“Uncle Ron, please make Haley stop bothering me!” Jordan demanded through clenched teeth, as Haley and Emma dissolved into giggles.
“Uh… what’s she doing to you?” asked Ron, studying a Magic Eye postcard that he’d picked up at Kings’ Cross.
“She’s poking me and saying ‘bother’ incessantly!” Jordan explained as Haley poked him and said ‘bother’ incessantly.
“Haley, don’t bother your brother,” Ron instructed automatically, still not tearing his eyes away from the Magic Eye. “Arrgh, this stupid thing! How do you get it to work?” he muttered in frustration.
“Uncle Ron, can I eat sugar quills on the train?” Haley wanted to know.
“What? Oh, sure…” Ron was now waving his wand at the Magic Eye and saying, “Specialis Revelio!” At his answer of “Oh, sure,” Haley crowed triumphantly, Emma grinned, Jordan began protesting unintelligibly, and Ted looked somewhat amused. He decided not to mention to Ron that Haley was forbidden to eat sugar quills, as they made her even more hyperactive than usual.
Ted cast a look over at Ivy, who had been very quiet. She looked drawn and pinch-faced, her eyes downcast and her hands knotted together; Ted knew that her father’s escape from Azkaban was affecting her deeply.
“Ivy,” he said quietly, “do you, er, want me to get you anything?” He and Ivy had always had a certain understanding between the two of them, something like friendship, affection, and sixth sense rolled into one, and they had always gotten along very well. Ted tended to know when something was wrong with Ivy, often before she did.
Ivy merely shook her head, but she looked up at Ted, and he could see the dark circles under her eyes.
“Well, you don’t look well,” he told her, his voice cracking like that of an ill donkey. “I just wish there was something I could do.”
Meanwhile, Jordan was saying to Ron, “Honestly, you just hold the card close to your face, unfocus your eyes, and push it slowly away from your face. See, the picture is a lion chasing a zebra!”
Emma appeared to be trying to convince a first year who asked when the train would arrive that he was waiting at the wrong platform, and that he was trying to board the train to St. Igglesworth’s Institute for Seriously Disturbed Young Men and Women.
“I don’t see a lion chasing a zebra!” Ron said loudly. “Well, this thing is rubbish, I’m chucking it away.”
“Don’t be a litterbug!” Haley exclaimed, sounding genuinely upset.
But Ivy wasn’t listening to them”her ears and eyes focused on something else. A passing Ravenclaw fifth year was saying casually to her friend, “And with that mad killer on the loose, security’s a million times tighter, so it’ll be hard sneaking out to see Grant at night.”
“You’re worried about not getting to see Grant when we could all get murdered in our beds, Jolie?” her friend replied in an anxious, squeaky voice. (Ivy recognized her as a girl named Antonia.) “Now, Malfoy has kids, doesn’t he? That Slytherin prefect and the blonde girl who hangs around with the Potters? I’d be a bit keen to keep away from them at school, you know, in case they’re in league with--”
“SHUT UP RIGHT NOW OR I’LL JINX YOU!” roared Emma, breaking off from her discourse about St. Igglesworth. She had pulled out her wand and was pointing it at the terrified-looking Antonia, her dark brown eyes hard and blazing.
“Um, Emma, you know what your mother would say if…” Ron trailed off feebly, drowned out by his daughter, who had begun yelling threats at the increasingly anxious Antonia. Years of experience had taught him that it was best not to get between Emma and the target of her anger when she went into caps lock.
“…and if you go bothering my friends again, you’ll wish Malfoy had already done you in to put you out of your misery!” she finished several minutes later, then let the two fifth years go.
“Impressive,” said Ted when the storm had died down. “Those were some of the most creative threats I’ve ever heard. They even top that thing last year with Professor Zabini and the potato.”
Emma twirled a strand of her hair, yanking on it as though it had done something horrible to her. “It’s that girl, Antonia,” she told him in a low voice. “How could she possibly think that Ivy’s a… a dark magician? That’s like saying that Uncle Harry’s a dark wizard-- or Haley!”
