Marian burrowed further into her pillows. She knew the sun was shining, but her alarm clock hadn't gone off yet, so she probably had another good hour before she had to wake up. She cracked an eye and smiled to herself. Yep, she was in her bed, which meant that she'd dreamed the whole thing. That had to be one of the craziest dreams she'd had since they took her off percocet.
"It's almost noon, you know," a sarcasm laced voice said at her side.
Immediately she was up, but she relaxed when she saw who it was. It was Snape. She must have fallen asleep while he was still here. "Um, morning," she said.
He just looked at her with that 'I'd like to cut you open and see what you're made of look' that he'd given her the night before. " Professor Dumbledore thought it might be best if you returned to the Muggle world for a while," he pulled out what she could only describe as an old fashioned quill. "If you want to return to Hogwarts, use this to write 'magic' on anything, and someone will be buy to pick you up."
"Slow down, what are you talking about?" Muggle? Hogwarts? How did he know about her dream? There was no way that had been real. It wasn't possible.
Snape sighed. "You have been gone for eight days, Ms. Elvbow, and it is currently eleven forty eight. I suggest that you try to put your life in order. Remember to only use the quill if you are serious about devoting yourself to our world," with that he stood and walked out of the room.
"Hey, wait a damn minute," she called, throwing off her covers and striding after him. She didn't hear the door open, so he must still be in the living room. She marched in, fully prepared to ream him royally, but stopped halfway through the doorway. He was nowhere in sight.
Marian shook her head. Eight days? She'd remember if she went somewhere for eight days, wouldn't she? "Missyla?" she called into the apartment, but she didn't hear an answering hiss. "Missyla?!" she called again.
She relaxed when she watched the snake's large form slither out of the bathroom. "Hey, you piece a shit, what's up?"
The python just hissed and slithered into the kitchen. Yawning, Marian followed, frowning when she saw her plants. They looked a little peeked, even though she watered them yesterday.
Her answering machine was blinking too, which was rare in and of itself. No one but Don knew her number. She pressed the play button.
"Mar, this is Don. Are you okay? You didn't show up for work today. Call me and let me know what's going on."
Must have been an old message, she thought. She'd been to work every day this month. Another message started.
"Okay, Mar, this isn't funny. It's been three days already. Where the bloody hell are you? I'm calling James in for the rest of the week. Please call me when you get this."
Marian stared at the answering machine. Three days?
"Marian, this is Dr. Almson, you missed our appointment today. Please call me as soon as you can to reschedule. Today is September second."
She could feel herself shaking. Eight days. There was more than a week missing from her memory.
"Marian. This is Dr. Almson again. This is the second time you've missed a session this week. I'm starting to get worried. Please, call me as soon as you get this message."
"Ms Elvbow, this is your landlady. You haven't picked up your mail and the box is starting to get full. Please get your stuff soon."
Marian braced her hands against the counter, dropped her head and slowly began counting backwards from a hundred. There had to be a logical explanation for all of this, she just had to find it.
"Fuck," she whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," that said, she walked into her bathroom for a quick shower: she smelled more than a little ripe.
Five minutes later she'd dressed, grabbed her bag, and walked out the front door.
Twenty minutes later she was standing outside Dragon Marsh, the dojo she taught at.
Don must have seen her walk past, because he was on her the moment she walked in the door with a bone-crushing hug.
Don Chaunswong was a short, stocky, balding Asian man with a diehard Liverpool accent and a habit of wearing too much cologne, but she didn't mind at the moment. Finally, something normal.
"Where in the bloody hell have you been, git?" he growled, looking her over. "Jesus, you feel like skin and bones, what happened to you?"
She tried not to feel a rush at his show of concern, but failed. There had been precious few times when someone was genuinely concerned about her. "I just…I"
"That doctor of yours was here yesterday. Wanted to know if you'd been to work at all. We thought you'd dropped off the map, girl! Thought I'd have to find another teacher for the first years."
