May 26th, 1894 - Hogwarts COB

The sheer excitement about being able to go to Hogwarts, even for one night, was enough to send Sadie nearly over the edge! This was far more exciting than her own planned debut in just a couple of weeks’ time. She would actually get to see inside the castle for herself. Everything she’d heard and read about it would be real! It would be nothing short of magical. So much had changed over the last few weeks and Sadie finally felt like things were starting to look up for her. Life was finally starting to go her way.

Getting ready for the evening had been a task; she had hardly been able to sit still long enough to be buttoned into her dress or for Nettie to tame her hair. By the time she’d left and arrived at Hogwarts she had all but wrung her gloves into a useless pile of fabric. As she exited the carriage and looked up at the castle, she stook awestruck. The entryway to the school was everything she had been told it would be; and more. Once inside she was overwhelmed by the reverence that had settled over her. The Great Hall was trimmed to perfection for the evening’s event, but she could clearly picture it on any other ordinary day in her mind’s eye. Students eating at tables, a giant Christmas tree in one corner, or large Jack-o-lanterns arranged around the room. It made her nostalgic for a place she had never been.

So far the evening had been going splendidly. She saw several people that she’d met during her time in Hogsmeade, Miss Thompsett and Miss Potts were debuting, Mr. Hatchitt and Mr. Moony were around somewhere. She wasn’t sure if Mr. Ashford had attended this evening, but she was so very comfortable here that she wasn’t worried in the slightest. The soft blue of her dress shone iridescent in the candlelight floating down from the enchanted ceiling that was otherwise the perfect shade of dusky purple. Her hair was lavishly tucked back, all brown now, but still stubbornly hanging at her shoulders. Still, Nettie had done a lovely job getting it all back from her face which was helpful while she tried to absorb every little detail of the school while she was there. Sadie had walked around every nook and cranny after the female students had made their debut down the staircase, looking out the grand windows, peeking out the large oak doors and up the staircase at the portraits on the wall. She didn’t want to miss a thing.

The more she explored and took in however, the heavier the night felt. Something about this place tugged at her even more than Hogsmeade; Sadie got the distinct feeling she had been here before. None of this felt new; it felt safe and comfortable and familiar. The more she thought about it, the more she was certain and the more breathless it left her.

Finally it became a little too much and she slipped from the celebration into the cool evening air of the school grounds. The sun was setting over the lake and Sadie was drawn to it like a moth to a flame. Up until now the lake had always given her a bad feeling, but tonight she couldn’t look away. She took the little worn path from the stone steps toward it, following it as if she had done it a thousand times before, her feet sure and confident without even really thinking about it. With her skirts gathered in her hands, she tiptoed down closer and closer, heart rate increasing with every step. It was racing by the time she got to the little dock that jutted out into the black water.

Visions of sunny days, snowball fights and laughter filtered through her memory as pieces of a forgotten lifetime pushed their way to the surface. A large white cat hovered around the edges, and Sadie shook her head, trying to get everything to fall into place. She was able to place the faces of the people in the memory as those she had met around town, but maybe she was just wistfully trying to make it make sense.

None of it made any sense.

As she neared the end of the dock, her breath caught in her throat; everything came flooding back, assaulting her senses while she grappled with what she thought she knew and what she remembered. She could feel it now, the electricity flowing through her veins as she was struck from the sky; the suffocating darkness of the lake that day in the park last summer; every summer day before that spent laughing and splashing around with her friends or her brothers. Somewhere in the depths of those dark waters the giant squid had her first wand; and her second now too! She looked back up at the castle standing tall in the darkness. The castle! She had gone to school here. She had! She was a Gryffindor and she played quidditch and that was why she had a little golden snitch on her charm bracelet.

The S didn’t stand for Sadie or Sinclair; it stood for Sloane.

The footsteps on the dock behind her were hurried and familiar, long strides that had brought the two of them to this same place countless times before. Sloane spun on her heel, eyes wide, looking at Lester as the tears pooled in the corners. ”Hatch.” She choked out immediately knowing it was him; it was always him. He had always known where to find her. ”Hatch!” Her voice broke the second time as her feet moved of their own accord, running toward him as she jumped up and flung her arms around his neck, body colliding with his in desperation. ”You found me.” She mumbled as she squeezed her eyes shut against the headache now pounding at her temples.

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Lester Hatchitt

  

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It felt weird to be back in Hogwarts without attending Hogwarts. The Great Hall was so familiar to him, but it was still an echo of the previous year — and while he had not been an important component of the previous year, he had at least been a graduate. Now he was just… an adult. He worked at the hospital. He felt like he’d been going mad since July.

