I took a reflexive jump back as the enormous, garishly purple triple decker appeared right in front of us, simply popping into existence. Then I gathered myself again and shot a smirk at Astrid, who was looking at the monstrosity with the wide eyes and slack jaw it very much deserved.

The conductor was just what I'd expected from my fore-memories: pimply, awkward and probably not yet old enough to drink. But the Knight Bus' questionably lax staffing choices worked in our favour now, as I guessed someone older —or just slightly more professional— might have wanted to know what two young girls were doing on their own at night.

He, however, didn't seem to mind it as he dismounted the vehicle and said: "Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded– Merlin's beard! Woss wrong with your hands?!"

Astrid took a step back, looking sheepish as she tried to hide her hands inside the dressing gown.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Sylvia." I tried to block his line of sight of Astrid with my own body, but my short stature made the manoeuvre ineffective: the young man's eyes were still latched to her fingers, which now that I thought about it actually looked somewhat larger than they had before, back at the Residence.

"Hey!" I repeated myself, more forcefully. "We need to go to St. Mungo's."

"Yep," he nodded, still not looking at me. "I reckon ya should."

"Well... can you take us there?"

"Ah, o' course!" he said, taking a step to the side at last and motioning us forward. "Get on, get on! Name's Stan, Stan Shunpike."

"Uh... how much is it?"

"Eleven sickles; but tell'ya what, for an emergency we'll just go free, won't we, Ern?"

The old man sitting at the driver's seat glanced at us and nodded: "Nasty."

"Yup. Grab tight, Sylvia... and, woss your name?"

"Astrid, she's my sister," I replied, because the younger girl was still shell-shocked, now looking at the impossibly expansive inside of the bus —with its beds and wooden walls— with something akin to fearful amazement.

It was indeed a sight to give someone pause, the unlikely collection of eclectic furniture and assorted items —cupboards and candelabra, two or three tea tables with steaming mugs of chocolate, trunks and bags of all colours and sizes piled up near the back— but I focused first on trying to locate the nearest empty bed, then quickly dragging Astrid towards it.

And it was a good thing I did so, because right as I was helping her climb onto it I heard the bus door closing behind us, and Stan saying: "Hit it, Ern!"

I reached for the bed's post with one hand and Astrid's clothes with the other, just at the same time as the vehicle jerked forwards with a new loud bang, a cracking sound reminiscent to the one Snape had made when he'd disapparated away after dropping me at the Residence —if Snape were a triple decker, fifteen meters long purple bus, that is.

Outside the windows there was chaos, the lights of a hundred lampposts blurring together into messy streaks that shone over the fleeting hints of the facades of the dozens of building we were moving past —or that were moving themselves to make way for us, I wasn't that sure. But I tried to ignore all that magical craziness in favour of keeping my eyes on the girl next to me: with her ruined hands making her unable to grasp any handle to steady herself with, Astrid's body tilted like a sack of potatoes, leaning dangerously left and right with every quick swerve of the driving wheel.

Stan, though, didn't seem to have much trouble keeping his balance. He towered over us, steadying himself with the help of an overhead bar as he looked with naked curiosity at Astrid.

"What'd ya do?" he asked at last, "Stick your 'ands into a boiling cauldron?"

The girl looked at me, her face a mask of panic. I wasn't sure if it was at being addressed by him, or at the general... mayhem of a situation she suddenly found herself in.

"She touched a cursed object," I replied in her stead.

"Ah, bad thing that, eh?"

I nodded; and I expected him to go back to his post then, but instead he remained there in front of us, observing as I struggled to keep the girl from falling from the bed, never lending a hand himself.

"Want some chocolate?" he asked at last, motioning with his head in the direction of the steaming mugs.

"I– I think I'm going to be sick," muttered Astrid.

"Uh... no thanks," I replied after a beat. At least that seemed to satisfy him, because he went back to his own seat next to the driver.

"Just hold on," I said to Astrid. "It's shaky, but the good thing about that is that it makes for a very quick trip. Try keeping your eyes away from the windows, though."

She nodded, but I could almost see the greenness invade her face with each passing second. I hurried to try and distract her from her growing bout of bus-sickness:

"So yeah, it's magic, sorry I didn't mention it before," I said, keeping my voice low enough that Stan wouldn't hear us over the ruckus all the beds and rattling furniture made with every turn. At least he didn't seem to be paying attention to us anymore, his face burrowed into an unfolded issue of The Daily Prophet.

