Trinity

Chapter 7

Sarah

"So what do you think you'll be getting for your birthday?"

I looked up from my Astronomy homework at Miriam's question. I had a three-dimensional, fully-working model of the solar system, borrowed from the school Astronomy teacher, set up on one of the low tables that populated the Atitjere Common Room, and was currently studying the position of Jupiter. Miriam had a thick book open across her lap, her quill stuck behind her ear. A roll of parchment rested on the arm of the chair she had seated herself in.

"Who told you it was my birthday soon?" I asked, more than a little suspicious. "Because I certainly didn't."

"Taylor did," Miriam replied. "It's a bit strange, don't you think - the three of us sharing a birthday, I mean."

"I wouldn't say it's strange," I said, recalling the sibling bond that Taylor and I shared.

"So what did you ask for?"

"Treacle toffee," I replied immediately. "I haven't had any in months. I wouldn't mind some of my mum's curry either; I've really missed it. Though I daresay I'll get quite a few things - if I was still in England I'd be of age next week."

"I asked my parents for a new pair of Powerball gloves," Miriam said. "Mine are just about falling apart." She put down her book and stood up. "Want to see what I got Taylor?"

"Yeah, sure," I replied. "Then I'll show you what I got him."

"Deal." Miriam walked off to the girls' staircase and took the stairs two at a time, returning about five minutes later with a wooden box. "It's in here," she said. She nudged the model aside and set the box on the table, and sat down on the floor beside me. "I bought it last month, on the first open weekend."

"So that's what you went back for!" I remembered.

"Well, I couldn't let him see it, could I?" she replied. She opened the box and lifted out two things - a quill and a leather-bound book. "It's a musician's Quick Quotes Quill," she explained. "Seth told me how he writes his music, and I thought he might like something like this. It might encourage him to take his music a little more seriously - you saw him performing during our first weekend here, right?" I nodded. "So you'd know as well as I do that he is quite good at it."

"How does it work?" I asked.

"I won't set it up now, but see this book?" She tapped the cover of the book, and I nodded. "It's enchanted - no matter how many songs he writes, he will never run out of pages. Anyway, you play whatever instrument you use to write your music near the Quill, in Taylor's case his guitar, and it writes down the notes for you. It's also self-correcting. Any sane musician in our world uses them; it's a lot less time-consuming."

"It's very practical," I said, and Miriam grinned.

"I thought you'd say that." She packed Taylor's present away in its box, closed the lid and set it down on the floor. "All right, your turn."

"Are you sure you want to see it?" I asked nervously; compared to what Miriam had bought, my gift to my 'new' brother paled considerably.

"Yes," Miriam replied, sounding quite sure of herself. "Come on, show me. I promise I won't laugh."

"Well, if you're absolutely sure..." I got to my feet and headed up to the Grade Eleven girls' dormitory, over to my desk. I pulled open the drawer and rummaged around, shifting spare quills, unused rolls of parchment and sealed inkbottles out of their previous positions, and found the loosely wrapped parcel that contained Taylor's birthday present. Miriam's was hidden in a separate drawer of my desk, and I had absolutely no intention of taking it out to wrap it until I was sure I could do so without being disturbed.

Miriam looked expectantly up at me as I returned downstairs and sat back down on the floor. "So what is it?" she asked, sounding slightly impatient.

I unwrapped the parcel and opened the box, and lifted out two things - a mid-sized animated model of a Chinese Fireball dragon, and a copy of the book Dragon Species of Great Britain and Ireland. "I know he likes dragons, so..." I said by way of an explanation, shrugging.

"I think it's really cool," Miriam said. "He'll love it." She gave me a smile, then stood up, picking up her present to Taylor and tucking it under her arm; the hem of her robes swirled around her ankles as she headed toward the dormitory stairs. "I'll see you at dinner, okay?" she called back over her shoulder.

After I finished my Astronomy homework, I wandered out to the back of the school, finding Taylor sitting on the banks of the school lake, trousers rolled up to his knees, skipping stones across the calm surface. There was a light breeze blowing, one that carried the proclamation that autumn was on the way. I shivered slightly and hurried over to where he was sitting.

"Hey sis," he said absently as I sat down beside him. "What's up?"

"I think it's about time we told her."

