Cut the cord!
Is that a man I once adored?
He’s nothing but an albatross
No great loss
Double crosser!
Forget about the boy.
Pull the plug!
Ain’t he the one who pulled the rug?
He’s lower than an alley cat
Dirty rat
And I flatter…
Forget about the boy, forget about the boy, forget about the boy!
--- “Forget About The Boy” from Thoroughly Modern Millie
Actually, I wish that “Forget About The Boy” was the most annoying song that Haley sang today. After waking me up, I heard her prance over to the pull-out couch where Ivy had stayed the night, and the little loony started chirping some strange little song,
“IIIIII-VYYYY, you look quite down
With your big sad eyes and your big fat frown.
THAAAAA world doesn’t have to be so GREEEEEEEEEEY!
IIIIIII-VYYYYY, when your life’s a mess
When you’re feeling blue, always in distress
IIIIII know how to wash that sad AWAAAAAAAAAY!”
I sat up blearily in my bed and immediately fell out as Haley started belting out the chorus at a volume loud enough to make seismic plates shift:
“PUT A BANANA IN YOUR EARRRRRRR!
PUT A RIPE BANANA RIGHT INTO YOUR FAVOURITE EAR!”
I scrambled around for earplugs, feeling they’d serve the purpose much better than bananas.
“It’s true! So true!
When it’s in, your gloom will disappear
The bad in the world is hard to hear
When in your ear a banana cheers
So go and put a banana in your EAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!”
I had never heard so many exclamation points in one place before. I could feel every hair on my body standing on end, and I began to worry about Haley’s song inducing early labour in our poor house guest. Before she could launch into the second enthusiastic verse of her song, I raced into the room, planted my hand over her mouth, and said, “If you’re trying to make Ivy feel better, that’s the best possible way to make sure she won’t.”
“Philistine,” sniffed Haley, flouncing away.
“You don’t even know what that means,” I called after her.
Ivy was sitting up in bed, her face drawn and tired and her hair disheveled. It brought me back to when the three of us all shared a dorm together, and I could tell that was what she was thinking as well. “At least I can tell I’ll never be bored here,” she said, smiling sleepily in spite of herself.
“Yeah, but you could say the same about a torture chamber,” I replied darkly.
As I got ready for work, I wondered how long Ivy would be staying with us. She couldn’t possibly stay as long as Ted was gone. What if Ted never came back? Would she never return to her nice, big, clean house? It wasn’t like I didn’t want her around, but I wasn’t sure I could stand to act sympathetic for more than a few days. That’s my problem. I’m perfectly good at feeling sympathetic, but I just can’t act it. Now, Haley’s a very good actor. Sometimes I have to wonder how much of her sympathy is acting. But then, I’ve never been into all that touchy-feely stuff, anyway.
“Whatcha thinkin’?” said a little voice in my ear as I reached up to grab the cereal out of the pantry. I started and spilled the little flakes everywhere, giving further incentive for the ants to come out of hiding.
“Holy crabcakes, Haley!” I groused, whirling around. “You scared the shaving cream out of me!”
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” commented Haley. I rolled my eyes. “You’re still annoyed with me, aren’t you?” she said quietly. “For dancing with Wolfiekins and stuff.”
Wolfiekins. That was a new one. “I guess,” I sighed, keeping my voice low. “But honestly… a lot of it’s about Ivy. Is she going to stay over here forever, or what? What if Ted doesn’t come home in nine months”will we have his smelly, screaming baby on our hands on top of everything else?”
“Six months,” said Haley.
My forehead creased. “What?”
“Six months, not nine. Ivy was through with her first trimester before she started spreading the news that she was preggers. She and Ted had like four miscarriages before and they didn’t want to take any chances.”
That was rather shocking news, not the least of it that there had been a little creature living inside my friend’s stomach for the last three months, and I hadn’t even known it. “Oh, of course she tells you that,” I muttered.
Haley poked me in the belly button. “Well, if she even said the word ‘miscarriage’ around you, you’d start running around in circles with your fingers in your ears going ‘lalalalala, can’t hear you!’” she countered.
“Ah,” I said uneasily. Sometimes, Haley knows me far too well.
Haley’s banana song was one of those infernally catchy ones. The songs she likes tend to be. As I strolled through the gate of the stadium, I hummed it to myself, unconsciously walking in rhythm to it. The moment I stepped inside, though, my humming stopped immediately, and I froze in my tracks.
Someone was waiting for me. It was hardly a welcoming party.
“Weasley,” said Henderson Vaultz in a voice so cold, I began worrying about the likelihood of frostbite.
“Er, hello,” I said. Patrick was lurking behind Vaultz like some kind of evil hunchbacked henchman. It wasn’t a particularly good sign.
“Weasley, tell me, what was the specific number one rule of working in this stadium as an Auror trainee?” hissed Vaultz, stepping closer toward me. He didn’t give me a chance to answer, because he automatically spat, “You are not to associate with my Quidditch players in any way, in or outside of the stadium. Now, why do you think this is?”
That was a very good question. “Honestly, I’ve always wondered that myself,” I heard myself saying. Wow. That certainly wouldn’t be featured on a top ten list of the best possible things to say in my situation any time soon.
