A/N: This story centers around a semi-literate juvenile delinquent and told through the person she grew up to be, thus some sentences can, will and are meant to be grammatically errant.
The tepid fog grew cooler by the second. It stuck to the skin, scrawled down the dirty walls, mingled with the smog and glistened on the cobblestones.
No money equals no food and by now, my insides felt frosty. I told Wilhelm and Greta I didn’t want to steal, but hunger wasn’t something to bargain with and I wasn’t about to beg.
The damp wind of this early autumn permeated the pitiful rags I was wearing. I felt I had a leg up on the other bums “ at least my rags were clean. I stalked to the market, willing my teeth not to chatter and betray my stealth. The people swarmed in to buy their pork, coffee and marmalade.
They hunched deeper into the warm grey of their coats and carefully hid the cold blue of their eyes. They thought me a panhandler.
I sighed - all the better, and concealed myself behind a portly bald man buying magazines. A discreet gesture, a faint whisper and a quick look were all it took to make his wallet no longer his. I'd done it. I snatched the billfold out of the air, removed a few faded pieces of paper and replaced it back in the man’s coat. The man trotted into a side-street clutching his magazines. He was several marks poorer, but still unaware. I, too, hastened to vanish while my luck was still good. A dozen steps further I tripped on a string that wasn’t there.
Cursing my incompetence and struggling to make sense of my fall, I came to. The ground felt dank, the air had gone dark and murky. Upon making fast friends with the pavement, my head swam in a putrid soup of fear and wonder.
Before me, half-shadowed, stood a middle-aged man with a goatee and the expression of someone bent on appearing proper on his bird-like face.
“Enschuldigung.” He smiled encouragingly. I shuddered.
Unable to delve beneath the iron-clad shell of soapy politeness, I, to my shame, I had become quite frightened. Just as the dog that barks won’t bite, I was sure that treachery most often hid behind the most brilliant of facades.
Meanwhile, the stranger went on. “At the moment, you may find your magic most helpful for pinching wallets, which I’m sure you have your reasons for. But, in the future, and in general, magic opens many doors - and not just literally.
Come the end of August, visit this address.” He thrust forth a piece of paper and I flinched. “My name is Professor Karkaroff and I educate those of magical birth.”
He looked at me quizzically, but I just sat and stared. I twiddled the piece of paper in my hands “ it was a familiar address. I’ve walked by there many times to get to the Kirche on Weimarstrasse. It was a house with invisible servants and not many dogs. They seldom had visitors.
“Farewell, now.” He tipped the brim of his trilby and disappeared with a crack.
Magical birth, eh? I scowled cravenly. And how is garbage like me supposed to know who on this blasted Earth was they were they born to? My teeth chattered, and in shivers, I set off for the Ditch.
The Ditch was a repulsively warm, caved-in hut, where Wilhelm and Greta reaped their harvest of crumpled Deutsch marks and tarnished pfennig from the plot of peewees they reared. I’d come to surrender my marks and receive the fertilizer “ stale bread with scant butter and ox tail soup. To this day I resent how horribly desirous I had been of that soup, but an empty stomach speaks in powerful terms.
Children of magical birth… I winced at the thought, and clutched the most valuable thing I owned “ a small silver pendant I wore on my chest. Only by some tremendous wonder, I managed to retain it through the nights I spent sleeping Heavens know where and being hungry enough to gnaw at my own foot.
Staggering through the door, I was greeted by Greta. “Hallo, Hexe! Hast du mein Geld? Or did you magic yourself out of hunger?”
Greta called me a hag or a witch all the time and it shouldn’t have stung like it did, but contempt in her voice never rang so clearly.
She ripped the bills from my fingers and by the hair, threw me towards the table “
“Friss! You motherless filth..!”
I wobbled away, hiding my rage. Despite myself, I willed August to end in a hurry.
I watched smoke, steam and other abominable ethers mingle and dance on the beams. My nape was still smarting from my benefactress’s grip, but it wasn’t the pain or even the anger that swarmed into my head.
For as long as I’d been able to think, I knew I was something that grew like grass (“and lived like dirt” as Greta added). And, as long as I’d been able to walk “ that very matter of origins was also the least of my problems.
Suddenly the matter of birth could make room for a life for me. An actual life! - For me.
Leave it to priggish men in nice coats to show how bitter are your lemons. I chuckled.
None of it mattered enough before - one morning someone “forgot” a slumbering basket under a door. Some years later, someone “forgot” a girl along with old furniture during a move. I moved on and made do. It may have left me disheartened, but never confused.
I shuddered unnaturally as other treacherous thoughts crept into my head. Is it because of magic that whoever brought me into this world popped me out and took off?
I didn’t hate life “ I didn’t wish that they’d take the trouble of throwing me off a cliff before leaving like the Spartans did. This world is a nice place “ not always, but often enough. I couldn’t curse my luck, because just to my left or my right snored something that had it worse.
Pitying myself, I drifted to sleep.
