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A throbbing headache accompanied by an overwhelming nausea aroused her from a restless sleep. Rolling to her side, she intended to reach for the water on her nightstand to soothe her rebelling stomach. This minute movement sent a new surge of pain through her body however, this time originating from other sources. Her lower back, her shoulders and her neck were stiff and aching like she had a whiplash.
Cracking her eyes open, she glanced down where her bed was supposed to be. Her eyes widened when she saw that she was not only not in her bed but apparently hadn’t even made it back to her hotel room. She sat up but her stomach didn’t agree with the sudden movement and she felt bile rising up her throat. How much did she drink last night? Where were the girls? And how did they get seperated?
She’d been lying in a dark deserted alley somewhere in England. At least she hoped that she was still in England. This trip had been planned for a long time and she and her friends had been spending the last couple of days with Harry Potter related activities in London. As they couldn’t afford a trip to the Wizarding World in Orlando they had agreed to save their money to visit all the Harry Potter themed places in London after graduation. It was the city where the Wizarding World was located in the books after all.
Last night they had been in a potion themed cocktail bar dressed in their Hogwarts house robes and waving the wands they had bought during the Warner Bros. Studio Tour. It had been highly entertaining and they had been laughing a lot. Afterwards they had intended to go for a pub crawl, but her memories after they had left the cocktail bar were hazy at best. She had some idea that they had been sitting outside at high tables in front of another pub but she couldn’t remember any details.
While she had been thoroughly smashed once or twice before, this was the first time ever that she experienced anything resembling a blackout and it frightened her. She did neither know where she was, nor how she got here in the first place. Frantically, she searched for her bag to retrieve her mobile. If she could reach her girls she would feel significantly better and they must be worried sick. Scanning the floor around her, she saw nothing but some dirt, an empty soda can and fag ends in the weak light provided by the moon.
The next functioning street light was too far away to be of any assistance with the dim light it emanated. This left her scrambling about and focusing on her immediate environment. With her bag nowhere to be found, she cursed her bad luck. Somebody must have robbed her while she was unconscious. The coldness of the ground began to seep through her clothes, which was probably a sign that she was in the process of sobering up. In her robe pockets she only found her travel purse, some tickets and the wand she had bought the other day.
Frowning, she inspected the wand more carefully. It seemed somehow bigger than she remembered and it felt more natural. It had definitely strong similarities with the Slytherin Mascot Wand she had fallen in love with but this one seemed to be made from real wood. Had they met another group yesterday and she had accidently left with someone else's souvenir?
Whatever. She had bigger problems to prioritise right now. She needed to find out where she was and how to get back to their hotel. Afterwards she needed to cancel her credit card as soon as possible and find out what the bloody hell happened last night.
She would have to make sure that her parents never heard about this. They didn’t want her to leave the country before she was of age with only her friends for company. If they were to find out that she got drunk and woke up mugged in a random alley somewhere, she wouldn’t be allowed to leave the house until she moved out.
The thought of her parents’ disappointment and fury got her into action. Her parents were rarely mad at her but if they got in an argument in the past it had always been a big one. Something she could definitely do without in the future. Supporting herself against a nearby wall she pushed herself slowly into a standing position.
Her legs were shaking and her head spinning. What the hell? She hadn’t been aware of this before but everything around her seemed disproportionately sized. Not only the wand which she had put back into her pocket but everything around her seemed way too big. Looking back down at her hands they seemed too small, contradicting her memory. Did everything grow bigger or did she shrink?
She was pretty sure now that she was hallucinating and the dizziness grew immensely since she was in a standing position. Not being able to force her body into submission anymore, she grabbed her ponytail with one hand and the wall with the other before she doubled over and threw up. This was not how she had envisioned her city trip to go. At all.
By some miracle she managed not to soil herself, but she felt incredibly weak after the urge to gag subsided. Tears had been streaming from her eyes through the force of the retching and she had nothing to get the nasty taste out of her mouth. This night turned out to be one of the worst in her life.
Breathing slowly, she considered what she could possibly do next. She would have to find a map. Even if one of the phone boxes still worked it wouldn’t help her much as all the numbers were saved in her mobile. She couldn’t for the life of her remember a number except her own, which was somewhat ironic. Who ever needed to call themselves?
