by Kim Zarins
Franklin puts his arm around her and tells her she did a great job, and that’s all he has to say about the matter.
“It was good,” Bryce says. “Also, I have to say I’m really glad that the ambassador isn’t some blond Narnian dude. I mean, pretty much all the good guys in Calormen have to convert to Narnian ways. Kind of sucks.”
“Like Shylock in The Merchant of Venice,” Mari says.
“Yeah,” Bryce says, but he looks unsure what she means, probably because I wrote his Shakespeare paper for him.
“I loved Aravis,” Mouse says, drumming her jawline, “but I see what you mean.”
“The big question,” Rooster says, “is which gift really is the best. I think the horse is. I want a horse that can run over land and air and doesn’t even shit.”
People naturally pair off to tell their seatmate what they preferred.
Of course I stare at Pard, who ignores me.
Reeve mumbles, “The mirror. For a man’s use, obviously.”
He scribbles on his clipboard. Up close, I see he uses black and red pen and writes in tidy, color-coordinated columns.
“The ring,” I tell his head.
Reeve looks up, scornful. “You want to commune with lovelorn birds?”
“I want to find the healing herbs.”
Reeve’s black stare is intense. You can see the struggle he’s feeling between wanting knowledge of his enemies and wanting herbs that cure all wounds. He returns to his clipboard, grumbles at it. “We should be allowed both.”
FRANKLIN’S TALE
With only two names left, Mr. Bailey draws Franklin’s, and the popular crowd cheers.
Franklin chuckles with feigned humility. “Well, you can see how awesome my girl is. It’s hard to follow her.”
“You should tell us something about yourself,” Mouse says.
He puckers his face with concentration, probably because there are so many accomplishments and world tours to choose from, but then his face clears. “Did I tell you guys I got into Princeton?”
Everyone’s like, No way!
I know jealousy is an ugly thing, but I’m thinking of all the flawless, slightly obnoxious papers I’ve written for him. My biggest client. Now I regret writing them.
“And Mouse is going to Rutgers to be near me. Luckily for me, Mouse hasn’t been adopted by dolphins.” He clamps down on her in a squeeze.
But Mouse giggles in his clutches and says, “Aw! You’re too cute. And brilliant! Give us a story, Frankie!”
His smile is pure confidence. “I think you’ll like this one.”
My tale begins at Hogwarts—
Cheers erupt like this is the story everyone’s been waiting for, and Mouse gives her signature squee.
I stiffen. Because I wrote a Hogwarts story and sold it to him sophomore year through Cannon. It’s the only time I sold a story. It was for his final project. He got an A. The only thing I asked was that he never publish it in The Southwarks—it was just for a grade. Still, it hurt to sell it. I asked Cannon if I could just write essays after that. I was nervous confronting him. He said that was fine and not to worry about it.
Franklin laughs, but he’s holding his hands up protectively. “Whoa! I’m not J. K. Rowling—time to lower the expectations!”
Please, let it not be my story. It’s one thing to know a teacher thinks he’s a great writer and for me to help launch him to Princeton. It’s another to see all these guys leaning in to hear him tell the story I wrote. It’s like when Harry catches Mundungus nicking Sirius’s stuff and can’t do anything about it—except I sold it. It’s my fault.
A fifth-year Slytherin watched hungrily as the owls streamed in at breakfast. It was spring, and he just needed to hold on a little longer before he could see Dori for the whole summer long. These letters were all he had in the meantime. When he was lucky enough to get one.
He prodded the strip of bacon he’d saved to offer his owl Perimene, but she didn’t come. Not today, then. He was stupid to hope for a response so quickly. It’s just that Dori’s last letter was so . . . promising. He couldn’t pull it out here at breakfast, of course, but he tuned out the racket of banter and cutlery and ran over the memorized words in her letter for the millionth time.
Oh, Aurie,
I loved the flower you sent me—it glows in the dark! I keep it on my pillow at night. Beautiful. How does it live on this little vial of stuff? You make me wish that I was a witch and could go to Hogwarts with you and Gus. You must have so many adventures.
