Brontide

I’d never seen another house like it and I never would. Unstable as it was, it had an air of familiarity, feelings of homeliness and welcoming that I would never forget. There must’ve been a good five or six floors, and standing not too far in front of it I felt miniscule in size. I just couldn’t understand how a house like this even existed. It looked as though it’d started off as a one story house and then other floors were simply built on top of it.

I was very tempted to find out who lived in such a place, so tempted that I made my way up to the front door. The curtains were drawn shut but I could see lights inside, the sounds of voices carrying and people chatting over a dinner table, most likely. There were a lot of them from what I could tell, mostly consisting of children.

This furthered my interest in the strange house. I thought perhaps I could become friends with them, or maybe I already knew them from school. My hand hovered in front of the door, prepared to knock when I let out a long sigh. I took a few steps back, deciding against it at the last minute. However, I would return. I would definitely return.

A few days later, when my mother finally let me go outside again, I retraced my steps and eventually showed up at the house again. This time I went during the day, feeling more confident about my approach and knocking promptly on the door. It was about a minute before I heard scuffling around inside, the door opening to reveal a middle-aged woman with mid-length red hair and a kind face, a shawl draped over her shoulders. She looked more than a little confused to see me, her brows furrowing a little.

“Hello, dear, are you lost?” she asked quietly, blocking my view of the inside of her house.

“Um, hi,’’ I said nervously, “my name’s Cassiopeia Bains, but you can just call me Cassie. I sort of stumbled into your house a few days ago and I just thought I’d say hello. I live a few hills that way.” I pointed in the direction of my house, over the paddy that was situated on their front lawn.

The woman looked very uneasy. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Cassie. I’m afraid I can’t talk right now, I’m a little busy.” She paused. “Please don’t wander so far from home, alright? Your mother must be worried sick. Be careful, now,’’ she said, starting to close the door.

Without really meaning to, I stepped closer to the entrance. “Wait!”

She hesitated, holding the door almost completely shut. “Yes?”

“I don't mean to intrude, but...what is this place?” I inquired, looking up at the tall structure.

The woman didn’t answer me right away. “What did you say your last name was, dear?”

“Bains,” I responded, wondering what that had to do with anything, “my last name is Bains.”

She was muttering things to herself, something about the “Diggorys” and the “Lovegoods” living nearby, both names I’d never heard before. I was beginning to think that I should head home, that I shouldn’t have trespassed on this woman’s property.

“I think I’ll go home now, I’m sorry for bothering you,” I apologized, turning on my heel and starting to walk away.

“Cassie, wait just a moment!” she called. “Please do come in, I’ve just put some cookies in the oven.”

I hesitated, examining the woman before me. I remembered what my mum always said about going into stranger’s houses, how if anything ever happened to me she’d be mortified. The funny thing was this woman reminded me a lot of my mother, more so how she was before my grandmother died. She seemed very kind and welcoming.

“Alright.”

***

I followed the woman inside, finding myself in her kitchen. The smell of cookies baking hit me in the face and my stomach growled, reminding me that I didn’t eat breakfast. There was a long table that could sit about nine or ten people, making me even more curious about the people who lived there. You could see the sitting area from the kitchen where there were big, comfy-looking sofas and a fireplace.

“Welcome to The Burrow, Cassie dear,” she said, sitting me down at the table. “You can call me Mrs. Weasley. Would you like some tea, anything to drink?”

“Tea would be nice, thank you,” I said politely, folding my hands on top of the table.

Mrs. Weasley pulled a thin piece of wood from her pocket, flicking it at the kettle. It began heating up instantly, floating around as though someone was dangling it on a wire.

Instantly I was taken aback. “W-what was that you just did?” I asked in amazement, unable to take my eyes off the kettle.

Mrs. Weasley sat down across from me, flicking the stick in the direction of the sitting room. A pair of knitting needles began self-knitting what appeared to be a jumper. “Do you know why you were able to see this house?” she asked, looking at my astonished face with a warm smile. I merely shook my head. It was the only thing I could manage to do. “You see, there is a whole other world out there that you have yet to explore. I want you to think for a moment about all the memorable experiences you’ve had. Was there ever anything odd that happened, something with no logical explanation? Have you ever experienced a flood of emotion, such as sadness or anger, and had something inexplicable result from it? Something breaking, perhaps? Or maybe the weather temporarily changed around you?"

The wilted Delilahs next to my grandmother’s hospital bed came to mind, along with a few other things that I was beginning to question. “Yes,” I said quietly.

She smiled and leaned forward in her seat a little. “It would be impossible for a muggle to see this place, not with the protection spells we’ve put around it. The only possible answer would be that you, my dear…are a witch.”

