I could have prepared her for this.
The accusation plays on repeat, an endless litany in my head. I shove away the thought; tell myself it wouldn't have helped. It really wouldn't have. Better to bully my brain into enjoying the sights; there's plenty to see. But I'm all too aware that alongside me Mother is wide-eyed and tense and I'm afraid too, scared she'll retreat into herself in that way I've never understood.
We talked over everything, again and again. But I could have done so much more. I could have prepared her. Let her in on my unofficial practice sessions, maybe. Too late now.
Mother never hoped for anything more than the impossible. She's never said it aloud, exactly, but it's easy to see she wanted everything in our shared life to stay the same, to move at more or less the old pace. As though we've ever enjoyed the luxury of normal. So I kept my silence until McGonagall came, and though she would never stop me from pursuing an opportunity, Mother didn't resign herself to my departure until there was no choice.
Now she's on edge and I can't blame her. If King's Cross was bustling and noisy, Platform 9 and ¾ is a sensory overload, an explosion of color and steam and firecrackers and the displeased yowls of cats winding underfoot. Voices, rising and falling in a vaguely pleasing disharmony: shrill, youthful—confident, or what passes for it. Adrenaline and trepidation mingled—the latter, mostly parents bidding their darlings goodbye for the school year—rise to a crescendo of wild excitement. Laughter. Along one side of the platform, a blinding wall of scarlet. On the other, the press of people. Oh, and somewhere in between, the laws of physics torn apart and redefined before our eyes.
There are more things in heaven and in earth, Mother, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. I probably should've warned you.
Far too late now. Magic sets many things in motion. I am merely one of them.
Overhead a whistle blows, and the mass of milling mages abandons its inertia and surges forward. My hasty goodbye, caught away by the crowd and the hoots of caged owls, isn't anything like enough. So I write my first letter before the train stops. I tell her the little things: the prefects rushing through the corridors, the fluorescent gecko in the next compartment, the hunched-shoulder shyness of the other first-years. I tell her about the strange taste in the air: a tinge of nutmeg and fir, something less definable. I try to capture it in the words Mum would use, a vivid eddy of articulated feelings, but only succeeding in offering my own: magic, whatever else it is, is half stimulation, and half the unfulfilled thirst for it. I leave out the giant escaped scorpion, exploding card games, and the unsettling awareness that some twisted soul invented pickled-egg jelly beans.
I also don't mention that this is the best day of my life.
Faintly pleased with myself regarding the lack of smudges—first time using quill and ink—I lean back against soft leather to scan the parchment. It doesn't take long for the satisfaction to evaporate. Reading over the words they seem trite, impersonal—in other words, me—but I know Mother will read it and see all the things I didn't say. Then she'll laugh a little, cry, and curl up on the sofa with a book. We all have our coping mechanisms. She got through Shakespeare, Austen and a good part of Dickens that way.
I'll trust Uncle John to keep an eye on her.
The sky is a deep navy blue when we pull in to the station, but the distantly lit castle is all the more brilliant for that. There's something magnetic about it, even from this distance, as though this single, grandiose edifice can somehow sweep away eleven years of dust and memories condensed into an old London flat. The giant of a man who meets us is twelve times my size, sports a wild brown beard shot through with grey, and appears to be clothed in the skins of at least half a dozen grizzly bears. But there are also smile lines in his enormous face, which I can just make out in the flickering lights of the station. There is good humor, too, in the booming voice with which he introduces himself.
Hagrid shepherds us down the bank and into a waiting fleet of small rowboats and steps into one himself. I watch curiously to see how the tiny vessel bears his weight, but it is as steady as though set into solid concrete. As soon as he settles into the front vessel we take off at a smooth glide, although no one is rowing and there's no visible current. The oars move themselves and a light slap echoes over the lake, softer cousin to the shattering chime of icicles Mum and I take turns breaking off the eaves in winter. The recollection falls strangely upon my mind, entirely at odds with the mildness of the late summer air—early autumn, actually, but Britain is deviating from its usual habits this year.
I tear my gaze from the star-strewn sky to peer into rippling depths of black water. Mysterious, fathomless, quite possibly full of creatures that shouldn't exist and that would quite happily snap off any appendage I care to trail in the water... thrilling. Away from Mother, I'm free to savor the slow and unfamiliar burn of happiness flooding through me.
Ahead lie answers, freedom, magic. As far as I'm concerned those words mean the same thing.
As we draw closer to the castle, light from the enormous arching windows plays across our faces and I'm able to catch a glimpse of those I'm sharing a boat with. A ginger-haired boy and a girl, whispering behind me. Twins, perhaps. No, cousins. Next to me a tiny girl with dark, curling hair and mischievous brown eyes. She catches my eye and gives me a wink. Caught off my guard, I return only a small smile.
There's the grind of wooden keels on sand as the boats lurch onto the gravelly shoreline. One tall, dark-haired boy is on shore even before Hagrid's shout booms out, the force of his leap threatening to send his boatmates pitching back onto the glassy lake. The boy grins, running a hand through his already tousled hair as though expecting applause.
"All righ', everyone out!" We follow the groundskeeper up a sweeping lawn to the castle. A nearly-full moon overhead throws serene light on the scene and I glance around, taking in as much as possible. The sloping path to the castle obscures most of the view to the left and right, but I catch a dark smudge off to one side. At the same time my ears pick up a rustle of wind through treetops. A forest!
Definitely not in London anymore…
Probably in Scotland, to judge from the speed and direction of the train. The headmistress was fairly reticent about Hogwarts' location, but—
A howl rings out in the distance, and I shudder with delight as I mount the granite steps. Hagrid catches my eye, misreading the gesture. The gamekeeper has already paused at the top of the great flight of stairs to the entranceway of the castle, massive hand resting on the great bronze door knocker.
"Nothin' in the forest ter be afraid of," he says comfortingly, with a pat on the shoulder that nearly knocks me over. "'Least, not 'til yer get too close…"
Most of the first-years huddle a little closer at these words, but someone behind me snickers and mutters something I don't make out. The culprit is the dark-haired boy with the lopsided smile, standing at my elbow. Whatever the remark, it sends the red-haired duo into hysterics, and he looks rather pleased with himself. None of them are worth the oxygen it would take to process a reply, so I merely rub my bruised shoulder and give Hagrid a wry smile.
I pause on the massive smooth-edged stone steps to observe as my classmates-to-be file inside. It's so easy to tell who is who—to those with magical siblings and parents, the ancient castle is a well-worn storybook. They nudge each other, gesture up staircases, exchange knowing giggles as flashes of white appear at random from solid stone, disappearing the moment we stop to get a closer look. These were the chief noisemakers at Kings Cross, I recognize now—the ones putting on façades for parents and friends, concealing their nerves behind boisterous excitement. Somehow, I don't doubt the dark-haired boy and his friends are among them.
In a couple of hours the castle will already feel like home to them. They'll be the old friends swapping tales beside the fireplace, while those sitting timidly on the sidelines venture remarks about football and Disney channel. Most of the Muggle-borns aren't bothering to hide their disquiet…or, like me, they're still wrapped in starry-night wonder. A few shoulder their cloaks more tightly around themselves and stare up at the vaulted crystal windows high overhead. I brush my fingers against a granite archway and shiver with fierce joy.
Hogwarts is more than a school, I sense already. It's more than a secret club. It's something exclusive…but not in the way my life with Mum was. This is isolation with a purpose. This is…history. This means something. This place has secrets. And I made it here.
The entrance hall empties to the left into an enormous dining chamber, where a rising murmur of voices indicates that the majority of the students from the train are already gathered. I follow my classmates inside.
