A Late-Night Flight and Late Night Conversations
A Late-Night Flight and Late Night Conversations
Wyatt and Chris walked through the corridors, headed towards their parent’s rooms when Wyatt noticed something out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he hurried to the large window and looked out, his brother following him in confusion.
“Wy, what is it?” Chris asked.
“Look.”
The two brothers looked outside and saw a figure falling from one of the higher windows. With wide eyes, they hurriedly unlatched the widow and opened it, Wyatt getting ready to jump out of the window, when the figure grew wings and flew up towards the sky.
The two looked at each other with wide eyes, though for a different reason this time.
“I didn’t know anyone in the Wizarding World could fly.” Chris said, surprise coloring his voce. “Let alone with wings. I know no-one from our school can fly like that.”
“I’m gonna go for a fly.” Wyatt told Chris with a smile, climbing onto the window ledge. “Maybe I can find out who that is.”
Chris nodded and said, “I’ll tell Mom and Dad where you are.”
Wyatt nodded and jumped off the windowsill, stopping his rapid descent half-way and levitating himself upwards as he followed the winged figure.
Aurelia let out a laugh as she felt the wind across her face, her wings fluttering behind her as they supported her flight. She flew over the Quidditch Pitch, flying through the golden hoops and down the poles. She flew several laps around the Pitch before settling down to perch inside the middle hoop at the far end of the Pitch.
“I was wondering who it was that had the ability to fly with wings in the Wizarding World, since no-one from Magic School had the ability.” A powerful voice said from behind her, startling her slightly.
She turned and saw Wyatt hovering in the air directly behind her, a smile on his face as he gazed at her.
“A side-effect from my Second Year.” Aurelia replied softly, turning around completely face him as he floated over to perch on the hoop next to her.
“You fought a Basilisk.” He said. “I heard the story from my parents.”
“Where did they hear the story?” Aurelia asked, wanting to know if their source was reliable or if it was nonsense.
“Professor McGonagall. She told them at lunch when they saw your eyes after your glasses slipped.”
Aurelia nodded. She understood why Aunt Minerva would have told them. They would’ve been taken aback by the sight of her markings and she would have told the couple to reassure them that it wasn’t painful or alarming.
“And you?” she asked, turning to face him as she removed her glasses and banished them back to her dorm-room. “How did you learn to fly?”
“I’ve got the power of Levitation, so technically, I’m not flying I’m levitating.” Wyatt replied.
Aurelia nodded in response as they fell into a comfortable silence for a while, listening as the wind rustled the grass and the night-time insects buzzed about. Their hair and clothes swaying in the wind.
“I’m going up to the Tower, you want to come with me or do you want to go inside?” Aurelia asked, breaking the comfortable silence as she pushed of the hoop and hovered in front of him.
“I’m guessing you don’t mean Gryffindor Tower.” Wyatt stated.
Aurelia shook her head and smiled, waving at him to join her as she flew up and turned towards the school. Wyatt followed her with a smile, wondering where she was leading him.
They had no idea that several magical creatures in the Forbidden Forest were watching the young Star and the young King as they flew across the grounds towards the majestic castle.
“Aurelia, where are we going?” Wyatt asked loudly, over the rushing wind.
“Come on. It’s not too far.” Aurelia replied just as loudly, feeling free for the first time in so long.
Sure enough, they reached the tallest Tower of the castle and flew up to the window.
“Alohomora.” Aurelia whispered, waving her hand at the window and causing the latch to unlock. She opened the window and flew inside, retracting her wings as she held the window open for Wyatt to enter before closing and locking it once more. She turned to him. “This is one of the places I come to think, or just get away, when everything gets too much to handle.” The two took one of the blankets that had been neatly folded in a corner and spread it on the slightly dusty ground before sitting and leaning back against the stone wall. “Somehow, I get the feeling you know exactly what I mean.” She looked up at him as she removed her heels and crossed her ankles, her movement mirrored by Wyatt as he removed his own shoes and stretched his longer legs out beside her, crossing his ankles. When he didn’t say anything, Aurelia continued, “Hermione, the brunette that ran out of the Hall at dinner today, mentioned that you were the Twice-Blessed Child and that your mother is one of the Charmed Ones.” She paused and looked up at him. “You don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. In fact, you can tell me to change the subject and we can talk about something else, or just sit in silence, if you want.” She wanted to give him the option because she had always hated it when people hounded her for answers when she wasn’t ready to give them or even had any answers in the first place.
