Anyway, I’d planned on sneaking the journal out, reading it, and sticking it back before anybody noticed, but I should’ve known that my sixteen-year-old sister Tony would foil that scheme.
“Merlin’s pink frilly knickers, Joey!” she shouted, stopping in the doorway of my room and staring at me like she’d never seen me before. “Are you reading?”
So I’m not quite as… erm… literary as Tony. Neither is anyone else in the family. Or probably the world.
“Er, yeah,” I said, rolling over on the bed and clutching the journal. “Sign of the apocalypse, right? Listen, have you ever heard of a book called Pride and Prejudice?”
It was like I’d offered her a lifetime supply of Fortescue’s best ice cream. “SINK ME TO THE DEPTHS OF THE DEVIL!” she screamed, vaulting into the room and crash-landing on my bed. “Discovered Jane Austen, have you? Isn’t she utterly fabulous? You’re never going to be the same again, Joey. I cannot wait to talk about this book with you! Have you gotten to the part yet where she dances with Mr. Darcy? You will adore Mr. Darcy, by the way.”
I laughed. “Calm down, this isn’t Pride and Prejudice. I was just wondering. It gets mentioned in here a bunch of times.” I held up the journal. “Look what I found. This is mum’s old diary from when she was like twenty-three. You wouldn’t believe this stuff.”
Tony let out an earsplitting shriek. “Give that to me this instant!” she demanded, snatching it from me. Despite her dreamy, romantic look, all long flowy skirts and gauzy blouses and long tangled curls, she is definitely the boss of the family. Which is saying something, seeing as our mum is our mum. I can only think of one instance where she hasn’t gotten her way”she keeps trying to get us all to call her ‘Antoinette,’ her real name. Those efforts have always failed pretty miserably. Tony likes to walk around barefoot by moonlight, sometimes singing and picking wildflowers. But it’s not because she’s a free spirit. It’s because she thinks it’s really appealing and attractive. She calls herself an ‘aesthete,’ but I feel like I probably wouldn’t agree if I knew what that meant.
She turned to a random page and read in her most theatrical voice, “‘I didn’t have to look at Tyrone as he passed to know what he looked like. His unrealistically perfect picture was on a million t-shirts, posters, mugs, and magazine covers, after all. Tall, broad-shouldered, even more well-muscled than back in school, smooth dark brown skin that always made you want to search frantically for just one zit that could prove he was human.’ This is too good!” she shouted. “Who would’ve guessed that dad used to be good-looking? Unless that’s just mum’s opinion. I mean, Aunt Ivy probably thinks Uncle Ted is sexy.” She shuddered.
I didn’t say anything, mainly because I always thought dad was good-looking. Most people do. And I don’t think Uncle Ted’s that bad, either”he’s always kind of gaunt and tired-looking, but once you know him, you don’t notice at all.
Maybe it’s because I’m not as pretty as Tony, who definitely got our parents’ looks. I’m not saying that because I want pity or anything, but I think I ended up with all of my grandparents’ weirdest features. Luckily, I’m also not as girly as Tony (though she’s the kind of ‘girly’ that can easily snap off the personal bits of any bloke who disrespects her), so my outrageously frizzy hair, lousy skin, wonky teeth, crazy eyebrows, and goofy nose don’t bother me much. I might not be all willowy and graceful like Tony, but my body’s plenty good for playing Quidditch. I’m a Chaser for Gryffindor, and pretty darn good.
“Joey, where did you go?” exclaimed Tony, waving a jangly bangle-covered hand in front of my face. “It’s like you just floated away to some fantasy realm or something. That’s supposed to be my job. You sure you’re feeling okay?”
“Peachy,” I said calmly. “Now, let’s get ready for dinner. I know that takes you a year and a half. Oh, and I’ll be needing my shoes back.”
