They were here, finally. The car's engine stopped after almost two hours. David and Grace each put down their copies of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's stone and left their conversation. The created a theory that J.K. Rowling is actually a witch who created a story about her world but sold it as fiction. It was crazy, but entertaining. The Blackthorne estate looked just as it had when it was built, which was very, very long ago. It's amazing how it didn't fall apart after all that time. It stood tall in the murky July heat with its dark siding and dusty windows. It was built by David and Grace's great grandmother and her husband, their great grandfather: Matilda Blackthorne and Sycamore Blackthorne. Nobody else lived in it besides them, and their son and daughter which David forgot the name of. David's mother brought to our family's estate here someplace in New Hampshire in fear of losing the sentimental house. The land made me feel…. Magical? I loved it. I felt that I could be myself, whoever that may be.
"Mom, how old do you think this house is?" Grace asked her aunt. She looked at grace with a quizzical smile and shrugged her shoulders. Grace didn't seem satisfied with the answer so looked at David for one. David is two years older than Grace, though they seem like the same age.
They all made their way onto the porch and watched as David's mom pulled a skeleton key from its crusty ring and placed it in the lock. She turned and wriggled the key vigorously within the socket with no luck of unlocking it. "Great, it's hot, it's sticky, and the key doesn't work. Wonderful!" David exclaimed sarcastically. "Its okay, it's fine. We will just…. Um…. Climb through the window." Suggested Grace. They walked fully around the house looking for the best break-in point. Eventually, they found an unlocked window. They took some wood from a log pile off to the side of the yard and propped it against the house to use as a stool. First went grace, her thin body easily slipping through the open window and into the house. It scared David to have Grace go in first. Who knows what could be in the house? Next went David.
The house was dark and silent. He expected it to be draped with cobwebs, crawling with spiders, and smelling of old wood. But really, it smelled like spices and warmth, like somebody had been living in it all this time. It was clean inside and neatly organized. It didn't look like an ordinary house. Everything looked…. Different. Like it had a new style never before seen? But where was Grace?
"Grace, Grace!" yelled David. His heart beat wildly and he couldn't hear anything over it besides the scream of his voice. He decided he might hear better if he calmed down some. He stood still and took a deep breath. He could hear his mother struggling through the window. He could hear a little girl's scream sound off behind him-
David darted toward the direction of the scream. It came from up a set of stairs which David climbed quickly and behind a large door.
The door matched the rest of the oddly furnished house. It was large and rounded at the top with huge, black, metal hinges with a matching lock. It was open slightly, and a shadow flickered inside. David tried to call for grace again, but couldn't.
Finally he caught his voice and managed a whisper, "Grace?" There was no answer at first but then, "In here, look!" she said excitedly.
David wearily stepped inside the room. It was the only place in the house that looked weird compared to the rest. Shelves lined the walls, holding bottles, jars, and vials of all different liquids ad specimens unknown to David and Grace. Books filed everywhere with odd titles such as Magic a History and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Others were on potions and spells, fantasy stuff that sounded oddly like…. Harry Potter.
Grace was drooling over some broom stood against the wall. It had two brass bars at the bottom that usually held your feet while you flew, according to Rowling's books. But something else caught David's eye. There were two dust-covered box-like shaped sitting on a shelf separated from the rest. David slowly stepped towards them, afraid of what might happen. Soon enough, he approached them and blew the dust off and swiped across them with his hand.
They both had a name tag carefully glued to the side of the box. One reading Matilda Blackthorne and the other Sycamore Blackthorne. So they must have belonged to their great, great grandparents. He opened the lid of Sycamore's box to find a velvet interior holding what looked like….. It couldn't be…. A wand of petrified wood. "Come over here, hurry Grace, look!" screamed David. He was amazed. Grace made her way over, stumbling on the Persian carpet lining the floor in a crimson red. "Look, I think they're wands!" said David. Grace took the wand by the handle and pretended to flick it around. Muttering Harry Potter spells and wearing a fake determined expression on her face. She laughed and laid the wand back in the box.
David wanted to give it a try. He took the wand and instantly felt at place with it. It felt as though it were truly a part of him. "Wow." He whispered. "Wow" the wand whispered back. How could this be happening? Grace's jaw nearly dropped to the floor. "David looks!" Grace said pointing to the nametag on the wand box. The name was midway wiping clean from Sycamore Blackthorne to David Blackthorne.
