I ate lunch with Sherrie Parker, now. She showed me card tricks (I demanded explanations, received none) and made me quiz her on spelling, history, astronomy - anything. My suspicions has been proven correct: Sherrie was really, freakishly smart. Unlike a certain other (bushy-haired) freakishly smart girl I’d have the… pleasure of getting to know over the next couple years, though, Sherrie could have cared less about what we were learning in the classroom. While I struggled constantly to keep up with Mr. Mendota’s lectures, Sherrie ignored him completely, reading books she hid under her desk.
I didn’t mind having a smart friend as much as I thought I would (notice I chose to spend my time almost exclusively with Jeremy, who didn’t know how to use a can-opener, and who once asked my brother if he wore glasses to protect his eyes from any sharp objects that might suddenly fly through the air). My self-esteem did get knocked down a few pegs when I watched Sherrie mow through Jane Eyre in a quarter of the time it had taken me to finish Alice, but, hey - she proofread my essays. I had no concept of a silent ‘e’.
Speaking of spelling.
I bit my lip, studying the word printed in block letters on Sherrie’s flashcard. –Pre… pre-cee…puh…puh… Sherrie, I don’t know how to pronounce this! It looks like precious.â€
Sherrie took a deep breath; I could see she was trying to be patient. –Is it precocious?†she asked.
I took a second look at the word, squinting and tilting my head at a sharp angle. –Maybe…†I muttered to myself. I tucked a clump of tangled curls behind my ear and glanced up at my new friend. –Do you want the language of origin? I can pronounce the language of origin. It’s Latin.â€
–All right,†Sherrie replied primly. –I’ll just assume it’s precocious. P-r-e-c…â€
While Sherrie perfectly spelled the word I had been unable to even decipher, I took a bite from the sandwich I’d made myself that morning and stared out the window. Though it had stopped snowing (for the first time in a solid two weeks, I reckoned), the sky was grey and soundly overcast. I’d all but forgotten when green grass or sunshine looked like. March had come in like a lion - we received another blizzard - but now it sat, bored and stuck, like a turtle.
Sherrie cleared her throat, jolting me from my thoughts. I turned my attention to the next flashcard, and bit my lip. –I think this says hustle, but if it does, I’ve been spelling it wrong all my life.â€
Currently, Sherrie was studying for the Stonewall Primary Annual Spelling Bee, a competition from which I had been banned since the first grade.
(Yes, I suppose I should explain that before I go any further. The Bee, like Winter Exhibition, was an excuse for parents to visit Stonewall and make sure the teachers weren’t screwing up their kids too badly. After a series of preliminary competitions held during the school day, two children from each grade were chosen to battle for the grand prize: bragging rights and a plastic scepter. In first grade, I somehow passed the first few rounds and wound up in front of an audience, spelling monkeys. Perhaps I was a good speller; perhaps I wasn’t - the problem was not my skill or lack thereof. It was that I had no concept of taking turns. As my fellow spellers stood in front of the microphone and slowly sounded out their words - mouthing and tasting the contours of them - I grew bored waiting and called out my own guesses. Because the difficulty of the word correlated to the age of the student, I hardly ever understood what the older students were supposed to be spelling, and often simply shouted random letters. At one point, I just spelled my name. This was all very amusing to the audience, but I imagine it got a little annoying. After a few minutes, I was escorted off stage and given detention. In case anyone’s interested, I have served one-hundred and six detentions at Stonewall Primary. I think they ought to give me an award, or name a building in my honour. Yes?)
Sensing my disinterest, Sherrie cleared her throat. –We can be done if you’d li-â€
–I’d like that very much, thank you.â€
She rolled her eyes, and traded her flashcards for those of a different variety. As she had informed me previously, Sherrie had received a –magic†kit for Christmas and was something of an enthusiast. Remarks about –real†magic rose to the back of my throat quite often, but I bit my tongue. Though I hadn’t seen anyone pulling a rabbit from a hat in Diagon Alley, that didn’t mean it didn’t happen. Besides, Sherrie was good.
Shuffling the new deck in a practiced, offhand manner, she dealt me three cards and told me to turn them over.
I did - three of hearts; four of spades; five of spades.
