(A/N: I'm sorry if I'm off on teatime. I looked up what I could online, but I've never actually taken tea, we didn't have time for it when I was in England, so just go with me, please.
Also, Mrs. Parker's spiel is meant to be biased and not necessarily true, so that is not my opinion, or fact, just her way of telling it.
Okay, I'm veryveryveryveryveryveryvery sorry about not updating for four months, I know I said I couldn't update for two weeks because I'd be on vacation, but then vacation turned into reading the 6th book and then in turned into going to college. I hope I'm getting back on track now.
And, of course, thanks to the wonderful reviewers for chapter two:dracochick (this takes place between twelve and fifteen years after the trio graduates), IRlost, TornIntoPieces (Hogwarts in the next chapter), A League of Their Own Fan (I don't think so, and for the purpose of the story, no) Caligrl-HPLVR, Chantal J and Sam, CPO3 (sorry about the currency thing, I'll probably go back and change it at a later date.)
Again, very sorry about the delay.)
Chapter Three: The Truth About Purebloods and Everyone Else
Kate didn't know how much time had passed, but, very suddenly, she found herself at Mrs. Parker's house. It was huge. "You didn't say you lived in a palace."
Mrs. Parker laughed, "Oh, dear, this isn't a palace, just a manor house. Now come on, I'm sure the children would love to meet you." She lead Kate to the front door which was opened by some strange…creature wearing a pillowcase.
"Um, Mrs. Parker, what exactly is that?"
"That's Mimby, one of our three house elves." She looked down at the thing, "Take Miss Singleton up to her room. We'll have tea in twenty minutes."
"Of course," Mimby curtsied and gestured to Kate, "Follow me, please, Miss." They went up two staircases to a room in a blue hallway. "This be your room, Miss, if you is needing anything, just ask the blue dragon statue."
"Thank you, Mimby." The elf squeaked and disappeared. Kate sat on the bed, it was a four poster made of some sort of red wood. The comforter was red with silver stitching. There was an actual walk-in closet. Her clothes were already hung.
"No," Kate heard a voice whisper, "I want to see her first! I'm older."
"Only by a minute, now, get out of my way." Kate opened the door and two kids tumbled in, they were only about nine years old. "Um, hi?" One, the boy, said.
"We were just checking out your door," the girl said, shoving her brother in the shoulder, "We wanted to make sure it wouldn't fall apart when you were asleep or anything scary like that, right, Nathan?"
"Er, yeah, that's it."
Kate nodded, "I'm Kate, but you probably knew that."
"Merlin!" said the girl, "Your accent is so cool! I want one."
"No," said Nathan, the boy, "I want one!"
"I'm sure if you both try really hard, you can both have an accent like mine. But you have to practice talking like me every day. So, I know you're Nathan, but what's your name?" She asked the girl.
"I'm Adelaide, but everyone calls me Addy." There were footsteps down the hall, "We need to go now, and if you see Mum, could you not tell her that you saw us?"
"Sure, no problem." Apparently the twins didn't listen to their mother's orders, they sounded like fun.
A few minutes later, Mimby came back to take Kate downstairs. Nathan and Addy were seated, now wearing nice clothes obviously meant to impress. "Ah, Kate, have a seat," said Mrs. Parker. "This is Nathan," she said, gesturing to the boy, "And this is Adelaide." She sat down, as did Kate. Trays with little sandwiches with cucumbers in them, cakes, scones, and a variety of other treats. Mrs. Parker floated a cup and saucer full with tea to her. Kate stared at it, fascinated, for almost a minute before a polite cough from the woman reminded her to grab the cup. The tea sloshed over the side, burning her fingers and she accidentally dropped the cup on the floor.
"I'm really sorry," she knelt down to pick up the pieces of broken china.
"Stand up, child," said Mrs. Parker, "It's no trouble." Nate and Addy were looking at each other with wide eyes, their mother would never have been so nice to them. She pointed her wand at the pieces of the cup, "Reparo," they reassembled themselves and sat on the ground, good as new.
Kate picked it up with wide eyes. "Wow."
