“Thalia, Thalia, Thalia.”
“Mum!”
Along with the sound of curtain rings rasping open, sunlight flooded through the bay windows, revealing a lovely room furnished and papered in cornflower blue and hazel. It was rather cluttered, with the desks strewn with everything from books to paint brushes to little balls of clay in every colour imaginable, but cosy. The plump cushions on the window seats matched the sleigh couch beside the brimming walnut bookshelf and the bed. On this bed was a large lump beneath the covers. Beside this lump sat a woman looking around at the mess with rueful and bemused affection.
“Come on, we’ve talked about this. And don’t ‘Mo-o-o-om’ me. What have I told you about whining? It isn’t becoming.”
“Don’t ‘Thalia’ me. It isn’t becoming.”
“Oh, tush. You’ll appreciate it when you’re older.”
“So you admit you used to hate your name, too?”
“That’s only because people never know how to pronounce it correctly.”
“Ditto.”
“That’s because you keep introducing yourself as Lia. Serves you right for disdaining the name your mother gave you.”
As she said this, the woman tugged on the comforter, but it was held fast.
“Honey, we had a pact to get you out of bed by seven. It had gone now. It’s nearly eight! I’ve been lenient already.”
There were only faint whimpers behind the quilt.
The woman laughed. “This is why we have to do this, Thalia! Or else you’ll suffer at Hogwarts. Get up!”
“We can start it next month, Mum.”
“No. We’ll start now, today. I made s’mores.”
“As if you’ll let me eat that for breakfast.”
“Try me.”
The quilt went flying. The woman dived down before she could be warded off, to plant a kiss on the girl’s cheek. She held on and nuzzled her daughter’s head. “I can’t believe you’re off to Hogwarts this September. It seems only yesterday when your Uncle Ron used to ””
“Balance both my wee feet on his palm and throw me around with Uncle Harry like a Quaffle, I know. Mum, you’re strangling me.”
The woman laughed and with another kiss on her daughter’s flaxen locks, let go. “You’ve been using my shampoo again.”
“I like it.”
“I thought you don’t like apricots.”
“I don’t like eating them. Why are you snuggling under my blankets?”
“Because I’ll nap here while you make this room resemble something belonging to a girl I raised.”
“Oh, Mum, can’t you do it? Just this morning, come on. I love seeing you do it. You’re so good. I bet the teachers still remember your name.”
“Aren’t you such a sly vixen!” Laughing, the woman kicked her daughter gently off the bed. The girl landed with a thump on her rug, pouting. “You won’t get away with flattery and that pout this time, Thalia. Tidy up! Goodness, we’ll have to practice on your organization, too. You’ll have roommates. You can’t leave your things and junk just anywhere.”
Huffing mockingly, Thalia got up and began stuffing things pell-mell into drawers. Her mother watched her, not at all napping as she’d said. Instead, memories were rolling like film in her mind, very vivid ones, and with Lia’s back turned, and with her blonde mane resting on her back just like that, the memories became images, of a man with that same hair.
“...might just be in Slytherin. Mum?”
“What? I’m sorry, honey. I was about to nap there.”
“You’re never capable of napping in broad daylight, Mum. I was saying, since you all say what a sly vixen I am, I might just become a Slytherin.”
The woman blinked at her child. Of course, Thalia was a Slytherin, a chip off the old block. But a chip polished and lovingly shaped to be loved and lovable, never to hurt anyone.
“Well, if you go there, you know what to do,” she said fondly, focusing on her daughter’s eyes and seeing herself there in those cinnamon depths. She was confident in Thalia.
“Hold sway and hold regular s’more parties?”
They hadn’t been together half an hour for the day and the woman could no longer count how many times she’d laughed. Thalia always made her laugh. Or was it amazement, that she had such a feminine and angelic version of that man, which never failed to make her rather giddy?
When she had been younger, she’d always envisioned herself as a strict mother, the kind who shushed jokes and threatened punishments at the drop of a hat. But Thalia was more like her friend than her daughter, a friend she listened to and who listened to her, a friend she went to ice cream splurges with and raced to the tub with on Saturday nights.
She bit her lip. All that was about to end. Thalia would be at Hogwarts in two months’ time.
