Chapter Thirty-Six: Reactions
"…I never knew he went through with it," Jessie breathed, a look of shock followed by one of what looked like confusion, a mild irritation and joy at once.
"Through with what?" I asked softly.
"There's an agency that helps wizarding couples to have children, whether it's a problem with infertility or…well…two parents the same gender," she explained. "Ian mentioned a while back that he'd been considering it, but I was in school and didn't really give it a lot of thought, that, and I didn't want to get my hopes up in case we were never able to meet the little one…"
"Wait." I looked at Jessie, then Ian and little Loren. It was actually rather striking, to see all three of them at once. "So Loren is really…"
"Really her nephew, yes," Sam explained quietly. "Ian only told me the other day; that's the sort of thing you tell a person you've just started dating, I guess. He didn't know until just now that Loren was the little kid in question."
Across the room from us, Ian and Loren were still chattering animatedly about the differences between England National's tactics and Zimbabwe's. Ian had begun arranging silverware on the table to represent formations and Loren was excitedly pointing at a wayward butter-knife as if understanding why it had done the thing it did in the game. (I hadn't seen that particular match.)
"Well, I can see that. But how can you be so sure?"
"The Quidditch game vs. Zimbabwe they're on about. Ian's allowed to send presents semi-anonymously, so three tickets were arranged. He carries the letter Loren wrote him in his wallet. I think it's one of his most prized possessions. The little guy's mothers decided 'uncle' would be a good title, and unless that rather obvious resemblance and the coincidence of a wizarding boy with two mommies seeing the game are just some odd prank of the universe, Ian's been that kid's uncle, in a kind of…"she gestured vaguely in a wibbley-wobbley sort of way, "well, kind of a 'we have a biologically related but non-parent elder male here, obviously he's not a dad because our boy has a two-mummy family and it's not like that, but uncle's as good a word as anything, let's go with that,' sort of way, pretty much since he was born. Or before, rather, if one wants to be technical. I don't pretend to grasp it entirely, but one hears of such things and it's kind of charming, if you ask me."
Jessie and I were staring, shocked, at Samantha, and the surprise was such we didn't even notice Ian and Loren had stopped talking.
"…Is that true, Mr. Tickes?" Loren asked suddenly.
Wordlessly, Ian took out his wallet and retrieved a bit of much-folded, lined paper of the sort small children use. It was clear from how worn it was that he had kept it for quite some time.
"That's…that's my letter," Loren looked confusedly at the paper. "I sent that to my Uncle. He's my bi-logical dad, of course, but just bi-logically because I have…had two mothers…"
That made Ian's eyes widen, as if he were startled Loren had been given that level of explanation already, but he didn't question it. Loren was a reasonably precocious little fellow and basic genetics and biology really aren't all that complicated, not at the 'girls are yucky' stage, anyway.
"And since you have two mothers who loved you very much, your biological dad was content to be an uncle instead, so long as he got to be a part of your life somehow," the tall Seeker agreed.
"Because he loves me very much…" Loren finished, this being very clearly a speech he had heard since he was very small. "And…and that's you? You're my Uncle Ian? You sent the trainers and the stuffed bear and the Quidditch tickets for my birf'day?"
"And beat Zimbabwe raw just to impress you," Sam mumbled.
"Uh-huh," Ian nodded. "I…uh…well…yeah. That's who I am."
"…So I'm not an orphan, I just live with my aunts and uncles now?"
"It looks that way," Jessie smiled.
"Hang on a second. Aunts?" Sam looked a bit edgy. They ignored her.
"Wow," Loren looked confused, somehow concerned, and yet, not unhappy. "Mama always said it's a small world an' all. I'm kinda glad I have some family, but this is all…this is just really strange." He held onto his cup as if the world were spinning.
"You're telling me," Ian sipped the chocolate latte-thing with a shrug. "I'd been looking forward to maybe meeting you when you graduated from Hogwarts, or your seventeenth birthday. I never expected we'd get to meet each other this soon, let alone like this."
"I had asked my Mama and Mum if I could meet you someday. That is, you-Ian-Tickes, not you-Uncle. And I did want to meet you as Uncle, too, but I thought if I asked, I might make them feel bad, like they weren't enough family."
"It must be weird to find out they're the same person," I observed.
"Yeah. But it does make a little sense. Mum let me go as Ian Tickes for last Halloween, and I didn't need any makeup or any'fing."