He cursed as the stone he had just tossed sank below the surface of the lake. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

"Miriam. It's our birthday next week, remember? And you told me last week that we'd tell her about us soon."

"Oh, right," he said. "So how are we supposed to do that?" I merely stared at him, one eyebrow raised. "Stop staring at me like that; you're creeping me out..."

"The photograph, you idiot! If I'm right, like I know I am, Miriam will have the third part of the photograph with her." I pulled a handful of grass out of the ground. "And then...it's just a matter of convincing her that we aren't totally crazy."

Taylor snorted. "I'd say we're going to need all the luck we can get with that. I'm pretty sure she thinks we're off our rockers."

"Yeah, well..." I shrugged and looked out across the lake.

It really was hard to believe that I'd only been at the Academy for little more than a month - it felt like I had been a student for years. Southern Cross Academy had something that Hogwarts didn't. It felt more...alive was probably the best word to describe it. Being an elemental was something to be celebrated, rather than hidden away. And I was making friends for the first time in years - I was thankful for that at least.

Quite a bit had happened in the past few weeks. After Taylor had copped a fist to the face during Atitjere and Nyapari's first game of the Powerball season, Atitjere had gone on to win twenty-five points to ten. We had had our first tests in Astronomy, Potions and Transfiguration at the end of February, and I had passed all three with flying colours. I wasn't exactly surprised, being that I had already studied the material back home, but it was nice to know that I was up there with my foreign counterparts. Taylor in turn had done similarly well in his History of Magic, Ancient Runes and Arithmancy tests. As a result, the two of us were starting to build a reputation as two of the more academically gifted students in the whole Academy. There was something to be said, therefore, about having to take a class twice, especially during the same academic year.

"So what did you get Miriam?" I asked. "For her birthday, I mean."

"Well..." He shifted in place and skipped another stone across the lake. "What I wanted to get for her, I would have had to order it from Los Angeles, and I didn't want to risk the owl ditching in the Pacific. I was going to get her a United States national team shirt. So I got her a great big box of candy instead. Ordered it from Sydney and everything."

"You couldn't have asked your parents to send it by Muggle post?" I asked, referring to his intended gift.

"I very much doubt the Muggle postal service here in Australia delivers to Larapinta Square, or even to the Academy," Taylor said evenly. "Besides, I'm not even sure if my mother or my father would be able to work out how to send a parcel the Muggle way. I daresay not even Elissa would be able to figure that out yet."

"And you do?"

"Of course I do. I've had a summer job at an aquarium in San Diego every summer since I was fourteen. Lets me practice my powers. And it's given me a fairly good idea of how the Muggle world works. As long as I don't pull my wand out when my co-workers are around, nobody's any the wiser."

I nodded, understanding somewhat. "Well, I got her some jewellery - I bought it on the weekend. Dragonstar Designs has some really lovely pieces in their store."

We lapsed into a comfortable silence, one broken only by the sound of splashing water as Taylor sent stone after stone skipping across the lake's surface. Not five minutes later, the bell rang to signal the end of free time, and the two of us rose to our feet.

"We need to tell her soon," I said as we headed back inside. "She's not going to like the fact that she's been kept in the dark, and if we leave it any longer it'll just make it worse."

We got our chance less than one week later.

The three of us - that is, Miriam, Taylor and I - all had a free period on Tuesdays after lunch. Coincidentally enough, our birthday this year fell on a Tuesday. That morning, Miriam had given me a writing set, including a bowerbird feather quill; Taylor seemed to have gone the 'safe' route, and had given me a pair of earrings and a necklace, both of which were set with opals. I had the sneaking suspicion that Miriam had had a hand in that particular gift. I had received from my family the treacle toffee that I had been craving, along with a selection of Honeydukes' finest sweets (which I suspected Grant and Maggie had had a hand in).

But the best gift, in my opinion, came from the Malfoys - a new cloak and scarf, the latter of which had been knitted from cashmere, both of which had been dyed a rich midnight blue. It really was a pity that it was still a little too warm to wear them. To me, it meant more than anything to know that, even though I was no longer in a relationship with the Malfoy heir, Narcissa still thought of me as highly as she did. Though I supposed the letter she had sent to me soon after my arrival at the Academy should have pointed that out to me. I had resolved to write a thank you note and send it off with Ariadne, who my parents had sent to me with my birthday gifts, the first chance I got.

