Facing Danger
Chapter 42: A Whole New World (Year 6)
By Anne B. Walsh
Author Notes:
Lyrics belong to Disney, not to me.
Crystal Huley, who earned her spending money working weekends and vacations at Ottery St. Catchpole's tiny paper shop, woke with a start. The weather was warm even for the beginning of July, and she'd left her bedroom window open, so why was the faint night breeze suddenly blocked? Why wasn't the moonlight forming its proper square on the floor? And what was making that noise? It was hushed and breathy, almost like… almost like…
She turned towards the window and glared at the person leaning in across its sill, one hand across his mouth to stifle his snickers. "What are you doing here?" she hissed.
"Came to see you, what else?" Moonlight sparked off red hair and a wide grin across a freckled face as George Weasley beamed at her. "Beautiful night out here. Care to come out with me?"
"How are you doing that?" Crystal asked suspiciously, sitting up in bed.
"Doing what?"
"Does that innocent look fool anybody who knows you?"
"Not really, but it's always worth a try."
"I'm sure. Now answer the question. How did you get up here and how are you not falling back down?"
"Come and see." George waved a hand vaguely out the window. "You'll like it."
Crystal eyed her not-quite-a-boyfriend with suspicion. "Try it, you'll like it." Where have I heard that before?
But in the year or so since the daughter of a former sailor and the son of "those strange folks on the hill" had been cautiously feeling out what they wanted to, and could, be to one another, they had been alone together plenty of times. If George's intentions had been bad, he probably would have revealed them by now.
In which case I would have showed him what my daddy taught me. And I still can, if he starts doing anything I don't like.
Besides, he's piqued my curiosity.
"I have to be home by sunrise."
"No problem." George slithered back out of the window, did something complicated with his hands and feet, and then stood up—
On what?
Crystal approached the window with care, flushing as she came into the light and saw George's eyes widen at her pajamas. Of all the nights to try on the silk harem-girl ensemble Mum got me for my birthday…
Two more steps brought her close enough to see what George was standing on, and her clothes suddenly seemed more appropriate.
It really should be a carpet, said the tiny corner of her brain which wasn't stunned by the revelation of just how strange "those strange folks on the hill" were. And he should be wearing a turban. The robes look okay, though.
Balancing without apparent effort on the handle of his hovering broomstick, George reached a hand back through her window and smiled at her with his most winning look. "Do you trust me?" he asked quietly.
This is insane, Crystal's mind yammered at her, this is absolutely insane, it has to be a dream…
But dream or no dream, she knew the right answer to that question.
"Yes," she said, and laid her hand in his.
Up in the Weasleys' orchard, the ambushers waited.
"Are you sure about this?" one of them muttered to another. "He's an awfully good shot."
"He won't be looking for us to start with, and he can't see those once the charms go active." The second ambusher's eyes swept the tops of the nearby trees, where the third and fourth members of the team were setting up the spells they'd specially filled the day before. "And if he takes one of them out anyway, well, that's why we brought four."
"I thought we brought four so we'd get the surround effect."
"That too."
"Both of you shut up," said a tinny-sounding voice from a tarnished mirror hanging at the first ambusher's belt. "They're on their way."
"Fine, fine," grumbled the first ambusher, retreating under cover. The second merely blew a kiss to the mirror, then raised a hand and waved frantically to the two members of the team who were still exposed. One of them began to clamber down, while the other simply pushed off and coasted to the ground. Within a few moments, the clearing where the Weasleys played pick-up Quidditch in the summertime appeared as deserted as it should have been.
The second ambusher smiled coolly, peering out of concealment to watch the unmistakable shape of a double-loaded broomstick zooming closer every second.
Appearances are such deceptive things.
"Magic is real?" Crystal knew it was at least the tenth time she'd asked the same question, but it wasn't one she wanted to leave open for debate. "Unicorns and dragons and wizards?"
"Oh my," George agreed with a snicker. "There's a herd of unicorns living in the Forbidden Forest at my school up north. Former school, I should say. We've left now, Fred and I. Going into business for ourselves. As for dragons, there's a colony in Scotland and one or two in Wales—my brother works at one of those, comes home every so often missing all his hair. And wizards?" He squeezed her hands where they met around his chest. "You're riding with one."