"You went as me for Halloween?"
The look on Ian's face at that moment…
"Uh-huh. Me and my friends, we went as England National. There were too many boys, though, and I got in a fight with Billy Jones about who got to be you. But he looks a lot more like Akintunde Ejiofor, so we comper'mised and I got Mum to help him make his Chaser costume more accr'ate." A thought suddenly occurred to Loren. "Does this mean I can tell my friends that my Uncle is Ian Tickes?"
"If you promise not to get a big head about it, I bet Ian could be persuaded to give you flying lessons and tutor your friends a bit," Samantha remarked.
"I could! Flying lessons, I'm good at them." Ian was still flustered enough to be transposing his words a bit.
Frankly, I was kind of stunned that this worldview-shattering revelation was being handled so easily. It was as if everyone but me had kind of suspected it, nobody was unhappy about it, and compared to the other news of the past day or so, there was really nothing for it but to make the best and be happy. Had something like that happened in my family, my mother would have been crying and hugging everyone, my father would be stiffly and proudly shaking people's hands and patting them on the back and the twins would be plotting just how best to prank the new arrival or involve him in pranks on others.
The Tickes' tendency to handle things comparatively calmly was a bit of an adjustment for me, it must be said.
"And you can practice between your Aunt Jessie's shop and mine," Sam generously suggested.
"…But Aunt Samantha, I can't fly," Loren explained sadly, taking off his tinted glasses with an ashamed look. "My eyes are bad."
"Bad?" Samantha, either missing or ignoring her sudden promotion to aunthood, crouched a bit and looked Loren in the eyes, squinting a bit herself. They weren't visibly damaged per se, but there was a slight cloudiness so that the color of the iris and the dark bit in the middle didn't look quite right. "Is it cataracts? Because they can fix that, now."
"It's called smoked lens," Loren explained. "There was a fire when I was a baby, and the smoke hurt my eyes a lot."
"So…the lens of your eye is the damaged part?"
"I don't know. The Healers said that this was as good as they could get them, though."
"Did you ever see a Muggle doctor about it, though?"
"No."
"Ian and Jessie, can I take him to my ophthalmologist?"
"Your what?" they asked in unison.
"It looks like Loren's got traumatic cataracts. My mother got one when a stunt went wrong, just about lost the sight in her left eye before they fixed it. Let me guess, things are really blurry and light hurts your eyes unless you've got tinted glasses on?"
"That's it a'zactly."
"Yeah, might be cataracts. You can get them from fires and injuries. All Healers know how to do is a Clearing Charm, which stings like a…like a very bad word indeed," Sam seemed to remember her audience, "and they can only make it about forty, fifty percent better. Muggles can fix that whole thing right up, though you do tend to be a little photophobic afterwards."
"I don't want to have a phobia!" Loren looked pale.
"No, that just means light hurts your eyes. Which is pretty much the case anyway, eh, Kiddo?"
"Hang on, Sam, how are the Muggles supposed to fix a problem that Healers can't?" Ian asked.
"Same way Sarah fixed us when we both got owl flu?" Jessie asked. "Muggle medicine does kick wizarding's butt sometimes."
"But how do they actually do it, is what I think he meant," I clarified.
"It involves lasers," Sam explained. "I could say more, but it'd only make you afraid of them. It doesn't hurt, and apart from having to hold really still, it's not so bad, if my mother's to be believed."
"I know what lasers are," Loren perked up. "Muggle cats chase them."
"Sure, let's go with that," Sam agreed, determinedly looking away and a little ill, as if the idea of a Muggle cat toy being used for…well…was more than a bit icky.
Jessie explained, much later of course, that Sam saw a Muggle ophthalmologist occasionally for allergy drops and to have a particular kind of test done that optometrists couldn't manage, not being allowed to sedate the patient or worse when they flinched, blinked and caused spontaneous fireballs to appear in the office from the sheer stress and fear of it.. Apparently she was inordinately sensitive about having her eyes or their lids touched and tended to protect them, which explained her tendency to pull out sunglasses at the vaguest trace of a break in the clouds and just hearing about her mother's procedure had caused her to black completely out, come to with a glass of cold water thrown to the face and the poor fellow standing over her, at which point she 'may have socked him in the jaw, just a bit.'
The fact that she'd even mention she had a regular ophthalmologist, let alone suggest going to see the fellow on her own initiative and without her sisters dragging her, struck me as a surprisingly auntly act of empathy and practical attitude.
