Note: 2 days of MTV work experience done, 2 more to go! Then it's back to (probably) writing more often. Thanks to those of you who are reviewing these random ramblings I'm posting here! :-)
4: The Jarvis Triplets
He was very nearly six years old when he met the Jarvis triplets.
They unnerved him.
There were a whole raft of reasons why Teddy found the three little girls who lived across the road from the fourth house unnerving. For one thing, he found it entirely impossible to tell them apart. He had no idea which one was Enid, which one was Erin or which one was Emma. They all had the same long milky blonde hair, always braided in the same way, with identical bows to match identical dresses. They were a trio of clones, right down to the freckles on their cheeks and they were unnaturally proper. There never seemed to be a spec of dirt upon their clothes, not a hair out of place or a sock not pulled right up to a knee. Teddy was quite convinced that they weren't really children at all, they simply couldn't be. They weren't noisy like Angel Broadview and the children at Greenwood Rise, they weren't inquisitive or adventurous like Graham Francis. They were like no children that Teddy had ever seen before.
They were aliens.
Aliens who liked to skip rope and chant grizzly rhymes out on the cobbled street. Teddy would sit and watch them from the sitting room window.
You could go and ask to play, if you like, his father would suggest after some half an hour or so, but instead Teddy would go and hide in his bedroom, peering down into the street again from behind the refuge of a curtain.
Teddy was quite taken with having a bedroom all to himself.
So was his mother.
"We have," Dora had announced dramatically to her husband the evening they had finally finished lugging the last of their belongings out of Andromeda's house where they had been staying, crammed into a single bedroom for near on six months, "A BEDROOM!"
"Excellent," Remus had mumbled, kicking off his shoes and stifling a yawn into his hand. "Let's use it, then." And with that he'd thrown himself down upon the bed and fallen asleep almost as soon as his head had hit the pillow.
From where he stood in the doorway, chewing thoughtfully upon a nail, Teddy had heard his mother demand:
"Remus, don't even think about falling asleep!"
Teddy wasn't really sure why it was so important for Remus to be awake at ten minutes to midnight, but when it became apparent that the werewolf had no intention of yielding to his wife's request the little boy offered:
"I'll stay awake, Mummy!"
Dora had turned to eye him, eyes twinkling in amusement before padding across the carpeted room to usher him across the landing towards his own bed.
"That's very sweet of you, Sweetheart, but it's much too past your bedtime! But you could let Mummy borrow your glass of water, so she can tip it over Daddy's head. It worked last time..."
The fourth house was still relatively modest, yet nothing like as cramped as the one before it. It had a cosy sitting room with a large stone fireplace that Teddy liked to sprawl in front of in the evenings, a separate kitchen and a bathroom with a shower. It was located in a large wizarding village in the West Country and though in many ways it was nice to be surrounded by the hustle and bustle of everyday life, in truth it made Teddy nervous.
After all, if Remus could be found out in the secluded setting of the previous house, surely it was only a matter of time before it happened again here...
Nevertheless they stayed for almost a year.
Most mornings, when Teddy went with his father down to the local village store for milk and other everyday supplies, they would pass the Jarvis triplets, the steady thud of highly polished shoes upon the cobbles as one sister jumped, the others whirling their skipping rope round and round, chanting their latest rhyme.
Little Lucy Humble,
All dressed in white,
Took a little tumble,
Late last night.
How many steps did she fall down?
One, two, three, four,
To the ground!
What on earth is a witch to do?
When a witch is a witch like Jenny Sue?
Her charms aren't charming!
Her potions a joke!
They hiss and bubble and make you choke!
Lock up your children,
The Hag's in town!
Drawbridge up and shutters down!
Check your windows and check the lock!
Get caught and she'll gobble you up!
Teddy became quite used to the grizzly little chants, though they made him frown quite distastefully and at the sight of his forehead crinkling, Remus would always laugh at him.
"They're just rhymes, Ted." the werewolf would remind him. "They don't do anybody any harm."
For a while, Teddy had entirely believed his father's words, but eventually he had no choice but to conclude that Remus was, for once, completely and utterly wrong.
It began one unremarkable late afternoon when his mother had returned home from work, brown paper bag clutched tightly in her hands and her face unnaturally pale.
Dora had marched into the sitting room where Teddy had been sat beside his father on the sofa, carefully sounding out the next few words that he was reading from a storybook. The witch had promptly shoved the paper bag into her husband's lap and demanded:
"Drink it, for Merlin's sake!" And then she had reached to bury her face in her hands, fingers grasping at stray strands of lightening blue hair.
There had been a sizeable pause as Remus had reached to extract the murky bottle of potion from the paper bag, before he wondered, quite necessarily Teddy thought:
"Is something wrong?"
"I was seen...!" Dora had ground out through clenched teeth, and Remus leant to set the bottle down upon the coffee table, visibly paling.
"By who?" he half-whispered, only to seemingly remember that Teddy was still in the room. Apparently the matter at hand was far too distracting, however, for he barely glanced round as he instructed: "Go and put that book back in your room, Ted, and make sure all of your toys are packed away. We don't want Mummy tripping over them when she comes to say goodnight later, do we?"
