The Departure Song of Steam and Starlight (I)
At 6:17 in the morning, Hailey's nose bumped against her suitcase strap for the third time. The Leicester family crest gleamed coldly on the bronze buckle, looking just like the spinning Star Hub gears from her dream last night. She crouched beside the four-poster bed, pretending to study how to braid her shoelaces while stealing glances at the dressing mirror. The girl in the mirror wore a freshly laundered, crisply pressed wizard's robe, with the butterfly brooch Eileen had given her pinned to the collar, but it couldn't hide the slight tremble in her fingertips.
"Are you wrestling with your suitcase again, miss?" Nini's high-pitched voice came from atop the wardrobe. The house-elf was standing on tiptoe, straightening Hailey's wizard hat, with half an unfinished ginger tea biscuit still stuck to its brim. "You hugged your pillow last night and said 'Hogwarts Express' seventeen times. You nearly scorched it into smoking with your magic." Hailey absolutely didn't believe Nini's nonsense. What was it with her and pillows, that she always had to use them to ruin them?!
Hailey jerked her head up, her ponytail brushing against the alchemy notes behind her. The words "Levitation Charm and buoyancy formulas," written in fluorescent ink, shimmered faintly in the morning light. She hurriedly covered them with her robe sleeve, only to hear her mother's laughter from the stairs. "Is our little witch nervous?" Mrs. Leicester wore a pale purple traveling cloak, her moon-phase pendant swapped for a more discreet pearl one. In her hand was an insulated basket embroidered with wisteria-one sniff told Hailey it held her favorite mung bean soup with dried tangerine peel.
"I am not!" Hailey stood up, chin raised, but just then the suitcase sprang open with a click, spilling out a Muggle calculator, a stainless-steel spoon, and her Quantum Mechanics and Magic Circles notes. Mr. Leicester walked into the room just in time, the toe of his leather shoe narrowly missing a magic crystal that had rolled to his feet. A hint of mischief flashed in his eyes behind his glasses. "I remember someone saying she was going to use Newton's laws to work out the aerodynamics of flying broomsticks at Hogwarts?"
Hailey's ears turned scarlet. Her father always liked to expose her little secrets with just a hint, just as he had last year when she changed her Transfiguration Spell homework to "throwing snowballs using the principles of parabolas" and he had smiled and handed her Fundamentals of Kinematics. "That was just... an academic discussion!" She scrambled to pack her things, but accidentally knocked over the picture frame on the bedside table. In it, her three-year-old self was clutching her father's wand and turning a glass of milk into a merry-go-round, while her mother laughed beside her, rocking back and forth. The hands of the grandfather clock in the background ran backward, and "Hailey's first prank" was written across its face in jam.
Mrs. Leicester crouched down to help her straighten her scarf, lightly tapping a fingertip behind her ear. "When you're nervous, just touch your Star Hub Necklace. Mommy wove a Lavender Soothing Charm into the gears." Only then did Hailey notice the faint shadows under her mother's eyes, and suddenly remember the whispers she had heard last night. When her parents were discussing the remaining pages of the prophecy book in the study, her mother's voice had trembled with suppressed emotion. She reached back and took her mother's hand, feeling the thin calluses on her palm-marks left by years of polishing wand cores in the laboratory.
"Dad said the Whomping Willow at Hogwarts is especially hard to deal with," she said in a deliberately cheerful tone. "If I use the Vine Immobilisation Charm you taught me, will it be mistaken for Dark Magic?" Mr. Leicester burst out laughing and took an engraved silver box from the inside pocket of his suit. "These are improved Cushioning Charm stickers. Stick one on a broom handle and it'll absorb seventy percent of the impact-provided, of course, that you don't use it in Professor Flitwick's class."
As the three of them talked, the doorbell suddenly rang downstairs. Nini zipped down the stairs and soon came flying back in a panic. "Mrs. Ronil and Miss Eileen are here! Miss Eileen's owl carried off her luggage tag!" Hailey peered out to see Eileen standing in front of the rosebushes, her golden curls tousled by the wind. The nautilus suitcase in her hand was half open, exposing the jars of potion spices scattered inside. A gray owl was flapping its wings, a leather luggage tag bearing the name "Eileen Ronier" dangling from its claws.
"Merlin's beard!" Eileen spotted Hailey from afar and immediately waved her wand, shouting, "Quick, have Nini help me catch Lightning! He's knocked over my jar of saffron again!" Mrs. Leicester smiled and shook her head. With a light flick of her fingers, a streak of silvery-blue light flashed past, and the owl obediently placed the luggage tag in Hailey's hand, specks of saffron powder still clinging to his wings.
"Good morning, Mr. Leicester and Mrs. Leicester." Mrs. Ronil bowed gracefully. Her wizard's robe was embroidered with mandala patterns, and an exquisite cauldron brooch was pinned to her cuff. "Eileen said she dreamed last night that your Hailey turned a cauldron into a coffee machine and insisted on stuffing coffee filter bags into my potion cabinet."
Mr. Leicester smiled and shook hands with Mr. Ronier. The Muggle suits they wore were identical in style-their "safe disguise" for exchanging business intelligence in secret. Hailey noticed a miniature distiller hanging from Mr. Ronier's watch chain, and it was actually the same style as her father's gold pocket watch. She couldn't help recalling the two families' adults discussing "the supply and demand curve of the wand market" over Muggle cups of black tea in the garden.
"Come over here, you little wizards!" Mrs. Leicester called, taking four ceramic cups from the insulated basket. "Try my newly improved magic milk tea—I used Ceylon black tea from Eileen's family and the turmeric powder Hailey had hidden away." Hailey's eyes lit up. Sure enough, fine grains of turmeric had settled at the bottom of the cup. Mixed with the aroma of milk was a barely perceptible magical tremor that the yuenyeung milk tea from the tea restaurants of her previous life hadn't had.
"Wow! This milk tea makes little bubbles!" Eileen exclaimed, watching miniature magic circles appear on the surface of the tea. "Did you add a Bubbling Charm? Hailey, look, there are turmeric patterns in the bubbles!" Hailey leaned closer and saw that, sure enough, each bubble reflected a turmeric-yellow spiral pattern, just like the magic fluctuation diagrams they had drawn in their secret base. Seeing this, Mr. Leicester deliberately spoke in a serious tone. "That's advanced Potions Class material. For now, you can only drink it as milk tea. No sneaking it into your notebooks."
Everyone finished their milk tea with laughter and finally picked up their luggage and headed out the door. September sunlight streamed through the ivy-twined wrought-iron gate, casting dappled light and shadow across the stone path. Hailey touched the Star Hub Necklace around her neck. A faint resonance came from the gears and the core of the pendant, like a precision instrument running softly in her father's laboratory. She suddenly remembered the first time she had lost control of her magic at seven and shattered the crystal chandelier. Now, that restless emerald-green magic had long since become something she could gather into a docile mist of light in her palm.