Chapter Seventeen – Muffliato!


When they got off the Hogwarts Express at King's Cross, however, Martin learned very quickly that this, at least, was one thing he need not have worried about. As soon as they had heaved their trunks out of the train and raised their heads to look around the platform, they saw two people coming towards them through the steam of the engine: a tall woman with curly blond hair and an even taller man, who had long black hair and wore it tied back in a ponytail. Both of them were smiling as they hurried towards them.

Ramin grinned and hugged each of them in turn when they reached them. "Hi Mom! Hi Dad!"

"Hello, my darling!" The woman replied, and her smile lit up her whole face. "You look wonderful! And you must be Martin," she added, turning towards him, her brown eyes shining warmly. They looked exactly like Ramin's eyes, Martin saw, and her smile was the image of his, too. "I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to meeting you at last! Ramin's told us so many things about you!"

Martin laughed nervously. His cheeks felt a little warm. He made to extend his hand, but Ramin's mother had already stepped forward and gave him a hug. Martin was taken aback, but it actually wasn't even that uncomfortable. She smelled of oranges and he also caught a whiff of that coco-scent that he so loved about Ramin. After a moment, she pulled back and beamed at him, and he returned the smile, a little uncertainly, but also quite touched at the warm welcome.

"Thank you very much for having me, Mrs Wilkinson," he said.

"Call me Michelle, dear," she smiled, and before Martin had time to think about how many years it was going to take his father to offer Ramin to call him Severus, if indeed it was ever going to happen at all, Ramin's father had stepped forward, and he did extend a hand for Martin to shake.

"And my name is Philip," he said, smiling more with his grey eyes than with his mouth, but his whole manner radiated a friendliness that was impossible to miss. He was a big man, not only in height, but also in every other respect. He had a broad chest and a matching belly, but Martin would never have called him fat or anything of the sort. Though not short himself, Martin was dwarfed by Ramin's father as they shook hands. He had to be well over six feet tall, and his other proportions did no more than match this extraordinary height. Anything less would simply have looked wrong on him. His voice fitted his built exactly: full and sonorous and voluminous, and somehow musical even when he spoke. Martin remembered that Ramin's father was a singer, and it took no stretch of the imagination at all to believe that he was a very good one. "Welcome, Martin."

"Thank you," he replied, and only just stopped himself from adding sir. This man had such a natural authority about him that Martin couldn't help being a little intimidated.

"How was your term?" Ramin's mother – Michelle – asked, her eyes sparkling with happiness, curiosity and an almost child-like excitement. "How's Hogwarts? I've heard so much about it, of course, but I've never actually been there. You must tell us all about it, honey, and you, too, Martin! You've spent so many years there, you must know everything about the castle, of course! And Ramin wrote that your father is your Potions teacher! How interesting! I've never enjoyed the subject much myself, but –"

"Michelle, let the boys catch their breath," Philip interrupted, kindly and calmly, and with a bemused twinkle in his eyes. "They've only just arrived. I'm sure we can talk about all of this over dinner. Now, why don't I take their trunks –"

"Oh, no, darling, I've got them," Michelle interrupted cheerfully, and with a wave of her wand, she had reduced both Martin's and Ramin's trunks to the size and – apparently – weight of match boxes and stuffed them into her bright-orange handbag.

"I'm so sorry, Martin," Michelle said, giving him that smile that illuminated every inch of her face again as they began walking towards the barrier separating platform nine and three-quarters and the Muggle part of King's Cross. "I'm afraid I'm always doing this sort of thing! Talking too much," she added with a laugh at Martin's slightly puzzled look. "I hope I've not shocked you too badly, but there are always so many things to talk about, aren't there? By the way", she continued without waiting for an answer, and far from being affronted, Martin was relieved, for he wouldn't have known how to respond anyway, "we're going to travel to our house by underground! Have you ever gone on it before?"

"Um, no, m- Michelle," he replied, catching himself just in time before he could say "ma'am." "I actually haven't been to London very often." This was perfectly true. The only times he ever went to London with his father were once before every school year to buy his new books in Diagon Alley, and then on the first of September to board the Hogwarts Express.

