Chapter Text
Monday, July 13th 2015
Evanora always knew she was a witch. Her father was a wizard and her mother was a Muggle and until she was six, she lived in a small magical village in the Azores, an agglomeration of islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Portugal. Then her parents got a divorce, and her mother moved back to her hometown near London. And just like that, her life of magic was behind her.
Until the letter arrived, that is.
It was late afternoon and at first, Evanora thought the repetitive noise might have been one of the neighborhood boys trying to play some sort of prank, but when she walked into her room she found an owl tapping incessantly on her window. After she managed to get it open, the bird flew away, leaving behind a thick envelope with her full name written in flowing calligraphy on one side.
Heart-racing, she carefully pulled open the letter.
“ Dear Ms Lopes,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours sincerely,
Headmistress Minerva McGonagall ”
What , she thought, re-reading the words again and again. Before she could contemplate the paper in her hands any further, she heard the front door opening. She didn’t even have time to leave her room before her mother was already in the doorway.
“How many times have I told you to keep the windows closed, Evanora?” she sighed as she moved to close the window. “And seriously, you could’ve at least cleaned your room instead of doing nothing all day.” Then she seemed to notice what she was holding. “What’s that?”
“A letter? I’m not sure-”
Her mother grabbed it with another sigh but she froze as she read it.
“Mum?” Evanora asked hesitantly, “Did you know?” She wasn’t even sure what exactly she was asking.
“I strongly suspected,” she answered as she moved towards the kitchen, where she dropped the letter onto the counter. “Grab me a frying pan, yes?”
“Wait, mum. What does this mean?”
“What do you mean ‘what does this mean’. I know we talked about you not using magic just last week, so you can’t have forgotten what you are already.”
“I-no! I just didn’t even know about this school. I mean, I don’t know what it’s even like!”
“Look, you don’t want to go, throw that out already. I’ll enroll you at St John's, that would definitely save me a lot of trouble.”
No “what do you think?”, no “how do you feel about Hogwarts?”. Just a passive dismissal of it, like it was just another chore on her plate. Caroline Atwater was mostly a good mother but she was sometimes too impatient with, well, everything. She was a tall, slender woman with curly, dirty blonde hair, big blue eyes and a face full of freckles — the complete opposite of her daughter, whose curls were the only thing she got from her. Evanora was short and, while also thin, her body tended more to the gangly and skeleton side than the slender athletic one. She had dark, almost black, brown eyes and was the spitting image of her father, from the shade of her hair to the mole she had on the right side of her neck.
She took a deep breath and tried to calm the anger she was feeling. Her mother was at the stove, presumably making dinner, and she felt a little bad then, she had been hanging about in her room all day and her mother had just arrived home. She bit her lip nervously before grabbing the envelope and taking a seat at the small table.
“How was work today, mum?”
“Oh well, it was fine,” her mother sighed.
Caroline worked at a café in town during the summer to try to save to go back to school, turns out no one was willing to hire someone with an unfinished college degree. She had put it on pause when she moved to Portugal to be with Evanora’s father when she was 21. However, when she came back to England a few years ago with no immediate family and a daughter to take care of she applied for whatever jobs she could with her limited qualifications.
“Anyway, you need to go to the shop to pick up a few things after dinner. I know you haven’t gone today like I asked you repeatedly this morning.”
Ah, Evanora thought, so that’s what I forgot to do today.
“Sorry,” she said simply. Her mother didn’t like excuses, and she had long ago stopped trying to give any, so she merely kept quiet and helped her mother cook.
Despite being late afternoon, the air was sticky when Evanora left the store, grocery bags in hand, and started on the journey back home. While she usually didn’t mind going to the shop because it gave her an excuse to get out of the house, right now all she wanted was to be left alone with her thoughts. What was Hogwarts? Why was her mom expecting a letter from them? Why hadn’t she heard of this school before? Actually, she thought she might have heard it being mentioned by some of her older cousins. But they all went to Beauxbatons, and, at the time, she hadn’t considered the thought of other magical schools (although it seemed really obvious now).
