AN:- All aboard for the glorious third year party!
Chapter One: Summer Abroad
"Sally! Sally! Watch this!"
"Be careful!"
"Sally, watch your brother!"
"I am watching him!"
"I'm so sorry girls."
"It's fine Mrs Perks."
They were sitting on a blanket, looking up at an energetic eight year old being chased by an exasperated sister. There were four of them on the blanket, Mr Perks, who had his courdory trousers rolled up to display pale ankles, a white handkerchief tied on his head and a book in hand; his glasses perched on the end of his nose as he amused himself with the Tales of Beadle the Bard.
Then there was Mrs Perks, who looked a little less frazzled than she normally did, with her frizzy blonde hair tamed into a ponytail and a baggy white t-shirt on. She was freckled and brown after a week in Spain, and considerably unwound from when Lisa and Lily had shown up on her doorstep nine days earlier.
Lisa was lapping up the sunshine, stretched out with a big floppy hat on and a swimsuit that left her arms and legs exposed to the elements. Her dark hair had picked up streaks of red from the sun and at her side was a very new book, the title prominent in silver engraving. 'Bite Volume 7: Bite Back Harder.'
Lily was dressed like any normal person would be for the beach, which was very unusual for the people who knew her. After being coaxed into a swimsuit on the third day by Lisa she had been very badly sunburned, and had spent the rest of the week wearing the biggest baggiest most cottony t-shirt available. It was one of Mr Perks old university t-shirts, green with a white stick figure holding a bottle with xxxs on it. There was faded writing at the top which read 'Wasted,' but Mrs Perks had forbidden Mr Perks from explaining what the significance of the word was.
The boy they were looking up at was called Henry, and according to his mother there was no child more filled with energy in the whole of England. He had been allowed to have an ice-cream with the rest of them (a small one, since normal ice-creams made him shake hard enough to be a blur while sitting down) and even that small amount of sugar had been enough to send him off exploring at top speed.
The exasperated sister was called Sally-Anne Perks, Sally to her friends, Miss Perks to her teachers, Sally-Anne to her parents, and a worthy contender for 'happiest person in Hogwarts' award three years running. She was doing well climbing the rocky cliffs after her brother, given that she was an 'ancient' thirteen years old now (it was ancient to Henry okay?) but he managed to evade her, skipping around with the ease of a mountain goat.
"Don't fall," Lily called up. She had been watching them with increasing nervousness, and now they were nearly twenty feet off the sand and the black haired not-quite-thirteen-years-yet was on the verge of pulling her hair out.
"Thanks for the advice Lily," Sally shouted back. "Didn't think of not falling."
"Don't be mean," Lisa said, returning to her book, "she's worried."
"Sorry Lily."
"That's alright."
"I'm king of the mountain!"
"Not yet you're not."
It was funny really. The first time they had met Henry he had hidden behind his sister and regarded them with the deepest suspicion, but now he was proudly standing with his hands on his hips and his bare chest thrust out, like Peter Pan on his rock.
Lily had only been introduced to Peter Pan a month before, but she thought it was a rather marvellous story, and right now Henry was every inch the little boy who refused to grow up. She remembered herself at eight years old, getting her first dress robes, attending her first dinner party with the Malfoys. She had never imagined that the option existed to be outside, in the sunshine, with sand and water and in a whole different country.
Sally had finally caught up to her brother, and the two of them sat down on top of the rock, peering down at the blanket below. "You all look very small down there," she called out.
"You look very small up there," Lisa shouted back.
"She looks very unstable up there," Lily muttered.
Mrs Perks didn't seem too concerned about her offspring climbing so high, although at least Mr Perks had put down his book. "Remember when they were little?" he asked his wife.
She nodded, "I remember finding Sally asleep on top of the cupboard when she was two."
"On top of a cupboard?" Lisa asked curiously.
"Oh yes, she was all curled up with a packet of biscuits she had found. Sally used to climb anything and everything."
"She still does," Lily mumbled. They had had one particularly hair-raising incident the year before with an ancient iron ladder eighty feet above the ground.
"Trees, cupboards, drainpipes," Mr Perks was counting them off on his fingers. "We gave up on baby gates because she figured out how to climb over them."
"I'm impressed," Lisa was watching the siblings now chasing each other across the top of the cliffs. "Even I only figured out the lock when I was five."
"What's a baby gate?"
"Oh, muggles use them to keep their children from running all over the place."
"Ah."
As always, revelations about the wizarding world had caused Mr Perks to sit forward and press his glasses up to the bridge of his nose, his way of being interested. "Wizards don't have baby gates?"
Lisa shook her head, and Lily was still looking mystified by the whole thing. "The really magical wizard babies can undo locks really easily. And bouncing is a sign of having magic when you're a child, so they tend to climb places muggle babies don't. Gates would be useless for a wizarding family."