"You haven't?" She asked, with genuine astonishment in her voice. "Oh, but then these vacations are going to be twice as wonderful! You and Ramin can go and see so many things here! The Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace and Madam Tussauds … Did you know there is a magical section with figures of goblins and hippogriffs and dragons, and every Minister for Magic you have ever had over here, and even some Quidditch players? It's accessed by tapping the correct pearl of Queen Elizabeth's necklace with your wand …"

As they descended further and further underground, standing on stairs that actually moved by themselves, which made Martin wonder how on earth the Muggles had achieved this or whether a wizard might have had a hand in it somehow, she continued talking happily about all the magical and non-magical attractions London had to offer, her eyes shining with excitement all the while. She and her husband were standing on the step right below Martin and Ramin, and as Martin caught his boyfriend's eye, Ramin grinned and rolled his eyes, mouthing crazy and giving his mother a pointed glance. Martin gave him a quick smile, but even though he was a little overwhelmed by Ramin's mother's habit of talking much and fast, he had still taken an instant liking to this warm, open-hearted and captivatingly friendly woman. As he listened to her enthusiastic explanations politely, Ramin's father was also watching her, a tiny smile playing on his lips. As they stepped off the moving stairs and turned a sharp corner, he put a hand gently on her back to guide her into the right direction, and even though Martin doubted whether Michelle had even really noticed her husband's touch, he found he was oddly moved by the familiarity and affection between them that this small gesture revealed. Fleetingly, he imagined his own mother and father being this comfortable with each other back when his mum had been alive, and the thought filled him with warmth.

They had to wait on the platform for a couple of minutes for the train to arrive, but the place was so crowded with Muggles that they couldn't talk about anything that was related to Hogwarts or magic. Martin didn't mind; he was too busy staring at everything that was happening around him: Muggles dressed in all sorts of clothes that ranged from neat suit-and-tie outfits to ripped trousers and sleeveless shirts, and there was even one young woman whose hair was a brilliant shade of green, and she had somehow styled it up into three spikes protruding from her head. Martin himself was wearing a baggy, hooded sweater and a pair of these typical blue Muggle trousers that he could never remember the name of, and he was relieved to see that nobody was giving him a second glance – but then again, he reflected, if you could wear three green spikes on your head without anybody batting an eyelid in the Muggle world, then the range of allowed outfits was broader than Ministry of Magic legislation made it out to be.

Martin rarely spent any time among large crowds of Muggles, and as he looked around the packed platform now, he realised that a few of them were holding one of their hands right next to their ears and appeared to be talking into them. It was only at the second glance that Martin noticed that they weren't actually talking into their hands, but into small, black things that they were holding in them. Martin couldn't make head or tail of this exceptionally odd behaviour, and he nudged Ramin and pointed surreptitiously at a man wearing a black suit and a tie and pressing his right hand against his ear, talking very fast into one of these black things.

"What is he doing?" He murmured to his boyfriend.

Ramin stared at the man for a second, apparently mystified. Then the Sickle dropped.

"You mean the talking?"

Martin nodded.

"He's telephoning someone. You see that thing he's holding in his hand? That's a mobile phone. He's probably talking to a colleague, or his wife, or something."

Martin stared at the man in disbelief. He remembered now that they had devoted a couple of lessons in Muggle Studies to methods of communication, and they'd talked about this telephone, but somehow he'd always imagined it as a huge device resembling a megaphone that the Muggles shouted into in order to bridge the distance between themselves and the person they were talking to. But the thing the Muggle man was holding was shorter than Martin's wand and no thicker than Advanced Potion-Making, and although it was obvious from the speed with which his lips were moving that he was talking rapidly, Martin could not hear a word he was saying over the general noise that filled the platform, so he couldn't be talking any louder than he would have done in a face-to-face conversation.

"So … you mean he's talking to someone hundreds of miles away?" He muttered, still gazing transfixed at the man.

"Well, maybe not hundreds," Ramin shrugged. "But thirty or forty, yeah, sure. Why not?"

There was a pause while Martin considered this. Then he finally turned away from the man and looked indignantly at his boyfriend.

