Ann was a Muggle. What's more, she knew it.
She couldn't defend herself against any curses, couldn't charm a doorknob to save her life, and couldn't transform a single object into something that it wasn't. There was not a single drop of magical blood in her body. But perhaps the only thing magical about her was that despite this she was drawn to it. Some people love to watch football, some people collect rocks, and others go out to art shows. Ann, however, craved magic.
Her fascination started rather simply: Ann was an obsessive bookworm. She haunted used and rare bookstores all over her state and around the country. Family vacations to other countries left the family at a famous landmark, and Ann in its bookstores. She searched the Internet for nonexistent editions and books so rare that even their authors didn't know how to find them. Ann read everything, fiction or non-fiction - it was all the same to her. Fictitious characters had a place in this shy girl's heart as real people did in the average person's heart. What really fascinated Ann, however, were the Magic books.
Her Magic books, as she called them, weren't magic in and of themselves, but they were books about magic. It started when Ann was eleven. She had reached that age where she began to yearn for adult books because now, for the first time, she felt mature and conscious, as if somehow she had just developed into a full human being. A classmate of hers had a grandmother who passed away, and their family was giving away the books piled in the old lady's attic to whoever wanted them before they packed the whole lot off to Goodwill. It would keep them on the good side of the neighbors and be fewer books to pack. It was no skin off their noses. That was how Ann found herself digging through an enormous pile of books that summer, the sweat rolling down her skin making her shirt cling to her back. She had already brought home two boxes of books earlier in the week. She was digging through the books at the very bottom when she came upon, under a mass of old National Geographic magazines, an especially thick and moldy book. It was called Hogwarts, A History.
She devoured it. She was fascinated that someone could have invented a magical school and come up with such a thorough and intricate history. She began to find more books, hidden behind all the other books in the bookstore, tucked in corners during garage sales. She found books about unicorns and Goblin Rebellions and more things than she could have ever thought possible, written as if they were real! Ann wished desperately that they did exist - she wanted the world to be magical and splendid and as real as a book, not the ugly and mundane chaos it really was.
Someone reading about Ann's life might consider it full of well-timed accidents, but this is not so. Most things Ann did, she did them deliberately. And it was by deliberate effort that she did indeed find her way into that magical world she craved.
One day Ann was walking through the city, a book in hand and an eye out for a good place to read it. She was crossing an alley between an empty building and an antique store when she realized she was missing an appointment. She was furious that she hadn't remembered before - Ann wrote everything down in her little planner she carried in her book bag and reviewed each day's agenda before she left the house. She was even more furious when she whipped out the book and found the blank spot over that day's date. She always wrote things down - she would forget them otherwise. She stormed off to her house to try to figure out what she was missing.
She never could find what appointment she was missing. She could have ascribed it to temporary insanity, but Ann had a habit of thinking too much. Well, she called it thinking - her family and teachers called it daydreaming. She remembered all the anti-Muggle protection charms around Hogwarts. She fantasized that she had just run against one of these non- existent spells. Ann loved to daydream - but she couldn't just daydream like ordinary girls: she had to act it out. She dressed up all in black, pretending she was a witch walking through the Muggle streets. She would go into that alley and pretend it was full of Magic bookstores. Or at least maybe find a quiet corner to read.
When she came to the alley, she was pretending so hard that it was at first difficult for her to determine what was real and what was not. Her mind was whirling with all the appointments and important events she was missing, but she went into the alley anyway. Her amazement at the transformation that took place before her eyes soon turned into joy when she realized her dream had come true!
The rest, for Ann, was history. She found her magical world full of all the books she could dream of. She managed to secure jobs for herself in the restaurants and bookstores there so she could have their strange shaped coins to buy more Magic books with. In a way, it was almost disappointing that what she had been reading was real. What a dork - she had been reading other's people textbooks as Muggles read romance novels! But an entire new world of possibilities opened up before her. Her passion for books continued unabated.
Most wizards and witches in the small city knew she was Muggle - she never dressed or acted otherwise - but they smiled at the sweet little girl and allowed her to quietly read her books. They weren't supposed to let Muggles in, but she had somehow gotten in on her own and most figured it was something she'd grow out of and eventually forget anyway. It wasn't until her later teenage years that they stopped smiling. They wanted to use a Memory Charm to make her forget about the Magic marketplace, but from all the books she'd read it would likely deprive her of half her life's memories. Instead she was simply forbid from coming back. It might have ended there had Ann not made another deliberate decision.