“Mum, did you eat something? You’re making faces. And did you hear what I said about the s’more parties? I mean it, you know. Does Hogwarts have a steady supply of grahams?”
“I heard you. Goodness, your sweet tooth is appalling. Nevertheless, I don’t complain. Your teeth are nicer than mine already.”
Thalia smirked. Gods, she stood there leaning on one hip with her feet apart, her head tilted to one side, and she smirked. Hermione gasped at the resemblance. She’d always known Thalia took after her father, but the similarities always struck her. Jabs to the heart almost painful in their intensity.
Perhaps it was the Hogwarts business triggering these things. That, and a certain grey-eyed girl with brown tresses down her back, whom Thalia had been next to in the queue last week at Flourish and Blotts. Joanna Bowling, that phenomenal author of Wizarding children’s literature, had been signing her new book. And there Thalia was, awaiting her turn to meet and greet her one favourite author. Hermione had been in the second floor balcony looking down. Her eyes were trained on her daughter. But photographers upset the line and several people stumbled. Thalia helped the girl next to her and they both pressed themselves against the wall, side by side, while the photographers did their thing.
Hermione had stared, because abreast, the two girls only differed from each other in the colour of their hair and eyes. And clothing. The other girl was in a chic knee-length red skirt, silk cream blouse and matching stockings. Her ankle boots were red suede, whereas Thalia was in a pair of tan jeans, a simple blue tank and sneakers splashed with paint.
They looked quite a pair.
But no, it couldn’t be, because Thalia’s pair was across the channel. That was the agreement. And though just the memory of the agreement sliced through her like a knife each time it crossed her mind, it was better this way.
She nodded resolutely to herself and held out an arm to lead Thalia out of the room and downstairs.
“Now, make no mistake, this s’more breakfast is only for today, your first day of waking up early.”
“That’s okay, I can have a s’more lunch or tea or dinner, right?”
“Thalia!” Hermione laughed. “You never give up, do you? Do you never tire of them? Honestly!”
“I never tire when it comes to getting what I want. And I’m persuasive.”
Hermione shivered. She’d heard of those exact same words years and years ago.
“Mum! It’s the middle of July! How could you be cold?”
“Sorry. You just scare me sometimes.”
“Me? You’re the one who sleeps in a library!”
They both laughed again as they sat down in their breakfast booth by the kitchen’s picture window. The sun was already bright in their ‘backyard’, which consisted of a patch of a tidily kept lawn, and beyond it, a wilderness of heather and honeysuckle on ash trees. This house used to belong to Hermione’s maternal grandparents and she and Thalia liked the rusticity around it. And they were only a town and a village away from the Burrow.
“No, I mean it. Promise me you won’t become a Dark witch, okay?” Hermione said in mock fervent tones.
“Sorry, Mum, I don’t promise anything for less than a promise of a lifetime of s’more meals.”
“Ugh. By the time you graduate from Hogwarts, you’ll be wearing false teeth.”
“I do brush, you know. Unlike Uncle Ron.” Thalia punctuated this statement with chocolate syrup dribbling down her chin.
For a moment, Hermione stared, remembering a long-ago incident of chocolate on just such a chin, too. And then she shook herself and wiped her daughter.
“You put on airs and swaggers but you’re still such a baby, you know that, my love?”
“If you insist. I tolerate it ‘cos we’re alone and ‘cos you’re so sweet giving me a s’more breakfast.”
“Oh, Thalia.”
Author’s Note: Thalia: thә-LĪ-ya (that’s a schwa sound ” as how you pronounce the verb ‘does’” after a soft TH, as in thrill, and a long I, as in kite) Calliope is pronounced the same, with a long I and with the stress in I. Ka-LĪ-yopee. Nice, aren’t they? Calliope and Thalia are two of the Muses, with Calliope as Chief Muse, the Muse of Epic Poetry, while Thalia presides over Comic and Lyric Poetry. The nine daughters of Zeus with the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne, the Muses inspire artists. *wink*
Okay, now, Greek phonetics aside, Callie and Lia’s father and mother had been revealed... *dun dun dun!* What’s that you said? Type it in the box, please, thank you! ^_^