An American at Hogwarts

Chapter Eighteen

That weekend was one of my busiest, although I didn't do any actual muggle or wizard school work. Instead, I managed to finish memorizing most of the Marauder's Map, and David and I made new leaps and bounds on our project. My schedule was starting to come together: school work (both magical and non-magical) during the week, everything else I was trying to do during the weekend.

The one change this weekend was a little bit of contact with my team from the MIT pre-college program. I really hadn't planned on keeping in touch with them once I knew I was going to Hogwarts, except maybe during the summers, but my team had done all of the heavy lifting for me. As soon as we got the final results about our victory over the smart house system, they had demanded we set up a video chat to celebrate. And they had refused to take no for an answer.

Saturday afternoon I kicked everyone but Angelina and Alicia out of the dorm room. They were in charge of making sure nothing magical interrupted the call and gave us away. I was sitting on my bed, where there were absolutely no magical moving pictures behind me, when their call finally came through.

"Alexa!" Dale's beaming face popped onto the screen in front of me with Alana squeezed in next to him.

"Hey guys! It's good to see you again!" I hadn't realized it, but I'd kinda missed the rays of sunshine from my former team.

"We won!" a loud voice boomed from somewhere else in the room. Jackson popped his head into view with the biggest grin I'd ever seen on his face. "Hey Alexa."

"Jackson."

"Ah come on, what's that tone for? I know we didn't really get along before, but let's put that behind us. We're obviously a good team! I mean, we won!" I couldn't tell if he was crazy or drunk off victory or what, but I didn't want to ruin the moment by squishing his peace offering.

"You know what, Jackson? Let's do it. Peace officially made." I nodded, and he returned the gesture. With that behind us, I spoke up again. "So, what was the awards ceremony like? Give me every detail."

"Oh, Alexa, you should've been there!" cried Alana.

"I'll go grab the trophy to show you," Dale chimed in. "You can see it in person next time you're in New York!"

Dale dashed out of frame, and Jackson slid into his spot.

"You should've seen the other team's faces," he said, grinning widely. "They obviously thought they were gonna win, the arrogant little bastards. They actually thought there'd been a mistake when our name was called!"

"Oh, I so wish I could've been there. Especially to see that smug girl who rolled her eyes for, like, our entire presentation," I said.

"Oh, she was the worst!" Jackson agreed. "I swear one of the veins in her face was gonna pop as soon as we touched the trophy."

"Speaking of trophy!" called Dale, marching happily back into frame with a trophy in-hand. "Da dada daaaaaa! Here it is!"

It was actually a pretty amazing prize; the trophy was about two feet tall with all our names carved onto it, but that wasn't all. The winners got to spend a week at NASA, working for and with the scientists on the cutting edge of technology and innovation.

Last year the winners had spent a week at Stark Industries, and I would be forever grateful that I wasn't competing in a year where spending time with my dad was the prize.

"That's beautiful!" I cried, leaning in to get a closer look at the screen. "So when do you guys go to NASA?"

My teammates all glanced at each other, and then looked back at me.