A six-sentence summary of my Christmas:
Snow pleated the ground, filling in the cracks in the sidewalk. I took a long walk around Little Whinging, admiring the larger-than-life evergreen that had been erected in Town Square. Everything smelled like holly and home. I wondered about Christmas at Hogwarts, and about who could possibly be responsible for the random purple sweater that had shown up in my room that morning.
Too late to do anything about it, I realized I’d sent Hedwig away without a reply.
With cold fingers, I touched the other thing Harry’s letter had contained: a small sterling silver pendent in the shape of a ‘K’, strung thoughtfully on a thin chain.
Jeremy and I were going to get married in June, when he was twenty-one and I was twenty. He wanted to go for twenty and nineteen, but I’d told him flat out that I wasn’t going to become a ‘Mrs.’ while my age still had a ‘teen’ tacked onto the end. We’d stick with the traditional vows, because I just didn’t have the patience or eloquence to write my own. Instead of roses, I would have sunflowers in my bouquet. Jeremy would wear a tux”a real one, like in movies, with a triangular-folded handkerchief in the breast pocket and shoes so spit-shined he’d be able to see himself”and I wanted a dress dripping with diamonds and lace. I wasn’t interested in a veil; I figured it would get in the way. I told him to forget about kids, and he fought me tooth-and-nail when I informed him that I intended to keep my own name. The compromise: one kid, and I got to stay Potter. Harry conceded to walking me down the aisle, but I don’t think he took the whole plan very seriously.
This all was decided when Jeremy and I were very young, under that tree in the woods behind the school. The main idea behind it was that neither of us had any interest in marrying, so we might as well just marry each other to get it over it. We dubbed it a ‘partnership of convenience’ (a phrase we’d read in a book somewhere), and shook on it. He suggested a kiss to seal the deal, but I wasn’t having it. I told him he could kiss me when the preacher said so, and not before then.
As I grew up, I think Jeremy and I realized how ridiculous an idea it all was. Still, we’d both make vague references to Sometime in the Future, when we’d take each other in sickness and in health, till death did we depart.
My marriage was the last thing on my mind when the letters started coming. It didn’t once enter my brain as Verno drove aimlessly around the country, or when we stayed at a motel empty except for vermin and chipping paint. And as we rowed haphazardly across an icy stretch of water in a steady deluge of rain, I was simply thinking, Cold. Cold. I hate all of you. Cold. Nothing about vows or veils.
But when Hagrid said the magic words (Get it? Magic words? Humph. Well, I think I’m funny.), I had three thoughts. This is how it went.
Hagrid: “Yer a wizard, Harry.”
Kata’s first thought: Did he just say lizard?
Kata’s second thought: Oh, wizard. That makes more sense. NOT.
Kata’s third thought: If Harry’s a wizard, I’m a wizard. And if I’m a wizard, how am I going to marry Jeremy?
Unbelievable, I know. After steady years of knowing it was preposterous to actually think I would marry Jeremy, a plan I had made when I was four or five was the first (well, third) thing that jumped into my head after a half-giant gave me the best and worst news of my life.
I guess it should have been a warning. Even when I asked Hagrid and he told me that Muggles married wizards all the time, I should have sensed it. There was an uncertain price I’d need to pay for entry into this brave new world that was blossoming before my eyes.
I would have to give up more than I wedding I didn’t even want. I’d be waving a wand with hands that would have to learn how to let go.
…Would you like to hear about it?
“Off the top of my head” I announced. “I can literally think of a thousand things I’d rather be doing than sitting here and freezing to death.”
Harry nodded silently, agreeing with me. Verno was busy trying to convince wet chip bags to burst into flame. Aunt P watched this process hopefully, and Dudley whined.
Perhaps I was just bored. But I was determined to get one of them (them being the Durselys) to say something rude or degrading to me. This just wasn’t natural. Verno’s eyes were pointing in different directions, and he grinning like he’d won the lottery. Aunt P’s mouth was stitched shut, and she kneaded her hands restlessly. Dudley”having run out of things to whine about approximately a half hour ago”was now simply making a series of high-pitched grunting noises, trying to get his mother’s attention. These were not the Dursleys I knew.
“So, let me get this straight,” I tried again. “You brought matches… and no food?”
“I brought food,” Verno smiled cheerfully, indicating the chip bags.
Then, he smiled. I think I had a tiny aneurysm.
Harry was staring off into space, way past caring what I said or did to upset Verno. But he shot me a warning look as I geared up for third attempt. I could only think of one thing the Dursleys hated more than me.
“Which came first, the chicken or the egg? What’s Madonna’s real name? Where do babies come from?”
Aunt P stopped wrestling with her own grip and looked at me quizzically. Verno hummed softly as match after match failed and was deposited into the fireplace alongside the chip bags. Tiny fires occasionally broke out, but the bags simply spouted blue smoke and curled up at the edges.
“What are you doing?” Harry said under his breath. I smiled coldly.
“Asking questions,” I said evenly. I’d hoped to make him smile, but all he did was look worried.
Hurt at the way my brother was behaving, and thoroughly annoyed with my unresponsive aunt and uncle, I finally shrieked, “Dudley, you’re fat!”
The response was a dark look from Aunt P and an unintelligible whine from DinkleDork. Or whatever they were calling him these days.
Finally, Verno gave up on the fire and began to take stock of the sleeping arrangements. There was a large, lumpy mattress set upon a groaning slab of box springs in the other room, but one would be lying to call it a bed. In addition, there was a fragile-looking couch composed of moldy cushions. And then there was the floor.
They say sleeping on the floor is good for your back. I intend to have a fantastic back one day, or I’m demanding my money back.
“You okay?” Harry said as Dudley snored on the couch and we lay sprawled over the floor. He let me hog the one blanket that’d been tossed our way, even though I could feel him shivering. For once, though, I decided to take advantage of the ridiculous selflessness that was Harry; I estimated that, out of the two of us, I’d be most likely to freeze to death.
