During those last days at Hogwarts, I'd begun to think of summer at the Residence as my little retreat from magic: a vacation, in more than one sense. Someplace where I could relax and recover at last from my bout of existential crisis in the relative peace and calm of the mundane Muggle surroundings. A calm that would be disturbed only by the mild shenanigans of the other residents of our shared home —a far cry from the basilisks, dangerous professors, ghosts and prefects that haunted the Scottish castle.

The Residence was only haunted by the Giraffe, in comparison; and I reckoned she wouldn't have much reason to harass me this year, my grades having improved since last time. And also because, according to the couple of letters that Astrid had sent me during the year through the Muggle post, most of the woman's focus nowadays seemed to be on reining in Colin's transgressions. Now sixteen, the boy was shaping up into the very picture of a teenage delinquent, having been arrested by the police a few months ago —something about arson and a teacher's car, apparently.

So I was hoping, wishing for a brief respite before the events of the Prisoner of Azkaban began to play out in full, and I had to head back into the dementor-infested school I knew would be waiting for us. That book always felt like a turning point in the saga, with Peter Pettigrew's escape heralding the return of Voldemort —something that I had decided I should try and prevent. So I wanted to be rested and ready, fresh and eager by the time September eventually rolled in.

Funny, then, that magic seemed determined to invade this little Muggle oasis. An invasion that began the very day of my arrival back at Residence, when I first entered the living room just to discover an enormous baroque fireplace dominating one of its corners, complete with a few firewood logs inside, soot-stained bricks, and a small shelf above its gaping mouth, adorned with a few decorative trinkets and pictures of random animals.

A fireplace that I was completely sure hadn't been there last summer —or any other summer before that, for that matter. But with how old it looked and how nobody paid it even the smallest attention, you'd think it'd always been there, always a part of the house.

Nobody but Astrid, apparently; because the moment we were alone in our room she went to great lengths explaining how the fireplace had just appeared one morning —about two weeks before my return— and how she was the only one to notice, the only one to remember the Residence as it was before. She told me she'd spent the following two days examining the appliance in detail, but didn't find out how to 'switch the magic on' —her words— before an infuriated Gary told her off for covering herself head to toe in soot, putting a swift end to her research.

I suspected that this was the surprise the headmaster had mentioned back at Hogwarts, a suspicion that was confirmed later that same day when I opened my nightstand's drawer to find an unfamiliar little wooden box inside. It contained a small pouch of floo powder, and a handwritten note in elaborate cursive that read: "Only in the case of an utmost emergency."

Which, you know, I figured that being forced to spend the entire summer in London pretty much qualified as an 'emergency'. And so that was why two weeks later I found myself gingerly stepping out of our brand new floo and into our living room after paying a quick visit to Diagon Alley, carrying two of those Fortescue's ice cream monstrosities, one in each hand.

I handed one of them to Astrid, who had stayed behind as a lookout and to keep people well away from the living room —she was learning to play the recorder, always handy for these things— and who now looked at the masterpiece of culinary engineering in her hand with something akin to amused bewilderment.

"How does it not fall apart?" she asked.

I shrugged: "Magic... And hold on! Wait until we're back in our room. The moment you bite into it you'll dispel the Impervious charm and it will start melting."

"Oh... okay."

I scouted our way ahead towards the foyer. With most of the other kids either outdoors, or busy with their household tasks, we didn't encounter anybody as we stealthily climbed upstairs and got to the safety of our shared room.

"Uh... what's this, Sylvia?" asked Astrid, sitting cross-legged on her bed and pointing at a particular greenish ball on her ice cream cone.

"Peppermint, I believe."

"Eww."

"Don't knock it until you've tried it," I replied sagely, biting into my own ice cream next, its sweet and smooth taste filling my senses.

"You sound just like the Giraffe, y'know," she muttered, but after she tasted a lick of it —with as much caution as if it could be poisoned— she didn't protest my choice of flavours anymore.

A few minutes later, once her ice cream had somehow vanished already and mine was well on its way to oblivion, she asked: "Why can't we get these everyday? It was easy, and the staff are always busy at this hour of day, so I didn't really need to distract them at all."

"Money, for one? Fortescue's is not exactly cheap, you see. But I also don't know if Dumbledore —that is, my headmaster— is monitoring the floo —that is, the fireplace. One or two trips I can probably get away with, but I can't make it into a daily thing. I'd need to buy some more floo powder too. And besides... I'm pretty sure too many of these ice creams would turn anyone's blood into syrup, anyway."

