Chương 7: Ms Parish

Ms Parish was waiting for me on my return. She was seated, tense and awkward, in the front office right outside my room. When I walked in, she locked onto me with a worrying intensity.

"Hi, uhh, Ms Parish." I shuffled a bit and set my wand box and paper bag on a table.

"I– thank you." I motioned to the bag.

"You didn't need to do that, but I'm grateful you did."

"Nonsense, it was cheaper this way," she said stiffly.

"Cheaper?" Weird thing to say.

"That woman, Mrs McGonagall, she was here for you—and solely for you. She clearly didn't do any research about our financial situation, and seemed to believe we were a lot worse off financially than we actually are. I don't think she even had a clear idea of the value of 'muggle money' as she put it." Well, currency was based on supply and demand.

An insular magical community with only a few thousand people living across Great Britain—all who can basically conjure mundane items out of nothing—are going to have a much more sporadic and skewed sense of value. The monetary values didn't translate very well at all. I'd been thinking about the topic during all the downtime at Ollivander's. My business degree having reared its head.

"You bought me additional gifts to convince someone that you didn't have the money to care for me?" I asked, instead of starting an economics debate.

"She was a bleeding heart, and loaded. Charity is given more freely when a person can see where the money is being spent, or if a heartwarming story comes with the spending." She was growing more relaxed as she spoke.

"Remember Lyra, the surest way to make money has always been to spend it. Your mention of financial aid was well placed. She mistook that to mean we were having difficulties with housing you, not that you were applying for tuition based institutions. Most children your age don't concern themselves with expenses. The fact that you clearly were, made it easy to imply you needed more. I managed to leverage that into a better budget from their school." I was a bit shocked, and impressed.

Ms Parish met a witch—had her whole worldview upturned—and immediately thought of how best to get extra money out of the encounter. And she works in a glorified orphanage, making almost no income. On the other hand—if she was thinking solely of money—it meant the action was less about my welfare. Was bringing up my muscular atrophy with McGonagall just another ploy for funding?

"We will need to shift your applications to scholarships that don't require much follow-up though."

"Ms Parish, do you know anything about my parents?" The question just– came out. Cutting off Ms Parish's rambling. She hesitated, so I added, "I was told magic can be inherited, not always, but it's more common for a person to have magic if one or both parents had some."

"We don't know. I found you abandoned in the woods near my old home, back before I moved here. You had a baby blanket with you, with Lyra sewn in. You weren't in the best condition."

"The woods?" and a blanket someone took time to stitch a name into. More likely then, that Lyra came from a family that died if they took enough care to do something sentimental like that.

"Nothing overtly magical?"

"Not on your person. There was a lot of strangeness with you. It was worse before…"

"Before my coma?"

"Yes. Still no memories from before?" I shook my head, and she continued, her shoulders falling.

"Near enough every time someone made you upset, something happened. The children called you cursed. Even the other adults became afraid just being near you."

"So it was all the unexplained things? The reason everyone avoids me now?"

"When you were younger, the problem wasn't as obvious. No one recognized you were… special. Magical. As more people began to make the connection between you and the incidents, they ostracized you; and that, in turn, seemed to make the incidents more common and more dangerous.

"It was linked to your emotions. I know that now, but back then, it was all fear and hate. The year before your coma, you leaned into it. Let yourself become the thing they feared. I was right, Lyra was being a menace. One part uncontrolled power and one part a reaction to an unpleasant environment.

"I'm sorry," I said. Even if it wasn't me. It was the only appropriate response. At the same time, I couldn't dismiss the fact that—as Lyra's primary legal guardian—Ms Parish would've needed to be the one signing off on 'ending' the coma. I'd been keeping a certain distance from her as a result, even as she proved nicer than the other adults. She was currently talking like she didn't contribute to Lyra's isolation at all. I wasn't sure how to deal with that, or even if I wanted to.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. Ms Parish hadn't even noticed I wasn't the same Lyra. Did she actually care or was this just an act? Was that because I was better behaved than old Lyra? Maybe I was overthinking this. Children could change dramatically. It wasn't so strange to dismiss such a thing after the kind of brain damage associated with comas, was it?

"You sound like you always knew I was the cause," I continued. Keeping the previous thoughts buried.

"I did. I was with you for almost eleven years, even if I didn't have the context for it; it was obvious something was happening." She visibly steeled herself.

"I failed you Lyra, I'm the one who should be sorry."

"No, that must have been– I mean– You stayed with me. Thank you." There was an awkward pause. She was, if anything, less adept at social niceties than I was. I decided to just forge ahead.

