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Curiosity was her one irresistible compulsion.
As the first rays of dawn spiked through the hedge and dappled the damp underbrush, the girl tugged her cagoule more firmly into place and glanced at the overgrown lane her steps left behind.
She couldn’t see the bobbing, blue flames now, as the sun’s illumination dimmed all other lights, but she could still feel their pull.
Snoring and still after a party entirely too wild for a conference of dentists, her parents were unaware of what she had seen through the foggy, chilled glass of their hotel room in the predawn hours. She’d been after a drink and the loo, not a mystery to solve.
But once the girl saw the lights, curiosity burned away the haze of sleep. What was beyond Devizes, glowing like a beacon when all else was still?
The answer to that question lead her wandering beyond the town and through the gloom, all furtive stumbles and frozen limbs, until she reached a rusted fence half-hidden in the brush.
She approached haltingly, the urge to return to some vague task now niggling her mind. But underneath that sudden preoccupation the pull of adventure simmered, and she shook off her hesitance. Each footfall snapped threads of agitation as effervescent wonder warmed her again.
Her fingers reached for the crookedly-mounted sign. The acronym UXO was unfamiliar, but danger was a universal concept. As she traced the red paint, staticky tingles burst against her skin and buzzed in her teeth. Stranger than that, though, was the shimmer of the fence as her whole hand pressed forward. The prickly sensation spread up her arm before the sign gave way to empty air. She stumbled at the unexpected shift, and turned to see the fence vanished, only bramble and trees where structure had been.
Stuffing down her foreboding at disappearing fences and shivery static, the girl marched back toward the lane and turned, the rusted chainlink forming again. The corner of her mind that whispered caution when she first saw the flickering, glowing flames trembled at the thought of pushing on.
But under that shred of sense was a buoyant energy that reached beyond her reservations.
Reached beyond the tingly not-fence and through the green.
Soft, brilliant warmth sparked up her spine and reached for the source of those hazy fairy lights.
Purpose renewed, she stomped back through the boundary and into the forest along a surprisingly gracious trail. Morning mist saturated her nightgown’s hem, but the sun warmed her back and drove her deeper into the trees. The woods felt different here, both curiously preserved and exuding life. Birdsong echoed against lichen-coated trunks and prismatic dew bent the thready sunlight in a way that made the entire canopy glow.
The air had the same quality she remembered from a class trip to Westminster Abbey, one that left the girl feeling awed and ephemerally small. She was a sojourner in both vaults, but where the carved chambers and eaves chilled her with their echoes, this living ceiling refracted the same energy that fueled her predawn pilgrimage.
That vibrancy carried her along the mossy causeway. Her steps and mind wandered in tandem.
She was an adventurer seeking stores of wisdom and wealth.
A princess in her woodland fairy kingdom.
Magical and ancient as the landscape that ensconced her.
And the girl could not say whether it was her runaway imagination or vestigial instinct, but something tickled her awareness and jolted her from her daydreams.
A step further and the strains of nature suddenly quieted. Limbs froze mid-stride and air congealed in her lungs. Her body was gripped by invisible, viscous pressure, but her mind tripped through theories and tactics as she cast about for an escape. The sensation of being watched settled like lead in her gut as a rustle broke through the stillness.
She was no longer the hunter of wonder, but another’s curious prey.
The girl swallowed and tried her voice. “I know you’re out there! Show yourself or stop following me.”
The invisible hold released and she whirled toward the sound. A snap of a twig, and the delight that had sustained her didn’t stop a shiver of fear at what beasts might lurk in this stand of trees.
A silvery form flashed between trunks. The girl gasped and backed away, arms wheeling as she caught the hem of her nightgown on one muddy wellie and tumbled to the ground. Another rustle, and the form resolved into white fur, empty eyes, and… arms?
He was tall, but shaded with the gangly carelessness of youth in smudged clothes and bare feet. Where a blur of silver had been, she now saw two hues - the ticked white wolf pelt and the cornsilk of his hair poking out from underneath the maw he wore like a mask. No fearsome creature. Just a boy being odd in the way all boys were as they traversed the gap between childhood adventures and the cares of men.
He stalked through the underbrush and around several thick trunks, posture erect and intentional, and paused an arm’s span from her graceless heap of limbs. Their silent tableau reminded her of a chess match. And, if she was reading his rigid stance correctly, it was her move.
“Why were you following me?”
