Violet's first visit is scheduled for two weeks into summer. Not as soon as either of us would have liked, but, as Mum insists, I haven't seen my grandparents in nearly a year, and a stay with them is in order. The visit goes as usual: endless cups of tea and biscuits, rambles through the countryside, a bit of tutoring from my grandmother, who can never resist. And, of course, the constant games of chess I mentioned to Violet. I bite back a smile, remembering the barely-contained violence of wizard's chess, and Grandpa raises an eyebrow at me.
"Am I losing already?"
"No," I try to say, but in my haste it comes out as "Not yet."
He chuckles and slides a rook across the board.
It's a constant strain on us both, Mum and I, pretending that I've been studying at a perfectly ordinary girls' school for the past nine months. I spent the car ride to the country memorizing the Roedean curriculum, which Mum printed for me last night, and for the first time in months using Google to crash-course anything unfamiliar. By the time we got here, I was practically an expert on the Wars of the Roses, thanks mostly to Wikipedia. Fortunately I taught myself college algebra and trigonometry at the age of six, as Grandma will certainly ask how it's coming along. She still cherishes the hope of another mathematician in the family.
By halfway through the second week, Mum and I are both exhausted. I can't count the number of anecdotes I've fabricated, the stories from my Hogwarts classes I've watered down and transmogrified into what passes for Muggle studies. When Mum decides we'll leave two days early, I'm secretly relieved. But there's more to the decision than maintaining my secret, as I discover when I nearly walk in on Mum and Grandpa making breakfast.
"...don't see why you can't stay just a little longer, Molly. It's been years."
"That's an exaggeration. It's not even been eleven months."
"I don't mean for us…for him."
I know without looking that Mum's shoulders have stiffened.
"Frankly, Dad, I don't give a toss about him."
"But he does, about Andrea. As much as he may try to hide it, you're hurting him. Surely, at least once in a while, he deserves…"
"I'm hurting him? He deserves?" Mum's voice is dangerously quiet. "You're going to look me in the face, Dad, and talk to me about what he deserves?"
Grandpa goes silent, and I slip back into my dad's old bedroom without a sound.
"How's Gram and Gramps?" Violet asks cheerfully, as soon as she stops spinning. I'm as impressed as ever by the alacrity with which she begins conversations, even with her vestibular system out of whack.
"Fine," I say, reaching out a steadying hand as she steps out of the fireplace, carefully wiping her feet on the edge of the rug. "Exhausting, actually. How are yours?"
"The same," she yawns. "Giving me the third degree about classes and boys, though I don't think they're too happy I ended up in Slytherin."
"Just point out that you're related to all of the Ravenclaw guys," I suggest, uncomfortably aware that Mum is listening to the conversation over my shoulder. I still haven't mentioned to her the stigma against Slytherins, or Muggle-borns.
"That'll do it," Violet grins. "Hello, Mrs. H."
"Hello again, Violet. Annie tells me magic is out of the question over the summer, so I understand you have a crash-course in computers planned for today. Have a scone before you two disappear into Annie's room?"
"Thanks," Violet says, heaving an overnight bag out of the fireplace. "Annie's always talking about Goggle. Honestly, it sounds exhausting."
"The world's biggest and worst-curated library," Mum says, flipping on the kettle. "You'd better fortify yourself. And, Annie, nothing naughty."
I make a face at her. Mum knows perfectly well that I care as much about sex as your average slab of granite.
"I'd say you have the world's biggest library right here," says Violet, letting out a slow whistle as she scans the room.
I can hardly blame her. Every single wall is covered in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, Mum's classics and my textbooks, mundane and magical. Thankfully, the lettering on the spines doesn't move. Any Muggle who gives them a close scrutiny would simply assume this is the home of an overenthusiastic Wiccan.
Toby leaps onto the back of the sofa and sniffs curiously at Violet. She giggles.
"Hello! Why didn't you bring this one to Hogwarts, Annie?"
"Because Mum would've skinned me alive," I say. "But we've got a shopping trip planned for this summer…Mum's getting me an owl!"
