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Part I: The Muse has Risen
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Waking up was a mistake. Or should I say it wasn't the best thing to happen to me at that moment? I woke up drowsy, even though I had no dreams. Everything felt out of order, out of focus even if it was the most vibrant it ever had been. What I did know was that I felt the pillow underneath my head was wet. So was my forehead. I had been sweating in my sleep and I didn't know why. I hadn't dreamt of anything, so what was I afraid of? Or maybe it was the hot night air. That's another thing I noticed, the air was clean and not humid. But still warm. Clean meaning sterile, much too sterile; as if somebody had taken the air and purified it to the point of utter ness.
As I got up, I remembered seeing around me light. Much light, but the bed was soft. Other beds were mines around too. My arm really hurt. I then abruptly remembered the items I had taken from the chest and searched my body for them. Instead of feeling the usually soft cotton feeling of the robes, I had felt a thin material draped over me.
I looked down and saw that I was in hospital robes. It is a horror to all of a sudden wake up drenched in sweat with hospital robes on you. That is exactly how I felt. I would have screamed but my mind was not working correctly.
I had not much time to react or think, because I heard loud footsteps upon the sterile tile of the floor heading toward me. I hadn't been thinking anyway. Upon impulse, I brought my head back upon the pillow and pretended to sleep. I could tell the floor was hard from their footsteps.
Their voices were loud as they entered the dreadfully echoing quiet hall.
"No! I don't believe she should have to stay here all of her life, she should be able to go to some other place. Plus, it won't be healthy for her to live around sick people constantly," The voice was as powerful as the door that slammed behind him. It was also distinctly male.
"Where else would she go? Listen to me, Stephen. I know that this is the only place where she can live in peace. With her mother is the best place to be, even if she's insane. There is no other place," this voice was age-worn and familiar. He was the man in the car that had charmed me to go back to sleep. I was intent on hearing more.
"She can go and live with foster parents, anyone would be glad to take her! Ask Potter, he would bring her up. He knew what it was like to live a miserable life and wouldn't place it on Jennie here," his voice really was loud.
"I know there would be possible suitors to take her, but wouldn't you think Bernard would come after her? He is, after all, a skilled wizard in concealment. Whatever made him turn to the dark side is something I wouldn't know, and Jennie knows things. It would be much safer to keep her inside of this hospital with her mother; he doesn't know that she's not dead," I didn't know what I felt; I just know that I had been pretending to sleep upon the arm that hurt so badly. Whatever had happened to my arm, it really did something bad.
"Damnit, Dumbledore, you always had a way with convincing others. I'll make sure she—I think we should continue this conversation someplace else. She looks to be okay."
"Very well then,"
I must have stirred. Or moved, because they soon left. As soon as I heard the door slam, I got up from my bed as if somebody had pricked me with a needle and I tended my arm. I found out later from a healer that it was broken.
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Since then, I have never gotten an explanation to my face of why I had to stay here. Just that sketchy bit of information from my eavesdropping let me know why I am. All I was ever told was that I had to stay because I had no place else to live. What a wonderful thing to tell a child that had no mother, no father, and most of all: nobody who loved. So it was like that for about a year or so. My childhood ran away from me, and it ran quite quickly.
And all I could do was watch.
Watch the soft hair of innocence fade past the horizon. Watch the sun go down in a blaze of purples and blacks. The sun went down and I never saw it come back...
I stayed by my mother's bedside by day, watching the nurses come and go: hoping every day that she would speak my name but no, she lay there with her eyes as wide as seas and even more vacant. By night, I wondered the hospital wings and tried to bring comfort to those who were sick and had no family.
In this way, I thought I could find love from someone, but didn't. It gave me no peace inside, nor any sleep. I didn't have to act like a 10 year old because I was no longer that.
I was a harpy.
When I woke I usually found myself on the nearby benches, hands underneath my head, wishing that sleep had not left me as soon as it had. Approaching my 11th birthday, which was right before the first Saturday of September, something happened that changed my entire life. That changed the way I saw, the way I heard, the way I tasted…the way I felt.
The acceptance letters to Hogwarts had been sent.
And one had been addressed to me.