She kicked at a little rock and watched it skip across the ground toward a group of boys. She recognized a few of them from school, but others appeared to be older, and she stared as they shoved each other around. She could hear them laughing from across the street and for a moment she envied the easiness of their friendship. There were also a few kids glued to their phones and a couple of girls standing towards the side were looking at the boys vaguely disgusted. She wondered why they hung out with them if they didn’t like them. One of the boys laughed harder than the others, the sound almost seemed to echo in the empty street, and as he turned to her, she recognized him as one of the guys from her class — Jake McCoy, 13 years old due to being held behind twice already, who insisted that everyone called him JJ. Evanora suspected this was something he heard in a TV show and thought was cool, but it didn’t really make sense because, as far as she knew, the only name he had beginning with a J was Jake; still, kids were too scared of him to say anything because he wore ripped jeans and smoked cigarettes. He seemed to have recognized her, too, because he raised his arms and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Lopez!” he called after her.
“ Dammit ,” she whispered, quickly turning around, intending to speed-run her way home. Unfortunately, he and his squad caught up to her, and he clapped a hand on her back so hard it almost made her fall over.
“Where’re you going, Lopez? We haven’t seen you all summer.” He was smirking and he had a lit fag between his teeth as if that made him cool or something.
She sighed and readjusted the grocery bags in her hands, rolled her shoulders back and resigned herself to her fate, aka enduring this interaction. She noticed the two girls in the group were now watching them with interest.
“For the last time, Jake,” she sighed, “my name isn’t Lopez, it’s Lopes. LOHps. I’m Portuguese, not Spanish. Now I have to go, so excuse me.”
She tried to turn away but he and his friends stepped in front of her.
“Now, slow down, Lopez. We only want to talk to you. Catch up, you know.”
She looked at him skeptically. “Right. Well, I don’t really have time so, goodbye.” His friends snickered in the background, but she didn’t understand the joke. Still, Jake laughed.
“We’re just trying to be friendly, we haven’t seen you in a while. Hey, how’s your mum? Still looking fit I bet.” He shoved an elbow at the boy next to him, who laughed along with the others. “Anyway,” he slung an arm over her shoulders, “it’s been pretty boring without your little mug sitting at the park doing your reading or schoolwork for the next year or whatever it is you do.” More laughs sounded behind her. “Have to admit I missed making fun of you. Hey, remember that time you cried in class because you got an answer wrong? Bloody hell that was nuts!” Even the girls were laughing at her now and it felt like they were even more condescending than the boys. She wanted to scream at them to leave her alone. She settled for shoving Jake and walking away. “Looking forward to seeing whatever barmy nonsense you come up with next year!”
“Actually!” she turned back to the group, feeling vindictive, “You won’t. I’m not going to be here for school. I really look forward to not seeing your idiot face.” There were some curious glances between the boys and then Jake laughed. She felt herself deflate, not getting the reaction she hoped for.
“Yeah”, he scoffed, “I don’t believe you!”
“What? Why?”
“No one ever gets out of here Lopez,” he said like she was being daft. “There’s one school. You’re born here and you die here. Nobody leaves and nobody comes,” he smirked, “Well, except for you, that is. Freak.”
Evanora furrowed her brows, her hands tightening on the bags she was holding. “Well, you’re right. I am leaving,” she said softly. They all cackled like hyenas. Her arms were starting to burn from the weight of the groceries and she just really wanted to get home.
“Yeah, where are you going then?”
She hesitated long enough for them to start laughing and shoving each other again.
“Well… It’s in Scotland.” That only seemed to make them laugh harder and she was starting to get pretty pissed off.
“Yeah, your mum find a boyfriend there?”
“No! I-” she swallowed past the familiar lump of shame in her throat “I was invited to go”
“Which of the teachers is she banging then?” one of his friends shouted.
Evanora felt tears pricking her eyes, they weren’t even focused on her anymore so she turned away to go home. She could still hear their laughs as they shouted at her.
The letter was still strewn across the kitchen table when she arrived home and dropped the bags on it. Her mother was nowhere to be seen but she could hear the TV playing, which meant she was probably holed up in the living room.
Evanora looked at the letter again and twisted her lips in resentment, both at being forced to go to Hogwarts if she wanted to get a magical education and at her mother for acting like it was such a hassle. She sighed and picked up the letter, reading it again, even though she was sure she would remember those words forever with how ingrained they already were in her brain.
She frowned the more she read; it seemed truly anticlimactic for all the stress it was putting her under. There was a second page containing the books and equipment she would need and she smiled a little bit at the prospect of getting a wand but that quickly vanished after searching on her phone what “robes” were.
She thought about asking her mum to write back prohibiting her from attending… the letter and cursive, the seal and now the robes, it all just seemed a bit… old for her. However, her mum might actually take her suggestion seriously and just stop her from going at all. She sighed and looked at her phone screen. “At least I’ll have you to keep me tethered to the modern world, I guess.”
