Chapter Eight: This Chapter has been Brought to You by the Letters C and M and the Number 4
Mum put a small statue of a wizard Menteron couldn't recognize on a small glass table in the foyer. She looked at the twins seriously. "This is a portkey. If you touch it, you will be instantly transported to the end of driveway. I could have set it to bring you right to the school, but that would be risky, so we'll just go to the gate."
Beside Menteron, Clarence nodded. Assured that his twin knew what going on, Menteron focused back on Mum. She smiled reassuringly at them. "Billy's mother will drive you to school and back home. When you touch the portkey, it'll come with you to the end of the driveway. Touching it again will bring it and you back here. Okay?"
Menteron looked at his brother. Clarence nodded. Menteron copied the motion.
"It's very important that you both touch it at the same time, or one of you will be left behind. You father and I will be home at the normal time. Until then, we'll be at work. Okay?"
"Okay," Menteron agreed promptly. Mum and Father being at work was easy to understand.
She smiled. "All right then. You have everything?"
"Yes, Mum," Clarence assured her. His three days of leg-lock had ended last night, and he and a silent Menteron had spent the entire hour between dinner and bed time making sure everything was ready for school the next day.
She stepped away from the little statue. "Be good. And remember, no magic!"
"Mum, we don't know magic, yet," Clarence pointed out.
She smiled nervously at him. "Yes, I know. Try not to do any accidently. And don't talk about it."
"We know, Mum," Menteron told her. She and Father had talked about what they could and couldn't say for ages yesterday.
"Alright." She clasped her hands in front of her, then let go. "Bye, sweeties."
As one, he and Clarence gave her a hug. "Bye, Mum!" Then they approached the statue. "Ready?" Clarence asked.
"Ready," Menteron declared.
"Now!" Together, they touch the pewter piece. Menteron felt a horrible feeling in his stomach, like he was going to be sick. Then the foyer was gone, and they were standing next to gate. Clarence put the statue on a rock, then squeezed between the gate's bars. Menteron followed.
Clarence looked around the Muggle neighborhood as though seeing it for the first time. Menteron realized his brother had never come out here when there wasn't a taxi already waiting for them. "That one's Billy's house." Menteron pointed out the white house across the street from them. "Billy's cool, and his Mum makes really good cookies. They've got a rat even bigger than Scabbers."
"Scabbers?"
"Oh, I forgot. You were at Hogwarts when we went over the Weasley's. Fred and George have a brother who has a rat. The rat's name is Scabbers. He's fat and lazy. Me and Fred and George ratnapped him from Percy." The twins crossed the quiet street (without looking both ways) and approached Billy's house as Menteron described the scene. "You should have seen Percy when he found out what we did. You think Jansten got mad when we tossed his room looking for your chocolate frog?"
Clarence laughed. "Worse than that?"
"Lots worse. Not even Tryna screams like that. And Percy's old. Like Brent-and-Valr-old." Which was to say, bigger than Menteron, but littler than Jansten and Harris. Clarence reached up on tippy toes and pushed a little round button next to the door. There was a ringing noise inside the house.
"Doorbell," Clarence explained. "I read about them once. I thought that might be one."
"I'll get it!" some yelled from inside. After a moment, the door swung inward. A boy, taller than Menteron and Clarence, pulled at the doorknob. "It's the twins!" the boy called up the flight of stairs.
Billy arrived on the scene a few seconds later, coming from where Menteron remembered the kitchen to be. "Billy, this is my brother Clarence."
Billy grinned at them, then pointed at the boy who had opened the door. "This is my brother Harvey. He's seven."
Billy's mum came down the stairs just then. "Everyone in the car! We're going to be late!" Menteron let Harvey lead the way. The older boy took the front seat. In the taxis, passangers always sat in the back. Suddenly uncertain, he watched as Billy opened the back door and scuttled to the far end of the back seat. Clarence climbed in behind him. Menteron took the rear. Billy's mum closed the door after them.