"Oh... okay then."

"But hey, I made this one trip count: I got us some dessert too!" I said, extracting a little bag out of the pocket of my robes and placing it on my bed.

"Isn't ice cream dessert already?" asked Astrid, eyeing the felt bag —which was shaking on its own— with some apprehension.

"Oh, shush, you chipmunk."

She stood up and approached the bag with tentative steps, poked it once or twice —which caused its contents to become still— then started unknotting it. "What is it?" she asked.

"Careful! Don't let them escape–!"

But it was too late, and one of the Ice Mice inside the bag was already scampering away, the little mouse-shaped confection dashing across my bed. Astrid tried to grab it instinctively, but it somehow dodged her hand as it jumped down to the floor and ran to hide under the girl's bed. Only it never got that far, because Teegee suddenly swooped down off his perch and snatched it in a smooth motion, flapping his wings around to hop onto my own bed afterwards.

"Hey, let it go! That's food for people, not for owls!" I protested.

Teegee simply swallowed the mouse whole, its little tail disappearing down his throat. Then, he turned his head to look at me, all smug fluffy feathers.

And yeah, I'd started to harbour the suspicion that Daphne's choice of owl for me hadn't been exactly random. Hoisted by my own petard, or something.

"You arse," I said, but without much heat. "You keep doing that and you'll become too fat to fly. And then what will you be useful for, uh?"

He pretended he hadn't understood me, taking little hops that just happened to take him closer to the bag with the remaining mice. I sighed and stood up to pick him up and place him back inside his cage, muttering: "See? This is what you get if you misbehave."

Astrid observed all this with faint amusement, then she finally asked: "Uh... Sylvia, do you think I could go with you to this Diagon place next time? I'd love to see a magical shopping street."

I thought for a moment, eyed the calendar taped to the inside of our room's door, and grinned at her: "I'll do you one better: how'd you like to meet my school friends?" I produced a piece of paper and a pen from the drawer of our shared desk, then started writing down a letter. "Besides, it's high time Teegee here earns his keep, no? He's been lazing around ever since I returned from Hogwarts."

What followed were three days of intense cross-country correspondence via owl as I coordinated our little outing; every trip making Teegee grouchier and grouchier. By the third day he simply refused to let me grab Daphne's reply, snapping his beak at me until I'd fed him first. Thankfully, some leftover toast from breakfast and a heavy dose of praise was enough to mollify him.

And so not one week later the doorbell finally rang, and Astrid and me both scampered down the stairs to meet with Tracey's father, who was there at the foyer alongside Tracey herself and Sally —my friends' gazes roving over every minute detail in our suburban house with naked, almost morbid curiosity.

Mr. Davis made a passable impression of a Muggle —what with his cardigan and dark trousers— as he talked to the Giraffe, reassuring her that yes, he was indeed my friend's father and not some random child kidnapper off the street; and yes, he would return us here by seven at the latest.

My friends' disguises were a bit more... wanting, should we say. Sally wore a short-sleeved white shirt over a wizarding tunic —as if she hadn't quite decided what look to go for, Muggle or witch— while Tracey was wearing overalls made of some sort of velvety, soft fabric —transfigured, was my guess— over a red t-shirt that simply read 'SPORTS' in big fat letters.

But it didn't seem to matter to the Giraffe, who eventually gave a reluctant nod of approval, warned us —me— not to misbehave, and allowed our little group to cross unopposed the Residence's main door for the great outdoors.

Tracey's father clapped his hands the moment we were on our own, then looked at me. He said: "Very well, then! It's good to see you again, Sylvia, and..." his eyes went to my room-mate next.

"Astrid. She's my sister; she already knows about magic," I informed him. Then I muttered a quick 'I'll explain later' to my puzzled friends.

"Oh. Good... good. In that case, we should get moving; we wouldn't want to be late, would be?" he said, extracting a deflated football out of his trousers' pocket; a pocket way too small for it to possibly fit inside. "The Greengrass girl must be waiting for us already; so come on, bunch up everyone."

It was Astrid's turn to look bewildered, as we each surrounded the football and touched it with a finger each; but she didn't have to be told twice to follow our example, her face a mix of suspicion and trepidation. I winked at her, and then the portkey activated and we were off, sailing across the entirety of London in the span of a heartbeat.

