Chapter Text
Gryffindor
~
You stand at the railing. The wind lifts your hair until it lays across your eyes and in your mouth and the would is a series of horizontal brown bars. You push off and the world spins and rights itself.
The air is still then and you keep walking because the railing isn’t there anymore and was never there.
That was always just you and the fog gathers on your wrists and your hands are wet when your fingers touch. You know you should call out—Hello? Are you there?—but you won’t-can’t so you keep still.
They pass and the fog swirls into the vacuum left behind. Then the trees fall away and the lamplight shines bright.
Behind you, you know, is home and warm pies and blankets by a fire but the golden glow shines down the street and the fog dances around them.
You heed the call and step away. You do not look back because you can feel the lights and you don’t know where you are going but there’s something out there and for once you just need to go go go go because your chest is filling and you are running, following the lights down the street and the silver tunnel.
Your hand splays across the leather and you pick it up mine before anyone can ask you and you put it up on your wall and you look at it every time before you close your eyes then you open them again to see the map and dive into the photographs until they come alive and you wake up and you need to go and the fog curls and beckons at your door and the lamplights laughs and call you and you just put a roll into your pack before going.
You will come back someday but for now you don't know where you are but stay silent and the brown bars turn into trees into buildings the size of the gods to a flea and a forest along the curve of the river with wolves that leap and your blood is the same red as their teeth but you have bandages and the leaves on the trees, on the ground are crisp apples and fire and the elk pass until the wolves leave and the lamplight is gone but the fog is there again, curling and licking and you grab your pack and run and find the photographs but everything has changed and there are loud voices but you have a louder one and you finally come home, months and years later, rubies on your back and golden mirrors in your pockets and you smile and look at the leather maps on the wall and know you will leave when the fog comes calling.