She could try to find the number of the hotel however. Even if there had been three hotels with the same name in London it would take her three calls at most to find the right one, right? It was at least an option. Find some map to get an idea of her location and look for a telephone box. The problem was that she felt weak and didn’t trust herself right now. The hallucinations hadn’t faded yet.
Still, she chose a random direction and started walking unsteadily. All the while she stayed close to walls and fences to find support in case she needed it. It was eerily quiet for a weekend in the city. Either she was stranded in some suburban area or worse; a neighbourhood outside of London. She wondered how late it might be. Every time she tried to remember more of the previous night her head began to spin dangerously and she gave up on trying.
Dragging herself along she finally reached a street that seemed not to scream “exclusive residential district”. It had a two-lane carriageway and shops surrounding it. They were all closed but she heaved a sigh of relief at having found an area that seemed to be more central than everything else she’d come across so far.
Keeping an eye out for any kind of public transportation and telephone boxes, she passed the first shop windows. The shops here seemed to be focused on the vintage theme. She passed a record shop, instruments and various shops with colourful clothes. There were some supermarkets and a bookshop, yet she couldn’t see a mobile or gaming shop anywhere.
Her friends would have loved the clothes. Heck, she herself would have loved checking out the bright coloured dresses if she hadn’t had about ten different problems to solve that had her mind fairly occupied. The illumination was better here than in the alley she had woken up in and in the far distance she could spot a red box that gave her a shimmer of hope.
There was neither a clock inside the telephone box nor a phone directory, just a dial-operated telephone and a display of area codes on the wall. She sighed. The only thing she could think of was making a directory enquiry, though she couldn’t imagine that she’d reach anyone in the middle of the night to look up a number for her. Never mind that she wouldn’t be able to take notes of her request and her memory wasn’t that good. She’d gladly exchange her souvenir wand for a pen right now.
It was weird that the hallucination still hadn’t subsided one bit. The phone had almost been out of her reach. Anything stronger than alcohol was never something she had been tempted to try and her current experience was just too wild. She probably should have herself checked in a hospital for having been drugged but she was way too confused and embarrassed with the whole situation. Before she decided on anything else she needed to speak with her girls and find out what happened last night.
Returning to the pavement, she pulled the travel purse out of her robe pocket and prayed to anything holy that it wouldn’t be empty. If it was, calling the emergency number would be her only available option and she really didn’t want this to go back to her parents. After she opened it she stopped walking and stared. What. Was. That? The purse wasn’t empty all right, but it just as well could have been with the content she found in her hands.
Her notes were gone and instead she had golden, bronze and silver coins depicting a dragon, a capricorn and whatever the bloody hell the last thing was supposed to be. It went perfectly with the Harry Potter theme. She let out a hysterical laugh. She was stuck in London in robes with nothing but fake money and a souvenir wand. Perfect. Maybe she could convince a cap driver to take the fake galleons and sickles in pledge until she got some actual money from her friends in the hotel?
Nah! Resigned, she turned back to the phone box. She would have to call the emergency number and face her family's ire. Thinking about her family made her feel yearning and hesitant at once. Reluctantly, she reached out to the door, but she was distracted by a sudden sensation. A pain comparable to boiling water flowing over skin was burning through her left forearm. She yelped and retracted her hand from the door.
The pain was gone as abruptly as it had appeared, yet it left a prickling numbness in its place, comparable to limbs that have fallen asleep. Wide-eyed she stared at her arm and pulled up the left sleeve of her robes with a shaking hand. There was the stick-on tattoo of the Dark Mark, red-rimmed by her clearly irritated skin. Only, it didn’t look like a stick-on tattoo anymore.
She groaned. If she’d gotten herself a permanent tattoo last night she would be permanently grounded. She felt the nausea return when the pain flared up again. If this was how the Death Eaters felt everytime Voldemort called them in the story they must have been a masochistic lot.
Feeling a shift in the atmosphere, she looked around uneasily. There was no one in sight but she couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was being watched.