There was a thick silence that followed, one that was only interrupted by the chirping of the kettle. Mrs. Weasley excused herself, using her magical stick to pour us each a cup of tea, levitating them over along with some sugar and milk. The cookies in the oven were done so she put them on a plate and set it on the table.

“Help yourself dear, I’m just going to get the children and tell them the cookies are out,’’ she said, disappearing to the sitting room and going upstairs.

Was I a witch? How was that even possible? Surely it couldn't be true, surely this woman was deranged and just pulled some sort of trick on me. I stood up and slowly walked over to the knitting needles, inspecting them closely. I waved my hand over and around them, searching for a string or wire, anything to indicate I was being fooled, but I found nothing.

Dumbfounded, I sat down at the table again, my hands folded as I stared into my teacup. My stomach was filled with this elated feeling, and as I studied my reflection in the tea water I realized I knew there was something different about me all along. I never felt I belonged where I was or with the people I’d meet along the way. Always the weird one, finding comfort in living in my head, creating imaginary places that were better and exciting...I felt lonely. I had no one left to connect to, what with my grandmother gone. She’d been my closest friend, my sole confidant, but just then I felt hopeful that I could find that connection again. I could rebuild.

There was a thundering of footsteps from above me and red-headed children quickly swarmed into the kitchen, Mrs. Weasley trailing behind them. They abruptly stopped upon seeing me, their mother squeezing through the lot to come to my aid, trying to talk over them.

“Mum, who’s this?”

“Can we keep her?”

“Did she break in?”

“Mummy I’m hungry!”

“Percy your big head’s in the way, we can’t see!”

“That’s enough!” Mrs. Weasley said loudly, her six boys and one girl all silencing. “Now, I expect you all to be well behaved because we have a new guest, or rather a friend.” She smiled at me reassuringly but I was too nervous to say anything. “Everyone, this is Cassie. She lives a few hills over and has just discovered she’s a witch.”

“What exactly does that mean?” I asked, finding my voice. “You mentioned something called “muggles” before and how they couldn’t see the house, but I could because I’m a witch.”

Mrs. Weasley was about to answer me when one of her boys spoke up, a curly-haired one who looked a bit older than me. “Well, muggles are non-magical folk, which I’ll bet your parents are since you didn’t know you were a witch. There are protective enchantments around this house that repel muggles and make it impossible for them to see this place. All witches and wizards get a wand when they turn eleven so they can cast spells, but only when they’re in school. Oh, speaking of school, you’ll probably be getting a letter soon for Hogwarts, which is the Wizarding School for Great Britain and Ireland. It’s over a thousand years old, with so much knowledge to give and so many friends to make -“

“If by friends you mean professors then yeah, you’ve got a lot of those, Percy,” one of the others piped up. Everyone else chuckled except for Percy, who stood there tight-lipped, and their mother. I cracked a smile.

Mrs. Weasley shot two of her sons, twins in fact, a look that could kill anyone. “Yes, well said, Percy. I’m sure this is all a little overwhelming for you, Cassie dear,” she said calmly, sitting back at the table with me while her children quickly emptied the plate of cookies, most of them returning to whatever they’d been doing before while a few straggled behind, eyeing me curiously. “Would you like to talk to some of my children? It might make you feel a bit more at ease." I nodded in agreement. “Fred, George, come over here!”

Fred and George, the twins, had been trying to sneak away from the kitchen at this point. When they turned around to look at us I realized they were completely identical and I would have a hard time telling them apart. They had the same ginger hair, the same freckles, the same everything.

“Fred, would you and George talk to Cassie for a little bit? I’ve got a few errands to run so Bill and Charlie will be here to watch over the house.”

“I’m not Fred, I’m George,” the twin groaned, rolling his eyes. “Honestly, you’d think our own mother would be able to tell us apart.”

“It’s a pity,” the other said, shaking his head sadly.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Georgie,” Mrs. Weasley said with a sigh, indicating that this was a common occurrence.

“I’m just joking, I actually am Fred,” he grinned.

I left their entirely unamused mother in the kitchen and thanked her for the tea and cookies, following the twins through the sitting room. I was then that I noticed what appeared to be a grandfather clock, though upon closer inspection I realized it was something else. There were several hands and each one had a picture of a family member. Where numbers would usually be instead had locations, and most of the hands pointed to "Home" except for who I assumed was their father, and his was set to "Work".

I was completely fascinated by it, and I took the time on the way to look at the pictures that hung along the walls, many of them bearing images of older relatives. These pictures were all either moving, talking or snoring. I stopped in front of a painting of an elderly woman who wore a strange feathered hat, staring in amazement as she told me my cheeks were too fat. One of the twins promptly told her to piss off before guiding me with them out the back door.