"How come wizards can't do that?" he demanded. "How come we have to send owls, or use the Floo Network, or send Patronuses? How come we are the ones that can do magic, but we have to sit down and write a letter or send our head spinning to another fireplace, and Muggles can just stick a telebone to their ear and talk to people forty miles away?"

"Telephone," Ramin corrected, grinning. "And I told you, No-Majs are geniuses! These portable phones are a pretty new development, though. Took them years to figure out how to do that. And we can use enchanted objects like mirrors to communicate. It takes a complicated bit of magic to pull that off, though."

Martin could barely make out his boyfriend's last words, because at that precise moment, the train pulled into the station, giving off a loud rattling noise. When it had stopped, multiple sets of double doors slid open of their own accord. Martin looked around in confusion, half-expecting to see a witch or wizard standing behind him with their wand outstretched, but there was no one but Muggles around him, carrying him with them as they boarded the train through the mysteriously opened doors. The train was crowded, but Martin and Ramin still managed to grab two empty seats and sat down next to each other. Ramin's parents, who'd got on ahead of them, were sitting a couple of seats away. Martin leaned towards Ramin and whispered into his boyfriend's ear: "How'd the doors open? You didn't use magic, did you?"

Ramin shook his head, grinning. "They're automatic," he whispered back, and, at Martin's bewildered look, added: "It's too complicated to explain. I dunno exactly how it works myself. Just think of it as No-Maj magic."

"That sounds weird," Martin grinned, and Ramin laughed.

"I guess. But it's still true. No-Majs might not have real magic, but they have pretty good substitutes."

And as Martin looked again at the man with the telephone, which he was just putting back into his briefcase, and as the doors slid miraculously shut again, Martin couldn't help but think that his boyfriend really had a point.


The Wilkinsons had a small, cosy-looking cottage on the outskirts of London that was covered in ivy. It bore no obvious signs of being inhabited by a witch, but some of the plants in the overgrown garden struck Martin as bearing a conspicuous resemblance to the less dangerous plants kept in greenhouses one and two that they'd dealt with in their early years of Herbology.

"Well, here we are. Home, sweet home," Ramin grinned as his father unlocked the door.

"Hardly," his mother laughed, cuffing him gently around the back of the head. "You've only lived here for five weeks before you left for Hogwarts in the summer! But Philip and I felt properly at home in no time, didn't we, darling?"

"We certainly did," her husband smiled and pushed open the door. "Come in, Martin! And make yourself at home."

Martin stepped over the threshold into the hall. There was a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor, but Ramin's mother called from behind him: "Just go right through into the living room, Martin!"

So he opened another door at the far end of the hall and found himself standing in a large room with light-orange wallpaper and a thick, fluffy carpet covering the ground. There was no actual wall at the far end, but instead two sets of double glass doors that opened onto the garden and through which light was flooding into the room. To the left, there was a table with four chairs and a door that probably led into the kitchen, while to the right, there stood a large, comfortable-looking sofa with a bend in the middle against the walls. It was dark blue and covered in orange scatter cushions, and there was a low, square coffee table in front of it. Against the far end of the room, facing the sofa corner, there was a chest of drawers with a most strange-looking device on top: it was black, large and almost square, like an enlarged dice, only without spots. The side facing the sofa looked as though it was made of something like glass, but it wasn't transparent: rather than allowing Martin to see the strange thing's interior, he could make out a blurry reflection of himself in the glass. He was just about to ask Ramin, who'd entered the room behind him, why Muggles used black, square, bulky mirrors that gave off such poor reflections instead of normal ones when another piece of information Professor Burbage had given them in Muggle Studies came back to him.

He turned to Ramin and pointed uncertainly at the black device. "Is that … a tele-mission?"

Ramin laughed. "You mean a television? Yeah, it is! How'd you know?"

"We talked about them in Muggle Studies," Martin replied, gazing at the television in fascination. "It works sort of like a portrait, right? Except you can't talk to the people in it."

"Something like that," his boyfriend grinned. "We can watch a movie on it sometime, if you like. Get off, you monsters!"

