The following days come and go normally, as if everything spectacular that happened days before had never happened. The students and teachers themselves are similar; once the constructions are over, the school ends its break and the daily routines shared by the students and teachers. For them, the dragon attack is now but long passed, casually spoken between friends like a distant memory. Everything felt normal, as if the dragon had never attacked the school and I've never been thrown into a bizarre night in London.

Diana scored the highest on a surprise quiz in Miss Lukic's class and the school cafeteria served strawberry pies as per usual on Monday evenings—I don't like strawberries. Everything is normal.

Considered normal is also the failure of a certain student. A flock of birds takes flight at a sudden disturbance. One troublesome witch had failed her broom riding practice for perhaps the tenth time this evening.

"Gyah!" Akko cries as she rolls on the dirt.

However, I'm in no place to laugh at her misfortune. I suffer a similar fate as her; thrown to the ground as I fail my flight as well.

"Gah!"

Sucy snickers next to us, not bothering to hide it. She floats her broom closer to mine and whispers. "At least you're not the worst in the class".

Akko glares at her friend. "Shut it, Sucy!"

Miss Nelson, the broom instructor for our class, helps Akko to her feet. She says, "Keep that up and you'll break your bones before ever learning to fly".

Something fast flies above us, interrupting our training. Looking up, I see a red streak flying fast in the sky.

"yahoo!". Amanda cheers as she performs maneuvers midair. She twist and turns and with amazing agility jumps and lands both of her feet on her broom, riding and performing dangerous maneuvers while doing this.

"Amanda!". miss Nelson shouts. "No acrobatics during class! Get that through your thick skull already!".

Amanda slows her broom down and lays on it midair. "Wow, way to kill my fun".

"Hey! No sleeping on your broom!".

As she continues to shout at the rebel, I scan the field for her two friends. Not far from the field I find Constanze sitting by a tree, with what seems to be a mechanically propelled broom leaning next to her, beside the short fellow is her friend Jasminka, doing none other than snacking while sitting sidesaddle on her broom.

Potato crisps with sour cream flavouring, I need to have one.

Cheers erupted from across the field. I look towards the source of attention and isn't surprised to find it came from Diana who's flying at an impressive speed and performing an even more impressive sharp turns and manoeuvres at that speed. She ends her flight with a break, leaving a dust cloud at her wake. She lands on her feet,

"8.02 seconds!". Hannah exclaims.

"Such speed! That's a new record, Diana!". Barbara cheers.

Diana appears unimpressed as she coolly fixes her hair, seemingly unwavered from the adrenaline rush she should have experienced.

"That's so cool", I mutter.

Amanda seems to have heard me, she flies closer by me, still lazily laying on her broom, and says, "Meh, I can do better. Anyway, what have you been doing this past days?".

"Nothing, stayed in my room without interacting with anyone else and doing nothing relevant".

Amanda doesn't bother hiding her sarcasm. "That sounds so exciting".

"What is Constanze doing anyway?".

"Her? The usual, tinkering about with her stuff, this time being a propeller broom apparently".

"Propeller brooms, rocket propelled grenades, robots, and guns, I thought high tec stuff like that is illegal here".

"Pshh! Her middle name is illegal". Amanda says. She pauses for a moment after that joke. "that came out wrong".

"Really? I thought her middle name was... Amalie? Or Braunschbank? ".

"Yeah, they both mean illegal in German".

"Right, and O'Neil means a rebel and a complete disobedient student in American, is it not?".

"Funny! And by the way no one says 'American' as a language just so you know".

"Nonsense. English and American English, they're totally separate things! I mean, what kind of lunatic pronounces grey… gray? Amanda what is Jasminka eating right now?".

She looks towards her snacking friend. "potato chips?".

"See? See? Who would even call that chips! It's crisps!".

"You're overreacting, there's not much difference".

"You literally renamed a millennia old sport just so you can name a new one of yours with the former's name".

"Come on, soccer sounds so much better than calling it football. What's wrong with that?"

"What's wrong with- everything! Especially the way you remove the 'u' out of everything. I mean, who pronounce colour without a 'u'?"

A smile finds its way to Amanda. She says with an obvious wink. "We're just trying to get rid of… 'u'".

I groan to myself. "Barbaric".

Amanda decides to stay by me while I continue with my training, occasionally providing sarcastic compliments every time I fail. Fortunately I'm not the only one failing. The sound of Akko falling and tumbling through the grass has become a norm at this point.

Lotte who've separated herself from the rest of the advanced students has come to see Akko train. "Maybe you need a little break, that's all" Lotte suggests with a smile.

"She's just terrible at this, let's face it", Sucy says.

Akko stirs and groans on the ground, the pain that she's been dutifully stockpiling begins to take its toll. Still, she still manages to speak. "At least there's Aldia! She's almost as bad as me!"