The car ride was no more special than a taxi ride, but he had only been in a taxi three times, all yesterday. To the school, to London, and back home. He stared out the window, watching as they passed muggle houses, sheep, and a muggle playground. He pointed this last out to Clarence, who got yelled at for taking off his seat belt to get a better look.
They soon arrived at the school. Billy's mum did not leave the car, so Menteron and Clarence followed Billy to find their class. As they entered, Menteron recognized Madam Baker from yesterday, and Davie and Greg from when he fell out of the tree. He pointed out the last two for Clarence's benefit. "That's Greg and Davie. I told you about them." Clarence nodded.
Madam Baker approached them with a smile. She clapped loudly, twice, gaining the attention of the class. "We have two new students in the school today, class," she announced. "I want you all to say hello to Menteron and Clarence."
"Hello Menteron and Clarence," the class chanted together.
"Hi!" Menteron replied. Clarence smiled and waved, stepping closer to his brother.
"Who's who?" someone called out.
"Menteron," Menteron pointed at himself, then at his twin, "Clarence." Menteron was under no delusions that anyone could tell them apart once they moved from this spot. Especially since they were dressed exactly the same. With a school uniform, they had little choice.
The teacher showed them to their seats, and the morning announcements came over the loudspeaker. Menteron and Clarence both jumped at the sudden disembodied voice that crackled out from the wall. Most of the words were garbled in static, so Menteron looked at Clarence, expecting the other twin to be able to translate it for him. Clarence just shrugged back helplessly, and tried even harder to interprete the awful sounds.
At one point, the rest of the class stood and clasped their hands together in front of them. Menteron and Clarence copied them, and mumbled along when they spoke, pretending they had some clue about what was going on. Then the weird voice stopped, and Madam Baker stepped in front of her class again, smiling. "Good morning, class."
"Good morning, Madam Baker," the class chorused.
"Everybody come to the Sharing Rug and sit in a circle." It took some doing, and Menteron wasn't totally convinced that the end result should be called a circle, but they did manage to sit in a wavy approximation of the desired shape, with Madam Baker in the middle. But she smiled proudly and said, "Very good, class. Today we're going to do a counting excercise."
Beside him, Clarence perked up. Internally, Menteron groaned.
"We're going to go around the circle and say how many people live in your house." She smiled at them encouragingly. "So if you live with just your dad, you would say two. Yourself is one, and Dad is two. If you live with both your parents and one sister, that would be four. Mom is one, Dad is two, you are three, and your sister is four. Okay?" She looked around the circle. "Clarence, why don't you start?"
Clarence looked up at the ceiling, and began to do something weird with his fingers. Then he looked right at Madam Baker and said, "Nine."
She looked surprised. "That's a lot of people. Why don't you tell us all their names?"
"There's Mum - one, Father - two, Jansten - three, Brent - four, Valr - five, Menteron - six, me - seven, Kib - eight, and Tryna - nine."
Menteron frowned. "You missed Harris."
"Harris is at boarding school. He doesn't live with us now."
"What about Lulli?"
Clarence's brows shot up. "Oh! Forgot about her. Lulli is ten," he told Madam Baker. "Ten people."
"And Tracy."
Clarence shook his head. "She doesn't live with us. She's dead."
"Well, she stays with us then."
"But that wasn't what Madam Baker asked." His eyes widened breifly and he started whispering, "Besides, weren't we supposed to not talk about Tracy?"
Menteron frowned. "Don't remember. Maybe."
"Who is Tracy?" Madam Baker asked carefully. "Your sister?"
"Oh, no," Clarence denied. "Tryna's our only sister. Tracy's our resident ghost. She's been dead for centuries."
Madam Baker lifted her eyebrows in surprise and disbelief. At this reaction, Clarence turned back to Menteron and said sagely, "I think she was one of the forbidden topics." Menteron nodded agreement, remembering the weird looks Billy, Davie, and Greg had given him when he talked about Tracy the other day.
