Chapter 1
1.
Astoria needed a gun. In fact, she needed multiple guns.
Do you know how fucking hard it is to find a gun in Great Britain? Practically impossible, but Astoria was nothing if not persistent.
So, here she was, in front of the home of one Harrison Baker, who if Point Me could be trusted, had a gun. A Smith & Wesson Model 41, to be precise.
With a simple Alohomora, she had unlocked his door. With a Point Me, she had located the safe with the gun. With another Alohomora, she had unlocked said safe. As she very carefully took the gun out, she checked that all was in order, just like she’d read.
It was.
So, she took the gun and its rounds, closed the safe, made sure Harrison Baker had not magically come back from his business trip, and stuffed the .22-long rifle into her bag.
Everything was in place. Now, she just had to get out of there and catch her ride. She went outside and stuck her wand out over the road.
BANG
A triple-decker, unmistakably purple bus appeared in front of her.
"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stic— Oh, it's you again. Back so soon, are ya?”
Astoria smiled the brightest smile one could when they had just robbed someone of their gun. “Yep! Back I go.”
Stan smiled that smile he always did when the child of a questionably young age took herself to strange places at ungodly hours of the night. “Right. Take your usual spot, no one’s been sittin’ there yet.”
Astoria paid him and securely sat down on the provided bed, pointedly ignoring the cleanliness implications of it looking the same as she’d left it. Besides, she had better things to dwell on.
According to her copious amounts of library research (and her innocent pestering of a police officer for “homework”), a .22 LR was not the best gun for defense. Oftentimes, it’d take multiple rounds to get rid of even something small. But that was okay because Astoria didn’t just need one gun.
She needed multiple.
2.
The thing about Astoria is she was not always named Astoria, and she did not always need multiple guns. Not in this dimension at least. Mind you, here she was always Astoria, and here she would remain, but once, in a distant place quite like this place, she was simply an American teenager obsessed with the fictional Wizarding World. Of course, that was no longer who she was, but this is where the peculiarities begin. She was presently an amalgamation of the pre-teen known as Astoria and the teenager known as…well, she was definitely known as something. But what that something was, she couldn’t quite say. Not anymore, at least. Now, she was just Astoria, but not quite, and certainly not only Astoria.
Does that make sense?
Probably not the whole affair is admittedly confusing. Let me explain it in a different way.
For the first few months, every time Astoria looked at herself in the mirror, she’d slightly flinch. Don’t be alarmed. Her face wasn’t ugly. Quite the opposite in fact. She could wax on and on about how her face was firmly the opposite of ugly, but that’s beside the point, as she was getting the feeling that her face was not her face.
Then, when she would go to Diagon Alley with her family to buy the latest robes in her favorite color (forest green if you must know), she’d get the feeling that her favorite color was not her favorite color and that these objectively trendy robes were not fashion statements but meant to be worn in the bedroom.
And finally, when someone would say “Astoria,” she’d get the feeling that that name was not her name.
At first, these were all ridiculous thoughts to Astoria. For the first nine years of her life, she’d been raised knowing exactly who she was: Astoria Greengrass, pureblood, the spare. A pretty little thing, according to her father. A clever girl, according to her mother. Destined for all the lovely, boring things that lovely, boring pureblood girls were meant to do—marry a lovely boy, host lovely little soirées, and have lovely pureblood babies.
A little morbid for a nine-year-old, she’d thought. And wasn’t that also ridiculous? Because how was a nine-year-old meant to know what’s appropriate for a nine-year-old? Unless, she wasn’t nine. Unless, she was some other age. And then she’d fallen, hit her head on a rock, and suddenly everything snapped into place.
She was no longer just Astoria Greengrass. And she definitely needed that gun.
3.
Astoria arrived back at her bedroom as she usually did: hoisting herself on top of the large rock underneath her room, a quick scramble up a pipe, and flinging herself onto her balcony. Blood maledication be damn. The only way one can get stronger is by doing.
She paused for a moment, leaning against the doorframe and surveying her room. It was exactly as she’d left it, which was good because it meant nobody had realized she was gone. Of course, no one ever noticed when she’d slipped out. That said more about her family than it did about her stealth skills, but regarding that she will not comment.
Crossing the room, she dropped her bag on the floor with a satisfying thud and knelt by her half-packed trunk. Then, she pulled out the gun.
It was oddly charming in person. Theoretically, she knew it should be scary. It could kill people, no, it will kill people. However, it hadn’t yet, and it was obvious the previous owner barely used it. It still looked brand new with its blue hue and wood-paneled grip.
It wasn’t at all like the Glocks she’d watched on television. She really wanted one, specifically a Glock 19, if only to feel like she was in an action movie, but the people of England were tragically limited to pistols like this unless she broke into a police armory and even with magic (if her primitive use could be called such) that seemed like a terribly bad idea.
Although, this was already a bad idea.
She nestled the gun and its ammunition into the trunk, carefully tucking it beneath her favorite forest green robe. No one would look there, and even if the house-elves did, how were they supposed to know what a gun was? They couldn’t even tell that Ginny Weasley brought in a Horcrux last year.
Satisfied, she stood up, dusted her hands on her robes, and looked around. She still had some packing to do for tomorrow, but first, she needed to sleep. Being a thief was exhausting.