Hummmmm.

The elevator buzzed my feet as I was pulled away from the earth and higher into the tall boring building.

A million times I had watched the floors creep past.

2…3…4…

And heard the faint ding as each passed.

But today was different. The ding seemed distant and the familiar elevator compartment felt cold and strange.

5…6…7…8…

My office was on the twentieth floor but today I was going to the fifteenth, particularly an office of a lawyer on the fifteenth floor.

A lawyer kept busy in today’s loose and shallow society, but I never expected that I would be seeing him. You hear about it all the time happening to friends, family, co-workers, but never you. You were different.

You were wrong.

9…10…11…12…

A divorce lawyer’s office was my destination.

13…14…15…

Ding

The door slid open to reveal a long ordinary hallway stretching to a doorway with the most extraordinary woman standing in it.

Her blonde curly hair was pulled back into a bun and she was wearing the most exquisite pinstripe pants suit that was ever created.

Few women could pull off this look and she was one of them.

I felt my feet move themselves forward out of the elevator onto the ugly maroon carpet.

Each muddled step brought back a memory as I stared vacantly at my beautiful about-to-be-ex-wife.

Step.

I shuffled past college kids sitting in bean bag chairs and plopped down on a couch in between a blonde curly haired girl and a guy wearing a pointed black hat and had a lighting bolt scar on his forehead.

In front of me the first Harry Potter movie film flickered on someone’s bed sheet as everyone gathered for the annual Harry Potter marathon watched.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were about to leave the Gryffindor common room when Neville Longbottom suddenly stood up.

Annoyingly enough someone in the front row did the same.

Down in front, I thought, but he didn’t budge. I instinctively pointed at him and mumbled, “Petrificus Totalus.”

To my surprise I had said it in unison with Hermione as well as the curly blonde next me, who was also pointing at the guy in front.

I blushed and smiled sheepishly.

“Harry Potter is kinda a big deal with me,” I said.

She laughed.

Step.

We were on our fifth date. We sat under a willow tree, her head in my lap as I read from book four.

Step.

I sat across from her on a park bench in Harry Potter world. She smiled radiantly at me with her eyes closed as I reached around her neck and clasped a necklace into place.

“Ok, you can open your eyes,” I said.

She opened them and looked down at the time-turner on her neck. She smiled even more brightly.

“It’s so we can never run out of time together,” I said as I knelt and pulled out a ring.

“Marry me?”

Step.

Friday night in our big back yard. We ran around like five year olds, pointing our authentic wands at each other, and yelling, “Stupefy!”

Friday nights were duel nights at out house.

Step.

I wrapped my arms around my wife. She was crying at the end of Movie seven part one where Dobby dies.

“It’s alright,” I mused. “Drink.”

I handed her a butterbeer and she set her head down on my shoulder.

Step.

The wands were away and nothing magical was in the air. We screamed at each other, yelling about who knows what. The spark was gone, taken by the burdens of marriage and life: Money. Jobs. Taxes.

Step.

I was walking into the office.

I signed. She signed.

No confrontation, no spells.

I turned around and walked back down the long hallway.

Horcruxes came to my mind. Rowling said that killing tears the soul.

Divorce tears the soul.

I stepped into the elevator. Where was the other half of my soul?

In the time turner around that beautiful woman’s necklace that stared blankly at me.

I lifted my hand and pointed as the elevator doors slid shut.

“Petrificus Totalus.”

But the spell was already done.

Her body rigid and her heart cold.