A Special School Solo Finished

A flutter of a shadow stirred the sunbeams across the hay-strewn floor as a tawny owl came to a perch on the open barn window, making its presence known with a trilled screech.

Startled by the movement, Roscoe bolted his head up with alarm, pricking his ears at the source of the strange noise. Sierra turned her head to glance overhead, and was surprised to see a large, bird-like creature gazing down at her from the barn window above.

An owl? Sierra thought to herself, fascinated yet confused.

Seeing that it had the girl's attention, the owl swooped down from the window and landed on top of a nearby crate, mere feet away from its recipient. Calmly, the owl watched her and shifted its feet.

Spooked by the owl's advance, Roscoe shied away and trotted briskly out of the barn. Frightened for a second that the owl was going to fly straight at her, Sierra scrambled backward a few steps, but halted in her retreat once she realized that the owl didn't seem poised to attack. Curiosity overcame Sierra' fears when she noticed a small envelope gripped in the bird's beak, as she studied it with perplexity. The owl seemed to be presenting the envelope to her, waiting for her to take it.

With the envelope being presented face-side toward her, Sierra could see that there was writing on the front, and she cocked her head at it with wonder. Warily, she hesitated before approaching the owl with caution, and slowly reached out her hand, taking the outermost corner of the envelope and plucking it from the bird's beak.

Keeping a guarded eye on the owl, in case it did anything else funny, Sierra glanced down to examine the heading of the envelope, and to her amazement, realized that it was an address. An address to one "Ms. S. Oakley"… Unless if there were other Oakleys living in the area, but no… The address was to her home, more specifically, "The Barn Beside the Farmhouse", unless if she was mistaken… or blind, or dreaming. With the faintest doubt, Sierra assumed that the only "S. Oakley" around could be her.

Her breath caught in her throat, suddenly fearing for her safety. Was someone spying on her? Sierra whipped her head around, seeing no one that might be hiding in the barn or in the pasture outside. Questioning whether she was truly alone, Sierra turned her attention back to the envelope, her mind combing over a list of people that might be behind it, those that would know her exact whereabouts to be able to send it. The only problem was… Sierra didn't know anyone who might be an owl trainer.

Sierra cast another uneasy glance at the owl, who calmly shifted its feet as it continued to watch her perplexed reaction with almost a look of amusement.

What an odd way to send a message, Sierra thought, debating if she should open the envelope at all. She had been warned about strangers, and the person that had sent this to her might have very well been a stranger. And if it that were so, then whatever was inside the envelope might be dangerous. Should she bring it to her parents first?

Fiddling with the thin, lightweight envelope between her fingers, and determining from what she could feel, might be no more than a harmless piece of paper inside, Sierra gave into curiosity, and flipped the envelope over, breaking the wax seal open, another thing she noticed that was odd. Who used wax to seal envelopes?

She pried out what she guessed was correct, a yellowed piece of paper, which she unfolded and began to inspect. What caught her eye in the beginning was the brightly-colored stamp at the top of the page, what looked like a crest or an emblem, divided into four quarters – red, yellow, green, blue – with the letter H in the middle, and a large heading below it: "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry".

Hogwarts? Sierra wrinkled her forehead, having not a clue of ever being mentioned that word before. What did that mean?

"She was your age when you got the letter; you were just about as much in the dark about it as she was! Honestly, Jare, I should be the one against it, not you." Inside the confines of the master bedroom, Mrs. Oakley argued with her husband, trying to keep their voices from being overheard through the other side of the closed door. "If you won't tell her anything, then I'll tell her what I know… It's about time, Jare. "

Across the other end of the hallway, Sierra sat at the foot of her bed, waiting patiently in her room, where her parents had told her to remain until they had finished their "little talk". Although she was tempted to creep over to the door and listen in on the adults' conversation, Sierra decided to stay put, assuming that now probably wasn't the best time to be caught spying by her parents. She could always poke them with questions later, once they were finished. In the meantime, all she could do was lie on her bed and wonder what her parents were talking about. Sierra knew it had something to do with the "Hogwarts" letter she had presented to them, just a few minutes earlier:

"So…" Sierra trailed off as she stood awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen, interrupting the moment of tense silence between her parents as she watched her father's eyes graze through the entire letter.

"It's nothing," Mr. Oakley said finally, folding the letter back into the envelope. "Nothing you should worry about."

