castle, having just finished yet another Care for Magical Creatures lesson on the care and maintenance of Unicorns. Even during winter, they were forced to be outside taking this stupid class. Merula was certain the only reason why this class existed was so the school had free child labor to care for an overabundance of beasts in the forest.

As they continued up the hill, a blur of white flew past Merula's head and smacked Barnaby right in the face. He shook the snow off of himself, and looked around with a stupid expression. Merula looked to see who had tossed it, and saw two snickering faces peeking out from behind a large mound of snow.

"SNOWBALL FIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!" Lewis shouted, and tossed another volley of snow their way.

"Oh bloody-!" Merula quickly pulled out her wand and cast a shielding spell in front of herself as Ismelda ducked behind her, and several balls of snow exploded in front of it.

Once Barnaby realized who was tossing snow at him, he cheerfully ran towards the other two boys, chucking snow as he went. Merula and Ismelda were not as enthusiastic, and did their best to keep out of dodge. Rowan refused to take the hint, and continued to chuck snow at the barrier in front of the two girls, keeping them pinned down.

"Augh! Those idiot boys! Let's see how they like a rock to the face!" Ismelda kicked the snow around her out of the way, exposing the ground below. She pointed her wand at the ground, and little balls of frozen dirt flew up in to the air and shot at the boy's snow barrier.

Seeing the barrage coming from Ismelda, the two boys retreated back down behind their barrier and seemed to cast their own Protego spells, as the balls suddenly started to explode on impact rather than sink in to the mound. A few moments later, a chain of snow erupted from behind it and launched at Merula's shield.

"Oi you gits, leave me out of this!" She shouted, and tried her best to fall back further down the hill. There was a large stone wall that she could hide behind at the bottom of the hill, and she could take another route back to the castle from there. But with Ismelda constantly tugging at her robes from behind, this made the process difficult.

Before the two girls could make it down the hill, there was a loud explosion, which stunned even the boys. The five students stopped what they were doing and turned to the source of the noise.

A large ball of fire suddenly appeared in the sky above the black lake, and was headed straight for the castle at incredible speeds. Every few moments, the ball would erupt in to an even brighter flame with a loud crack, then die back down, until it was nothing more than a brightly glowing egg shaped object.

Those explosions seemed to have slowed it down quite a bit, and it was no longer aimed to hit the castle, instead...

"R-RUUUUUUUN!" Merula screamed, and the five kids bolted off in different directions.

Moments later, the object slammed directly in to Lewis and Rowan's snow mound, leaving a smoldering crater behind as it bounced further up the hill and directly in to the castle wall.

Merula cautiously got up from the ground, having fallen down in her scramble to dodge whatever that thing was, and looked around. She dusted the snow off her robes, and saw Rowan and Lewis peek out from behind the stone wall at the base of the hill. Ismelda was peeking out from behind Barnaby, holding on to his cloak tightly.

"What in the hell was that?!" Lewis shouted as he and Rowan ran back up the hill to join the other three.

"I...I don't know." Merula said, wand held out in front of her. The hole in the castle wall where the object had collided was covered with a thick white smoke, and the five of them slowly made their way up the hill to see what in the world had just happened.