20 Jul 2025, 18:23
Welcome To London, I'll Be Your Guide
date- July 20th, 2025
Rolling in on the train, back at King’s Cross station in London, England, Sage held her bag in hand. It was a different one from what she normally used to bring her things to Hogwarts. This one was nowhere near as special. Next to her on the train sat her little sister, Kora Lynn-Willows, holding a similar bag.
The ride had been long, Sage had dreaded every moment of it. Her leg had been bouncing up and down as a mixed result of anxiety and adrenaline for almost the entire ride. The closer they got to London, the closer the train inched to Sage’s hometown, the faster her heart seemed to beat.
Accepting the invitation to visit Christopher had been a mistake. A horrible, horrible mistake. Sage just knew that every spare second in London was a second of her life she was wasting. Sacrificing weeks, an entire time she could have spent relaxing with her real family, had not been her goal for the summer before her third year.
It was too late now.
The train’s tires shrieked as they came to a stop at their platform. A muffled, meaningless announcement sounded over a PA system. “Dad said he’d be meeting us right outside the platform,” Sage mumbled to Kora. “That is, he said he would, he didn’t promise.”
The girls crept off the train, bags gripped tightly in hand. The commotion of the station, fairly familiar to Sage, seemed worse. “The Hogwarts platform,” she whispered to her little sister, “is over there.” She pointed off in the distance.
Kora would be starting Hogwarts in September, a fact Sage almost dreaded. As much as she loved her little sister, being in the same school as her felt foreign. How soon before Kora saw the same prejudice from Christopher that she saw?
“Kora! Sage!” a man’s voice called from a few feet away.
And there he was. Christopher Albert Willows. The only person Sage had ever hated in her life.
Exchanging a familiar, worried glance, Kora and Sage stepped forward to meet him. “Hi, Christopher,” Sage managed.
“No “Dad”? That’s fine. Here, Kor, I got these for you while I was on my way here.” Christopher extended a colorful bouquet of flowers to his step-daughter. It was like he didn’t even remember how much Kora hated being called “Kor”.
“Oh, thanks,” she mumbled, taking them cautiously. “But won’t they just die?”
Why was it that all pretty things had to die?
“Well, that’s what water’s for. Come on, I haven’t got all day. Grandpa Lyser is waiting for us in the car.”
Any effort Sage had been making to move was ceased. Grandpa Lyser. It had been years since she’d seen him. Did he hold a grudge since she hadn’t been at his wife’s funeral, her own grandmum’s funeral?
“He’s in the car? Granddad?” Sage managed to say, choking over her own words.
“For Christ’s sake, Sage, I just said he was. Don’t be all high and mighty with the fact you don’t drive our cars.” Christopher shook his head. “I thought you’d have gotten over your fear of driving in cars after all these years.”
She adjusted her hold on her bag. Cars had never been the problem, even if they did make her slightly uncomfortable. Very few things were ever about what Christopher wanted them to be about. Very few things in her life had ever been that straightforward.
“No.”
Sage took a heavy breath and stuck her finger in his face. “This is not about cars. This is about Grandmum.”
Christopher sighed, running his hand down his face. “We need to get a move on. I don’t have time for your fits.”
Kora, poor Kora who’d been wrapped up in these problems for too long, shifted. “Can we just go?”
After another second of glaring at each other, the Willows family left the platform out to the parking lot. The small car Christopher had been driving for most of Sage’s life sat parked in King’s Cross’ parking lot. Outside the front seat stood Thomas Lyser, his hair grayer than Sage remembered.
“Ah! Girls! Isn’t this a treat to see you both on the same holiday?” he called, stretching his arms out like he wanted a hug. “My God, Kora, you’ve shot up like a weed!”
Sage brushed past him, chucking her bag in the trunk of the car. “Hi, Grandpa,” she muttered. “Weather in Ireland good?”
Two seconds with her only living grandparent and they’d already segued into chatting about the weather. Great.
“Oh, you know how it is this time of the year. Sage, you’re looking just how your mum did at this age.”
Somehow, the car ride was even worse. She couldn’t determine if she hated the awkward silence more or the random bursts of conversation. Maybe it was the way Kora had tucked herself into the smallest position she could, like she was trying to turn invisible before their eyes.
“Sage, tell me, how’s that school of your’s going?” said Grandpa.
“It’s fine. I get to try a bunch of new classes next year.”
“Oh, right, I remember Autumn telling Iris and I about those.” He paused to shake his head. “Seems like an awful large load to throw at children.”
