“Come on, Val, it will be fun, I promise. You’ll love it.” Sitting on her bed and hugging her knees to her chest, Valeria shakes her head. All she wanted to do was to finish reading her book. Papa had pulled it out of her hands, demanding that she get her derrière out of the house to Diagon Alley.

What is this strange feeling? It’s as if… well… my head is all fuzzy. What happened yesterday? And… who is this… Sage that keeps cropping up in my mind. I must go find her, maybe she can make some sense out of this.

At the sound of music playing - the warm strum of a guitar and a boy’s soft voice - Valeria stops dead in her tracks. She turns her head in the direction of the music.

Hearing the bang of a foreign sound and Alex crying out for help, Valeria whips her head around to see a heavily wounded and unconscious Nikki on the ground. She looks around for the source of the tiny, black object that had penetrated Nikki’s shoulder, but the culprit seems to have fled.

The air is cool, the night long. The wind is howling, as if to shed light on the unforeseen turn of events that occurred on Earth below. The moon, a silver orb - clear and luminous - in the dark sky, sends down an unwelcome beam of light into the eyes of a young girl.

Approximately an hour more of waiting, but Valeria does not mind whatsoever. She is alongside friends, awaiting her very first adventure.

Werewolves are nothing new to Valeria. Though unbeknownst to other wizarding families, the Géroux bloodline has produced werewolves in the past, and in the very recent present - Valeria herself has also been a victim of a wolfish experience.

Through the small gaps between the scarlet curtains, a silver trail creeps into the compartment, casting a slight gleam of light onto Valeria’s overturned book; it is a full moon.

Valeria awakes with a startle. She had dozed off momentarily due to the lack of sleep she had received the previous night - stayed up thinking and worrying about what her family would say if she didn’t get into Slytherin.

Behind her book, Valeria blushes at Nikki’s comment. Laying her book down to protest (“I… That was… ”), her words are cut short as she watches Nikki pull out a copy of Hogwarts: A History.

The sound of the door sliding open catches Valeria off guard as her eyes detach themselves from her book and latch onto the brunette figure standing just outside the compartment.

No “We’ll miss you!”; no “I love you!”; not even a simple “Good luck!” for her as she passes the threshold into the Wizarding World.