Petunia woke up to the alarm clock ringing.
She got up, stretched, did some stretches and simple exercises.
Compared to yesterday, her body ached less, which was a relief.
While she attended to other urgent morning tasks, a strangely clear and detailed dream ran through her mind.
As if she’d been walking through an abandoned city, beautiful like a magical kingdom from childhood fairy tales.
The dream was so vivid that even after waking, Petunia remembered how the river roared at the bottom of the chasm and how terribly narrow and shaky the little bridge she’d crossed had seemed; how many steps the staircase had, and how the horn she’d carelessly blown had sounded.
Just like that stupid boy from the Narnia book.
Petunia had stopped reading fairy tales long ago — they were for children — but she still remembered the plots, if not in every detail, then quite thoroughly.
The comparison to Diggory amused her.
They really did have something in common.
He was the nephew of a magician.
She was the older sister of a witch.
Only the book boy’s uncle was a charlatan, while her sister was a genuine witch.
What else did Petunia have in common with Diggory?…
Hmm, she remembered, he had brought an apple from the magical land to heal his mother.
And Petunia…
Petunia had swiped a book in which she didn’t understand a single word.
“Ha-ha,” Petunia said sarcastically to her reflection in the small pocket mirror.
“Instead of taking something useful, you little fool, Tuney.
Still dreaming of learning magic from books?
You even dream about it.” Her reflection gave her an injured look, and she concluded, “But Lily’s books didn’t help you one bit.” She snapped the mirror shut and tossed it on the table.
Nearby lay her open diary.
Yesterday she’d barely finished writing and had fallen asleep immediately, and next to it…
Petunia blinked.
She didn’t remember having such a book among her things.
Large.
Larger than standard size.
With a bright red binding and gold embossing, the corners decorated with metal fittings.
Judging by the rich color — gold ones.
“Where did this thing come from?” Petunia reached out her hand.
The binding felt solid and cool under her fingers, real.
Turning the book over, she saw a gold eight-pointed star adorning its front cover, then she pried up a few pages with her nail and opened it.
A handwritten sprawl of strange letters immediately caught her eye.
“So it wasn’t a dream…” Petunia whispered and sat down on a stool, remembering how…
…she had raced along the road to the farm, ran between the trees, ignoring the familiar squelching from the undergrowth she’d heard since last evening, burst into the house, slammed the door shut with a crash, and immediately dropped the bolt.
And collapsed onto a stool.
She was completely exhausted.
Only then did fear slowly begin to leave her.
“I shouldn’t have touched that damned horn,” Petunia whispered, burying her face in her hands.
Her body still remembered the contrast of sensations: one moment she felt completely at home, in comfort and safety, and the next she suddenly was an uninvited guest, and the owners would hardly be glad to see her in their house.
And she’d even taken the book.
Why, for heaven’s sake?
Petunia leaned on the table and opened the book to a random page.
Just because.
Why not leaf through her trophy?
She couldn’t read it, so she might as well look at the pictures.
There was a tree with a dense crown, and among its branches sat tiny little birds.
Round, with red breasts and funny little crests on their tiny heads.
The tree was drawn in such detail that you could count every leaf, and the birds were almost alive.
Any moment now they’d chirp and fly away!
On the next page, the same tree and same birds were drawn, but this time a forest ginger cat was creeping toward the birds in the thick grass at the roots.
The tip of his tail poked out slightly from the forest grass, but the foolish little birds didn’t notice him.
There were many more drawings.
Whether they were illustrations for the text, or the unknown artist had drawn them just to fill the empty space in the margins, these very pictures told Petunia without words that the artist who made these miniatures had enjoyed his creation.
Every time he started work, because in every tiny leaf, every finest hair, joy was evident.
This book was treasured.
Not as a valuable art object, but as a gift from an important person, or even a memento of him.
Maybe that’s why she had taken it?
Because such a precious thing, once beloved by someone, lay in dust and oblivion?
And she just felt sorry for it?
Sometimes Petunia felt sorry for herself…
Petunia suddenly slapped her cheeks sharply.
No time for self-pity!
If you have time to whine, better spend it on work.
Keeping busy always helps.
Feeling sorry for herself and sniveling (like Nyunius, ha!) was completely out of character.
And if you don’t know what to do, first do what you can, and the solution will come on its own.
So she did what was obvious.
The day was over.
Time to have dinner, write in her diary, and hit the sack.
Almost falling asleep, she thought that this world was like Frankenstein’s monster.
It was stitched together from different pieces, but the sun was still the same.
Petunia had seen this clearly when she fled the ghost city.
A sharp and distinct boundary between two realities was there, halfway between the farm entrance and the city entrance.
It would have been nice if it was still day on the farm side, but there was only one sun in the sky.
And it had already nearly disappeared below the horizon.
The night that came to replace it didn’t care whose land was whose.
As she fell asleep, Petunia wondered what kind of person would have to be to stitch two different worlds together so firmly?
Not a wizard, certainly, she was sure of that…
…the book definitely wasn’t magical, Petunia decided, aimlessly flipping through pages covered in strange letters.
The plants and animals drawn in its margins remained motionless, and no one shouted, sang, or threatened to curse a stupid Muggle who dared to touch a magical book.
“You won’t mind if I keep you, will you?” The book didn’t answer, but Petunia decided it didn’t mind.
There was food in the pot.
It seemed she had also cooked more than necessary yesterday.
Petunia checked her supplies.
There was significantly less flour in the paper bag than before, and she had used up all the onions.
