The Purpose

CHAPETER 2: A GIRL LEARNS A BOOK BY HEART AND A PROFESSOR SCOWLS

CHAPETER 2: A GIRL LEARNS A BOOK BY HEART AND A PROFESSOR SCOWLS

It is strange how our life stories influence our decisions. And maybe if we each carried our own, written in plain view for others to read, many wrongs would be rights. If we knew the stories, we would know the people.

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London wakes early, like it does every day; all great cities wake with a head start. That's the only reason they made it as great cities in the first place.

What does a city sound like? A wail, a thrum, a rustle.

London always was both the wide avenues and the backstreets, those who wore the finest clothing and those who wove the thread.

A girl with grey eyes and a wild heart used to look out a window in St Mungo's. It showed pavements that looked like a great thrumming river of humanity and roads that looked like wailing rivers of cars. Some of the buildings have seen ages pass, standing in silent witness, weathered rocks stretching toward the sky.

Buses moan and screech to a halt. Bicyclists whiz by. An ambulance wails in the distance. A trumpet plays. Shop signs rattle. Bridges creak. Drops of water hit the windows and splatter against umbrellas. People with eyes half-open and their minds half-closed try to render their bodies at least tolerably functional until the first break. Their curses are the sort you only think of uttering when you're drunk, dying, or obligated to set off to work on a day far too rainy, far too early in the morning. The city of London hums. But the sounds don't belong to her world. For the girl, these sounds are far away, infinitely far away. Between her and that world lay the walls of the hospital.

St. Mungo's has white walls. People with expensive robes are the ones who rule these places. And there's no hope in fighting with the expensive robes or the places with white walls. They will always win – in their own way. She understands that better than most. So she closes her eyes and listens to the distant freedom.

And then one day, an old man with silver hair and half moon spectacles came here and talked to her. He promised her just that - freedom - as if it was the most normal thing to be offered. It also seemed he had the power to fight the expensive robes. Even if they didn't agree with him, they still listened to him. That was something new for the girl.

Sometime during August, a small package filled with golden coins was delivered to her. She asked about it, but they told her the sender left no name. "It belongs to you now" they said. She realized she received in a single package more money than she had in all her lifetime. A few days later, a matron wearing Muggle clothes gave the girl another set of Muggle clothes. And they walked out into the city. The woman took the girl to Diagon Alley, and instructed her to buy the items written on a piece of parchment.

Then, the day before September first, she snuck out of her room at night and went to the bathroom on the fifth floor. Entered the third cubicle. Opened toilet's tank cover and reached inside. Pulled out a rusty letter opener. With it, she pried open a small grating on the floor of the same cubicle and reached down inside it as well. On the side of the stone canal that ran straight down she felt a familiar small caving. She discovered it on her second week here. She pulled something out of the caving and washed it. It was an old wristwatch. Then the girl snuck back in her room and hid the watch carefully in a dragonhide glove.

The next morning, she was whisked away from the hospital with all the things bought in Diagon Alley, led to the train station, and instructed to go and find a compartment.

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A hat was placed on her head, and it cried "Slytherin!" And due to that series of events, the evening of a certain professor with greasy black hair couldn't be any more miserable.