"And is your whole family—?"
"Every one of us." George wove the broomstick deftly through the trees of the grove the kids in Ottery St. Catchpole called the Haunted Orchard. "Dad's a wizard, Mum's a witch, and there's seven of us kids, and not one of us a Squib."
"Squib? Is that what you call…" The words tasted bitter, but she had to get them out now or she never would. "People like me?"
George shook his head. "Your sort are Muggles. No magic at all, don't even know it exists. Squibs are born to a magical family but not magic themselves. Hard lines on them, but it's not like there's anything we can do. Though if Mrs. Letha's right—friend of the family, she is, and a Healer who's looked into this some—there might be." He brought the broom to a halt in the center of the clearing they'd come into and turned to face her, sitting sidesaddle on the broom's handle with his legs dangling off the opposite side from hers. "Some wizards think it's wrong, dirty even, to marry anyone but another wizard. Or witch, I should say, let's not get into that whole mess."
The uncomfortable expression on his face made Crystal giggle, but then it turned serious again. "Trouble is, magic runs in families, and there's only so many Muggleborns—people who have magic when their parents didn't, just came out of nowhere—and those same wizards think they're dirty too. Stupid bastards."
Crystal ran through the implications of the scenario he'd outlined in her head. "Inbreeding?" she said. "Is that what causes, what was it, Squibs?"
"Seems likely to me." George slid an arm around her waist. "So it ought to be pretty easy to avoid having a Squib kid. But none of that sort are willing to accept that. They're all too interested in their stupid 'purity.'" He grinned. "And I do mean stupid. Half the ones who've been marrying their cousins for all these years are thicker than two short wands. And a good percentage of the ones who can manage to count to eleven without taking their shoes off are psychotic."
"You seem nice enough," Crystal said, investigating the texture of the invisible cushion on the broomstick with her free hand. "And you might be thicker than one short wand, but I don't think you're thicker than two. I wouldn’t know. I've never seen a short wand."
"Have you ever seen a long one?"
"No."
His grin turned distinctly scandalous. "Want to?"
She felt her face heat as she realized she'd been suckered. "Depends on how you mean it," she said indistinctly, looking away.
"We'll start family-friendly, then." George's robes rustled, and a foot-long wooden rod, slender and polished from its rounded tip to the grip carved into its other end, was deposited in her lap. "One long wand. Fairly long, that is, I've seen longer, but mine's on the upper end as far as length goes."
Telling her dirty mind to get lost, Crystal peered closely at the wand. "So how long is it?"
Judging by George's face, he was having the same thoughts she was, but he plowed on nonetheless. "Twelve inches exactly. Made from ash and phoenix tail feather. Fred's is the same length and core, but hickory instead."
"How do you pick that out?" Crystal let her fingers trail along the smooth surface. "Or do you?"
George shook his head. "They say the wand chooses the wizard, not the other way around. When you try them out, there's always one that likes you best—here, I'll show you what that means—"
His hand went for the grip, but Crystal's was already there.
"Ready," the first ambusher breathed, handing the bag of lozenges back to the third. "Call it."
"On three," the second mouthed to the fourth, who raised one of the longer wands George had seen and aimed it carefully at the first of the spells mounted on the treetops. "One, two—"
Eyes met. Lips touched tentatively, then clung. One of them was about to break it off first, and Crystal wasn't sure for the life of her which one it was, when a burst of music made her gasp.
Almost made her, that was. Actively gasping in the middle of a kiss which had become as involved as this one somehow had would have had some unpleasant consequences. Fortunately, she was able to stop her impulse in time, and George pulled her a little closer while the music swelled, then let her go and winked one dark eye. "Hold on!" he shouted, spun himself back into flying position, and leaned forward.
Crystal barely got her arms around him in time as the broom rocketed skyward. The back of her mind noticed that the music was following them, and recognized the song just before a strong young tenor began to sing the lyrics.
What could be more appropriate?
