Chapter 4. Wir von einem Blut, dir sein und ich
What, after all, is happiness?
It wasn't the long, slow months that followed – living, hiding, waiting...
It wasn't the 2nd of May, when the world went madly ecstatic, because right in the middle of reading the liberated Prophet, with its screaming headlines of "THE BOY WHO LIVED" etc, etc, I looked up to see that Meck, Sally and Pam had disappeared – in the direction of the Van Dykes' windows.
They didn't smash them, of course. As Meck put it: "Un, deux, trois, Cat smash." The Lenoirs had got there first. In fact, it had only been Meck's talent for brilliant excuses on the spur of the moment, with Pam and Sally as primary evidence, that had kept our windows from going next. It somewhat took the edge off the day.
Happiness was not the crazy summer that followed, either, in which all of Kentish Town knew we'd had three muggle-borns in hiding and went out of their way to make ridiculously admiring noises. Yes, I know you all thought I was a collaborator! It's over! Stop fawning!
And happiness was certainly not the evening of the thirty-first of August, kneeling on the floor of the top attic, packing school trunks. In Silence. We had been on what Meck termed "The Great Girls Shopping Trip" – he, thank Merlin, hadn't come – and to speed things up, Julie had gone to buy the potions supplies while I took Sally and Pam to Flourish & Blotts for school books. Where the idiotic sales assistant had taken them for MY daughters! Mine! Evige Verdamnis!
They had kindly refrained from mentioning this to Meck – yet. But they did keep bursting into non-explained giggles at ridiculously frequent intervals, that did not stop when I said it Wasn't Funny.
Hence, silence. I picked up another pile of new robes and laid them in Pam's trunk. Three Lowes watched me. Julie had tried to help, but I had vetoed that when her ideas of packing turned out to seem to involve tossing everything in and then sitting on the trunk lid to get it to shut. There was a way to go about this! It was like the packed lunches for the train tomorrow: the white mouse had gone and suggested canned tuna fish with sliced bread! Cheese and tomato sandwiches with real bread, a pork pie each, spritz biscuits, gingernuts, a slab of fruit cake, a dozen early russet apples from the tree at home and two Sickles to top it all up from the lunch trolley – I only hoped that would work out to be enough. It was, as far as I could remember, roughly what Mother and our then house elf had used to send me to Hogwarts with – but then, I had not been a locust like some other people round here!
The house elf had looked quite suspicious when I asked for all that stuff – but I, for once, wasn't bothering: "Mind your own business, and don't tell Mother!"
Ah, yes, you've guessed. I hadn't told Mother. How would I have explained it, anyway? Hello Mother, we've had Meck's girlfriend and little sisters living over the shop for nine months with every risk of all of us getting murdered by Death Eaters for having them there...? I didn't think so.
Meck – after much prompting – had brought Julie home for dinner and introduced her. No need for anybody to have worried there: this being our parents and this being Meck, he could have brought a hippogriff home for dinner and said he was going to marry it, and that would have been just perfect. I sighed, and slammed another pile of stuff into the trunk. Tomorrow, at least, there would be peace and quiet. Peace... and quiet... and nobody... I squelched on that thought. Slytherins are not sentimental. Most of the time.
"Are you coming to see us off, tomorrow?" Sally broke into my meditations, from her perch on the end of the bed holding that Kneazle. It was a very necessary task, because the Kneazle had no intention of missing out on a milk diet from the Hogwarts house elves again this year, and was trying to ensure it by getting packed in the trunks.
"No – I'm – not," I retorted grumpily from the depths. "Julie's taking you. You don't need a vast farewell committee."
The holder of the Kneazle might have said 'Oh' – but I wasn't sure, because the littlest muggle butted in:
"Of course she's not coming, Sally. She can't wait to get shut of us, so she can start cleaning this place from top to bottom like a house-elf or a German hausfrau."
She WHAT?!
I sat up with such speed I bashed my head on the trunk lid, which promptly closed with a bang – fortunately with me on the outside. "I am NOT a German hausfrau, vielen dank!"
An expression of perfect innocence: "But it will look like you are, if you don't come and see us off..."
"Fraulien!" I bellowed. "Junge Fraulien! I know EXACTLY which House you're going to be sorted into tomorrow!" I grabbed up another book and slammed it down on the trunk lid for emphasis. "And I pity Professor Slughorn!"
The owner of the kneazle toppled backwards off the bed end with snort of laughter; the white mouse had a sort of muffled explosion in a pillow, but the littlest Slytherin just sat down on Sally's trunk and pulled as maudlin a face as twelve years old can:
"Hogwarts will be fun – but I don't suppose any of the Professors there are going to swear at me in German..."
~:~:~The End – und dann einige! ~:~:~
A/N: A very long wait, but finally finished - Thank you for reading!
