Chapter one, and much earlier than I'd hoped to get it done. There isn't much action in this one, but I hope that I've done a decent job introducing Orla. Again, I beg you to tell me if you see anything wrong.
Le Puff and her merry band aren't in this one – at least not directly. She'll probably show up again in chapter two or three.
Chapter One: Family Ties
At the same time as le Puff and Rave'n'claw were leaving for Hogwarts, Orla Quirke woke up stifling a cry. One thought ran through her head:
Can't sleep, the gnomes are going to get me.
A humorous thought, one made to grace pseudo-intellectual tee-shirts. If, that was, one wasn't the child of a wizarding family, as Orla Quirke happened to be.
Once, when she was six, she had put on a pair of galoshes and encountered a garden gnome in the right boot. Its sturdy little teeth had come crunching down on her big toe, and poor little Orla had had to go to Saint Mungo's for stitches. Even now, five years later, the old fear of the gnome's gnashing teeth came back to haunt her unpredictably.
Take tonight, for example. Her father had made an innocent comment after dinner about getting the gardener to degnome the garden (actually, the way he put it had been more along the lines of "damn gardener's not doing his job. If he doesn't degnome the garden by Thursday, he can consider himself fired."), and that had set her off. Now she lay awake in bed, her eyes two bright, almost feverish glints over the top of the covers, convinced that at any moment she was going to hear a high-pitched giggle and feel that exquisite pain as teeth sank into her toes.
Her rational mind tried to talk her out of it, to no avail. Orla, it said, you're eleven years old, surely you've escaped your childhood fears by now?
Her subconscious snarled back sullenly and responded with vivid images of gnome teeth. The gnomes are going to get me. They are!
She burst from her bed with a frightened cry, her hands fluttering around her hysterically. When the frenzy of terror had past, she stood panting a little in the center of her room, listening to the sounds of the house settling.
"I'm scared," she whispered. It was stupid to be scared, she knew that. She was eleven; she was old, and mature. She had no right being scared. Only little babies of nine or ten got scared because of gnomes.
"But I'm scared." The sound of her own voice, amid the creaks of the house, frightened her even more. There was no way she was getting back to sleep tonight, that was for sure. She picked her way across the floor, avoiding the scattered clothes and books on it. With a sigh, she settled on the window seat, pushing aside the fluttering curtains to look out into the night.
A new, more disturbing thought occurred to her: What if the gnomes were climbing up the side of the house?
She glanced down nervously, tucking her bare toes under the hem of her nightgown. Nothing moved on the walls, save for the faint shadows of the tree branches, and she relaxed again with a relieved sigh.
You're paranoid, her rational mind scolded.
Better safe than sorry, her subconscious shot back.
If you're not careful, you're going to get shipped off to Saint Mungo's permanently. You're crazy, you know. It's not reasonable, to be so afraid of something like gnomes.
She shifted uneasily in her seat, her lips drawing into a thin line. It wasn't pleasant, hearing that sort of thing, even from her own mind. She shut that voice out with a toss of her head.
Gnomes! Her breath caught in her throat as something below skittered across the grounds in a definitively non-shadowlike manner. She faced one terrifying moment when her mind dissolved into a flurry of panic, then she got herself under a semblance of control. The gnome can't get up here, she reminded herself firmly. It doesn't even know that I'm here. Her subconscious gibbered at her, but it was contained. The creature scampered through another patch of light, and Orla saw that, whatever it was, it wasn't a gnome; it was moving on four legs rather than two. That was some relief, at least. Of course, her older brother was always teasing her about all of the nasty creatures out there, creatures much nastier than gnomes. And whatever was doing on the grounds at one in the morning?
Whatever it was, she didn't find out. Satisfied that the creature wasn't a gnome, exhaustion hit, and she sank into sleep with narry a mutter. If she dreamed, she didn't remember.
She woke up disoriented and with a very stiff neck. The first was easily dispelled, as she recognized her whereabouts (if not the reason she was there) after a moment. The latter stayed with her as she got dressed. A lazy glance at the clock caused her to jump a little and bite back a curse. It was already ten, how could it already be ten? She struggled into a pair of robes with a cursory sniff to make sure that they were reasonably fresh, trying frantically to shove her head through an armhole before she got them on the right ways around. After quickly dragging a brush through her hair, she sprinted out the door and down the hall, hoping desperately that she wasn't late for breakfast.
She paused at the top of the stairs to catch her breath and tug her robes straight. Though not a pretty girl, she was striking in her own manner. Her nose was aquiline, the planes of her face sharp, and her dark eyes intense behind thick lashes. Her hair, cut, one might almost say chopped, short brushed her cheeks when she moved. Its thick, oily texture was apparent just from appearance. It looked like an animal's pelt rather than human hair.
