Mid morning on a hot summer's day found a bell ringing across a small town in Connecticut. The sound rang out from the top of a bell tower on a small college campus, and traveled over the many brick buildings and green fields that composed the campus proper. The ringing floated out through the newly paved streets of the town, gliding without a care over the deep dark black of the pavement. The ringing rolled out through the tree lined avenue of Inverness Lane to a well kept house wedged between the home of one of the college's fraternities and a quaint little cottage.
In this house there lived a young wizard. He was at that moment immensely enjoying the fact that he was on summer vacation from school as he rolled over in his bed to stare at the clock on his bedside table to see it read ten o'clock. The young twelve year old boy stretched a little as he debated actually clambering out of bed. He pulled himself up into a sitting position as he looked across the room.
He glanced around the room taking in everything like he did everyday. On the back of his door there sat a mirror that he glanced into, appraising his still small frame and increasingly thick mop of sandy hair. Hanging on the door knob was a smooth, and well polished leather wand holster that his parents had gotten him for his birthday. However his wand lay next to his bed with his glasses just in case he needed it in the middle of the night. Across from his bed was his desk where a computer sat, recently dusted as he had in the midst of the long summer vacation begun to use it to attempt to get a better understanding on the non-magical world he had been separated from for several months.
Next to the computer there sat several thick volumes, his old textbooks from last year that he had started to peruse just to remind himself that the past year had not been a dream. His hand came to rest on his thigh where a dark spell had hit him at the end of the year, he shook his head slightly reminding himself that it definitely had not been a dream. Draped over the back of his desk chair was his school scarf that he had never really put away despite the definite warmth of the summer months. Hanging above the desk was a small board to which he had attached several pictures that he had somehow managed to collect over the course of the year. He smiled as he did every morning as the magical pictures of his friends at school waved and smiled back at him. Next to his desk was his owl, Asimov, the large gray bird casually sleeping the day away.
Finally he turned to his closet where his cauldron sat with his quodpot horn poking up from it. Above it hung his school robes and a few sets of muggle clothing that his parents had bought for him at the end of the school year. He shook his head as he thought about how embarrassing that shopping trip had been but the young wizard had to admit that though he hadn't grown much over the year, he had grown enough that most of his old muggle clothing no longer fit.
As the young boy leaned back in his bed debating on whether or not to get up there was a loud knocking at the door, "Are you up yet squirt?" Called a voice from the other side.
The young boy groaned slightly, it was his older sister, "Yes," He called back through the door.
"Good," His sister called back.
"Why?" The young boy asked as he slowly clambered up out of bed.
There was a groan from the other side of the door, clearly his sister had thought the conversation was over. "Because Mom said I couldn't leave unless you were awake," She called back from the other side of the door, "Bye!" He heard her turn and then after a few moments the front door open and slam shut.
The young boy opened up his door and walked downstairs to make sure that his sister had locked the door when she had left. This year his sister would be a sophomore at the local high school, and she had gotten a job at some fast food restaurant at the start of the summer and the wizard had quickly learned that the job made his sister a little crazier than usual. Slowly he made his way into the kitchen to paw through the mail from the previous day, but still nothing with his name on it: William Fraser.
William was unsure when his new school letter would be coming with his list of new school supplies or the like but it was starting to kill him waiting for it. It was now July and he felt very cut off from the rest of the wizarding world. He had been exchanging letters with his friends from school but most of them were busy with family vacations now and he was completely out of contact. It was starting to make him feel like he was going crazy, like the whole wizarding world had just been some sort of vivid dream.
It didn't help that he had never had many friends in his hometown to begin with. The only friend that he had close by was Megan O'Rourke, and she was now busy with the few people she had met after she had started middle school. William had met them all once and had felt extremely uncomfortable, they all had been talking about school subjects, and when they weren't talking about history or math they had been talking about people at the school that William didn't know either. While he did miss the person who had once been his best friend, he was not sure if he wanted to put himself through the awkwardness of hanging around a bunch of people who he had nothing in common with to see her.
William sighed slumping down into a chair at the kitchen table twiddling his thumbs. As he sat there thinking about what to do, his stomach rumbled ever so slightly and he eventually got up and made himself a sandwich. Slowly he brought it up to his room where he sat down in front of the computer to comb through the bundle of muggle news sites he checked nearly everyday so that he was at least doing something with his time.
As the sun hung high in the sky, William got his wand and walked out into the backyard. While he was not allowed to actually cast any spells he was allowed to practice his wand movements and some of the more important tactics he had learned at the Dueling Club in his first year. William's Defense teacher had encouraged him very early on in the year to join the club so that he could better deal with the bullies who seemed to follow him like a plague. What William quickly discovered was that he greatly enjoyed dueling and had something of a talent for it.
Slowly he started out with his shield charms, moving through the motions several times, gesturing in several different directions as if he were being attacked from different angles. Then he started to perform the motions for jinxes, slowly thinking about the spells in his mind but not saying the words aloud. As the sun continued to progress he slowly started moving around, diving onto the ground, rolling across the grass, and jumping about. To anyone looking on it would have looked like William was some kind of mad man, but he was carefully practicing important dodge movements that he had been taught at the dueling club, along with the wand movements for counter-jinxes and hexes.
Eventually William just lay on the ground panting and sweating. The sun continued to beat down on him as he lay there staring up at the sky and wondering if there was anything else he could do. William wasn't old enough to cast spells outside of school and even if he could he lived smack dab in the middle of a muggle neighborhood, which he knew meant that even if he was allowed to cast spells normally he couldn't here without either a lot of privacy or an emergency. Slowly but surely he pulled himself up from the ground and made his way back into the house, happy to be in the shade and air conditioning of his home.
After a shower he sat down to read over more of his books from last year. He made sure that he knew all of the wand movements and had the proper pronunciations of his charms for what seemed the thousandth time when he heard the front door open, and he poked his head out of his room. Standing at the bottom of the stairs was his mother, she smiled up at him, and he called down, "Hi, Mom."
"Hello William," She said, gesturing for him to come down stairs. He came down quickly, happy to at least have someone to talk to. They slowly fell into a conversation about how their days had gone. William glossed over most of his day since it was the same as every other day; he had gotten up, practiced wand movements, and had lunch. His mother, a professor at the university, was able to tell him about her class that she was teaching that summer, several departmental meetings, discussions with grad students, and a whole number of other things that while he didn't quite understand he was still happy to hear about.
The sun continued to fall deeper into the horizon as eventually his father came home, also from a full day at the university lecturing and talking with students. Then came the family dinner when his sister got home from work reeking of hamburgers and french fries, where they all learned about her harrowing day in the food service industry in levels of detail that made William hope that he would never have to get a summer job like his sister's.
After the day finally came to a close, William sat up in his room reading a novel his father had bought him last week. Occasionally he would look up and stare out his window at the inky sky that rested over the small town where he lived. Asimov was flying around the town, hunting for mice or the like, while he sat in here wondering exactly what he would be doing tomorrow. With a sigh William Fraser closed his book, turned off his desk lamp, and crawled into bed.
He had one less day of summer vacation, which meant he was one day closer to the new school year and going back to his friends and his exciting life. It was one less day of pretending to go to some very secretive private school and one day closer to being able to proudly say he was a wizard. He smiled as he dreamed of the old growth woods around campus, and the thick ivy crawling up the school building.