There was a myth she had come across again and again, of a hidden book in an underwater cave. It was nothing evil, simply a book written by the ancients on sea monsters that have since become extinct or simply disappeared. It was of extremely great interest to scholars, but it was said to be protected beyond belief with magic that would kill any witch or wizard who searched for it. But it didn't escape Ann's attention that there was no mention at all of protection against Muggles. In fact, after she carefully studied this point, she concluded that there were no anti- Muggle spells protecting it at all, as this would only help those possessing magic to find it. It was a grave risk, perhaps, but not, thought Ann, to those who knew what they were doing. After some scuba- diving lessons and equipment shopping, she waltzed in and grabbed the book, a simple Muggle with a knack for puzzles.
She knew exactly what would happen if she presented the book directly to a Magic bookstore, exactly how much she'd remember of the encounter, and how much she'd be rewarded for her effort. Not very much - not a cent. So she went into business on her own. After the huge success of this first book, which sold for an insanely high amount of galleons, bookstores around the world were more than happy to do business with her. She could be contacted, however, only by owl. She was like magic to book seekers everywhere though - she could find, it seemed, any rare or valuable book commissioned. She had just as much success with Muggle books, operating in the same fashion, although it found it less rewarding in terms of excitement and gold (where else could you bathe in fire, wade through acid, dodge death curses left and right?). To thousands of people around the world, she was simply a name on a card, rumored to actually be an entire corporation instead of the one person printed in boldface type: M. A. Wyvern, Rare Books Dealer.
Ann knew exactly who she was and what she was interested in. If a book caught her attention, she found it - otherwise not. She enjoyed being secluded. She traveled from place to place, rarely picking up the customs and languages of the country she was passing through. She isolated herself on empty prairies, lonely mountains - or in the middle of a city, which was just a good a place as any for hiding. Ann was certainly reclusive and shy, stuttering and mumbling when in the presence of others, but she wasn't necessarily insecure.she told herself. She was Mary Anne Wyvern, lover and seeker of books, student of Magical history, hiker and occasional rock- climber, lover of Moulin Rouge and The Secret Garden, eater of pizza and chocolate. She had no friends, no personal correspondences. Her family, the faces she had lived with for seventeen years, her older sibling now faded voices, meant nothing to her. They quickly passed out of her restricted existence, drifting away on the tide of time.
When she turned twenty-five, her golden birthday, Ann celebrated by reading in her house - alone. She didn't have a single friend, except, perhaps, for Jack, the dark skinny boy she had just adopted.
She had been living on the island less than two months when she realized this boy she had befriended walking between the post office and general market was a wizard. Jack was also a member of a people who regarded any kind of magic with distrust and superstition, sometimes open hostility and violence. He was also an orphan. This was a dangerous combination to be.
Ann took Jack under her wing, more a younger brother than a son, and her being more a babysitter and older sister than a mother. She allowed him to practice magic, even helped when she could, and gave him free reign to roam the empty stretch of beach Ann's current house was on. Jack, who she fondly called Jackaroo, was a lot like her - he functioned best when left alone. Within reason, of course. He was almost seven years old.
Ann and Jack were the only people she knew that lived on this part of the island for miles in each direction. They had only the tide and nearby cliffs for neighbors. So, when Ann was out making sand castles with Jack late one Saturday morning in the beginning of the summer, she was surprised to see a man walking towards them. She wasn't scared - she had beat up enough men to consider herself adequately safe in most situations (a prerequisite for a young woman living alone and isolated). She watched him approach with curiosity. He had shoulder-length dark hair, a straight, long nose, and eyes that, once she could see them clearly, burned with an intensity that almost scared her. Despite the fact that it was summer, he wore dark trousers and a long-sleeve shirt. His clothes were casual, but in that I'm-rich-enough-to-dress-down sort of way. Ann tried to shake that last thought from her head. She certainly couldn't be bitter now that she was rich herself, although she definitely didn't look it. She was wearing khaki hiking shorts and a open light-blue button-down over her black bikini. A tan fishing cap hid her forehead from the sun.
She stood and brushed the dirt off her shorts. She looked up at his face. He must be over six feet tall, she thought. Her 5'3" figure didn't come past his chest. "Can I help you?" she asked edgily. He was on her property.
"I'm looking for a, er, an acquaintance of mine," he told her. He spoke with a crisp British accent. She wondered what her own American accent sounded like to him. Probably as weird, she guessed, as his deep voice sounded to her.
"What does this acquaintance of yours look like?" she asked. She hadn't seen anyone out on her beach ever in the five months she'd been here, but it wasn't the kind of thing you go telling strangers.