Things here in the ordinary world are fine. The performance went fine. I just . . . Don’t get me wrong, I love the cello. But sometimes I wish I could leave it all behind. Gus told me he was thinking of helping with dragon research when he graduates, and just thinking of Gus showing me nests of dragons and you showing me where the moon-phase flowers grow . . . if either could ever happen . . . it just makes my world so small, when yours is so big. You’re so lucky, living in two worlds, but I don’t know why you even bother with mine.
I miss you both. Gus sent me a picture of him on his broom. What a great Quidditch season it’s been for him! He has such a cheeky wink, don’t you think? And while I love the flowers you send in every letter, why won’t you include your picture? Here’s mine. It isn’t very good, I know, and it doesn’t move with magic. But now you have no excuse!
Love,
Dori
How wrong she was—her photo was absolute magic, even if it didn’t move. He was the one who kept moving multiple times a day to gaze at it just one more time before he’d tuck it under his pillow or in a pocket. And then he’d take it out again.
He sighed. Someone looked his way, but went back to chatting with his friends. Aurelius didn’t have friends at Hogwarts, but that was all right. Dori was all that mattered. But she wanted his picture! That could never happen. He was about as good at smiling for photographs as he was at making friends. He suspected the two were closely related.
But that letter . . . She kept his flower on her pillow. She missed him. She signed her letter “love,” which reduced him to putting his hand on his heart and sighing every time he visualized it on the page. He had written back with excuses about the photo. He’d see her soon after his O.W.L.s, anyway. He said he’d go hiking with her and show her wildflowers. “I’ll show thee all the qualities of the isle,” he wrote, echoing Shakespeare’s Tempest, which her literature class was reading—how amazing to study poems and plays in school. And as usual, he included another flower, and a poem. He wrote, “Your letter had the words ‘beautiful’ and ‘night,’ so I thought you might like Byron’s ‘She walks in beauty like the night’ this time, as mood music . . . to enjoy with your flower.” He signed his letter “love,” but daringly left out the comma, which turned the words into a plea. Love Aurie.
It all sounded so romantic and rapturous, writing all that, imagining her reading love poetry in bed with his flower on her pillow, and he sent the letter off with Perimene, his feelings literally taking wing, soaring to her.
He’d been a nervous wreck ever since.
Briony gasps. “This is really good. Franklin, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Mouse laughs. “He’s such a romantic.”
Franklin smiles. “I’m glad you like it.”
And I die a little more with every word, because every word is mine. Or was.
So Professor McGonagall was teaching transformations to the fifth-year wizards and witches, all Slytherins and Gryffindors. There was a knock at the door, and she had the students work in pairs while she had a brief conference with Professor Snape.
“Get your nose out of that book or I’ll charm your face into it once and for all,” snapped Aurelius’s partner, Jeremy. Most of the Slytherins tolerated him as a hopeless bookworm, a fluke who really belonged in Ravenclaw. Aurelius reluctantly pushed the bulging textbook he’d been reading under his elbow. It was hard to concentrate on transforming a bottle into a bird when his mind wanted to stay lost i
n the words he’d been reading.
Meanwhile, the Gryffindors were goofing off and getting away with it, as usual.
“I can show you transformation.” His archenemy showed a picture to his friends. “See if that doesn’t transform you in all the right places.”
A Gryffindor girl spun around in time to snatch the picture. “Gus, you pig—wait until I tell Sylvie!” But she didn’t look too angry. Gus had a bad-boy charm that seemed to have all the girls after him. Gus lunged after the picture, and it fell in swoops into the aisle at Aurelius’s feet.
The picture he’d been waving around like a trophy was Dori’s. Aurelius stood up so fast, the bench toppled backward, Jeremy with it. His wand was out and the transfiguration spell rushed from his lips. Now a raven, Gus squawked angrily.
The Gryffindors roared and the scene quickly turned into a hexing free-for-all. One of Gus’s friends cast a spell that Aurelius blocked with his left hand, which instantly became webbed like a seal’s, though it seemed to be a hex involving slime rather than human Transfiguration. Gus’s other friend cast the pins-and-needles curse, and Aurelius fell to the floor in pain all over.
