Alan Doe and the Phoenix War

We stood there listening to the distant sounds of combat for a while. Dad was the first of us to regain his senses. He walked over to Peter’s parents and took both of them by the arms. He looked at me and Peter for a long time, a silent message passing between us. My heart was pounding, but I tried my best not to look scared. Ten minutes, I told myself. That’s all we had to wait for.

“We’ll see you in a bit,” said Dad, and he disapparated, taking Peter’s parents with him. Peter and I stayed put for a moment. We didn’t say anything to each other. We were too scared to open our mouths.

We waited there beneath the awning for ten minutes. Fifteen. Thirty. The whole time, neither of us spoke a word. Peter sat on the bench with his hands folded on his knees, while I paced restlessly, staring around at the corners of the park for any sign of trouble. I could still hear the spells firing in the distance. Were they getting closer?

“He should be back by now!”

Peter looked up at me. “He told us to wait.”

“I know, but...” I looked at him, and for the first time my worries showed on my face. “It shouldn’t take this long. Do you think something happened?”

Peter clearly didn’t have an answer, and didn’t want to answer either. Thunder rumbled in the sky again. I glanced up at the storm from the edge of the awning. It didn’t look like an ordinary thunderstorm. The clouds raced wildly, clashing with each other like ocean waves. There was a strange golden glint to them, but I couldn’t tell what was causing it.

Peter stood up and gave me an anxious look. “We can’t stay here. If we do, they... they’re going to find us.”

I looked at him as if wanting to protest, but realized he was right. The sounds of spells were getting even louder. They seemed like they were coming from the southern part of the city, away from the stairs. I could hear voices now, angry yells.

“Should we... find a place to hide?” I asked him.

His mouth fell open as he searched for an answer. “I-I guess we should.”

We waited another few moments beneath the awning, perhaps hoping that maybe in those few seconds, my dad would return and we would disapparate to Lynnville. But he never showed up. With a start, Peter and I hurried away from the awning and ascended the concrete stairs nearby to the surface streets. The whole time, we kept our wands at the ready, pointing anxiously around us for any sign of a threat.

When we made it to the top of the stairs, we found ourselves on a wide avenue near the commercial center of Salem. The usually crowded streets were completely vacant, with some cars lying abandoned at the side of the road. This district mostly consisted of muggle banks. As we walked down the sidewalk, Peter gestured at one of the buildings and looked at me.

“Wait. This building. We can hide here. My mom works here. I know the code to get in.”

He ran up to the side of the building and reached a glass door, which had a small keypad built into it. He typed a six-digit code, and the door clicked open. I felt some of the tension relieve inside of me as I rushed in after him, and we closed the door behind us. The main room of the bank was empty and dark, but the dead silence was preferable to the approaching noises outside.

Peter and I didn’t wait around. We ran to the back of the lobby and found a door leading to a staircase, which we hurriedly ascended. We weren’t entirely sure where we were going, only that we were trying to get away from the streets. We reached the very top of the stairwell. I hurried over to a metal door and pushed it open, and we found ourselves on the roof of the building.

It was cold. Less than an hour ago it was a warm summer day, but now it felt like the middle of winter. I was glad to have brought my hoodie, and mentally thanked my mother for insisting on it. The rooftop was flat and had a handful of air conditioning devices on it, but was otherwise empty. Peter closed the door strongly behind us, and the two of us got on all fours and crawled to the edge of the roof, where a low wall prevented us from falling. Our knees grinded against the rough surface of the roof as we stopped.

“Think we’re safe here?” I asked Peter, leaning on the wall.

He breathed and side-nodded. “I think so. I doubt they’ll look here.”

I took a moment to breathe. Everything that had happened in the past few hours was overwhelming, and my mind and heart were having trouble keeping up with it all. I glanced over the wall at the streets below us, listening for the sounds of battle. A chilly mist had begun to sweep through the streets, and it became difficult to see more than a few hundred meters beyond our position.

Then I heard a scream.

Peter and I sat up. “What was that?” he asked, his eyes wide with horror.

I sat up and tried to get a better look at the area below us. No matter how much I strained my eyes, I still couldn’t see anything. The area had gone eerily quiet. I strained my ears to identify where the sound had come from, but all I could hear was the wind, chilling the skin on my face.

“Alan...”

“Shh, Peter, I’m trying to listen.”

“Alan!”

“Quiet, Peter!”

“Alan, there are Death Eaters! They’re right behind us!”

I whirled around.

There, standing on the opposite side of the roof from us, was a group of three Death Eaters. There was no mistaking them. They were just like what Harry Potter had described in his memoirs. They wore long black robes, and their faces were adorned with frightening silver masks. Their wands were at their sides, and rose slowly to point at us. That was the moment when the reality of this hit me. This was real. These people were Death Eaters. They were going to hurt us. They might be here to kill us.

Peter looked at me severely. “Alan!”

Instinct took over.

“Stupefy!”

“Reducto!”

The Stunning Spell launched from my wand the exact same moment that the Reductor Curse flew from the wand of the Death Eater on the left. The lead Death Eater was hit by my spell and fell backwards in a blast of light. Peter held out his wand, deflecting the Reductor Curse to the ground in front of him. The concrete surface of the rooftop exploded, and bits of metal and rock flew everywhere. The ground beneath us cracked and gave way, and the roof slowly leaned back.

