Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfigur[ation]... It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some “
Hermione Granger, DH, p. 241.
Yeah, well, food’s one of the five exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration.
Ron Weasley, DH, p. 465.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Resources
by Louise Roper
Sophie says she was four and a half when the miners started their strike, so I must have been not quite three. At first we only noticed that Dad had a clean face; he no longer came home covered in coal-dust. Then we noticed the potatoes. It was potatoes every day for dinner. Mam boiled them, baked them, mashed them, fried them... but it was always potatoes. I begged for beefburgers or sausages, but Mam told me, “Sorry, duck, we can’t afford meat.”
I remember folding up my outgrown dress, cardigan, slacks and T-shirt to give to a neighbour’s child, but then being told there was nowt new for me. I had to share Sophie’s clothes, although they were too small for her and still too large for me. She only had three outfits, so Mam did the laundry every day. Now I come to think of it, she washed by hand, although I know we had a washing machine at one time. Sophie says that we probably couldn’t afford the electricity to run it, so Dad would have sold it to pay the rent.
One dreadful day, Sophie dumped her shoes in the dustbin because they hurt her feet. When she confessed, Mam slapped her and shouted, “Yer should’ve known to pass ’em on to Louise, then!” I didn’t want Sophie’s old shoes, which had holes in the soles, but we both had to spend half an hour grubbing through the stinking dustbin to retrieve them. Sophie was supposed to be starting school at that time, but she didn’t go because she had nothing to put on her feet.
The day came “ after months and months of the miners’ strike “ when we were crying out to eat potatoes. By that time, there was no money even for vegetables. We couldn’t cook anything anyway, as the gas had been cut, so we had been living off day-old bread and withered apples for days. The electricity must have been cut too, because we lit candles in the evenings. Our parents had sold everything they could sell “ car, fridge, television, spare bed “ and the family allowance wasn’t enough to pay the rent.
When Mam walked out of the house that morning, probably to look for work, I burst into tears, certain she would never come back. She disappeared up the street, her shoes soaked in the autumn puddles, and I was convinced that we would be alone forever. The radiators were cold. The cupboard was bare.
“Ah want Mam!” I wailed. “Ah want food!”
Sophie, huddled in her coat, said, “Blubbing won’t bring yer nowt.”
“It’s cold!” I moaned. I was shivering from being shunted from a cold sponge-bath (we had no hot water) to being dressed in Sophie’s threadbare jumper, which hung on me like a too-short dress.
“Yer can ’ave me coat,” said Sophie, stripping it off with a sigh. She only had her vest and pants on underneath, and goosebumps were sticking up all over her arms and legs.
As soon as I had buttoned it up, I began to feel guilty for leaving her in the cold. I asked, “What’ll you wear, then?”
“I’m going to find Dad’s spare jumper. But what we need round ’ere is fire!”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, there was a flash of light, and suddenly the grate was full of fire!
We both gaped. I was too young to understand that the modern gas-fire wasn’t supposed to be inside the flames as if it were coal, but I knew very well that fire didn’t just appear from nowhere.
But it was real fire! We both ran towards it, and it was hot fire. We sat there for ten minutes before Sophie’s legs began to turn red and she warned me, “’Appen we shan’t sit so close.”
“Ah’m ’ungry.”
“Let’s look for food,” she said desperately. “There must be some crumbs in larder.”
We found two tins of baked beans, a bag of flour and a few pathetic crumbs from yesterday’s bread. Sophie swept these into her hands, saying, “I told yer there were some crumbs!” and when she turned around again, she was holding a huge basket full of bread!
I stared, trying to think on whether there had been a basket of bread that I simply hadn’t noticed. I knew that bread couldn’t appear out of nowhere, but how could hungry people go looking for bread and simply not notice a whole basketful?
“It just... grew... in me ’ands,” Sophie explained helplessly. “It grew out of t’ crumbs.”
I spared a glance for the larder shelf, which was now swept clean, not a crumb in sight, and then rushed back to the fire. Sophie followed, carrying the glorious basket full of bridge rolls, currant buns, baps and jam doughnuts, all oven-fresh and piping hot. We breathed in those bakery-smells for a single second before sitting down to eat.