“Mm-hmm,” I said sleepily. “Why?”
“The storm…”
I opened one bleary eye and defensively said, “I got over that a gazillion years ago.”
He nodded indulgently. “Last week?”
Yeah. On the fourteenth of never, I thought peevishly. “I’m not five, Harry.”
He merely bobbed his head knowingly. He understood me too well; it was irritating. Besides, this was more than just a little water. There was thunder and lighting and screaming winds and a flapping sea. It was perfectly natural to be scared of a storm like this.
I was drifting off, and had almost forgotten about the storm and the cold and the annoying older brother when he spoke again. “Do you think they’ll remember?”
“I’m trying to sleep here, bro. Who’s they?”
“Them.” He jerked his head toward the door to the tiny room with where Aunt P and Verno slept. “About my birthday.”
I sighed and rolled over to face him. “Considering we’re sleeping on the floor of a shack miles from home in the middle of Freaking Nowhere, and bearing in mind that they hate us both on principle, I’d say the chances are slim to none.” He blinked, smiling ironically at my logic. “I will, though.”
He groaned. “You’re not going to sing again, are you?”
“Try and stop me.”
“C’mon,” he said , probably remembering the time every dog in the neighborhood started howling uncontrollably when I broke into a chorus of “Carry On My Wayward Son.” “Don’t I get a wish or something?”
“Wish for a pony,” I said. Giving up on sleep, I opened my eyes and looked around. Dudley was out like a light, his ham-like wrist dangling over the side of the grimy sofa. 11:55, his watch read.
Suddenly, Harry went stiff and wrenched partially upright, propped up on his elbows. “Did you hear that?”
I shook my head. “All I hear is the sound of me starving to death. I’m allergic to the stuff they make those chips with. And you wouldn’t let me eat banana peels.”
“Shh,” he said , paying no attention to my food rant. “It sounds like something’s outside…”
“It’s called wind,” I said through a yawn. “Would you mind if I roasted and ate Dudley?”
Once again, I got no reply. He lay back down, one ear cocked warily. 11:56.
I was internally debating what Dudley would taste like when Harry twitched and looked around again. “Kata…”
“It’s the storm!” I said impatiently. “Go back to wishing for that pony. A pink one. With sparkles.”
He laughed, but it was forced and uneasy. Barely audible over the moaning of the waves against rocks. The bullet sound of lightning split the sky, and I buried my face in the crook of my arm, trembling.
“You got over it?”
“Shut up!”
“It’s not a big deal, Kat.”
“Happy birthday to yoooooou!” I belted in punishment, hoping the Dursleys would wake up at the sound of my nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. That would be quite the celebration.
Harry covered his ears, protecting them from permanent damage.
“Happy Birthday tooooooo yooooooou!”
“You’ll wake everyone up!” he hissed as I continued my whale imitation/singing.
“Happy Birthday, dear Harryyyyyy! Happy Birrrthdayyy toooo yoooou!”
I trilled off into a note that would make opera singers ashamed of their genre.
Can I pause for a second? I just want to describe it. The storm battered the little cabin, spraying it with wind and dousing its sides in foam-capped waves. The cold was bone-deep and painful, and I was hungry enough to consider cannibalism. My brother and I laughed at my appalling lack of talent as thunder slashed at the clouds. There was a watch, and it read, 11:59.
The last minute before life as I knew it came to a permanent close. I spent it in laughter.
When the door was broken down, I was still smiling.
My account of what happened when Hagrid came in isn’t entirely different than Harry’s. A bit more sarcastic, certainly. Longer, wordier. Essentially, though… it’s the same as what you know.
But that’s the point of not writing it out: to let you know that some things will be the same. Sometimes, Harry and I are in the same place doing the same thing with the same intent. We are related, after all. Just like the color of our eyes, our unpredictable tempers, and a curious form of stupidity that some people mistake for bravery, we share experiences.
But because this story is about me, I’ll give you one image. One box of words to help you assemble the climax of my life.
A girl. On the shorter side. With ornery hair and a shaggy wall of bangs her aunt cut by roping Scotch tape around her forehead and lopping off what hung over the edge. She’d been left on somebody’s doorstep and life was dead-end; that’s what she knew about herself. Just imagine the blaze of possibilities that lit up her face when the truth was unmasked. Think about how she must have felt, to know that she”who was decidedly ordinary”had the kind of roaring potential to someday be extraordinary.
There was pride, handfuls of it. Prospect, another foreign word.
This girl, she learned so much about herself in such a short period of time. Magic, Hogwarts, her parents, a Dark wizard with a name that reminded her of mold…
And this girl, who had always thought she didn’t have a middle name, got half a dozen of them thrown at her. The giant gazed at her skeptically as he recited these, like he expected her to react in a certain way.
“Katarine Natasha Elisabeth Rose Lillian Alice Mintaka Potter.”
Oh, yes, the girl thought. That’s very good.
The night was tinted. That’s the best way I can describe it. Tinted and too big to fit within the small hours it was allotted.
The Leaky Cauldron was sewn haphazardly onto the corner of a bust London street. It wasn’t the ideal spot for a business; the passerby seemed to collectively walk by it without even glancing up from their individual pursuits. Hagird led Harry and I toward it like it was the most important building in the world.
“It’s a right famous place,” Hagrid said. Doubtful, I glanced at Harry, who shrugged.
The inside of the Leaky Cauldron was no more promising. The tables had an ancient, greasy look to them”as did the people sitting at them. A dusty barman stood behind a counter, wiping a frosted glass with a stained rag and talking with a man wearing a top hat. The air smelled of sherry and resin.
The bartender and the top-hatted man smiled and waved at Hagrid. I wondered offhandedly where I could buy a top hat like that. “Hagrid,” the bartender said. “Your usual, I presume?”
“Sorry, Tom,” Hagird said gruffly, clapping Harry on the shoulder. I noticed a few old ladies in the corner pointing at Harry and whispering. One nodded eagerly, puffing on a pipe. “Not today. I’m on official Hogwarts business.”
