I had two subjects I needed better grades in.
And about four hundred chapters left to read.
Unfortunately, only one of those things interested me.
On the way home from school, I tried to work out how much studying I needed to do before tomorrow’s test.
An hour should be enough.
Maybe two, if I was further behind than I remembered.
First I’d eat something, rest for a bit, read a few chapters…
I knew this plan.
I’d been using it for most of the year.
Which was precisely why I had two subjects I needed better grades in.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand the material.
Usually, I never even got far enough to find out.
I’d come home, switch on the computer or open a book, and then it would be dark.
The next day, I’d promise myself I would start earlier this time.
Harry Potter was the worst of it.
I knew the books and the films.
When those stopped being enough, I discovered fanfiction.
Thousands of stories where someone changed one decision, saved the wrong person, or dropped a character into Hogwarts who knew what was going to happen.
I could spend half the night reading about someone else’s second life while my own waited for me to do my homework.
I didn’t have many friends.
I wasn’t seeing anyone.
Most of the time, that didn’t bother me; it was easier to find something to read than someone I wanted to talk to.
I stepped into the hallway outside the flat almost without thinking.
“Studying first today,” I muttered.
I took another step.
My shoe caught on something soft.
I looked down just as I lost my balance.
The new runner, thicker than the old one, had a corner folded back.
I reached out, trying to grab something.
Too late.
The last things I remembered were the edge of a cabinet and a short, hard crack.
I was sitting in a chair.
For a moment, that was enough to occupy all my attention.
I could feel the wooden seat, the backrest behind me, and my hands resting on my thighs.
Nothing hurt.
A white table stood in front of me.
On the other side sat an old man in robes.
He was laughing.
His head was bowed, his arms wrapped around his stomach, and tears were running down his cheeks.
He kept trying to catch his breath, but every time he looked up at me, he started again.
I glanced over my shoulder.
There was no hallway behind me.
There were no walls or doors either, nor anything else for my eyes to settle on.
White stretched away in every direction.
I couldn’t even tell how large the space around us was.
I touched my head.
My fingers ran through my hair, but I found no wound.
“Excuse me… Where am I?”
The old man raised a hand, asking for a moment.
With the other, he wiped his face.
I waited.
With every passing second, it became harder to believe this was a dream.
“That good a joke?” I asked at last.
He looked at me and pressed his lips together.
For a moment, it seemed he might get himself under control.
He didn’t.
Under normal circumstances, I probably would have started laughing too.
Right now, though, I was sitting somewhere I didn’t understand, opposite the only person who might be able to explain anything, and I was slowly losing patience.
“Could you tell me what happened?”
That finally helped.
The old man straightened, though a broad smile remained on his face.
“Normally, this would be where I judged your earthly life and decided your fate, but…”
For a moment, I didn’t hear the rest.
Earthly life.
I looked at my hands.
Turned them over, as though only now might I notice something I had missed.
The hallway.
Tripping.
The impact.
“I’m dead?”
The old man stopped laughing.
“Yes.”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.
A moment ago, I’d been thinking about a test.
I hadn’t wanted to study.
I was supposed to go home, eat something, sit down at the computer.
All of that still felt closer and more plausible than the man sitting opposite me.
“But I only fell over.”
“I know.”
“And that was enough?”
He didn’t answer straight away.
He didn’t have to.
I rested my hands on the edge of the table.
It was hard and cool, so real that it only confused me more.
I didn’t feel dead.
Then again, I had no idea how I was supposed to feel.
“So… what now?”
The old man waited a moment before returning to what he had been saying.
“As I said, normally we would assess your life. In your case, I intend to make an exception.”
I looked up.
“Why?”
The corners of his mouth lifted again.
“No one has made me laugh that hard in centuries.”
I studied him for a few seconds, waiting for him to add the real reason.
He didn’t.
“You were laughing at me?”
“I’m afraid so.”
My face grew hot.
Apparently, you could still be embarrassed after death.