Marian smiled. "Sorry."
Don gave her a hard look, then slapped her on the back. "Just don't do it again, okay? I don't think my heart could take it! Next time you want to take off, tell me!" As they walked by one of the classes he shouted. "Hey, looks whose back!"
A sea of children wearing white dogis turned around and bowed, and she could see that many of them were smiling happily, others with obvious looks of relief. "What have you been doing to them?" she whispered.
Don smiled. "Just a little tighter ship than you run, nothing special."
Marian smiled. "I want to see everyone at first position when I get back in five minutes!"
At four o'clock Marian walked into the office of her psychiatrist. Dr. Almson's office was a study in mahogany. Everything was deep, warm tones and soothing music, meant to lull the herd, in her opinion.
She hated every inch of it.
"Ms. Elvbow, Dr Almson will see you now," the secretary said.
Dr Almson was a tall, pale English man, who for whatever reason thought that tweed was still in style. One thing that always surprised her about him was the fact that for a man of sixty, he still had all his hair.
She wondered how much that cost him a year.
"It's good to see you again, Marian," he said, motioning to a recliner across from him.
Sentiment not shared!
"So, you missed two of our sessions last week."
Oh, get on with it!
"Might
I ask why?"
Okay, so what happened was
I was kidnapped and taken to this castle which is I don't know where and I met
a real life version of Merlin who lifted me about seven feet of the air using
his wand and I saw a student I haven't seen in almost five years. Yeah
right, he'd Baker Act her in five seconds if she told him that. "I didn't feel
like coming here."
Almson sighed. "We've been over this, Marian. These sessions are vital if you want to continue outpatient therapy. Have you been taking your medication regularly?"
"Yes," actually I've missed over a week, but I'm not telling you that.
"Any episodes?"
She sighed, she knew he knew, he just wanted to see if she was telling the truth. "One, about a week ago."
He put on his best grandfatherly face. "You know, Marian, that these spasms are an extension of your mental state. You control them."
Yeah, which is why I'm on 750mg of vicodine. "So you've told me."
He nodded. "I went to Don's a few days ago. He told me that you hadn't shown up for work either. Would you like to talk about that?"
"I was looking for another job," Oh, yeah. Great thinking there.
"Really?" Almson wrote that down on his note pad. "What kind of job?"
Shit. "I was thinking about becoming a teacher again. An English teacher. There was a school up north that I wanted to check out."
"Which one?"
Damn damn double damn! " I don't recall. It had some long name. But they have an opening for an English teacher available."
"Good, this is very good. You're showing a desire to reintegrate yourself back into society. But why wouldn't you tell your boss this?"
Marian sighed. This man could pick at the tiniest detail until you wanted to scream. "Because he's my boss. You don't go up to your boss and say, 'hey, I'm looking for another job right now, think I could have a few days off?' Real life doesn't work that way."
He looked a little affronted, but she didn't care. "Well, if that's all you wanted to see me about-?" she started to stand.
"Actually, I was wondering what your plans would be if you did get this job. I'm sure you don't want to drive into London twice a week just to talk to me."
I wouldn't drive ten feet to talk to you if I didn't have to, "I'll think of something."
Marian's breath of relief didn't come until she was back in her apartment, arms loaded down with mail. Apparently, it was the time that she was gone, or whatever, that everyone decided it would be a good idea to get in touch. There were several letters from Cheryl, her friend in California, two from Beatrice, one of the colleagues in Surrey, and more from people she hadn't heard from in months. She made it a point to give people her address for emergency purposes, but she never expected anyone to actually use it.
"Hi," she said when Missy twined around her leg. "You do anything all day?"
The python just looked at her before untwining herself and heading into the living room. She would have sworn the blasted snake shook her head first.
"Okay, just a little too much stress today," she whispered, dumping the mail on the table and reaching for the phone. Chinese sounded good tonight, not to mention the fact that she didn't feel like cooking herself.