Vaultz stepped even closer, so that his pointy nose came uncomfortably close to jabbing into me like a penknife. “It is because you are trying to preserve a professional image. You are protecting my athletes; you are not trying to befriend them.” I didn’t say anything, but the truth was, Vaultz hadn’t really explained anything further. There was still no sane reason why Auror trainees and Quidditch players shouldn’t mix, but whatever. Some people are rule maniacs.
“I see,” I said politely. “Er, no offense, sir, but I’m really going to be late for work… thanks for the explanation, though…”
Vaultz gave me the iciest smile I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’ve seen snowmen. “I don’t think you understand,” he said. “You will not be going to work. Mr. Wormwood here has informed me that you were recently seen at a party with one of the Chasers on my team, and that you have regularly spoken to him here at my stadium. Tell me, have you been consorting with Wolfgang Quinn?” Now his eyes were full of fire in addition to his icy smile. It was a dramatic image, more dramatic than the situation called for. He looked as though he thought he was working for the Spanish Inquisition, interrogating some heretic.
I rummaged frantically through my head for something I could say. This was exactly what poor Wolfgang needed, to be kicked out of his job for hanging around with me. As if he hadn’t had enough issues so far in his life. “Wolfgang Quinn? That’s a strange name, I’m sure I’d remember it… is he that guy with the kind of weird-shaped head and the unibrow?”
“This is not the time for playing games,” snapped Vaultz.
Except for Quidditch matches, of course, hahaha, I couldn’t help but add mentally. I sighed. “Look, Mr. Vaultz, I’m sorry for hanging around with Wolfgang. Don’t go sacking the guy, it’s not his fault.”
Vaultz looked as though a cupcake had just begged him not to eat a plate. (That might just have been the weirdest sentence I’ve ever written.) “I’m not entirely sure you understand,” he said. “Mr. Quinn is an athlete. He is not my concern. You, however, are under my employ.” He paused theatrically, then a stream of hard, sharp words came gushing out of his mouth, along with a little bit of saliva. “You are suspended from your position here. You will wash and return your robes by tomorrow, and you will not return to the stadium without a ticket until you receive a letter from me, informing you that your suspension is over. And if I discover that you are still maintaining connections with Mr. Quinn, then the suspension will be permanent. Understood?”
For once in my life, I was speechless. Not a single snarky comment popped into my head. Vaultz didn’t even wait for my reply, probably anticipating the scary effect he had on most people’s brains, and he marched away briskly, his usual nimbus of fury swirling around him.
Patrick was still standing there and smirking at me, looking like a blank-eyed ghoul with the sunlight glinting off of his glasses so that they looked white and opaque. At last, he opened his mouth and said, “Perhaps you should listen to directions next time. And perhaps you wish you had agreed to go to the party with me in the first place.”
I shot him a glare that made his shiny white ghoul eyes look tame by comparison. “After pulling a dirty trick like that, you’re the last person I’d want to go to any party with,” I spat, then kicked the stadium gate open and got out of there as fast as I could.
I felt the distinct sense that the bottom had dropped out of my stomach and my intestines had been French-braided. I was biting down so hard on the inside of my lip that I tasted blood. Auror training was really competitive, but trainees usually tried to stick together”after all, one of the most important parts of the job was teamwork. Only a serious ratfink would think about turning in their fellow trainees. Patrick knew perfectly well that I’d need to complete my internship at the stadium before I’d even be considered for the Auror office. And he also knew this was my second complete time going through training after getting kicked out during my internship three years ago.
He also knew that being an Auror was the only career I’d ever imagined for myself, that it was the only career that really prized being a suicidally bold (and occasionally, homicidally bold), reckless, hotheaded risk-taker who acts on the spur of the moment. There was no way I was going to redo Auror training a third time. This was the end of the road for me if Vaultz didn’t feel like inviting me back.
And so what would I do for a job? Settle for the mundane Department of Magical Law Enforcement? Convince Ted’s dad to step down and let me teach Defense Against The Dark Arts? Janitor? Knight Bus driver? Cat breeder? Private detective? Assassin? I still couldn’t imagine myself being anything but an Auror. (Though I kind of like that last one. Maybe I’d get to wear a glamorous black leather bodysuit.)
Angsty thoughts were brewing around my head on spin cycle as I Apparated back home. If looks could inflict serious damage, then my eyes would have burned huge holes through the front door. This did not escape Haley’s notice when I stepped inside. Immediately, she opened her mouth and sang,
“EMMMM-A, you look quite down
With your big, sad eyes and your big fat frown
THAAAA world d---“
“Silencio,” I said dully, flicking my wand. Haley clutched her throat, her eyes bugging out of her head and burst into silent tears.
“Normally, I would not approve,” said Ivy with more than a little guilt in her voice, “but I have to say, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s done for me all week.”
Haley let out a scandalized gasp and brandished two action figures at us, having apparently run out of ceramic kittens. On closer inspection, one of the action figures seemed to be that guy with the sideburns from Les Miserables, and the other was the Phantom of the Opera. Where does she get these things? I certainly don’t buy them for her.
Not really wanting my cause of death to be ‘Phantom of the Opera,’ I hastily lifted the charm and was rewarded with Haley’s shrill, angry ranting and much emphatic gesturing of musical theatre action figures. Once I was able to get a word in edgewise, I clapped my hands together and shouted, “All right, girls, pack your bags and get ready, we’re going on a trip.”
Haley and Ivy stopped in their tracks and stared at me as though I’d suggested we go to the moon.
