Disclaimer: I own nothing; just frolicking in the world of HP.

A small flat just north of the center of London, a cramped room strewn with printed papers and books, a few brown packing boxes scatter the floor, the light of a laptop screen illuminating the darkness.

"I really should organize this place," Alice thought as her body hit the bed crumpling some notes beneath her. It has been little over a month since she relocated to the city and about two months have passed since she completed her doctorate at Oxford. She was currently in that limbo stage between school and the real world, monetarily surviving off of the rest of her grant money while periodically publishing articles for the London Times and some smaller newspaper venues. Her interdisciplinary degree had given her a lot of options in that arena, although she hoped to find a teaching position soon. But with the economy and cutbacks she knew it would take some time.

Her mind, however, was focused on something considerably less academic, or at least many of her professors would think that. At Oxford, her dissertation focused on aspects of the supernatural in human society, utilizing anthropological and cognitive theory to account for human experiences that couldn't readily or rationally be explained. She first analyzed historical documents of unexplained phenomena, noticing that during early history, causation was leant to demons, angels, and witches, while modern accounts had extraterrestrial underpinnings. Of course, during the Enlightenment, skepticism and science would create more plausible explanations of the world and with them society marched towards what can be called modern civilization. Strange events tinkered off during this time and the world seemed more stable. However, the last 50 years or so had seen considerable stirrings in the world of the unexplained. And less than a decade ago, such peculiar events as the Millennium Bridge collapse in London had made headlines. She postulated that these events were more than the government was letting on, especially since early reports and eyewitness accounts did not match the final and official analysis of what happened. But purporting oddball government conspiracy theories or supernatural causation was analogous to committing academic suicide.

In the academic realm and specifically for her dissertation, she maintained the status quo of contemporary knowledge. Her professors had expected no less from Alice, a prized pupil since she began her education. She possessed peculiar advantages, such as a photographic memory and a devastatingly quick wit allowing her to debate with those very much her senior. Her high IQ should have led her to study science but a strong interest in human society pulled her in a different academic direction. Her head was like a cup that never got full and even now with school finished, when she should be on a recuperating hiatus, her research continued, along with preparation for the release of her first book.

Unlike her dissertation, her book hinted at the possibility of a hidden magical world. She had written it alongside her dissertation, aiming for a more general audience. She was careful to make sure it all sounded hypothetical since real evidence was sorely lacking. The title, which was accepted by the publisher, was Hinting at Magic: 20th Century Conspiracies and Possible Explanations. The opening sentence was as follows, "What if the world you know is divided with a world you cannot see, but that world has a profound influence on your world's trajectory. What if in this unseen world, magic is real, witches and wizards wave wands, and dark forces constantly battle against good. This book will attempt to explain unique events in the last century from a magical perspective, to be taken as hypothetical albeit possible explanations if such a divided world existed." The publisher was interested in it as a creative work and she hoped her academic comrades would see it as such. Of course, Alice was never a student to back down from making bold choices with topics. But she also didn't want academic elites thinking her a radical misusing her education to write what they would see as science fiction.

Not quite ready to sleep, her hand reached towards the nearby radiator to collect the tabloid which stood in as a makeshift umbrella on her way home. Bold print accompanied the tagline, "I Was Abducted by Aliens Three Times!" Holding the paper above her face, she hastily flipped its pages glancing from article to article only to stop on page three at the tagline, "Man Seen Vanishing on Charing Cross Road."

She sat up and grabbed her scissors, which lay on the top of a stack of nearby books. "Another vanishing act?" she thought as she added it to a wall of clippings which she organized by groups: Vanishing Persons, Sudden Appearances, Black Apparitions, Quirky Fashion, etc. Without closer inspection one might assume she was investigating a murder. Ever since returning to the city she took on a detective role, swapping book reading for field note taking. She wanted evidence in her perhaps misguided attempt to turn her fiction into non-fiction.

Alice quickly returned to the remaining pages of her tabloid and when finished, added it to the stack of papers in her recycling bin, her face grimacing at the thought of the money she spent on it. At times she didn't know what she was doing; researching unnerving phenomena in phony tabloids. Although for Alice, not all tabloids were created equal. Pulling out the middle drawer of her desk she took out a now heavily soiled, ripped, and crumpled newspaper entitled The Daily Prophet. She had found it discarded, lying open on a table in a small coffee shop at a train station she ran into prior to catching a train. It was unlike any paper she had ever seen, a strange mix of news articles, advertisements and commentary. At first she thought it was someone's school project, however, it felt too elaborate, too precise and full of detail, and the Millennium Bridge collapse had been mentioned with the latest death toll that it had to have been printed that very day. What was described in its pages professed a whole other world, a magical world. And in many ways it confirmed things she suspected since childhood, dreams she remembered but never had an answer for.

The night went on and rain continuously splattered on the window. Alice soon fell asleep with her head resting on her crossed arms in front of her laptop screen, which had grown dark from inactivity. Her right hand still clasped the precious newspaper below while her mind dreamt of an alternate reality.