Disclaimer: I only own what you do not recognise. Diane Duane and J.K. Rowling own the rest.

ADVANCED WIZARDRY

Prologue Miscalculation

James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew were playing poker in their fifth year dormitory at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in England. Nothing could break their concentration except for one thing.

"Miss me?" inquired Sirius Black, striding into the room and plopping onto his bed.

"Not really," quipped Remus pleasantly.

James grinned. "Should we have?"

Sirius just chuckled in reply.

"Where were you, anyway?" Peter questioned.

"Nowhere," Sirius shrugged casually.

Remus said, "Oh, I've been there. I thought it was rather dull."

Peter scratched his head in puzzlement. Obviously, he had not understood Remus' joke.

James reminded the others, "For Padfoot, 'nowhere' means touring the Astronomy Tower with some girl."

Sirius pretended to be highly offended. "I will have you know that I had a great time playing jump rope with...whatever her name was!"

He claimed to be jumping rope? His fellow Maruaders knew otherwise.

"But as fun as it was," continued Sirius. "I wish that something new and different would happen around here."

The next day, Nita Callahan, a voluptuous sixteen year old American girl with raven hair, was flipping idly through her wizard's manual, attempting to improve her vocabulary in the Speech, hoping for anything to distract her.

Neets?

Yeah, Kit?

Can you come over and help me with my homework?

Uh, sure. She had been studying for over four hours and would have agreed to almost anything to stop. Still, Kit is really smart, what could he need help with? wondered Nita.

She went into her backyard, said a swift greeting to her rowan tree, Luised, and used the "beam-me-scotty" spell to arrive on Kit's back porch where Kit was waiting for her.

"So, what's the problem?" Nita inquired.

Kit, her Hispanic best freind and wizarding partner, replied, "I need to do research on a castle, so I figured I would go look at a real castle. Wanna come?"

"OK. Where should we go?" said Nita.

Kit thought about it. "Probably England."

"All right. Let's set up the spell."

They worked on the transport spell while Kit's dog, Ponch, came over and eyed it curiously. The canine noticed that some things about the spell were amiss: the words that described the world they would enter and the time were obscure. Ponch was about to inform Kit of this when Kit and Nita began reciting words in the Speech.

He barked, Wait! to try to stop them, but they could not hear him as the wizardry closed in around them.