No Means to Use the Stove

Accepting the Unreal

She hadn't opened the plastic bag yet. She just sat there, staring at it. Part of her fervently hoping it would all be true, that there really would be something so inevitably magical in the bag that she wouldn't have any other possibility than to believe; part of her only wishing she could be perfectly normal again, with ordinary memories - with all of her ordinary memories.

Gingerly, she at last ripped the bag open and let it spill its contents on the carpet. On top of the pile, there was some sort of cloth. It was deep blue and there were...Anna gasped aloud and dropped the cloth. Something had moved on it! She looked at it, astonished. Delicate, golden embroidery was sewn on the fabric and the needlework shifted and shimmered and changed shape and form on its own. It had to be one of the most beautiful artefacts Anna had ever seen and still it somehow appeared...frightening. She cautiously picked the cloth up and realized it was a robe of the same kind that the people in front of the odd house had worn in one of the pictures that had been sent to her by e-mail. She wondered whether she herself had used the robe. It seemed the right size.

There was also a small, leather bound book called The Magical Community - Past, Present and Loopholes in Time and Place. A book. Regardless of its peculiar title, it looked normal and safe enough and so she opened it - only to find moving pictures! It shouldn't have been so strange; she saw moving pictures all the time: television, computer, animated cartoons, holograms... The moving pictures in this book were different, though. There was nothing even reminding her of technology or electricity in the way they moved.

The people in them waved at her or only glanced at her and then turned back to do whatever they had been doing. It was like they were living inside of the book and seeing her, too. And the book's pages were parchment-sort of paper and there was nothing indicating hidden microcircuits capable of creating the animated images. She leafed through the book, reading chapter titles like: Muggles - Treat or Threat, The History of Ministry of Magic, Werewolves and Community, Timetravel and its Consequences, Quidditch and its Importance, History of Broomstick-flying, or International Magical Cooperation. Half of the words were incomprehensible to her.

Not really comprehending her own feelings, either, Anna observed the other items in front of her. They weren't many. There was a strange-looking heavy coin that had the spidery words One Galleon engraved on it, a solitary candy wrapper that changed its color all the time, and lastly, a photograph. There was the same red-haired man that she had been kissing in the picture in the e-mail. And there was she herself, again. It was a moving picture, like in the book. She lifted the photo very near to her eyes so that she could properly scrutinize the man. He smiled at her as if recognizing her and his brown eyes were warm. She felt a sudden warmth inside her and he didn't look so unfamiliar to her anymore. She smiled back at the photo feeling a bit silly. Then she realized something she hadn't noticed before: she didn't move in the picture.

She remembered the e-mail: you left because you couldn't fit in their life. The warmth inside of her drained away. She had been hoping the e-mail would be proved true. She had been hoping there were intriguing and romantic secrets waiting for her to reveal them. She had been hoping like one hopes for something they know is impossible. It's easy and safe to hope for the unreal. You can imagine all kinds of wonderful things and forget about the reality and dealing with actual problems. But what do you do when unreal becomes reality and dreams and hopes reform themselves as actual problems?

Anna didn't know. She didn't know whether she should have been exhilarated or scared. There was only one thing she did know: never mind how impossible it sounded, Charlie was a wizard and magic did exist.

Anna didn't know. She didn't know how she should feel, she didn't know what she should do. Then she remembered someone who did. She went to her computer and opened anew the e-mail letter she had received. She would consult a very reliable source - herself.

Please, please, read this! I'm counting on your curiosity if not on anything else. Hopefully, the items I hid were still where they should have been and you now believe me, but even if he found them and took them away, I really beg you to read on.

"I am reading!" Anna exclaimed aloud, frustrated. Now that she had decided to learn what had happened, she wanted to get on with it. Suddenly, she felt very anxious over not remembering every little detail. She had been dating a wizard, she had visited magical world, she had seen wonders, and she didn't remember a thing! Her eyes couldn't move fast enough on the screen.