It’s Mum and Dad’s 20th anniversary today, so we’re having a party. That’s why Tony and I were hiding upstairs”Mum gets pretty terrifying when she has to cook for a bunch of people. Our little sister Charley, who’s ten, was in the backyard, cleaning the giraffe house”my turn was last week.
Tony hates Super Motts, our pet giraffe. She says having a giraffe is ‘vulgar’ and that he should be roaming free on the savanna. But between you and me, I think she’s just jealous because Super Motts was born the same day as her, so she has to share the attention with him on her birthdays. Also, Super Motts isn’t the brightest ungulate on the block, and that’s considering he’s the ONLY ungulate on the block. I think if he were on the savanna, he wouldn’t be doing much roaming. He’d either be lunch for a lion, or he’d be trying to mate with an especially pretty tree.
There was a horrible crash from downstairs, and the muffled sound of Mum screaming a few of her favourite words. If Dad knew I could hear, he would’ve cast a Muffliato charm around my room. I think he still sees Tony and me as his little baby girls. (Charley, not so much. She’s pretty tough. She may only be ten, but she’s as scary as Mum when she wants to be.)
As Tony went to go do makeup or whatever it is that takes her so long, I lay back on the bed and tried to imagine Mum and Dad as young people, starting up their relationship, back when Dad still had hair and was a famous Quidditch star, and Mum wasn’t even an Auror yet. (She’s second-in-command now, after a guy called Aeneas Scriggs, though she has another name for him).
It’s too hard for me to picture Mum feeling shy or uncomfortable around anyone, especially Dad. They argue all the time, although Dad tries to avoid it as much as possible, and sometimes, Tony and Charley and I used to get scared that they’d get a divorce. I think they almost thought about it once or twice, but”and this sounds really cheesy”I think they’ve been together so long, they don’t know how to be themselves without each other. They’re two halves of one crazy dysfunctional messed-up awesome whole.
Mum wrote in her journal that she didn’t want to get married, and that she couldn’t imagine herself having kids, that Dad was meant for those things, but she wasn’t. But I can’t imagine what she’d be like if she WASN’T a mother. A bunch of people have said that Dad’s more like a mum to us, since he stays at home and doesn’t have a job and takes care of us, but frankly, there are some areas where you just need a Mum, even when ours pretends otherwise.
I picked through my miserable array of dresses”I keep getting taller, and none of my clothes stick around for long”found something decent, and ran a brush pointlessly through my crazy hair as I listened through the floor to see who was arriving. It already sounded like feeding time at the zoo down there.
I smiled to myself, thinking about the fun of being crammed into one room with my bajillion cousins. I could already hear the tell-tale sounds of loud singing that told me the Quinn branch of my family was here.
By the time I ran downstairs, the whole bunch of them had taken over the living room. We’d magically expanded it to fit the number of people we were going to have over, but it was still packed. Aunt Haley, my mum’s best friend in the world, and Uncle Wolfie, my dad’s brother (well, stepbrother, but seriously, who’s counting?) are over here all the time with their five kids. Uncle Wolfie’s real name is something ridiculous, but everyone calls him Wolfie except my parents, and he writes music and plays the piano really well. Aunt Haley’s an actress and a singer, so there is ALWAYS music in their house. She’s tiny and he’s big, she’s loud and he’s quiet, but they’re still a lot alike.
At that particular moment, Aunt Haley was telling a long, complicated story to my mum, while Uncle Wolfie was helping his youngest daughter learn a song on the piano. The whole family’s musical except Jules, who’s my age and one of my best friends. He’s one of those guys who’s super-quiet and looks super-innocent, but when he says something, it’s always very witty and sarcastic. He’s short and a little bit chubby, and he has a mop of curly brown hair, so people always expect him to be a perfect angel and not, as his mum puts it, a “sass machine.”