Grinning like she’d performed a minor miracle, Sherrie gestured to the cards, like there was something deeply significant there, and I was missing it.
–It’s a Pythagorean triple!†she cried when she saw I wasn’t going to cotton on.
I bit my lip, wholly unimpressed. –You do know you’re ten years old, right?â€
My dismissal glanced off her, though, and she just shrugged, shuffling and spreading the cards over the saliva-and-cleaner-scented surface of the cafeteria table. –Actually,†she said, –I’m eleven. I had my birthday in December.â€
I huffed, my overgrown bangs fluttering and snagging between my eyelashes. –Of course,†I said, as Sherrie mixed the kings and jack and aces; as no snow fell. She splayed the cards before me, faced down, and I dutifully took one, angling it away from her view. The Queen of Diamonds - the picture displayed her as a redhead. –Because the whole freaking world is going to turn eleven before I do.â€
–Queen of Diamonds,†Sherrie said surely.
–Yep.â€
She plucked the card from my fingers, kneaded it back into the other fifty-one, and soon I lost track of it.
Later that night, I walked home alone, hands in pockets and face flushed from the cold. The straps of my backpack bit into my shoulders, but I ignored them. I really needed new trainers - the tread on the bottoms of mind had worn flat, and I skidded through the mess of slush.
As I turned onto Magnolia Crescent, I became conscious of something above me. A noise like a frantic heartbeat. A flash of pure, snowy white against the greying sky.
I gasped, and it turned into a shriek. –Hedwig!â€
The owl ignored me. She twitched the pointed feathers on the ends of her wings, and soared in a different direction, disappearing from my view. I was positive, though, that is had been her. How many snowy owls did you see flying around Little Whinging?
I rushed home, falling twice in my hurry and tearing open the knee of my already holey jeans. Aunt P screeched for me to take off my boots as I blasted through the front door, and I did so hastily, sprinting up the stairs as soon as my feet were free.
After a wild, noisy search of my room, I was forced to admit there was nothing to find. No letters, packages, or anything even resembling correspondence.
Bloody owl .
What was going on? Had Hedwig come just to tease me? Why bother? I looked around my room - my small, Spartan room, with its wobbly floorboards and cold wood furniture - and felt something was missing. No. Not missing. Rather, something was there and ready and I just couldn’t see it.
If I had been watching my life as someone else, maybe I would have understood. But I watched my life as me, full to the brim of my own view and unable to select another. A set of eyes looking in the window could have figured it out, but my eyes were peering out from the confused expression on my face, and they didn’t do me much good.
–You know,†I said dully, scuffing the toe of my shoe on the sidewalk, –most people do that before March.â€
My time spent wandering around Little Whinging had taken me to its very outskirts - and, apparently, right outside the home of Mr. Mendota. It was an old brownstone, regal and suburban at the same time. A rusted car - the kind of car Verno would have called there-and-back-again - was parked in the sloping driveway. My teacher looked like he always did at school: clean, orderly, and slightly off balance. But these traits were somewhat overshadowed by what he was doing at the time.
Mr. Mendota had a wilting Christmas tree halfway through the door—stump-side facing outward - and was tugging with all his might to try and extract its other half from his small foyer, where it was stuck fast. A collar of sweat looped around his forehead and his shirtsleeves were rolled up messily to his elbows. I watched a forgotten glass bauble, hidden under the folds of evergreen braches, tumble out of the tree and shatter on the walkway.
Mr. Mendota stopped tugging. One of his sleeves slumped back to his wrist, hanging there wrinkled and forlorn. A swatch of his brown hair snuck out of place and fell into his eyes. My teacher stared and stared at the remains of the bauble, his glasses fogging up with his smoky breath.
I wasn’t sure he heard me. –Mr. Mendota?â€
His head moved independently of the rest of his body as it turned in the direction of my voice. I stood unsurely, with my teeth clamped around my bottom lip and my hands feeling conspicuously empty as the hung at my sides. Mr. Mendota was hunched slightly forward, his chest heaving in the aftermath of his battle with the tree. A carpet of dead needles surrounded him. It was nighttime and the streetlamps gave his skin a sickly gleam and I didn’t know what to say.