“I was born on the day that magic died.” Wyatt said after a long moment of silence. “it was believed that whichever side I was raised by, I would be the most powerful force for that side, be it good or evil. Because of this, after I was born, there were several kidnapping attempts made on me until a law was passed to prevent it. Though it didn’t stop someone my parents trusted from trying to kill me, which would’ve sent me down the path of evil, if I hadn’t been saved by my father.” As he spoke, Aurelia took his hand in her much smaller one and interlocked their fingers, giving him silent support. “Because of us being so powerful as well as being the children of the Charmed Ones, my parents were very protective of us kids, especially me, because of how powerful I am and the number of times people had tried to kidnap me.” he gave a soft sigh as he let his head rest back against the stone wall and look up through the glass ceiling at the night sky. “I love my family, I really do, but sometimes they’re just constantly in my business and never letting me have a moment to myself that it feels like I’m being smothered.”
“I know the feeling.” Aurelia said softly, leaning her head back and facing the ceiling as well, though she couldn’t see the sky. “Although with me, it’s a pseudo-family rather than a blood-related family.” They both chuckled lightly. “Sometimes you just want to yell at them to give you a moment, or even just a second, to yourself so you could breathe without someone asking you if you’re all right. I mean, you know why they do what they do, you understand it, but at the same time, you just want to be like everyone else.”
“Exactly! My mom and my aunts are still constantly doing the whole ‘embarrass the kids at every possible moment’ and it drives me crazy. Not just me, but all of us kids.”
“How many of you are there?”
“My parents have three kids, myself, Chris and Melinda and my aunts and uncles have three each. Aunt Phoebe has three girl and Aunt Paige has twin girls and a boy. You?”
“Only child. Though Ron’s family have basically adopted me, and Dad and my Uncles have blood-adopted me so I am biologically their child as well. So, I guess you could say that I have 6 brothers and 1 sister from the Weasleys, and then all the cousins from being a pure-blood on my birth father’s side as well as my father and Uncles.”
“Wow, and I thought my family was big.” Wyatt chuckled lightly. His voice took on a somber tone as he asked, “Do you ever feel like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders?”
“All the time.” Aurelia replied softly. She turned to him and asked, “I take you know the feeling?”
“Extremely well.” He replied, slightly bitterly. “I am the King of all Magic and I wield Excalibur. I am the first child to be born to a Witch and a White-lighter ever, which is also why people always tried to kidnap me and why my family is so protective of us.”
“As you learned in Professor Moody’s class today, I am the only one to survive the Killing Curse, and that too was because of my mother who refused to step aside and pleaded with Voldemort to kill her instead of me.” Aurelia let out frustrated sigh. “What frustrates me the most is that my survival had nothing to do with anything I did, rather it was my mother refusing to stand aside and let a psychopath kill her daughter.”
“Yeah. It so irritating when people think you were the one to do something when it was really someone who loved you more than life itself and when you try to tell them that they refuse to listen to you.”
“I know! Sometimes, I feel like yelling it at the top of my lungs whenever anyone asks about that night, or even what had happened over the past three years. It drives me nuts!”
“What happened over the past three years?” Wyatt was curious, he had only heard the basics and what was in the newspapers, not from the person who had experienced it first-hand.
Aurelia let out a deep breath and proceeded to tell him what had happened over the past three years. In first year there was the Philosopher’s Stone being brought to the school for safekeeping and then saving it from being stolen as well as facing Voldemort for the second time, second year was the Chamber of Secrets being opened as well as the battle with the Basilisk, facing a teenage Voldemort for the third time and going blind, and finally the previous year when Bellatrix LeStrange and Peter Pettigrew had escaped from Azkaban Prison, the Dementors that were posted around the school and nearly being Kissed by them at the end of the year after being kidnapped from within the school by Pettigrew and LeStrange.
“And this entire summer, they refused to let me out of their sight! All of them!” Aurelia exclaimed. “I mean, I understand why, I had been kidnapped from right under their noses, but even now, I always have to let someone know where I am, be it a ghost, a portrait, a student or a staff member. The only time they let me out of their sight was at the Quidditch World Cup, which they weren’t about to let me attend but finally relented after I spent most of the month begging them.” Aurelia frowned slightly. “Though it was attacked by Death Eaters afterwards, so the over-protectiveness went up several notches. Though, this time it went both ways with how close I came to losing them.” Her voice took on a dark tone as she added, “I ever end up in the same place as any of those Death Eater and I am seriously going to smack them.”
