Author's Note: This is a story written as roleplay, between me and a friend, with the pace and flow of roleplaying. We edited nothing of the actual content, it's all as it was written and sent to each other. I only tried to make the difference between authors as obvious as possible, so my apologies for the massive bold parts, but I had no other way of making the shifts clear. Enjoy!

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Chapter 1 - Diagon Alley

Josiah Johnston was having a very strange dream. In it, he had been trying to charm a teapot to hum God Save the Queen, but instead, it made a tapping sound. He tried all the counter-spells he knew of, but still it kept tapping, and tapping, and –

A disgruntled owl cry tore him abruptly from his sleep, and he sat upright in bed, fumbling around for his wand.

"Ah," he mumbled, his voice still coated in sleep, his wand held crookedly in the vague direction of the noise. He lowered it, then looked over at the clock; it was around 10 in the morning. "Wotcher, little fella. Sorry, I forgot to leave the window open."

The school owl, looking a bit ruffled, ceased tapping on the window glass and hopped onto Josiah's desk as soon as he allowed it inside. It stuck its leg out regally, and Jo untied his very last school letter, smiling wistfully.

The owl took off from the windowsill, leaving the boy to ponder his correspondence in the bright morning light. He plopped back down onto his bed and unfolded the parchment.

There was no Head Boy badge enclosed, but he couldn't bring himself to feel too unhappy about that. Being a Prefect was honor enough, after all; and considering he was barely squeaking by in Potions, he didn't much need the extra responsibility. Still, he wondered who had been chosen...

Examining his list, his expression brightened considerably. He loved any excuse to buy new Charms books.

Tucking the letter in his nightshirt pocket, he grabbed his small pouch of Floo powder off of his nightstand and hurried down to the fireplace, hoping he could catch Dan awake.

Daniella walked back into the kitchen, Toby following her closely. She stopped at the sight of the owl waiting by the window. She quickly walked over to it and took the letter, letting out a small sigh of relief that Logan hadn't been there to intercept it.

This was (according to him) his last summer at home before moving out. He seemed determined to move in with a few of his roommates from Hogwarts, now that he had returned from his travelling and settled into some boring Ministry job.

She opened the letter and skimmed over the familiar text. She smiled a little at the title of their new Care of Magical Creatures book. She had that one already.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sounds coming from the fireplace. She looked around once more, making sure she was alone, before walking over to it and kneeling in front of the flames. "Jo?"

Josiah grinned sheepishly, although he had been forced to contort into a rather awkward position to get his head into the downstairs fireplace.

"Hey," he confirmed, wiggling a little to get more comfortable. "Are we still on for Diagon Alley later today? There was an advert in the Prophet that said Astronomy books were half off when Venus was in the sixth house."

Daniella just stared for a brief moment, before deciding she might as well not try to make sense of what that meant. As far as she was concerned, Venus could be dancing with Mars, as long as that meant cheaper school books.

"Yeah, sure!" She pondered that for a moment. Her mother and brother said they wanted to go with her, since he needed to buy some things for his new apartment, but she was sure she could get rid of them… somehow. She heard a noise in the next room. Logan was back. "I'll meet you at Florean's, alright?" She said, trying not to sound too hasty.

"Aye, I'll see you there," he said with a lilt, but she was already hurrying away. He attempted to unfold himself from his ambitious position, but all he earned himself was a smart bump on the head and watery eyes. He inhaled sharply at the pain, then sneezed out a fair bit of soot. He exhaled pitifully, wiping his nose with one hand.

He pulled on some plain Muggle clothes - his favorite pair of denim and a solid blue t-shirt - and yelled down the hallway to his mother.

"Mum! I'm going out!" There was incoherent mumbling in response, and finally, a "What was that, dear?"

Josiah, thankful to finally be 17, pointed his wand in the direction of his throat and shouted again.

"I'M GOING OUT, MUM!"

With that, he trotted back down the stairs, threw a little more of the cursed powder into the crumbling fireplace, with a clear "Diagon Alley!"

Daniella tried to sneak back to her room unnoticed. Maybe she would be able to sneak out and Apparate in Diagon Alley before they were-

"Hey, Dany. Where are you going in such a hurry?" She could hear the smirk in his voice.

Dan turned, narrowing her eyes at Logan. "Don't call me that!"

