3 April 2025

Cursa had been keeping a close watch on Alex and Angus ever since returning home from Hogwarts last fall. Naturally, the entire school was abuzz with the news of the attack on Hogsmeade. And naturally, he'd fielded loads of questions about what had happened to Castor and especially to Pollux. And, perhaps even more naturally, speculation and rumourmongering knew no limits. He'd tried to keep away from it as much as possible, hiding out in the library even more than usual.

When he'd first gone over to the UK, he had expected to meet a stuck-up and braggadocious buttwipe of a boy, even more of a Pureblood fanatic than his own family, but somehow also a half-breed werewolf or half vampire or something batshit like that. Ever since they had been sent to America for schooling, the McCoire twins --- Alex and Angus --- had loved to talk about their older brothers Colin and Liam. Colin especially. He was always getting into some kind of trouble, and he was always being punished in the most creative ways.

Well, served him right, Cursa had thought. In his mind, all during that journey, the stories of Colin's many sordid love affairs, all the girls he'd kissed, and --- well, Cursa blushed just thinking about the stories he'd been told! Some of the stories varied. There was a dark haired girl friend. There was a blonde girl friend. There were several red headed girl friends. They always portrayed Colin in the middle of all these kissworthy and beautiful girls.

Cursa shook his head.

And then the whole place had exploded. Pollux lay dead. Mangled and bloodied. Castor was nowhere to be seen. And who showed up? Colin McCoire, that was who. Not the swaggering, Pureblood playboy wannabe with half a dozen girls following him. Just the same barefooted, bekilted and bewildering boy he'd last seen at the age of ten when the older McCoire cousins got all the younger McCoire cousins together to "induct them into the Clan".

Cursa remembered well. They all had to wear super itchy wool kilts on the hottest day of the year while the older boys chased them around the bleak Highlands. Colin had stood up to Hamish for some reason. Hamish drew a rusty old knife and repaid Colin with a sliced face. Blood was everywhere. None of the younger boys knew what to do, afraid they'd be sliced too. One of the other cousins tried a healing spell that backfired, leaving Colin with a scar and permanent smirk.

It was this same Colin who had somehow recognised Cursa in his grief and just enveloped him like he would a mourning brother. There was a weird gentleness under the wild exterior. Over those next days, he found it difficult to believe that the Colin and Liam and he was staying with were the same Colin and Liam that he'd heard so much about.

Cursa had kept all that to himself when got back to Ilvermorny.

As the rumours spread and the stories grew, Alex and Angus were naturally in some demand. They had a ready villain to pin the attacks on --- werewolves. And wasn't it convenient that their dear older brothers were both werewolves? Of course, Colin became one of the operatives. But the story just didn't fit. Yes, Colin was weird. What was the British slang? Metal? Mackerel? No --- mental! Yeah. Colin was mental. He did weird things. He was a weird kid. But --- no way was he a werewolf.

You didn't just let werewolves roam free in a school. Of course, in their infinite wisdom, the governors of Ilvermorny had decided to let in a whole flood of monsters into the school. Cursa wondered. Maybe that's why Colin acted so mental all the time? Was he being bullied by the local pack or something? Maybe they were threatening to turn him? It was just so wrong to keep werewolves in a school. It was becoming Monster High around here!

And then he'd gotten the chance to observe Colin more closely at Beauxbatons. It had been bad enough being blown to bits in a Beauxbatons buggy, but now he was actually going to the school!? It wasn't so bad really. The food was horrible, of course. French muck. But at least the woodlands around were familiar.

Of course, Colin had go professing his undying love for some girl named Emily. Did she even know about the boy's other girlfriends? Did he even care how many he had? But for some reason, which Cursa couldn't quite put his finger on, Colin seemed to defy the expectations. For some strange reason, his cousin just didn't come across as the kind of boy who actually had sixteen different girlfriends.

Colin was certainly a puzzle to be pieced together!

Cursa held the battered, still vaguely floral scented envelope in his hands. He'd risked much to get it. He'd heard Alex and Angus talking on the grounds one day, and he was hiding on the other side of the hedge. About Colin. About letters. About family drama. About Hamish. About Agatha. About dark magic. About all sorts of nonsense. Cursa didn't know any of the people they were talking about apart from Hamish, if that was even the same rock for brains butthole that he'd met in Scotland years before.