With impeccable timing, the girl to whom she had just referred gently rescued a ladybug from the train tracks to keep it from getting squished when the train arrived-- definitely not your typical Death Eater material.
“I remember Antonia from last year,” Emma continued. “She’s that girl who was going out with Tyrone Thomas, and--”
“Ah, Weasley, I see you’re missing me after our summer apart. Just can’t keep your mind off me, can you?” came a silky voice from behind her. She groaned; she didn’t need to turn around to know that it was Tyrone Thomas, a boy in her year with whom she frequently disagreed. The disagreements were usually on such topics as ‘whether or not Tyrone is God’s gift to Hogwarts,’ or ‘whether or not Emma will go out with Tyrone.’
Tyrone had dated a large percentage of the Hogwarts girls, and most of the remainder was clamoring to be added to this demographic, with the exception of Emma. Emma was positive that the only reason why Tyrone had begun to pursue her the previous year was because he didn’t like the idea of a girl not going absolutely mad for him, and she was certain that if she agreed to one date, the boy would lose interest in her, like a little boy getting rid of a toy that had lost its appeal.
Tyrone was both an excellent Quidditch player (he was a beater) and extremely handsome-- and he knew it. He had creamy dark brown skin, long slanting hazel eyes, short black curls that usually shone with gel, and perfect teeth that he often flashed in his trademark grin. Emma found that smug grin on the face of the boy more annoying than anything else on the face of the earth.
“Go away, Thomas,” Emma snarled, fingering her wand.
“This appears to be a Emma hex-fest,” Jordan commented simply, as Ron chose the exact wrong time to ask,
“Is that your boyfriend, Emma?”
“DAD!” Emma’s face turned maroon, and Tyrone laughed.
“Well, I’ll see you on the train, my love,” he said, emphasizing the words ‘my love.’ “And your charming friend Haley, and Ivy, the--”
“DON’T YOU DARE SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IVY!” threatened Emma.
Tyrone blinked. “What, I was going to say, ‘the lovely blonde.’ What did you think I was going to say? You’re weird… but it’s a very good kind of weird, you know?” He winked at Emma and strode off to chat with a few of his friends.
Ivy spoke for the first time since they had arrived at the station. “Emma,” she said hoarsely, “You don’t need to defend me, really. I got this before my father escaped from Azkaban, and I was fine then. And Thomas, well, he’s known me since first year, he’s not going to start thinking that I go about doing dark magic.”
“Yeah, it’s Ivy the Mistress of Darkness!” laughed Ted. “Oh no, don’t get in her way, or she’ll grind your bones to make her granola!”
Jordan looked up. “We ought to board the train if we don’t want to be late,” he stated in his low, flat voice.
Haley, Emma, and Ivy gave Ron hugs and boarded the train, Ted and Jordan behind them, but abstaining from the hugging. Jordan was carrying both his and his sister’s trunks, “Because I’m a delicate little thing,” as Haley had informed him.
People were staring at them as they walked through the first carriage, trying to find a compartment. The five of them had always been the object of some attention, as their parents were wizarding celebrities, but now, everyone was trying to get a look at Ivy.
“Make way, make way!” shouted Haley, inspired by two of her favourite relatives. “Seriously evil witch coming through! Don’t make her late for her appointment to have a cup of tea with her fanged servant!”
“I don’t know that girl,” Jordan informed a nearby seventh year, gesturing toward his twin. “Never seen her before in my life.”
Luckily, it didn’t take them long to find a compartment. There was an empty one in the first carriage, by some stroke of luck, and they loaded their things into the luggage rack. “We’ll promise to write!” Ted called out the open window to Ron. With Malfoy on the loose, he knew lots of letters home would be more than welcome.
“You won’t need to very much,” he replied. “I’m going to be visiting Hogwarts every weekend to give an Auror report to Harry, and to have a cup of tea with my wife. It’s going to be lonely back at Godric’s Hollow with two of my favorite people away at Hogwarts.”
