*Chapter 2*
Nine and three-quarters
"Alright, first things first," Sander said. "What the hell's your name?"
"My name's Wanda," she said back. "Wanda Dozen."
"A witch named Wanda..." Sander mused. "Wonder why Rowling never thought of that?"
"I told you you to stop calling me a witch," Wanda said. "I am a magician, as are you."
"Whats wrong with witch?"
"The word 'witch' is an accusative term. It all goes back to the Salem witch trials. It was the first word to come to the minds of the people in that era which to label someone as unnatural or freakish. And since they couldn't understand what magic actually was then, they sought to abolish it. It's the same for the word 'wizard'. The word usually coincides with foolish images of old men with long beards and starry robes who live in caves and shit. The old prejudices have long since died out, however, that didn't stop our culture from abandoning those labels. In America, magical people are called magicians, regardless of sex."
"Are they called different anywhere else?" Sander asked.
"Most European countries still stick with witches for women, and wizards for men. But alot of countries have recently started adopting their own catch-alls for magical people; In America, we're magicians; in Asia, they're mages; in Africa, they're magi; and the list goes on," Wanda explained.
Sander nodded as he processed this information, which he was fairly surprised at his ability to understand so well. "So if you're a magician, I guess that's your wand," he said, pointing to Wanda's silver baton. "I've never seen one that long before; hell, I've actually never seen a real wand before. That thing must be two feet long."
Wanda twirled the slim rod between her equally slim fingers. "Eighteen and a quarter inches, actually," she said. "But these are really a dime a dozen."
"Why is it made of metal? Aren't wands made of wood?"
Wanda expelled a breath through her nose, "Wand of metal shows your mettle, does what wood never could," she said rhythmically. "Europeans are thick as bricks and still insist on making them from fucking trees. The number one rated statistic for wand destruction is accidental breakage; snapping it in two by some way or another. But I'll tell ya this, ain't nobody snapping my baby right here. Solid steel; break-proof; rust-proof, and dead fucking sexy," she gave the metal wand a resounding kiss.
"So what kind of core do you have?" Sander asked. "Phoenix tail feather, dragon heart string, or-"
"Standard spell cell," was Wanda's answer. Seeing the confusion on Sander's face, she gave the very end of the metal rod a light tap, and out the other end popped...
"A fucking triple A battery!?" Sander practically screamed.
"Is what it looks like," Wanda said serenely. "But it's actually an incredibly condensed pod of magical energy; good for about a thousand spells. Other types can give you more, but these are the cheapest."
Sander massaged his temples as he tried to follow all of this. "So tell me about this place called, The Centre."
"As I've said already, The Centre is our base of operations in this city. Every major city has it's own Centre. It's there that you will receive your education-"
"Kind of like Hogwarts, right?" Sander said excitedly.
"I told you to forget Harry Potter," Wanda snapped. "Firstly, I've been to Britain personally; explored every inch of King's Cross station myself and there is no platform nine and three-quarters; there is no Hogwarts express; and there sure as hell ain't no Hogwarts castle. Where European people receive their magical education, I can only guess, but it isn't there.
Secondly, you're probably under the impression that it will take you seven years to learn the ways of magic; that's not true. If all goes well, it should only take you several days. This is where the laundry list of all of Rowling's untruths begin. You see, Rowling was writing on a subject that the bitch barely knows anything about. Magic isn't something you have to have pounded into your brain; you already know everything, you just have to learn to manipulate it. Which is what will happen at The Centre. You'll be educated, evaluated, placed where you will most be useful, and finally shipped."
"Who do you work for, fucking FedEx?" Sander said. "And what do you mean, I already know everything? Why bother teaching me if that's the case?"
"Because you have to learn to use it," Wanda said. "You've only recently awakened, so you have no magical knowledge."
"But wouldn't strange things be happening around me? Like magic bursts I wouldn't be able to control?"
"Another of Rowling's mistakes," Wanda said derisively. "Magic is a force that must be focused through a proper channel in order to be used; it doesn't just explode out of you at random intervals. Rowling will have you believe that phenomenon begins somewhere in early childhood, and that magical people start school at around that time. That is total bullshit.
