[center][b]1st December, 1999 – Aldenberg Manor Grounds
Kyle McCarthy[/b][/center]

Kyle was cold, but he had on thick winter robes and a warming charm kept the coldest fingers of the winter away from him. Charms had never been Kyle's strong point, but he had of course spent his years at Hogwarts knowing that when he finished he'd be diving head first into a war. He considered himself lucky, even then, that he had finished school. Kyle pushed that thought from his mind and went back to what he was doing. What he always did when he had time, and that was stand outside on a small island in the middle of a lake and practice surviving. 

He bent over and looked at the spell book, one he had nicked from a Death Eater years before. The spells ranged from terrifying to only slightly disturbing. Kyle couldn't figure out why he could never get the spells to quite work for him. He had even used Siobhan's wand once, and that had produced awful results, albeit better than anything he had done with his own wand. For the umpteenth time Kyle wondered if there was in fact something wrong with himself. He was an excellent jinxer and hexer, and while his Charms were weak they were better than this nonsense. His protego and patronous were extremely powerful. He could even turn into a Panther, but there was this range of spells that he just couldn't cast.

Kyle prepared himself mentally followed the moves carefully and was about to cast when a bell rang across the grounds. A meeting. He sighed, waved his wand and the practice stuff returned to it's storage place. The book he slid into a pocket in his cloak, but the cloak showed no signs of having any such book with it's folds. Once at the manor Kyle went straight to the Dinning room. He gave a greeting to those already inside the room before taking his usual seat.