“Look, Vaultz just sacked me for hanging out with Wolfgang. Ivy’s husband went and ran off. We need to get away from here for awhile.”
“You got sacked?” exclaimed Haley.
I rolled my eyes, not really wanting to retell the whole sordid tale. “Yeah, and I think we should go off for awhile, get our minds off all of the things that are happening lately. We can go back to Godric’s Hollow”mum’s been begging me to visit, and they have real food. “
“You got sacked?” Haley repeated.
“Are you even listening to a word I’m saying? Yeah, I got sacked. The point is, I want to take a holiday to get my mind off of it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Ivy sighed, wearing her pinch-faced expression. “I don’t know about this, Emma. I don’t really feel like traveling.”
“You don’t feel like doing anything but lying on the couch!” I exclaimed, feeling like I was morphing into Haley. “Let’s go on an adventure, see some sights, do some stuff! You’ll feel better in no time! Come on, Ivy, you haven’t been working because the Experimental Charms Department doesn’t want to cause any harm to that fetus of yours. It’s the perfect time to take some time off! And if we go back to Godric’s Hollow, it’ll be good because your mum knows what it’s like to be pregnant”twins twice, ick”and she can help you out.”
I felt like my arguments were all extremely good, but Ivy still looked doubtful. “With all this werewolf stuff going on, I don’t think it’s right to just take a holiday.”
I knew exactly what she was thinking. She didn’t want to have fun when Ted was toughing it out at some ghetto werewolf campground. But having known Ivy for twelve years, I was ready to pull out the big guns. “You’re right, this whole werewolf thing is dangerous, especially since you’re carrying a werewolf’s baby right now. But your dad’s Head Auror, and guess who lives next door? The Deputy Head Auror. Godric’s Hollow’s like the safest place in England.”
Ivy smiled in spite of herself, holding up her hands in mock-surrender. “Okay, you win, Emma! But I can’t promise you I’ll be the most fun traveling companion.”
“That’s okay,” I said, grinning. “I’ll have Haley, and she’s a little bit TOO much fun. You’ll balance each other out nicely.”
That was when I realized that Haley hadn’t spoken a single word since I’d brought up the trip, strange for her. I looked over at her, and her face was thoughtful, her eyebrows furrowed and her neatly manicured fingers drumming on the countertop. “I don’t think I can go,” she said at last.
I squinted at her. “What, Haley Potter pass up a fun trip with free food, free lodging, and cute little siblings who love your singing? What alien is possessing your body?”
“Well, I want to go,” Haley replied slowly. “But I’m really busy. I’m still working at Madame Puddifoot’s, and I’m working really, really hard on the musical, and the guys are depending on me… Ani would get all upset if I missed rehearsal.”
Ani? What was up with Haley’s fascination with strange nicknames? Between Jor-jums and Tedward and Tyroonie and Wolfiekins and now this new name for Anatoly, it seemed like no one was safe. I wondered how she’d come up with a nickname for B.C.
“You’re playing the responsibility card?” I scoffed. “Haley, you’re Haley. Since when do you care about responsibility? Come on, it won’t be same without you. Much quieter. Less ceramic kittens and Les Miserables action figures. No banana songs… okay, actually, you not coming is starting to sound more and more appealing.”
I have to admit, though, as irritating as Haley can be sometimes, she is my best friend, and probably will always be, and she has that uncanny knack for making boring situations a lot more fun. It would be very different without her along. I mean, Ivy’s one of my best friends, but I can’t really think of any times I spent with her when Haley wasn’t around… we’ve just never really been all that compatible.
And I can’t help but feel that there’s another reason why Haley might want to stay behind while we went off. A reason that started with a “W” and ended with an “olfgang.”
NEXT MORNING
Did I really write that? “Started with a ‘W’ and ended with an ‘olfgang?’ Wow, I’m lame sometimes.
Well, anyway, today, Haley was helping me pack my stuff for the trip. I’d sent an owl to my parents, and they thought a visit was a great idea, especially given Ivy’s problem. We’d let her sleep late while we packed, knowing she wasn’t exactly feeling her best, and also because I wanted to have a rather private conversation with Haley.
“Er, listen,” I said, as I tried to nestle my Sneakascope into my already snugly-packed suitcase. “Haley… don’t take this the wrong way, but now I’m going away, and Vaultz says he’ll fire me permanently if I talk to Wolfgang”“
“Don’t worry,” chirped Haley, as though reading my mind. “Wolfgang’s adorable, but he’s not my type. He looks like a girl. I like a man who looks more like one.”
I stared her. “Haley, you don’t have a ‘type.’ You like everything with a y-chromosome.”
“That is not true,” Haley informed me, pouting a little bit.
I arched an eyebrow in exactly the sort of way that she despises so much. “That kid you peer-counseled? Ted? Ted’s brother? Tyrone? Vladislav Poliokoff? Andy Yang? That Ravenclaw kid who always said ‘absolutely’? Didn’t you even like Anatoly for awhile?”
“Come on!” exclaimed Haley. “Jonas needed me. And Ted… Ted’s a sweetheart. Everyone loves Ted. And, er, have you seen his brother? He’s”“
I cut her off mercilessly. “That Hyung-Jun guy who worked at the seafood restaurant? That you went and ate at every day even though you’re allergic? And then you got a job there? And Hyung-Jun was fired the next day? And your boss wouldn’t let you quit?”