"He has dark eyes, dark hair, kind of longish, I guess about the length of mine."
"Is he as pale as you?" she said, looking at his ghost-white hand. She cut him off before he could answer, "No, I haven't seen anybody by that description."
"Are you sure?" he pressed her. "He's wearing teal green swimming trunks, and a white under shirt. He might have just run by?"
"No," she answered. "I would remember if I had seen him."
"Where did the bloody fool run off to now," he muttered to himself. "I can't believe Albus is making me baby-sit a thirty-five year old man." he said to himself in contempt. He scanned down the beach, but saw nothing but white sand in either direction.
"What you name?" asked Jack.
"What is your name?" Ann immediately corrected. When Jack was around new people his developing grammar tended to lapse years.
The man looked down at the dark child at his feet. "Severus," he answered quickly, as if not sure this small boy was worthy of knowing.
"Uncle Severus!" Jack cried out, flinging his arm around Severus's leg. He held on as if for dear life.
"Let off you little brat!" Severus demanded with a scowl on his face. Ann grinned - a man after her own heart. She wasn't fond of children in general. She reacted to each child she met individually, annoyance with immaturity and unconcern with stupidity. She felt no desire to make funny noises at the lumps of fat women dragged around called infants. Ann wasn't a very nurturing person, but Jack had gained her trust and fondness. Jack had a habit of attaching himself to strange people - like Ann. It seemed Severus would now be another. She was pleased to note that the scowl on Severus's face didn't completely reach his eyes.
"Let go of the nice man, Jack," she said. She didn't really care - Jack could do what he wanted. Ignoring her strict appearance, Ann was very lenient as a guardian. She and Jack suited each other.
"I want to show him my magic tricks," Jack said. Ann had gone to great lengths to stress the need to hide his magic from normal people. Why was he ignoring one of the few rules Ann bothered to enforce now?
"If you must," said Severus. "But I have no doubt it will only a pitiful mockery of true magic."
Jack was undeterred as he gathered the four plastic shovels strewn about their feet and carefully balanced them one atop the other. Jack loved to pick up anything, stick or forks, and balance them.
"Fascinating," Severus said in a voice that said otherwise. Ann, instead of being mad at him, was glad he was at least honest, although it didn't completely make up for his obvious lack of other desirable character traits. He lifted a foot and kicked the shovels over. They sprang back up into the vertical row. Severus smirked. "Magic indeed. Jack, is it? I suppose you're a witch?" he asked Ann.
"No," she answered, unsure where this was going and how he was going to react.
"Is his father then? Or are you both Muggles?"
He must be a wizard, she thought. Maybe that's why he dresses so strangely? A voice said in the back of her head, don't count on it. Another answered, you're no fashion expert yourself chica. "No, neither his father nor his mother possessed magic."
"I see." he sighed and wiped the sweat off his brow. He was not a man taken with small-talk, and he could see from the clenched jaw of the young lady that she wasn't either. "Well, I still have several miles to go before lunch, so if you'll excuse me."
"You could eat lunch with us," Jack said, more a command than a suggestion. He had abandoned his shovels and was walking towards the house. "Please?"
"I don't think your. um, guardian would appreciate it if you just brought strange people home for lunch."
"You're welcome if you want to take a break from walking," Ann said suddenly. "It's no trouble to me - if you know how to make your own sandwich and stay out of my way." She didn't know why she had just invited a complete stranger over for lunch. It was the exact opposite of her entire life story. "After all," she added, "you did just walk five miles in the heat." What could they possibly talk about? She hoped if he accepted he didn't try to talk to her. Was she just attracted to older men? It might be the hair. Ann had always had a thing for guys with long hair - even if he did need to wash it.
Severus examined the girl - no, that wasn't fair, she was a woman - before him. Her offer to lunch was just that. It wasn't an invitation for conversation, friendship, and obligation at all. Simply food. There seemed to be no pretense to her manner. Severus knew little of Muggle ways, but he did know that Muggle air-conditioning could possibly be a thing of magic in itself.
He accepted.
Maybe that bastard Sirius would turn up. Maybe Jack was starting to interest him - how did a boy like him end up on a place like this? Maybe he wouldn't mind spending a few minutes sitting in a neighbor's kitchen and eating sandwiches as if he were normal.
Who knew?
"How did you know I'd walked five miles?" he asked as he followed them up the wooden stairs to their back porch. "Lucky guess?"
"Well, I assumed you live in the house on the cliffs. It's been unoccupied forever, but it's swarming with anti-Muggle spells, and you're a wizard. So, yeah - a lucky guess," she said.