Martin looked around at Ramin, bewildered. It was only then that he realised that there were three cats padding around his boyfriend's legs, purring and quite obviously wanting to be stroked, and that the room was, in fact, full of cats. Martin's attention had been so focused on the television that he hadn't noticed them before, but he now realised that they were everywhere: on the sofa, underneath the coffee table, on the chairs around the dining table or simply curled up on the thick carpet. He tried to count them, but it was impossible with most of them moving around, roused by the arrival of two people. His best guess was that there were about ten to fifteen. A couple of them were padding around his own legs, and he knelt carefully and began scratching one of them, a small, black one, behind the ears. It purred loudly and pressed its head against his hand. It felt completely different to having Achilles or Hector wind themselves around his arms, but as much as he loved his snakes, he thought that having a few cats pressing themselves against his legs and purring as he stroked their soft fur was cool as well. He looked up at Ramin, who had not bent down to give any of the cats that were competing for his attention so much as a pat, but had instead made his way to the sofa, rudely pushed aside a brown-and-black cat and sat down.

"Why are you so against them?" Martin asked, shaking his head in bemusement and continuing to stroke the small black cat.

Ramin sighed and fell back into the cushions. "Because they're messy and annoying and never leave me in peace," he replied, but when a grey tabby who'd already been padding around his legs jumped onto the sofa and attempted to climb onto his lap, he just groaned exasperatedly before beginning to grudgingly scratch behind its ears. "You see?" he said with a painful grimace, but Martin was now certain that his boyfriend's tirades against cats weren't entirely serious. He picked up the black cat, who didn't seem to mind that at all, carefully stepped over two more cats on his way to the sofa and sat down next to his boyfriend.

"Well, I think they're really cute," he said teasingly, grinning up at him.

"Oh yeah?" Ramin replied, his eyes beginning to sparkle in that way that always made a firework go off in Martin's stomach. "Well, do you want to know who I think is cutest in this room?"

"Oh, give over, Ramin!" Martin grinned, feeling himself blushing slightly, but still meeting his boyfriend's lips enthusiastically when he bent down to kiss him. Ramin had just put his left arm around Martin's back and Martin was anticipating a proper snog when the living room door opened with an audible creak and both their heads whipped around towards the sound.

Ramin's mother stood in the doorway. Martin's whole face was burning with embarrassment, but neither Ramin nor his mother seemed to be in any way abashed.

"Boys, I've taken your trunks up to your room, so you can go upstairs and unpack any time you want," she smiled. "We're having dinner early today so that Philip can join us before he has to go to work, and I didn't think you'd mind, because I don't think you had a proper lunch on the train, did you?"

Both of them shook their heads.

"Great," Michelle smiled. "We'll eat in about an hour, so you might want to unpack and really get settled in before that. And then we want to know everything about Hogwarts, of course!" And with that, she disappeared into the kitchen.

Martin could feel Ramin grinning at him, and he turned back towards him.

"What?" he demanded, though he was rather afraid he already knew.

"Oh, nothing," Ramin grinned, in a tone of mock innocence that wouldn't have fooled anybody. "It's just that you might want to consider switching house, that's all."

"Why would I want to do that?" Martin snapped, pushing the black cat off his lap and getting to his feet.

"Oh, I don't know," Ramin replied, and Martin could hear his ear-to-ear grin even as his boyfriend followed him out of the living room and up the stairs. "It's just that your head's a proper Gryffindor scarlet, that's all."

"Oh, shut up!" Martin retorted, but he couldn't help joining in his boyfriend's laughter as they entered Ramin's bedroom and began unpacking their trunks.


At dinner, it was mostly Ramin who told his parents about every little detail of life at Hogwarts. Martin did throw in the odd remark every now and again, for instance what the Hufflepuff common room looked like in contrast to the Gryffindor one, but he mainly listened to his boyfriend and learned a little more about Ilvermorny by way of the things that Ramin thought worth mentioning about Hogwarts. He talked very little about their subjects, from which Martin concluded that Ilvermorny must be offering more or less the same ones, but he told his parents at length about the castle's inhabitants other than students and teachers: Filch, Mrs Norris, the portraits, the ghosts and, particularly, Peeves. Ramin's mother and father were both greatly amused by their son's colourful retellings of Peeves's many mischiefs, and when Ramin recounted some of the lyrics of Peeves's version of 'Oh Come, All Ye Faithful,' which had sounded from what had seemed like every suit of armour in the school during the weeks leading up to Christmas, all four of them finally laughed so hard that tears were streaming down their faces.

