("Look! He's got smoke coming out of his ears!" Alexandra cried in astonishment.
Everyone turned to look. At first they all thought it was their imagination, but as they looked closer, Alexandra's statement proved correct. Old William sat before them, his face red and smoke rising above his head.
"He is the smokin' dragon!" Evander squealed in surprise, which made his brother and sisters shout out with laughter some more.
He was, indeed.)
Chapter Nine: Floating Bodies
All of a sudden, everything happened at once.
Albus Dumbledore was chuckling merrily along with everyone else until he felt a tingling sensation over his whole body. He felt very light, as though he carried the weight and mass of a single feather.
Hmmm…how very odd! I wonder…
However, he had no time to finish this profound thought, due to the fact that he was now an inch above his chair. "Oh my!" he said.
Everyone turned to look at him. He seemed a bit taller than usual, but the levitation potion settled in his stomach did not seem to want to stop there. He rose several more inches, his knees now touching the bottom of the table. As he rose higher, he gave a tinkling laugh. "Why, I feel as light as a feather!" he said joyfully. This only made everyone laugh harder, which was a very bad idea.
Marmie had ignored Tobias' advice in the kitchens, and dumped an enormous amount of pepper in her bowl of soup. She was going to have to pay for it, now. At the sight of Dumbledore, she let out a roar of surprised laughter, but it wasn't the only thing that came out of her mouth. A great burst of fire shot out over the dinner table, making Dingy, who sat across from her, squeak and fall off his chair for the third time that night.
Marmie, just as surprised as everyone else, clamped her hand over her mouth. Old William guffawed, Hestia snorted, and Tobias roared with laughter at the look on her face. Balfour was laughing so hard that smoke started to come out of his nose.
Albus Dumbledore rose higher and higher until he floated just above the table, chortling all the while. "I haven't flown in fifty years! This is quite marvelous, is it not?" His robes draped beneath him, nearly falling into the pudding. He floated higher still until he floated more than ten feet above their heads. He reached over and readjusted a light on the chandelier.
Irene watched him floating above her head, feeling very lightheaded herself, until suddenly, Professor Dumbledore didn't seem so high after all. She uttered a small scream as she realized that she, too, was floating higher…higher…higher…with a gasp, she reached down for an anchor. The chair she grabbed hold of, however, only rose with her.
"Mummy!" Evander tried to reach her but failed. Irene grasped her chair tightly, for fear of falling right onto all the food spread out on the table.
Alexandra watched the aerial ballet above her with envy. She dumped buckets of fruit salad onto her plate and started shoveling it into her mouth.
"How's the view, Professor?" Balfour called up.
"Oh, it's quite enchanting, thank you! Perhaps you'd care to join us?" Albus Dumbledore answered. His tall hat was now brushing the high ceiling twenty feet above their heads. Irene and her chair floated around uneasily somewhere around his ankles.
"Hey, Morgan, watch this!" Tobias said in an undertone. He took a deep breath, and when he blew out again through his mouth, puffy smoke rings drifted out, one after the other. Morgan giggled and clapped her hands in delight.
"Hey! Not until you're older, scally-wag!" Balfour said from behind them. Morgan jumped and Tobias coughed, choking on the smoke. Lord Balfour clapped him on his back. "Glad I'm not your mother!"
Beside them, all the food Alexandra stuffed in her mouth was paying off. She grinned in delight as she shot up out of her chair and past her mother in her seat, until she bobbed up and her head hit the ceiling.
"Ow!" she said, rubbing her head.
Everyone laughed at her, and Irene looked up. "Alexandra! You be careful! We don't know how long the effects last!"
Hestia turned to Toby. "Do we?"
Tobias coughed. A jet of smoke shot out. "Erm…well, actually…you know, I think that it…er…that it depends, you see…"
"Depends on what?" Irene said threateningly from above.
"Well, I'd guess on how much you ate, how fast you ate it, when you ate it," Balfour said reasonably, "and how big or small you are."
"Why does it matter how small you are?" Alexandra asked near the ceiling. She was scooting along, heading for the long windows covering the opposite wall.
"Because your digestive system works a lot differently than Professor Dumbledore's. They go at different rates and speeds, so naturally, you'll both have the potion out of your system at different times," Lord Balfour explained.
He spotted Tobias sneaking looks at the pot and snatched away the fruit salad bowl and the pot full of pickled soup. "I think I should take these for now!"
At once, Marmie and Tobias started complaining.
"Hey, watch it! That is perfectly good soup! Just because this nuthead here messed it up----!"
"I didn't mess it up! I improved it! And I never got a chance to eat any of the fruit! Give it back!"
"No!" Balfour said.
Virgilia howled a lament for the perfectly good pickled soup. A slim stream of black smoke trailed out of her mouth.
