There was another person nearby, someone who had hesitantly voiced a question. She hastily rubbed her eyes free of tears and swallowed back whatever else was threatening to burst out of her.

"Hai. Yes. I am all right." She scrambled to her feet and drew away, almost defensively. "Nathaniel, is it not? We met you at Diagon Alley yesterday."

"I...I am sorry. I did not mean to disturb your peace. Do not worry about me. I am well."

She was doing uncharacteristic babbling, her eyes deadened by unexpressed pain.

"Er.. oh..." Nathaniel characteristically stumbled over his words. She didn't look fine. She wasn't acting fine. Her mouth said one thing and her eyes another. "Ah.. yeah. Nathaniel."

The mostly black kitten rolled its eyes heavenwards.

"Shinrei, right?" he rallied briefly.

The mostly black kitten flopped down to its belly and put its paws over its eyes. He did his best to ignore it.

Ah damn it. He needed something. A sphere to run over the knuckles of his hand, soothing.

Nathaniel patted his pockets desperately. A wand. What good was a bit of bloody wood that wouldn't even make sparks.... he wanted the silver filigree ball.

"Oh bugg..." he began, and without knowing why held his right hand out, palm down.

A small 'pop'.

The silver filigreed ball snapped into existence on the ground near his boot and leapt up like a live thing into the palm of his hand. His trained reflexes didn't close his fingers about it, instead flipped and twisted so that it leapt to the back of his hand.

Then his brain caught up with his fingers.

He dropped it.

It hovered there.

He stared at it, the colour draining from his face.

A glance at Shinrei.

The kitten was purring happily.

"How did THAT happen?" he gasped eventually. "Oh damn it. Just damn it." He snatched the ball out of midair and pocketed it.

"Do you want to talk about what's bothering you?" he asked instead.

Zidane Summers had slept very soundly the night before. There were no synthetic-looking lights blinking from the distance, no smell of chlorine and unnamed chemicals. Just cool, cool wind and the smell of fall.

After breakfast, he wandered through the grounds and contemplated "transforming" again. He liked the transformations so much more now. It felt like the greatest rush one could ever dream of having.

He reached the side of the lake and found himself at a semi-secluded grove of trees. He spotted the back of a familiar-looking person. Nat. Nathaniel Greenleigh. His fellow Ravenclaw.

Zidane hastened his steps towards Nathaniel. "Hey. Nathaniel. I see I'm not the only one who likes to take a stroll in--" He stopped dead in his tracks and in his statement when he saw him talking to an exotic-looking girl he did not recognise.

Whoa. This seemed like a moment better off not interrupted by third parties like himself. Flustered, he grinned stupidly and said in an apologetic tone, "Oops. Excuse me. Sorry to barge in."

He looked at the girl and his eyes widened. Her red eyes and her damp cheeks. She had been crying. "Um. Hello. The name's Summers. Zidane Summers. Calif. U.S. of A."

Oh great. Great, great, great. Nathaniel knew exactly how the gossip machines worked. Pretty soon the word would be round that not only had he and Shinrei met by the lake but also he'd made her cry.

Perfect.

The ball in his pocket was bothering him. He'd left it on his bedside table when he'd put on his jeans this morning. It should still be there, not nestling in his pocket.

And Shinrei was terribly unhappy and Nathaniel hated to see people terribly unhappy. Hated it, because he knew what it was like to be that way.

"Uh... hi, Zidane." he half turned, including Zidane in the 'conversation'. "The lake is pleasant, I have to admit. Have you met Shinrei?" A half grin. "We only met yesterday, I have to admit."

An almost awkward moment of silence. Broken by the mostly black kitten playing with the leaves that blew in the breeze. A sudden gust of wind and the leaves leapt back at the kitten, which put his ears back and streaked up to sit on Shinrei's shoulder.

"Argh." Nathaniel said eloquently, and stepped up close to Shinrei to scoop the kitten up and toss it onto his own shoulder. "Cats. Who'd have them ARGH!" The kitten dug his claws in and looked around innocently.

"Ohayo, Zidane-san," Shinrei greeted the new boy. She remembered seeing him last night, being Sorted into Ravenclaw after a late arrival. "Welcome to Hogwarts. My name is Shinrei Hikari. I am from the north of Honshu, Nippon."

She turned to Nathaniel. "I would not mind if your feline sits on my shoulder, Nathaniel-san. I think it likes me. I have a certain...affinity with cats. My love for their kind is, as far as I know, always reciprocated."

Shinrei silently blessed the two boys for momentarily distracting her from her troubles. "What is your kitten's name, then?" she asked, holding her arms open to the black feline.

