Chapter 2

September 9th, 1983- Darwin Primary School, Yorkshire, England

Patricia was maintaining her crushing hug around Remus's legs as he attempted to enter the school. He didn't know what had gotten into her. She had been madly excited about her first day for school for the past week but then, just as they had left the Nest, had done a complete turn around and decided that she didn't want to go.

"We can still turn back Uncle Remus."

A woman who was carrying a tearful blond girl with a leaf-shaped birthmark on her cheek heard Patricia's words and gave Remus a quirky smile.

"Don't worry. I've been through this twice before and trust me, when you come to pick her up she won't want to leave."

Remus attempted to rid himself of Patricia's iron grip, and failed. The girl had all the strength of a seasoned Beater.

"That would be something." As the woman had her hands full, he nodded to her courteously. "I'm Remus Lupin."

The woman shifted the no-longer-crying girl to her left arm and shook hands with Remus.

"Mary Bowen. This is my youngest daughter, Tracy."

Tracy buried her face in her mother's shoulder, embarrassed. Patricia noticed the other girl's red face and, finally, released Remus' legs in order to address her properly.

"Hello Tracy. My name is Patricia Stimpson. Who's your teacher?"

Tracy sniffed. She looked down at the long-named redheaded girl who had spoken to her. "Miss Box. Both my brothers were in her class."

"She's my teacher to! Is she nice?" Patricia wondered.

Tracy nodded.

"Than what are we waiting for? Let's go meet her!"

Mary put Tracy down and the two girls walked into the building together. Mary and Remus looked at each other with amusement and followed them.

"Favorite colour?"

"Blue. Favorite food?"

"Treacle tart."

"That's not a food, that's a dessert!"

"It is to a food!"

"Girls," Miss Box admonished as she arrived in the corner of the classroom where Tracy and Patricia were sitting.

"It's a dessert," Patricia insisted.

"Desserts are foods, Patricia," Miss Box said.

Patricia opened her mouth to argue, but then realized two things. One, she was about to argue with her teacher, and two, Miss Box was right, desserts were foods. She turned red and looked down at the floor.

"Sorry Tracy."

Tracy looked surprised. "What're you saying sorry for?"

Patricia looked at her."I was wrong, and you were right. I'm apologizing for continuing to argue with you."

Tracy didn't know how to respond. Patricia was apologizing to her for an argument that had lasted barely ten seconds. That didn't make any sense to her. Miss Box was also confused by Patricia response, but she shook it off quickly.

"That's very mature of you Patricia. Now, both of you come and meet some of your classmates."

Tracy and Patricia, by the virtue of Patricia's regained excitement, had been the first students to arrive in their classroom. While Miss Box talked to Mary and Remus, the two girls had retreated to a carpeted corner near the rack of picture books. They had then gotten so absorbed in talking that they didn't notice when Mary and Remus left and other students began to arrive.

Tracy bounced ahead of Patricia to the group of three that was sitting on the colourful foam mats in front of the rocking chair.

"Hello, I'm Tracy, and this is my friend Patricia!"

One of the boys moved over so that Tracy and Patricia could sit down.

"I'm William," said the black-haired boy who was now sitting beside Tracy.

"My name's Ava," murmured the only other girl, whose green eyes were pointed downwards shyly.

"I am Lucas Alexander Hale," the second boy announced. "My mummy is the mayor's personal secretary and my daddy is a police officer. What do your parents do?"

Miss Box, pleased with the fact that her latest batch of young charges seemed to be getting along, left the classroom and took her place near the doorway, ready to greet her other students.

"My daddy is a doctor," Tracy told the group. "And my mum volunteers at the library."

"My dad's the warden at the Nest," William said proudly.

Patricia immediately looked at him with excitement. "You're Warden Styles' son? He didn't tell me you were in my class."

William was confused. He had never seen Patricia before in his life, when would she have met his dad? He didn't get a chance to voice his confusion, because Lucas hijacked the conversation.

"What about you?" he asked, pointing first at Ava, and then Patricia. "What do your parent's do?"

Ava turned red. "My granny is a librarian," she said quietly. "And Papa teaches guitar."

Everyone noticed how uncomfortable she had become. Patricia tried to change the subject.

