A/N: Okay, okay, I know that you can't really bring people back to life, but we're gonna bend the rules a bit. Trust me, I can pull this off. Criticism is welcome, and reviews are very much appreciated. I worked really hard on this, and I hope you like it!
Disclaimer: If I was JKR, would I be on fanfiction?
Prologue
July 9, 2014
"Hey, Nella, what're you making?" asked Merope. Nella was sitting in front of a cauldron, mixing ingredients with painstaking accuracy. She gestured to the book open in front of her. "A growth potion? What's that for?"
"The stupid roses," said Nella bitterly. "They keep dying on me, and for once I'd like to have flowers that don't look like they've been run over by an eighteen-wheeler."
Nella was Merope's twenty-five year old cousin. She had short, messy blonde hair with uneven bangs that made her look like she was nine, dull blue eyes, and mismatched clothes.
"Want me to help?"
"No! It's too complicated. One little screw up could have horrible, horrible consequences," Nella warned.
"Really? Like what?" Merope eagerly pulled up a chair and sat at the counter.
"Don't you have something to do?"
"Not really," Merope shrugged.
"I'm not describing horrific situations to an eleven-year-old with nothing to do except listen to descriptions of horrific situations."
"What's wrong with that?"
"To all your teachers at Hogwarts, I say good luck," Nella sighed. "Go do something useful. Why don't you de-gnome the garden?"
"Fine," huffed Merope, and she hopped down off her stool and went out to the back yard, searching the flowerbeds for the gnome burrow. Unlike most witches and wizards, Nella lived in a Muggle house in a Muggle neighborhood, with Muggle appliances and Muggle plants and even dull Muggle neighbors that came over for tea once a week to gossip over who's lawn was looking brown, or who's garage needed painting. All of Nella's plants were dead, but nobody had the heart to tell her, except Ms. Litterby, the lonely old spinster down the street who was fond of throwing things at children and calling foreigners "jackasses."
"Aha," Merope muttered, spotting the hole. She grabbed the hose from the side of the house, stuck it in the hole, and turned it on full blast. She held it there for about five minutes until all the gnomes had drowned.
"Done already?" sighed Nella. "For the ten millionth time, you can't drown the garden pests. Dammit, I'm out of lacewing flies." Nella got up from her chair. "Mero, you're going to watch this potion while I go over to Diagon Alley."
"I thought I wasn't allowed to help."
"One more smart-ass comment and I'm going to jinx your ears off," snapped Nella. "You sit right here and watch this potion. Don't touch it and do NOT let anything happen to it or I'll jinx off your nose as well."
"You know, at some point you're gonna run out of parts of me you can jinx off…kidding, god, I'm only joking!" said Merope hastily when Nella narrowed her eyes. "Why can't I touch it?"
"Don't touch it."
"Why not?"
"You'll die."
"Really?" Merope edged away from the potion.
"Want to find out?" Nella strode over to the fireplace, tossed in some floo powder, and shouted, "Diagon Alley!" With a whirl of green flames, she vanished.
"Okay." Merope sat in her chair and stared down at the bubbling pink potion. "Here I am. Watching the potion that will kill me if I touch it." She hummed along to the Wizarding Wireless set for a while, flipping through the potion book that Nella was getting the instructions from.
"This potion won't kill me," she muttered, reading the recipe.
"And now, a brand new single from Celestina Warbeck!" exclaimed the peppy radio DJ from the wireless set. "This one's called, 'You Stole My Love With—'" Merope leaned over to turn the dial on the wireless set; she hated Celestina Warbeck.
The doorbell rang, and Merope jumped, cutting her finger on the dial and accidentally sending the wireless set flying—into the cauldron.
"Oh no," groaned Merope as the pink potion turned dark green. "No, no, no, no!" She jumped up and grabbed a pair of salad tongs from a drawer in the kitchen and plunged them into the potion, searching around for the wireless set. When she pulled out the tongs, they were on fire.
"What do I do, what do I do?" she muttered. She saw a pile of caterpillars diced on the edge of the table. Nella must want those in the potion, thought Merope. I can't make it any worse, can I? Merope dumped the caterpillars into the potion. To her frustration, the potion turned black. She started dumping all the ingredients in sight into the cauldron, still holding the flaming salad tongs.