"They live in a real haunted house," Billy said suddenly, reminding him that he and Clarence were not alone with the teacher. "My brother told me so."
"How did Harvey know?" Clarence asked, curious.
Billy leaned forward, "He went up there on a dare a couple Halloweens ago."
Menteron looked at Clarence in alarm. His brother was looking right back at him with the same expression. The younger twin looked away first, fixing Billy with a intent gaze. "Did he say what he saw?" Clarence asked carefully.
Billy shuddered. "Ghosts."
Clarence frowned and looked at Menteron. "Did Trace have a Halloween party lately? I thought she always went over to the Malfoys for the holiday cuz that's where her cousin haunts."
Menteron crossed his arms, sulkily. "If she did, she didn't invite me!"
"Mum prolly wouldn't let her if it was late," Clarence pointed out reasonably.
"I guess," Menteron conceeded.
"So he just saw the ghosts, nothing else weird?" Clarence asked Billy.
Billy gave him a look that plainly said What could be weirder than ghosts? A girl several people away from Billy raised her hand.
"Yes, Ashley?" Madam Baker asked.
"Are you related to the Addams family?" she asked the twins.
"Or the Munsters?" someone else chimed in.
Menteron looked to Clarence, not knowing the answer. He didn't recognize either name, but if it wasn't Tragyl or Weasley he wouldn't. Clarence frowned, biting his lip, a sign of deep thought. "Don't think I ever heard of the Munsters," he admitted, "but I think we've got Adams relatives somewhere." He looked at Menteron. "Didn't Aunt Trisha marry an Adams?" Menteron shrugged, not even knowing he had an Aunt Trisha.
Madam Baker suddenly clapped her hands. All the children looked up at her. "Davie, how about you tell us how many people are in your family?"
Clarence's hand shot up.
"Yes, Clarence?"
"That's not what you said before. Lulli's not in our family. There's only nine people living with us who are family."
"Yeah, Lulli's our House -"
"Maid," Clarence cut in just in time. Menteron shot him a thankful look. House elves were definitely a forbidden topic.
"Thank you, Clarence," Madam Baker said, ending the discussion and bringing class back on track. "Davie?"
"Four. Mum, Dad, me, and my big brother."
"Very good." Menteron wondered why Clarence didn't get a 'very good'. It was a lot easier to count to four than to nine. Menteron usually got stuck at around six.
After lunch, the class sat again in a circle on the Sharing Rug. This circle was even less deserving of being called a circle than the one this morning had. Madam Baker smiled at them anyway. "We're going to learn two very important letters today. C and M. Can anyone tell me a word or name that begins with a C?"
Clarence's hand shot up in the air. "Yes?" Madam Baker called on him.
"Clarence does." Then, because he was fairly sure she didn't know which twin was which anymore, he added, "My name."
The teacher beamed at him, "Very good!" She pulled out a large construction paper C and safety pinned it to his shirt. "Does anyone else have a name that starts with C?" she asked the rest of the class. Looking down at the blue letter, Clarence did not think it was a coincidence that today's letters were the ones that started the twins' names. Two other students, a Christopher and a Cecila also received their own C's.
"Now who can tell me a name or word that starts with M?" Madam Baker asked when all the C's were distributed.
Clarence nudged his brother when he did not promptly raise his hand. Getting the hint, the older twin called out, "Menteron does!"
"Right," Madam Baker agreed, pinning an orange M to his shirt. Then she added, "You should raise your hand before answering, though, okay, Menteron?"
Menteron nodded. "Okay."
Billy's mum was waiting in her car at the end of the day. Harvey, Billy's brother, arrived not long after the twins and Billy. When he'd closed the front passenger's side door, Billy's mum started the car and pulled away. "How was your first day?" She asked the twins. Clarence thought the question was more for formality than because she was interested.
"Okay," Menteron answered, never very good at talking to adults, particularly ones that weren't Mum and Father.