"Well, before we do anything else…startling," Jessie observed, still a little shaken by the absolute enormity of the events, but holding it together, "hadn't we better see about getting dressed? I have some government business in Diagon, for which I'd appreciate your company, Sam, and perhaps Charlie and Ian could help Loren with clothes shopping?"
"Clothes?" Ian and Loren sounded equally disappointed in unison and I'm afraid I looked less than pleased myself.
"Jess, you can't send three men to buy clothing. They'll finish up after fifteen minutes with two items, neither of them appropriate, then spend the next four hours at the Quidditch shop, the bookstore and someplace that sells deep-fried lumps of artery-clogging ugliness allegedly sold as food," Sam remarked, an eyebrow raised at the three of us as if we were suspects in a murder trial.
"Will not," I objected, looking to Ian and Loren, only to realize they had been considering exactly that. "Not if you make us a list of things, anyway."
"Send them to Madame Malkin's for measurements, then you and I can handle the boring bit after the inquest," Sam suggested. "Unless you object to having ladies select your attire, Loren?"
"My mum always picked my clothes," Loren shrugged. "Could I have some England National trainers, though? I had a new pair, but they were in our flat…"
I realized how unlikely it was that the kid was getting any of his possessions back. I hadn't had too much as a kid, so the few things I had, I tended to be rather protective of. My heart broke for him even further.
"Sure. Just have Madame Malkin's people write down your size."
"May I have clockmaking apprentice clothes?" Loren perked up, hopefully.
"You may," Jessie nodded. "They can be somewhat boring and formal, though."
"Is there a waistcoat?"
"And an apron and a cloth cap, one formal suit for best and knee breeches or short trousers until you're ten."
"Breeches?" Loren looked a bit puzzled. "Like boys wear in old-fashioned books?"
"I'll get you mainly short trousers, then. There are supposed to be knickerbockers with your formal suit, though. It is tradition," Jessie looked apologetic.
"No, I was going to say that I'd like breeches. It'll be like playing dress-up."
"…You've never worn them before, have you?" Jessie looked hesitant. "I'll order the one pair, and if you like them you can have more of them. Granddad insisted I had to wear breeches or an actual skirt, and I really hated it, so…yeah."
"Do boy apprentices get skirts?"
"No."
"Oh, good!"
"If it were up to me, girl apprentices wouldn't be stuck with the things, either. Horrible, tweed affairs that itched like the dragon pox and wedged your pants right up to...er, they weren't comfortable."
"I liked knee breeches," Ian shrugged. "The legs didn't puff up when you flew in them like short trousers."
"We weren't supposed to fly in them, though. Granddad was ever so strict on apprentices…and he's not here, now, is he?" Jessie visibly realized the appeal of this state of affairs, and smiled.
"Does that mean long trousers?" Loren looked concerned.
"Do you want them?"
"No. They're hot."
"Then short trousers or breeches it is," Jessie shrugged. "The cloth cap is rather essential, though."
It didn't take long to give Loren the clothes he had from the previous evening once they were clean and dry. I put on jeans and a Weasley jumper over my Chudley Cannons shirt, then realized Ian had probably realized I had gone into Jessie's room to retrieve my clothes. I thought about it for a moment and decided he'd been through enough upheaval for one day and that being caught obviously sharing a room (with exactly one bed in it,) with Jessie, let alone announcing my intention to marry his sister might be a bit much for him. So I took my socks and trainers to finish putting them on downstairs.
"Incidentally, how was Switzerland?" Ian asked me, as soon as I found a chair. "Jess sounded like she had a nice time."
"It was …rather …nice, yes," I agreed, hesitating for a moment. I had only my own feelings about Ginny to go on for an approximation of what Ian might think of me…her…us…and the result was a rather sharp case of nerves, the owls from last night notwithstanding. "She wore lovely dress robes on the train and I got to meet some of her old friends."
"Was the stateroom any good?"
"Oh, I expect so. Don't have much basis for comparison. The…erm, the …food was excellent."
"Room service or dining room?"
"Um…all of it?"
"You do know you're red as a new Quaffle right now?" Ian grinned. "I'm not going to haul out the hurt-her-die-painfully brother speech, not unless you need to compare notes for expanding yours. You two are together, she's happy, and she seems to be handling this out-of-the-blue nephew situation a lot better than she would've before you entered the picture." He picked up a leather oxford and laced it on over a plain grey sock. "As far as I'm concerned, you two spending time together is a positive development."
