CHAPTER TWO:
I'd been back at Hogwarts for a week when the summons arrived for me in the morning post: 'Isabella Marie Swan, you are hereby being summoned to appear before the Muggle-Born Registration Commission.'
That's when I knew I had to run.
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I woke up at around midday. As I yawned and stretched, I observed that at sometime during the night Charlie had pulled a blanket over me, as I was only wearing the towel I'd wrapped around myself last night when I'd left the shower. My cheeks went a touch pink at the thought and I firmly banished it from my mind.
Griselda was fast asleep perched on top of the cage, her head tucked under her wing. She was a beautiful owl, with glossy, sooty grey feathers, a heart shaped marking around her face and large, liquid-looking black eyes. Fiercely independent, she was a gift from Luna for my thirteenth birthday and not much of a pet. Like all post owls, she seemed to have a sixth sense about when I needed her but otherwise I could go weeks without seeing her– she caught her own food, found her own sources of water and slept out in the wild. I almost envied her freedom, when I felt so trapped.
Glad that I'd had the foresight to do all my unpacking the day before, I dressed quickly and warmly in jeans and a thick woollen sweater before making my way downstairs. Charlie was already sitting in the lounge and watching television but he turned and smiled at me when he heard me come down. "Morning sleepy-head." He teased and I blushed slightly.
"Don't you have work?" I asked and his smile widened.
"It's Sunday, Bella." He reminded me and my cheeks darkened in my embarrassment.
"Sorry... time difference." I mumbled.
"Well you must have been pretty tired. I came up to get you for dinner and found you passed out on your bed." He noted.
"I haven't been able to sleep properly for a while." I answered his not-question honestly. Charlie's lips pursed slightly but once again, he didn't press for answers and I was thankful for it. I wasn't ready to talk about why I'd had to flee for my life, and if I was being honest I wasn't sure that I ever would be.
"So, after breakfast– well, lunch really– is there anything you want to do?" he asked instead, getting up to join me as I moved towards the kitchen.
"I don't really know." I admitted to him as I opened the cupboards, glancing back over my shoulder to give him a quick smile of thanks when I spotted a newly purchased box of my favourite cereal. Pouring myself out a bowl of it, I pondered his question. "I guess... I guess I didn't really think that far ahead. I just... had to get out of Britain."
Charlie fixed me with another long look, but again didn't say anything. Instead, he had a suggestion for me– "what do you think about attending high school?"
The local high school of Forks– which was, in fact, the only high school in Forks– was rather unimaginatively named 'Forks High School'. From what I vaguely remembered, it had a total number of about three and a half hundred students, which wasn't much less then the Hogwarts population. When I considered Charlie's idea, it was the thought that the kids here had grown up together– their grandparents must have been toddlers together– that had me hesitating. While I'd been spending more and more time in Forks over the last few years, I'd only spent it with Charlie. I didn't know any of the people in Forks my age and I would be the new girl; the daughter of the police chief's runaway bride who was supposedly from Phoenix yet had somehow picked up a slight British accent that I didn't know how I was ever going to be able to explain.
Even without the accent, though, I already knew that I'd be a curiosity at Forks High and all I wanted right now was to be invisible.
But if I didn't go to high school, what would I do? I didn't know how long this war was going to go on for and I didn't even know for sure if the Light were going to win it. I couldn't help the icy sliver of fear that slid down my spine at that awful, awful thought.
What I did know for a fact was that, for now anyway, I was stuck hiding in the muggle world and if I wanted to survive this was where I'd have to stay. Graduating from a muggle high school would certainly go a long way towards assuring that it was possible for me to have some sort of future in the muggle world.
"I guess that's a good idea." I finally answered Charlie, the words dragging reluctantly but honestly from my mouth. His mouth quirked slightly at my clear dislike of the idea but as I didn't mention it, he didn't mention it either.
"I thought you'd say that." He said instead. "I'll ring the principal later today about enrolment."
"I thought you said it was Sunday?" I said, surprised.
"Yes, but I'm fishing buddies with Norman," He explained, "I'll ring him and ask for a favor. We can probably get you starting as early as Monday."
"Terrific." I said flatly, pulling a face. He laughed.
"Did you study any, er, muggle subjects at Hogwarts? You're going to need to do six subjects to graduate and we'll have to, er, forge a few records." He explained and I nibbled on my bottom lip as I considered it.
"Arithmancy is closely related to math and we did have to write a lot of essays which at least gives me a partial basis for English, but... that's honestly about it. Though you could add P.E. to that, I suppose." Charlie started slightly, looking up at me surprised.