“Nice.”
“For me, yes. It may yet work out well for you too.”
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands.
“I’ve seen your life, Oliver. I also know which world interested you more than your own. I’ll let you be reborn there.”
I didn’t want to guess.
I was afraid that saying the name aloud would sound every bit as ridiculous as the idea that had just occurred to me.
The old man spared me the trouble.
“In the world of Harry Potter.”
I stared at him.
“Really?”
“Really.”
I waited for laughter.
For him to explain that I had misunderstood.
For anything that would let me return to the simpler assumption that I had hit my head and was having a particularly strange dream.
The old man calmly held my gaze.
Magic.
That thought cut through everything else.
Not a description in a book.
Not special effects.
A wand in my own hand.
A spell that actually worked.
Hogwarts.
A place I could actually walk into.
I wanted it.
Only after a moment did I remember what else was in that world.
“Does that include Voldemort?”
“It’s the same world.”
My enthusiasm dimmed a little, but it didn’t disappear.
I knew the dangers.
At least, I thought I did.
I knew where the monsters appeared, whom not to trust, and which school years would be best spent a very long way from Harry.
“Any particular wishes?” the old man asked.
This time, I leaned forward.
“I get to choose?”
“Tell me what you want.”
I fell silent.
I’d read plenty of scenes like this.
The protagonist met someone powerful, received a few wishes, and began a new life with advantages other people couldn’t even imagine.
When I was reading, I always knew what I would ask for.
Now my thoughts suddenly kept getting in one another’s way.
I didn’t want to waste this chance.
Nor did I want to discover, a moment too late, that there was a limit the old man had forgotten to mention.
“I want to be reborn as a Peverell,” I said at last.
I watched his face.
He didn’t object.
“And keep my memories. All the memories I have from this life.”
Still nothing.
“I’d also rather skip being a baby. Start at eight years old.”
Eight seemed sensible.
Old enough to walk, read, and do things on my own.
Still early enough to prepare for Hogwarts.
The old man waited.
I was beginning to suspect the silence was deliberate.
“I want an exceptional talent for magic, and to learn easily,” I added.
“And enormous power. Practically unlimited.”
Only when I finished did I hear how that sounded.
An ordinary student who couldn’t make himself study for a test had just demanded that everything come more easily in his next life.
I didn’t take it back.
If I was allowed to ask, I was going to ask.
“Basically,” I added, “I want to be powerful. Really powerful.”
The old man watched me with his lips pressed together.
For a moment, I was certain I’d gone too far.
Then he gave me a thumbs-up.
“Can do.”
“All of it?”
“Everything you listed.”
He laughed again, though more briefly this time.
I wasn’t sure whether to be more pleased by his answer or worried by the laughter.
“Are you always like this?”
“No. Very rarely, in fact. But you’ve put me in an exceptionally good mood.”
I shook my head.
I couldn’t believe this was the conversation deciding the rest of my existence.
And yet, for the first time since learning I was dead, I began to smile.
I was going to get another life.
I didn’t know what it would look like.
I didn’t know the people I would meet or where I would open my eyes.
But I would keep my memories and be given abilities I had only ever read about.
I already wanted to find out whether it was true.
The old man studied me more closely.
His smile remained, but his voice softened.
“It’s time. Good luck, Oliver.”
The edges of the table began to blur.
I looked down at my hands.
White showed through my fingers.
“Wait. One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“How exactly did I die?”
I knew I’d fallen.
I remembered the impact.
Even so, part of me was still waiting to hear that something else had happened.
The old man smiled as though he’d been hoping for that question all along.
“Your shoe caught the corner of the new rug, and you hit your head on the cabinet.”
I stared at him.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
For a moment, I couldn’t get a word out.
My entire life ended by a piece of fabric I hadn’t even noticed.
“I lost to a rug.”
The old man’s shoulders shook.
Before he could burst out laughing again, he snapped his fingers.
Everything disappeared.