"I only hope that when my sister is her age, things are going decently enough for me to take it that well," I sighed honestly. "You're taking…all of this, so very well, I'm almost afraid to imagine what does get a rise out of the two of you."
"Injustice, direct attacks on our friends, stuff that actually isn't personal and therefore safe to row about," Ian explained. "Get Jessie going on quartz movements sometime, you'll see sparks fly. Personal relationships, though? We're used to being quite clear on everything and making sure we don't overreact, because we know what happens when people don't communicate and do overreact."
"Your father? I met him."
"Really? Did you see the marks on his neck?"
"…Can't say I did, but he had a tie on, so…"
"I'm being metaphorical. The black dog just about tore his throat out; he's never been quite the same. Since our stepmother, he's been a lot better, but I can remember him ranting and raving and asking Jessie why it couldn't have been her died."
I dropped my shoe. I'd been told Mr. Tickes wasn't sane at points past, but to say something like that, to a little child?
"Of course, she was only two and doesn't remember it, but I did. I know now that it was because she resembles our Mum and because Mum's saving her life might very well have been part of how she died; that, and anyone trapped under that sort of shock and pain doesn't know what he's saying. Still stung, though, and I suppose I've become sort of overprotective as a result."
"Overprotective…but you're not being overprotective now, you're acting like you're fine with me dating her."
"There are lots of ways to be overprotective, Charlie. You can forbid suitors the house like a dragon guarding the fair maiden, or you can also, you know, talk with your sister, know what's going on in her life, what she likes, what she wants, and try your best to make sure she gets everything she could ask for with the minimum of fuss and bother. You make her happy, so I want you two to be happy. The problem, of course, is the endless temptation to keep cutting the crusts off her sandwiches and blowing her crystal blanks for her long past the time when she's ready to do it herself. I'm actually having a harder time not going 'so, have you thought about wedding venues?' than I am getting my head around the idea that you two…well…that you're grown adults in an adult relationship and hopefully quite happy enjoying adult pastimes."
"…We are. Quite so. Pastimes…good." I was still so, so unused to the openness and businesslike attitude the Tickes siblings tended to take to things, even if they did keep a very middle-class tendency to wrap smutty topics in bureaucratese or vague doublespeak, like newspaper over the fish and chips.
"Good. She deserves that. And…I'm not entirely aware of specifics, but she might, based on books she liked as a teenage girl, have some …preferences…well…suffice it to say that she might own a few articles from Redfern's that weren't joke presents…" Ian made an undefined and wobbly gesture, like a cat half-heartedly indicating a ball of yarn it suspected was on fire. "So, that's a thing."
"Fine by me. Good thing, indeed."
"That's good."
"Good, good."
We sat there nodding like awkward but satisfied beetroots for a moment before bursting out laughing.
"Do I even want to know?" Sam remarked under a raised eyebrow as she entered the room.
She was tapping a pack of gum hard against the palm of her hand, then pulled out a piece with her teeth, seemed to remember it was gum, frowned, then unwrapped it with her thumb and began chewing. A moment later, her eyes goggled, both eyebrows went up and she spat the gum some four yards across the room to hit the open lid of the rubbish bin. It went 'clang' and clapped shut.
I did not, you will notice, ask how she did it. Some people can cast a little speed or accuracy cantrip simultaneously with an action like spitting, throwing a dart or dealing cards and hardly even realize they're doing it. One doesn't comment on it, one just makes a point not to play darts with them for money.
"Oh, sh-" I self-censored, "darn, is that some of my brothers' pepper gum? Jessie keeps it on hand for colds…"
"No, I just bought the wrong kind, drat it all," Sam growled. "I'd actually trade her for pepper gum, if it tasted of real peppers."
"Habanero or chili?" Jessie asked, reaching into a cabinet near the top of the stairs.
"Whatever you've got the most of." That made Jessie do a double-take, then select what looked like a milder choice of gum.
"Here you are, spicy-hot cinnamon."
"Oooh. Can you tolerate peppermint?" Sam asked, looking critically at the pack of gum in her hand as if it had sinned against the candy deities and was doomed to Hell.
"Peppermint?" Jessie looked at her as if she were loony. "What on earth's wrong with peppermint? I thought you'd got something like cat wee or onion."