The world seemed to move in slow motion. Peter lost his balance and fell backwards as the wall behind us toppled down, its fragments shattering loudly against the pavement below. Without thinking, I dove toward Peter and reached out my hand toward him. I felt my stomach fly up into my neck as we went into a freefall. At the last second, our fingers touched, and I disapparated.

A split second later, we reappeared in an alleyway a few dozen meters down the street. I felt my shoulder slam against concrete. The rest of the corner of the office building crashed down to the road in an deafening avalanche of bricks and mortar. There was no sign of the Death Eaters who had attacked us. Peter and I stared at the devastation in shock, but there was no time to waste. With one last glance at each other, we sprinted down the alley as fast as we could, away from the scene and into the darkness.

Looking back, my first encounter with the Death Eaters was a lucky break. But that didn’t make it any less terrifying. We had been attacked. We were far from the only ones. The Death Eaters were everywhere – across the whole city, they assaulted en masse, causing destruction and mayhem wherever they went. As Peter and I roamed through the downtown of the city, desperate to stay out of the line of fire, we could hear the sounds of innocent people being hurt all around us, but thankfully never strayed too close to where the combat was taking place. It was like we had found ourselves within a city-wide horror movie. We didn’t know where the enemy might appear, or how long we would be safe to hide from them. At any moment they could appear again, and we didn’t know if we could escape them a second time.

Peter and I headed northeast. We didn’t have any clear destination. Lynnville was much too far to walk, and we felt as though most of the combat was happening to the south and west of us, though that was only the verdict of our ears. Every once in a while we dove into cover after thinking we heard a Death Eater nearby, and would remain in shelter for several minutes until the silence returned. Eventually, we left the banking district and crossed a length of abandoned strip malls. We took a break outside of a closed fabric store, resting on the curb and watching the storm clouds above us.

“Do you think they’re safe?” Peter asked. He looked at me. “In Lynnville, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” I shook my head.

Peter grasped his wrist, but remained steadfast. Neither of us was willing to show fear to the other. Maybe it was our way of supporting each other, keeping each other strong to make up for our own hidden weaknesses. I’m sure we didn’t think of it that way, of course. We were kids, and more importantly, we were boys. We weren’t conditioned to empathy, but we exercised it nonetheless.

“I’m sure they’re fine,” I said. “They planned for this, after all.”

“What do you think is gonna happen? Will the Aurors come to Salem?”

“They have to. I mean, the city’s under attack, right?” It felt crazy to be saying that out loud. “They can’t deny that anymore. The muggle police and the army and everyone else will come here and stop the Death Eaters. We just have to stay hidden until that happens.”

“Well, we’re not hidden here,” Peter pointed out, gesturing around the wide open parking lot around us. “So where can we go?”

I thought about that question for a long time before answering.

“Summerroot School. It’s not too far from here. Just across the freeway, and north a little ways. There’s a basement in the building that has a lock on it. If we stay there until the battle ends, we should be safe.”

Peter nodded. “Okay. Let’s go.”

We set off once again, taking care to stay away from major streets. No matter where we went, we didn’t run into anyone, not even muggles. The emptiness was eerie. To avoid being out in the open, we sometimes cut through the backyards of muggle houses, but even then we didn’t see anyone through the windows. Either the muggles had heeded the warnings of the wizarding community, or something else had happened to most of them. I shivered to think of that possibility.

We crossed beneath a bridge on the freeway that ran across the north side of Salem, and entered the shady neighborhood of Summerroot. My shoulders immediately lightened once the freeway was out of sight behind us. It felt like we were far from the scene of the battle. Summerroot was calm and serene as always, though the clouds overhead still cast an ominous atmosphere over everything. The mountains on the sides of the city were completely enshrouded in mist, which made them seem strangely larger, like behind the mist they stretched out infinitely into the sky. It felt like Salem was drifting in some incomprehensible void, separated from the rest of the world.

After fifteen minutes of walking, we heard the sounds of spells up the road.

Both of us stopped dead in our tracks. All of the relief that had come over me since we entered Summerroot immediately flew from my body. Those sounds weren’t coming from the city. They were coming from ahead of us, in the very direction we were walking. Peter and I looked at each other, then nervously stepped off to one side of the road, walking slowly forward to see where the sounds were coming from. At first it was hard to pinpoint their direction through the pine trees and rooftops. But pretty soon, a building came into view on the left side of the road, and there was no doubt about it.

The sounds were coming from Summerroot School.

We hesitated for a long time. Though neither of us spoke it, we knew that we had to make a crucial decision in that moment. The rational part of our minds was telling us to turn and run away as fast as we could, and I’m sure that was the option Peter probably favored. But I had second thoughts. Those noises were coming from Summerroot School... which meant that the school was under attack. The wizards there must not have been able to evacuate to Lynnville in time. The Death Eaters were assaulting them. What if there weren’t enough adults there? The kids at the school would be completely defenseless.

Peter and I looked at each other again. The message was conveyed nonverbally. We had to do something. We were both terrified at the thought, but in that moment, it felt like we simply had no other choice.

We hurried around the side of the school.