Clarence stopped himself from saying they'd had a near call when House Elves almost came up, but remember in time that (a) Billy's mum didn't know about House Elves either and (b) it wasn't something he wanted even his parents to know. They wouldn't be happy if they found out they were almost tripped up so quickly. He and Menteron had been good after that one time, though, and Clarence considered that adequete enough improvement to avoid burdening their parents about the little ghost mishap or the near-disaster of almost bringing up the elf.
"Fine," Clarence answered instead. He couldn't help adding, "We talked about ghosts." Menteron shot him a Look, but Clarence ignored it. Ghosts, in general, were a safe muggle topic. There were all kinds of muggle stories about them. They just probably shouldn't have talked so much about Tracy. Friendly ghosts just weren't as popular among muggles as the scary kind.
"Ghosts!" Billy's mum repeated, surprised into real interest.
Harvey twisted around in his seat, looking pale. "I saw some up your way," he whispered, either because he couldn't speak of it aloud or because he irrationally though his mother wouldn't hear him.
"You what!" Billy's mum demanded, shoting her elder son a sharp glare.
Harvey flinched. "I saw ghosts. Talked to one even. His - its - his name was Valr," he confided. Clarence and Menteron stared at him, looked at each other, then burst out laughing.
Harvey was looking offended when Clarence recovered enough to look at him again. "Valr's not a ghost!" he tried to explain, still laughing.
"Ooh-ho, Valr really got you good, didn't he?" Menteren asked, tears of laughter streaming down his face.
"He didn't even tell us!" Clarence lamented.
"You'd think he'd've loved to tell about the prank he pulled on a muggle," Menteron added, sounding regretful that Valr hadn't turned his storytelling skills to describing the incident.
"We wouldn't have believed him," Clarence admitted.
Menteron shrugged at him. "Still would've been funny."
"Might've been afraid Mum and Father would find out. We're not supposed to talk to -" Clarence cut himself off as he realized he and Menteron had an audience. "- the neighbors," he finished a lot quieter and distinctly embarrassed. If Menteron showed an accurate mirror image of himself, he was blushing.
Billy and Harvey were staring at them. If his mum wasn't driving, Clarence was fairly certain she'd've been too. As it was, she kept shooting looks at them in the rear-view mirror. "Who's Valr?" Harvey finally asked.
"Our brother," Clarence said, much calmer than he'd been a moment ago. Menteron nodded his agreement, as if there might some doubt.
"Oh," Harvey said. "So he tricked me?"
"If he told you he was a ghost, then yes, he tricked you," Clarence told the older boy, trying not to sound like he was stating the obvious. It was hard.
"But I could see through him!"
Clarence and Menteron exchanged confused looks. "Think it was accidental?" Clarence asked his brother, trying to be oblique.
"Pretty sure Valr meant it on purpose." Menteron wasn't so good at picking up on subtlety.
"Like how you on purpose didn't kill yourself falling out of that tree?" Clarence tried a different tact.
Menteron's eyes widened. Finally, he got it. "That was probably it," he agreed on the accidental magic assessment.
They were getting weird looks from Billy's family again. Clarence told himself that this was Valr's mess, not his and Menteron's. All the twins had done was try to explain that Valr wasn't a ghost. Therefore, it should be Valr trying to explain his way out of his transparency. "Tell ya what. You're having that barbeque this weekend?" he asked Billy.
A little too warily, Billy nodded.
"I'll bring Valr, and prove he's a solid as any of us."
"Can ya bring Tracy, too?" Billy asked with equal shares of trepidation and curiousity.
Menteron shook his head, and Clarence explained, "She doesn't leave our attic except for Halloween and Deathdays."
"What's a Deathday?" Harvey asked, with the same mix of emotions he brother had.
"It's like a birthday, except it's when a ghost died."
The silence following this lasted until Billy's mum pulled into her driveway. Clarence realized belatedly that he had forgetten to watch for that muggle playground, like he had meant to when he chose his seat. He mentally shrugged off the minor disappointment and opened his door. He and Menteron (who had been sitting in the middle) tumbled out his side.
