Chapter 5
The Macalister Girls
“…and that how I come to America,” the Ethiopian cab driver finished his long-winded story. “So, if anyone ever try to tell you that you cannot fly across the ocean in a hot air balloon you make yourself, they lying.”
The talkative taxi driver had been eating dinner on the curb when Harry and Ron walked passed him, talking about Nate Rivers. He jumped up and stopped them, informing them that he knew exactly who they were talking about. Apparently it was not uncommon for people to have a favorite specific taxi driver, and this cabbie had been shuttling Nate around for a number of years. So when he told Harry and Ron that he had a pretty good hunch of where Nate was going, they leapt at the chance to be taken there.
Streetlights streaked across the windshield, offering brief moments of vision inside the cab. Along the sidewalks, a few stores kept their lights on and a few windows were lit with neon signs, but for the most part the streets were still. And the people who were out walking kept their heads cast down and gave off every impression that they would not be willing to talk.
“Here we are!” The taxi driver slammed on the breaks very suddenly, sending everyone in the cab flying forward, the seatbelts cutting sharply across their middles. “Boy Nate Rivers always has me drop him off here.”
The building they had been brought to was a store called Threadstock. Through the grimy glass windows, Harry could see various displays of clothes that, even as a wizard, he could tell were horribly out-of-date. And the store, like most of the other shops on the street, was bit dark and obviously closed.
“Wonderful!” groaned Ron. “Now we know where he buys his clothes. We can start a stakeout tonight!”
“No, no, no. Not clothes store,” the taxi driver corrected him as he pointed into the back alley. “Apartments above clothes store. Door is back in alley.”
Looking up, Harry could see a few windows dotted with light. Although there was no sigh of movement through the glass panes, it was enough of a sign of life for Harry. He reached into his coat pocket, finding the supply of American Muggle money and tossing it to the driver without even counting. Harry stepped out onto the sidewalk and Ron barely had both feet on the pavement before the bright yellow cab screeched down the tar road, tires squealing as he ran a red light to turn a sharp left.
In the alleyway, the dim streetlights barely offered any aid, causing numerous stumbles over scattered litter and the metal staircase up to the apartment doorway. All of it only to find a very much locked door. Harry slowly pulled his conceal wand from his sleeve, debating where to begin in the series of steel locks.
“Excuse me, sir,” he heard somewhat shrill-sounding voice behind him and Ron. “Can I help you with something?”
Ron and Harry both reached for their concealed wands out of reflex beaten into them through years of training. But it wasn’t very long before that hardly seemed necessary and the wands remained in their jacket sleeves. Standing behind them was quite possibly the least intimidating figure in the entire city: a small, frail-looking old woman, bundled down in a dowdy jacket and scuffed leather shoes. Her sleek, silvery hair was tied back into a knot at the nape of her neck. In one arm, she balanced a brown, paper grocery bag from a twenty-four hour market, containing only a single bag of birdseed.
Certainly capable of sneaking up and startling someone near to death, but hardly anyone who could prove to be a threat to two fairly competent Aurors.
“Thank you, ma’am, yes,” Harry answered. “We’re looking for a boy named Nate Rivers, and we’ve received information that he often visits this location.”
The sound of that particular name caused the old woman’s face to grow long and her eyes to become cross. In Harry’s opinion, it was a look usually only bestowed upon bill collectors, candy bar-selling children, and anyone else who appeared at someone’s door unwelcome.
“Oh, I see.” The woman shook her heard in an exasperated sort of way. “I should have known you were here about the Macalister girls.”
She pushed her way past Harry and Ron, pushing her key into one lock after another, all the while continuing to rant about her upstairs neighbors.
“I tell you, it was only a matter of time before someone called in the authorities about that family.”
“Why do you say that?” Ron asked, jumping when the woman used her shoulder to ram the door open in a surprising show of strength.
“Those girls have been a nuisance ever since the day the moved in here.” The woman wiped her shoes against a ratty-looking doormat just inside the hallway, and offered disapproving looks at Harry and Ron when they did not do the same. “That mother of theirs coming and going at all hours, leaving them alone more than she’s with them. Who knows what they get up to when no one’s watching them!