* * *

I still remember the Summerroot School of my youth. It was a unique building, constructed by the wizards and witches of the Summerroot neighborhood in a mixture of rustic and Native American styles. It wasn’t a large building, and only housed a few main classrooms, which were divided based on age group. All of the walls of the building were painted by the students and teachers, a project that had been undertaken in the spring of 2005, when I was still attending. Cute little handprints were painted on the walls next to pretty spirals and curls and zigzags. You could tell which designs were done by the adults and which were done by the kids, but the mixture of them was strangely pleasing. The schoolyard was surrounded by a low fence, and inside of it was a wooden playground and a large field, next to a sandbox.

The Summerroot School I saw that day was devastated. The playground was half-destroyed, pieces of wood lying in fragments on the ground. Scorch marks covered the pavement and grass. The painted sides of the building were blackened and burned. At the far side of the field, approaching the school, was a group of six or seven Death Eaters, dressed the same as the ones who had attacked me and Peter on the rooftop of the bank. There was no way to read their expressions. They moved with silent malice, shooting spells across the schoolyard in the direction of the building, where a gathering of wizards and witches fought desperately to defend themselves.

All of the people defending the school were around the same age as me. Their faces were covered in dirt and scratches and blood, but they stayed their ground, and refused to allow the Death Eaters to gain a single inch. The Death Eaters were older and more experienced, but the kids they fought were Reborn, which more than made up the difference. The space between them was a light show of offensive spells, firing and rebounding in various directions. One spell came soaring at the fence, blasting it off its hinges. The broken fence pieces skidded loudly into the middle of the small parking lot.

Peter and I looked at each other, and then rushed into the fray.

This was my first real experience with magical combat. I had been trained in Defense against the Dark Arts, and I was part of the Rebirth Generation, so I had an upper hand when it came to dueling other wizards, even (or perhaps especially) adults. This was my sole advantage as I rushed blindly out onto the battlefield that had once been my childhood. I leapt over the remains of the fence, shortly followed by Peter, and the two of us ran forward to the other kids. They hardly paid heed to our presence until we joined them in firing off spells at the Death Eaters.

One of the kids looked at me, and his eyes widened. “Alan? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Silas!” I yelled back. A spell curved in the air toward me with a sound like a firework, but I dove behind what was left of the playground to dodge it. “We’re here to help!”

“Thank God!” he remarked. He fired a couple of blue-colored spells toward the field, then ran over to join me behind the playground. “There were too many of them for us already. They’ve been attacking for the past hour! We’ve sent a lot of them running, but they just don’t let up!”

“How many are there?” Peter asked.

Silas glanced at the field. “I think there’re seven of them right now. Earlier there were twelve. I think if we can take out enough of them, the rest will retreat.”

I sensed the professionalism of an Auror in Silas’s words, and couldn’t help but be reminded of his dad. “I don’t suppose you have a plan for that?” I asked.

At that moment, I saw a doughy-faced boy with light blond hair block a powerful spell from one of the Death Eaters. He waved his wand to create cloud of smoke in the air, and used the distraction to duck behind cover and join us. I recognized him almost right away.

“Liam?”

Liam Manfred looked at me with recognition, and grinned. His cheeks flushed red like a jolly old man. “Alan! Hey, man, long time! How have you been?”

A spell hit the path near us and exploded upward in a blast of dirt. “Been better,” I admitted.

Liam nodded. “I’m in charge here.”

“You?”

“Yeah. Well, it was Tommy, but he’s...” Liam looked away for a second with a grim expression, but quickly shook it off. “Anyway. The teachers instructed me to lead the defense and keep all of the students safe. We’ve got the younger kids taking shelter in the basement.”

I glanced at the school building nervously. “They won’t be safe for long.”

“Which is why we have to put these Death Eaters on the defensive. Now that you’re here, we outnumber them two-to-one. So we’ll move in for a surprise attack. Alan, you and your friend will attack from the left, while Silas and I will move in from the right. The other Reborn kids who are fighting will join you when you reach them. Understand?”

I was admittedly impressed by Liam’s strategic planning, and perhaps a little bit intimidated by the feeling of suddenly taking orders from him. With a nervous nod, I confirmed that I’d heard his plans. Liam nodded back, then glanced at Silas, and the two of them stood up and sprinted off to the right. I looked at Peter, then took a deep breath and ran out of cover in the direction of the sandbox.

There were about four other kids there when we arrived. Three of them were standing in formation behind a couple of trees, firing every few moments in the direction of the approaching Death Eaters in the field. The last kid was standing entirely on her own in front of the sandbox, stopping every spell that came in her direction. One of the Death Eaters tried to hit her with a Freezing Spell, but she effortlessly grabbed the spell in midair and hurled it back in the Death Eater’s direction. The Death Eater dodged as the spell hit a bush behind him, covering its leaves in ice.

I pointed to the group at the trees and looked at Peter. “Help them! I’ll help her!”

Peter nodded as he blocked another curse, which flew off over the neighborhood rooftops. He dashed to the kids desperately fighting behind the trees. I ran in the other direction, my feet slamming against the cold sand in the sandbox as I crossed it, and came up behind the girl who was fighting by herself.

She was a very pretty girl, as I probably would have noticed if we hadn’t been in the midst of battle. She had wavy blonde hair, and her piercing blue eyes were filled with fearless determination. She was wearing a sleeveless denim jacket over a white t-shirt and jean shorts, an outfit for a sunny summer day, not the chilly nightmare this day had become. The girl raised a Shield Charm to stop an array of attacks flying her way, and I took the opportunity to fire a Stunning Spell at one of the Death Eaters. Blindsided by the attack, he was instantly knocked to the ground, unconscious.