And sure, we could have used the Residence's floo instead, now that we had one. Travel by fireplace might leave you looking like a chimney sweep, but it had the benefit of being both one of the most peaceful and fastest modes of transportation that the wizarding world had devised. The only problem with that plan was that we'd have had to sneak everyone into our living room, with the added risk of discovery by any of the staff or the other residents. And since none of us —officially speaking— could obliviate Muggles, that adventure would most likely have ended with us putting a call to the Ministry.

Not ideal, in other words. It was Tracey who suggested the portkey, as apparently her father's magical prowess didn't extend so far as to be able to apparate with the three of us kids along for the ride, either.

The whirlwind stopped as abruptly as it had started, leaving us in some narrow street a couple of blocks away from the Leaky Cauldron, right smack in the middle of London. Daphne was already there along with her house-elf, just as Mr. Davis had predicted; and oddly enough, it was the pure-blood who wore the most passable Muggle outfit among all my friends: yeah, she might have looked like a schoolgirl straight out of the 60s, what with her plaid dress with wide white collar and cuffs, but at least her looks made bloody sense.

I gave her a quick wave, then turned to help massage Astrid's back as she shook from all the porkey-induced nausea. Luckily she didn't vomit —in part because I'd warned her to stick to a light, non-greasy lunch today— and two minutes later Daphne's elf disapparated and we were on our merry way, walking not towards Diagon Alley, but away from it and deeper into Muggle London, our odd-looking group attracting only some stares and raised eyebrows now and then. This being London, we could thank all those punks and goths for that.

Mr. Davis seemed to already know the way ahead, so I fell back a few steps to do the introductions: "Astrid, these are the friends from school I told you about: Sally, Tracey, and this here is Daphne."

"Oh, she's your rich friend, isn't she?"

I smirked at Daphne's discomfited posture. "She sure is. And this is Astrid," I told my schoolmates. "We share a room in the Residence, and she figured out about magic and that I'm a witch; so I've been telling everyone that she's my sister."

"Because of the exceptions in the Statute of Secrecy," commented Daphne after a few moments of mulling over the information.

I nodded. Yeah, it was all a ruse, of course. Both Astrid and I were well aware of that. It definitely wasn't like I'd adopted her as a sibling or anything, right?

We talked a little more, me giving the girls an abridged retelling of our adventure in Saint Mungo's last summer, they telling me about their respective plans for the rest of their vacations; but before long we'd already arrived at our destination, Mr. Davis looking at the building's entrance with something akin to wistful wonderment.

"Ah, here we are," he said. "I still remember the last time I went to the Muggle cinemas. The filmie was called... Mary Poppins, I believe. It had very funny ideas of how magic worked, but of course Muggles wouldn't know better, would they?... uh, no offence," he added belatedly to Astrid, who didn't seem to have caught on his slight condescension.

He took us towards the ticket booth and the red-haired young man inside, who looked at us with infinite boredom as Mr. Davis produced a wild assortment of coins of all denominations. "Now... let's see if I can remember which is which," he said, as he examined the coins one by one. "It's just been so long!"

"Perhaps I can help?" I said, sidling up to him and pointing at each coin. "That's a pound, that's a ten pence, and... uhm... that's a button, Mr. Davis."

"Oh, right, sorry for that... the transfiguration must have– nevermind. So that would be... two pounds, and seventy-five of these pence for each of us! Which is..."

"Two seventy-five is for the girls' tickets, sir," said the man in the booth in a monotone voice. "But you're an adult; it's three pounds ten pence for your ticket."

Mr. Davis shook his head. "Blasted Muggles, why do they have to make it this complicated... now, that's ten, no... thirteen pounds for you, and three... wait a minute, I don't remember these picket prices being so high before! You wouldn't be trying to swindle us, would you?"

The man sighed in irritation, then simply pointed at the notice with the printed prices on it.

"It's called inflation," I muttered to my friend's father, my voice low. "Muggle prices are always going up, it's a whole thing."

"Oh, of course they would, without Goblins!" he said, loud enough for the cashier to do a double take, then shake his head. Mr. Davis then extended his open palm towards me, showing me the coins. "Since you're more familiar with these, Sylvia, could you perhaps...?"

"Sure!" I said, gathering up the coins and quickly placing the exact amount on the booth's tray. "There it is, sixteen pounds, seventy five pence!"