But as he listened, one name kept coming up. Something about Colin's girlfriend Fire Angel. About him and her --- even Cursa didn't like where the the talk was heading. Thankfully, the topic of a letter came up again. Not just any letter, but Her Letter --- they one that they had intercepted; the one that they all had so much fun with last summer. Last summer!? Cursa's curiosity was piqued.

The younger twins seemed to have been making a plan. A plan that involved Colin and this Fire Angel girl. Cursa vaguely remembered her. Pretty girl at the Potions Championship, if he remembered right. That letter was going to "ruin Colin". The boys' laughter turned really --- sick. Cursa had been wondering about them for some time. By now, he no longer fully trusted them, but he knew that he had to play along until he could be sure.

Just as suddenly as they were going on about "ruining Colin", they decided to go off and pull a prank in the quodpot lockers. Cursa had taken that opportunity to put his own plan into action. He skipped his daily study time in the library --- ooh, how that tightened his chest! He headed straight for the Horned Serpent dorms. He actually evicted two poor first years with threats of turning them into newts if they didn't skedaddle. Then he got to work on the twins' trunks. Nothing an unlocking charm couldn't handle.

And there it was.

At the bottom of Alex's trunk was a battered box full of battered letters and other stuff that the boy had collected. Rubbish mostly. Huh. If Cursa had been feeling at all charitable, he would have admitted that his own trunk contained a box full of really awesome treasures that Alex and Angus probably thought were just junk! There must have been at least eight letters. He'd had to think quickly. He shoved the box, the letters and all the rubbish into his satchel, grabbed a bit of torn parchment and forged a letter of his own. "You wont you're junk back? You gotta pai." He signed it with the name of an older boy --- just the first name. Cursa smirked. Perfect.

God how it pained Cursa to deliberately misspell so many words in such a short space of time! But he was a boy on a mission! He figured that Alex would blab about the missing box eventually and, if all went according to plan, Cursa would offer to get it back!

Yeah!

Problem solved!

That was now three days ago. April Fools! How perfect was the timing! Alex hadn't noticed yet, and Cursa had some time to sort through the letters. And now here he sat, in his favourite cubby in the Library. Alone. Pondering. Sifting the evidence. One letter was from some place called St. Mungos. It looked official. Curss skimmed it. Some nonsense about a hag slug infestation. Something about kissing. Ew. The usual sort of things they were always warning kids about. A couple from some girl named Clair. Cursa had no idea who that was. Was she one of the red haired girlfriends? Or the one dark haired girlfriends? He shrugged. There were a couple letters from from shady sounding potions monger in London.

Cursa had to reread those thrice. What the living fuck was this boy up to? What the hell even was "Darkest Night" potion? "...sorry to inform you Mr McCoire, but we have no bones of eleven year old children available in stock, but perhaps in a future shipment from our Overseas Office..." Cursa had tucked that letter back into its greasy feeling envelope. He held no great love for No-Majs, but Cursa was, at heart, a decent and honourable boy. He had absolutely no love at all for dark magic. He needed to sort all this out.

And then he came to Her Letter.

He'd struck fire crab shells with this one. Not "Fire Angel", but "AngelFyre". And she called him "Woofy". Cursa rolled his eyes and made fake retching sounds. It was difficult to read. Not because it was clearly a girl who had written it --- the penmanship was superior in every way. She was undoubtedly one of Hogwarts Ravenclaws! Every sentence she wrote was well composed and of superiour calibre! And she was Colin's actual girlfriend? What was wrong with these Hogwarts girls!?

No. What made the letter difficult to read was all the defacements. Cursa read the entire letter. This AngelFyre --- she must be the girlfriend...

My dearest heart friend – my Woofy,

WOOF! WOOF! OWOO! Cailean's a DOG!

...surprised to know how often you do come to mind...

Oh BAAARRRFfF!

excitement and anticipation about forthcoming adventures

SNOG SNOG SNOGGING!

Abandonment is what comes to mind when I think upon you now...

Ye're screwed Cail! --- No! He's skrewing...! --- HAMISH!! HAHAHHAH!!!

My loving you, Colin, is never going...

...to get anywhere because YOU KEPE SNOGGING GERLS!

Cursa blushed.

What the hell even was this?

I choose to love you and to accept you and to laugh

Can i BARF now!? --- HAMISH! Don't draw that!!

I needed you an awful lot this past year, Woofy

OWOOO! Are you going to turn her too, wolfy lad?

And once you did leave me, I was too...

