Hey guys! Here's another chapter! I know that my updated skills are little to be desired, so thank you for sticking around.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for Blake. Anything that looks somewhat familiar probably isn't mine.
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The ride from Devon to Nottingham was a pleasant ride for some. The scenery was nice, but you could hardly see it through the constant blur of traffic cars going past through the bus windows. The refreshments were always a little sketchy for the Knight Bus typical food. The best part about the ride would probably be the peacefulness.
Although the Knight Bus could hardly be associated with peacefulness, you could always count on Sundays being quiet.
I took this time, the first Sunday I was in England, to reflect. Well, to be more precise; I took the trip to Nottingham's Church of Christ to study and read through the chapters that the odd assortment of Weasley's had assigned for that day. The trip back was my reflection time.
I'm ashamed to admit that I rarely thought of God on that trip from Devon. I went to church as though I was in a trance, acting purely out of habit.
For the past week I had been in a whirlwind of changing occurrences. Back home in Kansas I was surround by my family of Godly churchgoers who would always pray before every meal and would attend church regularly on Wednesdays and Sundays. But here, in Harry Potter Land, the family I was constantly surrounded by were witches and wizards, who never said grace for any reason and never attended services. It was easy for me to pretend that I was in a dream. One in which God never existed. So for me to travel to church was only habit. I had waken up and thought, 'Well it's Sunday, time to go to church', and had given no thought as to why I was going to church or what I was to do at church.
To say that I was overwhelmed with embarrassment and guilt when I arrived would be an understatement. I was meeting some of the nicest people anyone would ever meet and only ten minutes earlier I had been studying methods of steaming newts eyes for various potions.
I was even more ashamed when I had to lie to their faces, inside a church, when asked why I was visiting. How do you tell anybody, Christians or not, that you magically appeared into existence at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry?
To make matters worse, the sermon that day was over 'Doing the Work of Christ', which consisted of a list of sins, witchcraft being one of them.
Deuteronomy 18:10-12: 'There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.'
That was the first time since I had been baptized that I did not partake of the communion. As I sat there listening to Westly Bannon give his sermon over the works of Jesus Christ, all I could think of was my shame and my guilt for participating in witchcraft when it is an abomination against Christ.
For the next three days I put aside my magical requirements and focused only on God. I went to the library and stayed there for hours, scouring over the Bible and other biblical texts and references looking for answers. The King James Version of The Holy Bible uses the actual text 'witch' and 'wizard' as well as 'that useth divination', which leads me to think that any kind of magic which is used without the grace of God is an abomination to God. I could find no other text written from the words of God that said otherwise, therefore I came to another conclusion: that I was an abomination to God.
I do not pride myself with being a good Christian. In fact if I was being completely honest, I'm pretty bad at being a Christian, especially with the whole becoming-a-witch thing, but the next two days after that, I devoted all of my time to God.
I felt so horrible about being an abomination, that I went into a frenzy. I read The Bible, or at least tried to, I was so anxious I couldn't really read anything. I just stared at the words and turned the pages. I rarely ate, I couldn't sleep, and I never took a shower, as gross as that sounds, all I did for two days was pray, 'read', and sit in Percy's old bedroom, staring at the walls and ignoring the constant knocking on the bedroom door. It was in this moment that I had a premonition.
I knew God to be true. I knew Him to be omnipotent and powerful. And if everything that happens in this world and the next is His will, then I must be in this land for a reason. He must have put me here for a reason. And if He had placed me in this world, among the witches and wizard, with myself being one also, then I must also be a witch according to His will. Therefore, if I am to do all that I can, acting with what I know to be morally correct but also being a witch, I will not be an abomination against Christ. This was the only conclusion I could come up with.
And it was with this thought that I reached another question, well actually three questions. Why did God place me here? Why did God make me a witch and place me in a world I thought to be fictional? What is my purpose?
Molly, it turns out, was practically tearing her hair out because she was so worried about me. Apparently the whole family was worried. They hardly even knew me and they thought that I had cracked. So after taking a much-needed shower and convincing them that I was sane, I ready to get back to work. And so started my training.
The training of a witch or wizard in general is difficult. But stick in five years of knowledge into one summer, and then O.W.L.s afterwards was like Ivy League College up the wazoo. I had skimped on studying the five days I was on my religious quest and so I had five days to make up for the schooling I had missed. Bill was working me like crazy, stuffing transfiguration essays in my face and potions properties down my throat. Charlie would help out whenever he wanted to, but mostly he just sat back and watched me suffer at the hands of his brothers. Fred and George seemed to get a kick out of me being a horrible witch. They would try to catch me off-guard and make me defend myself. Which looking back I am grateful for, it made me quicker with my reflexes and more wary of my surrounds, but back then all I wanted to do was kick them both in the nuts. The most surprising to me was Ron. While I thought that he would stay as far away from schoolwork as he could, he came around to help me quite often. In fact, he seemed happy that he was better at magic than I was. For that I couldn't blame him at all. Ginny on the other hand would help me with different things. She would often tell me things that would be helpful, whether it was on the curriculum or not (This manly included the Bat-Boogey Hex). She also gave me the highlights (and lowlights) of every class, teacher, student, and store etc. that I would ever come across. This was much appreciated.
