Dear Mum, Dad and Lily , Albus scribbled on a lined piece of parchment. He'd found the spare paper tucked inside his copy of Colebach's Chronicles of Conjurations: Through the Twentieth Century, disguised the abhorrence of a broomstick race through the Norfolk broads Rose had constructed whilst on the train. Underneath a huge page-long footnote on goblin thaumaturgy, its upside-illustrations narrowly thwarted a German sylph; its face remained in determined flux whilst its petite fingers clawed a Cirrus Vortex broomstick.

As the grimy black ink oozed from his biro pen, he adjusted his position in the armchair and glanced around the empty common room, his eyes pickling with weariness. Interspersed within minute alcoves were walnut desks and crooked bookcases, pockmarked by decades of use, with antediluvian tomes wedged into every conceivable nook and cranny.

Littered across every surface were disseminated projects left over the previous year, including a mechanical radio, evidently Muggle in origin, which had been smuggled into the tower. Its exposed wires misfired occasionally from where it'd been converted to electricity and at thirteen minutes to, on the hour, every hour, played a raucous trill from the 'Forth One' radio station. Albus remembered a third or fourth-year girl, a tattooed line of maple wood curled across her neck, frowning at it for several hours. The first Ravenclaw, Adelisa, had wandered over, puzzling at the rigid depictions of its circuits in Nuts & Volts: Fixing the Unfathomable as she asked questions. She hesitantly granted her name and he'd stared in bewilderment as Goneril pressed her fingers to her tattoo, her wand melting through her dusky skin into her palm.

I survived the journey here. That was true, he concluded. James is busy revising His Eyes for his new audience (a certain Rose Granger-Weasley who's defected to the final frontier) since the Slytherins have challenged him to a duel. Of course, she's made the family proud by revealing her Quidditch obsession. My classmates still haven't recovered from hearing about Hufflepuff's fouls.

How could he articulate his own Sorting into Ravenclaw? Preoccupied with chewing his pen lid, he suddenly realised he hadn't heard of any Potters there before.

Bet you all a knut James has already written to disown me for donning the blue and bronze robes-

His tameless brother had surpassed his expectations with practical jokes; when the whole of Ravenclaw house had gotten up to leave the Great Hall, they'd found themselves glued to their seats with Sticking Charms. Chaos germinated until Mullard, resplendent in his tartan waistcoat, bellowed the loss of two hundred points from Gryffindor.

I'm sharing the dormitory with Sky (from the Ellis Emporium), Orville (a Liverpudlian Quidditch lunatic) and Kavyansh (as Scottish as Auntie Min's whiskey). So far, we've argued over whether or not a mop could function as an acceptable alternative to broomsticks. As well as that, I spoke to Scorpius who's worse than Rose when it comes to throwing dodgy Charmed objects around, he's a Gryffindor like Dad was. We're planning to meet up for the friendly match tomorrow and there's no way I'll be leaving terra firma!

Scratching his name underneath, he drained the lukewarm dregs of a cup of tea one of the Prefects had offered him ("Gotta crack on with this syrup of hellebore essay for Ellis, now he's back, he doesn't take prisoners…") and thought back to meeting his dormitory mates. Dewan, who'd been this year's hatstall, had muttered "A'richt? This match a muckle thing? Whit time?" in a dense Glaswegian patter upon reaching their four-poster beds. Whilst his hair was a tangle of handsome dark brown curls, his face had a pinched look to it, almost as if he'd experienced more than his fair share of sleepless nights. Albus stole a glance at him as Dewan cheerfully rearranged his things, tucking a creased copy of The Magicians by Lev Grossman underneath his pillow. A figure remained achingly stationary on its front cover, shrouded in a vaulted archway. Was he the owner of a steadfast Muggle heritage, securely insured against an acute understanding of recent historical events?