Looking back down at the tattoo she almost choked on the air she was breathing. The. Tattoo. Moved. The snake curled around her arm and was whipping its tongue out. Having no experience whatsoever with hallucinations, she didn’t know what was considered possible, but the pain had felt too real to comfort for her. Hallucination or not, with how real the pain felt, she did not want to run into any Death Eaters or worse, Voldemort himself.
It could all very well be paranoia kicking in now and she knew that. Still, she’d rather be safe than sorry. Feeling utterly ridiculous with what she was about to do, she retrieved her wand and looked at it for a moment, hesitating. Then she shrugged, pulled her sleeve back down and held her wand out in the air. Nothing. Alright, that was that. Relief flooded her system. If there was no Knight Bus, there wouldn’t be any Death Eaters lying in wait to ambush her.
She put her wand back and turned around to the telephone box. This time when she opened the door, she was interrupted by a loud crack. Startled, she retracted her hand again. Turning to the street she was half expecting to see the Knight Bus in front of her. So, when instead two cloaked and masked figures were crossing the street, she felt panic rising within her.
Why couldn’t she have a nice trip with some magical rainbows, Unicorns and Pygmy Puffs? That would have been preferable. As she didn’t know if the gaming wand movements would be applicable and she didn’t even know if that thing she bought would actually work, she left her wand where it was, praying that she wouldn’t be killed outright.
Her knowledge of English was acceptable but in no way excellent. She stood frozen in her spot while the two mages slowly drew closer. Her mind was working in overdrive, which was not helping in the slightest as she was still hungover and dizzy. She wouldn’t be able to run. Not in her current state and not in her usual shape either as she had to admit. She wasn’t completely unathletic, but she had never been a fast runner either.
They came to a halt in front of her and she felt incredibly small and vulnerable. To Look up to them, she had to tilt her head back considerably. This is not real. This can’t possibly be real. She repeated the lines in her head like a mantra. Even without the ability to see their faces, she knew that they were scrutinising her.
Making up her mind she decided to treat this like she had absolutely no idea what the masks were about. She hoped that her size and accent would do the rest. “Hello. Eh, nice masks. Where did you get those?” Even while she said it the question sounded flat in her own ears. Still, it wasn’t like she could take it back and she had really asked a group of masked dancers at a festival last year where they got their masks so it wasn’t like this wasn’t something she’d ask a stranger.
Wonderful. Now she had the image of dancing Death Eaters in her head and had to giggle. Were she able to see their faces right now, they’d probably be frowning down at her. Neither of them had yet said a word. They had probably tracked her down via the Dark Mark and couldn’t imagine that she’d be the one they’d been sent for. She would try to clear that up for them, kind as she was.
“Your friend also didn’t like talking much.” She tilted her head sideways, studying each mask in turn. “But I like the design. You’ve each got a different one.” That got her a reaction at last.
“Which friend?” The first of them asked with a deep muffled voice.
“I mean, I thought he’d be your friend seeing as he had the same cloak and type of mask?” She answered hesitantly, eluding a direct reply.
“Where did he go?” asked the other. His voice was also muted by the mask but managed somehow to come out stronger.
She pointed to her right “That way, but he just vanished like he went invisible. He didn’t make a sound like when you two got here.”
The two Death Eaters exchanged a glance at that. “And what are you doing here girl?”
“Here in England or here on the street?” she asked innocently.
“Both” the man returned roughly.
“I’m visiting family here and I got lost. I went to sleep at home and then I woke up outside because it was cold. But that’s okay, daddy told me how I could call the bus. How long does it usually take?” That made her think of her family again. How she’d definitely prefer the ire of her dad to the present company right about now.
The two wizards exchanged another glance. “Sounds like accidental magic” said the first, while the other just shrugged noncommittally.
They were about to dismiss her when the burn in her Dark Mark flared up again. With all the will and force she could muster she made herself not flinch or yelp. She couldn't, however, suppress the tears that were welling up in her eyes.
Voldemort had definitely shite timing. That was worse than getting a video call from your crush while sitting on the toilet or having someone ringing the doorbell while you're alone at home and under the shower. There was no way in hell that they hadn’t seen her tear up. She would have to fall back upon her mediocre acting skills from the drama club. Nevermind that she only ever got the minor parts because she couldn’t memorise the script.