"Miriam, can we talk to you?" Taylor asked. We'd headed directly for the library as soon as the bell had rung to signal the end of lunch, our books and bags in tow, and had taken over one of the tables nearest to the back window.

Miriam looked up from what I guessed to be her History of Magic project. Thick, leather-bound books were stacked on the table around where she sat, and she had a spare quill stuck behind her left ear, anchoring her hair in place. "Yeah, sure," she said, sounding somewhat distracted. "What about?"

"Sarah and I...I'm afraid we haven't been entirely truthful with you."

Miriam raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You remember how Kali asked us in Sydney if we were related, because we looked alike, and I said that we weren't?" I said, answering her question with one of her own. She nodded. "And then you said the same thing to Taylor when we were in Adelaide." She nodded again. "Well..." I elbowed Taylor sharply, and he pulled the photograph that we had partially put back together on our first night in Australia from his robes. He put it on the table so that Miriam could see it.

Miriam studied the photograph for a little while, and then looked at us. I could see recognition in her eyes. "You're twins," she whispered.

"Not quite," Taylor said. "This is going to sound a little strange, but...what's your middle name?"

"Marie," Miriam replied. "Why?"

"We have reason to believe that you're our sister," I said. "Our triplet, actually." I took a deep breath. "I'm a Precognitionist, and when I had my preliminary meeting with my trainer, she had me see to the upper limit of my range, if you will. At the time, it was six weeks, and when I went to that meeting, six weeks from then was today. Our birthday." I tapped the photograph with my right index finger. "I saw this photograph as it used to be - whole, instead of three parts, with all our names written on the back." I paused. "I am never wrong, Miriam. Never. Either I was hallucinating six weeks ago, or you have the last part of this photograph hidden away somewhere."

Miriam said nothing for some time. Then she stuck a hand inside her robes, fished around for a few seconds, and pulled out a faded photograph. She lay it on the table, and I lined it up with the photograph of Taylor and I.

For the barest of seconds, nothing happened. And then, just as I went to prod the pieces with my wand, the smallest of blue sparks jumped from the edge of one piece to the other. Pretty soon, more sparks had erupted, and were dancing along the rapidly sealing seam. The whole 'process' took less than a minute.

I picked up the newly recreated photograph and turned it over. Written there on the back, in an unfamiliar hand, were three names and a date - the same ones I had seen in my vision. Wordlessly, I held it up for Miriam to see.

"Oh my God," Miriam whispered. She reached out to the photograph and touched it, her hand shaking.

"I think we need to see Mrs. Chatham," Taylor said. "Now."

* * *

Taylor

Mrs. Chatham took our news better than I thought she would. She sat behind her desk as Sarah recounted the whole tale, starting from when she and I met in Los Angeles, not interrupting once. Only when Sarah had finished talking did she speak.

"How long have the three of you known?"

"Sarah and I have only known for just under two months," I replied. "Miriam found out this morning."

"And yet neither of you saw fit to notify anyone?"

"We wanted to wait until we had completely come to terms with it, ma'am," I replied.

Mrs. Chatham eyed us silently. "I see," she said finally. "Well, I must admit, this is quite unusual. I will need to speak with the school board, but until then the three of you should all be heading off to your next class."

"Yes, Mrs. Chatham," the three of us chorused, before leaving the office.

"I can't believe it," Miriam said as we walked down the corridor. She shook her head in what I guessed to be disbelief. "All this time, and I never even knew..." She stopped walking and turned around. "Why didn't you ever tell me?" she asked.

"We didn't even know ourselves to begin with!" I shot back. "We only realised after she" I nodded to Sarah "had that vision of hers! And then we had to figure out how we were going to tell you!"

"Merlin, no need to go off at me," Miriam said sourly.

"Sorry."

She nodded. "I really am glad that I came back this year. I mean, being made vice-captain was part of it, but if I'd decided to blow off school..." She looked up at me and smiled. "I've got a brother," she said softly. "One who's just as crazy about Powerball as I am."

"So are we going to tell anyone else?" Sarah asked as we returned to the library to collect our things.