"Alexandra! Don't you dare open that window!" Irene called out.
"I wasn't!"
"My, my, I'm not quite sure flying agrees with me any more. I'm beginning to feel a bit queasy…"
Everyone below looked up in alarm. Albus Dumbledore did look a bit green.
"Oh, no, no, no! Fly in that direction! I've still got a plateful of good food, don't ruin it!" Tobias shouted. He picked up his plate, hesitated, then took the basket of rolls as well, and hurried out of the room.
"Toby, you'd better bring those back, or I'll---I'll----" Alexandra threatened her twin.
Tobias called from the hallway, where he had now taken up residence. "Or what? You'll aim a kick at me? You can't do very much in that position, I'm afraid…looks like I'll be eating these by my onesy ickle self!"
Everyone else, meanwhile, was too occupied by Albus Dumbledore's pronouncement to care about whom ate all the rolls. The kids dove for cover, while Marmie immediately thought of her good food and started clearing the table hastily…just in case. Irene couldn't do anything at all in her chair, which was now stationed beside the large China hutch in the corner. She thought about just hopping aboard it instead, but if she let go of the chair, it would fall with a thud, and Biddy was right beneath her.
Hestia just looked up at her dear old friend in dismay. "Oh, Albus…at the rate you're going, you will never have a quiet dinner again! I hope you know that! Do you regret coming here now?"
Albus put a hand to his mouth, his usually apricot face colored with a sickly green.
"On the contrary, Hestia," he replied weakly.
Old William, who was trying to keep a civilized grumpy face, struggled hard not to chuckle. "Now, this is wha' I came oop here to see!"
Balfour ignored Morgan's and Evan's shrieks as they scrambled underneath the table for cover. "Don't worry, Professor, I'll get you down!" Balfour stood up, but even he couldn't reach the Headmaster, who had drifted further up as the potion settled elsewhere in his body.
Watching the entertainment with glee, Old William turned to the young house-elf beside him. "Ye'd better move, sire. He's righ' above you now!"
Dingy squeaked when he looked up. He tried to scramble away, but Biddy pinned him down with the bib over his clean shirt. "No, Dingy!" she said forcefully in her small voice. "You have to eat your vegetables, now. There's no reason to be scared of Prossefor! He's a good wizard!"
Dingy just clung to her, looking up at Dumbledore apprehensively.
Alexandra was having the time of her life. At first she started swimming from one end of the room to the other, then she crept along the ceiling upside-down. Now, with her legs wrapped tightly around the curtain rod, she was trying to maneuver herself onto the top of the large China hutch that occupied the corner. She had just seen an object of interest.
"Hey, Toby!"
Tobias poked his head into the doorway of the hall, where he had retreated in his haste. "Wot?"
Below her, there was a mass of confusion and chaos. Dumbledore was hovering only feet above the table; Aunt Hestia, Uncle Balfour, and Marmie were trying to clean everything out from under him, lest the potion ceased to work and he fell in the food. Old William was just watching them all with jovial laughter, while Morgan and Evan squealed from beneath the table. Biddy and Dingy looked upon all from their stack of books with trepidation.
"You know that one time, like, a year ago, when Aunt Hestia first got this place?"
"Yyyeesss…" he answered slowly.
"When we tried to find out if we could Summon things through closed windows?"
"Yyyeesss…"
"…So we stole Evan's Magi-Monitor because we couldn't find anything else that was the same size?"
"Yyyeesss…"
"And then, when we tried it, we broke the window because all the furniture came crashing through it?"
"Yyyeesss…"
"Then Dad got mad 'cause we lost the monitor and couldn't find it again?"
"Yyyee----no."
Alexandra rounded on him. "That's because you blamed it all on me just because you had an alibi and I didn't! So I got in trouble!"
Tobias sighed, exasperated. She had finally stopped bugging him about it eight months ago. Why'd she have to bring it back up again? "Your point being…?"
"My point being that I think I found it!"
She fished around the numerous Exploding Snap cards, melted candy, and the broken whirring Yo-yos that used to be able to 'travel' all over the room, until she finally held up a small, blue object.
It was just smaller than her hand and was shaped like an ear. It used to be used for whenever Evan had a nightmare and woke up screaming. In their house, no one could hear him outside of his and Morgan's room, so Dad got the Magi-Monitor so Mum would be able to hear him and go to him when he needed her. It was supposed to belong in a set, with the one half in his room and the other, oddly shaped like a mouth, in his parents' room. Then, when he cried, the sound would go into the ear on his bed and magically come out of the mouth Mum and Dad had.
When Alexandra and Tobias lost the ear-piece, Dad was furious because they had cost a lot of money and the Ministry stopped making them for something newer and better and, of course, more expensive.