"Why would you be trading for cat wee or onion, then?"
"Do you even need to ask?" Jessie raised her eyebrow and showed Sam how the outer wrappers could be exchanged. "Keeps my hand in with the twins just across the way."
"Is peppermint adequately shocking?" Sam asked, handing it over and accepting a red package.
"If we swap it with a label like 'cinnamon,' I suppose," Jessie performed the action, then placed the gum in a spot where someone might sample it. "It's all about expectations, you see. If you bite into a plum and it tastes of macaroni casserole, it doesn't matter if it tastes better than any macaroni casserole mankind has ever known. You're still going to think there's something awfully wrong with that plum and spit it out."
"Why don't you like peppermint, Samantha?" Ian asked.
"I thought it was pepper, not peppermint," the triplet explained artlessly, as if that were really an explanation for wanting something like pepper gum. "It's nice. I can appreciate the taste of spicy things so much more lately."
"How long's it been?" Jessie asked.
"Six months," Sam announced proudly.
"Oh, well done you!" Jessie punched her shoulder playfully. "I hear that once you're through the seventh month it all gets easier, so don't hesitate to help yourself to all the gum you want. And let me know if there's anything I can do to help keep things bearable."
"I've been putting the price of each pack I don't buy into savings, like you suggested," Sam scratched behind her ear. "It's not quite enough for the motorbike I want yet, but I did make the appointment for my license."
"That's splendid!" Jessie smiled.
"I didn't even know they required a license for motorbikes," Ian looked a bit puzzled.
"The Muggles do," Sam explained. "And close to a hundred pounds for the two-part test, so I've been practicing on my Dad's old one every day off I get."
"Aunt Jessie, may I have a motorbike?" Loren asked, coming down the stairs with only one shoe on, holding the other by a badly knotted lace.
"Well…I suppose, when you're older and if you're very responsible. What do you guys think?" Jessie asked.
"I prefer brooms, myself, but motorbikes can be fun," I agreed.
"I've never used one," Ian shrugged.
"If you promise to never start smoking, I'll buy you one my own damn self for your seventeenth," Sam remarked, looking thoroughly like a Bad Example as she unwrapped a piece of gum.
"Never ever?"
"Never ever. And no fair getting the bike and then trying it. Never means not ever, no way, no how, not doin' it." Sam stuck out a hand.
"Deal," Loren agreed, shaking her hand after almost missing it.
"We really do have to get your eyes looked at, kiddo," Sam looked concerned, even if she did hide it by checking her watch as she said it.
"It's okay. I don't so much want the motorbike to ride. I'd mainly like to take it apart and put it back together again better." Loren tugged at the knot in his shoelaces, succeeded in loosening it, then picked at it from another angle and successfully got it undone. "That, and I think it'd be quite fun to talk about. If people were bullies or standoffish, I might ask someone else if they thought the weather would be good for riding my motorbike, soon. Then the mean people would know I'd got one, but it wouldn't be bragging."
"So you want it for snob appeal?" Jessie looked just a bit concerned.
"Not to be bigheaded, though," Loren explained hastily. "Just to let them know I'm not so uncool as they think I am."
"My brother Percy used to bring the conversation around to prefect badges just that way," I recalled. "To be fair, though, he'd had an awful hard time after Bill and I, and one can't really dine out on good grades and a prefect's badge with people your own age the way you can on Quidditch and pranks on Filch."
"Who is Filch?" Loren asked.
"Someone whom it would be very naughty indeed to play pranks on," Jessie explained self-righteously.
"Like the time she glitched his watch into slowing down and speeding up until he was sleeping completely wrong hours," Sam clarified.
"After what you did with the catnip mice…"
"That was a selfless act of charity and you know it. Mrs. Norris deserved those catnip mice and enchanting them to come alive seven out of twenty-four hours a day gave her some much-needed exercise," Sam explained virtuously.
"Professor McGonagall found one in her slipper."
"In cat culture, that is a compliment."
Jessie sighed in that 'can't take you anywhere' way she sometimes did and Sam grinned at her. "So, am I dressed okay for this inquest thing?"
"What's a inquest?" Loren asked.
Jessie stopped cold and bit her lip, but Sam was on top of it.
"Have you ever seen detective shows on telly?"
"Some of 'em."
