Chapter Two:
I Apparated in front of my house, just a bit off. I stepped forward to hear a squelch that could only mean mud. I looked down at my shoe sinking in muck and groaned. I turned my eyes back up and saw a young girl stomping in the squishy ground. She was in front of a pitiful looking garden and the sky was a purple colour, as the sun was setting. Her mouth was in a pout and her eyebrows were furrowed. The child bent down, clutched a fistful of weeds, and yanked them out of the ground, placing them in a pile with others. A tear slipped down her dirty cheek as she looked down at all the weeds she had left, which, at the time, seemed like another hour's worth of hard work. A woman dressed in a simple white dress with a faded red pattern stepped out on the gray wooden porch and gazed down at the young girl.
"Now Minerva," she sighed. "It's not that bad. See?" The mother uprooted a huge clump of weeds and the girl's face lightened, seeing her new workload. The image faded and I was back. I looked down at my poor shoes, now covered in the oozing mud. "Urgh!" I yelled in frustration. "Why? Why when it was muddy?" Nature seemed to be laughing at me. I trudged inside where Richard was sitting in an armchair in the corner by an oil lamp and was reading. He looked up briefly at my condition and sighed. "Inaccurate Apparating once more?"
A stern look crossed my face, one that I would wear many times in the future. "Now Richard, you have Apparated plenty of times in the wrong spot," I scolded, but then a grin crossed my face. I could never stay cross at him for long. He threw the Daily Prophet down and walked toward me. I wrapped my arms around him. We leaned in close and I could feel his familiar warmth, smell his particular scent of wood shavings (oak and hazel, to be exact), and hear the murmurs of devotion.
"Once I said to you that death was preferable to being stuck in a room with you, remember?" I said, reminiscing of our Hogwarts years. He chuckled. "Ah, yes, that was when you were a strict prefect who wouldn't even stick a toe across the line, while I was a good student, a fellow prefect, and somehow 'insufferable'. It was the Quidditch, wasn't it?"
I laughed. "Yes," I admitted. "I could fly a broom as well as a troll, and you, you were amazing at it, and a bit of a braggart."
He rolled his eyes. "You are the one who made the Quidditch team!"
I waved that comment away. "Details, details," I said. Then, I remembered what I was going to say. "Richard, guess what has happened at my job today." I could barely contain my excitement, but I kept a straight face, for which I would soon be famous for.
He eyed me suspiciously. "What?" he ventured cautiously.
I grinned. "A man was paying for all of his drinks, and left too much money!" His eyes widened. "How much money?" "Two sickles and nineteen knuts!" I replied, ecstatic. He embraced me and I felt like life could be turning for the better. I had no idea how right I was.