Solanum

Title: Solanum
Genre: Crossover, Romance (slow burn), OC, First person POV
Notes: This was one of my ‘failed’ QB attempts. It’s a twilight crossover and in the first person, with a Longbottom OC. OC wakes up in Bella’s body just before Twilight starts. Worldbuilding and noble type stuff, and Hermione Potter, inspired heavily by Keira Marcos’ superb worldbuilding choices.
Words: 14,300ish
Summary: Belladonna Longbottom does not know why or how she’s on another world, wearing another skin, but by god she’s going to get to the bottom of it. Fortunately, paranoia and undectable expansion charms have left her well-equipped for the challenge.

–

I was a third year student when my country was taken over by blood supremacists. Thirteen when I watched my family’s Patriarch stand up to the darkest wizard of the century. In the years that followed, none of my cohort forgot how our safest place became a warzone almost overnight, how fickle the law became and how damning; and though some tried, the ability to trust such a broken system was just… gone.

In the years that followed, my hands did not hesitate to take down forbidden books, nor my wand spin in secret motions. I had seen the gritty underneath to the Ministry’s agenda and seen dead kids, my age and younger, laid out across the great hall. I did not give thought to what branches of magic were outlawed when I had seen, with my own two eyes, people declared illegal.

When I turned seventeen, it was an easy choice to bind my wand in blood and magic, tying it to an illegally charmed holster. Death Eaters and their ilk would not catch me unarmed. When that personal entailment worked, I followed with all my worldly possessions.

All this to say: when I woke up on a muggle airplane, feeling like everything was just a step to the left– wrong, definitely, but subtly wrong, like coming home to find your sibling has definitely been in your room and you know they touched your stuff– I at least had my wand.

It jumped into my hand as soon as I realized where I was– or rather, failed to recognize anything familiar. A voice was announcing our descent and, to my befuddled surprise, looking out the tiny window proved I was in a small, pressurized cabin that was aiming itself downward, as a broom would in order to land.

My wand was gripped white-knuckled in my hand, reduced to a pretty stick. I’d been on a plane once before and knew damn well it was an entirely muggle contraption; it would be stupid to cast so much as a lumos on board, in case the magic reacted badly with any of the uncountable wires that made the airplane work.

Heart pounding in my chest, I thanked Merlin I’d visited my extended family before, and that both parents had balked at international magical travel– whether by floo or by portkey, it would have been a nightmare, especially for me at age ten.

When we landed, I followed the instructions of the flight attendant mechanically, remembering how reassuring my dad had been, how he guided me and mom through the process with patience and good cheer.

The only reason I wasn’t losing my mind was because my magic was calm and reactive under my skin. It wasn’t bound or limited; it wasn’t reacting to any danger around me. I had my wand and my runes seemed perfectly untouched.

Growing up, I’d never been isolated from the muggle world; we had a television in our home, even. I’ve been to muggle stores and movie theatres, malls and restaurants. I tried to relax as I moved through the airport by myself.

Fact: I had woken up in an unfamiliar place, somewhere I had no business being.

Fact: I was wearing muggle clothing; jeans and a t-shirt I had never seen before, much less owned.

Fact: There was a wallet in my pocket, in which I found a plane ticket, a few cards, some American money, and a driver’s license.

I stared at the picture in the photo, at the name that was just a little off, swallowed, and made my way hastily to a bathroom, only to stare at what awaited me.

The face in the mirror was mine, but not. It was recognizable as my own, which only made the differences that much starker, wrong. The face was slimmer, younger. The hair, too brown, lacked life and volume, and the highlights that came with spending as much time in the library as the sun. The eyes were darker than I was used to seeing, more chocolate than honey.

It was the picture from the driver’s license.

I dumped my carry-on bag out on the bathroom counter. In it, I found muggle things– a battered paperback novel, a nondescript manilla folder, tampons, and a granola bar. 

Ten minutes later I grabbed my single, if large, piece of luggage from the revolving rack. It matched the receipt I, or the teenage girl I was, had been given. There were consent forms among my paperwork granting permission for the unaccompanied travel of Isabella Swan, daughter of Renee Dwyer and Charlie Swan, to Seattle, Washington, where I now was.

And, to some extent: who I now was.

I was wearing a muggle wristwatch. I hadn’t noted the time, earlier, but I picked up the arrival time from the ticket and the terminals. The flight had not been late or delayed.

It was 2005, which at least meant the year hadn’t changed, even if my body had. Even if, somehow, my memories had. I quietly cast the spell that would render me unremarkable to muggle surveillance, like any witch who travelled out of magical areas should, and let my wand spin on my palm.

“Point me Charlie Swan,” I muttered, and followed the compass to a muggle policeman wearing his full uniform, obviously waiting for me. He was not my father, despite his unmistakable resemblance to the form I wore, and my mind raced ahead as I answered his stilted questions about how I was, how my mother was doing, and other such minutiae.

Halfway through the drive to Forks, which was our ultimate destination, the minute hand on my watch created a complete revolution around its face, and my skin did not obligingly bubble, nor toil, nor trouble its way back into my rightful shape.

I gripped the edges of my seat until my knuckles turned white, and the minutes ticked on, and still the effects of polyjuice did not wear off.

Fact: I was not under the effects of polyjuice potion.

Damn.

The simplest, albeit unlikely– though what about this situation wasn’t— explanation was that I’d, for some completely batshite reason, been polyjuiced into Isabella Swan’s appearance, and somehow had my memory of doing so erased.

Every other option was infinitely more complicated, and increasingly less likely.

I licked my lip and shot Charlie a nervous smile.

“Why not just apparate home?” I asked, though I already knew why not. I just needed it said. Seventeen-year-old Isabella Swan would not be a minor in wizarding Britain, but I didn’t know the nuances of American law. My last hope was that she was too young to get her apparating license, or was– I don’t know, allergic to floo powder or something. Maybe a muggleborn girl whose parents didn’t trust magical travel.

“What?” Charlie asked, amused. “Is that some new slang term, or something?”

I laughed obligingly and if he noticed the nervous edge to it, he hopefully chalked it up to the distance and time from which he’d seen me. The driver’s license was for Phoenix, after all, and had been issued over a year ago.

Whatever else, I did not live with Charlie Swan in Forks, Washington. And whatever other things Isabella Swan was, a witch she was not.

Though it was impossible, I felt a sudden wave of relief that the spells I’d done earlier had worked. The presence of my wand and other items meant I was myself, and very magical, but I let myself breathe out slowly anyway, relaxing from the sudden, nonsensical fear that I had somehow become a muggle teenager.

“I found a good car for you,” Charlie said, smiling as his eyes– the same chocolate color as Isabella’s– cut over to me at a stoplight.

“Oh?” I asked, relaxing a little into the seat. I could do this. I could be Isabella Swan for however long it took to figure out just what in Merlin’s left testicle was going on. Visions of my best friend and off-again-on-again girlfriend played out in my mind’s eye.

One day I wouldn’t associate muggle cars with grease streaked Elliadora’s cheeks and the casual way she threw around a twenty-pound wrench, but today was not that day.

“Yeah, a truck. A Chevy, I mean.”

“That’s good, right?” I double-checked.

“Well, it’s in good condition, anyway. You remember Billy Black down in La Push?”

I pinched my fingers together, lying: “A little?”

He nodded with a smile and I stopped holding my breath.

“No, that makes sense– we used to go fishing together, but it wasn’t your favorite thing.” He laughed.

Fishing? As in with string and sticks? Hopefully he didn’t expect any knowledge of that, because I’d never done such a thing in my life.

“Anyway, he’s in a wheelchair now, so he can’t really drive. He offered his old truck when I told him you were coming out to stay with me this year.”

Mentally, I filed that little tidbit away. This was not just a vacation for Isabella Swan.

“It’s something I can drive, right?” I asked, thinking of my nonexistent car repair skills. I could drive a muggle car, technically, since Ellie had spent a memorable two weeks full of late nights and laughter showing me how, with muggle music encouraging us in our little rebellions from the speakers, but maintaining an old truck that broke down often, or even had recurring problems, was beyond me.

“It’s an automatic, yeah. Billy and his son, Jake– you remember Jake, right?– refurbished it wholescale a few years back. The body is old but under the hood she’s practically brand new.”

He glowed with fatherly pride.

I asked a few more questions about the truck, desperate for something to talk about– better this unusual form of reconnaissance than sitting in the quiet cab of a strange car with a man I didn’t know. I drew on nearly a decade of my best friend’s passion as I asked about the interior of the truck, the furnishings, and the color.