I don’t remember the rest of the day. Mam must have said something about the fire but I don’t remember it. I only remember that we had bread all that winter.
“T’ bread din’t turn up every day,” Sophie reminds me. She was five when it all happened and she remembers it quite clearly. “It only ’appened if we were desperate famished. And once I just cun’t make t’ bread come because Mam ’ad cleaned larder and there were no crumbs. After that I used to save a crust every day and ’ide it under me pillow for t’ next ’ungry day. Did yer notice that we was allus ’ungry again by tea time? Them tiny crumbs din’t make the kind of food that lasts long.”
I don’t remember that. I only remember the full-up feeling as we finished eating.
The fire didn’t come every day either. We had to be blue with chilblains before Sophie could make the hearth flare up. She seemed not to have much control over her fires. The flames were a different colour each time, and once, when the snow was thick over the window-sills and I couldn’t force my icy legs to walk, the fire was so violent that our house caught alight.
I screamed and clutched at Sophie, who grabbed my hand and raced out of the house. We screamed for anyone who might happen to pass by in the miserable, driving rain, too young to reckon that nobody would be able to call the fire brigade because no family in the street still had a working telephone connection.
But before we had time to learn the hard way, our rescuer appeared. He was wearing a purple suit and purple bowler hat, and he took us by the shoulder, one in each hand, and shook us into silence.
“Arnold Peasegood,” he introduced himself, “from the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad at the Office for the Improper Use of Magic. Where have you been doing magic?”
Sophie pointed at the house, where the flames were now licking the upper storey, although nothing was actually being burnt up.
Arnold Peasegood pointed a long thin stick at the house and commanded, “Finite Incantatem!”
The fire instantly vanished.
“You kids want to be careful,” he admonished us. We followed him indoors, and Sophie showed him where she had started the fire. “We’ve been very tolerant of the accidental magic in this house because our Squad has seen how you stick to the small and the necessary. But we’ve already had to Obliviate your mother twice, and I think you need to know that we’re watching your house very carefully. You are not allowed to set self-subsisting fires onto the whole street! Well, there doesn’t seem to be any actual damage. Don’t let there be another fire that escapes this grate.”
Mr Peasegood was a good sort; he tapped the gas fire with his wand before abruptly disappearing. The fire lit up in a perfectly ordinary way, just as if North Sea gas had been ignited. It didn’t look like magic at all unless you knew that our gas had been cut.
“But I can’t ’elp it!” Sophie protested to the empty room. “I never know whether I’m going to make any fire!”
“Did Dad ever play wi’ us?” I asked Sophie. “Were ’e ever a ’appy bloke?”
Dad had yelled at me yet again for standing between him and the television. But the space between the settee and the telly was the only thoroughfare in the living room. Dad had only two topics of conversation: what he had seen on telly (usually football) and shouting at the family for destroying his limited comfort.
“Of course ’e were “ once,” said Sophie sensibly. “I never ’eard him speak a cross word before ’is accident. ’E played wi’ us every day after work: don’t yer remember that ’e taught us cricket wi’ a broken-up packing case as bats? It were Mam ’oo worried about stuff.”
The miners’ strike had long since ended, but our troubles had not. Dad’s wages hadn’t been enough to pay all our debts, so the landlord had thrown us out of the house. We had moved into a tiny Housing Commission flat, where Mam still worried about things. Then Dad had an accident at work: he twisted his back and couldn’t go down the mine any more. So he was laid up at home while Mam tried to manage the family on unemployment benefits. The money put food on the table but it didn’t service our debts. Mam kept worrying, and Dad was always down in the dumps.
Dad groaned with pain every time he tried to walk. He spent months and months in bed, flat on his injured back, and then years and years lying on the settee. We usually kept the blinds down, because he complained that the light gave him a headache, and Dad just lay there. Sometimes he attempted the crossword but usually he watched television. Sophie and I became used to sitting on the floor; even if Dad wasn’t there, we forgot to use the settee. We never asked to watch Play School or Blue Peter on the telly; we knew that only Dad had the right to decide which channel was on.