The white light from the screen stared back at her silently and she sighed before starting to put the groceries away.
Thursday, July 16th 2015
It was a few days after the arrival of the letter that Evanora finally broached the subject. Her mother had been in quite a mood the past few days, once even screaming at her when she accidentally broke a glass, and she had a sinking suspicion it had to do with her going to Hogwarts. That thought filled her with rage. Weren’t mothers supposed to want what was best for their children? Why was her mother acting like her being invited to Hogwarts was the worst thing since the plague?
Still, she straightened her back, took a deep breath and walked and sat on one of the small sofas in the living room. She thought about how to start. Hey, mum. Can I talk to you? No, her mother would ask her if it could wait and then the cycle would repeat and she would never ask. I need to talk to you, Mum. Ew no, that was just awful and it made her sound like she was going to give an ultimatum on something. I was wondering if we could talk abo…
“Evanora, I can hear you thinking from over there. Spit it out.”
“Oh well, I uh… well it’s just that,” she wrung her hands together, “Well, I mean, it really was just an idea and I totally get it if you say no, but uh” she swallowed nervously.
“What is it, Evanora?”
She took a deep breath, reminding herself that nothing bad was going to happen, she was just asking a question. “I was wondering if maybe I could get a cat… ”
Her mother sat up from where she was lying on the sofa. Oh no, she thought, I was wrong, I was so wrong, she’s gonna forbid me from going to Hogwarts at all. Now I’ve done it, she’s gonna be so mad at me, why would I ever ask in the first place?
“No.”
“ What?”
“No. You cannot get a cat.”
“But why?” she cried, standing up from her seat in indignation.
“First, sit down. Second, I don’t think you’re old enough to be taking care of an animal on your own.”
“I don’t understand! You always treat me like I’m a child and super irresponsible. Why can’t you ever see what I do right?!” she exclaimed, getting louder and gesticulating more wildly the more she talked.
“Because you are a child. You barely do what I ask you to. How do you think you’re going to take care of a cat on your own? No, you’re not getting a cat and that’s the end of the discussion.”
Evanora felt her eyes stinging but refused to start crying. It’s not a big deal , she told herself. Except her mother kept talking.
“Honestly, I don’t know what that school is thinking. Allowing a bunch of 11-year-olds to run around playing magic and involving animals in the mix.” She shook her head as she talked but Evanora stopped listening.
Oh, she thought, that’s what this is about. It seemed obvious in hindsight. Her mother was pissed that she was going to learn magic. It wasn’t necessarily about her going to Hogwarts; it was about her being a witch. Suddenly, a lot of events in her life made sense. All the fights she and dad had. How they suddenly moved to England right before she turned 7 so she couldn’t get a letter from Beauxbatons and wouldn’t be able to attend. How she made Evanora promise not to do anymore magic and not mention it to anyone, ever. Every time she did accidental magic and her mother got so mad and screamed at her for so long, she swears she can still hear it. The one time it happened in public and she glared at her and dragged her away and swore to never take her out again if she couldn’t control it.
She swallowed past the lump in her throat and turned back to her room.
“And then you wonder why I say you act like a child when you go away when I’m speaking to you.”
She kept walking, desperately trying not to cry until she got to her room. She felt foolish for asking her mother for a cat, and she felt foolish for crying about the no she got. She wondered what everyone else would think about her when she got to Hogwarts. If they would consider her pathetic as well. Her shoulders shook, and she curled into her plushie in her bed. She desperately wanted to go back to her mother and curl up in her lap instead, but past experiences told her that would not go well. That instead, she would be screamed at for crying and she would only feel worse. She wanted to scream and hit something but that would only cause her more trouble. Stop this , she thought, you’re being irrational. Come on, that’s enough . She shook harder and she felt the anger take hold in her body. She cuddled more into her plushies, pulled the duvet over her head and wished to shut out the whole world, wished to go back in time, before she asked her mother for a cat. Before she received the letter. Before she left Portugal.
Finally, her sobs subsided and she felt embarrassed at her reaction. She felt like a small child again. Maybe her mother was right, after all, she did keep acting like one. She felt drained and she couldn’t breathe with how tight she had put the covers over her head but she also didn’t want to take them off and have to face the world just yet. Besides, some tiny hope was building in her chest that her mum would come check on her. She hoped and waited and, eventually, she got so tired she fell asleep.