“I forget, did you two want to pay a visit to her?” Christopher asked.
The her of the situation was clear. Her mum. Autumn. Sage hadn’t visited her grave since she’d been there for the winter holiday. Even then, her dad had hovered the whole time, never allowing her the chance to tell her mum how awful he’d been about magic. To think he’d given up his main belief that magic was harmful for his wife only to drop it once she died. And still, he hadn’t really accepted it. If magic couldn’t save his wife, then why was it worth it at all, was what Sage assumed he thought.
“Yes.” Sage didn’t pull her gaze from the window. “I want to see Mum.”
Kora visibly flinched next to her. Part of Sage felt bad, speaking about heading to the cemetery while knowing Kora hadn’t seen her biological dad’s grave in a few months. He’d died before Kora was old enough to remember him.
The tiny car dragged them up Christopher’s driveway and into the garage. “Welcome home, girls.”
Home. Like they’d been living there for years without a problem. Sage still remembered it, closing her bedroom door for the final time and stepping out of the house. The last time she would ever live there. The last time… she was in the place she’d been destined to live out her days.
And now it was just another place she hid from.
Another place she could look at and remember what could have been. What should have been.
Christopher’s voice broke her from the trance-like state she’d gone into. “You awake there, Willows?”
Adjusting her grip on her bag once more, she nodded. Would it be easier to carry around this weight if she were asleep, haunted by voices and nightmares of an alternate version of herself? Haunted by everything she could have had, a life she could never live.
She knew deep inside of her that she was the one missing out.
Missing out on a proper childhood.
A father.
A mother.
A life where her family wasn’t scared of witchcraft, of her.
And it was too late now.
“You're fine in your old room, Sage?”
The walls seemed slightly more cheery than the gray of December, like someone had held a spark to the wall and allowed it to come back to life. The windows were opened, new white curtains shielding the whole of the summer’s sun.
“It’s different.”
Christopher poked his head into the room, nodding before awkwardly stating, “I wanted it to feel more like home… Like… Like you could live here.”
Any words Sage could have replied with got stuck in her throat.
“Anyway!” He left the doorframe. “Kora, I’ve cleared the storage stuff out of your old room. Grandpa Lyser is set up on the couch. I’ll have to ring Joseph and Tyson, see when they want to swing by for dinner….”
“They’re coming for dinner?” Sage mumbled, stepping out of her room.
“Of course they are,” said Grandpa Lyser, walking into the house’s corridor they were chatting in. “It’s your father’s only brother and my only son, they will bring their families and we will act normal. Okay?”
Sage held her ground. “But we just got here.”
“Congratulations. It’s been ages since we’ve seen the whole lot. They are coming round whether you like it or not.”
“We aren’t all here! This isn’t normal, this is forced.”
“We are here. This is your family, Sage Willows, this is what your whole life revolves around. Of course, when your father convinced you to come spend a summer with us you had to drag in his step-daughter too.” The second half, while mumbled quieter, struck like lightning.
But this was her family. This is all it would ever be. Nothing greater, nothing less.
This was all she would ever live up to, a family with barricades taller than a dragon.
The exhale she breathed rattled in her lungs like a cough that wouldn’t go away. Kora seemingly vanished, probably gone back to her room. A room in a house that wasn’t and would never be her own. “You can’t say that,” she whispered, her voice barely audible over the roar of silence. “Kora is part of this family, she’s my sister. I didn’t want this. I’ve never wanted this. Cassie and Kora are my family. Kent is my home. This isn’t a family.”
“Cassie is Kora’s mum, not your’s,” Christopher reminded her.
Just like a tell tale heart, her own heart seemed to sink down into the floorboards. Hidden and guarded away from whatever you could call this.
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend everything is fine. I’m not fine. This,” she paused to wave her hand about, “isn’t fine. Cassie is as close to a mum as I’ll ever have now, I won’t apologize for realizing that. It’s time for you to wake up and realize that you haven't acted like my father in years. Literal years. ”
“That was quite the soliloquy. I’m here now, aren’t I? Inviting you into my home, my city, just to try and get to know you better and prove I care for you.”
Grandpa Lyser snuck away, Sage could hear him pattering down the hall. Their first reunion in years, and she yelled. What a grand granddaughter she was.
“I needed you.” Sage stared at him, watching as Christopher met her with an empty gaze. “I was- I am- a child. I needed my dad.”
“I’m right here,” he insisted.
“No. You aren’t.”
This would be all she ever got from her London guide. Nothing greater, nothing less.@Brookline Quinn as she asked to be pinged