An Exciting Life by Pondering
Chapter One: A Day Like Any Other
As the sun rose over the rooftops of London, Vicky Hotham was curled on her sofa, pretending to watch a morning news program. She stirred her coffee and tried to set it down in front of her. Not being fully awake yet, she missed the table and the mug hit the floor. The coffee quickly seeped into the carpet, leaving a stain, which Vicky knew would be hell to get out—but she would have to try, she supposed, once she had a little bit more caffeine in her. Drowsily, she rose to make herself a cup of coffee, hoping that the vicious cycle would not continue.
When the kettle finished boiling, she turned it off at the power point and poured the water in. She stirred it again and lifted it to her lips—maybe a nice good swig now would be enough to get her back to the sofa without tripping over her own feet.
The day was starting and Vicky knew that the paperboy would be coming around any moment now. Then she heard a dull noise, which could only be that of a roll of paper hitting the front window—she wondered if the paperboy aimed at it on purpose. Sighing, she managed to set her cup of coffee correctly on the table, put her slippers on and stepped out the front door to retrieve her paper.
Vicky had never been much of a paper reading person. It had always been her husband that had read the paper, but seeing as he was now fully out of her life she had assumed the role for herself. There weren’t usually that many interesting articles in the paper, but one yesterday had caught her eye. There had been a mysterious murder near the Prime Minister’s residence a few days ago, and the police had no idea who the perpetrator was or what their motives were. There was a lot of public interest in the case—apparently the public was feeling very unsafe at the moment, especially with the bridge collapse and the freak natural disasters. Now, they had ‘mysterious murders’ to add to the list.
She took another sip of coffee and glided off to the toaster, still feeling like a sleep-deprived zombie. After managing to untie the impossible knot in the bag of bread, she popped two slices into the toaster. She buttered the toast and went back to the table to read her paper.
It was slightly morbid, she noted, to be reading about a murder case as she ate breakfast. Death was not something someone wanted to be reminded about first thing in the morning, but after a few seconds, she found that she really didn’t care.
She munched her breakfast as she read the latest article. How strange—apparently every entrance to the house had been locked, but there was no sign of forced entry. Unless the offender had come down the chimney in a Father Christmas-like fashion, it had to be magic.
Magic.
She wondered if it could be magic. She knew that magic did exist, even if Father Christmas did not. After all, she had seen it performed with her own eyes. When she was nine years old, a man named Albus Dumbledore had come to her house to whisk her brother Chris off to a school of sorcery.
Of course, she couldn’t tell anyone that she thought the murder of this Emmeline Vance woman had been a product of magic. She might as well announce that she was going to hide out in her garden during Easter, hoping to capture the chocolate-delivering Easter Bunny.
Her brother used to send her three letters a week during his first term at the school—Hogwarts—but after that, the amount gradually reduced until his seventh year, when she received none at all. He had told her stories of unicorns, of games played on flying broomsticks, of the four houses—her brother had been a ‘Slytherin’, whatever that was. Most importantly, her brother had told her how wizards and witches hid themselves among the non-magical population, or ‘Muggles’ as they called them. Now Vicky could not help but say magic was the reason for everything strange or inexplicable she had heard of in her life, from the existence of flying saucers to the whereabouts of the Loch Ness Monster.
She wondered if she should send a letter to her brother. She hadn’t heard from him in ages; she had no idea how he was doing now. The problem was, she had no way of procuring an owl to carry the letter, so that idea was debunked.
Vicky opened the window and poked her head out. It felt oddly cool for summer and there was a strange mist hanging in the horizon. As she stared at it, she felt more miserable and upset. She shook her head to clear it; she didn’t need pessimistic thoughts this morning. She scanned the sky, looking at the dreary clouds, fat with the promise of rain. She sighed, why couldn’t summer be warm and cheery? Not like last summer, with the drought, but somewhere in between where it was pleasantly tolerable all season.
It looked like today would be a day like any other. In other words: dreadfully boring. She would go down to the supermarket as she was running out of necessary foodstuffs. Then she would make a large dinner for tomorrow night, when her son Ben would be coming over with his new girlfriend. She wrinkled her nose at the thought. She could only hope that this girlfriend had more table manners than the last one and was proficient in the use of a knife and fork.
The television announcer was now shouting something about some celebrity’s sordid love affair. Vicky grimaced and wondered if she should wash her hair before she went to the shops, or after she returned. Or maybe she could get another haircut? She shunted this idea out of her mind—her hair was already short enough. If she wanted it any shorter, she’d have to go to a barber. The very fact that she was spending this time thinking about what do with her time rather than rushing madly about trying to get everything done must mean that life had become very boring indeed.
An Exciting Life by Pondering
Chapter Notes: Thanks to voldy_mort for betaing this for me.