It all begun in the London Zoo. I was there watching the lions and I talked to them as I thought I was alone...

She remembered that! She had been sympathizing with the animals about their too-small cages when he had suddenly answered her from behind her back. Those were memories she already had! What about the lost ones? Those were the ones she needed, now! She impatiently hit the keyboard again and again, skipping the familiar memories. Then she stopped. These memories should have been familiar, but they weren't:

He is not so very tall, but it doesn't seem to bother him, not even when I am on high heels and he has to tilt his head a tiniest bit to look me in my eyes. Most men are intimidated when a girl is as tall as they are, but he isn't. I guess it's because he is so strong otherwise. Even if we are of the same height and I'm not a small woman, he can just pick me up into his arms like I was a small child. I used to like it, but after we went to the magical world, it sometimes irritated me, because there I was forced to feel incompetent and weak so often.

His eyes are my favorite part of him, them and his hands. He has the warmest eyes! It's almost as if they radiated warmth, and when they turn cold it's like someone had turned the heat off. His hands are warm, too, and rough and big. I like it when he holds my hand and I can feel really petite and feminine, as at least something about me is small in comparison to him. His hands are full of old scars and burns. He has worked with dragons - they do exist! - and fought in the wizarding war. There are hard calluses on his palms and little white scratches on his fingers. Even his fingertips are hard. It's a wonder, really, how those hands can be so tender when touching me!

Anna picked up the moving photo that she had found in the plastic bag and looked again at the man in the picture. She tried to place his face with the memories she had about Charlie. The Charlie she remembered was taller than her and had green eyes, instead of the brown ones that looked at her from the picture. He had long fingers and scarless arms. She closed her eyes and attempted to replace the wrong memories with the ones she now knew were real. She tried to remember his hands holding her. She concentrated on feeling how he had caressed her, how his fingers had felt on her bare skin, how his mouth had felt against hers... and she remembered. He had changed the way she remembered his appearance, but he hadn't been able to change the way her body remembered his.

She closed her eyes anew and focused on the time she had felt his face in the dark with her fingertips. She had touched his features lightly, like a blind person wanting to create an image of someone they couldn't see. In her mind, she returned to that unseen image and slowly, her memories started to connect with the man in the photograph. She could remember touching that hair, stroking those shoulders, caressing those arms. She remembered the feel of his muscles under her hands and the way his lips curled up, kissing her shoulderblade.

Suddenly she felt almost unbearable sadness over losing him and not being able to touch him anymore. Her skin could feel the empty air around it like it had been something cold and concrete surrounding her. She had the taste of a cry in her mouth and she felt tears beginning to form. She scorned herself for only crying out of self-pity, because of feeling lonely. There sure were better reasons to cry. She swallowed the tears and forced herself to read on:

He led me to a small, deserted park and looked so serious I was certain he was going to tell me something horrible, that he was going to break it up with me. I sat there, on the bench, and couldn't even look at him. I only waited and waited, scared and cold to my bones. He sat down beside me, made me look into his eyes and stated, very soberly: "Anna, I am a wizard." He trembled when he said it and looked like he would have expected some enormous reaction from me or, I don't know, maybe from the surrounding shrubs. I only watched him, relieved that it hadn't been anything serious and a little bit annoyed that he had made me so frightened over a joke.

I said so much to him and then he was annoyed as well and took a long, wooden stick - yes, I knew right a way it was a wand, I've read my share of fantasy novels - from his packsack and waved it a bit and muttered something. A bouquet of wild flowers appeared out of nowhere. He smiled smugly and I was delighted and told him I hadn't known he knew magic tricks. "Tricks?" he asked bewildered and I launched into an long explanation of a magician I had once seen performing some amazing illusions. He jumped up from the bench then and interrupted me, almost angrily: "I said I am a wizard, not some Muggle tricker! Watch this!" And then he transformed the bench into a live lion that felt like a lion, fur and all, and he made it rain from the tip of his wand and he disappeared with a "pop" and appeared again on the other side of me. Still, the spell that finally convinced me was when he opened his packsack and it was full of tiny, diminutive little clothes and things, and he changed them back to his clothes and books and other things. There must have been three suitcases worth of stuff in that one little packsack. No wonder he could travel light!

