Doug wiped sweat out of his scrubby mustache with the back of one hairy hand. “Yeah. Godric’s Hollow’s a weird place, everyone says so. My brother Dinsdale’s a postman, and he hangs up ten rabbit’s feet every time he’s got to make a delivery. Which ain’t often, mind you. They don’t get much mail.”
The other man snorted. “That don’t surprise me. They’re all weirdos. I reckon half this town’s in some kinda cult, walkin’ around in cloaks all the time…and owls are always flyin’ all over the place, even when it’s light out.”
“Wonder how long the Anderson family will last livin’ here,” said Doug thoughtfully. “Can’t believe they moved into Number Nine. Their neighbours are the biggest loonies in England, from what I hear. Dinsdale says there’s always explosions comin’ out of Number Seven, and howling noises, and once he swears he saw someone flyin’ around on a broom.”
“Wonder what drugs he was on at the time.”
“Shut up, Orville.”
“Hey, we both know Dinsdale’s half-mad. He says he sees ten-storey hedgehogs named Spiny Norman stomping around London. Bet the people in Number Seven are just normal people with a lot of weird rumours about them going around,” Orville insisted.
Doug laughed. “Normal my bum. Tell me how normal you think they are when they’ve tied you up to a stake and sprinklin’ paprika on you and tryin’ to sacrifice you to the cattle god Moostawfuh or something.” He reached in his pocket. “Here, have a rabbit’s foot.”
“No thanks, I’m not hungry.”
It was a normal summer day in the Potter household. There was a werewolf at the kitchen table, owls were flying in and out of the windows, several people were zooming around on broomsticks in the backyard, and a man suddenly turned into a large canary after eating a biscuit. Not many other families could say that this was, in fact, normal, but whatever Orville might argue, the Potters weren’t exactly a normal family.
The word ‘family’ was to be used in the loosest sense possible. One thing a visitor to Number Seven, Griffin Circle, Godric’s Hollow felt as soon as he stepped into the foyer was a sense of family, a sort of acceptance.
One person who could definitely testify to this was fifteen-year-old Ivy Potter. She had been adopted the previous year by Harry and Ginny Potter, as her birth parents, the Malfoys, were rather unsuitable parents (being convicted criminals, one of whom was currently a soulless lump lying in St. Mungo’s.)
Ivy was sweet, shy, and studious, but she was instantly recognizable as a blood relative of Draco Malfoy in any case. This was because she had the family white-blonde hair in a tight braid down to her waist, grey eyes, pale complexion, and pointed features. Ivy didn’t think of Malfoy as a family member, however-- she and her friends had successfully defeated him two months prior, ending his stint as the leader of a Dark Arts organization called the Overseers.
At the moment Ivy was deep in conversation with the resident werewolf, who happened to be quite a pleasant young man named Ted Lupin. Although Ted’s father, Remus, was also a werewolf, Ted had become one in somewhat unusual circumstances”he’d been attacked by one of Malfoy’s werewolf agents the previous Christmas Eve. Luckily, he was an optimistic and easygoing boy who had a good sense of humour, all of which helped him handle his condition better.
His transformations left him tired and worn-looking, his face thin beneath his shaggy light brown hair, and his clear blue eyes ringed by dark circles, but he almost always wore a warm smile on his face. He had grown extremely tall and thin over the last year, and he still hadn’t gotten used to his newly lanky body-- he was gangly and awkward, somewhat resembling a scarecrow. But though physically uncoordinated, Ted had a special gift of understanding people, especially Ivy, and they were particularly close because of this.
The man who had turned into a canary molted, and a petite girl with bouncy black hair giggled. “Uncle Ron, I can’t believe you fell for Canary Creams-- your brothers invented them, for Godric’s sake! Didn’t they teach you these kinds of things in your Auror training?”