"Fascinating," Mr Perks was talking to his wife now, "do you think that might be why we had so many problems with Sally?"
"Henry doesn't have magic and he managed to climb down the chimney when he was one," Mrs Perks responded.
"What about you Lily?" Lisa prodded her gently, "were you a climber?"
Lily shook her head, "I read things. Like my parents would find that I'd pulled all of my father's notes out of his desk and was going through them mouthing all the words."
"Didn't he lock the desk?"
"He did."
"I don't know how your parents coped," Mrs Perks said, leaning back again to enjoy the sun as Henry whooped above them.
"Well we coped," Mr Perks said, picking up his book again, "and we didn't even know she was magic."
There was a shout and a scream of laughter as Henry went plummeting over the edge, hitting the sea with an enormous splash. Thankfully the edge of the cliffs wasn't quite as high, but it still made Lisa and Lily wince as he smacked against the water.
"Come on Sally!" He shrieked when his head came back up.
"I'm not jumping!"
He cackled and started to doggy paddle around in circles, leaving Sally to work her way down the rocks until she was back on solid sand.
They only had a couple of days left of their holiday, and after that it was less than a week before they would be heading back to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry together. All three of them had been looking forward to it all summer, and despite the horrible events of the previous year there was nothing like taking the Hogwarts Express and seeing the castle shining in all its glory.
Lily had once more locked her wand up in its case in her desk drawers, although she had at least managed to avoid taking it out too often over the holidays. She missed doing magic even more than she realised, but being able to spend time with her friends had made it easier to do without.
It also helped that her parents were slowly becoming more accustomed to a muggle way of living. It had all started when Lily introduced them to the concept of muggle clothing, specifically trousers, and her father had immediately begun to move them closer to their muggle neighbours. What had begun with cardigans had soon become village council meetings and regular cinema trips. When Lily had left for Sally's he had even been attempting to persuade her mother to have a television in the house.
"Muggles use them to get all their news, and we could watch films without having to go down to the village."
Her mother had been more than a little opposed to the idea. "If you want to get one of those horrendous machines you may keep it in the shed. Haven't you seen what's happened to the muggle children of today? They can't even think for themselves without that box telling them what to do."
She had the feeling that by the time she got back for Christmas they would have a television sitting in the living room, and her mother's protests would have subsided to the occasional grumble about 'waste of time' and 'brain-rotting.'
Of course, they hadn't been entirely without wizarding news while staying at the Perks. Sally had finally convinced her parents to take out a subscription to the Daily Prophet, so every day they were met by the fluttering of an owl over breakfast. The first few times Henry had been shocked right out of his seat, but he quickly accepted it is as part of the morning routine and made it his mission to catch one of the birds.
Lily was convinced they were now sending only the craftiest and hardiest of owls.
The moving pictures of the paper had been another revelation to the Perks family. Funnily enough it was Henry who had accepted that easily, while Mrs and Mr Perks had been utterly flummoxed the first time Albus Dumbledore had waved at them cheerily from underneath the headline 'Headmaster Celebrates Return to School!' Of course now Mr Perks was readily accepting the change. "I wish they did it in our papers," he enthused as he read the Sports, "imagine watching Ryan Giggs scoring another blinder every morning over your coffee."
The look on Mrs Perks' face was more than enough to show her opinion.
On their last day in Spain the paper brought a surprising story
HARRY POTTER INVOLVED IN AUNT INFLATION?
An expose by R. Skeeter
Harry Potter, long-renowned as the Boy Who Lived, has been involved in a mysterious disturbance that all began in a quiet suburb in Sussex.
Sources at the Ministry can reveal that Mr Potter, famed defeater of He Who Must Not Be Named, may have used an illegal inflation charm on his aunt, who then had to be deflated by Ministry Officials. There is also a rumour that a man matching Mr Potter's description took the Knight Bus to London that same night. Said Stanley Shunpike, conductor aboard the Knight bus.
"'e were 'ere weren' 'e Ern'? Neville Longbottom took the bus all the way up from Surrey ter London."
Was this mysterious 'Neville Longbottom' merely a fake name for the famed boy wizard to travel under? Was he fleeing from Ministry Hit Wizards? And what punishment, if any, will he face for this flagrant disregard for the Statute of Secrecy?
Cont. on page 3.
"Isn't Harry Potter that boy everyone talks about?" Mr Perks asked as he buttered some toast.
