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The truth was that Elizabeth didn’t really know where she came from.
There had been a war, a war right there in England, she thought. She caught snatches of whispered international telephone conversations, the crisp accent of her mother so unlike her own shaking over words that meant nothing to Elizabeth. She searched London newspaper clippings from the seventies and found nothing like the things she’d overheard, but the words her mother never wanted to say haunted her even when the evidence insisted they were nonsense.
Elizabeth didn’t know what ‘muggleborn’ or ‘mudblood’ meant, or why her mother never seemed to take the same pride in her heritage that she’d found when they looked through the old photo albums. Ann Weir always seemed to be waiting for something when they looked at the pictures. She looked again and again and she could never figure out what the moment was that never came.
When she turned eleven, she came home from school to discover police in her home, discussing ‘shots fired in the neighborhood’ with her parents. Her father – stepfather – looked bewildered, her mother was tight-lipped and pale, and they all fell silent when she entered the room. Later, after the officers had left and Daddy was with his poker buddies, she held the torch in the backyard while her mother buried a small box near her prize roses. It was heavy – heavier than she expected it to be – and there were feathers poking out. She never asked why.
Sometimes, things happened because Elizabeth wanted them to. Sometimes they happened and she wished they wouldn’t. Her mother told her it was part of growing up, and she wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t telling the whole truth, either. She knew that, even as she nodded and wondered if her first period was going to be more or less awkward and inconvenient.
The little house that Mr. Weir owned never felt enough like a home, but he was a kind man who loved her as his own, and when she sat with him under the stars and he let her hold his pocket watch, she thought she could hear the ticking of it in his heart and maybe her own—and years later, would wish she’d told him so. He didn’t understand her mother any more than she did, and when the older woman let her mind go to the far away place Elizabeth couldn’t follow, she sought out her father and his pocket watch and they were together. It wasn’t as bad as all that, all things considered.
When she was nineteen, she went to London for a year, to ‘get in touch with her roots’. She wrote letters faithfully each week, and received no reply. Her father had been gone for some time, and her mother had withdrawn so much when she told her of her plan to visit England. When she finally gave in and called, just to be sure her mother was still there, she told her about the brick wall in the little side street that she’d laid her hands on. She’d been sure there was—something, but her mother laughed (too loud and too quick) and told her she still had such a vivid imagination. She supposed she was right.
It was 1995 when Elizabeth visited England again. This time her mother came too, and they went to visit her grandparents. They hurried along streets that seemed familiar to Mrs. Weir and lifetimes away from anything Elizabeth had ever known—when they got caught behind a few men on a busy street, she heard the name ‘Potter’ in hushed tones. It meant little to her, but her mother tensed and stayed that way for the rest of the day. She was hard to find the next morning, and by lunch was insisting that they go home immediately. Elizabeth complied, having learned as she grew up that it was best not to argue when she had one of those moods. Besides, her grandparents were fine and she’d seen plenty of London before.
In 1998, Ann moved back there. Elizabeth helped her pack and tolerated the occasional bouts of tears and laughter, because the woman had always been a little odd and she loved her even so, or perhaps it was because of that. She’d never seen her look so—so free and gloriously happy, not even on the very best days when her father was still alive. It was beautiful and she didn’t mind being cried on, not even a little.
Drinking with Peter Grodin wasn’t something Elizabeth indulged in often – or more than once, actually – but the one time it did happen, he confessed to her a number of things that left her, to put not too fine a point on it, spellbound. Magic was real – and if she could believe in her own death while her life continued, she could believe him when he showed her. He’d attended a school called Hogwarts – she’d laughed, then, and then sobered when he told her about the owl on his eleventh birthday.
She began to put things together, but there was no time and then Peter was gone and there were hive ships coming and—suddenly reinforcements, and the story of where Elizabeth came from wasn’t as important as the story of where she was going.
(One day.)