Harriet-Lily “Call-Her-That-And-You’re-Dead-Meat” Potter often pulled this sort of practical joke, as two of the loves of her life were pranks and sugary foods. Haley, as she was known, was a very energetic and somewhat hyperactive girl who seemed younger than fifteen, and had a flair for the dramatic”she loved musical theatre-- and a deep-seated hatred for anyone who had a habit of raising one eyebrow, something that Haley could only do in her wildest dreams.
In the backyard, Haley’s twin brother Jordan had just scored playing one-on-one Quidditch against their cousin, Emma Weasley. Jordan was an unusual boy-- very intelligent, logical-minded and talented, but rather irritable by nature, he usually preferred books to regular human company, but was nonetheless an excellent athlete. He had struggled for years with a bit of an inferiority complex-- who wouldn’t, being the son of Harry Potter?
It didn’t help that he had the same messy black hair and emerald-green eyes, though he had the features and freckled complexion of his mother’s side of the family, and he wore contact lenses. He always worked extremely hard in school, much more so than Haley, who seemed not to care about petty things like homework, assignments, studying, and final exams.
Emma snatched the ball from him, and flew off toward her hoop, her long waves of reddish-brown hair flying out behind her. She was Haley’s best friend as well as her cousin, and was exceedingly bold and adventurous-- too bold for her own good, as she had a temper and was always getting into sticky situations. She tended to speak or act before she thought things through and was very proficient at hexing, both of which made it dangerous to get on her bad side. Many would rather face a Basilisk’s stare than have to stare into Emma’s blazing dark brown eyes when she was in one of her tempers.
She was also considered one of the prettiest girls in the school (particularly by one Tyrone Thomas) but nobody ever mistook her for another pretty face.. and if anyone did, she often quickly corrected them in a rather painful manner. She played Chaser for the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and she managed to make reasonably good marks, although she never worked especially hard in school.
“Emma, you know you can’t win. There’s forty seconds left in the game, and I’m beating you one-zip,” Jordan pointed out as he blocked Emma’s shot.
“Ahhh, that’s what you think. Letting you get cocky is just part of my grand master plan. I’m luring you into a false sense of security, and then I’m going to clobber you!” cackled Emma, whipping around on her broom.
“If that really was your secret plan you wouldn’t have told it to me, now would you?” asked Jordan.
Emma opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off by the sound of breaking glass. “I’ll go see what that is,” groaned Jordan, coasting down to the ground and hopping off his broom. “Haley probably invaded my room again and destroyed half my things.”
“Fine, but I win by forfeit!” shouted Emma, doing a victory twirl in midair.
Jordan ignored her and loped around to the front of the house-- or, rather, manor, for that was technically what his home was. Number Five belonged to Emma’s immediate family. But the driveway of Number Nine, the house on the other side of his own, was currently decorated by a large moving van, and Jordan soon discovered the source of the crash.
A tall, skinny girl was bending over a spilled box that evidently contained the remains of what had once been a rather expensive-looking set of china.
“Here I’ll help with that,” offered Jordan, and he scooped the rest of the broken fragments into the box, taking care not to cut himself.
At this point, he got a good look at the girl. She had electric tangerine-colored hair chopped off just below the ear, framing a triangular face. Her face looked a bit like that of a cartoon character-- she had big, wide set brown eyes, a wide smiley mouth, and a little dash of a nose.
The girl wore an outfit quite unlike any that Jordan had seen before, consisting of a blue t-shirt advertising Spam, red plaid bell-bottom pants held up by a black and silver smiley-face belt, and old grey waistcoat that looked as though she may have stolen it from her grandfather, a black beret, purple high-top sneakers, about a thousand different bangle bracelets, and giant dangly earrings shaped like an ‘x’ and an ‘o.’
“I’m Jordan, by the way,” Jordan introduced himself. “I live next door.”
The girl’s jaw dropped and her eyes grew as wide as saucers, making her look like more of a cartoon character than ever. “How do you spell that?” she demanded.
“T-H-A-T,” spelled Jordan flatly.
“No, you twit, I meant your name!” the girl exclaimed, sounding exasperated.
