Head Over Heels ✓

14 / wizarding world

august, age 15

Adler hadn't shown up to school the following week, having been issued a week-long suspension while the school board came to a decision. Armed with Lucas's recording and his testimony to the headteacher, and his parents' plea that the school honour their supposed zero-tolerance bullying policy, they seemed to have made their choice very clear when Adler hadn't returned to the school for the remaining four months of the year.

Though she had claimed it had been her decision to move, Lucas knew better. Audrie had learnt, in a study session with Bryn, that she had been expelled with immediate effect after her suspension was up. Lucas had cried with relief when he had heard the news, his shoulders finally free each morning as he went into school. He no longer dreaded the chance that he might bump into her between lessons, that he would have to steel himself to take whatever insult she threw at him.

She was gone. He couldn't be happier.

The rest of the year had been something of a dream. Despite the exams that had loomed in the summer and the bucketload of work that every teacher had suddenly poured on them now that they were in Year Ten and it mattered, he had enjoyed the final term.

It did mean, however, that things were about to get a lot more serious with Year Eleven due to start in one week's time. That was the real deal, the exams that would determine which A-levels he could take, and they would have a place on his university applications.

Lucas wasn't particularly worried - he hardly ever dropped a mark - but the same couldn't be said for Asher. Even when he studied, and even with the extra time that his dyslexia afforded him, he struggled to achieve the marks he wanted. All the extra time in the world couldn't untangle the knots in his brain, the stress that took over as soon as he sat down in an exam hall. He managed to get mostly Bs on his homework with his parents' help, his father going to great lengths to help him, but he struggled to keep his head above C level in exams.

But there was still a week to go before school started again, a week that both boys planned to spend relaxing before the doldrums of education were thrust onto their shoulders once more. The past five weeks had been perfect. While Lucas had drifted between his parents as he always did during the holidays, he had spent a whole week in Wales with his mother and his stepfather. Although he hated the beach, he had enjoyed relaxing by the seaside with nautical life going on around him.

Home was ordinary in comparison, about as far from the seaside as it was possible to get, but Lucas had enjoyed every moment of the summer with Audrie back home after what had felt like forever at university. Her two month-long holidays at home hadn't been long enough for Lucas, who was used to having her around every single day, and he had been overjoyed the day that he and his family had driven down to Oxford to help her move back home. It had been a chaotic day, busy and crowded and all the things that ordinarily would have stressed him out but he had pushed past that, overriding it with the relief that he got to see his big sister again.

She would be home for another full month before she was due to start her second year, which meant three weeks of loafing around the house once her siblings had gone back to school. Charlotte would become her responsibility, enabling Sarah to spend a little more time at work, but she would be lying if she said she wasn't looking forward to that. She loved spending time with her baby sister, sometimes pretending she was her own daughter when they were in town together.

When Lucas woke up on the thirty-first of August, he didn't feel any different but he had a feeling that fifteen would be a good year. Adler was gone - for good, he hoped - and he couldn't see any reason that the year would get off to a bad start, as long as his birthday went smoothly. He had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the day, something he had inherited from his mother. He didn't like surprises and he hated the pressure of receiving and opening presents. It just wasn't a day that he bought into, despising all of the attention being placed squarely on his shoulders.