Then Mrs. Parker pointed her wand at the ground, "Scourgify." The carpet was as clean as it was before. "The children have learned how to grab floating teacups, I forgot that you'd never done it before." She smiled, "Put the cup on the table." Kate did, and before her eyes, the teapot glided across the table and filled up the cup. "Sugar? Milk?"
"No, thank you." Kate picked up the tea, this time without any trouble, and sipped quietly. A few minutes later a boy walked in. He was tall, probably about fourteen or fifteen, and he had light brown hair. He wasn't remarkable, but Kate noticed that he wasn't wearing regular clothes like everyone else in the room. His outfit looked like some kind of church robe.
"Mum, the robes are too big. I told you I needed to be fitted. You can't just give those people sizes, their bound to screw things up." He noticed Kate, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know we had company, I'm Braden."
"Kate," she said.
"American, are you?"
"Yeah," this bit was going to get old fast, she could tell, and she wasn't even at the school yet.
"Sit, Braden," said his mother, gesturing to an open seat next to Kate, "Have some tea with us. I'll see to it that the robes are fixed."
"Right." He sat down on the couch next to Kate and his mother floated a teacup to him, he caught it with no trouble. They sat and drank their tea, Kate wondered if Mr. Parker would show up, but he never did. After everyone was finished, Mrs. Parker stood up, this was obviously some sort of signal because the twins walked quickly out of the room.
"Feel free to look around on the first floor a little, Kate. We have a rather large library just down the hall."
Kate was about to speak when Braden said, "If you'd wait a few minutes, I'll give you a tour, I just need to change out of these robes."
"What a wonderful idea!" said Mrs. Parker.
"Um, sounds great." Kate remained seated on the couch while Braden left the room, presumably to change clothes.
Five minutes later he was back. "Let's get started." Kate stood up, Mrs. Parker had long since left the room, "So, if you're an American, why are you going to Hogwarts?"
Kate sighed, maybe she should just learn a British accent, "I guess my parents went their."
"You guess?" He turned into a room.
"Yeah, I grew up in an orphanage." She shrugged.
"Sorry."
"I'm used to it."
"Well, anyway, this is the dining room. There's a lot of expensive china in the cabinet, but I won't bore you with the history of it, suffice to say, it's been in the family for years."
She walked closer to the table, it looked like mother-of-pearl, only more iridescent. Her fingers ached to touch it.
"Don't," said Braden, "Mum gets really mad if we touch the table when we eat, I wouldn't want you to get into trouble."
Kate pulled her fingers back, "Thanks."
"Don't mention it." He took her into a parlor, this one different from the one they'd had tea in, and then a portrait room.
"Braden," Kate whispered, "Why are the paintings moving?"
He looked at her like she'd grown a second head, "All paintings move." At her blank look he asked, "Don't they in the Muggle world too?"
"No, they really don't. Haven't you ever been out in the Muggle world?"
His eyes widened, "Of course not! That's much to dangerous, especially for Purebloods."
"What is this Pureblood thing? I keep hearing it," before he could answer, she had another question, "What about your mom's sister, you've never visited her?"
"Mum doesn't have a sister."
Kate rolled her eyes, they were sitting on a bench against the wall, "She was one of the nuns that raised me. Honestly, she's a little scary. She said she was a skid, wait no, not squid, slid? Um…"
"Squib?"
"Yeah! A squib, that's it."
He nodded, "That's why I don't know about her. Mum was probably waiting until she thought I was old enough to handle the disgrace."
"Disgrace?"
He moved his head closer to hers and whispered, as if he didn't want the portraits to hear, "She doesn't have magic. I don't think there's anything worse that can happen to a wizarding family." He sat back up, "Don't tell Mum that you told me, alright? And don't tell Nate and Addy, I don't think they could handle it."
Kate nodded.
"What's a none?" he asked.
She laughed, "You seriously don't know what a nun is?"
"No, it doesn't even make sense. You must not be using the word properly."
"Right," she said, "It's spelled n-u-n, not n-o-n-e. Are you supposed to be smart, like a perfect or something?"
"Prefect."
She smirked, "Look it up, then." He glared at her, but it was playfully. Then he led her into the library and Kate's jaw dropped. It looked like it had as many books as the library in Beauty and the Beast. "How do you get the books on the top shelve?" They were at least twelve feet high.