He entered their house. Except for the sand that had seeped onto most of the floor by the back door, and the piles of books and papers everywhere, the lady's house was beautiful: it was full of pale wood and huge ceiling to floor windows. One of the things that Severus liked about it was that there was very little decoration. No flowery nonsense or ornamentations filled space on the walls and floor. A few carefully chosen reproductions were on the wall and the spare woven rug on the wooden floors. Lady?
"I forgot to ask what your name is," Severus apologized.
"It's Ann," she replied, shoving various ingredients on the counter. Jack started to make a jelly and carrot sandwich. Severus made his own celery and peanut butter one. Ann smothered two slices of bread with butter and cut off a hunk of cheese. Jack drank tomato juice, Severus lemonade, Ann PowerAde. They didn't talk too much at first. Ann seemed extremely interested in Hogwarts and wanted to know mostly what Severus knew of its history and the spells protecting it.
"I thought you said you were a Mud- er, Muggle. How did you even know about my house?" he asked her.
"The anti-Muggle spells gave it away big time. When a reclusive hermit is walking on the beach and suddenly has strange urges to check for nonexistent appointments, it's a fairly large giveaway."
"You mean all Muggles can tell when we put charms in place to keep them away?"
"No, just me. I guess you could say I'm very observant. Or that I think about things too much."
"But why in the world would you be so interested in magic if you can't even work it?" He knew instantly he had said the wrong thing. Her eyes usually thoughtful brown eyes suddenly flashed in anger.
"Oh, I see. The wizards and witches can observe the Muggles - that's perfectly fine, because they're just rats, little curiosities, like ants you step on if they get in the way. But they're not completely human - they're not allowed to study the wizards and witches right back. What would the scientists say if the lab rats tried to put them under a microscope to examine them? If your kind can be interested in things like electricity, why is it so wrong for me to love to read your books and be interested in your history? Doesn't Hogwarts have a class dedicated to studying Muggles?"
He had nothing to say to that. He felt vaguely unpleasant at the thought of a Muggle learning so much about his kind - it was contrary to everything he had been taught his entire life. This girl was certainly an anomaly, but he couldn't help wondering if she had a point. She pursued her studies with more zest and determination that most of the wizards and witches he knew. And she knew more, too. If there was one thing Severus could admire above all else in a person, it was competence.
She was interesting to talk to, although she did have funny ideas. "What is magic?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you use it all the time, don't you? Is it something that comes from inside of you that affects the outside world? Or is it some kind of force that's inherent in matter that wizards and witches somehow manage to control, like being able to see a different dimension? And why is there only magic and non-magic? I know lots of Muggles who have one or two experiences during their lifetimes that seem to border on being magic. Do you think everyone has some magic, but only some can use it, like everyone having the muscles to be able to wiggle their ears?"
Severus was disturbed because he had no answers. But he was intrigued, despite the fact that her strange questions were elementary. They ended up talking for a while about the difference between art and science and other such irrelevant topics that with most people Severus would get bored after a few minutes.
"Are you going to the Quidditch World Cup at the end of the summer? You're from Britain, aren't you?" she asked.
"No and yes. I wouldn't go to such nonsense anyway, but I'm staying here with someone who needed, uh, a little time away, shall we say? Are you going to go? Jack would probably enjoy it, although it's probably too late to get tickets if you didn't plan ahead."
"We don't like large crowds."
"Oh."
When it started to become later in the afternoon he worried that he was staying past his welcome. She didn't insist on his staying but gave him an open invitation to come back. "Jack could really use, I don't know, a kind of father figure who knows more about magic than I do. I mean, I know a lot, but I don't have any. You know how it is at that age?"
"Not really," Severus admitted. He didn't really recall his past very clearly. Maybe one of the reasons he was so unsympathetic towards children was his inability to really remember his own childhood.
"Well, I don't either," she said. "Who actually remembers their childhood? I just remember being me. I wonder sometimes if humans are actually conscious beings before they finally grow-up at the end of high school."
"Maybe sometime I will come back, to help Jack."
"For me, too," she added. "Well, it's not often I find someone I can just talk to, on the same level and all." She tried to sound casual, but her face was apologetic. She was starting to seem older and older to him in his mind. It bothered him.
She watched him walk away and wondered if he would ever stop by. If it was her, she probably wouldn't make a point of stopping by again, and he was a lot like her. She smiled. He thought her views were strange, but there was plenty strange about him. He was almost.evil, but in a good kind of way, if that was possible.
She watched his tall figure disappear over a sand dune. He didn't look back.
