Neighborhood

Amy was confused for a second before realizing that Ash had absolutely no idea that she was in on the wizarding secrets too, now. Letting an innocent smile slide onto her face, Amy decided to play with that. Call it mild revenge for her friend running off on vacation without her. "A game? It sounds interesting! How does it work?" She asked, pretending that she had no idea what was going on.

Avery, who had been about to tell Ash that there was no need to worry, didn't have the chance before Amy apparently decided to play with her friend. Now that could be interesting. Looking from one to another, Avery decided to stay quiet for the time being and watch the exchange, if only for amusement purposes.

Ash looked from one to the other of her friends, panicking slightly. "Uh, yeah, of course, well, see, it goes like this.... Um, there's this school, in the game, I mean, and it's called Hogwarts, and it's for people who can do magic, and....um....well, you know, we joke around about how we're going to get our letters to attend any day now, and I was gonna just joke around that I got mine while I was on vacation and maybe just have a little laugh, y'know?" She said all of this very quickly without any breaths in between, and pushed herself to her feet, dusting off her jeans with a nonchalant smile.

Amy frowned slightly. "That sounds boring... I mean, if you're only talking about how you're going to get your letters to this 'Hogwarts' place, then what's the point?" She shrugged. "I mean, it would be a lot cooler if you had a game where you pretend to actually go there," Amy said, and couldn't resist the urge to drop a metaphorical bomb into the middle of the conversation. "And that way, you could even pretend to be sorted into different houses. Maybe have them be divided kind of by personality? And then try to figure out if your friends will end up in the same house as you. It would make the game much more fun, I think."

"Well....I mean.... It's just a game, Amy!" stammered Ash, glaring slightly. "We didn't think it that far through! We made it up a long time ago, and we just agreed that the letters would come when we were eleven, and that's as far as we got!" Ash plopped down on the bed next to Amy and Avery, as the latter scooted over to make room for a third body.

Amy was starting to lose her ability to keep a straight face. "Well, if you've been thinking about it for so long, don't you think you should have thought it through already? I mean, really. Next thing you know, you're going to say that people at this 'Hogwarts' place send each other mail by having some sort of bird carry it around. Like, pigeons. Nah, owls. Owls are cooler than pigeons."

Avery grinned, not able to help herself. It was too amusing.

"I think that you're in for a surprise, Ash," She said.

"Yeah, what kind of surprise, Ave?" Asked Ash, clutching at any change of topic she could find, and struggling not to show her panic as Amy's guesses hit every mark. "Next you all are gonna be telling me that Amy knows all about our game, and she's playing too now." She laughed nervously.

"Of course I am." That only caused Avery to grin more. She could not contain her excitement any longer. "She is, Ash! She's coming with us! We're all going to Hogwarts together! Isn't a wonderful? Do you think we'll all be in the same house?"

Amy finally started laughing out loud. "Oh man, you should have seen the look on your face! It was priceless!" She glanced from Avery to Ash. "Actually, your face is still priceless!" She announced, laughing harder.

Ash stared in shock at her two friends as they giggled madly on the bed, her jaw hanging slightly. "But...I...you...we...." She shook herself quickly. "You people are mean. Come on, Avery, quit the joke, this isn't funny."

Amy couldn't take it anymore. She was starting to turn bright red from laughing too hard. Giving up, she pulled out the already-worn, overly folded Hogwarts letter from her rear pocket and tossed it to Ash. Finally catching her breath, she asked innocently, "You mean like that?"

Ash snatched up the letter and scanned it quickly, her eyes widening, and then she screamed suddenly and threw the letter aside, launching herself at Amy. "Yea! I'm so happy, ohmigod! I was afraid we'd have to leave you behind, oh, this is so wicked! What house do you want to be in? Avery told you about the houses, right? There's Gryffindor for bravery, Slytherin for cunning, Ravenclaw for brains, and Hufflepuff for loyalty, My mum was in Hufflepuff, you know, 'course Daddy went to school in Cairo, but I think he was in the equivalent of Ravenclaw, so I've no idea where I'll be! Oh, this is so cool! We're gonna have so much fun!" She was hugging Amy as tightly as possible and refusing to let go as she let loose her torrent of breathless words.

Avery, not wanting to be left out, grabbed both of her friends and wrapped her arms around them. "It is awesome, isn't it? I hope that we're all together. My dad was in Ravenclaw, so I could end up there. But there's no way to know really. Since my mother never went to Hogwarts and I don't remember her enough to know what house she would be in. Sometimes it runs in the family, sometimes it doesn't. But no matter what happens, we'll still be more together then we thought we'd be!"

"Avery, if we were any more together than we are now, we'd drive each other crazy!" Laughed Ash, crossing her legs. "Now, we totally have to go to the platform together, I'm not walking through that wall by myself."

Amy stared at her friends in disbelief. "Walking through what wall?!"

-------Go to Platform 9 3/4-------