“And I know for a fact the little one has been in my apartment. She comes in and lets my canaries out of their cages whenever I’m out,” The woman’s pitch seemed to rise into almost more of a squawk the angry she got talking about the children who ran wild in her building. “And the older one…well, you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
Harry raised an eyebrow. After the first eighteen years of his life, he doubted anything, even the things he saw as an Auror, could shock him anymore. “Why don’t you tell me anyway?”
“Well, believe me, I know it sounds crazy, but I think she practices witchcraft!”
Out of the corner of eyes, Harry could see Ron’s eyes widen slightly.
“Witchcraft?” Ron’s voice managed to crack. “What would make you think that, ma’am?”
“Strange smells, lights flashing from the windows, explosions going off every other day,” she listed off. “My apartment is right below theirs, so I’m witness to every single one of these little incidents.
“And adding that horrid boy in with everything else!” she told them, Harry knowing she was referring to Nate. “No respect for his elders, that damn skateboard knocking over anything that gets in his way, and everything seems to get worse whenever he comes sniffing around. You know, if that girl is a witch, it wouldn’t shock me if the boy is too!”
“Have you told anyone about this?” Harry asked as he and Ron followed her up the inside stairs.
“Well, I’ve called the police on numerous occasions, but apparently until some gets killed, strange behaviors are not against the law. And of course, I’ve tried calling social services so I could at least get the girls moved somewhere else, but they say unless they can find evidence of abuse or neglect, there’s nothing they can do.
“No case for neglect?” The woman snorted a sharp laughter. “Those girls are home alone twenty hours a day, and that’s not neglect? You know, I’ll bet it was that older girl, Lorelei. She probably puts some sort of spell on every social worker who comes through their door.”
There was still on last case of stairs leading upward, but the old woman instead walked out into the burgundy-carpeted hallway, pulling out her keys to open one of the doorways in a row down the walls.
“So these Macalister girls,” Harry asked, pointing upwards. “They live just up on the next floor up?”
“Exactly,” the woman replied. “I live in apartment 2-B; the Macalisters live in apartment 3-B. Good luck to both of you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Harry replied. “My friend and I will certainly check on everything you said.”
“You’re welcome,” she sighed, beginning to shut the door, but still speaking through the cracked opening. “I suppose it’s too much to ask to have a fourteen-year-old who just smokes cigarettes and dresses like a tramp these days.”
And with that, she slammed the door shut, leaving Ron and Harry alone in the hallway.
“What kind of kids are they breeding in this country?” Ron hissed as he followed Harry up the last flight of stairs. “The boys are all felons and the girls use magic in front of Muggles without so much as a second thought.”
“Neighborhood gossip,” Harry assured his friend. “People can talk about their neighbors being wizards, but unless they actually see something to prove it, there’s no reason to panic. I can tell you how many calls I’ve gone on where Muggles simply accuse somebody of being a witch. Let’s hope you never have to tag along on one of those cases. Dreadfully boring and just a general pain.”
Ron nodded and with only three steps left, they were final on the top floor of the complex. And to their right, sure enough, was apartment 3-B, right above where they had spoken to the elderly woman just moments before.
“Hello?” Harry knocked sharply against the solid oak door. “Miss Macalister, are you in there?”
Nothing. No one came to the door, not even any of the neighbors across the hall coming out complain about the noise at such a late hour.
“I hear music playing inside,” Ron whispered. “And the lights are on. Somebody’s home.”
“Their mother probably has a rule against opening the door when she’s not home,” Harry told him.
Suddenly, as though on cue, the light sound of feet pattering across the floor echoed of the softly playing blues music, soon followed by a slamming door.
“It sounds like someone’s running around inside,” Ron remarked in the same hushed tone he had been using all along.
“It sounds like extenuating circumstances,” Harry said as he pulled his wand from his pocket. “Alohomora!”