Jules, which is short for Julian, is the middle kid. His big brother, Luc, is seventeen, and he plays Keeper for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. He’s tall and muscular-ish with reddish-gold hair, and he might’ve been born in the wrong decade, because he’d be a bit of a hippie if he could. He loves nature and wears bright colours and plays the guitar and all that. Indigo, who’s sixteen, is also in Hufflepuff, but she’s tiny and dark-haired and bespectacled, and she’s incredibly organized and put-together. She might not be human. She’s in a million clubs, and she still has time to be brilliant at the violin and the oboe.
Then there are the twins, who are twelve. Elektra’s stick-skinny with long, curly, bright red hair. She can be hyper and socially awkward, but she’s really funny and a nice kid once you get to know her. Her twin, Dorian, has great people skills and is pretty popular, but he makes sure people include Elektra in everything, even though he’s in Gryffindor and she’s in Slytherin. He’s an incredible singer and dancer, and she’s a virtuoso at the piano, so they play music together a lot. I can tell Dorian’s going to be really good-looking when he gets older, with his shiny black hair and bright blue eyes, although he doesn’t like to do typical ‘boy things.’ He’d rather play with dolls or paint his nails than play sport, but almost nobody at Hogwarts minds, because he’s the most charming kid ever. I love the whole family.
A lot less noisy is the Lupin bunch. I honestly think Aunt Ivy and Uncle Ted might be the nicest people in the world. They both work at Hogwarts, Aunt Ivy teaching Charms and Uncle Ted as the school Healer, so I see a lot of them. I don’t often get to see my cousin, Rebekah, though, now that she’s grown up and left home.
She’s writing what she calls “the definitive guide to magical beings,” though she’ll probably come up with a snappy title for it. She says it’s a crime that nobody’s written one yet, though I guess she’d be the ultimate expert in the subject”she’s a Metamorphmagus with a werewolf dad and an Animagus mum, and she told me she dated a vampire once, though I think she was kidding. Sometimes it’s hard to tell with her. Rebekah was some kind of child prodigy, and she has kind of an odd sense of humour. For the most part, though, she’s quite down-to-earth and easy to talk to.
Rebekah’s not much at all like her eighteen-year-old brother, Henry, even though they look a lot alike (when Rebekah’s not using her Metamorphing skills, that is, which is most of the time”she mostly just uses them to clear up the odd spot or bad hair day). They’re both tall and lanky with blue-grey eyes and short-cropped blondish hair. But Henry’s always gotten into more trouble, and not just light-hearted pranks. He always struck me as sullen and scary when I was younger, and he almost got expelled a few times.
He’s grown up a lot in the past year, though”no time to explain any of that now”and now he’s going into training to be an Auror, believe it or not, even though he almost failed out of Hogwarts. Honestly, I think the poor bloke just wanted some attention, being the only ‘normal’ person in a family of pleasant and charming freaks. His parents were pretty good at dealing with everything, though, I have to say.
“All right, is everyone here?” boomed my dad, bounding down the stairs and dressed in his best dark red dress robes. He rubbed his hands together. “Quinns, check, Lupins, check… oh, come on, don’t tell me Jordan forgot?”
“He said he’d be running a bit late,” Mum put in, trailing down the stairs behind him. “Apparently, there was no need bothering to explain because I wouldn’t understand the explanation anyway. Classic Jor-jums. Ah well, gives us more time to make fun of him behind his back.” She looked really pretty in her brand new sparkly turquoise robes with a deep, plunging neck that she would never let me get away with. She was even wearing lipstick, which she almost never does, and her hair was all down and flowy. There’s not much occasion for her to get dressed up in the Auror business, which is probably good, because it’s mostly men and she’d distract everybody.
“Joey, would you mind nipping into the kitchen and put some dip and crisps and veggies and everything on plates?” asked Dad. “That way, everyone will spoil their appetites and no one will have to put up with your mum’s cooking.”