Tom dropped the dish rag. “Well, bless my soul,” he breathed, his eyes going wide and his hands shaking. A cross between surprise, fear, and reverence was making its way across his face. “Harry Potter.”
Immediately, the Leaky Cauldron was in uproar. Tom the bartender was the first to reach Harry. With tears clouding his squinty eyes, he pumped my brother’s hand. “Welcome back,” he said, wheezing slightly. “Welcome back, Mr. Potter…”
A tidal wave of people followed. Quite a few of them stepped on my feet or shoved me aside in a mad dash to meet Harry. There was quite a lot of hand-shaking and introductions.
“”so proud, Mr. Potter, just so proud””
“”always wanted to meet you…can’t believe it””
“”Diggle’s the name, my boy, Dedalus Diggle””
I expected the swarm of people to eventually thing, but it did not” some kept coming back to shake Harry’s hand again. Tom the bartender was all of a flutter, excited to have a celebrity in his undeserving pub. Slightly angered, I crossed my arms and stared at the floor. I didn’t understand.
A pale man with dark blue robes and a curious turban came forward, wringing his hands. One of his eyes twitched off and on, making his whole face contort and smooth out in little spasms.
“Well, hello, Professor Quirrell!” Hagrid said. “Harry, this is Professor Quirrell. He’ll be your Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at school.”
“Harry P-P-P-Potter,” Quirrell said in greeting, inclining his head nervously. “S-so p-p-pleased t-t-to finally m-meet you.”
“Defense Against the Dark Arts?” I repeated, confused. “What sort of magic is that?”
Quirrell shook his head as if he’d rather not elaborate. His eyes fell on me for just a moment, and something behind them twitched”not the eyes themselves. Quirrell was staring at me as if he knew exactly who I was, and as if I quite terrified him. But then he was gone, and a woman who introduced herself as Doris Crockford was shaking Harry’s hand for the umpteenth time.
It took an ungodly amount of time to disentangle Harry from his mass of admirers. While Hagrid worked at this, Tom the bartender finally asked my name.
“I’m Kata, Kata Potter,” I said proudly, hoping for some recognition.
Tom glanced at Harry, and then back to me. “You’re not… related to Mr. Potter, now?”
I bit my lip. “I’m his sister.”
This seemed to shock Tom a fair amount. He kept glancing my way, as if there was some sort of physical test he could use to determine whether I was a Potter. I watched Harry be met and greeted by a dozen eager fans, and wondered what the hell was going on.
“Must be going, now,” Hagrid finally called. “Lots ter do”c’mon, you two.”
We slipped through the back door of the Leaky Cauldron and I found myself in a dirty alleyway. A few broken bottles littered the ground, and patches of weeds sprung up through the cracks in the pavement. “What,” I said, “was that all about?”
Hagrid grinned. “Told yeh. Yer famous, Harry.”
“Yes,” I said. “You mentioned that. What you failed to mention were the mobs of fans and the handshaking and the Doris Crockfords and the whatever that was!”
Hagrid chuckled. My head was spinning. “And why didn’t any of them know me?” I demanded. “He’s the Boy Who Lived, right? Doesn’t that make me… I dunno, the Girl Who Lived?”
Hagird and Harry both seemed uncomfortable, as if they knew something I didn’t. “Well,” Hagrid said, “I s’pose yeh technically lived. But it’s complicated. Now, let’s see… two from the left, three up… right. Yeh may want ter stand back.”
Hagrid extracted his pink umbrella from a deep pocket in his overcoat and began tapping what seemed to be a random sequence of bricks on the alley wall. But the bricks he touched began to tremble… they pulsated, wiggling in place. A great rumbling noise”something like gallons on water pouring thickly onto a bed of rocks” sounded through the alley as the bricks in front of me began to fold backwards onto each other, forming a massive archway that led out to a cluttered cobblestone street.
I whistled out lowly through me teeth, a trick Jeremy had taught me. Harry’s jaw was hovering somewhere between the ground and its normal location. I took a step onto the street, barely able to think over the babble and commotion of the people and shops that stood before us. A chunk of sunlight replaced the shadow of the alley on my face.
“Welcome,” Hagrid said. “This”this is Diagon Alley.”
For the first time in my life, I was grateful for the what the mental quack the Dursleys had taken me to see mistook for ADHD”a short attention span that enabled me to look everywhere at once and not miss a single piece of Diagon Alley. Stores that sold things I’d never heard of or hadn’t thought existed lined the streets. People in wizard robes or old-fashioned Muggle clothes wove in between each other. There seemed to be no uniform direction of motion. We passed an apothecary, where a woman stood shaking her head, complaining about the raising price of dragon liver”dragons?!”and a department store called Monday’s. The windows of the latter were filled with statuesque mannequins charmed to switch poses every few seconds and wave to the passerby. Two girls of about my age stood outside a lopsided looking bookstore, passing a bag of candy back and forth. Whenever one of them ate a piece, smoke would pore from her ears and she’d squeal. I had a huge, stupid grin on my face as my eyes sifted through the massive amount of things worth staring at.
A perpetual hum of magic filled the air. Things banged and pinged and spontaneously exploded. The buildings were very close together, and seemed to almost lean against each other for support. As well as being seemingly endless, the street was crooked and turned sharply in some places.
“Here it is,” Hagrid said as we walked through the street, “Gringotts bank.”
Gringotts towered over everything else in Diagon Alley. It was also a pure, marble white, which further contributed to making it stand out. Hagrid led the way up the steps, toward a huge, polished set of doors. Just before I stepped inside, I turned around and looked down at Diagon Alley from this new vantage point. It was so different from the flat, dull world of Privet Drive that I knew and had grown up in. After years of being told otherwise, I suddenly felt like I belonged somewhere. Like I was where I was supposed to be.
“I’m back,” I said softly, standing up straight and moving forward, toward Gringotts and toward what would come.