What a nuisance.
The flour soup in the pot had cooled and looked far from appetizing.
Petunia thoughtfully scooped up some broth with a spoon, tasted it, and put it aside with disgust.
She didn’t feel like eating.
“I’ll save it for lunch,” she decided and went to work.
First, she checked the garden.
Since yesterday, her plantings had grown a bit more, sprouted additional leaves, and now looked much more like proper garden beds.
If you looked closely, you could even tell what was planted where.
Petunia conscientiously watered them and looked for weeds.
She pulled some grass here and there around the beds, more for her own peace of mind than out of necessity, and considered the garden work done.
But there was still plenty to do.
She rolled the bathing tub outside and filled it with water in several trips, took out a bar of laundry soap from her satchel, and thoroughly washed all her clothes.
Soon the branches of the trees around the cottage were adorned with fresh laundry, and Petunia used the soapy water to thoroughly wash the floors and walls inside the house, the single window, and the porch…
When the sun passed its zenith and rolled toward sunset, Petunia suddenly found herself with a broom and dustpan, cleaning up pieces of glass from the ruins of the greenhouse.
The fragments of its frame that had fallen inside were already outside, stacked in a neat pile.
This happened to her sometimes.
From nerves, she would start cleaning and wouldn’t stop until there was no disorder left in sight.
Here, on the farm, that would be like death.
There was disorder everywhere!
“That’s enough, Tuney,” she carefully swept a few more shards into the dustpan.
“You can’t put the whole place in order at once.
You’re doing great as it is.” She bent down, leaning one hand on the broom, and scanned the ground, checking if she’d gotten everything.
Experience whispered that tiny glass shards could easily get lost in the dirt and then pierce her hands at the worst possible moment.
Something glittered among the clods of earth.
Petunia carefully scraped the dirt aside with her hand and pulled out a small brass key.
“Hmm…” She didn’t think she’d seen such small locks.
Maybe…
“From the greenhouse, maybe?” She shrugged, tucked the key into her pocket, and continued cleaning.
She carried the collected glass shards farther away, to where she definitely wouldn’t stumble on them by accident.
Then she put the frame fragments there too.
After the cleanup, the greenhouse wasn’t any more useful, but at least now this part of the farm had some semblance of order.
Petunia loved order.
“That’s right!
I haven’t watched TV yet,” she remembered and snapped her fingers.
That was out of order.
She needed to fix it immediately.
The tub left by the porch had already dried, and Petunia dragged it inside.
She quickly checked the weather forecast — windy tomorrow but no rain — and listened to the latest horoscope.
“The day is in your hands…” she repeated after the fortune-teller, wondering what that could mean.
Lily didn’t do divination, so Petunia hadn’t had a chance to learn that magical science.
Maybe if she’d at least read a textbook, the cryptic sayings on TV would make more sense?
The fire in the fireplace crackled demandingly, like a capricious child.
Petunia reached for the kindling she kept beside the fireplace, but her hand grabbed empty air.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance.
The flame kindled by her magical firesteel was undoubtedly magical.
It sat obediently in the hearth, lighting and warming the cottage day and night, and showed no inclination to spread to anything else.
In return, it wanted just one small thing — for there to always be fuel in the hearth.
As a result, in the vicinity of the cottage all the way to the pond, there were no branches or dead wood left.
The voracious flame had devoured everything.
Petunia’s empty stomach chose that exact moment to also ask for food.
“I’ll walk to the gate.
There seemed to be a lot of junk there,” Petunia decided, and tossing to the fire, “Wait, I’ll bring something soon,” she dashed out the door.
It seemed the fire crackled something like “hurry up” after her, but Petunia was already outside.
Definitely, her habit of talking to objects was getting worse.
She even felt like they answered back, and she understood them!
She headed toward the gate, gathering every branch that caught her eye.
This part of the farm hadn’t been cleaned yet, so pretty soon her arms were full of an armload of brushwood.
Running back to the cottage, she fed it all to the fire at once, earning a satisfied purr in thanks, and set off for a second load, rightly thinking it was better to build up a bigger supply.
The woodpile right nearby she hadn’t touched yet.
First, there were still enough dry branches on the farm grounds, and second, she didn’t know how to chop wood.
Sooner or later she’d have to deal with that problem, but she was putting it off as long as possible.
Petunia was hovering around the gate, looking for branches in the tall grass.
There were so many all over the farm, as if a hurricane had passed through recently, and more than once.
She hummed a popular tune under her breath.
In the past few days, she’d become so convinced that there wasn’t a single living soul around that she wasn’t even embarrassed to sing.
Though before, she’d only used it to annoy her sister.
As soon as she’d start, Lily would cover her ears and promise to hit her with “silentio” if Petunia didn’t stop her awful wailing.
So yes, Petunia was “humming” a song.
Why not, if she was in a good mood and had no one to embarrass herself in front of?
So when someone knocked on the gate, she didn’t even understand what she was hearing at first.
The knock came again.
“Who’s there…” Petunia straightened up, turning toward the archway of logs, and froze halfway, feeling the fear she’d forgotten since yesterday rear its head again.
Outside the “gate,” making no attempt to enter, stood a tall figure wrapped so tightly in a dark, tattered cloak that not a strand of hair or the tip of a nose showed from under its hood.
Extending a thin hand from under the cloak, the uninvited guest knocked on the log again and then stood still.
“Who are you?” Petunia managed to force out, and flinched when the stranger turned at the sound of her voice.
There was no face under the hood.