"Wait! Ivy, wait up!" I called, gasping as I tripped over a root. My fairly chubby six year old body fell heavily, and I let out a loud wail.

My twin sister Ivy, giggling like an idiot, stopped and look back. "Come on! If we don't hurry they're going to find us!"

"I know!" I scrambled to my feet, brushing dirt from the dark blue skirt of our primary school uniform. The two of us had just started school, and I already hated the uniform. The shirt collar was too stiff, it made breathing harder. Clean white clothes never seemed to last long on me, I always landed in mud or tripped while playing tag. Uniforms were for people that didn't play outside.

But we'd show them! Our class was on a field trip to visit the park, and we were playing hide and seek. All we had to do was find the best hiding spot ever. Playing hide and seek at home was impossible, everyone else always cheated. Penny made her light thingies pop up everywhere so no one could hide very well, and Evelyn always seemed to find everybody really fast. Same with Beverly.

But none of our sisters were here, and the Wilson twins were going to be hide-and-seek champions!

"Is this still part of the park?" I asked nervously, looking around at the trees and roots that seemed to be in the way over here. The place where the teachers were sitting was much more flat and grassy. No stupid roots to fall on.

Ivy laughed. "Of course it is. But this is the really secret part. It'll be hard to find us here." She pointed at all of the plants around us. "Our hair is brown, and there's shade here. So if we crouch down somewhere good, they'll never find us!"

I nodded. "Makes sense. Let's go."

We began to run again, and Ivy led the way to a tall square hedge. It was trimmed and neat, unlike everything else in this bit of the park.

"I bet we can hide behind here!" Ivy chirped as we stopped in front of it, "Look at how big this is!" She crashed through the hedge without another word, not looking back to see if I was following.

Was this safe? We weren't really supposed to wander away from the group...then again, if we didn't wander at least a bit, they'd find us right away. So maybe this was a good place to hide, somewhere out of the way. Reassured, I followed Ivy through the hedge. The branches scratched against my skin as I moved through it, but once I got to the other side I was in the first bit of open grass I'd seen since we ran off from the main group.

There was a big house here, and it looked really old. The paint was peeling and there was no one around. The grass I was standing on was also growing all over the place, even though it was out in the open. Auntie would never let her lawn get this messy, I thought. There must be no one here.

"Hey Ily, lookit this!" Ivy yelled. She was standing over by the house, on tiptoe in front of a window.

"What?" I yelled back, running over to see what she'd found. The window she was looking through was broken, and there was broken glass everywhere. It crunched under my sturdy blue Mary Janes as I reached Ivy.

She tugged on my shirt sleeve and pointed through the empty window. "There are dead people in there."

I felt a weight seem to settle in my stomach as we pushed the door open. Something just didn't seem right about going up to a bunch of dead bodies, someone would probably get mad at us. But Ivy plowed right ahead, and I followed.

"Wow. They died on their couch and no one ever found them?" I asked, surprised that my quiet voice seemed to be working again. There were three people sitting on a sagging blue couch, two men and a woman. All of them were just sitting there, perfectly posed.

Unless you counted the fact that they were basically skeletons with bits of icky gray skin still on them with old-timey clothes instead of a perfect picture as a detraction. Then maybe not. This was just so weird!

"Maybe this is a really good hiding spot then." Ivy had already gone back to hide and seek apparently, and was moving toward what looked like an old kitchen.

"But I don't wanna hide...that long..." I began, looking over at the bodies. "I wanna win, but I wanna be found by dinner."

"Yeah, yeah, we will be," Ivy said absently, her tiny fist closing around a doorknob. There was one door in the old blue kitchen, but it wouldn't budge when Ivy tugged at it. She frowned and jiggled the handle again. The front door had been unlocked after all, so why not this one? It seemed to creak open as she pushed, but the sound of voices made us freeze in place. Several other six year olds from our classran through the wide open door into the kitchen, chattering excitedly.

"See, I told you I heard them run this way!" a red haired girl cried, and the others laughed and looked around to see where they had ended up.

"Aw, no fair!" Ivy sighed. "How did you find us so fast? We had the best hiding place ever."

"Yeah, if you hadn't been yelling the whole way here," a dark haired boy said with a laugh. "Where are we?"

The other kids calmed down, seeming to realize that they were lost. I couldn't help but roll my eyes. They had just followed us here right now, so we didn't know anything that they didn't. Except, maybe-

A shriek split the air, making all of us look up in alarm. My heart thudded loudly against my ribs, and I had to whisper at it to shush. Everyone was scared and it was being too loud right now, it would only scare them more.

Slowly, we all moved towards the sound. Everyone was trying to be extra-quiet, like whatever had made the girl shriek was gonna get us if we made noise while we went to look.

