"A new friend?" Severus asked suspiciously as we walked on the street again.
"Yeah, well, a friend. I met a boy in the store."
"Oh. And what's his name?"
"Ruben."
Severus seemed to think.
"Do you know him?"
"No. I have never heard of a boy named Ruben. Is he your age?"
"I guess so. I haven't asked, but it seems so."
"Then he isn't one of my students."
"Do you remember all of your students then?"
"Most of them."
"Impressive."
"Well, if someone blows up a cauldron, you remember."
I laughed. Severus didn't. It was apparently intended very seriously.
"But back to that friend of yours, what does he know about you?"
"I'm sorry?" I asked incredulously. Why did he ask that? Why was that... It wasn't any of his business.
"Are you deaf?" he snarled.
"Why are you even asking what he knows about me!?"
"I was just interested!"
"No you weren't. That's not a question to ask if you're interested."
"Well, maybe in your opinion, but it wasn't meant that way!" he snarled.
The suspicion in my body rose and I wondered where he was up to. The tensed behaviour if he was seen with me, me talking to other people. He was acting very odd- well, more than he usually was-.
I had decided to drop a silence and stop the argument, but Severus had other plans.
"Are you still going to answer the question?" he said demandingly.
The only thing I could do was sighing in frustration. What the hell did he want!?
"No I'm not answering that question! I don't owe you an explanation for talking to people! It's none of your business what I discuss with people!"
"I beg your pardon?" he stated indignantly.
"I'm not going to answer your question," I replied confidently. "And why do you want to know it so badly by the way?"
I hoped for an honest answer, but as the person that he was, I felt I wouldn't get it.
"I just told you, I was just interested, but leave it for what it is now."
"Not interested anymore?"
"Not that I cared in the first place," he stated softly.
"Excuse me?!" I exclaimed. "Then why do you even ask!?"
"To be polite, as apparently the only one between us."
I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Why do you always have to be so difficult?"
"I beg your pardon?" he stated indignantly.
"Well, I think you are lying about why you asked the question in the first place and now you are trying to hide it with insults."
"You think?"
"I claim."
Severus huffed. "You claim? And yet again you are getting to the wrong conclusions."
"Don't try to hide it. I know."
An evil grin appeared on his face. "You don't know. You just said you think. And there isn't something to know, because there is nothing to know."
"I have the right to get the truth.'
"Now, you need to stop. It was kind of entertaining before, refuting your arguments. Well, arguments…"
I gave in and stated silent. I wouldn't get the truth. Not today.
"And you don't have the right to get the truth. I decide when and when you don't get the truth."
"So, you admit that you lie sometimes?"
"I didn't say that."
I raised my eyebrows.
"Shut up!" he snarled and walked away with big steps.
He was definitely hiding something. But what? Well, I wasn't finding that out today and I probably never was.
"We are going home," he stated with a frustrated tone.
As we walked through the paved streets of Diagon Alley, I thought about my whole life, basically. I mean, being told you're a witch out of nowhere is not just something. Well, out of nowhere, I had always been a witch as a matter of fact, but I hadn't known about it. They had never told me. They thought it had been better that way. And maybe it was. I mean, having a kid that tells everyone she is a witch isn't the best situation as a parent.
They. They had never told me. My parents had never told me. I wondered where their bodies would be now. Were they cremated? Or buried? Or... I didn't know, but I hoped the had had a proper funeral, without me. Without anyone.
I had had to pack my bags pretty quickly. There had been no time for mourning and I actually wondered when it would be the right time.
Severus wouldn't mourn. He had pushed every contact with my mom away, systematically, and was long over her. Me on the other hand...
And of course I wasn't. They had been my parents, my guardians and even my best friends sometimes. When I needed a shoulder to cry on, they were there. When I needed to go to the dentist- which I hated, since that dentist looked extremely creepy-, my mom was there. Someone to help me train my swimming skills when I didn't reach the goal of underwater swimming, my dad was there. And when I did my exam swimming and finally got that diploma, the both of them stood on the side of the pool to cheer me on just like the other parents did for their kids.
Severus was not that kind of parent and he would never be. However, I liked him none the less. But I wondered if I did that because I wanted it or if I really meant it.
And even if I didn't like it, I had to live with him. He apparently was my father and I had to deal with that. And he had to deal with me, even though it was sure from his side he didn't like me.
He had not liked me from the beginning, because, like he had made clear during our quarrel in the basement, he had never wanted to conceive me and he hated it to have and take care of a kid.
If that was truly true than I wondered why he had become a teacher at a boarding school. Why teaching children if he detested them? Just illogical.
Well, Severus was just a conflicting person overall. So different from the family I had come from.
In contrast to Severus, my mom had been logic itself. Everyone always knew exactly what to expect and what not to expect from her. And most of the time, those expectations came true.
And now I was thinking about it, there were way much more contradictions between Severus and my mom. For example: my mom had been open and social, Severus tried to close himself off from the world as much as possible. She had been loving, he was harsh. My mom had always been very polite, he was often rude and unlikable.
I wondered how they could have ever ended up in each other's arms. There was nothing they had in common... well the both of them had grown up with magic, but that was probably it. And even that was not completely true.
