1 September, 2017
"Hello, Sadia"
The young girl on the stool nearly jumped out of her skin as she heard the voice in her head.
"You speak Dari?" she asked.
"Yes, girl. I speak Dari," the voice answered, as if it were put out by her asking. Sadia was puzzled.
"But you're a hat," she replied.
"Welcome to Hogwarts," the hat answered
Sadia Taheni had had a very long week, and a talking hat was hardly the strangest thing she had witnessed. It had started in "Auntie" Nazi's flat in London, where she was staying whilst her father had his regular appointment with the Home Office. Two days later she was on a plane bound for Delhi that never took off. 10 hours after that she was on another plane, this time bound for Kabul, that never took off. Her English had improved in the six months she'd spent in London, but she was hardly fluent, so when the strangely polite people who took her and her father away from the much less polite IE officers began to explain to her what was going on, she remained confused.
"So, this has to do with magic, then?" she asked the hat.
"You really are that daft, are you?"
"No need to be rude about it, hat," Sadia replied. "I simply have some questions."
"You muggleborns always have questions."
"There's another question - what's a muggleborn?"
The hat sighed. This was not going to be a quick sorting.
Sadia gasped when Professor Long-something levitated the salt and pepper shakers above the table. Then she giggled when he made the teapot dance. Then she wept.
"Mommy told me never to do that," she said to her father in Dari. "She said it was dangerous."
Sadia's father said nothing, but held his child as she cried. After giving her a minute to calm
down, he held her face in his hands, and wiped her tears with his thumbs.
"If the nice teacher is doing it out in the open, it must be safe here. Would you like to try it, angel?"
Sadia sniffled as she nodded her head. She then took a breath, screwed up her face in concentration, and levitated the plate of sandwiches six inches above the table before setting it back down. The professor gave her a kind smile, but she could see her father shaking, trying to hold back tears. She grabbed his hand and made a funny face at him, which brought a watery smile to his face. Then she turned back around to the professor and asked, in English,
"Was it bad that I broke the aeroplanes?
"Finally!" the hat huffed, "I have something to work with."
The hat shouted a word she'd never heard before, and she was shuffled off to a table where all the other children wore red and gold crests on their cloaks, along with matching neckties. An older Sikh girl with a brilliant red and gold paghri made a space for her on the bench, and invited her to sit. The room was quiet as the last few children were sorted, and then Sadia did her best to understand the very short, elderly man who stood on the table to make announcements. Supper was a boisterous affair, and as food - well, magically - appeared on the table, Sadia was not shy in grabbing her share and then some. Her time in that room in Heathrow had put a bit of a shock into her, especially as an eleven-year-old spending six hours being stared at by IE officers without being given so much as a sandwich, so she was determined never to let the British put her in that situation again.
The entire neighbourhood looked like a picture book to Sadia. At first, she was convinced it was some sort of fancy dress gathering, then she thought that dressing up in wizard robes was part of a secret British custom she'd never heard of, which wasn't that far off. But when Professor Longbottom showed her the trick at the pub, she could see this was real. Those inexplicable things from her childhood back in Daykundi had really happened. There was no turning back.
"Professor," she asked as they were walking around what looked like a pretend medieval village. "Can my father also do magic?"
"I don't know, Sadia. Perhaps you can ask him."
"But I didn't know I could do magic until yesterday."
Professor Longbottom gave her an apologetic look and kept walking. Sadia waited a bit before daring to ask her next question.
"If he does not also do magic, will he be sent back?"
Professor Longbottom stopped in his tracks, took hold of both of Sadia's hands, crouched down to look her in the eyes and said
"No, Sadia. You and your father are safe here in Britain for as long as you like."
"Okay," replied the girl, whose seeming nonchalance at his declaration was a bit off-putting.
"But what about Auntie Nazi's husband, and his children?"
After supper, the houses broke off, and first years were shown how to get to their common rooms and dormitories. Sadia was gently guided by the kind Sikh girl - Amrit, she found out - to Gryffindor tower, who told her to let her know if she had any problems. Once in the common room, there was a quick welcome by Professor Longbottom (who blessedly didn't make any special mention of her), after which she followed the other first year girls into what would be their home for the next seven years.
"Hi, I'm Rose Weasley," said a rather boisterous moppet of wild red hair and wilder self-confidence, not ten seconds after the door had closed behind all four first-year girls. "What's your name?"
"Sadia"
"What a pretty name," Rose replied. "What does it mean?"
"I don't know what it means; it is just my name."
"Well, it's very pretty nonetheless. Are you muggleborn? You seem a bit overwhelmed by it all."
"I am sorry. My English is not good," Sadia explained. "What is 'muggleborn?'"
"Well, if you are asking that question, I suppose you are. Anyway, a 'muggleborn' is a witch or wizard whose parents are -"
"Give it a rest, Weasley," one of the other girls barked. "It's not like she's going to understand you."
"Just because she's Pakistani doesn't mean -"
"Afghanistan," Sadia interrupted. "I am from Afghanistan and very tired. Please listen to your friend."