They said their goodbyes to Billy and his brother, then squeezed through the gate bars. With some difficulty, Clarence located where he had left the portkey, and waved over his brother. "Okay, on the count of three, touch it. One, two, three!" Both twins touched the little figurine and disappeared.
The next moment they were standing the the Tragyl foyer again. "That is so cool," Menteron delivered his opinion. Clarence nodded his agreement. It sure saved time. Normally it took ages to walk down the drive. The Tragyl ancestor who had built the house must have had serious privacy issues. Being a Slytherin wizard in a muggle neighborhood, that wasn't terribly surprising, come to think of it.
Clarence put the little figure/portkey on the glass table next to the door, then yelled up the stairs, "Valr!"
Menteron's shout was more general, "We're home!"
Somebody shouted something back, but it was muffled to incoherancy. Clarence made a guess that their own shouts were equally indistiguishable, and so guessed its interpretation. "They said 'what?'" he told Menteron, who took his word for it without question. Together, they clambered up the stairs, and as they reached the top, Menteron repeated his homecoming announcement.
The tutoring room door was open and the answer came from there. "Good for you!" Clarence entered the room, and looked at the desks lining the walls. Only was occupied. Brent sat beside an elderly wizard, and both were looking towards them. "How was muggle school?" he asked curiously.
"Great!" Menteron answered enthusiastically.
"Where's Valr?" Clarence asked, letting Menteron's answer work for him, too.
Brent hooked a finger toward an adjoining room, where the smaller tutoring rooms were. "The farthest one back. Why?"
"Billy's brother met him a year or so ago," Clarence answered, trying to sound casual. "Thought he was a ghost."
"I know Jansten's called him dead meat before, but I hadn't thought he was serious," Brent remarked with a straight face.
Clarence laughed, and a moment later, so did Menteron. Looking mildly amused himself, Brent's tutor said, "If you would like to join your brothers for a game of Valr haunting, we are finished with today's lesson. Do the first ten questions at the end of the chapter."
Brent nodded acknowledgement of his assignment. "Thanks, bye!" The elderly tutor bowed his head in a silent good bye, though his student was no longer looking in his direction, then disapperated from the study room. Brent reached the door to the private tutoring rooms first, but stopped with his hand on the doorknob. "Think Kib'll want to hear this?"
Clarence figured the three year old probably would, but he didn't want to waste the time tracking him down. "Nah. He's too little. He'll tell Mum and Father." Though three years the twins' senior, Brent took his word for it, and they entered the first of the tutoring rooms. This was empty, so they hardly paused before passing through it to the next. Jansten and his tutor were in the second.
Their current oldest brother looked up from the book he was hunched over with an annoyed look. "What are you three midgets up to now?"
Brent looked mildly offended by the term of address, but Clarence and especially Menteron were so used to it from both their father and most of their older brothers, that they hardly noticed. "Valr's got a story for us," Menteron answered readily.
"He met a Muggle last Halloween and made him think he was a ghost," Clarence added. "See-through and everything." Jansten rolled his eyes apparently disintrested, but Clarence knew he was hooked. If nothing else, it offered another way to try to get Valr in trouble. A goal Jansten had been unsuccessful with for almost two years.
The three younger Tragyls passed through to the next room, and finally found Valr. Unlike Jansten, Valr welcomed the interruption, looking up at them with relief and gratitude. "What's up?"
Clarence hid a smile as he noticed Jansten come in behind them. "Tell us about the time you haunted Harvey the Muggle."
Valr started in guilty surprise, but covered quickly, "Need a better room for that story." Good, he wasn't going to deny it. He just needed time to decided what fictional elements to add and which actual events to take out. Clarence considered asking what was wrong with their present location, but decided his brother had a point. The private tutoring rooms were designed with one child and one adult in mind. Not five children and one adult.
The tutor frowned. "Your lesson is not finished."
Valr stole a quick look at the clock. "There's only five more minutes left. Please?"