I would've chuckled along if it wasn't true.

"Who's Aldia?" I hear Amanda ask.

Akko turns to Amanda and me, an innocent, curious look on her face. "Oh, you two haven't met?"

Amanda pauses, her confusion is visible as she looks to me for guidance but I offer her nothing.

"…who, who are we talking about here?" Amanda asks.

"Her!" Akko gestures towards my direction.

Amanda turns to me uncertainly. I finally reply to her with a series of quiet hand gestures.

Amanda has the most confused look on her face. She follows, nonetheless. "…yyyyeah, I met her".

Later, when Akko's busy with her training again and Sucy and Lotte are preoccupied in helping her, I pull Amanda close.

"I'll explain it later", I whisper urgently.

"What gives? Why are they calling you that?"

"They still think I'm a girl".

Amanda distances herself from me and looks at me with new look of clear surprise. She eyes me from head to toe without a word.

"What, Amanda?"

She doesn't reply.

"Constanze didn't tell you?" I ask.

There's a delay to her answer, it also comes like a whisper. "…she knew?"

"You didn't?"

She pauses again, holds up a finger, and says. "For the record, I've a legit reason to think you're not a guy—I thought you were roleplaying back in the labyrinth and still is".

"This is not a time to joke around, O'Neill!"

Unfazed, Amanda eases and huffs out air. "Seriously dude, you really pulled off a good disguise here, almost as good as I could! But why are you hiding the fact that you're a…"

Amanda's words trail off and her eyes drift from mine for a moment. They suddenly show a mischievous glimmer and she has the most annoying smile now plastered on her face. She leans close to me and says in a whisper, "Never expected you to be a pervert, Jerry".

I immediately grow red. "W-watch your mouth, its nothing like that!"

"Nothing like that? Then why are you so worked up when they almost figured it out?"

I stop dead on my tracks—there's really no worthy explanation to my terrible social abilities. The reason for my 'worked up-ness' is simply that I'm somehow too embarrassed to just tell them now, if that even makes sense?

"That's because—"

"You're a perv who wanted to sneak close to them, right?" Amanda rushes to finish before I could.

I grow even more red, my voice almost cracks, "That's not it…"

Amanda doesn't listen. Instead, she just laughs gleefully, enjoying the pinch she's put me into.

I stomp my foot, trying to fight the embarrassment that's building up inside me. "They're just nice to me so far and I sort of took the 'going with the flow' thing too far, now I'm afraid that if I reveal it now—which is too late in—they'll think I'm some sort of creep that wanted to get close to them".

"But that is what you're planning, right?"

I puff my cheeks and stomp my foot again. "You're not helping!"

Amanda shakes her head. "Listen, you're overthinking this, seriously. Just go and tell them like a champ. Who knows, they'll see you differently right away", she ends with a wink.

I don't reply with any words, only with an annoyed and flustered stare at her. I look away towards the three subject to our conversation, painfully unaware of anything we just talked about.

—

Before the next class starts, I try to find Diana. As expected, she's already in the classroom before classes even start. Her books and utensils already prepared on her table. There's no sight of her two entourages.

I'm surprised to discover that Diana wanted to talk to me as well. As expected, she's curious of what happened back in London.

"I'm quite sure it's a disturbance in the mansion's sorcerer's stone", Diana says. "I heard it's caused by a terrible miscast spell from within the mansion, though from where it's sourced from I have no idea. Perhaps it's a member of that family. Perhaps they cover that information up to avoid damage of reputation of said member".

I nod quietly, not making any comment on her assessment. I won't risk giving her any ideas.

Indeed, it still feels surreal that I'm perhaps the only person in this building that knows what really happened that night.

"I'm still surprised to see you there, by the way", Diana says.

"A friend of a friend has an invitation and. I just so happen to be at London", I reply dismissively. "In any case, I'm not here to talk about that".

Without waiting for Diana's response, I place a book on the table. "I borrowed this from the library. It's… confusing to read and I hope you can help me a bit".

Diana's eyes show recognition after a brief glance at the book.

"Blood magic?" Diana says. Her hand hovers just above the book.

I pull a chair and take a seat across Diana. "I've just recently heard of it. Know anything about it?"

"Only a little. I read about them not long ago", Diana confesses. "The simplest way to understand it is to compare it to your usual every day magic. You've normal magic, it converts magic around or within the user and transform it to forms the user wished. And then there's blood magic. Same principle, same way any other magic works, only that it uses another substance, fuel, to run the magic: blood".

"What about the catalysts. We use wands, what about for those kinds of magic?"

"I don't know much about them. I only know that, while blood magic catalysts come in many shapes and forms, they all follow the same rule: they take in blood and convert them to blood magic or normal magic, depending on the wielder's needs".

