When Worlds Collide

Cedar Mills High School was an imposing brick structure located on Main Street, just out of downtown Cedar Mills. The school could easily have been mistaken for a jail of some sort, with its chicken-wired windows and stark façade. Considering the number of juvenile delinquents it housed for the better part of the week, I suppose the description wouldn't have been too far off from the truth.

The morning after our break-up and make-up found Draco and I walking up the sidewalk to the school. We were both bundled up in coats and scarves, but our breaths could still be seen, making little puffs of steam before our path. Draco had offered to carry my heavily-loaded backpack for part of the five-minute walk to school, but I had declined the offer; it was more than possible for a man of his work experience (namely, none) to have a heart attack from attempting to lift any high school student's schoolbag.

"So, let me get this straight," he was saying as we approached the front steps. "The story is that I'm your cousin who's come all the way from Britain to visit you?"

"Precisely. My parents emigrated from Britain when I was fifteen months old, and my mother is entirely British, so we can say that you're my distant maternal cousin of whatever degree."

"And how are you going to explain the fact that I look nothing whatsoever like you?"

"Distant cousin," I emphasized. "Genetics can do amazing things, you know. By the time you're my third cousin, we'd be about as related as we are right now. Meaning, not at all."

"Um, right." He waited until we were in front of the doors of the school to ask me, "By the way, what is genetics?"

I stopped and slowly turned around to face him, my hand still resting on the doorknob. If he said something like that to anyone else, I'd never hear the end of it. "I forgot to mention a couple of things, I think." Draco arched an eyebrow in expectation. "Number One: if you don't know something that you hear or see today, for God's sake, do keep it to yourself until we get home! If word gets out that you're really a wizard from Harry Potter, all hell will literally break loose. . . which leads to Number Two--your new name outside the house is now, officially, Devon Merton."

I smiled sweetly, taking in Draco's stunned expression, before opening the door with a flourish. "Are you ready to start your day at an American high school, my dear cousin Devon?"

Draco, now known as Devon, could only sputter his displeasure as we walked into school.

WWC WWC WWC WWC WWC

"Estella, will you do us the honor of introducing your guest?"

For the fourth time that day, I rose from my seat in the front row, pulling Draco/Devon into standing position alongside of me. We were currently in Physics class, and our teacher Mr. Gundersnach (nicknamed Mr. Guten Nacht by some smart-alecky German student of the class) was already standing before the blackboard, chalk in hand, waiting patiently for me to begin.

"This is my cousin, Devon Merton," I said, just as I had in three earlier classes. "He's here to visit me from his home in Britain, and he was interested in seeing what an American high school is like. So. . . please welcome him here today."

Draco/Devon nodded politely to the class, and I sat down, expecting the response to my announcement to be as minimal as it had been elsewhere. But I had forgotten how hyper my Physics class could be.

"You're from Britain?!"

"Cool!"

"Far out!"

"What's it like over there?"

"Are you going to be here for a while?"

"Do you go to boarding school?"

"Are you single?"

"Do you have a FaceBook?"

"One question at a time!" Mr. Gundersnach bellowed over the noise.

Draco/Devon laughed and tossed back his head. His hair was shorter than it was when he had arrived (I had done my best job of cutting it for him); but he still insisted on keeping it medium length, just enough to give him a devil-may-care look that was already sending some of the opposite sex into convulsions of sighing.

"Yes, I'm British," he said, letting his accent roll off his tongue even more than normal. (More sighs from the girls.) "I live in St. Albans, outside of London, but I do attend boarding school for most of the year."

"Eton, Harrow, or Winchester?" asked a friend of mine, a tall young man whose legs looked far too long for his small desk in the back.

"None of them. You've probably never heard of our school, it's so small, and it's located near the Scottish border, fairly close to Edinburgh. But," here Draco/Devon smirked, "I'd say we're loads better academically than what even Eton has to offer."

My friend raised an eyebrow doubtfully but remained silent, casting a questioning glance in my direction. I shrugged my shoulder almost imperceptibly in response. As long as the topic of Harry Potter didn't come up, I didn't care what 'outrageous' things Draco/Devon came up with.