Once, Albus' father had tacitly expressed that wizards, eager to traipse in their family's footsteps, were so focused on their origins, their accents and their Hogwarts houses that they forgot to look where they were going. "It doesn't matter what someone was born to do but what they grow to be, Albus," he'd said, as he returned his threadbare first edition of One Hundred Historical Sites from the Second Wizarding War to where it belonged on the furthermost shelf in his study. Albus had never been allowed to glimpse inside.

Orville had chanted 'Eagles! Eagles! Eagles!' at the other two boys they were sharing the dormitory with, Cromer and Forncett; all three of whom had grown up on the same street in Liverpool. Whilst the seventeen fresh-faced Ravenclaws had been divided into eleven boys and six girls across three dormitories, theirs was decidedly the largest in their half of the tower. Forncett, a HB pencil balanced on his ear as he stapled his navy blue Everton flag to their cork pinboard, ignored the agitated glares Cromer was tossing in his direction, even when he trained his wand on the football banner.

"De fuck is 'muckle'?" Forncett loudly demanded.

"Think it means 'big', lah," Cromer replied, grinning craftily. Tiny flickers of baleful crimson snarled from the tip of his wand. "What's de spell fe chang'n this ter de reds?"

There was a heavy silence as the rest of the dormitory swapped baffled glances before resuming their preparations for bed. Stiffly, Forncett lobbed his dog-eared copy of Transfiguration Trials: Second Edition at Cromer, bellowing a strained 'Bewgaroff!' as he chased the boy around his four-poster bed, darting through the gaps in the furniture. Despite being out of breath, the pair began to exuberantly guffaw, the Everton flag left crumpled into a careless mayhem on the silk eiderdown.

"Anyone fancy translation' wee resident Scousers?" Sky had piped up.

Albus had grown up in Suffolk's aurous fields, yards away from the Weasleys' ancestral home and Hogwarts' bewitching classrooms and corridors. He'd learnt to file his vowels down to a Ottery St Catchpole rhythm so he didn't sound out of place in the village square and the castle's jumble of utterances from all four corners of the country meant he was accustomed to meeting wizards and witches from all walks of life. Yet he couldn't place Ellis' manner of speaking. He'd begun dropping his gees and haitches, perhaps indicating the beginning of a self-consciousness of his origins, or as a vocal camouflage.

Orville had offered an impenetrable answer. "Oh, 'alf o' Liverpool support da' terffees. De uvver 'alf love de reds and nobody wants ter make up their minds about oo's scutty. It's de Appleby Arrows fer me... Nitherscott got nicked from us."

"I'm sure yer makin' it up for a laff…"

The wheezing and gasping of the moribund fire in the fireplace wrestled Albus from his reverie, as the nautical timepiece on the mantelpiece ticked past one. How long had he sat there, his thoughts meandering like the rivers that nourished Loch Shiel? The common room stood forlorn, its weary emptiness staring Albus down like the impatient shopkeepers in his village. He folded his letter into its own envelope, his home address printed in block capitals, and briskly set off for the owlery, hoping that with enough luck, he could elude his restless thoughts.

Generations of his family had recited fond anecdotes about their school years, his younger cousins passing on rosary beads of truth about their misdemeanour in reverential tones, of facing an indignant Mullard or of sweating through monotonous lessons on conjugating tired Latin spells. What if he was unable to achieve that for himself? What if he trudged through Hogwarts' hallowed halls with nothing to show for it? What if he became the person that humiliated and disrespected the great Harry Potter? His father's aloof account of his childhood ignored the whispered rumours at the Ravenclaw table about what lay beyond the dark boundaries of the Forbidden Forest.