"Since I am nicer than you," he began, "I'll do more than tell you to 'look it up,' even though you are in the perfect place to do so."
She stuck her nose in the air like she was a spoiled rich lady, "And I shall thank you."
He walked over to one of the shelves and opened a book that was on a stand in front of it. Kate noticed that there were similar books in front of every shelf. "Just browse the titles in this book, and then put your finger in this little box here," there was a box next to every title and synopsis, "For five seconds and voila, you have your book." A book floated off of the shelf and landed at the nearest table. "Of course, if you know what book you want, you just say it, and be sure to add please, or you won't get anything."
"Will you show me?"
"Sure," he looked at the back wall of the library, "Standard Book of Spells (Grade One). Please." Within seconds, the book was on the table.
"Wow, how do you reshelf them?"
"Oh, you just leave them on the table and they reshelf themselves after awhile."
Kate nodded, "If you don't mind, I'm going to stay in here for awhile."
"Have fun, I'll just continue looking through my textbooks. I want to be prepared. You might think about doing the same so you don't fall behind."
Kate smiled, "You're not serious, right? It's still summer."
"You've never had summer assignments?"
She shook her head.
"Well, say goodbye to that." He left the room.
Kate sat down at the table with the two books on it and began leafing through them. There were spells to do everything! She could float things in the air, just like Mrs. Parker had done, and make her wand light up like a flash light, and fix broken things. Those were just three of the spells that she read through.
She didn't know how much later, but Mrs. Parker walked in and sat down next to her, "Ah," she said, "The Standard Book of Spells, that book will be more useful than most anything else in the wizarding world."
"I can't wait to be able to do this stuff!"
Mrs. Parker smiled, "This may seem out of the blue, but I promised to explain it to you, so I will."
"Purebloods?" Kate guessed.
"Exactly. Now, there are different types of wizards, like I told you earlier. There are Muggleborns, they come from Muggle families, as you would suspect and usually don't have enough respect for magic. Don't tell this to many people, but they tend to be worse at magic than anyone else. Then there are half-bloods. They have one wizard parent and one Muggle parent, or two Muggleborn parents. Their much better at magic then Muggleborns because they have more magic in their blood."
Kate nodded, it made sense, sort of.
"Of course, the Purebloods are at the top, they tend to be best at magic because they have the most magic in their blood. Pureblodded families consist of generations of wizards and witches, not just a generation or two, like the half-bloods. It's all very simple, really."
Kate nodded again, but something was still bothering her, "What about…" What was that word again? "Squibs?"
"I believe that Muggles would call that a birth…affect."
"Defect?"
"Yes, I'm sorry, defect. It happens, luckily not often, where someone from a magical family is born without magic. Usually it happens to half-blood families. Though, as the case is with my family, it can happen to Purebloods." She shook her head, "It's very tragic. Almost like being born deaf, or without fingers."
Kate's eyes widened, that was not a pleasant image. "Um, thanks for telling me."
"It's no trouble, really. We'll be eating shortly, I'll send Mimby for you then."
"Has it really been that long?" Kate looked out the windows, it was getting dark, "I guess it has. Thanks."
Mrs. Parker smiled and left the room. Several minutes later, Mimby came for her. "I am to escort Miss to the dining room."
"Thank you, Mimby."
The little creature gave a squeal, apparently many people didn't bother to remember her name. That was a shame. Once she was in the dining room, a chair pulled itself for her at the beautiful iridescent table. The twins and Braden were already seated. A few minutes later, a tall blond man walked in. He saw Kate and said, "You must be Kate Singlesmar?"
"Singleton, sir," she said.
"Yes, sorry. I'm Declan Parker."
"Nice to meet you." After this, Mrs. Parker walked in. Seconds later, the food appeared on the table. The meat was turkey, but there was every side dish she could think of, and some she wouldn't have. There was way too much food for six people. She took a little bit of everything that looked appetizing, and arranged it on her plate so that it looked like she couldn't fit anymore. The twins each had three helpings, Braden had two. She was stuffed after one.
After the meal, Kate went back to her room with Mrs. Parker's reminder, "It's going to be a big day tomorrow."
She was asleep by ten o'clock.
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