The Storm Within

There was no pain when she woke. Only a drowsy warmth. Cyrna vaguely recalled the nightmare before she snuggled deeper into her bed, intent to get as much sleep as she could before her alarm would inevitably wake her for her 8am lecture.

"Nicolas! Did you see the state she was in!?" A woman's shriek pierced her ears.

Cyrna's eyes snapped open, but had the presence of mind to remain still to avoid attention.

Lowering her eyes to half mast, she noted that she was lying a bed, and in front of her was a stone-cobbled fireplace lit with a hearty fire. Beside it were dusty bookshelves that stored not only books but also jars filled with strange colourful things and—were those eyeballs!? The optic nerve was still attached, and they floated in a jar. Then the eyeballs moved, turning to look at her. She very nearly fainted. But she was already on a bed, and after taking several breaths, she moved her eyes and saw a lizard, also dead, preserved in another jar.

"Not normal… black hair…"

Angling her head slightly towards the voice, she caught a passing glimpse of a cauldron that glowed sickly green, and... oh. She must be dead.

Floating candles simply did not exist.

"I'm not sending her back!" the woman insisted.

Cyrna's eyes flickered to the woman and the person she was conversing with. They were old—wrinkly skin and white hair; she could outrun them. Her throat tightened when she realized they were talking about her. Had she been kidnapped?

Silence settled into the room. Cyrna froze and realized that sometime during her musing, two pairs of eyes were now staring back at her.

Shooting out the bed, she sprinted towards the only door in the room. Cyrna yanked down on the handle—practically trying to rip it off the walls—but it didn't open. She spun around—

"Hello," said the elderly woman. Her forehead was creased with wrinkles, seeming concerned.

"Where am I?" Cyrna asked sharply. She tried to hide the fear and confusion which was slowly consuming her mind.

"You're with the Flamels—in our cottage," said the man.

Flamels? Something about the word shook her enough to stop yanking at the door.

The woman nodded gently. "You were injured in the Lost Forest, so we brought you back with us. Though I've no idea of how you managed to find yourself—"

"Indeed. How did you get into the Forest?" The man had a steely gaze as he stalked towards her, white hair and hunched back and all. He watched her suspiciously and Cyrna studied him back, noting that his fingers seemed to be stained with different colours. He scowled and said, "Witches like you shouldn't be able to enter."

Witches?

"I… what?"

His expression darkened, and suddenly he was pointing a stick at her.

"Nicolas!" the woman exclaimed.

"It's suspicious, Perenelle! You know that only creatures live there, and you knowhow they are like!"

"But perhaps—"

"No! There's absolutely no way she's one of them—For Merlin's sake, look how black her hair is!"

Merlin's sake?

Cyrna forgot the door entirely as her eyes darted around the room again, cataloguing evidence for her growing hypothesis—something that should not have been real. Her eyes caught onto a mirror, and it supported what he had said. Black hair. But how could her hair be black when it was supposed to be brown?

The man closed in on her, and she had to tilt her head back to keep him in view. But he hadn't seemed tall. She was tall. The tallest among her friends. Cyrna's back hit the door.

A child with raven-black hair and a pair of wide blue eyes. Laufeia, Laufeia, Laufeia, Laufeia—

Tears crept into her eyes. This couldn't be happening. It was impossible.

Life had always been a game where people were never dealt equal hands. It was a pathetic game, one that she had grudgingly suffered through once. To think that she had to play it again in another world with another set of rules. Oh, she had realized it then, because how could she not? Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel, Merlin, cauldron, jarred ingredients, floating candles, a wand…

"We should obliviate her and just get this over with," the man—Nicolas said.

The woman—Perenelle—frowned disapprovingly.

Obliviate?

A bitter laugh escaped. "Has Dumbledore, sorry, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, contacted you yet?"

"He hasn't." Perenelle stared at the child with no little concern. Terror and panic leaked off from the child's magic. It was a building, a growing wave as it tensed and fluctuated in peaks and sharp edges. "Is there a reason we should hear from him?" she asked gently, wanting to calm the child.

Cyrna had never viewed Life as a friend. And now, she had to wonder what trespasses she had committed against it. Dumbledore was the Headmaster, and the Flamels were still alive. Combine those facts and it would mean that she had been plopped into the Harry Potter universe sometime between the rise of Voldemort and the start of the Hogwarts Era.

And that was horrible because this timeframe meant a single thing:

Voldemort was still alive.

She was going to be stuck in the middle of a war.

It felt like her heart had stopped beating; she stared blankly with twisted amusement at the faces of the couple who didn't even know they would soon be dead. It was ridiculous. This was supposed to be a story. This… Her mind spun. She needed to leave Britain and head to America—or anywhere else. But she had no money and what was the minimum age to work? The walls of the house seemed to close in on her; her breaths quickened. Trapped. She was trapped, trapped in another game Life had decided to play.

The safety, her stability—family, friends, her career, success—everything that she had painstakingly cultivated… she watched it wither away, amounting to nothing in this new and strange world.

Cyrna gasped, laughter bubbling with tears as she choked on her own breath.

She did not hear the screams, the crackling of stone, the shattering glass.

But what was impossible to notice, even when she was so stuck in her head, was the thundering boom as the house was torn apart.

Cyrna halted mid-laughter. There was broken glass and debris everywhere as the winds whistled, whipping powerfully around her. She had summoned a storm, and she stood at its center.

For a moment, her mind was blissfully empty. A white canvas. Then a sudden spark, a small thought drew on its canvas.

How could she forget?

She was in a world of magic, meaning that there had been a possibility that she could do magic as well.

Cyrna surveyed the remains of the house; the rubble, the splintered wood…

Had she done that?

She looked at Nicolas and Perenelle who were both inside a translucent shield, staring back at her with a mix of shock and wariness. Her eyes widened, and nothing she felt could smother the sharp unadulterated excitement that coursed through her veins. This was different. Her heart thumped faster.

She had done this.

She had done magic.

Giddy with excitement, she missed the softly spoken words of stupefy and the red light heading her way.