Adelaide Fenwick and the School in the Hills

by meldahlie

Were Harry and Neville the only 'Children of the Order? Starts with Sirius Black and a proposal of marriage...!

1. Chapter 1

1976.

There were strange grown-ups in the sitting room. Three of them. Two men talking to Daddy: "This is Sirius Black. No, no – he's on our side; he's living with the Potters, now. Sirius, this is Benjie Fenwick."

"An' who are you?"

All the grown-ups jumped. Nobody had noticed the little girl lugging the large cat, whose legs and tail trailed practically to the floor, in the doorway.

Sometimes grown-ups don't answer the simplest questions. The little girl frowned. "An' who are you?"

There was a titter of grown-up laughter at the five-year-old's insistent, clear-voiced query. On the other side of the room, Mother paused her conversation with the lady who'd come. "Adelaide..." she began warningly.

But the man crouched down. "I'm... I'm Uncle Frank," he said decisively.

"Oh." Adelaide put the cat down to consider the matter: Mother, and Daddy, and a Sirius Black, and an Uncle Frank. The lady with Mother had visited before, and she'd been called Alice then, but with this...

Adelaide ignored Daddy's chuckle at Uncle Frank's explanation, and peered across the room. "Does that make you Aunt Alice?"

There was a roar of laughter: Mother and Daddy and the Sirius Black; Uncle Frank and the lady called Alice both turned rather pink before they joined in. Uncle Frank stood up again, but he looked at Adelaide, not Alice. "Perhaps, little girl, perhaps."

The Sirius Black let out a last bark of laughter. He bent down, and Adelaide scrutinized him. He was only a big boy, really, not a grown-up. His hair flopped round his chin, not like Daddy's, and he looked like a happy dog.

"You're cute," he said. "Will you marry me, then?"

That was an entirely different matter to aunts and uncles.

Adelaide gathered up the middle of her cat with red-faced dignity, and stepped back to the doorway as all the grown-ups laughed. "I'n too busy now, thank 'ou."

A/N: There is more to this tale – as you may gather from the discrepancy between the title and the contents! It is just still very much "in progress" - but this first chapter seemed too much fun not to share!