An Unfortunate Event
She had known, the moment the phone had rung the previous evening. She had known something was wrong. And now, Grammum was standing there looking nervous sad. Maia was still in her bed.
“Something very sad has happened,” said Grammum quietly.
Her stomach bubbled with the discomfort of fear. Her mind immediately flitted to her grandfather, who was at a gymnastics meet in Sweden.
Grammum took a deep breath. “Your father died last night,” she said. “I’m sorry…”
One of the flowerpots in the window spontaneously fell to the floor and smashed into a million pieces. It was filled with those ugly pink flowers that looked like they were made of plastic. Maia had never liked those flowers. Grammum released a small cry of surprise, but made no move to pick it up.
“He died quickly, so there was hardly any pain,” said Grammum.
Maia stared at nothing. Some part of her thought that maybe, if she didn’t think about it, perhaps it would mean it was not true. But her grandmother looked sadly at her; it was clear that she was uncertain of how to comfort her.
A few minutes later “ or it could have been hours, for all Maia knew, because time suddenly had very little meaning “ her aunt Inge came into the room. Inge and her family lived in the same house Grammum and Granddad, upstairs. She rushed to Maia’s bed and embraced her and wept in her hair.
“Poor dear, this must be so hard for you!” she whispered. “We all loved your father very much, you know…” She trailed off and pulled back, holding Maia at arm’s length, looking at her with a sad, teary gaze. But Maia’s response was cold.
Why was she crying? What reason did she have to weep? It wasn’t her father who had died. What right did she have to cry when Maia herself couldn’t? Maia wasn’t sad; she was angry.
“Don’t touch me,” she said icily. Inge’s eyes widened and she let go suddenly, as if she had been burned. Grammum was over by the window, fussing with the broken flowerpot.
“Please get out,” said Maia quietly, not looking at either of them. “Leave me alone.”
Grammum stood up quickly. “But Maia, dear, don’t talk like “” But her daughter laid a hand on her shoulder carefully to silence her.
“Let’s leave her alone, mum,” she said softly. “She needs to process this by herself.”
When they had left, Maia got out of her bed. She was a thin, remarkably long-limbed eleven-year-old, with long blonde hair and eyes of a curious green-blue colour. She got dressed slowly, put on her glasses and stuffed a CD in her Discman. The CD spun, halted, spun some more, then a spark shot out of the battery case, burning her finger, and the player turned itself off. She pressed play again, but nothing happened. She had put new batteries in the day before. She took out the CD before throwing the Discman across the room.
At around eleven the phone rang, and Grandmum came into the room and told her it was her mother, Maisi.
“Hello, sweetheart,” said the voice at the other end of the line when she put it to her ear. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m alright,” said Maia, all emotion drained from her voice. “Mum, my Discman broke. We have to get me a new one.”
“Alright,” said her mother quietly. “We’ll do that when you get home, alright?"
There was a short silence.
“We’ve fixed plane tickets for you to come home on Friday,” continued her mother. “It was the earliest we could get… the funeral’s on Saturday."
Maia made an acknowledging sound. There was another short silence as Maia stared out the window.
“Could you put your grandmother on?” asked her mother after a little while. Maia called Grandmum into the room, gave her the phone, and went out into the living room to watch TV.
It was the shortest summer of her life.
She left on Friday morning, and took a plane from Kokkola. She landed in Helsinki where a Finnish stewardess with poor English walked her across the airport to the plane to London Heathrow. The plane landed at Heathrow at five o’clock and Maia was picked up by her mother and her boyfriend.
The next couple of days, Maia felt like she was in a dark cloud. She found later that she remembered very little of the wake and funeral for her father. Her classmates’ parents had got together and sent her flowers of condolence. They were white roses, but Maia didn’t want them. Her classmates, who had teased her and been mean to her throughout her school years, had absolutely no business sending her flowers. She was glad she would be starting secondary school that autumn. She wouldn’t lose all of them, but some were going to other secondary schools, and some would go to public schools. It would be nice to start afresh, she thought. Or as fresh as she could, in any case.
She was in her room, thinking about just that, the day after the funeral, when her mother came into her room with a bunch of letters.
“A letter arrived for you the day before you came home,” she said. “I haven’t checked the mail since then, though. It appears you’ve gotten about five more of these…” She put the letters down on Maia’s desk. Maia picked one up. The envelope was made of heavy parchment. It was addressed to her, with the street and flat number on it, and it was sealed with red wax. She opened it, and read out loud:
Headmistress: Minerva McGonagall
(Order of Merlin 2nd Class, Ultimate Feline
Impersonator, Honorary Bagrat, High Witch)
Dear Miss Herod,
We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Filius Flitwick
Deputy Headmaster
Maia’s eyes glittered as she stared at the letter in her hand. She was uncertain for a moment; what if it was some kind of mean joke by her former classmates? But she somehow felt sure that it was real.
Her mother, however, snatched the letter out of her hand. “What an incredibly inconsiderate hoax to pull!” she said angrily. “‘Await your owl’… ‘witchcraft and wizardry’.” She gathered the other five letters from the desk and went to the kitchen to throw them away. Maia looked at her hands. Her mother was right; it was probably a hoax. But if it was true, it would explain a lot of things. She shrugged and picked up the book she had been reading before her mother had come in.
It would have been fun, though…