One held breath, and his twitching fingers caught her attention. Blanched knuckles clutched a smooth, polished stick. Another breath, and he came to some unspoken decision.
“This is my land, little girl. You’re trespassing.”
The boy paused again, and though she couldn’t see beyond the pelt, she felt the weight of his eyes examining her from boot to hood, ponderous and wary in the silence between them. But the girl had none of his circumspection in the wake of her own calming heartbeat.
As she drew a breath to repeat her question he parried with his own.
“Why didn’t you use the Floo? Father didn’t say we were expecting company.” Here he stopped himself, tapping that stick against his thigh and darting a look back over his shoulder into the distance of the wood, and muttered, “We weren’t expecting anyone, I’m sure of it...” The girl felt his resolve shift beyond the mask he donned like a shield. “Who are you and why are you sneaking around like a thief?”
Her brows shot up as she smacked small fists against the packed earth at her sides.
“I am not sneaking! I was following the path trying to find the lights. If this forest is yours can you show me?”
“If this fore— Do you have any idea who I am?” The boy managed an incredulous sneer.
She cataloged him in a way far too imperious for one tumbled in the mud.
“You’re the barmy boy stalking me in a forest with a mask on!” The girl cleared her throat and shook off her sarcasm in deference to the more urgent need. “And what about the lights I saw? I followed them this morning, from the hotel. And through that disappearing fence that made me itch. I didn’t know this land was someone’s, I just followed the path until you snuck up on me and I couldn’t… and...” She cast about for words to describe the muffling, paralyzing pressure that came upon her but they wouldn’t come, her voice deserting her as she tried to reconcile the impossible thing she felt in this glowing, golden wood.
Something settled the lines of the boy’s frame. He eased the stick into an unseen pocket and crouched down, melting from rigid alertness into warm, curious assessment of her.
“You really don’t know, do you? How did you even pass the boundary without magic?”
She stared uncomprehendingly at him.
“Magic isn’t real.”
He laughed at this and inclined his head.
“So you say. Except you just told me you followed mysterious flames through a Muggle repelling boundary line before I came upon you caught in the blood wards of the Ma— this land. So, little girl, how do you explain all of that?”
She pondered this, caught between disbelief at his explanation and mounting excitement at the confirmation of a hundred little clues she’d observed and dismissed. Books unshelving themselves. Snobby classmates breaking out in boils. A steaming scone vanished from its brightly lit case and into her pocket.
And most telling, that pervading inner glow that seemed to kindle at the plaintive confidence in his words.
He watched her with a small smile, her expression flickering from incredulous to thoughtful and settling on eagerness. The girl twisted to her knees, then, hungry for knowledge in the uncomplicated way all children are.
“So you know magic? Show me!”
Here his smile dropped a bit, his whole demeanor regaining the caution he’d shed while they spoke.
“That’s right out. There’s, there are rules. Things I can’t say to a Mug— to someone without magic. I’ll get in trouble.” At this she pouted but was undeterred.
“But you just said I was magic. I’ve done things that nobody else believes.” She fixed him with a canny look. “Maybe I’m the magic one here and not you, if you can’t prove it. I’m the one who made the fence disappear and—”
“No you’re not.” He cut her off with a shrug. “That boundary was meant to make people turn away from our land without ever coming close. You felt it, right? The urge to leave and do something else?”
He eyed her gaping expression.
“That’s what I thought. I can’t fully explain, but the line admits certain people and not others. What I can’t figure out is how you made it through after the enchantment kicked in.”
On that point, she had an answer for him.
“I felt a… heat? Energy? In my chest and… and reached for it. When I’m scared or unsure it makes me feel better. The strongest it’s ever been was when I spotted the fairy lights this morning. That’s why I’m here. I have to know. Help me? Pleeeease?”
Whether it was the girl’s wheedling or disclosure of her deepest and most treasured secret, she couldn’t say. But with a sigh and a smile that warmed from sardonic to nearly kind, the boy reached into his pocket and drew out the gleaming length of wood he’d previously stowed.
“I hope I don’t regret this. Do you know much history? Have you heard of the burnings and hangings of witches in Britain’s past?”
She gave a somber nod.
“Right. Having magic was dangerous. Many witches— yes, shut your gob, witches and wizards are real. Many of them had to hide who they were or die because of the ignorance and hatred of the Muggles around them. Muggles are what we call non-magical people, got it?”