My take was a layman’s take, for sure, but Charlie could see I was trying and looked thrilled by my participation. In my head, I imagined he was in the same boat as me– awkwardly trying to find common ground with a stranger.

It helped, a very little. The scenery rushed by, green and vervant. It was far removed from the countryside where I grew up, which was more integrated with the wilderness– muggles had the habit of divvying up the land, entire areas perfectly manicured for their purposes until it reached perfectly untouched, with no inbetween.

Or perhaps, given my family, I was a bit biased about how people handled their green. With that thought in mind, I looked down sharply, only to exhale in relief as I saw the ring on my finger, right where it was supposed to be.

Being in someone else’s body– or, hopefully, being spelled or potioned to look like someone else’s body– didn’t change or limit my connection to the family magic, which shouldn’t be possible but didn’t change my feelings about it.

As far as I was concerned this entire situation made very little sense and I hung on to those little reassurances with both hands.

Charlie made a few more comments about the weather and the scenery and we invented a little game of naming– or attempting to name– local trees as we passed by. Predominantly conifers, most were various types of pine, but my closest friend wasn’t an Olivander for nothing. Between my herbology and her wandlore I was pretty confident in most of my answers, only getting a few subtypes mixed up from having never seen them before.

Eventually we came to Forks, Washington and the two-bedroom house whose driveway Charlie eased into. On the street was a huge, red truck– my truck, at least for now, the color faded with age. I couldn’t see myself needing to actually use it, but good for Isabella that her father cared enough about her to give her, with her muggle limitations, some sort of independence to move about.

It had a charming sort of timelessness to it. Elliadora would love it if she were here. I appreciated the exterior of it, thick as dragon’s hide; if one had to drive a muggle vehicle that wasn’t a muscle car, one might as well drive the most armored one around. Unlike brooms, which rarely if ever required navigating other flyers, the concept of ‘traffic’ relied entirely on everyone minding their P’s and Q’s at all times.

I was comfortable enough to drive sometimes when Ella and I went for day trips in the city– and nothing in Forks, Washington compared to London if we get right down to it– but why drive when you can floo?

“Wow, I love it!” I enthused to Charlie, setting up the stage for Isabella’s return. “Look how sturdy it is.”

I made a show of opening both doors in turn and ooh-ing over the tan, upholstered seats, either relatively newly fitting in or just lovingly maintained. The cab was clean and neat.

Charlie was pleased I liked it, a ruddy flush muddling along his cheeks to his ears as he said as much. He grabbed my bag from the trunk of the police cruiser and brought it to the front door, allowing me and my carry-on to follow.

Isabella had an upstairs bedroom. It was, naturally, completely unfamiliar to me, but I tried not to let that show on my– her– face as I walked in. Charlie sat my luggage on an antique rocking chair and I looked around, as if relearning the place instead of seeing it for the very first time.

There was a vertical dresser against one of the light blue walls, opposite the one that held a small closet. A bed and a computer desk, complete with a computer, took up the rest of the wall space. A little window dressed with faded yellow curtains faced the front yard.

Charlie and Isabella had only one bathroom between them, which I accepted with a polite nod. Then Charlie, apparently not one to hover over his child, left for downstairs. I looked at the luggage and, nodding decisively, drug it over to the bed, upon which I upended it.

There was no clue to my circumstances within the bag. In fact, it was distressingly plain. Washington was one of the northern states and yet Isabella only had a few long-sleeved shirts, and no jumpers. There was a parka with the tags still on it, and rainboots with the same. 

It started to rain as I unpacked, putting the sparse selection of clothes into the closet and dresser respectively just to do something with my hands as I thought. There was a bag of bathroom supplies segregated from the loose clothes in the luggage, so I dutifully took that to the single bathroom.

No clues sprang up at me from the faded porcelain facilities.

Finally, all excuses done, I sat on the bed and laid out the facts before me. Somehow, I was impersonating or– sweet Merlin– inhabiting the body of Isabella Swan, seventeen, muggle.

I had awoken on a plane of all things, so I had to have gotten on that plane. Attempting to apparate onto a plane wasn’t something I would ever do under any circumstances, nor would that endeavor be successful, so I had to have walked onto it. Polyjuice was the most likely way to get me to look like some random muggle, but it had already been hours.

There was a chance, however small, that someone had attempted to memory charm me into oblivion. If they did, they had either found an American muggle at random and– somehow– changed my appearance to hers. Did they get rid of the original girl? The thought chilled me. And while I was on the subject of this hypothetical enemy– for it must have been an enemy, right?– I listed out people who might be interested in hurting me.

It was a distressingly long list, one that could cheerfully be titled “political enemies and blood purists.” Seven years had passed since the final battle and there were still people who hadn’t faced a single day of jail time for their actions or cowardice during the war.

No one, however, would I expect to go to such lengths. When it came down to it, blood purists were lazy. More specifically I did not, could not, believe there was a blood purist who could navigate the muggle world so well as to arrange a plane ticket.

Unless they didn’t have to, a small voice whispered. Unless they just obliviated you, stuck you in some poor girl’s life, and Imperiused you to go along with it. If Isabella were already going to travel across states, then surely a witch inserted into her life would just be… following her muggle plans?

No, it was too outlandish. Why go through all the trouble of memory charming me if the obliviation wasn’t good enough to last? I searched my memories purposefully. The last thing I remembered was going to bed for the evening.

It was–

I paused. I couldn’t remember what day of the week it had been. I couldn’t remember what month it had been. That was evidence. I tried to reign in the panic. So, my memories had likely been tampered with. That was always going to be true; I woke up on a muggle airplane for fuck’s sake.

I wrote that down and forced myself to move on. If it was a botched obliviation, one that had broken on its own– or that I had broken through– someone had to have placed it. Someone had to have deliberately put me in a muggle girl’s shoes.

But a blood purist wouldn’t know how an airport worked.

A blood purist, even if the culprit was keeping track of Belladonna Longbottom-in-Isabella Swan’s life, wouldn’t be able to track muggle travel easily. I spelled the curtains shut with a shaking hand.

I locked the bedroom door magically and applied a subtle, very small muggle repelling charm to the door. It wouldn’t keep Charlie out of the house, or even the upstairs bathroom, but the door itself should hold no interest for him, and he’d forget what he needed from me should he approach it.

That settled, I pulled out my luggage. Our plans during the war had always been to retreat behind War Wards at Bright Meadows if it came to that, but we had contingencies that I’d never really let go of. Child that I was, I hadn’t been prepared for the first war. It had, to me, come out of nowhere.

Others had seen the writing on the wall but I had been too young. The lesson it left me with was that your life could come crumbling down around you at any time. Later in life, when my cousin claimed his title and made me his heir, I honed that fear into a battle-ready paranoia.

What if War Wards fell?

Hermione Granger had saved the world living out of a tiny clutch bag. Hermione Potter had modified wizard space charms beyond what commercial retailers could do. I wasn’t nearly that good, but I wasn’t willing to return to normal the way a few of my classmates tried to do.

I wanted to be ready.

I wanted, more than anything, to cut the next blood war off at the head, the way Neville had cut the head off that great bloody snake. The House of Longbottom hadn’t sat idle in any of the wars and wasn’t going to let another blood purist regime gather political power in the wizengamot.

We also weren’t going to let the Ministry enforce backwards laws about how we could and couldn’t defend ourselves and use our ancestral magic. My blood entailment charm had been illegal in 2000 when I did it, but wasn’t any longer. The body had been more than willing to see our side of things in terms of personal and family defense in the wake of how much was lost.

I was thankful for that paranoia now that I found myself in another bloody country. The art of Hobythe Sacks was one of the earliest recorded uses of wizarding space and a few of my ancestors had looked into the math therein. Whatever enemy had tried to strand me in a muggle’s life hadn’t been able to see my Heir Ring, which would disappear to someone’s sight if it thought it was in danger of being removed, and they hadn’t been able to detect anything about the runes that glittered up my forearm, inert and invisible unless activated.

Dimensional stores were usually tied to dverger-wrought mithril in bracelets, necklaces, or lordship rings. They were very expensive. Hermione and I had devised a way to do it with blood runes and the ministry would pitch a genuine fit if they knew about it.

We could probably have won a number of prizes and awards for it if we were willing to share it with the public, and therefore our enemies, or if we were willing to fight through a lot of legal dragonshite about blood magic.

It wasn’t illegal to entail my wand to me (anymore), but the blood runes were incredibly illegal (for now), and that was where I stored my wand holster. Usually it took concentration to remove something specific from a dimensional store, but I got around that by having two arrays. One for the holster alone, and another, separate array, underneath for everything else. 