Vi high-fives me. "About time!"
Mum reenters the room carrying a tray of tea and scones. "I've accepted that dead mice and owl pellets are the price of correspondence with my daughter. Letter writing, in this day and age! It's so quaint, I've actually come to enjoy it."
Violet accepts her mug, looking confused. "What do you mean, quaint?"
"Ah," I say, spooning sugar into my tea. "I've yet to introduce you to smartphones."
"Telly-phones are smart?"
"And email. And texting. We'll get to it."
Mum interrupts. "Slow down on the sugar, Andrea, you're as bad as your father."
I shoot a murderous look at Vi as she giggles.
"I'm not sure your mum knows the half of it."
"Not sure she should, either," I say meaningfully.
Mum sighs.
"You'd think a doctor could convince her own daughter to eat properly," she tells Violet. "But it's either whatever sugary confection she can sweet-talk out of our landlady, or she gets involved in a project and simply forgets to eat for days on end…"
"No pun intended," I say sourly.
"So I've noticed," Violet grins. "She's got a weakness for the house-elves' vegetable stew, though. In case you need ideas."
"Does she?" Mum asks, brightening.
"And their Yorkshire pudding."
I clear my throat. "I'm still here, you know."
"Any other tips?" Mum asks Violet, ignoring me.
Before Violet can reply I stuff the rest of my scone in my mouth and haul her upward by the arm.
"Come on, Vi. Goggle awaits."
"Your mum is so cool," Violet says, spinning in my long-disused office chair with almost excessive enjoyment. Her observation derails me from an impending lecture on centripetal vs. centrifugal force.
"You think so?"
"Of course. Don't you?"
"I don't see her like this, much," I say honestly. "Something's changed over the past year. But it's a good change. I think."
"She's so different from my stepmum. Who's a good mum, you know? But we're just too different to be friends. I think she's still hurt I never wore the pink dress robes she bought me when I was seven."
"Mum and I are different too," I say, thinking of the wordless gap between us. It has something to do with my father and something to do with my magic and something to do with the look she gives me when I accidentally tell the cashier at Tesco's about his boyfriend's extracurricular activities.
"Well, you're alike in at least one way," Violet says, with a meaningful glance at the biology textbook on my bedspread. "I've never seen so many books in all my life! I think Pince would have a coronary."
"The Hogwarts library has us beat about fifty times over," I point out. "But it's not for lack of trying on Mum's part. She's finally had to accept that only a finite number of books can fit in a finite space."
"Maybe for now," says Violet, rotating thoughtfully. "But just wait until we learn the Undetectable Extension Charm."
"The what?" I demand, with what is clearly too much interest, because Violet grins, leans forward, and snaps her fingers in front of my face.
"Com-pyuh-ter, Annie. You promised."
"Fine." I bend down to press the power button on the PC. "But you're not off the hook until I learn about that charm. In the meantime: may I introduce the magic of Windows 10?"
Violet jumps slightly as the screen flickers on.
"Cool!"
"Just you wait," I mutter, typing in my password. "What do you want to start with?"
"What do you mean?" Violet watches my fingers fly with interest.
"Well, it's a library. Sort of. Books and games and moving pictures; world news and science and art; sports and how-to's and corporations trying to sell you things and people lying about their lives for clout. Where do you want to start?"
"Um…say that list again. Actually, don't. I like games."
"Okay." My fingers fly across the keyboard again. "Not really my area, but here's a site with lots to choose from. Do you want to wage nuclear war, raise magical goldfish, or smash turtles with a sledgehammer?"
Violet leans toward the screen, eyes wide.
"There are turtles in there?"
"No." I click the link. "There's information in the form of ones and zeroes, which is transcribed via various programming techniques into a simulation of highly fragile turtles. Welcome to the Internet."
"Translate."
"It means that someone with the sum total of Muggle knowledge at their fingertips chose to use it for false turtle violence."
"No turtles harmed?"
"Not unless you're extremely sentimental."