One after another, there was the sound of the four locks sealing the apartment door shut snapping open. Carefully, Harry reached for the doorknob and turned it open, pushing the door open ajar slowly on the off chance that whoever was inside would be right against the wall waiting for them.
Inside, the flat was fully lit, but completely still. The television was set on mute and a reading lamp was turned on over the sofa, a paperback resting open across the arm. Music was playing down one of the hallways, behind one of the shut doors. The whole room gave the feeling that its occupants had all vanished mere seconds before the front door opened. But there was something else that made the entire scene so eerie.
Having a son of his own, Harry’s house was a constant mess with toys scattered throughout every room in the house, the occasional piece of abandoned laundry, and even a few things he and Ginny had contributed to the mess. This flat, however, was so orderly, it was disturbing. The hardwood floors were polished to the point where Harry could nearly see his reflection; the walls were covered with various pieces of obscure art, but no family photos. The TV tucked in the corner didn’t even have on video that would interest anyone under the age of twenty, and the surface of the refrigerator was completely empty, devoid of souvenir magnets or report cards. The entire feel of the place seemed wrong for the people Harry had been told lived here: a single mother with two children.
Harry and Ron made their way down the hallway, walking to the first door on the right and gently pushing it open. The interior was silent and left little hope that anyone was inside.
The room it had led them to looked as though it belonged to a little girl. It was small, cluttered, but full of color, from the bedspread to what had to be at least three dozen drawings taped to the plain beige walls. It seemed to be more a mess than the rest of the flat, dolls scatted alongside singular crayons and scraps of yellowed drawing paper. Harry involuntarily jumped at the sound of a snap, only to look down and see that the noise had been caused by his foot stepping on a peach-colored crayon.
The room as a whole seemed to exist as an entire separate entity from the rest of what he and Ron had seen, as though whoever lived in this room lived a life without any interference or support from any of the other inhabitants of the flat.
Then, a muffled cough caused Harry to turn around, only to curse himself for being so jumpy when there had been absolutely nothing to be afraid of.
Waiting on just the other side of the door was a little girl with dirty blond hair, and large honey-colored eyes. She looked up at the two strangers, not afraid, not even wary of their presence. She simply stared in quiet observance, a thoughtful look on her face, but no signs of any real emotion.
“Hello, cutie,” Harry tried to say in as friendly a voice as possible. “My name is Harry, and this my friend, Ron. We’re…policemen.”
The girl remained silent, looking up at the both of them with a stare of quiet awe. Her head cocked to the side slightly, but still, she said nothing to them; not even to ask how they had gotten into her home.
If this even was her home…
“Maybe you can help us. We’re trying to find a boy named Nate Rivers. Do you know anyone with that name?
She put her thumb to her mouth, as though debating whether or not to suck it, but still didn’t say a word. As horrible as it sounded, Harry found himself wishing the little girl would cry, or scream, or do something. There was something about her behavior that just seemed unnatural.
“We’ll give you a Chocolate Frog if you do,” tried Ron when she still hadn’t given an answer.
As though she had finally lost interest, the little girl stepped backward into the hallway toward the glass-panel doors just behind her. She pulled one open just a crack, slid in, and sat down on the floor, watching the two of them as though they were animals in the zoo.
“That is one creepy little kid.” Ron remarked as the little girl pressed her nose to the glass.
“This flat doesn’t even look like any children live here,” Harry added as he surveyed the rest of the flat’s open area. Other than the glass-panel doors directly across from them, there was a door open slightly ajar, leading to a bathroom, and one more shut door at the far end of the hallway; the last doorway, leaving nowhere else for any other surprise guests to hide.
Out through the hallway, a pair of honey-brown eyes followed as he did so, still showing no fear, no panic, nothing. Harry pushed the door open quite easily, the door being just barely latched, and walked inside. He turned, banging his leg into the glass-top desk resting next to the door, causing him to swear sharply under his breath.
“Harry, are you okay?”