Conventional wisdom said you couldn’t store one wizard-space device within another. Hobythe Sacks were an exception to that rule, however, and those were what Hermione and I based our research on.

I pulled my trunk out of my storage rune.

Probably it spoke to my incredible trauma that I had an empty flat and a full trunk with which I could live out of– and, indeed, live in, if needed. We hadn’t ended up on the run but I had spent my entire third year worried about the need to– about how underprepared I was to survive. Even living in the Room of Requirement was stressful. I made lists and plans of what I would do once the war was over in order to never be hungry or stranded ever again. As coping methods went, I’ve seen worse.

Despite the circumstances I felt a little vindicated in my paranoia. Of the few who knew about my precautionary measures, no one had outright told me it was excessive– they had been through the same war I had– but there were a few eye rolls and an ever present surprise that I was still working on the ideas, years later.

Assured that my storage arrays were untouched by whatever madness or malice had landed me in my situation, I left the trunk on my bed and went back to my runes.

I couldn’t pull things directly out of the trunk while it was inside the rune, so things I used often or had plans to use, like spare robes or upcoming outfits, were ‘stored’ as loose items in the third array, which required strong mental organization and very purposeful thoughts to access. 

The whole final design had been a pain in the ass to figure out but was worth it now.

I pulled my communication mirror out of the third storage rune and tapped it once.

“Neville Longbottom.” I said clearly. Nothing happened.

Cold dread began to form in my stomach.

“Neville Longbottom.” I repeated. Nothing. Not even the indication that someone was busy or couldn’t come to the call.

“Hermione Potter. Harry Potter. Elladora Olivander. Luna Lovegood. Bellarose Longbottom. Kenneth Longbottom.”

My breath caught on a sob as nothing happened. I went through a dozen more names, including half-a-dozen Weasleys; everyone I knew who had a mirror, right down to the Longbottom account manager at Gringotts. It was possible the mirror was malfunctioning, I told myself. I just didn’t believe it. The mirror fell softly to the bed from my numb fingers. My grip had grown far too tight.

“Ozzy.” I said, quietly. A house elf couldn’t pop from the continent, which was why I hadn’t tried this first, but I expected some sort of response or acknowledgement. At least they’d feel the call and know I was alive, know my location and be able to relay it to Neville.

There was nothing.

“Eli. Emma.”

If I concentrated I could feel the bonds there, tying myself and the elves to the family magic, but something was preventing me from touching it. Something more than distance. I forced myself to breathe because I knew– I knew— that they were alive.

 I wouldn’t be able to touch the bonds at all if they weren’t, but it was something. And though the others weren’t family, and so I couldn’t know for sure, if Neville– if my Patriarch— was dead, I’d certainly be able to feel it.

No amount of distance could mask the hole family magic would tear into my heart, the ache of it that wouldn’t ease even as I took up his ring and became Earl of Greenwood after him.

The pain of his death would resonate through the entirety of our family magic. The loss of my parents would be almost as evident for me and their loss would spread to the other Longbottoms as well.

So they were alive.

It took almost half an hour before I was able to convince myself and get my emotions under control. Finally I ended up just crying from the stress of it all, letting it out of my system as I could, and then wiped my eyes.

I set my trunk on the ground and lay on the faded quilt in Isabella Swan’s room and tried to focus on the softness of it, on my pillow, and the bonds I had inside me that were whole and hale, if somewhat muted.

I forced my breathing into a meditative calm to see them better, to hold that confidence and immerse myself in the ever present embrace of my family magic. When I sat up, I felt better. More determined.

Once more I closed my eyes. 

A castle on fire. Smoke, rubble, blood. Fear and courage as my breath caught in my throat and the Earl of Greenwood jerked forward with a warcry, righteous and magical, to behead the snake Nagini.

The wave of renewed, impossible hope of Harry Potter alive, so much stronger for the choking grief that had taken us all when we saw his ‘body’. Embers of defiance surging into passionate wildfires, sweeping up everyone.

Tom Riddle’s body landing on the cobblestones.

Relief like a tidal wave rising up in each person, in each individual throat as they realized it was over. Seeing Neville, alive. Taking stock. Anthony, Desmond, Amethyst–

And then, from across a courtyard, Elladora, clearing a collapsed doorway with a shaking wand.

There were a lot of happy memories after May 2, 1998. There was seeing my parents again, putting on the Heir Ring, the moment when Hogwarts reopened. Learning to drive with my best friend, shouting off-key muggle music into the sunset; my head pooling on Anthony’s shoulder as he read off important ingredients our potions final, because we didn’t actually graduate until three years later; those three years themselves, reckless with joy as we tried to reclaim what youthful opportunities we’d once feared lost, walking arm-in-arm-in-arm through Hogsmeade.

It was wonderful, it was beautiful, and it all started when my best friend looked up from her exhausted levitation charm to see me there, equally exhausted and dirty with wide dark eyes, and drop her wand.

We ran towards each other and that was the first kiss of the ages, a first kiss that would become a hundred throughout Hogwarts and beyond, as we tried what fit and what didn’t, as we laughed and dated and laughed and didn’t date, depending, and I would never, ever take for granted the easy love and knowing, the easy confidence in ourselves that let me say I wasn’t sure I wanted to date, without fear of reprisal, without fear of anything because I was safe, I was home.

“Expecto Patronum,” I said.

A creature swam out of my wand, silver and just as strange as my friend; the axolotl swam around the room before turning to me, as if curious.

“To Neville Longbottom,” I said in a forcibly calm voice. “The message: I’m alive. I’m in America. Forks, Washington. Send help.”

I expected the patronus to dart off through the walls of the house like they weren’t there, extending all the way to England. Communication mirrors were one secure form of messaging that wasn’t hampered by distance; patroni were another.

My patronus just looked at me, not comprehending. My heart squeezed. The rush of fear ended the spell. I tried a few more things. None of them yielded any results. It got to the point where each failure demoralized me further and a glance at the clock confirmed the late hour, and I forced myself to begin getting ready for bed.

If anyone was watching me, I wasn’t going to let on that their memory charm failed. In fact, I set a time-release charm to write on my wall, a message visible only to me. Every day it would spell out the situation and every day, I would dismiss the spell. If I remained myself, I would dismiss it without issue; if I didn’t remember setting the note, I’d know I was missing time, and the contents of the note would fill me in on the situation.

I climbed into bed, determined to sleep. The rain grew louder but not fierce. It was a calming sound, pattering against the roof, and I tried to let that lull me into dreams. Eventually, it even worked, despite the worries my thoughts kept catching on like so many bloody thorns.

What on earth could stop a patronus?

–

My dreams were scattered and dark. Stressful, even though I couldn’t remember anything specific; the details ran through my fingers like rain-water. I woke up, silenced the tempus alarm spell, and ate breakfast with Charlie Swan.

Charlie Swan asked me if I’d be able to find the school okay, and wished me a good first day of class.

I blinked at him, uncomprehending. My fingers tightened on my glass of milk and I almost choked. Lee Jordan’s voice played in my head, taking his strong quidditch announcer voice to the radio news show he’d picked up after the war: Local lunatic thinks witch in her twenties is going to muggle high school, couldn’t be more wrong! More at seven.

We were working on getting the magical television network that the Americas used approved for importing despite Britain’s archaic and restrictive laws that purposefully limited innovative ideas to keep us less muggle and more in the bleeding dark ages, and then Lee Jordan would be Britain’s first actual news anchor.

Harry Potter had threatened to physically throttle him if he had a segment called Potterwatch and the Weasley Twins actually patented the term as, we hope, a joke.

“Mhmm. School. I’m sure I’ll be able to find it.” I said, suddenly thankful I really could drive. Charlie rose an eyebrow at me and I gave him a reassuring smile. Definitely not a witch here, only a teenager nervous for her first day!

The kitchen was brightly-colored, at least. Dark walls and hufflepuff yellow cabinets, white linoleum floor. There was a fireplace in the family room and rows of pictures. Charlie left first, off to his job, and I waved him off from the door.

Glancing at the photographs told me nothing, of course; except that the woman must be Renee, Isabella’s mother, and the oldest picture of them together was when Isabella was young. Apparently the couple had split up early on, which explained how Renee lived in Phoenix, Arizona.

Charlie, however, was a good father. While pictures of Renee stopped at a certain age, pictures of Isabella alone continued; she aged in each one, smiling awkwardly, gangly-limbed and shy. She didn’t look comfortable in any of the photographs. Of course, they were muggle pictures; they didn’t move.