Evil in a sexy kind of way, she amended.
She couldn't defend herself against any curses, couldn't charm a doorknob to save her life, and couldn't transform a single object into something that it wasn't. There was not a single drop of magical blood in her body. But perhaps the only thing magical about her was that despite this she was drawn to it. Some people love to watch football, some people collect rocks, and others go out to art shows. Ann, however, craved magic.
Her fascination started rather simply: Ann was an obsessive bookworm. She haunted used and rare bookstores all over her state and around the country. Family vacations to other countries left the family at a famous landmark, and Ann in its bookstores. She searched the Internet for nonexistent editions and books so rare that even their authors didn't know how to find them. Ann read everything, fiction or non-fiction - it was all the same to her. Fictitious characters had a place in this shy girl's heart as real people did in the average person's heart. What really fascinated Ann, however, were the Magic books.
Her Magic books, as she called them, weren't magic in and of themselves, but they were books about magic. It started when Ann was eleven. She had reached that age where she began to yearn for adult books because now, for the first time, she felt mature and conscious, as if somehow she had just developed into a full human being. A classmate of hers had a grandmother who passed away, and their family was giving away the books piled in the old lady's attic to whoever wanted them before they packed the whole lot off to Goodwill. It would keep them on the good side of the neighbors and be fewer books to pack. It was no skin off their noses. That was how Ann found herself digging through an enormous pile of books that summer, the sweat rolling down her skin making her shirt cling to her back. She had already brought home two boxes of books earlier in the week. She was digging through the books at the very bottom when she came upon, under a mass of old National Geographic magazines, an especially thick and moldy book. It was called Hogwarts, A History.
She devoured it. She was fascinated that someone could have invented a magical school and come up with such a thorough and intricate history. She began to find more books, hidden behind all the other books in the bookstore, tucked in corners during garage sales. She found books about unicorns and Goblin Rebellions and more things than she could have ever thought possible, written as if they were real! Ann wished desperately that they did exist - she wanted the world to be magical and splendid and as real as a book, not the ugly and mundane chaos it really was.
Someone reading about Ann's life might consider it full of well-timed accidents, but this is not so. Most things Ann did, she did them deliberately. And it was by deliberate effort that she did indeed find her way into that magical world she craved.
One day Ann was walking through the city, a book in hand and an eye out for a good place to read it. She was crossing an alley between an empty building and an antique store when she realized she was missing an appointment. She was furious that she hadn't remembered before - Ann wrote everything down in her little planner she carried in her book bag and reviewed each day's agenda before she left the house. She was even more furious when she whipped out the book and found the blank spot over that day's date. She always wrote things down - she would forget them otherwise. She stormed off to her house to try to figure out what she was missing.
She never could find what appointment she was missing. She could have ascribed it to temporary insanity, but Ann had a habit of thinking too much. Well, she called it thinking - her family and teachers called it daydreaming. She remembered all the anti-Muggle protection charms around Hogwarts. She fantasized that she had just run against one of these non- existent spells. Ann loved to daydream - but she couldn't just daydream like ordinary girls: she had to act it out. She dressed up all in black, pretending she was a witch walking through the Muggle streets. She would go into that alley and pretend it was full of Magic bookstores. Or at least maybe find a quiet corner to read.
When she came to the alley, she was pretending so hard that it was at first difficult for her to determine what was real and what was not. Her mind was whirling with all the appointments and important events she was missing, but she went into the alley anyway. Her amazement at the transformation that took place before her eyes soon turned into joy when she realized her dream had come true!
The rest, for Ann, was history. She found her magical world full of all the books she could dream of. She managed to secure jobs for herself in the restaurants and bookstores there so she could have their strange shaped coins to buy more Magic books with. In a way, it was almost disappointing that what she had been reading was real. What a dork - she had been reading other's people textbooks as Muggles read romance novels! But an entire new world of possibilities opened up before her. Her passion for books continued unabated.
Most wizards and witches in the small city knew she was Muggle - she never dressed or acted otherwise - but they smiled at the sweet little girl and allowed her to quietly read her books. They weren't supposed to let Muggles in, but she had somehow gotten in on her own and most figured it was something she'd grow out of and eventually forget anyway. It wasn't until her later teenage years that they stopped smiling. They wanted to use a Memory Charm to make her forget about the Magic marketplace, but from all the books she'd read it would likely deprive her of half her life's memories. Instead she was simply forbid from coming back. It might have ended there had Ann not made another deliberate decision.