He had always been a handsome boy; he was a handsome man now. He used his dark blond hair short and disheveled; he was tall and broad-shouldered and he had a smile that had melted a lot of girls' hearts already. His dark blue eyes were pretty too, but they were cold and sharp, making her feel like he could see far deeper into her soul than she wanted to.

"Talking to that… boy again?" He asked, the smirk gone from his face. "You really should reconsider your companies, sister."

"I could say the same, brother." She muttered in reply, making her way past him and into her bedroom. "If you and Mother aren't ready in half hour, I'll go by myself," she shouted, climbing up the stairs.

"Oh, don't worry, we'll be ready before that," he shouted back, lightly.

Josiah had arrived at the ice cream parlor at half past eleven, but Dan was nowhere to be seen. Digging his spoon into the bottom of his sundae in an attempt to scrape out as much hot fudge as possible, he looked around at the afternoon crowd that was starting to gather.

Loathe as he was to admit it, Jo didn't feel completely comfortable in Diagon Alley these days. His eyes kept darting back to the Knockturn Alley gate, where pale witches and wizards in sweeping black robes emerged regularly and gave him the shivers. He didn't have to talk to them to know what they would think of him.

Pushing these thoughts out of his mind, he pulled out his list and pretended to peruse it with heavy concentration.

It took Daniella a good forty minutes after arriving at the Diagon Alley to convince her mother to take Logan for whatever shopping he had to do and let her do her own. Still, she had to agree to letting her buy her new robes for school, especially after a pointed and slightly disgusted look at her jeans and sleeveless top.

She was grateful to Jo for showing her how Muggles dressed, or she might be wearing long robes right now… and the weather was far too delightful for that.

She spotted Jo easily sitting at a table outside. She quickly made her way to him, sitting on the other chair. "Hello, stranger."

Jo grinned up at his best friend, licking the last bit of fudge off of his spoon.

"'Lo, Miss Clearly-Has-Been-Reading-Muggle-Fashion-Mags. How fares the noble house of Hawke?"

"Well, someone has to fight the boredom that is the dressing habits in my house…" She said, more cheerful than she felt. Hopefully, spending the day with Jo would quickly make the day a lot more fun. "Noble," she snorted, "they do try…"

Looking greedily at the remnants of his ice cream, she ordered one for herself. "I can't wait for summer to be over. I've had enough of Logan Hawke for a lifetime. What have you been doing?"

He laughed appreciatively at her jokes, hoping that it would make her feel a bit better.

"Still a giant prat, then?" He murmured, smiling sympathetically. "I've not been up to much of anything since we talked last; sleeping in, you know. Although last week I put Unbreakable Charms on all the eggs in the fridge. Drove Mum mad." He grinned mischievously. He sipped at his iced tea, savoring it.

"No owls from anybody else, then? Any ideas on who Head Boy and Girl are?"

Dan laughed at that. "Your poor mom…"

"Well, there's no surprise who the Head Girl will be." She shrugged. "Sabrina was bragging about it on the train." She didn't really care enough to figure out how Sabrina would know so far in advance she would be selected, but it might have something to do with her father being friends with Slughorn. "Dunno about Head Boy, but I hope Marcus is selected."

Josiah groaned a little, scrunching up his face and sipping his tea a little more ferociously.

"I can't believe Dumbledore gave it to her after all. She's going to feel even more entitled now; absolutely insufferable, I'll bet." He rolled his eyes at this. "Everyone's father is friends with Slughorn, eh? All it takes is a tin of pineapple and you're golden." Six years of struggling through Potions had not given him a great opinion of the man.

"Marcus is a fair choice though, for certain. Better him than me, to deal with Sabrina, anyhow." He smiled a small half-smile, not willing to admit that he had daydreamed about the Head Boy badge on his own robes once or twice.

Dan sighed. "Mother is still upset that I never attended Slughorn's private parties."

She focused on her ice cream for a while, silent, but eventually looked up at Jo, studying him more closely. "I would rather have you as a Head Boy, but I think Sabrina has something to do with that too. She might push for Greengrass. She's crazy about him. She's tried everything but showing up naked in front of him in the common room… it's a little disgusting, actually."

A movement at the end of the street caught her eye. She pressed her lips together, looking at the woman standing at a distance, looking around. "What's she doing here?" She muttered under her breath. She supposed she should be relieved Logan wasn't with her mother at the moment. More than anything, she hoped her mother wouldn't notice them sitting there.