Sisse looked beautiful tonight. Lester still missed her — he’d been missing her for years. Now, how was he ever going to be able to tell her? It was strange to look at Calla, too — whenever he saw the two of them, Lester felt as if he was looking at an absence. Sloane was supposed to be here. She was supposed to be nudging him with her elbow, pointing out the slips in people’s outfits, talking excitedly about the Quidditch career she was going to get started on. She was supposed to be alive.

He had been so sure that Miss Sinclair was Sloane.

The Great Hall felt suffocating. Lester slipped out of it, abandoning his brother Josiah. (Josiah, just barely old enough to take a wife, was on a mission tonight.) He’d walked out of the castle nearly out of habit. Lester had half a desire to go somewhere he’d never been, but he found himself walking to the dock on the Black Lake — a dock he hadn’t been on in over a year. It was a location he associated so strongly with Sloane that the thought of going there nearly froze him, but what else was he supposed to do right now?

She was supposed to be here, debuting despite herself, laughing with all of them. She had always been too alive to be dead.

He saw her on the dock, where Sloane had always been — Miss Sinclair. His ghost. Lester sped up, trotted onto the dock, and then she was turning around and running back towards him.

Hatch.

Lester’s heart caught in his throat. He hugged her back before he could even think about it.

”You remember me?” he said, quiet. After the first February twenty-eighth, she’d broken his heart — she forgot the next day, and so did his whole family, and Lester was left thinking that he had dreamed the whole thing up. Maybe this was a dream, too — the familiar weight of Sloane’s hugs.

”Sloane,” Lester breathed, testing the name out — there were tears in the corners of his eyes.

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   Sloane Bixby

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Merlin her head hurt, but not as much as her chest. It felt like her heart was breaking and she didn’t even know why. All she could do was tighten her hold on him and try to breathe. ”I don’t know how I ever could.” How could she have forgotten Lester? They’d grown up together, houses right next to one another. Sloane couldn’t remember a time without Hatch. She knew exactly which bedroom window was his, and how to scale the tree next to it without getting caught to crawl through that window and pester the shit out of him on a hot summer day. He always knew where she was even when she didn’t want to be found. He was the only one who could understand her during January and handle her moods. Lester had always been there, how had she lived a life without him? But this past January was a blur. No sitting in silence and just existing, no hiding away in his room so nobody would bother her. It was events and dancing and she was thoroughly confused by all of it.

Sloane was crying in earnest now, sobs wracking through her body as she lost the energy to hold herself up. Thankfully his tight hold was keeping her from collapsing all of the way to the ground, even as her feet hit solid ground again. As she fought to even out her breathing, she tried to make sense of everything, but couldn’t really get a grasp on the warring stories playing through her head. It took her a few more minutes to finally settle, the headache worse now. ”My head is killing me. What happened?” He had to have context to help her sort through everything. She had memories of her childhood bedroom, a little bed, wooden floors and her broom in the corner; but also of a lavish four poster with a marble fireplace and crisp clean linens. The pain in her head wouldn’t quit and she pulled at the pins in her hair in irritation, yanking them free and tossing them to the ground until her long brown hair was free. It didn’t help much, but it felt far more natural than the tight updo from a moment ago.

”Nothing makes any sense.” She rubbed her temples, putting pressure on where it hurt most, but nothing was easing the stabbing pain.

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Sloane’s sobs were soaking his shirt. Lester wanted to cry, too, but couldn’t manage it. The start of tears which had appeared in the corners of his eyes were gone now.

Since her death — or not-death, as it were — he had been unable to cry in front of people. He kept his arms around her, inhaling slow breaths, grounding himself in this moment — she remembered. He would not let her forget this time.

”You got caught in a storm,” he answered, ”And then — Miss Sadie Sinclair came to town a few months later.”

Had Miss Sinclair ever been real? What had led the Sinclairs to claim Sloane as their own? Lester’s arms around her tightened.

  

Caught in a storm. That sounded right. Sloane remembered the freak lightning across the park as she’d frantically tried to dive toward the water, looking at Alvin for help, only for everything to go very black and cold a second later.

Sadie Sinclair. This resonated with her too, as a part of her, but she was having trouble rationalizing the two worlds coexisting in her brain. Sadie lived a very lavish lifestyle; she had a horse and a large four poster bed and marble floors. She had just gotten herself very involved with a Mr. Jeremy Ashford. Sloane lived in a modest house full of boys where she could climb out her window and cross over to her best friend’s window. She was also very much in denial about having feelings for said best friend. Neither one really made much sense and as the two personalities warred for dominance, Sloane didn’t know how to reconcile what had happened.

