& I see Mindfreak like, "What's up man, what's happenin'?"

It was cooler in Autumn- much cooler, despite the fact that the sun was still to be seen in the gray skies overhead- a temperature which made Calvin feel quite content as he rocked, back and forth upon the plastic seat of the swing he had spent most of the day on. The swing set had been built with children in mind- children who were much, much shorter than Calvin, whom felt like a crumpled origami giraffe as he sat there with his back hunched and his knees bent. The young man had no room to dangle his legs from the swing as he could remember doing so when he was young, however, he did have an advantage; with only a small push, Calvin was able to launch himself backwards into the air, and could then stretch out his legs in front of himself- a stork taking flight.

He wore a smile upon his face, as was to be expected from the childish fellow, despite his pathetic hunched position upon the swing in the center of the nearly-empty park, and if one were to listen closely, they would have been able to hear the notes which Calvin was humming softly- almost as if he were daydreaming.

Two young children were sitting in the grass on the far side of the park, watching Calvin as if he were going to take flight at any given moment- or perhaps they were simply wondering why such an odd looking man was sitting on their favorite swing. They were the only others there to keep the sandbox, the plastic slide, and the swing set company that quiet afternoon.

Calvin stretched his legs outward for a short moment and sprung from the ground as if the chips of wood that had been sprinkled about it were actually made of some sort of enchanted trampoline. Laugher drifted from his awkward smile and danced upon the chilled, fall air as he slowly and cautiously slid his arms up the chains that held the swing in place, his twinkling eyes running over the playground, which seemed so far below him. For someone with so much fear burning beneath his chest, the young man seemed quite free spirited as he swung his legs back and forth, forcing the swing to imitate the movement.

“Aha!” One of the children sprawled out on the grass exclaimed, crawling quickly to his feet; the young boy was clearly impressed with the height that the stranger on the swing set had managed to reach.

Calvin had not taken notice to the children, and was startled by the sudden outburst despite the fact that it had not been any particularly frightening noise- it had been more of a cheer, in fact, and for a moment, as Calvin’s eyes met the excited baby blues that belonged to the boy below, he felt for a moment as if he had become someone else entirely. He had achieved something magnificent in the eyes of the child before him- he was Superman for that fraction of a second.

Now, had he actually transformed into the superhero that he himself had once idolized when he was as young as the blue-eyed boy on the other side of the park, Calvin would have been able to prevent the swing from rocking forward violently when he was distracted, and would have thus been able to prevent himself from crashing to the hard, dirtied ground with a loud thud when gravity decided he had spent enough time in midair. However, such things did not happen- at least not for Calvin, for that would have required luck, and he had been a rather unlucky person since birth.

“Ouch…”

The small, hurried footsteps of the two children rushing towards him were magnified when his head was pressed so firmly against the ground like that- as was the pain that seemed to be coming from his arm, which he was lying flat upon with his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He would have cried, but for that moment, it had seemed as if he had forgotten how to; the pain had been too great for him to remember how to allow the salty tears that were building up within his eyes to roll down his scratched cheeks.

“Mr! Mr, are you OK?” a small, innocent voice squeaked as both children grabbed hold of Calvin’s sides and began to pull him upward off of the ground.

Calvin straightened, peeking through his sticky eyelashes at the arm which pained him. His left arm hung limply from his shoulder, his hand in his lap, and it took no time at all for the young man to realize that he had broken the bone beneath the skin. “On no…” he croaked- his voice sounding as small as that of the children whom had pulled him up from the dirt; Calvin knew of many healing spells which would work greatly in such a case, however, the idea of casting one of those healing spells upon his own arm frightened him like a thunderstorm frightened an infant.

No matter, the pain was too great to ignore, and the injury looked terrifying.

Slowly, Calvin shifted his weight so that he was able to dig the fingers of his right hand inside the back pocket of his black jeans, fingering the change that he had forgotten about within the pocket before the tips of his fingers met with the splintering wood of his wand. “G-grab that, please,” Calvin whimpered as he asked the younger boy for assistance, who then pulled the wand Calvin’s back pocket with ease, being as small as he was. “What’s that, a stick?” The younger-looking of the two children asked; a girl with long blonde hair that appeared as if it hadn’t been combed through in a year at the very least. Her large, crystal blue eyes were identical to her brothers, and were what lead Calvin to assume that the two of them were siblings, if not twins.

