Monsoon Wings

Stampede Lane sat in front of his table, face buried in his hands, brain troubled.

What had he done? What in heaven’s name had he done?

Yet when he closed his eyes, he could see the jade eyes crying, spilling tears, while at the same time it was staring at him coldly, full of hatred and detest. He remembered. That night. How Samantha had left him, how she neither cared nor looked back at him. How she took the steps away from him. Yes, Samantha was arrogant. She was egoistic.

But Juno was innocent. It’s not her fault that she had the same jade eyes like Samantha. What had he done, then?

The door of the hut opened, and Elvis came in, blushing and holding a shovel.

‘Help me shovel the snow,’ he said breathlessly. When Stamp did not move, and still buried his face in his palms, Elvis looked away coldly and said, ‘You’re lucky nothing permanent happened. You should go say sorry to her. Or never show up your ass anymore.’

Elvis took off his hat, brushed the snow off it, and put it on again, walking out.

*

The next morning, during breakfast, something funny emerged. Jayden complained he had lost his wand. This statement shook the whole group in tremor. Ron, who was gulping in water at the time, was having trouble swallowing it.

‘WHAT?’ Harry screamed shrilly like a woman, while Hermione closed the book she was reading, a look of extreme confusion in her face.

Ron, after finally able to swallow the water in, laughed. ‘This is all very hypothetical. You mean you actually lost it? Your wand? I have never heard of this story before.’

‘This is not a story,’ Jayden snapped, annoyed. He wondered how he would go through his classes. ‘It is nowhere in my dorms.’

‘Have you checked in Harry’s or Ron’s trunk? Maybe it fell there,’ Juno suggested, trying to sound helpful and not awkward.

‘Well, no,’ Jayden replied, staring at his bread.

‘Must be. Just check,’ Juno played with her chocolate cookies.

‘If it’s not there, maybe it fell in the corridors or you left it somewhere in classes. In that case you should probably ask Argus Filch,’ Harry said.

Hermione continued looking worried. Harry asked her why and she shook her head, putting a bite of porridge into her mouth and chewing. A second later the owls came fluttering in, soaring around the Great Hall searching for their masters, then dropping packages and letters. A small perky owl landed near Hermione bringing her the morning’s Daily Prophet. Hermione took five Knuts and kept it in the pouch tied around the owl’s leg and the owl soared away.

‘Why do you read the Daily Prophet, Hermione?’ Ginny suddenly piped in.

‘Because it’s Hermione,’ Ron blurted. Ginny giggled, caught Harry’s eye, blushed, and turned back to her friends.

Hermione gasped in awe the moment she saw the main article heading in the first page. Her eyes darted quickly around the first paragraph and then she showed it to the rest.

Apparently, the rest were interested only in reading the main heading. Mainly because it was large and black and bold and short.

HARVEY FOSTER IS BACK!

‘Foster, wew,’ Ron turned back to applying strawberry jam onto his bread. The fifth slice this morning.

‘Am I the only one who doesn’t know anything about the Fosters?’ Harry implied.

‘Yeah, kind of,’ Juno replied nastily.

‘The Foster family was—’ Hermione started the tale. ‘Well, is damn rich. Even wealthier than the Malfoys, I think. So, the couple—Billy and Gerda Foster— had two boys. Twins. One winter night, when the twins were no more than a month old, the Death Eaters came and set fire to their house. The couple died in the fire but the bodies of the boys were never found.’

‘Ow,’ Harry groaned. ‘So what happened to the boys?’

‘Nothing. They went missing. Some contradicted that maybe they died,’ Hermione sipped her coffee.

‘And what’s the stuff you’ve just read? Who’s Harvey Foster?’

‘Harvey is the grandfather. He happened to be away when the fire broke so he survived. Anyway, the article said that he had found evidences that his grandsons are still alive. So now, he is back searching for his grandsons. He is the only Foster left. He growing older and needs a family heir,’ Hermione explained smartly, more like telling a bedtime story.

‘Okay,’ Jayden stood up. ‘Come on, Harry and Ron. I need to find my wand. Come on, before classes start,’ he began to leave. Harry shrugged and followed him, while Ron snatched another piece of bread before waving good bye.

‘Kind of low profile, Harvey Foster is. All this years. Not much news,’ Juno said, swallowing her cookies.

‘Wonder if he’ll actually find his heir,’ Hermione added. ‘Personally, I believe the twins died in the fire. I mean, you see Juno, if the bodies were never found until now—and that’s been 14 years-- then…’

Hermione went on and on. Juno had stopped listening and was craning her neck at the direction of the Slytherin table. The blonde head wasn’t hard to spot. He was sitting there with Olivia.

God, they were snogging!

Ugh.

*

‘What do you mean it’s not there?’ Jayden said, feeling a bit annoyed.

The room was a mess. Harry, Ron, and Jayden had tipped out all the contents of their trunks and Jayden’s wand was not hidden in any of the pile. They had searched beneath the four-posters, still it wasn’t there. Not that they hadn’t tried the magical way: Harry had used the Accio Charm, and still the wand did not pop up. Ron proposed that maybe Harry performed the charm wrong, but Harry denied it, saying that he had used that charm to summon his Firebolt in his first task.

‘Are you sure it’s here?’ Ron asked for the hundredth time.

‘Yes, I am! On Saturday night, I still saw it on my bedside table.’

‘How about Sunday morning when you woke up? Was it still there?’ Harry asked, waving his own wand, and immediately all his stuff flew back into his trunk.

‘It was. And I did not use my wand at all throughout Sunday,’ Jayden scratched his hair, wondering whether he had to tell McGonagall.

‘So do you think someone stole it?’ Ron started suggesting. ‘Like your robes thing. They went missing and suddenly turned up days later.’

‘Why are my stuffs always missing?’ Jayden groaned.

‘There must be a mystery behind. In the mean time, you can share my wand. Let’s go to class now. We’re late already. If your wand is still missing till lunch, you should tell a teacher,’ Harry closed the topic.