A week before our shopping trip, I thought I had plenty of time.
The day before it, I couldn’t find the list.
I checked the desk, my books and my bag.
Then I checked them all again, only less calmly.
The list was in the envelope with my Hogwarts letter.
I’d put it there myself so I wouldn’t lose it.
I decided it was best not to tell anyone.
The next day, I was ready before noon.
Bag over my shoulder, money in my pouch, list in my pocket.
I checked for it one last time when I heard the knock.
Professor McGonagall arrived exactly on time.
She spoke to the carer for a moment.
I waited beside them, trying not to look like someone who would have happily interrupted after the first sentence.
“Shall we?” she asked at last.
“Yes.”
I took a step towards the door.
“Your list?”
I patted my pocket.
“Money?”
I touched my pouch.
“Good.”
Only then did we leave.
Apparition was still horrible.
Over the past year, I’d tried to convince myself that I’d overreacted the first time.
I’d been tired, nervous and completely unprepared.
This time, I knew what to expect.
It didn’t help.
McGonagall waited for me to regain my balance.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. My insides are still deciding.”
She studied me carefully.
“They usually need a moment.”
She waited until I’d straightened up before setting off.
At the Leaky Cauldron, Tom greeted her with a nod.
When he saw me, he glanced at my bag, then back at the professor.
“School shopping?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“More than one book this time, then.”
McGonagall looked at me.
I pretended to be very interested in the way to the courtyard.
A moment later, the bricks slid apart beneath the tip of her wand.
Diagon Alley was crowded.
I’d got to know the street over the past year, but now there were children with their parents everywhere, along with shopping lists and stacks of new textbooks.
Someone was dragging a trunk that kept trying to turn left.
Outside the bookshop, two witches were comparing editions of the same book and blocking half the pavement.
For the first time, I was looking at it all as someone who was actually going to school.
I no longer had to wonder what it would be like in a year’s time.
In a few weeks, I’d be getting on the train.
“Robes first,” McGonagall said.
“Then we’ll collect the rest of your supplies.”
I followed her.
Madam Malkin’s smelled of new fabric and something like a hot iron.
A round-faced boy stood on a stool by the wall.
An elderly woman was adjusting his collar while the seamstress tried to measure him.
“Don’t slouch, Neville.”
The boy straightened his back.
Neville.
I looked at him again.
I knew I was going to meet people I’d read about in books.
I’d had three years to prepare for it.
Even so, I spent a moment staring like an idiot.
Neville noticed and gave me a questioning look.
I offered a small smile.
He smiled back before his grandmother drew his attention to his collar again.
McGonagall greeted her.
They exchanged a few words, and then it was my turn.
I stepped onto an empty platform.
Madam Malkin held out a black robe in front of me.
“First year, dear?”
“Yes.”
“Arms out.”
I obeyed.
The tape measure slid along my arm, then dropped down my leg of its own accord.
I twitched.
“Ticklish?”
“A bit.”
“Nearly done.”
For the next few minutes, I tried to stand straight and resist following every moving object with my eyes.
I looked different in the mirror.
The robe was still too long, held together with pins and loose around the shoulders.
Even so, it was hard not to smile.
I looked like a Hogwarts student.
Not someone dressed up as one.
The door opened again.
A fair-haired boy came in, and I recognised him almost immediately.
The woman with him approached the shop assistant while he looked around as though he’d expected better.
Draco Malfoy.
His gaze settled on me.
First on the robe, then on my face.
We looked at each other for a moment.
I wondered whether he’d say anything.
He didn’t get the chance.
“Chin straight, dear,” Madam Malkin reminded me.
I turned my head back.
Apparently, my first encounter with a future school nuisance had to wait until my collar had been measured properly.
When the clothes were ready, I took out my money.
McGonagall checked that we had everything on the list and let me pay.
The parcel went into my bag.
Before leaving, I glanced at Neville.
He was still standing on the platform.
He didn’t look pleased about it.
At the cauldron shop, I soon understood why the professor had wanted to come with me.
I’d picked out a copper one.
It looked sturdy.
It had a comfortable handle and a much nicer colour than the grey ones beside it.
McGonagall didn’t even touch it.
“Pewter. Size two.”
I checked the list.