“He had amazing eyebrows!” protested Haley. “What was I supposed to do?”
“The boy with the long hair and the fedora and the waistcoat and the skin-tight jeans with orange patches on the knees and the eye patch and the huge scar on half of his face who was eating the strawberry ice cream at Fortescue’s and then started choking and you saved his life, and then he asked me out and I said no? The Australian owl keeper with the really hairy arms who kept yelling, ‘Strewth! Love a duck!’ when the owls kept dive-bombing his privates?”
Haley was beginning to look a bit uncomfortable. I pressed on anyway.
“What about that vampire that tried to kill me in the alleyway last year?”
“HE WAS SPARKLY!”
“No, that was your diseased imagination, Haley. Bloodstained, maybe.”
“HE WAS SPARKLY!”
“Well, what about that traffic cop with the waist-length dreadlocks and the lip piercing?”
Haley stopped in mid ‘SPARKLY’ and gave me a cunning look. “Emma, you fancied him, too,” she informed me.
I sighed. “Okay, you’ve got me there. He was pretty awesome-looking. But you didn’t need to run out in the middle of traffic just to get his attention. And some of the celebrities you fancy are really, really weird.”
“They are not,” Haley protested.
“That sort of fat singer with the silly curly hair who makes all the stupid faces while he’s singing and jumps around the stage and makes every song sound impossibly cheesy?”
Haley glared suspiciously at me. “If you are referring to Michael Ball,” she said in a brisk, business-like voice, “He is the greatest man on earth and he’s fourteen times the person you’ll ever be, and I own every song he’s ever performed, and I happen to know that God sounds exactly like him.”
I shook my head in disbelief at my poor cousin’s handicapped taste in men. “Do you like anyone normal, Haley?”
“Yes, I do!” she proclaimed. “Preston L. Zyzyx!”
I blinked. “Who is that?”
“I don’t know!” announced Haley. “But I saw a picture of him, and he looks cute!”
As entertaining as our conversation was (mostly for me), all good things had to come to an end eventually. Still not entirely convinced that Haley would stay away from Wolfiekins while we were gone, I eventually ran out of names of Haley’s subjects of admiration and Ivy eventually got up.
The plan was that I would stay at my parents’ house and Ivy would stay with her parents. When we were growing up, we’d be over at each others’ houses every two seconds. With the Potters living next door to my family, a casual onlooker probably wouldn’t know which family technically inhabited which house.
I have to admit, the Potters’ house was little more entertaining than mine because I’d been an only child, and there had been five Potter kids, so some kind of exciting chaos was always going on. But now, the only Potter kids who still lived at home were Holly and Jonathan, the nine-year-old second set of twins in the family, and I hadn’t seen my parents in so long that I was almost beginning to fondly remember my dad’s rabid overprotection and my mum’s dogged insistence that I do something ‘educational.’
Ivy and I took the Floo Network over to the Potter house, knowing that my parents would be over there for breakfast. Wizard transportation is great, I swear. You can jump all over Britain in the time it takes to brush your teeth. The Muggles may have a leg up on us on pop culture, and Muggle stuff’s been getting more and more popular since Voldemort’s defeat, but we’ll always beat them when it comes to getting from place to place.
The first thing I noticed when I climbed out of the fireplace was that the big piano that had loomed in the corner of the room was gone. I didn’t have time to notice anything else in the room, because immediately, everything else was blocked by my mother jumping up and hugging me too tightly. Her enormous, poofy hair managed to obscure everything else in the room. I really, really missed that enormous, poofy hair, I have to admit.
“Well… I’m here,” I said, muffled through a mouthful of hair, as Ivy staggered out of the fireplace behind me. A cursory glance around the room showed me that my mum and dad were both there, my dad’s hair a little greyer and my mum’s taste in clothing a little worse than I had remembered, but otherwise exactly as I’d visualized the scene. Uncle Harry was sitting and trying to surreptitiously mend some kind of broken vase or knick-knack, apparently hiding this from his wife, who was in the kitchen cooking. I didn’t see Holly or Jonathan, but they were good at leaping out of the strangest places at the least-expected times.
After the usual rounds of huggings and greetings all around”Ivy receiving rather more love, seeing as she was the one whose life had taken a dramatic turn for the worse lately”I flopped down on the couch and said loudly, “So, Uncle Harry, what’s that blue vase thing you’re trying to fix?”
The response was instantaneous and expected. “HARRY!” came a shout from the kitchen, accompanied by the really ominous sound of Aunt Ginny loudly smacking a huge knife against the cutting board. This was followed by the really ominous sight of Aunt Ginny herself striding out of the kitchen, still holding the knife and wearing a scowl that didn’t match her ‘KISS THE COOK’ apron.
I saw my dad smirk quietly at me out of the corner of his eye, obviously trying not to laugh out loud. Uncle Harry looked considerably less pleased.
“Is that the vase that I bought for my mother’s eightieth birthday?” demanded Aunt Ginny.
“Very possibly,” Uncle Harry replied cautiously.
