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“Harry!” The girl in question turned to see a tall brunet rushing towards her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave you to carry your potions alone today.”
Harry smiled. “Leo, it’s fine. I can carry them on my own.”
“I know, lass,” he said as he swooped in to steal the crates from her. “But you shouldn’t need to, not while I’m here.”
Harry perfunctorily tried to hold on, but then let go of them with a fondly exasperated sigh. “Thank you.” She began walking back towards the Leaky Cauldron, but Leo pulled her back.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re doing something at the Phoenix that I think you’ll like.”
“Leo, I have work to do!”
“Can it not wait an hour? It won’t take long, I promise.”
Harry pursed her lips. She had to do the week’s correspondence work, and the Guild presentations were soon, but... An hour wouldn’t hurt. “Alright,” she said. As they walked, Harry asked, “So what is it that we’re doing?”
“Now, it’d be no fun if I spoiled the surprise for you.”
She elbowed him. “Leo!”
Wincing, he said, “I’m serious; Rispah would kill me if I didn’t let her explain. Thankfully,”—he rubbed at his ribs—“we’re here, and you no longer need to attack me.”
“That was quick,” came Rispah’s voice from the bar. Harry and Leo made their way towards her, and she swept Harry into a hug. “It’s been a while, lad.” Harry began to apologize, but Rispah cut her off. “You’ve been busy, we know. Still,” she said, letting go of her, “I don’t know that I would have seen you this summer had Leo not insisted on bringing you into this.”
“You were the one who said you needed a fifth!” cried Leo indignantly.
“And I also said that I knew someone, and you protested. Don’t try to lie, cousin.”
Leo looked sheepishly at Harry, and she spoke up. “What, exactly, did Leo sign me up for?”
“There’s this Muggle game called Dungeons and Dragons that I’ve been hearing about for a while now. I started playing this year, and I thought it was time I finally run my own game.”
“Run the game?” inquired Harry. “Like, referee it?”
“This game goes differently.” Rispah patted a barstool absently as she grabbed a book. Placing it in front of Harry, she said, “I got a bunch of Player’s Handbooks. You can use this one.”
Harry looked at the thick book in front of her. “I need to read this whole thing?”
“Oh dear Mother, no! I’ll explain the basics to you, and you’ll need these sections”—she tabbed 3 pages—“to create a character, but beyond that you can just have this as a reference. It might take you a bit of time as we play to understand, but everyone’s pretty new, so I’ll go slow. Sound good?”
“I—.” Harry stared at Rispah. “You know what, sure.”
“Lovely. So Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D, is a game where each person plays a character that they make. There isn’t a purpose, you just roleplay and go on adventures. The adventures you go on depends on both what your characters choose to do, but also on the world and plot that I, the “Dungeon Master”, created beforehand.” Rispah explained the mechanics of the game to Harry for the better part of an hour. After she’d finished, she said, “Take the book home, read through it, and figure out what you want your character to be. The plan is to start next week, but we can push it back if you don’t think you’ll be ready by then.” “That’s fine, I can do that.”
Rispah smiled at Harry. “Leo said you’d say that. But I am serious. Like I said, we know you’re busy. If you need some more time, we can give you that.”
Harry looked down. “My internship does end next week...”
Rispah patted her on the shoulder. “Then we’ll wait until the week after. We’re going to start at noon, so if you could come a little early and tell me about your character?”
“Of course!”
“See you then, lad.”
Two weeks later, Harry showed up at the Phoenix with a freshly filled out character sheet. She scanned the room for Rispah and found her sitting not at the bar, but at a large round table in the back of the room. There were papers scattered all over it, and Rispah was scribbling something down on one of them. She looked up just as Harry slid into a seat.
“Harry! Perfect timing, I was just reviewing what I had prepped for today.” Sweeping all her papers into one pile, she said “Let’s see what you’ve got for me, and then I can slot your character in.”
Harry handed her sheet to Rispah. “I decided on a human transmuter? I mean you can see that on my sheet, but I thought it’d be the easiest thing to do since I’m new.” “You don’t have to just do what’s easiest.”
“No, it’s not just that. It’s sort of closest to who I am? I do like it. I mean I’m not quite a transmuter yet, I suppose, all the spells I know at this level are still pretty basic, but I think she would want to go that route.”
“Alright. Give me your character’s background.”
“Katerina Basel, 20, Her parents are well known specialists, both of them Abjurers. But Kat, as she prefers to go by, has never been interested in what her parents know. She’s been raised with so much abjuration magic that it bores her. She wants something new, and the more her parents try to force her to follow in their footsteps, the sicker she gets of it. She finally runs away one summer, at 16, to become a Transmuter, because that’s as far away from her parents as she can possibly get.”
Rispah nodded. “Rebellious, young, headstrong. That’s going to work perfectly.” She wrote quickly on a blank piece of paper, then asked, “Anything else I should know?”
“If she’s still Level 2, would she still be studying? I wasn’t really sure of that, because she still has to learn more as I level up?”
“She doesn’t have to be, if you don’t want her to.”
“What’s this?” said a voice from beside Harry. She turned to see Leo, Marek, Solom, and Aled. Marek continued, “Your character’s a girl?”
Harry narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you implying, Marek, that there’s something wrong with that?” From the corner of her eye, she could see Rispah smile threateningly at him.
“It’s just weird, lad. If anyone was playing as a girl, we thought it would be Leo, considering how feminine he is.”
“Hey!”
Laughing, Harry said, “I figured I’d give Rispah something to work with. Every group needs a lovely lady, and since she can’t be ours, I did it for her.” Everyone laughed and sat down.
“Right, give me one moment to finish this, then we can get started. Harry, what do you want her to do?”
“Can she be studying, but not at an institution? She wouldn’t want to be held somewhere.”
“Done.” At that, Rispah folded the paper she’d been writing on and placed it with four other similar papers. She flipped her notebook open, pitched her voice a little lower and began.
“It’s a bright summer day. There’s no clouds in the sky, a light breeze in the air. It’s beautiful. Idyllic. Peaceful. The only thing that’s out of place is a cloaked man. The air around him seems twisted. Where he steps, creatures skitter away. In his hand are five papers. He heads to a small building. A post office. The man seals the papers into individual envelopes and sends them off. Then, he vanishes.”
Rispah passed each player one of the papers she’d stacked earlier. When no one moved, Rispah sighed. “Go on, open them.”
Harry unfolded her paper and read through it quickly.
‘Miss Basel. I know what you’ve been learning, and I know your progress has stalled. It’s been hard, hasn’t it? Without the resources your parents gave you before you abandoned them? But you can’t go back to them. And you need help. I can do that for you. Go to the old basilica in Roneas at noon, 3 days after the solstice. It’s the only chance you have to become a true Transmutation specialist.’
Just as she finished reading, Rispah said, “What do you do?”
Leo grinned at his paper. “I’m going to the basilica, obviously.” The others agreed.
“So it begins.”