So it was.
“Wouldn’t this one be better?”
“It would be different. First-year recipes are designed for specific equipment.”
I put the copper cauldron back.
At least I hadn’t paid for it yet.
The shopkeeper handed us the right one.
I peered inside, more out of habit than any ability to judge the workmanship.
It looked like a cauldron.
McGonagall inspected it a little more thoroughly.
“This will do.”
I paid.
In the next shop, we bought a set of scales, some phials and a telescope.
I lingered by the shelves of ingredients.
I recognised some from descriptions.
Others looked nothing like I’d imagined.
Dried plants, powdered minerals and jars of things I preferred not to examine before lunch.
There were ready-made beginner’s kits beside them.
I picked one up.
I’d spent a year reading about measuring, grinding and preparing ingredients.
Now I was finally going to see how it was done.
“Looking forward to Potions?” McGonagall asked.
“Yes. I’d like to do more than read the recipes for once.”
“Professor Snape will certainly give you that opportunity.”
I looked at her.
Snape.
With all the excitement over the letter and the shopping, I’d managed to put that thought aside.
“He is demanding,” she added.
“Listen to his instructions, and don’t make your own changes to the recipes.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
Not in the first lesson.
To be honest, I didn’t know enough to make a sensible change to anything yet.
I put the kit down and picked up the one specified on the school list.
That saved me from buying A History of Magic twice.
Unfortunately, several of my other books wouldn’t do.
“This textbook covers similar subjects, but you’ll be using the specified edition in class,” she explained.
I didn’t argue.
Another book was hardly a tragedy.
The trouble was that, while standing at the counter, I spotted two more on a nearby shelf.
I reached for one.
McGonagall glanced at the cover.
“You already have plenty to read over the next month.”
“I only wanted to look at the contents.”
She said nothing.
I opened the book.
Read the contents.
Put it back.
With some regret, but without feeling that I’d just been robbed of the opportunity of a lifetime.
The bookshop probably wasn’t going anywhere.
After the textbooks came parchment, ink and quills.
The shopkeeper was very keen to sell me a quill that corrected mistakes by itself.
McGonagall took an immediate interest.
“What sort of mistakes?”
The man cleared his throat.
After a brief conversation, I bought ordinary quills.
I also chose a small handwriting practice set.
Signing documents at Gringotts hadn’t been the last time I’d smudged ink, and my notes got worse with every page.
“A good choice,” the professor said.
“Legible handwriting saves a great deal of work.”
I suspected she was thinking of her own work marking essays as well.
We bought the trunk last.
It was dark and plain, with sturdy fastenings.
The shopkeeper showed me how to arrange things in the compartments, then McGonagall helped me move some of our purchases into it.
When we closed the lid, I just looked at it for a moment.
This wasn’t a bag of books I’d brought back from town any more.
It was luggage for school.
“Everything?” the professor asked.
I checked the list.
Two words remained at the very bottom.
“An owl.”
I heard the Magical Menagerie before we went inside.
Something was screeching.
Something else was hissing.
A cage rattled somewhere, and a cat ran out from under a shelf and passed us with the air of someone who owned the place.
McGonagall held the door.
“Watch your step.”
I stepped over the cat’s tail.
Inside, it smelled of animal feed, sawdust and animals.
There were terrariums on one side and cages on the other.
Some of the creatures slept through the noise.
Others did everything they could to add to it.
I headed towards the owls.
One of the larger ones watched me from beneath fluffed-up feathers.
A small brown one was asleep, its head almost entirely hidden under a wing.
A white one sat a little further along.
I stopped.
For a moment, the sounds of the shop seemed to grow distant.
Snowy feathers.
Yellowish eyes.
A calm, watchful gaze.
Hedwig.
The name came without thinking.
Of course, I had no proof that this was the owl.
There had to be more than one white owl in the world, and the book hadn’t included a cage number or instructions for identifying a particular bird.
But looking at her, I couldn’t think of anyone else.
She took a step closer along her perch.
So did I.
“This one?” McGonagall asked.
I nodded, still watching the owl.
The shopkeeper opened the cage.
“Easy now. Don’t reach down from above.”
He showed me how to hold out my forearm.