Since I did as I was told, I have no idea what kind of snappy retort mum made, but knowing her, there definitely was one. By the time I emerged, though, B.C. was pounding away at the piano and Dad was singing at the top of his lungs, “SHE’S GOT A CHICKEN TO RIIIIDE! SHE’S GOT A CHICKEN TO RI-I-IDE! SHE’S GOT A CHICKEN TO RIDE, AND SHE DON’T CARE! MY BABY DONKEY!”
“And this is how you welcome me? Butchering a song by my favourite artists? I’m deeply offended,” said Uncle Jordan, suddenly materializing in the middle of the room and making his way matter-of-factly to his favourite armchair. It was already inhabited by Dorian, but he quickly took care of that with his famous Jordan Face.
Uncle Jordan works with computers, which means he pretty much lives as a Muggle, even though he’s a Seer. Somehow he manages this, I dunno how. But on the three or four times a year that he crams visiting us into his busy schedule, he goes all-out and uses every kind of magic under the sun. Apparition is one of his favourite kinds.
“You may want to move away from the fireplace,” Uncle Jordan added flatly. “My wife and son will arrive via the Floo network in approximately nine seconds. It really is inconvenient that neither of them can Apparate.”
FLSHOOOM. Sure enough, just then, Aunt Giorgi stumbled out of the fireplace, coughing slightly and followed by my best friend in the whole universe, Nigel Potter. Aunt Giorgi’s a fashion designer, not famous among normal people, but she makes stuff for celebrities all the time, which I think is fantastic. She always dresses up in the craziest clothes, but her outfit tonight was pretty low-key for her”a long rainbow tie-dyed dress with puffy sleeves, ballet slippers, earrings that looked like tiny spinning disco balls, and a long wedding veil covered in rainbow sequins. She was wearing strings of Christmas lights around her neck and up and down her arms, and her hair, which she’d grown out almost to her waist, was sort of a soft coral pinkish colour.
“Godric, all these years, and Mum still freaks out whenever she has to take the Floo network,” muttered Nigel, brushing off his jacket and leaning up against the mantelpiece with his usual flair.
Aunt Giorgi rolled her eyes. “How many times do I have to tell you, I have nooo problem when it comes to the actual traveling bit itself. That, I don’t mind. It’s the stepping into the giant terrifying flames bit that I don’t particularly care for.”
Nigel pulled a face. “Parents,” he muttered, chucking me on the shoulder. Nigel is my favourite person ever, but I would never tell him that. Partly because he already knows it, and partly because he’s full of himself enough as it is. He’s tall and skinny with a long red ponytail and thick black glasses, but he has this way of carrying himself that makes him look almost handsome. Girls are crazy about him… bit scary, actually. He’s also brilliant at art”painting mostly, though he can make pretty much anything”and he has what he calls a “semi-photographic memory,” which means he’s a walking collection of random trivia and useless facts.
So, you’d think he’s perfect, and at first blush, he seems totally confident, but there is a bit of a snag. See, Nigel’s practically a Squib. He’s terrible at magic, no matter how much he tries and how hard he works. He’s not a complete Squib”I’ve seen him manage magic lots of times”but it seldom works out the way he expects it to, and it comes exploding out of him when he gets upset. He gets great marks on written exams and essays and everything, because he’s really bright, but he just can’t do the practical stuff.
His dad was in denial about this for a LONG time, and he always yelled at Nigel for not trying hard enough, but he’s finally come to terms with the fact that magic isn’t as easy for Nigel as it is for him. If all this troubles Nigel, though, he never shows it. I don’t dare bring it up, either. It’s… a bit awkward.
“Well, that’s everyone, then, isn’t it?” said my Mum. “The food’s all ready, so we might as well go eat it now!”
“And by ‘eat,’ she really means ‘we give long boring speeches while everyone stares longingly at their plates,’” Dad put in. “Come on in already, you know where the dining room is!”
