Disclaimer: This story is based on the wonderful stories and characters owned by J.K. Rowling. I certainly do not make any money with it, just having fun…
nycgrl : Thank you sooooo much for my first review, as soon as I read it, I complied with you're request and attacked my computer with renewed enthusiasm. As you can see I took your demand quite seriously!!
2- Into town
Sylvia woke up the next morning with a sinking feeling in her battered stomach, knowing that there was no point in delaying the inevitable. She put her head under the pillow, growling with lack of enthusiasm at the idea. She would have to go to town today. There it was. No going around it. There were just too many things she needed to buy and she could not take the risk to have the grocery delivered here. She must make sure that nobody knows where she lives. So, she had to go herself, but that too was dangerous. People in small villages are curious about strangers and they talk easily and often, building simple straight stories into very creative rumors. She knew that simple fact, and the only way to counteract it was to be very open, very outspoken and very out of the ordinary. She had to dismiss any idea of mysteries or strangeness from her past in their mind. Following that idea, she had created a persona so different from herself than nobody in their right mind would associate that wild women with the shy, unobtrusive and traumatized Sylvia Shaw girl that very few people knew. And of course she was NOT using her real name.
Getting into the wild Rowena McDougall persona usually takes her a while though…she made a face under the pillow. "Well, ….I guess I'd better get cracking" she thought throwing her quilt and pillow away and getting up to the sound of the hundreds of birds singing to the morning light in the forest just behind her window.
Walking into the kitchen, she started to get into character… "Rowena McDougall is older than me, around 28…she walks proudly with energetic long stride and remember, she keep fussing with her hair. Sylvia straightened her shoulders, changing her mind set while going through the motion of preparing breakfast. Her step grew more confident and her gestures became larger. Sitting down at the table with her omelette dish complete with toast, she went on with the transformation. "Right, Rowena thinks of herself as the ultimate women, she is divorced with no children attached, she is moderately rich because of her divorce and is an eccentric, she is a screenwriter in search of inspiration. She is also not very bright and is very transparent about what she thinks or how she feels. She is the kind of person that nobody would suspect to have a dark past. She came down here to find her muse and to commune with nature because she's currently under a spell of New Age craziness. "
Sylvia felt her lips curve into a wry smile at the thought. She had made an extensive research into New Age literature in order to pull off the credibility of her character and could NOT believed the weird stuff some of these authors invented in order to sell their books. To think that there are actually real people buying this stuff made her feel both amused and sad that a life could be so empty that the only way to become interesting was to cry that you have been abducted by aliens. She knew that she was a long shot from being at the high point of her life but still, she fervently hope that she would never go THAT far down. She also remembered reading about the Wiccan religion and thinking that the history and philosophy were pretty interesting, very different from her strict Protestant upbringing, quite open-minded. Well, at least it was interesting until she got to the spell and magic part. She remembered closing the book in disgust, wondering if there was any one religion or philosophy on this planet that did not try to sell dreams and easy solutions to people drowning in the futility and absurdity of their own life. Sylvia didn't believed in god-sent miracles anymore. She was only saved by her own actions and decisions and not because someone took her by the hand to get her out of her predicament. If she had waited for something to happen, for somebody to come and save her, she would be dead by now. Spells, magic and miracles are for those too weak to take responsibility for their own lives.
Shaking herself out of her reverie, Sylvia discovered that her plate was empty and her coffee disgustedly cold. Putting both in the sink in passing, she went back to her room to finish her transformation into the one and only Mrs. Rowena McDougall. She opened the second wardrobe and gazed at the frilly dresses and tight jeans she had bought that long gone sunny afternoon with a giggling Melanie and her sister Elizabeth. Both of them had helped her create Rowena and other characters as well out of the blue. They had passed a wonderful time trying extravagant clothes and making pin-up poses in front of the convenient store mirror. Sylvia felt her chest tightens at the memory, she missed them both so much. They had been her only true friends, always trying to make her laugh, making sure to keep her away from a too deep depression that could end up in tragedy. Both of them had no idea where she was, she had to move twice since she had last seen them.
After discarding several possibilities, she decided on a pair of jeans and a very pink tank top that was so unlike her that her mother would have had the shock of her life if she could have seen her. The thought almost made her drop to the floor as she struggled into her jeans. Her parents were very clear about what they considered proper and bright color and revealing pants were definitely not it.
The next step was to put on the beautiful wig she had found a few months ago in Lancaster while on her way here. It was a wonderful dark red and made of real long straight hair. Stuck with her boring natural brown, Sylvia had always been envious of women blessed with long vibrant shimmering red hair. When she had seen the wig, there had been no power on earth, which could have stopped her from buying it. She carefully tucked her short curls under the wig then brushed it and finally put the finishing touch with a little make up on her eyes and lips.