I can show you the world
Shining, shimmering, splendid
Tell me, Princess, now when did you last
Let your heart decide
They were flying lower now, zipping past darkened houses and rustling the leaves of trees. Idly she wondered why no one was outside to see where the music was coming from, but reasoned that the same magic which was capable of building an actual flying broomstick could probably keep sounds from being heard by anyone they weren't meant for.
I can open your eyes
Take you wonder by wonder
George's half-heard, half-felt chuckle was her only warning as he threw the broom into a fast climb followed by a barrel roll, then shot below an outstretched tree branch so close that Crystal could have reached out and picked herself a twig.
Over, sideways, and under
On a magic carpet ride
A whole new world
They rose into the clearer air, letting her look down on the roads and houses below. She had to crane her neck to find her own home, and shook her head in wonder at how tiny it looked from here.
A new fantastic point of view
No one to tell us no
Or where to go
Or say we're only dreaming
A sweet mezzo-soprano took over the song, and Crystal found herself whispering along with the words.
A whole new world
A dazzling place, I never knew
But when I'm way up here
It's crystal clear
George half-turned to grin at her, and she stuck out her tongue.
That now I'm in a whole new world with you
The tenor came back in over the end of the line.
Now I'm in a whole new world with you
The mezzo returned the favor, and George guided the broom still higher, pointing silently at the beauty of stars on the river.
Unbelievable sights
Indescribable feelings
Soaring, tumbling, freewheeling
Through an endless diamond sky
Crystal's original suspicion hardened into near-certainty. This whole night had been carefully planned to pander to her secret (though obviously not secret enough) love of Disney. She didn't know how George had planned for her outfit, though if he had this kind of magic available for a simple midnight visit to her house, she'd bet he was capable of spying on her to see what she wore to bed. Or if she was wearing anything at all.
Somehow the thought wasn't as repulsive as it would have been with most of the males of her acquaintance....
A whole new world
She was starting to feel overwhelmed, both by the flight and by her own thoughts, but the tenor's chiding tone stopped her in mid-motion.
Don't you dare close your eyes
The mezzo summed up her thoughts about the situation perfectly.
A hundred thousand things to see
The tenor's tone warmed as he made the promise.
Hold your breath, it gets better
George winked at her and sent the broom into a dive, and the mezzo's clear, ecstatic high notes followed them down.
I'm like a shooting star
I've come so far
I can't go back to where I used to be
Every turn a surprise
They tumbled through a complete circle, then began to climb again.
Every moment red-letter
The two voices blended in harmony, and Crystal discovered the reasoning behind her earlier lack of revulsion at George seeing her undressed. George was... not innocent, the word was laughably inapplicable to him in its usual context, but focused. He had things he cared about and things he wanted to do, and sneaking around leering at girls who didn't want to be leered at wasn't on either list. If he'd caught an eyeful or two of her naked body, he might have been cheerfully appreciative, but he wouldn't have been creepy about it.
I'll chase them anywhere
There's time to spare
Let me share this whole new world with you
And whatever we tell men, or ourselves, on that subject, there was never a woman born who didn't like to be appreciated.
The song wound towards its finale, tenor and mezzo echoing lines back and forth, tenderly interweaving words over each other's held notes.
A whole new world
(A whole new world)
George put the broom into hover and turned back to face her. The focus she'd just been thinking about now centered on her, and Crystal swallowed once.
That's where we'll be
(That's where we'll be)
What the hell. Every girl says she wants to be the most important thing in his world. I'll give it a go.
A thrilling chase
(A wondrous place)
She leaned forward into his kiss as the two voices blended to finish the song.
For you and me
The four ambushers slipped down the hill and back to their field base, where their back-up and transport team awaited to escort them home. The operation had been completely successful.
This did not help them when they were discovered on their way up the stairs to their control room.
"Sneaking out at this hour of the night!" The voice was precisely calculated for maximum effect on the wrongdoers, while allowing most of the occupants of the house to continue their slumbers. "Running off to heaven knows where, without leaving so much as a note!"
Ron was cringing, and Draco looked as though he'd like to put his fingers in his ears. Ginny's arms were folded, but her defiant expression was wearing thinner by the second. Hermione had her back against the wall of the stairs, seemingly trying to push herself through it and disappear.