There was a myth she had come across again and again, of a hidden book in an underwater cave. It was nothing evil, simply a book written by the ancients on sea monsters that have since become extinct or simply disappeared. It was of extremely great interest to scholars, but it was said to be protected beyond belief with magic that would kill any witch or wizard who searched for it. But it didn't escape Ann's attention that there was no mention at all of protection against Muggles. In fact, after she carefully studied this point, she concluded that there were no anti- Muggle spells protecting it at all, as this would only help those possessing magic to find it. It was a grave risk, perhaps, but not, thought Ann, to those who knew what they were doing. After some scuba- diving lessons and equipment shopping, she waltzed in and grabbed the book, a simple Muggle with a knack for puzzles.
She knew exactly what would happen if she presented the book directly to a Magic bookstore, exactly how much she'd remember of the encounter, and how much she'd be rewarded for her effort. Not very much - not a cent. So she went into business on her own. After the huge success of this first book, which sold for an insanely high amount of galleons, bookstores around the world were more than happy to do business with her. She could be contacted, however, only by owl. She was like magic to book seekers everywhere though - she could find, it seemed, any rare or valuable book commissioned. She had just as much success with Muggle books, operating in the same fashion, although it found it less rewarding in terms of excitement and gold (where else could you bathe in fire, wade through acid, dodge death curses left and right?). To thousands of people around the world, she was simply a name on a card, rumored to actually be an entire corporation instead of the one person printed in boldface type: M. A. Wyvern, Rare Books Dealer.
Ann knew exactly who she was and what she was interested in. If a book caught her attention, she found it - otherwise not. She enjoyed being secluded. She traveled from place to place, rarely picking up the customs and languages of the country she was passing through. She isolated herself on empty prairies, lonely mountains - or in the middle of a city, which was just a good a place as any for hiding. Ann was certainly reclusive and shy, stuttering and mumbling when in the presence of others, but she wasn't necessarily insecure.she told herself. She was Mary Anne Wyvern, lover and seeker of books, student of Magical history, hiker and occasional rock- climber, lover of Moulin Rouge and The Secret Garden, eater of pizza and chocolate. She had no friends, no personal correspondences. Her family, the faces she had lived with for seventeen years, her older sibling now faded voices, meant nothing to her. They quickly passed out of her restricted existence, drifting away on the tide of time.
When she turned twenty-five, her golden birthday, Ann celebrated by reading in her house - alone. She didn't have a single friend, except, perhaps, for Jack, the dark skinny boy she had just adopted.
She had been living on the island less than two months when she realized this boy she had befriended walking between the post office and general market was a wizard. Jack was also a member of a people who regarded any kind of magic with distrust and superstition, sometimes open hostility and violence. He was also an orphan. This was a dangerous combination to be.
Ann took Jack under her wing, more a younger brother than a son, and her being more a babysitter and older sister than a mother. She allowed him to practice magic, even helped when she could, and gave him free reign to roam the empty stretch of beach Ann's current house was on. Jack, who she fondly called Jackaroo, was a lot like her - he functioned best when left alone. Within reason, of course. He was almost seven years old.
Ann and Jack were the only people she knew that lived on this part of the island for miles in each direction. They had only the tide and nearby cliffs for neighbors. So, when Ann was out making sand castles with Jack late one Saturday morning in the beginning of the summer, she was surprised to see a man walking towards them. She wasn't scared - she had beat up enough men to consider herself adequately safe in most situations (a prerequisite for a young woman living alone and isolated). She watched him approach with curiosity. He had shoulder-length dark hair, a straight, long nose, and eyes that, once she could see them clearly, burned with an intensity that almost scared her. Despite the fact that it was summer, he wore dark trousers and a long-sleeve shirt. His clothes were casual, but in that I'm-rich-enough-to-dress-down sort of way. Ann tried to shake that last thought from her head. She certainly couldn't be bitter now that she was rich herself, although she definitely didn't look it. She was wearing khaki hiking shorts and a open light-blue button-down over her black bikini. A tan fishing cap hid her forehead from the sun.
She stood and brushed the dirt off her shorts. She looked up at his face. He must be over six feet tall, she thought. Her 5'3" figure didn't come past his chest. "Can I help you?" she asked edgily. He was on her property.
"I'm looking for a, er, an acquaintance of mine," he told her. He spoke with a crisp British accent. She wondered what her own American accent sounded like to him. Probably as weird, she guessed, as his deep voice sounded to her.
"What does this acquaintance of yours look like?" she asked. She hadn't seen anyone out on her beach ever in the five months she'd been here, but it wasn't the kind of thing you go telling strangers.
"He has dark eyes, dark hair, kind of longish, I guess about the length of mine."