Teddy had slipped carefully down off of the sofa and had headed for the stairs. He had barely reached them before a hushed, hurried conversation broke out between the two adults.
"Who saw you?"
"She did...!"
"She?"
"Over the bloody road! Angela bloody Jarvis!"
"Perhaps she won't know what it was you were buying..."
"Of course she'll bloody know what it was! She's a bloody apothecary's assistant!"
"Oh Merlin..."
"I'm not moving, Remus. I'm telling you now, I'm not moving, not again..."
"But we're not safe..."
"I like it here."
"So do I, darling. But we're not safe. Teddy isn't safe..."
"I know, I know...it's just...for Merlin's sake! Why? Again!"
"How long do you think we have?"
"A few nights, perhaps?"
"Pack a bag for Ted, we'll send him to your mum's or Harry's..."
"No! We're not sending him anywhere..."
"It's not safe."
"No, it isn't. But I'm not sending him away, not yet...I don't want him to get frightened. Not after just now. I shouldn't have burst in like that...I was just...well..."
"One night, then. He can stay one more night and then..."
"Then I'll take him round to Mum's first thing in the morning."
"Yes. First thing."
"Exactly."
"Precisely."
As he peered down from where he had paused, crouched upon the landing above, Teddy had watched the two adults gaze at one another, eyes growing fierce as if daring each other to protest, until finally she reached to straighten the collar of his shirt and he reached to dust invisible dust from her shoulder.
"Chin up, Sweetheart." the witch whispered, and as his finger reached to brush her jaw, the werewolf agreed:
"Chin up, darling."
From that moment on, everything went back to normal.
Or so Teddy had thought.
He'd sat in his bedroom and gazed out of the open window, watching the sun begin to sink in streaks of orange and pink as in the street below the Jarvis triplets jumped rope.
Can you hear the banshee's song?
Just one note and you'll be gone!
Sing a little louder!
Drown her out!
And just in case,
MAKE SURE YOU SHOUT!
Little Ollie Walters was in the wood,
Picking Mama flowers like a good son should!
The moon was high and the moon was round!
Little Ollie Walters heard a sound!
A terrible creature that gave a howl!
A werewolf with fangs and an awful growl!
Savage, evil, darkest creature!
What can little Ollie teach'ya?
Quick little Ollie, grab your stick!
How many strikes can a little boy hit?
One strike, two strike, three strike, four strike, five strike...
When Dora came to fetch Teddy for his dinner, it took her some minutes to locate him, curled up in ball in the dark under his bed.
"What are we playing?" the witch inquired as she consented to lying flat on her stomach in order to get a good look at him, and the little boy told her flatly:
"We're not."
"Ah. What are you doing under there then, hm?"
"The Jarvis triplets."
"What about them, love?"
"They want Little Ollie to beat Daddy to death with a stick."
There was a sizeable pause as Dora allowed this piece of news to sink in before she gave a chuckle and told the boy:
"Don't be silly, Sweetheart. It's just a silly skipping rhyme, isn't it?"
"Is it?"
"Of course it is! We used to sing it when I was a little girl. Little Ollie Walters was in the wood..."
Teddy reached to clamp his hands over his ears. His mother strained to reach an arm under the bed in order to pull his hands down.
"Listen love, it's just a song. It doesn't mean anything. There's no Little Ollie Walters and it's just a werewolf, it's not Daddy! Besides, any little boy who thinks he can beat a werewolf to death with a stick is completely and utterly deluded..."
"You could beat Daddy to death with a stick though, couldn't you? If...if it wasn't...full moon..."
"Of course I could, Sweetheart, but that's Mummy's privilege, nobody else gets to do it. Now come on, come out from there and stop being silly. Your dinner will get cold."
When Teddy didn't move, Dora slumped sideways until she was lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling.
"Teddy," she sighed, "You're much too young to understand this, so are the Jarvis girls, but that song isn't even about werewolves or sticks or anything of the sort. It's what's called a metaphor..."
"What's a metaphor?"
"Well...one time, a long time ago when Mummy and Daddy were little...or when Mummy was little at least there was a lot of trouble with the government of Wizarding Britain...which is very boring and dull for little boys to understand. But the point is somebody made up a song about the government and the people and what the people should do to the government...Little Ollie Walters is meant to be the people, the werewolf is the government being all scary and..." she trailed off, frowning deeply before deciding: "It really doesn't matter, Ted. The point is some things aren't what they sound like, and Little Ollie Walters is one of them. You don't need to be frightened about a silly rhyme being sung by some little girls. Now come along! If you don't hurry up, Daddy will have eaten all of the washed potato."
Despite allowing his mother to coax him out from under his bed, Teddy was not at all reassured by the notion of a metaphor, which he really didn't understand at all, and he spent the rest of the evening being clingy and refusing to go to bed.
It was almost ten o'clock when Remus resorted to carrying him up the stairs and, once Teddy had screamed and fought for all he was worth, the werewolf was forced to drag him by the arms into his bedroom, before depositing him on the bed.
"Pyjamas, Teddy."
