Our Crazy Messed Up Lives

Jack's Father

Onceler

                “Hey,” I said to the other student in the boat with us.

                “Hey yourself,” he replied smiling. “I’m James Potter.” James extended his hand towards me and I shook it.

“I’m Onceler Smith.”

“Onceler? That is an odd name.”

“Well, my mother was an odd lady!”

James laughed. “I see. Have you ever seen the castle before?”

“No, I haven’t,” I replied. “I never even knew it existed until I got my letter.”

“What are you two talking about?” Bekah asked, turning.

“The school,” James said. “I’m James.”

“I’m Rebekah,” Bekah smiled. “It really does look majestic, doesn’t it? Have you ever seen inside?”

“Once,” James said. “I was visiting with my dad when he came to talk about death eaters to the defense against dark arts class.”

“Death eaters?” Jack asked, joining the conversation. “Why would they be talking about that? I thought they had all died.”

“It was more of a history segment than a defense lesson.” James shrugged. “It was interesting though.”

“What are death eaters?” Bekah asked. Both Jack’s and James’s expressions darkened.

“Death eaters were the subordinates of the evil wizard Voldemort. He was a dark wizard that killed a lot of people before he was defeated by Harry Potter about thirteen years ago,” Jack explained, looking down. “He killed a lot of people from my village.”

“Harry Potter?” I said. “Is that your dad James?”

“Yeah,” James replied. “Not that it’s a big deal or anything.”

“I personally think that we should be more worried about the Animestores now,” Jack said.

“Their leader was arrested though,” James said. “Almost three years ago. They’re disorganized and leaderless. We won’t have to worry about them for a long time.”

“Who’s the leader?” Bekah asked.

“Actually there were four,” James said. “One of them disappeared, but the other three were captured and taken to Azkaban, the highest security wizard prison in the world.”

“Wait,” Bekah said. “There were three of them? I remember reading something in the paper not long ago. It was a front page story. It said “Small Prison break From Azkaban”. I didn’t know what Azkaban was then, so I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal.”

Jack paled visibly. “W-what? A p-prison break?” He grabbed Bekah by the shoulders. “What were their names! Tell me their names!”

“I don’t remember!” Bekah said, shocked. “It was a Pitch something, and two others! I don’t remember, so please let go of me!”

“I’m sorry,” Jack released her and stood up. “I have to go! Mom and Pippa! They’re in danger! I-I have to go warn them!”

“Jack!” I yelled. “Sit down! You’re going to tip over the boat! SIT DOWN!”

But he was too far gone to hear me. He kept on rambling about how the evil couldn’t come back again, and how he was sorry about failing his father, and a bunch of other garbled nonsense I couldn’t understand. Suddenly, he was encompassed in a translucent bubble, and we couldn’t hear him anymore.

“He’s having a panic attack,” Professor Toothiana said, flitting over to our boat. “He’ll be okay in a moment; he just needs to calm down.”

Jack stopped trying to break the bubble after a moment, and sat on the bottom, his head in his hands.

“See?” the professor said. The bubble popped and Jack fell back onto the bench. “He’ll be okay.”

She flitted back over to the lead boat, and we stared at Jack in shock.

“Are you okay?” Bekah asked.

“No,” Jack replied. He wouldn’t look at our faces. “Pitch Black is one of the leaders of the Animestores. He killed my father three years ago. Now he’s escaped, and he’s going to hunt down my family and kill them.” His voice broke. “And there is nothing I can do!”