Taking a step back, Sylvia examined herself critically in the full-length mirror near the wardrobe. Her long legs were encased in the jeans and left very little to the imagination, her stomach was lean and showed some muscle. She had been on the chubby size before that stay in the clinic. But not anymore, she was very careful about that. The clinic had not only helped her to heal her physical and emotional wounds but also to help change her physical appearance. A controlled diet and an exercise program had changed her quite a bit, and reconstruction surgery on her jaw and nose, which had both been in a pretty bad condition, had transformed her face. Furthermore, her eyebrows had been cleaned in a thin round line and colored contact lenses could change her brown eyes to whatever color she chose from black to pearly gray. For the duration of her stay here, they were bright green, of course, to match her fiery hair. She even went so far as to have her navel pierced with a big purple stone, a stone that was Rowena supposed birth stone, only because it was in character. The stone glittered in the sun coming from the window while she thought "Not bad. I better add the usual trinkets Rowena wears though. " She went back to the wardrobe to take out a little box from which she took several long necklaces, each with a different symbol pendant showing Rowena esoteric interest. She also took two large golden bracelets, one for her left upper arm and one for her right wrist, and finally, a pair of owls ears pendant.
She stayed there a bit, looking at herself, making minute corrections, her head high, her movements large and her whole face open and glowing. She was ready. No signs of Sylvia could be seen in the woman who now sat on the bed to put on her sandals or in the way she tossed her head to send her long hair flying on her back with an ease born of habit. But inside, Sylvia felt the same as usual during her time in disguise: nervous. She didn't especially like Rowena; she was too weird, too loud and too full of herself. But the worse was that Sylvia always felt so exposed in her costume, not only because it did show quite a bit of skin, but also for the outspoken ways of her alter ego.
Sylvia every instinct screamed at her to stay low, to blend in the background, to attract as little attention to herself as possible. She had done it that way before, posing as an unattractive, single, part-time secretary in a big society, or a puritan woman working in a mission. Both times, HE had tracked her down, she had received just enough advanced warning in order to get out. The first time, in London, had been the worst; she barely managed to escape. Max and her had at the time concluded that the best way to hide was just under HIS nose though HE would never thought her capable of that much nerve. It almost worked, but she got careless after a few months and called her mother whom she missed terribly. HE traced the call, and got to her apartment in half an hour. Fortunately, she recognized his footstep on the stairs that he was pounding in his anger, she grabbed her little emergency suitcase, and fled through the emergency exit staircase just beside the kitchen window.
Sylvia/Rowena shuddered at the memory while going through the cabin for the door. Once outside, she locked the cabin door and proceeded to the garage and her car on the left. On the small, bumpy road, she wondered if she should go to the other little village on the right side of the fork. She knew there was a village there, for once in a while, she would hear a train going in that direction and its shrill whistle when it stop. She also knew there was some old castle ruin on the hill on the other side of the lake, it was on the map of the region but there was no tourists' visit since it was both too dangerous and too small for it. Still, she would like to take a look at it one of these days, it might give her ideas if she ever received a command for a digital castle. But not today she decided. One village gossiping wildly about Rowena was quite enough, and what's more, she was definitively not in the mood to tell her made up story again. Having made up her mind, she took the left fork when she arrived at the branching and never saw the small sign half hidden in the bushes on the other road, saying Hogsmeade, Hogwarts: 20 miles.
* *
The village, called Whytburn, was nothing more than two streets with a couple of hundred houses huddled near them. The target of Sylvia /Rowena today was to make a round trip of the general store. She parked near the entrance, locked the door and turned to enter the store when she saw the stray dog that had come to visit her the morning before. It was jauntily walking down the walkway directly across her. Sensing her eyes, it turned its head to look at her and stopped abruptly. Sylvia could have sworn that she saw something very close to astonishment cross the dog's eyes, but of course it was not possible. Sylvia pushed the strange idea aside, turning again to go inside. "I'm probably more nervous than I thought" she murmured to herself. Nervous was good, it made Rowena's voice even louder than usual and her gestures even more grand. But too much was bad…she would have to be careful.
"Mrs. McDouglas!!! What a pleasant surprise!" said the owner's wife, Mrs Langley, behind her counter.
"It's McDougall, but never mind that, I'm in a hurry Mrs. Langley, my horoscope for the day is absolutely horrible. So, you see, I can't stay long. " Rowena answered with a contralto voice that was supposed to be seductive.
" Why, yes of course. What can I do for you today, then?" asked Mrs. Langley with an amused and slightly superior smile.
"This is what I need." said Rowena, putting a piece of paper on the counter, but before Mrs. Langley could grab it, she exclaimed "Wait!" and wrote down two other words on her list. The woman took it and gave it a quick look then, suddenly, looked closer. She raised her eyes to Rowena. "Are you sure about those two last items?"
" But of course Mrs. Langley. Is there a problem?" asked Rowena, smiling and fussing her hair.
"No, but I was not aware that you had a dog. Is it a new acquisition?" Mrs. Langley's eyes were glowing with the prospect of telling a new story to her friends about the infamous red hair city girl.
"Not really. I just thought that I could make friend with the poor dark stray dog that roams the forest. The goddess asks us to be friendly with all of earth creatures you know. Doing so can enable you to learn the language of the beasts and help you acquire a lot of power."
"Really! Isn't that interesting." Answered the lady with a barely concealed smile. "I'll have everything ready for you in about an hour."
Rowena nodded then went out to go buy herself a good lunch in the small restaurant across the street. Things were looking good so far, there has been no other customer in the store and seemingly also very few clients in the restaurant. If her luck hold, she would be out of here in an hour without too much fuss. Smiling and wiggling her hips, she went inside shouting a huge "Hello everyone!"