"Let's just keep it to ourselves for now. But I'm going to want my parents to know about this when I go home for Easter break," Miriam replied. Her long blonde plait swung down across her back as she piled her textbooks into her backpack. "And if you two come with me, you can help me tell her." She buckled her backpack closed and swung it onto her back.

"That's fair," I agreed. I glanced at my watch and started gathering my own books. I was going to be late for Arithmancy if I wasn't careful. "I'll see you guys after school," I said as I stuffed book after book into my backpack, before buckling it closed and pelting out of the library.

* * *

That Saturday night, Atitjere House was the scene of one hell of a party. Owls had been flying back and forth from the upper tower windows all week, returning each time with a mysterious package clasped in their talons. It set me to thinking why the owls weren't being sent from the school Owlery, as they usually were. And at the end of the week, I found out why.

A table had been set up against the wall nearest the common room fireplace and stacked with bottles of pale green liquid, with another table stacked with dark red-tinted glass bottles. A third table, this one stacked with glasses, a tall bottle of water, a small glass bowl of sugar cubes and what looked suspiciously like a spatula, had been slotted in between the other two tables. The usual couches and low tables had been cleared away, and a large dark blue rug had been spread over the polished wooden floor.

"What's going on?" I asked. One of the Grade Twelve students - I was pretty sure that her name was Lynden Haigh - looked up from her current task of setting out cushions around the edge of the floor rug.

"We're having a party tonight," she explained. She pushed a few locks of dark hair behind her ears. "Usually we leave it until next week, but nobody in Atitjere has birthdays now until June. So we moved it forward a week."

"Oh..." I nodded. "Is there anything you want me to do?"

"No, not unless you know where the kitchens are." I shook my head. "No, I didn't think so. All you need to do is have fun for the next few hours. We don't usually kick off the festivities until around eight-thirty."

I was rather tempted to ask what she meant by 'festivities', but I didn't particularly want to risk being hexed six ways till Sunday. Instead, I nodded again, and hurried from the common room out into the corridor.

At dinner, excited murmurs travelled up and down Atitjere table between the senior students. The younger students either ignored the chatter or looked on in either bewilderment - in the case of the Grade Seven students - or sheer jealousy. I concentrated on my dinner while Sarah quizzed Miriam about that night's party - or tried to, at least.

"You're not getting a thing out of me," Miriam said stubbornly.

"Because you don't know what's going on?"

"Of course I know. Well," Miriam allowed, "I do know that it involves a decent amount of alcohol, so we'll be nicely buzzed by the time we head off to bed, but outside of that...there's not much I can tell you without giving it away."

"We'll find out in a few hours, Sarah," I said. "Just be patient, all right?"

"Oh, fine," Sarah said, sounding miffed. "I suppose I can wait until then."

"I'll tell you this much, though," Miriam said as she started on a second helping of shepherd's pie. "Our House's parties are legendary. And I can't tell you anything else, otherwise I'll be hexed into next month."

It wasn't very long before I found out just what Miriam meant by legendary. The two senior classes of Atitjere House re-entered the common room just before eight-thirty - the lower classes had been banished to the library - and settled down on the rug. Three of the Grade Twelve students carried the tables I had seen earlier into the centre of the circle and set out bottles and glasses, before taking the tables back to their previous positions.

"What is that exactly?" Sarah asked, pointing at the bottles of green liquid.

"That, my friend..." Lynden reached for one of the bottles and held it up. "This is la fée verte. In English, the green fairy, or absinthe." She picked up one of the dark red bottles. "And this is firewhiskey. She put the bottles back down in their respective places. "We are all going to get plastered first, and then the fun can begin." She looked at Dominic. "Dom, you have the honour of picking our first victim."

First victim? the ever-present voice in the back of my head repeated worriedly.

Dominic stood up and started to walk slowly around the circle, passing behind each of my classmates. Every few steps, he would place his right hand on someone's head, startling them, before continuing on his 'rounds'. Finally, I felt a hand on my head, and a tugging on my rat tail. "You're it," Dominic said lightly.

I let out a melodramatic groan, and everyone laughed. "All right, I'm your victim, I suppose."

"Which one do you want first?" Lynden asked, hand poised to take up one of the bottles.

