Chapter 9: My First Wonder

As I slowly open my eyes, my entire body feels strange. I feel strangely heavy, like every inch of me weighs a thousand pounds each. But when I move, a weightless feeling accompanies the heaviness somehow.

Looking around, my movements feeling like air, I realize that my hair's loose, falling over my shoulders. I see my ribbons sitting on the nightstand. Only six though, when I'm almost certain that I put eight in my hair today.

As I move the covers off of my body, I feel almost as if I'm moving through water. Weightless and yet every movement feels like I'm pushing against some sort of force. I feel like I'm moving in slow motion. I realize I'm in my nightdress, but I don't remember changing into it any better than I remember taking my hair down.

I hesitate, sitting on the edge of the bed for a minute, trying to remember. My mind's so foggy though. The last thing I remember is walking into Ollivander's with Fred and George so that we could get our wands.

Was it all a dream? Diagon Alley, the twins, the letter? My memory of it all is dark and fuzzy and seems to be fading even as I try to remember it, just like trying to remember a dream. But…

I look back at my ribbons. I wore them today. When I wear ribbons in my hair, I always wear eight. Four on each side. But there are only six ribbons.

I sigh, giving up on trying to figure it all out, as it seems to be doing nothing except make my brain even more foggy.

I slide down from the bed, feeling like I'm hovering in the air for an impossibly moment before my bare feet touch the cold wooden floor. I move soundlessly, almost gliding across the floor as I cross the room. I pull the door open, and I feel like this too, is an act against water, or some other unseen force. The door moves weightlessly, but feels like something is pushing against it, trying to hold it closed. When I do get the door open, I slip silently out of the room, walking down the hall and towards the stairs that will lead downstairs. I follow the sounds of the music drifting towards me from somewhere I can't see.

Once I get to the stairs, I slip down them, still silent, still heavy but weightless, still feeling strangely as if I'm in a dream and yet still convinced that all of yesterday was the dream. Halfway down the stairs, I sit on the steps, wrapping my small and pale hands around two of the rungs of the railing as I peer in between them, watching the people in the dining room of the Leaky Cauldron.

The music's louder here, and it has a rhythm to it that I've never heard before. It's fast and loud and it makes me realize that the heaviness is disappearing from me, leaving only the strange weightlessness that now makes me feel almost as if I might float away.

I watch in wonder, as people all over are dancing. Some people dance as couples, some people are brave enough to dance all by themselves, even on top of tables. There's even a large group towards the middle with lots of people dancing together. Everyone seems to be smiling and laughing and talking loud, and they all look like they're having so much fun.

I'm hypnotized by it all. It's like nothing I've ever seen before. They all seem so happy and carefree and alive. No, that's not right…this is something more than just being alive, more than just living…this is something I've never seen before.

I sit on the staircase for more than an hour, watching, gripping the rungs so that I don't float away. The music seems to vibrate within my body, making me feel strange. Suddenly I'm convinced that it wasn't yesterday that was the dream, but all the days before. My entire life in Rutledge Home for Girls. Now I wonder if maybe that wasn't all a dream after all, and that maybe I'm just waking up from it now.

Then I see Tonks, dancing in the middle of the huge group, dancing with all of them and yet somehow seeming to be dancing with just one of them too. I watch the two of them dance, and then when they take a break, I watch them sit down and drink, talking and laughing like they've known each other forever and like they've been friends forever.

Suddenly my memory of yesterday, of Tonks coming to Rutledge, of the Diagon Alley, of the twins, all the memories snap into perfect focus, clear and vivid and colorful. So much more powerful than any other memory I have, the colors so bright and the sounds so loud and the feelings so much more powerful. Those are the waking memories, and everything before then are sleeping memories, dreams.

This isn't a dream though. I know it. I'm awake now.

A small smile appears on my lips as I watch Tonks and the man. Rutledge was just a bad dream. This is my real life. Now I'm more alive than I've ever been for as long as I can remember. Now I'm awake.

And now that I'm awake, I find myself thinking about something that I've been wanting for a very long time, but that only just now is seeming like it might be a possibility. I want to look at someone the way Tonks is looking at the man sitting beside her. And I want someone to look at me the way the man is looking back at her. I want to be able to laugh as freely as they are. I want to dance with someone. I want to have friends that I can talk freely with.

I want to stop being called a freak and weird. If I couldn't have that in my dream life, maybe I can have that in my awake life. Maybe I can keep from going back to sleep forever. Because here, now, in this strange magical world that should be the dream, I finally, for the first time for as long as I can remember, feel awake.