"Well, okay," says Violet doubtfully, taking the mouse. "I'll give it a go. Is this what Muggles do all day?"
"Only the lucky ones," I say. "The rest work in offices or fields or starve on the streets. You could call us an imbalanced society. Resource allocation is much more of an issue when everyone lacks access to magic."
"And I should probably be judging," Violet says, clicking turtles. "But honestly, this is more addictive than it should be. Do people seriously starve, though? In Britain?"
"Sometimes. Wizards can multiply their food production by pointing a stick and saying two words. Muggles can't exactly do that."
"We could do it for them. If we could get around the ban on underage magic. And the Statute of Secrecy. And learn the Gemini spell."
"A few minor obstacles," I say drily.
"What's a la-ser?"
"A laser? It's a light-based cutting tool. Why?"
"I'm la-sering turtles. Look at their little feet waving in the air. Merlin, Annie, the violence."
"And yet it all seems a bit banal," I muse.
"But so satisfying."
"Not the turtles," I say patiently, wrapping a strand of hair around my fingers. "I'm talking about the magic restriction for underage wizards. I understand the risk, but if we could get around it…"
Violet gives up on the turtles and swings around to face me, her expression serious.
"Annie, breaking that rule will have you expelled in no time."
I let out a sigh of frustration. My flippant presentation of the negative facets of life in the Muggle world was nothing but an offhand display of the cynicism I'm so often accused of. And yet. Violet is right. Muggle life entails so many problems. Shouldn't we be able to do something? About anything?
But I know the consequences of underage magic, and they're not ones I'm prepared to live with.
"Look, Vi. My landlady downstairs is over eighty. She can barely walk. I could wave my wand - after a few more years of schooling, that is - I could fix her hip with a wave of my wand. And yet, according to wizard law, I'm not supposed to do it."
"Sure, but when you're seventeen…"
"By the time I'm seventeen, Vi, she might be dead. Just like thousands of other people who could benefit from magic. And then there's the Statute of Secrecy to consider…why shut ourselves away like this when we could literally save the world?"
Violet sighs. "I asked Dad about that once," she says.
"And?"
"He went all serious and said something like, 'Differences paint a target on your forehead. Not everyone is ready for that.'"
Well, I think. He's not wrong.
"And I can sort of see what he means," Violet adds. "Back when they knew what we were, Muggles tried to burn us alive, remember?"
Something something Salem witch trials. I only know about it because I've read The Crucible.
"I suppose that's true," I say, twirling an old quill between my fingertips. "Still. You'd think there would be something we could do."
"If anyone can figure it out," says Violet, turning back to the computer screen, "it'll be you."
Late that night, as I lie in bed - having fought Violet for the bedroll on the floor and lost - the problem won't leave my mind. Something we can do. Anything. If anyone can figure it out, it'll be you.
And then, crowding that out, the mocking, grinning tone: You had to teach yourself, didn't you?
Angrily, I turn over and bury my face in the worn pillowcase. I don't need external assessments. I don't need that damned Hat to tell me what I really am. I already know.
But Violet…Violet seems to suggest that even if I can't become someone else, I could be something else. Apply my twisted reality, my talents, in a new way.
An old way.
I could…
Suddenly, I know what I'm going to do. And magic has nothing to do with it.
I arise early, before Mum or Violet, mumbling on the floor in her sleeping bag; even before the faint noises of the landlady moving about downstairs reach my ears. Dawn has barely peeked over the horizon, but it hasn't beat the morning papers. I tiptoe carefully down the stairs, avoiding the creaking step, and open the front door. Morning air floods my nostrils, as fresh as it gets in central London, and my toes curl on the cold cement doorstep. There at my feet lies my prize: the London Sun.
I pick up the paper and hurry, shivering, into the apartment. It's an almost magical early-morning feeling, as though I were paying an early visit to the Owlery at Hogwarts. Or does the sense of enchantment come from the jarringly unmoving newsprint in my hands?
If Mum finds out I'm doing this…
But I've spent too long denying this part of myself. Maybe here I'll find the answers, or the questions, I'm looking for.