–I think you might need some help with that tree,†I said, my voice small. The naked beginnings of a grin found his face. Mr. Mendota lifted one needle-scarred hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, as if trying to get rid of a headache. I pushed my hair out of my eyes and waited.
He began to laugh. Uproariously. The sound of it resounded down the street and stung my skin.
–I don’t even know why I got a tree,†he said through waves of laughter. –I was out of town. I told you that. I took a holiday. I wanted to get out of here for a few days. This town is small, Kata. It’s small and it makes me feel small, too. So I left. But I got a tree. And I wasted my time decorating it, and I put one of those stupid stars on top and no one even saw it.â€
–Oh,†I said. Oh. I crossed the deserted street to his walkway. Needles crunched under the soles of my purple Converse trainers, which were even more mangled and filthy than they’d been at the start of the school year - and not exactly all-weather footwear.
Mr. Mendota shook his head incredulously, barely noticing that I’d come closer. A patch of strong-smelling sap decorated his shirt. –What am I talking to you for? You’re a student. I shouldn’t talk to you about my personal-â€
–Well, who else are you going to talk to?†I said unthinkingly, interrupting him. –There’s only one car in the driveway - you haven’t got a girlfriend, have you?â€
Mr. Mendota’s face hardened. –Kata, that’s my own business-â€
–Have you?â€
–It doesn’t-â€
–Do you have friends?â€
–Of course I—â€
–Do you have brothers and sisters?â€
–STOP!†Mr. Mendota bellowed. It was even louder than his laughter, and the contrasting silence deafened me. Shock wrapped around me, and I felt bizarrely, momentarily afraid. I was too self-centered to think about such things then, but I know now that my teacher must have been duly afraid of me. He saw my red hair and my imperious eyes - I saw his dark hair and glasses - we stood - facing what we didn’t even realise we needed to fear - with a wrecked and wasted Christmas tree laying defeated among the sidewalk and our shoes. The night hovered nervously around us, the streetlamps puncturing it at intervals.
–You,†Mr. Mendota huffed, –have no tact. You’re rude and don’t consider people’s feelings. You’ve got no respect for me as a teacher. Every other sentence that comes out of your mouth is cheeky and I don’t know if you think it’s - it’s - it’s cute, or something - or you think you can just do whatever you like and no one will - will stop you. But I don’t appreciate - don’t want - one of my sixth grade students telling me… talking to me like you do. You don’t know everything, Miss Potter. Have you even remotely considered the possibility that you don’t have it all figured out?â€
I supposed that was what Mr. M considered to be a telling-off. I took it calmly, avoiding his eyes and watching the patterns of fallen needles on the concrete below us. They blurred as my eyes filled with tears - but I didn’t believe in crying, so the tears stayed inside of me.
In my mind, the fact that he referred to me by my surname marked the end of whatever friendship we’d compiled since the beginning of the Twenty Things assignment. This knowledge didn’t affect me in any particular way. Most of my friendships had been falling apart over the year, and I wasn’t sure if I’d even liked Mr. Mendota to begin with.
I walked away. Buried deep, there was a shard of Kata who was tired of people leaving her; she wanted to do the leaving. So, I left him, walking methodically down his driveway, past his there-and-back-again car, between and under the craters of the streetlamps. Houses and families and picket fences meshed together at my sides, and I didn’t give them a passing glance. My eyes focused dully on whatever lay directly in front of me. A simple drone of whatever buzzed between my ears. It was my anthem. It wasn’t happy or sad or anything, really. Thoughtlessly and endlessly, I walked until I lost the will to do anything else. My mind swallowed me.
I am clearly unsinkable, I thought, but, as I made my way back to Number 4, I didn’t feel it.
That weekend, I found myself sitting next to Sherrie Parker’s mother in the Stonewall School Auditorium, watching the Bee and wishing I wasn’t. Other kids’ parents make me uncomfortable, but not for the obvious reason. You see, I’m what you might call ‘strong-willed’ - this means I don’t mesh well with adults of any kind. My tentative friendship with Mr. Millerton (and, all right, maybe Mr. Mendota) was an anomaly in the long, long history of me hating anyone who had even the slightest power over me. As soon as I could, I made an excuse and dashed out for some air.