I stood against a wall”though, it didn’t make much sense to call it a wall… the entire shop was made of shelves that were cluttered with long, flat boxes”my eyes half-closed from boredom. Mr. Ollivander bustled around the shop. He was a curious man; he seemed to inhabit his entire body, throwing himself this way and that with rapid, sharp movements.
Harry looked uncomfortable, waving wand after wand with nothing to show for it. “Wand number sixty-four,” I said. “Not that anyone’s counting.”
I understood the wand was an important part of being a wizard… but, come on! I was waiting for my turn, and at this rate it didn’t look like the moment was ever coming.
“No, no, no…” Ollivander said. “Here”try this… made of pine, that’s rather unusual. Unicorn hair core. Nine and a half inches…”
Predictably, the wand did nothing. I sighed as quietly as I could. Hagrid had grown distracted, and was staring out the window with glazed eyes. I tried poking my fingers through the bars of Harry’s owl’s cage to pet her feathers, but the bird snapped at me and turned away. Hagrid had explained that the owl might not take to me easily because a) my voice is apparently very high-pitched, b) owls are loyal to their masters more than anyone else, and this owl would recognize Harry as her master, and c) snowy owls have some kind of issue with the color red.
“What about that one?” I said, indicating a strange wand sitting on a velvet cushion in the window. It wasn’t made entirely the same as other wands; cords of glass were ingrained with the wood from the grip to the apex. Ollivander followed my eyes, but glanced away a mere second later with disdain.
“That wand will not favor Mr. Potter,” he said dismissively, handing Harry another wand (number sixty-six).
Shocked by his swift disregard, I bit my lip and studied the glass wand and a bit further. It was sleek, if short. The wood was sand-colored and smooth. Under the examination of my gaze, the wand abruptly quivered and rolled over.
“Mr. Ollivander!” I shrieked in shock, losing my footing and collapsing back onto a wall of shelves. Boxes immediately toppled down over me like rain; their corners struck my face and arms painfully. A raucous clatter shivered down the walls of the small shop as wands broke free of their boxes and rattled around me. In the commotion, I stepped on a loose wand, went flailing forward, and somehow wound up flat on the ground, surrounded by supposedly magical twigs.
Someone shouted my name, but I couldn’t tell who over the roar of sound in my ears. One large hand seized the back of my t-shirt and hauled my to me feet. Hagrid. I wobbled unsteadily, but stood my ground. Mr. Ollivander was already doing damage control, gathering up boxes and the wands that went inside them. Feeling guilty, I tried to help, but he only waved me away, muttering incoherently.
“Quite all right… really, quite all right… happens all the time…”
“That wand,” I said. “It just…”
I glanced at Harry, and he was giving me The Kata Look.
I’ll outline this look for all you fine spectators. Start with your standard worried expression. Add a pinch of shame, a glob of brotherly concern. Mix in something close to exasperation. Knit the eyebrows together, open the mouth ever so slightly. Depending on the situation, there may also be a bit of I can’t take you anywhere. Stir together, add calamity and Kata. Bake at three-fifty, and there you have your Kata Look.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Just in case anybody’s interested.”
“You’ve got a wand in your hair,” Harry said, unsure of whether to smile. I reached up and searched through my curls, further humiliated. Locating the intruder, I plucked it out and weighed it in my palms. The wand was carved from darkish wood and had a scent I couldn’t place, but felt like I knew. It was about twice the size of my forearm, and had a single knot on the side.
Impulsively, I held it out to Harry, flattening my hair with my other hand. “Try it. It has good wand vibes.”
His arms cluttered with boxes, Ollivander chuckled. “Do I have a Seer in my shop?”
I glanced at Harry. “She’s good with these things,” he said. “She called the World Cup last year.”
I nodded proudly. “Argentina.”
Ollivander blinked his pale eyes and took the wand from my fingers before Harry could. His nimble hands folded over it knowingly, and his face lit up devilishly. “I wonder,” he breathed. He glanced at Harry, then at me, and handed Harry the wand. “Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches. Supple.”
I waited anxiously as Harry slashed wand number sixty-seven through the air. The uncomfortable look on his face evaporated, and a spray of red and gold light filled the room. I smiled widely, watching the display. Hagrid applauded, and even Mr. Ollivander seemed excited. He beamed. “ Oh, finally! Bravo! Very good, very good. Well, well…”
Abandoning the reconstruction of his shelving system, Ollivander slid Harry’s wand into a box and packaged it with brown paper. “Curious. How very curious… indeed…”
Now anticipating my turn to find a wand, I didn’t particularly care what was so curious about wand number sixty-seven. My brother, however, apparently did. “Sorry,” he asked. “What’s curious?”
Dragging his gaze away from the wand box, Ollivander raised his eyes and stared directly at Harry’s lightning scar. It was as if Hagrid and I weren’t in the room anymore. Suddenly, I was very conscious of my own forehead” I am unmarked.
“I’ve done this for more years than I care to say, Mr. Potter. And I remember all of it. Every wand I’ve ever sold, every customer I’ve ever dealt with. Some more than others. And, it just so happens, that this wand had a brother. The cores of these wands are identical. It’s curious, you see, that this wand should choose you so completely when its brother”the wand with the twin feather at its core”was the wand that gave you that scar.
A brief chill slid across my skin. Harry swallowed audibly.
Nervously, I watched my brother extract some of the large gold coins from his pocket to pay for the holly and phoenix feather wand.
Something clicked into place in my mind. “Wait,” I said. “What about me? What about my wand?”
Eyes”pearly gray, beetle black, and emerald green”landed on me. They asked and answered questions. Confused, I took a step back. A rickety floorboard, slathered with age and dust, creaked. Slowly, I shook my head.
There had been one set of books, one cauldron, one telescope. I was so used to sharing everything I owned that I hadn’t realized what this really meant.
I understood abruptly. It was disorienting.
“Kata,” Harry started to say.
“No.”
