My story begins in the hallowed halls of the Topanga Academy of Magic. Well, not halls exactly. TAM is in southern California. It's more like a labyrinth of courtyards and mission style buildings surrounded by pretty trees and beach views. And I guess if we're being specific I was actually in transfiguration. So technically it was the hallowed classroom of the Topanga Academy of Magic. Whatever. Our teacher was trying desperately to get a roomful of apathetic teenagers to care about the upcoming STARs, the big test that graduating seniors take to apply for jobs and stuff. Mrs. Morales was making a valiant effort, but the date was February 1, 2007 and we had bigger news to talk about.

I was sitting in the back row in the corner, my usual spot if I could get it. I like to be close to the windows. I was sort of half listening to Mrs. Morales drone on about the importance of studying while I enchanted a little star I had doodled on the corner of my notebook to dance around the page. I was thinking about adding another one so they could tango when a crumpled up piece of paper hit my temple.

I shot an irritated look at Morgan Speizer, the boy sitting next to me, but he just rolled his eyes and indicated the girl on his left. My best friend Jenna was pointing eagerly at the piece of paper that had landed next to Morgan's foot. I gave Morgan a hopeful smile, but he just looked smug and pretended not to notice. Jerk.

I weighed my options. I could try summoning it, but Mrs. Morales is really strict about unauthorized magic in her classes and I really didn't feel like getting another detention. I decided it would just have to wait.

I turned to Jenna and mouthed "Oh well!" and shrugged. I figured she would understand…Jenna's totally scared of Mrs. Morales. I was surprised to see her shake her head emphatically and point at the paper again. I looked again to see if I could subtly reach my leg out and slide it over. It was a little far.

"I can't!" I mouthed exasperatedly, but Jenna was practically bouncing out of her seat so finally I took a deep breath and slid my foot toward the crumpled ball. I was just about to get it when Morgan reached out his foot and kicked it two rows up.

I glared at him. "Jerk!" I hissed under my breath.

He just grinned all snooty and rude and made an "oops, did I do that" kind of face.

Marisa Hernandez was pretty close to the paper now; it was in the aisle next to her. I tried to get her attention, but just as I did a large foot came flying out of the other side of the aisle and sent the crumbled ball soaring up to the front by Mrs. Morales. It was Naresh Adani, Morgan's best friend laughing silently.

I looked at Jenna, her face was murderous.

I was getting frustrated, so finally I just waited till Mrs. Morales' back was to me and muttered a quiet "accio" with my wand. I caught the zooming paper just as Mrs. Morales turned around and went on with her little rant.

I tossed a triumphant glace at Morgan and opened the note. There was only one word written on the paper: Popcorn.

Popcorn is a code word. When someone wants to connect their notebook to someone else's they cast a popcorn spell so that the words pop from one book to another and then sort of burst out on the page. It's sort of like instant messaging but with paper. If you get caught doing it in class it's an automatic detention.

I was torn. On the one hand I was mildly annoyed that I had gone to all that trouble when Jenna could have just mouthed the word to me in the first place. On the other hand I was intrigued to find out what was so important that Jenna was willing to risk doing the spell in Mrs. Morales' class.

Mrs. Morales is totally the McGonagall of our school. Except younger. And prettier. And she kind of swears a lot.

When the coast was clear, I tapped my notebook with my wand and whispered "concero: Jenna".

The little blue star was still twirling blissfully around the page, but stopped abruptly and looked indignantly at the dark green ink beginning to seep over the lined page and form a single phrase:

"July 21, 2007"

At first I didn't understand. I looked at Jenna; her face was beaming. And then I got a little inkling…I…I hoped. I wasn't sure, and I didn't want to be disappointed, but I must admit that I hoped. I took a deep breath and wrote back:

"Going on vacation?"

"Nope!" was the quick reply.

My blue star looked intrigued.

"Something interesting going on that day?" I wrote causally.

"Oh yes."

"Don't tease me Jenna." I wrote, waiting anxiously for her answer. My star waited too, sensing the importance of the note on his page.

We were not disappointed. The next words that appeared below my jittery drawing were:

"Official. Release. Date. Oh…and might I add? EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"

My blue star jumped for joy and I somehow resisted the urge to do the same.

Instead I looked excitedly at Jenna and mouthed: "Oh my gosh!"

She mouthed back: "I know!"

Then I wrote the same thing in my notebook.

"Oh my gosh!"

"I know!"

"When? How?" I wrote, desperate for the details.

"This morning on her website! It said on the newspaper!" she wrote back. My star was delirious, embracing the words with its little point arms and twirling drunkenly between the lines.

Marisa kept throwing glances in my direction, dying to know what was going on. Finally I mouthed popcorn to her and went ahead and sent her the entire conversation. Her writing came in a pretty pink color.

"No way! Is there a party planned yet?"

While Jenna was writing back the sad response to that question, Naresh was leaning over the aisle to see what Marisa was so excited about. Then he popcorned Morgan, who looked annoyed and rolled his eyes again and just kept on pretending to care about the STARs. Which was a joke since Morgan is a total jock who totally has to take remedial transfiguration tutoring after school. Which I may or may not have to take with him.

By now the news was popcorning all over the classroom. Everywhere I looked people's heads were turning to look with excitement at their neighbor and then bending back down to write a fevered theory on how early release books could be procured.

My star was beside itself reading the multicolored responses that were filling my page, leaping from one line to the next.

People lack the subtlety of popcorn that Jenna and I have managed to perfect, and so it is no wonder Mrs. Morales got so mad.