Magical people awaken at different times in their lives. You, for instance, are twenty-two years old, but have just now awakened. Some take even longer than that. There have been cases of very early awakenings reported, funny enough, these reports all come from Japan. I knew those Asian kids were smart, but damn..."
Sander took a deep breath. "So magic is something that I already know, huh?" He gave his head a few disbelieving nods and a matching laugh. "So where is this Centre of yours?"
"Drexel University," Wanda said.
"You're fucking me, right?" Sander said. "My school is a center for magical operations?"
"You attend a school with a dragon for a mascot, and yet you doubt the presence of magical peoples?" This shut Sander up. It was then that the train they had been waiting for finally arrived. "Don't worry, everything will become clear soon enough," Wanda said.
"Doors are opening," said a pleasant female voice upon the train's arrival. "Frankford train making all stops."
"This way," Wanda said, walking down the platform. Sander followed her to the very last car on the train. They both boarded to find a pretty packed car. Several people were standing as all of the sitting room had been taken.
"Doors are closing"
"Nice one, Wanda," Sander said. "I can't speak for you, but I don't feel like doing too much standing up on these things."
Wanda squeezed her way around a portly woman with her face buried in her cell phone. "We won't have to," Wanda said, withdrawing her wand. "Observe." She pointed her wand at man in the seat directly in front of her. "You. Move." She said this with a small jerk of her wand. The man reacted as though she had attached invisible marionette strings to him. With a somewhat ungraceful movement, the man vacated his seat and stood in the isle. "I suppose you want to sit down too, huh?" she said to Sander over her shoulder. She again pointed her wand at the other man in the adjacent seat, whose eyes had not moved from the passing city scape outside his window. "Move it." With the same mindless haste, he sprung up and joined the other man in the isle. Wanda gestured extravagantly for Sander to take the window seat, which he did.
Upon sitting he said, "You know, I'd ask you how you did that, but something tells me that I'm not going to understand the answer." He cast a look to the two men who were magically evicted from their seats. While they appeared no worse for the wear, they both had somewhat glazed expressions on their faces. "Or like it."
"You will understand because the answer is quite simple," Wanda said. "Magic may be mysterious, and ambiguous as it is powerful, but it's actually not difficult to grasp. It's all about this." She pointed slowly to her head. "You see, Rowling lead you to believe that magic is something physically endowed within you; intangible as it may be, she still presented it as a physical trait; some had it, others didn't. Magic has nothing to do with your body or how you're born or who you're born from. It's all in your head.
Magic is a force that is channeled exclusively by your mind. Those who have awakened have been subjected to a certain number and form of stimuli."
"Stimuli like what?"
"Could be anything," Wanda said. "We have yet to really pinpoint the source of what exactly awakens people, but we do know that it has everything to do with your mind's willingness to accept things that are...out of the ordinary."
Sander thought for a moment. "The way you say that, you make it sound like anyone could awaken."
"And you would be right," Wanda nodded. "Every human being ever born on this planet has the potential for magical awakening, it's just a matter of them realizing and accepting it." Wanda crossed her long legs as she paused for thought. "How can I put it another way...? You remember all those shows from the early nineties? Sailor Moon; Dragon Ball Z; and the Power Rangers?"
"Do I?!" Sander said, his nerd senses tingling.
"Now listen to this. Whenever you watched those kinds of shows, your imagination would run wild; you would see yourself in those situations; imaging that it was you that was battling for the universe. And when the show was over, you would go outside and gather with all your friends and re-enact all those things you saw on TV. You would feel invincible; firing pretend Kamehameha waves and Hadokens and shit, even though you knew it was all in your head.
And that's exactly where it starts.
"Knowledge and acceptance of the fantastic is one of the sure fire ways to unlock your magical potential. Over the years, as those same kids grow up, they begin learning of the ways of the real world, and slowly start to forget or rather, let go of those childhood fantasies. Someone like you, who clearly has never forgotten those experiences, is a prime candidate for becoming awakened." Wanda paused here again. "The thing is, we just don't know what the x factor is; why some awaken and others don't. It's a phenomenon more mysterious than magic itself."