The ninety-four-million or however many of us there were, all poured into the dining room somehow, which, like the front room, had been expanded with magic. Instead of one dining table, there were three”one big one for adults, two smaller ones for the ‘kids.’ Like it or not, I was one of the younger kids by default, so I sat down with Jules, Nigel, Dorian, Elektra, and Charley.
“A toast!” said Uncle Wolfie, raising his glass. “To Ty and Emma, for going this long without killing each other!”
“SPEECH!” yelled Aunt Haley. “Speech, speech, speech, speech!”
“Managing to stay married to this woman for twenty years, that’s definitely something to celebrate. I deserve a circus parade,” said Dad. “Seriously, though, it’s a double edged sword, you know? It’s not just putting up with her, it’s managing not to drive her away, too. Tricky stuff, but if anyone can do it, it’s The ‘Ronester.”
Mum rolled her eyes. “Oh, come on. I haven’t heard you call yourself ‘The ‘Ronester’ in decades. I thought that nickname was dead for good. You’re way too old for that particular brand of crazy.”
“Hey, youth is not an affectation, youth is an art!” piped up Tony. I could tell she was quoting Oscar Wilde from the weird old-fashioned accent she put on when she said it. She claims she doesn’t have an Oscar Wilde Voice, but she totally does.
“Don’t encourage him,” said Mum witheringly, but she was smiling. “But yeah, it’s been a rocky road these twenty years.. ‘Cos the question was, all the arguing, all the horribleness and the insanity and the radically different beliefs, is dealing with all of that worth the ridiculous amount that we’re attracted to each other? But the answer’s yes. I learned that lesson a million and twelve times over. We’ve had our fights, but nah, we can’t live without each other. It’s pathetic, the poor bloke’s stuck with me for life.”
Dad grinned. “See, I’m a romantic,” he said, “And Em’s… not. Definitely not. So being married is nothing like I ever thought it would be, but the important thing is finding someone who makes you laugh and likes having a good time. Because marriage isn’t like fairy tales. You learn all these fun facts, like my wife has really hairy toe knuckles, and she snores, and she likes to steal my boxers and wear them, and she teaches the kids swear words, and she always forgets to flush the toilet.”
“Yeah,” mum retorted, “Or that my husband secretly has a unibrow, but he plucks it so nobody will know, only he uses my tweezers because he’s too far in denial to buy his own. And he talks about food in his sleep and he sings really loud and off-key in the shower when I’m trying to sleep, and he never replaces the toilet paper, and he tapes down his man-boobs with spell-o-tape.”
Dad’s jaw dropped. “How many times do I have to tell you, Em, I don’t have man-boobs! My pecs are just on vacation, and they got some friends to house-sit for them!”
“Well, at least I accept the fact that I have hairy toes,” said Mum. “Hobbit pride!”
Noticing that this conversation was plummeting downhill fast, Dad cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said, “After all that awesome TMI, the number one thing I had to learn about Em”and that took me way too long”is that you have to be patient and let her make the first move. Yeah, I’m not good at that.”
“When Tyrone wants something, he does not give up. If he thinks one day when he’s six years old that it’d be cool to have a pet giraffe, he’s still gonna want one when he’s grown up. And the problem is, when I don’t want to do something, getting me to change my mind takes forever. So it’s like tug-of-war gone mad.”
Tyrone shook his head. “Yeah, I tried to snog her once, no go. I had to wait for her to snog me. Then, when I wanted to get married, I proposed, she said no. I proposed three times, I made a total fool out of myself, and she still said no. I even got the whole Chudley Cannons team to propose with me during a game, still no. Then, when I gave up all hope, she turns around and asks me to marry her when I least expected it.”
Aunt Haley let out her famous squealing noise. “I remember that! It was the fourth night of that Princess Bride musical that Wolfie wrote! And I was playing Buttercup, and Tyrone was in the audience, and after the show was over, we all came out to bow, but then after we’d all bowed, Emma rode out onstage on a giraffe””
“Wearing a bikini,” Dad interjected enthusiastically.
