John Proctor Middle School
There was plenty of political turmoil during the Obama administration, but no issue was greater than that of wizard-muggle relations. More than a decade had passed since the Statute of Secrecy was broken, and the wizard and muggle worlds were in chaos as both sides became more and more radical. Barack Obama campaigned on a platform of peace between the two societies, but his efforts were usually in vain. Anti-wizard vigilante groups had formed in major cities across the country, and various states had enacted legislature to bar the rights of wizards. Ironically, while MACUSA was not recognized as a legitimate government, wizards and witches were also treated as non-U.S. citizens under the law in many places. Most states did not permit the use of magic in public, and many banned magic outright. Montana remained pro-wizard due to the advocacy of Salem’s populace, but it was a very tentative balance between that one city and the rest of the state, which generally wanted wizards deported or worse.
John Proctor Middle School was meant to be a bridge between the two worlds. Obama opened the school in the summer of 2010 as the first public school in America to accept both wizard and muggle students. John Proctor was the name of a wizard who was hanged during the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. During the school’s opening speech, Obama said this name symbolized a recognition of past muggle violence towards wizards, and the hope that our future might not be defined by similar prejudice. The location of Salem, Montana was picked because the city personified these values. The school would hold joint classes with standard curriculum for both wizards and muggles, as well as separate classes for wizard and witch children to learn magic. It was not a large school, but it was big enough to accommodate most of the Reborn population of Salem, including myself.
My little sister, Clea, was born a few years before I enrolled. Unlike my parents and I, my sister had not inherited any magical power. Because of this, I developed strong sympathies towards muggles, which were already seeded by my parents’ pro-muggle political views and my generally muggle upbringing. A lot of my friends in the interim years were like-minded muggle neighbors or family friends. My parents respected Obama and liked the mission of John Proctor Middle School, and because I was approaching sixth grade, they decided to enroll me there. It was far away from Summerroot School, in the southern portion of Salem surrounded by a suburban neighborhood and large fields. You would not know by looking at it that it that it was a school that wizards attended: it was a very simplistic, modern building, with grayish brick walls and a single flag on a metal pole. The epitome of your everyday American public school.
While noble in principle, John Proctor Middle School utterly failed in execution. The fearmongering of muggle parents had led to strict rules about when and where magic could be practiced by wizard students: magic could only be used in magic classes, and anywhere else was expressly forbidden. Using magic outside of class, or even being accused of such, meant immediate detention. I learned this the hard way several times. The muggle kids conspicuously avoided the wizard kids, leading to the formation of two very separate cliques, which kept to themselves and almost never interacted. Friendships between wizards and muggles weren’t just frowned upon – they were outright policed. Even the teachers reinforced this; in all of the mixed classes, wizard kids were given much harsher punishments for wrongdoings than muggle kids. The academic achievements of wizard kids were downplayed, and some teachers even dismissed them outright, accusing the kids of cheating using their magic.
But rather than the muggles, it was the wizards who had greatest negative impact on John Proctor. It hadn’t taken long for many of them to realize that they commanded absolute fear over the muggle students and teachers, and that power quickly went to their heads. Gangs of wizard students formed to rule over the school with an iron fist, and the muggles – including teachers and parents – were too scared to stand up to them. Most of these kids were the children of pure-blood or wealthy families, though a handful came from muggle backgrounds. They united in the common ideology that if there was no one to stop them, they could do whatever they wanted. They were vile, uncontrollable, and dangerous.
And the most dangerous of them all was Nicholas Varennikov.
Nick was different from most wizard children, even after the Rebirth. He was extraordinarily talented, perhaps the most gifted young wizard at our school. His magical skills, even at the age of twelve, dwarfed those of most adult wizards. He was the pinnacle of the Reborn. Moreover, he was adored by most of the wizard students, and the ones who didn’t adore him feared him. Nick was a charismatic leader and a cruel dictator, and led a group of like-minded goons to bully and extort muggle students of all ages. Any wizards who stood up to him, or fraternized with muggles, were met with even worse fates.
Nick and his gang cared naught for the rule against using magic in school. At first they acted like they wanted to hide it, but then one day Nick was caught using magic on a muggle student by the principal. The principal told him to stop, but Nick turned on him and raised his black wand directly at his throat.
“Stop?” Nick spoke with authority unbecoming of his age. He was tall, very tall, and towered over the short and stubby principal. He looked sixteen, not twelve. “You don’t tell me what to do, muggle. I tell you what to do. Understand?”