A quiet Slytherin, Crossgrove, suggested that there was a mass graveyard, dedicated to all of the fallen of the Battle of Hogwarts, once they'd finished their appetisers. The names of those whose families had been so badly decimated by the regime there'd been nobody left to claim their remains or those who'd deserted their forebears' tenets to take up the fight for what they believed in were carved into flagstones across the castle, with corresponding grave markers, he breathed into pauses in their conversations. The Ravenclaw Head Girl, Cordelia, had dismissed this with a bitter look in her eyes, steering the conversation towards the termly interhouse Gobstones competitions. Their generation was one of the first to be born after the war and were recognised as the children who grew up on battlefields and in graveyards. As such, their birthright had become broken families. Albus' father would be crippled for weeks on end with headaches and migraines, and although he hadn't understood why, he and Lily were forced elsewhere whilst James would frequent his bedroom with tepid cups of tea.

"Parmenides," Albus murmured into the autumn night in the owlery, tenderly smoothing his older brother's owl. The speckled brown barn owl had been a gift from their father upon receiving his Hogwarts letter, although he'd taken to hissing at James in the last few days, with smouldering golden eyes. "Please wake up. I need you." The bird of prey, flustered from having been disturbed, lept onto his arm to nibble at the pouch of tidbits. As a peace offering to James before the start of term, Albus had used his last sickle for Eeylops Premium Owl Treats. "Can you take this to Mum and Dad? You can have an extra one if you give them a kiss from me."

He looked absurd as he tried to noiselessly clamber into his bed, inching off his garments one at a time. There was a lambent, flickering glow from one of the bedsteads opposite Albus, dazing him as it illuminated the dormitory. Perhaps he wasn't alone in enduring a sleepless night.

"Smurf wankers!"

The bellow came from the maroon-clad crowd two tables away from Albus. A gaggle of Gryffindors snickered, their faces enthusiastically painted with lopsided lions. A sneering James was surrounded by his classmates as he acted out a story with exaggerated flailing arms. The Great Hall had rapidly swelled with apprehensive-looking first years and anticipative higher years that morning, some of the chosen players enveloped by their respective house teams in a last-minute bid to share strategies. Orville opened his mouth, his face creased with indignation as he stared down his fried eggs. He was the only first-year who'd sported the sumptuous leather elbow, shoulder and knee pads Albus had seen his mother wear in her Holyhead Harpies portraits.

"Don't bother," Rose hissed, perching on the bench next to him. She clasped a slice of scorched toast, the butter dripping from its curled edges in one hand, whilst she tapped the oaken table with her wand. "He's a little shit. Always has been. Who's playing against them? Can't just be yours sincerely."

A chant went up, commanded by Roxanne, with Scorpius hovering at her elbow, grinning rabidly. 'Oi, oi, oi, honey, whatcha waiting for? Welcome to the Gryffindors!'

The opposite side of the table thrust their middle fingers up at Cordelia as she traipsed past them, her boundless lilac-dyed hair braided into serpents, animated to spit blue flames. They continue, regardless. 'It's time for you to prove… That you're not a loser anymore!'

Sky glowered at them, his arms crossed behind his half-empty plate. "You... Crossgrove... Those two trolls who tripped me thi' mornin', Forncett, Orville, Christine an' t'hatstall, Dewan," he remarked. The game had been explained in the dormitories; four students from each house were offered the chance to earn some house points in an unspoken tradition, with an additional Beater to safeguard the team. Ravenclaw had been paired with Slytherin this year so would square up against Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. "Fort e' love o' God, Orville, please crush 'em."

Albus stared at him, frowning as his cousin savagely laughed. "James and the rest of Gryffindor House will be getting their just deserts, believe me."

"Wha' do yer mean?" Sky asked.

"Four sickles."

"Wha' for?"

Rose tugged an oversized jersey over her head, a diagonal line bisecting jade green and sky blue. "Sixty to one-fifty. Wait for the denouement." She emphasised the French noun, sticking her foot out to send the next unfortunate Gryffindor tumbling.