Lester’s tight grip around her helped to calm her cries, until they slowed completely. His steady, if rapid, heartbeat was giving her something easy to focus on, even though all she could do was press her face into his shoulder and tighten her own hold around him.

After another moment, she dared to peek up at him, seeing him so distressed made her heart ache almost as much as her head. ”I’m sorry,” she managed as she wiped away some of the remaining tears from her face. ”I didn’t remember anything; my hair was short and blonde, even my eyes were more grey than blue; no freckles...” Sloane knew what Sadie looked like; they had the same face, but everything else, even her height, was different. Something must have happened to her animagus abilities after the lightning, it was the only explanation.

”Lester, I want to go home.” She said finally, lower lip trembling again as a fresh wave of tears threatened to overtake her.

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While he held onto Sloane, Lester's mind was whirring. The Sinclairs had to know that Sloane was not Sadie. Had there ever been a Sadie Sinclair, and if so, where was she? Was that the body they had identified as Sloane's? Who had come up with this, and why?

By the time Sloane stopped sobbing, he was angry. Not with her — but with whoever had caused this. He had been angry for months, and now he had a distinct person to blame — someone who had robbed the Bixby family of their daughter, and Lester of his best friend. He'd been grieving and flailing for months and this was someone's fault.

He swallowed the anger as much as he could. "I'll take you," Lester said. He wasn't letting her out of his sight until they had cleared this up. "But I think that first — first, we should go to the Ministry."

  

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set by Fallin!

Being pressed so close against him, Sloane could feel the subtle shift in the tension of his muscles. It took a minute to recognize it, but she looked up at him abruptly when he said they should go to the ministry. "What? No." Why did they need to go to the ministry. She wanted to go home and to get out of this ridiculous dress and to get rid of this heinous headache. Anything but the ministry.

"Please don't," she could tell he was angry, but Sloane didn't think there was anything the ministry could do. She hadn't been herself; hadn't looked like herself or known anything about what happened before the lightning. She didn't think there was anything insidious going on with the Sinclairs, if that's what he was thinking. "I don't want to cause a big scene. Lester please." She was starting to panic, tone pleading,  as she curled her fingers into his jacket.

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She didn't want to cause a scene. Lester swallowed; they were so close together that he was half-worried she would feel the motion of his Adam's apple, even though she was nearly a foot shorter than him. He had to stay steady; he was supposed to be the responsible one, the easy-going one. He had not managed a good job of that since she'd died, but with her back, he was trying to keep the tension and the anger at bay so that he could get them through this.

"They're going to think I kidnapped you," he pointed out, tone gentle. She was a debutante and he was a boy below her station — this was not going to go over well.

  

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set by Fallin!

"But I look like me," she protested. She didn't want anyone to think that Lester had kidnapped her, of course not. (As if he could if she didn't want to go.) But she couldn't go back inside and continue with the night, to pretend everything was okay. Causing a scene of any kind, whether it was alerting her friends to her return, or Mrs. Sinclair to her absence, Sloane didn't want anyone to be upset or outraged or anything. She just wanted to go home and hug her mother and sleep in her little bed in her little Bartonburg house with Lester just across the yard. Sadie didn't have a mother, but Sloane did, and she couldn't even imagine what her family had been going through in her absence.

Her head was throbbing, but the wheels were turning and she took a reluctant half of a step back from Hatch. Maybe she could pretend to be Sadie for a little while longer. Right? Sloane wiped the tears from her eyes and concentrated. Her ability to change her appearance was down there, somewhere and she thought back to learning how to control it in the first place. First the hair, that was always easiest; shoulder length and a lighter brown than her own natural color. Next the facial features and finally the height. "I'll see if I can get Mrs. Sinclair to let me go home." Sadie suffered from chronic headaches (and Sloane thought this might continue), it was a built in excuse. Hopefully she was too caught up in the evening to protest. "Meet me by the carriages?" Merlin it felt like they were trying to sneak out past curfew or cut class to fool around on the quidditch pitch. They could walk back to Bartonburg if she could convince Mrs. Sinclair to let her go.

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Whether she wanted it to or not, Lester was sure that this would eventually involve the Ministry — and a scandal. But he could bring her home first. He owed her that much, owed the Bixbys that much. He wished that he could explain this to one of their friends, but they did not have the time, and what if they didn't believe him? Watching the transformation in front of him, he could hardly believe it himself.

What if the Sinclairs didn't let her go?

Lester swallowed, and nodded. "I'll meet you by the carriages," he said, "In ten minutes."

No one would mind if he left without saying anything.

  

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set by Fallin!