And of course, I had to go jinx myself. One of the heavily made-up girls in the front row, an unabashed HP fan-girl if I ever saw one, had to go and blow it for me. "Oohh, Julia!" she squealed to the girl next to her. "I know who he looks like--it just hit me!"

"Who, Marcie? Who?" Julia asked excitedly.

Marcie attempted to lower her voice, but her answer still came out in a whisper loud enough for the whole class to hear. "Tom Felton!"

At this point, Draco/Devon furrowed his eyebrows and made the mistake of asking who Tom Felton was. I was sure I was blushing furiously, as my cheeks felt hot enough to fry an egg over hard in the silence that followed. Finally, Marcie managed to sputter, "You don't know--you don't know who Tom Felton is?? Like, he's the guy who does Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies! He's sooo hot!" Julia let out a heartfelt sigh in agreement.

"Oh." Draco/Devon tried to shrug it off by adding, "Well, I'm not all that interested in Harry Potter."

Again, wrong thing to say. "What?" Julia gasped in obvious horror. "But--but Harry Potter's got to be the best thing since--"

"ENOUGH!" Mr. Gundersnach shouted. "Question time over! We need to get back to PHYSICS talk here! Honestly, don't you guys want to do better on the final exam? The last midterm was disappointing, to say the least. . ."

With that threat, our hyperactive class settled down and prepared to listen to the day's lecture. I got out my notebook as a matter of course, but Draco's presence kept me from focusing as I normally did. I doodled in the margins of my notebook, barely registering what Mr. Gundersnach said for quite a while.

When I finally managed to snap myself out of my trance, Mr. Gundersnach was holding up a pencil and waving it before us. "See this pencil?" he said. "Now, when I set it on this table in front of me--" which he did, "--it wouldn't be counter to the law of conservation of energy should this pencil leap into the air. There's nothing preventing all the energy in the air to go into the pencil and make it jump up. It's just highly improbable that it should do that rather than, say, rest peacefully on the table like it is right now. Maybe. . . maybe just once in a million years, this pencil will fly into the air of its own accord." His eyes gleamed. "I'd be able to retire happily if I should see it happen, even once. . ."

That struck a chord with me. Sure, it might take a one-in-a-million-year chance for a pencil to defy gravity on Earth using the laws of Newtonian physics--hell, even the laws of quantum mechanics. But with a little bit of magic. . . anything is possible.

Mr. Gundersnach continued to talk, unaware of the mischief running through my head. I glanced over at Draco, but he was intently listening to Mr. Gundersnach's lecture. I didn't even know if he had his wand on him, and I sure didn't want to ask him then. The prank I wanted to play required the use of a wand, however, so I was stuck.

Or, did it actually require a wand?

Wandless magic was difficult, if I remembered right from Half-Blood Prince; but that was my only option at the moment. And if I didn't want to be discovered, wordless magic, which was reputed to be even harder than wandless magic, would also be necessary. I just had to be difficult from the start, didn't I?

I closed my eyes and, using the pretense of raising my right hand, waved my index finger at the pencil while screaming the magic words in my head. The sound of the collective gasp from the student body made me open my eyes again.

The normal-looking Dixon Ticonderoga pencil, now two feet above the table, hovered in mid-air for a moment longer before I released the spell, allowing it to clatter back onto the table.

Mr. Gundersnach, along with the rest of the class (Draco notwithstanding), looked as if he had seen a ghost. It took him a full minute by the classroom clock before he found the ability to speak again. "Uh--uh--Estella--did you have--a question?" he stuttered as he saw my still-raised hand.

I slowly lowered it, feeling embarrassed. "No, sir, I--I forgot," I answered lamely.

"Well, then. . ." Mr. Gundersnach dropped into his chair and held his head with both hands, apparently shocked out of his wits. "I think this calls for an early dismissal. . ."

