A/N: Ello. Emberley here. This story was inspired by the line, 'I think we'll live in the country,' in the PoA movie, because I live on a farm in the country myself and immediately had a vision of Sirius wearing a floppy hat and rounding up cows. I'll be writing all the stuff to do with living on a farm, while Kiz will be writing the romance side of things. This is extremely AU, trust me, and yes, we DO know that some of our animals do NOT belong on a farm, but we couldn't think of any more farm animals, so we went to the other extreme. :)
Disclaimer:Much as we'd like to say that we own Remus and Sirius, we don't nor do we own any of the other characters you recognise from HP. However, Kiz owns Kiz and Lily, because they are her two personalities and I own Emberley and Spaci, because they are mine. We're a bit odd, you see.
'Well, here we are,' said Harry, as he pulled his trunk to the door of the massive homestead he and his friends had just recently bought and rang the doorbell. The door opened to reveal two girls who looked no more than about twenty.
One had long, brown hair tied up in a high ponytail and secured with a largish clip. She was wearing an outfit that made her look like she got dressed before turning the light on that morning. The other girl had chin-length, wavy, auburn hair and infinitely better dress sense than the first. They both had big smiles on their faces and were very welcoming towards Harry and the rest of the Order.
'Hi!' exclaimed the one with brown hair, 'I'm Emberley! This is Kiz. You must be Harry!' She took Harry's hand in hers and shook it vigorously.
'Yeah, I'm Harry,' Harry confirmed, then turned around and, pointing to each of the people behind him, he introduced everyone. 'This is Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, but I'd advise you to call her Tonks, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Ginny Weasley, the twins are Fred and George Weasley, Alistor Moody, Minerva McGonagall, Albus Dumbledore, Rubeus Hagrid, whom we call Hagrid, Cho Chang, Severus Snape and Olympe Maxime… Did I miss anyone?'
'Yes … me!' said a loud voice from the back.
'Ah, yes, that's Gilderoy Lockhart. He's … er … just got out of hospital. He needs a bit of fresh air.'
'Hehe… Right,' said Kiz slowly, and slid a slightly scared glance at Emberley. There was no way either of them would be able to remember everyone, but they decided not to worry about that just yet.
'Well,' Kiz continued, 'I'm sure there'll be plenty of room for you all. It was far too big for the two of us living here on our own, we're going to move to a little place down the road a bit… we'll check up on you every now and then to see how you're doing.'
A thought suddenly struck Emberley. Not one of the seventeen people before her looked like they had ever lived on a farm before. She thought worriedly about the wombats curled up inside a hollowed-out log out the back of the huge house.
'Um,' she said, 'have any of you lived on a farm before?'
'Nope,' replied one of the red-haired Weasleys, Emberley was pretty sure it was Ron, 'we've looked after owls before, though, and I had a pet rat. Well, I thought I had a pet rat but then…' His voice trailed off. Kiz and Emberley looked at each other. This was one odd bunch of people.
'What do you mean, you thought you had a pet rat?' Kiz asked.
'You don't want to know,' Ron replied.
'Ah,' said Kiz, and left it at that.
'Well,' said Emberley, realising that the group of people who had bought their house were still standing on the front step, and that she and Kiz were blocking the entry, 'why don't you all come in? We can show you all the bedrooms, and then you can get settled in a bit, and then maybe tomorrow we can work out who's going to look after which animals, and we can teach you a bit about looking after them.'
'That'd be great,' said the man Harry had said was Sirius Black, 'we're all a bit jet-lagged at the moment. Britain to Australia has quite a time-difference; it'll take a bit of getting used to.'
'Righto,' said Kiz and Emberley almost in perfect unison, then they set about helping the sixteen people drag all their things inside and upstairs to the bedrooms. There would be a few who would have to share rooms, but Emberley thought they seemed to know each other well enough that they could work everything out.
'Well,' Kiz said to Harry as she and Emberley prepared to leave, 'we'll see you all tomorrow then, shall we?'
Harry walked with them to the door. 'Yep, see you tomorrow,' he agreed, and waved to them before shutting the door behind them. He had a feeling that he and the Order were in for a good time.
Harry woke early the next morning. He was eager to see what animals he'd be looking after.
He wandered down to the kitchen, still in his pyjamas. It was a good feeling, being able to plod around wearing whatever and knowing that nobody was going to give a damn. It was nice change from number four, Privet Drive that was for sure.
'Morning, Harry,' Remus Lupin's voice greeted him as he reached the bottom of the stairs.
'Good morning,' Harry replied.
