Wednesday, 1968, March the 8th
It's ironic. It's awful.
I grew up loving Harry Potter. Knew the plotline inside and out. Did all those quizzes on Pottermore to be sorted or to select my wand type. Joked with my friends about what it'd be like to have magic, how amazing, and spectacular it would be. I grew into an adult eventually and would still read the books now and again for nostalgia's sake. Read fanfiction to pass the time, or escape the stress of adult life for a few hours. In none of those stories or childhood fantasies of Magic being real had I ever entertained the thought of not having it. It sucked that magic wasn't real, I'd think and feel slightly disappointed but was able to accept it in the end because no one else had it either. Then I somehow came here.
Here is a dirty neighborhood called Cokeworth, a small outdated brownstone in a row of identical cookie-cutter residences.
Here is a fictional town that should not exist in the 1960 United Kingdom.
Here I am not me but someone else.
One of my favorite television series to watch when I wasn't working on the weekend was a show called Lucifer. In that world, people in hell are locked in a nightmare of their own making. Tortured for eternity by their mind.
In the words of the Italian poet Petrarch,
"Man has no greater enemy, than himself"
I am stuck in a body under the name of one Petunia 'Horse-Face' Evans. I'm a fucking muggle in magical Britain. ...if Lucifer exists, fuck you okay?
Entry ends here- pages liberally smeared and stained with teardrops.
Case File One: PetuniaPetunia
"Fly Me to the moon~"
The surprisingly clear record player in the corner crooned with a jaunty melody as the body of one Petunia Evans sat trying to curl as tightly into herself as she could.
"Let me plaaay, among the stars~"
Her voice rising along with Frank Sinatra's was shaky and cracked a few times as one's voice tends to do after crying. Her hair was tangled down her back, bangs limp on her forehead and stray wisps of dirty blonde hair sticking to her cheeks where the tears had dried earlier. Hell who was she kidding, she was still crying even now. Hadn't stopped in over a week, which is how long she'd been here.
The view from her perch was bleak, grey smoggy sky, dirty old buildings lined up like sad soldiers in a war long lost, the thin alley-like streets had an oily grease like sheen under what weak sunlight could pierce through the clouds. Trash litters the gutters. It was desolate, sad, and not real.
Her bony knees dug into her flat chest as Petunia blinked a fresh well of tears from her eyes unable to stop herself.
She was grieving.
Was pretty sure she was locked in some kind of nightmare.
And questioned that if she wasn't dead what she'd done to have a mental break this severe.
The window sill was narrow and as such even though Petunia's frame was unforgivably slender the wood with its chipped white paint was digging into her backside.
"Fill my heart with song and let me siiing for e'er moore~"
And if she was dead and this was hell Petunia wonders what she's done that damned her.
Her head throbs dangerously and her vision swims.
No. Not Petunia. My name Is Sasha. I'm not a tiny child. I'm a grown woman. I want to wake up. The girl chokes off a sob and resists the urge to bury her face in her knobby knees. Closing her eyes only to open them to find herself still here hurts.
"Tuney?"
A soft knock on the door interrupts Frank's smooth baritone fading into a smooth big band chorus and has Sasha's posture tensing up defensively. Her already thin lips disappear as they press so hard together they ache against her teeth and her watery bloodshot baby blues glare resolutely through the glass.
She ignores the noise, hoping that whoever it is that's come to try and drag her out, will go away if ignored long enough.
Interacting with fictional creatures, that might be demons disguised within human flesh, makes her skin crawl off her body.
Despite not receiving an answer, the latch dislocates with a soft click nearly drowned out by the record player, creaking hinges squeak sorrowfully as the door swings open far enough for a small red-haired child to pop her head hesitantly around the door jab.
"Hey, Tuney, Mum said that dinner is almost ready and that we should get cleaned up and come down." Lily's voice was hesitant as she called out to her older sister. The tall blonde had been acting strangely lately - prone to long silences and violent verbal outbursts. It scared her. Lily's sister was not always kind per se her tongue was rather sharp when crossed but the vitriol the other female child of the Evans family had been spewing was not like her sister.
When Petunia doesn't move nor immediately snap for her to leave, Lily takes the chance to slowly push the door further open and inch into her sister's bedroom, taking in the messy floor with wide worried bottle-green eyes. The strewn clothes and unmade bed. Overflowing trash can and overturned desk chair. The only thing in the room that seemed even remotely in order was the pristine brass shine of the freshly polished phonograph and neatly categorized records on the shelf on the far right wall.