And before all of our eyes, the principal, trembling and pale in the face, nodded and quickly backed away. The poor boy on the ground writhed in pain, but nobody stepped in to help him. Nick smirked in satisfaction, then walked away, his snickering posse following from behind. The incident solidified the balance of power at John Proctor Middle School. Nick Varennikov controlled everything, even the faculty and the parents. There was no one who could stop him. He was the undisputed king of the school.
The only ones who ever stood up to Nick were me and my friends. Saying it like that makes us sound noble, but in truth, we were always on the losing side of things. We were a very small group, mainly consisting of muggle-born wizards, and generally kept to ourselves throughout the day. My best friend was a boy named Peter Halcon, born to a low-income muggle family from Spokane who moved to Salem in late 1999. Peter was an easygoing nerdy type, the kind of person who drifted through life and never let anything bother him. We enjoyed talking about video games and other muggle distractions, and spent our recesses hanging out by the storage shed chatting or playing games. Peter didn’t really like to talk about himself, and usually preferred to just listen to me. He was a good listener.
There were a few other kids who cycled in and out of our friend group. Dirk Baumann and Rosemary Taylor were two of the kids we sometimes spent time with, though Dirk was always a bit grouchy, and fights would occasionally break out between us. Rosemary would defuse the situation, but it would be a while before Dirk would hang out with us again. He was the kind of kid who held grudges for a long time, and the only thing more important to him than his vengeful personality was his adoration for Rosemary. It wasn’t a crush, but a childhood friendship that had withstood the test of time. They protected each other through and through. It sometimes got annoying just how close the two of them were, but maybe I was just jealous of them. I never had anyone like that, not even Peter.
The other kids we spent a lot of time with were Jared Manning and his younger twin sister Zoe, though this was also a friendship fraught with difficulties. Jared and I had a rivalry that mirrored my past rivalry with Emma: he envied my natural skill with magic, and I resented his academic prowess. Nevertheless, we spent plenty of time together, since we shared common interests in games and television. Jared could be bratty and uptight at times, and cried over every little thing that bothered him, much to everyone else’s annoyance. Zoe, meanwhile, was very clingy and always seemed to look up to me, despite the fact that she was only a few months younger than me. Everyone always accused her of having a crush on me, though I didn’t pay these remarks much mind, since I had no interest in her that way.
While we spent a decent amount of time with these four, it was usually just me and Peter against the world – or more specifically, against Nick. At first, the conflicts between us and Nick were relatively tame, and rarely escalated to violence. Nick made a target of wizard kids who didn’t belong to his cult following, and harassed us in the halls whenever he got the chance. I’m not sure there was a single one of us he didn’t reduce to tears at some point, except perhaps Peter, who always regarded him with the indifference of a sage. But this was just ordinary bullying, indiscriminate and nonphysical. For the first few months of the year, Nick didn’t have any specific reason to want to hurt us.
But that all changed when we heard about Donovan Trackwell.
* * *
His origins are still poorly known. They say he attended Hogwarts back in the day, though no one knows what house he was sorted into, or what happened to him after he graduated. He lived his life in the shadows, beneath the radar of the wizarding world. Then, years later, he resurfaced in Salem under the pretense of hosting a simple radio show for the wizarding community. The radios were a unique feat of wizarding engineering: only wizards could hear what was broadcasted on them. They were a popular item among the wizarding families in Salem, and Trackwell’s show became regular listening for many.
I still remember the first time I heard Donovan Trackwell’s voice, coming out of the little radio set my parents kept in the living room. He seemed soft-spoken, quiet, almost like he was whispering. There was something chilling about the way he spoke, each word decisive and punctuating my ears like ice. My parents eventually forbade me from listening to him, not that I needed any convincing. Trackwell frightened me. There was something about him that made me feel unsafe, like listening to his voice was the equivalent of inviting his dark presence into my home.
Trackwell claimed to be an advocate of “deliverance,” and his show focused on topics of interest to wizard-muggle relations, particularly the oppression and violence against wizards across the United States. He claimed to be have been a victim of this kind of violence, and told long anecdotes of how his wizard family had allegedly been killed by muggle vigilantes. The more popular he grew, the more radical his rhetoric became. He advocated for wizards to defend themselves, to exercise their right to use magic in public. He justified violence against muggles as necessary self-defense, and argued that the wizard and muggle worlds were incompatible. He began to fashion himself as something of a liberator, a revolutionary leader intending to emancipate wizards from the systemic prejudice of muggles.
