Time witchcraft

14

At two o 'clock in the morning, Penny woke up in a cold sweat, staring straight at the ceiling of her dorm room.

It was a long time before she realized that she was awake. The room was quiet late at night, except for the long breathing of her roommates. Petunia sat up slowly, her hands clasped around her knees, calming her rapid breathing in the darkness.

She had just had a dream -- a bad dream, that Eli was having a bad time. The Hogwarts in her dream was like one of those British tourist castles, with its ancient buildings and closed people, and Eli, dressed in tattered old clothes -- in her dreams a bit like Snape's when he was a boy -- walking cautiously through the corridors, while others pointed at him and threw leaves at him.

It was just a dream. It was ridiculous, outrageous, impossible! Penny criticized herself harshly. How could you think that, Penny?! At any rate, Eli couldn't have come to such a miserable situation, he was only a first year, and even the wizards -- evil, bad ones -- couldn't have turned on him! Lily says he's always been popular at school, and even in his dreams he shouldn't be so pessimistic!

She sat for a moment angrily angry with herself, ashamed of her distrust of her friend's abilities. As the momentum slowly subsided, it became clear in the silence around her that her heart was sinking uncontrollably.

But she couldn't help it, thought Petunia gloomily. She could only imagine Eli's situation now by guessing, no one had ever told her the details, she was too far away and completely irrelevant, the world that had rejected her should have been completely irrelevant to her, she had accidentally acquired a pair of hands sticking out of it, and when they were withdrawn, she could hold nothing, nothing again.

She stared silently for a moment, then slowly buried her head, her forehead against her bent knees, and gathered herself into a small ball.

It had been nearly two months since she learned of Eli's plight in Lily's letter and wrote to him. Spring had slipped away and early summer had arrived, and for nearly two months she had heard nothing from Eli.

Lily cares about her and wants to help her. It was just that, as a Muggle-born first year, her access to information was obviously very limited. Petunia had already seen enough of the wizarding world to know that it wasn't all the fairy-tale fantasy she thought it was, that where there were superheroes there were supercriminals, and that it wasn't the Muggle-imagined utopia it was.

So she didn't get much out of Lily. Hogwarts School maintained the usual calm, can not see the outside world of the storm and the contest. All Lily could tell Penny was that Eli's situation at school had improved over the past two months, and that quite a few people had become less suspicious of him than they had been at first.

"A week after that article went out, he posted another one in the Daily Prophet with the same headline, along the same lines but clearer and more convincing." "Isn't he wonderful?" she wrote to her sister.

Yeah. Petunia stretched out her arms in the darkness, fumbled under her pillow and pulled out a carefully folded newspaper.

This newspaper is exactly what Lily said it would be republished in a week. Lily had sent her two newspapers, the first and second editions Eli had published, and she had read them carefully enough over the past two months to see the difference clearly, and to feel vaguely the undercurrents behind them.

But Eli did not share a word with her. After receiving her letter, he sent her the newspaper a week later, writing a simple sentence in the blank space above.

-I won't give up. I'll keep trying.

That was the last response Penny received from him. Since then, he hasn't sent another letter.