"All this is... magic?"

I wasn't sure if she was talking about the bus or what had happened to her hands, but I opted to think it was the former: "The Knight Bus. It's a quick transportation service for witches and wizards. There are other, less... uhm... less intense ways of travelling. But this is good if you are in a hurry and don't have access to any others."

"But... so... how...?"

"Magic, Astrid. The answer is always magic."

She meditated on that for a few seconds, her eyes going over the interior of the vehicle, pausing when they got to the pile of trunks —possibly taking into stock how similar to mine they looked. I was glad to see my trick to distract her attention was working, though; or maybe we were both simply getting used to the continuous rocking of the bed, because it no longer felt like I was holding on for dear life, and I could relax my grip on the post a little.

"So you're a... a magician?" she asked at last.

"A witch," I corrected. "I have a magic wand, you saw it just now, and I go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, where I learn how to cast spells... among other things, like brewing potions and–"

"Brewing potions... in cauldrons?" she asked, as if unsure whether Stan —or I— were telling the truth or simply pulling some extraordinary prank on her. It was a feeling I knew well.

"Exactly!"

Her eyes went back to the world outside the windows. "But how can... nobody know?"

"Well, the bus is probably invisible, it's my guess," I replied. "Like that day when we were in the Giraffe's office and she almost caught us, remember? It wasn't a superpower or anything, it was just accidental magic on my part. There's a lot of those kind of spells going on, to keep the secret. And when someone does see something that they shouldn't have, well..."

"They take the memory away," she muttered.

"Yes; but also Muggles... uh, rationalize it when they see something weird, you know. If you see a purple bus driving towards you at night and then blink and it's gone, you're most likely to believe you were just tired and imagined it all. But even so, it's not a perfect secret: there is stuff leaking all the time; that's how people know about witches having cauldrons and magic wands and brewing potions, and flying on brooms."

She snapped her head towards me: "You can fly on a... on a broom?"

I nodded.

"You can fly on a broom?!"

"Shh," I said. "Yes. But not just any broom, it has to have been enchanted to–"

That was when the bus stopped with another sudden crack, finally launching the two of us from the bed. I barely managed to prevent Astrid from crashing straight into the nearest nightstand, but felt the muscles of my arm stretching into a forceful position that I knew I was going to regret come morning.

"Two to St. Mungo's!" announced Stan, opening the bus' front door.

At fucking last, I thought. I picked myself up and helped Astrid stand up again, and together we disembarked the maddening vehicle as quickly as humanly possible. The street we landed on seemed to be a trafficked, commercial one; but as it was night already most of the shops were closed, and there weren't that many pedestrians around.

And it didn't help that we were right in front of a derelict building, the street lamps on this part of the street all burnt out and the pavement dirty with litter. I knew from my fore-memories the hospital was supposed to look somewhat like that, so I wasn't too worried; but the sight still was —to be quite honest— a little bit intimidating, and I suddenly became very aware of how small my twelve-year old body was.

I was about to turn and ask for Stan on instructions on how exactly to enter the building, when I heard the crack beneath me and the gust of air rushing to fill the suddenly empty void the bus had left on its wake, the wind pushing scraps of paper and abandoned plastic bags into fluttering across the ground.

"Sylvia...?" asked Astrid, looking around with a worried expression.

"Let's go," I said, pushing her elbow gently towards the abandoned department store. The hospital itself should be safe, but I wasn't that sure about this very street on the Muggle side, so it was probably best not to linger around.

The issue was, of course, that I wasn't that sure of what to do next. Unlike with Diagon Alley, or platform nine and three quarters, I couldn't quite remember how you were meant to cross whatever barrier separated the Muggle and magical sides here. So I simply advanced towards the abandoned front window display, took a quick look around to make sure nobody was paying attention to us, then extracted my wand —not that I knew what I should use it for.

Nothing happened, and I reached with my free hand to touch the window. As I did so, though, the dusty mannequin on the other side turned its head slightly to look at me with its featureless, blank face. Astrid took a quick step back; but the mannequin didn't do anything else, simply looking at us as if... expectant.

I said: "Uh... can we... go through? It's an emergency."

I felt a little silly, but it seemed to do the trick, because the thing nodded at us and the fingers I had resting against the window suddenly went through it, as if the solid pane of glass had gained the consistency of smoke.

"Come on, Astrid!" I said, grabbing for her elbow again and pushing forwards.