'Breakfast?' Lupin motioned to a pile of toast he had no doubt conjured magically as there was no sign of a toaster and such, and to a tin labelled Cocky's Joy. On the label was a white bird with a yellow crest on its head.
'What's that?' Harry asked.
'Some sort of golden syrup,' Remus replied, 'It tastes good, which is the main thing.'
Harry sat down at the table across from Lupin and started spreading some of the syrup across his bread. He took a bit and chewed for a bit before saying,
'Mm, it does taste good.'
Slowly, the other members of the Order joined Harry and Lupin at the kitchen. After chatting with Ron and Hermione for a while, Harry went back upstairs and changed into some other clothes.
A few minutes later the doorbell rang, and Harry realised just how big the house was as he listened to the chimes echoing through the house on his way to answer the door.
'Hi, Harry,' Kiz greeted brightly.
'Hi, Kiz. Hi, Emberley,' Harry replied.
'Emberley' looked at Harry coldly. 'Don't ever call me Emberley, okay, Harry? It's Spaci.'
'Um, all right,' said Harry uncertainly, and looked at Kiz. 'I suppose you're not Kiz, either?'
Kiz smiled apologetically. 'For the moment, I am. One thing you have to know if you're going to be living near us for any period of time is that Em and I both have split personalities. So sometimes she'll be Emberley and other times she'll be Spaci. Sometimes I'll be Kiz and other times I'll be Lily.' She smiled again at the look on Harry's face. 'You'll get used to us after a while.'
'Okay, then,' Harry said, confused. 'Well, come in. Most of us are just finishing breakfast, but we'll be ready soon.'
'Cool,' said Kiz, 'come on, Spac.'
Spaci and Kiz followed Harry inside. Spaci looked around and noticed the fact that there were no rumpled lounges or mattresses lying on the floor.
'I don't mean to be rude or anything,' she said, 'but where the bloody hell did you all sleep last night?'
The man with longish black hair, who's name Spaci couldn't remember, answered, 'The younger members of our party found an empty room upstairs and have agreed to share it until other sleeping arrangements can be made. Not that I see why it's any of your business.'
Snape knew as well as anyone there that there was no point in telling the two Muggle girls that Dumbledore had conjured up some extra beds so that everyone had somewhere to sleep. The chances against them believing it were astronomical.
Spaci, not too pleased at being talked back to, stared coldly at Snape. 'Listen, mate,' she said, 'I still consider this house mine, since I never wanted it sold in the first place, so what goes on here is totally my business.'
'Spaci, stop it,' Kiz said angrily.
'Spaci?' said Hermione, 'I thought her name was Emberley.'
'Emberley is her alter ego. Emberley, me and my own alter ego, Lily, all decided to sell the house because it's far too big for us, but Spac didn't want to, so she's being all annoying about it.'
'Ah, I see,' said Snape sceptically. He decided he wasn't going to get along with Spaci. It wasn't helping that she was continuing to stare daggers at him. If only she had some house points he could deduct…
A couple of seconds later, however, Spaci's eyes glazed over. When they came back into focus, they were bright instead of cold. Emberley had returned.
'Oh, hello everyone,' she said, and then, realising where she was, she added, 'I've been Spaci all morning, haven't I?'
'Yes,' Kiz replied, 'they've only been here one day and already she's making enemies out of them.'
'Oh,' said Emberley, upset.
'Anyway,' Kiz said, keen to change the subject, 'if you're all ready now, we can start showing you around.'
'Are we all here?' asked Dumbledore, doing a quick head-count. 'Yes? All right, girls, I believe we're ready.'
'Coolies,' said Emberley, and she and Kiz led the way out into the enormous back yard.
The first thing that everyone noticed was a long, yellow and brown neck reaching up into the trees.
'Blimey,' said Hagrid incredulously, 'Yeh didn' say nothin' about any giraffes livin' here, too.' Ron slid a worried glance at Harry. It seemed Hagrid was as interested in wild Muggle animals as he was in Magical ones, and there was no knowing what could happen there…
'Uh, yeah,' said Kiz, 'they got here by mistake. Actually, that's an interesting story…'
'No, Lily, now is not the time for stories,' said Emberley, giving her friend a push in front of her, and then turning to face the others. 'This is Lily, everyone. She's obsessed with story telling. One day, she'll be an author, but until then…' Emberley sighed.
They were interrupted when Dumbledore gave a surprised yell from up the back of their group. Everyone turned around to see a slightly startled Dumbledore there with two black hairy arms around his neck.
'Dalmore, you dag,' Emberley laughed, lifting the chimpanzee off Dumbledore's back. 'Are you trying to scare the new owners?'
Dalmore affectionately pulled Emberley's glasses off her nose and attempted to put them on himself.
