Area 51

Broken

It's strange how certain moments just stick with you. Helena could still in that moment remember the last day she had seen her father.

She had woken up that morning at exactly 9:17, and gone down for breakfast. Her mom had made pancakes with blackberry syrup, her favorite breakfast of all time. She ate them at the table, with her sister next to her, and her brothers across from her, Zar directly across from her, and Merlin across from Guinny. Her dad at one head of the table, to her left, and her mom was at the one to her right.

Everything was perfect that day. She wasn't angry at Zar. She wasn't confused at Merlin keeping things from her. She wasn't even indifferent towards Guinny.

She had been so excited. It was a Saturday, meaning that Zar and Merlin were home from school for the weekend. It was a sunny day. They had gone outside.

Zar and Merlin had showed her some magic they learned within the privacy of their backyard, knowing the Magical Congress would be able to tell the difference between if they did magic or not.

Zar was so excited to show her and Guinny the nonverbal wind spell he had perfected. He had been able to catch Guinny up in the wind and blow her through the air, making her scream and giggle in joy.

And Merlin had shown Helena how he could make the flowers their mom planted come back to life from being wilted. It amazed her completely, and at that moment, she told him she couldn't wait to go to Area 51 with him and Zar, and Guinny said she couldn't wait either.

Then Zar smiled and said that he wouldn't be there, because he was graduating from school in just a few weeks, and then he would be off to work at Congress. And then the three of them talked about how they would miss him.

Then their dad had come home from work, and they had onion rings and chicken fingers from Henrietta's. Helena could remember how delicious it had been.

At one point in the meal, their father had left the table, muttering something about having a cigarette. Their mother muttered something about such a nasty habit, and he said he knew, and he'd quit soon.

Then he left. And no one thought anything of it. They waited for a bit for him to come back. They finished their dinners. Emptied their glasses, and he never came back.

They thought it was odd, but paid and left the restaurant, thinking they'd find him outside. Thinking he'd be smoking his third cigarette, and saw he had just lost track of time.

He wasn't there.

He was long gone. The no-maj car he had bought to be inconspicuous was gone from the front of the restaurant. There was only a hint of the scent of tobacco left, and nothing else.

It was hard to forget such a day. Such an ordinary day is all Helena thought it would be. And that's what made it so memorable. The fact that it started so ordinarily. That it started with such childlike joy. The fact that it took such an unexpected turn.

It took weeks for the truth to fully set in. That their father, her father, had really left them, and that he wasn't coming back.

It just went to show you that magic couldn't fix everything. Magic couldn't fix a broken marriage, and magic couldn't fix a broken family.

Magic couldn't fix Helena's problems, and despite the fact that Helena had been so excited just earlier that day to go to Area 51, and learn about magic, it was in that moment when she lost all desire to practice magic at all.

If magic couldn't fix her family, then it was of no use to her.