He heard shouts and then, finally, the pain eased off. Aurelius tested his limbs. Snape stood over him.
McGonagall’s voice was harder than Aurelius had ever heard. “Aurelius, when did you learn human Transfiguration, and how dare you try it on a student unsupervised? Twenty points from Slytherin. And, Leo, I saw you perform the pins-and-needles hex. That’s unacceptable. Twenty points from Gryffindor.”
Then the chorus of other Gryffindors clamored in Gus’s defense.
“Aurelius started it, Professor.”
“Gus was minding his own business.”
“It came from nowhere.”
“Silence, everyone!” thundered McGonagall.
Snape screwed up his mouth like he’d tasted something foul. “I’ll leave that miscreant in your hands. Meanwhile, I need a word with Aurelius. Come, boy.”
He got up on legs still weak from lack of blood and would have fallen without Snape catching his arm, which still felt like it wasn’t his arm. They made their way down the hall, then down the stairs.
He waved his flipper. “Shouldn’t I go to Madam Pomfrey’s?”
“Not yet,” Snape replied, swinging open the dungeon door of his office.
Aurelius looked around the office he knew well from so many detentions.
Most of the detentions were for unauthorized reading: in class; outside, at Quidditch matches, which Snape sometimes required him to attend; in the library, because he read the wrong books there. Snape was particularly furious when Aurelius was caught writing bits of rhyme. Snape gave up long ago detracting points from Slytherin. It only turned the House against the boy, who retreated even more desperately to his world of words.
By force of habit, Aurelius dipped his finger in a vase holding one of Snape’s small selections of plants, all of them magical and most needing no soil to live, just living off icy-hot tinctures. Aurelius had stolen cuttings from some of these plants and bred his own garden in his room.
Aurelius liked detention. It gave him an excuse not to have plans on Hogsmeade evenings, or Saturday nights, or Quidditch matches and post-match parties, and all the other social events. Not that anyone asked him what he was up to on a Friday night.
“Sit,” Snape said when he saw the boy move to the tray of dirty vials needing washing, and the boy’s face fell. “I want to hear what happened.”
He didn’t dare look in the eyes of his Head of House, a skilled Legilimens. His father, his classmates, and everyone else, cast Aurelius withering looks of disapproval but couldn’t read whatever went on in Aurelius’s head, and Aurelius liked it that way.
“Maybe I’m finally showing Slytherin spirit,” he offered, unconvincing even to himself. “You know, defying Gryffindor.”
Snape’s stony face remained unreadable. “Let’s start at the beginning. First, during Professor McGonagall’s class, you were perusing this little gem.”
Pulling the transformation book from Aurelius’s book bag, Snape yanked out the book hidden inside and examined it with a contemptuous lift of one eyebrow. The book was called Immortal Sonnets, but the tattered copy appeared to be at death’s door, and several pages fell loose in Snape’s hand.
“Sonnets,” Snape spat, literally, on the final s. His voice dripped with scorn. “I’m not sure whether I should be more disgusted by the sonnets themselves or the outlandish claim that they’re immortal.”
“I think it just means they’re really, really good.”
“Enough!” Snape made a strangled sound and wiped his face. “Such a waste of talent. I saw how you transfigured Arveragus . . . that was N.E.W.T. level work, far beyond your coursework. . . .”
He sat bolt upright. “So, that’s it. You sneaked an entire Muggle library into Hogwarts through transformation.”
Aurelius squirmed eyes down with his hands in his lap. You can fit heaps of books in your luggage if you turn them into cotton balls. And his crime was a misdemeanor in both worlds. He’d stolen from a Muggle library, or borrowed on his own terms. He’d bring the books back when he was finished with them.
Snape’s oily black hair curtained his face as he leaned forward. “Why? We have the best library at Hogwarts.”
“Yes, sir. It’s terrific. It’s how I read up on transfiguration in advance. The collection is a little lacking in poetry, though.”
Snape almost snarled. “You should be writing spells, not narcissistic emotional reflections.”