"Fifty-second street station" the automated voice chimed.
Sander watched as the two men Wanda magically motivated from their seats left the train. One of them walked smack into the seat in front of him as he made his way out. "Hey, is it like, safe just to magic people like that?" He said. "And besides; didn't you just do magic in public? Isn't there like a national statute of secrecy and shit?"
Wanda laughed out loud. "Firstly. Yes, the statute does exist, but we here in America abide by no such law. It just so happens that these yops-"
"Yops?" Sander said.
"Yop is an acronym. It stand for Highly Un-magical Person."
"I thought they were called muggles?"
"Only in Europe," Wanda explained. "Over here, we call them yops; in Europe, they're muggles. Shadowhunters just call them mundanes-"
"Shadowhunters are real!?" Sander gasped.
"Story for another time," Wanda said with a grin. "Anyway, using magic on yops is not a punishable act. You see, Rowling was right about one thing; yops will go to any lengths to ignore magic, even if it's staring them right in the face. Those two guys that just left the train are under the assumption that they just really, really wanted to give their seats up to that beautiful girl that just walked on the train."
"But I didn't hear you say a spell or anything, you just said 'Move it',"
"That's the beauty of magic," Wanda said. "Power of the mind. Magic is not all about twirling your wand and muttering spells that have a suspiciously Spanish verbal inclination. It's a force of your mind; you can achieve the exact same results as any spoken spell simply by focusing your mind on the effect you wish to achieve." Wanda took a look around the train car and spotted a new target. "For instance, the silencio spell," she said, nodding at a man chatting loudly on his cell phone. "Rowling's method requires you to actually say silencio when appropriating your target; that's bull. Observe."
She pointed her metal wand at the man, who remained ignorant to Wanda doing so, and muttered, "Shut up." Instantly the man's voice was silenced. He pounded his chest, coughed, and cleared his throat in an attempt to get it working again. "Now, you see, he's under the impression that he just came down with a coughing fit that paralyzed his vocal chords," Wanda explained. "When in reality, that mo fo will never say another word for as long as he lives if I don't give him his voice back. And I did it all without actually having to say silencio." Wanda pointed to her head again. "Power of the mind," she said.
Sander was slowly beginning to understand. "So, it's like a force of your will..." he said. "The words you say don't really matter, as long as you focus hard enough on the effect you want to achieve, the spell will work perfectly?"
"Bingo," Wanda said.
"Fortieth street station"
The doors opened and the silenced man and several others left the train. "Hey, will that guy ever get his voice back?" Sander asked.
"Whoops, kinda forgot about that part," Wanda said offhandedly. "Oh well, sucks to be him."
"That's gotta break some kind of magical law," Sander said. "Even if you are of age, using magic on random people like that can't be safe, not to mention you did so on a train full of mug- I mean, yops."
"Still worried about that secrecy thing, are you?" Wanda quipped. "Look, that statute does not apply to the country of North America. And the only reason it exists in the first place is because European wizards are a bunch of hermits. Remember, Rowling wrote those books based on her world view, and with her being British, it wasn't a very broad one.
Over there, magical people feel the need to hide themselves from modern society; to form a world separate from the one which they actually live in. And over hundreds of years, they have become so ingrained in this archaic doctrine that they completely forgot how to live amongst their fellow man. European wizards are completely out of touch with the real world, having lived so long in the secret one they've created. The mother fuckers can't even dress themselves properly when they do have to deal with non magical people, nor can they communicate with them effectively. They're so far out of touch with the world of the normal that they can't function in it. You could easily mesmerize one of those idiots with something as simple as a flashlight; a cell phone; or an automobile.
"But here in America, we never lost touch with our non magical brethren. We live with them; we live like them. European wizards seem to forget that they were born on earth, not on another fucking planet. We have never felt the need to cut ourselves off from society. Those morons don't know how valuable knowledge of yops and their technology can be."
"Thirty sixth street station"
"So, maybe Rowling was wrong about alot of things," Sander said. "Or maybe she just didn't know how things worked in other countries. But you can't blame her for that."
"I'm not blaming her," Wanda said. "It's just that she should have done more research before writing on such a broad subject. And I mean alot more."