"My mum is still upset that I have a teacher named Slughorn," he confided in Dan. "Just the other week I was telling her about him again, and she said, 'You know, the poor man really ought to have that fixed up. I can't imagine what they think at the insurance office.'"

He chuckled sheepishly at her close scrutiny of him, trying to brush it off. "Dumbledore might be a bit mad, Dan, but I don't reckon he's that mad yet, eh?" Following her gaze, he took a quick peek over his shoulder at his friend's mother. He looked back at Dan, giving her a slightly queasy smile.

Dan's humour had darkened considerably. Her heart was racing, tension gathering inside her. And then her mother saw her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered to Jo in advance, feeling mortified already, casting him an apologetic glance as her mother approached their table. "Mother," she said as she looked up, unable to keep the tension out of her voice.

"Daniella," her mother said stiffly, the look in her eyes hardening considerably as she examined Josiah. The silence that followed was heavy with accusation and something else Dan didn't want to label. "And your…" She could see the struggle in her mother's eyes, as she tried to force a few polite words out of her mouth, "classmate. Why are you here? Didn't you have errands to run?"

"His name is Josiah, Mother." Dan felt heat rise to her cheeks. From anger or embarrassment, she couldn't tell, but she couldn't meet Jo's eyes. "We're going to do that later."

Josiah had been overjoyed to enter the magical world - he was still overjoyed every single day, as a matter of fact, as he always learned something new - but there were some things that no amount of explanation could have prepared him for. The discrimination had been one of them.

Having spent the past 6 years receiving this sort of treatment from Slytherins, and even an occasional member of his own house, Jo had developed a strategy to deal with these types of situations: stay quiet and pretend you don't exist.

It still stung every time, of course; he'd liked to have placed an Imperturbable Charm on both his ears, if he had had the time. But he hadn't, and he probably wouldn't have had the nerve anyway. So, he stared pointedly ahead at Dan's ice cream dish, cheeks burning slightly.

"Later…" her mother repeated. Daniella closed her eyes, trying to keep it together, trying to Apparate Jo and herself out of there with sheer power of will. "Can I have a quick word with you?"

At that, Daniella opened her eyes and gave her mother an angry look. "There is no need, Mother. I know the speech already. But I am not a child anymore. And I don't care how people look at me and what they think of who I hang out with."

Her mother pressed her lips together tightly, glancing around quickly. "You better not let your father hear you saying those things." She cast Josiah another glance; her lips were now a very thin line on her face. "We'll talk at home. Don't take too long."

Dan kept her mouth firmly shut, until her mother turned around and walked away with all the dignity of a proud, snob pureblood. Dan let out an embarrassed sigh. She still couldn't look Jo in the eyes, so she hid her face behind her hand. "I'm so sorry…"

Josiah fiddled with the collar of his t-shirt, pulling it away from his neck self-consciously in an attempt to curb the heat. He watched Dan's mother glide away, with all the sophistication of a true pureblooded witch. It was several moments before he felt comfortable to speak again.

"Nah," he murmured finally, grinning at his friend, albeit a little reservedly. "Not your fault. I just hope I'm not making trouble for you at home again." He sighed as he studied his empty tea glass, then squinted once more over the Alley crowd.

He pulled out his wand and flipped it around in his hand once absentmindedly. He changed the tea glass from clear to transparent blue with a nonverbal charm, then back again.

Dan shrugged. "No more trouble than usual." She chanced a look up at him. "And it's worth it. I just wish I- nevermind." She peeked into the glass. "I see you've been practicing."

Jo raised his eyebrows at her abrupt silence, but didn't push the matter. It was surely difficult for her; he couldn't imagine disagreeing with his family on a matter so important. He chuckled, setting his wand on the table instead.

"You know how I like my color-changing charms. I turned Dilly red the other night, but he didn't fancy it much, so I changed him back."

Dan pushed the rest of the ice cream aside and focused on her tea. It was a lovely summer day and she was with her best friend. She didn't want to think about anything depressing today. She would have plenty of time for that.

She huffed out a laugh, allowing herself to relax a little. He was definitely worth the trouble. She raised her glass. "Cheers to Professor Slughorn. Despite his name, he was thoughtful enough to put us together, all those years ago. Wasn't that nice of him?"

"Aye," Josiah murmured with a lopsided grin, using his wand to funnel a bit of water into his glass. Then, he held it up to hers. "And it's the only time I'm going to cheer him, that's for certain." He drained the water, feeling a bit lighter at heart.