The mostly black kitten gave Nathaniel a smug look and leapt into Shinrei's arms, purring sweetly and rubbing his head against her hands.

"Cat." Nathaniel said succinctly. "I doubt he'd answer to anything I give him. And if he wants me to know his name, I'm sure he'll say something."

Suddenly dizzy. Time rushed. The world span.

An apple tree.

I give you health without any fee. This is the spell of the apple tree.

Time folded. Space ripped. Tore a bleeding wound down his mind.

Nathaniel blinked slowly.

Knowledge flowed.

He put his hand into his pocket and took out the silver filigree juggling ball.

The silver was wound around a crystal sphere, and both crystal and silver glinted in the sunlight.

Uncaring of his audience, Nathaniel let it slide from the back of one hand to the back of the other in a fluid motion and then back again.

Then it spun and danced to the tip of one finger against gravity, where it sat poised.

Waiting.

Waiting for what?

The words.

Say the right words.

What words?

Another bleeding edge in his mind.

"Sol solis." Nathaniel whispered quietly. "Somnio... somnio laetitia..?"

The silver casing to the crystal segmented and folded back neatly, and the crystal gleamed for a moment. Nathaniel looked into it and a faint smile touched his lips, a dazed look in his green eyes.

"Something to remind you of your favourite places." He held it out towards Shinrei. "I think the.. silver closes again when you put it away... um...."

Shinrei looked at the silvery object Nathaniel held out to her. "It seems to be a rather delicate item, Nathaniel-san. Perhaps we should keep it away from, um, Cat." She cast a meaningful glance at the mostly black kitten purring contentedly in her hands.

"Why don't you show it to Zidane-san instead?" she suggested with a smile at the American boy.

"Hmmm. Do you think, um, Cat will like it if we try to think up of a new name? Perhaps Cat would like something more exotic to be known by."

She was trying to change the line of conversation, steer it effectively away from her being caught crying only moments ago. She bent down towards the kitten and cooed at it affectionately.

The purring kitten slid out of Shinrei's arms and Nathaniel automatically stooped to pick the kitten up. It looked at him with slanted green eyes.

"Stalks by Night." Nathaniel said quietly, his own green eyes bearing a far away and distant expression. Then he blinked at the sphere in his hand, and the silver casing snicked back up to encase the entire ball. He pocketed it absently.

"I'll... uh... yeah." he looked from Shinrei to Zidane and back again. To Shinrei he said, "Forget it. Just... a thought."

Talk about a quick recovery, Zidane thought as he noted of the Japanese girl's rapid mood changes. It was rather admirable, maintaining poise under her very obvious early distress. It was quite obvious that Nathaniel was not the cause of her tears--she seemed to be hiding whatever was bothering her from the two of them.

He caught up with what Nathaniel and Shinrei were discussing. Something about a silver something that Nat was holding. Zidane walked closer to them and peered at the object in his fellow Ravenclaw's hands.

"What's that?" he asked in genuine curiosity. "It looks very...uh...magical. I have not read about it in 'Modern Magical Inventions' nor in 'World's Most Useful Magical Artefacts' so...what does it do, Nat?"

He glanced at Shinrei and gave her a wink. "Don't tell me it enchants girls to fall in love with poor loveless saps like ourselves."

To Zidane, he replied, "Why would I want to enchant... oh never mind. A thing of.. illusions, memories, thoughts, dreams, flights of dragons and ... and ... " Nathaniel blinked hard. "..a window to the country of the ... the...."

Bleeding edges faded, lost in normality. He blinked hard again.

"I don't know anymore." he finished lamely. "I did, but now I don't. Was that magic? Was it magical?"

He fished the ball out of his pocket and it laid serenely on the back of his hand.

Shinrei gave Zidane half a smile, the best she could muster. He had a very energetic aura about him that was almost infectious. "I am afraid those sorts of enchantment things are forbidden at Hogwarts, Zidane-san. But it would be a very interesting item indeed."

She turned her attention back to Nathaniel. This boy was comparatively more brooding and thoughtful. Right now he looked as if he was caught in figments of memory.

"Nathaniel-san?" she asked the rather misty-eyed boy. "I am not certain if that silver crystal of yours has powers that Zidane-san claims, but I have to assure you it is indeed magical. An item that is highly attuned to its owner--his feelings, thoughts and desires. It may be a repository of your dreams, or your memories. I can see it responds to you very well. Somehow a bit like the Pensieve but more...externally responsive."

She turned to Zidane. "I am certain that you may have heard about the Pensieve if you have read books on magical items, hai?"

"Uh.. excuse me, but what's a Pensieve?" Nathaniel asked her. "As to this..." A flick of his wrist and it rolled smoothly over his fingertips to his palm, another flick and it was on the back of his hand again. "... it's just a contact juggling ball. Found it in a junk shop in Angel Islington. It's just... for contact juggling..."

