❝ In another universe, the sky is always pink and I didn't leave three people for you, and in another one the trees grow downwards with their roots in the air, and in another one, we meet in the middle of the street at the age of six while chasing the same butterfly. ❞ - bonemeadows on tumblr

The sight of Greg flying frantically around the ceiling fan greeted me as soon as I walked into my messy bedroom at The Leaky Cauldron. He hooted in anger, black eyes zeroing in on me.

"Oh, come on, Greg," I said. "You can't be mad at me forever. You know I love you, buddy. Now get into your cage, we're leaving."

As if understanding what I just told him, Greg stopped his circled flight around the room and returned to his cage, flapping his wings jubilantly.

Though I wanted to leave before it got dark, it took me about half an hour to clean my room, because I didn't want to call the housekeeper and I still hadn't mastered that damned Cleaning Spell, so I had to organize my stuff in the muggle way, how I'd done it all my life. Many useless things ended up in the garbage bin, but even after all the decluttering, my suitcase was jam-packed with all the stuff I'd bought in Diagon Alley, and I had to sit on it to get the zipper to close.

Thankfully, I did learn how to cast a Lightweight Spell, so I went ahead and charmed my suitcase because it had become twice as heavy as when I ran away from home. I had a lot of traveling in mind, so the easier it was to carry, the better. The last thing I needed was for my arms to go limp from dragging all that weight around from place to place.

When I finished packing and cleaning, I grabbed Greg's cage and my room key, and made my way downstairs to check out. Tom, the barman asked me where I was heading-he must have figured out I had no permanent place to stay, given that I'd spent all this time in Diagon Alley instead of my own house or at a friend's place-so I gave him a brief summary of my (barely existent) traveling plans. Clearly, he figured out I didn't have much of those, judging by the concerned look on his face.

I would've cursed my pathetic inability to lie, if it weren't for its ending up working to my advantage this time. Tom gave me a brochure of wizarding towns and famous visitor hotspots around, as well as some traveling tips that I could really benefit from. He was even generous enough to give me his old tent that he said he no longer used. I tried not to let my excitement show, thanked the kind old man as I completed the payment for my stay, and walked out of the building.

By the time I left Diagon Alley, my wristwatch read 6:30 p.m. Once I reached a crossroad, I stuck out my wand arm at the curb, and in less than a minute, a triple-decker purple bus appeared in front of me at the speed of light. The doors flew open and a lanky, bucktoothed guy in a dark blue uniform took a lazy step down the stairs. He leaned with one shoulder against the open door and regarded me with a bored look, his gaze barely skimming over me. I recognized him from the books as the bus conductor, Stan Shunpike.

"Well," he said in a high-pitched, tired voice. "Where you headin' to, then, young lady?"

I cleared my throat. "Boktown, sir."

"Right then. Come on in."

I stepped inside the bus, dropping eleven Sickles on his hand and taking the ticket he offered me. As I took a seat on one of the empty brass beds, Stan grabbed my luggage to store away, but I insisted on keeping Greg. One quick scan of the bus confirmed what I already figured before stepping in: there were no other passengers. I looked up at the ceiling that stretched even taller than I'd imagined. A chandelier hung from it, looking dangerously close to falling on top of my head.

The driver, just like the conductor was a familiar face as well-an elderly man with greying hair and thick rimmed glasses that faintly resembled Albert Einstein. Spending time in places I'd always thought to be fictional was one thing. Seeing fictional people in the flesh, a whole nother. I cut my eyes away from Ernie Prang and clutched the handle of Greg's cage tighter.

"Where'd she say she was going?" Ernie asked Stan when he entered the bus again, the doors closing behind him.

"Boktown, Ern, Boktown," Stan repeated, articulating each word loud enough for the elderly man to hear.

Ernie gave a vigorous nod, and before I could prepare myself, The Knight Bus instantly took off at full speed. I screamed, trying to hold on to the pole, but it was too late. I fell backwards on the ground and banged my head against the end of another bed.

"Any hot drinks, miss?" came Stan's shrill voice, as if I didn't just lose my balance over the speed at which the bus was going.

"Are you joking?" I cried from the ground, rubbing my head. "No."

Stan tsked. "Figured as much."