For once, Aurelius talked back. “You’ve heard of Sonnets of a Sorcerer, that book tricking people to speak in limericks, as if sonnets had anything to do with limericks? Real sonnets aren’t a trick. Real sonnets are our deepest feelings distilled into . . . perfection, captured on a page, forever alive and able to connect with anyone caring to read them. They’re magic. They are. I want to read words that have that power. I want to write words with that power. Even to write just one poem like those. Just one.”
“Then write the damn thing and be done with it!” Snape said.
“It’s not like that. It might take my whole life and hundreds of failures. Thousands.”
Snape angrily got up and shoved the copy of Immortal Sonnets, with all its loose pages flopping out, into a drawer. So now his book was confiscated too. “We’ll leave this topic aside for a moment. Now, explain yourself. Why Arveragus? To clarify, I can think of many reasons to despise Arveragus. But I’m curious what your reasons are.”
Aurelius shrugged, like it didn’t matter. “Gus is my neighbor, back home . . . you know, among Muggles. We’ve never got on well.”
Snape raised an eyebrow. “And the photo? Who is she?”
Aurelius flushed. “A neighbor.” Then Aurelius realized, it’s time to tell him. It would distract him from this sensitive topic. And he’d decided this was what he wanted. “Sir, I have some news. I’ve decided not to come back in the fall. I’m going to live with the Muggles permanently.”
Snape went white with anger. “Not continuing? Are you mad? Look, just finish up and then ruin the rest of your life. I cannot allow—”
Then he stopped, and Aurelius didn’t like the look dawning on Snape’s face. “So that’s it. Love. Rivalry.”
It was humiliating to have his heart dissected this way. “Professor, I can’t talk about this.”
Snape’s eyes narrowed, the tone dripping with smiling pessimism. “Whom does she favor?”
Technically, Aurelius didn’t know. There was a chance she’d favor him. He wasn’t handsome, or popular, or athletic, but he listened to her, he wrote her back with enthusiasm, if not as much wit as she deserved, and he listened to her cello and knew what music meant to her. Would it be enough? It had to be.
The professor seemed to see Aurelius’s thoughts. Snape frowned like he could see the boy’s rejection as plainly as the nose on Aurelius’s very plain face, like he knew Aurelius would never be
loved by anyone, ever. A bit pathetic when Aurelius spent so much time reading and writing love poetry.
“Stop!” Reeve thunders, aiming his red pen at Franklin and looming over the back of his seat.
Franklin looks up from his lap, eyes bugging.
Reeve chuckles. “You were reading your phone, Franklin. Disqualified!” I never dreamed that Reeve would suddenly appear as my unwitting knight in shining armor. I almost love him.
“I wasn’t,” Franklin snaps in disgust, like, How dare you?
Of course everyone is furious at Reeve, even if people in the back can probably see the phone in Franklin’s lap.
“Shut up, Reeve,” Rooster says. “You’re just jealous.”
Reeve sneers. “Why would I be jealous of a cheater? If it’s your story, and you aren’t reading it, tell me, Franklin, how does one combat Legilimency? Hmm?”
I can almost see the word “Occlumency” hover over the head of every fan of Harry Potter on this bus—including Reeve. I had no idea he was a fan. I always figured he read books like Crime and Punishment, because he liked the word “punishment” in the title.
Mouse tries to mouth the answer, but Franklin ignores her. His scowl shows all his bottom teeth. “Jesus, Reeve. I hardly need to take a pop quiz from you. Can I go on, or do we have to stop for an interrogation?”
“Couldn’t be more obvious,” Reeve mutters, while everyone shouts him down so Franklin can continue.
After taking his O.W.L.s, he moved back to his Muggle address. When he finally got up the courage, he phoned her.
“You’re back, too! Aurie, I have to see you. I have big news. Something important.”
In twenty minutes, she was in his arms.
Then, clutching both his hands, she pulled back with a beaming face. “I have great news: Gus asked me out! Can you believe it?”
Aurelius, who’d said his good-byes at Hogwarts, confronted his angry father, and committed to the Muggle world, gaped for half a minute.
“You . . . really?” he heard himself ask.
She laughed, but an hour later she put her arm around his shoulders. “Aurie, I know what’s eating you up.”