All in all, the Weasley's were a helpful bunch and seem to have taken me in stride. For which I was grateful.
Thursday was Harry (and Neville's) birthday, so Ron was a flurry trying to capture Pig to tie Harry's present to his leg. At one point Ron and I had orchestrated a capture plan for Pig which involved Ron jumping on top of Pig and me tying the letter and present in place before he could escape. This escapade ended with Ron's eloquent speech: "Bloody useless bird."
I cannot begin to describe how strange it was for me to see Ron sending off his gift to Harry and for me to already know when Harry would receive it and what would cause him to wake up in time to see his gift arrive.
It was even stranger to know what Harry would be thinking.
It hadn't really hit me until that moment because up until then, the story hadn't even started. But now that it had, I was counting down the days to when I would finally get to meet Harry and Hermione.
The Weasley's noticed the I was preoccupied even though they didn't know what about. Bill had to keep yelling at me because I kept messing up spells and potions. Molly was the worst; always asking me if I was okay and if I could use something to eat. Ginny became my refuge.
Turns out Ginny is one of the most laid-back people that I have ever met, including my dad who was such a go-with-the-flow kind of guy that when the airport lost his luggage once on our way back from Florida, he sat back on the chair next to the 'Costumer Service' desk and said 'They'll get it figured out in no time'. It took them three hours to track down the luggage and two weeks more for them to send it back to us...he never complained once.
Ginny was cut from the same clothe as my father. She taught me how to pay Gobstones and Exploding Snap and we sat on her bedroom rug for hours paying games and listening to her talk about Hogwarts and Quidditch. Another thing about Ginny was that she was funny. I really shouldn't have been surprised, but I was. Maybe it was because Ginny took a small role in Harry's life before his sixth year, and even his fifth year. And whenever I heard about Ginny it always involved her fighting something, or dating someone. But Ginny had a quick wit and a sarcastic humor that fit great with me, and talking to her seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
The day after I finally successfully performed Incarcerous was the day Hermione Granger arrived at The Burrow. Aptly described in the books, Hermione was filled to the brim with knowledge and bursting with the unavoidable 'know-it-all' syndrome. I suspected that it wasn't as bad as it had been back when she was a kid. Harry and Ron's influence has clearly had an impact on her. Which, in my opinion, was a wonderful thing. Although she did occasionally correct me on my school/summer homework, I didn't mind because she honestly seemed like she only wanted to help. And I was all for her help, after all, I would need all the help I could get.
When I first met Hermione, I was in the side yard with Ron and Bill. Poor Ron was my practice dummy and kept getting tied up whenever I would perform the spell correctly. Hermione came out into the yard just in time to see me tying up her crush (not that she would let anyone know that). She had immediately went 'Spanish Inquisition' on me, leaving me startled, amused, and terrified all in on setting. After a while she seemed to have had her fill, having asked me various questions from 'Who are you?' and 'How to you like England?' to 'If I were to make a potion out of frogs eyes, an alicorn, and the bottom side of a newt's tail, what potion would I be making?' Don't ask me, I still don't know the answer.
Hermione did seem to hang more around Ron and Ginny than me, but who could blame her? I probably would do the same. A strange person comes out of nowhere and is learning six years of magic? I would be running to my friends for explanations. And Hermione was that kind of person, to want to know everything about a situation.
But I did like Hermione. In fact, in some cases, she was the only one I could stand to talk to. If I got too homesick one day, or just needed to talk about muggle things, Hermione was the one I went to. Sure, sometimes it was funny if I talked about muggle life with Mr. Weasley, but Hermione was the only one would could fully appreciate my muggle references and jokes. Well, except when I would make a reference to something that didn't exist yet, or something that was apparently strictly an American joke. Or when I said something about Eminem, and Hermione thought I was talking about the candy. She was very taken back when I started rapping 'When I'm Gone'.
In fact, that seemed to happen a lot. I would find myself singing a song that isn't out yet, or talking about a movie that doesn't exist and end up confusing everyone. That's always a sad time for me. Not only was I totally alone in that aspect, but I would have to wait until whatever it was to come out for them to understand what I was talking about. There's also the fact that they still can't know that I'm from the future and a completely different universe. This whole situation was just super confusing. And honestly, that whole summer I was just waiting until I could go back to Hogwarts and see Dumbledore again, that I didn't even really get to know anyone. So even though I talked to everyone, except for maybe Percy and the twins, they seemed rather elusive that summer, I still didn't feel close to any of them.
I guess I just didn't appreciate the amazing opportunity I had been giving because I was too busy thinking about how I was going to get back home.
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