Shifted ~A Hogwarts Experience~

Chapter 1

I sighed as I closed my journal and looked around my room. A soft, golden light flickered from my desk as its warmth filled my room with the smell of mint and waterlilies. Wrapped around my bed frame was a string of old Christmas lights that my uncle had given to me when I asked for fairy lights. They were the best he had to offer me and honestly, I liked them better. I draped the extra ones around the ceiling of my room and kept them on instead of the main lights. 

I shivered a little as a cold breeze floated through the open window and I listened as the rain outside tapped on the leaves of the plants.

Winter had just begun and my online schooling had taken a break for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was about the be the longest winter break of my life, but I was more than ready for it.

In the last year my entire life had been turned upside down. COVID-19 had thrown the world into disarray and I got swept up in the middle of it. Suddenly my entire life was pushed indoors indefinitely. Media was filled with people debating about the virus and whether or not it was real. I was sure it was... I was just as sure that you didn't have to get the virus to be effected by its illness.

About three weeks after lockdown began, my dad became sick with a cough. He said it was nothing. We were all sure it was nothing. But he only got worse. Days later he was admitted to the local hospital and placed on machines that had to breathe for him. From then on it was only a week before he passed away all together.

My mom had left us when I was about 4 or 5 so for the majority of my life it was just me and my dad. When he died I moved in with my uncle and his wife. They had had one child of their own, but he was grown up and living in another city.

My aunt and uncle were great people. They loved me as if I were their own child and that was something I would always be thankful for. I got my own room and was told that whatever I needed to make myself more comfortable they would do their best to provide.

In August of 2020 I started my sophomore year of high school from a little wooden desk in my room. Google classroom and zoom lectures consumed every part of my day. Outside was a foreign concept. Part of me was terrified to even walk out to the mailbox. So, I stayed inside all day, everyday. 

As time went on I found myself closed off a lot more. I started skipping classes, staying in bed, sleeping my days away. I was glued to my phone, mindlessly scrolling through TikTok usually. It was a terrible addiction, but it saved me. It kept me sane and reminded me that there was a world out there still. My family tried their best to include me, bring me out of my room, but it didn't always work.

One day, I was once again mindlessly scrolling on TikTok when I stumbled across a video about Harry Potter. And another. And another. My For You Page was filled with videos about Hogwarts, Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy. Creators were making edits of characters or even editing themselves into clips from the movies. To say I become obsessed would be an understatement.  I fell in love with it. DracoTok and HPTikTok become my safe spaces. I bought wands, decorated my room, watched the movies, reread the books, and even wrote some of my own fanfiction about Draco falling in love with a girl from Hufflepuff (me, obviously). 

It was a hyper fixation, but I would go through moments where I would have to remind myself it wasn't real. It would never be real. That is, until I stumbled upon ShiftTok. 

I was being recommended more and more videos of girls talking about how they were able to live out their Hogwarts fantasies by doing something called shifting. I learned about creating and scripting my desired reality. 

It wasn't until recently that I actually got up the courage to try it. I had just finished my script and turned to slip the journal under my pillow.

That would be the night I would try shifting for the first time. I wasn't confident it would work, mostly because I had seen multiple videos of girls talking about how it had taken weeks, even months for it to work. I just wanted to try as soon as possible. I needed an escape. I needed to not thing about my life in my current reality. I needed to be with my comfort characters.