Closure

This has to work, I thought. It just has to. But after spreading out the instant film on the dining table, I could only laugh to stave off the incoming sobs. In those half-developed pictures, there were not only no hints regarding my parents, but no traces of any magic whatsoever. No signs of alchemical experiments in Father’s study, of culinary sorcery in Mother’s kitchen, nor of beginners’ charms practice in my bedroom. It was as if the magic of the past had been overwritten or sealed away, hidden from my scientific eye set on concrete answers. In those still images, we were just a normal family: Father chatted with his friends, Mother served dinner to the guests, I ran around the garden under Greg’s watchful eye.