“J-O-R-D-A-N, the normal way. How else would you spell it?” asked Jordan.
“G-I-O-R-D-A-N!” squealed the girl. “Because that’s my name! Giordan Ann Anderson. Everyone calls me Giorgi, though, unless I’m in trouble.”
Well, this is fortunate, Jordan thought to himself sarcastically. A girl with the same name as his. He’d known that Jordan was sometimes a girls’ name, but he’d never met one, and the feeling was somehow embarrassing. True, he’d met people before who had asked, ‘Which is which?’ when introduced to twins named Haley and Jordan, but at least Haley had been equally humiliated then.
He changed the subject. “So, are you some Weasley I’ve never met?” Jordan asked, eyeing her neon orange hair.
“A Weasley?” she repeated blankly.
“They’re a family I know-- they’ve all got bright red hair,” Jordan explained. So this girl didn’t know who the Weasleys were? But they’d been famous ever since the final battle! Decidedly odd.
The girl laughed and ran her hand through blinding hair. “I like to mess around with my hair,” she explained. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t my natural colour, but I don’t even remember what it is anymore. That’s why online, I’m called rainbowbrite04.”
“You like to go online, too? Me, too!” said Jordan. He was not normally very talkative or particularly friendly toward new faces, but he’d never met anyone else who was interested in computers.
They’d learned very briefly about computers in Muggle Studies the previous year, and although the professor didn’t know much about the subject, the concept of a computer had so fascinated Jordan that he”in typical Jordan fashion”had gotten truly obsessed and learned all he could about them.
He’d received his very own laptop for his fifteenth birthday from his Grandfather Arthur, and the two of them had spent many hours trying to explore the entire World Wide Web. Everyone else seemed to think his hobby ridiculous or even unhealthy, but Jordan didn’t see why. He loved nothing more than new information, and the internet was chock-full of it.
“I’m known as sgtjpepper online,” he said.
“Beatles fanatic?” Giorgi asked with a smirk, and Jordan nodded affirmatively. He was rather impressed. This girl knew Muggle music as well as Muggle technology? This was certainly a new one. He’d always thought he was the only person in the school at all serious about Muggle Studies. “They’re okay, I guess. By the way, are you going to Cresthill High School when school starts again? I don’t know anyone-- we just got here, my dad’s transferred to work at some firm called Grunnings.”
It was an innocuous question, but hearing it made Jordan’s mind spin. The bottom dropped out of his brain, and his eyeballs froze. Cresthill High? The local school? Giorgi was a Muggle! An actual Muggle family lived next door to him! True, Hogsmeade was the only all-wizard village in Britain, but Godric’s Hollow was a small and secluded village of manors, and there were few Muggles anywhere near.
It was like finally seeing the Loch Ness Monster after years of careful study and research. Jordan felt like yelling, “MERLIN’S NOSE HAIR, A MUGGLE!” But as he was not, after all, Haley, all he said was, “I go to a private boarding school, up in Scotland.”
“That stinks, I’d hate to have to wear a uniform,” Giorgi sighed.
“Yes, I can see that,” Jordan replied. He found it so incredibly interesting how Muggles managed without magic-- and he couldn’t think what they could possibly learn in their non-magic schools.
“Of course, I have to wear a uniform when I do gym, but I don’t mind, I love sport. Do you play anything?” she asked.
“Um, yeah, I do,” said Jordan, trying to think of a Muggle equivalent of Quidditch. “I’m er, on my school’s… uh… football team.”
“Excellent, football’s the best!” exclaimed Giorgi. “Who’s your favourite player?”
This would have been quite a sticky situation, but luckily for Jordan, salvation came in the shape of one of the last people he’d have expected it from. “Jordan, our schoolbook lists have just arrived, and Mum wants to go shopping,” announced Haley. She then started as she noticed Giorgi. “Hi, I’m Haley,” she introduced herself cheerfully. “Don’t let my brother bore you.”