The owl considered it for a moment, as though assessing the quality of the perch on offer.
Then she stepped carefully onto it.
Her talons gripped harder than I’d expected.
“Oh.”
“Keep your arm steady,” the shopkeeper advised.
I did.
She was even more beautiful up close.
She tilted her head and examined my face.
She didn’t look away, fluff up her feathers or try to retreat.
I smiled.
“Hello.”
The owl blinked.
McGonagall stood beside me, patiently waiting for me to remember that buying an animal involved more than staring at it in delight.
I asked about feeding her, letting her out and helping her settle into a new home.
This time, I really listened.
I didn’t want to buy an owl and then discover I was hurting her because I’d assumed magic would take care of everything else.
The bird, cage and a supply of food cost me twenty-five Galleons.
When the shopkeeper closed the cage door, I hesitated for a moment.
If it really was her, Harry would get a different owl.
The thought gave me a small pang.
Then her white head turned towards me.
I couldn’t leave her here just because she’d belonged to someone else in a story I’d once read.
“Hedwig,” I said quietly.
McGonagall glanced at me.
“Chosen a name already?”
“Yes.”
The owl gave a short hoot.
I decided to take it as agreement.
We headed back towards the Leaky Cauldron.
McGonagall guided the trunk along beside her.
I carried the cage and kept glancing inside.
Hedwig watched the street with rather more composure than I’d managed on my first visit.
I stopped as someone crossed our path carrying an armful of long parcels.
The professor walked a few steps ahead.
That was when I saw the figure in a side alley.
It stood just beyond the corner, where the light from the main street didn’t quite reach.
At first, I thought it was a person.
Then I looked more closely.
There was something wrong with its shoulder.
I could see the uneven line of the wall through it.
My grip tightened on the cage handle.
Thin strands trembled around the figure.
They resembled the magic I knew, but didn’t form a coherent weave.
Broken ends moved independently, vanishing before I could trace them.
A ghost?
It should have been brighter.
Probably.
I knew ghosts from descriptions and films.
I had no idea what they ought to look like through my eyes.
The figure didn’t move.
I wasn’t even sure it was looking at me.
“Oliver?”
McGonagall’s voice made me start.
I turned.
She stood a few steps away.
“Is something wrong?”
I looked back into the alley.
Empty.
A crate lay against the wall, with a closed door further along.
“I thought I saw someone.”
The professor came closer and looked between the buildings.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I thought someone was standing there.”
She examined the alley for a moment.
“Don’t go down side streets on your own, particularly if something has worried you.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
That was true.
I had no desire whatsoever to find out what was around the next corner. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Hedwig shifted in her cage.
Only then did I notice that I’d tilted it slightly.
I levelled my arm.
“Sorry,” I murmured to her.
We walked on.
I glanced over my shoulder once more.
There was nobody there.
McGonagall took me back to the orphanage.
The owl required rather more explanation than the trunk.
The professor spoke to the carer while I stood beside her holding the cage, trying not to look as though this problem had only just occurred to me too.
In the end, Hedwig was allowed to stay.
Provided I cleaned up after her, fed her and didn’t let her fly around the dining room.
I accepted every condition without negotiation.
Before leaving, McGonagall reminded me about the train.
“The first of September. Eleven o’clock. Don’t leave getting onto the platform until the last minute.”
“I’ll be early.”
She looked at the cage.
“And remember, from now on you’re packing for two.”
Hedwig tilted her head.
I nodded mine.
Once the professor had left, I took my purchases upstairs.
The room suddenly felt cramped.
Trunk against the wall, cage by the window, textbooks on the desk.
For a moment, I couldn’t decide where to start.
I chose the owl.
I sat beside her and looked through the bars.
“We’ll only be here for a few weeks.”
She surveyed the room.
“I know. I’m looking forward to a bigger one too.”
The rest of August passed in reading, packing and learning Hedwig’s habits.
It soon became clear that we didn’t always agree.
I thought morning began when I woke up.
She sometimes decided I ought to wake up earlier.
I thought a quill left on the desk was where it belonged.
She wanted to know what it would sound like hitting the floor.
Even so, it grew harder to imagine the room without her.
The first time I let her out, I was more nervous than I cared to admit.
I waited by the window.
