Tansy angrily slammed the door to her electric blue room in her mother’s shocked face. For a brief moment, Tansy wondered in the silence if she had knocked her mother out with an accidental blow from the door.
“Tansy Steads, open this door right now!” Her mother shouted angrily from the other side. Tansy lurched forward to click the lock. One could always dream.
Her mother began pounding on the now locked door, and fourteen-year-old Tansy chose to glare obstinately at her ceiling, which was covered in glow in the dark stars. She flopped onto her black satin sheets, enjoying the coolness of the fabric against her body, which felt heated due to her anger. It was a warm August night, with the multi-scented city air drifting gently into her explosively decorated room.
She inhaled deeply, savoring the filthy, delicious city smell, knowing that her days were now numbered. The arguments, the door slamming, the lock. They were just delays, the move was inevitable. Tansy felt fury boil up into her chest. For fourteen years, Tansy thought to herself, her fists curling tightly around the satin sheets, black fabric bunching between her clenched fingers, she led me on, let me believe I was normal. Let me believe I was human.
All those years of fear, and confusion, of feeling like a monster. All those years her mother had known, had lied, letting Tansy think she was totally alone. Running from one place to another, no warnings, no explanations. Not a breath of relief, or a sign, or a clue into what she really was. When Tansy turned eleven, she’d found a letter with a fancy stamp. It was addressed to her, so of course she tore into it, grubby fingers reaching into it, until her mother had ripped it out of her hands, slapping Tansy square across her face, storming away.
Four years later, finally her mother told the truth, leaving a shell-shocked Tansy behind in her insipid, ridiculous, fantasy world in which she was still human. When her mother looked her square in the eye, saying she was a witch, Tansy thought perhaps she was finally getting kicked out of the house for one of her innumerable crimes against society, fashion, and her mother.
But Adeline had been dead serious. Tansy’s emotional related freak accidents were normal for a witch. And there was some creepy boarding school that she was supposed to be attending, that’s where all of the letters came from. For the past three years, Tansy should’ve been learning about the ways of magic, and the world she had been born into. Tansy could have dealt with this; the lies, the loneliness, the lack of education, the deception.
After all, she wanted to be human, to be normal, which was all she had ever wanted. Apparently, however, after years of evasion and deception built upon deception, it had all come crumbling down, leaving Tansy to pick up the pieces. Adeline kept cursing something called the Ministry, which was the organization that had discovered Tansy and her mother, evading proper, witchy regulations.
Now, three years behind everyone else, scared, and without a clue as to what she was anymore, Tansy Steads was being shipped off from Boston to a remote, creepy old castle called Hogwarts. Hogwarts was a school for kids like her. Apparently, crazies aren’t sent to sanatoriums anymore, Tansy thought darkly, glaring out the window of her room.
The brochure was quaint, and every time Tansy looked at it, she swallowed back the urge to vomit. There were kids running around with sticks in cute little uniforms. A portly lady with a death-grip and cheery smile in front of some freaky potted plants and nerdy looking man hefting a text book blandly labeled ‘Herbology’. What kind of lame-ass Merlin wannabe’s wear a uniform anyways? wondered Tansy who stared at the children frolicking as one might an unsightly picture of disease victims.
Her mother was sending Tansy off to this remote school, where Tansy might also have to frolic, waving a magical stick, in a uniform. The thought made her shudder. There were four different dorms, all of which had names Tansy couldn’t recall. Though she would’ve been a fourth-year, many of her classes to begin with would be with first years. She was also going to be sorted with the first years, in front of the entire school. As if internal shame wasn’t bad enough.
