Fighter

Chapter 1

       The basement of the manor had grown more uncomfortable in the past weeks. The already normally eerie feel of the room had grown ten fold due to the constant activities. A new smell of rotten eggs and old gym socks had arisen and, in the most fitting manner, a green haze was circling around the ceiling. Due to some missing ingredients, the owners of the horrible room were sure that there was a rat hiding somewhere that was just too clever to be found. But then again, they just didn’t have time for such a petty problem. They had bigger fish to fry –sometimes in a literal sense -, like their six-year-old daughter who had been waiting upstairs for over an hour now and was sure to lose her patience soon.

            “Are you ready?”

            “Are we sure this will counter act what is meant to happen?”

            “If not, we are in for another surprise.”

            Alexandra Kaneland looked at her husband, Travis, nervously. There had been so many close calls in the past weeks and she didn’t want to keep taking risks.

            The perfect opportunity to leave their work arose when the potion the couple had been trying to test exploded in a puff of black smoke, turning their faces the same color. It wasn’t as bad as the last explosion that nearly took off Travis’s ear, but proved enough work for one session. The man threw his wife a towel and they cleaned themselves before ascending the stairs back to their family life – another day, another failure.

            “Mummy! Daddy! I thought you two would never be done!” Angelica Kaneland exclaimed.

            “It’s been busy at work, darling,” Travis simply stated as he picked up his eager daughter, not wanting to go into depth about how brutal work had actual been for he and his wife the past few months.

            “Are Grandma and Grandpa on their way for supper?”

            “They’ll be here soon enough,” Alexandra assured, walking away from her long-term partner and daughter, but not before wiping away a smudge that Travis had failed to get on his own. He watched her, adoringly, before turning back to Angelica with a smile and tossing her into the air, only to catch her again.

            Alexandra had been nervous lately. She and Travis had been working on trying to uncover what certain potions and artifacts were meant to be used for extensively with no results. The makers had to have known that the Wizarding Police Force, more commonly know as simply the Force, would be after them as soon as something suspicious arose. But on top of the potion problems, more notions of dangerous activity had emerged.

            There had been so much peace since the war – why couldn’t it carry into the time that Alexandra had to work with everything? She hadn’t asked to become head of the Force; in fact, she hadn’t wanted to do any legal work at all. Her daughter had come at an early age and she needed to be a mother. But with Travis working in law at the Medium, this had seemed like the right choice. Frankly, Alexandra didn’t need a job at all and neither did Travis, really; his parents had enough money to support their only son and his family for a lifetime. But time would pass and money would run out and Alexandra and Travis needed to know how adult life felt… even though they had been living it since they were teenagers.