I shuffled down the hallway (I’ve already spouted prosey nonsense about empty school hallways, right? We don’t need to revisit that? Awesome.) and bit my nails for something to do. The solitude settled around me like an old friend. Enjoying a break from the clamour of my life - both metaphorical and literal - I allowed the silence around me some space and tread lightly, smoothly.
Or maybe… not so silent. As I passed the girls’ lavatory, I heard a nervous shuffling from inside, as if someone was trying and failing to be unseen and unheard. I stopped dead in my tracks, debating and fighting the urge to investigate. I fought it and fought it and fought it. For, like, eight and a half seconds.
Curiosity killed the Kat, and I doubled back, poking my head in dubiously. Impenetrable darkness. Blinking, I took a tiny step forward.
If my life were a horror movie - and, believe me, it sometimes is - the tinkling, warning music would have crescendo’ed at that moment. A pair of luminously pale, phantomlike hands emerged from the blackness and grabbed the front of my shirt, yanking me forward into the shadows. I yelped in shock and - quickly sizing up my options - employed what my brother and I once called the Windmill.
Glad you asked. The Windmill is a defensive strategy developed by us Potters as soon as Dudley discovered that Harry minus glasses equals easier target. Basically, you stiffen your arms, thrust them out at random angles and swing your fists wildly and unpredictably. The perfect defense against both bullies and myopia.
Anyway, I was struggling and Windmilling and maybe cursing a bit when-
–Ow!†a shrill, girlish voice cried indignantly.
My insides tightened; shock choked me. –J-Jilly?†I croaked out.
–You punched me!†she shrieked in answer. My eyes began to adjust to lonely darkness of the windowless bathroom, and I could see her. Knife-sharp features; colourless hair - wild and curly, but in a kinkier, scratchier way than mine. And a disarmed, furious expression.
–You yanked me out of the hallway!†I fired back, sheepishly defensive.
–You punched me!â€
–I thought I was being kidnapped!â€
–You pun-â€
–We’re walking in circles; I recognise that tree.â€
Both breathing hard, we stared each other down with malice and the awkward knowledge that we had once been friends. This is Jilly Hanks, I thought. This is Jilly Hanks, who knows that I hate filing my nails; who knows that I like the smell of hairspray even though it makes me sneeze. This is Jilly, who brought me a me-sized stuffed bear when I had my appendix out two years ago. And this is Jilly Hanks, who is now a stranger.
Unsaid apologies deafened us.
–I just… need to tell you something,†Jilly said.
I huffed, smoothing my hair. –Is it ‘I’m sorry’?†I said, and I did not mean for pulling me into the abandoned girls’ loo and scaring me three-quarters to death. No. I meant for ignoring me and quitting me as a friend and not even offering an explanation.
(I never really did say what happened with Jilly, did I?
It’s coming up. Promise.)
–No,†Jilly said, calmly. A resonate note of shame could be heard in her clipped tone. –It’s not. It’s… just…†She took a huge breath, as if courage could be drawn from the air around us. –Just read this, okay? And don’t make any cracks about how you’re allergic to books or something, because I saw you mow through Alice in Wonderland in a month and then start over. Just read it. And don’t bring it to class.â€
She pushed a paperback of medium-thickness into my unprepared hands. I looked at it, and then up at her. Our eyes met. Stunned with what I saw in hers, I bit the inside of my mouth, trying to make the physical pain somehow overpower what I felt looking at her.
–I do not even recognise you,†I said without meaning to. My voice came out dull and small.
I knew she was thinking the same thing.
Jilly ran off, then, either afraid of being seen with me or being seen by me.
I looked down at the book she had given me, and the first thing I saw was a name.
K. R. Mendota.
Dr. Hampton slowly undid the Velcro straps of my arms brace, gingerly sliding it off my arm. Six years had passed since Jeremy and his dad rushed me to the hospital, and the same Doc was still treating my broken bones (as Jeremy previously hinted, they were numerous and mostly all my fault).