Then I moved away so I wouldn’t be ridiculous.
A few minutes later, I went back.
When she finally landed on the windowsill, I pretended I’d been quietly reading the whole time.
She didn’t look convinced.
I hadn’t forgotten the figure in Diagon Alley either.
I tried to find something in A History of Magic that matched what I’d seen.
The passages about ghosts offered no answer.
They mentioned incorporeal bodies, the presence of the dead and various customs, but said nothing about broken threads.
That probably shouldn’t have surprised me.
The author most likely couldn’t see them.
I had no reason to assume I’d encountered anything particularly dangerous.
There were plenty of things in magical London that I didn’t understand.
I wrote down a few sentences about what I remembered.
Then I closed the notebook.
I’d be able to ask someone at school.
The evening before I left, my trunk was packed.
I’d checked it twice.
The third time, I took out the book I wanted to read on the train and had to rearrange half my clothes before I could close it again.
Hedwig watched me from the wardrobe.
“Don’t even start.”
She preened her breast feathers.
I knew the trunk wasn’t the problem.
I simply couldn’t sit still.
Tomorrow, I was leaving for Hogwarts.
Every few minutes, I thought of something else that could go wrong.
Oversleeping.
My ticket.
The platform.
Not being able to lift the trunk onto the train.
Then I’d think of the castle and it would all start again, only with excitement this time.
Eventually, I decided to go for a walk.
I left my things in the room and told the carer I’d be back before the doors were locked.
The evening air was damp and cooler than it had been during the day.
I took a familiar route, one I often used on my way back from a run.
It passed an old cemetery.
Usually, I walked past its wall without much interest.
This time, the open gate caught my eye.
It was already darker among the trees than on the pavement.
Further in, someone was moving slowly between the graves.
I took another step.
Then stopped.
Those threads again.
Faint, uneven, breaking off where I expected them to continue.
A chill touched the back of my neck.
The figure stood a few metres from the path, partly hidden by a gravestone.
I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman.
The outline of its head was clearer than the rest of its body, but I couldn’t make out the features.
I rubbed my eye.
It was still there.
I didn’t want to go in.
Really.
Even so, I took two steps through the gate, trying to see whether it was simply someone in a pale coat standing behind the stone.
The figure turned its head.
I froze.
It knew I was watching.
I had no idea where that certainty had come from, but suddenly I couldn’t pretend I was looking at a stray patch of light any more.
Its face was indistinct.
Yet something about the way it stood reminded me of a person who’d been waiting too long for an answer.
I opened my mouth.
At first, nothing came out.
“Who are you?”
I said it quietly.
The figure didn’t answer.
One of the thin wisps beside its shoulder trembled and dispersed, as though torn away by a gust I couldn’t feel.
The figure began to fade.
For a moment, I could still see its face.
Then only the stone behind it.
I stood staring at the empty space.
A car passed on the road outside.
I stepped back.
I didn’t try to touch the gravestone, look for traces or wait to see whether the figure would return.
I left through the gate and headed towards the orphanage.
After a dozen paces, I realised I was walking much faster than before.
I slowed down a little.
Hedwig was waiting on the windowsill when I got back.
She hooted softly at the sight of me.
I closed the door and leaned against it for a moment.
“I’m glad to see you too.”
She flew up to the wardrobe, leaving me room by the window.
I looked at my reflection in the glass.
My eyes looked the same as they had that morning.
No pain.
No burning that might have given me some warning.
I could have been mistaken in Diagon Alley.
Twice was harder to dismiss as a coincidence.
I took out my notebook and added the date beneath my earlier entry.
Then the place and a few details, before they could get muddled in my memory.
I didn’t call the figure a ghost.
I left a question mark beside the word.
There were people at Hogwarts who knew more about such things than I did.
I could tell Dumbledore about it without adding anything about my previous life or instructions from a dream.
I’d seen a figure.
I didn’t know what it was.
That, at least, was true.
I put the notebook in my travelling bag, beside my book for the journey.
Then I checked the alarm clock.
It was exactly where I’d left it before the walk.
My ticket was still in place too.
Hedwig shifted above my head.
“We’re leaving tomorrow,” I said.
This time, it sounded a little different.
I still couldn’t wait.