Chapter Two: In which Neil gets sent to a place that is small and smells like Hawaii

Characters this chapter: Mari, Neil

Disclaimer: Again, everything belongs to DWJ, except for the chapter title, which is nearly a direct quote from Sabrina the Teenage Witch... hehe ...

One hour ago, back in Wales …

To the untrained eye, Mari Parry looked like a studious, well-behaved young lady. The average person would have opened her bedroom door on this particular Saturday afternoon, and seen a little girl sitting at a desk by a window, dark hair hanging into her face as she poured over a large textbook.

To the un-magical eye, Mari also appeared to be neat and tidy, as evidenced by the immaculate state of her room. Megan would have said that it did her credit. The pink carpet was curiously bereft of toys or any other kind of juvenile chaos. Mari's dolls and stuffed animals were lined up in neat rows on the shelves of her bookcase. And the bed was made to military standards, the "Sleeping Beauty" sheets pulled so tight that a First Sergeant could have happily bounced a quarter off of them.

Now, someone with the gift of witch sight would have seen an entirely different version of Mari's room. And although Neil was not this someone, eight years of living with his sister had provided him with enough experience to know that something was amiss when he entered her bedroom. Frowning, he pushed her door open wide. The hinges squeaked like rusty pulleys, and Mari jumped in her seat.

"Don't you ever knock?" Mari glared at him, her ice blue eyes channeling all the ferocity that she could muster. The resulting expression was more cute than fierce, but it bore enough resemblance to Megan's glare that it caused Neil's stomach to churn uncomfortably. Neil scowled at her, and knocked on her already open door.

"That doesn't count, you muppet," Mari sighed, and closed her book. "What do you want?"

"Don't you talk to me like that, twerp," Neil grumbled. "Show some respect to your elders."

"I will when I see one," Mari quipped. "And don't call me 'twerp,' jerk. Mam won't be happy when she hears about you calling me names."

"As if you're such an angel," Neil deadpanned, shuffling into the middle of the unnaturally clean room. Something soft squished beneath his foot. Looking down, he found a stuffed dolphin lying where there had been nothing but pink carpet a moment before.

"Pimple-face!" Mari shouted before he had time to think about the dolphin.

"Brat," he retorted.

"Sock-breath."

"Twit."

"Ci!"

Half of Neil wanted to call Mari something truly dirty, but the other half of him (in a voice that sounded suspiciously like his mother's) was urging him to "act his age." So he drew himself up out of his customary slouch, and quickly reminded himself that, at the age of fifteen, he was above this childish bickering.

"All right, cut it out now, Mari," he scolded, doing the best imitation of his father that he could manage. His voice cracked on the word "now," which ruined it a bit. "I was just come to tell you that I'm going across the street to Dewey's for a minute. I'll be right back, so don't cause any trouble while I'm away."

"Some baby-sitter you are," Mari muttered. "Mam and Tad would never leave me in the house alone."

"Are you scared, Mari?" Neil teased, tossing the dolphin onto her bed (its mysterious appearance having been temporarily forgotten). He didn't notice that, as the dolphin landed against the neat stack of pillows at the head of the bed, the pillows abruptly rearranged themselves into a messy pile. "Would you rather I stay in your room with you? Want me to hold your hand, maybe?"

"Wait, don't—"

Mari tried to stop it from happening, but it was too late: Neil had sat down upon her bed. The "Sleeping Beauty" comforter, which had previously been draped over the bed with such precision, was now bunched haphazardly on the floor. The bed sheets were in turmoil—wrinkled, and littered with candy wrappers, and pulled up in places so that the bare mattress was showing. Megan would have blown a gasket. Neil simply frowned, his thick eyebrows knifing downwards in a "V," and pulled something hard out from beneath himself—a half-dressed Barbie doll that was missing an arm.

"What the …?" he scowled at the Barbie, holding her up so that she dangled from between his fingers by her one remaining arm.

Inwardly, Mari sighed. The next time she went to her Uncle Howell's castle—if she was ever able to get to his castle again—she was going to have to ask him if there were any proper spells for instantly cleaning one's room. (On second thought, she would ask Aunt Sophie. Uncle Howell's notions of cleanliness ran a little too close to her own to be of any help.) Creating the visual illusion of a clean room was all well and good, but only until certain nosy family members came in and destroyed the illusion by touching things that they shouldn't be putting their grubby fingers on in the first place.

Outwardly, however, Mari was determined that Neil should not catch on to what she was doing.

"Look what you did, you mochyn brwnt," Mari jumped up and grabbed the Barbie from Neil's hand. "Made a sty out of my bed, you have. And you broke Debbie."

"I just … sat on it …" Neil mumbled.

Neil's stomach was churning uncomfortably again, and this time it had nothing to do with Mari's resemblance to their mother. He looked back at the bed—clean one minute, and a complete disaster the next. It felt like that time four years ago, when Uncle Howell's fiery haired ex-girlfriend had appeared in their backyard, and his feet had taken him towards her, even though he had desperately wanted to run the other way. Or Christmas two years ago, when he had gone into the kitchen to get a fizzy drink, only to find Aunt Sophie talking to the dishes—dishes that, no matter how many times Neil blinked, seemed to be merrily cleaning themselves. Or that time just last month, when Neil was practicing cricket in the backyard with his father, and he could've sworn that he saw a black castle, lifting up into the sky as though it was caught in a tornado.

Mari was saying something now—something insulting, no doubt—but Neil couldn't hear it through his haze of thoughts. He shook his head, certain that he was going insane, and decided that this was his cue to leave.

"Sorry about the mess," he apologized as he stood up, not knowing what else he could possibly say.