"Thirtieth street station. Access to Drexel University."
"This is our stop," Sander said, rising from his seat.
"Sit," Wanda commanded.
"Look, you said this place was in Drexel, so unless you-"
"Just sit your ass down," Wanda sighed.
Sander complied and retook his seat. All of the other passengers had left the car, leaving Sander and Wanda alone. "So, what, you feel like walking all the way back to Drexel? 'Cause this train is about to-"
"The train is leaving, but we're not going anywhere," Wanda said.
Sander could see the door of the next car from where her was sitting.
"Doors are closing"
The electrical whir of power moving the train began to fill Sander's ears as the train began to move. Correction.
Some of the train began to move.
The last car that they were seated in had somehow (dare I say 'magically') uncoupled itself from the rest of the train and remained stationary while the other cars rolled off as they usually would. "What in the hell?"
"What time is it?" Wanda asked him absently.
"It's nine-thirty," Sander said.
Wanda nodded and reclined back further in her seat. Sander looked to the window on his right and into the underground station. Many passengers were starting to file in. They anxiously checked their watches and craned their neck down the length of the tunnel to possibly scout an oncoming train. Sander felt quite foolish and exposed sitting in this train car. "Hey, they can't like...see us or anything can they?"
Wanda looked out the window to see a particularly frantic woman staring down the tunnel. She hopped nervously from one foot to the other while she checked her watch. She was clearly in a hurry. Wanda reached over Sander and gave the woman a unceremoniously rude salute. The middle finger. "Fuck you, stupid bitch," she said. That answered Sander's question.
"Are you always so...?" Sander wasn't sure what word to use to describe Wanda's...disposition.
"What? A jerk? A bitch? A total fucking cunt?" She said unashamedly.
"Yes," was Sander's simple answer.
"Not really," Wanda said back. "Only on days that end in y." She gave a huge yawn. "Time?" She asked.
Sander checked his phone again. "Nine forty-three"
"Just about time, c'mon." Wanda rose from her seat and made her way to the door, and Sander followed. "You're about to enter The Centre," she told him. "We've recently had an influx of neoterics like yourself, so you won't be the only one on shaky ground. You'll follow me to the foyer, where you'll be registered, and then to the atrium where you'll be given your orientation by Anima; the founder of this particular Centre. If you have any questions, save them for later." She was watching her phone intently, no doubt watching the time. "Three...two...one..." And the trains' double doors opened and They both stepped out into a narrow corridor. Sander looked behind him, but could see nothing of the train or the station from which they came, only a solid stone wall.
"So this is the Centre?" He asked.
"No, the Centre is just beyond those doors," Wanda said, pointing down the length of the corridor. "There are exactly three hundred and ninety -seven thousand exits to this place, but only one entrance. And it only opens at a certain time of day."
"So the only way in here is through a secret entrance at the train station, and that entrance is only accessible at nine forty-five in the morning?" Sander asked.
"Right on the money," Wanda said.
"Nine forty-five..." Sander mused. "Hey, wait a minute...that's nine and three-quarters."
Wanda grinned sardonically. "Anima's idea, not mine," she said. "C'mon, don't wanna be late for your first day at the Centre, do you?"
"No," Said Sander. "No I don't."
*End of chapter 2*
A/N:
I feel the need to apologize again; all this verbal destruction of Rowling and her ideas...but I've already touched on that subject in my story intro, so I won't go on about it. I do feel the need to say however that I won't be updating this story for a little while. You see, this whole idea was just another spark in the brain I got after recently finishing the entirety of the Harry Potter series again (for the fifth time).
And I says to myself, "Uh-oh, I feel a fanfiction comin' on." So I just decided to start the ball rolling...and immediately stop that ball. Depending on what kind of reception this receives ( if any) will determine my priority in updating it. So just think of these two chapters here as a sort of...fanfiction demo. The final finished product won't hit shelves for another year, and is subject to to the usual number of creative hurtles.
Jesus, am I still talking? I'll let you go now.
P.S.- I would like to thank fanfiction user TheyCallMeVengeance for the fav and the follow.
-B.D. Skunkworks