I have written 30k! So happy! I will add one or two chapters more to this I think, just to show you guys how the BEGA characters fit into it, but they will take a while. I have a life to get back to!

The workload for seventh year was intense. Even Julia and Tyson had finally started doing their homework on the night they were given it. Hilary and Kenny were already constructing revision schedules for everyone. (Revision schedules. In the first week.)

Tyson was provisionally still Quidditch captain, but he'd promised Hilary, his Head of House and his grandfather that if he was too stretched by Christmas he would give it up. There was a loud fourth year with a short attention span called Daichi who'd been nagging Tyson to step down since the end of fifth year. He was by far the best Beater on the team, but everyone who spent more than five seconds in his presence wasn't sure if he was ready for strategies and long-term decision making yet.

Max had been entered into the prestigious Wizarding Schools Potions Championship, and as a result hadn't seen daylight except from out a window for the week of term so far and would probably go sunless for the rest of the year as he frantically prepared and invented and practised.

Mathilda and Ray were seriously struggling with seventh year levels subjects. Ray was just drowning in Defence Against the Dark Arts, which they had all kind of expected and Tyson had already had one argument with him about, but Mathilda was in trouble over everything. She'd completely lost confidence after only passing sixth year Transfiguration thanks to the combined efforts of her entire dorm, and now she spent most nights crying about how she was going to fail all her NEWTS and confirm everybody's disappointment in her.

So one part of Kai could understand why literally no-one else in his year seemed to understand how important it was that they research what the hell Boris and BEGA were up to. But the rest of him was frustrated and angry. Their excuses of being too busy were pathetic. He was doing more NEWTs than anyone apart from Hilary and turning up to Quidditch practise three times a week just like Tyson and Hilary. (Hilary had tried to drop out in sixth year but she was still the best Chaser any of them had ever seen so Tyson had bargained, bribed and pleaded to keep her.) He was even still going to Duelling Club, even though only Julia and the teacher could spar usefully with him. He'd got told off for that the other day. He'd given Julia a ten minute nosebleed when their hexes had collided, and in return the teacher had given him a lecture which basically boiled down to, "We're not actually trying to hurt each other here, Kai," and taken ten points from Gryffindor.

He'd gritted his teeth and managed not to retort. It wasn't the points that galled him. He barely noticed them these days – this was his last year, what did he care about the House Cup now? No, the problem was that no-one was seeing the danger.

Just because everything seemed fine with this school, other than it temporarily stealing some Hogwarts students, didn't mean everything was fine. It couldn't mean everything was fine. There was literally no way that Kai could imagine that Boris would ever have a neutral, safe agenda.

So on top of NEWTs, Quidditch and duelling, he was spending every free second that didn't need to be spent on food or sleep (and he could do without those quite well, actually) in the library looking up new spells, and in empty classrooms or quiet corners of the grounds practising them. As well as combative spells, he also looked up Charms. Tyson's creativity had taught him that you didn't have to use a charm exactly how you'd been taught it, or for the same ends. He'd briefly looked into unfamiliar Potions, but that had been at the end of a seventy hour period of being awake and he'd gone irrationally paranoid about poisoning for a day or two afterwards as a result.

At that point, Ray had put him in a Body-Bind, dragged him to bed and told him, '"I don't care how shitty Balkov is, you're going to hurt yourself." Kai had stubbornly stayed awake until Ray had stormed out of the dorm, but then he made the mistake of drinking from the glass of water next to his bed and only remembered Max's skills as sleep had dragged him under.

After that, his entire dorm, and the girls, conspired to make sure that he got at least four hours sleep and at least two meals a day. He'd spent probably a week in a frenzy of bitterness that only stopped when Tyson had sadly said that Kai was behaving like he had been in first year, and Julia had kicked his wand out of his hand in duelling and told him to stop being scared of accepting help.

One morning at the end of the third week of term, the situation changed in several ways.

Firstly Professor Dickenson stood up and briefly announced that the first year textbooks would now be changed. He mentioned one title as an example. Because Kai had been reading every scrap of information about BEGA that he could find, he immediately recognised the author's name as a member of staff at BEGA.

"That's a BEGA textbook!" he said through his teeth. Hilary, who was sat next to him today, frowned.

"I'll have to pick up a copy at next Hogsmeade weekend. See what they're being taught."

Kai wanted to bang his head on the table in frustration. "Or we could sneak out and get a copy tonight. Or at lunch."

Hilary gave him a dubious, appraising look. Kai waved a hand at her.

"Whatever. Forget it." He scooped up her copy of the Prophet and opened it with an admittedly but unashamedly petulant snap.

And then the second game-changer happened.

The front cover was another BEGA piece. This on proclaimed the wonders of BEGA and continued its recent campaign of subtly insulting Hogwarts. Nothing unusual there. But that was all just narrative guff around the real piece:

BEGA was holding a competition. A magical tournament. It started in two months time, and lasted until a victor was found. It was open to everyone under eighteen: BEGA students, Hogwarts students, teenagers who had never received a Hogwarts letter. Anyone. It even said that Squibs were welcome to attend and to take place in the theoretical knowledge tests.

Right, Kai thought. I'm going to BEGA.

All opinions welcome!

Thank you to everyone who read this, and thank you very much indeed to those who reviewed.

xIlbx