I sighed. I had no idea when this school started, or even when muggle high school traditionally started. 

Nor where the building was located. Damn.

Okay, definitely time to go. It took a while longer yet to decide what to take with me. On the one hand, the answer was glaringly obvious: everything I owned. Easy enough. Entailed items could be returned to me with a simple recall order and my trunk was already in its store; it automatically returned itself there in a small rush of magic if I left a room without it.

That done, I decided what Isabella Swan should have. Charlie had thoughtfully bought her a backpack laden with school supplies; I knew, vaguely, that muggles had lists of required items just like wixen did for Hogwarts, and the bag seemed filled with new notebooks and pencils instead of parchment and quills. That was a relief, honestly; I’d gotten far too used to muggle utensils in the last few years. I did a quick inventory of the new supplies, more out of habit than anything.

I got dressed for school, donning waterproof boots that had yet to be broken in and a raincoat. Because I was a grown-ass witch, I also cast the impervius charm fairly liberally. And because I wasn’t hankering to break the Statute, I also cast the standard charm to thwart muggle devices when magic was afoot, and a weak but very meticulously tailored notice-me-not that would prevent anyone from noticing that my hair wasn’t damp and my boots weren’t wet, or anything about me that was quietly magical.

I wasn’t very good at inventing spells, but I could damn well research and modify them, especially with help, and my runework was second-to-none. Years of study into worst-case-scenarios had led to a lot of precautionary magic. Those two notice-me-not spells we did end up sharing with the rest of the magical community; muggle technology was fast becoming Dangerous with a capital ‘D’, and one of Hermione Potter’s projects was delaying that inevitable discovery and controlling the fallout.

The truck was nice and dry inside, if a bit taller than I was used to. I felt very tall as I adjusted the seat and mirrors. I held my breath as it cranked up, well aware that any issues would not be solved by a quick reparo, nor my meagre skills.

The engine turned over beautifully, but very loudly. I was halfway through a reflexive muffliato when I jerked the magic back to me, heart beating fast. Cars were usually fine to be modified with magic; they had less of the fiddly bits and were very straightforward in purpose.

Especially an old car like this. Regardless of how good I was at modifying spells and rune sequences, however, I was not about to cast on muggle technology willy-nilly. Tales of the Weasley car that had gained sentience and, reportedly, a taste for spider flesh were fresh in my mind.

Aborted mistakes or not, the trip to school was nice. Quiet. I drove slow in deference to the overwhelming fog, but nobody honked at me. The town only had a few roads so I essentially just followed the main ones, turning around as necessary, until my search yielded fruit. Despite its obvious and recent cleaning, the cab smelled well-loved; like gasoline, peppermint and herbs.

The school was nothing like a castle, of course. I found it off the largest highway, mostly because it had a helpful sign. It was more a collection of brick buildings than one main affair, though some were bigger than others. Sidewalks connected each building, accompanied faithfully by long metal pillars every few yards, that held up a snaking roof. I imagined it was a necessity in a place as wet as this.

January in Forks, Washington offered cold temperatures and wet air, less a result of dew and more from the drizzle and the thick, overlaying fog. I was delighted to find that the truck obligingly put out hot air from the vents, and was already dreading leaving the resulting bubble of warmth. A sign designated one building as the main office, so I parked there along with one other vehicle. Most of the lots were guest only; I felt very guest-like, visiting this strange, small school.

The impervius charm kept me dry, not warm. I cast a warming charm on my clothes without thought, frowning. Any other time I was out in this weather, I’d have a cloak. A nice, charmed cloak with all these charms built in.

Hmm.

Well-manicured hedgery lined the sidewalk and guided me to the door so I couldn’t miss it. I took a moment to gather myself, pasted on a cheery smile, and pulled open the door.

Inside was warm and homey. It made me nostalgic immediately, though I couldn’t place why. I tried to figure it out as I looked around. The carpet was a dingy orange, the chairs cheap, the walls covered with framed achievements, awards, and even little cork boards with papers thumb-tacked to it. Most notably, however, were the potted plants. I lit up to see them.

Magic wiggled out of me without hesitation, brushing over the plants and bringing me impressions of their health and feelings, lighting up different colors, singing faintly, and inventing new flavors under my tongue.

 My toes moved in my boots, wanting to taste the earth and ensure it was good quality, and my magic promptly made up for that shortcoming by feeding me even more diagnostics. Overall, they were healthy, species chosen that did well with the– obvious– lack of light. They were native and used to the weather and sun patterns here.

I would still, definitely, be sneaking in and fixing some soil deficiencies here, adding some nutrients there…

Realizing I had been staring at the plants, I jerked my attention smoothly to the rest of the office; namely to the large counter and the woman behind it. She was red-headed, femme-presenting, and wearing a simple purple t-shirt.

She looked like a Weasley. It finally clicked. The office, with its cozy vibes, reminded me of the same cluttered care the Burrow had. The months I spent dating Ginny Weasley had made me fall in love with the place; of course, now Elladora was dating Luna Lovegood– who was basically Ginny’s Elladora, near as I could figure– who lived right down the road from that memorable home, so I still saw it often enough.

“Hello,” I said politely; she jumped, looking up quickly. “I’m new. Is this the right place to get started?”

“Oh, yes.” The woman slipped on a pair of glasses to see me properly. “Isabella Swan, right? You’re a bit early, but I should have everything ready for you.”

“Glad to hear it.” I reached out and took a small mountain of papers, unsurprised she knew the name without being told. If someone had ever transferred in to Hogwarts during January, the entire school would know their name. At least she had a name plate on the counter to keep things equivalent.

Mrs. Cope walked me through my schedule. It was a very short, very fast yet comprehensive “Fantastic Classes and Where to Find Them” complete with hi-lighted routes through the fierce wilderness otherwise known as Forks High School. She wished me luck and I thanked her before heading back to the truck, paperwork safely inside my backpack that, with a huff, I belatedly remembered to charm waterproof.

“I’ve never been to high school before,” I told my truck as I started it, eye barely twitching at the loud idle. “It’ll be weird, huh?”

History of Magic had been the only class in which we weren’t expected to do any wandwork, and even that got a smidgen better after Harry Potter somehow managed to get Binns to go into the light in 1999.

The truck didn’t answer me back, which was good; I had no idea what I’d do with a sentient car. There were no magical forests into which it could escape and build a habitat.

I followed the slow trickle of arriving students around the school to the student parking lot. The individual lots were numbered but no one had tags or parking stickers that I could see, so it seemed like a holdover from a bygone era.

I parked with no particular care as to where and dug around a bit for a map. The routes were drawn-in for me so after I identified the cafeteria on the map– the biggest building, which was connected to the parking lot via a covered pavilion area with multiple picnic tables– I began to develop a sense for the layout.

There were a lot of teenagers but no uniforms. I myself wasn’t wearing a uniform, so I don’t know why it took until now to be surprised. There were also no houses. I wondered if there was a point system?

I blended in with the crowd, at least; the waterproof rain jacket was a common choice, especially in dark colors, especially with the hoods pulled up to ward off the drizzle.

English was first, a welcome relief. I followed a few others into the room and hung up my coat. I wasn’t the most well versed in muggle subjects, but English and literature blurred the line quite well. There weren’t a lot of wizard playwrights and poets compared to the sheer number of muggle publishers.

Mr.– not Professor– Mason gave me a list of books we’d be covering this ‘semester’ and gestured me easily to an unoccupied seat in the back of the room. I recognized most of the names, having already read some.

The lesson wasn’t that strange. It went quick, obviously drawing to some conclusion far sooner than I expected. I was used to classes much longer but students began packing their bags a bare forty-five minutes in.

The bell rang, startling me. Hogwarts certainly didn’t do that. A boy turned around immediately, black-haired and grinning.

“Isabella Swan, right?” He asked, eager.

“Bella.” I said, making the snap decision. It settled into my chest, fierce. I wasn’t Isabella, no, but I’d been Bella all my life.

“Bella, sure. Where’s your next class?” He bounced a little as we walked to the door. I told him and he offered to walk me, despite it being out of the way.

“No thank you!” I laughed, immediately. “Sorry, it’s just– I absolutely cannot remember where I’m going unless I figure it out myself, through trial and error. It’s like my brain turns off when someone else is leading the way. I’d get lost the first time I had to find it on my own.”

He laughed as well.

“I can walk you until my next class, then.” He compromised. “It’s Eric, by the way.”