Pale hands clasped tightly together and against her pastel plaid shirtfront, Lily wrings her fingers nervously and tries again, "Tuney"
The pale blonde in the window is like a waif. Long and thin limbs, colored like shallow moonlight appearing sickly under the light, hallowing her form crouched in the window like a sullen gargoyle. Her hair is stringy and unwashed. Clothes wrinkled, a stain sticks out on the hem of her skirt and seeing her like this, her perfectly put-together sister has Lily on the verge of tears.
"Tuney…" Lily swallows and the continued silence has a flair of hope rising in her chest. "Tuney won't you come down and eat? Please?"
The blonde's fingernails, ragged from being chewed down to the quick, drag harshly against her skin, and the flair of pain makes Petunia angry. So very angry because it feels real and it's not.
"That's not my name," she denies, glaring up at the clouds as if they hold the answer to her problems.
Not hearing her over the music Lily speaks louder "Tuney-"
"THAT'S NOT MY FUCKING NAME!"
The harsh snap of glass giving under Petunia's small fist and a wail of pain rose above the music. The color drains from Lily's face as blood begins to platter the floor.
The eight-year-old flees the room crying for its mother, and Sasha lets out a fluent string of curses as she tries not to move her hand and breathe through the pain.
Fucking fantastic.
Several hours later Sasha is parked on a stark white bed in a depressingly outdated hospital room trying to pretend that she can't hear the crying on the other side of the white curtain sectioning off her bed from the rest of the ward. She eyes the rickety-looking contraption next to her bedside and follows it to the iv in her arm and sneers. Was this place even sanitary? Now numbed from the pain, she was getting some serious house on haunted hill vibes.
What decade was this supposed to be anyway?
"Seriously dehydrated, showing early signs of malnourishment…" the doctor's voice trails off as the crying stops long enough for a woman to tearfully call out. "She was fine a week ago! Then Petunia slowly stopped eating and had memory lapses. She acts like she doesn't even know us!"
The woman breaks down again, unable to continue and Sasha goes back to picking at the itchy medical tape on her bandages as a man speaks next sounding just as strained.
"We're not sure what to do anymore! We just thought it was a phase and acting normal would help her feel better-"
Did they seriously fucking think that because she was supposedly a child that she was deaf? Sasha smashed a window pane with her hand, not her head. She grimaces and in an effort not to think about the stitches in three of her five knuckles tunes reluctantly back into the conversation as the doctor's voice pipes up again sounding especially grave.
"Self-harm is a serious sign of mental or emotional instability…"
Sasha scoffed. Self harm my ass. Not my fault the fucking wood was rotted and the glass shattered. Normal windows don't just buckle under the pressure of a pint-sized brat. Pissed off or not she wasn't completely crazy.
...or was she? Sane people don't hallucinate living in someone else's body in a fictional place halfway across the world.
Sasha steadily ignores the obvious proof presented that the surrounding world and its happenings seemed pretty fucking legit.
"I recommend sending her to a medical professional in this field.."
Her picking grinds to a horrifying halt. Fickafrackin fuck. What era is this? Was she about to be shipped off to a looney bin? The small niggling sense of, this is real you daft cow you need to get your shit together and fast reared its ugly head, and all the air in her lungs vanishes.
Fuuuuck. A strangled wheeze left her lungs as for the first time since being here blind panic threatened to consume her.
Frantic voices, a flashlight shining in her face, the pounding sound of her frantically beating heart in her ears, and a prickling pain in her arms.
Soon she feels woozy from more than lack of air. Slowly her muscles relax and the last thing Sasha saw before drifting off was the worried tear-stained faces of Carol and Gregory Evans huddled behind the doctor tucking her into the bed.
The next time the Body of Petunia Evan woke up she was scared and had no idea where she was. Only that her parents looked tired and cried when she called out to them as Mum and Dad.
When questioned by the doctors and on-call therapist about the events of the past week she was surprised that a week had passed that she didn't remember.
She didn't remember putting her hand through a window, telling her sister that her name wasn't Petunia.
Sasha was nowhere to be found in her mind.
AN: Ahahahahaahaha...so its been like 10 years since I last posted... um... whoops? and its not even an update but a new crack fic. *nervous sweat.* All of those aren't abandoned I just went on a bad health spiral and couldn't write and after that lost all my stuff for them in old computer that decided to die so.. yeah. I'm working exclusively on google docs from now on. They're being re-read and I have to try and figure out where the hell I was going with any of those plot points.
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