'No,' Emberley scolded gently, and turning to the person closest, added, 'Excuse me, Mr… err… Moody, I think, would you be able to grab them for me, please?'
Grunting, Mad-Eye Moody took the glasses out of the chimp's grip, and after Emberley had set Dalmore on the ground, he handed them back to her.
'What made you call him Dalmore?' asked Minerva … McGonagall, Emberley thought. That was close enough to her name anyway.
'It's the last name of a person we used to know,' explained Lily, who had turned back when she realised no one had been following her. 'We believe they look alike.'
'Oh,' said McGonagall, looking slightly horrified.
'Come on,' said Lily, grinning, 'the stables are this way. We'll show you around them first.'
Emberley and Lily led the way into the large wooden stables, explaining how their last stable hand and gone off and got married and now lived in Sydney and now had some fancy job in a puny little office on the top floor of a skyscraper.
Inside the stables, there were four stalls along one wall. In each stood a tall, proud horse. Lily walked over to the first one and stroked it along the snout. It whinnied softly and nuzzled her hand.
'This one's called Evening Star,' Lily said, 'so named because of the little white patch on her back." Hermione, who had been leaning on the fate of the stall, leaned over to see a smallish white circle amidst the black hair on Evening Star's back.
Emberley then led them over the next one, a chestnut stallion. 'This one's Chester,' she said, 'sort of named for his colour and sort of named because we just liked the name.'
Hermione worked her way to the front and leaned over to pat Chester on the snout. 'Oh, he's beautiful,' she gushed.
'I didn't know you were the horse-loving type,' Ron commented from beside her.
'I'm not,' she scowled back, 'but I'm allowed to say he's beautiful, aren't I?' Harry rolled his eyes. It would make life so much easier for everybody if those two just admitted they fancied each other and started going out together, he thought.
Emberley and Lily introduced them to the other two horses: a stallion called Beau Cheval ('It's French for Handsome Horse,' Emberley explained) and a mare named Ethereal Beauty ('We thought Black Beauty was a bit unoriginal,' Lily said).
'Over here's where we keep all the dry food for the animals,' Lily said, leading them over to the other side of the stable where there were several old, used petrol drums.
'There're tins in there to scoop stuff out,' Emberley said, leaning over sideways into one of the drums and pulling out a largish tin can.
'Just make sure that you don't do what Em did last week and fall in head first when the grain started to getting too low.'
'I keep you secrets, too, Lils,' Emberley scowled. Lily grinned. They led the way out of the stables and on to another wooden shed from which they could hear several low grunts.
'Oh, my God,' said Hermione, looking quite disgusted.
'Hey,' said Lily, 'never judge a book by its cover.' Emberley rolled her eyes.
Leaning over a small wooden fence, they saw a huge, fat sow surrounded by about a dozen piglets. Some of them were suckling, while others were curled up in the straw, asleep.
Emberley leant in and picked up one of the sleeping piglets. It squealed loudly and struggled, flailing its small hooves wildly, delivering a couple of blows to Emberley's stomach. However, Emberley didn't even flinch, and merely talked soothingly to it until it settled down, and sat quietly snorting in her arms.
'This is Jimbob,' she said to everyone. 'Anyone want to hold him?'
Sirius Black stepped forward. 'I'll give it a go,' he said, holding out his hands.
'Okay,' Emberley said, twisting Jimbob around to face Sirius. 'Now, put your hand under him like that,' she instructed, 'yes, that's it, and hold his snout with that hand. Yep, like that.'
'His snout's all muddy and wet!' Sirius protested, while everybody laughed. He balanced the pig in one hand and wiped the other on his clothes.
'Did you expect him to be pristine?' Lily grinned, 'I mean, he is a pig after all.'
'Well…' Sirius' voice trailed off.
'Shall we continue?' Emberley asked.
They walked on until they came to a pond in which several small green shapes were swimming. Lily held out her hand and Emberley, almost automatically, handed her a pair of thick gloves.
'Okay, children, do no try this at home,' said Lily, reaching into the water and pulling out a struggling baby crocodile.
Almost everyone stepped back. Lily, with a mischievous grin, made a motion as though to throw the crocodile in amongst them. However, she held onto it the entire time, and laughed when the gasped and took another step backwards.
Jimbob, who up until then had still been curled up in Sirius' arms, began squealing. Emberley took him into her own arms and walked back over to the pigsty while the rest of them listened to Lily explain a bit about the baby crocodiles.
'It would probably be a good idea if only one person handles them,' she said, 'we've found they don't particularly like too many people, strangers in particular.