Anna read on and on. She read about all the wonders in the Diagon Alley, about his family and how they had so warmly welcomed her, about their war that he and his friends and brothers had fought in. She read how he had smiled proudly when he had seen her in her wizarding robes for the first time and how his mother had hugged her, tears in her eyes, when they had announced their engagement. She started to feel really stupid over leaving him. Why? Why, if he loved her and she loved him and everything had been so wonderful and she had been accepted and embraced into this warm and affectionate family? Surely not moving in their photographs hadn't been the only reason?

And then she found herself reading her own answers to that question:

It was all wonderful in the beginning, like a marvelous holiday in a...well, magical destination. I felt so loved. But that was all I was, in their world. Loved. I wasn't respected, I wasn't needed. I couldn't even take care of myself. For the last week, I would lay awake at nights, listening to Charlie's peaceful breathing and imagining my life as a wizard's wife in a wizarding village. I would need help all the time and nobody would need my help. Good Heavens, I organize parties for living! Any decent witch can decorate a house in an instant and they use living fairies and enchanted stars instead of crepe paper and plastic bows.

I could see our red-haired children, who would perform dangerous, accidental magic while Charlie would be at work and I couldn't reverse it. Molly had told me about all the things that had happened around her children when they were small, and now, I can't help wondering if she meant me to worry about it. I imagined keeping it all secret from my friends and my family, telling them they couldn't ever visit us in our home. I imagined being totally alone, except for Charlie, and totally dependant on him. I imagined neighbours watching me, pitying or loathing.

I didn't have any other option. I had to leave, even if it hurt. I couldn't have forced Charlie to live as a Muggle any more than I could have lived as a witch. There wasn't any other way. And now there certainly isn't.

I left him a note. I thought that was better, because any explanations would only have hurt him more. Frankly, also because explaining would have hurt me more. I came home and I thought it was over. Then I remembered something: the magical world is a great secret. Muggles like me aren't supposed to know about it and the magical administration keeps a severe watch over it. I only got to know about it because I was going to marry Charlie. Now that it's over, he has to Obliviate me. It's a spell that wipes out one's memories. I don't know for sure how it works, but I know it's a complicated charm and something can go wrong. I don't want to feel like a patient after a lobotomy. Having lived through all this, I have earned my memories and I shall hold on to them!

He is coming, I know it. Don't hate him for what he has to do. He really has to do it. If you read the book I'll hide in the locker, you'll understand it better. I don't have time to write more, I'll go to the railway station now. I hope you'll remember everything when you have read this.

She didn't remember everything. The memories she had written in her letter were like a piece of fiction to her. She would have to memorize her own past. Regardless of what she had written, she couldn't help a burst of hatred emerging. He had violated her memory, mutilated her mind. And he loved her? Sure! She imagined Charlie, angry at her for leaving him, ringing her doorbell and entering her apartment like an angel of revenge, drawing his wand and laughing bitterly. Looking into her eyes and smiling a cold smile. Shouting harsh words in Latin. Watching in a patronizing manner as she collapsed on the floor, without her memories. Patting her unconscious head and mouthing: Pitiful little Muggle, under his breath. Going back to his wizarding world, relieved that he didn't have to deal with an alien anymore.

Reasonably thinking, she knew that wasn't how it had happened. She just couldn't think reasonably. She didn't remember how it had happened. She had to hate somebody for her situation, and it was less painful to hate Charlie than to love him. She picked up the wizarding photograph, looked at it once again and ripped it half, forcefully.

She didn't know a charm to repair it. She just hadn't it in her, the magic.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX