It was early in June, and the weather was nice for a change, one of those hot spells when there was not a cloud in the sky and you just knew it would last for the rest of the summer. It never did, of course, but that hardly mattered on days like these. On the other hand, it was not so hot that you couldn't lift a hand without breaking into a sweat, as had happened more and more often in her later years.

Donna was sitting on Jack's rooftop terrace, reading a book. It was funny, really. Her first time as a 10-year-old, she wouldn't have dreamed about taking up a book in the summertime. Now, after having had kids, both in real life and in a virtual world, there was nothing she appreciated more than time to read without any interruptions.

Jack had a cleaner come in every week, so she didn't even have that many household chores to do. She'd forgotten how easy childhood was, too busy being a child the first time around to appreciate it – or lacking the experience of adulthood. She had even more freedom now than when she'd been living with her mum, since Jack often left her to her own devices while off doing Torchwood-related stuff, and appreciate it she did. To be fair, she had the whole hormonal circus to look forward to, but these preteen years were the best, and she was going to milk them for all they were worth. And if she was really lucky, the regeneration she'd gone through had rewired more than just her brain. It's not like she'd ever asked the Doctor if puberty was a thing that happened to Time Lords.

She was lounging in a reclining chair, engrossed in her book, while soaking up the sun. That was one thing that had not changed: she was as much a summer kind of person as in her old life. She did not like the cold.

"Hoot."

Donna blinked, dragged back to the real world by a sound so unexpected that she had to think about what it was.

"Hoot. Hoot!"

She blinked again, then slowly lowered her book and peeked over the edge to check if she'd heard correctly.

There it was, large as life and sitting on the balcony railing. It managed to look, and sound, annoyed. Somehow.

An owl. There was a real, honest-to-god owl staring at her, ruffling its feathers.

"Hoot," it said again, decisively now that it had her attention. And then it stuck out its leg, and Donna could not help it, she just started laughing, the situation was so absurd.

The owl evidently did not appreciate being laughed at, as it beat its wings a couple of times and stuck out its leg again.

"Alright, alright! Jeez, tetchy much? No need to get offended, sunshine, I'll take your bloody... is that a letter?" And she was off again, only just managing to untie the letter inbetween gales of laughter. She hardly noticed the owl's disdainful toss of the head, or its offended departure.

"A bloody owl! With a letter written on parchment! In the middle of the day! Oh Jack, what have you gotten yourself into?"

It wasn't until she had calmed down enough to look at the letter that she realised her mistake. It was not addressed to Captain Jack Harkness. It was addressed, instead, to her.

Donna Noble

Smallest bedroom

Flat 30

Liberty Residence

Cardiff

Okay... that was more than a little creepy. Who sent this to her and how did they know where she slept? And, you know, why? Perhaps the most important question of all... who could she complain to?

When she turned the envelope around, she saw an actual crest. Who still used crests? Well, she wasn't going to get any answers just turning the damn thing around in her hands.

Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she read when she opened it. Were they saying she was a witch? That wasn't very nice, was it, since she couldn't insult them back, whoever 'They' were. Apparently one of 'Them' was Minerva McGonagall, since she was the one to sign the letter.

Well, if she ever saw this McGonagall in person, she'd give her a piece of her mind, that was for certain.

When she read the second page, though, with the pointed hat and the cauldron on the materials list, not to mention the dragonhide gloves and a wand, she realised they were talking about actual witches. Because magic was... real? Maybe?

God, she missed the days of widespread internet. Her first instinct was to send a message to Jack to come around and then get onto the web to search for references on wizards and witches. Now, she'd have to wait for Jack to drop by, since she didn't know the Hub's phone number. He'd said he'd be there in the evening. She wanted to know if he'd known about this, about magic being real, or if he was as clueless as herself. How was she going to find out more information?

She would ask the people sending the letter, except they were 'expecting her owl' by the 31st. She'd suspect a euphemism of some sort, or a hoax, if it wasn't for the bloody great big bird that had delivered the letter. If she went up to a pet store saying she wanted an owl to send a letter to a magic school, she'd be off to the loony bin faster than you could say Gandalf. Waiting for Jack it was.

By the time Jack came around, she was going stir crazy. She hadn't read a single sentence more in her book. The letter lay on the table, innocently mocking her every attempt to ignore it. Every time she tried to focus, her eyes would just glide right back to the side, until she closed her book in disgust. Eventually she just started cooking, so that she'd have something to do to pass that time. Otherwise she'd go right back to studying every inch of the parchment looking for clues for the umpteenth time, and that would do little good. If she hadn't found any yet by now, she never would. When she heard the key turn in the lock, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Before he was halfway inside, she'd already grabbed the letter from the table and stood holding it out to him. "D'you know anything about this?"