“It’s a wand,” Calvin answered her question, forgetting completely of the laws that had been made in order to protect muggles from the wizarding word, despite the fact that it was his job to do just that- though it wouldn’t have been the first time Calvin Ransom had foolishly admitted to someone who could very possibly have been a muggle that their was, indeed, a world beyond the one that they knew of. In fact, he slipped up on a daily basis, and it was a wonder why the Ministry hadn’t fired him for it.

Though it took a bit of time, and Calvin struggled quite a lot at doing so, he eventually managed to position himself so that he was holding his wand firmly in his right hand, and the tip of it lay gently upon the arm that he had broken, “Please, lord God almighty…” he whispered quickly, fallowed by the muttered incantation that was supposedly going to heal the damage that had been done when he had fallen from the swing.

The hairs upon Calvin’s arm seemed to have been lit on fire as the charm spread throughout his arm; an odd tingling/burning sensation was felt as the magic mended his fractured bone, as if welding it back together with the flame that Calvin could have sworn had begun to dance upon the flesh of his arm. “Ow-ow-ow!” he wined, but his voice was drowned out by the “Ooohs” and “Ahhhs” of his audience of two.

Jack hated crowds and she found the ones of Hogsmeade particularly terrible, for all she heard was the screeching of first years and the giggling of girls much to idiotic for her patience, and the guffawing of boys much to moronic for her attention. Mostly, she found people too stupid for her attention, or simply not interesting enough. And discussing lip gloss, and the attractiveness of the opposite sex simply did not appeal to her. And that was why she avoided crowds.

She had Apparated to Diagon Alley, but the situation was much the same as the place before, and she had merely gotten one roll of her eyes in before she had decided to move on. She had Apparated to her cousin Elliot's home in London and knocked on his door, but received no reply, which was really not all that odd. That man was always off trying to save the world... or whatever it was he did.

So, she stuffed her hands and continued on, walking slowly, kicking out her legs and following the sidewalk. It led her towards a more suburban area and soon the laughter of children reached her ears. She walked along a fence, glancing across it to the park on the other side and a loud yelping sort of cry caught her attention. She paused at the gate and looked inward.

A taller sort of person was sitting in the middle of the park, a swing behind him swinging as though a ghost sat in it. Littler figures surrounded the figure and he raised a thin stick to his head-

Jack realized it was a wizard and quickly opened the gate, crossing the park towards the person. The little kids, comfortable around the figure, looked borderline terrified by the approaching redhead, who was about to ask this fool what they were up to. She rounded around the person and kneeled, wondering who this person was and what their problem was.

She immediately recognized him. She had met him once before. Calvin Something... It was not the sort of person you easily forgot. She looked at him, raising her eyebrows. "Calvin? What's wrong?" She had just noticed that his face was constricted in pain.

For a frightening moment, the two small children before Calvin had stared over his shoulder with wide, terrified eyes, and thoughts of the worst had begun to zip through his mind- like cars racing down a highway at a speed much faster than the speed limit, knowingly, but without giving a damn about it; with such troubling thoughts running through his head, he was bound to wind up with a stress headache, but that didn’t change the pace at which they ran through his head. It only made them come and go faster. Calvin spared a glanced to the left, allowing his eyes to skim his shoulder for a fraction of a second to examine the skin upon it, as if he expected it to have actually have caught fire- it wouldn’t have had surprised him if it had, though it certainly would have brought him to tears.

When the young man found no dancing red-orange flame upon the skin of his left shoulder, he was left to assume that something far worse but much more amazing had occurred; aliens had been approaching the park since the time he had spent on the swing, only, he had been too preoccupied to notice, but now that the group of three were sitting upon the ground with no real distractions other than the pain of Calvin’s arm in the way, the children had been able to spot the approaching creatures.

One of the children, the girl with ratty blonde hair and big blue eyes, clung to the arm that Calvin hadn’t injured when he had fallen, and hid her face within the hood of his vest, despite the fact that he could have been some dangerous stranger- pft… more like a dangerous teddy bear.

“Watch out, I’ve got a loaded gun and I’m not afraid to use it! Teddy is bad to the bone!”

Calvin had always wanted to come face-to-face with life-forces from another planet, but he had never wanted it to be when he was in so much pain- "Calvin? What's wrong?" It was odd; he had never imagined that aliens would speak the same language he did, and he certainly hadn’t expected them to have such squeaky, feminine voices… Calvin turned his head, twisting his neck so that he could see who had approached him, only to be filled to the brim with disappointment when he laid eyes on a familiar looking redhead female. It wasn’t that he wasn’t excited to see her again- Jack was her name, she had a boy name, Calvin remembered so- it was simply a matter of whether or not he wished to befriend someone from another galaxy, or if he would rather run into someone he had met once at a restaurant on a slow afternoon.