"I won't go to bed! I WON'T! I WON'T!"
"Take your socks off, please."
"NO! I WON'T!"
"It's very late, Theodore. It's far past your bedtime and your mother has to get up to go to work in the morning. Now are you going to take those socks off like a grown up boy, or am I going to have to take them off for you?"
"NO!"
"I see. Come here, then..."
"But I don't want to go to sleep, Daddy!"
"And why ever not?"
"I don't want to sleep in my room!"
"Perhaps when the weather is better Mummy might allow you to pitch a tent in the garden. Until then, take that t-shirt off this instant and stop pulling faces. If the wind changes you'll stay like that..."
"I'm scared, Daddy." Teddy complained, and almost as soon as Remus had pulled the t-shirt free from his head the child lunged to throw his arms around his father, holding on with all his might.
Tossing the t shirt towards the end of the bed, Remus was forced to pause in his battle to ask:
"What are you scared of, Teddy?"
"He's scared of Little Ollie Walters." a voice announced from the doorway, and as they both looked round to see her, Dora wandered into the room, twirling her wand absent-mindedly around in one hand.
"Ah." Remus said with an audible snigger, and as she came to a stop beside the bed Dora reminded their son:
"Nobody's going to beat Daddy to death with a stick, Sweetheart. Remember, only Mummy gets to do that." She paused in her twirling to give her husband a sharp jab in the arm, and he offered her a frown.
"Nobody's going to do anything to anybody, Ted. Besides, who'd dare sneak in here with a silly old stick when Mummy sleeps with her wand under her pillow? They'd have to be stark raving mad or at least downright stupid!" the werewolf assured the child, reaching to pick up the stripy pyjama bottoms, giving them a shake.
"What if they have wands?" Teddy wondered, fingers toying uncertainly with the waistband of his trousers.
"So what if they have, love?" Dora said, grinning broadly. "Daddy's not going to survive two wizarding wars only to get hexed to death in his pyjamas! He'd look utterly ridiculous!" She reached to ruffle the child's hair before telling him: "Besides, I'm not an Auror for nothing, am I? What d'you suppose I do all day? Sit around in my office playing Exploding Snap with Minister Shacklebolt?"
"You are rather good at it..."
"Shut up, Remus. Nobody in their right mind would try and attack us, Teddy love. Tough as old boots, that's Daddy and me. Now go on, tough old boots need plenty of sleep. Especially when they have to get up early to go and play Exploding Snap!"
As it turned out, Teddy discovered, his parents have been entirely correct.
Nobody came bursting into the house wielding any sort of stick, or indeed a weapon of any description.
But that was because they didn't necessarily need to burst in personally.
Teddy was never entirely sure what precisely woke him, whether it was the earsplitting crash of breaking glass or the hefty thump of the brick landing upon the pillow beside him, a mere couple of inches from his face. Either way the child's sudden near miss terrified him into stunned silence, a clumsy gasp escaping his lips as his entire body tensed in terror, his eyes screwed shut.
They snapped back open again at the sound of his bedroom door being flung open and as his parents bolted into the room a startled sob finally escaped his lips.
His father reached him first, scooping him up tightly into his arms, and as he clung to the front of the werewolf's pyjama shirt Teddy dared to look round, just in time to see his mother come to a skidding halt beside the smashed window. In one swift movement she had flung back her arm, before thrusting her wand forwards to point out of the window with bang and a burst of light.
The spell shot out of the window and Teddy flinched at a sickening snapping sound, accompanied by a pained shout.
"MOVE A MUSCLE AND I'LL BLOODY BREAK THE OTHER ONE, TOO!" Dora bellowed out the window, face ashen in fury, only to lower her wand when Remus hissed:
"Dora...!"
The Auror instantly turned and hurried across the room, reaching to fling her arms around both husband and son, sucking in a deep breath that did little to calm her.
"I don't care if they try to charge me for it, I don't give a toss, Remus, they can say it's just a broken window if...if they like but...but look at...look at that! Another...another few inches to the side and...I'll...I'll bloody do it again and again, I swear..."
"Shh."
"Yes...shh. It's alright, Teddy Sweetheart. It's all going to be fine..."
"You're a very brave boy..."
"Very, very brave!"
"Now, how should you like to come with Daddy, and we'll...we'll find you some new clothes, get you out of these wet ones..."
Looking down at the state of his pyjama trousers, a dark, damp patch had appeared between his legs . It was fast spreading to the front of Remus' shirt, and Teddy had no recollection of how it had gotten there.
"You know," Dora said, suddenly almost cheery, "Mummy ironed you a fresh pair of pyjamas just yesterday!"
"Well then," Remus said, adjusting his hold upon the silent, blank eyed child, "we had better go and find those, then." He turned and set off towards the landing, Teddy's face buried in his chest, and as she turned to survey the brick upon her son's pillow once again, Dora mused:
"We're going to have to bend the rules, next time. For protective wards, I mean."
"Don't worry," Remus murmured darkly as he disappeared in the direction of the airing cupboard. "I intend on smashing them."
And so it was that Teddy came to leave the fourth house and move into the fifth one...