Area 51

The Fire Frat

After quickly unpacking and fireproofing the rest of her clothes and personal items, Tree insisted on showing her the common room. He had started by leading her down the dormitory hallway.

"What are you doing? There's just a wall there," Helena had cried out.

"You just walk right through the wall. Like at Kings Cross Station."

"Oh," Helena said. For the amount of times people had told her to stop comparing Sagebrush to Hogwarts, there sure were a lot of similarities. Tree walked through the orange wall first, followed by Helena.

"Welcome to the Fire Fraternity," Tree dramatically announced.

The common room was different than she had been expecting. For one, there were no chairs in sight. Only logs that sat around a camp fire that wasn't lit. A few students, a second year girl, a fifth year boy, and a seventh year girl, sat around the fire pit.

"Tree! I'm glad you're finally here after that ceremony," The seventh year girl said. "I'm assuming this is the new recruit."

"Yeah, I'm Helena!" she said, moving to shake the older girl's hand.

"I'm Cici. One of the three seventh years. You're probably see Patrick later. He's just very particular about how his bed is made. He's working on a spell to make it for him at the moment."

"That's cool. I wish I knew that spell," Helena said.

"Well, it's not really required you make your bed. We don't care. If you don't want to, you don't have to."

"Thank heavens" Helena said.

"Why would you thank the heavens?" the fifth year boy asked, seeming hostile.

"Pablo," Cici said. "There's no need to be rude."

"It's fine," Helena told them both. "My brother is named Merlin, and he hates when people use his name as an expression, so my family says heavens instead."

"So," said the second year girl to Tree "Are you going to light the fire?"

"As soon as everyone comes up here, Tamera. We have to wait for them."

"It's our tradition as the Fire Frat," Cici explained to Helena. "We light the fire pit together at the start of year and have a bonfire. Since we don't technically have school until tomorrow, we have it all day today. I brought plenty of marshmallows!"

"I love bonfires! My brothers always hated them though," Helena said.

"Well, we have them all the time," Tree said. "We have a few people to wait for. Two second years, four third years, three fourth years, one fifth year, two sixth years, and one seventh year still have to get here. So that's like, thirteen more people."

"So there are like eighteen people in all the years?" Helena asked. "That so low." Tamera nodded.

"We have the lowest numbers of any house. Most people aren't willing to go through the trials of being an Ignis."

"But it's not like you can pick your house, right?" Helena asked.

"Well, no," Tree said. "But the wand of choice senses what you're willing to do. There are trials for every house, but more people are willing to work out in hot field for hours on end, or almost drown, than play with fire and get burned constantly. It's a rare personality."

"Well, the less people, the more for us so guess," Helena said. "I wonder when Diana's gonna get here."

"You know Diana?" Tamera asked

"Yeah, she's one of my brother's friends."

"Right. Merlin is your brother." Tamera sounded as if she had just remembered, and that it made her sad to remember.

There was a silence for a few seconds. The kind of silence that suffocated you, and made you feel like you couldn't breathe. The kind that made them all know, without asking, that Merlin had hurt Tamera somehow.

The silence went on for what seemed like hours before Helena saw the shadows of figures entering the room out of the corner of her eye.

"Hey guys!" Diana shouted. She was at the front of a crowd that had taken their time getting up there. They wasted no time in introducing themselves to Helena. There was an underlying tone of disappointment that she was the only new Ignis, though they tried their best to hide it.

Once everyone was sitting around the campfire, Tree began to mumble incamtations to himself. He lit the fire, using only his right hand and no wand. Though it seemed to be a draining task, it still looked less draining than a fireproofing spell. The fire started out as orange, but slowing shifted to blue, then a bright white flame.

They roasted marshmallows, and sang campfire songs late into the night. Helena had suggested they go to bed at around nine, but a third year named Colby had just laughed and told her they had hot coffee to get her through the day.

"A few of us chipped in to get a coffee maker a couple years ago," Penelope, a sixth year told her. So, Helena had given into the fun, and let herself stay up, and let go of the worry she would be too tired for classes the next day. She hoped coffee was as magical as they all said.

It was amazing to her, even years and years later, that she could have so much fun with people she barely knew. She clicked almost instantly with all of them. It was like she was their little sister. There was a sense of immediately being at home.

She guessed she knew what Merlin meant when he talked about not wanting to go home.