The doorbell rang again.
"One moment!" shouted Merope a little hysterically. She dropped the tongs back into the cauldron and shoved it under the sink before sprinting to the door and flinging it open.
"Ms. Litterby! What the hell are you doing here?" blurted Merope, thinking of the cauldron under the sink and hoping to god that nothing else would get set on fire.
"Shut up, don't talk to me like that, you insolent brat," snarled Ms. Litterby. "Apologize to me."
"Sorry," muttered Merope.
"Shut up, don't talk to me like that, you insolent brat." Ms. Litterby pushed past Merope and strode into the house. She was headed to the living room—adjacent to the kitchen.
Merope jumped in front of the woman, blocking the doorway.
"Hey, you want to hear a joke?" Merope invented wildly.
"I don't want to hear anything that comes out of your mouth," Ms. Litterby sniffed.
"Ha, ha, that's funny." Merope forced a laugh. Ms. Litterby did not look please. Merope trailed off and cleared her throat. "Now…er…why did the chicken cross the road?"
"Chickens don't cross roads," snapped Ms. Litterby.
"It's a joke."
"I hate jokes." Ms. Litterby tried to pass Merope again.
"Don't you want to know why the chicken crossed the road?" asked Merope hopefully.
"Melanie—"
"Merope," Merope corrected.
"Shut up. I don't give a damn why the chicken crosses the road."
"Well, he wanted to get to the other side!" Merope forced another laugh. "That's a funny one, eh?"
"You stupid kids and your marijuana…you're frying your brain, I'll bet you didn't know that, funny girl!" said Ms. Litterby in annoyance, shoving Merope aside and entering the next room. Merope rolled her eyes; Ms. Litterby was under the impression that all kids were on drugs.
"Where's Nella?"
"She's…she went over to the QFC," Merope invented, "so she'll be gone for a while."
"The QFC's just down the road."
"Well, yeah, but she's got a lot of hard decisions to make…you know, whole milk or skim milk, paper or plastic…"
"She's just as high as you are." Ms. Litterby shook her head. "It's those damn foreigners, bringing their drugs over to a nice country like Whales. Just yesterday I saw some kid writing obscene things on a wall downtown…"
Merope allowed Ms. Litterby to rant. She was staring at the sink, hoping beyond hope that it wouldn't catch fire.
"You know, Ms. Litterby, Nella might not be back for hours, so you may as well just go home," said Merope hopefully.
"Go make your sorry ass useful and get me some water," Ms. Litterby told her.
Merope got out a glass and walked over to the sink. She made to turn it on, but it began to shake in her hand. Merope jumped back and let go immediately. It continued to shake. In fact, the cupboards were shaking too, and the sink itself…
"It's an earthquake!" squawked Ms. Litterby.
"No, it's not…" said Merope nervously, backing away from the sink as everything began to shake more violently. Ms. Litterby was screaming god knows what, but Merope wasn't listening. She could hear the pipes rattling and the cauldron clinking under the sink…
"Merope, I'm home!" said a voice from the fireplace, and Nella strode across the room, stopping short upon seeing Ms. Litterby, who was looking floored at the sight of Nella walking out of a fire. "Oh. Hello—Merope, why is the sink—"
And then, to Merope's horror, the sink exploded.
Merope dove down out of the way and covered her head as the pipes flew off and the handles and ricochet off the walls. Ms. Litterby screeched, and ran around the living room before being hit by a pipe and diving behind the couch. Nella was swearing at Merope at the top of her voice while attempting to Stun the various pipes and handles and bits of the wall that were spinning around the room. Drywall rained down on Merope's head. There were two more crashes, one right after the other, as the dishwasher and the oven burst into flames. Merope stumbled up and ran under the table on the other side of the kitchen.
Then, as fast as everything started, it all stopped.
Gingerly, Merope got up and looked around nervously. It wasn't pretty. The entire wall that the sink had been adhered to was demolished. All the plates and cups and pots were strewn across the floor, ninety percent of which were shattered. The cauldron, however, with the bubbling black goop in it had remained intact, and it was sitting on the floor, looking as innocent as a cauldron full of black bubbling goop could look.