A dark girl with pigtails was pressed against the wall, apparently terrified. Had she seen something? What if there was a ghost here? Beverly said she saw ghosts, but we couldn't cause we were only six and she was seven. Seven year olds knew those things. But maybe some people could see them earlier, and this girl was one of those.

Apparently not, since everyone else started to freak out too. I'm pretty sure that they can't all see ghosts, so it must be something else. Nothing really looked different since me and Ivy had walked through here a minute ago.

"Why's everyone screaming?" I asked, looking at Ivy for reassurance. "What's wrong?"

Ivy only shrugged as the other kids started to run. While one on her own seemed unable to move, in a group they moved like a swarm to the front door of the old house.

"Wait - what's wrong?" I'd gone from asking to yelling, terrified that there was something here that I couldn't see that was horribly wrong that had made everyone so worried. Maybe they didn't like the dead bodies? Though they were hardly hurting anyone, just sitting there. "Please wait!" I was starting to cry now, it wasn't fair! Everything was so wrong now.

Ivy motioned to me and turned to follow them. I couldn't believe it. What was going on? I was terrified, but Ivy was just going with it. How could she still be so calm? Something was wrong here! Didn't she get it?

I waved my arms in the air. I probably looked weird, but I needed to move around. My heart had been pouncing loudly before, but now it was beating wildly out of control. Normally it was just a gentle 'thump', but now it was going crazy.

And I felt like I was going crazy. Nothing made sense, and everyone else being freaked out made me feel freaked out, but Ivy being calm made it so much worse!

I felt a warm feeling spread from my hands. It tingled as it spread through my arms, leaving a glow in my chest. Was this what happened when Penny made all of those lights appear? Maybe I could do that too, since we were playing hide and seek. The idea distracted me from the panic, and I clung to it.

But then one of the kids ran back up the steps, still looking like he'd seen a ghost even though I knew for sure that he couldn't really have seen one. "The teachers are coming!"

My cheeks flushed as the big woman in charge of watching our class clambered up the front steps and burst into the living room where Ivy and I were still standing. the shriek she let out when she saw the couch made me wince even more than the one earlier had. Even the adults were being weird!

"Oh my word. Wilson! What on earth were you two thinking, wandering away from the group? And this...oh my..." She was having trouble talking, so I decided I needed to correct her.

"We were playing hide and seek!" I hadn't meant to sound so angry, but it came out that way.

"This is outside of the park, young lady. I will need to phone your parents when we deal with...this..."

Ivy was being quiet, but I wasn't going to let the teacher be stupid. "You can't call our daddy!" I yelled, "He doesn't answer anyway, he's always at work! But you're all being weird, and you need to stop it!" The energy that had built up in my hands jumped out as I spoke, leaving lights behind in the living room.

"Ilyana Wilson," Mrs. Teacher screeched, suddenly angry rather than shocked. "Have you been playing with matches?? Give them to me this instant young lady!"

"Leave her alone, she doesn't have matches." My twin was finally speaking up with her hands on her hips. "We're just witches."

The blank look was even worse than the screeching. Somehow, I didn't like where this was going. That same knot I'd gotten before we'd come in there was poking my stomach again. It hurt, too.

"Both of you are going to march outside this instant. Come along, march. We clearly need to have a conference with your parents."

To my surprise, she grabbed each of us by the wrist and began to tug us towards the door. I smelled something burning as we walked, and saw flickering light start in the living room where I had been standing. But now I was being pulled away, and it really hurt, a lot more than my stomach. I struggled and pulled, but her arm was strong. I wanted her to let me go, I didn't want her to yank me around, it hurt, I wanted her to just let me go...

The yelp of pain came first, then the pressure on my wrist left. She'd let go, that supervising person that I never remembered the name of. Her hand looked all red, and she was staring at me in shock. I noticed that she'd let Ivy go too.

"That child burned me," she said to Mrs. Talbot, the second teacher that had come up the steps. Mrs. Talbot was our regular teacher, but her usual smile was gone today as she watched the other teacher lady point at me.

I glowered in return, stuck my tongue out, and ran towards the kitchen. I didn't know if I'd burned her or not, but I was really mad. I hadn't been playing with matches! Auntie said only muggles used them, and even though we went to a muggle school we should never touch them, so I hadn't. Ugh! That was so unfair. I didn't even realize that the flickering lights around me were getting stronger as I yelled at nothing, until a 'boom' that rattled the house made me fall to the ground.

People were still shouting around me, and the smell of smoke filled my nostrils. I gagged and tried to cough, but only ended up choking on more smoke. Ow, why did my side hurt so much? And what was that other smell, not smoke but...was something burning?

I couldn't think, it was just too much. Too exhausted to even try to stand up and run, I let my eyes slide shut as the world flooded into darkness.