"What–?" she tried to resist what must have looked like me wanting to crash her straight through a window, but I'd been quick enough that the momentum carried her forwards, and together we stepped through the barrier and into a large mix of a reception area and waiting room.

I wasn't sure what I'd expected —some place that looked old-fashioned and sort of Victorian, certainly, given that this was the wizarding world after all; but that would still be elegant and refined. Kind of like the halls of the Ministry of Magic in the films, or like the Slytherin common room. But I quickly realised my being sorted into the house of the posh and rich might have given me some unrealistic expectations of how official wizarding buildings should look like, because St. Mungo's didn't look just old-fashioned; it looked old.

The room was large, with walls covered in off white and green tiles that took my mind to the London underground, but the yellow stars that decorated the floor were worn down from years and years of people stepping on them, and the light enchantments in the lanterns that hung from the arched ceiling seemed to be petering out somewhat, seeing as they left some of the corners of the room in a penumbra.

The wooden benches —with some patients and their families seating and waiting for their turn— didn't help improve the look, given that they could have been taken straight out of some ancient cathedral or something; and I had to wonder why nobody had thought to transfigure them into something more comfortable a long time ago, like soft couches or something. Or perhaps they had, originally, and the spells had simply worn down with the years.

At least it was clean, I thought as we crossed the room to approach the reception desk at the other end. A middle-aged witch eyed us with a severe look from under a poster on the wall beneath, depicting a moving dragon of bronze scales: 'Do you know the symptoms of Dragon Pox?' it read, followed by a list of such wholesome things as 'pockmarked skin' and 'sparkful sneezes'.

"Hello," I said to the woman. "We... well, she needs her hands looked at."

The woman took a quick look at Astrid's hands, then asked: "Cauldron accident?"

"No, it was a cursed object."

"Names?" she said, taking notes with a quill on the thick tome open on her desk.

"The Furnunculus and Jelly-Fingers Curses."

She paused in her writing to look at me as if I was the biggest idiot on the planet.

"Your names, girl."

"Oh... she's my sister Astrid. I'm Sylvia Sarramond."

She nodded at that, not before shaking her head slightly. "Sit down there," she said then. "A healer will be with you soon."

I didn't have to be asked twice, dragging Astrid to sit on a nearby bench —which was as uncomfortable as I'd feared. On the good side, it didn't look like we'd have to wait a long time, given that the waiting area was only half-full at this late hour, with just a few clusters of patients here and there. Most of the people around looked perfectly healthy, in fact: wizards and witches dressed in a wide variety of robe styles and colours, and with bored expressions on their faces.

Astrid was one of the few patients that showed any outward signs of affliction —the other was a boy that must have been fifteen years old or so, with a skin that looked just like it was turning into tree bark— and that attracted the curiosity of some of the younger kids around the room. I even heard a witch scolding her son in a low tone when he'd spent a few too many seconds staring at Astrid's hands: 'Kevin, don't be rude!'

From time to time, healers dressed in long green robes entered the waiting area, talking to the patients and bringing them one by one to the next corridor over. One of them took a look at Astrid in passing, but she didn't say anything and moved to the bark-skinned boy instead, which told me we would probably need to wait for some more time yet. So I took the opportunity to instruct the younger girl in the very basics of the wizarding world and what she should expect. A quick —and probably way too dense— crash course on magic wands, spells, charms, potions, Hogwarts, Muggles, the Ministry of Magic, and so on.

But after a few minutes I noticed Astrid was only half-listening to me, because she kept blowing air on her reddened hands, then biting her lip.

"Does it hurt more now?" I asked.

She gave me a quick nod, then blew some more air.

I sighed, then waved at one of the healers as soon as he entered the room sometime later; a somewhat short, thin young man with glasses who stopped and looked at a parchment note, then gestured us over.

"Astrid... Sarramond, are you?" he asked. At our nod, he gestured us towards the corridor that went deeper into the building, and through one of its open doors, but right as we walked past his side he paused to look around the waiting area. "I'm Healer Towler. Now, where are your parents?"

Astrid looked at me with alarm in her eyes. But I simply said: "They're dead. We're orphans."

And yeah, I figured being blunt would help here. Most people don't want to keep digging after you make them feel a little self-conscious.

"Oh," he muttered. "I'm sorry to hear that. Do your guardians know you are here, at least? Who are they?"