"Ten minutes, Sloane echoed, trying to sound confident. She reluctantly released her hold on Lester and hurried back up the pathway to the school. She had to get control of her racing thoughts and heartbeat or her appearance would slip and everything would go to hell. She saw Sisse on her way through the crowd and the urge to reach out had to be tampered down. The room was too overwhelming for her to truly stop and she didn't want to ruin Sisse's night. This was supposed to be a happy occasion and her friend looked beautiful and happy and it should stay that way.

It took a couple of minutes, but Sloane located Mrs. Sinclair, slowing her speed and approaching with a pained look on her face. It took all her willpower not to bounce on the balls of her feet, as Sloane would; Sadie would never. Once she garnered the woman's attention, she dove delicately into the headache explanation and lamented her sadness at having to leave early in spite of her eagerness to attend this evening. The older woman looked skeptical, but at the request to go home in the carriage with their footmen as supervision, Mrs. Sinclair reluctantly agreed. It wasn't the first time, Sloane recalled, so hopefully the precedent was set.

Relieved that she had been dismissed without too much of a fight, Sloane made her way toward the entryway once again, determined to turn toward the school entrance.

That was when she spotted her, her mother. Of course Fiona Bixby would come even when her own daughter wasn't here.

Stopping dead in her tracks, Sloane wavered for a moment; what was home without her mother? What was she supposed to do? She didn't have time to thin about it, Lester was waiting and she needed to hurry. Sloane cast one more look that way, her father would know how to handle it. Descending the steps quickly, Sloane worked her way down toward where the carriages waited, hoping not to be questioned, she caught sight of Hatch half-hidden down the lane a little way. Sloane cast one look over her shoulder, picked up her skirts and bolted to him. "My mom's inside." She whispered breathlessly as she tucked herself into his hiding spot.

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It was strange to see Sloane running in a Sadie Sinclair outfit; Lester still had half an idea that he'd made up this whole thing. But she was back and she was talking, and he'd already committed to sneaking her out, and — her mom was here.

Lester pressed his lips together. How could they do this if Mrs. Bixby wasn't going to be home when they got there?

"Do you want me to get her?" Lester asked. He was becoming increasingly convinced that they couldn't get out of here without making a scene.

  

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set by Fallin!

Sloane clung to him as her world went sideways and the pounding in her head had her seeing spots. She lost the concentration on the change and her hair and features resumed their normal composure. "No, let's go, my head is killing me." Sloane knew they couldn't linger for too long, they were already walking a thin line, elongating the distance was only a recipe for disaster.

Peeking out from around their hiding spot, nobody was around, the laughter and music far off in the distance no, leaving them plenty of room to escape. Sloane slipped her hand down to his, lacing her fingers between, and pulled him toward the edge of the road that led back to town. There was no good way to explain this, and she knew she was going to have to talk to the Sinclairs and possibly the ministry, sooner rather than later, but tonight she just wanted to go home and tomorrow she could figure it out.

"Thank you." She said after a moment, peering up at Hatch almost hesitantly. He was the same old Hatch, but different. He'd changed in the time she'd been gone and though she suspected her "death" might have something to do with it, she worried about him.

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Lester stood up. He wished he was shorter — he was worried that people were going to talk about them leaving together. But people were certainly going to talk, no matter what happened.

"Alright," he said, and started leading the way between the carriages down the path to Hogsmeade. He wanted to talk to her, the way they used to, but he wasn't entirely sure how. "I'm a healing intern now," Lester blurted. He was not sure he had ever told as much to Sadie.

  

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set by Fallin!

She kept tossing glances over her shoulder, hoping nobody would see them or even be able to tell who they were. The farther they got from the school, the more the knot in her chest loosened. "I knew you could do it." Knowing Lester had sort of fumbled with what to do after graduation was not news to her, nor was she surprised that he was interning at the hospital either.

"I'm sorry, it must have been... tough." Trying to find his footing as an adult after finding out she'd "died." Sloane felt guilty even though she knew it wasn't her fault, not really. There was nothing to be done and though she knew that something was going to come out of this, she hoped everything could be solved quietly. First she would go home and see her family and then she would go see the Sinclairs and get everything cleared up there. She didn't know what they had been thinking, but Sloane did know that she hadn't looked like the girl who had died in the storm, and they had taken very good care of her in the meantime.

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Lester decided he wouldn't tell her, right now, how difficult being a healing intern was — that he had to keep so much information in his head all the time, that death haunted him, that he was not even sure the healers liked him. He swallowed it down. He could tell her later. Or he could keep it inside, where no one had to know.

"It was — definitely hard," he said, swallowing. "On all of us. Especially your brothers." Merlin, how did he tell her about Wally's accident? They were definitely going to find him there when they got to the Bixby house.

  

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set by Fallin!