“Well, thanks for making us feel loved, Dad!” Emma yelled jokingly.
“I think he meant me and you when he said, ‘his two favorite people,’” suggested Haley. “Isn’t that right, Uncle Ron?”
Ron laughed. “So, yeah, you’ll get to see me pretty often, as Hogwarts will be under lots of surveillance. And then there’s the matter of other Auror business.”
“Does ‘Auror business’ include playing with the fanged Frisbees that Mum’s confiscated?” Emma wanted to know.
Ron winked. “Maybe…” The train whistled and began to roll, and before long, Emma’s father was a little black, white, and red dot fading into the distance.
The train journey passed normally enough. Haley ingested too many sugar quills and tried (and failed) to instigate a sing-along. Jordan got cranky and hid behind a book, as usual. Emma and Ted played Exploding Snap, and Ted lost fourteen consecutive games, causing his eyelashes to become significantly more crispy than usual.
Ivy usually liked to read on the train voyage as well-- Muggle fantasy books were her favorite because she thought it was funny how unrealistic they were. Only Ted noticed, perceptive as he was, that she wasn’t actually turning the pages of her book, but he didn’t want to fuss over her. She didn’t like that.
Tyrone Thomas came by to irritate Emma; the Gryffindor Quidditch captain gave Jordan a thick book of new Seeker tactics; and sixth year Edwin Weasley (son of George and, much to his father’s consternation, a prefect) came by to see his cousins and warn them in a rather overdramatic manner of how difficult fourth year was. But then, things quickly became less than normal.
“Haley, you just ate the last sugar quill,” groaned Jordan.
“No, I didn’t!” chirped Haley, and she pulled a fresh sack out of the inside pocket of her so-called ‘pockety’ denim jacket.
“You always wear that jacket,” Emma pointed out. “Don’t you have any others?”
“No, this is my new jacket! You’ve never seen it before!” Haley exclaimed. She observed her friends’ confused expressions. “Come on! My normal pockety jacket had pink glitter on it. This one has pink sequins.” Ted and Jordan looked at one other in a “I’ll-never-understand-girls,” sort of a way.
Unfortunately, irritation came in a form that was tall, blond, and accompanied by an arm accessory of an obnoxious girlfriend. Ophidias Malfoy and Charybdis Nott stood smirking in the doorway. “Well, it’s the Gryffindorks,” sneered Ophidias, clearly unafraid of prosecution by prefects, seeing as he was one himself. “Not so cocky now that Father’s out of prison? Worried that he’d going to kill all of your little mudblood, Muggle-lover, and blood traitor friends?”
“No,” Emma replied through clenched teeth.
“Well, then, you’re clearly an idiot. You should be worried,” Ophidias informed her. “Not that your lack of intelligence is any news to me. Well, I just thought I’d stop by to let you know that things are going to be a lot different around here. When Father finds you at Hogwarts, you won’t be safe anymore.” He looked pointedly at Ivy as he said this, his cold grey eyes intensifying. It looked as though he was trying to bore a small, neat hole into each of his sister’s pupils.”
“He won’t,” Ivy said suddenly, in a small, hard voice.
“Who won’t what, blood traitor?”
“He won’t come and get us at Hogwarts,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “He won’t have a chance against the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher.”
“You tell him, Lightfoot,” Haley whispered encouragingly, using the nickname for Ivy that she and Emma sometimes used.
Ophidias raised an eyebrow-- a mannerism that always irritated Haley immensely, as she was the only person she knew who couldn’t raise an eyebrow at all. “The new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher? And who might that be?” he wanted to know.
“Don’t you wish you knew,” Jordan shot back, his lip curling.
“Well, we’ll be off now, but this isn’t the last you’ll be seeing of us,” Ophidias drawled menacingly. “Good luck surviving, Gryffindorks… or not…” And with that, he left the compartment with his cronies, who were laughing amongst themselves.
“He’s a git,” Ted told the others conversationally.
