Ensorcell (revising)

one

It was like any other perfectly sunny day when little ten year old Harriet Potter first encountered beastly Logan, the foundation for every major change in her life. She was first in the garden at nine sharp, taking care of Petunia's...petunias. It was a wonder how there were any flowers in the first place, considering Harriet hadn't been the Dursley's gardner for long - only about two and a half  years - and Petunia's distaste for anything she had to do herself. Petunia had only won all of those 'Prettiest Garden' awards because of Harriet's hard work.

"Freak!" she'd heard being called from inside, and raised her head at the calling of her name. She knew that her real name was Harriet, from what the teachers at school called from the role sheet, but she always answered to Freak. Freak was her true name, according to her uncle, as it encompassed her freakishness completely.

Her uncle didn't know those words, of course, because all he had was a high school diploma that he didn't really deserve. When Harriet talked smartly at him to rile him up, she could see the confusion in his eyes, hear the words repeating in his head and trying to match meaning to them. It was the best part of her day, and she always treasured the hunger she felt in the cupboard for the next week. It was the only thing she had over him.

The whale known as Vernon Dursley waddled outside, just inside the screen door to protect himself from the bug bites all over Harriet. There was a glare on his nasty face, as if it put him out to give her any kind of attention. She stood up, meeting his eyes and raising a brow, sparing the man from having to listen to her speak. His glare worsened, as if that scared her.

"You're going to the store, Petunia needs some stuff," he said, and turned from the door and back into the house. Harriet followed, tugging on Dudley's battered sneakers on her sockless feet and picking up the money off the floor that Vernon threw at her before waddling off in search of more biscuits.

She reached the store in about twenty minutes, due to the bruises on her right foot from accidentally hitting the piece of wood that stuck out in her cupboard in her sleep. Her dream last night was just as confusing as all of her others, but this one wasn't about the Dursleys. It was about her mother, and the first time she held a wand.

Staring at her mother in her dreams, only a year older than Harriet was now, was an out of body experience. They were almost twins, if Harriet didn't have her scar and deep black curly hair.  How could she know that this was actually her mom? Is this just what she thinks her mom would look like at eleven? How did Harriet know that she was eleven in this dream?

There were bookshelves surrounding her eleven year old mother, but there weren't any books. instead, they were filled with long boxes of all different kinds and labels. There was a tall, wily man with gray hair jumping around and handing her different kinds of sticks, letting her move them about, before snatching them back up from her.

Finally, the old man, named Ollivander, if the shops name was anything to go by, produced a long, elegant stick and motioned for her to flick it. Harriet could feel the rightness that her mother felt in that moment, that her path was forged and she was going the right way. That as long as she had that stick, her wand, by her side, life would come easy.

Harriet didn't understand what all of the magic meant, and the book about dreams she had didn't either. The book did say that maybe the wand was a metaphor for finding your call in life, so maybe she decided who she wanted to be then? But, that didn't really explain the old man, who almost seemed to look back at Harriet in the dream, or the line of children that came from the door. More kids needed wands? Was the Ollivander fellow some kind of employer? Would he offer Harriet a job that would take her away from the Dursley's?

There were too many questions that all of her dreams left her, so she wrote them down to come up with the answers later. As best she could, at least, with a ten year old ability to write. Most pages were wonky because she had to use her left hand, and that was after Dudley decided to push her down the stairs, but in his defense he thought she was Pierre.