“Yeah, wearing a bikini, and the giraffe had a banner around its neck that said, ‘TYRONE, WANT TO MARRY ME? P.S. IF YOU SAY YES, YOU GET TO KEEP THE GIRAFFE.’ Aaaaagh, it was so adorable! I will never get over how cute that was!”
Dad grinned. “And I yelled, ‘AS YOU WISH!’”
Before anyone else could tell any mushy stories about my parents, though, there was a strange noise at the front door. Uncle Jordan jumped up, and so did Mum, looking her most Auror-y. We all froze for a second or two, expecting the worst, until there were three short, sharp raps at the door.
Mum groaned. “I’ll go get rid of them,” she said. “Typical.”
She walked over to the door and opened it but, before she could do anything else, a man with long curly blond hair and a top hat shoved past her and strode inside the house as if he owned the place. “Oh, come on, don’t tell me you started without me! Beastly behavior!” crowed Anatoly Capshaw.
“You told us you weren’t coming, you idiot!” exclaimed Mum.
“Well, naturally! I always say I’m not coming so that people will be excited to see me when I turn up! That’s show business, you repulsive harpy!” he declared. “Now, move on out of the way so my entourage can come in.”
Anatoly is best friends with Uncle Wolfie and Aunt Haley, and one of the strangest and coolest people I’ve ever met. The whole family loves him and his weirdness, but he and Mum have always pretended to hate each other. I’m not sure why, but I’ve learned not to question either of them much. Anatoly’s had pretty much every job under the sun at some point”he even ran away with a circus for awhile, and I heard he took on everything from lion-taming to clowning to being the ringmaster. He’s done carpentry and landscaping, he’s been a pastry chef, a zookeeper, a professional stuntman, a best-selling novelist, a farmer, a substitute teacher, a repo man, a speed skater, a roller coaster designer, and a bounty hunter, and those are just the non-wizarding ones (though, of course, he always used magic to do his jobs).
The ‘entourage’ he was talking about consisted of a Belgian astrophysicist named Franc Declerq and a three-year-old Vietnamese girl. See, Anatoly and Franc have been together for sixteen years, but Anatoly always just says, “It’s just a fling, nothing serious.” He hates the idea of committing to anything, so Franc is just Franc, nothing else. He’s small and reserved, with dark hair and a beard, and if you call him Anatoly’s ‘boyfriend’ or ‘partner’ or anything else, he looks at you like you’re a three-headed baboon and says “Please don’t ever call me that again.”
They’re definitely a unit, though, and they even adopted a baby from Vietnam. She’s called Ringo Supernova Capshaw-Declercq, after Anatoly’s least-favourite Beatle and Franc’s favourite word, and she’s adorable. Anatoly once said that the only way he and Franc would ever get married was if it was the same day and time as Ringo’s wedding, just to tick her off. I bet they go through with it, too.
“Sorry about this,” Franc muttered to my mum, kissing her on the cheek. “He didn’t even tell me this was going on until fifteen minutes ago. I’d intended to get some work done, but you’re more important.”
“It’s just the sun, it can wait!” shouted Anatoly. “Honestly, the way you talk about it, you’d think the earth revolves around it!” He jabbed my mum in the ribs. “That’s a good one, eh? I really ought to write these things down!”
She rolled her eyes. “Into the dining room, the lot of you. And shut up.”
“You should’ve told us you’d be here!” Dad said, conjuring up some more chairs for the ‘entourage.’ “You missed the sing-along.”
“Of ‘She’s Got a Chicken to Ride,’” Uncle Jordan added dryly as Franc sat down next to him. (They were friends from college, and Jordan accidentally introduced Franc and Anatoly, something that Mum likes to blame him for all the time.)
“Ah, ‘She’s Got a Chicken to Ride.’ An immortal classic indeed,” Anatoly said gravely, plopping down right next to Mum. “Second only to ‘Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza.’”