“Hold on a second””
“No!” I shouted, and I bolted from the shop. The bell above the door screamed as I wrenched it open. Too quickly, I was thrust into the commotion of Diagon Alley. Busy shoppers, moving every which way, surrounded me. None of them paid attention to the scrawny redhead kid moving underfoot. Battling my way through the crowd, I stuttered over the patchy cobblestone roads. The neon colors of everything slapped a pulsing headache between my eyes. My eyes watered from the sensory overload. I ran and ran and ran.
My lungs didn’t ask for air. Adrenaline kept the pain of my pounding heart and the stitch in my side to a minimum. I’d always been terrible with remembering how to get from one place to another, and didn’t know which way to go to reach the Leaky Cauldron.
Instead, I settled for a more general direction: that way.
No longer interested with taking in everything around me, I ran until the shops and shoppers became a blur. I didn’t even let myself be amazed at the size of the Alley. All I wanted to do was run until I was hopelessly lost.
Gasping, I rounded one last corner and reached a deserted dead end. A tall, impenetrable wall of orange brick stood before me. Hunched beneath it and the blazing sun, I felt two feet tall.
And completely out of place.
It was the first time I understood I had the capacity to hate my brother. As a general practice I hated many people”Verno, Aunt P, Winnie Alderton. But Harry, though we fought like any other siblings, was someone I had always considered to be on my side.
My stomach felt rather hollow, and there was nothing to do but kick the brick wall.
“Ow!” I cried out as pain shot up my leg. Indignant, I gave the wall another solid kick for revenge. The sun scratched my skin as I did this again and again. This sunken section of the street was entirely isolated but for the sun and my exclamations of pain and frustration.
Ow. Ow, ow, ow.
“I’m not supposed to talk to lunatics,” a voice said behind me. “But I’d really like to know why you’re doing that.”
I whirled around, heatedly angry. A boy with chin-length black hair, aristocratic features, and a confident grin slouched a few feet away from me. He wore all black, which made him look contrastingly pale. For someone who thought I was crazy, he looked completely at ease. In a way, I was strangely drawn to him. Something about the way his chin cocked gave me the impression he thought of the world as one big game and experiment. It reminded me of… me.
Chest heaving, I spat out an answer. “None of your business.”
“You’re right,” the boy said. “It’s not. I’m Zane, by the way. Zane Liestman.”
“Kata.”
Zane raised an eyebrow. “D’you have a last name, Crazy Kata?”
I bit my lip and debated for a moment. “No.”
Zane nodded. “Right.” He began to walk away.
As I caught my breath from my fit of wall-kicking, a few more words stumbled out over my lips. “I’m not crazy!”
“I know,” Zane said as he slouched away. A swatch of sweat clung to my forehead.
“How?” I asked. “How do you know?”
His shrug was easy and incomplete. “Because,” Zane Liestman said, “I am.” And then he was gone.
Huffing, I placed my back against the wall, slid down to sit on the summer-baked ground, and threw my head into my hands.
It was the first time I hated Harry. It wouldn’t be the last.
Together, Harry and Hagrid explained most of it. Patches of words stuck in my mind like flies in marmalade.
“Hagrid told me this morning. At first,” Harry said, “I said I wasn’t going without you. I said I wasn’t leaving you. But then he explained more of it, and… if you think about it… it’s better this way.”
No. No, it’s not. I don’t have to think about it to know that.
Hagrid gave it a shot: “Dumbledore’s thought this through. He’s a great man, Dumbledore, an’ he knows what he’s doin’. No witch or wizard younger ‘an eleven has ever come to Hogwarts. It’s how it is. But yer gonna be fine, Kata”
“I’ll write,” Harry promised. “I’ll come back every chance I get.” A pause cluttered his voice. “We used to hope for something like this. Remember how many times I told you it would never happen?”
Vividly.
I couldn’t read Harry’s expression. “It did.”
I didn’t say a word.
As the truth was outlined for me, I stared at my brother’s eyes. Shielded behind his glasses, they held a possibility of excitement. I realized how many doors had always remained closed for us, and how much of his life had been spent making sure I was okay, alive, and out of trouble. How could I begrudge him the chance to see what awaited him beyond Privet Drive?
Not a single word.
“I can’t find it.”
The final month Harry spent on Privet Drive wasn’t the happiest of my life. The final night, however, was one of my worst. Tension had been erected, and I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to shatter the silence that stood around our room.
Some poor, ignorant soul had given Dudley a book of poetry at one time or another. Neither a big reader nor a particular fan of depressed loners stringing angst-filled rhymes together(My interpretation of poetry: Oh, pain. Oh, suffering. My soul is dead. Nobody loves me. And then it rained. The end), it was out of pure desperation that I became the first person to crack open Best-Loved Poems of Childhood.
“Kata,” Harry said. Pretending to be immersed in my book, I ignored him. “Have you seen my copy of A History of Magic?”
I got the feeling I would’ve gotten along with this John Clare fellow.
I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tost.
“Self-consumer of my woes…” I said quietly, licking my finger and turning the page thoughtfully. “That’s nice…”
“I left it around here somewhere,” Harry said, pawing around under the bed. Clouts of dust bubbled near the floorboards. “Are you sure you haven’t seen it?”
I paged through a brief section of Brontë (both Emily and Charlotte) and said nothing.
Finding no other pieces that could hold my interest, I flipped back to the Clare. “Shades in love and death’s oblivion lost…”
There was a boil of silence and anticipation.
“Oi!” Harry yelled. “Katarine! Care to put down the book and help me out?”
Simmering, I slammed the book closed. Its pages rioted. “I’m sorry, Harry. Maybe the book is crammed up your””
“Watch it!”
I laughed ironically. “Oh? You’re playing the first name card and telling me to watch my language? Who do you think you are?”
“Right now, I’m your older brother who’s telling you to get over yourself and tell me what you did with my book!”
“What I did?” I said indignantly, standing up and taking three furious strides towards him. “What makes you think I’d want anything to do with that stupid book?”
