RA WESTWOOD
Based on the world of Harry Potter,
created by J.K. Rowling
Chapter 5
Déjà Vu All Over Again
Smell arrives first upon apparition. Equal parts musk and smoke, London’s morning fog welcomed Noah with damp stories of receding night. The next moment, lucent blacks and whites gave way to the Royal City. Purple dawn fluttered behind brick and stone eyelids. Uneven pavers and the broken telephone booth confirmed Noah was in the alley before the Ministry of Magic.
“Don’t move or I do it, mate,” the voice behind Noah was foreign and familiar, Crowe’s sibilant tone in a sinister key. “Don’t even peep.”
Noah raised his arms above his head and turned a solo waltz. It seemed countless ages hung on Crowe’s face. His cheeks were without buoyancy, jowls wobbly like a battered dog. Ghastly skin was splotched with dirt and sand, the light drained from his eyes.
“Wand,” Crowe croaked, his fingers curling ‘gimme gimme.’
Noah decided compliance was best. Even in his prime, he couldn’t out-duel Crowe. Arm like a pendulum, Noah slung his wand. It rolled to a halt at Crowe’s boot.
“Good,” Crowe sighed. “Now spin on your heel and apparate far, far away so I can hex Potter to oblivion.”
Noah set his rubber soles to the coarse pavement. Arms to sides and fists clenched, he stepped forward. “You don’t want to do this.”
“I can’t go back to writing bloody books. I can’t.” Crowe’s wand quivered at Noah’s forehead. “Please don’t make me do it. This hex isn’t meant for you.”
Noah took another step forward.
“You only found that hex because of me. Lose me and lose the Oblivion Hex.”
Crowe drew a forearm across his face, mopping sweat. His eyebrows squeezed with painful thought.
“I’ll find it again.” His voice cracked uncertainty.
Dawn exorcised all but the serpentine fog snaking about Noah’s ankles. London’s dank perfume punching his nose, Noah was trying to slash through the panic running rampant in his mind when it happened. The morning’s drowsy murmur suddenly burst with life. Pop!Pop!Pop! three apparitions hit like chimes of a clock.
In that moment, prescience vibrated through Noah’s body, Legilemency brought on by adrenaline. He saw the inky hex closing around him though Crowe stood still. In the flash before Crowe opened his mouth, Noah thrust his hand before him. Like a gymnast tumbling hand springs, Noah’s Rosewood wand jumped from the pavement and vaulted toward him.
“Esse Evanesco Totalus!” Crowe’s spell warbled as if yelled underwater.
The hex was a black hole, ravenous for light, its surface without gloss or depth. Swift as a snitch, its borders expanded as it approached. The Oblivion Hex looked like a Dragon-sized Dementor, open mouth salivating for a kiss. Blackness crashed over Noah as his wand nestled into his palm. Earth and sky evaporated, negating Noah’s mass and weight.
“No,” he tried to say. The words evaporated in his throat.
Noah jerked backwards as if he’d touched a portkey. The sensation was of innumerable hands clawing him backwards. The air (although air isn’t the right term, for the blackness was without atmosphere) turned to ice as the hands pulled him down their berserk roller coaster.
“No.” Tears dried from ducts before they could leave his eyes.
It looked as if he Noah was flying through outer-space. Shimmering stars punched through the blackness, each one a memory. They played like movies from an ancient projector, flickering scenes both familiar and foreign. Noah looked down and saw his body, like the stars around him, had turned to mercury. One by one quicksilver memories tore from his being and returned to the eternal constellations. His life was being unmade, his soul recycled, until Noah was only a pinprick of light. He saw at last his own birth. Noah reached to grasp the infant only to find his body gone. The man must be father. So young. Mother wept, indefatigable smile warming her newborn.
As the last threads holding his life were torn from their seams, Noah thought of the future being robbed from him.
He thought of MaryAnn.
He thought of his unborn daughter.
“No,” he announced. Life’s flame pulsed hot with desire. The hands ushering Noah to non-being shifted from pull to push. The infant grew in body and mind. Noah’s life returned bit by silver bit, regenerating his body. Hogwarts, his fellow Ravenclaws (although one was already a mere shadow cast against lazy hallways), celebrating the Dark Lord’s fall, trading dark wizards for dusty tomes “ each star returned his strength tenfold. Then he watched, warm hands pushing him forward, as he spilled a sugar dish at the Librarian’s conference. “Sorry miss.” “Its fine.” “I’m Noah.” “MaryAnn.” Noah was a supermassive star, conquering the darkness with blinding light.
The damp breath of London morning welcomed him back. Earth fell under floating sky and Noah’s weight pushed through ankles and heels to pavement. Orange dawn shredded Oblivion’s veil, the hex an ink spill flying from his body.
Crowe’s face bloated surprise to see Oblivion reflected. His wand sparked a rainbow of counter spells, each fizzing useless into the dark. Finally, Crowe dropped his hands to sides and accepted the void. In that final moment, Noah saw Crowe’s mouth open, their eyes locked.
“I’m s””
The Oblivion Hex swallowed Crowe. A discordant symphony screamed as the void collapsed under its own gravity. A shockwave pushed the breath from Noah’s lungs and blackness disappeared with a sound like
a toppling of books. Spines and covers thumped over the whrrsh of fluttering pages. Noah plucked his ink pen from its gilt holder and thrust his chair from beneath him.
“Lousy miscreants,” he muttered, circling the reference desk to the nonfiction stacks. “This is a library, not a bloody playground.”
Ten rows into the library’s photography collection, Noah found the commotion’s source. He sighed. Just as he expected.
Two teens”one tall and the other stout”crouched over a pile of upended photography volumes, trying to quickly reshelve. Unnoticed, Noah stood with arms crossed as they plucked books from the wreckage and rushed them back to shelves. Wearing lime green hockey sweaters, it seemed the teens played a strange game of book arranging, the rules foreign to Noah.
“Boys,” he finally said. The two teens froze, totem poles planted to carpet, then turned agape to Noah.
“We’re studying,” they chimed.
Noah strode to the pyramid of books on the ground and plucked the topmost. Pages splayed an anthology of Victorian nudes reclining on sepia sofas and sitting prim in wicker chairs.
“I’m sure you were studying,” Noah quipped. “You’ve got ten seconds to leave or I give you both tails.”
The taller teen shook his head.
“That’s not fair! We’re browsing the collection.”
Noah flicked his pen. “Go.”
Eyes vacant, the teens spun and walked in step to the exit. Noah’s brow pinched as he watched their green backs shrink from him. A queasy wash flowed from head to toes, wiggling his spine and twitching his muscles. His stomach tumbled somersaults.
“I saw that, Noah Sizemore.” The voice behind him was a honeyed balm to soothe the uncanny chill in his bones.
Noah turned and saw MaryAnn, rosy cheeks and auburn hair, a cloying smile on her face. “You just magicked P.J. and Dan away.”
Noah, still shivering aftershocks of his odd tingle, flicked his wand to the books. Like soldiers in morning reveille, they hovered from the floor and scrabbled themselves to perfect Dewey order on the shelves.
“Yeah...” Noah said, his voice drowning in a watery daydream.
MaryAnn read the glassy shimmer in Noah’s eyes. “Are you okay, love?” She looked down, rubbing furtive circles over the small bump of her stomach. “Because if there is something wrong, your future wife and child need to know.”
Noah smiled. The thought of his daughter toddling on summer’s verdant bosom evaporated the heaviness which had drenched his bones.
“I’m great,” he beamed, taking MaryAnn’s hand in his. “Just had a bit of déjà vu.”