"And the coma? I never asked, but how did that happen?" She let out another sigh, "We don't know. We suspected an older boy who isn't here anymore, but there was no proof."

"Isn't here anymore?" I repeated, thinking of all the things magic could do to a person. There was also a snippet of conversation I heard from one of the older staff, telling Father Rubens about how 'Lyra deserved to go to hell'. I'd been avoiding that lady since, but if a kid died because of her, I could understand the viewpoint a bit better. Understand. Not 'agree with'. Before becoming Lyra I'd assumed death was simply the end.

Now, after waking up in another world where souls demonstrably existed, I wasn't nearly as certain. Still, I doubted the universe operated as a simple morality test. Even Voldemort had apparently been capable of repairing his soul and getting a 'good' afterlife. Some of my disquieting thoughts must've come through in my voice or expression, because Ms Parish replied quickly.

"Oh, no, he was emancipated months ago. He was the one who found you unconscious. Said he found you that way.

"With your amnesia and that woman's explanation... I was thinking, it might have been yourself."

"I don't think unconscious magic typically harms the user." At least all the examples I could think of from the book prioritized protecting the wizard over everything else.

"I meant the amnesia," she elaborated.

"It was a restart. In your time away, the other children rotated out. Rumor died out. They don't associate you with everything going wrong anymore. The incidents are less common now, and you're more innocent. Happier." That surprised me. I hadn't been depressed these last two months, but that was me on the inside. On the outside I was still following my known patterns of behaving like the brooding, shut-in loner I used to be in my last life.

To appear happier and more innocent than what used to be an actual nine year old… I really should start putting more effort into changing my anti-social habits. I still wanted to make friends when I start school. Friends at Hogwarts. Maybe the main cast? This would take some time to process, along with the events of the rest of the day. I was well past being overwhelmed at this point. Also, her theory; it might've been pretty decent if not for me being an entirely different person.

Magic was at least some explanation for how something like this could've happened—not a complete one—but an explanation all the same.

"So, Magic." Ms Parish started again, with a certain anticipation.

"What did you end up getting for the extra gift?" I glanced at my bag. Suddenly feeling quite a lot of hurriedly suppressed embarrassment.

"Apart from my school supplies, I got a floating mirror. I can control it to a certain degree. Move it around without touching it." I pulled it out and demonstrated. Using enchanted items obviously didn't set off the Trace. If they did, the Weasleys' car would've gotten Harry expelled when they picked him up. Ms Parish rarely emoted. Her smiles were always small, her reactions muted, her face made of stone.

Today was a little different, but as much as she'd gotten to know me over this last month, I'd gotten to know her as well. She lit up at the simple display, an eagerness I could well understand. She had stuck with Lyra for nearly eleven years now. When others were scared away, she stayed. Maybe I was wrong and she really did care—maybe she just felt responsible—but looking into her eyes as they followed the mirror, I was sure at least a part of it was this; a pursuit of something unexplained.

She wanted magic in her life.

"And the rest?" She looked over to the wand box, and the gift bag with something else clearly inside.

"That's my wand," I said quickly.

"I'm not allowed to use it outside of school, but it's going to be my main way to use my magic eventually." I opened the box and showed her. She reached out and lightly touched it.

"The rest is just a wand care kit that came with it. Wood polish, a rag, some miscellaneous stuff." Maybe the personal alarm was a bad idea. There had to have been other items that could wake me up without alerting others. She better not go through my things. We did go through the other stuff together. Examining all of the school supplies McGonagall had purchased. Ms Parish helped me sew a new wand 'holster' into my robes. One in the sleeve so I wouldn't be keeping it in the waist pockets the robe had.

I didn't fancy accidentally damaging or losing it by storing it there. I could vaguely remember that being a thing at multiple points in the books. The hat was my favorite from the purchases. Wearing it felt ridiculous, like I was cosplaying. It also felt serious, like things were more real and grounded. The mix of the two was enticing in a way that was hard to explain. We talked until the evening grew late. I described Diagon Alley. She answered questions about old Lyra.

We speculated on my upcoming classes, or she speculated while I pretended to. Somewhere along the way, the conversation stopped feeling awkward.

"You're going to need to learn calligraphy," she finally said.

"If they're as old-fashioned as all this implies, some of your teachers are going to grade you on handwriting as well as content. I'll adjust my schedule to teach you, and we can pick up a few extra school supplies at some point." I nodded.

"I think my assignments need to be submitted with quill and parchment, but some lined paper for personal notes would be nice." What else? I thought tiredly. Cheap, non-technological, easy to use, mundane items that can help me? Ms Parish noticed my exhaustion not long after and bid me a goodnight. Magic. I thought one last time before falling asleep. I had magic.