"But seriously", Martin said when he was at last able to draw breath again, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand, "why are you so interested in Peeves? Isn't there a poltergeist at Ilvermorny?" As annoying as Peeves was most of the time, Martin could not imagine Hogwarts without him.

"No," Ramin's mother replied. "Because of the policy of very strict separation of No-Majs and the magical world that was upheld in the US for a long time, having magical creatures like ghosts that can think and talk and move for themselves around was considered too dangerous, especially mischief-makers like poltergeists."

"There's an army of Pukwudgies guarding the school, though," Ramin grinned.

"How come they were allowed?" Martin asked curiously.

"Isolt, Ilvermorny's founder, saved a Pukwudgie's life once," Michelle explained. "Ever since, Pukwudgies have had a special tie to Ilvermorny. They protect it and they are also the school's maintenance service."

"Cool," Martin laughed. "Beats Filch and those Security Trolls and Dementors we had last year." And he explained how, in the months after the escape of the murderer Sirius Black from Azkaban, the school had been surrounded by Dementors day and night. A slight shiver went through him at the mere memory. Even though he'd always taken care to stay well clear of those horrible creatures, they had still given him the creeps.

After they'd finished eating, Michelle made all the plates and cutlery whizz back into the kitchen with a wave of her wand, and Philip said goodnight to all of them and left for the theatre in the West End in which he was currently performing. Martin, Ramin and Michelle spent the evening together in the living room, playing game after game of Exploding Snap and later two-on-one chess – Ramin and his mother against Martin. They played with the Wilkinsons' pieces, and although the chessmen were deeply distrustful of Martin at first, they very quickly realised that he knew what he was about on a chessboard and gave up their resistance to his commands. Neither Ramin nor his mother were that bad at chess, Martin thought, but the countless games he'd played against his father had turned him into a truly skilful player and he won without too much difficulty. After the game, both Martin and Ramin felt tired, and they said goodnight to Michelle and went upstairs to shower and get ready for bed.


Half an hour later, Martin was lying on his mattress in Ramin's room, looking up at the ceiling, which was painted a deep, dark blue, and contemplating that he had rarely been as content as he was in that moment, lying here next to his boyfriend and having the whole of the Easter Holidays in his company to look forward to. He shifted onto his side and looked at Ramin, whose mattress was lying right next to Martin's.

"Your parents are really nice," he murmured, already quite sleepily, and he saw the outlines of his boyfriend's grin in the dim moonlight that was shining through the curtains.

"Told you," he replied. "And they love you already."

Martin laughed softly. "And I like the house. And the garden. And the cats." He grinned widely as Ramin groaned. "Everything's so … cosy, d'you know what I mean?"

Ramin's mattress creaked slightly as his boyfriend turned onto his side as well, looking Martin straight in the eye. "Yeah, I do," he replied softly, and something about the low tone in which Ramin said these words pulled Martin's sleepiness away from him, as effortlessly as if it had been but a thin blanket. He was suddenly wide awake, and he felt goose bumps erupt all over his skin as he looked into his boyfriend's dark-brown eyes, no more than ten inches away from his own. He watched unblinkingly and with bated breath as Ramin slowly extended his left hand and cupped it around Martin's cheek, moving his thumb softly through his hair.

"And it's you being here that makes it perfect," he whispered, and Martin could feel his boyfriend's warm breath on his face as he leaned closer.