"And you!" Mrs. Weasley turned to Charlie and Tonks, who gave her near-identical smiles of hopeful pleading. "Helping them! Have you no sense at all? There are Death Eaters out there, you could have been attacked—"
"We'd have known," said a voice from the first floor hallway.
Mrs. Weasley lifted her chin at the speaker. "Oh, really?"
Harry came down a few stairs, holding up a tarnished rectangle of glass. "Two-way mirrors," he said, pointing at the matching article hanging from Draco's belt. "We were watching them every second, so we'd have been able to get them help if they ran into anything Tonks and Charlie couldn't handle."
"Which isn't likely," added Neville from behind Harry, Luna and Meghan beside him. "Death Eaters prefer working alone, or in small groups. No more than four."
Ron straightened up, emboldened by his friends' arrival. "We could probably take four of them ourselves if we had to," he began, then wilted under his mother's stern look. "Well, we could," he muttered.
"Beside the point, all of it." Mrs. Weasley looked reproachfully at them. "I thought you had more sense than this. It seems I was wrong. So I want your promise—all of you," she added, looking up the stairs at the other four Warriors. "No more gallivanting off in the middle of the night for fun and games. No leaving the house at all, unless it's with an adult. A real adult, not one of these overgrown delinquents." She twitched her head towards her second son and his wife, who bristled at the description but subsided when Charlie kicked her in the ankle. "Honestly, I'd thought after last Christmas you would have learned something."
Hermione flinched away from the words, and Ron drew himself up in indignation. Ginny elbowed him in the stomach and stepped in front of him while he was still gasping for breath. "We promise, Mum," she said, glancing up and down the stairs to make sure she had the approval of the whole Pride, however grudgingly it might be given in some cases. "We won't do this again."
"Good." Mrs. Weasley sighed wearily and massaged the back of her neck with one hand. "It's not that I don't understand," she said in a gentler tone. "You're young. You don't want to be cooped up here all the time. But you can't just run off whenever you feel like it. It isn't safe."
"We understand," said Harry, giving Neville a significant look. The shorter boy nodded and waved Luna and Meghan back down the hall towards the Pride's den room, where they'd been watching the success of the ambushers through Harry's two-way mirror, before beckoning Draco and Ron, now with Neenie draped around his shoulders, up the stairs behind Harry.
Mrs. Weasley gazed at him. "Do you?" she asked, then gave herself a little shake. "No, that's silly. If anyone your age can understand it, Harry, you would. Do try and explain it to the rest of them if you can, though it's not a thing that's easy to explain..."
"No, it's not," Harry agreed as Ginny joined him at the top of the stairs. "But I'll try."
"Thank you, dear." Mrs. Weasley smiled. "Good night, everyone."
A round of "Good nights" later, the Warriors of the Pride settled grumpily onto the cushioned floor of their den.
"Why did you agree?" Draco demanded of Ginny. "You know she's going to call any adult who would take us out of here once in a while another 'overgrown delinquent,' and that means we'll be stuck in here until term starts again!"
"You weren't listening very carefully, were you?" Luna reached up with one bare foot and tweaked a strand of Draco's hair between her toes, making him color and the rest of the Pride snigger. "She wasn't upset that we went out, or even that we went out with only Charlie and Tonks. She was upset that we went out without telling her first."
"She's being a dictator," griped Ron, scratching Neenie's chin.
"This is something new?" Ginny quipped. "I agreed because if I hadn't, she'd have slapped us all with locator spells and made us stay in. Luna's right. All Mum really wants is to know where we are, and that we're as safe as we can be. And once she cools down some from panicking over us being gone, she'll realize we were safe tonight. We never left the wards around the Burrow, and even at Christmas..." She gave a small shudder of her own. "Even then, they had to lure us out of the wards. They couldn't get in themselves."
"What did she mean about you understanding, Harry?" asked Neville, idly spinning the selection chamber on his unloaded potion piece. "Why you?"
Harry looked around the room. "Were any of you there when she went after the boggart last summer?" he asked. "I mean there in the room, not down in the kitchen or off someplace else?" Shaking heads greeted him. "I didn't think so. I was. That's what she meant, or part of it."
"I remember she had a hard time with it," said Ron. "Mr. Moony ended up getting rid of it, didn't he?"