Doing no work and always getting his own way seemed to make Dad’s moods worse. He barked at us to belt up and then chuntered that we never told him nowt. If we ran out of aspirin or cigarettes, he yelled at Mam for not managing the money properly.
Sophie and I started school as soon as Mam could afford two pairs of shoes. I was only in the reception class, which was technically optional, but Sophie had missed several weeks of Year One, which made the teacher frown.
“Didn’t your mother know to send you to school in September?”
“Me Mam’s a good mother!” Sophie protested hotly.
The teacher didn’t say anything else except, “Ouch!” because, probably by coincidence, her hand landed on a drawing-pin.
On my first day, Steven Carter pushed me down to the hard asphalt ground because I was standing in the way of his football. On my second day, he kicked me because he recognised me from the day before. On my third day, he threw a stone at me because he liked throwing stones. I wasn’t the only child who was terrified of Steven Carter, who was a gigantic Year Two lad with a barrel-chest and a single bushy eyebrow stretched meanly across his forehead. He thumped me because he could. He had a variety of verbal insults too.
“Yer pudgy face is a midden!” (Smack.)
“Yer gormless cloth-’ed, yer as daft as a brush.” (Thump.)
“Yer a mardy cow that stinks like t’ bog!” (Kick.)
But finally he made the mistake of twisting my arms like barley-sugar right in front of Sophie.
“Give over!” she screamed. “Lay off me sister!” Head down, she charged towards him and head-butted his stomach. My arms were suddenly free as Steven Carter shoved back at Sophie, and I shoved him too, even though he was far too solid to give way to two small girls. With no apparent effort, Sophie’s feeble push created a zing! and a shower of zips, buttons and elastic fell to the tarmac.
We sprang back in three directions, only to see that Steven’s anorak had lost its zip, his school jumper was completely un-knitted and hanging in long, curly threads, his shirt was hanging open with no buttons, and his trousers, divested of belt, zip and button, were hanging down by his knees. Children around us screamed in terrified mirth: they hadn’t often the chance to strike back at Steven Carter.
Steven squealed in outrage, lurched forward with a clenched fist and fell flat on his face again.
“Let’s get us out of ’ere,” said Sophie, taking me firmly by the hand and pulling me into the crowds.
I didn’t say a word. I knew my safest course of action was to keep close to Sophie.
* * * * * * *
During our first couple of years at school, Mam tried to go to work to support us. The problem was, half the town was unemployed. There was no house-cleaning work because nobody could afford to pay a cleaner. There were no shop-assistant jobs because, if a shop could afford an assistant, it was cheaper to employ a teenager. There were no permanent jobs in the wire and glass factories because it was easier for the employers to hire casual hands, who could be fired pretty well at random. Mam bravely queued for those factory-hand jobs, and sometimes they awarded her a couple of shifts. But it never lasted long, and she never earned much more than the unemployment benefit.
“It’s cheaper not to work,” she complained. “When I don’t get a wage, an ’ole lot of stuff’s ’alf price. We’d be less poor if I stayed on the dole and dinn’t try to work.”
“Are we poor, then?” I asked.
I hadn’t noticed we were poor because every family in the street had the same problems. I knew that no adult expected a permanent job and that every child was on free school dinners. Some of them had Dads who drank or no Dad at all, and that seemed worse than a having Dad who lay on the sofa being mardy all day.
“If we’re poor,” said Sophie, “why do we waste money on cigarettes for Dad?”
“Belt up,” said Dad, reaching for his packet again.
“Yer wasting us money!” Sophie repeated. Mam slapped her, but it was only a little swat, so Sophie ignored that. “Smoking’s just paying to get lung cancer. Yer’ve no right to complain about not ’aving enough for t’ rent “ or for me school trips “ or to take Louise on bus to dentist “ if yer’ve wasted t’ money on smoking.”
Dad lit up fretfully, inhaled “ and nearly choked. “What t’ bloody ’eck’s going on around here?”
“What’s wrong, love?” asked Mam.
“They’ve replaced t’ tobacco in this lot wi’... muck!”
We gathered around the cigarette, which certainly didn’t smell of tobacco. Dad stubbed it and split it open. The disgusting brown flakes that dropped to the floor were not tobacco but mud... ordinary garden mud.
