On September 15th, Flight 397 from Boston to Paris began its boarding process a good thirty minutes before departure.
Dania Møller, a Danish woman with a head of coffee brown hair and a pair of dull blue eyes, rose from her seat in perfect sync with the other people around her.
She adjusted her grip on her lima-bean green carry on bag and hiked the handle of her purse higher up on her shoulder. She dragged her things through the gate with a secure sense of familiarity as she fell into line with the other passengers.
Six hours down, eight more to go.
Theoretically speaking, her flight from San Francisco to Boston wasn't half bad. There were no screaming children, no overly loud passengers making ridiculous requests to the staff onboard the plane, and no immediate signs that someone may have been sick.
But the complete and utter lack of sleep the night before and a general inability to fall asleep those six hours in the air over the continental US took its toll. Dania was practically walking down the isles of the Airbus like a zombie who was completely uninterested in brains and would much rather settle down for some piping hot caffeinated tea.
Or decaffeinated tea. Whatever helped Dania sleep.
Dania mumbled something unintelligible to herself as she scanned the countless rows of seating, trying to find the numbered row that matched the one listed on her ticket. When she finally found it, she was relieved to see that the three-seat row was still empty.
She heaved her carry-on up into the overhead compartment and crawled into the window seat. Wordlessly, she started rummaging around in her purse and pulled out her headphones, phone and neck pillow and sunk into the tight, economy class seat.
Dania switched her phone into airplane mode after sending a quick text to her parents letting them know she was on her way, and began listening to some classical music. She tilted her head to the side so that she could stare out the window at the twinkling lights of the airport against the backdrop of the night sky.
Eight more hours and she'll be touching down in Paris where she'd take a cab to the hotel where her family was waiting for her.
They'd been planning this trip for a solid year now.
She had saved up and taken a week's worth of vacation days, and her parents made arrangements with the three university students under their employment at the family flower shop in Copenhagen so they could take off for five days.
Neither Dania, nor her parents had been to France in years, and the opportunity to play the part of a tourist was something the entire Møller Family was looking forward to. And before Dania had to head back to San Francisco they were planning on taking a train Amsterdam to visit Dania's aunt for a day as well. They'd part ways at the airport there, and Dania would head back to her tiny apartment in San Francisco that she shared with two other women.
Dania closed her eyes and let her muscles relax as her music washed over her.
Just eight more hours. Eight more hours.
Surprisingly, or perhaps entirely unsurprisingly, Dania fell asleep before the plane even had a chance to take off.
She expected to stay awake at least until one of the flight attendants announced over the intercom that it was now safe to unbuckle and move about the cabin.
But Dania supposed she underestimated just how tired she was and how effective her music was in soothing her mind and cast her thoughts into oblivion.
It was a gentle sleep, one without any dreams.
And perhaps, had Dania's sleep not been interrupted, she would have woken up a little less than an hour before the plane lands, fully rested and ready to take on the day and the inevitable jet lag like the seasoned traveler that she was.
Nothing prepared her from being ripped out of her sleep by the sound of explosions.
Dania's heart lurched into her throat before she could even open her eyes. Her hands shot out and grabbed the armrests in a death grip as she pressed herself into her seat to make herself seem as small as possible. Snapping open her eyes, Dania frantically scanned her surroundings.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
The explosions went off one after another in a barrage of noise.
Something touched her arm.
Dania tore her headphones off.
"Hey, are you alright? Do you need some water or something? I can get a flight attendant."
Dania's eyes darted to the right. Blood pumped in her ears as she struggled to calm down from her adrenaline high.
A woman was sitting next to her, a very young one that appeared to be just on the cusp between adolescence and adulthood. She had twisted around in her seat so that she was facing Dania, with one hand holding onto the seat in front of her while the other rested on Dania's forearm.
"You know what," She said when Dania stayed silent, "I'm gonna call a flight attendant." and she began rising up from her seat.
"No!" Dania said a little too quickly, "No I'm fine, you don't need to call anyone."
The auburn haired woman shot her a look of disbelief but sat back down nonetheless.
Dania glanced down at the phone in her lap before she shifted around in her seat and picked it up.
"I forgot I had Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture on this playlist," Dania said with a slight laugh as she flipped the phone around and showed the screen to the woman sitting next to her.
The woman tilted her head ever so slightly and furrowed her eyebrows like she couldn't quite understand why that tidbit of information had anything to do with Dania jumping out of her sleep.
"Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer in the late 1800s. He used military weapons as musical instruments, and I guess I was playing my music too loudly and the cannon fire woke me up." Dania further explained.
"Cannon fire?" The woman asked, looking a little lost.
"Yes," Dania answered as she wrapped the aux cord around her headphones before stuffing her headphones and her phone into her purse.
The woman stared at Dania for a moment "Who puts weaponry in classical music?" she asked but before Dania could answer the woman shook her head, "Nevermind, the Russians would. Are you sure you don't need anything? I got Ibuprofen in my bag, and-"
"I'm fine," Dania insisted, but the other woman didn't look convinced. "I don't think I caught your name," Dania said in an attempt to distract the other woman.
