"I'm not lying," the second boy said indignantly, wiping his smudged face on the sleeve of his T-shirt. "Here, read it yourself if you don't believe me! Just wipe your hands first!"
"From the Headmaster of the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry…" the first boy began, unfolding the odd-looking letter. "Yeah, right, this must be Dudley playing a prank on you!"
"Dudley can't string three words together, let alone write like this," the second boy snorted. "And when have you ever seen owls delivering letters? I've heard of carrier pigeons, but this… Imagine this: we're having dinner, and suddenly, this massive, colorful owl starts banging on the window with a letter tied to its leg! My aunt clutched her heart with one hand and Dudley with the other, my uncle reached for his gun, but I'm not scared of animals. So, I went out to the porch, and the owl handed me the letter."
"Yeah, your cousin couldn't have pulled that off," the first boy said thoughtfully, taking a bite out of another apple. "So, does that mean you're a wizard or something?"
"Looks like it," the second boy said, casually stuffing the letter into the pocket of his baggy jeans and pulling out an orange. "And my aunt spilled the beans. Turns out my parents were wizards too—both my mom and dad. She just doesn't like all that magic stuff, so she kept quiet about it."
"Cool…" The boy with the apple sighed suddenly. "So, you're leaving then?"
"Looks like I have to," the boy with the orange grimaced. "The letter said to send a reply with the owl. I grabbed it, held it under my arm—man, that thing bites! Anyway, I scrawled, What if I don't want to go? The next day, they replied: You have to. Apparently, I've been signed up for this school since I was a baby. Some magical contract or whatever, so I'm obligated to attend."
"What a load of rubbish," his friend muttered, shaking his head. "Medieval nonsense! My mom's into old literature—she read this story about someone whose parents signed him up for some regiment before he was even born. Imagine if it had been a girl—that'd be hilarious! Back then, they couldn't even tell…"
"Yeah… not so funny to me," the bespectacled boy huffed, adjusting his glasses. "On the one hand, it's kind of cool, but on the other, I wanted to be a vet!"
"No worries, you'll end up treating unicorns or whatever else they've got!" his friend laughed. "What's the difference?"
"Well, yeah…" The boy with glasses scratched his head. "But something feels off about this. I'll figure it out!"
"You forgot to say, not unless I'm Harry Potter," his friend pointed out.
"You've got a way of cheering me up, Terry!" he laughed. "But seriously, if there's a way to get out of it, I will. Though I'll miss a lot of school…"
"Take your textbooks with you," Terry suggested, chucking another apple core somewhere off to the side. "I'll send you assignments if I can."
"Why not?" Harry scratched his head again. "I don't fully understand it yet, but apparently, I'm not supposed to talk about the magical world to regular people. But my aunt definitely knows about it—and the school too—and nobody's done anything to her. So I can write to her, and you can drop off the homework and whatever else. She'd probably love that—she doesn't want me being abnormal anyway!"
"Think you can handle two curriculums?" Terry asked seriously.
"Do I have a choice?" Harry muttered, chewing on the orange peel. The sight made his friend shudder, as usual—Harry could eat citrus in any form, completely waste-free. "I'll try."
"Haaarry!" came a piercing shout from a woman. "Lunch, now! Haaarry!"
"Alright, I'm off…" Harry quickly jumped down from the thick branch of the sprawling apple tree. "Or she'll have the whole neighborhood in an uproar. We'll talk about the rest later."
"We've always got our code," Terry said calmly, finishing his third apple.
"No one will figure it out. So write to me. But…"
"I'll miss you. And our school. And even my cousin."
"Haaarry! Where are you, you little menace?!"
"Coming, Aunt Petunia!" he bellowed in reply, shook Terry's outstretched hand—sticky from orange juice—and sprinted toward the house. "Coming riiight nooow!!!"