“Give us another one,” said Dad. Mam passed one over.
Dad sniffed it, then ripped it open, displaying yet more mud inside. I grabbed the packet and took out the “cigarettes” one by one, but each one smelled of mud.
This was the first time I remember asking Sophie, “How did yer do that trick?”
“I don’t know! I were thinking about muck... and worse, but then I thought that were too nasty; it should just be mud... but I din’t do owt. I don’t know ’ow it ’appened!”
Dad sent us straight out to waste more money buying more cigarettes, but every single cigarette in the new packet also turned into mud. Dad thought Sophie had done it on purpose, perhaps by buying the papers at a joke shop and rolling the fake-cigarettes herself, so he sent Mam out to buy yet more. Mam handed the packet directly to Dad, and the first couple of smokes were fine. But then Sophie touched the packet, and suddenly all the tobacco turned into mud again.
If Dad had had the energy to lift himself off the settee, he would have skelped Sophie to a pulp, but he was in too much pain to bother. He yelled at Mam to belt her, and Mam’s blow was so half-hearted that Dad screamed at them both. Sophie wept and raged and accused Dad of starving the family because he was a “tobackerholic,” while I cowered in a corner, waiting for them all to finish with each other.
Finally, Mam thrust her purse into my hands and sent us off to buy yet more cigarettes.
“Do it again, Sophie!” I urged. “’Appen yer can do it every time, Dad might give up smokes, and then we’ll ’ave more money for real food.”
But our courage sank down to our scuffed shoes when we reached the corner-shop and found there was only fifty pence left in Mam’s purse. All thoughts of reforming Dad fled our minds when we saw he had smoked us out of our budget!
My heart thumped. “Dad’ll kill us if we go ’ome wi’ nowt,” I said.
“Nah.” Sophie was trying to be brave. “’E’ll only kill me. ’E won’t believe there weren’t any money.” She squeezed the spiky coin in her fist, rigid with determination. When she opened her fingers again, there were three fifty pence coins sitting on her palm.
“Get away! Did yer do that on purpose?”
“I don’t know ’ow it ’appened,” Sophie told me yet again. “Let’s buy t’ poison before t’ money disappears on us.”
On the way home, I asked, “Can yer make money, Sophie? Can yer make as much we want, any time we want?”
“Not any time. But ’appen if we’re desperate enough?”
By the time we handed the cigarettes over to Dad, the tobacco had once again changed to mud. And that was the way it stayed. Only Mam ever bought cigarettes, but if Sophie so much as touched them, the tobacco always became mud. With a grim defiance, Sophie made sure she did touch every packet that entered our house, preferably before it was opened. At first Dad could manage a few smokes while we were at school, but tobacco soon became an unstable compound in our house whenever Sophie was home. Soon she hadn’t even to touch a packet; hadn’t even to think about it. Tobacco was automatically destroyed as soon as it crossed our threshold.
There was no choice. Dad had to give up smoking.
* * * * * * *
For the next six months, Sophie did seem to find quite a lot of spare money lying around the house. She would open a kitchen drawer or run her hand down a shopping bag and suddenly she would be holding any number of pound coins (it was never a paper bank note). It only happened when we were desperate “ if we had to pay a bill or buy milk “ but it often turned into far more money than we needed. Once she even managed to find a stamp when Mam had to mail off an application. But in the end, Sophie was rumbled.
It was at school, when the teacher was collecting money for an excursion to the Leeds Armouries Museum. Actually everyone knew that museum entry was free, but the school was collecting for the coach hire, and rumours were flying that most of the money would end up in the school funds. Sophie and I really wanted to go because we had never been to Leeds before, and I was furious when I was told that I couldn’t go to this free museum because my parents couldn’t cough up five pounds.
I found Sophie during the break, and of course she was furious too, so furious that she very quickly found a pound coin in the pocket of her school bag. We marched up to the school office, where Sophie announced:
“What’s all this about ripping off kids from benefits families, then? Me and Louise are going on this excursion, and yer can find someone else to fuggle!”
She slammed down a coin, then another and another, until she had piled the full ten pounds onto the reception desk.