"Orla!' her mother's voice drifted up from the dining room. "Are you coming to breakfast? Your father and I are waiting."
"Yes, Mother," she called back. Her mother didn't sound irritated, so she had the time to make her way down the stairs at a dignified walk rather than a mad scramble.
She reached the dining room and bowed to her parents before taking her seat. Her father didn't look up from the tome he was engrossed in, but that was no surprise. He was an editor for the Flourish and Blotts' publishing incorporation, and his work never seemed finished. Orla had never seen him without a book in his hands. Her mother inclined her head to her daughter regally.
"How did you sleep, dear?" she asked, cutting the biscuit in front of her into miniscule bits before conveying them to her mouth.
"Fine," Orla replied, more interested in piling as many pieces toast onto her plate as possible.
"I sent in the reply to your Hogwarts letter," her mother said, cutting an already minute piece of biscuit in half again.
Orla nodded, not looking up from her breakfast. Unlike Muggle born students, she had been expecting her letter for years, ever since she had accidentally turned the neighbor's dog into a fern when it tried to bite her. Her mother had purchased her school things at the beginning of the summer.
"I've also received news that—" her mother began, but the sound of the door opening and a cheerful "Hello!" cut her off.
Orla shot to her feet and dashed to the front hall even before her mother's request that she go and see who that was. Her nighttime fears, which had been lurking in the shadows of her mind, retreated to a distant and altogether unimportant memory.
"Theo!" she shrieked delightedly, and threw herself into her brother's arms. Theodotus, known to his mortification as Theo to family, had inherited their mother's looks rather than their father's. He was neat and spare, with a small pair of wire-rimmed spectacles perched on the tip of his pencil thin nose and hair held back in a tidy horsetail. He moved with a certain economy that, while not precisely graceful, was nevertheless pleasing to the eye. He had also grown short, Orla found as she hugged him. Last year when he visited he had been two or three inches taller than she was, now they were the same height.
As their mother entered the hall they broke apart hastily and shook hands, showing the proper amount of enthusiasm for a well-liked sibling and no more. Theo's careful mockery of their mother's formal expression had her biting the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Their mother smiled and leaned forward to kiss Theo on the cheek, taking his hands in hers and leading him gently across the hall towards the dining room.
"And how are you?" she asked, sounding genuinely pleased beneath her dignified veneer. "You haven't visited in months. I'm sure your father will be delighted to see you."
Theo's eyes found Orla's across the room, and he winked at her. She wrinkled her nose back at him, trailing after their mother. Their mother's quest to wrest their father from his books was a ceaseless source of amusement for them both. "Archibald," their mother said, "your son's come home. Why don't you say hello to him?"
Their father's eyebrows, the only part of him visible above the tome, wriggled expressively. He grunted something that could have been interpreted as a welcome or as a request to be left alone.
"Well," their mother said, clasping her hands above her breasts, "now that we've all been reacquainted, tell me how your trip went."
She settled herself back in her chair and stared raptly at Theo, as if nothing interested her more than his recitation of facts and figures.
Theo sold wizarding insurance: protection against broom accidents, or Apparation mistakes. He adored his job, and could quote a never ending stream of statistics about the latest insurance rates. It was, to Orla's way of thinking, the one flaw in an otherwise admirable sibling. She let Theo's nattering about the skyrocketing cost of collision protection for teenage wizards fly over her head and concentrated on her breakfast, pausing only to nod and say 'mm-hmm' in the appropriate places. She was just finishing her final piece of toast when her brother said, "I brought something special back for you, Orla, a present for your first year at Hogwarts."
She leapt to her feet, insisting that he tell her what it was, and tell her now. She skipped around him, ignoring her mother's remonstrations that a young witch should show restraint, and continued pestering him as he trooped out to the front hall where his things were still piled.
He shoved trunks aside until he'd found a large domed cage covered in a cloth. With Orla peering over his shoulder, he pulled aside the cloth to reveal what at first glance appeared to be a large ferret. It squinted at the sudden light, yawning to reveal a number of very white, needle sharp teeth.
"Yaah," it snarled, "whatcha youse lookin' at?"
Orla stared.
"It's a jarvey," Theo explained. "I thought it could be your familiar."
Orla threw herself upon her brother again. "It's perfect!" she cried. A jarvey, why hadn't she thought of that? Jarveys ate gnomes, every wizarding family knew that. If she had a jarvey, no gnome would dare to come near her.
