No Means to Use the Stove

Mail from Me

Anna opened her eyes. Her head felt heavy. She was lying on her living-room sofa and - she glanced at her watch - it was quarter to four in the afternoon. She couldn't recall why she had been sleeping on her couch in the middle of the afternoon. In fact she couldn't remember going to sleep on the couch in the first place, either.

She had to be ill. She felt her forehead, but it didn't feel feverish. So, she obviously had been ill, ill to such a degree that she didn't recall her own doings, but then she had slept, and the rest had helped, and her temperature had dropped back to normal. That was logical, wasn't it?

It just felt so damn weird.

The last thing she remembered...the last thing she remembered....was Charlie telling her that they weren't going to see his family because he was married already and it had all been a lie and then she had yelled at him and left him standing there, in the middle of the park.

So it was the shock, the reason why she couldn't remember. They had planned to go to see his family and she had taken a month's vacation from her work. But they hadn't gone. Instead, he had told her there was something important she had to know about him. As the memories flooded back, Anna tensed, readying herself to feel righteous anger towards him. She expected to feel livid, or then desperately miserable. On the contrary, she felt distantly indifferent. Like the memories didn't mean anything, like it had all happened to someone else or ages ago.

But it had happened this morning, hadn't it? The moment the thought appeared in her mind, she found herself contradicting it. It was three weeks ago, her brain insisted. Three weeks! How come it was her last memory, then? Suddenly, as if answering her silent question, her memory felt like...stretching itself and she abruptly recalled spending three weeks in her apartment, being miserable, not telling anyone what had happened and mourning over her lost relationship with Charlie.

Anna shook her head vigorously. She must have been ill. Really ill. She could believe being miserable after leaving Charlie, because, after all, now that she thought about it, she felt a constant, throbbing pain over losing him for ever. But being miserable and doing nothing else than being miserable for three weeks?

That just didn't seem right. Had she been herself, she would surely had done something, talked to somebody, worked on something. She knew her usual means to survive the unfair blows that life gave were to work night and day, rather than drown herself in self-pity. She must have been really ill.

Her illness was the only explanation for the fact that she still couldn't remember what exactly had she been doing, while wallowing in self-pity in her apartment, all alone, for three weeks. She didn't remember eating, or going to the bathroom, or watching television, or answering the telephone or... Telephone!

Hurriedly, Anna got up, snatched her purse from the nearby table and rummaged it to find her cell phone. It wasn't on. She switched it on, dialed the PIN-code and checked the last calls - only to find out that she hadn't made one single call in the last three weeks. She didn't give up, though, but listened the message she had recorded on her answering service: Hello. This is Anna Richardson. I'm on a holiday and unfortunately unable to answer your calls for the next month. Please, leave your messages for me on my e-mail address [email protected] and I'll contact you on 12.8. when I'll return. My apologies for the inconvenience this causes you.

She had locked herself up in her home pretending that she was taking a holiday?! She really must have been very, very ill.

Now, at least, that kind of pathetic behavior was to be over and done with. She moved to her computer and started to check her e-mail. The latest mail there was had been sent today, by...herself? Well, at least it had come from her personal e-mail address. Intrigued, Anna opened the mail and found there was no message at all, only several large attachments, seemingly both text and photos. She clicked on the text-attachment titled: extremelyimportandreadnow! and started to read:

Anna, this is me, or you, or I am you or...fuck the semantics, I'm in a hurry. The point is: you don't remember writing this but you did. You remember, or I don't know how much you remember, but you don't remember some things considering the man you, or me, dated for the last eight months. I don't know if you remember him at all, so if you don't, the thing is that you dated a man named Charlie Weasley...

Weasley? Charlie's surname was Wesley, wasn't it? Though Wesley didn't sound any more familiar than Weasley, Anna's brain confirmed it was the right name. Well, that was probably just a typo. She read on:

...and you loved him, more than you have loved any other man ever, and probably more than you ever will love anyone after this. The last three weeks you stayed in his family's house, but you left this morning...

What? Who had sent this? Without her consent, her eyes returned to the screen:

..when you left him. Before I tell you why you left him or why you don't remember everything, I'll better remind you that this really is me, or you, writing this. You know no one else knows the password for your personal e-mail address that I used to send this mail.

Well, that was true. And she didn't remember everything clearly. Maybe she had tried hypnosis on her depression over leaving Charlie or something, and had written this mail as a precaution. She read on:

Ok, now it comes, the big shock. I know you don't believe it right away, but I can prove it. Charlie and his family are wizards. You left him because you couldn't fit into their life and now they have wiped out your memories of them so that you won't jeopardise the secret of there being a magical world beside ours.

Yes, sure! Anna snorted. Maybe she had written this while under hypnosis and while having really high temperature. Well, at least this was a much more entertaining reason for leaving a man than him being married to another woman.

Yes, they are actual wizards. If you open the other attachment, you'll see pictures of them, flying around on broomsticks -Anna had to laugh -don't laugh!- and doing all kinds of other magic. The pictures have not been manipulated in any way, but because I know you won't believe it, I have more solid proof, too. In the pocket of your jeans is a key to a locker in the railway station around the corner. There are some items that cannot have been manipulated in any way known to me. Just do believe yourself, will you!

Anna clicked open the other attachment. One by one, pictures started to appear. There was a bunch of red-haired people, grinning widely, in front of the oddest house Anna had ever seen in her life. Whoever had planned this joke had done a thorough job. The house looked like it needed magic to stand erect. And the people in front of it who, by their looks, could have been Charlie's family, were all dressed up as wizards and witches, except for the small children. In the next picture the same people were flying around on broomsticks and whoever had done the manipulation had done a marvellous work with it.

The third picture really caught her attention as there was she herself! She was tenderly kissing a red-haired, unfamiliar man and she couldn't distinguish anything in the picture telling her how the two people had been manipulated together. On the side of the page there were a few lines of text. Beside the first picture it said: The Weasleys and the Burrow. Arthur, his father; Molly, his mother; George and Fred, his twin brothers...Anna skipped the explanation of family strings and read the line next to the kissing picture: Anna and Charlie caught kissing by Hermione.

That wasn't Charlie! He looked a bit like Charlie, yes; he, too, had red hair and was stockily built, but otherwise it was all wrong. Charlie's nose was shorter and his shoulders weren't as wide and his hair was darker and his chin was rounder and...why was she kissing this strange man, then? She went back reading the letter and searched for one particular sentence there.

They have now wiped out your memories of them so that you won't jeopardise the secret of there being a magical world beside ours...

Could it be that they hadn't wiped out all of her memories, just replaced them with different ones? Making slight changes on Charlie's appearance and last name so that she wouldn't recognise him? Anna didn't know what to believe. The letter sounded impossible and ludicrous, but it also sounded like her. And if it was written by her, today, and she didn't remember writing it...well, that in itself was proof of there being something truthful in this more-than-weird explanation. Furthermore, the other option wasn't any easier to believe: that she had locked herself up in her house for three weeks and done nothing, and didn't remember accurately even the nothing she had presumably been doing.

And, though she didn't want to admit it, believing that Charlie was a wizard was much less painful than believing he was married to someone else.

Anna felt the pocket of her jeans. It didn't even surprise her, when her hand caught a small key. She looked at the silver key with a number 22189 on it and rose. She left the computer on, grabbed her shoes, pulled them on, and in a resolute manner, walked towards the door and the railway station around the corner.