The next three weeks went by in a fog.
My future, uncertain and teetering as it was, still seemed far more alluring than the addled half-life I’d been living so far. Pathetically, a mere promise was enough to make the stealing, the beating and the cursing all worth it. I swallowed my enmity towards Greta and tried not to think of what would happen should I be deemed unfit. The way I reasoned, things couldn’t get too much worse.
Weimarstrasse was a moderately narrow, grey street with lights mounted on fences and gargoyles leering at the passers-by. I shivered lightly and stalked towards a heavy black door near the end of the street.
A tall dark-haired woman opened the door and measured me sternly
“Servus,.” I began, giving her my most dutiful and pliant look.
The woman gave a curt nod, but said nothing. Instead, she motioned for me to follow her through the hall.
The man I met a fortnight ago sat in an arm chair reading a paper. He was noticeably weary “ purple shadows settled beneath his eyes and the overlay of mellifluous politeness had faded. Simpering, I tried to make small talk. I tried to thank him for this opportunity…
I still despise the loathsome, sycophantic worm I become in presence of things I want. I risk becoming reacquainted with my lunch and dinner when I see how eager I am to kiss hem and bow low before people I need and how hesitant I am to stretch out a hand and beg, as decent beggars do.
His bird-like face dropped the faintest hint at a sneer.
It was dispassionately explained to me that based on what the Professor knows, I am at least a Half-blood and, while I indeed have the privilege to be educated at the Durmstrang Institute, I would do well not search for any family. I listened quietly trying not to breathe (as that would involve sniffling) and scare away my unexpected fortune. I might have a roof over my head soon.
The woman floated in with a tea tray. My eyes went turned alight and my mouth watered: the tray held tea, marmalade, butter and rolls. With a face of eloquent revulsion the lady put a tea set in front of me and went to nurse her high-class wounds in the kitchen.
I dug furiously in and he looked away. “As soon as you’re sated, we must set off.”
I gulped down my food. “Where are we going?”
“To get your wand,.” replied the man simply. He was merely a shadow of his erstwhile politeness, but it didn’t matter, I said to myself, I’d have taken anything over the Ditch.
He grabbed a handful of green powder, stepped into the hearth and yelled.
“Zwischendruk!”
Ashes, chimneys and nausea tided over us and expelled into a room veiled with dust and littered with firewood. Karkaroff charged out the door and I wobbled dizzily behind.
We walked through the empty streets with their church bells, roosters, languid dogs and elderly ladies playing chess on a porch. Past the water-soaked grass, net curtains and newspaper stands, rose hips and street lights, to a quiet old man slouched over the counter in his a shop with a faded sign. From there, my memory tapers into a point.
It’s the day I did magic.
I was told to pick up wand after wand, but they were either all wrong or did nothing. The last was a long, brittle piece of gray wood the old croaker summoned from the depths of the room.
I waved it cautiously. Smooth, cold and heavy, my hand it was akin to an open faucet “ the energy previously stored, built up and expelled in violent bursts now poured calmly and smoothly like blood back into a sleeping limb. The wand’s tip emanated clear white light. I could hardly believe it.
Hollow, jilted and bruised, I finally had something over the manicured snobs from large houses on brightly lit streets: magic! Magic to cast spells, magic to conjure objects, magic to turn me into someone worth being. I suppressed a jubilant quiver.
“A few hundred years under a bog, another fifty here, let’s see how long it last with you.” The wand maker chuckled at last.
The professor paid and we left in silence. A few steps into a sleepy alley way he looked at his watch and stopped.
“We won’t be getting your other commodities - there might be second-hands at the castle, and you should be thankful for what you have.” He took out a scroll, whispered something to make it glow blue and handed to me. “This is your ticket to life.”
Author’s notes:
“Enschuldigung” “ excuse me.
“Kirche” “ church.
“Hallo, Hexe! Hast du mein Geld?“ “ Hello, hag! Do you have my money?
“Friss!” “ eat! Or “devour!” to be more precise. Unlike “essen” “ the verb one would use in reference to people, “fressen” is only used for discussing animals and carries a clear note of revulsion.
“Weimarstrasse” “ literally, a street named after Weimar, a city in Germany.
“Servus” “ a German and Austrian greeting used for either “hello” or “goodbye”. Originally meant “slave” “ hence the common root with words “service” and “servile”.
“Zwischendruk” “ a street I made up to mean “stuck in between” and to be located either in Austria or Switzerland.
Thank you for reading.
For Your Benediction by chasing_willow
Chapter Notes: All but two characters in this story belong to Joanne Rowling, who created the universe within which this story takes place.
Austria, East Germany and other assorted European locations are created by any deity and/or collective of physical forces you choose to submit to.
My story is created with the help of Pondering (Tash) and bluemoon13 (Shivani) - my betas and my professor and guide - MithrilQuill.
This story also uses a wee bit of German, all of which is explained and translated at the bottom of this page.