Harry nodded with his teeth clenched, rubbing the injured spot on his thigh while looking around the room. This one, too, seemed to belong to a girl, but not a little girl like the honey-eyed one hiding behind the glass. The one brick wall across from them was covered with school certificates, glossy posters of European cities and Asian gardens, and of bands he had never heard of; none of them moving. A radio on the end table next to the bed proved to be the source of the blues music they had heard in the hallway, actually quite loud when they were in the same room with it. Like the bedroom opposite it, it seemed to exist in the pattern of having itself cut off from the rest of the flat, existing in its own little universe.
Ron walked over to a bed tucked in the corner. The violet sheets were perfectly made, but the covers were rumpled, as though someone had been jumping up and down on the bed.
“There’s a fire escape out here, Harry,” Ron pointed out, and then pointed to the bed. “It wouldn’t be that difficult for him to come and go as he pleased.”
Harry glanced out the window, but even from as far away as he was, he could see the view of the city lights and even the river offered from the fire escape. It wasn’t hard to understand why anyone would want to spend a fair amount of time out there.
“Do you think he would try to hide here?” Ron turned on the lamp resting on the side table. “The place hardly seems the type for a teenage boy to come to very often.”
“It’s likely. He obviously feels safe here,” answered Harry, who had moved his way over to the bureau. “Look at this.”
In Harry’s hand was a framed photograph. In the photograph, was Nate Rivers, laughing and making faces at the camera. Sitting beside him was a pale, dark-haired girl, harder to recognize with the sour-expression on her face, but there was little doubt as to who it was. It was one of the girls that had been on the stoop earlier that afternoon; one of the children who seemed to know Nate.
But unlike Nate, she was sitting stiffly off to the side, rolling her eyes and shaking her head, and occasionally laughing at something Nate did. The moving photograph, despite all the Muggle decorations in the bedroom, offered proof that the old woman downstairs had been right in her suspicions: the older of the Macalister girls was a witch.
“Hello, Miss Macalister,” Harry said to the photograph as Nate threw an arm around her shoulder.
Harry set the photo down and began to look through the collection of photographs scattered atop the bureau. As he went from frame to frame, he noticed they were all photos of the same two children. Nate Rivers and Lorelei Macalister at a park, bundled in jackets against the cold wind, pushing the little blonde girl on the swing. A very old picture of Nate in a suit and Lorelei in a frilly white dress, the pair of them looking no older than seven. And even a picture of the two of them sitting outside on that very same fire escape, watching the lights come on over the city. Harry wasn’t quite sure what to make of it all.
“She has a diary.” Ron pointed out as held up the tiny spiral notebook.
“I think,” Ron added, straining as he read over the last few passages that had been written. “…wind blows in hot over the city as the last days of school are over. I don’t sleep during those times. Not that I truly sleep at any time of the year. Nate thinks this all a good idea, and given the right people come along, it could start to breath. But I’d rip it apart at its core first. Nate would think it’s funny. Nate would think that can make us safe.
Nose wrinkled, Ron looked up at Harry, the diary still open to the same page, a confused expression on his face.
“Is that helpful?”
“Not really, Ron,” Harry answered, taking the journal and flipping through the pages himself. But all of it just seemed like nonsense written down to confuse whoever tried to read it.
Harry ran his fingertips over the page, observing the handwriting itself. For a passage that seemed written for the sake of confusing the reader, the rushed quality of the letters looked as though whoever wrote them could not get them on the page fast enough. But at the same time, he noticed a definite practiced quality to the rabid script. In fact, the longer the Harry stared at it, the more Harry began to notice: a too-thin loop on several of the letter, a heavy flourish on the last stroke of every word. The more familiarities he noted, the clearer it became to where he had seen them before.
“Ron, look at the writing!” Harry raced over to the doorway where Ron was looking over objects on the glass-top desk. “What does it tell you?”
Ron looked over the diary, not taking it, though. But he didn’t seem to notice anything particularly odd about the handwriting.
“Two very creepy kids live here?” Ron commented.
Harry fished into his pockets, searching until finally found what he was looking for: an old, crumpled letter that had been a thorn in Harry’s side for more than a week now.
“How about now?” Harry asked, showing it to Ron.