The girl turned to look at me. I stopped in my tracks when I recognized her face. It occurred to me that I should have recognized her earlier, but now that we were staring face-to-face, there was no way I wouldn’t recognize her. It was Emma West.

“Alan!” I heard Peter yell from behind one of the trees. “Hurry, attack now!”

Emma and I looked back in the direction of the Death Eaters. Two of them were arching their wands, preparing some complex dark spell to fire at us, but we acted faster.

“Expelliarmus!”

“Bombarda!”

Emma’s spell disarmed the Death Eater on the right just as my spell caused a pile of grass in front of them to explode in a fiery burst. The explosion knocked the second Death Eater off his feet. Taking advantage of the opening, Peter and the other kids next to him stormed in from the left flank, just as Liam, Silas, and a group of others rushed over from the right. The remaining Death Eaters, recognizing their defeat, hurriedly grabbed their fallen allies and disapparated.

“Yeah!” Emma exclaimed triumphantly. “And stay out!”

I stared at her from behind. She sighed and flipped her wand in the air, then turned around and looked at me. We stared at each other quietly for a long time, but the arrival of Liam broke the silence.

“We should check on the kids in the building,” he said. “Make sure they’re all safe.”

Emma and I nodded. Silas and Peter joined us, and the five of us ran over to the school building and up the stairs leading to the main door. Liam pointed his wand at the door and muttered “Alohomora,” and the door clicked open, swinging back to reveal a short hallway. The other kids outside spread out around the playground-turned-battlefield, vigilantly keeping an eye out for more Death Eaters as we went inside.

The inside of the school was just how I remembered it. It actually surprised me that it had changed so little, even though it had been more than four years since I had last attended. The classroom that belonged to Mrs. Carol was exactly the same, with kids’ artwork and drawings on the walls next to readouts of basic spells. Spellbooks were shelved in a little library in the corner, and there was a huge hand-made carpet on the floor, with an image of a deer in front of a full moon. The carpet had been knitted by Sam many years ago and given to the school as a gift. He taught us how to knit with magic during one of his visits.

Liam hurried down a nearby stairwell into a low-ceilinged basement. He knocked on a small wooden door, and a few seconds later, a boy opened it up for him. Behind the boy, I could see a group of very little kids, ranging from toddlers to eight-year-olds. They looked scared out of their minds, but seemed a little more at ease upon seeing Liam’s face. Liam smiled and nodded at the boy at the door, who dutifully closed it.

“They’re okay,” Liam said as he walked back up the stairs. “For now, at least.”

I stared at the closed door where the kids were hiding. That was the storage room. I had once snuck into it when I’d wanted to skip out on class, only to be discovered by Mrs. Carol a few minutes after my escape. I had good memories of that room, as with the rest of this place. But now, it was being used as a war shelter for terrified little kids. It was a gruesome twist on my childhood memories.

We went back outside and sat around the front of the school to catch our breaths. Liam did a quick check-in with the other kids outside, making sure none of them were injured, before returning to us. I had to respect his diligence in his appointed duty as leader of Summerroot School’s defenders. He was a much different Liam from the one I had known four years ago. When we had all calmed down and seemed to have recovered from the battle, I began to ask him questions.

“What happened here, Liam? Where are all the grown-ups?”

Liam shook his head slowly. “Well... they’re gone. The Death Eaters showed up out of nowhere and grabbed most of them, then disapparated. They tried to take us, too, but we resisted. We’ve been on our own for at least an hour now.”

“We tried to call for help,” Silas chimed in. “But our phones aren’t working, and other methods of communication aren’t either. I tried the Floo Network, but no luck. Something is wrong. I think it has something to do with those clouds.”

I glanced up at the gold-tinted storm clouds above us.

“How many people here can fight?” Peter asked.

Liam pondered the question. “Let’s see... not counting us, I think we’ve got twelve.”

“Has anyone been hurt?”

Liam’s gaze fell. Silas’s expression darkened.

“We lost two kids. Tommy Chisolm and Jimmy Lewis.”

“Lost them? You mean...”

Silas looked at Liam. “We... we brought their bodies inside.”

A cold silence set in. I felt something tighten in the pit of my stomach. Peter’s eyes widened, and then he closed them, covering his mouth. They’re dead, I realized slowly, like the acknowledgement of his horrible fact had taken hours for me to process. Dead. Two kids, dead. Killed by the Death Eaters. The Death Eaters were willing to kill people, willing to kill children – anyone who resisted them.

Liam and Silas had anxious looks on their faces. I could tell that through their pretenses of bravery, they were both scared out of their minds, and it was only the duty of keeping the younger kids safe that kept them from freaking out. I couldn’t tell at the time, but the expression they wore was one I would soon be intimately familiar with. It was the look of a person who had seen death with their own eyes.

I needed some air. I excused myself from the front steps of the school and walked over to a nearby corner of the playground, breathing slowly. My mind returned to my family, to Mom and Dad and Clea. I had assumed they were safe, but now I was wracked with fears that they were in danger. What if they had met the same fate as Tommy and Jimmy? Would I even have a family to go back to when this was all over?