As Diana goes on with her explanations, I listen intently, not making any remark or response.

The moment she's done, my head is overflowing with information—too much than I expected to receive when I first came to her. I slump back on my chair and stare off into the ceiling, trying to take all the information in.

Diana remarks, "You seem quite interested in this. It's morbid history. I'm not much of a fan of this".

"Yet you know so much about it", I muse, still staring at the ceiling.

"I tend to remember things well", Diana responds dismissively. "What about you, why are you interested about this? I didn't take you as someone who's interested in spells that most would find disturbing".

I hide a grimace at her words. I managed to read through the lines. The rough translation of Diana's cleverly tact words are: 'I didn't know you're the type of kid who likes creepy occult things'.

Just now I realize how creepy and weird it must've been for Diana; someone out of the blue just came and asked her about a creepy form of magic.

I wasn't aware of it at the beginning, but now I'm aware of how weird I might've been the entire conversation.

Fearing this idea of me will grow, I correct her immediately. "Oh, it disturbs me! I wouldn't even come and ask you these if I wasn't…"

But the words trail of my mouth, leaving Diana in confusion.

Noticing my growingly blank look, Diana worriedly raises her brows. "If you weren't…?"

I blink out of my daze and meet Diana's growingly puzzled stare, only to avert my eyes away.

I gulp. I scratch the back of my head and answer, "…If I didn't have homework on it! Hah! Miss Lukic really have the spookiest subjects, huh, Diana?"

I glance briefly towards Diana, to see her reaction. She's outstandingly confused.

"There's no homework about this…"

I blink. "Well, in my class—"

"We're in the same class, Franklin".

I heave out a load of air before slowly facing Diana again. "Fine, I'm researching about blood magic in my own volition, but it's not what you think it is! My purposes are purely academic. I've no personal interest in… creepy occult things that only kids with eyeliners are into!"

Diana stares at me with unblinking eyes. Her arched brows slowly turn to a frown. "I didn't say anything like that".

I lean myself forward on the table, surprising Diana.

I exclaim, "Regardless! Do not, I repeat, do not go around telling people I asked you any of these. I don't want the reputation of being an edgy kid sticking with me till the end of my school years here. Don't tell anyone".

Diana blinks. Her mouth hangs open but no words come out.

Before she could make any respond, a new voice appears from behind us, startling me beyond words.

"Don't tell what? What were you two talking about?" asks Hannah as she walks up to our table, followed by Barbara.

"And what's that creepy looking book?" Barbara asks.

"Crumbs!" I splutter before turning to the two. "W-what are you two doing here?"

"Um, this is our table?" Hannah says with a frown, emphasizing this by casually placing her books and stationaries on the table.

Barbara, however, noted the foreign book on the table with a creepy cover. It's definitely not hers, and she doesn't remember Hannah or Diana ever having a book like that.

Noting the direction of Barbara's gaze, I quickly swipe the book away. I stand up and force out a laugh.

"Well, Diana, thanks for helping me with my magical numerology homework. I think it's time I should hit the road".

Though they've no idea what's going on, Barbara and Hannah definitely notice something is off. They both exchange questioning glances.

Diana, for whatever reason, thankfully takes my lie in stride. "Pleasure's all mine…"

Hannah and Barbara is bad news if I want to keep something a secret. In the little time I've known these two, I've already discovered quite many things about them. Aside from discovering first-hand how terrifying Hannah is when she's pissed, I've also learned from other students that she and Barbara have a knack for getting and spreading rumours. Add the fact that these two are quite popular, I've a recipe for a secret spiller right in front of me.

"Class is about to start. I better find my seat", I remark as I attempt to leave the three, only to stop when I spot a familiar trio entering the room. It's the red team. They make their loud entrance into the class.

I promptly turn 180 degrees. "Can you scooch over, Diana? I don't want to sit next to Hannah".

Soon Professor Ursula enters the room and class starts as usual. I requested it earlier, but sadly, I do end up sitting next to Hannah.

Still better than with the red team, I guess. Though I'm starting to think otherwise when the yellow-bowed girl starts poking at my elbow out of the blue.

"You really can't fly, huh?" Hannah whispers. "I thought you were joking back then. Why can't you?"

I bite back a groan. I pretend I didn't hear her and continue taking notes.

Hannah leans slightly closer and closer towards me, while I reply by leaning further away from her.

Her unrelenting gaze has this indescribable pressure on me.

Finally reaching my threshold, I turn and glare at the girl. "I'm trying to take notes here".

It wasn't effective. Hannah just shrugs it off. "I'm just asking you a question!"

I narrow my eyes at her. On the other hand, a devilish, smug smirk is growing on Hannah's lips, her eyes only grows in confidence.