"Right... about that. We live in a Muggle orphanage, and–"

"It's not an orphanage," muttered Astrid. "It's a residence."

"–and they don't know anything about magic, the Muggles," I continued, doing my best to sound like a young child. "And... and Headmaster Dumbledore told us we couldn't share the truth with any of them, because of the Statute of Secrecy. So we figured it would be easier if we just came on our own so that you could just... heal her hands?"

Healer Towler listened to me with growing astonishment, then ran a hand across his hair. "Come on your own? How did you...?"

"The Knight Bus."

"That is... very unorthodox," he said at last. "Do you know who your legal representative is, at least?"

"Our what?"

"You must have one, if you're registered in the Ministry's books and going to Hogwarts. Or are you... are you squibs, perhaps?"

"I'm going to Hogwarts," I said, sounding a little offended as I half-raised my wand out of its pocket so that he could see it. "And she is ten."

"Ah, so too young for a letter yet. Well, then you at least must have a–"

I sighed. This bloody bloke was starting to annoy me; I crossed my arms and said: "Look. I don't know who this legal representative is, and nobody told us about any of that. But perhaps we could call Headmaster Dumbledore to come here and clear things up? Of course, I'd rather not bother him with this at night, but if you think we have to, before you can treat her hands..."

I saw how the weight of my casual name-dropping impacted him, as he straightened out, then sighed and said: "No... I don't believe that disturbing Professor Dumbledore tonight will be necessary. After all, this seems like only a minor curse, with a straightforward treatment." He addressed Astrid next, looking at his parchment again: "And you said you touched a... cursed object? Do you remember what it was?"

She nodded, then said: "It was her trunk."

Shit.

"It was an accident!" I rushed to clarify, before the man had time to reconsider whether or not Dumbledore's involvement was warranted after all. "I put enchantments with the Furnunculus and Jelly-Fingers Curses on it, and... uh... forgot to tell her."

"Why would you put curses on your trunk?" he asked, looking at me all surprised. Really? That's what he was focusing on?

"To prevent stealing?" I said, shrugging and biting back the 'obviously'.

"From your sister? Or from the Muggles?"

"Not from her! Or from... well, I'm in Slytherin," I added, as if that explained it all; which perhaps it did.

The healer shook his head slightly, then motioned Astrid to cross the door "Well... Astrid? Come here, let's get those hands fixed."

She entered into what looked like an ordinary consulting room —complete with a desk, a nurse who beckoned Astrid in, and a patient's couch covered in a white sheet— except for the towering shelves replete with all sort of potions that completely covered the far wall. I was about to follow when the man blocked the way and said: "I believe it would be better if you wait outside, for... your sister's privacy."

"Sure," I said. Then I addressed a panicky Astrid: "I'll be right here."

With that, Healer Towler closed the door and I was left alone in the corridor.

I paced back and forth near the closed door to the consulting room. It didn't seem like a very sturdy, thick door, but it was enough to completely block the sounds of whatever conversation was taking place inside; so I had no way to know what was going on.

Now it was time for me to play the waiting game, it seemed like; and to cross my fingers as I hoped Astrid wouldn't say anything that gave the truth away in terms of her being a Muggle. Or that they wouldn't accidentally discover the girl had no magic in her during the treatment. Although with some luck, they'd just think her to be a squib if that happened.

With nothing else to do, but aware that I was inside a very magical building with a lot of spells going on all the time —which meant the trace wouldn't apply here— I whipped my wand out and cast the bubble charm to produce a stream of bubbles the size of my fist, that floated in the air. I'd aimed for a green sheen —because house pride and all that— but in truth they turned out a little more blueish than I wanted.

Whatever, the colour wasn't the point of this. I followed the charm with the 'Ventus mitis' incantation, a variation of the wind charm that was meant to produce gentle, more controllable breezes. Then, I waved my wand this and that way, using the soft wind to prevent the bubbles from touching the walls and ceiling of the corridor, trying to corral them together —but not so close that they'd hit one another and burst.

It was difficult, requiring a high degree of subtlety and anticipation of the bubbles' motions. And all my tries always seemed to end the same way: with one or two of the bubbles drifting a little too far, a little too fast, then me trying to over-correct with a stronger gust which only served to push all the other well-behaved bubbles into a myriad different directions, from which there was no recovery possible.