But that wasn’t all. Trackwell was also a believer in the Dark Arts. He kept it subtle at first, spinning tales of revisionist history intended to give credit to his claims. He claimed that Lord Voldemort had been misunderstood as a ruthless killer, when in reality he was a freedom fighter. He said that the Dark Arts were not evil, but simply barred by wizarding law out of fear and misunderstanding. He waxed poetic about ancient histories when wizards had allegedly ruled the world, and muggles were in their righteous place as servants to their magical masters. The more extreme his words became, the more Trackwell gained favor among wizard families, especially those of pure-blooded descent. But even muggle-born wizards aligned themselves with Trackwell’s views, especially those who were victims of the very sort of muggle violence that he spoke of.
Trackwell’s teachings spread rapidly through John Proctor Middle School. His popularity among wizard parents was passed down to their children, and a clear divide was formed between supporters and non-supporters of his views. No student embraced Trackwell’s ideology more than Nick Varennikov, who idolized the mysterious radio man and spoke of his teachings wherever he went. Nick was convinced that his duty was to enforce wizard “deliverance” at John Proctor. Suddenly, his violence against muggle students had a tangible justification, and he became more dangerous than ever. But even greater than Nick’s hatred for muggles was his hatred for the wizards who did not support Donovan Trackwell – me and my friends.
I could never have supported Trackwell. Even without knowing what I do now, and all of the horrible acts that Trackwell would later commit, his philosophy was one I fundamentally disagreed with. He preached that muggles had to remain separate, subordinate, to wizards and witches. But my own sister had no magical abilities. I wouldn’t tolerate anyone telling me that my baby sister was lesser than others just because she had no magic. With this combined with my temperamental personality, I quickly became Nick’s number one enemy at school. I called him out for the flaws in his beliefs, and he retaliated furiously. Our confrontations became more frequent, and much more violent.
Each incident began the same way. I would be hanging out with my friends when Nick would unleash his wrath upon an unsuspecting muggle kid. I would immediately intervene, despite the warnings of my friends, and pretty soon I’d be locked in another standoff with Nick.
“Leave her alone!” I yelled across the playground.
Nick brandished his wand indifferently. The girl on the ground continued to scream helplessly, as the huge spider that had once been her hairpin crawled through her bangs.
“Hm...” Nick hummed, running a hand through his golden hair. “How about no?”
“Alan...” Peter appeared at my side and put a hand on my shoulder, but I wasn’t letting up.
“I said leave her alone, you jerk!”
Nick’s gang members angrily turned toward me. Nick’s face soured. “That’s some disrespect you’re showing me. You had better clean up that tone, or I’ll have to scrub your throat with a toilet plunger.”
“Go ahead and try,” I snapped back at him.
Nick raised an eyebrow. With a flick of his wand, the spider on the girl’s face turned back into a hairpin. Sobbing, she ran away as fast as she could. Nick and his gang turned to face me.
“You made a big mistake, muggle-lover!” exclaimed Miles Argo.
“We’ll break your bones for disrespecting Nick,” snarled Rodney Vosburgh.
I was very clearly outmatched. I knew that. Not only was Nick the most powerful wizard at school, but he also had four or five wizards and witches at his side. All I had was Peter, and I knew the last thing he wanted was to get involved in yet another losing battle. Still, I couldn’t step down now. I wasn’t afraid of Nick. That blind and foolish courage of my youth kept me firmly in my place.
“You’re nothing but a bully.”
“I am an acolyte of Donovan Trackwell,” Nick boasted. “Muggle-lovers like you are beneath me.”
“Get off your high horse,” I responded flatly. “Trackwell is just a hatemonger!”
“How dare you speak that way of him!” Nick raised his wand furiously. “Trackwell is the liberator of wizardkind. He will emancipate us from the grasp of the muggles, and lead us all to deliverance!”
“You sound like a crazy cultist,” Peter said plainly.
Nick responded by snapping his wand in Peter’s direction. A jet of flame launched out of it like a bullet, but I quickly threw up a shield in front of Peter. The flames burst around it in a cloud of smoke. Peter recoiled and adjusted his glasses.
The activity had caught the attention of the other kids standing around outside, all of whom turned to look at us. Nick’s eyes locked onto mine with animalistic venom. “I know about your family, Alan. How they pander to the muggle-borns. Like your pathetic squib of a sister.”
“Are you really one to talk?” I asked fearlessly. I gestured to Miles Argo. “Aren’t your parents muggles, Miles? And what about you, Rodney? I thought you were a half-blood!”