The girl nodded with rapt attention, and he gathered his thoughts for a moment before forging on.
“I can’t explain everything, or show you much, because a council of wizards from across the Isles and Continent came together to draft up a new form of government and protective laws for all magical folk and creatures. And no, I’m not telling you about them, too. Get that look off your face.”
“But I—”
“No. And if you interrupt again I’m packing it up and you can just wait a few years and stew.”
“A yea—? Right. Sorry.” She cleared her throat and fought for the threads of her self control that seemed to fray with every delectable morsel of mystery he dropped at her feet. The boy held his peace a few seconds further before taking up the tale again.
“As I was saying, they drafted up new laws to govern magical society, the chief statute being one of sworn secrecy on all magical matters, persons, potions, and artifacts. My ancestors and other scions of the oldest families pledged themselves to this… why in the bloody hell are you raising your hand?!”
The girl bit her lip and lowered that over-zealous hand back into her lap, all heated cheeks and determined, bright eyes. She couldn’t be sure, but it almost sounded as though he swallowed a laugh, hiding it deep beneath an irritated moue.
“So magic isn’t just making things happen with…your mind? Hands? You can use objects and make actual potions too? I’ve never seen this in any book I’ve read, nothing real, anyway. It’s all fairytales and tricks.”
“You are actually incapable of just letting something lie, aren’t you? Where do you think those so-called fairytales came from? These laws were only put into place 250-odd years ago.”
He brought the stick she’d almost forgotten to the fore, shafts of scattered sunlight reflecting off the warm, smooth surface.
“This is one of the regulated objects, and the only one you’ll be seeing today. It’s no ordinary piece of wood, this.”
Here he tapped the rod against the loamy path beneath their feet and muttered in a tongue she couldn’t make out. But whatever passed his lips was lost to her cut gasp as pure, pink campion bloomed from nothing in a thatch between them. The boy grinned at her dumbfounded silence and reached forward, plucking one perfect, crisp bloom and presenting it with a flourish for her inspection. Hands clenched and eyes alight, she could only stare at the evidence of his fantastical tale.
He leaned closer with the lovely and impossible posey.
“You asked for proof. I can’t furnish much, magic use is tracked if you’re underage, and only small household spells are allowed. But this wand is a… a special conduit for my magic, and no two are alike. With training and practice, a wizard becomes adept at the magical arts. It takes years, and the knowledge is safeguarded as a heritage passed down through magical kin.”
It was at this statement the girl’s smile faltered and dimmed.
“So I’m not magic, then. My family doesn’t know any of this. They think it’s just made up, stories passed around to justify what people didn’t have better explanations for.”
The boy plucked a few more blooms, then, making a tiny bouquet of wildflowers that looked as real as any she had ever seen. He presented it to her with a little shake. The stems felt crisp and moist against her fingers, just like the flowers she picked for her mum from their sunny back garden. She brought them to her face, stroking soft, flawless petals of that same pink across her lips and smelling their green and honeyed scent.
“That’s the only reason I can say even this much. You didn’t break the boundary ward to our land. It must have let you in because you have magic. It blocks Muggles and they can’t bridge it. You could because you’re not one of them. Sometimes a family throws a magical child, and— and there you have it. Here you are.”
He said this with brisk alacrity, but the girl caught his hesitation, the subject shuttered for reasons more complex than the boy was letting on. She bounced on her knees, still clutching her campion bouquet, and debated the wisdom of pressing him further.
With more self control than he’d have credited her, the girl traced back to a mystery he’d stoked in his fit of pique, instead.
“What did you mean when you said I could stew for a few years? If a person has to be taught magic, why can’t I learn now, from you? I’m a keen student and if you’ve a book or lecture for me I’d—.”
The boy lost his battle with composure, barking a laugh that nearly dislodged the empty eyed mask atop his head.
“Keen, you say? Rather swotty, more like. How old are you, little girl?”
“Would you stop calling me that? I have a name, you know!”
“And I don't want to know it. Never underestimate the value of plausible deniability.” He ignored her confusion and forged on.
“Formal studies in the magical world start when you’re eleven. Unless you’re pitifully stunted I’d say you have a few years before your letter. Your questions will be answe—”
“I’ll be eleven next month, you great big prat! And what’s this about a letter?”
His eyes remained hidden but the glare he leveled was tangible thing.
