Ivy loved her summers with her family, her cousins and her best friend, but it was always a relief when nights began creeping in sooner and it was time to make the trip back to King's Cross Station. She sat excitedly with her trunk beside her and her raven anxiously clicking his beak, safely locked in his cage in her lap. The last day had been good. She had carefully avoided bringing school into their conversations and thus had avoided the bitter look in Gary's bright blue eyes.

As she clambered out and headed for her platform her mother hugged her fiercely and said, "Promise you'll be careful."

Having muggle parents meant that she had a somewhat easier time of downplaying how grim things truly were in the wizard community since the return of the Dark Lord, but events were transpiring even in the muggle community that her parents couldn't completely ignore. They never said outright that they knew how dangerous things were getting, but they usually didn't hold her quite so long at their farewell.

"Let's get that Dark Magic Defense score up, this year, OK? Please?" It was both joking and warmhearted, but slightly strained. It had to be frightening, knowing that the most powerful dark wizard in the world had a grudge against one of your child's classmates. That they might be in danger but not fully understanding what from.

"I will," she said, addressing them both. "I'll ask for extra lessons if I have to," she added, not saying that her last Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher had been something of a disaster and probably set her behind in lessons. With that, she turned and trotted through the barrier where a scarlet steam engine smoked pleasantly. There was the usual crowd of students and parents saying farewell, though she couldn't help but notice that all the goodbyes seemed a bit more strained and tearful, the warnings much more earnest than "Behave yourself."

Ivy squeezed past the Longbottom boy in her year who had been at the ministry last year and his fierce-looking grandmother and climbed aboard.

Where to sit had always been a bit problematic for her. Making friends had never been her strong point and probably to some extent she kept to herself out of loyalty to Gary. It wasn't so bad at school, with classes and studying and assigned partners and such, but on the Hogwarts Express, when she generally planted herself in the first available car and spent the trip reading, it could get a bit depressing.

She waved briefly to Cho Chang, a Ravenclaw girl who had helped her with her Potions homework last year and then suddenly heard, "Oy! Smitty."

"Hi, Adrian," she said, smiling in relief. A seventh year Slytherin, Adrian Pucey had been introduced to Ivy when after four lessons she still hadn't been able to get her broom to lift into her hand. Madam Hooch had introduced him as one of the best fliers in the school and after a few lessons he had her in the air at a reasonable height. She had then helped him with his assignments in Magical Portraiture and Sculpture, which he had signed up for thinking it was a soft subject, but came to struggle in. Over the years their continued bartering had bloomed into a friendship. She would tutor him in astronomy, he would take her shopping list into Diagon Alley and save her the hassle of buying her own back to school supplies. Even though she was certain he treated himself to a butterbeer or chocolate frog or two with her change and her robes never fit properly it was worth it to not have to arrange travel and escort into the shops and figuring out the exchange on pounds to galleons.

Sweaty and somewhat disheveled, she was happy not to have to drag her things further. "Have a good summer? I assume you got your parcel fine. Hey, Smudge," he said, poking a finger into the raven's cage for inspection.

"I did, thanks. How was Greece?"

"Fantastic," he said, relaxing further into his seat. A smile played over his angular face. "I apparated there no problem and got around easily. The wizards there in the old days had a life. They pretended they were gods and if muggles gave them problems they'd transfigure them into animals. Imagine."

"Ancient wizards were pretty scary," she said mildly, pulling out her sketch pad. He snorted.

"You lot are the ones that are scary. Muggles go there by plane all the time. I followed one around for a while because he had something clapped on his ears and tied to a little box. Do you know what it was? Something to play music only for him. The things they figure out how to do without magic? Mad."

She frowned a bit at the statement, but had to smile at the thought of him following a muggle around to figure out what his Walkman was. He continued with stories of the food and sculptures he had seen. It was pleasant background narration as she did more shading on one of the drawings she had been working on over the summer for class. Her hair felt like a heavy damp cloud after shuffling about in all the late summer humidity. Not for the first time she wondered if it would be more convenient to wear her hair in long braids like Angelina Johnson, a Gryffindor student who had left school last year. But without Johnson's athletic frame and perfect poise she worried that more long strands down her back would look like extra limbs on her lanky body.

