Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Sad, isn't it?

Home Life and Social Habits of British Muggles

The summer had been progressing slowly in West Bretton, and it felt even worse for Amelia Palio, who had to spend most of the time with her father and sister. The Palio family was a very odd one indeed. Mrs Palio, a young but rather plain woman of 34, had moved to London a few years earlier, where she no longer was Mrs Palio, but Miss Charis. There she worked in Leavenworth's Second Hand, a very peculiar curiosity shop in Diagon Alley. Mr Palio, on the other hand had for some very bizarre reason given up on magic, though he came from a long line of pure-blood wizards. Though it may not have been the most outstanding of families, at least it was pure. Amelia had actually never bothered to ask her father why things were as they were, mostly because she wasn't all that fond of her dad, and greatly preferred to sit alone in her room with some of the very obscure books her mother sent her almost once a week. She had a fain idea that it might have something to do with the fact that he had been in school together with the man now known as Lord Voldemort. Anyhow, he was now the economy manager of a publishing company and had resigned from the magical world.

Amelia's younger sister, Fawn, had got to be a very torn child in Amelia's opinion. She very rarely met her mother, as Mr Palio thought it best that the child suffered as little exposure to magic as possible before they knew if she was a witch. Amelia thought all that very stupid, as both the parents were pure-blood witch and wizard. Mr Palio's parents thought that this was just something he'd grow out of, and tried to ignore it with all their might. Unfortunately, they never came to visit anymore, mostly because Mr Palio had told them not to. They often wrote to their grandchildren, but Mr Palio forbid Amelia to show any of the letters for Fawn, or at least not tell her how they'd arrived.

So once a year, Amelia Palio went from total isolation from the magical world to living in Diagon Alley with her mother for the last few days before the school started. Yes, it was a very unfair way to divide the custody, but Mr Palio thought that all the time she spent in school was exposure to magic and therefore on her mother's watch, so he demanded most of the summer's break. It was quite a challenge to adapt to the changes, as they only lasted for a few days. But thankfully, this was her last day in West Bretton, and after dinner, she'd go to her mother's by Floo Powder. Despite Mr Palio's contempt of magic, his grate was still connected to the Floo Network. Mostly because his daughters that way would have quite an easy journey to Diagon Alley, but also because he wanted to be able to yell at their mother face to face for sending books of a more questionable nature to Amelia.

"Dinner's ready!" called Mr Palio from the kitchen and Amelia herd the quick feet of her sister run out from the room next to hers and out to the dining room.

She put down Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration, got up from her now neatly made bed and walked out to the dining room, where the dinner was on the table. Her father didn't seem to find it any moment to celebrate, that she was leaving for almost a year, and the meal prepared was mashed potatoes and meat balls. For a moment she wondered about what tactic he was playing at, but he soon gave himself away.

"Fawn, could you pass the mash?"

He was clearly pretending that she wasn't leaving at all, and that this was just another day. He was actually not even looking at his eldest daughter.

"Why is Meli packing?" asked Fawn in that very well-tried 'watcha doing' voice only an eight year old girl could muster up.

Amelia stopped a piece of meatball half an inch from her open mouth. For one, she hated that name, which, thankfully, only Fawn used. Second, now her father could no longer ignore the fact that one of his daughters were leaving. He would also have to talk about magic; something he only did with the expression of someone who had jut spilt something over their best clothes.

"She's going back to school," he answered awkwardly and cleared his throat.

"To Hogwarts?" asked Fawn in a very determined voice.

Amelia put her fork down on her plate, prepared to bolt if needed. But Mr Palio seemed to remain calm, if you didn't count the muscles twitching in his jaw when he wasn't speaking.

"Yes, to Hogwarts," he said mildly.

"I want to go too!" whined Fawn and Amelia knew that this was her cue. She scrambled up from her seat and left the table without having even tasted the food, and almost ran back to her room, where she felt that she desperately needed to pack.

Through the closed door she could hear Mr Palio yell and scream at Fawn, who Amelia doubted knew what she had done wrong. And then it all went quiet after two doors were slammed.

So Amelia went back to carefully packing all her things, not only for the brief visit with her mother, but also for school, as she probably wouldn't open her trunk when she was there. It felt like she had been packing for two weeks, waiting for this day, but she had a surprising amount of things left. Her robes, which weren't allowed to hang and dry outside ("What if the neighbours were to see it?") and diverse spell-books, which she hadn't gotten around to packing, as she always thought that she might feel like reading about this and that one of these days. Bottles of ink, quills and pieces of parchment were spread around the room, and she only swiftly packed down the things that might actually be to some use. That didn't not include the large peacock quill Mrs Leavenworth had bought her for Christmas last year, nor the very impractical inkbottle that sprouted legs to be able to run and always be no more than five and a half inches from the quill currently used.

Much later that night, when she woke up after falling asleep during a particularly tedious bit of Novel Divination, she brought her trunk to the fire-place after some fumbling around with her father's golf-trolley.

She knelt down by the hearth and lit a match, which she threw in between the cinders. Before it went out, which was very quickly, she threw a pinch of Floo Powder at it, and large, green flames erupted from the small match.

"Diagon Alley 27," she spoke clearly and stuck her head between the flames.

There was a sudden twirling and it felt like her head had been ripped off her body. Ash was swirling around and almost blocked the view entirely. When the ash cleared, she could see a room. To her it was immediately recognisable as the kitchen above the odd second hand shop, and she saw her mother sit on one of the mismatched chairs with a cup of tea and skimming through a copy of Witch Weekly. On the stove behind her was a small pot, which was stirring itself with a tree ladle. Much of the apartment and kitchen was just as clustered with strange objects as the shop below, and a peculiar red box was blocking half the vision out from the fire-place.