Harry and Hermione, who were to be teaching at Hogwarts, had just Apparated into Hogsmeade and were now walking toward the school together. “It’s going to be strange coming back to Hogwarts after all this time,” Harry commented as the familiar castle came into view. “It’ll be like the DA days all over again. I’m half expecting to see Dumbledore at the staff table, Snape in the dungeon, and Malfoy…” he trailed off. “Well, I’m hoping we won’t see Malfoy on the Quidditch pitch.”
Hermione smiled tautly. She was rather attractive in a businesslike sort of way, her chestnut brown hair coiled in a tight bun and the merest hint of lipstick on her lips. “Well, everyone will be excited to see you, Harry,” she told him. “You should have seen Neville’s face when he heard you were going to teach.”
Neville Longbottom was the Herbology professor at Hogwarts. He and his wife, Luna, (the editor of a magazine called The Quibbler) were both famous for their time among ‘Potter’s Eight.’ Neville, who had been injured in the final battle against Voldemort, was also the only Hogwarts professor to be confined to a wheelchair, but that didn’t stop him from being a very well-liked teacher.
A nervous expression passed over Harry’s face. “Not everyone will be happy to see me,” he said in a low voice. “You and Ron weren’t over at the house when Jordan heard the news about me teaching. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry-- it was a bit scary, really. I mean, I could see him being annoyed that his father’s going to be grading his essays for the next year, but he was completely out of control.”
Hermione looked at him. “You didn’t have parents growing up,” she told him. “Jordan, well, surely you’ve noticed that he’s insecure about people comparing him to you, saying, ‘oh, you’re Harry Potter’s son,’ as soon as they meet him. And now you’re going to be at the school at well, and it’ll be a constant reminder of the fact that he has a very famous, very powerful father.”
Harry gaped. “Really?” he spluttered, feeling as though Hermione had just clued him in to who Nicolas Flamel was or that she’d been time-traveling all year. “Jordan… he feels jealous of me? He’s brilliant at everything!”
His sister-in-law laughed. “You’re worse than Ron sometimes. Well, it’s like when I was a girl at Hogwarts. My mother was beautiful, and I had a beautiful grandmother and two beautiful aunts, and I was the plain little girl in the family. So I always tried to work extra hard in school, so as to prove that I wasn’t entirely worthless, you know?”
“I never knew that,” Harry said slowly, amazement written all over his face. “I never knew that at all.”
When the five friends entered the Great Hall, Mr. Potter was at the staff table, deep in conversation with Professor Granger-Weasley and the Herbology teacher, Professor Longbottom. But he looked up at them and waved cheerily as they took a seat at the Gryffindor table.
“I can’t believe Dad’s going to be teaching!” squealed Haley.
“Me neither,” moaned Jordan, sounding distinctly less happy than his twin.
“It’s going to be different without my dad doing Defence class,” commented Ted, his voice thoughtful. “Lessons on werewolves will be a lot less in-depth, for one.”
Unfortunately for them, Headmistress McGonagall did not share Dumbledore’s belief that real speech-making should be saved for after the sorting feast, and their stomachs were growling all throughout her lengthy address. Haley and Emma played tic-tac-toe on a napkin (Emma winning 8 out of 10 games) to relieve the boredom.
But after what seemed like ages, McGonagall finished up with, “and finally, as Professor Lupin is away with other business and unable to teach for the time being--” there were scattered boos and assorted mutterings-- “our new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher for the year is Professor Harry Potter.” Haley and Jordan’s father stood up and smiled at the assembled students as voices rang out throughout the hall.
“The Harry Potter?”
“Oh, I don’t believe this, I’m going to get his autograph first thing!”
“Blimey, he looks just like his picture on the trading cards; the scar’s really there!”
“We’re going to get taught by Harry Potter?”
“ROCK ON, DAD!”
The last voice was very loud, clear, high-pitched, and excitable sounding. Everyone turned to look at Haley, who waved cheerily at the student body.
“I don’t know her,” Jordan told a nearby student for the second time in not too long. If only, he thought, he could say the same for the man now receiving thunderous applause from the rest of the school.