The twins always thought it a shame that they didn't lose the mouthpiece instead, because then they could have gone all over the Mansion calling through the ear until they heard their echo coming back to them through the mouth.
"Whoa! So that's where it went!" Tobias exclaimed. "No wonder we could sometimes hear a small clanking noise coming from the toy box! It's because Marmie would be setting the table and we could hear it through the Magi-Monitor!"
Alexandra smiled smugly.
Just then, Tobias spotted where Balfour put the pot of pickled soup. He hurried off, a gleam in his eye.
Alexandra was just about to put the ear in her pocket when there was a loud bang! And she lurched, falling off the top of the large China hutch. She only plummeted a few feet before the Levitation Potion kicked up again, but the ear-piece slipped right out of her hand and fell down into a half open drawer near the bottom.
"Blimey!" Alexandra whispered.
The explosion, meanwhile, had created quite a stir. It appeared to have come from the most obvious source in the Hesperus Mansion: Tobias.
"It wasn't me!" he said automatically. And for once, he was right. He had been bending over the pot of pickled soup, just about to ladle some into his bowl, when Balfour elbowed a few jars of herbs on the shelf along the wall in his haste to get the Professor, who was now bobbing against the chandelier. A jar labeled Ground Cumin hadtumbled right into the pot. Thus, the explosion.
Tobias, who had been closest, got the full blast of it. His face resembled charcoal and his clothes had been singed. The dark curls which had once hung mischievously into his eyes now stuck straight up while smoke sizzled around him.
Poor Dingy was quite frightened by it as well. Being so light, he was blown right off the stack of books, crashing into Albus Dumbledore. Before he could drop down into the pitcher of water on the table underneath him, he held on as tight as he could to Albus' robes and shimmied up his body.
Surprised, Albus chuckled, holding on to the small house-elf as Dingy clutched his beard, shivering. "There, there, young one," he whispered, patting Dingy's head. "You're safe up here."
Dingy suddenly looked up, squeaking in fright when he saw just whom it was exactly he was clinging on to. He tried to pull away at first, until he realized how high up they were.
"You're safe up here," Albus repeated softly.
Irene, in her chair, dropped lower and lower. "Finally," she sighed.
Balfour had already given up on trying to get the three floaters down, or maintaining order and peace in the dining room. He plopped down onto his own chair and took a stab at his meat. "Evan, Mory, you done eating?" he asked the two on the ground.
"I've eaten my meats and my veggies! I wanna play now!" Evan cried.
"And I don't wantto eat my veggies!" Morgan said from underneath his chair. "They came from the garden! I helped plant them, I'm not gonna eat them! Is it safe to come out now?"
Balfour looked up. "Yes, Mory, it's safe. He's coming down now."
"Hurray!"
Hestia knelt next to an excited Tobias, rubbing gently at the marks on his face.
"Did you see that explosion, Aunt Hestia? It was brilliant!"
"Yes, I saw it. I saw you get a face full! Why did you have to have your face so close to the pot, Toby? Ooh…here's some more cucumber bits, next to your ear. Hold still, you!" She tried to pick the gooey stuff out of his hair.
"But it hurts!"
"Well, you need to be treated for burns! That soup was hot and it splashed all over you. And that's not to mention the fact that the fire that exploded out of it licked your face as well."
Marmie and Biddy had just finished putting everything away when Irene landed, sitting in her chair atop the middle of the table.
"All hail! The Queen has landed! Clear the runway!" Balfour shouted into the room, cupping his hands over his mouth. He reached up and offered her his hand.
"Milady," he bowed, escorting her off the table. With a flick of his wand, her chair flew off the table and righted itself in its original place.
"Why, thank you, kind sir!" Irene graciously accepted. As soon as her feet hit the plush carpet, Evander ran over and bowled himself into her, throwing his arms around her legs.
"Mum!" he said happily, cherishing her name.
"Evan!" she responded, bending to kiss his head.
"Mum!" said another someone, wrapping her arms tight around her mother's waist.
"Morgan!"
"Mum!"
"Alexandra?" Irene cried, staring up at the newest voice.
"Help me!" Alexa shrieked. She had been floating peacefully in the middle of the ceiling when the potion had lost its strength. Because she had wolfed it down all at once, it now left her all at once.
It was a strange sensation. Before, she'd felt so light it made her giddy; now, however, everything came crashing around her at once. Her insides dropped, her heart plummeted, her body felt as heavy as lead.
Then she fell. Before she could get very far, however, she stuck out her hands and grabbed hold of the chandelier. Everyone looked up her hanging from the swinging chandelier, dangling fifteen feet above the table. She was slipping…she couldn't hang on for much longer…
Just as she let go, Balfour, far below her, whipped out his wand and shouted.
