chapter one
“Do you have everything you need?”
You glanced up from your bag, your forearm buried in your duffle bag, fingers fumbling for your wand. “Yeah, give me a sec,” you muttered, sorting through heavy winter clothes. The sky was pale with flurries of fresh snow made up of perfect snowflakes, the ones that children made paper cut-outs of in Kindergarten. With a huff of annoyance, you extracted your wand from its prison. “Why can’t we just Apparate? I could grab you and just… poof. Y’know?”
Your mother raised an eyebrow, placing her calloused hands on her hips. “You know how I feel about that, little missy,” she replied. “Even if I wasn’t a Muggle, I don’t know how I feel about disappearing in one place and reappearing in another. Do you know how many things could go wrong?
“Besides,” she breathed, “it’s unnatural.”
You pretended not to hear the last part, your lips twitching into an almost imperceptible frown. Though your mother had accepted that you had what she called unique abilities, she never passed up an opportunity to remind you of what she actually thought. She thought that you were, frankly, a freak. Or maybe mentally ill. Some days, you really couldn’t tell. It was probably both, you mused as you slung the strap of your bag over your shoulder. The uncomfortable press of the leather strap into your flesh made you grimace, but at least it took your mind off of the inevitable plane ride.
Despite having suggested that you could Apparate to London all by yourself (you were grown, after all), your mother had staunchly refused, citing an alarming number of things that could possibly harm you. Kidnappers was one, and you had told her that it was nothing a good hex couldn’t handle. She seemed thoroughly convinced that you would be snatched up the moment you set foot in London alone.
You sighed harshly through your nose as you followed your mother down the sad beige hotel hall, stopping in front of the elevators. “Do you know if Char is gonna be there?” you asked, tracing the outline of your wand through the fabric of your pocket. Beech wood with a phoenix feather core. Ten inches. It felt oddly warm. Your mother said she did not.
Before you could investigate the cause of its unusual heat (and have your very Muggle mother scold you for it), the elevator doors slid open, and out stepped a young man with dark hair and even darker eyes. Although, the harder you looked at him, the less young he looked. In a blink, he was halfway down the hall.
With a contemplative hum, you stepped into the elevator. “Hey, didn’t that guy seem weird to you? Like, wizard weird.”
Your mother looked at the still-open metal doors in horror, before turning back to you, her eyes blazing. “That’s so rude,” she exclaimed, possibly even louder than you. She slapped one of the buttons on the panel and rummaged impatiently through her bag, waving a hand as if to say, “Don’t speak to me,” and you obliged. Your stomach did a strange flip as the elevator descended to the ground floor, and your eager fingers quested toward your wand again. It felt hotter than it had before.
The hotel lobby was obnoxiously crowded, and you hissed apologies as you pushed past a particularly large family of 12. Who actually needed ten whole kids? You could already feel the migraine knocking at the base of your skull. You wondered if your mother would scold you for Apparating anyway. Glancing at her disheveled form as she wandered toward the entrance, you figured it was best not to risk it, lest she confiscate your wand and your broom.
“Hurry!”
Groaning, you sped to a slow jog, your bag slipping off your shoulder. At times like this, you regretted being unable to part with half of the things you owned. In your defense, they were comfort items. Very heavy comfort items, but comfort items, nonetheless.
You had crossed the threshold of the hotel entrance when your mother stopped suddenly. Nothing good ever happened when a woman like her stopped so suddenly. She turned to you, mouth agape like a drowning fish.
“I forgot my wallet in the hotel room,” she squeaked. You mustered up your nth sigh of the day and held your hand out for the car keys. She dropped them into your hand without protest.
“Go. I’ll warm the car up.” Watching as she scuttled past the family of twelve and disappeared into the elevator, you turned on your heel, duffle bag over your shoulder and your mom’s suitcase in your left hand. What a day, you thought.
You had hardly stepped off the curb when something silver and built like a box slammed into you, forcing your teeth down into the tender flesh of your tongue. The silver beast must have stopped at some point, but not before you rolled over the front of it and landed on the ground with a dull, unceremonious crack.
The coppery tang of blood filled your mouth, coating your lips and sliding down your throat. Pain exploded behind your eyes - the kind of pain that would have sent you to your knees if you weren’t already laying pitifully in the icy street. A puddle of warmth was pooling around your head, and you could only vaguely understand that it was also blood. Did dying always include so much of it? You weren’t sure.
Your wand, which had been tucked into your pocket, had snapped. You could feel the sharp point of its splintered body buried in your stomach, and your fingers twitched uselessly towards it. Even if you could use it, you knew that you had lost a lot of blood already. You couldn’t help the whimper of pain that bubbled in your throat as you pressed a violently shaking hand to your side, feeling for the familiar hum of your wand. Fist closing around splintered beech wood, you pulled it out of your side. It sputtered and went still.
A chorus of gasps and shrill screams arose around you, and you cracked open your bleary eyes to face the grey sky. Thick droplets of water shot down like missiles, splattering over your cooling skin and diluting the pool of red that lay around your broken body. The world had traded the snow for rain.
You were dying. It didn’t take a genius to figure it out, and it didn’t take a witch to know that not even magic could save you. And it wasn’t like you could use it anyway, unless your wand snapped back together and fit itself into your bloodstained hand.
Blurry faces shone above you like bright lights, shielding you from the constant pelt of the rain. What felt like minutes must have only been seconds, because before you could process what was happening, a stranger in a dark green jacket had scooped your body up and carried it over to the sidewalk, where a small Muggle crowd was gathering. You wanted to tell them to fuck off, to just let you roll over and sleep, but you couldn’t open your mouth and you couldn’t roll over. You couldn’t do much of anything at all, really, but at least you couldn’t feel the pain anymore. At least you couldn’t feel anything. In the empty space, you thought of Mom, with her disapproving stares and aversion to magic. Despite it all, she still loved you.