'How're you going to decide who looks after what anyway? Are you going to draw a name and an animal out of a hat or something?'
'I had been wondering about how we were going to work that out,' Dumbledore said, 'and I believe that is a very good idea. Unless we think of something better, we will do that later on.' Lily saw a twinkle in his eye, and decided that Dumbledore was one cool old guy.
At that point, Emberley returned, carrying with her two funny-looking hats, which she placed on the heads of the first two people she came across.
'Gorgeous,' she said, beaming at them.
Sirius and Remus looked at each other and promptly burst out laughing. Sirius was now wearing a wide-brimmed hat to which several corks were attached on long pieces of string. Remus was wearing an old-fashioned peaked cap, the peak of which seemed to be almost coving his eyes. Everybody turned around to see what the matter was, and soon they had all joined in the laughing.
'What are the corks for?' Sirius asked.
'To keep the flies away,' Emberley explained. 'Australian tradition.'
Emberley turned back to her friend, who was still holding the crocodile, but looked a bit blank.
'Hello, Kiz,' she said brightly, 'you do know you're holding a crocodile, don't you?'
Kiz looked down at the crocodile in her hands, squealed and accidentally dropped it. It scurried into the group of startled witches and wizards until it found it's way to Gilderoy Lockhart's boot. It curled itself around his leg a couple of times and settled itself across both boots.
Gilderoy himself looked blankly from the crocodile to Kiz to Emberley and back to the crocodile again.
'Well, we know who'll be looking after them, then, don't we?' said Dumbledore, his eyes twinkling again. The rest of the group looked from him to Lockhart and back to him again. They had no doubt that Lockhart was about the worst person imaginable to look after baby crocodiles.
'Come on,' said Emberley, beckoning everyone again.
'Oh, bloody hell,' said the person everyone though was Kiz and pulled out a wand. She began summoning all the animals on the farm that they hadn't got around to showing the owners yet. It was quite a sight to see goats, turkeys, pigeons, kangaroos and peacocks, amongst other things, flying through the air towards them.
Emberley looked as surprised as the rest. 'Kirrilee,' she whispered, 'Kiz took a potion to get rid of you.'
Kirrilee shrugged. 'Then it didn't work, did it?' She pocketed her wand and looked at the bunch of people standing near her. 'My God,' she said, 'I can't believe it. Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore, and – Oh, my God!"
'What?' asked several people at once.
'Sirius Black??!!'
'Is he anyone we know?' Emberley asked.
'He's like, the second most wanted wizard in the world!' Kirrilee exclaimed.
'Ah, yeah,' said Sirius, 'well you see…' He didn't bother finishing though, because at that point her eyes went out of focus again and before they knew it, Kiz was back.
'Whoa, that was weird,' she said, 'Lily usually hangs around for longer than that.'
'Yeah…' said Emberley, slowly, 'I need to talk to you later. Anyway, the animals we haven't seen yet have all turned up here, meaning that we needn't bother doing the tour anymore. We can just talk here.'
'That's odd. Oh, well. Yeah, so what are we doing first?'
Emberley looked at the fluffy, grey koala that had landed in her arms when Kirrilee had summoned it. 'Well,' she said, 'might as well start with these guys.'
'Rightio.'
'Now, being English, you lot probably haven't ever come across koalas before. So. They're pretty quiet and usually keep to themselves most of the time but it'd be a good idea to have someone check on them every now and then. We've made them a little enclosure and they've got stuff to climb and stuff, so they should be pretty easy to look after.'
Emberley set the koala down and it began crawling back to where it had come from in the first place. Kiz bent down and picked up another chubby animal with sharp claws.
'This,' she said, 'is a wombat. His name is Bill. He has seriously sharp claws so don't get on the wrong side of him. Most of the time he'll keep to himself, we just leave him out something to eat every couple of days but usually he looks after himself.'
Tonks suddenly let out a yelp as a snout nuzzled her hand. She looked down to find a kangaroo there, looking for something to eat.
'Hello Missy-Moo,' said Emberley, joining Tonks and scratching the kangaroo behind the ears. 'The couple of kangaroos we have here are completely tame so don't worry if you see anything on the news about a person being attacked by a kangaroo or anything, because Missy here, and Sassy won't do that sort of thing.'
'Just make sure you feed them right,' Kiz added, 'they eat the grain in the stables and also they like bread and avocado and apples and things like that.'
'Avocado?' asked McGonagall.
'They love it. Really, they do.'
'Chickens of course,' said Emberley, pointing and not bothering to pick the animal up, 'are pretty easy. Just fill up their food each day and collect the eggs each morning and you'll be doing fine.'
