In the two weeks before Severus was set to arrive on the first day of September, Emily tried to come to terms with her letter and the changes it brought. If she had been able, she would have dug into research about Hogwarts and wizardry and the Ministry of Magic. But information was unfortunately few and far between. It's not like the library stocked up on books about some unknown wizarding boarding school. And her mother was less than forthcoming with answers.
"Did you know Dad could do magic when you met him?" Emily asked over dinner. Her mother shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Did he show you?"
Noelle let the questions hover in the air.
But Emily kept pushing. "When did you find out?"
"Emily, please."
"Who else knows?"
"Assez!" Noelle slammed her fork against her plate with an echoing clang, and the room went silent. Emily's face paled, and Noelle took a deep breath. She softened as she looked back at her daughter. "No one else knows. And they mustn't know."
"But —"
"This is a secret, Emily. I won't discuss it any further."
The house felt buried under the weight of secrets. Emily was burdened with an insatiable curiosity about questions with no answers, burdened by knowledge and loneliness and so many secrets.
That was the last time she brought it up.
By the time Severus came back, Emily's bags were packed and waiting at the front door. Each time Noelle walked past them, she stifled sobs, but they only increased Emily's anticipation.
And on that first day in September, she was ready. Her mother didn't greet Severus at the door, and when Emily went to leave, Noelle was nowhere to be found, though she could hear the echo of stifled sobbing from the kitchen. When the door shut behind them, the sound stopped, and they were met with an uncomfortable silence.
"So what is Hogwarts?" she finally asked, walking in step with Severus as they moved from the front terrace.
"A school."
"Where is it?"
"In Scotland."
"How come nobody's seen it?" she asked, and he scoffed in reply. Emily seemed surprised he was a teacher with so little patience.
When they approached the edge of the path, Severus grabbed her forearm, and she felt her body being forced violently in every direction as the view of her house melted away in front of her.
She couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything. She couldn't tell where her body was, couldn't feel anything except her stomach being forced up her throat, spinning and spinning in every direction at once until they suddenly stopped.
It took her a while to regain her balance, and she leaned against her trunk as a brace. Her arm was pins and needles before the feeling came back to it. Even still, it took a moment for her mouth to be wet enough to squeak out, "What was that?"
The lantern-lined cobblestone street seemed to stretch out infinitely in front of her in every direction, crammed to each kerb with people. Men and women were dressed in elaborate robes not unlike Severus's, though in vast varieties of colour and pattern, and trailing behind them were children ranging from near-infant to her age and older, wearing t-shirts and washed-out denim. Among them, Severus stood out like a sore thumb, a black shadow amidst the rainbow of colours and the daylight. The shopfronts they stood in front of were adorned with large windows, lit with displays — some selling books and parchment, some animals, and others yet selling broomsticks and cauldrons.
Where were they?
"Diagon Alley," Severus said, the announcement blasé. It didn't explain how they had gotten here, but Emily appreciated having a name for the place.
The buildings were all large, casting long shadows onto the worn cobblestones. One in particular stood above the others with a shimmering marble exterior that reflected the sunlight. Its slanted slope contrasted against some of the finer, straighter facades of the other buildings. The aged engraving on the outside read Gringotts Bank, the letters etched in thin capitalized font.
Severus pushed her in the direction of the bank. "Come."
Emily crossed the threshold into the building and felt the temperature fall. She shivered against the cold, wondered how anyone could stand it. Severus did not seem to mind.
The inside was vast and open, and her footsteps echoed between the marble walls. There were tall counters lining the walls, where multitudes of grotesque creatures with wrinkly skin and sharp teeth and pointed ears sat. They looked like something out of her nightmares. She dared not ask what they were.
The creature stared down at them in silence, watching as Severus approached the counter. It held a quill in its sharp claw.
"A withdrawal needs to be made from the vault of Julian Prince," Severus said and held out a silver key.
"By whom?" the creature asked, eyes focusing on her, like it could sense her fear. Its voice was deep and gravelly, reverberating against the vastness of the bank's insides. It did not take the key.
"His daughter."
The creature made a face to himself, his features scrunching up as if in disgust. "Unfortunately, Mister Prince's vault is... inaccessible at present term."
"This girl is his daughter," Severus argued, "and the rightful inheritor to the contents of that vault."
"If you have no further business —" The creature waited for Severus to rebut again, but he did not.
There was a silence that passed between them; then Severus huffed and reached into the pocket of his robes. He pulled out a dull, bronze key and reached up to hand it to the creature.
He was waved on to the left where another creature of similar likeness called him over onto a moving platform. It, too, requested to see the key before handing it back to Severus.
"You will wait here," Severus told her, and she wished he hadn't because whatever lay past the platform couldn't have been any worse than being left alone in a room full of these creatures.
Their beady eyes watched her every move, even as she stepped away from the counter, moving off to the side and out of the way. Under her breath, she cursed Severus for abandoning her there.
He returned with the creature shortly thereafter, and Severus thrust a small, jingling change purse into her hand.
"What's this, then?" she asked, but he didn't answer. She followed him out the door without another word.
As she left the bank, the sunlight was garish against her eyes, which had grown accustomed to the dark of Gringotts, but she was grateful for the way it warmed her skin.
