If the curved walls were flat and if the windows weren’t real, it wasn’t much different in Gryffindor. Lia lay still beside Callie, waiting for sleep and sniffing the air. Was that... ink?
“My books were all vandalised. Or personalised, as they preferred to say. Grandmother and Aunt Pansy inserted my name into the rhymes.
and Callie shall go to the fair.
And Callie shall have a blue ribbon
to tie up her bonny brown hair.
Did your mother do that with you, too?”
Lia shrugged, acting like she hadn’t jumped when Callie spoke. Callie’s only just come down from her high boil. At least, Lia hoped so. Throughout the day, Callie had stayed resolutely silent. It was scary. She was still plenty angry, though, judging by her word choices. “I didn’t like books much,” Lia said. “What I liked was being read to. When it got too quiet or when my minder for the hour started to get bored enough to consider other things to do, I did something. I didn’t like being alone.”
“Me, too. And do you know, I didn’t like the solitary stories. The ones with only ‘Callie’ eating the bears’ porridge and ‘Callie’ going up the beanstalk, getting the gold-laying hen and killing the giant. I didn’t even like Callie and the Seven Dwarves. I loved Hansel and Callie.” Callie picked up Lia’s hand (pinched it to get Lia to stop sniggering) and compared it with hers. Except for the dot, there was nearly no difference.
“Muggle stories?”
“Grandmother is still on a streak. She can’t get enough of them.”
“I only found out about magic when I was seven. So I was raised on Muggle ‘fairy-tales’ just like you. Did you like Jorinda and Jorindel and Frederick and Catherine?”
“I loved Frederick and Calliope, even though Calliope was soft in the head.” Lia was relieved when Callie chuckled, all anger seemingly forgotten for the moment. “Tell me about growing up Muggle.”
“Mum said it was so I appreciated both worlds.” Lia embraced Callie’s arm, hoping to alleviate any bad feelings at the mention of their mother. “I thought everyone in the world had owls and I always wondered why I didn’t see them much in the telly. I even asked the mailman why he went to the trouble of personally delivering my birthday card from Nana Helen! It was bitter cold and the mailman was surly and he said if I’d rather he used pigeons, he was awful sorry and he glared at me. Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur were visiting and they laughed fit to kill.
“Everyone only started to Floo in after I’ve been told,” Lia continued, yawning shamelessly, opening her mouth right on Callie’s face, making her sister stare at her half in fascination and half in disbelief. “It’s one of my memorable memories, seeing Uncle Ron’s head in the fire for the first time. Before that, we walked or used the car to get around. I was taught chores, like rinsing my dishes and dusting my room and weeding the garden. And then Mum started using her wand at home and I thought my chores would disappear. Wishful thinking. But they all had it easy from then on. They used magic to rein me in. Of course, I also had my first broomstick then, so I guess using magic on me became necessary. Not to mention I started homeschooling then, too. Magic was my reward. When did you get your first broom? What did you get? Were you homeschooled, too?”
“We weren’t near any day schools and they didn’t want to send me away sooner than necessary. I got Father’s old broom. I’m not that keen on flying... What did they say about your first magic?”
“What was yours?”
“I summoned my bear to sleep with me. Father said I was seventeen months. Aunt Pansy was visiting and she didn’t want me out of sight so when it was time for my nap, I was still in the sitting room with her. My bear flew over to me all the way from my nursery and we settled down on the couch.”
“Where’s that bear now? It’s not in your dorm.”
“Oh, he retired when I was nine. Before he completely fell apart. I dragged him with me everywhere!” Callie yawned, covering her mouth with the back of her fingers and rolling her eyes when Lia mouthed ‘prissy’. “Books became my companions next. You’re not telling me your first magic and I asked first.”
“Well, I’ve heard stories and I seem to be different from you lot who manifested when you were babies. Do you remember your allergy eruption?” Callie shuddered in response. Lia shuddered right along with her. “Imagine having that at five. You were worse than I was but I was terrified. Hives all over me. Hot and itchy. I thought I was going to turn into a monster! Like in Beauty and the Beast--”
“You would think that,” said Callie, “because you must have been a right little--”
“When I surfaced from bawling my eyes out, I saw that both Uncle Harry and Uncle Ron also had hives. For the next few days, whoever visited also sprouted hives. Everyone except Mum. I felt kind of sorry because I thought they caught it from me, like a cold, but I was also happy that we were all hivey together. Their hives disappeared when mine went away.”
Callie was laughing, muffling the sound under the bedclothes.
Taking courage from that laughter but still tentatively, Lia said, “You have Mum’s old bed.”
Callie went still but didn’t reply.
“This is her bed. It smells like ink because she sort of pummelled an ink bottle in here. She and Uncle Ron were fighting about her cat and his rat. She vented her temper on her ink. That hole in the wall, Mum used that for books, too.”
After some more moments of silence, Callie said, “Does your bed have something like an M on one post?”
“Dad’s bed?”
Callie nodded. “But if he so much as hugs you, he dies. They’re idiots.”
“Stop that. I mean, they are idiots, yes, but stop being furious, please. You’re scaring me.”
Callie snorted, very un-ladylike. “Get me an inkwell.”
“We’ll fix this. We’ll make them marry. We just have to find out why they--”
“They don’t have to marry. They shouldn’t have to just so your mother can hold me and my father can hold you! Idiots, idiots, idiots! Selfish idiots!”
“YOU’RE A SELFISH IDIOT YOURSELF. Shut up. Sleeping here.”
“Wow,” said Lia. “I though she only shuts me up.”