"Bignose freaks," the jarvey muttered, and went back to sleep.
Their mother made disapproving noises in the background. Orla turned to her, looking as prim, proper, and pleading as she knew how.
"Please?" she asked.
Her mother's stern look softened a bit, and she nodded reluctantly, though not before throwing another disapproving look at the jarvey cage.
"If you can train it not to speak so foully then you can keep it," she said. She swept back into the dining room with a final glare at the sleeping jarvey.
Orla and her brother exchanged triumphant looks and hunkered down by the cage again.
"What're you going to name him?" her brother asked. His normally solemn eyes were dancing, whether at pleasing his sister or circumventing his mother Orla didn't know.
"Gnasher," she said. "Because that's what he'll do to the gnomes," she explained, seeing her brother's blank look.
"Y'know, Orla, about this gnome fixation…" her brother began, but he didn't finish whatever he was going to say, because the door opened again. A pair of feet in worn, overly large boots tromped through the door and stopped on the threshold of the entrance hall.
"What," sneered a voice laden with aristocratic overtones, "seems to be going on here?"
Orla and Theo both shot to their feet, identical expressions of guilt on their faces. They hadn't been doing anything wrong, Orla knew, but somehow her Aunt Arane always managed to make her feel as if she'd been caught with doing something criminal and vaguely obscene. She was suddenly very aware that she'd worn these robes yesterday, and that she had a smear of syrup on her cheek. Beside her, Theo surreptitiously tugged his shirt straight.
Arane was an imposing woman, with a nose like a hawk's beak, as aristocratic as it was prominent. Her eyes glittered darkly and without any emotion other than vague disdain as she stared at her niece and nephew. Though she was dressed roughly, in a shirt and trousers worn to a nondescript gray with age, she exuded a refinement that made all Orla feel plebian and whey-faced by comparison. It was, Orla recognized in a dim, wordless way, the kind of attitude that her mother tried to mimic. Arane was a tall woman, towering even over Orla's father, and she knew how to use her height. She loomed over her comparatively short relations like a glacier.
"Don't fidget," Arane ordered.
They both went stock still.
"Now, answer my question," she repeated. "What seems to be going on here?"
Orla gulped and summoned the courage to answer.
"Theo was just showing me the jarvey he brought home." She quailed as Arane's gaze swiveled to concentrate on her. It felt like being under a high powered spotlight. "It's going to be my familiar," she said with a trace of defiance. Arane frightened her, but gnomes scared her more.
Arane glanced down at the slumbering jarvey, her lip curling in disdain.
"This?" she demanded, nudging the cage with her foot. "This is an appropriate familiar for a pureblood?"
Her prodding had awakened the jarvey. Upon seeing Arane's large boot, it dashed to the other side of the cage, puffing up and hissing like a cat. Arane bent down to peer more closely at it, her hands clasped behind her back.
"What a perfectly disgusting creature," she said, her voice almost pleasant.
The jarvey looked as if dearly wished to reply with something inventive and insulting, but didn't quite dare. Orla sympathized with it perfectly.
There mother swept back into the hall with a swish of skirts, no doubt to see why her children hadn't returned to the table. Orla looked up from where she had been fiercely studying her toes in time to see her mother's face crease into a brilliant smile.
Orla kept from shaking her head in bewilderment only because she knew her aunt would indubitably see and want to know why she'd been fidgeting. Her mother's love of her older sister never ceased to confound Orla. She didn't see how the same set of genes could produce a perfectly lovely woman like her mother, and a monster like Arane, or how the two could like each other.
The sisters embraced, Orla's mother looking threadbare and worn next to Arane, though she was the younger of the two.
"Arane, how simply splendid to see you!" her mother gushed. Orla rolled her eyes. Even Theo didn't get a welcome like that.
"Wenelda, a pleasure as always," Arane replied dryly, breaking off the contact. "You're looking well." Before Orla's mother had a chance to return the complement, she continued. "Your Orla has told me that this… thing is to be her familiar," she said, jolting the jarvey's cage with her foot again.
"Well, yes," Orla's mother faltered. "I didn't think that there was any harm in it. After all, she's reaching the age where she needs to make decisions on her own, now that she's going off to school. I thought that once she'd realized what a poor pet the creature made she would discard it…" She trailed off, looking anxiously at her sister for approval.
Arane grunted, and their mother brightened again.
"But why are you here so early in the year? I didn't think that your shift finished until the end of September."
"Oh," Arane said lightly. "I pulled a few strings and got off early. I thought that I'd come and help you get Orla off to Hogwarts."
Orla and Theo could only gape at each other, stricken.