He tossed the kitten to his shoulder where it landed as easily as if it had been doing it for centuries, and brought his left hand up. Let the ball slide easily on the back of his left arm, and the ball carried on sliding towards his hand although his hand was rising in a graceful flourish. Against gravity, the sphere made it to the back of his hand, then flipped over his fingertips to cross his left palm. A small flick of his wrist and the sphere gravitated to the palm of his right hand and then it was back where it had begun.

"Just... sleight of hand... really..." Nathaniel shrugged and made the ball vanish somewhere in his sleeve. "Nothing magical about that, surely."

"A Pensieve is an enchanted bowl where a person's excess thoughts are stored," Zidane recited, as if he had swallowed a book. "The thoughts are siphoned from the mind and transferred in the form of silvery liquid. It's not exactly liquid or gas or anything--not //matter//--but a magical time-space substance. It's rather advanced magic, right?"

The affirmation he directed to Shinrei. She appeared to be very well read and sensitive to magic. Zidane had also felt a certain magical field around the juggling ball, something very subtly yet distinctly electric, a little like what he felt when he was in the process of "transforming."

"Listen," Zidane added, struck by sudden inspiration, "it may have started out as an ordinary thing, but maybe you did something to it along the way. Like, transferred your powers to it or something. Wizards do things like that when they create Portkeys--make magic stuff out of perfectly ordinary objects."

He ran a hand through his hair and grinned apologetically. "'Scuse me. I didn't mean to babble. I'm just excited about piecing together all the wizard stuff I read about over the summer."

"Transferred my powers to it?" Nathaniel laughed a bitter laugh. "What powers and how? So far I've shown as much ability at magic as a fish does at cycling. What I have done, I don't know how I did it, or why.... I'm a Muggle, Zidane, born and bred, and well in over my head."

***********

Anders had gone back to his house and made a half-hearted attempt to tidy up a little. (The Anders Grimalkin School of Housekeeping, Lesson # 1. When tidying, pick up pile of papers that you don't need any longer from middle of table where they have been quietly festering. Move papers to other table. Leave.)

Quickly bored with that chore, he was playing happily with the kitten when the owl arrived, sending poor Wilbur scurrying under the chair where he safely remained, hissing at the owl, which simply turned large, scornful eyes on the kitten before leaving again.

Gleefully, Anders rushed to grab his pride and joy, the Meteor Shower broomstick that he had treated himself to. He was delighted that he'd found the perfect excuse to go back up to the school and see Nimue and Kat...and perhaps even enjoy himself on the broomstick into the bargain.

He strolled leisurely up towards the castle. It was a crisp autumn day, with just the merest hint of a chill in the air. Perfect flying weather. Very little wind, not too bright...

He had a very good feeling about all this. And that in itself felt good. He was a happy man.

Raphael and Sarah exited the castle, and then he saw... The coach!

Instantly what Raphael had been thinking about was forgotten, even if the tune kept playing in his mind. Broomsticks! He'd find Zephyr later, and even if the angel talked sense... which was unlikely...

"Er..." he said, addressing Anders Grimalkin. "Er, I was wondering if you'd be up for a little bit of showing us around on broomsticks today?"

And then a thought. "Or even just opening up the broomstick shed would be useful," he added, glancing ruefully at Sarah.

Anders smiled warmly at Raphael and glanced over the boy's shoulder, giving Sarah a cheery wave.

"Yep," he said, happily. "Flying lessons all round today. And you don't need to feel that you're trying to impress me, either. I'm off to get the key from Madam Hooch, so come back out here in about half an hour or so."

With another cheery waved, he bounced off towards the castle.

What HAD happened to the angst-ridden young DADA Professor whose walk had once been so characterised by what he himself now called the Perpetual Slouch of Doom?

He had got his life back.

Raphael, conversely, was stunned. "Er..." he trailed off lamely to the bouncing professor. Well... apparently that, as it was said, was that. He spun to face Sarah. "So..." he hazarded, "what now?"

Should they... he'd been doing something before he thought about broomsticks and... Quidditch... the word rolled off his tongue... he'd been thinking about... there was something he'd been thinking about, something he had to do, something he had to remember...? So what Raphael decided to was look at Sarah for confirmation. Maybe she'd remember.

"So a little delay before we can play." said Sarah - not subject to a rhyming curse it just worked out that way.

"You'd mentioned that we had to find Zephyr - just before you and Piotr smacked into each other."

In the distance by the lakeside, she spied the bright red hair of Zidane and it appeared Nathaniel and Shinrei were with him.

