It was a dark day. Great, grey clouds swarmed overhead, opening their bellies mercilessly on the city below. Rain fell heavily, urgently, tapping on the roofs of automobiles, padding against the stone-covered ground, collecting with loud plops in puddles wherever it would be held. But the weather Gwenyth didn’t mind; it was the storm brewing in her heart that she found most threatening. With a swooping whoosh, she opened her umbrella and stepped lightly out from under the doorway. The rain grew louder as the drops fell against the taut canvas over her head, lulling her into a state of apathy.
Strange, being back in London. Surreal. How was it possible that everything could look so much the same when her entire world had changed? Every building, every road, every alleyway was familiar. She’d forgotten that she hadn’t forgotten them. The streets were as crowded as ever, but Gwen felt distinctly as if she were wandering through a ghost town – through some memory of a former life. It was the same sort of feeling she had in those dreams....
Rarely did she dream anymore. When she did, it might be about something silly, stressful or nonsensical. She would wake with relief to discover that none of it was real. But, every once in awhile, she would have a dream that was... distinctly different. A dream that was always foreign in nature, yet entirely too real. These dreams she never wanted to end; they were as vivid and detailed as any waking moment, and sometimes seemed to span great lengths of time, but afterward she would be left with only fragments. It seemed she was always someone else in them. Maybe a friend she hadn’t seen in years, a relative, sometimes a complete stranger. Often times, in the day that followed, something in her life would trigger a flash of what she had seen the night before. Usually it was a feeling, or maybe a memory of a feeling, that felt like an image... or a memory of an image. But as soon as she tried to look closer, the feeling would fade, as if she had doused a flame.
Most poignant and most difficult to pinpoint was the very distinct feeling that went along with them; the dreams themselves were inconsistent in content, but always the feeling was the same. A bit like déjà vu, perhaps, but subtler and more complex. Somehow, this moment evoked a feeling a little bit like that, only she knew she was awake and she knew she was herself, and the feeling was only an echo of what it would be in a dream.
The agony tugging in her chest and tearing at her mind prevented her from giving it much thought, however, as she frowned at her surroundings. Everything looked the same, but time had clearly passed. There were things that had changed about her former home; minute details here and there. The restaurant that she and her parents used to visit on Saturday afternoons in the summer was now a bakery. This door had been painted a different colour. That flower bed was overflowing with peonies rather than daisies. Noting each small change, Gwen navigated her old neighborhood as effortlessly as ever, confused by the bittersweet reminiscence of simpler times.
As her destination grew nearer, a panic begin to beat violently in her chest. Abruptly changing her mind, Gwen pointedly turned two streets earlier than intended so as to avoid walking past the house she had grown up in. The key in her pocket was feeling more burdensome than its size would suggest. She knew she couldn’t avoid it forever (or maybe she could?) but she wasn’t sure how she wished to proceed. There had been some peace in assuming someone else had taken it over; she had mourned the loss for sentimentality’s sake for a time, but now dreaded the idea of returning there. She might never have come back at all, had she known it would hurt this way. Don’t think about it, she told herself. Just don’t think about it. You don’t have to decide right now. Taking a deep breath, she began wandering instead in the direction of Diagon Alley.
She stopped at a Muggle newsstand, desperate for a distraction, and attempted to be entertained by a third-page story about an elderly gentleman who, after his wife’s passing, had found a new lease on life after discovering a passion for collecting bottle caps. In just two years, he had collected over three thousand unique caps, the rarest with an estimated value of £1500. He had intentions of opening a museum, in joint effort with a fellow bottle cap enthusiast, so that all the world might share in his joy. “Hmph,” Gwen mused in approval, flipping the page. Sports. Flip. She had become rather skilled at the art of distracting herself from things she would rather not to think about. Avoiding thinking about important things was highly preferable to the way she used to dwell in inescapable over-evaluation of absolutely everything.
Before long, Gwen found herself at the Leaky Cauldron. She stuffed the paper under her arm, folding the umbrella as she stepped inside, quickly adopted an air of someone very busy and important. She slipped through quickly without looking at anyone in hopes of not being noticed. Unfortunately she'd just have to hope so, there was no way to know for certain. She wondered if anyone would recognize her as the scraggly, unkempt child explorer who had once been known for wandering around unaccompanied by adult supervision. It seemed like someone else’s life. Her parents had always afforded her a certain amount of independence, which she knew to be very different from the way some of her friends had been raised. And although they had never granted her complete freedom, she had abused their trust without a second thought. She felt a little guilty about it now, but boundaries had never suited her. Now nobody could control her. Now the entire world was her playground.
She flipped open her umbrella again as she stepped into Diagon Alley, noticing immediately that a large crowd was gathered in front of a large fountain that had not been there in her youth. In fact, a quick glance around told her that much about Diagon Alley was different – significantly moreso than the Muggle world beyond. This was easily explainable in her mind, as she knew the war had forced much change on the magical shopping district. A voice carried loudly overhead, reverberating against the walls of the narrow alleyway, and curiosity carried her closer.