"Mum!" she called out to catch her mother's attention, as she didn't seem to have noticed her daughter's head in the fire.

Miss Charis jumped and looked around, dropping her magazine.

"Oh, I didn't think you'd come this late, so we assumed you'd come tomorrow!" she said and got up from her seat. She sent the box flying with her wand and it landed with a crash somewhere out of sight.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that, but dad had a row with Fawn," said Amelia and looked down.

"But don't you worry. The dinner's one the stove," she said with a wide smile. "Where are the rest of you and your things?"

"It's right here," said Amelia and jerked her head towards her body, which was still in West Bretton.

"Come right over, honey," she said and moved some chairs out of the way so that Amelia could land freely.

Amelia pushed her trunk through and then crawled through, finding herself on all fours in the kitchen a very long way from where she had been just seconds earlier.

She had always felt more at home in the apartment above the store, with her mother and the Leavenworth's, who not surprisingly owned the shop. They were very good friends of the family, and Miss Charis had been in school with Mrs Leavenworth. Her uncle, Razvan owned a very suspicious shop down in Knockturn Alley, where Amelia often went to visit. In the Palio family, as well as the Charis family, the line between regular and black magic was very blurry, and many times, Amelia even doubted its existence. It was mainly because both the families had been involved in many iffy affairs during the centuries. The Charis family had mostly been in Slytherin, with a few exceptions who landed themselves in Ravenclaw, like both Amelia and her mother. That Razvan had been in Slytherin was however something that became very clear about half a minute after you had met him. In the Palio family it had been the other way around, and most people were in Ravenclaw, with a few exceptions that landed themselves in Slytherin, and among those were her father. Most of their friends were from one of those houses as well, and during the years they had developed certain arrogance towards Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, with the base that those two houses didn't actually take anything to be in. Everyone was brave sometime in their lives, and almost everyone somehow fit in the description of loyal. Not everyone, however, could brag with wits or great ambition. Ravenclaw and Slytherin were also mainly pure-bloods, compared to the trash in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff. And blood mattered, no matter what the others said. The birth-rate for Ravenclaw in particular, had, unfortunately, lowered drastically during the 60's.

"Alana, I-" said a voice, and Amelia turned around to see Mrs Leavenworth dressed in a very oddly cut set of robes. "Amelia!" she exclaimed merrily. "Thomas, get down over here!"

Mr Leavenworth was a very tall and very scrawny man with huge hands and brownish grey hair. He couldn't possibly be over forty-five, but his hair had always had the same mousy colour. His wife, who wasn't very tall at all, looked small in comparison. He smiled through his goatee when he saw her, which lit up his face and made him look several years younger.

"You sit down," said Mrs Leavenworth and nodded towards the chairs around the table. "I'll take care of your luggage. Locomotor."

She pointed her wand to Amelia's trunk and it floated up in the air just in front of her. This way, she walked up the stairs to the second floor, where there only was Amelia who had her room.

"So, Amelia," said Mr Leavenworth and took a seat next to her. "How was your stay in West Bretton?"

"Not much," she answered frankly.

"Oh well, you're here now and let's just hope you'll have a better time here!" he said shortly. He wasn't the type of man who liked easy small-talk, and when he spoke it was because he had something to say. "The Weasley's are coming for tea tomorrow. They're bringing their new son. What's his name? Peter? Paul?"

"Percy," corrected Miss Charis absentminded without lifting her eyes from Witch Weekly.

"If you don't mind, I'll be off to bed now," said Amelia when Mrs Leavenworth came back and sat down as well. She didn't want to be cross-examined about the year's most boring weeks, and she was quite tired as well.

"You don't want any food?" asked Miss Charis and looked almost hurt.

"No, I'm not hungry," lied Amelia. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Sleep tight, darling," said her mother, who now again was absorbed by an article, which seemed to be about a potion that prevented one's hair from ever grow grey.

Amelia walked up the narrow staircase to the second floor. Hers was the only room there, but there was also a large closet, which she guessed contained a boggart. She hadn't gotten around to tell anyone about it, or to kill it, but she liked hearing it thrash about in there during the nights.

Her room had two windows; one overlooking Diagon Alley, and the other one the roofs of the houses that parted Diagon and Knockturn Alley. If you stood on your toes and tilted your head to the left, you could actually make out the window of the store her uncle owned. There wasn't a lot of furniture, just a bed, a bookshelf and a large velvet armchair with small, yellow stains all over. The bookshelf covered most of one of the walls, and it in turn was covered with unusual books she had found in the shop below. Books no-one would really see the value of like she did. Titles among these were Fools and Their Follies, or the extremely large Stories of Simpletons, but also a few books which had actually proved to be quite useful and informative, in spite of their aged language and their approach which was from Dark Magic, such as The Vampire: His Kith and Kin, or just old school-books from when her mother or grandmother had been to school, like Innovative Charms.

She walked up to the window, where a small candle was burning, and opened it. Carefully, she climbed up on the windowsill and leaned to the left to get a good view of Razvan's place. The lights were on in the flat above. She made a mental note to go and visit him tomorrow, not only to see her uncle, but also to get her cat, Bob, which he had been taking care of during the summer. With this thought still in her head, she closed the window, got undressed and went to bed.