Sniffing, she let the tears run freely now. “The Knight Bus will come, right? I don’t know where my family lives in England and my dad told me”…sniff…”he told me to go to my uncle in the Ministry if I ever got lost.” She used the sleeve of her right arm to wipe away some tears, before looking up miserably to the Death Eaters.
They shifted a bit in place, clearly uncomfortable to be in a position where they had to console a child in their masks and combat robes. They had definitely intended to leave her here on her own mere seconds ago (these bastards!) but seemed somewhat conflicted now. When she started to make her lips wobble a bit like she was really going to cry any moment, the first Death Eater cleared his throat, “How exactly did you try to call for the bus, girl?” He threw a glance at the telephone box and was probably thinking about the visitor entry to the Ministry.
“I raised the wand my dad got me for emergencies. Was I supposed to do anything else?” She asked with uncertainty in her voice. J.K. Rowling could be wrong after all. Or she could have changed her mind.
“Maybe you raised it not high enough. In the time we were standing here it certainly should have arrived.” The other wizard turned towards the road. It was certainly not in their interest to be seen by the Knight Bus or their passengers.
She got out her wand and held it firmly. The Death Eater who was still turned towards her watched it with interest. “That’s a pretty wand you got there.” Yes beautiful and utterly impractical as it seemed. She had bought it for its aesthetic value only. Holding it however was somewhat awkward with the snake curling around its length.
“Thank you, Sir. It’s made of snakewood like Slytherin’s wand” she said with a smile.
At that the other Death Eater turned back towards her to see the wand for himself. She probably shouldn’t have told them that. What was preventing them from stealing her wand? Stupid. Utterly stupid. She tightened the grip around her wand and held it high in the air, making sure to never point it in their direction “Like this, Sir?” she asked the wizard politely while begging her wand mentally to please work with her.
This time she didn’t have to wait long. A moment later another crack announced the impressive purple triple-decker headed for them from the far end of the street. She was ecstatic. The Death Eaters not so much.
“We have to leave.” one of them said urgently. The men were already turning away from the bus so as to not show their masks. “Good luck, girl.” grunted the other.
“Thank you for your kind help!” she chirped after them before they turned on the spot and disappeared with a loud crack. Some of the tension left her when they were gone, though it surely wouldn’t take them long to realise that it had been her who they’d been looking for.
She had told them that she had been at home and asleep before she woke up outside. Who sends their kid to bed fully dressed with their shoes on and a pocketed wand? No one. That's who. If accidental magic got her dressed, a wand summoned and apparated to god knows where would that constitute as accidental-chain-magic?
“Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Ross Quesnel, and I will be your conductor this morning.” She heard the well known introduction, if from an unfamiliar name. The wizard was way older than the Stan Shunpike she knew from the series and was currently busy frowning down at her. “Aren’t you a little young to be travelin alone, lass?”
Grateful that his voice sounded more concerned than accusatory, she gave him a rueful smile. “I got lost, Sir. It was by accident, I did not plan to leave home tonight.” She would go with the accidental magic excuse the Death Eater had provided her. “How much would it be, to get to the visitors entry of the Ministry? I need to find my godfather.” The poor bloke she’d chosen didn’t even know of her existence yet. Also, she should probably get her stories straight, didn’t she tell the Death Eaters something about an uncle? The hazards of improvised acting.
“Ahh.” the conductor nodded sympathetically, comprehension flickering in his eyes. “That would be 11 Sickles for the ticket only, but for thirteen you get hot chocolate and for fifteen you get a hot water bottle and a toothbrush in the colour of your choice.” Uhhh she had completely forgotten about this part. She kind of wondered if the toothbrush was magical if no toothpaste was offered but she would take the offer either way. Anything that would dispel the bad taste in her mouth.
She beamed and offered Ross Quesnel a Galleon. “I’ll take a green tooth brush.” After she received her change of two Sickles, the water and her toothbrush, the conductor moved her past the driver whose name she’d forgotten moments after she’d heard it and led her to the first bed. She’d been a bit disappointed not to find Ernie in the driver seat, though hadn’t expected it either after Stan hadn’t been there.