Callie shut up and sulked. When Lia thought Callie had already fallen asleep, Callie said, “Why aren’t you angry, too?”
“Maybe when you calm down, priss. Let’s take it in turns. Bad things happen when we’re both angry. Remember?”
Instead of laughing like Lia expected-- it was a funny memory-- Callie pounded a fist, barely missing punching Lia’s thigh. “See, that’s their fault, too!”
“Is this belated PMS or something?”
Callie growled.
“Stop it, I said. They’ve paid for their idiocy, they nearly died--”
“And if they die, you and I will be orphans! It’s us who suffer again.”
“Dang it, don’t make me furious this late. Ronky will hex me. You’re right. Go on, then, sulk.”
My child,
such trouble I have.
And you sleep, your heart is placid;
you dream in the joyless wood;
in the night nailed in bronze,
in the blue dark, you lie still and shine.
Draco doesn’t know lullabies. What he’s humming is a waltz. Can’t remember by whom. What he remembers is who had danced to it, not too long ago, wearing stars in her eyes. Probably not too lulling either. But the tiny creature in the crook of his arm isn’t complaining. She seems content, in fact. His baby. She smells so delicious and he can’t go so much as three minutes without kissing her hair. He wants to nuzzle her cheek, but she’s so small, so delicate and he’s so afraid he’ll hurt her. He won’t do that. Nor will he let anything or anyone else do so. In any case, he can’t move at the moment. She has grabbed his finger with her mittened hand. For someone so tiny, she can grip like a grindylow.
He chuckles and she pouts and kicks her little leg in remonstrance before settling back down. Draco bites his cheeks to keep from biting her. She’s adorable.
“I first saw you on a day like this. Well, no, you weren’t born yet and I didn’t even know you had that prospect. Of being born, I mean. And it was winter-- I wouldn’t bring you out in winter-- but it was sunny. And I saw your mummy-- your stupid mummy-- in a park. At first, I thought I was mistaken, that it wasn’t her. But it was her, all right. And her coat wasn’t just abnormally bulky. And she hasn’t told me about you. Can you imagine?”
As if in agreement, his little chipmunk wrinkles her nose.
“I ran to her, your mummy, and she ignored me. Wouldn’t even look at me. I even begged. Do you know what that means? It means completely dropping your pride in the dirt and stomping on it. I didn’t stomp, I knelt. Right there in the cold, hard ground. It was winter and your mummy competed with the cold and won. Ice queen. Untouchable even by begging. And you know how ice queens are. People hate them. I hated your mummy just then.”
Some bird shrieks somewhere near and his baby jumps, her nose wrinkling again in distaste. Draco strokes her fluffy head, amused that her hand and arm have simply moved with his instead of letting go of his finger.
“Of course, it was just then, you understand. If I didn’t love your mummy, you wouldn’t be here, you pretty little puffskein. But I doubt she loved your poor daddy, because if she did, she wouldn’t have walked away from me, would she? Wouldn’t have turned us out and preferred to not see you than see me.”
Hermione doesn’t know lullabies, and perhaps she should ask her mother. And Molly. What she is humming now-- in between shushing-- is The Blue Danube, which, for some reason she’s always forgotten to ask, was on Permanent Sticking Charm on someone’s record player. The baby on her arm sounds aggravated, but Hermione knew the tiny mercreature has no reason to be aggravated at all. She’s only just been nursed, burped and changed. Hermione lets her cry it out. It only lasts a bit. When the wailing subsides to whimpers, Hermione snuggles the swaddled bundle closer to her chest.
“What, you don’t like waltzes, little buttercup?”
There’s a telltale movement beneath her baby’s eyelids.
“Are you rolling your eyes at me? How dare you.” She negates that scolding by burying her nose in her baby’s downy head and breathing in that heavenly scent of babyhood, when infants still smelled like angels. “Let’s read for your bedtime, shall we, my wee one? We have a new book from Nana... I don’t know which nana.”
Hermione takes the book from the end table beside the rocker. The baby begins to fuss again, only settling down when Hermione talks again. “Look, baby, ‘Rhymes and Lullabies’. But I don’t know how to sing any of these. No guarantees, all right? How about this one?
“Merry are the bells and merry would they ring
Merry was myself and merry would I sing
With a merry ding-dong! Happy, gay and free,
And a merry sing-song! Happy let us be!
“My goodness. You like this? You’ve lost that eleven on your forehead, you goose. Merry have we met--” Hermione laughed. “No, it wasn’t particularly merry. And merry have we been. Merry let us part, and merry meet again-- I don’t like this thing. Not really for bedtime. Here’s a good one.
“Sweet and low, sweet and low,
Wind of the western sea,
Low, low, breathe and blow,
Wind of the western sea,
Over the rolling waters go,
Come from the dying moon and blow,
Blow him again to me;
While my little one, my pretty one, sleeps.
“Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,
Father will come to thee soon--”
Hermione halts. But then her ‘pretty one’ scrunched her face up.
“Rest, rest on Mother’s breast,
Father will come to thee soon.” Amazingly, the squirming and kicking stops. Hermione continues reading the... lullaby. It’s by Tennyson but she can’t call it a poem.
“Father will come to his babe in the nest,
Silver sails all out of the west
Under the silver moon.
Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. You’re something, Thalia Maura. Picking this for your lullaby. So devious of you, darling. You’re lucky you’re tiny and pretty or I’d whip you. But then, of course you’d be pretty, wouldn’t you? Your father’s pretty, you know. I suppose handsome is the right word. And if only he’d said the right words.”