The woman opened her mouth but whatever she was about to say was cut off by the entire world suddenly start to rattle violently.
The plane rocked from side to side like some sort of amusement park ride. Dania's hands wrapped themselves around the armrests once again as oxygen masks at every seat fell down.
Dania couldn't remember much after that. Some bright flashes of light, some screaming, and lots and lots of violent jostles that threw Dania this way and that in her seat.
Then there was a sickening crack and a lightning bolt of pain in her forehead.
Then came the haze. The Proposal. The Breakdown.
And then there was the floor, coming right at her face.
"Aaaaahaaahaaaaaaoowww…. Lort….. Alt gør ondt…."
"She's waking up! Miss. Evans is waking up!"
"Someone call Dr. Benson!"
"...Kan alle bare slukke deres mund sirener…?"
"It sounds like her speech is garbled. Is it from the head injury?"
"Hold on, I can't hear her well enough."
"Where is Dr. Benson?!"
"...Hold kæft alle sammen!"
"She's speaking gibberish."
"No no no, listen, she's speaking phonetically."
"...For fanden da også vær så stille…..."
"It sounds… almost Scandinavian"
"Does Miss. Evans know any languages other than English?"
"She's not supposed to."
Dania wasn't on the plane. She wasn't falling through the atmosphere. She wasn't drowning in the stretch of ocean between Greenland and Iceland.
No. She was in a hospital room with outdated equipment, surrounded by doctors with British, or maybe Scottish accents, and a throbbing pain that encompassed the entirety of her brain.
The lights were too blinding. She couldn't focus properly. She'd start talking to the doctors, and her mind would suddenly go blank and she'd would forget what she was even trying to say.
Occasionally she could register the utterly baffled look on their faces, but she didn't have the concentration to fully process exactly what was causing the doctors and nurses around her to be so puzzled.
It all felt like she was submerged in a dream.
A dream that was accompanied by the loud beat of the most god awful migraine she ever had the displeasure of having.
The bed beneath her didn't feel tangible, the tests the hospital staff administered to her didn't feel real, and the things people asked her were straight up outlandish.
Why was everyone talking about some "Petunia Evans"? Dania had never heard of anyone with that name before outside of fiction. Sure she knew a couple of people with the last name of Evans but never combined with the name of a flower.
Perhaps they were merely talking about the bowl of petunia that sat by the window. Maybe the elderly couple who brought them for her named them Evans. And now everyone was just going along and calling the petunias by the name of Evans.
That's what Dania thought those first few blurry days after waking up. Until her brain finally made the connection that no, the doctors and nurses were not talking about the bowl of petunias on the window sill.
They were talking about her.
They thought her name was Petunia Evans.
Dania may not have known much about her current situation, where she was or what was going on, but one thing she did know for sure was her own goddamn name.
So she corrected them.
Every time someone called her Petunia, she'd tell them her name was Dania, which prompted a confused:
"Yes, I know your name is Petunia."
To which Dania would reply "No, my name is Dania. It's spelled D-A-N-I-A."
And the response to that is always, "Petunia, you don't have to spell your name, we know it already."
"No! My name is not Petunia, it's Dania! Dania Møller! Listen, just ask my parents when they get here."
But despite all of her protests, all of her insistence that her name was truly Dania, people kept calling her Petunia.
Why? Dania didn't have a clue.
And to be frank, it was beginning to grate on her nerves.
It didn't stop at her name either. It was as if everyone Dania came into contact with was conspiring against her to make her question the series of events that led her to be hospitalized in some nameless hospital in the United Kingdom.
Or perhaps everyone Dania interacted with were delusional and terrible listeners.
They didn't even believe her about the plane crash. The doctors thought that her mind was creating falsified memories to deal with her traumatic encounter with some guy named Vernon Dursley.
Another name she couldn't quite recognize. He was clearly someone important, that much Dania could deduce based on how frequently his name came up in conversation amongst the nurses. And someone who probably did something illegal given all of the police officers and lawyers that had come to her little hospital room to collect statements from her.
Dania really wasn't sure what they were looking for her. She explained to them that she didn't know who they were talking about and that they should probably talk to someone else, but all they did was nod sagely and promise her that they were going to make sure he will face justice for the damage done to her mind.
It didn't make any sense whatsoever.
Still doesn't stop the elderly couple that visits her daily from reassuring her that they will make Dursley pay for what he did.
This was all just so crazy.
Absolutely insane.
Which is why, after a solid week of staring at the same ceiling of her hospital room, Dania decided that she was in a coma. Medically induced or otherwise.
It made sense, weirdly enough. She must have been in critical condition after the sudden loss of altitude before the plane crashed into the Atlantic ocean. She remembered something hitting her head on the way down, that's for sure.
So all of this? This was just her own personal dream world that her mind had retreated to while she recovered from her injuries in the real world.
Dania didn't know how long it would take before she woke up in the real world. She hoped it wasn't too long though, she knew that it was highly probable that her body was deteriorating with every moment she was in this dream world.
But there really wasn't anything she could do about it. After all, how does one wake themselves up from a coma?
It's just so much easier to play along with her mind's creations.
Yes, of course, her name is Petunia Evans.