Annoyed by Sophie’s defiant tone, the receptionist announced, “Sophie Roper, I want to be very sure that’s yer own money there!” She picked up a coin, almost as if she expected to see a “thief” engraving, and then she picked up another. “’Ere! ’Oo forged this, then?”
She showed us, plain as day, that the head-side of the pound bore the date 1987, yet the tail-side showed the flax-in-a-coronet that had been the previous year’s mint! The second 1987 coin had the thistle-imprint of 1984. Sophie hadn’t been careful enough; she didn’t really know what a pound-coin should look like, so only one coin in our forged collection happened to be correct. All it took was one amateur coin-collector who knew the minting-design rules, and Sophie’s infinite supply of magical money was exposed as a fraud.
We weren’t in trouble, because of course the school assumed that we had been the victims of some grown-up forger, but we weren’t allowed to go to Leeds either. After that, Sophie was never again able to produce fake money.
More than a year later, we had another strange event with money. We had been evicted twice for unpaid rent, and Mam was in despair. “That’s us second bad reference. If we’re evicted again, we’ll be on t’ streets.”
Unfortunately, we were still in arrears. When our arrears reached the twelve-week mark, we received a Housing Association notice. I was so upset that I ripped it up before Mam ever saw it, despite Sophie’s dark warnings that “t’ problem dun’t go away just because yer kill t’ evidence.”
Three weeks later, we received a court order to vacate the flat, together with a bill for the Housing Association’s court costs.
“Mam ’as to know eventually, love,” Sophie warned me when I tossed the order in the dustbin.
Three weeks after that, we received the dreaded N54 from the bailiffs’ office, advising us that the bailiffs would be at our house at eleven o’clock next Wednesday. I shoved it tearfully into Sophie’s hands, hoping that she could take care of the family if only the grown-ups didn’t interfere, and the notice burst into flames as soon as she touched it.
Next Wednesday came. Mam had gone off to one of her casual jobs, and Dad was staring at football on the telly, not even noticing that Sophie and I hadn’t gone to school. We sat at the kitchen table, knowing what was going to happen, counting the moments until eleven o’clock... Yet the thundering at the door still stopped my heartbeat, and I was frozen to my chair.
Sophie, however, sprang to her feet and flung herself at the door the same moment it opened. Three enormous men were standing on our doorstep, and the first one began to say, “Come along, then...”
“Naff off!” Sophie was even more furious than she had been with Steven Carter. She gave the first bailiff a feeble punch on the beltline as she declared, “Yer not coming in. Get lost!”
The man laughed patronisingly and tried to grab her arm. That made me so furious that I forgot all about leaving it all to Sophie and jumped up to “help” her. But before I had crossed the kitchen, all three men collapsed backwards, just as if someone stronger had punched them to the ground, and the door slammed in their faces. Then... silence.
I stared at Sophie, not knowing whether she had fixed them or not. We didn’t dare open the front door and look.
It was a couple of hours before we heard an elderly neighbour shrieking about dead men in the corridor. At that point, we ventured to open the door a crack and saw that the three men were still lying there, flat on their backs! It was far worse than Steven Carter; the bailiffs actually looked damaged. The neighbour was banging hysterically on every door on our floor, and eventually she found someone with the sense to call an ambulance.
We didn’t hear any more about it. Perhaps the Housing Association didn’t find out that the eviction had failed, because we never had bailiffs round again.
Sophie told me firmly that it was better not to destroy any more bills, but after that, she did make a point of opening our parents’ mail for them. Strange, though small, things happened to our bills as Sophie read them: numbers mysteriously rearranged themselves, and red squares faded to grey.
I was ten years old, and Sophie was nearly twelve, when her Hogwarts letter arrived. My biggest surprise was learning that other people like Sophie existed; I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that she was a witch.
Mam didn’t seem to notice that Hogwarts was a magical school; she was completely focused on the fact that it was a boarding school. She said that only posh people went to boarding schools; they were out of the question for the likes of us. But when Professor Burbage visited our flat to explain that board and tuition were free, and that a family like ours would be entitled to a complete books, equipment and uniform scholarship, Mam became interested.
“That could work out cheaper than Kirk Balk,” she calculated. “’Oo’d’ve thought our Sophie would end up in a joint like Mallory Towers?”
