Rose Garden Dreams

Chapter Three: The English Chills

Author's Note: Sorry it took me a few days to update but I thought I was going to update just one chapter but this chapter ended up being longer so I'm splitting it up into two chapters. I'm still not done with the next one but I'm going to go back to working on it after updating my other story.

 Let me know what you think of this chapter.

The day she left for Hogwarts was at the end of August. Selena had to leave a day early since the flight to London was a long one and she also knew she was going to have a layover in Charlotte, North Carolina and another one in Tampa, Florida before they'd finally head over to London. It would probably take over eighteen hours before she'd finally arrive in London. Selena was looking forward to the flight since she had never been on a plane before let alone been on a plane for that long. She was sure it was going to amazing.

It had been over a month since the trip to New Orleans and Selena had already read all her books. She'd even read some of her books two or three times through. The Gilderoy Lockhart books she hadn't been a big fan of since the guy sounded really into himself in Selena's opinion but she liked the magic history books she had purchased. They taught her so much about the wizarding world as well as a lot about Hogwarts. When she was done with Hogwarts: A History Selena discovered that Hogwarts just had to one of the coolest schools of all time. Between the history of the school as well as the fact that it was a castle, Selena just didn't see how any other school could compare to it. Even Ilvermorny.

Of course, she was very disappointed to see that electronic No-Maj devices didn't work there. That meant she'd probably have to spend several months without her Walkman and they mostly likely didn't have a phone either. She wouldn't hear her family's voices for a long time. Selena figured that she could probably write to them but it wouldn't be the same. Oh, well. This was the wizard way so she figured she'd just have to adjust to their society. It would be difficult, without a doubt, but Selena knew she could learn their ways if she really tried.

During the month since she had first acquired her school materials, Selena had thrown herself into learning everything she could. She studied every book passionately as she tried to learn magic. Nathan told her that it was perfectly alright for her to practice the spells from her school books but after she started attending Hogwarts she wouldn't be allowed to do that anymore. So Selena practiced spells from her book on spells as well as the one on Transfiguration. Surprisingly Selena had even been able to cast a couple spells from the book. She had successfully mastered the wand-lighting charm 'Lumos' as well as the mending charm 'Reparo' much to Belen's astonishment and Sofia's disgust. Selena had managed to practice the mending charm on her old jewelry box with the broken ballerina. To Selena's amazement the music box and ballerina were now completely fixed. She also had to admit that the wand-lighting charm served as an amazing reading light at night. She was currently trying to work on an unlocking charm but that one was a bit harder. Not to mention Transfiguration was incredibly difficult. Selena just figured that the teacher at school could probably help her more than the book could.

Selena had ultimately decided to leave potions for Hogwarts although she had read through the book once and skimmed through another time. She was sure that class would be interesting enough. The only other book Selena had taken great interest in was the books about magical creatures. Another day that Selena marked as one of the greatest days of her life was the day she found out that Unicorns existed. Finding out Unicorns were real was one of the greatest things ever and Selena couldn't wait until she could finally see one. The book said they were more common in Europe and the UK so Selena figured Hogwarts must have at least a couple unicorns. One of her favorite films growing up had been The Last Unicorn and her treasured childhood stuffed animal was her old, raggedy looking unicorn that she creatively named Corn Dog when she was three. It seemed like Corn Dog the stuffed unicorn would be making the trip to Hogwarts with her because she wasn't sure if she could sleep without Corn Dog. As you can see, Selena adored Unicorns and was beyond happy at the news that they were very real.