"Absinthe," I replied without hesitation; I'd always wanted to try it, and it seemed that tonight I was getting my chance.

"Absinthe it is." Lynden looked up at Dominic and winked, before moving into action. When she was finished her preparations, she handed me a glass of pale green liquid. "There you are," she said, sounding vaguely proud of herself.

Here goes nothing... I gave her a small smile, then took a small sip of my drink. It tasted different to anything I'd ever tried before, but it wasn't unpleasant. "Not bad," I said.

It wasn't long before everyone else had a glass of absinthe or a bottle of firewhiskey in hand - I had finished my glass of absinthe, and was currently working my way through my first bottle of firewhiskey. I decided that I liked firewhiskey quite a bit better than I did absinthe, and quickly made short work of it.

"Right, now that we're all nicely relaxed," Dominic said as Lynden set a large platter of what looked like suspiciously like chocolate fudge brownies in the middle of the circle, "we can really have some fun. We are going to play truth or dare."

"That's a kid's game," one of the Grade Twelves said scornfully.

"That may be so, but there's no harm in acting like a kid every so often," Lynden said. "Dig in, everyone - there's plenty of grog and brownies to go around."

I examined my brownie when I had taken one - it looked innocuous enough, but I knew there had to be something else to it. Australian witches and wizards were internationally famous - or as some said, infamous - for being a nation of potheads and boozers. The hamlet of Nimbin, in the north of the state of New South Wales, was a mixed Muggle-wizarding town, and according to Miriam it was the undisputed marijuana capital of Australia. The national distributor of magical marijuana, which was far more potent than Muggle marijuana, was based there. And unless I was very much mistaken, that was one of the ingredients in these brownies.

"Seth," Lynden said to begin with - Miriam had said something about it being 'tradition' for the Grade Twelves to start the game off by questioning a Grade Eleven student. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth," Seth said immediately.

"Do you have a tattoo?"

"Yep." Seth shifted around so that he had his back to us, and pulled off his shirt. There on his bare back, just under his right shoulder blade, was a moving image of a black scorpion, its stinger raised. "Got it done last year for my sixteenth." He pulled his shirt back on and shuffled back around. "Hmm...Sirena, truth or dare?"

"Truth," a long-legged Grade Twelve student replied; she had long dark blonde hair cascading down her back.

"What's your sexual preference?"

Sirena spat out a mouthful of firewhiskey. "I beg your pardon?"

"You heard me. Everyone's been wondering, now spill. And this is magical truth or dare, remember."

Sirena shrugged. "Try-sexual." Then she grinned devilishly. "In other words, I'll try anything once. I fucked a vampire while I was in Transylvania last summer."

"TMI!" almost everyone shouted.

"But being serious," Sirena said, "I'm bi."

"You don't need to go into so much detail, Ren," Lynden said.

Sirena ignored her, and then locked her gaze onto me. "Taylor, was it?" she asked, and I nodded. "Truth or dare?"

I swallowed. "Truth," I said finally.

"What is the best prank you've pulled?"

I finished off my brownie and thought for a little while. "It was during my freshman year at Amargosa Valley - my friend Matt, his younger brother Zac, and I rigged up a jinx in the doorway of the Potions laboratory. The whole point of the jinx was to turn someone's clothes invisible. It worked rather well, and the three of us got in a shitload of trouble because of it." I shrugged. "Wasn't all bad though. That was how I met my girlfriend."

As the night wore on, the questions asked and the dares performed progressively got dirtier, fuelled by liberal quantities of alcohol and pot brownies. By the time we all picked ourselves up off of the floor and wandered upstairs to bed, I was rather tipsy and nicely buzzed - and unless I missed my guess, the Grade Eleven and Twelve dormitories were going to be hangover central the next morning.

One thing was for sure, however. It had been one hell of a night - and the best birthday party ever.

* * *

Miriam

"Mum, are you sure you and Dad are okay with this?"

My mother let out an exasperated sigh. "Miriam, how many times do I have to tell you that we are fine with having your friends stay over?"

I turned slightly away from the public telephone that I was using and looked over at Taylor and Sarah, who were occupying themselves kicking what looked like a small, striped beanbag back and forth - Taylor had brought it with him from America, and had called it a 'hacky sack'. Term One had ended only days earlier, and we had two glorious weeks of Easter break stretching out before us.