"Is he as pale as you?" she said, looking at his ghost-white hand. She cut him off before he could answer, "No, I haven't seen anybody by that description."
"Are you sure?" he pressed her. "He's wearing teal green swimming trunks, and a white under shirt. He might have just run by?"
"No," she answered. "I would remember if I had seen him."
"Where did the bloody fool run off to now," he muttered to himself. "I can't believe Albus is making me baby-sit a thirty-five year old man." he said to himself in contempt. He scanned down the beach, but saw nothing but white sand in either direction.
"What you name?" asked Jack.
"What is your name?" Ann immediately corrected. When Jack was around new people his developing grammar tended to lapse years.
The man looked down at the dark child at his feet. "Severus," he answered quickly, as if not sure this small boy was worthy of knowing.
"Uncle Severus!" Jack cried out, flinging his arm around Severus's leg. He held on as if for dear life.
"Let off you little brat!" Severus demanded with a scowl on his face. Ann grinned - a man after her own heart. She wasn't fond of children in general. She reacted to each child she met individually, annoyance with immaturity and unconcern with stupidity. She felt no desire to make funny noises at the lumps of fat women dragged around called infants. Ann wasn't a very nurturing person, but Jack had gained her trust and fondness. Jack had a habit of attaching himself to strange people - like Ann. It seemed Severus would now be another. She was pleased to note that the scowl on Severus's face didn't completely reach his eyes.
"Let go of the nice man, Jack," she said. She didn't really care - Jack could do what he wanted. Ignoring her strict appearance, Ann was very lenient as a guardian. She and Jack suited each other.
"I want to show him my magic tricks," Jack said. Ann had gone to great lengths to stress the need to hide his magic from normal people. Why was he ignoring one of the few rules Ann bothered to enforce now?
"If you must," said Severus. "But I have no doubt it will only a pitiful mockery of true magic."
Jack was undeterred as he gathered the four plastic shovels strewn about their feet and carefully balanced them one atop the other. Jack loved to pick up anything, stick or forks, and balance them.
"Fascinating," Severus said in a voice that said otherwise. Ann, instead of being mad at him, was glad he was at least honest, although it didn't completely make up for his obvious lack of other desirable character traits. He lifted a foot and kicked the shovels over. They sprang back up into the vertical row. Severus smirked. "Magic indeed. Jack, is it? I suppose you're a witch?" he asked Ann.
"No," she answered, unsure where this was going and how he was going to react.
"Is his father then? Or are you both Muggles?"
He must be a wizard, she thought. Maybe that's why he dresses so strangely? A voice said in the back of her head, don't count on it. Another answered, you're no fashion expert yourself chica. "No, neither his father nor his mother possessed magic."
"I see." he sighed and wiped the sweat off his brow. He was not a man taken with small-talk, and he could see from the clenched jaw of the young lady that she wasn't either. "Well, I still have several miles to go before lunch, so if you'll excuse me."
"You could eat lunch with us," Jack said, more a command than a suggestion. He had abandoned his shovels and was walking towards the house. "Please?"
"I don't think your. um, guardian would appreciate it if you just brought strange people home for lunch."
"You're welcome if you want to take a break from walking," Ann said suddenly. "It's no trouble to me - if you know how to make your own sandwich and stay out of my way." She didn't know why she had just invited a complete stranger over for lunch. It was the exact opposite of her entire life story. "After all," she added, "you did just walk five miles in the heat." What could they possibly talk about? She hoped if he accepted he didn't try to talk to her. Was she just attracted to older men? It might be the hair. Ann had always had a thing for guys with long hair - even if he did need to wash it.
Severus examined the girl - no, that wasn't fair, she was a woman - before him. Her offer to lunch was just that. It wasn't an invitation for conversation, friendship, and obligation at all. Simply food. There seemed to be no pretense to her manner. Severus knew little of Muggle ways, but he did know that Muggle air-conditioning could possibly be a thing of magic in itself.
He accepted.
Maybe that bastard Sirius would turn up. Maybe Jack was starting to interest him - how did a boy like him end up on a place like this? Maybe he wouldn't mind spending a few minutes sitting in a neighbor's kitchen and eating sandwiches as if he were normal.
Who knew?
"How did you know I'd walked five miles?" he asked as he followed them up the wooden stairs to their back porch. "Lucky guess?"
"Well, I assumed you live in the house on the cliffs. It's been unoccupied forever, but it's swarming with anti-Muggle spells, and you're a wizard. So, yeah - a lucky guess," she said.