When I was about ready to walk back to the school steps, I noticed Emma West nearby, sitting on the side of the sandbox. Her expression was firm, like the look of a seasoned soldier, even though she was just a twelve-year-old girl. When she caught me looking at her, she tilted her head.

“What?”

“N-Nothing...” I stammered, looking away.

Emma stood up and turned to face me, putting one hand on her hip. It was still hard to believe this was that same bratty girl I’d known all those years ago. She was very attractive, almost dangerously so.

“It’s been a while, huh? Alan.”

My heart raced a little to know that she recognized me, though in hindsight she may have just found out when Peter called my name during the battle. I choked out a response. “Yeah, I... guess so. Emma.”

“Still tormenting little girls?” she asked sardonically.

I gave her a look. “Come on. That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah, figures you’d use that excuse.”

She walked over to me and stared up at my face. She was pretty short, but her fiery attitude was clear from her body language, and I was somewhat intimidated by her.

“My life was pretty miserable here because of you, you know. Nobody ever hung out with me because you kept telling everyone I was stupid.”

“Are you seriously still holding a grudge over that?!”

Emma suddenly slid one foot forward and reached her arm back as if making to punch me. I instinctively recoiled. She stopped short just as she was about to throw her fist, and scowled.

“Of course I’m holding a grudge over that! Not all of us get to have the easy life like you. I never had magical parents to raise me. My own parents barely notice me, and...”

Emma abruptly stopped herself. She looked like she had said too much, and was now embarrassed by it. Her eyes darted to the left. After several moments, she spoke again, a little more quietly than before.

“Sorry. Sorry, it’s just... this has been a really long day. I didn’t mean to... take it out on you. Sorry.”

I was taken aback by this apology. The Emma I knew would never have apologized to me for anything. I knew that four years had passed since we’d last spoken to each other, but that didn’t make it any less surprising. But I could tell that this Emma was a bit different from the one I had known. Like Liam, she had matured. She was every bit as childish in looks and personality as I was, but we’d both gotten just a little too old to keep holding onto petty grudges. We had far more pressing things to worry about.

Emma and I sat down at the end of the sandbox and gazed out at the scorched field where the battle had taken place just minutes ago. Emma folded her arms on her bare knees and sighed.

“So...” she said awkwardly. “What have you been up to?”

I pondered how to answer the question. “I was homeschooled for a while, and then I went to John Proctor. You?”

“Regular school,” she said plainly. “Eustice Carrey Elementary.”

“You’re still in elementary?”

“It goes to sixth grade. I just graduated.”

“Oh.”

“It’s pretty lame,” she said flatly, kicking aside a piece of broken playground near her foot. “I can’t use magic at school, and obviously my family won’t let me take private lessons either. Most of what I know I learned on the web. There are some muggle-born students at Ilvermorny who post spells online to help Reborn kids learn.”

I’d never heard of such a resource, but I made a mental note to check it out when this was all over.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Emma said quietly.

I matched her slouching position. “Yeah. No kidding.”

“I had no idea there was even a threat until that broadcast yesterday. My family didn’t tell me anything, or maybe they didn’t hear about it. Either way, they’ve left. Freaked out when everything started to go south and just skipped town, or something. I don’t know where they are. They didn’t even call me, or leave a note. I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so I headed down to Summerroot looking for the teachers. That’s how I ended up fighting here.”

I felt a tang of pity for Emma for having such a horrible adoptive family. To not even inform her that they were fleeing... it seemed like they really didn’t care about her at all.

“What do you think he wants?” Emma asked me. “Darkanoss?”

I frowned at my feet. “I don’t know. He said he wanted to ‘liberate’ wizards from the oppression of muggles. When the Death Eaters attacked, Peter and I were in the middle of the city. My dad was supposed to bring us to Lynnville, but he never showed up. The Death Eaters are everywhere.”

“It’s horrible,” Emma whispered. “I saw one of those kids die. They... they have no mercy.”

I had nothing to say to that. Emma pushed her face into her knees.

“This whole time, I hated muggles for the way they treated me. But now with the Death Eaters... it’s like there’s no one. No one in the whole world who’s on my side. I don’t even know why I’m here.”

I felt a wave of guilt when she said that. I thought of the way I used to tease her when I was little, how I went out of my way to belittle and prank her. I had never thought about it at the time, and later on, I’d always just tried to ignore how I had once been toward her. But now I was facing it, and I couldn’t look away. Emma was a lonely girl. She’d always been lonely. I wondered if she even had friends now, or if she was just as isolated at her all-muggle school as she had been when she went to Summerroot. Mrs. Carol and the teachers here were probably the only nice people in her life, and now they were missing, possibly dead. Maybe it was just the superficial fact that I thought she was really pretty now, but I regretted the way I had been toward Emma all those years ago. How could I have been so selfish?

Emma seemed to be thinking the same thing. She sat up and frowned at me. “God... I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It’s not like you care.”

I was quiet for a long time. I stared at the side of her face, her cheeks and sky-blue eyes. For some reason, I recalled a faint memory from many years ago, when the two of us were sharing an arts and crafts project in the classroom. We must have been five or six years old. Naturally, we couldn’t make ourselves agree on anything, and had very different ideas about what kinds of crafts we should be making. She wanted to make a unicorn, but I wanted to make a dragon with robot arms. Mrs. Carol had eventually told us to compromise on a unicorn robot-dragon, which somehow worked. Emma and I worked diligently to create our masterpiece, and ended up with glue all over our hands and a gigantic mess made out of wooden sticks. When the whole thing collapsed, we’d laughed our heads off together. It was a rare happy memory between us, a reminder of the good days I spent here at Summerroot School.