Aunt Ginny’s face softened. “Oh. Okay, then. That can be fixed. As long as it’s not something important,” she said, casually setting the knife down on the coffee table and taking a seat. “So, Ivy, Emma, how was your””
She never got to finish her question, because there was a muffled ‘ow!’ from the door that led down the stairs to the basement and the sounds of a low-key scuffle. The door swung open to reveal Jonathan sprawled flat on his back, with Holly sitting on his chest. I had a feeling that they had managed to break the vase themselves and were too afraid to come out until they were positive the situation was safe.
Jonathan and Holly are twins, but they look a lot less alike than Haley and Jordan do. (Why on earth would the Potters pick names for their kids that sound so insanely similar? But then, what do you expect of a couple that named their firstborn Harriet-Lily?) The younger set of Potter twins both have red hair and features that resemble their father’s, but that’s where the resemblance ends.
Holly is several inches taller than her brother, and has short, messy hair and freckles. She’s the only one of the five Potter children to inherit her mother’s brown eyes, and she wears rectangular glasses. Nowadays, she has a stringy, awkward look about her, while Jonathan still looks soft and childish. His hair, shiny and straight like Haley’s, falls over one of his eyes and culs up slightly at the ends, giving him a pensive appearance. The lucky boy managed not to inherit the freckles that all the rest of the Weasley clan, including me, had ended up with, and he’s also lucky enough to have perfect vision.
“Oh… hi…” said Holly sheepishly, getting up off of her brother’s chest and straightening the baggy, oversized t-shirt that she wore over a pair of boys’ cargo shorts. Her mother looked at her, arching an eyebrow slightly, but apparently felt it best not to ask any questions.
“So,” said Ivy, handily changing the subject, “what happened to the piano?”
All eyes went back to Holly again. “It was an accident!” she exclaimed. That was a good enough explanation for all of us.
Holly has always been a bit rough-and-tumble, and she has some crazy ideas sometimes. She pulls stunts and goes along with dares that I even I wouldn’t be insane enough to agree to. Luckily, given the amount of things she breaks, she is also extremely good with her hands and at making things. Unluckily, she’s very much the boss of the two twins, and can get Jonathan to agree to do pretty much anything.
The best word to describe Jonathan would probably be ‘dreamy,’ though several less-polite alternatives have been suggested. He’s very, very quiet”not shy like Ivy, just quiet”and always has his head in the clouds, always very deep in thought. No one’s ever figured out what exactly it is that he thinks about so much, but he’s usually in his own little world. This means he’s also pretty absentminded”his socks almost never match, if he remembers to put them on at all, and he’s always the kind of person who puts ice cream in his dresser drawer and his shirt in the freezer. Jonathan’s been known to sit in silence for hours at social events, then randomly interject some kind of totally unrelated statement out of nowhere.
But although some people mistakenly believe he’s only half there, there’s more to Jonathan than meets the eye. Some people are good at looking very attentive while not listening to a word that you say, but Jonathan takes everything in, and he never forgets a thing that he hears. And he’s much smarter than he seems. Still, it’s an undeniable fact that he’s carrying on the proud tradition of socially inept Potter boys.
I looked over at Ivy, who seemed rather sad about the piano. She’s not exactly B.C. Quinn, but she’s always been really good at playing the piano, and it’s always been something she’s liked to do.
We had an outlandishly good-tasting dinner, and it was rather more fun than my usual meals of cereal or sandwiches or food from whatever take-out place I passed. Even with no insane Haley there, the company was interesting, and it was always fun to hear what I had missed in my absence. But there was something restrained about the conversation”all of us were very careful not to mention Ted. Ivy’s a smart girl, and I think she realized this, but it’s amazing how hard it is to reminisce without talking about Ted. He’s kind of always been there.
Looking around the table, it was easy to see which person was the most preoccupied (other than Jonathan, of course). It wasn’t Ivy”she was involved in the conversation, trying to be as animated as she could. It was Uncle Harry, who never took his eyes off of Ivy the whole time. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him look so concerned. I wondered if there was something about the werewolf situation that he knew and we didn’t.
“So,” I said, “how does everyone feel about going to the zoo tomorrow?”
Ivy sighed. “Emma, we just got here. Do we have to go running around everywhere this soon?”
“Come on, kid, you always loved the zoo!” I exclaimed. Though come to think of it, I’m pretty sure the most exciting attraction at the zoo was always Ted. He’s a little too… enthusiastic about animals sometimes, and it’s always kind of funny to see him racing back and forth, pointing at all the different animals and shouting excitedly like a little kid.
“I think my love of zoos has died down a little since…” Ivy swallowed and added quickly, “Since fifth year, when we were chasing Tancred Apple in the zoo. It made it a bit less fun for me.” But I knew that wasn’t what she was going to say.
Something had to be done about this. We couldn’t just go on pretending Ted didn’t exist. It was downright psychotic. So after dinner, I pulled Ivy aside and decided to have a good honest chat with her.
“Look,” I said. “If you’re going to go around pretending Ted doesn’t exist, you should at least try to act like nothing’s wrong. You can’t do both, they rule each other out.”
She looked at me like I was wearing a dead gorilla on my head. “Emma, what are you talking about?”
“You never mention Ted. And it’s pretty weird. Yeah, we all know you’re mad because he left you, but why not just talk about it?”
The dead gorilla look intensified. “You don’t understand,” she said quietly. “I’m not mad because he left. I told you, that was both of our decision. I’m sad because he’s not here.”
“I don’t get it,” I said blankly.
