More than anything else, I love standing in the shop and watching the customers. They come in all shapes and sizes, cloaked in gaudy brocades and swathed in velvet, or dressed more sensibly in witchy black and wizard green. The odd customer has a hat with stars and moons on it, and the even odder customers are wearing assemblages of clothing from centuries near and far. How they can possibly hide from the Muggle world is magic.
Literally magic, of course.
Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes is even more popular with children than with adults. Bitty little witches and wizards love things that go bang and make fart noises; even better if they smell bad. The school age set, gather round the Skeeving Snackboxes and Patented Daydream Charms at the back of the store, looking over their shoulders to make sure their parents are occupied elsewhere. Children - they are a whole new world to me, one that I will become familiar with soon. I looked down to where my feet used to be and instead of my sensible flat shoes, I see the taut roundness of my belly. It’s slowly expanding under my sedate robe, millimeter by surreptitious millimeter.
Yesterday I could see my toes, today, nothing. Feet, removed from sight, glory be, it’s magic!
Smiling at my own wit, I returned to the Muggle magic tricks that I was restocking. It’s near the window, between the pygmy puffs and the check out; my doing, I had persuaded George to move the hottest sellers towards the back. It generates more traffic that way. And having the low cost novelty items where people can be tempted to a last minute impulse buy when they reach for their galleons? Straight out of my textbooks. Normally I sit in an office and look at spreadsheets and presentations, but for the Weasley account, I make the trip to the store to stock the shelves myself. That way I can talk to my favorite proprietor about new products and product placement. That’s what I do, marketing and sales relations for Abracadabra Magic Jokes and Toys, Inc. It’s a Muggle job, at a Muggle company because that’s what I am, a Muggle. A Muggle pretending to be a witch. Verity knows my secret; I think she gets a kick out of pulling one over the snobs of the wizarding world. It was she who supplied me with charms and trick wands, enough to fool the casual observer, so I can stay a part of the wizarding world.
People see what they want to see, and witches and wizards are no different. Looks like a witch? Acts like a witch? Must be a witch. It didn’t hurt that my sister and I had looked so much alike. She was a little taller, her eyes blue instead of hazel but we were close enough to pass as twins, which we were, just not the identical kind. We had liked a lot of the same things, swooned over the same teen idols, shared our daydreams and crushes late at night when we should have been sleeping. In school, however, we liked different things. I was keen in English Composition and Maths, while she had loved Arithmancy and Transfiguration. She had gotten a letter when we turned eleven and I hadn’t. But I looked familiar to anyone who had been at Hogwarts with her; someone they had seen around, somewhere. It was enough. I passed.
I paused, my hand on the shelf, distracted by the sudden flood of emotion. Carefully, I tilted my head back to swallow the tears. I lifted my shaky hand to my eyes, trying to wipe them without Verity noticing. And as I did my elbow banged against the rack, sending the tricks flying.
“Sorry! Sorry!” My hand went for my wand and I flourished it, turning it into a pair of briefs. That part was planned, more or less; I always carried a trick wand in the store, I figured it was better to look like I picked one up by mistake than to prove myself to have no magic. But the part where the briefs caught on the still wobbling Muggle Magic rack and sent it flying into the Bubblegum Hair Potion? Which in turn crashed into the pygmy puff pen, which I managed to open after I dropped the wand to grab the potions? That was not planned. Really, how could such a catastrophe be planned? Only in the movies, my sister would say, only in the movies.
Within moments there were panicked pygmy puffs emitting high pitched squeaks and turning lurid shades of acid green, fluorescent orange and electric blue as they rolled all over the store. Children screamed. Parents screamed. I screamed. It was chaos.
“Accio puffs!” With one swish and flick of her wand, Verity summoned the now rainbow colored pygmy puffs.
“Sedo vestri!” George executed a complicated wibble-wobble with his wand and silence descended on the shop. Verity, who was completely covered with a quivering rainbow of puffs, carefully inched over to the pen and started putting them back. Gradually conversations started up again, with not a little bit of laughter at my expense.