I pulled out my wand and pointed it up at the cloudy sky.

“Expecto Patronum!”

For the first time, my wand exploded with silvery-blue light, and a glowing animal took shape at its tip. The spirit solidified and pranced around in the air, casting a shimmering light around the field of battle. Emma stared up at the conjuration in awe. The other kids, sitting around nearby with grave looks in their eyes, stood up and watched in amazement as my Patronus danced around with childish glee. Silas gaped at it, and Peter grinned. Liam watched it bounce back and forth with a wide smile on his face.

It was a doe.

The Patronus skipped back down the ground, walking to Emma and turning its face up to look at her. A split second later, it dissipated, and the only light left on the playground was the ominous gray glow from the clouds above. Emma was quiet for a long time. She looked at me, then looked away again.

“Oh,” she said simply.

I glanced at my wand and felt goosebumps on my arms. Honestly, I had not been expecting that to happen, not in a million years. Had I seriously just cast my own Patronus, and so effortlessly at that? When I was taking lessons with Silas, I had barely been able to muster the slightest force in my Patronus Charm. What made the difference now? What was it about that simple memory of the collapsing kindergarten sculpture that gave form to my very happiest and warmest emotions?

Emma looked at me again. My thoughts halted.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

I was confused. “Sorry for what?”

She shrugged and put her hands behind her back. “Well, I mean... I never thanked you. For that one time. With that.”

Emma gestured to where my Patronus had been, and I realized what she was referring to. “Oh... the stuffed animal?”

“Yeah. You... you stood up for me. You fought that jerk, and you fixed my toy. I know it was just a stupid toy, but...” Emma blushed again. “Well, that meant a lot to me. I’ve been wanting to thank you all this time, but I thought you wouldn’t want to remember me. But, well...”

She gestured again to where the Patronus had vanished. “I guess that’s not true. So I’m sorry. And thank you.”

“You don’t need to thank me for that!” I insisted, far too embarrassed to take the compliment. “It was just... it just happened. That’s all. Don’t worry about it.”

Emma smiled, almost teasingly. “Yeah. Okay.”

Peter and the others approached us a few moments later. Peter gave me a big pat on the back and congratulated me for conjuring my first Patronus. It was a feat none of the others had yet accomplished, so it was something worth celebrating. But for me, it had honestly been in the spur of the moment. I don’t even know why I raised my wand, let alone recited the charm.

“What brought it on, huh?” Peter asked. He gestured to Emma. “Flirting with a cute girl?”

Emma and I immediately turned beet-red. “N-No! It wasn’t like that at all! I wasn’t flirting with her.”

She nodded in firm agreement. “Yeah, no. Gross. Him? I don’t think so.”

Peter gave us a good-natured laughed, and patted me again. “Okay. If you two say so.”

His obvious disbelief only embarrassed us further. We were just about to reemphasize that there was no way we were flirting, but we were cut off by the sound of Liam’s voice.

“Guys?”

He was pointing to the field where the earlier battle had taken place. All of our eyes turned in the direction his finger was pointing.

There, at the far end of the field, was a strange shape that at first I wasn’t sure how to discern. It looked like a cloud of ink, or maybe a ball of black mist. It danced violently as it slowly took shape. I realized that it was apparition. The cloud solidified with a sudden crack, which echoed through the silent avenues of the Summerroot neighborhood. Black clouds became a flowing cloak, covering the body of a large boy with greasy brown hair and a look of wild excitement in his eyes.

It was Jonah Melville.

Jonah extended his hands to either side like the ringleader of a circus. “Well, well, well! Isn’t this a pleasant surprise? I was told by the New Dark Lord to expect resistance at Summerroot School... but I never would have expected it to be you! It looks like I get to kill three birds with one stone.”

The five of us stared at him in shock from the other side of the field. Jonah strolled through the burned grass, his yellow teeth widening with glee. “Alan Doe. Emma West. Right? I remember you two... I think. It’s hard to remember the names of mudblood ants like yourselves...”

Something about Jonah was different from the bully I’d known years ago. But what was it? He was cooler, more composed... more vile. Though he was only a little bit older than us, I immediately sensed the danger we were in. It confirmed all of our worst fears. Trackwell wasn’t just recruiting adult wizards and witches to his ranks. He was having his Reborn followers fight as Death Eaters as well. Jonah and his family must have been among the people to heed his call in the months leading up to the attack. They must have been trained, the same way we were trained. But while we were trained to defend, they were trained to kill.

Liam poised his wand at Jonah and grimaced. “What are you doing here?!”

“What do you think?” Jonah laughed at the incredulity of the question. “I’m here to kill you all.”

“Why?” Silas demanded. “Why does Trackwell want to kill us? What’s his goal?”

“How dare you speak his name!” Jonah snapped back, though he was still grinning, like playing the role of the villain was thrilling to him. “The New Dark Lord, the Master of Limbo, Lord Darkanoss, does not need to explain himself to the likes of you. The ritual is already finished. We can’t lose.”

