Chapter Twenty
"I think I've figured it out," said Euphemia Kramarczuk, right in the midst of a cribbage hand over at Hjordis Halvorson's dining-room table.
"Figured out what, Effie?" John Norton had been in the midst of moving his pegs on the cribbage board, but he stopped to look up at Effie when he heard the odd tone in her voice.
"How Severus got to be here."
It turned out to be a fairly complicated explanation, much of which had to do with geography – namely, that of Fillmore County.
As Effie told it, the extreme southeastern corner of Minnesota, where Fillmore County was situated, was part of a four-state section of land known to Muggle geologists as "the Driftless Area." It got that name because unlike most of the rest of North America at that latitude, no glaciers, during any of the Ice Ages, had ever touched the area.
This was important because of the scouring action that giant glacial ice sheets had on a landscape. Plant species, animal species, topsoil, magical outgrowths – everything was swept away to be replaced by something new once the glaciers retreated. This happened more than once in North America; some places were scoured nearly half a dozen times.
But this scouring never happened in the Driftless Area. As a consequence, certain exotic plants grew here that grew nowhere else in the region – or in some cases, the world. And there was something else that didn't get scoured away, either: The two-billion-year buildup of magical power loci. In areas of Minnesota where the glaciers had been, the natural magic was generally relatively weak and uniform in content. In the Driftless Area, it was strong and varied, with multiple strains whose existence stretched back tens of millions of years, if not longer.
"That's why there are more Muggle-born witches and wizards in this part of the state than anywhere else, I figure," Effie said, setting down her lemonade.
"You mean like Hjordis and Julie?" Mrs. Norton said.
"Yup. And what's more, the magic in the area's strong enough to act as a lodestone. It pulls loose magic to itself, so long as the magic's of the right kind."
"How does this explain Severus, though?" asked Mr. Norton.
Effie's thin lips pursed as she thought through what she was going to say. "Well, even though Hjordis and Julie will never be strong enough to cast any spells – at least, I don't think they'll ever get that strong, though it could happen – their magical type, their 'signature', is not only the same as that of the most powerful magical strand here in the Driftless Area... it also happens to be the same as Severus'."
"You mean," Julie said, "that Gran and I brought him here?"
"Well," said Effie, grinning cheerfully, "you had a bit a' help, what with the background radiation being the same as his and all. But yeah, you and your grandma probably tipped the scales."
Julie turned to Severus, who was standing open-mouthed by her side. "I knew it," she said smugly. "It was fate."
"Naw, it was magic," corrected Agent Kramarczuk, who then took another swig of Hjordis' homemade lemonade.
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It was the middle of August, and the pace was starting to pick up at the Norton farm. There was a drought going on in much of the rest of the United States, but it had yet to touch Minnesota, and so everything was growing much as it should, if not better.
The vegetables in the truck patch were ripening along with the berries, and Mrs. Norton and Julie and Mrs. Halvorson were kept busy in Hjordis' kitchen, canning and freezing what they could. (Severus was a big help in the freezing department.)
The apples in the Nortons' backyard were ready for harvest, most of them being turned into juice and cider and applesauce, with some left over for the occasional pie. The material left over from juice or cider pressing became apple pomace, and as such was fed to the cows and the chickens; it was quite good for them, and very well received by them. The beans wouldn't be ready for another month yet, but they still needed checking. And the raspberries and blueberries were producing by the bushelful every day, almost every hour. It was a good thing that Severus had long since finished off his schoolwork, including his potions for Professor Schneider; he found himself out in the fields with Dad and Becky much of the time, and when he wasn't there, he was usually over at the Halvorsons' place, helping out with the canning.
In the outside world, Nixon had finally resigned, allowing Gerald Ford to take over and the world to breathe a sigh of relief. Finally freed of worrying about having to stop an imminent nuclear exchange between the US and the Soviet Union, the Department of Magic turned its attention once again towards Britain and their "Voldemort problem". This meant that Effie was busier than ever before, but she still made time to stop in and check on both Severus and Julie. And of course, if during the course of her visit she happened to be offered a slice of hot apple pie, smothered in freshly whipped cream – well, she wasn't going to be a bad guest and turn it down.
"Hey," she said one evening, between bites of Sarah Norton's apple pie, "the State Fair's coming up."
"Yeah, it is," averred John. "We're probably going to go this Sunday. We'll be heading out right after I give the girls a milking so Bernie down the way only has to do it once for me while we're out. What, will you all have an exhibit there?" he teased.
Effie made a short laugh. "I wish. Nah, we're just going to do things like make sure no wizarding idiot tries to detattoo the Tattooed Lady or sneak a real mooncalf into the oddities exhibit on the Midway." She turned towards Severus, who was uncharacteristically disregarding his own plate with pie on it to give Effie a somewhat quizzical look. "You'd love the Fair, Sev – lots of things to do and to see, and it's great for people-watching. Nearly a hundred thousand people a day visit the place, people from all over."
The thought of being among a hundred thousand hot and sweaty persons didn't sound very appealing to Severus. "A hundred thousand people?"