Wyatt squeezed her hand gently in silent support as they fell silent.
“You know,” he said after a moment, amusement in his tone. “there was this one time, I was so terrified by the idea of losing my parents that I shrunk them and out them in a doll-sized version of our home.”
Aurelia faced him with wide unseeing eyes as she felt his honesty. She burst out laughing with Wyatt joining in after a few seconds.
“I wanted to ask,” Wyatt said after they stopped laughing and got their breathing under control. “what are Moony, Padfoot, Prongs and Cryo? Those toys that were damaged and you held a three-month long grudge against Draco for?”
“My stuffed animals.” Aurelia replied. “Moony is a dark brown wolf, Cryo is a black wolf with a silver-white stripe along its back, Padfoot is a black dog and Prongs is a silver-white stag.”
“Stuffed animals.” Wyatt repeated, slightly incredulous. “You held a three-month long grudge because your cousin damaged your stuffed animals.”
“I was eight!” she cried out indignantly. “Besides, I love those stuffed animals.”
“Hey, I’m not judging.” Wyatt said with a laugh as Aurelia hit him lightly on the leg. “I had a stuffed teddy bear when I was young, Wuvey.”
“Wuvey?”
“Wuvey. And there was this demon that cursed it when I was two and a future version of me, that had been sent back to the past because of a spell my mother cast, turned evil right in front of my parents. My father was able to save me and break the curse, but I do know the attachment someone can have to toys.”
“There was this one time, I was around 6, I made the four stuffed animals become real because I wanted to play outside during a full moon but I wasn’t allowed.” Aurelia admitted.
“It was my 3rd birthday party, I made three of my toys become real to help me find my father after he had been taken by the Angel of Destiny.”
“Why was your father taken by the Angel of Destiny?”
“He was supposed to have died in order to motivate my mother to fight in their Final Battle, but she made a deal with the Angel of Destiny for him to be frozen instead. So that when the Battle was ended, she would be reunited with him.”
“Wow.” Aurelia breathed in wonder as they fell silent once again.
A short while later, Aurelia asked him about his family and their inability to distinguish between hugging and smothering, leading them to talk about their families and friends and all the drama that came with having big families.
And so, the hours slipped by with out them realizing it until they fell asleep in the Astronomy Tower, Wyatt with his arm around Aurelia as she leaned her head against his shoulder.
Meanwhile, in the Guest Quarters, Leo and Piper were having a conversation of their own after Chris told them that Wyatt had gone out for a late-night flight. Their students were all in bed in their assigned dormitories so Piper had called Phoebe, Paige, Henry and Coop to the school.
“I’m telling you, those were the exact same markings!” Piper said adamantly to the adults of her family as she paced the length of their Lounge Room.
“Regardless, Piper, we have no idea if it was the same girl.” Leo told his pacing wife gently, seated on the sofa with a glass of wine.
They were talking about Aurelia and the possibility that she could be the girl that had come to the past with their son.
“Leo’s right, Piper.” Phoebe said, perched on the arm of the single her husband was sitting in, with his arm around her slim waist. “Any number of people could have those same markings.”
“Actually, no there isn’t.” Piper disagreed, turning to them. “I asked McGonagall after dinner and she said that no one in the world has the same markings as Aurelia does.”
“There is also the fact that you said she had the same appearance, albite several years younger.” Paige pointed out, seated on another single leaning against her husband who was perched on the arm with his arm around her shoulder.
“Okay, you have a good point, but what are we supposed to do? Tell the two of them that they are going to fall in love and be the most powerful couple the world has ever seen?” Leo asked, only slightly sarcastic, as he looked at his family.
“Absolutely not.” Coop said strongly. At their looks at his strong opinion, he continued, “If our theory is right, and she is the one who came back with Wyatt, than this is the most crucial time in their relationship. The last thing any of us want to do is make things difficult for them, when they already have so much on their plates with this Tournament, particularly Aurelia.”
His explanation received nods of understanding and agreement. Relationships were hard enough without the added pressure of essentially having the fate of the world hang on its success.
With the agreements all around, they said their good-nights before Paige and Coop transported themselves and their spouses back to the US while Leo and Piper went to bed, none of them realizing that the topics of their conversation were high in a Tower taking the first steps towards a legendary love that began with a simple friendship built on shared experiences and struggles.