The middle aged woman regarded him sternly, making Valr fidget. Then she sighed in defeat. "You weren't paying attention before, now you'll be impossible. I want you to read the rest of this chapter and try to understand it. Then do the rest of the excersises at the end."
Valr beamed at her. "Thank you!" Then he turned to his brothers, his tutor (and probably his assignment) forgotten. "Last one to the sitting room is a rotten egg!"
Apparently Jansten didn't care if he was a rotten egg, but the other brothers raced each other through three tutoring rooms, out of the large study room, down the hall and stairs, across the foyer, and into the sitting room. Due to cheating, Valr reached it first. In the foyer, a push from behind had sent Menteron into Brent, making both boys fall. With only the much shorter Clarence left blocking his way, Valr took the lead steps from the finish room, and took the prize of not being a rotten egg. In second place, Clarence took the runner's up prize: also not being a rotten egg. Brent and Menteron untangled themselves, and scrambled to their feet and across the remaining seven feet to the sitting room. Menteron scrambled faster, gaining him enough of a lead to take the third place prize of still not being a rotten egg.
The last of the racers into the room, Brent took fourth place. "You're a rotten e-egg!" Menteron taunted, ignoring the fact that he'd only just barely beat his older brother.
"Am not! Jansten's not here yet! And Valr cheated!"
"Did not!" Valr denied. "We didn't set any rules against pushing!"
"It was sort of implied," Brent argued back.
"What part of 'last one to the sitting room is a rotten egg' implies that?"
It occured to Clarence then that the game was pretty stupid. Even if they had all raced and even if no one had cheated (if one can cheat with no rules defined) the loser still wouldn't be a rotten egg. At that moment, Jansten walked into the room, sneering a little at his his arguing brothers. He looked perfectly human to Clarence and not at all like a rotten egg. Despite this, Menteron declared in a sing-song voice, "Jansten's a rotten e-egg!"
Jansten shrugged, unconcerned. Despite being the last one there, he got his choice of chairs, as everyone else was still standing. He took the cushy rocker in the corner, and asked, "So what was this about transparency, Valr?"
"Mum did warn him about eating all of his dinner," Brent remarked, taking one of the spots on the couch. "He's just wasting away on us."
Clarence thought that was supposed to be funny, so he smirked a little and took another spot on the couch. The joke went completely over Menteron's head, and he looked at Brent in confusion, giving Valr time to take the couch's last spot. Left with the choice of a hard, wooden rocker and the itchy green armchair, Menteron crossed his ankles and dropped down to the floor.
Ignoring Brent's attempt at a joke, Valr leaned forward, then individually met each of their gazes. Clarence discovered, somewhat to his surprise, that he had copied the pose. As had Menteron and Brent. Jansten was sitting stiffly enough in the comfortable rocker that Clarence guessed he was putting willpower into not leaning forward.
"Halloween, 1983," Valr began in a low, mysterious voice as though the year was decades earlier instead of just months. "It was a dark day." Clarence wasn't sure, but he was fairly certain last Halloween had been sunny. "Dark and cold." He did grant Valr the cold part. "Lessons had been cancelled for the holiday, and we had mostly gathered in the family room." Sounded about right, Clarence conceded. He vaguely recalled most of last Halloween had been spent in the large family room with the majority of his family. "Harris had begun a tournament of exploding snap, and convinced you four to join him," Valr nodded at Jansten, Brent, and each of the twins in turn, confirming their whereabout during the following events, grounding his story to indisputable events in hopes that credibility would transfer to what followed. Of them, Clarence suspected only Menteron of being that gullible.
"Since I don't really like playing Exploding Snap, and with Kib and Tryna far too young to do anything fun with, I decided a walk in the rain would be nice." Raining now? The day's weather kept getting worse. Before he just claimed it was dark. Though, going out into a storm was definitely a Valr kind of thing to do. And it added a nice dramatic touch to the story. He wondered briefly if he was remembering wrong, or whether it truly had been sunny. Then he dismissed the doubt, reminding himself that this was Valr telling the story. His uncertain memory of that day was, by far, the more reliable.
