Author's Note: Happy Birthday to Draco Malfoy! In honor of his birthday, I am posting this chapter.
Regulus, Chris, Petra, Sirius, Claire, Severus, Katya, and Yun were playing a game of Monopoly in one of the private rooms in the rec center. As they played, Chris remarked, "Mom and Dad let me see the room assignments. Reg, you're with me, and our other two roommates are Ethan Sekibo and Caleb Manning. Ethan's the grandson of the Headmistress and Professor Nakamura and he visits every summer, so you'll meet him before school starts. He's half-African, and his father is part of the Nigerian magical government as their diplomat to Japan. All I know about Caleb is that he's from the state of New York in the United States and he's Muggleborn. And that his parents freaked out over the fact that he's a wizard, since they're very religious and see magic as something bad, even though the Bible verse is really about not letting poisoners live, not 'thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'."
Both Reverend van Herten and Father Vasquez had mentioned this in their World Culture lesson on Christianity, and Regulus and Petra had heard it in one of their classes in the primary school, so the others nodded at that.
"His parents didn't do anything to him, did they?" asked Severus, as a worrying thought struck him.
"They didn't hurt him, if that's what you mean," replied Chris. "If he had suffered any sort of abuse, do you really think he'd still be with his parents? The teacher that went to give him his acceptance letter would have immediately taken Caleb to live here if he'd been abused. I do know that Reverend van Herten is the one handling the case now, since she can convince Caleb's parents that magic isn't bad, as she's both a witch and a minister. Besides, after what happened with you and your mother, Sev, school policy has been changed. All Muggleborns or those brought up in the Muggle world are tracked down and offered places at Nightwind School, and those with unhappy home lives are brought to Windwere to live."
Severus's mouth fell open in shock. "School policy got changed because of me?"
"You could say that," said Claire. "But there's more to it than that. There was a case about twenty years ago where a new student was found to have been abused. There was some talk about changing school policy then, but since this is no longer the Middle Ages, where all or most Muggles hate or fear magic, the change never occurred. Then you and your mother's case came up, and the staff realized that there would always be those who have parents that hate or fear magic and perhaps take it out on the magic-user. This time the change in policy went through, and with little argument."
Severus blinked, processing this information. Once he had done so, he took his turn, landing on Go and collecting a two hundred Galleons salary. Chris then took his turn, landing on St. James Place, which Katya owned. He paid her the rent, and then said, "Petra, your roommates are Bridget, Maya Chowdhury, and Adriana Chavez. Maya is Indian and Muggleborn, and you know Ana already."
Petra nodded, and for the benefit of Regulus, Severus, and Sirius, explained, "Ana is the niece of Professor Chavez. She's the Transfiguration teacher for our first-year, Reg. Ana's visited Windmere a few times before, and me and Bridget are her pen friends."
"Maybe the eight of us can form a group like the Phoenix Club," Regulus remarked thoughtfully.
"Ana and Ethan would definitely like that," said Petra. "We'll just have to see how Maya and Caleb feel about it."
The game continued, with Sirius winning. As it was past five o'clock by then, the group put away the game and returned to their respective homes for dinner.
At the Evanses' house, Fiona and Dylan were visiting for two weeks, as Lily's parents had given her permission to invite a couple of her friends over. As Fiona was the only one of her female friends that lived in Great Britain or Ireland, Lily had invited her. Knowing Dylan's interest in science fiction, she had invited him as well, so that he could get a chance to see a few episodes of Doctor Who. He had accepted and Nightwind School had provided him a Portkey to England, since his family didn't really have the connections to get an International Portkey from the Canadian Ministry of Magic.
At the moment, Lily, Fiona, and Dylan were in the living room, watching Doctor Who, which currently was during the run of the Third Doctor and his main companion, Jo Grant, who was his assistant while he was exiled on Earth. "Does the Doctor have to have companions?" asked Fiona.
"I think he gets bored without any," answered Lily. "And it would get boring to just have him traveling around on adventures. The First Doctor had his granddaughter Susan, and when her history and science teacher happened across the TARDIS in the first episode, they ended up joining him. Since the Third Doctor is currently exiled, you could say that the Brigadier and some of the other people in UNIT are like his companions also."
"Ugh!" exclaimed Dylan a few minutes later. "It's a good thing Daleks aren't real. I wouldn't want to live in a future where they're ruling Earth."