“That’s the last interruption from you or I’m done, got it? Mannerless twit…”
She bit her lip and tried for composure, every instinct urging her to argue and push and force her way to the knowledge she sought instead of waiting out his half cryptic statements and self satisfied smirks. The girl reminded herself that he had been kind and, if his statements were to be believed, faced some risk to share information with her. The thought sobered and centered her, defensiveness fading away as she sucked in the warm, damp air of the morning.
“I apologize, can you tell me more? Please? I’ll be quiet this time, I promise!”
“One final question, and then you best be getting back. I can’t let you go further in our lands and the longer you’re here, the more likely you’ll be discovered. And there are magical ways of stripping knowledge right out of someone’s mind.”
The girl gasped at this cruelest of consequences.
“I— okay. Yes. If I just need to wait for that letter I will, I can be patient no matter what you think. But can you help me with what I came here for? If this is your land, the lights are yours, too. I just want to see them. I need to see them before I go.”
Hidden eyes sought some truth in the distance, beyond the wood to where she suspected his home was. She fairly buzzed with anticipation, but clutched at her final shred of patience and waited in silence for his response.
“The lights, as you called them, are the flames of my forebears. Every head of house gives part of themselves as a trust for the future, in blood and power. The light is kindled from that well of magic accrued over the generations we have lived on this land - or so my father says. They were the beacon you followed, even after sunrise, right?”
“I felt them inside me as soon as I saw them, that warmth I told you about.”
“The magic in you recognized the magic here, in this place, see? All magic comes from the same source, all of us who have it can recognize it in others. That you could see the flames and feel them to follow during the day is proof.”
At that, the boy’s wand traced another obscure, intricate pattern. The mesmerizing glow of a flickering flame gathered in his outstretched palm.
She gasped and the light was reflected in her wonder-struck eyes. She reached out a tentative finger, feeling the warmth of the blue fire echoed in her chest, throughout the living canopy around them, and, somehow, radiating from his grin. The boy closed his hand and vanished his conjuring, leaving her at once satisfied and longing for more. Some deep and primal part of her recognized the truth of it - that whatever force of will it took to make the magic bloom, it was hers as much as his. As real as the flowers wilting in her shaking, clammy fist.
“I hope that was worth an early morning hike and whatever trouble you’re sure to get in when your parents have their say?”
“It was the very best thing I've ever seen,” she uttered, numb with astonishment and a head so full of longing she could scarcely give voice to it.
“Then I’ll take my leave. Just walk back the way you came. If you wander or try to follow me you’ll be stuck in the blood wards again, and this time I’m not helping you out of them.”
“Wait!” She scrambled up on unsteady feet. “You never told me your name.”
“No, I didn’t. It’s better unsaid, just in case. But—“ here he paused and tossed a conspiratorial smile her way, “next time you see me you’ll know it.”
She couldn’t fathom what that meant, as he backed up a few steps into the brush before sauntering away, all amusement and self satisfaction.
Mind spinning, but marveling in the joy of a mystery solved and still more to discover, she retraced the trail just as he said. Her brimming curiosity would have to wait, though. The girl’s faculties fully engaged in the tasks of slipping back into the hotel and spinning some confabulation to satisfy the furious parents she’d left in the dimmest hours of dawn.
— — — —
That summer cooled into a wet and windy fall.
The girl’s birthday passed with unseasonable bluster.
No sign of magic aside from the kindling glow deep in her marrow and, if she concentrated with all her might, the occasional page turned as if by an invisible hand while she read every dog-eared library book on magical lore she could. The boy’s prediction finally came true when she received a letter from a keen eyed tawny owl, just after Boxing Day.
Exultant.
Justified.
Belonging, at last.
Such were the emotions that suffused her as her father read aloud the missive proclaiming her something beyond just a precocious girl with a bottomless imagination that connected to a hundred eccentric moments her parents could never explain.
They made her wait an endless spring before the honeyed warmth of summer heralded her second trip to the discrete world beyond the veil of magic. And in every shop window, around each tilting facade, she looked for the boy whose eyes she’d never seen but whose mouth smiled a dozen secrets told and promised thousands more.
The girl caught a glimpse of cornsilk blond hair, as the crowd eddied and churned past the goblin bank her family had visited hours before. But this hair was too long, connected to a face far too stern and years too old. Even with all the courage she could muster, how could she ask after a boy whose name was never said? One she might endanger if indeed she did find him? No, as the dour, smartly dressed man disappeared into the building, the girl resigned herself to that particular mystery remaining unsolved awhile longer.