“Jack!” Calvin exclaimed, unable to express his disappointment that she weren’t, in fact, an alien; she had been quite friendly towards him when they had last talked, and anyone who had ever been friendly towards Calvin was considered a friend of his, in his big, childish brown eyes. “I fell from the swing when I was pretending to be Superman,” he admitted with a sheepish smile; a grin that looked quite pained due to the fact that the healing spell he had cast upon his arm had not quite finished working.

“These are my friends,” He added, patting the blonde head of the young girl who was nestled up against his side, “Y-yeeeaah, I-I’m C-h-a-r-l-i-e,” the blue eyed boy, who had been the first to make his presence know to Calvin, spoke, hiccupping as he spoke, as if he had caught some sort of rare disease that made it impossible for him to speak a single word without doing so. The other- the girl- must have heard the introduction that her brother had made and had decided that it was safe to come out of hiding, for she slowly-but-surely began to slide away from Calvin so that her face was visible once more. She did not give any introduction, nor ask who the strange redhead girl was, but there was a glitter in her eyes, one that spoke the words that she did not, for her.

Jack did not even blink when Calvin gave a rather less-than-enthusiastic greeting. She would admit, she did not know him very well, but from what she did, this was slightly out of character, since he had left an impression of boisterousness on her the last time she had met him. She was getting fairly used to disappointing people though. Sorry, world, Jack can't always be the superhero. She had her damn problems...

She raised an eyebrow, and then could not help but laugh when Calvin informed her that he had been trying to imitate superman and she was able to piece the rest of the story together from there. She let herself fall back so she was sitting on the grass, cross-legged, across from him. "Hey, we've all done it." Sure, most of us before we hit puberty... Still, she could relate.

He introduced her to his.. friends... She waved a little at them, but was not sure what to say otherwise. She did not know how to treat little kids. She did not know any... Apparently, Calvin did, which was a little awkward but, when she thought about it, expected from the awkward guy. Jack simply nodded at them and saw that they were nervous and Calvin was still in pain... She felt like she had to do something. Especially something to distract from Calvin's wand...

"Hey, uh, you guys want to see a magic trick?" the question was rather feeble, because she was addressing children and... well, a man-sized child named Calvin. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a quarter and held it in her palm, the other hand in her pocket. She closed her hand around the quarter. She squeezed on her wand and re-opened her hand. The quarter was gone. "Oooh," she said. She reached forward and grabbed something behind the boy, Charlie, 's ear. "Is it here?" She withdrew holding out a candy. "Nope. Here?" She tried the blonde girl's ear, who clutched Calvin but looked intrigued. Jack showed her another candy. She tried Calvin's and withdrew a cheesy bouquet of flowers. She smiled for the kids. "Dang, where'd that quarter go." She handed each the 'gift' she had 'found' and put her hand in her pocket. "Oh!" She puled out a quarter. "Here it is!" She smiled weakly, hoping to have entertained them.

The simple healing spell had eventually done as it was supposed to- or, perhaps it had been the distraction that Jack had provided that had caused the searing pain in the upper section of his arm to slowly fade away. Unpleasantly, the process of healing his own injury reminded him of the days he had spent dressed in a white coat, visiting young children with hospital bracelets around their wrists and scars to brag about… and it took Calvin a moment to collect himself, for during that short moment, he swore that he could feel the duct tape that Reid had helped him wrap around his heart in order put the broken pieces back together, running out of its stickiness. It had been years; years of recovering, of pushing thoughts of that poor, innocent little boy's fate out of his head, and smiling- there was lots of smiling, because smiling always made Calvin feel like he was dancing with the clouds in the sky…

Smiling made everything beautiful and joyous - almost as much as Chase Moor did.

Oh how her laughter warmed his heart when his mind reproduced that sweet melody in his ears for his enjoyment… Laughter and smiles are the best kind of medicine, Calvin recalled his mother telling him when he had once gone to visit his sister in the hospital- but there was something about that particular laugh that could bring Calvin back from the dead. Well, you know, if he ever died- but he wouldn’t, because Peter Pan had told him so when he had gone to Disney Land when he was seven.