"Oh, mum wanted me to ask you if you were free at all this summer. Just to visit for a day or two, you know. She said it was practically criminal that they keep you locked up in that house all the time, but mostly I just think she misses you…"

"Well, I am officially an adult now, so I can go wherever I want to."

Of course it wasn't that simple… not with her family. But the thought of spending the rest of the summer at home made her want to run away. And that, in turn, made her feel bad. They weren't bad people. If only she could make them understand…

"I would love to go," she said, smiling. "My brother should be moving out in a couple weeks, at most. It'll be easier after that, at least I won't have him nagging me all the time."

She finished her tea. "Should we get going? The bookstore will be crowded if we take too long."

Josiah's eyes widened at this realization, and he stowed his wand into his pocket hurriedly.

"Don't think poorly of me, but if there aren't any copies of '1001 Household Charms to Impress your Guests' left, I'll hex somebody."

Dan chuckled, fiddling with the coins she had found in her pocket that morning and dropping a few on the table. "I'll gladly give you mine, if you want. I'd probably learn more from you than any Charms book, anyway."

She rose and looked around, studying the busy street. "I also need some ingredients for my potions kit, but we can get that later. The bookstore is closer."

"How do you always have every book?" Jo whined to his friend, pushing open the door to Flourish and Blotts. "I have, like, 22 galleons left."

The bookstore was busy, just like Dan had predicted it would be. He inhaled the scent of new paper, and the Ravenclaw inside of him celebrated.

"Ah!" He exclaimed, rushing quickly to the display of Astronomy books. "Agrippa's sake! There's only one left." He tucked a red book titled 'Charming Astronomy: Simple Spells to Make Your Stargazing More Pleasant and Productive' under his arm. He heaved out a relieved sigh, hugging it protectively to his chest as people walked by.

"We have a big library at home," Dan explained. "Well, big for me, you'd probably think otherwise." She had never read a lot of the books in her father's library, except the ones related to animals or adventures. And she was the only one reading those, at home.

Dan eyed the book he held so tightly with amusement. "Ah, I missed watching you around books. It's never boring!" She took the letter from Hogwarts out of her pocket and checked the book list. "Most of our classes will require two books this year. We're not going to have much time to chill, are we?"

"I know that. It was a rhetorical question," Josiah mumbled, nudging her with his elbow and then grinning. He proceeded to pick a few more books up from the display, then turned around and squinted at the rest of the shelves.

"Yeah, even Potions," he said drearily, as though he thought buying two Potions books was a complete waste of the few galleons he had left. "I didn't think Sluggy would find a way to torture me any more than he did last year, but that shows what I know."

"I'm still amazed you didn't ditch Potions," Dan said. "I'm glad I don't have to set foot in another Astronomy class ever again."

She couldn't reach the top shelf, so she summoned the book she needed. "I think we'll be doing a lot of extra work in Potions this year, and most of it will be group work. At least we'll have more variety of potions to choose from. Some should be fun to create," she mused.

She found herself quickly struggling to keep the pile of books she would need balanced on her arms as a tiny kid pushed her to reach for the shelves as well. "First year students…" she muttered, rolling her eyes. "They really should make sets of these books for Hogwarts students. It would make everyone's life a lot easier."

"I would have, but you can't drop Potions if you go into Healing – you have to at least be able to make a headache potion, and even that's NEWT level." He furrowed his brow a bit, giving his sternest Prefect look to the pushy first year.

"Good, I like group work. I can be the designated stirrer. I'm tops at stirring," he said sarcastically, grinning as he rolled his eyes toward the vaulted ceiling. "Can't make it too easy, can they? Got to keep us on our toes, and all."

"Studying is boring enough as it is. Making it more difficult won't make me any more eager to do it." Watching the kid stumble away with books up to his chin, she added teasingly, "Don't look at him that way, he looks like a future Ravenclaw."

"Deal!" She offered him a smirk, looking at his pile of books. "I think I've got all of them. Are you done?"

Josiah looked mockingly offended, clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth.

"I'll have you know I never pushed people that way when I was a first year, not even for Charms books," he said airily, making his way over to the counter behind the tottering boy. "Looks like a Slytherin to me."

He stood patiently in line, perusing the shelves of trinkets and sweets that were laid out in front of the register. He couldn't stop himself from plucking a Sugar Quill out of a nearby box; they were more expensive than they were in Hogsmeade, but he hadn't had one all summer, after all….