Ivy massaged her temples anxiously. “I don’t feel like myself when he’s not here,” she said. “Ted somehow makes everything…”
“Bright and sunshiney?” I suggested.
Ivy smiled weakly. “Something like that. Logically, I’m glad that he went. Emotionally, I… well… I don’t think I can explain it. And that’s why I don’t want to talk about it. You’re just so mad at him… and it’s like you think we’re on the same side or something, that if you say bad things about Ted, it’ll make me feel better. But it… it just feels like you’re insulting me.”
It was weird, I’d never looked at it that way. I’m still not really sure what she meant. But then, the relationship of Ivy and Ted is something I’ll never understand anyway.
When my mum and dad and I went back to our house next door, I couldn’t stop thinking of Ivy. But my dad had other questions. Questions that I had a feeling he’d been saving until after we got home and out of the Potters’ house.
“So,” he said. “You got sacked, huh?”
“Yes,” I replied, gritting my teeth. No need for him to bring that up. “Because of some stupid rule of Vaultz’s. I hung out with one of the Quidditch players, and he got all mad at me. So now, I have to wait for him to invite me back.”
My mother didn’t look placated by this explanation. “It doesn’t matter if the rule seems stupid,” she said. “You have to learn how to follow the rules, whether you think they’re good or not.”
“But mum!” I protested. “You can’t honestly think that anything bad can come out of me hanging around with Wolfgang.”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “This whole thing is reminding me a lot of Terrence.”
My dad squinted. “Oh, Godric. You mean the Ishfriend?”
I think I should explain about Terrence the Ishfriend. He was my first boyfriend after I broke up with Tyrone Thomas. Haley knew him from something somewhere, and she introduced us at a party, and we got along really well. Terrence’s most notable quirk was his love of the colour purple, but the other quirk, the one everyone remembered him for, was his even stronger love of the syllable ‘ish.’ He loved it so much, he used it on its own. Like, if you asked him if he was hungry, he wouldn’t say, ‘I’m hungry-ish.’ He’d say, “I’m ish.” If you asked him if he was feeling better, he’d say, “ish.”
Well, Terrence and I got to be really good friends, and then we started inviting each other everywhere. He was fun, a little sarcastic, not sappy, just an interesting person. We sent owls to each other all the time, and we were always going to visit each other, but we never did anything romantic. We weren’t an official couple. If anyone asked Terrence if we were going out, he’d say, “We’re ish.” And him stating that we were ‘ish’ was the death sentence. We couldn’t progress any further because he’d already put the stamp on it”‘ish.’ Not just friends, not dating, just ‘ish.’
One day, I just confronted him and asked him what he really meant when he said we were ‘ish,’ and he just suddenly burst out with this huge speech about how I was everything to him and how he loved me so much or something and how he’d give anything to go past ‘ish’ or whatever. Well, we went out for two days, and Terrence randomly turned so bizarrely mushy and puppydoggish that it was actually a little weird, and more than a little disgusting.
I told the boy that I liked it better when we were ‘ish,’ and he dramatically stated that he could never return to being ish and stomped out of there and sobbed that he never wanted to see me again. It was certainly exciting.
“Wolfgang is nothing like Terrence!” I laughed. “For one, he’d never wear purple. And I don’t think he’d say ‘ish.’”
“That’s not what I meant,” said my mum. “From what you’ve said of Wolfgang, you’re not making it very clear whether you like him as a friend or as more than that. I’m sure Wolfgang doesn’t know either, but I’m beginning to get a feeling that he likes you very much, maybe a little more than you want.”
I thought briefly of his extraordinary chemistry with Haley in their sexy little salsa dance. “I don’t think there’s much risk of that,” I said as I stepped inside the house. But the Terrence metaphor was a good one. I had definitely been ish with Wolfgang, and I’m not sure what that meant on either side. Ah, well. That wasn’t important. I wasn’t allowed to talk to him ever again or whatever, so it wasn’t an issue. (Hehehe. Ish-ue. I crack myself up.)
I was sitting in the living room refolding my clothes (my mother had insisted I do so after she saw the state of the clothing I’d packed… she’s weird like that), when there was a knock on the door. This alone wasn’t so unusual. People are pretty close in my parents’ neighborhood, and there’s always someone popping over.
The door’s positioned so that people sitting in the living room can’t directly see it or vice versa, but when my dad answered the door, the voice I heard outside the door made me stop in mid-fold.
“Oh, hey, Mr. Weasley,” said a deep voice that sounded like slow-motion velvet. (Don’t even ask me what that means. It’s one of those things you have to hear to understand.) It was a nice-sounding voice, as voices went, but at the moment, I’d have preferred to hear fingernails on a blackboard. “I’m going to go away for about two weeks, and I need someone to take care of my toads for me while I’m gone. Do you think you could?”
I sat very, very still, taking care not to make any sound whatsoever. I felt like a burglar hiding in the closet of a house I was robbing, anxiously listening to the menacing-looking owner of the house tiptoeing around with a baseball bat. How come Tyrone always had to show up wherever I was these days? Did he have some kind of special evil radar or something?
“Sure,” said my dad. “I used to have a tank full of frogs when I was a kid. Here, come inside.”
Why did he say that? Why did he ask him to come inside? Didn’t he know I was in here? Did he realize what that meant?