"Okay, I just wanted to make sure."

"Where are you?"

"Central Station. Don't worry about picking us up - we'll take a taxi or something."

"Do you have enough money?"

"Yeah, I think so. I changed some of my Galleons and Sickles over to Australian dollars in Adelaide. I'm not about to walk all the way to Mosman - if we can't afford a taxi ride all the way there, we'll take the ferry."

"All right, Miriam. Is your sister with you?"

"Nope. And I don't care what you say, but she is not tagging along with us. She probably went home with one of her friends."

We talked for a little while longer, hanging up after I had assured her that we would be careful. "All right you two, let's go," I called as I slipped my phonecard back into my wallet, and stowed my wallet in the middle pocket of my backpack. "We're going to need to catch a taxi to get to my place - it's only 12 kilometres, but..." I gestured to our luggage - three Transfigured trunks, three backpacks, and three caged owls. "We should probably let the owls fly ahead - no sane cab driver is going to allow three owls to ride in their taxi. If it's too pricey, we'll have to take the ferry."

"Good thinking," Sarah said. She crouched down and unlatched each of the cages, and our respective owls (my tawny, Taylor's screech owl, and Sarah's eagle owl) flew from their cages and alighted on our outstretched arms.

I spoke quietly to Arian, stroking her feathers as I did so. "You're going to have to fly home, Arian. Lead the others home for me." Arian let out a quiet hoot, then spread her wings and took off from my arm. A loud hoot had Horus and Ariadne - Taylor and Sarah's owls, respectively - flying after Arian, out through the gap in the glass roof normally reserved for pigeons. I shrunk each of the cages so that they were small enough to fit in our pockets, and picked up my backpack.

A line of black and yellow taxis sat in a line outside the railway station, their paintwork and bumpers gleaming in the bright autumn sunlight. I approached the first taxi in line and rapped sharply on the driver's side window. The window rolled down, and the driver looked out at me.

"G'day little lady," he said, tipping an imaginary hat. "What can I do for you?"

"My friends and I need to get to Mosman," I replied. "How much would it cost?"

"Where exactly in Mosman do you need to go?"

"Ninety-three Bradleys Head Road. And there are three of us."

The driver eyed Taylor and Sarah with all our luggage, then drew his head back through the window and punched away at his meter. "$65.15," he replied finally.

I sucked in a sharp breath through my teeth. For a short twelve-minute trip, that was pretty expensive. "I think we'll pass," I said. "But thanks anyway." The driver nodded and rolled the window back up again, and I walked back over to where Taylor and Sarah stood. "We're going to have to take the ferry," I said as I grabbed the handle of my suitcase and pulled it out, locking it into place. "Sixty-five dollars is just too expensive for a taxi ride. At least the ferry and an extra train ticket each isn't going to cost too much."

We walked back through the station, and while Taylor and Sarah poked around in the newsagents', I bought three City Circle tickets to Circular Quay from a vending machine, making a mental note to ask the two of them to pay me back later. As soon as the two of them emerged from the newsagents', I explained just what we had to do just to get to my place.

"It's like this," I said as I handed them a ticket each - I knew that the likelihood of either of them carrying student passes was slim to none, so I had forked out for two adult tickets, and one student ticket for myself; all students at Southern Cross Academy and the other Australian school of magic, Twofold Bay, were issued with Muggle student concession passes at the beginning of every school year, entitling each of us to travel at half the adult fare if we needed to take Muggle public transport anywhere. It definitely made things a lot easier. "We need to catch a train to Circular Quay. It's a lot quicker than walking there, and if we shrink our suitcases and put them in our backpacks we won't look all that out of place. We'll look just like anyone else. And seeing as it's still the morning, I reckon we should hang around The Rocks until this evening. It's a little too early to be heading out to my place yet." I shrugged. "Unless, of course, either of you can think of something better to do with the next seven hours..."

"No, that sounds good," Sarah said; Taylor nodded his agreement.

"Okay then." I crouched down and pointed my wand at my suitcase, and whispered the incantation for the Shrinking Charm; it shrunk to the size of a matchbox, and I stored it in my backpack, before leading the way to platform 17.