Lisa nodded, "he defeated He Who Must Not Be Named when he was only one year old, and he fought him again in our first year, and he fought Slytherin's Monster, whatever it was," she cut Sally and Lily off before they could start arguing again. The three girls had spent a large portion of the holiday trying to puzzle out exactly what Slytherin's monster could have been. Given that one of them was a Ravenclaw, not used to being wrong, one of them was a Slytherin, not inclined to being beaten, and one of them was Sally, the arguments had gotten pretty heated.
"And are none of the teachers concerned about a twelve year old running around solving problems that they can't?"
Lisa and Lily exchanged a look. They had wondered themselves whether maybe it wasn't quite a coincidence that Harry Potter and his friends had managed to do everything they managed to do. It did seem a bit unlikely that Dumbledore, who everyone said was the most brilliant and wisest wizard ever, would not know that something was going on.
"I suppose some people are just really good at hiding stuff from the teachers," Lily said innocently, aware of the irony of that particular statement.
Mr Perks went back to his breakfast, but the look Mrs Perks gave the girls told them that she understood perfectly well what adventures they had been getting up to.
They whiled away the time finishing up their exploration of the house. On their first day they had discovered an old tunnel hidden behind the fake fireplace, and since then had been sneaking down it daily to see where it led. They had found a supply of torches and batteries, a device Lily was still highly suspicious of, and set off on an adventure.
The tunnel itself wasn't very exciting, and if they were honest the places it led to weren't very exciting either, but it still gave them a little of the thrill they had found when they started to map Hogwarts castle. Like when they had poked through a thin bit of wall and discovered the nearby tennis courts, or accidentally come up in the boy's changing room at the next-door swimming pool (they had swiftly departed, although there may have been a few more giggles than were strictly appropriate)
Now they were on the verge of finishing their exploration, and since they only had a few hours left before they left for the airport they were itching to get to the very end of the tunnel. They slipped away as the Perks parents were packing and managed to dodge Henry in the living room by hiding behind the sofa when they heard him coming.
They hurried down the tunnel; half crouched from the narrowness of it. Lisa was leading, as usual, with Sally behind her and Lily covering the rear. They passed the new hole in the tennis court wall, dragged Sally past the boy's changing room ('just a little peek?' 'EW! No!') and carried on until they could see light right at the very end of the tunnel.
The last few feet of the tunnel sloped sharply downwards, but they had experience of sliding down dark wet tunnels, and this one was a lot less dangerous than the waterslide behind one of the portraits on the seventh floor of Hogwarts.
Unfortunately, it didn't lead anywhere particularly interesting. They rolled out onto a dusty dirty hill, looking down at the village below them. There were cars snaking up the road below them and they could see the sea in the distance, sparkling a little in the mid-morning light.
They sat on the edge of the ledge they found themselves on and swung their legs a little, enjoying the breeze and the silence.
"I'm glad we came here," Lisa said.
"I'm glad we saw each other," Lily agreed.
"I'm glad we're going back soon," Sally said.
"Me too."
AN:- Aaaaaaaaaaand we're back.
Obviously Mrs Moon has been busy over the years, since Bite now has 7 volumes. You'll remember that this is the volume where the witch and the werewolf are finally considering having children, but are concerned that the child might be a werewolf as well. In volume 8 (A Whole New Tail) we find that the child is a magical new type of shapeshifter who can change into ANY ANIMAL! Possibly my attacks at Twilight are getting a little bit too mean spirited, I apologise to fans of the book who may be offended.
My father used to have two t-shirts he wore all the time. One was bright red and had a stick figure man with crazy eyes and spirals around his head and jagged writing saying 'MAD!' the other was dark green, had a white stick figure man holding a bottle of moonshine with the word 'Wasted' over his head. My mother got very annoyed at him when he explained to me (aged six) what 'Wasted' meant. Possibly the Perks have a little bit of my parents in them as well.
My sister learned to climb over baby gates, I learned to open them. My sister was the climber, I was the one who managed to get into places I shouldn't have been able to.
The ongoing subplot of Lily's parents becoming acclimatised to the muggle world does have a point, I promise.
Nothing in canon said that Harry avoided any and all media coverage for blowing up his aunt, so I put in a little preemptive Rita Skeeter. Listing the Dursley's address as 'Sussex' was a deliberate mistake.
When I first came up with the concept for Sally I wrote down all the character types I had been avoiding for years, because I need to practice them. The list includes 'blonde' 'happy' 'hyper' 'energetic' 'anti-cynical' and in big capital letters 'FLIRT.' Sally's discovery of boys is significant (remember last year when she managed to amass loads of Valentine's Day cards during Lockhart's V-Day breakfast?) As for who thought looking at boys is icky and gross, it's Lily. Who else?
And so begins Hogwarts Retold: The Prisoner of Azkaban. It began with sex jokes, drinking jokes and three good friends looking forward to the year. Who knows how it will end?
Well me obviously, but you'll just have to read it.