"It's exactly like the inquests on those. Paperwork, lots of measurements, and I can't even tell you how much maths."
"Oh. Okay." Loren made a momentary face and resumed tying his shoes, suddenly completely uninterested. Sam gave Jessie a cheeky 'ta-da!' sort of look and Jessie shook her head at her with a smile, as if to say 'really, Sam?'
They can have whole conversations without talking, Jessie and Samantha. It's actually quite adorable.
Handwriting changes.
"So, how are you handling the news, Jessie?"
"How'd I know you were going to ask me that?" I sighed. "Look, I'm not exactly happy about the fact that I didn't know. It's a shock, and I wish Ian had considered my feelings enough to not try so hard to protect my feelings that he wound up hurting my feelings, though I must admit that my feelings really don't mean spit or biscuits compared to Loren and Ian's feelings, so I have to be mindful of how they're feeling –and I really wish we could just…I don't know, not bother with the damn feelings while there's work to be done!"
"…Spoken like yourself."
"Well, I've had practice," I smiled ruefully.
"What's this about an inquest, then?"
"We have to go and formally identify the …remains, the suspected murder weapon, the scene of the crime and then we have to hold an inquest and ask a jury to determine cause of death based on the evidence presented by the Aurors."
"Okay," Sam looked perfectly comfortable. "I can do that. Just wonderin' though, why'd you ask me 'steada somebody from Diagon?"
I leveled a steady gaze at my old friend.
"Who else could identify a gun and some dead bodies without fainting or throwing up?"
"That we know of? Eh, I'm pretty sure some of the goblins could. They do know a fair bit about certain Muggle stuff. Valuables and all. And I think maybe Abby Flourish might be familiar with inquests and things. She's been part of the Chamber for donkey's years and she does read quite a number of mysteries."
"Good idea. We'll stop and ask her along on the way." Sam seemed to consider this, shrugged and continued on. I realized something fairly obvious, stopped, and turned to her. "Wait. Are you uncomfortable with the idea of –"
"Oh, no. I mean, I might be a little skeeved out by real dead people, but I've seen fake ones often enough, and people playing dead people. If I just pretend they're going to wake up for union break and kvetch about the makeup artists with the dolly grips, I should be okay. I just didn't know if asking a Knockturner was a good political idea yet."
Well, that sucked.
"Sam, look around you. Do you see these shops?"
"Yep."
"Do you see the apartments over them?"
"Yeah. Lots of good real estate."
"Do you see the shoppers and the tradesmen and that nice older lady who sells hot cider and pumpkin juice? The barrows with fruit and secondhand clothes? The snow on the gutters and the cobble pavement?"
"Yep. Same old Diagon."
"Now, having looked closely, do you see any fucks for me to give about which bloody block has your shop in it?"
Sam blinked, thought for a second, and nodded to herself with a smile.
"Nope. You seem to be clean out of fucks to give. Funny how you keep running out these days."
"Really. I can order them wholesale and still be completely out in only a few minutes."
And with that, we headed to Flourish and Blott's for additional moral support and expertise.
Abby Flourish is one of those sensible, shopkeeping witches who seems to exude good cheer. It's not the kind of boisterous, 'have a pint and let's talk Quidditch' of witches who manage pubs or the sleek, elegant 'something in red, I think,' of witches who sell dress robes. It's more like an elemental force of self-satisfaction, secure in the knowledge that everyone who enters her presence with so much as ten Sickles will find something that satisfies a deep and important need, textbook season excepted. Anything you need done, she can do, and if she can't do it, she can find you the book that will tell you what you need to know so that you can do it. All the organization of a librarian with none of the shabby wages or mistrust of small children with ink pens combined into a perfect paragon of quiet competence and satisfaction. She is simply meticulous, capable contentment personified. If one were to hear purring, it wouldn't be amiss to think it was coming from her somehow.
That is, except in a crisis.
Then, she's actually a bit scary.
"Madam Tickes, and about time, too! We've all heard the awful news. I've delegated the Weasley twins to take up a collection for Florean's little great-nephew, we're all cooperating with the Aurors and I have an advertisement offering a reward for information leading to our friends' safe return and the perpetrators' conviction ready to go to print as soon as you authorize the amount."
I took about a half a second longer than I should've to process this information.
"How much can the Chamber afford?"
"I think five thousand Galleons would be appropriate, don't you? It might mean a very scanty show for the Christmas advertisements-"
"Do it and damn the advertisements. Where do I sign?"