When their lips met, all other sensation was evaporated from Martin's mind. All thought, all feeling was blocked out; nothing mattered but that Ramin should continue to press his lips onto his own, to run his hand through Martin's hair, to sling his left leg over Martin's right one, intertwining them …

Ramin's hand moved from Martin's hair to his back, and he pulled him closer towards him, so that they were now lying on a single mattress, their legs intertwined, their lips locked together, and just as the firework in Martin's stomach reached a dimension that he had never yet experienced before, there was the loud bang of the front door closing, followed by audible footsteps climbing up the stairs. The boys froze, their faces turned towards the closed door of Ramin's room, both of them breathing hard, listening.

"It's Dad," Ramin whispered. "He's back."

"He won't come in here, will he?" Martin asked, at the same time terrified of being discovered in this undignified position and yet oddly indifferent to the possibility, more impatient than he had ever been in his life to get back to what they'd been doing moments before.

"No", Ramin breathed, "but he'll hear us. The walls aren't very thick."

For a fraction of a second, Martin was faced with the shattering prospect of having to wait for Ramin's father to change, possibly shower, get into bed, and fall asleep before they could continue, but then, an idea struck him like a golden beam of divine intuition, and he couldn't help himself from laughing out loud.

"What is it?" Ramin asked, apparently completely bewildered.

"Where's my wand?" Martin asked by way of a reply, looking around, and having located it on the other side of his now empty mattress, he unwillingly disentangled himself from Ramin and rolled over to reach it.

"What are you gonna do, Stun him?" Ramin asked, with a disbelieving, yet also slightly amused note in his voice, as if the thought was actually quite appealing to him.

"Don't be silly," Martin whispered back. He raised his wand, pointed it at the closed door, and, concentrating with all his might, murmured: "Muffliato!"

Nothing observable happened, yet Martin had felt his wand grow momentarily warm in his hand, so he knew that it had worked. He put his wand aside again and turned back to Ramin's puzzled expression, an ear-to-ear grin on his face.

"Dad taught me this one," he explained, climbing onto Ramin's mattress again and re-entangling his legs with his boyfriend's. "It fills the ears of anyone nearby with a sort of buzzing. It's very slight, and your parents won't even notice it, but they also won't hear anything that's going on in this room tonight."

"Genius," Ramin replied, his face breaking into a grin every inch as wide as Martin's. "Your dad's a complete genius."

"Ramin?" Martin said, and his boyfriend looked at him questioningly at the slightly pleading note in his voice.

"Yeah?"

"Let's not talk about my father now, all right?"

Ramin was looking straight at him, and Martin could practically see the look in his boyfriend's eyes changing from puzzled and slightly concerned to something very different at the tone in his voice. His eyes grew darker, and there was something strong and powerful, almost hungry in the look that he gave Martin now. But far from being alarmed, Martin felt a shiver of delight and glorious anticipation arch through every particle of his body as he met his boyfriend's gaze. Whatever would follow, he did not only want it. He craved it. He yearned for it.

The boys looked into each other's eyes for a few more seconds, then, as if following a silent command, they both simultaneously moved forward and their lips met once more.


Author's note:

It's been a very, very long time, I know, and I'm really sorry. But here, finally, is the next chapter – better late than never, I hope ;)

All information about wizarding America and Ilvermorny is, as always, based on the corresponding articles on wizardingworld, please check there for more information.

I have been to King's Cross station once, but it was a very long time ago and I can barely remember anything. I also have no idea what the place looked like in 1995, so I apologise if my description in this chapter contains mistakes. The same goes for Madam Tussauds, which I've actually never visited. I have no idea if the figure of Queen Elizabeth is wearing a pearl necklace, or whether it used to back in 1995. Lacking historically accurate information, I just made some things up. I hope you can forgive me for that ;) I also don't know too much about the state of development of mobile phones in 1995, what exactly they looked like, how big they were or whether they would have worked on an underground platform, so again, I described it the way that fitted best to the story I wanted to tell.

This chapter has not been betaed by a native speaker, so I apologise for any mistakes and ask you to please alert me to them so that I can correct them.

I really hope you enjoyed the chapter, and I'm glad you're still reading this story after such a long break in updates – and please, write a review and give me some feedback! I can promise that that will be a huge motivation for me, so the more reviews I get, the more likely it is that you won't have to wait for the next chapter as long as you had to wait for this one ;)

Thank you!