My mom had gone to a special school for squibs- that's at least what she write in her letter to me- and Severus had intended to Hogwarts. He had the magical ability. She had never gotten it.
He had left her for not having the same ability. He had found her to be less than him because of it. The swine! That horrible piece of...
"Are you crying?" Severus asked out of a sudden.
He had pulled me out if my reverie and I didn't know what to say.
"Hello? I asked if you were crying."
"Huh? No, I wasn't." I responded surprised.
He frowned. "Then why do you have a tear hanging on your chin?"
And now I felt it. A drip, hanging under my cheek. I imagined I had let slip a tear when i had thought about my parents, but had been too deep in my thoughts to notice. I quickly wiped it away and pretended it had never happened. I didn't feel the urge to talk about it with him.
"Why were you crying?"
Oh shit, he actually wants to talk about it, I thought.
"Well?"
"I accidently bit my lip," I lied.
Severus turned his head to look at the shops on the other side of the street. I couldn't see his face when he said: "I feel that you're lying."
"What?" I exclaimed, trying to cover up the lie.
"You heard me," he replied as he turned back around. "I claim that you are lying."
"And based on what if I might ask?"
"It seemed like you were in reverie."
"So it seemed?"
"Head bended, low shoulders and not really watching your surroundings."
"Oh."
"Where were you thinking about?"
"Not interesting."
"I ask it right, so if I ask I am interested in even an uninteresting story."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Don't I have the right to know it?" he still talked in a normal tone which made my suspicious.
"No. No, you don't."
"Tell me." Still with a normal tone.
"It's none of your business!" I exclaimed.
Severus dropped a silence and I supposed I had won. I supposed.
"Do you understand now?"
I didn't get it. What would he mean?
"I did not truly want to know where you were thinking about. I don't care enough. I just wanted to let you feel how it is if someone claims you're lying."
"Excuse me!?"
"I think it worked quite well, didn't it?"
I stayed silent.
"What? No words anymore?" he asked with a dirty look on his face. I felt the urge to smack it off, but luckily somehow found the power to restrain myself.
"I think you have learned your lesson."
"Yeah, that you're a jerk," I whispered through the grits of my teeth.
He quickly turned his head to me with a baffled look on his face.
"Excuse me!?"
"What?" I tried to hide what I had said.
"Don't ever call me like that again!"
"What!? I didn't say anything!"
He turned his head back to watch the street and seemed to doubt his own ability to hear.
With big steps, he marched on. And still I needed to do effort to keep up with him.
He walked past a corner and recognised the alley from earlier that day. We were heading to the apparition spot.
Wizards and witches were passing us as we walked to the right place to apparate. It was already getting a bit dark and I wondered what those people should still do at such a late time. Were the stops still open here after five o'clock. Well, this was the Wizarding World, so why not?
We walked over to the other corner of the apparition place, people were still apparating in the other corner and disappearing behind the corner of the alley, on their way to Diagon Alley.
"You know how this goes by now."
I nodded and grabbed his arm tightly.
He didn't check the safety, like he had done before. Instead, he just apparated. And yet again it felt like hell. I hoped that would change one day, but didn't think so.
We had apparated right into the shed in the backyard. I found I to be a strange place to reappear- and so did Rowan who startled so much of our apparition that he fell of his sitting stick. Luka didn't seem surprised at all. It had apparently happened way more times to him.-, so I asked him why we had apparated into the shed.
"We can apparate out of the house, but not into it again."
"Why not?" I asked as he held the door open for me.
"Because I have protected the house from magic like that."
"Against burglars?"
"He gave me a surprised look. "Yeah, something like that."
He unlocked the backdoor with an iron key that seemed to age back to the fifties or so and let the both of us in.
He got a small brown bock slip out of his pocket and placed carefully it on the kitchen table. He got out his wand as well and pointed it with a sweep at the box. The box started growing immediately and became as big as the wingspan of my arms.
He opened the box and got some bread and a bottle of milk out of it. More groceries followed and he started to put them away in the refrigerator and the cupboards.
"I used a shrinking spell," he stated as he put a bottle of juice in the refrigerator.
"Impressive."
"Not really.
"It's in the first year curriculum."
"Useful for things like this."
"Stating the obvious again?"
"Maybe."
"Your new clothes are in the box too."
I got them out and examined them. These were at least better than the other ones I had seen in the store.
"Thanks for the clothes by the way."
He nodded while putting a can of beans in a cupboard.
"I need to buy much more food since you live here," he declared as he put another can in a cupboard. "You eat like a troll."
"A lot?"
"Yeah, for a girl. I have no idea where you leave it."
"The doctors at school told me I'm going to become tall, so I think that's where it's going to."
He nodded. "Hungry?"
"A bit."
"Making food then?"
"Good idea."
Author's Note:
Hey reader!
My beta-reader (to2llyuntraceable) and I are working on a storyline for a better version of this story. It's going to take a while to finish the storyline and re-write the story (besides still working on this one for you), so don't expect it very soon, but I just wanted to share it with you people.
See you next week!