–Right,†Doc said softly, carefully turning over my arm in his large, neatly manicured hands. I stared at a point on the wall, swinging my feet absently. The paper strip covering the examination table crinkled beneath me. Doc prodded my palm and asked me to wiggle my fingers. I did, without pain. This break was far from the worst I’d ever experienced. Eight weeks in a Velcro brace was nearly twice what I’d needed, but Aunt P had put off making a check-up appointment with the Doc.
Just to be sure, though, he put me through some routine exercises. I zipped through them all. –I could do a cartwheel, too, if you like. And my friend Sherrie just taught me how to stand on my head. Turns out all this is a pretty good cushion.†I patted my mass of hair with my free hand. –We also think bullets might bounce off of it, but I didn’t actually want to test that one.â€
Doc laughed. –No cartwheels necessary, Miss Potter. I pronounce you completely healed. Let’s be a little more careful next time, though, eh?â€
–Sure,†I said breezily. If I had a Sickle for every time someone told me that… I’d probably have, like, two Galleons, I thought.
I hopped from the exam table. Doc scribbled a few things on his clipboard and, without looking up, neatly caught my high-five. Taking advantage of my newly-freed left hand, I gathered my things and stuffed my feet into my boots. My wrist felt oddly exposed and vulnerable, though of course it was in no worse position than the rest of me. Odd. It was as if-
–So, where’s your brother?†Doc asked. –Can’t remember the last time I had you in here without him. Kid skipped school for three days when you were in the pediatric surgery wing, right?â€
I shrugged, as if Doc had brought up the weather (false alarm, it’d started snowing again) instead of the cornerstone of all my problems. –He’s at a school up North.â€
Doc nodded nonchalantly. I couldn’t tell if he’d really been interested. –Well, good for him. Okay - stay safe, Miss Potter, and let’s hope we never see each other again, yeah?â€
I smiled and said goodbye, beginning to make my way back to the lobby. I knew Great Whinging General like I would come to know the secret passageways of Hogwarts.
Chewing my bottom lip, I tried to figure out what had just happened. Doc had brought up my brother, and I had not felt the stab of loneliness and betrayal slide through me. I had found I could talk about my brother and hardly feel it. Had I grown used to being separated? Was it getting better? Could I go days without thinking of him or missing him, and feel nothing?
Did I want that?
(The first part of) The Jilly Part:
If you want the short version, I wasn’t there and then I was, and Jilly was there and then she wasn’t. If you want the long version, I guess it started with gin rummy.
I am uncommonly good at gin rummy.
At least, I’m uncommonly good at beating my brother at gin rummy.
–Harry,†I called, leaning against the doorframe of our bedroom, shuffling a deck of cards in what I intended to be an offhandedly cool, threatening manner. I dropped a few and kicked them aside so he wouldn’t notice.
He looked up from 1001 Magical Herbs and Fungi. (Neither of us were ever especially studious, but those new schoolbooks did hold a certain promise of discovery.) –What? Oh, not right now, Kat.†He paused; grinned in a way that was supposed to reach out and invite me into his side of the magic. –Hey, come take a look at this - there’s this plant called the Bau Bau root; it can-â€
His offering did nothing to soften me. Effectively cutting him off, I tossed the cards on the ground; they landed like choices. –Whatever,†I said. –You can play fifty-two pick-up, instead.â€
–Kat!†I heard him call after me, shocked, as I stormed off to the attic, which was accessed by a small door next to the linen cupboard. A slanted, narrow staircase led me to the place that had come to be my refuge. For occasions such as these, when I needed to be alone, I had smuggled up my drawing pads, a bag of marshmallows, and (purely to annoy him) Harry’s copy of A History of Magic. As I said before, the Hogwarts books intrigued me, and I paged through the first few chapters when bored. I’d never been much good at reading - the words swam off the page and reordered themselves - but I tried.
I sat against a pile of dusty boxes and stared apathetically at the sketches littered around me. The main subject of these was the boy I’d met in Diagon Alley - Zane something. Whenever the weight of what had happened in the last week became too thick and nauseating inside me, I had been coming up here and drawing him as I remembered. The oily wink of the summer sun off his ridiculous leather jacket; the flat bridge of his nose, which was slightly too big for his face; eyes brown like milky tea. His voice added to the orchestra of confusion playing continuously in my mind: I know… I am, when I asserted that I wasn’t crazy. But he had seemed so sane; so cool…
Sighing, I flipped a nearly-finished drawing of his face over to its blank side and cracked A History, hoping to replace one commotion with another.