“I’m Giorgi, I just moved in,” replied Giorgi. “And actually, he’s not that boring. Of course, I’ve been entertained by playing lint football, with the lint as the ball, my right hand as Manchester United, and my left hand as Brazil, so I’m, like, really easily amused.”
“Well, I guess I have to go now,” Jordan told her, somewhat gratefully, as he began edging toward his house.
“All right, I’ll email you,” responded Giorgi cheerfully, kicking the box of china fragments behind a hedge with yet another ominous crash.
As soon as the twins were out of Giorgi’s earshot and safely inside the house, Haley shouted, “Hey, everyone! Guess what Jordan’s been doing? He’s been making friends with the new neighbors! Our Jordan! Making friends!”
“Ooh, it’s a sign of the apocalypse,” Jordan muttered sarcastically. He was a bit upset with himself for telling Giorgi that he was a football player. Now she would probably email him and want to know all about his favourite team, and it would cause a lot of unnecessary trouble.
But there were more important things on his mind right now. As Haley flounced toward the sitting room, Jordan noticed a thick envelope addressed to him sitting on the table… an envelope with the Hogwarts seal on it.
Normally, his booklist was not of special interest to him, but this year was different-- fifth year was the year that Prefects were chosen, and he had looked forward to nothing more than the day he received his Prefect badge, ever since his first year. He reached for the envelope with trembling fingers and tore it open, feeling like Charlie Bucket looking for a golden ticket.
And just like Charlie Bucket, Jordan gasped as he saw the glint of gold winking up from inside the envelope. He pulled out the small, round badge and clasped his hand around it. Being a Prefect really meant a lot to him; it was more than just a title, it was a position of authority. Jordan would be looked up to by younger students and respected by teachers.
He’d be given responsibilities and actually have the chance to do something that made a difference around Hogwarts. Also… and though this wasn’t something of which he was proud, it was true nonetheless… Jordan had always wanted power. He wanted the ability to make decisions, not just for himself, but for many people. He wanted to be recognized and respected. And being a Prefect was one stop closer to his goal.
He turned over the badge to examine the finely engraved words, “HOGWARTS PREFECT.” But he almost dropped the badge when he saw the lettering. Something was wrong… they’d sent him the wrong badge… the lettering read, “QUIDDITCH CAPTAIN.”
Quidditch Captain? True, Jordan was good at Quidditch, and there was no denying it. But so was Emma… and Tyrone Thomas, the Beater… and Edwin Weasley, the Chaser. All of them could have just as easily gotten the badge. But no one rivaled Jordan when it came to eligibility for the Prefects’ badge.
He had perfect grades, nothing below an O in all his four years of school. He’d only gotten detention once, and that was an unfair punishment in his first year for helping to save Ivy’s life in the Forbidden Forest. Jordan had probably earned more points to Gryffindor than everyone else in the year put together. It was selfish of him, but Jordan knew he deserved the badge, and he wanted it more than anything. What could have happened?
He put down the letter and slouched into the sitting room where he knew everyone else was waiting for him to go shopping. As soon as he entered the room, Haley exclaimed, “Hey, Jordan, guess who the Gryffindor Prefects are?”
“No clue,” said Jordan flatly.
His sister gestured grandly toward Ivy and Ted. “Ta-daa!” she sang. Ted and Ivy smiled, though somewhat apologetically.
Jordan couldn’t believe it. Ted was a Prefect. Ted Lupin had been chosen as a Prefect over him. Ivy he could understand-- she was smart, a good student, and much more responsible than Haley and Emma…though this wasn’t saying a lot.
But Ted? Sure, he was nice, a good friend, and undeniably brave, but how could this have made him better qualified for the badge? Where did being nice get you in life? Perhaps McGonagall had thought that Ted and Ivy would work nicely as a team… or maybe there was a different reason.
A new thought popped into Jordan’s head, a thought that made him incredibly glad that no one in the room could read minds: McGonagall only picked Ted because she feels sorry for him. It’s because he’s a werewolf.