Abby grinned at me as I glanced over the ad and signed it with, well, a flourish. She even had her owl ready to send it off to the Daily Prophet.
"I presume from Madam Redfern's presence that you were just about to ask me to the inquest. I have my apprentices running the shop today," Abby turned to address three anxious-looking young women in cardigans. "Wands at the ready, dears, and if the Aurors come by for breaks, do make sure they get a decent cup of tea and something nice to read. We have teatime assortment in the pantry and I know Alastor Moody will want one of the crossword compilations, that'll be on the house. I'm counting on you, dears, just keep calm and carry on."
And, throwing a canvas shopping bag over her shoulder, Abby Flourish led us off toward the scene of the crime.
"Sorry to be so abrupt, ladies, but you really have to be firm with apprentices. Emma's had hysterics twice since the news broke."
"Which one is Emma?" Sam asked.
"This was the middle Emma. The taller one has more sense and the little wiry one is handling the whole thing quite decently."
"So they're all called Emma?" Sam mumbled, looking more than a little perplexed, but neither of us responded because Abby was already on to the next topic.
"And how is little Fortescue, Jamesina?"
"Loren? Oh, he's had a rough time of it, but bearing up quite well under the circumstances."
"I sincerely hope that horrid woman at the Ministry doesn't try to question poor Florean's will on the boy's custody," Abby frowned. "I witnessed it myself and his mother's, too."
"You mean, you knew he wanted me to have custody?"
"Of course, dear. Your brother travels so much and Florean wanted the boy to have a stable home life. That, and it isn't the first time unmarried siblings have set up housekeeping with an orphaned nephew."
"Nephew definitely being a case of insistent terminology in this case," I frowned, immediately feeling like a peevish cat for saying it. Abby didn't so much as blink.
"Well, yes, but for a boy with two married mothers to have a father show up out of the woodwork looks rather like illegitimacy, don't you think?" She patted my hand cheerfully. "Nephew is really more accurate in the social sense, and we mustn't let a little thing like biology make society untidy."
"…Did everyone know but me?"
"I only guessed it like half an hour before you did, Jess," Sam loyally clarified.
"Still, you at least knew he'd gone through with it."
"And I only had his mothers' educated guess to go by, myself. Florean would've given you custody even if the boy were no relation, you know, and it made him so happy to see the resemblance between Loren and you the other day. I understand you helped the little fellow make his first clock."
"With seriffy numberals," I sighed. "I still don't understand. I'm only twenty. I mean, sure, I'm the Chairwoman, but-"
"You're Siobhan's daughter," Abby explained. "Florean was close to his granddaughter and to her wife, but he also lost his only child to You-Know-Who's little band of thugs. Not only was your mother his employee and later a dear friend, but she personally hunted down and arrested the wizard responsible for killing his son. He actually introduced your parents to one another, or takes credit for it, anyway, and I've always had the impression that he considers you and Ian his adopted grandchildren."
"My mum did that?"
"Between you, me and the lamppost, there are some who imply that the thug died in Azkaban more as a result of injuries sustained while dueling her than the Dementors. Florean certainly believed it. He also knew that he wanted to hunt down that scum himself, only Siobhan was faster, and she spared him from being a murderer." The cheery gray eyes were suddenly quite hard. "And you yourself stopped that lunatic Lestrange from torturing Apollo Nooke, you've brought more Aurors into Knockturn Alley than there've been since the Thirties and before noon the next day, you're overseeing the inquest and will probably give a speech."
"I…I haven't…"
I'm not sure if I would have said more or not. We had just reached the burned-out wreck of what had once been Fortescue's. The windows were all smashed out, caution tape and a Blocking Spell kept any onlookers at bay, and there were spots of brownish stuff with little yellow waiter's numbers next to them even on the sidewalk. I could see Aurors taking pictures inside and there was an awful smell like burning with a metallic tang.
I had just eaten apple pie ice cream cake there the other day. I had been going there for ice cream since before I could remember. And all of a sudden, it looked like this…
"I'm sure inspiration will strike," Abby smiled again and pulled a little tin of something out of her bag. "All right, dears, now I'm going to suggest we each put a little dab of menthol ointment on either a handkerchief or our third knuckle, that way we can all take a good whiff if we feel faint or get nauseous." Sam accepted a little bit, as did I, and we went inside.