In the latter days of the final “”kirtan covenant, I read, chaos reigned. The Usurpers neglected the duties of the government they had seized, paying attention only to their Dark agenda. Anarchy claimed the streets of magical and Muggle Paris. Fearing for their lives, many attempted to leave the country - as stated in Section 19.4, thought, the Usurpers kept tight constraints on emigration, and trans-continental Apparition was not yet advanced enough to be considered safe. The people’s desperation for escape led to the construction of L'Évasion - a wizard-built expansion of the Parisian catacombs that grew to span a good portion of the European continent. In this manner, citizens were able to flee from the tyranny.
After the covenant was broken at Tripoli, L'Évasion was effectively abandoned. Left unchecked, the magic used to create such an intricate structure began to mutate. This resulted in an entirely unsafe magical anomaly: a veritable, literally unnavigable labyrinth of tunnels lurking fifty feet below modern Europe. Today, these tunnels –change†frequently, and an assortment of Dark creatures call them home. Many who have attempted to explore or map what remains of L'Évasion have not returned, and those who do tell some very horrible tales indeed.
(At the time, I did not understand a single word of that. But you might want to keep it in mine, for future reference.)
There was a footnote: Added to Bagshot’s original work, c.1948. -A.W.
Abruptly, a feeling I had once dubbed –Cupboard Syndrome†crashed down upon me. The room shrunk, and I couldn’t draw breath from the air around me. The weight of what had happened, and the weight of what was to come, sat on my chest and suppressed my lungs as I tried to inflate them.
The problem was this: it just didn’t make any sense to me. How could anyone possibly think it was a good idea to split up Harry and I? We were a team. Without him, who would make sure I kept my marks up in school? Who would prevent me from doing things like stealing the neighbors’ lawnmower, and then inadvertently setting it on fire?
(Though, if you want to get technical about it, the whole lawnmower debacle was really Harry’s fault. Merlin - I keep bringing up these stories that I’ve got no time to tell! Sorry.)
Without me, who would remind him that his hair was weird? Who would entertain him by blowing up stolen power tools? (Once again, his fault.)
Anyway, it was a very symbiotic relationship, mine and Harry’s. And I could not imagine how it could ever be any different.
The barest hint of a plan began to form in my mind. I could go to Hogwarts, couldn’t I? Now. I could go now and speak to whomever was in charge. This Dumbledore bloke. Yes, I’d board a train - I’d freaking walk if it got me there - and I’d find this school, walk calmly and professionally into the Headmaster’s office, and present my case.
I know I’m a year younger¸ I imagined myself saying. And I know I’m not all that smart. But I can do this. I have to be able to do this.
I suppose, if I’d been older and smarter, I would have known it wasn’t a question of being old enough and smart enough. But we’ll get to that later.
Satisfied with my plan, I launched into preparation. From under a stack of boxes, I unearthed a dusty, smelly duffle-bag big enough to hold A History of Magic, the bag of marshmallows, and a jumper. Feeling very sly, I snuck out of the attic, past Harry’s and my bedroom - I paused there for a moment, very much wanting to tell him of my intentions, but though better of it - and down the stairs.
Only then did it strike me that a person needs more than marshmallows and books to make it all the way to an unknown part of Scotland. A person needs cash.
I had five pounds and a cubic zirconium earring to my name, and it was all hidden away in a cigar tin, stashed under Jilly Hanks’ bed. The faraway nature of this hiding place was mostly due to Dudley, who sometimes nicked my stuff because he knew he wouldn’t be the one getting in trouble.
I hadn’t thought about or seen Jilly since coming home from Diagon Alley one week previously, which was sort of unintentional - but not entirely. My obsession had become this: to get out of Little Whinging and go to a magical school with my brother. Unlike Harry, though, I had people I actually liked in Little Whinging. Namely, Jilly and Jeremy. I’d subconsciously avoided them both, perhaps because I did not want to face what I was working so hard to lose. Jeremy said it best, that night in the foyer: All your friends are here. For the life of me, I can’t see why you’d want to leave.