"Even if they were real, you wouldn't be in that future," Fiona pointed out. "The Doctor and Jo traveled to the twenty-second century, and you would be dead by then, even counting the fact that witches and wizards live longer than Muggles. There is no way you would live to be two hundred."
When the episode ended, Dylan said, "Well, that was very interesting. I think I'm going to like Doctor Who as much as I do Star Trek."
The three then got into a discussion about science fiction, as Lily had some liking for it, though not as much as Dylan, and Fiona was somewhat familiar about the subject, as her mother was a Muggle and she had some exposure to the Muggle world.
Kurt was sitting on a chair in the Coursant yard, sketching a picture of Nicole, who was currently painting a picture of her family's garden. He had been invited to visit for a week, since he lived the closest to her out of all the members of the Phoenix Club and she considered him her best friend due to their shared interest in art. While Kurt considered Amina to be his best friend, he did see Nicole as his second-best friend, along with Dylan.
A chuckle caused him to look up from his sketch. "Wat ist, I mean, what is so funny, Nicole?"
"I just thought about if I were painting you sketching me instead of the garden," Nicole responded. "Then my painting would contain a depiction of the sketch you were doing, which would have a miniature version of my painting, and it would continue, except my easel isn't large enough to hold a board big enough to show that. And your sketch would contain a depiction of my painting, which would have have a tiny version of your sketch, and so on, except your sketch pad isn't that big."
"That would be pretty funny," said Kurt. He sketched in a few flowers from the garden, then continued slowly, "Er ge xing qi hou, xue xiao hui kai shi. Na heng hao." (Two weeks later, school will start. That's very good.)
Nicole turned to look at him, surprised that he was speaking in Chinese. "Ni shi lian xi shou zhong wen ma?" (Are your practicing speaking Chinese?) That was the only reason she could think of for his doing so, since there was no need to keep their conversation private at the moment. At his nod, she continued, "Hui qi shang xue shi hao." (Going back to school is good.) She frowned in thought, but lacked the vocabulary to say the rest of what she wanted completely in Chinese, so she switched back to English.
"I miss the rest of our friends, so it'll be great seeing them again. Just writing to them in our notebooks isn't the same. And most of what Dylan writes lately is about science fiction. He goes on about shows called Star Trek and Doctor Who that he's seen on television. While they sound interesting, science fiction is not something I'm really into, and unlike him, both sides of my family are magic and outside of some books, I have very little exposure to the Muggle world. Once we're back at school, Dylan can talk about other things besides Muggle television shows and science fiction."
"I don't know about this Doctor Who, since Dylan's only seen a few episodes since he arrived at Lily's house, but what he told us about Star Trek is rather fascinating," said Kurt. "Don't you think it would be great traveling the stars? And living in a future where all races get along? Well, the human race and the alien races that are part of the Federation. There's no prejudice with gender or the color of your skin."
"You mean a future where the black lady is answering the space, what's the thing that Muggles use, ah yes, telephone?" inquired Nicole sarcastically. "I'm sure Makena would love sitting in the bridge of a spaceship and act as a secretary, screening calls and answering messages."
Kurt flushed. "The creator of the show is only able to do so much. There's still prejudice going on in the United States. If he wrote the show as having a black person be high up in the chain of command, much less the captain, a lot of people would throw fits, and it wouldn't be popular. It probably wouldn't be allowed to be shown on television at all once the people in charge saw the first episode. Things will change, though, and maybe in the future there will be a version of Star Trek where black people aren't just the space operator or secretary."
"Good point, Kurt. Now, let's talk about something else. I really don't want to discuss a Muggle television show, especially when all I know about it is what Dylan told us. What do you think our second year at Nightwind School is going to be like?"
"Not much different than our first year, except we'll be learning new stuff. Unless something interesting happens."
The two continued their conversation until they were done with their artwork, at which point they packed up their art supplies and went inside to help Nicole's mother with dinner.
Author's note: 'Er' (pronounced 'are') is the word for two in Mandarin Chinese, but when speaking about two of something, the proper term is 'liang'. Since Kurt isn't fluent in Chinese yet, he naturally made a mistake, and if Claire or Yun had been there, they would have corrected him. For those who might be wondering or have a guess, the episode of Doctor Who that Fiona, Dylan, and Lily were watching is one of the four episodes of the season nine (in the original series) serial "Day of the Daleks." As season nine ended at the end of June that year (1972) and season ten didn't start until the end of December, the episode is obviously a rerun.