He entered their house. Except for the sand that had seeped onto most of the floor by the back door, and the piles of books and papers everywhere, the lady's house was beautiful: it was full of pale wood and huge ceiling to floor windows. One of the things that Severus liked about it was that there was very little decoration. No flowery nonsense or ornamentations filled space on the walls and floor. A few carefully chosen reproductions were on the wall and the spare woven rug on the wooden floors. Lady?
"I forgot to ask what your name is," Severus apologized.
"It's Ann," she replied, shoving various ingredients on the counter. Jack started to make a jelly and carrot sandwich. Severus made his own celery and peanut butter one. Ann smothered two slices of bread with butter and cut off a hunk of cheese. Jack drank tomato juice, Severus lemonade, Ann PowerAde. They didn't talk too much at first. Ann seemed extremely interested in Hogwarts and wanted to know mostly what Severus knew of its history and the spells protecting it.
"I thought you said you were a Mud- er, Muggle. How did you even know about my house?" he asked her.
"The anti-Muggle spells gave it away big time. When a reclusive hermit is walking on the beach and suddenly has strange urges to check for nonexistent appointments, it's a fairly large giveaway."
"You mean all Muggles can tell when we put charms in place to keep them away?"
"No, just me. I guess you could say I'm very observant. Or that I think about things too much."
"But why in the world would you be so interested in magic if you can't even work it?" He knew instantly he had said the wrong thing. Her eyes usually thoughtful brown eyes suddenly flashed in anger.
"Oh, I see. The wizards and witches can observe the Muggles - that's perfectly fine, because they're just rats, little curiosities, like ants you step on if they get in the way. But they're not completely human - they're not allowed to study the wizards and witches right back. What would the scientists say if the lab rats tried to put them under a microscope to examine them? If your kind can be interested in things like electricity, why is it so wrong for me to love to read your books and be interested in your history? Doesn't Hogwarts have a class dedicated to studying Muggles?"
He had nothing to say to that. He felt vaguely unpleasant at the thought of a Muggle learning so much about his kind - it was contrary to everything he had been taught his entire life. This girl was certainly an anomaly, but he couldn't help wondering if she had a point. She pursued her studies with more zest and determination that most of the wizards and witches he knew. And she knew more, too. If there was one thing Severus could admire above all else in a person, it was competence.
She was interesting to talk to, although she did have funny ideas. "What is magic?" she asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you use it all the time, don't you? Is it something that comes from inside of you that affects the outside world? Or is it some kind of force that's inherent in matter that wizards and witches somehow manage to control, like being able to see a different dimension? And why is there only magic and non-magic? I know lots of Muggles who have one or two experiences during their lifetimes that seem to border on being magic. Do you think everyone has some magic, but only some can use it, like everyone having the muscles to be able to wiggle their ears?"
Severus was disturbed because he had no answers. But he was intrigued, despite the fact that her strange questions were elementary. They ended up talking for a while about the difference between art and science and other such irrelevant topics that with most people Severus would get bored after a few minutes.
"Are you going to the Quidditch World Cup at the end of the summer? You're from Britain, aren't you?" she asked.
"No and yes. I wouldn't go to such nonsense anyway, but I'm staying here with someone who needed, uh, a little time away, shall we say? Are you going to go? Jack would probably enjoy it, although it's probably too late to get tickets if you didn't plan ahead."
"We don't like large crowds."
"Oh."
When it started to become later in the afternoon he worried that he was staying past his welcome. She didn't insist on his staying but gave him an open invitation to come back. "Jack could really use, I don't know, a kind of father figure who knows more about magic than I do. I mean, I know a lot, but I don't have any. You know how it is at that age?"
"Not really," Severus admitted. He didn't really recall his past very clearly. Maybe one of the reasons he was so unsympathetic towards children was his inability to really remember his own childhood.
"Well, I don't either," she said. "Who actually remembers their childhood? I just remember being me. I wonder sometimes if humans are actually conscious beings before they finally grow-up at the end of high school."
"Maybe sometime I will come back, to help Jack."
"For me, too," she added. "Well, it's not often I find someone I can just talk to, on the same level and all." She tried to sound casual, but her face was apologetic. She was starting to seem older and older to him in his mind. It bothered him.
She watched him walk away and wondered if he would ever stop by. If it was her, she probably wouldn't make a point of stopping by again, and he was a lot like her. She smiled. He thought her views were strange, but there was plenty strange about him. He was almost.evil, but in a good kind of way, if that was possible.
She watched his tall figure disappear over a sand dune. He didn't look back.
Evil in a sexy kind of way, she amended.