As Ron began to compare the two pieces of paper, his eyes began to widen with recognition, and Harry already knew why. This was the letter that had been sent to Professor McGonagall by Nate Rivers, the one that had started this whole bloody headache.
The letter had seemed so out of the blue when it had arrived, that he had hardly thought to look at the handwriting. It did seem like the signature was different than the hand that had written the body of the letter, but Harry had been running and rushing so much lately, he hadn’t stopped to dwell on it. He hadn’t stopped to consider who had written the letter for Nate, or even if it had been anyone other than Nate.
“The girl who owns this journal also wrote that letter to Professor McGonagall,” Harry thought aloud, walking back towards the window, eyes still spread across the pages. They collaborated with each other!”
Ron didn’t answer or respond in any way to what Harry felt was an amazing discovery. He was about to say something when he heard a very distinct-sounding crack and Ron crumpled to the floor. And then another crack, and another, and another, and another…
“HARRY!” Ron shouted, as the sound of more cracking blows rained down on him. “GET HER OFF! GET HER OFF, PLEASE!”
Harry spun around rapidly to see his best mate crouched on the floor, trying in vain to fend off the smashing blows of a bat wielded by a girl swinging as though she were going for a record.
It took a moment for Harry to realize it, but he recognized the girl wielding the bat. It was the sour-faced girl on the stoop, the older of the Macalister sisters, Lorelei. And, as recently discovered, the author of a certain letter that had been causing Harry far too many migraines as of late.
But Ron seemed to be the one she was causing more at the moment…in his head, and his shoulders, and his shins, and his back…
“YOU…DIRTY…THEIVING…SON OF A BI-”
“Expelliarmus!” Harry pointed his wand at the wildly-crazy girl, sending the bat flying out of her hand and over her head, creating a very loud clank as it crashed to the floor unseen.
“Holy hell!” she screamed as she tried to scramble back up to her feet. “NATE!”
She disappeared around the corner and out of sight. Harry raced out of the bedroom after her, leaving Ron behind, finding it hard to believe any worse could happen to him tonight. However, fearing the volume factor only getting louder the longer this went on, Harry swiftly cast a Silencing Charm as he moved. The last thing he and Ron needed was to give the old woman from downstairs yet another reason to call the police; especially if the commotion upstairs caused enough ruckus to actually convince them to come.
Arriving in the adjoining living room and kitchen, he found a baggy-clothed figure slumped over on the breakfast bar. There, in a drugged-looking state of sleep, was Nate Rivers.
“NATE!” Lorelei shouted in her friend’s face, yanking him up by his hair. “Nate Rivers, wakey-wakey! Your best friend needs you!”
It was a dramatically loud smack across the face, causing Nate to topple backwards on the stool, which finally brought Nate to his senses in a fit of stuttering and jerky movement. It was only when his eyes finally focused on Ron and Harry that he finally seemed to be brought completely back to reality.
“MAGIC POLICE!” Nate shouted near to the point of screeching, scrambling onto the toppled stool and pulling himself back to his friend’s side. “You see, Lore? I told you they were following me!”
“Wait,” Lorelei stopped her friend, pointing towards Ron and Harry. “There actually are magic police?”
Nate began to nod, only to be pushed to the floor, stool and all, by the furious-looking girl. “And you led them back here?!”
With so many rapid emotions circling the room, Harry was certain he didn’t trust the girl to be hanging onto a solid metal weapon at the moment; even more so now that he saw the treatment she gave to people she considered her friends. With his wand still concealed, a wordless charm sent a few idle knives into a drawer resting below the sink, along with a few forks and a meat tenderizing hammer just for good measure.
Lorelei’s eyes, indicating that she had heard the sound of sliding metal, flicked over to the sink drawer, and then, more slowly, back to Harry. Her expression displayed a variety of different emotions: confusion as to why the bat had been taken from her, annoyance that it had been taken from her, and barely suppressed anger at the two invading strangers in her home and her supposed friend who had led them there.
The one thing she didn’t seem to appear was afraid.
