She moved with the slight rocking motion of the train. With every sway of it she could feel the weight of her thoughts grow, feel the pain and loneliness she hadn't allowed herself to feel for so long. It was crushing in its entirety and she felt exhausted, mind , body and soul.
("Is there anyone I should call?", the police officer asked, pointing his pen to the ice pack she cradled to her jaw. A mugging she'd taken care off easily but not without a little injury. It was just a little bruise though and would heal in no time.
But the answer to the officer's question, that struck her like an anvil.
"There's…There's no one to call."
Dead, missing or just plain absentee. That was the state of her friends and family. She was all alone in the big wide world)
Felicity closed her eyes and leaned back against the glass of the window and sighed. In an attempt to keep from losing herself to the grief she looked around, people-watching in the gentle sway of the train There was a young man just a few seats away hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie. His jaw clenched and she noticed the slight bruise on it. Absent-mindedly she wondered if the hands he had stowed away were split from the brawl he had clearly taken part in. He shifted just a bit and she saw the top of a certain infamous tattoo climbing up over the collar of his shirt. A gang member, she realised, and looked away. Another time and she might have been afraid and cautious. Now she was just numb.
To the other side there was the balding middle-aged man who had fallen asleep head drooping forwards constantly, only to wake with a start to sit back before the pattern repeated itself. She saw the trail of drool running down the side of his mouth and a twitch of amusement ran through her.
There was a tottering old woman holding on to the hand of a toddler tightly a few seats away. The old woman had a pinched look to her face while the toddler seemed content to swing her legs back and forth happily. She wondered if perhaps the grip the old woman had on the child's hand was a bit too tight.
And then there was the woman in front of her. Clearly a school teacher considering the chalk dust on the sleeves, all neat and tidy and yet somehow exhausted. Felicity hadn't realised up until she looked at her how much she'd been trying not to look in her direction.
And once she did look, she was entranced. But she couldn't really say why.
Admittedly it wasn't a particularly pretty face. Not symmetrical in any way, no upturned nose to charm and dazzle, no flowing locks to distract. Instead her hair was pulled back severely making her forehead looking alarmingly large, eyes that were disproportionately big stared at her through plastic spectacle frames down a hawkish nose while her mouth scrunched up in an expression of dislike.
And yet there was something about her, she just seemed so interesting that you wanted to look at her again, if she permitted it, that is. The slight upturn of the mouth had Felicity drawing in a breath and leaning back, for some reason breathing hard. Adrenaline rushed through her for reasons he did not understand and her heart pounded as she stared into dark eyes that glittered. The woman reached out her hand and Felicity followed the movement with her eyes.
"Apple?" Said a deep smooth voice that seemed to echo and she was ensnared by the glossy red skin of the fruit. The more she looked at it the brighter it became, more vivid and red, dark yet somehow illuminated from within. When Felicity finally took her eyes off the fruit she jolted back into her seat with a sharp intake of breath.
"Are you alright?" Asked the young gang member, concern lit on his face but Felicity couldn't see it. She was almost blinded by the glow he gave out.
"I-I'm," She stuttered then struggled for words. "I'm alright, just a bit..."
"Tired?" He guessed incorrectly and the light he gave out shined even brighter.
"Yeah." She whispered and looked around the train.
The middle aged man who drooled in his sleep did not glow quite like the young man but there was an unmistakable air of mischief around him now. An imp intent on causing mayhem.
The toddler's eyes burned through her, scorching her very soul, dark and malevolent in a way that Felicity did not believe possible and her grandmother, the old woman shook in terror.
Her eyes swept over the woman who'd offered her the apple but found she could not look at her directly. She shone like a star, too bright up close and it would make her blind to look at her. From the corner of her eyes though, she saw her.
She wore a gown spun of moonlight and a crown woven of silvery spider silk. The eyes that had glittered now seemed to shift hue with every second, like every hue in the spectrum and then some were all etched into her iris.
"I take it you don't like apples." The voice that said those words had Felicity awash in warmth. If ever a voice could sound like home, this was it. This was her mother laying a cool hand on her forehead when she suffered a fever, this was her father coming home late but not forgetting to tuck her into bed before he trudged tiredly into bed, this was Saturday morning cartoons with sugary cereal, the swing in her backyard, the fairy tales on her shelf all woven into a voice. This was everything she had only just realised she would never have again
And it was terrifying
"N-no," was all she could say.
She could accuse the woman of putting her under a spell now could she? Accuse her of hypnotizing her with a ruby red apple? There's a one way ticket to the looney bin.
"An apple a day-" The woman said, her mesmerising voice trailing off into a smirk. The ruby red of the fruit still called out to her and Felicity wanted with a ferocity she thought she would never feel again.
"I don't think that's going to keep anyone away." Felicity still stared at it. It was calling out to her, something about it compelling and enchanting. Something magical although Felicity had never believed in that word before today.