"I had reached the point of the Troll Attack," this was a clearing about a hundred yards from the front, left corner of the house, out in the woods that surrounded the Tragyl Residence. The clearing's name had originated when Harris and Jansten had been ambushed there by Valr and Brent, who had been pretending to be Trolls at the time. Clarence had been only two back then, but the spot had been pointed out on multiple occassions and became a landmark of sorts.
"When, all of a sudden, I heard the sound of voices." Valr's voice lifted about an octive, "'Haunted, you say, Jason?' the first voice asked, sounding very nervous. 'Haunted,' repeated the other. I crept forward," Valr rose from his chair and demonstrated, hunched over and making exaggerated steps like a bad actor playing a worse villian. "Keeping behind trees, because these were voices I had never heard before." Valr seemed to have fogotten he had set the scene in a clearing.
"I came upon them, and they weren't much older than me." Billy had said Harvey was seven, which put him at exactly Valr's age. Jason, Clarence hadn't heard of yet. "Muggles. Naturally, I felt it my duty to discourage them from tresspassing." Clarence didn't have any basis to judge this statement. Statistically speaking, though, it was probably a lie.
"Since it was Halloween, after all, I decided the best course of action was to scare them away, so I bravely charged toward them. That I turned partially transparent was as much a surprise to me as to them. They thought I was some kind of avenging spirit, and so promptly turned tail and ran." He nodded decisively. "And that's what happened. I choose not to tell Mum and Father about it because I did magic in front of Muggles, and they probably wouldn't have been happy that Muggles were on the property to begin with. Father, in particular, might have done something the neighbors would regret."
Jansten made a sound that, if Clarence hadn't know better, might have been a laugh. But since Jansten never laughs at Valr's jokes, his second oldest brother must have simply coughed.
Valr watched his brothers file from the sitting room, dropping back into the cushions of the couch, not quite showing relief. That would be very stupid. He was glad none of his brothers, who doubtless believed his story about as much as they believed that the tooth faery was really a sixty-seven year old Muggle man with spiked green hair, didn't press for the true events. Not that he didn't have two or three more fake versions to go through. Not that they would have believe the truth even a little bit more than his fictional story. If anything, what had really happened last Halloween was even less believable. Though it was surprising that Jansten hadn't tried to get a version out of him that left Valr in less of a noble and blameless role.
In truth, there had been a very good reason he hadn't informed his parents and siblings of the events until now. He'd been thinking up alibis since it had happened, in the paranoid chance that somehow it was discovered. He was very thankful now that he had.
Because if even a hint of what truly happened reached his parent's ears, it would be Mother advocating the harshest punishment her often underestimated creativity could devise. Because not even his Slytherin Father would approve of the, uh, 'acquisition' Valr had obtained almost three years ago. As a four year old boy-wizard, he had understood what a wand looked like, and that it was a very important and grown-up thing to have. As a four year old boy-wizard, he still hadn't completely understood the concepts of 'mine' and 'not-mine'. As a drunken, bitter, old wizard, Grandfather Tragyl hadn't even noticed his wand was missing until he tried to draw it when the aurors came to arrest him.
When the ministry searched his person and his house and failed to find the old man's wand, his wife assumed he had incompetantly lost it after one to many trips to the pub. His younger son assumed his father had cleverly hid it, and confirmed his mother's story, fully expecting a prison break in the near future. No one suspected that it had lain in the bottom of four-year-old Valr Tragyl's toybox since his last visit to his grandparents house, one day before his grandfather's arrest.
Almost three years later, seven-year-old Valr Tragyl wanted to keep it that way. Of course, it hadn't stayed idle for all that time. Since that Halloween afternoon, Valr had learned to successfully cast the invisibilty charm he'd read about in the family library. Pity it hadn't worked quite right just before the Muggles showed up and startled him nearly to death. Then he could have really scared them instead of the other way around.
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