"Merope June Fallon. What the hell did you do?"
Merope winced as she turned around and saw Nella standing a few feet away from her and looking livid.
"Well…er…you've always said how this window needed to be bigger…"
"YOU BLASTED OUT THE DAMN WALL!" she shouted.
"I can explain!"
"This is going to be a good one." Nella rolled her eyes.
"I was sitting here and then the doorbell rang and the radio fell in and then the salad tongs got set on fire and I tried to make the potion better but it only made it worse and so I stuck it under the sink and answered the door and then Ms. Litterby was there and she didn't like my chicken joke and then she wouldn't leave and then you came home and the sink exploded and please, please don't kill me!" Merope said all this very fast.
"You. Sit there," ordered Nella. She was shaking with rage. "I'm going to call the Dept. of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, but I am not finished with you yet."
Merope obeyed and sank into the couch next to Ms. Litterby, who had been knocked unconscious. A closer look told Merope that she had just been Stunned. Some of the nosy old neighbors were peering into the house through the hole in the wall.
"What happened here, Merope?" asked Hanna Sedgwick, a neighbor girl three years older than Merope who Merope had gone to grammar school with. She was staring at the lack of wall with her mouth open. Merope got up and walked over to her.
"Oh, this?" Merope tried to act like it wasn't a big deal. "I…er…" Merope blurted the first thing that came into her head: "You know how people tell you not to explode marshmallows in the microwave?"
Hanna raised her eyebrows and looked at the wall as though sizing up the damage, wondering whether Merope could possibly be telling her the truth. Merope stepped to the side, trying to conceal the cauldron, but Hanna noticed.
"What's that?"
"What?"
"That. That pot."
"What pot?"
"Is that a cauldron?"
Merope did the only thing she could think of doing.
"Is that a cauldron?"
"Seriously, Merope. What is it?"
"Seriously, Merope. What is it?"
"Why've you got a cauldron in your kitchen?"
"Why've you got a cauldron in your kitchen?"
"Stop that, you're not six."
"Stop that, you're not six."
There was a flash of light, and Hanna fell to the ground. Merope whipped around and saw a man in dark green robes with the Ministry emblem on the chest who was pocketing his wand. The men from the Ministry had arrived.
"Are you Merope Fallon?" asked one of them.
"Y-yes," stammered Merope.
"What exactly did you put in that potion?" he said.
"I-I don't really remember…let me think. Well, the wireless set fell in, and so did a pair of salad tongs, and I don't remember what else. It was all stuff we had on the counter. Ingredients for the growth potion, I think. You'll have to ask my aunt." Merope gestured towards Nella. The man nodded curtly.
"Um, sir? How much trouble are we in?"
The man just looked at Merope and laughed before going off to question Nella.
Six hours later, the wall was repaired, Ms. Litterby's memory was modified, and the potion was being taken away to be dumped in a landfill somewhere in Scotland. Once the ministry people were gone, Nella rounded on Merope.
"You are very, very lucky, Merope. Do you know why?"
"N-no…" she stuttered.
"You are lucky because it's illegal to murder little girls," replied Nella, looking so angry she seemed a little crazed, "but if it wasn't, you would be headed to that landfill along with that potion in a million pieces."
"Well, I-I suppose I am lucky, th-then," said Merope cautiously. She backed up slowly, jolting unpleasantly when she backed into the kitchen counter by mistake.
"I am so mad that I'm ready to keep you home from Hogwarts for this," Nella ranted, "but if I did, then you'd be messing stuff up stuff your entire life, and I am not going to subject the world to that sort of destruction."
"Er…I really don't think that I'm capable of messing up that badl—"
"Merope, you just exploded the wall!" said Nella indignantly. "All I asked was for you to watch the stupid potion, and not to touch it, and you go ahead and…"
Merope listened to Nella rant, slightly frightened. She had never seen Nella so angry. When she got angry, Nella's blue, doe-like eyes got massive and seemed to pop out of her head, while her five-foot-one height seemed to stretch to twice it's height.
"Just get upstairs," Nella sighed, covering her face with her hands. And still two months to Hogwarts. Hopefully.
A/N: And there you have it! Love it? Hate it? Want to burn it? I don't know unless you tell me. So review away!