The hands holding the fruit turned it and in its shiny skin Felicity saw her reflection distort and pull. Her hand reached out of its own accord and soon she held it in her palms, cradling the fruit as if it were something holy.
Forbidden fruit. Temptation. Sin. Immortality. Knowledge.
All the meanings of it rushed through her mind.
"What will it do?" Because it was sure to do something. If just looking at it had her seeing things, a bite was sure to do worse.
"Make you feel again."
Tempting, so very tempting. Especially now when she felt so numb but everything had a price.
"What will it take in return?"
"Does it matter?" Finally Felicity looked at her and found the brightness had dimmed. She was still beautiful, bewitching but it no longer hurt like she was looking at the sun. She was staring at Felicity intently and she smiled, an impish little grin that was more than a little terrifying. "What do you have to lose?"
Nothing.
Against every self preservative instinct, every cautious sentiment ingrained in her, Felicity took a bite.
No harm ever came from eating a fruit, right?
The world spun around her, lurching and twisting this way and that. A spell of dizziness hit her as the neon bright lights of the train flashed all the colours in the world. The apple rolled out of her hand and to the floor where She picked it up.
Was she getting smaller or was the world getting bigger, Felicity wondered as the Woman loomed over her head. Her hand drew closer and closer until it was all Felicity could see and when it touched her skin her body felt like it was alight but with the kind of fire that did not burn.
And then it all went black.
Her eyes opened and shut just as quick, blinded by all the white brightness in the room. A hospital then. Somehow this wasn't what she expected when the Woman (was She one though? Didn't seem very human) said the apple would make her feel.
But then she didn't really expect anything, really. Nothing tangible. Just some vague promise of not numbness.
She sat up and looked around the room carefully. It didn't look like any hospital room she'd ever seen. The archaic stone structure, the ridiculously high ceilings, it wasn't quite the clinical clean that she was used to, the smell of antiseptic wasn't even there although there was an herbal tinge to the air. Sunlight streaming in through the type of windows that were usually seen in churches was what blinded her, not the neon lights of a hospital.
Where was she?
A screen separated her from the rest of the room. It was a thin flimsy type of thing and she could see the silhouette of a woman through it. She swung her feet over the edge of the bed only to yelp as the motion jarred her head.
"Miss Ivoire, whatever are you doing getting out of bed like that, you need to rest!" The woman on the other side of the screen came to her, helping her back onto the bed. "Your brother has been worried sick ever since you took that tumble."
She was dressed oddly, in the kind of nurse's uniform that Florence Nightingale might have worn. The skirt wasn't quite as voluminous but the rest of it was incredibly archaic and yet fitting considering the decor of the place.
But why was she calling her Miss Ivoire?
"-Your brother's been beside himself and the young Ms Bulstrode has already written to your parents."
"Brother? Parents?" Her parents were dead, her brother hadn't been heard from in years and who the hell was this Bulstrode? "What are you talking about Miss-?"
The woman stared at her without blinking for what felt like ages. "Madam Pomfrey, dear. I'm the matron at Hogwarts."
Hogwarts? Wasn't that the magical school from those books? She'd never read them, preferred murder mysteries but everyone had heard about Hogwarts and Harry Potter and all that. And here this woman was claiming she was in that magical school.
"You're fucking with me." She declared, unable to accept it.
Madam Pomfrey puffed up, red and angry, "Miss Ivoire, you will control your language!"
"Why do you keep calling me that?"
Madam Pomfrey faltered. "Because you're Lyra Ivoire." She said hesitantly. "I think we need the mind healers."
With that Madam Pomfrey went to the fireplace and threw some black powder in it and disappeared into the bright green flames that had sparked up with the powder leaving her all alone in the big empty wing.
Well, almost all alone.
"That was a bit of an overreaction." A voice said and she turned to find the Woman sitting in the formerly empty chair beside the bed in all her sparkly glory.
"You! What kind of hallucinogen was in that apple?"
The Woman ticked up her eyebrow. "Not much of a believer are you? They never are", she tsked.
"What are you talking about?"
"It's not a hallucination. Frankly my dear you give your imagination too much credit."
She blinked rapidly.
Not a hallucination. Real.
Hogwarts. Real.
Magic. Real.
Magical world that she knew nothing about because she never read the books. Real.
"I was giving credit to the hallucinogens, actually," She remarked feebly. Her hand went to her arm and she pinched hard. It hurt. Or did she just think it hurt?
She splayed out her hands in front of her instead. Ignoring the pain as she lowered her gaze she began counting.
1, 2, 3 ,4 , 5, 6, 7, 8, ,9, 10.
"Convinced yet?" the tinkling voice of the Woman sounded, amused. "Welcome to Hogwarts in 1996."
In a fantasy world, twenty years in the past, in the body of someone else. Wonderful.
Somewhere out there, someone was having a huge, great at the joke her life was.