Dad took no interest at all. So Sophie went to Hogwarts.
I missed her terribly. She wrote often, describing her new friends, the quirks of her teachers, her magical lessons and the wonderful food. I wasn’t surprised that she was happy without us: Hogwarts sounded so much better than Kirk Balk would be.
Home was very quiet without Sophie to take care of the family. Now that she wasn’t there to speak out for us, I didn’t know what to say “ to my parents, to my teachers or even to shop assistants. When Mam lost her latest job, I wondered if we’d survive. Sophie had been able to deal with the Housing Association bailiffs, but what chance did Mam or I have? I started saving the crust-end of each loaf and hiding it under my pillow, just to remind myself of what Sophie would have done if ever we had another real emergency.
Once, when I had outgrown and outworn all my warm clothes, I opened Sophie’s underwear drawer, nostalgically pretending that one of her fake coins would turn up. Oddly enough, a couple of pounds did fall out of a holey sock. Could Mam and I both have overlooked available money in our own home? Not likely! I checked the mint-date against the reverse, and sure enough, both coins were a shining 1992 mint and both bore the leek-reverse of 1990. So they were more of that useless counterfeit money. Why had Sophie left them lying in her drawer for all this time?
However, desperate people will do desperate things. I raced to Tesco’s and bought a red hoodie with a screen-print gold lion, shivering too much against the March gales to worry about how I was stealing from the multinational giant.
Sophie’s first year at Hogwarts ended early in July. For some reason, those mad wizards sent her from the Highlands to London, which took all day, and then left her to make her own way north in the evening! But she managed to arrive home before dark, and I flew into her arms.
“Sophie, yer’ve grown fat!” I meant that she had filled out to a normal weight, including rounder cheeks, while I could feel my own bones sticking out of my clothes in all the wrong places. “Yer tall, too!”
“I know! There’s loads of food at ’Ogwarts, and yer can eat all yer want, even second and third ’elpings!”
“Yummm....” Dad hadn’t looked up from the telly, but Mam wanted to say hello, so I stood aside. That’s when I noticed the boy standing in the doorway. “Ayup, Sophie, ’oo’s yer friend?”
“This is Ernie. ’E’s in me class at school and tonight ’e taught me ’ow to get ’ome. First we took tube in London, then we took Floo to Sheffield, then we took train to Barnsley, and we did t’ last bit by bus.”
“Oh, ’eck, duck!” said Mam. “Did yer fly to Sheffield?”
“Nah, t’ Floo’s like a magic chimney. It were t’ shortest bit of t’ journey; it only took two minute.”
“So ’ow’s Ernie getting ’ome again?”
Ernie lifted Sophie’s trunk over the threshold and stepped into our living room. “Good evening, Mrs Roper and Miss Louise. I shall take the bus and train back to the public Floo, which is directly connected to my parents’ house. Good evening, Mr Roper.”
Dad did not stir from the settee, and Sophie shifted uncomfortably.
“I told yer, Ernie. Dad dun’t say much.”
“Good evening, Mr Roper,” Ernie repeated. “Sophie has informed me of your misfortune. If I may take the liberty of saying so, my sister is a Healer and can treat slipped-disc conditions.”
Dad did move this time; he raised his voice over the football commentary. “Doctors can’t do owt for me.”
“Dad!” Sophie protested. “We don’t mean a National ’Ealth doctor! Wizard-doctors are different.”
“Huh.”
“I reckon yer should bring yer sister around anyway,” Sophie whispered to Ernie. “Nowt could make ’im worse than ’e is now.”
Ernie wouldn’t stay for a cup of tea; he charged straight downstairs to catch the next bus to Barnsley Station.
“I ’ope ’e’s home before dark!” said Mam. “’E seems a good lad, and it’s a long way to Glasgow.”
“Mam!” remonstrated Sophie. “Once ’e’s reached Sheffield, it’ll take ’im one minute to Floo to Glasgow!”
Ernie knocked on our door again at ten o’ clock the next morning. He brought with him a young woman in long, lime-green robes who looked absurdly like him and definitely not like any doctor in the National Health Service.