After she ordered, she walked into the kitchen and put a bottle of white wine in the freezer, then pulled it back out again. Alcohol and tranquilizers definitely didn't mix.
Thirty minutes later she was elbow deep in chow mien and fried rice, while Missy satisfied herself with chicken stuffed dumplings.
"You know, I'd probably get jailed for animal cruelty if anyone knew I feed you human food on the sly."
" Don't let a little tttthhhhhing like that ssssssstop you,"
Marian blinked. Great, she'd thought she'd had enough episodes to last her a lifetime. "Did you just say something?"
Missy wasn't paying her any attention, and she sighed. She was probably still high strung from not knowing what had happened to her over the past week.
Another hour had passed when Marian shoved the last of the takeout into her fridge, after dumping out the old takeout and something unidentifiable that was sticking to the bottom of a Tupperware bowl.
"Night, rat breath," she called into the living room as she got ready for bed. The quill was still there, a red stain against the blue of her sheets. Her first instinct was to throw it away, but she didn't. It might make a good gift for Don later on.
Harry stared at the Gryffin that guarded Dumbledore's office. "Cockroach clusters!"
Nothing.
"Um, Bertie Bots! Sherbert Lemon! Chocolate Divinity!"
Still nothing.
Okay, knowing Dumbledore it has to be some kind of food. "licorice!"
" Sassafras bars!"
The Gryffin moved.
"He really needs to get out more," Harry muttered to himself as he entered the headmaster's office. As usual, the pictures of the previous headmasters were sleeping in their frames. A few actually seemed to have migrated to one large frame and were involved in a chess match between a sour looking old woman and a man who was a hundred if he was a day.
"Hey, Fawkes," he said, patting the Phoenix on the head. He chirped appreciatively, a gentle note that calmed some of Harry's anxiety.
"To what do I owe this visit, Mr. Potter?" Dumbledore asked from the other side of the room.
Harry jumped. He hadn't seen the man sitting in a chair by the fireplace, even though he had to have walked right past him. "Hello, Professor Dumbledore. I hope I'm not disturbing you."
Dumbledore smiled, and gestured to a chair across from him. "Nonsense, Harry. I seldom get visitors here unless they bear bad news. Please, sit. Would you like some tea?"
Harry shook his head. "No thank you. I was wondering if I could ask you about Ms. Elvbow."
"Ah. Ms. Elvbow is perfectly all right, Harry. She was returned home a few hours after you left her."
Harry was confused. "Why would you let her go back to the Muggle world, Professor? Isn't she one of us?"
"She has to make that choice herself, Harry."
"But what if she hurts someone?" He remembered vividly blowing up his aunt.
The headmasters voice softened slightly. " If we find she has no control over her abilities, then she will be taken by the ministry, but until then it is important to give her the choice. Unlike most wizards, she has no knowledge of what she is, and she is no longer a child whose choices can be made for them. She will decide what is best, of that I'm very sure."
"But she's been gone for almost two weeks-"
"Harry," Dumbledore leaned forward and rested a hand on his students shoulder. "Nothing has happened to her. The ministry is making sure of that. She has the means with which to contact us if and when she is ready too. Now, I believe you are late for Divinations."
Dumbledore watched as Harry left his office, then sank back into his thoughts. He'd hoped that Marian would have made contact by now. The reports from the ministry stated that she had returned to her normal life without incident, and seemed to be under no threat. He wondered if she would contact them, or if she had decided to forget everything she'd seen and experienced. He would have guessed her to be stronger than that, and time was running out. The cold war between the light and dark was escalating into a hot one. The disappearances were beginning again, more slowly than before. There were rumors of dark meetings being held on the continent. If they went to war she would be drawn into it whether she wanted to be or not. They couldn't leave her defenseless in the Muggle world.
"Make your decision, Marian," he muttered into the fireplace. "And please make it soon."
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