If Emily had the chance, she would have stayed here forever. Diagon Alley had everything she could need — stores and shops that sold clothes and food and books. There was so much to look at, and the streets were lined with other kids just as excited as she was. She loved the way her footsteps echoed off the cobblestones with each step. The sweet smell of ice cream wafted through the air from a small corner shop; Emily was tempted to ask Severus if they could stop, but she had a feeling she knew what the answer would be. Instead she just admired it through the front window as they walked past.
Severus pushed her in the direction of a small, crooked shop. The sign above the door read, in peeling gold letters, Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since 382 BC. She wondered how anything could possibly be so old. The shop certainly didn't look new, but it certainly didn't look like it had been there for a millennium.
"You'll get your wand in there."
"Do I just pick one out or...?" When she turned around, he was gone.
She entered the small building and coughed as a reflex, dust swimming around her with each step she took inside. As she closed the door behind her, its bell tinkled, breaking the silence that resounded within the shop. "Um… excuse me?"
She glanced around the shop, each wall running with long, square boxes. She could barely make out a logo through the layers of dust, but as she reached to wipe one clean, she saw the cursive O.
"Yes, how may I help you?" A bony, white haired man stood at the counter, his thin fingers tapping gently against the surface. He had silvery eyes that examined Emily with a sort of strange curiosity.
Emily jumped and let out a surprised squeak, jumping back from the walls like she had just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. She wiped the dust from her finger onto her jeans before he could see it.
The man paused for a moment, then answered his lingering question. "Ah, of course; you're here for a wand! Yes, when you're looking for a wand, Mr. Ollivander is most certainly the one to see. Lovely, just lovely." A tape measure with silver markings floated out from the dusty drawer, and he asked, "Wand arm?"
She hesitated, looking at both hands, unsure of which was the wand arm. Was it the dominant arm? Or were things backwards here?
"Which is it you write with, my dear?" he asked, softly, as if sensing her confusion.
"Right."
The man, Mr. Ollivander, she assumed, measured the length of her arm, following his tape measure as it rounded her figure, muttering a little, "Hm", every now and again. He began to hum to himself as he returned to the rear of the store, coming back moments later with a long green box. "Try this," he said, handing the contents of the box, a pale, pinkish coloured wand, to her. "Redwood and unicorn hair. Ten inches." As she stood with the thing in her hands, unsure of what exactly she was supposed to do with it, he prodded, "Go on, give it a wave."
It felt warm in her hands before she even moved, and it pulsed with her like it had a heartbeat to match her own. Once she waved it, it was like she was floating. The wand's tip erupted in a fitful of blue and copper sparks that flew through the air around them.
This felt right.
Finally.
"Interesting," Mr. Ollivander started with a smile. "You know, it's not terribly common to connect with the right wand on the first try. It often takes two or three, sometimes more." He took the wand back from her, replacing it gently in its box. "The wand chooses the wizard — or witch, as the case may be — so even I never know how it's to go."
Emily smiled while Mr. Ollivander jotted down notes on a small piece of receipt paper, his quill dancing in a flurry of feathers with each mark. "As a matter of fact, I remember every wand I've ever sold, my dear. The last such instance was a twelve inch blackthorn with dragon heartstring, a most powerful wand… most powerful, indeed, as is always the way." He paused, glancing back down at the paper once or twice more before ripping it from the stack. Ever so slightly, he shook his head before he continued, "But enough about that. I'll need your name, please, and seven Galleons."
She pulled out the change purse Severus had given her. Were Galleons the gold ones? She hesitantly took seven of them from within the bag and set them on the counter, and answered, "Emily Prince."
Upon hearing her name, Mr. Ollivander seemed to stop short. "Prince? Why, yes, that was it. Dragon heartstring and blackthorn… Julian Prince." He paused, taking the coins, and he seemed to almost shudder. "Most peculiar..."
"That was my dad," she said and smiled.
Ollivander's lips pursed, his eyes dancing across her face. "Well, then, I wish you nothing but goodness, Miss Prince. I hope you and this wand bring out the best in each other."
When Emily walked out of Ollivanders, the wand box held tightly in her grasp, Severus stood waiting, an owl in a cage resting on the ground next to him.
"There's a full trolley waiting for you," he said, and she was admittedly impressed by his efficiency.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing to the owl.
The bird looked like the one that had delivered her letter, with brown speckled feathers and big yellow eyes. It sat quietly in its cage, pecking its beak against the metal bars.
Severus thrust the cage into Emily's arms, nearly knocking the wand box from her grip.
"An owl," he replied coolly, "to use to communicate with your mother."
Emily wasn't sure her mother would much want to receive letters from her daughter at magic boarding school.
The owl looked up at her with large circular eyes, his smallish body set in the centre of the cage. Guardedly, she moved a finger to just near the bars of the cage, waiting to sense the bird's reaction. She half-expected him to snap at her, but he nudged his beak gentle against her skin.
"I like him," Emily said, rubbing his small feathers. "Thanks."
Severus didn't hear her — or perhaps neither noticed nor cared. He walked her outside of Diagon Alley, through a small pub at the street's fore. He handed her a ticket and rolled her now-filled trolley over to her.
"What's this?" She glanced over the ticket in her hand, and felt her body lurch, the sensation somehow much less painful the second time around. When she looked up from the ticket, they were in a dark alleyway of a populated train station. Kings Cross, she remembered. She had come here before with her mother.
"The train leaves promptly from Platform 9 ¾. Run straight at the wall between the platforms, and you'll arrive at the station."
Before she could ask him to repeat his directions, he was gone again.