A/N - Hi! I hope you enjoy this one, it came about after a long discussion with some very old friends about which schools we went to, and I'd love to know what you think :)
The Letter That Changed A World
Every day feels the same for this girl. Getting up, looking disappointment full in the face as the change she prayed so hard for last night is revealed to be nothing at all. Tying back limp hair, walking slowly down the biscuit coloured stairs with the air of one going to the gallows, eating cardboard cereal that feels like wood-shavings in her mouth. She puts her books in a brightly coloured rucksack which always feels wrong, perfectly formed letters on a perfectly clean page that will win her praise from no-one where she's going. And she walks there on the warm summer mornings, watching the other girls link arms with their friends, laugh and talk and not care about anything at all.
She has more than most at home – two parents that love her, adorable twin brothers, a pretty room, a pretty house, a big back garden with a pond and enough trees for the fairies to build a palace in. But none of that makes the days at school any better.
She always sits in the same place for each lesson, the same room, the same table. The cruelty of seating plans is lost on some teachers – to them, seating the quiet, drab girl with the bright, loud ones is bringing her out of her shell. But it doesn't, because what could be worse than being surrounded by your opposites? All chatting about their weekends, what they did together, tapping bright pink nails on the desk as they ignore the lesson. They pass notes to each other, and wink at boys across the room, and smile pityingly at the outsider as if they wish they could include her, but they just can't, for a thousand meaningless reasons.
Sometimes she thinks she doesn't care, that she doesn't need to be friends with them because they don't seem nice anyway – but oh, how lovely it would be to be one of them. One of the tall ones, with voices like honey and smiles from catalogues who get invited to every party and tell confidences about boys in hushed voices, even at this age.
And sitting with them can make that worse, shows her what she's missing, so that she can't even hate them for being inhuman because they are. She knows about Becca's parents divorcing, and Lauren's brother not getting into the school he wanted to, and about Amy's dream of being a model. And it makes it harder, because even as they exclude her, she still makes excuses for them, keeps a little flame of hope in her heart that one day they'll turn to her and invite her to a sleepover, a bowling party, ice skating.
At lunch, she is the only one left standing at her desk with no friend to come over and whisk her away to the swings, no-one desperate to discuss the note they got from that boy with her, nothing. So she acts as though she doesn't care, scoops up her bag of sandwiches and makes for the edge of the playing fields, where grass melts into forest and she might get some peace.
The teachers see her there, the girl sitting quietly with a worn book and her lunch, but they all assume someone else is doing something about it, and they leave her in peace.
Peace to hear the laughter from the lucky ones? Peace to berate herself for not being louder, prettier, better? She's sick of peace, sick of quiet that reminds her of loneliness. She's long past waiting that one of the people walking past might come and join her, start a conversation, become a friend.
No, she's reading, reading in every spare moment she gets. Diving headfirst into the world of beauty and calm and kindness, devouring books meant for older kids and even adults. She's finished everything that interests her in that little library of action stories and science books above the geography classrooms. Now she's been swallowed up by the world of historical fiction and fantasy – engrossed in the adventures of Belgarion and Mara of the Acoma, snatching up everything about Anne Boleyn or Elisabeth of Austria, she loses herself in them. And in her mind, she is in the story, dancing with Richard III and shopping extravagantly with Marie Antoinette, she saves worlds from dragons and becomes queen in her own right of a hundred magical realms.
But the draw of the stories isn't the marvellous scenes or the beautiful romances or heartbreaking tragedies, but just escapism. Because in her deepest soul, she knows it isn't real, knows she'll never stand on a balcony applauded by the adoring people, or be whisked through a sparkling ballroom by a charming prince, or fly with Valkyries through the night sky, looking down on all the houses below her on the way to the feast of the gods.
And that would make most people shy away in fear of being hurt more, contrarily denying themselves simple happiness for fear of later heartbreak. But for a child with little else, it's okay, and she finds ways to make it feel real, finds ways to protect a fragile soul and a pretty heart from disappearing under the casual cruelty of young girls.
Every evening she goes home and starts her homework at once, fairly racing through it and gobbling her dinner so she can escape all over again, escape the glib questions and loving smiles from a family she'll never tell the true story to.
But this morning, this weekend she's been so looking forward to as she looks forward to any respite from school, is different. It doesn't feel different, as she'd though days like this would, but it is. Because, at 11:00am exactly, there is a knock on the door, and a visitor is ushered into the living room where she is sitting, curled on a worn green chair with a tome of fairy tales in her small hands.
It's a tall woman, not beautiful but as striking as the sorceresses she's read about, wrapped in a long blue cloak that just begs to be swirled around in the moonlight, billowing out behind a white horse in a manic chase away from evil.
And the woman looks directly at her, not at her parents, and tells her that she is special. They're the words she's been praying for her entire life.
She is magical, she's told. She, Clara, is magical. A witch. She will do magic.