He interlaced his knuckles and stretched his long, sinewy arms overhead and then cocked his head to look at her drawing.

"Are you bloody joking?" Adrian exclaimed. "That's what you're turning in as practice?"

She looked down at the picture. It was a pencils drawing of Gary. It turned side to side, blinked, rolled his neck side to side as if popping it and hitched half of its mouth up in Gary's bright half-smile. It was fairly simple, but captured his inquisitive stare and almost apologetic grin. She looked up quizzically.

"It's excellent," he said, like an accusation.

"So what's wrong with it?"

"What's wrong with it is that I've got to turn this in next to it," he grumbled, fishing out his own crumpled book. She flinched slightly at the portrait of his girlfriend. It had her dark, wavy auburn hair and violet eyes, but seemed to both smile coquettishly and sneer cruelly on different sides of her face. "It's awful."

"Well…"

"Can you help me?"

She looked at his pensive face. Adrian wasn't overly concerned with marks like she was. He wanted to play quidditch professionally and eventually coach. That was his ambition. But his mother and father, a magical historian and a ministry official, respectively, leaned on him about his academics. He did well in subjects that required application. Charms and potions he sailed by in, but areas that required studies he lagged in. He often turned to her for aid or sometimes (much to her chagrin) cheated. Perhaps there was something to the standards of the houses because though she struggled, her determined Hufflepuff nature dictated that she keep slogging forward.

"Show me your pencils," she relented, putting her drawing of Gary aside. It wasn't perfect, but it was a good showing for her. Her ambition was to have one of her portraits hanging at Hogwarts before she left school, but for now she needed her friend to not hand in this abysmal piece. He rummaged around in his trunk and produced a case of cheap pencils. "That's part of the problem. You need good instruments. Would you go to some secondhand wand shop?"

"Not likely," he said, indignantly.

"And you've got to stop thinking of using it like a quill. You use it like you would a wand. A lot of your intent comes through that way. Color, feeling and memory. Did you and Illeanna have a fight when you were making this?"

"More than a fight," he responded, narrowing his blue eyes. "We split up over the summer."

Though she felt bad, that was something of a relief. Illeanna was so lovely that Ivy had often wished to draw her herself, but she had a way of sneering any time Adrian tried to include Ivy in conversation. Or if she was in the room. Or if anyone was. Ivy handed Adrian her own pencils and ordered him to reflect realistically on their relationship and remember a good time while giving him pointers on spots that needed more shadow or more light.

"This is ridiculous. I had a perfect model and somehow she comes out looking worse than your muggle mate."

"Hey."

"Only joking. Just being prickly because I'm garbage at this and haven't figured out a way to pretend that I'm not."

"We're all good at something. I can't stay on a broom and hold a quaffle at the same time."

"Well, my uncle was sneaking and letting me practice when I was five. Up until you were eleven you lot just used them to clean house."

"Listen, Adrian Pucey," she snapped. "You need to stop with this 'you lot' nonsense. Unless an owl got the wrong address I got into Hogwarts which makes me a wizard same as you. And Gary isn't my 'muggle mate'. He is my friend. Not muggle, not wizard. Just my friend. Same as you."

Adrian had lifted his head from his sketch to listen in surprise at her brief outburst. He tilted his head back and gave her a familiar smile. His lids lowered and his lips closed it was a searching look, trying to gauge exactly how angry he was and plan his response. "I wouldn't say EXACTLY the same as me. I mean, has he ever scored 90 points by himself in a single quidditch game?"

The edges of her own mouth quirked up into a smile and she threw one of her pencils at him. With some aid his portrait of Illeanna was still pretty poor, but at least the drawing seemed to only stare coldly and roll her eyes rather than have facial spasm. Eventually they parted ways so that he could talk to some of his Quidditch teammates and she could change into her robes. She had to laugh when the sleeves went all the way past the tips of her fingers. Rolling up her sleeves, she peered out the train window to see the familiar outline of Hogwarts appearing in the distance. The loneliness, the stress seemed to ease a bit. Even though it felt more dangerous than ever it still felt like coming home.