“Th-That’s not what matters!” Miles retorted pathetically.
Rodney nodded. “She’s no mother of mine! She’s nothing but a worthless muggle!”
“You can’t seriously believe that!”
“Enough!” Nick snapped. He gave both Rodney and Miles disapproving looks before returning his gaze to me. “I’ll give you to the count of ten until I grind your face into the pavement. Run away like the coward you are, and maybe it’ll hurt less.”
I clutched my wand tighter. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Peter glanced at me. “You’re really doing this?”
I nodded, not taking my eyes off of Nick.
Peter smirked and sighed. “That’s how it is, huh?”
“Ten,” said Nick, smiling.
“Stop it!” I heard a voice calling from behind me. I turned to see Jared Manning sprinting towards me. He gave me an angry look. “Come on, Alan, you’re just going to make things worse as usual!”
“Nine,” said Nick.
I frowned at Jared. “I don’t see you helping! You’re okay with him hurting muggle kids?”
“Eight.”
“I’m not okay with it, but...” Jared made his usual expression like he couldn’t believe I was too stupid to understand him. “But fighting over it is just dumb! You’re always making things worse, Alan!”
“Seven.”
“You’re like a broken record, Jared! You always say the same thing.”
“Six.”
“I’m just trying to tell you that you can’t win against him!”
“No, but it’s better than sitting around doing nothing at all!”
“Five.”
“Ugh!” Jared threw his arms into the air and shook his head. “Fine. Be stupid. You’re on your own.”
With that, Jared turned tail and ran away as fast as he could, as if taking shelter from a bomb. A part of me wanted to chase after him just to slap his stupid face, but I resisted the urge.
“Four.”
“They’re surrounding us...” said Peter.
Sure enough, Nick’s followers were slowly closing off all of our exit points. They raised their wands at us. I didn’t see any teachers moving to intervene – not that they would. The students watching from afar just stepped back, awaiting the spectacle of our defeat.
“Three.”
“You’re done for, losers!” boasted one of the goons.
“Two...”
“Here we go...” said Peter.
“One.”
Spells instantly flew. Bolts of light shot in every direction. Peter blocked the first wave of them from behind with a Shield Charm, but one of the spells hit his thigh and forced him to one knee. His glasses fell from his face to the ground. The goon who had struck him laughed and lowered his wand, thinking the battle concluded. Peter used the window of opportunity to fire a Knockback Jinx, pushing his opponent to the ground. A split second later, someone fired a Disarming Charm at Peter, and his wand went flying out into the nearby basketball court.
I aimed my wand directly at Nick and fired an offensive spell. Nick countered instantly, and the beams of multicolored light met in the middle, exploding against one another with titanic force. Nick’s followers and the rest of the watching students recoiled at the intense light. Hot wind whipped from the glowing singularity between the spells. I grasped my wand tightly, straining against Nick as he struggled to keep the upper hand. It was looking like we were evenly matched.
“Expelliarmus!”
Suddenly, my wand flew from my fingertips and landed in the grass. The spells instantly dissipated, and a last warm gust of wind echoed across the field as the magic vanished from the air.
“ALAN DOE!”
The voice had come from the direction of the school. Storming in my direction with her wand outstretched was a short middle-aged woman with wiry blonde hair in a bun. Her face was gaunt, and looked a decade older than her actual age. She wore a tight black suit, and gestured to me with one thin finger, sheathing her wand with the other hand. It was Jenna Widow, the teacher of transfiguration at John Proctor.
“Inexcusable!” she screeched in a high-pitched voice. “Dueling on school grounds... another detention for you!”
“Me?!” I pointed an accusing finger at the smug-looking Nick. “But he was...”
“No excuses! I saw you fire the spell.” Ms. Widow pointed at the school. “Go to Ms. Blair’s office immediately. She will ensure you are disciplined properly.”
I gaped at her, wanting to argue back. Nick and his follower snickered and turned to leave, kicking a spray of dust into Peter’s face as they passed. Peter rubbed his eyes and retrieved his glasses from the grass. I realized there would be no winning in this situation. Dejectedly, I picked up my wand from the ground and walked toward the school.
The office I entered was dark and grim. It was minimalistic in its décor, with only a single old photograph on the wall of an elderly woman from the nineteenth century or so. The only other objects in the room were a chair, in which I sat, and a desk, behind which sat an enormous woman wearing a simple black dress. Her face was like the face of a toad, covered in warts and scars, and her lips seemed like they were made out of pale stone. Her green eyes gazed into mine from behind her curled gray bangs. She was the epitome of what uninformed muggles probably thought a “witch” looked like.