She wondered why her mind came up with completely unfamiliar people instead of the originals. Shortly after she sat down on her designated bed she was distracted from her thoughts however as the bus sped up and drifted violently. Following a loud bang, their surrounding location changed and the driver slammed hard on the brakes to pick up another passenger. Her stomach churned at the turbulence and this was just the start of her ride.
They should have offered vomit bags as an upgrade option. While she loved the appearance of the Knight Bus, she definitely didn’t intend to repeat riding with it again, if she didn’t have to. Like ever. Pressing her eyes shut, she concentrated on her breathing. She really didn’t want to throw up again, even less when she was sitting in public transportation.
When Mr. Quesnel made his way back to the front, after escorting the new passenger to his bed, she used the moment to enquire; “Excuse me, Sir. Could you tell me what time it is?”
The man didn’t pause when he drew his wand and murmured some incantation. She didn’t see the result but he told her it’d be 5am shortly.
When would the first employees arrive at the Ministry? She sighed, clinging to the four-poster bed frame while the bus swerved back and forth on the road. Her nausea increased steadily back to previous heights and when the bus stopped again, finally calling out her destination, she stumbled towards the exit as fast as her shaky legs could manage. Without a look back, she mumbled a “Thank you” in the vague direction of the conductor and fled into the fresh air.
She couldn’t help it. A ride with the Knight Bus wouldn’t be well received by her stomach on good days, but in her today’s condition she couldn’t fight it a moment longer. Just after the bus had closed the doors behind her she felt her stomach tense up and she emptied it for a second time in several hours. Ugh! Disgusting. Wiping her mouth with the hem of her robe, she distanced herself from the spot she’d just soiled.
It was time to test the (hopefully) magic toothbrush. It looked like a normal toothbrush to her, although made of wood instead of plastic. Shrugging, she rinsed her mouth with some of the water and poured some over her toothbrush before using it as if she had toothpaste on it. To her immense relief the toothbrush seemed indeed to be spelled with some sort of scouring charm to clean her teeth and provide a fresh minty taste during the usage.
This was a part of her hallucination she could live with as she felt instantly cleaner. Now to the visitor's entry. There was only one telephone box on this street corner, so it was impossible to miss. After entering the box she stood on her tiptoes and dialled the number that would spell magic; 62442. Had they used some random number like the vault numbers in Gringotts or the Azkaban numbers she wouldn’t have been able to remember them.
Therefore, she was glad for the symbolism in the design of the visitor’s entry. “Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Please state your name and business.” said a cool female voice.
Oh, yes, a name. She still wasn’t thinking straight. Sylvia Graue wouldn’t mean anything to the people here, but Graue was German for Grey so she’d just translate her name and be done with it. They had Blacks and Browns after all, another colour should fit right in.
“Sylvia Grey. I’m here to visit my godfather.” “Thank you,” answered the voice. “Visitor, please take the badge and attach it to the front of your robes.” A badge slid out of the metal chute where returned coins usually appeared and it read: “Sylvia Grey. Family Visit.” She put it on and listened as the voice continued: “Visitor to the Ministry, you are required to submit to a search and present your wand for registration at the security desk, which is located at the far end of the Atrium.”
The voice was acting exactly like she remembered it from the series and the floor began shuddering under her feet after her last statement. She could see the pavement rising up until she was enveloped in complete darkness, on her way into the depths of the Ministry for Magic. While the start of her journey down felt a tad bit bumpy, the landing was comparably soft. “The Ministry of Magic wishes you a pleasant day.”
Upon reaching the Atrium, she stepped out of the telephone box, left the magical version of Siri (or Alexa?) behind and looked around. The light was eerily dim in this place and the hall seemed like it was still empty. Fires burned weakly in the fireplaces, yet none of them flared up with the familiar green flames. Walking through the length of the hall, she made her way to the far end, where registration should be located.
She couldn’t make out any security administrator, though she reckoned that they wouldn’t have checked her too closely anyway as she seemed to be smaller than an eleven year old kid. After checking the floor directory, she headed for a lift and pressed the button for the second level “Department of Magical Law Enforcement” to get to the Auror Headquarters.