He instantly felt horrible for thinking this about his friend. Being a werewolf had never stopped Ted from doing anything before, and it was just another fact of life-- “Ted will turn into a wolf every full moon.” But the truth was, he couldn’t think of another reason why Ted would have been chosen as a Prefect.
He looked up at his friend the Prefect and opened his mouth to speak. There had been a time not too long before when Jordan would have raged and stormed and shouted at him. There had been a time when he would have made a cryptic, sarcastic remark and stomped off to his room to sulk for the rest of the day. But those days were over, and Jordan wasn’t that person anymore. He maneuvered an uncomfortable smile onto his face.
“Congratulations,” he said. “I’ll bet anything that you’re going to do a good job together.”
Jordan’s father, Harry, looked at him, and it was that eerily understanding look that made Jordan, an Occlumens nonetheless, feel strangely uncomfortable. “It’s the Potter Men’s Curse,” Harry told his son. “Potter men are never picked as Prefects. I wasn’t, and neither was my dad.” He paused thoughtfully. “Another part of the curse is the hair, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
This didn’t help as much as his father had hoped it would. Just another way I’m like my dad, thought Jordan. The one thing that always separated Dad and me is that he’s the Quidditch captain type, and I’m the Prefect type. Now even that’s gone. He sighed, then tried to shake the thought from his mind. He was trying to be a better person, but his brain wasn’t cooperating very well with this plan.
Rebellious thoughts aside, Jordan pushed the smile back onto his face. “What are we waiting for?” he said, trying to keep the flatness in his voice to a bare minimum. “Let’s go to Diagon Alley.”
A week later, the five friends had just arrived at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, and were preparing to board the Hogwarts Express.
Haley had caused a spot of bother, insisting on cartwheeling through the barrier and attracting the attention of several Muggles-- apparently, it was something she had wanted to do since her first year, and hadn’t gotten the courage to do until then. Jordan hardly believed this explanation, as Haley usually never held back when it came to doing incredibly embarrassing things in public places.
Speaking of Muggles, Jordan reflected on a bit of questionable magic he had done earlier. He had surreptitiously taken the box of shattered china from behind the hedge at Giorgi’s house and carried it up to his room. There, he had done his first illegal deed ever: he had practiced underage magic, performing the Reparo spell on it.
He knew it would be undetected by the ministry, as the house he was in was a wizarding dwelling, and Haley was always doing underage magic, but he felt like some sort of criminal as he snuck back to Giorgi’s and replaced the box behind her hedge.
But the scary part was, it had been fun. There had been a strange, tingling thrill in his stomach that had been caused by breaking the rules, a thrill he’d never gotten from reading or studying, and that really disturbed him.
“Jordan!” He was shaken from his thoughts by a deep, silky-sounding voice. “Good to see you! Hey there Ted, hi ladies.” It was Tyrone Thomas, a boy who was very popular, extremely good-looking, and quite aware of both of these facts. He had long had a bit of a love-hate relationship with Emma (she was the one doing the hating, while he represented the other side), but now the two of them were friends, which was a rather nice change.
“Hi, Tyrone,” Emma greeted him. “Um, what’s wrong with your lip?”
“What?” Tyrone looked startled.
“Your top lip,” repeated Emma.
Tyrone stroked the area in question. “You mean my…mustache?” he asked.
“That? It’s just a few fluffy hairs, you loony. Get over it,” smirked Emma, though her voice was playful.
Despite the so-called mustache, Tyrone really was handsome. He was tall and well-built with creamy deep brown skin and a broad film-star smile. He had short black curls, shiny with gel, and slanting hazel eyes that gave him an exotic flair. He’d inherited the eyes from his mother, Parvati Thomas, who had been murdered the previous year. His mother’s death had really upset him, but he usually had a cheery, casual demeanor, nonetheless.