"That's cool. Do you play?"

Ava nodded, her face changing dramatically from bright crimson to flushed pink.

"You're lucky. I haven't gotten a chance to try any instruments."

"I take piano lessons," William said. "What about you, Tracy?"

"I—"

Lucas interrupted. Patricia was starting to become annoyed by him. He acted like he was the only one who could be in charge, and scrambled for control when things didn't go his way.

"What happened to your parents? Are they dead?"

Ava began to turn red again.

"That's not a nice thing to ask, Lucas," Patricia said.

She took Ava's hand and stood up. Tracy followed a split second later. The three girls moved as far away from Lucas as they could while still remaining on the mats, which was admittedly not very far, and sat down with their backs to him.

"Do you like Shakespeare?" Patricia asked after a moment. "A Midsummer Night's Dream is my favorite right now."

Ava's eyes widened. As a librarian's granddaughter she had heard a lot about Shakespeare, and how kids did not like to read it.

"You read Shakespeare?" she asked with surprise.

Patricia smiled lopsidedly. "Well, actually…"

By the time she had finished explaining her slightly complicated process of asking various people at the Nest to explain words that she didn't understand, which was only complicated because she had to explain it without revealing that she lived at the prison, their other fifteen classmates had arrived. Several of them were wiping away tears, but Tracy and William's excitement seemed to spread throughout the group. Miss Box soon found herself sitting in front of a rambunctious class of five-year-olds with bright faces turned to her like leaves seeking sunlight.

"Hello, children," she said with a smile. "As some of you already know, I'm Miss Box, and I will be your teacher for the next two years. Now, as we're all strangers at the moment we are going to play a game. Please make a circle, and then I'll explain…"

It was a welcome surprise when Ava, Patricia, Tracy and William all ended up sitting at the same little round table. They were the green group, with a mobile of pictures of leaves, green apples, and frogs hanging from the ceiling above them. Lucas was in the orange group, which he complained loudly and bitterly about for a full five minutes because orange wasn't his favorite colour, red was. While the rest of the class got pictures of Actress Annie to colour, Lucas had to sit in the time-out chair in the corner.

His bad mood may have been the reason that he crossed the line during painting, or it may have been because, even at five, he was a complete bullying prat.

They had to take turns at painting because the battered table that they used was only large enough to hold two sheets of paper with the row of cans of paint, two cups of water, and a can of paintbrushes between them. Patricia was a little upset at being paired with Lucas for her turn but she decided not to let it bother her. She had promised Bella, one of the inmates in the woman's half of the prison, that she would make her a painting to put up in her cell. Warden Styles had allowed it, so she wasn't going to break her promise.

She picked out two brushes and dipped one of them into white paint. She painted the outline of a white crescent on her paper, which was the same stuff used for newspapers and therefore not pure white, and carefully filled it in. Lucas had picked up the can of red paint and seemed to be painting wonky circles of different sizes all over his page.

"Her parents must be dead," Lucas said suddenly. "That's why she doesn't want to talk about them."

Patricia ignored him. She swirled her first paintbrush in the cup of water and blotted the water off on a piece of paper towel. She then dipped the second paintbrush in the can of yellow paint and used it to create a sun attached to the crescent moon she had already made.

"Ava's parents," Lucas clarified, though Patricia knew perfectly well who he was talking about. "I'll bet she cries every time she thinks about them. Did you see how red her fact got?"

He smeared red paint gleefully. He was disappointed at not being able to make her cry, his mummy had said that he was going to make all the girls cry, but he at least knew that he had made her upset. Then his paintbrush paused as he seemed to realize something. He turned on Patricia with a gleam in his eye.

"You didn't talk about your parents. Are they dead to?"

Again, Patricia ignored him. She would not tell that awful boy about her sainted parents. She had precious few stories about them, and even fewer memories. They were not something that she would share.

Not getting a reaction, Lucas pressed further. He was sure that he could make this girl cry, the pale, redheaded know-it-all.

"I'll bet they abandoned you! No one who ever had real parents could dress like that."

He was one to talk. Lucas was wearing an absolutely ridiculous tan suit with a little red tie. She bet that his "mummy" had made him wear it. She looked down at her black pinafore dress and clean, new Mary Janes. She couldn't see anything wrong with what she was wearing.