How desperately you wished you could have been a better daughter to her.
The sound of the panicked chatter seemed to have faded into white noise, because although you saw their mouths move, no sound fell from their lips, and you thanked Merlin for that. The pounding in your head was back, and this time it felt like a thousand little battering rams were pounding against your forehead.
Your punctured lungs gave one last weak, wet exhale, and your fingers stopped trembling completely.
Death was an odd thing. You had never dwelt on it in life, and even now it seemed inconsequential. Your physical body was still on the sidewalk, broken to pieces by an evil monster prowling the streets, but you were still very much alive. You didn’t know how you knew, but you knew this wasn’t the end.
The room you were in was white, overwhelmingly so. It was like all the big lights in the world were turned on at once, coming to haunt you even in the afterlife. When you looked down to what you believed to be the ground, you cast no shadow at all, your dirty sneakers being the only color that seemed to bleed into this limbo world. You watched as you put one foot in front of the other, again and again until you were drifting past hundreds of windows. It nearly gave you whiplash. Wracking your brain for any useful information as to where you are or how you got here, you could come up with nothing except for the fact that a Tesla fucking Cybertruck had hit you and you died in front of a fancy hotel.
Once again, your thoughts drifted to your mother. Would she find her daughter’s dead body? Would she scream and faint or would she sink to the ground and cry? Frowning, you shook the image from your mind. As much as it ached, you felt compelled to venture on. On instinct, your hand dug in your sweater pocket for your wand. It wasn’t there. Looking around, your eyes alighted upon a door.
“Finally,” you muttered, shielding your eyes from the oppressive light that definitely wanted to kill you. Well, kill you again. You sped up, coming to a stop in front of the door. It was a very unassuming door, in your humble opinion, with a rusty brass knob and hinges that looked as if they hadn’t been properly oiled in a decade. After a moment of hesitation and a contemplative look around, you tugged the door open.
Everything went black and your mind went blank.
Exactly how many times did you have to wake up in an unfamiliar place? It was only twice now, and if you weren’t busy panicking and vomiting your guts out onto a plush carpet, you would muster the courage to be annoyed.
Your stomach heaved again, tears brimming at your lash line as you held onto the soft carpet for dear life. It took a moment before your stomach settled and you sat back against a bookcase, wiping away your drool and vomit with your sweater sleeve. “What the fuck…?” you sobbed. You wondered if now was an appropriate time to start crying. It wouldn’t have mattered, though, because you started crying anyway, salty tears streaming down your hot cheeks. What the actual fuck was happening? Where were you? Where was your phone? If you didn’t have your wand then you could at least call someone, right?
Luck wasn’t on your side, because your phone was missing from its usual place in your back pocket. You wanted to throw up again, but you pressed your clammy palm to your forehead and tried your hardest to breathe.
You must have spent hours just breathing. The doctors didn’t lie about breathing exercises. As long as you don’t overload your brain with oxygen, you recalled one of them saying, you’ll be okay.
You sucked one last deep breath in through your gritted teeth, wiping your sticky tears. Unlike the last room you were in, this one wasn’t filled with evil bright light. In fact, it was mostly dark, and from what you could make out, filled with desks. The only light to see by spilled in through a door left slightly ajar. It flickered, as if lit by a candle. A candle? In 2024? You stood on trembling legs, drawing in a lungful of fresh air.
Aside from the burn in your throat and the ache in your stomach, you felt no pain. As far as you could tell, you bore no evidence of whatever happened on that icy street. Your sweater was clean, free of any tears or rips. All things considered; you looked pretty good.
You avoided the puddle of your lunch, inching towards the door. It was so quiet, it was making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up in alarm. Where the hell were you?
The door was heavy when you nudged it open, allowing more candlelight to flood the room. Outside, the corridor stretched out into darkness that not even the wall of candles could illuminate. With furrowed brows, you stepped out into the cool air, your tired legs carrying you from the vacant classroom to another door. This one was closed, but faintly, you could hear shuffling behind it.
The logical part of your brain told you to turn around and return to the classroom you woke up in, stay there until somebody found you or until you figured out where you had ended up. But your eyes were tired, and fatigue was starting to set in. Caution must have grown legs and fled, because you found yourself turning the doorknob and peeking inside.
A man stood behind a large desk, stacks of parchment in his wrinkly hands. He looked both ancient and lively at the same time, grey eyes twinkling behind half-moon spectacles. His beard was long and silvery and tucked into his belt, and the sight made something niggle at your brain. You had the distinct feeling that you’d forgotten something very, very important. You realized too late that you opened this door without even an inkling of a plan in mind. Exhaustion gripped you suddenly, and with a wince, you stumbled into the room.
The man startled, as if shaken from a stupor, and adjusted his spectacles on his nose. “Oh! Great Merlin,” he muttered. “Are you quite alright, Miss?” His voice rang loudly in your ears, and you frowned.
“No,” you said, fighting back another onslaught of wretched tears. None of this made any sense and it was all going too fast for you. Where was your wand? Where was your mother? The man seemed unsure for a moment before he nodded sagely.
“I see,” he sighed, straightening up. But how could he possibly see? Even by wizarding standards (which, you noticed belatedly, that he was indeed a wizard), your situation was strange. It felt like all the energy in your body had been sucked out of you.
“Um, what year is it?” you croaked. The look in his eye told you that he–whoever he was–understood. Maybe it was your sweater or your jeans, or the way you carried yourself, but he seemed to know what you were thinking before you had the chance to explain it. “The year is 1942.”
You felt like you’d be sick all over again.