“Come off it!” Frustrated, Harry flattened his hair”a habit we shared”and redirected. “Look. I hate this thing just as much as you. If it made sense, I’d make them take you. But””
“Nothing about this makes sense!” I objected, a trademark redhead blush seeping into my cheeks. “It doesn’t make sense that you’re a wizard who comes from a wizard family and is going to go to a wizard school and wave a wizard wand! It doesn’t make sense that you’re famous and no one even knows I exist! There’s a whole other world hidden behind London, and it doesn’t make sense. But do you know what really doesn’t make sense? Why you would leave me in this last-chance town just because some people in robes tell you that’s how it’s supposed to be done. I mean, does it really suck that bad, being my older brother?”
Later, Harry would tell me what he was thinking.
The innermost thoughts of Harry Potter on August 31st, 1991: There is no right thing to do.
But I didn’t know. All I could see was a roadmap of what we’d always been: two. Joined. Brother and sister. I’d like to say we always got along, that we became best friends and talked about everything and were forever bonded. But, no. In nutshell, Harry and I were best friends because we annoyed the crap out of each other but there was no one else so we forced ourselves to be a part of the other one’s life.
I was what most little sisters are: a pain. I irritated him, got in the way, judged and criticized. Gave him the silent treatment for days at a time, indulged in rude remarks and huffy bouts of anger when I felt they were necessary. Stole his stuff. Accidentally broke the stolen stuff. Hogged the shelf space and sang loudly even when he begged me to stop.
Harry never resented me, but he certainly had more than a few good reasons to.
And as we stood in the smallest bedroom, facing each other and arguing about books, I could see those reasons. They stood in the corner, loud and conspicuously there. They wrapped heavy hands around my wrists, making their presence known.
My question. It was still there. Damp and challenging.
Does it suck that much, being my older brother?
“No,” Harry answered, because it was what he was supposed to say. “This has nothing to do with me.”
It was true, quite possibly. And I should have treasured it. For a very long time, everything in my life would have less to do with me and more to do with a legend named Harry Potter.
It took us a little while to leave the house the next morning, due mostly to the fact that Verno caught me trying to slash his tires. That sort of thing never ends well. After a) Aunt P convinced him not to slit my throat with the kitchen knife I’d been using and b) I discovered that being a witch didn’t give me the inherent power to slash tires by staring unblinkingly at them for several minutes, we were on our way.
Silence was pungent in the car. Verno seemed to be in another nastily satisfied mood; he was convinced Harry’s ticket was phony. I’d never heard of platform nine and three-quarters either, but personally I found it difficult to hold anything connected to magic in contempt. I’d seen a lot of freaky, seemingly impossible stuff in a very short time.
Verno’s car du jour pulled up to King’s Cross about a half-hour before Harry was scheduled to be on a train. As we made our way to the platform, I dragged my feet and stared at the ground as Verno”sinister and chipper”wheeled Harry’s trunk through the clamoring station.
Morning”what was left of if”fell into the station by way of people. I had never felt so surrounded, so connected. Bodies of every shape and origin made their ways through each other, passing over like light. Shoes attacked the concrete floors, and voices coming from every direction meshed into one indecipherable language. A pang entered my stomach as I thought that these people didn’t know me and I didn’t know them. Straps of sunlight in the windows. Smiles of greeting and tears of goodbye, all around me. This was a place of coming and of going.
Suddenly, nothing sounded separate from the rest. Verno’s lips were parting and closing, saying something (probably a horrible something), but I couldn’t pick out the gruff pitch of his voice from the squeals of train brakes or the dribble of footsteps. Harry’s eyes were widening, dry panic spreading as Verno strode back to the car. Laughing, the Dursleys drove away. There was a single snarl of unyielding sound and the clock was punishing and my brother was looking at me and there should have been words between us but I couldn’t find the right ones so I just said, “Where’s the platform?”
People were beginning to stare. Well, duh, I thought. That’s what happens when two kids, a snowy owl, and a trunk stand staring at a blank patch of wall as if they expect it to do tricks.
Harry said something about asking a guard, and what could I do? I followed.
“Excuse me!” Harry called to a passing man in a uniform and an unfortunate mustache. “Can you tell me where I can find the train leaving for Hogwarts?”
“It’s a school,” I said, because I was ten and I thought that would help.
“Hogwarts,” the guard echoed, his eyebrows contorting suspiciously. “Never heard of it. What part of the country?”
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know.”
The guard didn’t like that. “A really big school,” I tried again.
“What about the train that leaves at eleven?” Harry said.
A very ticked-off guard said, “No train in this station leaves at eleven.” He strode away, shaking his head and muttering.
“Well,” I said. “Well.”
The long hand on the clock shuffled closer to the vertical position.
“There’s got to be a trick or something,” Harry said. “Like getting into Diagon Alley.”
Well.
I was still having a hard time picking out individual sounds from the passing crowds, but Harry and I turned around simultaneously as we both heard a swatch of conversation from behind us.
“”always packed with Muggles””
I punched Harry’s arm and bounced on the soles of my feet, squealing, “They said Muggles, that’s a wizard word, Muggles, they’re wizards, and they have an owl, talk to them, ask about the platform!”
Though we were desperate, Harry hesitated slightly. “It’s fine,” I said. “I always trust redheads. It’s like a secret code between us.”
He wheeled his cart after the speaker”a small red-haired woman”and her family. One could immediately tell they (the small woman, four boys, and a girl around my age) were family by their matching shocks of trustworthy red hair. I quite envied any kind of family resemblance. With Harry and I, you had to stare at us for several minutes before finally saying, “Well, I guess you look a little alike… no, never mind. Just a trick of the light.”
We watched as the mother directed her children toward the space between platforms nine and ten. “Percy,” she said. “You first.”
A boy with an owl strapped to his trunk and glasses pressed far up onto his nose nodded, marching toward the platform gap and pushing his cart. Forever vexed by my height, I stood on my toes to watch.
