DAY FOURTY-NINE

Ha Sooyoung. Three syllables. One person. Ha, like the sound one makes when they are amused. Soo, as in sue me. And young. Because that’s what she was, after all. At least for the time being. That gave her the right to do whatever stupid she wanted to, right?

Well, it didn’t matter if the universe gave her permission. She was going to do what she wanted regardless.

“Time to go.”

She shattered the glass window with a swing of her crowbar. The scattered glass fell to the ground, forgotten. Sooyoung reached through and opened the door with a twist of the door handle. Some people would call breaking into her father’s factory in order to steal some inventory wrong, but those people were boring and not worth listening to. Besides, he wasn’t her real dad, so what did she care? She’d be in another home in a few weeks anyway. None of them compared to Hogwarts.

Hogwarts, the only place where she could be herself. Out here, in the muggle world, she was forced to be something darker. Something she didn’t talk about in front of her friends. Not even Jiwoo. Lovely, lovely Jiwoo. But she couldn’t let herself get distracted...she had to move quickly, before muggle law enforcement got on her tail.

She ran through the darkened interior of the factory to the only light in the place-- the lamp in her foster dad’s office. The man never turned it off, not even when it was time to close up. What a er. She smashed the glass of the office window like she had the main entrance, and she slipped through with little hesitation.

There, in the corner of the office was what she had come for. She brushed the dust off the off-white plastic of the case. She ran her thumb over the two red marks at the top of the briefcase. They were supposed to represent an apple. Apple of knowledge? Adam and Eve? Sooyoung had no idea. Whoever had built this case had done it before the dawn of time, in her own estimation.

She hefted the case in both hands and made her way out of the room with swiftness. If she got caught her, she’d probably end up spending some time in a juvenile detention center. She’d tried that before. She wasn’t a fan.

The bars of metal contained within the jostled as she ran out of the factory and into freedom. The factory alarms blared into her eardrums. She did her best to ignore them.

She hailed a cab that took her all the way out to her workshop at the edge of the city. London was a nice place, on occasion, but it was too busy for what she craved.

And what she craved was silence. The perfect, total kind of silence that came only after work. Work, in this case, was melting metal down and welding it into shape. It was difficult, sweaty, and tiring, but satisfying.

This project--this work of art she had dedicated herself to--it was everything in her world. She was sure that if a muggle came through the door of her workshop, they would be confused beyond belief. Even her wizard friends would struggle to understand. She hardly understood it herself. But it was something she had to do.

She hammered tirelessly at the half-melted hunk of alloy, pounding into shape until she was satisfied with the result. She worked through the night, stopping only to take a sip from the bottle of water she’d brought with her. Finally, she had what she wanted.

Sooyoung gave herself a break, pushing her stool away from her workbench to take a look at her project. The freshly-cooled metal was formed into the shape of a human skeleton, arms at its sides. It wasn’t done yet. It wasn’t even close to being done, but it was a start. And there was no way she was going to finish tonight. She decided now was as good a time as any to rest. She had an early start the next morning.

~

Now, underage magic was pretty restricted by the Ministry of Magic. Not as much as it had been--they were more lenient about it, if the student could prove that they were responsible enough to wield it outside the classroom. Sooyoung had more than done that. So it was pretty easy to shrink her workshop down into a size manageable enough to carry around in her bag. She wouldn’t be coming back to this part of town. She had a friend to see.

She crossed the unkempt grass lawn that laid in front of the humble little shack Jiwoo and her mom called home. It was bigger on the inside, as Jiwoo would insist. Just like me! God, Jiwoo was adorable. It was a shame neither of them were willing to make a move on the whole thing. It’d probably just ruin their whole dynamic.

Sooyoung knocked politely on the door. She was wizard Sooyoung again, and she would be for some time, before the authorities found her and gave her away again. The good thing was she’d only have to deal with this crap for another year, and then she’d be an adult, free to be herself and do whatever she wanted, without other people looking over her shoulder in ‘concern’.

Hmm. Jiwoo hadn’t answered the door yet. Neither had her mom. Sooyoung knocked again. Distantly, from somewhere inside, Jiwoo yelled. “Hold on a second! I’m just cleaning up in here!” There was the sound of rustling and of something falling over, and then a faint bout of mild cursing. The door opened a minute later to reveal Jiwoo. Her face looked disheveled and desperate for the briefest of moments before she realized Sooyoung was at the door. Her face brightened instantly. It was almost scary. Sooyoung tried to recall a moment between the two of them where Jiwoo wasn’t smiling, but nothing came to mind. It struck her as odd, but she quickly put it out of mind and stepped inside.

She had work to finish.