The man looked as relieved as Mr. Davis himself, and he finally handed us the tickets and directed us towards the main gates. We got inside, stocked up on popcorn and sugary drinks —Mr. Davis just handing me the money this time, leaving the transaction entirely up to me— before finding our screen, and our seats in the middle of the packed auditorium.

"I don't think I've ever seen this many Muggles together before," commented Daphne, who was sitting next to me. She daintily took a single popcorn out of our shared box, placed it in her mouth, then blinked a couple of times at the taste.

"I should take you to a concert next, then, if you think this is crowded!" I replied, raising my voice over the background murmur. Sadly, most of the iconic concerts I knew about had already taken place, and I'd wasted my chance of seeing Freddie Mercury live; but Bowie could be a good consolation price. The biggest hurdle would be in convincing the Residence's staff; the Giraffe in particular didn't seem like she'd ever understand the appeal, or the very concept of live music in the first place.

But then our conversation was cut short when the lights went out, the fanfare started, and the words 'Jurassic Park' appeared on the screen. The tense opening scene that followed immediately grabbed the attention of the heiress by my side.

"What was it?" she asked me, her eyes wide. "The beast inside that cage?"

"It looked like a basilisk!" exclaimed Tracey.

"No, it had to be a drake!" added Sally. "That cage was too small for a basilisk."

"Not all basilisks are as large as the one at school," protested Tracey. "Perhaps it was a young–"

"Shhh!" shushed someone from the seats behind us, silencing the girls. A silence that lasted only a few minutes, when Tracey loudly asked "Are they like... Muggle curse breakers?" upon the reveal of Alan Grant and the other palaeontologists excavating bones out of the soil. Thankfully Astrid was also there, fielding my friends' questions and filling them in many of the most mysterious aspects of Muggle culture —such as how a mathematician was someone who solved multiplications and fractions for a living, apparently.

It felt odd, watching this film in the big screen; a film that I had pretty ingrained memories of watching for the first time on TV, back in my before life. Back then I'd been younger —nine years old— and staying overnight at my cousin's, and Jurassic Park just happened to be on TV. I hadn't been too eager to watch it, it looking too much like a grown-up film in my younger self's eyes —and a scary one to boot— but my cousin was in his dinosaur phase and had insisted in the strongest of terms. The result was predictable: two weeks of nightmares for me, as I relived in my head the scene of the T-Rex devouring that man on the toilet, time and time again.

Funny then, that the result of watching it now could be the same, albeit for a different reason altogether: all those continuous mentions to the creation of artificial life —of bringing back creatures that had lost all right to exist in the present time anymore— hitting different now. Way less hypothetical, much more personal.

Hell, was I even Sophie anymore? Could I still claim ownership of that name? I knew that Healer Cross had mentioned that I had a human soul, but he could've been wrong; and even if I did, maybe it was too different now, fractured and twisted like Voldemort's; my blood too altered and mixed with that of other creatures, just like those dinosaurs in the film.

"What does that mean, 'cloning'?" asked Daphne, taking me out of my spiralling thoughts.

"It means that they found samples of blood from the original dinosaurs, and used that to create copies of them," I explained. "Living, breathing copies."

"Oh; so it's like a blood ritual, then?"

I closed my eyes for a beat, thankful that she wouldn't be able to see my expression in the dark. "Something like that," I muttered.

"That's quite interesting. See, I never considered Muggles would have so many alternative ways of doing the very same things that we wizarding folk do, only without–"

"Shhh!"

I nodded, though she couldn't see me. That was one of the reasons I'd chosen this film, after all. Even the most progressive wizards and witches had a perception of Muggles that was at best, should we say, charitably condescending in an 'it's so cute that they try' sort of way. The prevailing opinion among them being that it was the burden of the wizarding world to protect them from getting hurt, like one would a toddler. A pitying, paternalistic attitude; but that was still loads better than that of the vast majority of Slytherin pure-blood families —Daphne's included.

So this, inviting my friends to the cinema was only one step on the road to try and change those deeply rooted outlooks, to try and get the girls to see Muggles as I saw them: as resourceful and capable. It had to be a film with some visual spectacle, of course, in order to grab their attention; and it couldn't be fantasy —as that would only help reinforce the stereotypes when the Muggles inevitably got some aspect of magic wrong. So sci-fi it was; a film close enough to the modern day that they simply wouldn't know the difference. Not that I saw it as an issue, if they left the cinema convinced that Muggles could indeed clone dinosaurs; it was still healthier than the alternative.