I kept my eyes on our surroundings as I walked; the outdoor ‘halls’ were convenient in that I could see all around the campus and the woods beyond.

There were no death eaters waiting outside the school, much less inside it. The more I thought about how much planning and effort it would take to pull this off, the more I was doubting my chief suspicion. It was logical, to blame one’s enemies, but my enemies had never done anything of this calibre. I severely doubted their capabilities.

Regardless, I wasn’t out to ruin some muggle girl’s life– not to be dismissive of the value of that life, because it wasn’t her fault nor to her detriment that she wasn’t magical– so I resolved to set her up for success. When I left this facsimile and found her– the real Isabella– I’d make sure she was coming back to something nice, to friends and a routine where her replacement of me didn’t arouse suspicion or mistrust.

It wasn’t hard to be friendly to a group of teenagers who were already being friendly to me.

The mathematics teacher had me introduce myself and I took a small moment to reflect. Who was Isabella Swan? What did I know of her? It would help me to build a small dossier about her, to seed the truth of her into the beginnings of friendships I was making on her behalf.

“My name is Bella Swan.” Belladonna Longbottom.

“I’m seventeen.” Twenty-two.

All I had to go on were her possessions, meagre though they were.

“I like classic novels and old cars.” That last was a stretch, but believable due to her restored pickup. This was the point where I thought, ‘fuck it, I barely know anything about the girl’ and realized there was no avoiding bridging the gap between us with my own opinions.

If they happened to be different, Isabella could claim she’d changed her mind. She had every right, didn’t she? People changed all the time, especially young ones. I fought the urge to say some patently ridiculous, if true, things– interesting things, magical things, details that I might use when introducing myself to a class of Hogwarts students, if I ever was put in the situation to do such a thing. As a new teacher, maybe.

The urge was brushed aside easily enough, words of true interests– in runes and spellcrafting, black-and-white films and herbology– dying on my tongue.

“I want to study English in college.” I finished instead, lamely, and made my way to a seat. It touched nothing on my actual academic goals at the International Academy of Magic, of course.

Like I’d thought earlier, the students here were very isolated– not quite like at Hogwarts, since I wasn’t the first transfer student in Forks’ history– and naturally very curious about me. Or, rather, Isabella.

They asked about Phoenix, Arizona, where few if any of them had ever been, and all I knew about Arizona had to do with thunderbirds. A red kind of dessert, stretching for miles. I’d always wanted to visit.

My answers were on that trend: the heat, the weather, the monsoons.

The last was news to people. They didn’t know about dust storms or the seasonal flooding. I capitalized on the interest to keep my own ignorance of Phoenix circumspect. 

Trigonometry was just math. It wasn’t quite arithmancy, but I wasn’t entirely ignorant of muggle subjects. The Academy required a decent grounding in several core subjects, including mathematics and sciences, that students from my home country were often surprised to realize– if they bothered to pursue higher education at all.

In that class, I met Jessica Stanley, the girl who sat next to me. She had fourth period with me as well– Spanish– so she cheerfully followed me there, filling up the empty space with constant commentary. I didn’t have to try so hard at this conversation; Jessica was more than happy to take on the lion’s share of work.

I didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, though my Italian was good and I could kind of play along. After Spanish was lunch. There was a small hiccup because I’ve never used American bank notes in my life, but I handed the lunch lady my largest from the wallet– a twenty-note– and hoped for the best. She handed me quite a lot of change.

Unfortunately, the food itself was a nightmare. I had settled for the least offensive option and still only managed a few bites of it. Jessica saw my face and laughed, explaining that the food was always bad. I responded that there was bad and then there was an assassination attempt, which was apparently the height of humor.

Jessica laughed as I surreptitiously checked my ring for warmth; it was supposed to alert me to any ingestible poisons at hand. The muggle girl was very amused by my glower, explaining that it was my ‘first time trying the food’ to any newcomers. I was soon introduced to all of her friends, with whom we sat.

The time passed quickly with exchanging bits and pieces of information– the number of siblings, the occupations of parents, the places people have and haven’t been to. 

(I began to think of writing a journal with all of this information, so that Isabella wouldn’t look like a lunatic for not knowing these basic facts, though there was a good chance she’d be obliviated from whatever had happened to her, and her school friends would be happy to re-introduce themselves after her ‘tragic, memory-altering head injury’ or fever, or whatever cover story.)

One of them, Angela Webber, had Biology II with me right after lunch. She was a shy girl with light brown hair and scattered freckles. She was also incredibly tall. I had to look up at her when she spoke.

It had taken me a while to complete my A-levels, having to start nearly from scratch in terms of non-magical education, but those correspondence courses hadn’t prepared me for a biology ‘lab’ room. It looked similar to a potions lab if one could forgive the high black-topped counters which had individual sinks. 

The two-person seating arrangement was at least familiar, though unfortunately Angela– and nearly everyone else– already had a partner.

I handed my collection of teacher’s signatures to the biology professor– teacher, I corrected myself sternly– and looked at the only free seat in the room.

A boy looked up as if feeling my gaze and I jerked, surprised. He was gorgeous. It was like a slap in the face, actually. He was too pretty, with red-bronze curls and flawless skin. It was a kind of otherworldly beauty; the sort I’d expect to see in a high elf returned to the realm, not a muggle classroom.

Dark eyes regarded me, set in a pale face with regal features, and skin which had an almost moonlit sort of glow. Looking at him was like looking at another Peer; right down to the expensive cut of his clothes and the expression of polite disinterest.

He looked like the heir to a noble house, so far removed from a muggle high school that for a moment I forgot where I was. Mr. Banner handed back my slip of paper and I shook myself out of it.

The teacher pointed out the only open seat absently, naming the mysterious boy Edward. I took a few steps forward and almost froze, forcing suddenly stiff feet to keep walking despite the abrupt change in Edward’s expression.

He went frozen in his seat, face twisting up with something unexpectedly hostile. It was such an extreme emotion, anger naked and out of place on his otherwise beautiful features, and I was caught completely off-guard.

Maybe he didn’t want a lab partner, but something in me sat up in true alarm. It might have been that he looked like the people I was used to being around, beautiful and powerful as a matter of course, and those people did not wear their fury so openly unless they intended to reach for a wand.

The magical elite kept their truest emotions– happiness, anger, disdain– politely hidden, playing political games until and unless they were pushed to the breaking point.

I sat next to Edward and he shifted away, face turned from me as if he smelled something bad, and a flash of offense rocked me to my core. I’d seen arseholes at school turn up their noses in just such a way, to be paired with a muggleborn student at school, and the memory had my fists clenching. It wasn’t that, obviously, and I was more or less a pureblood to begin with.

Maybe he did smell something unpleasant. Isabella’s shampoo was strawberry-scented, her deodorant some sort of fresh-fabric scent. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. It was entirely possible he was allergic to the artificial products or had some sort of unlikely but extremely bad memory triggered by something about me, or one of the smells.

The lecture was about cell anatomy. I used the excuse of reaching for my notes, the breadth of my body between us and Edward looking entirely away from me, to flick my wand into my hand. It was masked entirely by Isabella’s backpack and I pointed it towards myself, casting a charm that would completely mask any scents on my body or clothes.

One of the most amatuer mistakes a wix would make was to disillusion themselves without masking scent or sound. Anything with extraordinary senses or anybody that used magic to give them heightened perception could locate an invisible person by their footsteps, their heartbeat, or by their incredibly unnatural and strong strawberry scented shampoo.

I pulled out my notes and set them on the lab table, pointedly not looking at Edward. I don’t know what I expected– perhaps a slow relaxation as the offending element was, perhaps, taken out of the equation, if it truly was some smell of mine he was so sensitive to– but it wasn’t for him to turn to me with clear and evident shock.

Naturally, I feigned ignorance. That was more awareness than I wanted from a non-magical person, especially when I had cast the generic notice-me-not spell that should prevent muggles from being able to pay attention to magical effects, much like a muggle-repelling charm made them unable to approach magically warded areas. 

Maybe he was a squib? He was dressed in a long, white button up, the sleeves of which were fastened above his elbows, baring strong, pale forearms, one of which was braced on the lab table between us as Mr. Banner talked.

It seemed unnatural to me that this boy wasn’t magical. I wondered if it was some bias in me, that he was rich and good-looking and I immediately assumed he couldn’t be a muggle. I blinked and inhaled slowly.

No, that wasn’t it. There was something there. If he were blonde I’d suspect genuine veela allure, though there was a pathetically small chance of a veela– even a quarter veela like Fleur– being here. For fuck’s sake, his skin was practically glowing– not literally, and maybe not ‘glowing with magic’ as some highly magical people did, but I couldn’t dismiss it as mundane. 

