Ace and Luka

As I gazed at the replaying picture, all I could think
of was the disbelief. The black and white photo held
the image of someone resisting arrest. A tattoo of a
skull and a snake emerging from where its mouth would
be and twisting itself into a knot on their left
wrist. It really was a shocking sight, so shocking it
made me want to hold my breath in suspense. But there
was nothing going to happen, what was on the front
page of the daily prophet was very difficult to
believe, but it was true.

“Is that-“ I stopped halfway and grazed the
article, maybe it was a mistake. Nope. That was
definitely Professor McGivney. Ace nodded to confirm
my suspicions. It looked as though she was reading it
over herself. I walked around the seating arrangement
and placed myself in a chair across the table from
her, waiting for words to be spoken.

“Hold on a minute,” Ace put the paper flat on the
smooth surface of the oval table and pointed to a
sentence with the tip of her finger. “Says here he
was sent to Azkaban right away.”
I nodded, trying to figure out where she was going
with this. “Yeah, he probably was.”

She caught my eye, clearly still thinking. “Then
what was he doing here today?” I froze when it hit
me. What was he doing at school today? There were
explanations as to how he could manage something like
that. Quite a few actually.

“He could be using a time turner, or that could be a
bewitched paper,” my Ravenclaw mind was very
familiar with facts I could draw out at the moment of
need, but right now I seemed to be blanking. He was
the charms teacher, there had to be some illusion or
disguise charms, like Homorphus which I had just used.
“Or someone else…”

“Someone else could be pretending to be him.” Ace
leaned back with her hands behind her head while
putting her feet up on the table. Again, she seemed to
have forgotten about the paper that caused them to
slide off once again. Sighing, she picked up the Daily
Prophet and folded smaller. She tucked it inside her
robe and grabbed the handle of her broom. We both
stood up and headed back towards the entrance of the
HQ. It was the right idea, we would need some sleep if
we were going to track down an imposter McGivney and
force him to come clean while sacrificing himself to
Azkaban.

* * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * *
* * * * *

But I couldn’tsleep. Not until late at night
anyways. I woke up with an extremely bright ray of
sunlight bursting through the shades. It had to be
later than I usually awoke. Quickly I got ready and
sped down to breakfast. Immediately I saw Ace hadn’t
gotten much sleep either. Well, it was rather hard to
tell, she’s always like that in the mornings.
Yawning every ten seconds, not eating breakfast, all
conversations going in one ear and out the other. I
wanted to talk to her, but it would look odd for a
Ravenclaw to sit at any other table than its own.
Besides, she probably wouldn’t comprehend anything.

I sat next to a friend of mine, a year younger than me
in Ravenclaw. Cameron was her name. She had short,
thick, strawberry blonde hair and big blue eyes that
were always happy. ”Hey Cam,” I greeted casually.
“You hear about Professor McGivney?” For always
being happy she sure was a terrible gossip, and would
most likely know all about the topic. Eager, happy,
blue eyes widened as Cam propped her big head up with
her elbow.

“Nope!” she replied quickly, awaiting the
information. “What happened?” Great, now I had to
tell her. Then everyone would know, and I’d probably
end up failing charms. Quickly thinking of a bluff
that could coast me along. That’s when I was saved
by the owls.

The first to arrive was Spencer’s owl; he was
Gryffindor’s hero/Quidditch captain. It was always
hard to tell which bird flew in next. The good news
was Cam was no longer paying attention to me. The
better news was I saw Fayara, my own snowy owl, with
mail for me. I caught the stack of two or three
letters in both hands and watched the vanilla-white
figure flap away.

“So anyways, what happened?” Uh oh. I turned back
to Cam who was already snacking on the Droobles her
mother had sent her. I opened my mouth, hoping that
that fib would spring on me, soon. Oh wow was I lucky.
I was saved again, by the bell. No, that wasn’t
right, I was saved by Ace.

“OH YOU STUPID CREATURE!” Ace’s voice crowed
through the entire hall as she erupted from her seat
and pointed at her cat Ziggy. Zigs wasn’t any
ordinary cat, mostly because she had wings. No, she
was born with them; Ace had a bit of a Transfiguration
accident that no one could reverse. Surprisingly she
had trained the thing like a messenger owl. Well,
kinda.

Ziggy held a stack of letters in her mouth while she
gracefully landed on the table near Ace and began a
full speed run away from her spot. The silvery white
wings tucked close to her sides while she hopped over
the food. Ace trailed after her from the sides of the
table, by this time almost everyone had turned to
watch. She used her arms to part two Gryffindors
sitting next to each other at the shoulders before
diving on to the Gryffindor table herself. Before
anyone knew it, she was tailing the cat by one or two
plates, food flying everywhere. Students getting
pelted with the food groaned and teachers began
shouting.