“Now,” Harry began, making sure to keep his movements fluid and his voice low; behavior usually reserved only for when one was approaching a wild animal. “No one is in trouble, and no one is being arrested.”
Harry made sure to stress that point when he noticed the two children tense as he approached them. Even as he watched his movement as carefully as he did, Lorelei continued to move further away, back into the kitchen area. Nate stayed put, but his feet seemed to twitch underneath him, as though he wanted nothing more than to run, even straight out the window.
“This should have gone a lot easier and a lot faster if you weren’t so quick to run, Mr. Rivers.”
Nate offered a disgusted look as he sensed the beginning of lecture in Harry’s voice. “But nobody’s in any trouble here; we don’t even have to leave the flat. We are, however, going to have to have you answer to a few of our questions about Skat-Hatok-”
“Ahhhh!” Ron shouted as a shot of icy water sprayed over his front. “COLD! Really cold!”
Harry had been so focused on keeping his eyes on Nate that he hadn’t even noticed Lorelei creeping back towards the sink. In a small window of opportunity, she reached for the spray nozzle in the sink and began spraying it all over the kitchen. Whether she was merely trying to create a distraction, or if she actually though it might actually do something remained to be seen.
“Oh, for the love of God, Lore!” Nate shouted at his friend. “He’s not the frickin’ Witch of the West!”
It was becoming more and more obvious that these two were not feeling the spirit of cooperation. Neither of them seemed willing to sit down and discuss the situation calmly; the only thing that appeared to garner any sense of respect was when they were staring down the surface of an opposing wand. Harry pulled his wand from his sleeve, making it very visible to the two teenagers. The two didn’t come close to submitting, but there did seem to be a significant decrease in their impulsive desire to fight.
It was a rarity when Harry ever had to pull his wand on a suspect, and in actuality, he had no intention of casting any hex on the two children in front of him. But he could hardly argue with the results.
But there was barely any opportunity for the two teenagers to see the pointed wands, because both his wand and Ron’s, which he hadn’t even drawn yet, flew backwards, over their shoulder, as though attracted by a magnet. The two rods flew right into the waiting hands of a small child with dirty blonde waves and bed-rumpled pajamas. The little girl laughed, tapping the two wands together at the tips. Multi-colored sparks danced from the wands, the little’s girl’s honey brown eyes growing wide with wonder, an awed sigh escaping her lips.
“RAE!” Lorelei shouted. “I told you to go to the neighbors!”
The small child, Rae, looked up at Lorelei, back to Harry and Ron, then back to the two teenagers cowering back in the open kitchen area. She met both opposing parties with a gaze of curiosity and some sort of quiet understanding. But, like Lorelei, she showed no signs of any fear towards the situation.
In the brief moment that their eyes had been averted, Lorelei Macalister had snuck across the room, quietly retrieved the bat, and crept up from behind them to smash Harry right in the back of the knees, sending him crashing to the hard surface of the floor.
“Rae, hide!” Lorelei ordered the younger child.
Harry looked up just in time to see Rae dash off behind the kitchen counter and hear a cabinet door open and close. Nate, in all this madness, had the perfect opportunity to run, but to Harry’s shock, he hadn’t moved from the spot he had been in when Lorelei had first started swinging. And his eyes had never left his friend, who seemed to be the only person in the room who did not put him at unease. He watched her attack with the calm of someone observing something as mundane as a pigeon on the sidewalk; as though this sort of behavior were not only acceptable from his friend, but perfectly ordinary.
What finally did cause him to react was when Lorelei attempted to swing the bat at Ron’s shoulder, missed and fell onto an end table; one of the dark walnut legs cracking and breaking as she went down. Then, he bolted across the living room and dropped to his friend’s side, allowing Harry enough of a diversion to seek after Rae and the wand.
Once on the opposite side of the breakfast bar, he could hear pots, pans, and various metal clanging as Rae crawled through the cabinets. Slowly, stepping softly, Harry followed alongside Rae as she crawled through the shelves, wondering how long it would be before the two teenagers on the opposite end of the flat finally ganged up on him with that Merlin-be-damned bat.