But that was precisely the point of this little exercise —which I'd read about in the 'Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2' and that I figured Flitwick would require us to perform at some point during this upcoming year. I had quickly pegged it as the most finicky thing he'd have us learn, and as so I wasn't planning on going unprepared for it; I had a reputation as a charms genius to maintain, after all.

But my worrying about what was going in the consultation room wasn't exactly helping, making me lose my concentration time and time again as my mind drifted into all the ways in which this little excursion could end badly for Astrid and me. The result was that the part of the corridor near me was quickly filling to the brim with a swarm of bubbles that slowly drifted away, too far already for my unsuccessful attempts at controlling them to make any difference.

And that was something that the old, exquisitely dressed witch that suddenly appeared from behind the nearest corner didn't seem to like at all, judging from the thunderous stare she immediately sent my way, as if I was polluting the entire place or something. I quickly created a strong vertical gust that pushed all the bubbles into the ceiling where they burst, clearing the corridor and making way for her to pass. She resumed her walk towards the reception area without a word.

She wasn't alone, though. Following her footsteps was a young boy that I recognised from school. And he recognised me too, judging by how he kept his eyes glued to his feet as he walked past me.

"Longbottom," I greeted him with a nod.

That caused the older witch to halt on her tracks and turn to stare at me —from under her very... very distinctive hat— as if evaluating my very worth. I could almost feel the way she judged my appearance, my wrinkled yet pretty weekend robes, my unbrushed hair... my everything.

"Well?" she said a few seconds later to Neville, in a curt tone. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

The boy looked like that was the last thing he wanted to do; like he'd rather the Earth swallow him whole, in fact. But still he stammered ahead:

"Uh– yes. T– this is my grandmother Augusta... Longbottom. And gran, this is... uhm... this is..."

Really? He didn't remember my name?

"Sylvia," I said, trying to keep my voice from sounding too harsh. "Sylvia Sarramond. Nice to meet you, madam."

"You know my grandson from Hogwarts, of course; are you in the same house?"

"No, but we share a few classes," I said, avoiding the topic of which house exactly I belonged to. No need to antagonise someone who I figured was probably a Gryffindor herself.

Of course, it was Neville who felt the need to clarify: "She is in S– Slytherin."

"Oh," said the elderly witch, regarding me again as if under a different light.

And that more than anything caused the vindictive streak within me to rear its ugly head. Because that was so typical, how they automatically would think themselves more honest, more moral than me, right?

"Yes; but we shared that detention with Hagrid too, right Longbottom?" I said, because perhaps they needed a reminder that they weren't perfect either.

Neville nodded softly, his cheeks flush red; but his grandmother seemed to immediately pick up on the subtext, what my not so subtle dig had been aimed at, because she straightened out slightly and said: "Ah, yes. I do hope we will not see a repeat of it this year. Of course, one way to prevent such situations is to make sure to keep well away from bad influences in the first place. Isn't that true, Neville?"

"Uh–"

"Well, it was nice to meet you, girl; but our visit has run late and we don't have any time left for idle chit-chat. Good night."

She didn't wait for my reply, turning and walking away from me at a fast clip. And it's not like I had to wonder who exactly she was referring to as the 'bad influence', because it certainly wasn't Potter or Granger. You know, the ones who were actually responsible for Neville getting detention. If I hadn't wanted to antagonise her, well... mission fucking failed. I blamed it on my anxiety over Astrid, still in the room next door.

Ah, whatever. It's not like I had to deal with Neville on a daily basis or anything; and he wasn't as important as the Golden Trio either, all things considered.

I started pacing again, but didn't resume my little charms exercise —wasn't in the mood for it anymore— and after another five to ten minutes, the door finally —finally!— opened again. I scrambled to look through, fearful of what I'd find. An obliviated Astrid, perhaps.

But the girl seemed fine, at least. She was sitting on the couch and eating a licorice wand, her hands now looking perfectly normal. And when our eyes met, she seemed to recognise who I was and didn't show any overt signs of magically induced confusion.

The nurse I'd seen before helped her towards the door where I waited, but before I could say anything Healer Towler addressed us: "Astrid, why don't you wait outside for a few moments? There's something I need to discuss with your sister."

Oh.

She shot me a guilty look and shrugged, before nodding and vacating the room alongside the nurse. I followed the healer's gesture to sit on the old-fashioned chair in front of his desk, and waited as he closed the door again and went back to his own seat. I had to restrain my hand from diving into my pocket, in search of the security of my wand.

I figured he probably had discovered that Astrid had no magic to speak for. But that was something I'd certainly been expecting, and not a big deal, right?