"What the hell is going on in here?" she shouted suddenly in the middle of a sentence.

At least I think she was mid sentence, I was in the middle of dissecting the meaning of the word "hallows" with Jenna. My star froze. I muttered a quick "cero" to cut the connection. Unfortunately so did the rest of the class. Mrs. Morales looked like she was going to throw something.

"Would you care to tell me what is so fascinating that you all are feeling free to ignore the instructions for the single most important test of your life?" she asked in an icy voice, putting a lot of emphasis on the word ignore.

No one said anything.

"No, really, please enlighten me. True, the Sorcery Technical Application Review will determine what programs you'll get into, what jobs you'll have, how much you'll get paid for literally the rest of your lives…but what's that compared to a little bit of gossip?" Mrs. Morales was angry, but I was hoping that if no one said anything she would just yell a little more and then get on with the lesson.

"They're having a conniption because the new Harry Potter release got announced." said Morgan derisively. He's such an ass sometimes.

"Oh really Morgan? And would you care to inform me how you came across that piece of information?" she asked him nastily.

The superior smile dropped right off his face. Even if we all got detention, it would have been worth it for that moment. But she looked like she was getting ready to do just that, and it wouldn't have been that worth it…so I did the only thing I could think of.

"The Minister of Magic is keeping it secret!" I called out.

I held my breath.

Morgan held his breath.

The whole class was holding its breath.

Mrs. Morales snapped her attention over to me and…laughed.

So I laughed.

And Morgan laughed.

Then the whole class laughed.

Mrs. Morales held up her hand kind of still chuckling. "Alright, alright. Fair enough Ruby, but I think that's enough dwelling on this subject until the period ends." she eyed the class threateningly. We stopped laughing. But it was alright.

I looked at Jenna and she grinned proudly at me. Morgan looked sullen.

It was a lucky break, but I knew Mrs. Morales loves Ministry jokes. She's really political and she hates the British Minister of Magic.

The British Ministry of Magic is the butt of a lot of jokes in the Wizarding World. This is for obvious reasons if you've read the Harry Potter series; they lost a lot of credibility during Order of the Phoenix. But the main reason these days is because of the Harry Potter series.

I guess you can cut them a little slack considering the state the country was in at the time. Coming out of the worst war in the history of wars and finally being free of the worst historical baddie in…well ever, that's big. And having to go through all those people trying to sort out for good who was a death eater and who was imperioused, not to mention figuring out the final death toll…well things are bound to slip through the cracks a little. Still, you would think that if a muggle woman published a book accurately detailing the beginnings of the events that led to the current situation…the Ministry might crack down a little and figure out how that happened.

They didn't even notice.

No one did. For—get this—three years! It wasn't until book four got released that somebody finally noticed that, oh hey, our super secret history is being sold as fiction TO MUGGLES! The Ministry almost died. Every Ministry almost died. The A.C.W. (American Consulate of Wizardry) still has a case of terminal smugness. You see, it was our government that finally discovered the books…although they shouldn't really be that proud, they only figured it out because the muggles were practically screaming the name Harry Potter on every street corner waiting for Goblet of Fire to come out. (They were doing the same thing in England, but muggle observation wasn't exactly high on the "to do" list for them, they were still negotiating with the giants at the time. But the Consulate still has a "Ha ha! We found it first!" attitude.) So suddenly on top of everything else, the British Ministry had managed to miss the biggest information leak to ever hit the Wizarding World.

And nobody has let them forget it. The story got splashed all over every newspaper in every country that has newspapers. A special Wizengamot with representatives from all over the world was organized to decide what to do about the problem. The books have very specific information about British Wizardry. For example, the Philosopher's Stone gives the location of the Leaky Cauldron, and tells about platform nine and three quarters. In Chamber of Secrets, Azkaban got mentioned and that freaked everybody out even more, and everyone kept worrying that muggles would finally find where Hogwarts was.

In the end they decided that they would have to do a massive obliviations and remove the books from circulation. As soon as that decision got reached the international community exploded with protests. People picketed and made speeches about muggle rights and the freedom of speech. The ethics involved got debated for months. Then there were the groups that insisted the possibility for brain damage was too significant and that having an entire generation of mentally altered muggles was too dangerous to risk.

These were both good arguments, but the one that was the loudest and the angriest were the people who were dying for the next installment. And that number was growing by the day. You think muggles are crazy for these books? You should see wizards.

What finally stopped the arguments was the arrival of book five. Order of the Phoenix sold an estimated five million copies on its first day of release. Everyone had to admit it. There was no way they could remove the memories of five million people. It just wasn't logistically possible.

The Wizengamot held its breath trying to figure out what to do. Turned out they didn't have to do anything. Because muggles…still didn't notice us. Even after they were presented with our deepest darkest secrets (well, Europe's deepest darkest secrets, we were barely involved at all) they still thought it was just a story. How awesome is that?

The second that class ended Jenna was at my side.

"Ruby you're a genius!" she gushed, blue eyes shining. Jenna's a really good friend for boosting your self esteem.

I shook my head modestly. It wasn't even a good joke.

"Oh yeah Rube, good one." Said Morgan sarcastically.

"Thanks Morganza." I snitted, without looking at him.

"Shut up Morgan." snapped Jenna. Such a good friend.

"I wouldn't have had to say anything if you hadn't been such smart ass." I reminded him helpfully.

"You would have had to say even less if you hadn't been the one to cause the drama in the first place." He fired back self-righteously.

"Shut up Morgan." This time we said it at the same time