Our story begins with pain and noise and movement. If you've ever been knocked unconscious, you know what this is like. Blinking my eyes open, I was looking at pavement centimetres away from my face. My vision was blurry and dark and the road was hot on my skin. The whole right side of my body hurt like a bruise, just aching and tired but probably nothing broken. And the noises. I only registered it as loudness at first. Then voices, shouts of anger and panic mingling like the shy kids at a party. Uncertain of who was who and who should be doing what. I felt myself move, but I wasn't making myself move. In hindsight, I recognize I was being moved by someone, but at the time I just felt the movement of it as if I was being pulled by some magnetic force from the sky. I thought I was floating toward heaven, but I guess I was just turned over. You're not supposed to do that – move someone who might have a spinal injury. I didn't, but still.

"Come on, come on," said a desperate voice. "Please be alright." My eyes focused on a man in a rumpled suit, holding me close to his chest.

"I- I think I'm good," I choked out. My voice felt strange in my throat – high and small. I felt the man breathe a sigh of relief. As he helped me to my feet and checked me for injuries, I looked up at him. He was huge. I mean his body. It seemed way bigger than it should have been. It would make for a nice, clean story if this was the person you're imagining, but (unfortunately for both of us) size is relative. As I got my bearings and took in some of my surroundings on the city street, I discovered with unease that he was not too big. I was too small.

"Do you know your parents' phone number?" I didn't like the question. It set a cold weight in my gut, like I knew why he was asking but didn't want to.

"It's okay," I said distractedly. "I know where I am. I'm not far from home." I did not know where I was and (based on the English accent we were both speaking in) I was very far from home. I walked away before he could object and I think he had somewhere important to be or he would have pursued me. I was several blocks away before I had the guts to glance at my reflection in a shop window. Not many people will have the experience of looking into a mirror and seeing a different person than they would have less than an hour before. I just stared at it. Many of my features had stayed the same. My long brown hair, olive green eyes, and hollow face reminded me so much of who I'd been that morning, with the minor difference that they were now being worn by an eleven year old boy. I'm dreaming. That's the obvious first thing you think when you abruptly become a different person. I could feel my clothes and pinch my skin, but I've had dreams where I could do those things too. I stood there staring at my face like an idiot for several minutes before I decided it would be better to do something, dream or not.

I walked into a nearby cafe and reached my hand in my pocket, praying to find money. By some miracle, I pulled out a five pound note. I bought a coffee, sat down at a table, and began rifling through my other pockets, hoping to find some inkling of who I now was. I found a few packets of salt, a tiny baby doll, and a letter with a very familiar seal. I smiled. A fellow Harry Potter fan. I turned over the envelope, expecting the usual "Mr. H. Potter, Cupboard under the stairs etc etc". Instead, the words that greeted me were:

Mr. Branchus Ash

Side of the Street

Charing Cross Road

London

Is it too obvious to say 'I'm in the Harry Potter universe'? I'd watched enough anime to know what this might mean. Did I die? My mother's voice, a car horn, and the screeching of tires played in my memories. God, I hope I'm in a coma. In fact, let's go with that. I'm in a coma. Makes more sense than my soul being sent to a different universe. Still, if I was in a coma and having a very realistic dream, I was going to make it a good one. I looked down at the envelope in my hand.

Now how do I get there?

x x x

I stepped out onto the sidewalk. The name of the street sounded familiar to me. Charing Cross Road. It was an innocuous street somewhere in London. What are the odds this is the street the Leaky Cauldron is on? I began scanning the people walking down the street, trying to focus my attention on what they were wearing. After some time, I spotted what I was looking for. There was a middle aged woman walking down the street in ankle length robes and a tall, pointed hat. Please be a witch going to the Leaky Cauldron and not just a random hippie. I waited a few moments before I began tailing her from a short distance.

She eventually entered a building that was exactly how The Leaky Cauldron was described in the books. Initially, it seemed like an old, broken down shop, but – upon closer inspection – it was clearly the famous quaint pub from the story. It occurred to me that I was lucky the witch was walking toward the pub and not away from it. It also occurred to me that lucky breaks rarely last. Again I waited a few moments before entering behind the woman, not wanting to seem like I'd been following her. I approached the man behind the bar (who I vaguely remembered was named Tom) and spoke more anxiously than I'd intended to.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but I got this letter and I was told to come through here, but I'm not really sure how to…" I trailed off, unsure how to finish my sentence in a way that would imply I knew more than it would make sense for an eleven year old in my position to know.

"Shouldn't you be here with your parents?" He sounded genuinely concerned and I realized that I may have to deal with this problem a lot.

"Oh, they…" Quick, say something normal. "They trust me to be out alone." He seemed skeptical, so I hastily added "and I'm meeting someone in Diagon Alley." He must have been relatively satisfied with that answer because he nodded and started leading me to the back of the pub. How am I better at talking to people as an eleven year old boy than I was as a fifteen year old girl?

I have stepped through the gates at Diagon Alley and I can confirm: it's everything you imagine it is and more. Magic is reality for the people walking this street. Here, the mundane and the wondrous swap places. In Diagon Alley, a woman wearing runes and a large pointed hat is barely worth a second glance. A kid wearing ripped jeans and a zip-up hoodie, on the other hand, might get a couple looks.

My first order of business was to go to Gringotts to see if I could get my remaining £3 converted into wizard money. I had never actually been inside a bank, let alone a wizard bank, so I wasn't entirely sure how this process was meant to go. Stepping into the bank felt somewhat unnerving, like that feeling looking over an edge, as if I might randomly try to rob the place. I approached a goblin, who looked down at me over the tall desk.