“Good morning, Mr Roper. I am Mercy Wiggleswade, a Healer from St Mungo’s. I understand that you’re having a little trouble with some slipped discs. Can I examine your spine?”
“Pack it in! Don’t touch us!”
“I’m not needing to touch you. If you’ll lie on your other side, I can make the diagnosis...”
Dad complained loudly, but Mam persuaded him to roll over. Healer Wiggleswade did not even need him to lift his shirt. She simply spoke some kind of spell, ran her wand an inch above the length of his spine and noted some silver sparks that jumped out.
“It’s here,” she concluded. “Curo! And here. Curo! And this, perhaps, is what your Muggle X-rays could not discern... Curo!”
At the third Curo, there was a great snap and a puff of red energy, then all was silent.
It was Dad who had fallen silent.
He twitched cautiously, then slowly stood up.
“’Ell fire!” he exclaimed. “T’ pain’s gone!”
“Of course it has,” said Ernie’s sister. “Everything is in the right place and there is no more pinching or swelling. I’m not expecting any complications...” She reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle of golden potion. “Take this mood-lifter if you’re feeling not quite right over the next week. If the pain returns, owl me at once. But you should be fine now. Ernie, I’ll Apparate you home.”
She picked up her bag and held onto Ernie. The two of them solemnly vanished before we had time to explain that we had no way of sending owls from this house.
Fortunately, there was never any need, for Dad was suddenly well. He had no back-pain and no stiffness, and he never relapsed. After only two days, he said it was time to look for a new job. The mines had long since closed, but it took him only one more day to secure a post as a lorry driver. He has been driving lorries ever since.
But the really amazing difference for us was the change in Dad’s mood. He stopped barking at us. He almost gave over watching television. He began to laugh. I finally remembered that he had played cricket with us, once when we were very small. It was only the next Saturday when he took us down to the park and organised all the local children into a game of cricket.
To be honest, cricket isn’t my favourite thing. I played because it was so fantastic to have my Dad back. I was a butter-fingered bowler, but my bat always managed to send the ball in the right direction.
“We’ll get a football team up and running next term,” said Dad, “and since Sophie’s going back to that fancy boarding school, Louise can be t’ captain.”
I wondered how I could tell Dad that he’d be better off choosing one of the lads as captain. He was becoming very popular with the local boys.
Mam was less worried that summer. Having Dad well again, and knowing that we would one day pay off our debts, meant that she fussed less about handing down shoes and wasting hot water. “It’s jammy Sophie ’as that scholarship,” she kept saying. “But Louise’ll need a uniform when she starts at Kirk Balk, and there are no uniform grants in this town. I wonder if we can buy t’ stuff on credit?”
“Mam, don’t bother raking up another debt,” I told her. “Let’s wait while Sophie’s ’Ogwarts letter comes. After we know ’ow much scholarship she’s getting and what stuff she needs, we’ll know ’ow much cash we’ve got left for me. We don’t need owt while September, and we might ’ave savings by then.”
Mam didn’t believe this, but she didn’t argue the point the way she would have in the old days. We all knew that something might turn up.
The Muggle school holidays began, and July passed away. On a brilliant August day, just three weeks before Sophie was due back at Hogwarts, we followed Dad into the park and set up old tree branches as cricket stumps. I hoped he would assign me to deep fielding because the sun was rising high, and I wanted to laze around doing nothing; there were already plenty of lads queuing up and demanding to bat.
“See there!” Sophie nudged me and pointed to a large bird in the sky. “It’s coming this way “ it’s yer-know-what.”
I did know what. “We can’t let all them Muggle lads watch yer talking to owls,” I said. “We’d better run off be’ind of t’ trees. We can send t’ owls off again before Dad misses us.”
We pelted away while Dad was assigning fielders. Sure enough, a tawny owl swooped down through the green leaves and hovered just in front of Sophie, holding out the yellow Hogwarts parchment.
“Flipping ’eck!” exclaimed Sophie in surprise. “Did they send us two this year?”
She was right. A second tawny swooped down beside the first and held out its talons to me.
“They did an’ all,” I said, taking the letter. “Weren’t yer expecting it? I was. This extra bird’s brought an ’Ogwarts letter for me.”