The potential for violence drained away, confusion and surprise replacing all traces of hostility. Edward did not stop looking at me until Mr. Banner asked him a question, which he answered without looking away– and only then did he blink and stop staring.

Looking at him the second time was more startling than the first; perhaps because he was looking directly at me? His face was dazzling, somehow.

“Hello.” It took me a minute to place the musical voice as his, despite seeing his flawless lips move in time with the words. “My name is Edward Cullen. You must be Isabella Swan?”

He spoke in a very polite undertone, so as not to disturb the lecture. A tenseness lingered in his posture and his eyes, when I glanced over, were intense, curious. Crap.

“Bella.” I corrected quietly. “We should pay attention to the lecture.”

His amused huff was so unexpected that I stared for a moment, unable to look away. Dazzling was right. My heart sped up.

“Of course.” He demurred, and I forced myself to stop staring at his eyelashes of all things and focus forward. What in the world? I doubled down on my occlumency barriers, baffled at the unnatural attraction. It didn’t help, disproving my wild veela theory. Maybe he really was that pretty?

Somewhere, Ella had just burst out into laughter and didn’t know why, I was sure of it. Mr. Banner finished his lecture and passed out some worksheets regarding the subject matter. I took mine and passed Edward his, since my seat was closest to the aisle.

He turned to face me slightly, chair and body angled in my direction as he leaned in, pencil over the page. A low murmur rose in the classroom, everyone talking politely as they completed their work. It wasn’t a partnered assignment, per se, but neither did Mr. Banner seem to mind the light chatter.

“Did you know it’s supposed to snow next week?” He asked, and I made the mistake of looking up again. Still gorgeous; still utterly perplexing.

“I didn’t.” I admitted, trying to read the first question on the list. This crazy day aside, I quite hoped to be back home by next week, so I also wasn’t too worried about trying to drive in it, of all things.

“Have you seen the snow before? You’re from Arizona, right?”

“Yes, of course.” I answered, thinking about winter in Scotland, and the absent desire to see the Grand Canyon one day. “It snows in Arizona.”

“Just not in Phoenix.” He pointed out, lips quirking up.

“Not usually in Phoenix, no.” I allowed.

“Did you like it there?” He asked, writing something down for one of the questions. I forced myself to pay attention to my own work, opening one of the battered textbooks in front of me to the appropriate chapter.

“Why do you ask?” I had never been to Phoenix, and therefore had little personal opinion, though apparently Isabella hadn’t liked it enough to stay.

“Well, it’s an abrupt change on your part, isn’t it? You moved in the middle of the year.” He rolled his pencil through his thumb and forefinger, then looked up and caught me staring. “Forks is very different than Phoenix.”

“It is.” I acknowledged, hardly able to say ‘I’m not Isabella and I might have been kidnapped.’ “Charlie’s nice.”

I found the answer to the first question. This wasn’t, precisely, material I had covered before, but it was similar enough.

“You call him Charlie? Not ‘dad?’”

“Why so many questions?” I asked, surprised to find my voice slightly breathless. I forced myself to breathe normally because apparently, at some point, I’d stopped doing so.

That phased him. He looked down at his hands, a sweep of lashes.

“I don’t know.” He admitted, some of the playfulness falling away, the words serious. A touch of frustration entered his eyes, replacing curiosity. A hint of a smile, self-depreciating. Still no teeth. “Perhaps I got ahead of myself. I know what it’s like being the new student… a curiosity.”

Something wry tinged his words. Despite myself, I was intrigued.

“You’re new, too?” Impossible. I would have heard his name spoken with the same interest as mine at lunch.

He looked up with surprise.

“You haven’t heard? My family moved here two years ago.” Dark eyes took hold of mine, captivating. He looked like he was trying and failing to see something on my face, and the hint of frustration returned, though it wasn’t anything close to anger; merely the slightest furrow in his brow.

“Your family?” I prompted. It was interesting to turn the tables. Maybe they all moved from France and he was part veela, after all, or some distantly related bloodline.

I forced myself to move on to the next problem on my worksheet as he considered the question.

“My siblings and I, and our mother and father of course. Adopted.” He clarified, before I could even start to ask. “Myself, my sister Alice, and my brother Emmett are Cullens, adopted by our father Carlisle. His wife, Esme, had already adopted her late sister’s children– Jasper and Rosalie Hale– before they were married.”

“A big family.” I said in tones of honest admiration, with perhaps a touch of wistfulness sneaking in. Like most purebloods, I was an only child. I had many cousins in the Longbottom family, but they were all either much older or much younger than me.

“You’re an only child?” He asked and I froze.

“Yes.” I guessed, having seen no other pictures in the house. I hoped Renee wasn’t remarried with five kids.

“Does it get lonely?” He wondered, looking up from his assignment and pinning me with dark, dark eyes.

I swallowed. Yes, it had gotten rather lonely. Neville was my closest cousin in terms of age and I hadn’t really gotten to know him, being four years older, until the war began in earnest. We’d had a few conversations, mostly about homework and grades, until Delores Umbridge happened and I joined Dumbledore’s Army. We weren’t really close then, either, but things escalated and I knew my place by his side.

“Sometimes.” I said, glancing up and catching unexpected sympathy in his expression. Suddenly wanting to reassure him, I said: “I had friends, though, at school.”

“Why did you come here, then?” He asked me flat out, just shy of demanding. I hesitated. For a moment it felt like we were talking about me, and not the girl whose face I was wearing.

“I don’t know.” I whispered.

The bell rang, causing me to jump. Mr. Banner announced that if we hadn’t finished our worksheet, we should complete it for homework and turn it in tomorrow.

I shoved the sheet into my notes and those into my backpack roughly, slinging it over my shoulder in my haste to leave. I needn’t have bothered, though; by the time I stood up, hurried though I’d been, Edward Cullen had completely vanished.

–

Gym class was uneventful, for all that it was fascinating. It was nothing like quidditch or dueling. The coach found me a uniform but didn’t make me wear it, instead offering to let me watch for the day. I stared at it in poorly disguised horror because I wasn’t sure how clean you could get exercise clothes like that with mere soap and water.

House elf magic was one thing but muggles didn’t even have that. I took the uniform and fully planned to give it the complete treatment at Charlie’s house. 

I passed the hour observing as the students played volleyball, trying to discern the rules. The only thing I knew for sure by the end of the class was that, maybe, for the short time I was here, I should confound the coach into thinking me infirm. At least sports at Hogwarts had been voluntary. 

Afterwards, I took the uniform and my bag to the truck before driving carefully around to the main office again, and turning in the slip signed by all my teachers.

I managed to find my way back to Charlie Swan’s house, frowning heavily the whole way. The day was over and I could stop pretending to be a seventeen-year-old.

The truck pulled smoothly into the driveway and turned off. I hopped out, went directly up to my room, and did the full lock and ward routine.

It was time to figure out just what the hell was going on.

–

It was a sleepless and dead-eyed Belladonna Longbottom who returned to Forks, Washington in the early hours of morning.

She looked around Isabella’s bedroom with a numb sort of horror.

Nothing. There’d been nothing.

No Bright Meadows, the ancestral home of the Longbottom Family. No Hogwarts, no Leaky Cauldron, no Diagon Alley. No anything. Even the international magical institutions were just gone, as if they’d never existed to begin with. I’d tried four major cities before I accepted that there weren’t even any branches of Gringotts.

International portkeys were genuine hell and I’d created them one after another, increasingly desperate.

I’d taken waking up as Isabella Swan as my only issue, assuming everything else was– normal, continuing on. Now, though? It seemed like waking up in her life was the only clue I had to an even bigger problem. A symptom of some greater madness.

Part of me wanted to scream, to cry, to freak the fuck out in peace– to destroy things until I ran out of things to destroy, hitting the universe until it decided to make sense again, damnit! 

Instead I forced myself to take a shower. I went through the motions woodenly, using my own products instead of Isabella’s. I could have used one of the bathrooms inside the trunk, and almost did, only pausing at the last minute.

There was a temptation there. I could go inside the trunk and not come out until this nightmare was over. That was quitter talk, though. Cowardly. Whatever was happening to me– it was real.

I had to face it head on.

And alone.

By the time I stumbled downstairs, dressed in jeans and my softest shirt– I needed the comfort– Charlie was already eating breakfast. My stomach rumbled angrily, reminding me that aside from a single bite of lackluster lunch, breakfast was the last thing I’d eaten.