But, faced with losing my family and losing my friends, I knew what I would pick. And, faced with an international journey with no money in my pockets, I knew I had to go see Jilly.
But what would I say? Hey, Jilly. Listen, I’m sorry we haven’t talked all summer, and I can’t tell you why. But you know how you have my life savings under your bed? I need it. Can I come in?
Even in my mind, it sounded stupid.
Ten minutes later, I found myself standing outside Jilly’s bedroom window, which was on the first floor, since she had sleepwalked when she was younger. Slightly out of breath (I’d pedaled there at, like, the speed of sound), I said, –Hey, Jilly. Listen, I’m sorry we haven’t talked all summer, and I can’t tell you why. But you know how you have my life savings under your bed? I need it. Can I come in?â€
Jilly looked back at me, pale and confused, one hand holding back her lace curtains. Her hair was done into a neat French plait, and smooth, classical music played from a stereo in the corner. Jilly’s parents were the sort of people that thought Mozart would greatly increase their daughter’s academic potential. –Er. Sure,†she said, after a delicate cough into her elbow.
So, you know how I bite my lip a lot? Well, Jilly coughed. It wasn’t because there was anything physically impeding her airway - rather, it was just something to do.
Jilly took my hand and helped me clamber over her windowsill, into her white, clean room. We were used to this procedure, as Jilly’s mother silently disapproved of me.
My bag snagged on the windowsill, its contents spilling over the floor. "I'll get it," she said as I bent to pick up A History of Magic, which had slid beneath the bed.
So I just stood there, sweaty and disheveled, in a room painted an almost-white blue and trimmed with lace, feeling patently out of place.
With another cough, Jilly emerged with the cigar tin that held my life savings. I, sitting lightly on the edge of her bed, reached out and took it from her. We stared at each other for a weighted moment, and then she said, –What’s that smell?â€
I grimaced. –Well. It’s not this backpack that I didn’t steal from the attic.â€
Rolling her eyes, Jilly shut the window. The hangings around her four-poster bed (as a girl who grew up sleeping in a cupboard, it is difficult for me to describe how deeply I envied Jilly’s canopy bed), which had been billowing in the breeze that leaked in from the outside world, collapsed around me.
–Well,†I said, because I didn’t know what to say, and I wanted to hug her. She gazed at me, clearly befuddled by my sudden and unceremonious appearance. The reality of leaving and being left struck me again, and I tried to soften the situation. –Jilly, I’m sor-†I began, but she cut me off.
–You’re running away again, aren’t you?†she asked. She seemed tired.
–It’s complic-â€
–You are a mess.â€
She meant it metaphorically, and she was right. I felt like a mess. But I also felt cornered.
–It’s complicated.â€
Jilly sniffed in a way that reminded me of Aunt P, and crossed her arms over her chest. –I bet it’s not.â€
And so I told her everything. I mean, I left out the bits about magic and Hagrid and Diagon Alley, but the essentials remained. Jilly listened. She let me talk. She let me tell her about how Harry had been accepted to a school up North, and how I hadn’t been accepted, and my brilliant plot to change those facts.
When I was through, Jilly raised an eyebrow. –Is that all?†I nodded. She walked to her desk and retrieved a pen and a piece of stationary. –Kata. Instead of hitchhiking across the country - write a freaking letter.â€
I smiled. See, that’s why Jilly and I were good together. She balanced out my half-baked antics with cool logic and perspective. Often, I ignored her words of wisdom, but in this case she had a point. With five quid and no way to travel, I wouldn’t make it very far.
So. I took Jilly’s stationary home, not wanting her looking over my shoulder as I wrote. After many false tries on scrap paper and many trips to the dictionary and thesaurus, I composed the following.
From the desk of
August 14 1991
Dear professor Dumbledor.
Hello. My name is Katarine Potter. We have never met but I have been told you are headmaster of Hogwarts. My brother Harry Potter recently got a letter from your school about magic. This was new information. I do not know a lot about magic yet but I like it. I am not a big fan of owls tho.
I know I am younger then Harry and also not so good in school but it is not a good idea for me not to go with him.
Even tho I’m younger I would study a lot. Especially jinxes. And I would try for fewer detentions but no promises.
If its a finanshul problem, do not worry. I have recently come into some mony.
Please reconsider. I would be very greatful.
Sinseerly,
Katarine Potter
The attic
4 privet drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
p.s. I am sorrey for any spelling mistakes in the last part of this letter. My cusin took the dictonary to use for a footstool. I am also sorrey that I do not write good like I talk. I will work on this.
I hoped that would suffice.
This is how Twenty Things That Make the World Go ‘Round, by Kailey R. Mendota, begins:
The following is a raw, unabridged record of how I moved to Swartownshot and started a small revolution in the year after my sister Bea did a nosedive off a bridge. She was eighteen, and it still feels odd to use the past tense when speaking of her.
It’s like this: there was once a girl named Beatrice Frampton and everyone called her Bea and she was beautiful and brave and she smiled all the time—only, not so much, now that I think of it - and she was full of sadness the way most people are full of blood. So now there isn’t a girl named Beatrice Frampton, called Bea or otherwise. She left us to sort those things out, and - believe me - I was plenty mad at her about it for a long time.
But.
She may have mucked up our lives, but she was only returning the favor.
So, I guess the following is also a raw, unabridged record of everything that happened in the eighteen years before the nosedive and the revolution.
From what I understood of that (which, actually, was quite a bit), I thought that I would have really, really, gotten along with this Kailey Mendota. She wrote kind of like how I thought, but how I could never capture on paper.
So, in the first week of March, I sat at the kitchen table with all of these things churning around in my head - things of the Jilly variety and the Twenty variety and the Mr. Mendota had a sister? variety. I wore a striped stocking cap with these ridiculous tassels, because I needed a haircut in a way you can’t imagine. Aunt P bustled around the kitchen, doing something, but we ignored each other. I ignored everything, really. I sat and sat and stared out the fogged windows and thought, Gee, it sure would be nice to have an older sibling to talk to right now.
A fresh batch of snow worked its way over the backyard as I watched. Huffing in frustration, I tugged my stocking cap over my eyes and let my head fall onto the table with a satisfying, yarn-muffled thunk.
Aunt P looked up. –If you’re going to mope around the house all day, make yourself useful. Go get the mail.â€
I shrugged, thinking that I didn’t really have a good reason not to. –All right,†I said as I trudged out of the kitchen, –but just so you know, the last time one of us went to get the mail, we wound up in the middle of the North Sea trying to light plastic bags on fire.â€
She didn’t hear me.
–Well, maybe there’ll be a letter for me,†I mused as I made my way down the hall, tapping the door to the cupboard under the stairs as if for luck. –And maybe I’ll move to a faraway land and live with flying monkeys in a castle made of gumdrops.â€
I froze, realising what I was doing.
–Bloody he - I’m talking to myself.â€
Shaking my head, I scooped up the letters and sorted through them. –Bill. Bill. Fashion catalogue - sorry, Aunt P, that’s mine now. Bill. Still talking to myself. Smeltings newsletter. Shut up, me!â€
And then I saw it. Opened it. Read it.
Holy hell.
Oh good, my voice is in my head again.
But mostly, HOLY HELL.
I wandered back into the kitchen, dazed and a inexplicably a little frightened. Dumping the rest of the mail on the table, I collapsed into a chair and read through the letter again. Made sure my poor reading comprehension skills weren’t messing with me. Was it real?
I checked the envelope again.
It was real.
Aunt P materialized behind me. –Took you long en - What are you reading?†she demanded, her voice sharp and, yes, a little panicked.
My face felt slack and molten; my expression could have been anything. I looked at her and she looked at me and holy hell.
When I didn’t respond, my aunt assumed the worst. –Did you - oh goodness - no you didn’t! Of course you didn’t! You can’t! Give me that-â€
I wrenched it out of her reach. –It’s not from Hogwarts,†I said, and she clapped her hand over her mouth as if I’d just uttered some horrible word. –I won the Surrey Regional Young Writers’ Competition.â€