"IMPEDIMENTA!"
At once, Alexandra hung motionless in thin air. Below her, everyone was holding their breaths. Irene looked absolutely white and more liable to faint than Albus at the moment.
Balfour guided Alexandra's body to safe ground, using the Mobilicorpus. Irene hurried forth to hug her, but Alexandra was unable to move until Uncle Balfour said the counter-charm for his Impediment Jinx.
Meanwhile, Albus Dumbledore was slowly drifting down, chatting amicably with Dingy. When the potion finally wore off, Albus was sitting atop Dingy's chair, books and all, with the small house-elf on his lap, talking happily with him.
With everyone jovial, exhausted, and completely full (or else having lost their appetites), dinner came to a lingering end. There was a great deal of laughter as everyone recalled the past events. Hestia kept chuckling at the fact that her sister brought a chair up with her as she floated around, and Balfour gave accurate imitations of Professor Dumbledore frog-swimming through the air. Old William kept up a fiendish laugh as Tobias was fussed over by his mother, while Alexandra related to Mory how it felt, flying…not that Alexandra had never done it before, but she couldn't remember the last time very well.
Too soon, though, Albus became grave again at the thought of what he had to tell them. As enjoyable as the evening had been, he knew it couldn't last.
The children were all told to go and play while the adults talked, an idea that didn't suit them in the least. Immediately, they started complaining and griping, voicing their opinions.
"But we want to stay!"
"We wanna hear what's the matter with Daddy!"
"You always make us leave! Just because we're kids!"
"I wanna stay with you, Mummy!"
Irene sighed at their outburst. "No. You can't stay in here, now leave! It's nearing bedtime. By the time I come up there you all need to have your teeth cleaned and jammies on, okay? Now scoot!"
"But Mum!"
"Tobias, what did I say? If there is anything about your father that I think you need to hear, I'll tell you, all right? But now is not the time!" Irene said forcefully.
She herded them all out the door, giving her youngest a kiss on his head. "I'm sorry, Evan, but Mummy can't be with you right now, okay? I'll come in and tuck you all into bed. And Biddy will be watching you to make sure there's no funny business. So be nice to each other, and don't give her any trouble."
As soon as the children were out, with Biddy and Dingy following, the adults righted the dining room, fixing the chandelier, table, chairs, and curtains. The burn marks on the floor vanished and Hestia conjured some more comfortable chairs for them all to relax in.
Outside, the storm had abated; the wind was less now, and the thunder rumbled only in the distance. Lightning flashed every few minutes, illuminating the grounds in white light, while rain still fell as steadily as before onto the flooded grounds.
Albus, Hestia, Irene, Balfour, Marmie, and Old William all sat down at the oak table. The lights around them grew dim, leaving flickering shadows dancing across their faces as Albus began to speak.
Author's Note: Cliffhangers, cliffhangers...they are admirable objects, are they not? They are such fun! But just so you know, I WAS going to be nice. When I first mapped this chapter out, I was going to cut it sometime during their 'talk' instead of before it. But then I had the funnest time writing the dinner scene, with all of the 'floating bodies', and I just couldn't keep myself from adding more stuff on to it...but I know that you all love me for it! I suppose you are just going to have to wait!(Unless you're like Mistress Editor, who I am sure stays behind a few chapters just for this reason!)
Ah...yes...I almost forgot...Earlier in the chapter, where Marmie comments on what Tobias told her about the spices in the kitchen...I just wanted to let you know that one ofmy reasons for getting you this chapter late last time was because of that. You see, last Saturday I wrote for more than three hours, only to have my computer freeze on me! (Stupid, lousy, biased, damnable things!) So I lost everything I had written that morning.
I was devasted. I was at a complete lost. You will never know how much I go through every week just to have each chapter posted asthe next seven days end. With juggling everything I have on my platter...let's just say that I was near tears when I found out how much I had lost.
I rewrote most of it, of course...though none as good as the first copy. But there were two scenes I had left out. One featured Old William and Virgilia in the Gatehouse (I skimmed through that in my final draft...the part where O.W. walks in the dining room), and the scene in which Tobias runs into the kitchens after hearing the explosion. In that scene, we find out what exploded and why...about spices and such...But I just couldn't rewrite either of them.
ANYWAY! If you would really, really, REALLY like to see these two scenes...I suggest you beg.Beg and plead with me, because, otherwise, I'm not doing it. (Though it really was a good scene!)
But, cheers! And, of course, give a wonderful round of applause for my amazing beta Miss Whydoyouneedtoknow! She's the best, honestly! And, just so you know...this chapter was...is...the BOMB! I had the absolutely best time writing it! I just hope that you all have had the best time reading it! And don't forget to REVIEW!
Love, Hestia