Tiny, pigtailed Ringo tugged on Anatoly’s long acid green frock coat. “Ani? Who’s got a chicken to ride?” she asked quietly.
Anatoly looked down his nose at her with utmost solemnity. “Lady Mondegreen,” he said. “Now, you go sit down with all the other boys and girls. Meanwhile back at the ranch, I’ll embarrass myself in front of all of the grown-ups with my customary stream of inane drivel.”
“Okay, Ani!” she chirped, and skipped over to our table, where she knew she’d get all kinds of attention.
I kind of lost track of what the adults were talking about. I was too busy eating some pretty good food and arguing with the rest of my table. Sometime in the last few days, the Quinn branch of the family had unanimously decided that my new nickname should be ‘Joe-jums,’ and Nigel was totally in favour. Sometime while I was making my case, though, I heard Uncle Wolfie say, “Of course, back when you were dating, every witch in Britain would have given her wand arm to be Mrs. Thomas. Nobody would’ve believed it would turn out to be you.”
My Mum’s eyes flashed flashed, but I couldn’t tell whether it was in an angry way or mischievous way. It was somewhere in between. “That’s ‘Ms. Weasley’ to you, Beowulf Caspar Friedrich… whatever your name is. This is the twenty-first century.” She speared a bit of meat with the fork and pointedly swallowed it. “There’s a time and a place for everything, but if you think this is the time or place to ‘Mrs. Thomas’ me, you are sorely mistaken.”
As always, Uncle Ted was the one to break the awkward silence. “So… er… what is this stewed with the porkchops? It’s good, whatever it is.”
“It’s prunes, I think,” said Aunt Ivy, taking a careful nibble.
Mum and Dad exchanged glances and grinned like a pair of Cheshire Cats. “No,” they said in perfect unison. “It’s pre-juiced plums.”
I can’t sleep tonight. I just keep reading through this journal for hours, sitting up in bed and trying to imagine Mum’s life.
Tony always has boyfriends coming out of her ears, and she always goes on about ‘being in love,’ but I’d honestly never given that kind of stuff a moment’s thought. But suddenly, I can’t stop thinking, will I ever get married? Will I ever be a mum? Will anyone ever love me so much that I’ll be having my own twentieth anniversary dinner, with all of my friends crammed together under one roof?
I keep hearing Dad’s words about finding someone to make you laugh, someone to go on crazy adventures with you. That’s the happiest ending, I think. Mum and Dad would never be content with a peaceful life. I think Dad thought he wanted a Princess Buttercup, but he couldn’t settle for anything less than an Elizabeth Bennet.
That’s why I felt like I had to tack on my own two knuts onto the end of mum’s joual. Because the way it wrapped up all seemed too perfect to me. Real life isn’t ‘happily ever after,’ and it’s a good thing, too, because if there’s not ‘happily ever after,’ it means there’s still plenty of story to go.
So I’ll just end with this, but it isn’t the end. Right now, while I’m sitting here under the covers, hoping Mum doesn’t find me and yell at me for doing underage magic (as if ‘Lumos’ even counts), I hear my parents coming up the stairs. I hear Mum laughing, and she sounds about sixteen years old. As they walk past my room, I hear Dad say, “And how are you tonight, Mrs. Thomas?”
I can see their shadows on the wall. He’s kissing her.
“Incandescently happy, duh,” she’s saying. “Or else I’d never let you get away with calling me Mrs. Thomas, you gorgeous lunatic.”
“Oh, good. Because I only say ‘Mrs. Thomas’ when I’m incandescently happy, as well,” replied Dad.
Mum laughed again. “Fire away, then.”
It’s quiet now. But if I listen really, really closely, I can hear Dad whispering, “Mrs. Thomas… Mrs. Thomas… Mrs. Thomas… Mrs. Thomas… Mrs””
“Hang on, ‘Ronester. There’s a light on somewhere.”
Oh, Niflheim. She’s coming in h---