WWC WWC WWC WWC WWC

The moment I walked out of the classroom with the rest of my chattering classmates, all of whom were eager for an early lunch, Draco grabbed my wrist and wordlessly pulled me with him to a far-off cluster of lockers. Upon arrival, I found myself pushed between himself and a locker while he took his wand from his pocket (I guess he had it with him all that time, after all) and proceeded to wave it around for a moment.

"What are you doing?" I managed to ask when he had finished.

"Setting up an anti-Muggle charm," he replied shortly before stowing his wand in his pants again. Sure enough, the few students in that part of the locker bay avoided our corner, much less looked at us. Draco glared at me. "We need to talk--alone."

I gulped. He knew. . . "Draco, I can explain--"

"Is this your first time doing magic without a wand?" he interrupted.

I didn't answer immediately. "Well?" he pressed.

"Yes," I whispered.

"And wordless, too?"

"Yes," even softer than before.

Draco suddenly brought both arms up to rest on the locker on either side of my head, effectively caging me there. "Do you always have to be so bloody special?" he sighed to no one in particular.

"Ex--excuse me?"

Draco leaned closer to me until we were a mere inch away from each other. "You--are--a natural hand-caster," he emphasized the last three words.

"I'm a what??"

"A natural hand-caster. Someone who can cast spells with their bare hands--and who has more control over it than they do with a wand." He paused there, but upon seeing the confused look on my face, he continued his explanation. "A wand, you see, is just meant to focus the inner magical core of a wizard or witch outward, to control the flux of power within. But if a wizard can control the magic without any outside help, the wand becomes extraneous and often hurts the magic more than help it." He shook his head before adding, "I think you're the first one since Merlin himself."

I cleared my throat several times before I could say anything. "And what--does this mean--for me--exactly?" I finally stammered.

"Well, you're damn lucky for one thing. . . you don't need to use a wand; in fact, you're probably better off without one. You've got the levitation spell down perfectly now, so I think last night's power surge was just because of the wand. And now I can teach you--"

"Estella!"

A familiar voice (to me) stopped Draco in mid-sentence. He whirled around, and I peered around his shoulder, to find my learned friend from Physics striding over. He was nearly a full head taller than Draco, I discovered when he stopped a foot away from us. Draco pulled back from me quickly at the dangerous look on my friend's face.

My friend stopped glowering at Draco long enough to turn to me. "Estella, is everything all right?" he asked gently.

"Yes, of course, Dirk, but--" I stopped myself before asking Dirk how he had overcome the anti-Muggle charm Draco had set up. "Why are you here?" I hoped the question didn't sound too antagonistic.

"Well, for one thing, it is my locker you're standing against." I twisted my head around to verify; Draco was still too stunned to make any comment. "And for another thing," Dirk continued once I had turned back to look at him, "I've wanted to talk to you--been looking for you since class let out. Is our practice still on tomorrow?"

"Practice?"

Dirk quirked an eyebrow. "Our sonata practice. Remember? Fridays at five? Surely you haven't forgotten over holiday break?"

"Oh, right. Sorry--I've had a lot to think about lately. . ."

Dirk suddenly looked taken aback and flushed a little. "Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. I should've thought before I said. . . but are we still on?"

"Of course," I flashed him a weak grin, "if you can live with the fact that I haven't seen my violin since December."

Dirk laughed and turned to go. "Just catch up some before tomorrow, will you?" he called over his shoulder and waved a hand in farewell.

Once Dirk had walked out of earshot, I turned to Draco standing next to me, his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish. "He's a good friend of mine," I explained. "We've been playing music together since middle school." Draco continued to work his jaw on his invisible chewing gum. I punched him lightly in the shoulder to get his attention. "Your charm didn't work so well, did it?" I asked him as conversationally as I could.

At this, Draco turned to face me; it still took him some time to find the right words. "But that's the thing," he said softly. "I've done that spell a hundred times, if once, and I've never--and I mean, never--messed it up. That leaves only one option. . ." He trailed off.

"What are you talking about, Draco?"

Draco stared at me, as if the thought was too shocking for him to believe. "That Dirk friend of yours is no Muggle. . . he's as much a wizard as I am."