Disclaimer: It should be noted that this document is a work of fanfiction and therefore any recognizable characters, events, ect. do not belong to me.
Chapter One
This summer was warmer still than the last, at least that's what Aletta's mother insisted just as she did every year her daughter stepped off the Hogwart's express to be home for the holidays. This summer, however, Aletta agreed with her mother. The children outside their quaint Chelsea neighborhood turned the hoses on each other in play and the Thames river cruises seemed to be running twice as often as they usually did, the tourists reveling in the unchararicslicty clear London weather.
Aletta adored the Thames and looked forward to spending peaceful summer afternoons looking out on the Wobbly bridge. When she was little Grandpa Newt would come out with her and point out the creatures lulling beneath the water. When she went alone she never could find the Kelpies nor the others herself. Sometimes Rolf would come with her when their grandpa was busy or he complained of his old bones, something the two of them could never believe would ail their jubilant grandfather.
Aletta hummed as she helped her mother prepare their welcome home dinner for the evening, a family tradition since Rolf left for Hogwarts just nearly six years ago, just one year before she got her own letter. The dinner made leaving her friends at the school much easier as letters never were as nice as being with them at Hogwarts and there was a sort of loneliness of living in a muggle neighborhood between these times at school. She thought of Ron, who was horrid at keeping up with letters anyways and Harry, who had warned her that his family whom hated magic and often refused to allow him to send anything by way of Hedwig. Really, Aletta thought, Hermoine was the only one that she could expect a weekly letter from over their break.
"All set," Aletta said to her mother, dropping the veggies she had just cut into the steamer set up on the stovetop. "Do you need anymore help, Mum?"
Aletta's mom looked over from where she was levitating one pan into the oven with her wand in one hand and stirring together a mix of ingredients for her homemade cake with a spoon in the other hand, "Not at all, Aletta, you've been a great help. Just be sure you wash up before your grandparents arrive and tell your brother to do the same."
Aletta's mother was a great cook and always kept a furiously tidy home. They'd had a gnome infestation in their garden one spring but after mother was done with them they never dared came back. Aletta once asked her mum where she'd learned all her housekeeping spells as they certainly didn't teach quite so many in her lessons at Hogwarts and her mother admitted she had picked it all up from her Aunt whom is now Aletta's great Aunt. Though, she didn't come around as often as her other relatives as she lived in America, New York to be exact. Aletta adored her accent and the way she carried herself, gently but strong and in a way Aletta knew her great Aunt must have been very beautiful when she was young.
By the time she and Rolf had washed up for their meal they could hear their Father in the sitting room with their grandparents discussing something in solemn tones. Aletta slowed her brother as he made his way down the stairs, creeping past him and as near to the doorframe of the main room as she dared without getting caught. Perhaps they were talking about…
"You don't think they're talking about…?" Rolf trailed of unable to find the right words for the end of this last school year.
Aletta's only answer was to simply turn to her brother, pointer finger over lips, in a silent gesture to shush him.
"What would they know about… you-know-who… that Dumbledoor didn't already tell us at the end of year feast… or that Harry hasn't told you?" Rolf was still put off by the fact that Aletta refused to give him the same details that Harry had given her, Ron, and Hermoine after he had returned from the graveyard with Cedric Diggery's body. Instead, she left him to speculate with the rest of the school who busied themselves with impossible rumors until Dumbledoor's speech shocked them all into speechlessness. Nobody could make up a rumor more impossible than what had actually happened: that Cedric Diggery, one of their two Hogwart's champions, had been murdered by Voldemort.
"Perhaps there's news?" Aletta spoke hurriedly, "Mum collected the daily prophet right from the owl this afternoon without even letting it reach the mail slot."
Their mother, for all the books she kept in the twin bookshelves in the sitting room, often turned her nose up at the Daily Prophet, which the news owl only continued to bring to their home on their father's request, whom read it religiously with his morning cuppa. Despite Aletta's suspicions however, the adult's conversation did little to stray from the topic of the Horklump, which had apparently been ravaging many garden's in the area, and the best way to remove them. Dinner carried on much the same way though Aletta did not expect otherwise, certainly not in front of her or Rolf, and by the end of the night she was very much ready to fall into her own bed and sleep.
Each morning of her holiday Aletta would wake early to sit with her father and share morning tea. Her father seemed glad that she was so intent to spend the extra time with him even noting one morning that he had missed the time they had together while she was away at Hogwarts. It made her feel a bit guilty, seeing as her intentions on waking so early were to be able to read the headlines on the Prophet as her father flipped through it. However, because her mother woke so early as well, prepping breakfast for the pair, she scarcely got to read more than the front headline as her mother found it fit to pick the paper right up after her father and sack it deep into the bin, dumping that morning's tea dregs in after it.
It wasn't until a few weeks of this that her mother followed them into the kitchen, opened the pantry, and tutted. "I'll have to be off to the market," she said as she kissed her husband swiftly on the cheek, "can the two of you make do for breakfast on your own?" Her father nodded and Aletta had a feeling they weren't going to be having breakfast at all that morning. Despite her hungry stomach though she knew she would rather wait for lunch as for once her father said his goodbyes for work and stepped out the door Aletta was left to read the paper without interference.
She immediately tore through the stories searching, even, for the smallest of clues. What she found, however, she was not expecting. Tucked away on the third page of the print was the heading: POTTER: THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF.
Later that afternoon her mother found her in her bedroom, window thrown open as the summer breeze brought warm air into the house. "Sweetheart," her mother sighed, "I see you've read the paper."
Aletta rocked her chair back on two legs from her seat at the desk, chewing at her lower lip, and incredibly unsure. Her mother had used that same tone with her before when she was little and needed coaxing out of her shyness, or her knee was skinned and she couldn't calm her tears. The last time she'd heard that incredibly soft tone was such a long time ago.
"Well," her mother came over to run her fingers through her hair, "I only wanted to keep you from a small hurt. No need to hear of your friend that way."
Aletta shook her head, "There will always be rumors, Mum. I'm not so little anymore."
Her mother nodded at this looking very sad and very proud all at once. "Yes I do know," she grinned all at once then, the same wide smile her daughter had, "but I know this fondness you have for the Potter boy."
There was a tone of suggestion in her mother's voice that made Aletta blush. Was it true that mother's could always tell these things or was it just hers?
They each paused and for a moment they both had the same look on their face: deep hazel eyes crinkled in thought. "And… of course… this is just the first of many battles."
Aletta snapped her head up to look at her mother then but before she could say anything her mother began again. "Yes, dear, Dumbeldoor has contacted me and your father and I suppose there is no holding on to this for thought anymore. We all have quite a bit to discuss.