"I'll bet it was because you're a witch," Lucas continued.

Patricia's heart leapt frantically. There weren't any other wizarding families in the area. Lucas had to be a muggle, and muggles didn't know, weren't supposed to know about witches.

"My mummy says all girls with red hair are witches."

Patricia finished her painting, giving the sun-and-moon a squiggly green frame and writing her name in the bottom corner with blue, and went to lay it on the drying table. When she went back to clean up she discovered that Lucas had taken the paintbrushes she had been using, and more besides, dipped them all in black paint and dumped them on the area where she had been working. A puddle of paint was threatening to spill off the table. Miss Box, unfortunately, chose that moment to check on the two painters. She shook her head at the mess.

"Patricia, did you make this mess?"

Patricia shook her head. "No Miss Box. I didn't even use black."

"She did to!" Lucas accused, still clutching the can of red paint. "I saw her!"

"It wasn't me miss, I promise," Patricia said. She did not say that Lucas had done it because she knew that doing that would get her the dreaded name of 'tattle-tale'.

"I didn't do it!" Lucas said quickly, before he could be accused. He hadn't thought that his plan to make Patricia cry could get him in trouble. He had already had one time-out, he didn't want another.

Miss Box looked slowly between the two children. She couldn't show favoritism, but she had to admit that she liked the girl better. She was polite, helpful, and nice to her classmates. The boy complained about nothing and was far too entitled for his own good. Still, she couldn't show favoritism, so she came up with a fair not-really-punishment.

"Well, since neither of you want to confess, both of you will have to clean this up."

Patricia nodded in understanding while Lucas just managed to hold back a groan. To him, having to clean up was worse than having to sit alone in the corner for five minutes.

After Miss Box left for another turn around the classroom, Patricia went to the sink to get the roll of paper towel. When she got back the mess had been added to. A blob of red paint swam in the sea of black. Involuntarily, her eyes started welling up. Lucas noticed and smiled to himself.

"Maybe you should get Cinderava to help you clean that up," he suggested.

Patricia snapped. She felt a release of tension and the can of paint in Lucas' hand erupted. A wave of red flew towards him and drenched him from head to foot, using more paint than could have been in the can at the time. It soaked into his hair, coated his sleeves, and ran under his apron to stain his suit. Not a drop of paint touched Patricia. Lucas screamed and everyone in the room looked at him.

"Oh dear," Miss Box said, surveying the situation. "Patricia and Tracy, please take the hall pass and go get one of the custodians. Their room is just down the hall."

"Are boys with red hair witches to?" Patricia asked Lucas just before Tracy dragged her out of the room. He was too busy rubbing paint out of his eyes to respond.

On the way home, Patricia told Remus what had happened. Then she asked if it had been her that caused the paint to explode.

"Yes, Patricia. That was accidental magic. We've talked about it before, it happens to all magical children."

He smiled at her in the rear-view mirror. "And from what you tell me, it was bound to happen. What that boy did was… uncalled for."

"He deserved it," Patricia said. "He was mean to my friend, and my parents."

"He was," Remus agreed. "Perhaps he's learned his lesson."

Patricia personally thought that being drenched in paint was a poor price to pay for insulting someone's family, but she didn't argue with her Uncle Remus. Instead she asked a question.

"Uncle Remus, do muggles think that everyone with red hair is a witch?"

Remus frowned. "Who told you that...Ah, it was Lucas, wasn't it?"

Patricia nodded.

"That's just an old wives tale; it isn't true, though one of the most brilliant witches I've even known was a redhead."

"But do they really think that Uncle Remus?"

Remus turned the car, which had been borrowed from Warden Styles, into the Nest's staff parking lot.

"Some of them," he said carefully. "But not all." Patricia nodded in understanding.

Remus locked the car and the two of them walked along the wall to the gate, where Warden Styles was waiting.

"So, how was school?" he asked as he accepted his car keys from Remus.

Patricia gave a toothy grin."Magic!"

Remus had a hard time trying not to laugh.

Two weeks later, Luacs' hair was still stained red. His mummy was not happy.