Lack of alarm. Dismissal without worry. It would seem that her father didn't want to know more about where the letter had come from, or who could be the mysterious sender behind it. Sierra sensed a growing concern, and had a gut feeling that her father was holding back.

"Why? Is it fake?" Sierra piped up. "Is it a real school?"

Mr. Oakley opened his mouth to respond, then stopped short before continuing. "Yes, it is," he replied. An unwritten expression crossed his face. "But you're not going."

"Why? What about it?"

"You don't need to know."

"Why?"

From there, Mr. and Mrs. Oakley had sent their daughter upstairs to her room and shut themselves in the master bedroom, where they continued on in a private conversation.

"That school is dangerous," Jared emphasized, rambling on with exasperation. "She could get hurt, she could get killed — Children have been killed, over at that school! You think that's all worth learning a couple of magic tricks?"

"It's not just the school." Charlotte's tone softened. "There's an entire world you've never told her about. Not that you've told me much about it either." A faint gleam of interest resurrected in her eyes.

"And what about your parents? Your brother?" Jared grilled, listing off names of Charlotte's family and relatives, those that shared close contact with Sierra. Those that were sure to take notice and ask questions, should Sierra change schools away from home. "How're we going to explain it all?"

"They'll understand. They'll keep it secret."

"They are going to freak once they find out what she is." A dismal look fell over Jared's face as he scoffed and turned his back. "What we are."

Mrs. Oakley fell silent, and her husband sighed irritably.

"Look, if she wants, I can start teaching her a few things." Jared turned to his wife, almost pleadingly. "She doesn't need to be sent off to learn anything."

Charlotte huffed. "At least tell her something." She mustered a small smile at the man who had shrouded his past from his daughter and herself for the last fifteen years. "Give her a choice."


As her father entered the room and closed the door behind him, Sierra sat upright on her bed, eager to ask more about the letter and why her parents' talk had been so secretive.

She didn't have to press long for an answer. Mr. Oakley was ready to explain.

"This 'Hogwarts' is a magic school…" Jared began, sitting himself down on the bed beside Sierra. "It's where young witches and wizards, children like you, go to learn magic." He struggled for lack of words to describe. "It's a 'special' school, for those that have 'special' abilities. People like you and me."

Like us? Sierra soaked up her father's words. She had always known that the two of them were different, that their magical "oddities" were what set them apart from "regular" people. But having never encountered another witch or wizard in her life, it was difficult for Sierra to imagine that there were others out there, besides her father and herself.

"I went there, when I was your age," Jared pointed out, revealing a few basic facts about Hogwarts while lightly referring to his own academic years spent there. Sierra listened and asked questions with keen interest. All her life, she had been told to keep quiet about her abilities, just to act “normal” like everybody else. Knowing now, that she wasn’t alone, that there were other children with powers like herself, tugged at Sierra’s wandering mind to want to visit Hogwarts for herself.

"So I'm supposed to go to a magic school?" Sierra thought more or less to herself, aloud.

"No.” Her father seemed all too quick to imply otherwise. “Not if you don't want to.”

"Can I try?” was the least Sierra could propose. After all, she could always come back home, should she change her mind. At least she would know for sure, once she experienced it. Then her curiosity would be at ease.

"We’ll think about it," Mr. Oakley concluded as he left the room, promising they as a family would talk about it during supper and come to a final decision later.

After sending his daughter downstairs to assist Charlotte with supper preparations in the kitchen, Jared returned to the master bedroom and spent a few moments inside the walk-in closet, knowing where to look as he bent down in a corner and quickly found what he was searching for. From a dark cubbyhole of a bottom shelf, he pulled out a long, narrow, black case, about a footlong, and held it up to the light as he stood up straight, pausing with a breath. He unfastened the latch and opened the lid, gazing in reminiscence before his fingers reached down to brandish a long, wooden object — a champagne brown wand. Spruce wood and unicorn hair. It had been many years since he had last felt the urge to look upon it. Even longer since he had last been tempted to perform magic with it. Now that he was holding it again, it was as if he were somehow… invigorated. Yet returning to an object that bore connections to his past, had awakened old shadows and suppressed memories that unsettled him greatly.

Apprehension gnawed at Jared, hoping that he hadn’t opened the door to anything he would regret. Putting his wand away, he tucked the case back inside the closet, and then proceeded downstairs to join his family for supper.