Ye're sech an arse Cail! --- We're gonna show Ma, Cail! She's going to kill you! --- NO. WE'LL SHOW IT TWO yOU KnoW WhO

Loneliness. Confusion. Grief. Hurt.

You're such a butt, Cailean! She luuuuuves you!

I sent an owl to you before school ended.

Bet he ignored that one too! --- Har har!! --- Yeah, like he's ignoring this one!

...I would do it all again if I thought it had a chance...

What a deluded little witch! --- Ye're a SUCKER Angle Fire! --- Heheheh! Is your WOOOOFFY still doing it with --- LOLZ! --- Wait till we sned you this letter back ANGLE WANGLE!!

Cursa stopped blushing.

The words, written in at least three different hands, or maybe four, were bad enough. The stick figures --- Cursa could barely stand to look at those. He didn't know who AngelFyre was. He didn't have to. His fist clenched. Whatever those two buttwipe brothers of Colin were up to, this was just too much. These kinds of words --- these kinds of pictures. They were straight out the gutter!

Cursa skipped to the end. The space at the end of the letter was full of really super crude imagery and --- Cursa didn't even know what to call it. His first thought was to crumple the letter and set it on fire! His breathing came hard and fast. It wasn't even his letter! Cursa made a promise to himself. Right then. Whoever this AngelFyre was, she was clearly an intelligent girl. If she was the girl he'd seen last fall with Colin, then he knew she was beautiful. She was clearly intelligent. He read the letter over and over. He detected no signs of her actually being his girlfriend. He detected no signs of her "loving" him the way he imagined he might some day love a girl.

No.

What he read here in this letter was a friend who felt abandoned by a friend. He didn't know what part "Darkest Night" played in this, but basic research revealed what St Mungos was, and a curious notice in an old newspaper from last fall revealed one or more Hogwarts students had indeed been infected by hag slugs and one of those had been the cause of a small epidemic among girls in several British locations, including Altnahara, Colin's home town.

What he read at the bottom of the letter, written in a very uncultured, unlettered and untutored hand, was, he deduced, dear cousin Hamish's most recent knife slash against Colin:

Don't think i forgetted wot happened on the Bridge at Altnahara, Cailean. I'm coming for yu. Ye'll regret wat ye did tae me. Wut i wunt tell ye is when. Yee'll piss yer kilts ye little gobshite!

A ken whet ye dinna ken, mate. Uncle Mac put me in the know...Ye know whot? ye won't be missing around with that stupid lassie of yers much longer!

Right.

Cursa put the letter down.

How the fuck many different ways could one boy spell the simple word "what"? Did they not educate young wizards in Scotland? Cursa shook his head. This dolt Hamish wouldn't have lasted ten minutes at NoCoWEC^(*), that's for sure!

Right.

Cursa had read enough. More than enough.

Right.

Five different misspellings of "what" in one short bit of writing was simply too much to bear! But more than that! No one messed with a girl this way! Cursa stood up. He clenched his fists. He sat back down. He shook his head. Quite apart from the atrocious spelling, one thing you didn't do was hurt family. He had no idea who "Uncle Mac" was or any of the rest, but Colin needed to know. And this AngelFyre needed to know. Dealing with Alex and Angus could wait. Cursa needed to think of a plan.

He also needed to send Colin this letter. It would certainly be delivered to him at school! No way the twins could intercept it there at Hogwarts. Cursa had to write a letter of his own. He made it short and to the point:

Colin!

We need to talk. Face to face. Not by owls. Don't write back. I've decided. I know I said I'd never set foot in England again, but I'm going to go to your spring ball at Hogwarts. I'll make up some story here.

Also.

You need to see this letter. AngelFyre does too. I don't know what's going on here, but your brothers and dear cousin Hamish are cooking up something against you. I don't understand half of the drivel they defaced your letter with. But I promise you this. After seeing this letter, I no longer trust Alex and Angus.

You showed me nothing but kindness back last fall. You and Liam. You treated me like a brother. I didn't expect that. Not after all the stories Alex and Angus told about you. Colin. They even called you a werewolf! Can you believe that!? So I'm making a vow with you. I'm going to do everything I can to make sure Alex and Angus's plans fall apart. I know people here.

One day soon, brother, we'll face them together.

--Cursa

(*)NoCoWEC is a little primary school for wizarding kids in New York: North Country Wizarding Education Community.

@Stephen Schwartz | @Casey Stone