Alex Forster's words from earlier that afternoon came back to mind. He wasn't wrong about the discomfort of this bus. I grabbed hold of the pole, hauled myself upright and on the bed again, and made sure not to loosen my grip at any cost. The idea of traveling with The Knight Bus definitely felt more magical in theory. After about ten minutes of driving-which, for me, consisted of just holding onto the pole with all my might, to the point my palms started to ache and sweat-the bus came to an abrupt stop. So abrupt, that my whole body jerked forward and for a second, I thought I'd hurl up everything I'd eaten today.

"Boktown!" Stan announced in his tired, high-pitched voice. "Thank you for traveling with us. Have a great night!"

I cursed under my breath and got to my feet. The blood rushed to my head and my knees almost gave in, so I grabbed hold of the pole again and waited for the wave of dizziness to pass. Good God, was I never stepping on this damn thing again!

I grabbed Greg's cage and staggered out of the bus, not finding the voice (or need) to thank Ernie, who probably wasn't going to hear me anyway. Stan had taken my suitcase out of the trunk, and I barely managed to utter a 'thanks' to him as I grabbed it and started to walk away. I hadn't taken two steps from the bus, when it took off like the Flash, leaving behind a gust of wind and dust. Greg hooted in annoyance and I tugged my fingers through my now messy hair to unravel the knots that had formed during the trip. As if my hair wasn't frizzy enough, the uncomfortable ride had made it twice as worse.

I really, really regretted not listening to Alex when he warned me against this.

"Well, here we are, Greg."

Any hopes I had of reaching Boktown before dusk had flown out of the window, but as I looked around, I felt my anxious heartbeats slowing in relief. The village consisted of a few traditional dwellings with no gardens, built relatively close to one another, and a huge area of open land to the right. An enormously high hill on the left cast a dense shadow over the houses, but the streetlights that lined the only road winding up to the village provided a livid illumination.

"I wonder how depressed people who live here must be," I thought out loud. "It must suck not to be able to see the sunset. The area looks nice and quiet, though."

I walked over to the open field and found the perfect spot to set up my tent: behind a cluster of trees that seemed to lead into a forest. It took me a while to erect it because the spell didn't work out the first few times, and I began to grow frustrated and impatient, but eventually I got the hang of it.

"Thank God," I whispered.

My jaw fell open once I stepped in. On the inside, the tent was larger than I'd imagined or hoped. It resembled a small apartment. There was a bathroom, a living room, a kitchen and two small bedrooms. After putting my suitcase and Greg's cage down, I started recalling all the protective charms I had read about in my textbooks. These took me even longer to cast successfully than the spell that helped me erect the tent, and with each minute that I spent outside, the night breeze grew more chilly against my skin, the chirping of crickets louder, and my worries that a villager would look out of their window and spot me even bigger.

I settled for a Disillusionment Charm to make my tent invisible, and an Imperturbable Charm to make it soundproof, but even when I was done, I wondered how effective my spellcasting skills were. I'd managed alright so far, but these were considered highly advanced charms, and for all I knew, I could've spent the past twenty minutes swishing my wand around in vain. Only when I took a couple of steps back and noticed that the tent camouflaged with the trees the further away from it I stood, did I breathe out a sigh of triumph and relief.

"Well," I whispered to myself. "That'll do."

After sweeping the dust away from the sofa in the living room, I plopped down on it and turned on the radio that sat on the coffee table. I kept switching channels for a while, until I stumbled upon Celestina Warbeck's hit song You stole my cauldron but you can't have my heart.

"Isn't it amazing, Greg?" I said to my barn owl, who I'd set free from his cage. He rested on an empty armchair, pecking on an Owl Treat I'd dug out of the suitcase for him. "I'm a witch. I mean, like actually, a witch. Every now and then, it just hits me, that this is my life now. I'm literally in the wizarding world, using magic for everyday tasks, listening to wizarding music, using a wand-an actual wand."

I laughed out loud, half incredulously, half in disbelief. Any second now, I expected to wake up and find that everything that had happened the past couple of months had been nothing but a dream. I'd been on the move ever since I left home, and my new reality only dawned on me in moments like this, late at night when I lay in bed and allowed my brain to slow down and grapple with this 180 degree turn my life had taken ever since I got that letter in the mail.

Greg uttered a lazy hoot, which I took as a sign of agreement. But why would Greg complain, after all? He might still be inside that dark cage in the small animal shop in Diagon Alley, waiting to catch somebody's attention, if it wasn't for a certain fifteen year old girl who entered the shop one beautiful morning, two weeks ago. That fifteen year old girl called Polly Annabelle Kin, whose life changed once and for all when she received her acceptance letter to Hogwarts.