Neenie nodded, as did Meghan. "He said she had so much trouble because it had a lot of alternate forms it could take," the younger girl said. "So when she tried Riddikulus, it would just change its shape."
"It did have a lot of them, but they were all the same." Harry let his eyes unfocus and drifted back to that evening, the hairs on his arms lifting in deference to the memory. "People she loves. Your brothers. Our families. Us." His own features, pale and totally still, glasses hanging precariously by one earpiece, before Moony's calm incantation sent the boggart fleeing for its un-life. "Dead."
The silence in the den room was total.
"That's what she thinks about when she wakes up in the middle of the night," Harry went on after a few breaths. "That's what she worries about, every minute of every day. She's seen it happen before. All our parents have. Their friends, their family, people they liked or loved, who didn't get a chance to say goodbye. They just never came home. And it isn't something you 'get over.'" His eyes met Draco's, then Neenie's, then Meghan's, thoughts of Andromeda Tonks clear in all of them. "You go on, but you have to go on with it. There's no other way. Not unless you forget those people." He laughed a little, weakly. "And I should have thought of all this before we agreed to help out tonight, shouldn't I?"
"Being the alpha doesn't mean you're the only one who gets to think," Draco said. "We all should have thought of it. I did think of it, but I thought staying within the Burrow's wards and being with Charlie and Tonks all the time would be enough."
"Enough? For Mum in a 'my precious babies' mood?" Ron guffawed, raising a mild hiss of protest from Neenie at the noise. "You can get down if you're so fussy," he told her. She smacked him on the nose with a paw. "Or you can do that."
"So we didn't consider Mum carefully enough, and now we're semi-grounded." Ginny rolled onto her stomach and arched her back to bring her head against her heels. "Not the worst punishment we've ever had. At least she agreed to take our word, instead of hauling out the locators right away."
"She knows we keep our promises," Luna pointed out. "If we were Fred and George, she would have used the spells."
"If we were Fred and George, we would be of age already," said Meghan, a distinct pout in place. "And we would have our own shop and our own flat and not have to worry about parents."
"And we wouldn't be ourselves, which would be more of a pity for some of us than others," said Neville in an offhand tone.
Meghan looked at him sideways, unable to decide if she'd just been complimented, insulted, or both.
"All right, enough." Harry held up both hands. "We're not Fred and George. We are the Pride. We're also on parole inside the house, which won't be as bad as it was last summer because there's no more massive cleaning to do and there are some unused rooms if we have to get away from each other. And there's always summer homework if we get desperate."
"Have to be pretty bloody desperate," said Ron. "But I see what you mean. It's not like we wouldn’t be stuck mostly inside wherever we were, with a war going on and all. Mum just made it official."
"As she so loves to do," murmured Ginny.
Neenie flowed down from Ron's shoulders and changed back. "Getting our summer homework done early might be a good idea," she began, and waved her hands irritably at the chorus of boos and cat-calls. "Would you let me finish!"
Harry stuck two fingers into his mouth. The room went silent. "Floor's yours," he said, taking them out again.
"As I was saying." Hermione favored both Ron and Draco with one of her patented withering glares. "If we finish our homework now, while we're still in trouble for sneaking out, then we'll have it done by the time Neville's and Harry's birthdays come... and if we've been good until then, we can ask to have their party at home, and make the strengthening of the wards that will need an excuse to keep going back for the rest of the summer."
"Sneaky," said Draco. "I like it."
Ron slid an arm around Hermione. "I knew there was a reason I loved you."
"You mean besides my putting up with your moods?"
"And on that note," said Harry as Ron pulled Hermione into his lap and attempted to tickle her, getting a nip on the thumb from Neenie for his pains, "the business portion of this Den is adjourned. Who's for Exploding Snap?"
Crystal tried to keep her eyes from bugging out and her jaw from dropping, but it was hard when every step brought a new wonder into view. Cauldrons and owls, wands and broomsticks, and everywhere people in long robes, looking as strangely at her T-shirt and jean shorts as she would have at their clothing on the streets of London or Ottery St. Catchpole. George, towing her down the street by one hand, seemed as unimpressed by the spectacle as though he saw it every day.