“Hey, can I sit with you lot on the train?” he asked easily. “I usually hang out with the same group on the train, but I figure why not have a bit of a change for once?”
“Well, that’s fine with me,” Ivy said. “But, erm, Ted and I won’t be there, because we’ll have to sit in the Prefects’ carriage.” She sounded somewhat uncomfortable with this as she snuck a glance at Jordan.
“We’ll come and sit with the rest of you later,” promised Ted.
“Cool, you’re a Prefect? Nice one!” Tyrone congratulated. “Does that mean that you can just walk around and yell ‘A SQUINTILLION POINTS FROM SLYTHERIN!’ and then poof! Slytherin’ll be short a squintillion points?”
“Prefects can’t actually take points from other houses,” Jordan pointed out knowledgeably. “And even if they could, there’s no such number as a squintillion.”
Tyrone grinned. “Lighten up, will you?” he told him leisurely. He blinked as he registered the Quidditch captain badge that Jordan was wearing. “So that’s who got the badge! I was wondering who that would be. I thought it might be Em if not me, but I guess I was wrong.”
“You weren’t the only one,” replied Jordan.
The Prefects’ carriage was rather nicer than the regular ones, Ivy noticed immediately upon entering. The windows were clean and shiny, and the upholstery on the seats was new and uncracked. She looked around at her fellow prefects-- from Ravenclaw was a girl named Erika Corner and a boy she didn’t know named Linus Aster, from Hufflepuff was a boy she vaguely remembered as being called Rupert Daniels and a rather silly girl named Charlotte Dalton with whom she was familiar. And from Slytherin was Charybdis Nott, an extremely unpleasant girl she knew only too well (Charybdis had once dated Ophidias Malfoy) and a long-haired boy named Anatoly Capshaw.
But who was a Prefect was not of much interest to her. What did interest her was who the Head Boy was, the Head Boy who was now standing up to give a speech.
“Hello,” he greeted the group. “I, believe it or not, am your Head Boy, Edwin Weasley. Our lovely Head Girl can’t be here today because she lives in Scotland and can, like, walk to Hogwarts. But in any case, here I am, and believe me, I’m as surprised as you are that I’ve been named Head Boy. My Dad actually disowned me… well, he was kidding, of course. At least, I hope he was kidding.”
This elicited chuckles from everybody except Charybdis Nott, who rolled her eyes. Edwin was the son of George, infamous prankster and co-owner of “Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes’-- definitely not the Head Boy type.
“But then, I guess I should have known I’d be Head Boy and all, what with my charisma. Anyway, your job is to patrol the halls for a bit, and then you can go sit with your friends and do each others nails or whatever, capische?” Everyone nodded. “Cool. So, you can, er, go now. Please. I want to do my nails, too, you know.” As everyone scattered, he winked and whispered, “Ivy! Ted! Good job making Prefect!”
“Thanks, Edwin,” they replied in perfect, unrehearsed unison. As the two Gryffindor Prefects stepped into the hall, Ivy whispered, “Do you think Jordan is very upset about not being a Prefect?”
“It’s usually pretty easy to tell how Jordan feels about something,” replied Ted, thinking about all of the times Jordan had blown his top and started shouting like a madman. Then he thought about all of Jordan’s mysterious sulking and glaring and immediately retracted his statement.
“I guess he’s just growing up,” Ivy stated. “I can’t imagine him not caring about the badge. He’s really the Prefect type-- no offense,” she added quickly. She knew her brother, and although he tried to hide it, one of the few things he cared more about than school was his identity and getting recognition.
“None taken. I mean, I know as well as he does that he’s better qualified to be a Prefect than I am,” shrugged Ted. “My dad was a Prefect, but I’m not nearly as smart as him.”
Ivy thought briefly of her biological family-- both Draco and Pansy had been Prefects, as had her biological brother, Ophidias. Though neither Harry or Ginny Potter had ever been a Prefect, she was still following in her family’s footsteps. She blinked. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re a Prefect.”
Ted smiled. “Thanks.”