Their yard had so much wide open space with a cute little garden near the house. The sky was bright and clear and the sun felt nice on my face. We walked to the trees that stood far behind their house and sat under the shade of an old willow tree. I was still processing the newfound information I’d been given and wanted to know more; I wanted to know everything.

“Your mum seems really sweet,” I said quietly, trying to break the awkward silence.

“Oh she is, just be careful though,” one of them warned.

“Next time you come over, you’ll go home having gained a good ten pounds,” the other said.

“The woman is a fantastic cook, but she insists on feeding everyone until their feet are no longer visible,” the first one shuddered.

I raised an eyebrow inquisitively. “Then how are you two like a pair of string beans?”

They shrugged in unison. “We have fast metabolisms.”

Right. “So, what’s it like growing up in a wizarding family?” I asked.

“It's pretty cool,” one said with a shrug.

“We can’t wait to get our wands, that’s when the real fun begins,” the other grinned.

“You can only do magic while you’re in school though, right? That’s what your brother said."

“Well, when you come of age, which is seventeen, then you’re allowed to do magic outside of school.”

“George and I are gonna open our own joke shop when we’re older,” the one I now pinned as Fred said.

They told me all about a wizard named Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, and how he was one of the greatest wizards in the world. They told me how Percy’s a know-it-all and they drive him bonkers. They spoke of how their older brother Charlie wanted to go to Romania to work with dragons and Bill wanted to be a banker with the goblins. They told me about the gnomes in their garden that they’d kick around. They explained in great detail how they would wreak havoc upon Hogwarts once they got there, having dreams of blowing up toilets and setting off dungbombs in the corridors. Their father Arthur was the Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office at the Ministry of Magic, many of his superiors thinking him to be a bit of a nutter.

When I mentioned the skeletal horse that’d brought me to their house in the first place it was the only thing they couldn’t answer. They had no idea what it was. Putting that aside though, it amazed me how casual they were about the whole magic thing. Hearing about dragons and goblins and live garden gnomes and dungbombs made my head spin but in the best possible way. I figured that growing up surrounded by magic must’ve made discussing it less invigorating for them than it was for me.

Fred and George had also told me about a letter I’d be receiving from Hogwarts in the upcoming weeks, informing me of my enrollment, and that was perhaps what I was most excited about. Just like they said, less than a week later a letter showed up on my doorstep, informing my parents that I was eligible to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. My brother Devon, though he wouldn’t admit it at the time, was jealous and spent even more time out of the house than usual. Dad believed it to be rubbish until my mother confessed the fact that her mother had been a witch as well. Magic had skipped a generation.

I spent the majority of my remaining summer at the Weasley’s, finding best friends in Fred and George. Their younger brother Ron, who was only nine, was afraid of me at first but warmed up once he saw that I wasn’t a big scary muggle. The twins and their older siblings tried showing me how to ride a broomstick, which terrified me out of my wits because I realized then that I didn’t like heights. Mr. Weasley would ask me about all sorts of muggle contraptions from the toaster to the unicycle, fascinated by all of this knowledge that I apparently had.

It didn’t take me long to realize how much trouble Fred and George could cause, and admittedly most of it was amusing, such as the time Mrs. Weasley came home to find the garden gnomes bouncing around the sitting room and destroying everything in sight. Her screams could be heard from miles away.

My Mum met Mrs. Weasley a week before term started. She kindly offered to take me with her and the boys to Diagon Alley so we could get our school supplies. It took a lot of effort on my part, but with enough begging and pleading, I was eventually allowed to go. Another thing that’d noticeably changed was my relationship with my mother. I wouldn’t say it was necessarily strained but I wasn’t too happy with her. I had no doubt in my mind that she knew I was a witch years ago, why she neglected to tell me was something I didn’t understand. I could’ve asked my grandmother about magic while she was still alive, and maybe her adventures would’ve made more sense to me if I’d known about it. I was agitated but that agitation was covered with excitement and anticipation for what was to come.

If one thing was for certain, it was that my life changed drastically in just a matter of weeks. One moment I was helping Mum cook supper or feeding the fish in the backyard pond. In the next, I was shopping for my first wand and naming my new tawny owl Nestor. I developed a close bond with Fred and George that even in our final year at Hogwarts remained good and strong. We endured many trials and tribulations that tested our limits as friends, but as a whole I learned to love them, faults and all. I was sorted into Gryffindor House with the twins when we arrived at Hogwarts, befriending a girl named Rae who slept in the poster bed next to mine. We became almost as inseparable as the twins and it wasn’t long before the four of us were more tightly knit than a Weasley sweater.

If only I could've told my fragile seventeen-year-old self just what was in store for her. The final year we spent at Hogwarts was simply a test drive for the real world waiting for us.