Luckily, though, before that could happen, Rae finally emerged from one of the cabinet doors, looking from side to side, but not seeing Harry standing right behind her. And with an overly large amount of ease, he snatched the two wands out of the girl’s loose grip.
“Thank you, young lady,” Harry remarked, taking one wand and tossing the other to Ron, not seven feet away. Nate and Lorelei had not moved from their crouched positions on the floor, against the wall.
Suddenly, jumping to his feet and making leaps and bounds across the planked floors, he sprinted for the front door.
“Colloportus!” Harry shouted, pointing his wand towards the door, effectively sealing it in place. Ordinarily, opting for such a simple charm would have been a poor decision. But as he had yet to see either of the two children extract a wand, Harry began to have serious doubts as to whether either of them even had a wand. They had clearly seen him use a charm to shut them in, but still neither of them employed the use of magic.
Still, Nate strained and pulled at the doorknob, as though he still thought he might be able to force the door open. Lorelei, on the other hand stood stiff, still and rigid, nearly shaking.
But instead, she let out an angry, piercing scream so loud, it could have shattered glass. Actually, glass did shatter. The glass panes from the three living room windows fractured with deep cracks before the shattered fragments scattered across the hardwood floors. Then a loud crack caused Nate to jump back against the walls, doing so just in time to watch the front door fly inches in front of his face, bits of plaster still clinging to the ripped hinges. Soon, several identical rips and crashes told Harry that the rest of the flats doors had been ripped down too.
Unintentional or not, things were getting entirely out of hand. Harry pointed his wand, and a wordless silencing charm quickly ended Lorelei’s shrieks. Once her voice was lost, the girl clutched at her throat and made a desperate effort to speak, but unable to utter more than a few rasping breaths of air.
Still, the entire building shook with the aftershock, coming to an end only after the light surged, flickered and the entire street was plunged into darkness.
For a moment that seemed to last longer than it actually was, the entire apartment was dead silent. Not even the sounds of whispers, movement, or breathing could be heard. Harry found himself confused. Not by the fact that he hadn’t seen either of the older children use magic until now, but by the fact that someone Lorelei’s age was still having fits of uncontrollable magic, at fourteen, possibly fifteen.
“Lumos,” Harry whispered, waving his wand across the room. Also whispering a quick “Reparo” on the windows, lifting the broken glass of the floor, he hoped against hope that the vanishing electricity would simply be attributed to a power outage and that the American Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee would not need to be called in.
Now all they had to do was attempt to handle the inward situation themselves. Rae peaked out from behind the counter, and soon popped right back behind it as soon as they made eye contact. Brief flashes of movement lurked throughout the flat, taking turns racing between pieces of furniture, but never staying still long enough to be seen.
“911 emergency,” Harry heard a soft, but low voice coming from off to the side. “Please state the nature of your problem.”
While Harry had been distracted, Rae had found a phone hidden somewhere, and was now calling the Muggle police for help, as though they were actually equipped to handle the situation.
“Hello,” she whispered into the phone. “Magic Police are attacking my house.”
“No, no! Not Magic Police!” Nate leapt out from behind the couch and snatched the phone out of Rae’s hand, trying to stop the phone operator from hanging up. “We just found burglars in the house, and they know we’re calling for help right now, so can you please send a car or a SWAT team or somebody!”
Now Harry was simply getting fed up. He had been indulging them as of this moment, because he thought this matter was one that could be solved with a relatively little amount of effort, but now things were simply getting ridiculous.
“That’s it!” Harry shouted, stomping towards Nate with his hand out. “You give that to me right now!”
Instead, demonstrating a complete in ability to learn cause and effect, Nate once again ran for the ripped opening in the wall where the front door had once stood. A Leg Locker Curse, though, quickly put an end to that and sent Nate falling, rather painfully, to the hardwood floor. The phone, however, only landed about a foot from his face, still leaving him with the ability to shout into the receiver with his arms bound at his sides.
“Armed?” Nate repeated what the phone operator asked him, looking up and noting the retrieved wands. “Oh, yeah; they’re armed!”