And I saw.
“Holy hell,” I said under my breath. The bespectacled boy had vanished completely in a shadow of tourists.
“Fred,” the woman said, nonplussed. She indicated one of the three remaining boys. “Go next.”
“I’m not Fred,” the boy said, “I’m George. Honestly, woman, can’t you tell us apart?”
I smiled as the redhead mother apologized. “Only joking,” Fred/George said, “I’m Fred.”
He ran towards the barrier, completely nonchalant. His twin was right behind him. They were almost there… and then they just weren’t.
I stepped on Harry’s foot. “Excuse me,” he said to the woman.
“Hello, dear,” she said kindly. “First time to Hogwarts? Ron’s new as well.”
She indicated the last of her sons: a tall, ginger creature with something smudged on his nose.
“Yeah,” Harry said. “The thing is… I can’t figure out…”
“How to get on the platform?” she asked. Harry nodded gratefully.
“No one here’s heard of it,” I said, remembering the guard.
The woman smiled at me, and then addressed Harry. “It’s very simple. All you have to do is walk straight at the barrier. Don’t stop. And don’t be afraid, that’s very important. Get a good running start. Just go now, before Ron.”
Harry swallowed, preparing to run at the barrier. “Wait,” I said impulsively.
I scurried around to the front of the cart and climbed aboard, sitting on the trunk and gripping the straps for support. Hedwig hooted in surprise. “Gun it, Four-Eyes,” I said.
Harry looked at me, opened his mouth, closed it, and then nodded.
Oddly enough, it was like a kind of truce. I knew Harry could barely push the cart with me sitting on it, but he didn’t say anything about this. Maybe he realized that the return of my Kata-ness (I’d been sulking for days, but who else would demand to ride through a magic barrier on a luggage trolley?) meant I forgave him for what was happening. That, instead of just me, it was now happening to both of us.
We were going to crash. As soon as Harry started running, and the wheels started rocking and complaining under my feet, I knew that. The redheaded mother started to say something about my chosen method of transportation being unsafe, but it was too late. The speed of the air rushing past me was somewhat exhilarating, and I took several clenched breaths. Eyes wide open.
I saw the true platform nine and three-quarters before Harry did. An enormous steam engine in a shiny shade of red was parked next to a bustling platform. It was like a smaller version of the actual station. People and luggage and noise. A black iron archway crowned the scene.
I repeated an earlier sentiment: “Holy hell.”
The cart slowed and then stopped. Harry cleared his throat, which I took as my cue to get down. We walked along the side of the train until Harry found an empty compartment. Loading the trunk into said compartment turned out to be the hard part.
“Lift with you knees,” I grunted as he pushed and I dragged from above. The thing had to weigh more than I did. “I don’t think you’re really trying.” And then I promptly dropped the trunk on Harry’s foot.
One of the red-haired twins ambled towards us. “Need a hand?”
He called his brother over, and the three of them easily tucked the trunk inside. “Would’ve gotten it eventually,” I muttered.
Stepping away from the compartment stairs, I took in the surrounding area. Owls called to each other in that perpetually annoyed manner owls have. A few straggling students hugged their parents or talked animatedly to friends. Two girl in their mid-teens played a complex-looking card game on an overturned trunk. In the corner, a sulking boy with frizzy clumps of black hair”as if he’d been recently electrocuted”stood with his parents, hands in pockets. He saw me looking, and I glanced away to a group of giggling girls, embracing and touching each other’s hair.
If I closed my eyes, I could have been somewhere else. Noise was just ambiguous noise. These people, if you ignored the robes and wands, didn’t have to be wizards; they were the people I passed everyday as I walked through Little Whinging. They were Jeremy and Marc and Harry and Jilly and maybe even me. Linked.
One minute to eleven, and the clock chimed a single toll in warning. Students hastily ran everywhere, their families convening at the very edge of the platform to wave goodbye.
The following conversation was short and complete and final. Harry stepped down from the train and stood in front of me, awkwardly. I smoothed my hair, tucking it behind an ear. Deep breaths were taken. Efforts were made to remain calm.
The truth was, we had no idea how to do this. I knew he’d thought about it, and I had, but obviously neither of us had planned anything.
“Kata?”
“Yeah?”
“…”
“...”
“I’m sorry. About this. It… might not make sense to you, but it does to me.”
I swatted that away and settled for a pathetic joke. “Knew you’d find a way to get rid of me sooner or later.”
His smile was forced. “Took me long enough.”
“Yeah, well. Having Kata is like having mold.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I think we covered that.”
“Stay out of trouble. Please. I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah,” I said. It didn’t matter if Harry was telling the truth, I just needed to believe he was. “Soon.”
Those were the words we said. The ones we needed to say, to keep us from floating away. For the life of me, I couldn’t think of better ones. Neither of us were sentimental people, and you can only promise to write so many times. It was like ripping off band-aid: just do it, and do it quick. Just leave before you lose your nerve.
It turned out there was one more thing to say. I don’t remember which one of us said it first. “’Bye.”
If you’ve never stood next to a train just as it prepares for departure, you’re one up on me in the luck department. Trains are loud”deafening”and relentless. They smother everything with smoke, making it impossible to see anything, even your brother as he gets on board and slides the compartment door closed. The whistle sounded twice, staccato and earsplitting, the slow grind of wheels started up, and suddenly there was movement.
I wish I would have run after the train, like the other younger siblings left behind. Nothing would have been different, but at least I could have felt like I did something besides watch. I don’t even remember if Harry waved, or if I cried, or if I did anything besides choke on the air I was supposed to be breathing as my limbs turned to stone and a train erupted into the distance.
“You’re Harry Potter’s sister?” a meek voice asked from behind me just as the din of the train died away. It was the first time I got that label. Turning around, I saw the lone redhead child who had not gone to Hogwarts. “My brothers told me,” she said. “Your brother told them.”
“Yeah, I am” I said. It was true, and my sarcasm was running on ‘E’; I couldn’t think of anything witty to say.