Just like with the Knight Bus, the transportation had seemed like a creative idea in the books and made for a nice visual effect in the movies. Standing in that death trap however, clinging to the wall like her life depended on it while the lift jerked downwards, to the left and then forwards was not pleasant. The hand-grips were disappointingly far out of her reach. She hadn’t much love for the types of magical transportation she’d tried so far and wondered if it would be any less uncomfortable without being drugged or make for an even worse experience.
When the doors of the lift opened she stepped out into a round hall with several corridors and doors leading further into the floor. During her exploration she passed several offices and a waiting area in which she found a copy of the Daily Prophet on one of the unoccupied seats. The moving pictures on the thin paper accomplished to raise a faint smile from her, until her eyes caught the date on the top right corner; Monday, 31 July 1965.
Not even trying to suppress the hysterical laughter that bubbled out of her, she blinked a few times and doubled over. This was too weird to be her own fabrication. Whatever kind of drugs she had been given she wanted to know what it was, because this felt just too absurd and real at the same time. If she had been home in Germany she’d even have considered if this could be some well-elaborated prank that her friends were playing on her, but then again, they’d never go as far as to drug her for some fun at her expense.
When she had calmed down, she felt the stresses and strains of both the previous day as well as this night weighing down on her. She was overwhelmed and more than anything else she felt tired. Nevertheless, she turned away from the tempting seats in the waiting area to look for the Auror offices. She simply wouldn’t feel safe, falling asleep in an open space like that.
A sign at one door let her into an open plan office of the Auror Headquarters. There was nothing except for nick-nack and name plates on the desks. It took her a moment to find the name she was looking for, but when she did the world surrounding her felt a tiny bit less threatening. Struggling to keep her eyes open, she crawled underneath his desk and curled into a ball, still clutching her water bottle and the Daily Prophet. She would allow herself some rest until the day shift began and the Aurors would be flooding the office.
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Omake
She drifted off into a fitful sleep.
… Blurred images flashed by her mind's eye at a speed too fast to comprehend. The sounds of music, laughter and clinking glasses filled her ears. The smell of alcohol, smoke and perfume in her nose.
Everything blinked in and out of focus. People in robes were sitting around a high table, standing in small groups surrounding it and walking past her, talking indistinctly, blurry smiles on their unrecognisable faces.
It looked like her own group had exchanged their robes for film props and had moved to a private lounge of sorts with other Harry Potter fans.
Their robes looked tailor-made and she hoped that they'd only borrowed them as she feared to figure out the price of these cosplay costumes by checking her bank statements after she returned.
Spread on the table was a game consisting of a board, cards, dice and various other paraphernalia she couldn’t identify.
When she tried to focus on anything or anyone in particular there seemed to be a skip in time or point of view, making it hard for her to make sense of what she was seeing.
One moment there were boys and girls (her girls!) playing a game, then they were drinking, standing in an alley with some of them smoking, some guy was handing out something and then they were back at the table.
Short flashes of scenes that gave her a vague feeling of déjà-vu. She didn't remember though. None of it.
She was back at the beginning. Sitting at the gaming table. Instead of focusing on her vision she tried her other senses to get more information.
The smells didn't change much, except in the alley. That was to be expected with the change of scenery. Her smell never got worse when she focused on it though.
Unlike her vision. As she couldn't learn much from her nose alone and her vision seemed to be betraying her, she closed her eyes and tried to focus on the sounds.
A bell-like laugh rang from her right. Violetta! “So we can choose our first ability but how good we are depends on the dice, yeah?”
It took all her willpower to keep her eyes closed now that she was finally able to discern the voices.
A foreign male voice answered her in a deep baritone, dripping with amusement: ”Quite so, Miss Prewett, your assessment is impeccable.”
She could practically hear the smirk in that reply. Wait. Did he call Violetta Miss Prewett?
Against her better judgement she opened her eyes to scrutinise the game master. And regretted it immediately. Not only did the man look like she was squinting through frosted glass but the scenes seemed to skip at random again.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she refocused on the noises.
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