My face was flaming red, tears still standing in my eyes as I awkwardly bent to start picking up the Muggle Magic tricks. Pregnancy does not make you more graceful.
“Here, let me help,” Verity murmured in my ear as she swished and flicked. The scattered tricks swooped towards me and together we put them in their places. I restocked the upper racks, while Verity knelt to get at the lower shelves.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes, its just that being pregnant makes me clumsy,” I said as I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve, “and emotional.”
“And what were you being emotional about?”
I just shook my head.
“Hmmm. . . .” Verity looked up and glanced out the window as she put the last card trick in its place I heard her intake of breath at the same moment she clutched my ankle.
Looking in at the rainbow of pygmy puffs with a smirk on his handsome face was a tall, slender, white blond wizard, impeccably robed. His eyes met mine and widened in sudden recognition. If the window hadn’t been there, I could have touched him, slapped him, kicked him in the shins, thrown a cauldron of acid over him. Something.
I was shocked that he was real. Until this moment, he had been an image, albeit a moving image that whispered and laughed in the wizarding picture I had found on my bedside table four months ago. It was the only proof I had that I had known him, because I was beside him in the picture. Just like him, I looked happy, giggling and blushing as he whispered in my ear. I looked very in love. Very in love, and very not pregnant.
I tried to take a step backwards, away from this stranger from my unremembered past. Verity’s hand tightened on my ankle and I stumbled. The corner of my robe caught the tray of Instant Darkness Powder on the table beside me. With a god-awful loud clatter, darkness surrounded us. Verity must have turned and stood up, because her hand vanished and some part of her hit me in the stomach. This time I was the one who hit the floor, more with an oomph than a clatter. I curled up in a ball, protecting my head and belly. Someone small, a child perhaps, tripped over me and I could hear more thumping, crashing, squeaking, laughing and a sudden ker-chunk that sounded like the barring of a door.
“Attention, everyone, we are closing up early today!” George’s voice, magically amplified, boomed out over the confusion. The darkness paled. I decided to remain on the floor while giggling patrons filed out, the occasional one being relieved of Wizarding Wheezes that had unaccountably fallen in their pockets or up their sleeves.
I slowly uncurled, surveying the disaster that I seemed to have conjured out of a normal working day.
George stood at the table that had so recently been decorated with neat trays of Peruvian darkness powder and trick wands. He seemed to be staring off into the middle distance, a strange twisted expression on his face.
“You know, if Fred where here we would be laughing at this,” he said.
If I had a choice of what memories to obliviate, that afternoon would certainly be high on my list and I would take back the three months when I had evidently met, gone out with and gotten pregnant by one Draco Malfoy.
How, when, where, who knows, I don’t, and if I had confided in Verity during that time she was being remarkably closed mouthed about it. I suppose that it is not unheard of, that a girl can’t remember “the act”, but it’s seemed monumentally unfair that I had consumed no drugs, drunk no liquor and was still completely in the dark about sex. If it wouldn’t have offended my mother so much, I would have referred to it as an immaculate conception. Strangely, my pregnancy and “amnesia” had pulled my parents together in a way that they haven’t been since my sister’s death and I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize that, even if there are a thousand jokes that will never be made for fear of offense. My father managed to treat me simultaneously as an innocent girl and a mother-to-be; a contortion that I was willing to bet was pulling many a mental muscle.
So, there I was, sitting on the floor of the shop, disaster all around me while George, Molly Weasley and Verity swished and flicked and cleaned everything up. Every so often Mrs. Weasley would look over and smile at me, clucking in a mother-hennish sort of way. George, well, George skirted around the space I was occupying. I’ve always liked George, and knowing that he lost his twin made me feel closer to him, although I hadn’t exactly told him about my twin sister, the real witch. I wanted him to keep thinking that I belong.
Verity came over and pulled me to my feet, brushing off the back of my robe.