I hungrily helped myself to some fried eggs and bacon.

“Woah, Bells!” Charlie laughed. “Hungry much?”

“Starving.” I replied, through a giant mouthful. “I fell asleep right after school. Jetlag.”

“Isn’t the time difference only an hour?” Charlie asked, amused.

I shrugged. It wasn’t worth defending the lie as long as he was willing to buy it. Charlie asked me about my day yesterday and I answered as truthfully as I was able.

He offered to grocery shop with me this evening so we could cook dinner together and I gladly accepted, visions of the school fare still dancing behind my eyes. It was an innocent thing to focus on, harmless– unlike the empty, average forests that stretched across where Hogsmeade should be, haunting me.

Charlie left before me and I ate another serving of breakfast. I needed to keep my energy up, at least. Come to think of it, while I was emotionally and physically exhausted from the lack of sleep and the rollercoasters of revelations, my magic seemed almost recovered from the various exertions.

I frowned and took stock.

I hadn’t done anything too crazy but portkeys weren’t exactly inexpensive to make. I’d also done a fair bit of apparating– even chain-apparating, once or twice, in my panic. I expected to be a lot more drained than I was.

Still, I’d need to eat to keep up my strength. I polished off the rest of the food and went into my trunk to get something for lunch, too. The trunk was designed for a war we were losing. It was my pet project and post-war therapy all in one. Maybe not the healthiest of coping strategies and certainly illegal in places, yet it helped me sleep at night.

It was designed for the worst case scenario. I’d bought and studied the most expensive models on the market and I’d improved on them.  I had a house in my trunk. I had anything you could need to serve a village (sadly without the village itself, though not for lack of trying), including farmable land.

There were enough house-elf prepared meals under stasis charms to last five people ten years, and enough similarly-sealed rations and raw ingredients for fifty.

When I say ‘designed for the worst case scenario’, I meant it. Hermione and I had put our heads together for many-a-nights as we re-hashed the war, re-inventing what we would have done had we had time to prepare– and thereby, preparing ourselves for the next one.

I could plant my trunk safely in the woods and live out of it for the next sixty years, but that wouldn’t do anything to change my situation. 

The only clue I had was Isabella Swan’s life.

So I had to live it.

I transfigured the plate into tupperware and stored it for later, marching outside: a woman on a mission. I figured out how to get the truck’s hood open, ascertained how the metal connected to the rest of the machine, and used my wand to carefully carve a runic array for muffling sound into the underside of the hood itself.

When I closed it, climbed into the cab, and turned the key, the engine’s idling noise was much reduced. I sighed and rested my forehead against the steering wheel for a long moment.

Tiredness pulled at me, reminding me of my sleepless night and  beckoning me to the sweet realm of dreams, so thoroughly that I had to work to shake it off. 

I drove to school carefully, though it wasn’t raining. There were teenagers milling about around their cars, what looked to be most of the school–few seeming to prefer the cafeteria and its doubtless lackluster breakfast offerings.

When I left the truck’s warmth, my eyes fell to Edward Cullen, directly across the parking lot. He was leaning against a newer car– I had no hope of naming the brand, much less the exact type– and next to him were what could only be his siblings.

Suspicion rose in me.

No Hogwarts, no magical London, no World Court of Magic, but this family of psuedo-veelas was right here, in Isabella Swan’s life? It couldn’t be a coincidence.

I couldn’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk to look at them, so I forced my feet to keep moving, eyes ahead.

A familiar face greeted me; my sigh of relief was hopefully not too obvious as a jerky smile hopped onto my face, my path changing left accordingly as Jessica Stanley waved me over. Her and a few others I recognized from yesterday were standing outside of the cafeteria, colonizing a picnic table.

The table, perhaps in deference to the constant weather, was made out of grated metal instead of wood.

Walking over to them was easy. They didn’t ask anything particularly creative– what’s it like living with a police officer, what’s your mom like, etc. I answered more or less on auto pilot as I planned the fact-finding mission my life had become.

Or rather, a sort of strange, impossible mystery that made no sense at all, even when looked at from multiple angles.

As the morning wore on, I asked strategic questions here and there. Unfortunately, it was immediately clear that none of the other students had the knowledge I lacked. They had only questions for me. Isabella Swan was a stranger to them. None had the power or the motive to… what?

Was I really working off the assumption that someone– somehow– had done this? That one person or group of persons could eradicate all traces of the magical world?

Not even our worst-case scenarios pictured this. Being bombed from orbit was one thing; being stripped from the time stream was quite another, as if we had never existed in the first place.

No death eater was capable of that.

And no muggle would have knowledge of it, either.

I bid my time, passing the morning by, and then eating my home-made lunch with the others– and it was home-made, a remnant of my true life, which I held onto with both shaking hands and tears in my eyes– until biology.

Edward Cullen was already sitting down. I had already erased every trace of my scent. He turned to me, inhaling quietly. His lashes fluttered, as copper in color as the hair on his head–which was permanently windswept, as if he’d just stepped off a broom.

I had to handle this delicately.

They were the only clue I had, the only abnormal people I’d found here. Though the ‘here’ in question was rapidly becoming a mystery. I’d thought my location to be a state in America– but America in my world, the world I was born to.

Many things were possible with magic and I was beginning to accept that I had stumbled into one of the unique instances.

I am somewhere Other. 

I picked the concept as though a loose crumb between my teeth, worrying it contemplatively. My mind thought of examples, each as unlikely as the last: a cursed book or a portal, a fairy ring or the veil of death– tales of wizards stumbling into an impossible place and maybe coming out again someday, if they were lucky, or vanishing forever if they were not.

I could remember no verified precedent for being remanded to some land without magic– with an entirely different history– but I had to accept that I was not where I used to be.

“You said your family moved here two years ago? Where from?” I pulled out my pens and pencils and arranged them like soldiers on the table we shared, in neat rows.

“Alaska.” Edward said, mouth curving into a little almost-grin as if amused by something, an in-joke I wasn’t privy to. My fingers clenched slightly before I relaxed.

Maybe they were like me– magical and pulled here.

The thought gave me hope and I tried not to choke on it, pulse speeding up a little. I made the mistake of meeting his eyes– gone was the dark of yesterday; they now burned a brilliant gold.

Definitely inhuman and also, surprisingly, my favorite color on the planet; the gold of magic, of felix felicus, of the shield charm with which I was most adept.

It was startling against the black of his pupils, which widened at some unseen chemical signal. His nose twitched. I considered the spell I was using. To someone with an enhanced sense of smell, it had to be strange not smelling me.

Edward did not bring it up.

“Did you like it there?”

“It was… adequate.” Edward said after some length, weighing the words in his mouth as if precious stones. He blinked. “We have… family there and my brothers enjoyed roughhousing in the snow.”

“Your brothers?”

“Emmett and Jasper.” He reminded, the words slightly clipped and formal.

“Tell me about them?” The teacher gave us an assignment. I barely focused on his faraway words as we began.

“Hmm. What should I say?” Edward’s pale hands reached over and did his part of the lab work, expertly utilizing the tools provided.

“What do they look like?”

A small huff of amusement. He looked at me again, gold boring into my eyes as if searching for something, before flicking away. The moment of eye contact was intense though it barely lasted a second; as it broke, it felt like tension snapping.

“Emmett is… tall. Physically he’s the largest of us but also the least mature.”

“His inner child is proportionally large?” I asked, trying to imagine a playful giant– some sort of Hagrid with the personality of the Weasley Twins.

“Exactly.” A faint twitching of his lips. “Jasper is quiet by comparison. He’s blonde, like Rosalie.”

“Rosalie?”

“My sister.” Edward confirmed. “She’s… you’d have to see her.”

Another wry quirk to his mouth, secrets dancing in his eyes. Humor and wit despite the low murmur of his voice, inviting me in on some of the joke.

“There’s another sister, right?” I remembered what he said previously, and my brief glimpse of them in the parking lot– scant enough that I only remembered silhouettes and perfect, pale skin.

“Alice.” Edward agreed. “She’s the smallest of us but a force of nature.”

“Short but mighty?”

“Yes, but call her short at your own peril.”

I huffed at that, twirling a pencil against the surface of the lab table.

“Who’s the closest to you in age?”

Edward looked thoughtful for a moment. Around us the conversation of the other students seemed muted, as if we were in a bubble all to ourselves.

“Rosalie.” He said finally, tongue wetting his lips. “She, Emmett and Jasper are seniors this year.”

“So they’ll be graduating?” I think I understood the American education system correctly.