Crawling between Harry’s legs and grabbing the phone before he could reach of it, Rae snatched and quickly scooted back on her knees.
The cell phone was precious inches away from Rae’s ear when an electronic voice chimed, “Incoming phone call. Would you like to select Call Waiting?”
“Uh, hold on,” Rae told the 911 operator, pressing a button that ended the call and brought the panic sounding mumbles of this new stranger.
“Hello,” Rae spoke to the new stranger, looking as though she were confused. “You tell me first.”
This time, the mumbling voice spoke louder and very quickly. “Look, little girl; either Ron Weasley is there or he isn’t. Just let me know, and let me know RIGHT NOW!”
It was Hermione. This recognition seemed to dawn with Ron first, who quickly raced across the floor and snatched the phone out of Rae’s hand, but not before Rae could playfully reach for the speaker button so everyone would be able to hear what should have been a private conversation.
“Hermione? What’s going on?” Ron gasped, becoming suddenly oblivious the conflict that had just bee accruing around him. “How did you know where I was? How did you think to use the tele-ma-phono?”
Lorelei snorted and raised an eyebrow, and Nate began rolling and thrashing around on the floor in an effort to break the Leg Locking Curse.
“I’ll tell you later.” Hermione’s voice rang clearly over the receiver.
“Hermione,” Ron said, eyes flashing over the scene. “This really isn’t a good time.”
“I wanted to tell you in person, but,” Hermione spoke over the phone, “I can’t put it off anymore. It’s not healthy.”
“Um,” Nate wriggled on the floor, as though trying to wave in an effort to gain the attention of the two Aurors. “Remember us?”
However, while Harry noticed this, Ron didn’t seem to defer at all from his squabble with his wife.
“Hermione,” Ron began again, “I know this has never an official rule, but I can’t have you tracking me down and calling me on people’s tele-ma-phonos when I’m on a case-”
“I’m pregnant!”
Ron’s mouth fell open in shock, and Harry stood motionless off to the side. Rae began to clap and smile at what she thought was good news, but slowed and finally stopped when she noticing the conflicting reactions around the room.
“Ron,” Hermione began to panic when she did not hear a response. “Ron, you’re speechless, right? Ron?”
Finally, in a dramatic reaction normally only reserved for over-the-top movies, Ron fell to the floor and did not get up, his eyes shut and a gentle groan escaping from his mouth.
“RON,” Hermione screamed into the phone, “RON, SAY SOMETHING!”
Lorelei walked over to Ron and picked up the phone, holding it up to her ear before remembering that the Silencing Charm was still in effect. Carefully, Harry took the phone from her before she could remember it was Harry that had taken her voice in the first place.
“Um…hello, Hermione; it’s Harry,” he spoke into the phone. “Ron’s going to have to call you back, alright?”
With Hermione still yelling, Harry handed the phone back to Lorelei, who was standing right next to him with her hand out. Stiffly, she snapped the phone shut and pointed to her throat and then to her friend wriggling on the floor. Warily, Harry lifted the effects of the respective charms and breathed a sigh of relief when neither of them ran. Lorelei pulled a still-struggling Nate to his feet, and then tapped her bare foot against Ron’s shoulder.
Nothing. Maybe things had just become too interesting for either of them to leave now.
“I’m…gonna go clean the kitchen,” Lorelei said as she passed the phone off to Nate.
“And,” Nate though as he watched his friend walk away and turned back to Harry, “I’m gonna go reattach all the doors.”
And with Ron sprawled out on the floor, not moving, Harry was left alone with little Rae, staring at the phone as though it were some new toy.
“I’m hungry,” Rae muttered sweetly and smiled up at Harry, as though oblivious to the scene that had just played out.
Harry Potter and the Skat-Hatokha Reaction by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Harry and Ron finally track down Nate Rivers, but neither he nor the recidents of his hiding place are feeling the spirit of cooperation. And in the middle of it all, at the worst possible timing, Ron recieves some news that quite literally knocks him off his feet.
Love ya, Jo-jo!