“You are in very deep trouble, Alan.”
Her voice was blunt and humorless. I scowled at the ground.
Karen Blair folded her massive hands on her desk. “I get reports about you almost every day. Disrespecting teachers. Using magic outside of class. And now you’re assaulting other students.”
“It wasn’t me!” I retorted. “Nick was hurting a girl, and...”
“Nicholas is an exemplary student,” Blair interrupted. “His grades are perfect, his magical talents are exceptional, and most importantly, he listens. But you don’t. That has always been your problem. Your grades in every class are suffering because of your constant inattentiveness and disobedience.”
I clenched my fists. “Nick isn’t ‘exemplary’! He’s a bully! Haven’t you heard the things he says about muggles?”
“I see no issue with that,” Blair said plainly.
“But he was saying they’re beneath us as wizards!”
“They are. That is the natural order of things.”
I was baffled by her, and the rage in my veins boiled even hotter. “That’s not true! My sister is non-magical! How can you even say that?!”
“You ought to dispense with your naïve idealism. Our kind has been oppressed by muggles for hundreds of years. But there was once a time when that was not true. When wizards ruled over the muggle world. They were in their righteous place then, as our servants.”
My heart pounded with loathing. “That’s not true. That’s just Trackwell’s lies.”
Blair snapped back in a scolding tone. “Donovan Trackwell is not a liar. He speaks out for all wizardkind. You have been brainwashed by your parents and the muggles to believe in this delusion of coexistence. But it is a lie. War is inevitable between the two kinds. This is absolute.”
I’d had enough. I stood up from the chair in an attempt to leave the room, but Blair unsheathed her wand and pointed it at me. An invisible force pulled me back down, slamming my butt against the hard wood. I felt my whole lower body aching.
I almost reached for my wand, but Blair’s words stopped me. “Don’t you dare. If you so much as touch that wand in my presence, I will have you expelled from this school faster than you can blink.”
I scowled at her with unbridled hatred, but reluctantly complied.
The next half hour was a torture of lectures and rants, ranging from scolding about my alleged misbehavior to glorification of Donovan Trackwell and his beliefs. By the time it was over, I was drained of all resistance, and felt totally empty inside. Blair ensured me that any further disturbance would result in me being suspended, to say nothing of my grades in class. When I exited her office, I was in low spirits.
Jared was waiting for me on the bench outside. “You’re finally out.”
I glared at him, but said nothing. He stood up and put his hands in his pockets. “Peter is fine, in case you were wondering. I think he went home for the day. The bell rang a few minutes ago.”
“Whatever,” I said quietly. I tried to walk past him, but Jared stepped in my way.
“You just don’t get it, do you? The way you act just causes trouble for everyone. Nick is only going to get angrier, and he’s going to make all of us suffer because you can’t control yourself...”
“Get out of my face.”
Jared recoiled. I shoved past him and walked down the dark hallway in the direction of the exit, just wanting the day to be over.
This was typical of my everyday experience at John Proctor Middle School. Not only did I have to deal with classmates like Nick, but I also suffered because of teachers like Karen Blair and Jenna Widow. Blair was the chief officer of wizarding education at John Proctor, and also taught my homeroom Defense Against the Dark Arts class, though to call it “teaching” would be generous at best. She and Widow, along with most of the other wizard teachers at John Proctor, were avid followers of Donovan Trackwell and listened to all of his radio shows. They harassed and mistreated wizard kids from muggle-supporting families, and turned a blind eye to the actions of Nick and his followers. The blatant favoritism of the magic teachers was ignored by their fearful human coworkers, and no one dared do anything to change the situation at John Proctor. My parents were sympathetic to me and condemned the actions of my teachers, but like Jared, they encouraged me not to get involved. They didn’t pull me out of John Proctor either, even knowing how often I got into fights with Nick, because it was the only school with qualified magical educators in Salem. So the struggle continued, for months on end.
But as the new year came, life slowly began to change for all of us. The winter saw the departure of many students, whose families (like that of Jonah Melville) no longer saw fit to have them cohabitate with muggles. Dozens of pro-Trackwell wizarding families quietly moved out of town, packing up their things and leaving their houses deserted. The old magical community of Salem, the ones who still advocated for peace with the muggle world, were unnerved by this phenomenon. Something big was happening.
A storm was coming.