Maliciously-utilised Skiving Snackboxes and jinxes had thrived in the throngs on the way to the pitch, behind the professors' backs, and Albus, his sides aching from repeated elbowing, lodged himself in the most unassuming corner he could find, next to his remaining dormitory mates. He'd edged past Sky and Cromer in the crowd but they'd hauled him back, insisting that they needed to watch Rose's back. For the last hour, grunts and shrieks of 'We'll beat ya, yer bastards!' had been lobbed across the stands as the atmosphere grew increasingly nasty. The assortment of Slytherin and Hufflepuff upper-years behind them exchanged tea flasks, smacking the backs of their heads as they did so. As its sweet, tart essences drifted downwind, Albus grimaced, recognising the scent of Strongbow cider. A lukewarm itch had crept through his fingers, prickling uncomfortably.

"Is da fresh char?" Cromer wondered aloud.

"Think it's chamomile," an absentminded Sky replied, considering his disheveled copy of Amin & Goldbury: A Saga of Zagovory Magic with deep affection.

Albus gawked at the students behind them. "I'll have some of that then."

"Gentlemen," Sky called, as it began to rain, covering his textbook with the hem of his jumper. "They're whistlin'. Ont' pitch."

Draped in what had to be uncomfortably bulky tunics, much like Rose's, the sixteen luckless first-years marched against a burgeoning drizzle, onto the green. Their referee, Dupont, pronounced the rules before glumly kicking off from the grass and nodding to the professors' stands, adequately satisfied. A familiar voice introduced herself as Cordelia, the Ravenclaw Head Girl and Quidditch Captain, as she tested the microphone. Whilst the crowd blanched at the howling screech from the feedback, she promptly began commentating, announcing players' names and their positions. "'Un or twa recognisyeble names heor… Michael Bloodworth is Keeper, Christine Adelisa, Nelson Forncett an' Rose Granger-Weasley are Chasers, Orville Williams, Pat- Patrycja Bargiel an' Kavyansh Dewan are Beaters and Owen Crossgrove is Seeker. Reet, let's see ha these lot laik…"

"Whose idea wus it ter git a Geordie in?" a disgruntled Hufflepuff remarked somewhere behind Sky. "Get ahn wit it! We're gettin' wet 'ere!" A Bludger darted in front of Dewan, who expressed bewilderment at having been confronted with one.

Undeterred by the abrupt downpour, Rose shoved her way past Forncett and Dewan, levelling out her angular Aitcha broomstick as the Quaffle was tossed into the air, straining to touch the scarlet ball. Her counterparts weren't as fortuitous and stumbled onto the ground when their brooms refused to move, eliciting taunting jeers from the stands. "Granger-Weasley's in possession an' - she scores! Malfoy gives hor a high-five - canny inter-hoose solidarity thor… Ten-nil tuh the Ravenclaw-Slytherin team…"

Cromer bit his thumbnail, affirming that, "Dey dun't 'uh much of a defence, do dey? Considerin' they're still on de floor." In the buoyant racket a significant portion of the stadium effected, three of the eight that hadn't ascended to the scoring area lumbered off the pitch, one hurling his broom to the grass as he did so. "Blimp, our Keeper's jus' walked off an' Rose is goin' again… Wha' are dey singin'?"

'Bloodworth, Bloodworth plays so shitty... You eat arse back in Coventry…' The intoning seemed to be radiating from the Gryffindor-designated grandstands, discounting Rose's repeated tries. 'Could be worse, you could be Scouse… Eating rats in your council house…'

Sky was appalled, bellowing into the embittered rain. "They're takin' t'piss!"

"Fifty-nil to Ravenclaw-Slytherin… There wul' be penalties enforced if supportis bullrag players. You've beun warned… An' Granger-Weasley strikes again! Sixty-nil…" That was when the clouds pelted the Quidditch pitch, forcing the Gryffindors' booming mantras into distant yelps.

Through the deluge, Albus scanned the oval field, unable to recognise where Rose had gone. Dewan was struggling to remain on his broomstick and was hunched against the pummelling torrents whilst Adelisa and Forncett had accepted refuge under the professors' stands alongside the sidelined players. Orville hurtled past, battling a mercurial Bludger and preventing it from barrelling towards the audience, his club disregarded in the melee. But where was Rose? Unease, like drops of rain, trickled down his cheeks. There was something awry, he was absolutely positive of that fact. If he was honest, there'd been something so incongruous with the match, he'd almost overlooked it. He sincerely hated flying or Quidditch or anything to do with broomsticks and desolately longed to be wrong.