I could hear Tyrone still talking in the entry hallway. “The bigger one is Fido, and the little one is Rover. Here’s their food, and you can give them a Fudge Fly every now and then, but not too often, because Fido’s on a diet, and Rover gets hyper when he has too much sugar. Here’s their litter box”they’re both toilet trained”and extra sand for that. And this is their little pool”make sure the water’s room temperature, because Fido can’t take it if it’s hotter, and Rover doesn’t like it colder” and there’s Rover’s special blankie. I think that’s everything.”
I couldn’t imagine anything he could have possibly forgotten. Heck, I don’t need half that much stuff for the Rum Tum Tugger. I wonder if Tyrone remembered that his pets were, in fact, toads.
“I have their schedule right here,” continued Tyrone. "Is there, like, somewhere I can sit down? This might take awhile.”
Don’t come in the living room, don’t come in the living room, don’t come in the living room, I thought frantically.
“Well, come in the living room, then!” exclaimed my dad. I groaned.
I made sure I looked extremely busy folding my clothes as Tyrone sauntered into the room, bearing large amounts of toad-related equipment. I didn’t even look up as he came into the room, though I’m sure he was staring at me, given the tone of his voice as he said, “Oh… er… you…”
“Yeah, Emma’s staying over here for awhile,” said Dad casually, somehow failing to grasp how incredibly awkward this all was. “She and Ivy decided to come visit their old parents for once in their lives.”
Tyrone let out a nervous little cough. “Maybe now’s not the best time,” he said.
“Well, I’m going to be over here for some time,” I told him briskly, still not lifting my eyes from my clothes-folding, “so I don’t think you have much choice. Might as well get it over with, if you can stand it.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him look around and finally sit down in the farthest possible chair from me. He related the toads’ daily schedule or some other bit of nonsense as quickly as possible, then started to get up with every appearance of wanting to high-tail it out of there. Dad didn’t seem to pick up his signals.
“So,” he asked. “How’s Tabitha doing?”
“Huh?” said Tyrone, as though he’d never heard of his own little sister before. “Oh. She’s good. It’s her seventh year, so in a few months, she’ll be on her own”she wants to do something with the Ministry, can’t remember which Department, though. I mean, she turned seventeen a year ago, so she’s not really my responsibility anymore, according to the Ministry, but it’s not like I was going to kick her out of the house or anything.”
I made the massive effort to tear my eyes away from the laundry, and look up nonchalantly at him. The idea was to make such fierce eye contact as to intimidate him. It worked pretty well. “Yeah, you know, you wouldn’t want to get a reputation as someone who kicks people out of houses.”
Sweet Merlin, the boy looked genuinely confused. Did I need to spell it out and specifically mention that I meant when he snatched away the house that his dad had left Wolfgang? He was even less intelligent than I remembered. He was also better looking than I remembered, but that was entirely immaterial.
“Erm. So. Emma,” he said, trying to change the subject and hoping that whatever he came up with was less desperately awkward. “Do you… that is, I’m, er, sorry you got sacked. I heard about that.”
“Yeah. I guess everyone has by now,” I muttered, going back to folding things. Fierce eye contact was all very well and good, but it was starting to make my eyes water, and I certainly didn’t want to look like I was crying.
Tyrone’s eyebrows did that Thing they do. It’s not something you can describe, but if a sound effect accompanied it, it would sound like ‘TWING!’ “If it helps,” he said, “Vaultz said you were the most promising of the bunch of the trainees.”
“Sorry, but that doesn’t really help too much,” I responded. “I mean, I already knew that. It’d be like me telling you that you’re a million times more talented than the rest of your team.” His eyebrows TWING-ed again. “Oh, don’t look like that,” I said. “That’s not a compliment. It’s a fact, and I’m stating it. My opinion of you has got nothing to do with it. Haley’s an outrageously good singer, but that doesn’t stop her being annoying.”
I half expected Tyrone to say ‘I take what I can get.’ When we were at that awkward ish-stage back at Hogwarts, before we started officially dating, whenever I accidentally let slip something that could be considered a compliment he would always say, ‘I take what I can get.’ And then he’d give me that big, shiny, infuriating grin, the grin that always made my teeth itch with irritation but made it impossible for me not to smile as well.
But he certainly didn’t smile now. He got to his feet. “Right. Er. Well, I’m going to go now… thanks for taking the toads, Mr. Weasley. I’ll be back in about two weeks, so try not to kill them.”
“Well, have a good trip!” said my dad cheerily, leading him to the door as if he didn’t know where it was. “Feel free to pop by any time.”
The second the door shut behind England’s favourite Beater, I sprung into attack mode. “DAD!” I howled. “What the Niflheim was that? Why did you let that boy in our house?”
My dad smirked at me. “Boy?” he repeated. “He’s not exactly a kid, Emster.”
“I’ll have you know that he is two days younger than me,” I informed him with great dignity, ignoring the stupid pet name. “And you know what else he is? He’s my ex-boyfriend, so he probably should NOT be in our house anymore. What was he even doing around here?”
My dad frowned. “He moved to Godric’s Hollow about a year ago. I didn’t know it’d bother you so much if he came over. I mean, you two broke up, what, five years ago? I didn’t think it’d be a big deal anymore. Haven’t you gotten past that?”
“Me? Sure,” I snorted. “But Tyrone isn’t the brightest guy on the block. Once he gets an idea through that thick skull of his, it’s hard for him to let go.”