And sure, you could argue that Jurassic Park wasn't exactly an endorsement of Muggle ingenuity, given that everything that could go wrong on that island did go wrong, often terribly so. And yet it still showcased stuff like helicopters, self-driving cars, guns, biotechnology and computer systems; most of them new to the girls.

Case in point:

"What's she doing now?" asked Daphne, pointing at the screen with the popcorn in her hand.

"Switching the power back on," I replied.

"But isn't that the same electrikacy that the enchanted fences use?"

"Yes!" said Tracey. "What will happen to the boy, Tim?! He's still on that fence!"

"Toasted Tim, I guess." I shrugged.

Daphne covered her eyes with her hand, peeking through her fingers: "Oh Merlin, I can't watch this."

"Why doesn't he let go? It's not so high. Let go, Tim!" shouted Tracey.

"Shhh!"

"He can't hear you," said Astrid.

"Sorry, I... forgot again... wow! Is he dead?"

"Oh, Merlin!" muttered Daphne, hugging her knees as a velociraptor made its appearance not a moment later, chasing after a screaming Ellie.

I eyed Sally instead, who watched the scene silently and with eyes wide open, her hands grasping her seat's armrests; then shook my head. I'd hoped she'd have recovered somewhat from the whole ordeal of the basilisk by now; and that if she hadn't, then this outing would help distract her from it at least. But in retrospect, perhaps this hadn't been the wisest choice of film for her.

Perhaps we had that in common.

She didn't seem worse for wear when the film eventually ended, though, and we exited the cinema —receiving the angry stares of the older couple who had seated right behind our group. We walked back to Diagon Alley, and there we sat at one of the cafes lining the street, where Tracey's dad invited us to have some chocolate and sweets —right under one of those Sirius Black posters. Her previous haunted look had seemingly vanished by then, as she explained to us the holes in the Muggles' knowledge of dinosaurs, and that the Dracosaurus Rex had in fact been capable of breathing fire, obviously.

"But it wasn't a true Dracosaurus Rex," argued Daphne, "because the Muggle... ah, scientists combined the blood with that of other animals; isn't that right, Sylvia?"

I blinked. She'd picked up on that? That was an important plot point, actually; one that I'd expected would fly over the girls' heads. "Ah? Yes, sure... the original samples weren't good enough."

"That's crazy, mixing bloods like that," said Tracey as she took a sip from her chocolate mug, never noticing how their casual comments were hitting me way more directly than she could've imagined. "It's no wonder their cloning rituals went wrong."

I nodded, my gaze falling to the cauldron cake on my plate. I supposed I had to be glad the girls were so taken with Muggle stuff now, the film having seemingly left an impression on them, but I wasn't that keen on the direction this conversation was taking, so I looked to Tracey's dad and asked: "Uhm... Mr. Davis, do we still have time for a quick visit to Madam Malkin's before we need to get back? I wanted to buy some new robes and trousers with the money I've saved, but I doubt Snape will let me visit whenever he takes me back here."

"Let's see..." he said, extracting a pocket watch with way too many needles and little gears, and taking a closer look at it. "Yes, we should still have enough time, but you need to be quick about it; I don't fancy my chances against that Mrs. Sherwin at your home. Do any of you girls also want to purchase anything else? Your sister perhaps... hold on, where is your sister, Sylvia?"

I looked around the table, then felt the blood in my veins turn to ice. Because Astrid's seat to my right was empty, and I hadn't even noticed.

I jumped to my feet, my heart beating fast as I examined the crowd around us and along the street, already thinning as many of the shoppers began their slow retreat to their own homes. Astrid wasn't anywhere in sight.

"Fuck."

"Language, Sylvia," said Mr. Davis, producing a wand made of a deep, reddish oak wood. "Don't worry, she can't be that far, we shall find her soon enough. Now, stay close to me, everyone."

I nodded, and he started weaving some sort of enchantment in mid-air. "Do you have anything belonging to her?" he asked me.

I patted uselessly my own pockets, before my eyes fell on the little mound of cinema tickets on the cafe table. I grabbed the one I suspected had been hers, then asked: "Will this work?"

He frowned. "Tracking charms work best with more personal items, but she should be still close enough for this to suffice. Let's see... 'Echo vestigia'"

The wand span in his hand; once, twice, before finally settling down somewhat, pointing along the street but still oscillating left and right in wide arcs.