“All right now?”
“Certainly.”
“Perhaps you can just send a box next month, then?” said George from across the shop. Mrs. Weasley made tisking noises at him and Verity glared mildly.
“Ha-ha, just joking.”
“Come, my dear,” said Mrs. Weasley, “how about joining us for tea at the Burrow?” There was a sort of a matchmaker-ish look in her eyes. It seemed that even with the successful marriages of Bill, Percy, Ron and Ginny that Mrs. Weasley wouldn’t be happy until all her chicks were matched up and clucking happily. Really, she must have thought that George was terrifically hard up if she was trying to match him with a somewhat pregnant witch-wannabe. Not that she knew I was as fake as the trick wands.
“Charlie is in from Romania, I don’t think you have met him yet, and George’s Angelina will be coming by too.” Her smile was just a little too bright as her eyes discreetly measured the diameter of my belly. I had a distinct feeling that she thought it would be much too improper to mention my “condition”. And I had an even stronger impression that she thought that if I wasn’t married yet, I certainly should be before the next three months were over. The wizarding world doesn’t seem to “do” unwed mothers, or visible pregnancy, for that matter. Perhaps I was missing the magical pregnancy hiding robe. Perhaps the wizarding world is still stuck in the last century when a woman in a delicate condition simply wasn’t seen in polite society.
Lucky for me that Weasley's Wizard Wheezes is the antithesis of politely correct society.
I closed my eyes briefly, wishing back to the simpler days, less than a year ago, when the pinnacle of excitement for me was a hot chocolate at Goldfry‘s. Having dismantled the shop with a couple of unfortunate moves, shown myself to be embarrassingly pregnant and now being appraised as potentially dateable by a doting mother, could the day get any worse?
Yes, of course it could.
“I can bring her by, Mrs. Weasley,” said Verity. “She can’t Appartate right now.” Mrs. Weasley blushed, oops; there was almost an allusion to the pregnancy. Of course, I can’t Appartate at any time, but I can’t even do a side-along apparition at the moment.
“How thoughtless of me, of course not. Well, perhaps, George, you could bring her on the broom?”
“I really should be getting home,” I said. Good heavens, how was I going to get back to my London flat on my own from wherever the Burrow was?
“Oh, pish. No shyness now,” said Mrs. Weasley, bustling around like the force of nature she was. “And Verity should certainly come too. It’s been far too long since Arthur and you have seen each other. He was quite taken with your ideas of how a Muggle could pretend to be a witch.
“He is quite mad about his Muggle collections, you know, plugs, batteries and that car… well, the car is off in the Forbidden Forest now, I suppose. But that was such an interesting idea, my dear, and he talked of nothing else for days. I’m sure he would love to talk about it more.”
I glanced at Verity, who shook her head at me. No, apparently my secret was safe. Just an amusing discussion with a Ministry employee on a “what if”. I decided that I would need to be amused, rather than appalled. I straightened my robe and picked up my fake wand.
“Well, perhaps Verity would take me, then?” I asked.
The Burrow was an absolute fascination to me. A real, actual, magical dwelling. And clearly held up by magic, since no normal building could possibly have such odd angles and additions.
So there I was in the corner of the kitchen, where Mrs. Weasley occasionally asked me to do some meaningless task. I had offered to help get tea together, but perhaps she was concerned by my recent performance in the shop. Quite honestly, I had never been such a butterfingers in my life, but during my pregnancy, I just felt so awkward. It was helping my friends accept that I had fallen off a ladder, which was all to the good, but it was a bit hard to keep a straight face when Mrs. Weasley asked me to count out the walnuts before she put them in the biscuits.
“Hello everyone.” From his looks and the odd partly healed burn scar, the man who had walked in had to be Charlie the dragon keeper. He looked an awful lot like George, short and stocky with the Weasley red hair. Verity introduced us and Charlie took my hand and shook it with a rather strained look on his face.
Oh, my, he must be the recipient of maternal matchmaking on a more regular basis than I ever was.