“Oh.” She nodded. “I wondered why you were alone.”
I thought about earlier, in the main station where I’d felt so connected to every person moving through the crowd. “I’m pretty much surrounded,” I said, mostly to myself.
She nodded again, a reflex. “I’m Ginny Weasley.”
“Kata,” I said, introducing myself sans surname.
Ginny Weasley blinked at the disappearing train. I could see something pressing on her mind, and after a few seconds she finally voiced it. “Do you have…?” she indicated her forehead.
I lifted my overgrown bangs. “I’m no one special.”
I stayed at the platform as it emptied out, as Ginny Weasley and her mother went home and the scent of train smoke dissipated. I liked how a place that had been so alive and so filled with noise could settle into an eerie calm. I liked the vacant tracks, no longer rumbling with the movement of the Hogwarts Express. The way the air around me was still and indifferent as I sat down and leaned back against the iron archway, refusing to think about how I was going to get home. No one made me get up. No one asked who I was or why I was there or why I didn’t leave. Finally, I got a bit of peace, and I relished it.
I just didn’t understand magic.
And that’s the end of it, I guess.
Here’s the thing about the Dursleys: I wasn’t entirely sure they knew my name.
All my life, Aunt P had scrupulously maintained that ‘Katarine’ wasn’t a real name. Whenever anyone used it instead of my preferred nickname, she muttered bitterly about how whoever named me was both a freak and a junkie. She called me Katherine if she called me anything at all; most of the time she just ignored me.
Verno, however, didn’t bother with correcting spellings. He liked, “devil spawn”, and “mutant twerp”. I imagined one of his favorite pastimes to be reading the thesaurus, trying to think of more varied ways to insult me. So far, I hadn’t heard him use the same one twice.
So, when the phone rang a week after Christmas and Verno shouted, “GIRL!” up the stairs, I knew it was for me. A bit disappointed he hadn’t included a fun adjective (something endearing, like “oddball” or “runt”), I dragged myself into the kitchen. He thrust the receiver at me with a grunt.
I cleared my throat. “This is your twenty-four-hour suicide hotline. My name is Kata, how may we stop you from offing yourself today?”
A brief round of feedback crackled on the other line. “Kata?”
My stomach suddenly felt full of air as I recognized the voice. “Mr. Mendota?” I asked incredulously.
“What are you doing operating a suicide hotline?” he responded shrewdly. I could practically hear him raising his eyebrows.
I swallowed, pushing a chunk of hair from my eyes. “How’d you get this number?”
“I’m your teacher, Kata. Of course I have your number.”
That particular aspect of the public education system slightly creeped me out, but I shoved that aside and concentrated on the matter at hand.
“Are you dying?” I asked, annoyed.
More feedback, louder this time. “Excuse me?”
“Are you on the side of the road, bleeding profusely, all alone?”
“No! And where did you learn the word ‘profusely’?”
“It was on one of those dippy vocabulary lists you hand out,” I said defensively. Just because I was failing school didn’t mean I was stupid. “Not that I read them. I skimmed. One time. Anyway, are you telling me the only reason for this call is that you want to say hello?”
“Believe me, Kata Potter, if I were dying on the side of the road, you would not be the person I’d call.” He paused, and I smiled a bit; I loved making adults talk in circles. “I’m calling because of your Twenty Things project.”
My stomach did the airy thing again. A swell of clamminess broke over my skin, and I bit my lip. “Did I fail?” I said stridently.
“No, no,” he said hurriedly. “No. Actually… This is the best, most authentic, most spectacular response I’ve ever been given to the question, ‘What are the twenty things that make that world go ‘round?’.”
I choked on surprise, my head a mess of crumpled thoughts. “You… you liked it?”
Mr. Mendota was odd, but he wasn’t that odd. My project had barely been done. It was a few stringy pieces of paper tossed together in a notebook. It wasn’t deep, or meaningful, or conclusive. Not an assignment, ceremony, or quest. In short, my project had been nothing that a Twenty Things project was supposed to be. Unless my teacher had recently sustained a life-altering blow to the head, or actually was dying on the side of the road, I didn’t see how he could have anything good to say about me or my notebook. Especially after my performance at the school two weeks previously.
Maybe he was just going to quote more T.S. Eliot (I’d looked it up in Dudley’s poetry book), say something completely cryptic and unhelpful, and then leave me even more confused and annoyed. That seemed like him.
“Of course I liked it!” he said. I could hear his trademark grin being smiled into the phone. Maybe I’ve fallen into Wonderland, I thought. Maybe this is Anti-Mr. Mendota, and he’s just messing with me. “You’re a very good writer, you know. Very moving. I’m proud of you, Kata.”
To understand how I felt after those words, all you have to know is that no one had ever said them to me.
I rode the rush of approval as Mr. Mendota kept piling on the praise. “I’ve seen students write letters before,” he said, “but the concept of ‘Dear Friend’”especially coming from someone like you”was so unexpected and so… real. I feel like you really understood the point of the assignment.
“Anyway, I’m calling to let you know that I’ve entered your Twenty Things in a competition for young writers, and I’m confident you’ll do well. I’m out of town for the holidays, but once we’re back in school I’ll give you the details””
My hand flexed and I dropped the receiver, letting it drip to the ground. A sudden clamminess cooked on my forehead, and gravity wasn’t enough to keep me standing anymore. Breathing as if I’d just run the circumference of the world, I leaned onto the wall and tasted panic on my tongue. My vision went pulpy, and suddenly all I could see was the color green”the waxen, solid leaf green that had been both the Twenty Things notebook and the Dear Friend notebook.
Identical. Indistinguishable, accept for a stupid Hello Kitty sticker that I couldn’t have been expected to see when having a mental breakdown.
My voice was fractured, full of cracks. It wobbled, collapsed as soon as I spit it out. “Mr. Mendota,” I said, even though he couldn’t hear me anymore, “I think I may have given you the wrong notebook.”