Yes, of course, she was born and raised in England.
Yes, of course, her parents were that strange British couple.
Yes, of course, it was September of 1977.
Her amiability also seemed to set her doctors at ease. After two weeks of being held for observation, Dania was released with a stringent list of what she could and could not do while recovering at home.
A list that included a ban on her working for a solid six months.
So when Dania's stand-in-parents hustled her to their home in a very Charles Dickens-inspired English town, they made sure to notified whatever company she was 'working' at in London themselves that she would not be able to show up for the next half a year or so.
Dania promptly lost that job since the pre-existing condition of being a woman was a terrible thing for job security. Especially since she wasn't going to be showing up to work for the next couple of months.
That left Dania firmly confined to one small townhouse for the foreseeable future.
She didn't do much the first week or so of being 'home.' It was still too difficult for her to be outside without feeling like the sun was burning off her retinas. And even when she was inside, she needed to wear sunglasses.
But at the very least she'd managed to regain her ability to concentration more or less on any task. She could organize her thoughts now and she didn't feel like her train of thought was crashing into a brick wall every other second.
And while she still felt the pull of lightheadedness whenever she walked, at least Dania wasn't straight up fainting when she stood up anymore.
Dania spent her days cautiously wandering around the Evans household.
She'd spend a few hours each day reading with only a small ambient light and the curtains drawn, and she'd help out with some small chores she was capable of doing. Because Dania was many things, but a freeloader she was not.
She was able to fall into a comfortable routine with Mr. and Mrs. Evans.
She'd be the last to wake up in the morning because apparently jet lag and time zone changes were still a thing in her subconscious. She'd get herself ready for the day, and walk downstairs to find that Mrs. Evans already had breakfast ready and waiting on the table.
Dania would then have an amicable conversation with Mr. Evans about the state of the economy. After that, Mr. Evans would bid Mrs. Evans and her farewell as she left for work leaving Mrs. Evans and Dania to take care of what needed to be taken care of in the house.
Although, it was really Mrs. Evans who was doing all of the heavy lifting. Dania could only get away with doing the dishes or maybe putting the laundry away before Mrs. Evans shooed her back up to her bedroom, insisting that she should take the time to rest her poor injured head.
At around three o'clock every day, a couple of doctors, psychologists, and linguists would stop by for a checkup and run some cognitive, memory, and language proficiency tests.
Dania was a little confused why they seemed to be so focused on the fact that she could speak Danish.
She had told them over and over and over again that her knowledge of the Danish language wasn't something that she had recently acquired. She'd been speaking it her entire life. It was her first language after all.
But whenever Dania tried to explain that, the professionals studying her linguistic ability never seem to hear her. Or rather, they would ignore her explanation entirely and start coming up with their own theories that she had gained some sort of condition after her incident.
By the fourth in house check-in, Dania had given up trying to convince the Doctors that she wasn't a walking medical miracle.
Really, she didn't understand why they all were so giddy about it. Nor did she understand why her unconscious mind wanted English to be her native language over Danish.
Dania's group of doctors, psychologists and linguists would leave at precisely five o'clock, leaving Dania with plenty of free time afterward in which she would settle down in her room and read some books.
Then Mr. Evans would come home from work, and the whole family would all gather around the dinner table to eat. And Mr. and Mrs. Evans would shuffle into the living room to watch some laughably poor reality TV shows on the small television set that had bunny eared antennas and everything.
All things considered, it wasn't a bad dream.
No zombie apocalypse, no conveniently placed cliffs to fall off of, no hellish demons bent on dragging her immortal soul into the jaws of Satan himself….
...It could have been worse. Dania had to admit that much.
Her situation could have been so so much worse.
Danish To English Language Key:
Lort Alt gør ondt = Shit Everything hurts
Kan alle bare slukke deres mund sirener = can everyone just turn off their mouth sirens *Quote from Brooklyn Nine Nine*
Hold kæft alle sammen! = Shut up all of you!
For fanden da også vær så stille = For fuck's sake be quiet
Author's Note:
EDIT (2/4/2019): Corrected the Danish phrases. Thank you to thedarksun_writes On AO3 for all of your help! :D
This chapter was written while listening to Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.
IMPORTANT! I do not speak Danish, I am not Danish, nor have I ever visited Denmark. The Danish phrases I used in this chapter are from Google Translate and as we all know Google Translate is not at all reliable. This is more of an experiment to see how well I can write about a character who is Danish and I would appreciate if there are any Danish people or native Danish speakers out there who could help correct any Danish I get wrong or help add authenticity to Dania.
Now that's out of the way, can I just say how completely blown away I was by the support you guys are giving me on this fic? Seriously, every single review and comment I got just completely made my day! I can't thank you guys enough!
I'm also super happy that I actually managed to get this chapter out on time. I will be striving to complete each chapter by Saturday of each week but I am hesitant to officially announce a formal schedule due to the fact that I am notoriously bad at keeping to a schedule. But for you guys, I'll try me best :D
If you liked this chapter, please leave a comment telling me what you thought about it! They all really do help motivate me complete the next chapter faster and make sure that the quality is top notch!
See you all next weekend!
~Lost-In-The-Muse