"You want to see what they are up to? I haven't had a chance to thank Shinrei for my kimono. It is so neat she embroidered dragons on it!"

Raphael nodded to himself and started wandering over to the girl Shinrei and his housemate Zidane, and of course Nathaniel.

But then his attention was somewhere else. Back at the castle. In the shadows, for a second blue ice steamed and burned, and the pair of eyes closed and faded away. Zephyr was... okay, Raphael knew.

Then his eyes slipped across a few meters to the bright castle wall, out of the sunshine. On a little of it. A patch of red. His eyes moved a little more across, and unfocused for a second, for the castle was drenched in bright crimson blood... no ...flowers. All on the walls. A sea of blood flowers on one wall, growing, claws into the wall, climbing... wildflowers. Wildflowers of red climbing the wall.

He reached Shinrei, Nathaniel and Zidane, and quietly asked them all: "which of you wizarding types would know how to dry out flowers quickly? Like, with magic and all?"

Sarah had followed Raphael over to the lakeside. She curbed her natural exuberance to give the others a chance to answer him. She smiled and gave a little wave to Nathaniel and the kitten.

Shinrei's compounded pain and fear caused by Kanjou's letter and the unexpected events since yesterday all momentarily stepped aside in her concern for Nathaniel.

"Do not say that you do not have the power, Nathaniel-san," she said gently, "Hogwarts School does not make mistakes in choosing its students. We all have powers, only in varying forms, because we are all different people--individuals."

She smiled and bowed to both Sarah and another dark-haired boy whose name she did not know as they joined their group. "Good morning. It is very good to see you again, Sarah-san. I hope your summer was rewarding."

"It's good to see you again also Shinrei. Summer was cool but being back here is much, much better." she beamed a lovely smile in the direction of Nathaniel and Raphael confirming, in case any one was in doubt, her appreciation of the two boys.

"Oh, I wanted to thank you so much for the kimono, the dragons were just perfect!" she said with enthusiasm. "So, rumour mill says you're getting married in the spring to some important dude from back home. Is it true Shinrei? I guess this means you won't be dating huh?"

Sarah didn't really know the meaning of the word subtle.

"It was my pleasure making that particular kimono, Sarah-san," Shinrei replied. "Embroidering the dragons was one of the more interesting projects I have come across in my sewing."

Sarah's next question, about her upcoming marriage to Kanjou, was not quite the one she had expected from the girl. But Shinrei being as disciplined as she was, she managed to keep a straight face, without any obvious emotion.

"That is true, Sarah-san," she said simply. "My engagement to Kanjou-sama was formally agreed upon yesterday aboard the Hogwarts Express." She glanced apologetically at all her schoolmates. "The manner of informing me was rather...unexpected, causing the explosion."

Although she had an inkling of the Western idea of "dating," Shinrei chose to bypass this particular aspect of Sarah's query.

Zidane had been very taken aback by Nathaniel's outburst at being incapable of doing magic. The boy was not alone in that arena. Zidane likewise had doubts about his own "real magic" abilities; although he could throw fire with the best of them, he found it difficult trying to perform the spells he read in the books over the summer.

He was about to voice out his own doubts when Raphael and Sarah joined their little lakeside party. Raphael asked something about "drying" flowers...

Zidane turned to Raphael. "In what way would you like them, uh, dried?" he asked. Now //that// was something he could definitely do.

Raphael glanced at Sarah for a second - she kept astounding him. And... and he... he kept wondering where his hand was... A smile to Zidane and the new girl, Shinrei, wasn't it? ... and then a glance at Nathaniel.

He seemed to Raphael, to be... awkward... unpoised... or was it that he was unpoised, not Nathaniel, but him? He felt like he was floating. Nodding to Nathaniel with little expression, Raphael turned abruptly and stalked off towards the crimson castle wall.

The section of castle wall in particular had a growth of flowers on it so extreme that it was more a blanket then a mere covering, and each of the bright flowers were in full late summer bloom, splashing red across the wall. The deep red was a staining on the walls, not the vertical garden of flowers, but something else...

A figure from the shadows threw him a small leather pouch. "Thanks," was Raphael's only response.

Soon the pouch was filled with delicate petals, blood in a pouch. As he had been carefully picking flower after flower, Raphael had realised that it was calming, helping him grab reality against the flow of song that buzzed in the back of his mind. Even as he had a conversation, apparently alone by the wall and very quietly, he wasn't there enough, but now he was almost back.

After picking the rose petals. His mind black of memory, he absently added one of his tears to the crimson in the pouch. With that, he returned to the group, back across the grounds to where they were standing.

Actually managing to look directly at Sarah - and seeing Nathaniel - Raphael treated them both to a grin, and felt normal again.