"P.E.? You?" he asked, trying and failing to hide his incredulousness. A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth.
"Yes I'm actually not that bad at sports now. That must come as a bit of a shock, I imagine." I teased him.
"Hells yes." He nodded, "I love you to pieces, Bells, but you were the clumsiest, most uncoordinated kid I knew. You couldn't walk along a flat surface without tripping." I laughed.
"Don't worry, I'm much better now. Can even run along that surface without tripping." I joked and we shared a smile before I started thinking aloud. "I could do Home Ec. That doesn't require too much background knowledge and I imagine after five years of potions with Professor Snape– well four years with him, one year with Slughorn– that I'm pretty damn good at following recipes."
"So that's P.E., Home Ec, math and English. That's a start." Charlie said and I sighed.
"Yeah, but that's it. None of my other classes even slightly cross over with any muggle subjects."
"What about history?" Charlie thought, out loud.
"That could work," I agreed after a slight pause. "I know quite a bit of magical history, and I'm sure there has to be crossovers. I can do that, I'd just have to be careful about adding information not in the syllabus. Well, that's five I suppose... I just need one more."
"Why don't you try one of the science courses," Charlie suggested, "it might be too difficult, but it might not. You never know." The thought of physics made me cringe, especially considering the fact I broke the laws of it on a daily basis– or at least I had when I'd been able to use my magic– and I considered chemistry but the thought of it made my head hurt. That left Biology, which I wasn't overly keen on either, but figured it had to be better then the alternatives.
"I'll do Biology, then." I told my father.
"And that makes six." Charlie stated, satisfied.
"That makes six." I agreed, hoping I hadn't just made a terrible mistake.
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After talking to the principal, Charlie drove us up to Port Angeles to buy the supplies I was going to need for school. I had a surprising amount of fun picking out different pens and notebooks– it was going to be weird not using parchment and quills, I could already tell. I also picked out a brightly coloured book-bag to store my things.
We then went to a bookstore where I bought the required reading for my English class, then to an art shop to purchase several bottles of ink– after using a quill for so long I'd gotten attached, and I knew that nowhere in Forks would sell ink.
"Anything else?" I asked Charlie, who checked the scribbled list he made during the phone-call with the Forks High principal.
"No, Norman says the school can provide the rest." He said with obvious relief. He wasn't much of a shopper– I didn't used to be either, but being friends with Isobel MacDougal meant that I had to learned over time to grow a tolerance towards it.
Isobel was one of my dorm-mates and someone who I considered to be a friend. I had two other people I considered myself close to, not including Luna– a girl in Gryffindor called Ginny Weasley and Sue Li, another one of my dorm mates. Sue and her family had left Britain and returned to China when Voldemort's return was confirmed but Isobel had stayed, as had Ginny– both of them, as well as Luna, were from pureblood families and the MacDougals were considered to be among wizarding nobility. They would be safe from the Death Eaters in that sense.
Isobel MacDougal had a sharp tongue and a wicked sense of humor, as well as a sexy Scottish brogue that generated her a fair bit of interest from the male population of Hogwarts. She' was gorgeous and rich and she knew it– her self-confidence was honestly awe-inspiring. Sue, on the other hand, was almost her exact opposite. She was a slight, timid but very sweet girl, with a gentle smile and kind eyes. In our first year she spoke very little English which had made her very shy about making friends, but a very determined Isobel had pulled her out of her shell and she proved to be smart as a whip, as well as having a surprisingly bold sense of humour.
And then there was Ginny, fiery, passionate Ginny who never did things halfway. I became friends with her in our second year after she defended Luna– in a very loud and curse-ready manner– when a group of Gryffindor girls were bullying her. She lived only a ten minute walk from Luna's house in Ottery St Catchpole, which I considered my 'home away from home', and we visited each other over frequently over the holidays and had slept over together at either house more times then I could count.
I missed them all so much.Especially Luna. I missed her so much my chest hurt and I felt sick to my stomach.
I was surprised, to be honest, that I actually made any friends at Hogwarts. I didn't relate well to people my age, never had. In fact, I didn't relate well to people, period.
When I was younger, I used to wonder if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that the rest of the world was seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain, I had thought. But Luna... in Luna I finally found someone else who looked at the world through different eyes. And we'd been inseparable ever since.
A/N: Hi, I know it might seem a little like a Bella/Luna pairing (well it might if you've read any of my other stories), but they're just best friends, and Bella's scared for Luna's life. Oh, and Luna hasn't been taken by Death Eaters at this point.