{ tales from the wizarding world: the disappearing apothecary }

They say there is an apothecary in Beijing that no one has seen, and those who step foot into it come out with no recollection of it at all.

The store front is drab and inconspicuous with upturned eaves that passersby seek shelter under when it rains. The windows are fogged over so no one can see in. Droplets of water tumble gracefully like ballerinas from the roof, but what people never notice is how they always dissipate before they reach the ground.

They never notice.

The shop is run by an elegant woman draped in fabrics of varying shades of red. She’s older than she looks—much, much older. The Philosopher’s Stone is but a child’s toy to her in her dabbles with immortality. Herbs and spices are her real treasures. 

Throughout her life she has taken on many characters, but her favourite had been the exiled imperial concubine. The life had been good, it had been interesting. It’s hard to find anything interesting after so many centuries endured, but the frivolities of the palace had captured her attention like the beating wings of butterflies once used to. It was a shame the emperor’s disposition toward sorcery had been so easily distorted, but she had the apothecary now, which was fulfilling in an entirely new way.

The shop changes location every day; it disappears and reappears without disturbing so much as a mouse. There are shelves upon shelves of jars. The aisles stretch on and on, beyond what is possible for a shop that looks so intimate from the outside. When visitors ask how that is, she just winks and says, “It’s magic,” and they simply accept it as fact.

(insp)