Her parents don't believe it until with woman turns their coffee machine into a piglet and back again. There's still some doubt in their eyes until they reach the dissolving wall and the gateway to the magical world, where everything is bright and brilliant and colourful and stitched together with golden thread, and their daughter seems to blossom out as people smile at her and she takes in all the parts of her new life.
She adores the robe shop, trying on all the different shimmering styles that transform her into a princess before her very eyes, begging for a dress made of all the colours in a quiet dawn until they laughingly usher her out, with promises of one day.
She revels in the ingredients and potions emporium, wide eyed with wonder at dragon's teeth and newt's liver and bottled tonics which promise to make your life a fairytale. She rushes straight past that, not needing it now that she's already living the fairytale she's always wanted.
The bookshop, oh, the bookshop. She could have lived in it, wandering through the cramped corridors and up the elegant spiral staircases with glazed eyes and lungs full of the musty, homely scent of books. But she leaves it eventually, for the pet shop, for an owl. A beautiful, glossy brown owl who she names Polgara at once, after one look into its curiously conspiratorial eyes.
Then, she spends the whole summer waiting for the first of September. She reads all her books three or four times, dragging her parents back to the Alley in search of more, buying all she can with her pocket money. She has her own account at Gringotts – another place which exudes magic as a stove exudes good smells – and she feels different. She feels as if she is worth more than she used to be.
All of a sudden the summer has flown away, and she is on the train and on the boats and then she's here. Hogwarts. And everything is wonderful; flying candles and ghosts and beautiful portraits whose stories she is aching to know – but first they must be sorted. And then there's fear in her heart, because where will she be? She doesn't know if she's brave, or cunning, or loyal, or clever, because she's never been given a chance to be, never had a friend to say she is.
"Ah, hello my dear"
The voice makes her jolt, fear flashes across her face and she hears a laugh from the crowd of swimming faces that makes her blush, but then she hears it again. As if someone is speaking inside her head.
"No, no, none of that, thank you. It's a nervous bunch, this year, but anyway, let's have a look at you. Clever, yes, very clever – though perhaps for things you love than things you need. Slytherin a possibility, you do have a capacity to deceive…but I suspect for the good of others rather than for yourself. Hufflepuff would do well enough, you would be happy there. But such bravery to go unwasted? That wouldn't do at all. But you aren't quite a Gryffindor either. Hmm.""
Oh god, I don't fit anywhere. They're going to send me home, I'll have to go back and face them all and be normal again and oh god I can't do it I'll die there, I'll just die
"Now, my dear, calm down, I know just where to put you…
"RAVENCLAW!"
Cheers erupt from that table, and Clara is ushered down the stone stairs to the welcoming smiles of her house. She slides in beside a girl with freckles across the bridge of her nose, who smiles and introduces herself as Pippa. And she's shy, and shocked, but it seems everyone wants to talk to her, wants to know what she thinks, wants to know what the hat said to her – and they tell stories back to her as well. So before she realises, she is chatting like the bubbliest of girls, laughing and even sparkling a little, and then she is in their dormitory, bagging beds and unpacking in the beautiful, delicate tower room that looks like an illustration in one of her books.
XxXxXxX
She changes there, but she stays the same. She grows and grows well, becoming insightful and kind and generous, trusting and loving. She falls hard for a boy in her sixth year, a Hufflepuff who swept her off her feet with the unexpected gift of a book of witches in the past, gilded and golden with an inscription she'll never share with anyone. She stays short, but her hair grows glossy and dark as her owl's feathers, and her eyes are the dark blue that no-one will ever be able to describe. She learns much, so much, and loves the lessons so that she is passably good even at the ones she's bad at. She's not Head Girl, but she's a prefect, and girls in First Year come to her for advice. She likes helping that, likes bringing someone who reminds her of herself out of dark places so they can see all the beauty in the world.
When she returns home in the holidays, she sees people from her old school sometimes. The boy who smiled at her in maths is tall and handsome and in love with his girlfriend, and she's happy for her. The teachers she thought didn't care are the same, a little worn, a little tired, but proud and pleased to see the pretty girl so much changed.
But the girls who she believed tormented her? Well, they're a tale in themselves. Becca is better, kinder, but brassy and fake and too loud, all orange skin and bleaches hair that no amount of holidays from guilty parents can chase away. Lauren is worse, made cruel and harsh by years of hurting other girls to make her feel good, and she isn't around town much now. When she is, she's negative and abrasive, drinking at all hours and harassing passers by. Amy is thin and frail and softer, just out of hospital with some disease that no-one will name, because Amy would never hurt herself, no, never.
Clara feels sorry for them. The bitterness of her far from ideal childhood is melting away as she learns a little of their own mistakes, and she thinks that they were the really unlucky ones. So she smiles at them as she glides by, moving on to better things, leaving them bewildered as to how someone they made so miserable then could be so forgiving now.
She's more grateful than ever at home. At Hogwarts it's easy to get caught up in the wonder and amazement and forget that things could have been so, so different.
That letter changed her world. Because of that one letter, her life is magical in ways that she never could have imagined. Because of that letter, she's happier than she ever imagined she would be.
Please review!