Remember those situations when you were back at boot camp and they said that you would never know how someone reacted to a combat scenario or an ambush until it happened? Saying you are in the military of course, then perhaps.
If not, let me attempt to explain it to you.
What a lot of people don't know is that while the military takes all the time it possibly can (BCT and that training prior to a deployment) to train you for combat scenario's; that doesn't mean that the soldier as an individual will preform as they should under the real life, real time variables that come with combat. It has occurred in the past and in plenty of soldiers' experiences where the guy they may have went to basic with, who was in the leadership position and they excelled brilliantly. They called the shots, they followed through with protocol, they had the least amount of deaths and or kidnappings, was an expert shot, could call in nine-lines like a pro and tourniquet a severed limb blindfolded.
Then there was the other guy, you know the guy who "Flagged" the whole squad downfield, couldn't march in step to save his life, managed to be the one who was kidnapped while on fireguard. Had that funny stench on them the whole duration of training.
In theory, one would believe that the first guy would be the one who would do extremely well in combat. He would be the one that everyone would turn to once deployed and expect him to be able to do the same thing, while the second guy wouldn't be given a second thought. But everything changes when there are actual mortor's and bullets flying at you. There is no amount of training anyone can really receive to simulate a real life scenario and until you were in that situation everything was up in the air.
Let me stop and back track and use examples almost anyone can relate to. A large population of the world has stage fright or test anxiety. Using those examples, how many of you had sat down for hours and studied your material; whether it be for a speech, performance or simple test, then found yourself completely blanking out when you needed it most. You knew that you knew the information, but it just seemed to magically disappear.
I don't know why I didn't just open with that... Anyway,
I would much rather be in any one of those situations than the one I I currently found myself in. Because even after the initial freak out, the majority of those who 'blank out' after a couple of minutes regain their bearing and go about with whatever it is they need to get done. (The test, the speech, the attack.) Unfortunetely for me, I had no training what-so-ever to help me get through what I was convinced to be the most curious event of my life and the two standing before me who looked utterly gobsmacked for a moment before deciding to ambush me with 101 questions.
I couldn't very well be upset with them; I mean if some curiously dressed female popped into the middle of my house out of seemingly no-where... I too would be wanting some answers like:
How did you do that?
Who do you work for?
The hell is with your clothing?
Can you teach me to do that?
Perhaps if they were asking questions along with those lines I could bullshit some answers...but of course, they were not. There questions were more like:
Are you alright?
Is everything ok?
Why did I apparate into their home?
Did I know them?
Did they know me?
Was I attacked?
I sat there unable to say anything for a couple of moments as my mind finally did start to fall back onto that training I had been reviewing for my whole career. Slowly as I began piecing different things together such as:
The clothing they were wearing.
Their accent.
Their furnishing.
Their oddly shaped house.
Their lingo.
It was only further confusing me before my mind finally caught onto one of their questions. "Why did I apparate into their home?" There was something uncannily familiar and strange about the question. Namely the verb used. Then as I ran through where I may have heard that word before, I felt as if I had been slapped upside the head by the Doctor himself.
Apparate?!
I felt the blood rush from my face as everything began snapping into place. Their sixties clothing style, their English accent, the sticks they were pointing at me, their choice of vocabulary, their red hair, the red headed kid poking his head from around the corner. I could hear myself mocking the tenth doctors phrase of confusion a few times. I mean time travel, timey-whimey-ness theoretically made sense. What with Einsteins equations and other brilliant minds of my time. The future time? That time? Oh for the love of Merlin I now knew how Sexy felt... tenses and verbs were bloody confusing!
Doctor who, Back from the Future and all of my other nerdy shows and comics allowed me to accept that time-travel was a thing. Theoretically speaking of course. And I suppose in a sense I could have simply jumped into the past...saying that I was a bloody muggle and knew absolutely nothing about the magical world aside of books that opened my mind to the world of fandoms. But something told me that the Ministry wouldn't allow someone to simply write about their world as if it didn't existed...unless, you know they got smarter in the years after their Second War. It was a good cover up.
But for the sake of my Sanity and to stop the red headed woman from continuing to swipe (what now I accepted to be) her wand up and down my figure to see what was wrong with me, I was going to simply accept another Doctor Who slash Comic Book theory. I was in another Dimension...and I was not happy about it. In the least. I mean COME ON REALLY?!
And I digress, again. In my defense at this new revelation I think I have a right. As far as I last recalled, I should be worrying about the bloody RPG's and AK rounds that were reigning down on my convoy. Sorry for not being able to accept, what others would consider a blessing or miracle, right away. I had my boys to worry about and they sure as hell were not here confused out of their minds next to me. I don't know what she handed to me but I took it without so much as a second thought, namely cause I was hoping it was a strong whiskey or something, then moments later I found myself relaxing and collecting my thoughts.
This time when I looked up to the red haired women with piercing brown eyes and her husband who stood in the background, they seemed familiar...in a friendly sort of way. A part of my mind, the more open and accepting part of it, had long since accepted exactly where and when I was. And honestly had this been a couple of years ago, earlier in my career before I had lost good friends and been forced to push those hopes, dreams and memories to the back of my mind... I could have accepted it there. But no, my mind was trying to come up with any other logical reasoning to all of this. One by one those ideas were thrown aside and I was finally left with two scenarios I couldn't accept.
I was either sitting in front of and staring into the eyes of the one and only Molly Weasley or I was knocked out and all of this was some sort of realistic hallucination of sorts.
It was at these conclusions, when I passed out for the first time in my entire life.