"Good enough," he declared. "Come on, girls, let's find her."

We advanced, following the direction marked by Mr. Davis' wand, all the while looking around. I was replaying in my head the last moments I'd seen Astrid seated with us, just a few minutes ago —had it been ten minutes... just five? I wasn't sure. And the fact that none of us had noticed her walking away was... troublesome.

At the heart of it, there was the simple truth that I'd brought a Muggle girl into the heart of the British magical community, and that was something which came with its own risks. Perhaps an Auror had noticed and taken exception to it —although I supposed that if any person of authority was involved, they'd have confronted us directly instead. But there was also Knockturn Alley and its peculiar inhabitants to worry about, the pure-blood supremacists and Death Eater sympathisers, or just the mere fact that there were always a myriad of different spells and charms peppering the entire street, and I had no idea if some of those would have any side-effects on any Muggles that happened to be around.

If I didn't know better, I would suspect Sirius Black to be behind it; those posters were insidious enough to put anybody on edge, with the maddening despair visible in his eyes.

"Do you see her?" asked Mr. Davis. "She should be around here."

"No," I replied faintly, as I kept frantically scanning the people around us.

It should've been okay, though. Muggles came to Diagon Alley all the time! The parents of Muggleborn students came here to purchase books and other school supplies —like Hermione's. And if there had been any true hidden danger, I assume Mr. Davis would have let us know.

I focused on looking for the shorter figures that were on their own, filtering out the adults and larger groups. There were two boys in front of a broomsticks shop, salivating over the latest model, and over there a girl looking at the wands showcased in the window of Ollivanders, and another girl stepping out of the Magical Menagerie with a cream-coloured fluffy puffskein in her arms —but none of them were Astrid.

Here a boy was rushing to meet with who I presumed were his family, there a... no, that was a goblin. There, two girls chatting among themselves... no, those were the Patel twins. And now I was beginning to seriously worry.

Wait a moment.

My eyes backtracked to the front window of Ollivanders, to the lone girl standing right there.

"Astrid!" I shouted as I ran towards her. The girl started, but when she turned to look back at me with a guilty expression I clearly recognised my room-mate. How I hadn't noticed it was her before was beyond me.

"Sorry," she replied, low enough that it was hard to hear the word. She gingerly motioned with her hand towards the window. "It's just... I saw these wands and I thought... Sylvia, do you think I could... could I try some? Just to see... if..."

Oh.

"If you're magical," I finished the sentence for her, waving for the rest of our group to give us some space, now that they had too realised it was my room-mate I was talking to.

I sighed. This had been a thing ever since I returned to the Residence. Being eleven now, if Astrid was ever to receive a Hogwarts letter, it had to be now. During this very summer.

And that was something she was very aware of, always seemingly present in her head as she rushed to meet any incoming owl in wild excitement, only for that excitement to swiftly turn into disappointment when they invariably turned out to be my friends' owls, or Teegee returning from one of his trips around the neighbourhood.

I had tried to gently ease her into the possibility that she wouldn't have magic, after all. A possibility that I figured was most likely true; because just what were the odds that two orphan witches would've ended up sharing the same room, out of sheer coincidence?

Yeah, magic itself skewed the odds somewhat —as Astrid was fond to repeat to me— but still... to my knowledge she was still to perform any feat of accidental magic.

She had even argued that since I'd said we were sisters, it must mean that magic would now also flow to her. That... wasn't how that worked, I'd explained; but to deaf ears apparently.

Although there might have been a kernel of truth to that, with my magical bindings and such; but I didn't think it would be that powerful to actually be able to grant magic to an otherwise Muggle girl, turn her into a witch herself. I doubted the Ministry would ignore these fae people like they did, if they had that sort of power.

I could have tried it of course. I could have said to her 'yer a witch, Astrid' three times in a row, see if it stuck. But I hadn't; because instinctively, I knew it wouldn't work.

See, magic is all about intention, focus and belief. Belief in magic itself, and in your own ability, your own power to wield it and use it to reshape reality. And whatever magical bindings I could apparently do weren't exempt from those very fundamental truths of magic. In order for them to work, I suspected there had to be intention and belief behind my words. I had to believe them true, their meaning accurate even if only in some deep, metaphorical sense.

And that was the rub of it, wasn't it? Why I hadn't even tried: I just didn't believe Astrid would turn out to be a witch.