Instead, she trailed her parents and set her mind to absorbing the amazing, impossible details of the world she could now call her own.
Before, she’d sought bobbing, hypnotic flames. Now, she sought the nameless, half masked someone who spun a little magic and cracked open ancient secrets at the center of her world in the same sweep of his wand.
The summer days warmed and waned, passed by the girl in a flurry of reading and research as she prepared for the end of her non-magical life. Curiosity was, after all, her greatest compulsion. And she now sat at a feast table of knowledge, sating her appetite on every piece of history, practicum, and lore that had been guarded and cultivated and was now her heritage, too.
She looked for the boy at the station, past a magical barrier that reminded her of a sign and a forest and her first taste of the truth.
He wasn’t there.
She peeked her head into other compartments at the behest of a desperately awkward boy and his misplaced toad.
No gangly limbs or buttermilk-blond hair.
No toad, either.
They crossed the gates of the magical school that was now her new home and she swore there was a flash of him in the crowd, but the crush of bodies carried her along and she soon lost her focus as trunks were piled and fellow first year students gathered like milling, wide eyed ducklings beholding open water for the very first time.
She was overwhelmed.
She was overjoyed.
She very nearly forgot all about strange older boys and pink flowers and ancient blue flames as they were herded into the cavernous, beautiful dining hall and the wizened headmaster welcomed them with a twinkle and a smile.
The girl could scarcely absorb her surroundings, focused as she was on the teaching staff’s introductions. But her awe cracked into splintering amazement as the headmaster called up the students serving as school prefects for the year.
She had never seen his eyes, and somehow he’d grown even taller in the year past, but the girl saw that sauntering stride in her dreams. She traced his features greedily now, the nose and brow and watery-pale eyes the wolf pelt had obscured. No bare feet and dusty trousers, he was smartly dressed and self possessed. Her examination of his frame was so intense that the girl nearly missed headmaster’s reveal of his name.
“…—pe Clearwater and Terry Boot from Ravenclaw,” the wrinkled wizard paused for the applause from a table of blue and black ties as both students stepped forward and accepted the prefect badges with beaming smiles, “And for Slytherin house, our fifth year prefects are Daphne Greengrass and Draco Malfoy.” Clapping and hoots from the other side of the hall echoed in the air.
Any further words were lost to her as she watched the jaunty wave and strut of the prefects returning in honor to their peers.
How galling that it happened just as he predicted, his face and name rolling through her on a tide of applause and leaving the girl spinning in the backwash of one more mystery solved.
She was jolted from her thoughts again as her peers stirred from their clump in the back of the hall and formed a queue, waiting to be sorted into the houses that would shape their loyalties and identities and futures. Her heart trembled in her chest as she lost the thread of him again, bubbling with excitement and a shard of fear at how the magical hat would settle her fate.
The girl smiled briefly at the thought of it, that if he’d told her of this magical artifact in the shade of his family’s ancestral forest, she’d never have believed it.
The hat began its work with a badly-rhymed and thoroughly charming song and she lost the thread again, first years stepping ever closer to the dais until her turn was up.
“Granger, Hermione!” rang the authoritative voice of the deputy headmistress, and she sat with trembling limbs and saucer wide eyes as the enchanted hat settled on her head. With a confidence she didn’t feel, it was joyously declared that her fate was with the lions. Brave, true, and most definitely not the house she imagined being sorted into when she cracked open her textbooks and learned of the Ravenclaws’ thirst for knowledge.
But maybe she was more Gryffindor. Not just a scholar but an adventurer.
A seeker of truth.
The hunter of wonder.
One who would traverse the dark and damp and follow the light inside her soul instead of counting the cost of her journey.
These thoughts swirled and eddied in her mind as she slipped down off the stool and cast about for the table of wine-gold ties and the most raucous cheers. She scanned the hall and stuttered on him again, crossed arms and cornsilk hair and a smart new badge on his robes.
He was looking at her with knowing. And his stare caught her just as thoroughly as the Malfoy family magic ever had. She was nearly past him, hall ringing with cheers for the next student queued, when he quirked his lips, shrugged one careless shoulder, and winked.
The warmth that settled in her stomach now was, perhaps, a different kind of magic altogether.