Dan huffed and lowered her voice. "If he ends up in Slytherin, he'll be taught to push only people smaller than him soon enough. But I don't think he'll find a lot of kids even shorter than him for a while…" she said sarcastically.

It seemed to take a long time for the line to move, but eventually they got out of the bookstore. "So, what else do you need to buy other than sweets?"

Jo snorted as they left the bookstore, unwrapping the sugar quill and sticking it into his mouth happily. He flushed a little at her comment, then bit off a piece of the candy with a muted crunch.

"There's no Muggle sweet that can compare with a sugar quill," he said pitifully, returning it to his mouth. "I promised mum I'd buy Pearl a fake wand so that she'd stop waving the fire poker around trying to be magic," he said solemnly. "But I also need Potions ingredients."

Dan laughed with pleasure at that. "Please, let me buy it for her. She's sweet and I feel bad that I can never figure out what would be appropriate to offer her on her birthdays… Muggle toys are confusing." She furrowed her brow at the memory of the toys they'd shown her before.

They got the potions ingredients first. That store was far less busy than the bookstore had been, so they didn't take long in there.

Dan hadn't had the chance to enter the joke store in a long time, but it had always been one of her favorites.

"That's because Muggles have to do things the hard way," he grinned, pushing open the door to the joke shop. He ducked as a giant farting boomerang flew by his head. Some things never got old….

"Just don't pick a chicken one," he murmured, flicking one that turned into a limp, plucked chicken. "She's going through some kind of vegetarian phase. I think she might be upset."

"She is? Good thing she doesn't go to Hogwarts, then. I don't think there are a lot of meal options without meat in them." She looked over at the large box with a bunch of fake wands.

The shop owners hadn't tagged them, so the only way to figure out what they turned into was trying them. "Maybe there's one that turns into a carrot…" She picked one up and flicked it. It turned into a quill. "This might take some time…" she murmured.

Josiah grinned sheepishly, then began testing the wands out with her. The second one he tried turned into gelatin, and he began to question the practicality of fake wands, period.

"Dad was all up in arms about it. She got a pet goldfish at the beginning of the summer, you see, and then she stopped eating fish all together. Then dad told her eating a fish wasn't any worse than eating a chicken or a cow, so now she doesn't eat meat at all." He pursed his lips to keep from laughing at the thought, swishing a few more wands.

"This one's celery; that might be the closest thing to a carrot we're going to find, aye?"

Dan stopped waving wands and stared at Jo for a moment, blinking. "Mm…" she ended up saying noncommittally. "Yeah, I can see how that went. At least she didn't get a cow pet… right?" She said teasingly.

"Yes, that's a good one." She took the fake wand and tucked it in one of the gift boxes piled up against the closest wall. "I'll give it to her when I visit, so don't tell her yet."

Jo grinned, wiggling the gelatin wand until it returned to its solid state. "My lips are sealed, don't worry."

He held up his arm and examined his Muggle watch. "Nearly an hour past noon, now," he murmured, looking over his shoulder as though someone would come in and drag them away from each other. "You don't think your mum will… worry?" He didn't think worry was quite the word he was looking for, but it was the closest he could think of at the moment.

Dan put the box away with the rest of her purchases and brushed her hair behind her ear. "She's been worrying all morning, anyway." She tried to say it lightly, but she couldn't help feeling tense again, mostly because of Logan.

He hadn't been with their mother before. That probably meant he had met some of his friends. If he bumped into Dan and Jo while with them… She searched the street, half expecting to find them turning the corner, but there was no one familiar in sight. "I probably should go home soon, though," she admitted unwillingly.

Josiah nodded silently, signifying his acknowledgement of her situation.

"That will give me some time to start a few of these books," he murmured, giving her a lopsided smile. He hoped it would make her feel better.

"Make sure you owl me to say when you can come; mum will have a fit if she doesn't have time to clean beforehand. Or, rather, make me clean beforehand," he mumbled, motioning to his wand.

Scratching his scalp, he figured that he was out of things to say for now.

"Well, I'll see you, Dan, aye?"

Dan offered a small smile. "Yeah, well, do try to leave some learning to do at Hogwarts, alright?" She pulled him closer for a tight hug. "Sorry again…" She whispered, before letting go.

"It's a good thing you're good at charms, then. I'll send an owl as soon as possible, so your mother doesn't have to worry about it. Be safe, Jo!"