Which he must, since he said last night he and his brother have a shop here now. I wonder where—
An enormous yellow-on-purple sign in a window ahead caught her attention.
Oh. There it is.
She mouthed the words to herself and began to giggle. George looked over his shoulder with a grin. "Like it? We figured we'd do our bit for morale, keep everyone as happy as possible."
"Except the people whose friends give them the stuff," Crystal retorted. "That's just cruel."
"Hey, we figured out an antidote for it."
"Which you'll sell at double the price of the original formula, right?"
George sighed happily. "I knew you were a keeper. Speaking of which, don't let me forget, I've got to introduce you to my little brother and sister at some point, but for right now come on up and say hi to Fred, and meet his girl and our other two friends who're helping us out with this."
A tap of his wand unlocked the door, and they hurried through the colorful shop and into the back room, up a flight of stairs, and into a narrow hallway with a door off either side. George knocked at the left-hand one, and it was opened after a few seconds by his twin. "Luck?" he asked, then noticed Crystal. "Luck indeed."
"That's right." George waved his brother back and led Crystal inside, and Fred shut the door behind them. "Who should I be hexing for that little surprise in the orchard? You, Lee, or both?"
"Why should you be hexing us?" asked a dreadlocked boy lounging on a sofa, transforming one of his bare feet into what looked like a dog's paw and back again. "It worked, didn't it?"
George rolled his eyes. "Crystal Huley, Lee Jordan," he said, waving at the two of them. "My graceless brother you already know."
"Graceless indeed," Fred began, but a tall girl, as blonde as Crystal herself, opened the door of a far room before he could continue.
"Who's here?" she asked, then spotted George and Crystal. "I see all went well."
"Did you expect anything else?" George preened. "Crystal, this is Danielle..." He made a strained face.
"Reading, like the city," Danielle finished for him. "Honestly, I've only been going out with your brother for nearly a year now." She shook her head and turned her attention to Crystal. "Are you any good with getting people to think clearly about things?" she asked.
"Um. Maybe?"
"Maybe is better than no. Come in here."
Crystal looked at George, who shrugged. Up to you, he seemed to be saying. She considered it for a moment, then crossed to the door, which Danielle vacated for her and closed behind her.
A third girl lay across the bed in this room, her shoulders occasionally heaving and her mass of long dark hair obscuring her face. Danielle sat down on the bottom of the bed. "Maya, sweetie," she said gently, "this is Crystal, George's new girlfriend. This is Maya, if you missed it," she added to Crystal. "She's with Lee, and she's got a little problem."
"No, I do not have a little problem!" Maya rolled onto her back and sat up, revealing a golden-tan face which was probably quite attractive when it wasn't red-eyed and blotchy from crying. "I have a big problem, and you're just pretending it's little because you want me to stop worrying about it!"
"Why don't we let Crystal decide what kind of problem you have?" Danielle suggested, flicking her wand to slide the desk chair out for Crystal. "She hasn't heard any of this before, so she'll be impartial."
Maya sighed theatrically. "Fine. Fine. Where do I start?"
"My name is..." Danielle prompted.
"Har har." Taking a deep breath, Maya pushed her hair back from her face. "My name is Maya Pritchard, and in January I did something very brave and very stupid..."
Crystal listened awestruck to a story which certainly merited both those adjectives, and to all the various aftereffects from that one painful moment of Maya's being bitten by a werewolf. She wasn't sure exactly what a real werewolf was like, as opposed to the variety of fictional ones she'd heard about, but the detail of the slumber party being on the full moon told her one thing and Maya's obvious hatred of that night told her another. Her fingernails cut into her palms when Maya's parents admitted they had agreed to the attack, and she had to physically stop herself from cheering when they were arrested and Maya's aunt and uncle stepped in.
"They're who I'm worried about now, really," Maya said with a sigh. "Them and Graham and Bernie. I love them so much, they've given me everything I have now, and all I've given back to them is trouble. People throw eggs and rocks at their house, there've been death threats, someone even burned a wolf in effigy on their front lawn..."
"But you're not living there, are you?" Crystal asked, looking around at the obvious signs of occupancy in the bedroom. "Did you ever?"