"Cromer, how many Bludgers are there in a match?" he asked.

"Should be two, why ay yous askin'?"

"Rose said, 'Wait fer th'denouement,'" Sky repeated, his eyes widening in horror. "Th'denoument… Sixty ter one hundred an' fifty… She wasn't on about us winnin' - Gryffindor do bur James gets 'is fyass bashed i'."

As they turned to face the pitch again, Albus noticed his cousin grappling with a Bludger, a stolen cudgel clenched in her fist, as she sped towards the Gryffindor platforms. The figure of Scorpius Malfoy sped across the mud underneath her, his broomstick clattering as it made contact with the timber frames, before skittering across the silt as he lunged for something.

"Now, who's takin' the piss?" Cromer replied.

"I believe Malfoy haz caught the Snitch; that's 'un hundred an' fifty tuh sixty tuh Gryffindor an' Hufflepuff. Wey done tuh those who played!" An euphoric roar sounded from the other half of the stadium as they trilled, 'No Malfoy boy, no cry!' playfully. "Granger-Weasley, the match is owor, stand doon." Rose apparently refused, hurling her club above her head, targeting the Bludger, as she hovered in front of where James was sitting. As the slate-coloured orb barrelled towards him, it flitted side-to-side, aggravating an already-infuriated Rose. She hastened after it, accelerating as it ducked in discordant directions, unaware that Orville was in pursuit, quicker on the rapid corners than she was. She braked without warning, unprepared for a mid-air collision as he seized a handful of her jersey, heaving her away.

'No Malfoy boy, no try!'

The Gryffindors shuffled towards the back rows of the gantry, as the tusselling pair drifted five feet directly above where they'd been seated. They determinedly grappled for domination, Rose fending off her opponent's swift jabs with her Beater bat. The Bludger returned, and Orville dived towards it, battering it across the Quidditch pitch. Content to remain on its trajectory, it surged in the direction of Albus, Cromer and Sky.

'No Malfoy boy, no high!'

Whooping, they crouched underneath their seats, waiting for the spheric object to buffet the lumber joists.

"Well, dat wus shite," came the dismayed Hufflepuff voice again.

"'Ow many fouls do yous reckon thuz wuz?" Orville asked, his voice registering somewhere in the clamour of Albus' throbbing brain, temporarily beset by a deafening headache for his part in knocking his head against his seat. "Am sure Rose pulled off at least thirty…" That Saturday evening in the common room had been surrendered to multiple retellings of the fight in the air, frequently ending in him sharing anecdotes of his mother receiving broomstick speeding fines from the Ministry of Magic. "Dey catch yous ova de M6… so yous 'uv ter floor it! De Starsweepers can only go ninety deese days…"

Forncett padded over to him, his brisk footsteps echoing as the Forth One's hourly chime oozed from the mutilated radio. "Only ninety? Got a Cirrus Cairngorm 'iddun in doz trousers, 'av yer?"

"This came fur yer, mucker," Kavyansh said, planting a moss green envelope bearing his sister's chaotic longhand in front of Albus. It felt damp in his hands.

Evening dear A, it commenced, his initial underscored in pencil. Dad's lost the plot and has Flooed up to Hogwarts to sort out James and Rose's 'incident' at the match. (Can you give me the details? Mum won't say what happened). Knew you'd make Ravenclaw, you're too clever for Slytherin! Your dormitory mates and Scorpius sound nice, can you introduce me when I come up next year? George came over earlier to celebrate Potterwatch winning the licence to broadcast Hogwarts Quidditch marches. Lachlan asked after you this morning; what should I tell him? Otherwise, very dull here.