So, Tyrone had managed to earn enough money to buy a house in Godric’s Hollow. That’s really the trendy place for all the up-and-comers to get houses nowadays, ever since Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny and my parents and all the rest of the Voldemort-defeating crew all ended up here. And here I thought I was coming to Godric’s Hollow to escape from my problems.
Well, at least there’s one good part. At least Tyrone’s going to be gone for two weeks. And who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky and a Nundu will eat him or something while he’s gone.
Well! After Elizabeth Bennet and her android sister Jane come back from their fun excursion to Mr. Bing-Bing’s Hot Regency-Era Bachelor Pad, an interesting guest shows up at the Bennet household. And I’m using ‘interesting’ in the way you’d describe the ‘interesting’ bit of feces that somehow managed to show up in your teacup.
The bloke’s name is Mr. William Collins, but I’m going to affectionately call him ‘Bilbo,’ because I feel like it. Though perhaps ‘Gollum’ would better suit his personality. Anyway, Mr. Bilbo Collins is a distant cousin who’s going to get to inherit the house after Mr. Bennet kicks the bucket, because he didn’t have the foresight to have any sons. Bilbo’s pretty much the last guy on earth you’d want in your house, and that’s saying something, because Tyrone Thomas was at my house today.
He (Bilbo, not Tyrone) is an obsequious, blibbering toadie who happens to be some kind of priest, and he manages to turn everything into a sermon. The only person he loves even more than himself is his boss, some rich old noblewoman named Lady Catherine de Bourgh. The guy eats, sleeps, and breathes Lady Catherine, or, at least, he wishes.
The lady sent him to the Bennets’ place because she felt it’d be useful to get him off her hands for a few days, and to keep him away as long as possible, she told him to try and find a wife. I get the idea she made a hobby of sending him off to fetch impossible objects, like striped paint and diet water, and then eventually gave up after he kept succeeding and sent him to find the most impossible thing of all.
He sees Jane, and naturally, the first thing that pops into his head is, “Ooh, I’ll take two, please, in that sparkly wrapping paper.” So he runs up to Mrs. Bennet and announces, “Your daughter is outrageously gorgeous, and clearly out of my league! I’m going to marry her!”
Well, Mrs. Bennet kindly tells him that Jane is already engaging in all sorts of hanky-panky with an attractive young Bing-Bing, and Bilbo says, “Ohhh… er… did I say Jane? I meant Elizabeth! Haha! I mean, yeah, she’s not that bad, for a girl.” And from that moment on, he makes it his mission to obnoxiously stalk Elizabeth as much as possible.
It eventually gets so creepy that Elizabeth’s dad takes pity on her and suggests that the group talk a walk. And while Bilbo’s traipsing along at a snail’s pace, sermonizing like a pro, who should come prancing by but a soldier who happens to be one of the victims of the little harlot Lydia Bennet! And he has with him a really, really, really, really cute soldier named Mr. Wickham!
Mr. Wickham, besides being really, really, cute, is clever, charming, good at conversation, beautifully dressed, kind, chivalrous, witty, and has a nice bum. In short, he’s everything that Bilbo Collins is not, and everything that Mr. Emo Darcy wishes he was. He immediately takes a fancy to Elizabeth, and vice versa, and they get to chatting.
Then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, in the middle of a nice little talk, MR. DARCY comes riding by! (What is this, some kind of block party?) And he sees Mr. Wickham and he just sneers at him like he’s a mushy old banana that he accidentally trod on. And Wickham looks at him with ice dripping from his eyeballs from sheer cold, hard, hatred.
So Mr. D. goes riding off with several complimentary obscene gestures and glove-slap or two, and Elizabeth’s like, “Well… that was interesting… I knew he was a rude git, but what was that all about?”
Desperate to evade Bilbo, who’s now giving speeches about why marriage is such a jolly good idea, Elizabeth decides to talk to Wickham about Mr. Darcy. Their friendship, at this point, is pretty much based around their mutual dislike of Mr. D., because they don’t really know much else about each other, but hey, Wickham must be a good guy if Mr. D. doesn’t like him.
Turns out that Wickham was raised as Darcy’s brother, except Darcy’s dad, being a sane guy, liked Wickham better, because he wasn’t a rude git and didn’t randomly yell things like “MY MIND IS A DANK, LONELY CAVE OF SHADOW AND DARKNESS.” So Wickham wanted to grow up and be a priest (Good for him! He could get in an awesome Priest Battle with Bilbo and beat the poop out of him!), and when Mr. Darcy’s dad died, he left money for Wickham and a cute little priest house for him, but Mr. Darcy took the house and sold it to someone else because he was jealous that everyone liked the adorable Wickham more than him.
So Wickham basically went, “Dangit! Well… I want money… I guess I have to join the army now.” So this sweet, nice young bloke who just wants to become a priest has to become a soldier and kill people and go against his religious beliefs! Just because Darcy was jealous of his awesomeness!
Oh yeah, and I forgot”remember that Lady Catherine lady that Bilbo seems to fangirl constantly? Yeah, she’s Mr. Darcy’s aunt, and apparently, Wickham says she’s one of the most obnoxious people he’s ever had the misfortune to run into. Guess it’s a family thing.
Okay, I never liked Mr. Darcy, but now I really can’t stand him. What is that guy’s problem, anyway?