"That's all right," said Mari, sitting back down at her desk. Her face softened, although she still eyed him warily.

"What's that you're working on?" Neil asked,making a last-ditch effortat being friendly. He always felt foolish for squabbling with his sister, even if she was a royal pain in the arse. He gestured towards the book on Mari's desk, and traded his scowl for an almost charming smile.

"English homework," Mari told him. She put her hand on top of the book in a protective manner.

"Need any help, do you?" Neil took a step towards her, and she pushed the book in the opposite direction.

"Dim diolch," she said, looking rather uncomfortable. "You're no good at English anyway."

"Oh, come on now," Neil protested. It was a true statement—maths was his subject of choice. But he wasn't about to let a mere child inform him of his deficiencies in the humanities. "I'm better than you at any rate. You can't be reading anything difficult. What are you on now—nursery rhymes?"

With that, Neil lunged forward, and swept the textbook out of Mari's grasp. Mari leapt up in an attempt to grab it, but Neil kept it held high above her reaching hands, all the while watching with fascinated horror as the book morphed before his very eyes. The smooth, laminated cover became rough and leathery, its colorful illustrations fading to plain brown. The title no longersaid "Reading Exercises"—instead, in an archaic, gold-leafed script, it announced that the book contained "Elementerie Spellwerk." Neil cracked the book open, thumbing the pages that were now edged with gold leaf—they felt fragile and powdery, as though they might disintegrate in a breath of wind.

"What is this?" Neil wondered aloud.

"None of your business, that's what it is. Now give it back," Mari ordered. She climbed up onto her chair so that she was eye to eye with her brother, and made another grab for the book. Neil, however, was already striding towards the other side of the room. As he walked, his foot collided with something hard, but he barely noticed as a doll house materialized in his wake.

"This is magic, yeah?" he accused, opening the book to a picture of a mystical-looking seal and holding it up for Mari to see, as though he was presenting incriminating evidence to a jury. "Mam'll throw a fit if she finds you looking at this rubbish again. She'll send you to that child psychologist again, she will."

"No, she won't, because she's not going to find out," Mari spoke through gritted teeth. "Neil, give it back!"

Neil looked from the tome in his hands to his sister's face—which was both plaintive and stormy—and then back to the book again. He didn't fancy the idea of Mari being sent to a child psychologist any more than she did. But over the past few years, life had been a little too strange for his liking, and his sister was somehow connected to it. He was sick of the shape-shifting books and the flying castles and the self-cleaning dishes. He was sick of feeling like he was slowly going mad. He would have no more of it. Starting today, things were going to be normal.

"Sorry, Mari," said Neil as he backed out of the room. "I can't—"

But before he could finish speaking, Mari flew off of her chair and sprang towards him like a rabid kitten. He turned on his heels just as she was about to fling herself at him, and sprinted down the hallway, driven by a very genuine fear. For Neil might have been twice Mari's size, but she could use her teeth and nails to astonishing effect.

"You git! Come back here right now!" Mari screamed at him as she chased him through the house. "I'll turn you into a toad if you don't!"

Now, although Neil didn't know it, this was an empty threat. Mari couldn't turn a tadpole into a toad, let alone her brother. Transfiguration was too advanced for her. To her great chagrin, she was still learning basic magics: levitating mirrors, spontaneously creating fire, freezing water with a gesture. Glamours were the only exciting spells that she could perform, and as the fiasco in her bedroom had just proven, she hadn't even mastered those yet.

But Neil wasn't sure what to think when he heard this particular battle cry. He stopped in the middle of the sitting room and chuckled nervously, edging sideways so that the sofa was between him and his sister.

"I'd like to see you try," he challenged, trying to sound braver than he felt. He reminded himself that magic wasn't real, but after everything he'd seen, his skepticism had begun to falter, and had all but lost its ability to comfort him.

"Fine," Mari shrugged, and began to circle the sofa. Neil circled in the opposite direction, in what he hoped was a non-chalant manner, and silently cursed himself for getting cornered in the sitting room when he could have escaped out the front door.

In the meantime, Mari racked her brains for a curse. She didn't know many curses—Uncle Howell had refused to teach her any until she had more control over her magic—but she had learned a few by flipping through his books when he wasn't looking. And she didn't need a strong curse. She wasn't trying to hurt Neil—she was simply trying to distract him long enough to get her spellbook back.

"Just as a baby has its dimples," Mari began to recite. "So a toad has slimy warts. So may your face bloom with pimples, though you are not a toad at heart."

When Mari finished speaking, Neil burst out laughing, both at his sister and the absurd rhyme that she had just spouted, and at himself. How silly he had been to think that Mari could turn him into a toad, or that she had anything to do with his bizarre hallucinations. She was just a little kid having fun after all.

"What … are you trying … to … do?" he managed to gasp as he bent double with laughter. "Kill me … with awful … poetry?"

He dropped the book at his feet, and gripped the back of the sofa as heshook with mirth and relief. A moment later, his hand slipped off of the sofa, and he fell to the floor because he was laughing so hard. It would be a few minutes more before he realized that he could not get back up again—that in fact, he could not move at all.

Ci -- dog

Mochyn brwnt -- dirty pig

Dim diolch -- no thanks

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A/n: Whew! So I finally finished Chapter Two ... and this time I won't remove it, I swear! Thanks for waiting so patiently, though, and I'll try to get the rest of the story out at a (relatively) speedier rate. And sorry if some of the words don't have spaces between them ... for some reason, every time I load a document on it decides to delete some of my spaces. Buthopefully it'sstill readable.

And don't worry, Howl and Sophie reappear in the next chapter. :)