The growing silence—the longer I make no response—mean more victory for Hannah.

In the end, I look past her and towards Diana who sits far on the end of the table. "Diana, can we switch seats?"

When the class is over, only a handful of students remain in the room. The blue team had also left the room not long ago.

Meanwhile, I need to stay for a while longer, finishing up an assignment I was late to finish (thanks to a certain yellow-bowed distraction) while the professor waits, still behind her podium.

Once I finish the paper and handed it to the professor, I was about to turn and leave when something on the professor's table catches my eye. On an old piece of parchment paper is a crude pencil sketch of a comet, complex numbers and calculations scribbled around and even over it. The comet has a twin tail.

It's the same comet mentioned in Rudolph's letter.

"A twin tailed comet", I remark quietly, not intending to be heard, but the professor did.

"The Twin Tailed Comet", Professor Ursula corrects me as she glances at the paper I'm referring. She turns to face me. "You know of it?"

"…Only heard of it in passing". I respond after a pause. "I heard it's quite special".

The professor nods. "It's a very rare comet, only seen a few times across history. Any sighting of it is believed to be an omen of change, great change".

"Change… Change to what?"

"To anything, that's why while it's traditionally an omen of good luck, it also has in it an ominous nature; no one knows what change it'll bring until it happens".

The professor gathers her papers and books, putting the questioning session to an end. Not that I can complain, I have no idea what to ask anyway.

Author's Notes: have this side story thingy that came to be because after a series of reworks I've no idea where to put them. Lol.

-mini bonus side story extremeA: Learn to Fly-

"First of all I have to say thank you, to all of you, for being here and giving me the much needed moral support on my endeavor to master the art of flying".

"no problem". Jasminka replies before taking a bite of her bagel. Constanze just nods without looking up from her tinkering.

"You're not going to put up a show", Amanda says nonchalantly. "Now start by telling me about your flying experience".

"This is the third time I've ever touched a broom" I answer confidently. "To ride one, I mean. I use brooms regularly to clean floors".

"That's miserable". Amanda shakes her head and keeps clicking her tongue, overdramatizing her pity on me.

She's quick to perks up again though.

"But that doesn't matter! Because the person in front of you have learnt broom riding since she's little, so I know just how to practice for your first flight".

Amanda sits sidesaddle on her floating broom, ready to observe my training closely. "Okay this isn't really relevant to your training, but why didn't you go train with your friends from yesterday?"

I stare at Amanda flatly. "That would be like asking a paraplegic to teach me how to run".

Amada shrugs. "I guess. Anyhow, go and do what you did yesterday".

I did exactly what I did yesterday, putting the broom between my legs.

"Good you're doing great so far!", Amanda chuckles, she stops it quickly after I throw her a sharp stare. "Okay, okay. Now, say the spell and kick off the ground".

"Tia Freyre? Tia Freyre!"

I kick off the ground and lo and behold, gravity still works.

"Eh, figured as much" Amanda sighs. She hops off her broom and walks closer towards me. "Try to focus your magic on the bristles by the way, it's the easiest place to focus your magic, for me at least".

"Bristles, okay got it".

I ready myself once again and this time focus my magic on the bristles, but still no change to my air time.

"Try not to use too much magic" Amanda continues. "Use just enough. Flying doesn't need you to put out too much magic, you're trying to float not drown yourself. Use light amounts of magic but put it at the right places, that's what I'm trying to say ".

"R-right!".

It's a rare sight seeing Amanda being so knowledgeable about something, I know its harsh but until now I've never see her as the type to actually be knowledgeable about anything. So this? A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one.

"Now you need to find a balance between the tip of the broom and the bristle end, but put more magic in the bristles since the back part plus you is heavier".

I try to do just as she said, trying my hardest to divide my already feeble reserve of magic. It's a struggle I have to admit.

My struggle begins to come into fruition, when I see the bristles begins to shake and wave, magic coursing through it feebly but steadily.

"Good, Jericho good", Amanda smiles. "Now hit it".

I kick off the ground and say the magic words. It's a great leap of struggle but to my surprise, I find myself floating for a mere mighty second before landing back on the ground.

Despite me being the one training, Amanda was the first to cheer. "Hah! It worked! I didn't think it would!"

"That was amazing!". Jasminka cheers and gladly pauses her snacking just to clap, Constanze nods in approval and does the same.

"I can't believe it. I thought I'm going to be flightless my whole life!"

A smug grin creeps its way to Amanda. "Just minutes here and I thaught you more than miss Nelson".

The rest of the afternoon was spent with me repeatedly jumping up and down and gaining more and more air with each try. Amanda and her friends stuck around for a good while, just being there to watch me train and to laugh at me when I inevitably fail at some points in my training.