It was as if the little girl at Calvin’s side had positioned herself close enough to his head to hear what it was that he was thinking of, for at that precise moment, she smiled- and oh what a smile it was! Those big blue eyes of hers glittered, reflecting the light of the sun to such an extent that Calvin pondered for a moment whether or not her eyes were shining brighter. In response, rather than speaking, Calvin began to smile along with her, the occasional giggle escaping his lips, as though he could not contain the infectious happiness that had spread from one person to the next; soon, Charlie too was laughing into his lap, resting his head atop his folded legs as though he were not aloud to do so in front of Jack. To them, she was the teacher, and they were to be nothing other than quiet- Calvin was simply another student sitting beside the two of them.

A magic teacher, it was decided as Jack began to speak, making it clear with every exciting word that she was about to unleash a whole lot of magic. Calvin did not feel funny as he leaned forward, staring at Jack with wide eyes as she performed her first trick, though he should have, having grown up in a wizarding family, and having attended the finest wizard’s school in London.

No, no- ON PLANET EARTH!

Ah, Thank you Calvin for correcting me. Yes, the finest wizard’s school on, ahem, planet earth.

He was just as fascinated by Jack’s ability to produce candy from Charlie’s ear- which he attacked as if he were a Velociraptor- as well as a the young girl’s, who Calvin had named “Sun” because of her eyes, and last but not least, the plastic bouquet of flower from Calvin’s ear. For a moment he was awe-stricken as he gazed at the flowers; how on earth could that have fit in his ear!? Or more importantly, when had it gotten stuck in there? Had it been days ago, weeks even, or maybe even months!? Calvin was certain at that moment that- so certain that he would bet his playstation on it- Reid had stuck it in his ear when he’d been sleeping as a prank, or maybe even a way to distract him so that he could go for the world record on Dig Dug.

Calvin could imagine it: "Hey Reid, you seen the ear cleaners (Q-tips)? I think I've got something in my ear..." "They're in the bathroom- and please don't tell me you put another peanut in there... You are not Merlin, you know, and it took me forever to get that out of your ear last time. Do you remember how far that fell down there!?

No words fell from Calvin’s lips; only a loud exhale to express his shock, which sounded quite similar to air escaping a balloon through a hole that had been made in the thin, colorful material. Hiccup- Calvin had decided that the name suited him more than his actual name, and was quite pleased when he remembered that that very name had been in the latest muggle movie he had seen- however, made up for the words that Calvin could not speak, with his own, “More!" - hiccup - "M-ore, mo-re" - hiccup- "m-ore! More c-a-n-d-y, miss,” he said, dark brown chocolate smeared across his lips like the Joker’s makeup. The very thought of that comic book character cause Calvin to shiver, and he immediately began thinking of Batman instead, whom he worshiped almost as much as he did Superman.

Jack was not sure who seemed more amused by the mediocre tricks- the children or Calvin. All looked at her wide-eyed and amazed and she felt a bit of a grin fall on her face. She could not help it. After weeks of feeling like she just could not do enough to impress everyone she needed to- Potter's Army, teachers, her teammates, the judges, the people in her life- it was a little reassuring to know that she could at least entertain the innocent minded.

She almost thought about leaving then, maybe offering to take Calvin to St Mungo's, when she suddenly was being asked for an encore performance. She grinned as her mind went through a list of ideas. Usually any tricks she did was in the presence of magic folk and it was usually at someone's expense. She figured that the kid's would be fine, that their young age would be some sort of excuse. Any adults would think it was just their imagination when they raved about the girl in the park who pulled candies out of their ear.

And if she could not think of anything innocent, she could always just turn one of the pranks to be at her own expense. But she was thinking of an idea... Some of the tricks that Michael had taught her...

Jack shrugged. "I dunno. I'm not that good. I mean, most of the time, my tricks happen on acciden- Whoops!" She put a leviation spell on herself and she raised, still cross-legged, in the air before falling over. She winced slightly, but sat up, grinning bemusedly as though it had been by accident. "See? Oh, you'd better not litter," she said, picking up the wrappers of the candies. "I hear it's bad for the environment."

She pulled a pen out of her pocket- always having one handy- and looked up at the kids and Calvin. "Do you guys like bunny rabbits?" She wrote across the wrapper 'rabbit' and set them down in front of her little audience. She closed her eyes and waved one hand, while her other stayed on the wand in her pocket. "Abra cadabra! Hocus pocus. Bippity boppity boo and all that jazz!" she said, while thinking a complex little charm Michael had taught her. The wrappers curled into rabbits the same colorful colors as the wrappers and hopped around, going to investigate the little audience and then hop and tumble over each other before morphing back into wrappers.

"Remember, kids, it's only a trick of the eye. With practice, you could do the same," she said, just in case, because this was technically against the law. But she could always say it had been to lead them off the trail of real magic. She grinned at them all.