'In fact most of the birds: pigeons, peacocks, and turkeys… you can just feed them and let them wander about.' Kiz pointed to each bird as she said its name.
Emberley went over to a sheep that was baaing and chewing grass not far away. 'The goats and sheep just need plenty of space to roam about and fresh grass and stuff,' she said. 'The goats like hilly areas though, so we keep them over there.' She pointed towards a gate through which the group could see a rocky hill descending.
Kiz was now attempting to calm down a bull that had been standing nearby and was now trying to buck anyone who got near it. 'The cow paddock,' she yelled over her shoulder, 'is next door to the sheep field just down there. They basically look after themselves as well, but we send a couple to market every now and then, so I hope we can train one of you into a fair-to-decent stockman. Then there's milking and all that sort of thing.'
'Last but not least,' said Emberley, stroking the leg of the giraffe they had seen earlier, 'is Baby. He, er, was a baby when he arrived here.' She looked up at the giraffe that was busy detaching some leaves off one of the taller trees nearby. 'He's pretty well behaved, just make sure he doesn't eat the stuff he shouldn't.'
'Well,' said Kiz, looking around, 'I think that's it. You can all decide who you're going to look after now.'
'Wait,' said Tonks, 'there's seventeen of us, but we've only seen sixteen animals. What will the extra person do?'
Emberley shrugged. 'House cleaning?' she suggested.
'Wait, what about the worm farm?' said Kiz.
'Oh, yeah. Um, yeah, this way people.' Everyone followed Kiz and Emberley back towards the house until they came to a black roundish container. 'Okay, anyone with a weak stomach close your eyes,' Emberley said as she lifted the lid on the worm farm. Underneath were several scrappy lettuce leaves which looked disgusting and underneath everyone could see hundreds of worms crawling over one another. Almost everybody turned away feeling a bit queasy.
'Righto, now that is it,' said Kiz, 'so come on back inside and we can work everything out.'
Kiz led the way back inside and went upstairs to find pens and paper. She came down again and got everyone to right the names on one sheet, while she and Emberley wrote down all the animals on the farm.
'I have an idea,' Emberley announced, 'you're names are one sheet, and our animals are on the other, so how about if we just go down each list and match them up. All though I believe Mr Lockhart is looking after the crocs?'
A few people looked a bit worried at using this mode of determining who was doing what, but Dumbledore had nodded before any of them could protest.
'Okay,' said Kiz, taking the sheet of paper with everyone's names. She looked at the list of names and then the one of animals and announced,
'Sirius Black will be looking after the sheep!'
Sirius seemed to almost breathe a sigh of relief. Emberley scribbled it down on another piece of paper. By the time they finished, Emberley's list looked like this:
Sirius – sheep
Harry – chickens
Remus – pigs
Tonks – kangaroos
Ginny – turkeys
Hermione – horses/stables
Ron – cows
Cho Chang - pigeons
Mad-Eye Moody – goats
Fred George – peacocks
Dumbledore – chimps
McGonagall – wombats
Hagrid – giraffes
Mme Maxime – worm farm
Snape – koalas
Lockhart – crocodiles
They had laughed at a few of the results. Harry, Ron and Hermione found it slightly hard to imagine Snape looking after the koalas. They were too cute and cuddly.
'What,' said Snape, 'is Lupin going to do at … er … that time of the month?'
'Excuse me?' exclaimed Emberley, who was more used to hearing this phrase in the feminine context. Lupin, however, thought quickly, and came up with a reply.
'I, er, have a sick friend in Sydney whom I'm trying to visit each month. I'll be going up for a couple of days so someone will have to fill in for me.'
'I'll do that,' said Tonks, quite eagerly. Lupin looked at her and she went slightly red. Harry looked back and forth between them. Well, there was something he'd never noticed before.
'Okay,' said Emberley and added that to her list, which she then attached to the front of the fridge.
'Well,' said Kiz, 'I think it's lunch time. Mind if we join you? Is Vegemite sandwiches okay with everyone?'
'Kiz, I don't think any of them would've ever tried Vegemite,' Emberley reminded her.
'Well, it's time they did,' Kiz replied, and pulling a pile of bread out of the fridge and a jar of black spread out of the cupboard, began making lunch for everyone.
A/N: Okay, I suppose you're wondering whether Kiz and I live on a farm or a national park?? Well, I'm sorta wondering the same thing. My God, I don't think I've ever written a single chapter this long! Hope I didn't get on your nerves going on like that, but well, ner if I did. If you happen to be a zoo-keeper, could you please give us some advice on looking after chimps and giraffes? That would be greatly appreciated! Please review!!!