“Yes.” Perfunctory, clipped but polite. “I’m afraid it will be only Alice and I next year.”

The lab was simple. We measured some things, combined some things, and ultimately wrote down some things. It was interesting to find out more about photosynthesis and what the little pigments revealed; I found my attention being drawn toward herbology with a fierce bout of homesickness.

“What do you do for fun?” I asked, probably out of the blue to him, and Edward turned to me in some faint surprise. It was less probing than my earlier questions, but received the same amount of interest.

Throughout the period, he’d looked intrigued at the simplest of questions from me, bright eyes watching me as if trying to determine my reasons for asking– as I in turn scrutinized his answers, hoping for some accidental reveal of the extraordinary.

This question was born of purer motives.

“You know, hobbies?” I prompted.

He blinked and I found myself watching copper lashes catch fire in the light.

Edward cocked his head.

“My family goes camping a lot. On the rare days of nice weather we’ve even been known to miss school for it.”

Ah yes, the sun. I hadn’t been here long enough to think about the weather– and on the isles it rained often, so a few days in a row was nothing special– but I could see how I’d come to miss the sun after too long without it.

“What do you do, Bella?” Edward demurred as often as not, his voice soft and enthralling. This question was no different.

“Herb– gardening. I like to grow plants.” 

Definitely not herbology. I bit my lip for the almost-slip.

“In Arizona?” Polite disbelief in his tone, turning towards me incredulously.

Right, the fiction.

“I love it too much to let a little weather stop me.” I said, quite truthfully. My greenhouses were the best escape from the world, warm and closed off from the problems outside– and magically warded to have their own environment, regardless of the season.

The bell rang, startling me.

For a moment I didn’t remember what it was, looking around in alarm. Then as students began to stand, I turned back to Edward, who was patiently waiting.

He seemed to be in no hurry as he helped me clean up our lab.

“You’re not worried about being late to class?” I asked, thinking of house points and detentions in a castle far away– much further than it had been even a few days ago.

My heart tightened.

“Mrs. Goff loves me.” He admitted shamelessly, standing in one smooth motion before– after the briefest hesitation– offering me a hand. I took it.

“The spanish teacher here.” Edward elaborated, lips barely moving as he looked at our hands, still connected. His fingers were cool in mine, almost cold to the touch.

I let go and his hand dropped immediately. It seemed like only seconds later that his shoulder was brushing past mine, a whisper of fabric without pressure. I stared blankly at the air before retrieving my bag.

When I got to the door, still a little dazed, Edward was waiting.

“I’ll walk you to the gym.” He explained, falling into perfect step beside me. Now that we were standing, I noticed he had more than a few centimeters on me. 

In fact, he was over a head taller. Ugh.

“What is it?” My expression must have revealed my displeasure, because Edward’s eyes kept focusing on me, hardly paying attention to the path in front of us.

“Nothing.” I waved him off. A small crease appeared between his perfectly sculpted brows and I realized I was paying just as much attention to his expression.

I whipped my gaze forward, narrowly missing a large rubbish bin. A cool touch– cool enough to notice through my clothes– caught my elbow, swiftly moving me out of the way so that my hip didn’t even check the plastic lip of it.

“Thank you.” I grumbled out of reflex. Who even needed bins that large? Hagrid, maybe.

“You can thank me by telling me what had you scowling a moment ago. Is my presence truly so disagreeable?”

Disagreeable. Wow.

I blinked at him in disbelief only to get caught on his face, playfully lit into almost teasing. Stunned, I found my words falling away.

I’d never seen him smile before and it was inappropriately disarming. Maybe he did have veela allure. I reflexively tightened my occlumency barriers and was dismayed to find out nothing changed.

“Bella?” Quiet concern dawning on handsome features.

I laughed a little, somewhat breathless.

“Ah–” Ahead of us, the gymnasium loomed. “It was actually. Well. I’m not that fond of Gym class.”

“Oh?” An invitation to share more, even as we approached the doors. I readjusted the strap of my bag.

“Don’t get me started.” I blew a strand of hair out of my face, nose scrunched in distaste. Dueling lessons were one thing but putting on a uniform and flouncing about in a gaggle of teenagers? The most exposure to group sports I had were pick-up quidditch games on holiday gatherings.

“I’ll have to ask you some other time.” Edward diverted smoothly, gracefully moving forward just fast enough to open one of the heavy doors before I could even begin to reach for it.

Oh. Hmm. How polite.

“Thanks.” I said quietly. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you then.” Edward waited until I was entirely through the threshold before softly shutting the door behind me, rather than let it slam on its own.

Confession time. It makes me a horrible person and perhaps in violation of British law, but I handed the Coach a folded slip of paper charmed so thoroughly it glowed to my sight.

“Ah, a doctor’s note.” He said without reading it. Without questioning why I wasn’t being entirely excused from his class and assigned a different subject for the period, he merely assured me that I could sit out indefinitely in the bleachers.

“Thank you.” I said with real relief, and avoided the locker room in favor of going directly to the grody stands. Seeing that no one had finished changing yet– they apparently were given an extra five minutes to do so– and the Coach wasn’t watching, I slid my wand into my hand and threw around some nonverbal cleaning charms, even hitting the rest of the stands once I realized the area I’d first hit was a visibly different color from the other sections.

“Ugh.” I sat down and whipped out a book from the library trunk. I didn’t have a copy of every single book in the Longbottom library, but only because Hermione and I hadn’t finished copying them all yet.

“I’ll have to buy extra copies of the entire collection,” I realized, when stocking the trunk.

“Why?” She’d asked, horrified.

That’s when I learned mage-level spellwork could bully through the anti-deplication charmwork. Raw power could forcibly make copies of even the rarest of books.

“Magical works don’t ever go into the public domain.” She’d said with disgust. “They stay in copyright forever and royalties and rights are passed through family lines.”

Hermione didn’t care that it was illegal; she found hoarding knowledge abhorrent in all its forms, especially the ones that had a paywall.

I personally rationalized it as a last-resort measure. If I needed to rely on my war chest’s library instead of the one at Bright Meadows, it was because Bright Meadows was gone or lost to us.

My throat tightened. We weren’t at war but my access to home was, in fact, utterly cut off. I forced myself to relax before I could hurt the pages under my hands.

Gym’s hour passed in a flurry of kids doing something with sports balls, and me flicking through three different tombs on transportation magic gone awry. I even had a rare, potentially black market text on the formation of the floo network that read more like a treatise on summoning contracts.

Then the final bell rang and we were free to go.

I didn’t see Edward again. Somehow, it came as a surprise, even when it shouldn’t have. He had no reason to come back to this side of campus.

When I made it back to the parking lot, all the Cullens were gone.

–

So what do you do, when you’ve found yourself the only magical person in a strange, unfamiliar world? Step one: don’t panic.

I failed step one.

Step two: assess your resources.

That was easier, my paranoia paying off. Throughout history everyone thought their war was the last war– and every time they’d been wrong.

Conflict was inevitable. Governments were fallible. Preparation was key.

When I’d packed for the end of the world, I had gone into it thinking I wouldn’t be alone. The unexpected reality was jarring.

Being part of an Ancient and Noble house was supposed to mean I was never alone. In extremely rare cases, such as Harry Potter’s, a house could be reduced down to one member– but even then you had allies.

I had no allies, here. I had only myself.

So, after taking stock of my resources, I set to work making myself better.

My training didn’t need to stop just because my classes did. My Mastery coursework was with me, of course. I could continue learning.

It helped that I had such a library– and when you’re Hermione Potter’s back-up of a back-up war trunk, you had better believe you’ve got every subject covered. Burning down a manor would not be the end of that witch’s books.

Blunt studying aside, however, there were a few magical endeavors I’d set aside for the nebulous future, in favor of more immediate goals.

Some magical disciplines took time and focus that I hadn’t been prepared to dedicate myself to before my basic education was complete.

That night– that first night– I began the set-up for a runic circle in Charlie Swan’s back yard. It would take many nights to charge the ward stones, even for personal use only.

Introduction to a formal coven had been one of those things I was putting off. Learning large-scale ritual magic took time and dedicated attention.

But I was of House Longbottom, and I’d been raised to cherish my connection to Lady Magic, so several times a month I did smaller circles. Ritual magic didn’t have to be large-scale.

Amethyst, Elle, Luna, Ginny and I made five, which was a goodly number for certain rituals. Lady Longbottom– Faye– and Hermione sometimes joined us, creating an even seven, the latter leading us as the most powerful and experienced witch.