“Ritual? What ritual?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Jonah snarled back.

Liam clutched his wand tighter. “You can’t beat us all alone.”

“Who said anything about alone, paste-face?”

At that moment, there was a sound like an explosion in the field before us. It wasn’t an explosion, but a flurry of dozens of apparitions as a small army of Death Eaters appeared before us. They severely outnumbered the attackers from earlier, as well as our fledgling group defending the school. I felt the air leave my body. The faces of the other kids went pale.

Jonah raised his wand high into the air. “I have been chosen as one of Lord Darkanoss’s Reborn. I answer only to the Master Reborn, and Lord Darkanoss himself. Go forth, Death Eaters – for deliverance!”

The Death Eaters roared in collective animal fury, and charged at us. A sea of black cloaks whipped in unison as the army approached us. We had no choice. I glanced at Peter, and then at Emma, and we all raised our wands in preparation for the attack that was about to strike.

What happened next was a blur. The Death Eaters seemed to hit us from everywhere at once. I remember blocking spells from every direction. Explosions of flame burst from everywhere in sight. I could feel their heat on my cheeks. The playground buckled and fell to the side. I took cover behind piles of dirt uprooted by the force of spells, and fought back with everything I had against the Death Eaters. I was terrified, but in my terror I defended myself surprisingly well. Even with an immense numerical disadvantage, the Reborn still overpowered their adult counterparts. We were inexperienced, but our instincts were powerful. They never managed to hit me. I could hardly see the others, so I could only pray that they were still okay. All I saw were the Death Eaters, closing in from everywhere, a never-ending onslaught.

I managed to get the drop on a pair of attacking Death Eaters by rushing up a dirt hill at the back of the schoolyard, firing a pair of spells down to knock both of them out. Neither had time to react. I was about to slide back down the hill and search for Peter, but at that moment, Jonah apparated out of nowhere to my left, and raised his wand. A second later, I was flying through the air, and tumbled roughly across the pavement in front of the school steps. My arms stung like crazy from the impact.

Jonah strolled down the side of the hill, his robe flowing behind him. “Oh, this is just too good. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time, Alan.”

I struggled to my feet and held my wand out toward him. I was still overwhelmed with fear, and only my childish instinct to yell at him kept me sane. “Why? Are you really still upset that that I kicked your butt that day, Jonah?”

Jonah gave me a look like I was a rat swimming in a pool of trash. “Silence, mudblood scum! You would do well to respect me. I... I am your superior!”

I scoffed. “You’re talking like a comic book supervillain. Say what you want, Jonah, but you’re just a pawn to Trackwell’s plans! I sent you crying like a little baby once before, and I’ll do it again!”

Jonah’s eyes bulged with rage. He screamed out a spell I couldn’t hear, but this time I managed to block it at the last moment. Just as the radiant glow of yellow vanished from in front of me, Jonah lunged forward, whipping his sword like a knife in the air and flinging another spell my way. Before I knew it, I was caught in a full-on wizard duel, and Jonah was winning. He was insanely powerful, vastly more so than the adult wizards he fought with. His spells were aggressive and violent. It took all of my power just to keep them from hitting me. Jonah pushed me back further, until I was practically pinned against the remains of the fence. He feigned a spell on the left, and I instinctively blocked in that direction, but then he unexpectedly shot another one at my leg. I felt a searing pain rush through my knee, and toppled over onto the dead grass.

My wand fell from my hand as I collapsed. I tried to reach over to it, but Jonah kicked it aside. He looked down at me with smug pride.

“That all you got? I bet you’re thinking twice about dissing me. Now I’m gonna make you pay.”

Jonah raised his wand, and flames appeared at its tip. But before he could cast the spell, I heard a voice cry out from nearby. “Flipendo!”

Jonah was blasted off his feet. His robed body flew through the air ungracefully, and hit the side of the school building hard. When I turned my neck in the direction of the voice, I saw the side of Emma’s hip as she stood next to me. She kicked my wand back to my hand, and smiled down at me with an impressed expression.

“That was some nice smack talk back there. Maybe you’re not so bad after all.”

I stood up slowly and smiled at her. “Guess this makes us even, huh?” I said awkwardly.

“Not even close.” Emma twirled her wand and stepped closer to me, bringing her face close to mine. My whole body tingled as she whispered softly into my ear. “But... you’re getting there.”

When she realized she was blatantly flirting with me, Emma suddenly went red in the face and stepped back. “Ah, b-but you still have a long way to go,” she stammered, as if shocked by the way she’d been acting a moment ago. “You were still a jerk to me, so...”

“Yeah, yeah,” I nodded, rubbing my neck shyly. “Right. Message received.”

Jonah’s hand grasped the wall of the school. He slowly pulled himself up, breathing heavily. Emma and I turned to face him.

“You worthless... garbage... mudblood girl!” Jonah sputtered. “You’re...”

Emma interrupted Jonah by shooting a Stunning Spell directly at his face. Jonah blocked it, but his expression showed his surprise. Emma stepped forward boldly, and fired another spell, but this time Jonah dodged to the right, then ran out into the open so that she would not longer be cornering him. The two exchanged rapid spellfire, neither gaining the upper hand, but neither backing down.

“Alan! On your right!”

