Candies with any taste

The box sat on the coffee table — slightly battered, with purple-and-yellow paint flaking off at the corners. Ron had hauled it out of George’s storage closet along with a batch of defective Blundering Breakfasts. “George said: ‘New formula. Genuinely any flavours,’” Ron said, setting the box on the table and flopping onto the rug, stretching his legs toward the fire. “So, shall we test if marketing’s lying?” Hermione looked at the box with that particular expression she wore whenever something dubious — from a common-sense perspective — was being attempted in the house. “Ronald, last time you spent half an hour rinsing your mouth out after ‘earwax.’” Ginny, perched on the arm of Harry’s chair, was the first to reach into the box. She fished out a bright green bean, popped it into her mouth, and crunched. “Lime. Just lime. Almost disappointingly normal.” Harry picked out a golden one. He twirled it between his fingers — the sweet gleamed in the firelight like a tiny Snitch. “Well, in for a Knut.” He tossed it into his mouth. Braced for the worst — for rotten egg, for shoe polish, for anything his years of experience with Weasley products had taught him to expect. But the worst didn’t happen. Instead, he was overwhelmed. The taste was… something strange. Harry smelled old wood and port wine that had evaporated from oak casks a century ago. He heard rain drumming on cobblestones beyond a grimy window. He felt under his fingers a rough tabletop, scratched for some reason with the names of witches and wizards who’d sat there hundreds of years before. The Leaky Cauldron. He was standing there — eleven years old, in clothes three sizes too big. Hagrid had ordered him soup, and steam rose from the bowl, mingling with the smell of wet wool from the giant’s coat. And Harry was staring at the door to the inner courtyard — that very same brick door — and shaking in terror that it wouldn’t open. That this would all turn out to be a mistake, a dream, someone’s stupid joke. The taste melted on his tongue, carrying away the echo of rain. Harry opened his eyes. The room was swimming. “Harry?” Ginny touched his shoulder. “What? Vomit-flavoured again?” “No,” he shook his head. “The Leaky Cauldron.” The room went quiet. The logs crackled in the fireplace. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked — the children, thank Merlin, were asleep. “What do you mean, the Leaky Cauldron?” Ron asked, having forgotten to finish chewing his own sweet (cabbage, as it turned out). “Exactly that,” Harry said, rubbing the bridge of his nose under his glasses. “I just ate the taste of the Leaky Cauldron. It had… everything. Dust. Rain. Soup. Hagrid.” Slowly, as if afraid to break the spell, Ron reached for the box. He took a red sweet — it looked harmless, almost like a Muggle jelly baby. He took a bite. And froze. The corner of his mouth twitched upward — slowly, incredulously — and then broke into a wide grin that crinkled the skin around his eyes. Ron only smiled like that in two situations: when he won at chess, and when he looked at his beloved children. “The Gryffindor common room,” he breathed. “The red upholstery. And the soot from the fireplace — remember? No matter how much we cleaned it, it still smelled of smoke. And someone was always blowing up a Potions textbook right before homework was due.” “And you sat on the windowsill pretending to study for Transfiguration when you were really finishing off a pie you’d nicked from the kitchens,” Ginny added, and her voice held no trace of her usual reproach. Only warmth. “That’s impossible,” Hermione shook her head. “Sweets can’t reproduce abstract memories. It violates the basic principles of flavour charms. That’s… that’s not even a metaphor, it’s some kind of neurolinguistic—” “Hermione,” Ginny interrupted, “just eat a bean.” Hermione pressed her lips together. Hermione Granger’s problem had always been that she needed either to understand or to verify. She chose a beige one, the most unappetising-looking of the lot. She closed her eyes and put it in her mouth. And gasped. Before her rose shelves. Tall shelves stretching up into darkness beyond the reach of the torchlight. She smelled leather bindings, old parchment, and something else — ink, perhaps. The Restricted Section. She was standing there, thirteen years old, clutching a torch (foolish, of course — *Lumos* would have been easier, but then she’d have been spotted). Behind her loomed a shadow — Harry under the Invisibility Cloak, his warm breath near her shoulder. Somewhere in the distance, floorboards creaked under Filch’s cautious footsteps. Her heart was hammering in her throat. And she was terrified. And she felt that the whole world — right there, hidden among those shelves — was just an arm’s reach away. Hermione opened her eyes. A tear rolled down her cheek, which she immediately wiped away, pretending it was from the fireplace smoke. “The Restricted Section,” she said hoarsely. “I could smell books that no one had opened in two hundred years.” Ginny silently took a yellow sweet. Popped it into her mouth, squeezed her eyes shut. And smiled — not widely, but in a particular way, just the corners of her lips. “First snow on the Quidditch pitch,” she said. “The smell of wet grass and fresh paint on a Nimbus. Wind whistling past your ears, and you’re flying so fast that tears stream from your eyes — and you don’t even notice. Because the Snitch is ahead. And nothing else exists.” She looked at Harry. He was looking back at her — and he seemed to see not a grown woman with a tired face after a day’s work, but that girl with the red ponytail who’d crashed into him on the Quidditch pitch and said, “Out of my way, Potter.” “How do they do it?” Ron whispered. “This isn’t food. It’s not even magic in the usual sense. It’s…” “It’s us,” said Harry. The box sat on the table. Inside, the remaining sweets rattled around — yellow, green, purple, spotted and striped. An entire life, portioned out into tiny sugar spheres. “What do you think,” Hermione said, peering into the box, “what does the Room of Requirement taste like when you’re holding a lesson in it, hoping Umbridge won’t find us?” “What does the changing room taste like after a winning match, when everyone’s shouting so loud the walls shake?” Ginny picked up. “And what about a kiss in the corridor when we were hiding from the prefects?” Ron chuckled. “Bet it tastes like mint gum.” “Wrong,” Ginny stuck out her tongue at him. “It tastes like the fear of getting caught and absolute happiness at the same time.” Ron reached into the box and pulled out two at once. “Here’s what we’ll do,” he said. “Everyone eats one more. And we’ll leave one bean. For a rainy day.” A log cracked in the fireplace. A shower of sparks flew up. Four sweets disappeared into four mouths almost simultaneously. And four adults — with wrinkles, bills, Ministry jobs, and children upstairs — ceased to be adults for a few seconds. The taste melted away. Reality returned. But somewhere at the bottom of the Bertie Bott’s box, one single sweet remained — purple with yellow spots. For the darkest day. In case the memory ever started to fade. But for now — they were here. Home. Together. Ron suddenly grimaced and coughed. “Urgh! I think I ate Moaning Myrtle’s toilet troll after all.” “Serves you right,” said three voices in unison. A few years later, Harry will eat the last candy, the one with the purple and yellow spots. And he would remember the day he received the letter to the school, his ticket to the magical world that had started it all.