Being Ace, she ignored them all and kept chasing her
pet. “GET BACK HERE MORON!” she shouted, like
that would help. Sighing, I slipped out my wand and
stood from my place. The tip of my wand aimed at the
fleeing animal. I snapped my arm back and thrust it
forward again right when it was about to leap off the
table.

“Immobulus!” I shouted over the noise of the
laughing students, angry students, and angrier
teachers. Ziggy was in full pounce about two feet
above the ground with spread wings when the spell hit
her. Time around her was slowed to a speed where
snails flew by. The cat was suspended in the air when
the laughter turned into groaning, as people were
obviously amused. Ace, who was not affected by the
spell, charged into the cat and grabbed her with both
arms while hopping off the end of the long table
herself. Ripping the letter from the animal’s mouth,
she tossed the cat on the ground where Ziggy landed
lightly and scampered away.

I walked over to Ace who was undoing the envelope and
taking out the letter from her parents. She smiled at
what I guessed to be the mixed messages of last
weeks House Elf Disaster prank. Her mother, a
former Quidditch player and Gryffindor named Katie
Bell (was it Fred or George who liked Angelina?) was
probably telling her it was a terrible idea and that
pumpkin stew should remain un-flammable. Her father
Fred Weasley probably congratulated her through a
series of things he would never say. He probably asked
to know the charm she used, and that it would make a
good addition to the joke shop.

Ace chuckled to herself while tucking the letter away
inside her school robes. To myself I wondered how many
things were in that pocket she had installed. It
wouldnï¿1⁄2t surprise me if she was starting a black
market, who would want to buy her letters, though?

“Oh those people are crazy!” she said, most likely
speaking to herself. “Now if you’ll excuse me I
have to finish my breakfast.” And with that she was
walking back to her seat, oblivious to all the annoyed
Gryffindors who had food splattered all over them. I
silently stalked back to my place as well.

“Pah, and it comes after the day I really need
it,” I overheard a Hufflepuff student say. In their
hand a copy of the Daily Prophet was held. “I had to
make up some stupid prophecy in Divinations for that
bloody test!”

“What do you usually do?” asked the neighboring
student, a copy of the paper being unwrapped in their
hands as well. The first student flipped to the pages
where the horoscopes were. I would have been amused,
but this got me thinking. No wonder Cam hadn’t known
about McGivney, the Daily Prophet hadn’t come the
previous day. I didn’t notice, it wasn’t the first
time in the past month where we had skipped a day of
getting the paper. The school just figured it was a
mistake, or workers being lazy.

I charged back over to where Ace was about to sit down
and seized her by the elbow. Soon I was tugging her
out of the great hall at an alarming rate and up to
the library. She resisted surprisingly well, as usual,
but in the end I had dragged her to sit down at one of
the tables. We couldn’t head to the Resistance HQ
quite yet, there were still people in the library.

“What gives?!?!” asked Ace, clutching her arm.

“It’s an impersonator.” I told her bluntly. I
jabbed my finger into the table. “No one got the paper
yesterday.”

“So? No one got the paper Wednesday last week.”

“But yesterday’s paper had something important in
it! Which means it was blocked on purpose!” It was
hard not to shout, but no one else could hear this. If
McGivney was a Death Eater, then another Death Eater
would probably fill in for him. And everyone knew
Death Eaters, gulp, killed. Not yet had it occurred to
me just how dangerous the Daily Prophet could be.

Ace took a moment to process all the information. Soon
her eyes widened. “He’s an imposter!!!” I winced
as she shouted. The grumpy old librarian hissed at her
to keep her voice down, and heads turned to look at
us. I would’ve asked her if she had forgotten the
entire conversation last night if people weren’t
staring. Ace stuffed her hand over her mouth as both a
muzzle and out of realization and shock. Her widened
eyes blinked a few times, obviously a bit
uncomfortable with the attention she was getting. I
decided to save her an explanation, as she had saved
me one.

“Uh, say Ace? Don’t you have Quidditch practice in
half an hour?” I hoped she did, and if she didn’t
I hoped she played along. She removed her hand and
grinned like she had fallen into a pit of galleons.

“I do! Don’t I? I get to go see Kazzy!” The
heads turned away and she switched to a whisper.
“No, I actually do though, in about fifteen
minutes.” Departing from the table, we said our
farewells and Ace headed up to her dormitory to fetch
that broom of hers. I stayed in the library to do a
bit of studying. As nerdy as it sounds, I didn’t
know all that much about the illusion of
impersonation, or how to counter the spell or potion.
This was very tricky business, I soon found out.