I’d been so mesmerized by Emma’s fighting that I had forgotten to be aware of my surroundings. The warning from Peter came just in time to protect me from a spell flying toward me. I blocked it just in time, and Peter rushed to my side, both of us engaging the attacking Death Eater in battle. Every spare chance I got, I glanced over toward Emma and Jonah, whose battle still raged in center stage where the playground had once been. Emma was gaining the upper hand. Jonah knew it, too, because his face had gone pale, and he was sweating profusely.

“I won’t lose to a mudblood like you!” he screeched, tossing a spell her way.

Emma deflected the spell to her left. It hit a Death Eater who was moving in to attack her. “You will lose, Jonah! Because news flash: you’re a loser! And you always have been!”

I was admittedly gushing with admiration for Emma by now. Maybe she just didn’t have the same charm when she was younger, or maybe it some manifestation of the suspension bridge effect, but I was overflowing with attraction towards her. Moreover, I got the feeling that she felt the same way about me. It was absurd to think that after so many years of being disinterested in girls, the one I’d finally start liking would be Emma, and in these circumstances no less. But when I was watching her that day on the battlefield, she was like an angel of fury. I could have kissed her if she asked me to.

Jonah was at the end of his rope. He screamed angrily, and reared up his wand like a scorpion about to strike. He bellowed as loud as he could: “CRUCIO!”

The Unforgivable Curse launched from Jonah’s wand. He hadn’t cast it properly, but the snakelike coil of yellow energy that emerged would definitely leave a mark. But Emma didn’t flinch for a second. At the exact moment that Jonah cast his spell, she raised her wand and fired a blue beam of light towards it. They met in the middle and exploded in a fiery mess. I could feel the heat on my face even from across the schoolyard battlefield. The union of the spells scorched the wooden fragments of the playground. The trees shook. Jonah and Emma strained to keep their spells pointing forward, the green line between them vibrating and dancing like a snake on fire.

Emma pushed one foot forward. Jonah noticed, and strained to do the same, but only ended up losing his balance and taking a step back. Emma shut her eyes tight against the ashes flying into her face. She took another step. Her blonde hair whipped behind her like she was facing a tornado. Jonah’s legs locked in place, but it was clear he couldn’t hold on much longer. Emma pushed forward again, and the singularity between the wands arched back, closer to the tip of Jonah’s. When Jonah flinched again, the bright light met his wand, and engulfed it.

The explosion was louder than anything I’d ever heard. It knocked everyone off their feet, including me and Peter. Dust exploded up from where Jonah’s wand had been, and little fragments of wood flew everywhere like projectiles. When the smoke cleared, I coughed and strained to see the results of what had happened. I made out the shape of someone lying on the ground. It was Jonah. His whole right arm was burned black, and what was left of his wand lay at his side. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

Emma was still standing. She breathed heavily, waving her wand to her side to disperse the smoke flowing from its tip. Beads of sweat ran down her forehead, and ash stained her pristine cheeks. But she was okay.

“Ha!” she yelled triumphantly, her voice resonating across the schoolyard.

I couldn’t help but grin. When Emma turned around, our eyes met, and she grinned too. Something passed between us that was more than words. She took a step forward, and it looked like she was about to run over to me.

A loud crack sounded at the top of the hill behind her. In the split second it took me to notice what was happening, I saw the enormous outline of Karen Blair standing atop the hill, scowling down at us with the draconian scorn of an evil queen. She raised her wand over her head, and pointed it at Emma’s back.

“Avada Kedavra.”

There was a bright flash of green light. Emma’s smile faded. She started to fall, drifting slowly toward the ground like a leaf in the fall. There were no sounds. I couldn’t see or hear anything else as she softly hit the ground, landing right next to the body of the boy she had defeated moments ago. Her blonde hair spread across the pavement like a spiral of gold, mixing in with the blood and charcoal and ash.

Blair turned and waved her wand at the school. A jet of flames released from it and attached to the roof. Then it hit me all at once. Sounds returned, and were turned up to overdrive. Everything was a din. I looked up at the spot where Blair had been seconds ago, but she had disapparated. The Death Eaters roared with triumph as the school went up in flames. I looked back at Emma, lying motionless on the ground. I wanted to run over to her, to shake her body and wake her up. She couldn’t be dead. No. She couldn’t be. She can’t be dead.

I felt something grabbing my arm, but I was barely conscious of it. It was Liam. “Alan!” said his voice, a faint approximation of a message that my brain was nonetheless unable to interpret. “Alan, listen to me! We have to go! The school! The kids!”

I looked back at the school. The flames were higher now, flickering in the sky. I thought of the kids down in the basement, taking shelter from the assault. That brought me back to my senses.

“I’ll get them and take them out the other door!” said Liam. “Alan, you distract the Death Eaters! Lure them into the parking lot and then get out of there as fast as you can!”

I didn’t know what else to do but obey. Liam sprinted off toward the school, and Peter and I backtracked over the broken fence, Peter practically dragging me away from the spot where Emma had fallen. The other Reborn kids joined us, doing everything they could to keep spells off our backs. The Death Eaters focused their attention on us, advancing en masse like a swarm of black mice. When we were certain enough of them had moved away from the school building, one boy cast a spell I didn’t hear, and a huge cloud of white smoke appeared in front of us. Without a moment to lose, we turned and dashed off down the narrow suburban road, running as fast as we could away from Summerroot School.