Sadia and her father were put up in a room at the Leaky Cauldron for the next three days, where they both tried to come to terms with their new reality. Funds were provided for Sadia to purchase school supplies, and she hoped that by pointing at words on the list she'd been given that the Diagon Alley shopkeepers would know what she was looking for. She wouldn't know a cauldron if she'd been sitting on one, regardless if it were explained to her in English or Dari. The confusion of the situation was no match, however for the nearly oppressive whimsy which followed them through every shop and to every street corner.
"Did you tell them that you're a teacher, too, Dad?" Sadia asked as they tucked in to supper after a long day shopping. "Perhaps you could work at Higwards, and we could go together."
Her father chuckled. Sadia had been coming up with funny improvisations on her new school's name almost since Professor Longbottom had first told her where she'd be attending.
"That's Higglewumps, angel. And I think they'd need someone who could teach magic. And speak English, for that matter."
"Well, that's Hoogoonorps's loss, then. You're a brilliant teacher, and probably too good for them, anyway."
Sadia was struggling with the stiff upper lip her new homeland prided itself on, and stirred her thick beef stew idly.
"How far from London is The Highlands?" she asked.
"About 750 kilometres. It's like going to Lahore."
"And that will only take seven hours?"
"The railway system is better here than at home," her father said, looking down at his own stew. He looked up as he heard sniffles from the other side of the table.
"Why are you crying, angel?"
"I miss Daykundi. Why did we have to leave?" Sadia said, trying unsuccessfully to stop her tears.
Her father sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose under his glasses. "I've told you, we will discuss it when you're older."
"I'm older now," Sadia persisted. "Why can't you tell me? Is it about Mommy?"
"Please, child, keep your voice down. We'll discuss this when you're 17, and not a moment earlier."
"Fine," she huffed. "But I will be there at 12:01 AM to wake you up."
"That's my girl," her father said, chuckling. "Now eat your stew. It's getting cold."
A trunk with the few things Sadia had accumulated since she and her father stopped running six months prior magically appeared by her bed just as she needed to get changed for bed. Evening ablutions completed, she climbed into bed and looked around when she heard a scratching sound. Rose was sitting on her own bed with a sheaf of parchment and a quill, furiously scribbling away.
"Did you want to write a letter, too?" Rose asked in a loud whisper, patting a space on the bed next to her. "I don't know if we have post owls that will fly to Afghanistan, but of course your family would be dead chuffed you were sorted Gryffindor."
"What is Gryffindor?" Sadia asked, climbing over to Rose's bed, "and why is it important?"
"Why is it important? Gryffindor is the best house in Hogwarts, if you ask me," Rose replied, as certain of the truth of her statement as Sadia had ever seen anyone. "It's the house where Harry Potter was sorted, and he was the wizard who saved us all, along with some help from my mum and dad, of course. All of the real heroes of the Wizarding Wars came from Gryffindor."
"There are Wizarding Wars?" Sadia asked.
"Well, yes, but the last one was nearly twenty years ago,"
"And as Gryffindor, we are in these wars?"
"Well, it's not like there's conscription or anything, but Gryffindor have always been on the side of the Light. But that was years ago, Nobody's fighting today."
"Oh," Sadia replied. She then took a few sheets of parchment from Rose, and a quill ("keep it, I have loads"), and began a letter to her father.
"Dear Daddy," she began.
"I want to come home and live with you in London again."
Sadia had bidden a tearful goodbye to her friends in Brentford just a week earlier, but at that point she expected to still be able to stay with her father. But as she tentatively dipped her hand into the same brick column her father was leaning against, she realized she was going to be leaving him, too.
"I don't want to go, Daddy," she said, not even stopping to wipe the tears streaming down her face.
"I know, sweetheart," he replied. "I don't want you to go, either. But we got a second chance this way. We'd be running already if those planes hadn't mysteriously broken down last week."
Sadia chuckled under her tears for a second, and then wiped her running nose with her sleeve.
"I still don't understand - why can't we stay together?" she asked.
"Because you're magic"
"I don't want to be magic," Sadia replied. "I want to be with you."
Her father's lip began to quiver, when they both jumped at a rather loud exhalation from behind them, where a small queue had begun of other families needing to get onto platform 9¾.
Sadia heard someone say "Excuse me. Sorry." through a tight-lipped smile, which she returned with her own tight smile and a terse "Terribly sorry," dragging her father out of the way.
"Who's going to teach you how to wound someone with an apology?" she asked, chuckling. "I can't just leave you here."
"I'll be fine, sweetheart. The magic folks said they don't quite know what they'll do with me yet, but I'm sure they'll think of something. Meanwhile, and I know it doesn't mean much to you now, but we're safe."
"I'll take your word for it. I should go now, though. I love you, and I'll see you in December."
"I love you, too, sweetheart," her father said.
Sadia turned around and walked through the column to platform 9¾, not noticing the two plainclothes IE officers standing behind her father.
Author's Note: This story was written for the Teachers' Lounge "Nineteen Years Later" challenge, in which we were supposed to write a story set on September 1st, 2017, knowing what we now know about the world 10 years after Deathly Hallows was published. My story was inspired by that of a 22 year old Afghani asylum seeker, Samim Bigzad, whose plane was halted at Heathrow after the pilot said he wouldn't fly him back to Afghanistan, where he would be in danger. Sadly, that's as 2017 a story as I can think of, so, sadly, this is, too.