Maya shook her head. "That doesn't matter to these people," she said darkly. "Uncle Par and Aunt Voni accept me, and that's all their kind cares about."
"Maybe it's not." Crystal thought back through the story. "Didn't you say your dad was some kind of big shot for the bad guys, the ones who don't like Muggles?"
"He is—was," Maya corrected herself with a grimace and a half-hearted giggle. "Why?"
"And your uncle finally got the better of him over you," Crystal went on without answering. "And then joined the good guys full-time, instead of sitting on the sidelines."
"He and Aunt Voni both," Maya agreed. "And Graham is training with us at school."
"So maybe somebody who was a friend of your dad's is using you as an excuse to go after your aunt and uncle." Crystal nodded firmly. "That's got to be the answer. This isn't about you at all. You're just a scapegoat, a convenient reason why 'normal people' should hate your relatives, probably to get somebody on board who isn't so sure they want to be with the baddies. Maybe a bunch of somebodies. This isn't your fault."
Maya's face was starting to clear. "That... makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you, Crystal. I feel so much better now. I was thinking I was the reason they need to leave their house and move to somewhere safer, but you're right. If I wasn't around, there'd be some other phony reason why people were going after them. You're right. Thank you."
"You're welcome." Crystal squeezed her new friend's hand, intercepting a broad wink from Danielle. "Happy to help."
Magical people, it seemed, had just as many problems as Muggle people.
And they're in the middle of a war. Why am I here again?
Even as she asked herself the question, herself answered it with a snort of amusement. Because George is here and not about to leave, and he may have magic but he doesn't always have common sense. Besides, if they lose we're all screwed anyway, so I might as well see what I can do to help.
And, I have to admit, because it's real magic and you're not getting me away from it with anything short of—what was it, a Beater's bat?
"If you want to pay me back," she said with a chuckle, "maybe you can explain to me just what 'Quidditch' is, and what it means that 'Gryffindor took the Cup two hundred seventy to forty'—thanks, of course, to George's 'magnificent Beating', and unless that means something different than I think it does, I ought to be on my way out of here as fast as my legs can take me!"
Both girls burst into laughter, and Crystal joined them, remembering something her mother had told her.
"Always laugh where your man can hear you. It keeps him nervous, wondering what he's done that's so funny."
And I'm going to need every bit of help I can get to keep this one nervous, oh yes I am.
But it will all be worth it in the end.
The "somewhere safer" to which Par and Voni Pritchard moved their family the very next day was originally intended to be a safe house in the country, but Brian Li happened to spot the house's location while he was assembling information for his next mission and immediately sent Remus a message that it was no more than a mile from one of the larger werewolf camps he'd visited. There was no guarantee the family would be recognized there, but then again, there was no guarantee they wouldn't, and Aletha, Danger, and Molly settled the whole thing between them by cleaning out and fixing up two of the unused rooms on the third floor in the time it took the male members of the Order to agree that they had a problem.
"Voni didn't work outside the home, so with us to keep an eye on Graham and Bernie for her, she can take on Order duties full-time," Danger said. "She's dependable and good with her wand, which is something we desperately need in a full-timer."
"Besides, with the crowd we have around here, two more kids are hardly going to be noticeable," said Sirius, leaning back in his chair and tweaking one of Meghan's braids.
"Dadfoot!"
Graham, as it turned out, was the less noticeable of the pair, simply because he was seldom around. Maya slept at Lee's flat in Diagon Alley, but most mornings she (and Lee, and Fred, and George) arrived at Grimmauld Place for breakfast, then departed again with Graham in tow for Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, where there was always work for willing hands and wands, even ones belonging to a thirteen-year-old.
Meghan, held by the Pride's promise to Mrs. Weasley, griped under her breath about not being allowed to go along, but Graham made up for his frequent absences by joining her in her homework sessions every few days and being startlingly helpful. Clearly he was learning more than jokes from his cousin, Lee, and the twins.
Bernie, on the other hand, spent the first few days of her new existence in a foul mood. She'd liked her home, she'd had friends there, and here, as nice as everybody was, it was the nice of the big kids to the little one, or the grownups to the baby, and that wasn't what she wanted. She wanted people on her own level, and she wanted them now.