“Charlie, why don’t you take our guest out and show her the garden?” Mrs. Weasley beamed at Charlie, who was still holding my hand.
“The garden?”
“Yes the garden, go along now, shoo, tea will be ready shortly.”
We walked slowly out to the garden and stood a while looking over the fence. Charlie’s face had gone a remarkable shade of red that clashed stupendously with his hair.
“Well, this is the garden. And it’s October, so not much is growing at the moment. Just the odd gnome to amuse us.
“So, you work at George and Fr…. That is, George’s shop, then?”
“Well not exactly, I’m actually a supplier of Muggle Magic tricks for the shop, I happened to be there today when your mother stopped by.”
“Oh. How interesting. My father will probably bombard you with a million questions, he is quite Muggle-mad, you know. A Muggle company, eh? How did a witch wind up doing that?”
My mouth opened to start the familiar litany of half-truths, prevarications and little white lies. And then I closed it. Charlie had a kind face, he seemed like a nice man; did I really want to try to keep dancing this absurd dance? I thought of the look on Draco Malfoy’s face today. Shock, recognition and what else? Hurt, betrayal, anger. A very different expression from the one he had had in the picture, there was no love on his face today. I had told him the same thing I was going to tell Charlie, of that I was sure. My hands fell to my belly and cradled it. How many new lies was I going to have to tell?
“Well, it’s because I am actually a Muggle. I’ve just been pretending to be a witch.”
Charlie looked at me and raised his eyebrows. He didn’t look particularly shocked or offended.
“It’s rather a long story.”
For a few moments, I joined Charlie in his contemplation of the garden messy with fallen leaves. In the spring, it would be green and bright with blooms.
“I had a sister, and when we turned eleven, she got a letter and went off to Hogwarts and I, well, I didn’t. I used to go with her to Diagon Alley to shop, and she owled me a lot during the school year.”
“You were close.”
“We were twins. Not identical twins, not like George and Fred. But close, we were always so close.
“She was killed in the Battle of Hogwarts. Four years ago.”
I was staring straight ahead, my eyes blurred by unshed tears. Charlie reached over and put his hand on mine, held it. And waited.
“You know, this may sound really strange, but except for Verity, I’ve never told anyone this. And I don’t know why I’m suddenly deciding to tell you, except you lost your brother too.
“When my sister died, it changed so much. My parents stopped talking to each other. They divorced, sold the house I grew up in. There wasn’t really a place I felt I belonged.
“Verity helped me pretend to be a witch; she was my sister’s best friend in school. But I have to stop now because. . . .”
Charlie squeezed my hand gently and nodded.
“I am sure you can tell that I am going to have a baby. And, well, here is the really embarrassing part, Verity says I dated Draco Malfoy for three months, and I must have pretended to be a witch the whole time. I think he is the father, and Verity thinks he is the one that obliviated my memories. I saw him today and he looked very, very shocked. I don’t really know what I told him, or how I felt about him, or what happened in those three months. I don’t feel angry with him, because I don’t know him at all, but I feel very, very angry that this happened.
“And then I think, well, what did I expect? Lying about what I was, tricking someone. I mean, if I loved him and he loved me, which I think it must have been because I never ever did. . . . that. . . . you know, with anyone else before. And now here I am just babbling about it to you. And I don’t know you either!”
The tears were overflowing now, my nose was running and there was just no dignified exit from this dramatic little confession.
“Hanky?”
“Thanks.”
“I’m sorry about your sister.”
“Thanks.”
We stood for a while longer, as the sun set behind us. Charlie still held my hand in his.
“Yooohooo!!! Tea is ready!”
“Ready for tea and my mother the matchmaker?” Charlie smiled at me, I smiled back and then both of us broke into laughter.
“Does she do this often?”
“You have no idea. Usually it’s really awkward.”
I had to smile. Awkward, really?
“So, tell me about yourself, Charlie, what’s it like working with dragons?”