Healer Towler rested his chin on his linked hands, looking at me over his desk; then he sighed and said: "How old are you... ah... Sylvia?"

"Twelve."

He nodded. "Now, I'm not sure of how exactly a Muggle orphanage works; but should both of you have been raised in a magical household, there's something that your parents would have explained to you by now. As this isn't your case, and since the teachers at Hogwarts aren't perhaps aware of this particular issue, it falls to me to explain it to you now: we need to talk about the basic safeties and ethical uses of magic in the–"

"I know, I know. There's no need to–"

"There is all the need in the world for you to listen to me," he interrupted me. "Unless you prefer to hear this from Professor Dumbledore? I said I didn't want to bother him tonight, but I can certainly send him a letter. Merlin, girl! You can't simply put any curses you find in a book on your trunk, then leave it lying around where anyone else might touch it! Do you realise how lucky you were that it was just your sister who did, rather than any of the Muggles you live with?! You would have breached the Statute of Secrecy and would have needed the intervention of the Department of Magical Accidents!"

I nodded, my head hung low at his rising tone. "Sorry," I muttered.

He took a deep breath, then said: "Well, it's not only your fault, is it? If no adult wizard ever explained these things to you. So... let's talk a little about jinxes and curses..."

The talk lasted for almost half an hour, and besides the basic security and ethical guidelines it also included such awkward topics as the use of beauty and love potions, changes in magic resulting from puberty, and cautioning against the use of transfiguration to... enlarge one's bosom. Which I was way, way too young to even consider anyway; but according to him it always resulted in a couple of teenager witches ending up requiring urgent care here every year.

By the time I left the consulting room to join Astrid outside —who had long finished her licorice wand and was now half-asleep, wrapped in my dressing gown and spread all over one of the benches of the reception area— I was feeling abundantly chastised, and more tired than incensed or anxious. Now that the crisis was finally over, I only wanted to be left alone to go back to the Residence in peace.

But it seemed like even that little wish was beyond my reach, because Healer Towler escorted us both towards the main entrance and then through it to the street outside.

"You're certainly not going back on your own," he said. "I will take you both back home on the Knight Bus. And I also want to talk to this new conductor they hired, how he could just allow two unaccompanied children to–"

"Could you not?" I protested in a tired voice. "Please? He was nice to us, gave us a free trip and all."

A trip that turned out to be the more pleasurable of the two of that night. Because while my begging on Stan's favour resulted in the healer not being as... straightforward to him as I'd feared, the way he looked at the teenager and the continuous hints at how a responsible person in a public post should act made for a very, very long few minutes.

At least Astrid seemed relaxed, now that her hands were fixed and she didn't feel at risk of being found out, because she promptly fell asleep on the bed she claimed right after boarding the bus, snoring softly. And I had to shake her awake when the vehicle finally stopped right in front of the Residence.

Healer Towler escorted us all the way to the front door —under the cover of a charm to repel Muggle attention. He then stopped and said to us: "Now... Sylvia, Astrid. There's something you should do as soon as possible: if your guardian is a Muggle, whenever you have a situation that is... magical in nature such as tonight, they won't be able to help you. This is why you need to know who your legal representative is in the wizarding world, and be in contact with them so that you always have an adult figure to go to."

I nodded, though I wasn't too sure about the wisdom of that. Wouldn't they immediately realise the truth about Astrid's situation? It was only luck that Towler here hadn't found out about her being a Muggle herself. And wouldn't someone from the Ministry possibly digging into my origins be dangerous too, given... well... what I was?

Whatever, I could think about that later. I asked: "How should I find out?"

"Send a letter to the Ministry of Magic, to the Department of Magical Education. They should be able to put you in contact."

"I don't have an owl."

He sighed, then said: "Well, then wait until you are at Hogwarts and use one of the school's owls. But remember to do it, will you?"

Some more nodding and assurances seemed enough to satisfy him, and finally he let us go and enter the Residence. The house was silent now, and we had no unwanted encounters while climbing up the stairs and taking refuge into our room. I closed the door behind me, let out a relieved sigh, and fell onto my bed, too exhausted to remove my robes.

Astrid seemed similarly tired, but she at least removed the dressing gown before climbing into her bed —still wearing my pyjamas. Then she turned to look at me and said: "So, Sylvia... now that we're sisters and I know all about magic... can you show me what's inside your trunk?"