"That... wouldn't be useful, Astrid," I explained to her, softly. "If you haven't received a Hogwarts' letter, it–"

"Yes, I know! I just..." she shook her head, angrily.

I sighed, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Hey. You know what? You don't need magic to come here, and be involved in magical stuff, use magical items and all that. Remember what I told you about the squibs–"

"I don't want to be a stupid squib!" she protested, loud enough that I was sure my friends must have heard her. "And I... I wouldn't be even a squib, would I? I'd just be a... a Muggle."

"Astrid... I just don't want you to put all your hopes in a... a letter. There's nothing wrong with being a Muggle, and I don't want you to be disappointed if you—"

"Too late for that," she grumbled, crossing her arms. "But there's still time, isn't it? Maybe your headmaster just... hasn't sent the letters yet?"

"I don't think it would be a letter at all, if you were... he probably would want to visit in person like he did with me, but Astrid—"

"Then we should head back!" she said, walking away from me and towards the rest of our group. "I don't want to be away when he finally visits!"

I nodded softly, and with a last gaze at the rows of wands in Ollivanders I joined them too, too weary to continue the discussion. This was always how it ended, it seemed like: I was too weak, too much of a coward to voice my true opinion, too afraid of what would happen when I crushed her dreams —an unrealistic dream that I was aware was my fault to begin with. And yet with every day that passed, with every week that we got closer to the end of summer, the weight of that unspoken truth grew larger and larger. And I knew that the more I waited, the harsher it would be for her to accept this truth; the more painful it would become.

And yet I kept waiting.

None of us were feeling like shopping for clothes after that, so Mr. Davis returned us to the Residence somewhat ahead of schedule —earning a nod of respect from the Giraffe, a truly unique, one-of-a-kind prize. And then we went back to our summer routine: my time spent half lazing around, half working on my homework —that thankfully didn't include gardening this year.

There were no more going out to the cinema, or anywhere else really —the staff too worried about the news about that one murderer on the loose to allow us free range. And one by one, the days slipped away, Astrid growing more agitated as she waited for her letter.

Then one night we were at our room after dinner —she looking out the open window, I reading my book of fae stories— when she turned to me and exclaimed: "An owl! It's a new one!"

I blinked, closing the book and walking up to her. There was indeed a white owl flying straight towards our open window; and we both had to take a step back as it landed on the ledge, fluttering its wide wings. It wasn't one of our regular visitors either; and yet it looked strangely familiar.

I was sure I'd seen this one before, at school most likely. Could it be, then? Could it be carrying Astrid's letter, after all? I reached for the white envelope tied to its right leg, deftly untying the knot and reading the words on it.

"It's for me," I said to Astrid, who huffed and collapsed back onto her bed. I frowned, reading again the address on the envelope. It said simply: 'Sylvia Sarramond. The Residence for orphan kids. Near London.'

"And you found me just with this?" I asked the owl, who hooted as if in confirmation. Up on his perch, Teegee gave the newcomer a haughty look, before turning his back on the both of us.

"Don't mind him," I muttered as I opened the envelope. It was definitely not parchment, though, so I doubted it was a school owl after all. But then who...?

"Uhm... it's empty," I said, showing the contents of the open envelope to the white owl; there was no letter inside it at all. "You wouldn't happen to have dropped the contents somewhere on your way here, uh?... Oh, shush you!" I added to Teegee, who had just begun to loudly hoot in a mocking tone.

The white owl, of course, couldn't explain itself. Wizarding owls were unnaturally smart, sure, but still lacking in the vocal chords department. I eyed the animal once more, trying to place it. Where had I–?

The Residence's front doorbell rang, loud enough to be heard from our room.

"Who could it be, now at night?" asked Astrid.

I slowly turned my gaze back onto the white owl still on our window's ledge, putting two and two together.

"No way," I whispered in horror, trying and failing to find my words.

"Sylvia?" asked Astrid, sitting up again. But I was already leaving our room, the forgotten envelope falling to the carpeted floor as I rushed downstairs.

"No way," I repeated again, "no fucking way!"

Down below, I saw how Gary opened the front door to reveal a somewhat scrawny boy with messy dark hair, dressed in clothes one or two sizes too large for him. He held a fancy broomstick in a hand, and had a large trunk next to him.

"Er– hello," he said, shifting on his feet. "My name's Harry. I... my family are... abusive." He swallowed and added: "Could I maybe... stay here tonight?"