"I'm sorry. I've never done this before," I said, trying to exude 'small child in need of assistance' energy. "I need to trade some muggle money for wizard money." The goblin (the plaque with his name on it was obscured) pulled a form out from under a stack of papers.

"How much?" he asked, putting a quill to the form.

"Um… three pounds sterling?" He stopped when he heard my answer and peered down at me over his glasses. Sighing, he placed the form back under the stack of papers. Then, he opened a drawer in his desk and rifled through it, producing a slight jingling noise. Then he produced a small velvet purse and reached his hand over the desk.

"Coins, please," he said simply. I quickly dove my hand into my pocket and retrieved the money, placing it in his hand. In return, he handed me the little coin purse. "Next time," he said, "just go to a shop and ask them. There's no need to come here for such a small exchange." My face went hot and I'm sure I was blushing.

"Right," I said. "Sorry about that." Then I turned on my heel and walked out. Well, gonna be thinking about that moment for the rest of my life.

I was certainly thinking about it while searching for a post office. I had no money to buy school supplies nor any way to get a ticket for the Hogwarts express nor even any way to get to King's Cross Station. I figured my best bet for getting out of this pickle would be to write right back to Hogwarts. I was relieved, upon arriving at the post office, that there was only a short line. In the post office, there was a small stand with the most recent newspaper. July 31st, 1991. I'm in the past. Harry Potter hasn't gone to Hogwarts. At midnight this morning, Harry met Hagrid. They might be in Diagon Alley right now. I decided I wouldn't try to find them. I needed to get used to the idea that Harry Potter was a real person so I wouldn't act like a crazy person if I ever did meet him. He's just a random kid. Then I was at the front of the line. I picked a postcard from the display on the desk.

"I would like to send a letter to Hogwarts, please," I said, hoping I was cute enough to mitigate the fact that I looked like I'd been hit by a car (which, obviously, I had been). "I don't suppose you have something I can write with?" The man behind the counter obliged and I wrote a quick note on the card.

Thank you for acceptance letter. No money for required items. Please advise.

- Branchus Ash

p.s. currently suffering severe amnesia

It was technically true. I didn't know anything about this kid I now was. I gave the man three knuts to send the letter. It seemed like a very low amount to me, but I'd never sent a letter by owl before so I didn't really have a frame of reference. As I left the post office, there was a split second when I thought I'd picked Potter's face out of the crowd, but he was out of my sight as soon as I'd noticed him. I went to the ice cream parlour and bought myself a small chocolate ice cream cone. As I sat eating it, I wondered how long it would take for someone to get my letter. I also wondered if I should have stayed in the post office, but I'd been getting hungry and hadn't wanted to wait. It took only a couple hours, but the time went by gruellingly with little to do but look at things I couldn't afford. Eventually, I was approached by a tall witch with black hair. Minerva McGonagall was exactly how the books described her.

"Are you Branchus Ash?" she asked. Something about her cadence reminded me of my mother in a way that made my heart ache. I just nodded. "My name is Professor McGonagall. In your letter, you said you're experiencing amnesia. You've been forgetting things?" I screwed up my face a bit as I tried to think of a way to explain myself.

"More like I've forgotten things," I said slowly. "Most things. I- this is maybe unbelievable. I don't remember anything. I don't know who my parents are." It's weird, not knowing the life you're currently living but having full memory of the life you used to live. It can really give a person amnesia imposter syndrome. I could tell McGonagall was barely suppressing a more panicked expression.

"We're going to take you to a hospital," she said in a surprisingly calm voice. "You'll be alright." I really would have preferred not to go to the hospital, but I couldn't think of a good reason to not take an amnesiac orphan child to see a medical professional, so I didn't object.

x x x

The doctor – healer, I reminded myself – was stumped. Apparently, there was nothing physically or magically wrong with me, aside from massive bruising from getting hit by a car (which was mended easily). Still, I would have to stay in the hospital for some time so they could monitor my condition.

"Can I still go to school?" I asked the healer, not wanting to spend my whole coma in St. Mungo's.

"It should only take a week or two to determine that you're stable." He said it almost grudgingly, as if he really thought they should be keeping me longer. "But if you have any head pain or dizziness, you should go to the school nurse right away." I nodded. Just as he looked like he was going to say something else, a member of the staff approached him and asked to speak to him outside. He was gone for several minutes before he reappeared holding a box.

"Your school supplies," he said, placing the box on the table next to the hospital bed.

"At least I'll have lots to read while I'm here," I said. I was genuinely relieved that I wouldn't show up to Hogwarts with no idea how anything works. The books did not get into enough detail about the specifics that I'd be comfortable just guessing at this stuff. The healer sighed and sat on the chair next to the bed. The pity on his face made my insides squirm.

"There's no easy way to tell you this," he said. "We cannot find any records of your parents. We can't find a birth certificate that matches you."

"What does that mean?" It came out a little more frustrated than I'd intended. "I don't exist?" Really, it probably meant that I wasn't put in the body of someone who already existed. I vaguely wished I'd stuck around to ask the car driver if I'd appeared in the street out of nowhere.

"There are several possible explanations," he responded, trying to be calming. "It might just be a filing error." He didn't sound like he thought it was a filing error. "After a couple weeks, if your parents don't come forward to claim you, you'll be put in an emergency foster home for magical children."

I didn't know what I thought was going to happen. Maybe that I'd live at the Leaky Cauldron like Harry did before his third year. But he had actual living relatives, so it wasn't really the same situation. Still, the details weren't that important.

I'm going to Hogwarts!