Had it really only been two months? I couldn't even remember what my life looked like before all this. The girl I was before I found out about the existence of the wizarding world felt so far away, so distant from me now.

With these thoughts occupying my brain, Greg's faint hoots as he pecked away at the last remains of the Owl Treat, and the chorus of crickets outside the tent, I drifted off to sleep.

▼

I woke up the next day with the weirdest feeling, which I realized had everything to do with the dream I had. If I could even call it a dream. What I saw in my sleep felt more like fragments of childhood memories trying to resurface, but lacked the line of narrative to link them with one another in a way that would help me recall anything of value. All that reached me were flashes, glimpses, puzzle pieces I didn't know where to fit.

A tire swing. A stream leading into a forest. The bark of a dog-a golden retriever. I couldn't have been older than six or seven. The dog was chasing after me but weirdly enough, I wasn't scared. I ran and ran, along the stream and into the forest, laughing. Then a boy. He, too, around the same age, possibly a year older. Running with me, laughing with me. Raven hair, jeans torn at the knees, a gap between his front teeth.

The boy's face wouldn't leave my mind all morning as I walked all the way to a quaint little tavern in town to get breakfast. I had definitely seen him before, but I couldn't remember where or when. It wasn't until I sat down and the waitress emerged back from the kitchen with my order (scrambled eggs, French toast and a mug of hot milk) that it hit me.

Not on my own terms, obviously, given my poor memory, but when I reached into the pocket of my zip-up hoodie to pull out the money to pay, my fingers brushed against another object. A folded piece of paper. I pulled it out and unfolded it. It was the photograph. The one I found tucked between the pages of mom's neatly arranged photo album of all our travels through the years. Except this one stood out from the rest because where they were immobile, this one moved; where they were printed in glossy and smooth paper, this looked old, yellowish even, the edges frayed. That's when it hit me.

The little boy from my dream was the same one from the photograph. But here, he looked older by three years, and so did I. He stood next to me: same raven hair, same gap between his front teeth as he smiled, a couple inches taller. Behind me stood mom, another woman beside her who had one arm around mom's shoulders and the other draped around a brunette girl, who had to be twelve or thirteen. On the woman's other side stood a taller girl, this one blonde, who seemed to be the eldest of her children-probably fifteen by the looks of it. She was the only one wearing clothes, while the rest of us were dressed in swimwear.

We were posing in front of a lake. Bright and sunny summer day. A wooden sign in the background read, 'Asheville, N.C.' I flipped the photograph, remembering what I found written on the back of it the first time I stumbled across it. A date and description, the only indicator of identity of this mysterious family. 17 Aug. 2025. Asheville lake day with the Ransoms.

So the visions from my dreams weren't a result of my imagination, after all. They were exactly what I feared they had been: fragments of lost childhood memories. Of people whose names and faces I didn't even remember. Places I didn't recall visiting.

When I found the photograph that day, my first thought had been, I've been to North Carolina and I don't know about it? Mom always checked off the names of every state we visited in the bucket list she kept glued to her fridge. I always told her how much I would like to visit North Carolina someday because I'd looked up pictures on the internet and the landscape looked beautiful. She always dismissed me by saying we'd go there someday, but apparently we had visited already. And we knew people there. That had been my second thought, We know a family of wizards? This photograph was the only documentation I had, both of our visit, and relationship with these people. The Ransoms.

But now I'd just had a flashback in my sleep. Maybe-hopefully-the first of many. If there was a whole part of my past that mom had managed to keep hidden from me, to the point my brain had completely buried or erased its existence, dreams could be my only hope of recovering glimpses from it. Especially if that past happened to involve wizards. One in particular that I seemed to have been friends with, who was around my age too.

I paid the money and left the tavern, but not before asking the waitress for more information about wizarding locations nearby and how to get there. As the days turned into weeks, and I continued my travels from one place to another like a nomad, always in search of what the next adventure would bring, my dreams went back to normal. Jumbles of incoherence, riddled with faces and areas that I saw or met during my travels that wove their way into my sleep without any particular meaning.

No more flashes from my lost past. No more visions of the young, raven-haired boy with the gap between his front teeth and tears in his jeans that revealed his ashy knees. No more signs of hope that I would recover those forgotten memories from my childhood, at least not anytime soon.