Her wish was granted from a source no one expected.
"You go first!"
"No, you go first!"
Bernie sat up straight in the big chair in the bedroom she shared with Graham, dropping the book she'd been pretending to read on the floor. "Who's there?" she said loudly, sliding down and looking towards the open door. The voices didn't sound like grownups...
The speakers sidled into view, and Bernie stared. She had seen house-elves before, a few of her friends' families had them, but those house-elves had been almost as big as she was, and these were tiny, not much bigger than a cat. And they were wearing clothes. Clothes made out of old dish towels and couch covers, maybe, but still clothes. It didn't make any sense!
"Who are you?" she asked.
"My name is Echo, Mistress," said the little elf with blue eyes, blinking them a few times rapidly. "My brother is Cissus. We is being twins."
"You're twins?" Echo was wearing a skirt, so Bernie guessed she must be a girl, and Cissus, being her brother, was of course a boy. "How old are you?"
"Five months, Mistress," said Cissus. "Which is like five years for humans."
"You're five? Really?" Bernie sat down on the floor and patted two spots beside her. "I'm six—I didn't think there was anybody else my age around here!" Something occurred to her. "Why're you calling me Mistress?"
"You is human," Echo murmured, sitting down tentatively in one of the places Bernie had indicated. "Humans always is being our Masters and Mistresses."
"Not this time," Bernie declared. "Not me. I don't know how to Mistress, and I don't want to learn. I just want friends." She smiled at both elflets, and Echo's returning smile was stronger than her voice had been, while Cissus frankly grinned at her. "Will you be my friends?"
"Yes!" said Cissus immediately, and Echo nodded.
"Good." Bernie's smile broadened. "Now we have to do something to make sure everybody knows we're friends. Something just a little bit bad. Something like... like..."
"Like sneaking up on Kreacher," Echo blurted, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
"Yeah!" Cissus seconded. "We can sneak up on Kreacher and spy on him!"
"Kreacher?" Bernie frowned in thought. "Is that the mean nasty grown-up house-elf who lives under the water tank?"
Both elflets nodded. "His Master told him stay in there after he had a fight with our daddy," Cissus said solemnly. "He doesn't like his Master, or our daddy or mummy, because both of them are free elves that got clothes from their old Masters."
Bernie's frown deepened as she tried to figure this one out. "But if he doesn't like his Master..."
"He thinks his Master is being a bad wizard," Echo said in a hushed tone, glancing over her shoulder. "He believes all wizards should be hating Muggles."
"Pbbbbt to him," Bernie declared, blowing a raspberry in the direction of the water tank, several floors below. "He's stupid. Let's go spy on him and listen to him be stupid, and then throw a water bomb on him and run away and laugh."
Both elflets agreed that this course of action sounded highly agreeable to them.
"'Scuse me."
Sirius looked up—or, rather, down—from his typewriter into the face of a small, dark-haired girl flanked by a pair of elflets. "Yes, and what can I do for you?" he asked gravely.
"Sorry to bother you when you're working," Bernie recited all in one breath. "But we were spying on Kreacher—"
"You don't want to do that," Sirius interrupted, stifling a groan. Great, what kind of language did they hear that I'm going to have to account to Voni and Winky for? "Kreacher's old and he doesn't always think straight, he says things that aren't nice. Or even true."
"I know," Bernie said. "But he kept saying this one thing over and over, and crying. And then he said a whole story. I didn't understand it all, but Echo and Cissus listen to him lots, so they helped me with some of the harder parts." The elflets nodded in unison. "And after that he went back to saying that same thing again, and I thought since you were his Master I better ask you." Her eyes never left his, inquiring brown locked onto worried silver-gray. "How come Kreacher says it's his fault his Master Regulus died?"
Author Notes:
Yes, shock and amazement, there is actual plot in this chapter. You may all faint now. I anticipate reviews full of face-keyboarding, though this is not actually desired.
More will be forthcoming as soon as inspiration coincides with lack of work. I wouldn't be too anxious for it if I were you, though... if I hold to my mental outline, the next chapter ends with Bad Things happening to main characters. And yes, they do merit the capital letters. Mwahaha.