That evening, after we had spent a few hours - and a lot of money - in The Rocks, we caught a ferry to the wharf nearest to Taronga Zoo, which, incidentally, was the nearest to my own house. It was one hell of a walk up the road from the wharf, hence my extreme reluctance to make the trek more than a few times a year; I usually got a lift with either my mother or my father at the beginning and end of each school term.

Ninety-three Bradleys Head Road, the house that had been my home since I was a baby, was just down the road from Taronga Zoo. It was a two-storey, sandstone brick house with a dark red tile roof. There were two cars parked on the paved driveway, both of them belonging to my parents. It mattered not that we Kennedys were a family of three witches and a wizard, we still lived in Sydney. And unless one wanted to continually fork out money for ferry, bus, train and taxi rides, a car and licence were two absolute necessities for city life. I fully intended on getting my licence when I was out of school. One of the distinct advantages of being a witch who was quite competent on a broomstick was that I wouldn't be forced to go through two years of driving on a restricted licence - if I could fly, then it was assumed that I could drive. I did intend on getting a crash course on the finer points of city driving from my cousin Matt before I went for my licence, however.

My mother was cooking at the kitchen stove when the three of us dragged ourselves and our luggage inside. "Miriam!" she said when she saw us. "How was school?"

"It was good," I replied as the two of us embraced.

"And these must be your friends," Mum said. She put her wooden spoon down on the side of the cooktop, wiping her hands on her jeans. "Taylor and Sarah, right?"

Taylor and Sarah both nodded, seeming suddenly shy. "Oh come on, I don't bite," Mum said. She winked. "Well, not very hard, anyway."

That did the trick, and Taylor and Sarah both laughed. "It's nice to meet you, Mrs. Kennedy," Taylor said as he sketched a slight bow.

"Oh, please, call me Janice," Mum said as she turned back to her cooking.

I stuck a finger into the sauce that simmered on the stove and stuck it in my mouth. By the taste of it, Mum was cooking her specialty - lemon chicken. It was one of my favourite meals. "Mmm, that's good," I said appreciatively.

"Good, I'm glad you like it. Now scoot, and show your friends where they'll be staying for the next couple of weeks. Taylor, you'll be in the spare room near the upstairs bathroom, and Sarah, you're staying with Miriam in her room."

"Is Dad home?" I asked before leading the way upstairs.

"No, he's at work."

I nodded, and headed upstairs, Taylor and Sarah following close behind.

"When are we going to tell your parents?" Sarah asked as she and I stepped into my room; Taylor had continued on down the hallway.

"Tonight," I said decisively. "If we don't tell them tonight, we'll never get around to it. We've got a lot to do these holidays."

"Like what?" Sarah asked, sounding wary.

I unlatched my trunk, opened it, and started pulling out my clothes. "All three of us need to get dress robes before we go back," I replied. "We've got an all-school ball in July, and they expect us to take it seriously."

"You have to be kidding me." I looked over at the doorway, right in the middle of separating my clean clothes from those that needed to be washed, to see Taylor standing in my bedroom doorway. "We've got a school dance?" he continued.

"Well, yeah," I replied. "We do Christmas In July here, seeing as our summer break is over the 'real' Christmas. And we have a ball that night as a celebration. It's always a lot of fun. And yes, we get presents, so when it gets closer to the actual night you both might want to owl your parents and let them know what's happening." Having finished packing my clothes into the calico laundry bags that I kept in the bottom of my trunk, I slung them all over my shoulder and carried them downstairs to the laundry.

Dinner was a lot livelier than it normally was when it was just my parents, Josephine and I. Taylor and Sarah held court over Mum's lemon chicken and jasmine rice, trading off of each other and telling stories about their respective home schools. One of Sarah's stories concerned Hogwarts' Giant Squid, two Hufflepuff second-years and her ex-boyfriend, while Taylor regaled us with the tale of how he'd met his best mate, Matt Hanson. Dinner was followed up with a store-bought sticky date pudding and whipped cream.

"Mum, Dad," I started when Josephine had cleared the table, levitating the stack of plates, bowls and cutlery before her as she walked into the kitchen to load the dishwasher. Under the table, I felt Sarah and Taylor take my hands, and they squeezed ever so slightly. "There's something I need to tell you."