"Do a spell, do a spell!" she yelled. "Well alright." He said, later repeated by the wand. " Uuuuuummm. Lumos?" he said. A white orb of light appeared at the tip of the wand. It was real! Harry Potter was real! Everything he read about it, every spell he chanted in play with Grace was real! He was magic. The house- That was it! The house, never damaging or showing its age, is magic. His family is magic, which he inherited along with Grace. But why didn't his mom inherit it? Squib perhaps. His grandparents must have known they were magic, living in this house you would have to know. It all makes sense now! But why didn't they ever go visit? All of this passed through David's head within a few seconds, to be broken by Grace fiercely opening through the box as fast as she could and threw the covered across the room. She slowly brought her hand down with anticipation and grasped the handle of the petrified wood wand. A look of smug washed over her.
"I guess I'm magic too!" she exclaimed as the nametag changed to show her name. "What spells should I do?" she asked herself. As she said this, an image, maybe even a trick of the light, appeared over her head. It showed her sparking up a fire, and apparating through a wall. It showed her disarm a Deatheater and much more fantastic images. What was happening after they first used the wands? David's wand echoing his voice, Grace's thoughts produced into the light above her head.
"Oooohh I know what to do!" she said. She ran over to a pot of soil sitting on the window sill. It had dried remains of some kind of plant. She pointed her wand at the wrinkly foliage and said clearly, " Herbivicus!". Nothing happened. "Grace, that's a Year 3 spell." Said David. She shrugged him off and said it again. A small green spark popped from her wand for a half a second bringing with it life to the plant. Its shriveled mass turned a bright green and stood erect once more, then budding a flower and blooming right before their eyes. When they thought it was done, they were wrong. The flower's petals grew larger and more vibrant in their pink florescence. Pretty soon, the flower rose to the ceiling, hugging the walls with think tendrils of stem.
"I don't think that was supposed to happen." Said Grace. "Well why didn't you flick your wand away?" David asked her with his arms out. She stuck out her tongue at him. "It doesn't matter anyway, this room needs some life." They both pocketed their wands and searched around the room for anything that might interest them. At first they both looked at the specimens of whatever- they –were that were sitting on the shelves. Then, David found a book on Transfiguration and they both read through part of it. Note to self: become an Animagus, thought David and Grace. By the time they put the book down and quenched their thirst for cool artifacts of magic, they looked out the circular window of stained glass with colors of blue, red, yellow, and green.
It was getting dark, so they stepped out of the room and marveled at what they had experienced for the last hour. "How did you open the door?" David asked Grace. Grace contorted her face at the question.
"I don't know. I think me… It…. It's sort of like the Room of Requirement. When I was coming up the stairs, I cut my hand on the railing." She said as she showed David the dried blood running from her palm in thick legs. "I wished for somewhere to go, I don't even know what, just somewhere. As I walked, the door appeared and I tried to go in it. At first, I used my clean hand to open it, but that didn't work. Then I just felt like I knew what to do. I used my bloody hand, and immediately it clicked open. I don't unders-
David cut her off. "I do. I understand. The study we were just in, it's magic like the rest of the house. We are Blackthornes, so when you put your blood on the door, it verified that we were not only Blackthornes, but magic." David explained. Everything clicked perfectly for them now. Together, they walked down the staircase and explained to their mom that they were gone for an hour because they found a bedroom that looked like it had some stuff left by their great grandparents. She accepted their lie, gave them dinner, and they went upstairs to find a bedroom to share for the night. Almost all night they talked about what they could do with magic. "Those things. What were those things happening to us when we first used the wands?" Grace asked blindly. "I don't know. But I do remember being able to mimic voices and sounds without speaking." said David. "Ya and I remember tricking my cat when I was little to think it was seeing a mouse scurry on the ground." said Grace. "I think it's something left out of Harry Potter. It's like a power we always had, but became more aware of when we joined our wands. What should we call it?" asked David. They both stewed in thought for a while before Grace answered " Primaries. Let's call them Primaries because they're the first thing that happens when you touch your first wand."
David liked the idea of that, and so didn't Grace. There was not another word between them for the rest of the night, and soon, both fell asleep, clutching their wands, and remembering that they have a room that they can go to that nobody else can unless they are magic. But David's mother can't be magic; she would have figured it out by now. Or maybe she knows, and she's trying to protect us from ourselves. This thought made David cry. He knew it was just an idea, but he somehow knew it was most likely true. Surely, he could understand his mother, with the dangers of magic. But there were no Deatheaters anymore, and no Voldemort. Maybe the Ministry of Magic wouldn't be able to track their use of magic from this far away in the United States. Maybe. Everything would be alright, he hoped.