Jack closed the door and raised an eyebrow at her. "Good evening Donna. How was your day?" Donna rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, pleasantries. Consider them exchanged. If you want to know about my day, I can tell you. A bloody owl delivered this."

"An owl?"

"Yes, an owl! Big raptor, tufty ears, creepy eyes. It had this tied to its leg, gave it to me – with attitude, mind – and then flew away! Now tell me if you've ever heard about this, or anything like it, because I am clueless and more than a little bit freaking out."

Jack took the letter from her and read through it, then again with a frown on his handsome face. She imagined she'd looked about the same on her first thorough read-through or five.

"You're sure this is real?"

"Fairly so. Seems kind of elaborate for a hoax, doesn't it, training an owl to deliver a letter, with my name on it and all, when hardly anyone even knows I'm here. Could be me, but owls don't seem very trainable. Sure, in those raptor shows they fly from one end of the pitch to the other for a bit of meat, but that is a far cry from sitting there and insisting on their package being taken."

"Yeah, you're right, that does seem like magic might be involved. Let me think now. Have you eaten?"

She nodded toward the kitchen, where there was more than enough food to satisfy even Jack's voracious appetite.

"Nice. You don't do things by halves, do you?"

She shrugged. "I needed a distraction. Cooking's as good of one as anything else I could come up with. At least I haven't forgotten how."

"You most certainly haven't. This is really good," Jack said approvingly as he tasted the sauce. "I'm surprised you could even reach some of these ingredients in the high cupboards though, shorty."

She nudged his arm with her elbow, well used to his teasing by now. "Oh har har, very funny, mister I'm-never-home-to-cook. That's what chairs are for. You probably didn't even know you had them in the first place."

The meal passed with much ribbing from both sides, but their heart wasn't in it as much as usual. When it was over, they moved to the sitting room, Donna curling up in a corner of the couch. Jack stretched out in the easy chair, looking up at the ceiling for a moment before looking back at her.

"Okay. Let me start by saying that I don't know anything officially. My specialty, obviously, is extraterrestrial life. But I've been around the block a time or two, and I do notice things. For example, some years ago there was a slew of murders happening all over the country. The victims had little to nothing in common. Men, women, even children. Sometimes whole families would be found lying together, other times just one person. Some on the streets, others in their homes.

"Most were perfectly healthy people. You'd expect them to live a long and fruitful life, and yet they were lying dead, without any wounds or visible cause of death. Autopsy reports concluded that their hearts just stopped, but why would a whole family have that happen all at the same time? It didn't make any sense. Eyewitnesses talked about seeing a green light, but since when do lights stop a heart? Not without leaving a visible wound, they don't.

"I read the reports, to see if there was alien involvement, but when I went to talk with the eyewitnesses, they had no clue what I was talking about. 'Green light? People dropping dead in broad daylight? No sir, I never saw anything of the kind.' It was almost like their memories had been wiped. I'd suspect Retcon, except we control the supply, and if there was a new source we'd have heard about it.

"Then, about ten years ago, they stopped. No more green light, no more mysterious deaths, nothing. I could not find any proof that aliens were involved, so I classified all the reports. I wonder if I were to dig them back up, if I'd see a pattern now that I missed then.

"In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, what with your delivery owl, there was something to do with owls right around the time the murders stopped. What was it again... Something about loads of them being spotted in broad daylight. We should check out the newspaper archives, maybe we'll find an article about it. I never connected the owls with the murders, since it wasn't clear until later that they had stopped, and by then I'd forgotten all about the owls."

"Okay. As enlightening as that is, it doesn't get us much closer to answer than 'Yes, magic probably exists, and something happened ten years ago. Maybe.' What we need is inside information. You wouldn't happen to have a wizard up your sleeve, do you?"

"I wouldn't be guessing quite so much if I did. Although..." Jack trailed off, a thoughtful look on his face.

"Care to share with the class?"

"There's this guy I know, bit of an odd duck. I met him about five years ago, helped him out of a spot of trouble with a Weevil. He has the oddest sense of fashion."

"What, worse than yours?"

"Oy! At least I have style. A style, even, that I actually stick to. Archibald, my friend, thinks the height of fashion is the vest of a three-piece suit worn under dungarees and platform shoes right out of the seventies."

"Right. So worse than the Doctor. Got it. But does that really mean he's a wizard?"

Jack shrugged. "Might not. Call it a hunch though, but I do think he might be. It wouldn't hurt to see him, get a feel for how much, if anything, he knows."

The rest of the evening was spent in speculation, mostly about magic and what it could and could not do, and what the wizarding world was like, hidden away so well that even Jack, with all his years on earth, had heard nothing about it.

At least they were taking actions, although Donna really hoped this Archibald bloke would turn out to be the real deal. That way, she'd have someone to vent at.