Effie smiled. "Don't worry, they're spread out over a few hundred acres. The Fairgrounds are almost ten times the size of your dad's spread."
"Oh, it's fun, Severus," Julie said, giving his hand a squeeze. And I'll be with you the whole time, I promise. It'll be a chance to be by ourselves for much of the day...
Severus' eyebrows went up. It will?
Yes, it will. We can go off by ourselves and then meet back up with your folks around lunchtime, or whenever...
"Well... all right."
Julie beamed at him.
They all rode up in the station wagon for the long drive to Saint Paul, because it was much roomier than Hjordis' old Ford two-door car. The morning was cool and dry, but the clear skies presaged a scorcher later on; Severus cast a Cooling Charm inside the car so Dad wouldn't have to run the air conditioner, which was a drag on the car's already-low gas mileage -- no small thing when petrol cost nearly a dollar a gallon, three times what it had when Dad bought the wagon just a few years earlier.
Becky was up front with Dad and Mom, as she was small enough to fit comfortably between the two of them. Hjordis, Severus and Julie sat in the back seat, there being a bit more room for them there. Mrs. Halvorson's wheelchair was folded up in the rear compartment of the wagon; she normally didn't like to use it, but the Fairgrounds was simply too big for her walker to be convenient, and in a wheelchair she could propel herself with her strong arms faster than most people could jog.
"It'll be so good to see Mom and Dad again," Julie sighed happily as John Norton drove the Coronet through Rushford on State Route 43. "Phone calls are OK, but still... And they'll get to see you, too," she said, looking at Severus.
"Yes, yes, they will," Severus agreed, more to say something audibly than for any other reason. They knew that everyone else knew that they could mind-talk, but they didn't want to rub it in their faces. "They seemed friendly enough on the phone."
Severus had in fact talked at length on the telephone with Julie's parents. (This was in itself rather strange to him; the household he'd grown up in had possessed a telephone, but Severus could count the number of times he saw it used on the fingers of one hand. But American Muggles apparently spent a good portion of their lives chatting on the phone about everything under the sun, and some things that weren't.)
Her parents knew who he was, and what he was, and were so far comfortable with the idea; any possible qualms they might have had vanished when they found out that he was the one who had given Hjordis back her mind, and of course Hjordis herself had nothing but praise for him. They would be attending the Fair as well, meeting the Nortons at the entrance gate by Machinery Hill.
I have a girlfriend, Severus thought to himself, as quietly as he could behind the mental privacy barrier he had learned to construct. A Muggle-born girlfriend. And I'm going to meet her Muggle parents. And they like me, or are at the least prepared to like me...
He had to keep from pinching himself as he sat in the speeding car.
The farther north and west they drove, the more Severus noticed subtle changes in the terrain. The stubby pin oak trees vanished once they were north of Rochester on Highway 52; in their place were taller, more conventional-looking oaks. The land was flatter, less riven by brook and river valleys; where it wasn't being farmed, there were long stretches of lightly-wooded grassland, and the occasional lake and/or what Severus thought of as fenland, but what the people here called "wetlands".
There seemed to be more people, too. Even not counting Rochester, which was a major city by Minnesota standards (it had nearly ninety thousand people), there were more towns and bigger towns as they came northwards, towns with exotic names like Oronoco, Pine Island, Zumbrota, Wanamingo, and Cannon Falls.
Severus had spent his first years in Nottingham, so he wasn't totally unfamiliar with what big cities were like. But from age eleven onward he had lived mostly at Hogwarts, which was situated in a remote, isolated corner of Scotland, where for ten months out of the year he saw no one besides the same few hundred students and staff members. And for the last few weeks, aside from the trip to Winona, he'd not been near a city larger than Rushford and its two thousand-odd souls. Now, it almost seemed as if the very terrain itself was conspiring to slowly prepare him for the relative immensity of the Twin Cities, and the State Fair.
About an hour and a half north of Rochester, entering the almost-exurb of Rosemount, the towns were big enough and closely spaced enough so that the farms and wooded grasslands now seemed to be just brief interruptions in a city and suburban landscape. They drove past a golf course, a sure sign of increasing population. The traffic on the road increased as well.
Soon the farms completely gave way to parks and tract housing, each house on its own eighty-by-forty-foot lot surrounded by a green lawn, with a small knot of apartment blocks and commercial buildings every so often. Then they approached South Saint Paul; Highway 52 was now crammed with vehicles, but that didn't seem to bother Dad, hopped from lane to lane, cheerfully dodging huge eighteen-wheeled lorries while Severus felt himself gripping Julie's hand tighter than usual.
They crossed the famous Mississippi River, busy with barge and pleasure boats; its sheer size made him think of the River Trent back in Nottingham. Then they were in Saint Paul, and Dad switched from 52 to 35 E, which was an even bigger motorway. They sped along in the narrow valley created for the motorway, tall walls and embankments holding up the buildings alongside as the motorway snaked between them like a river. Then Dad took an exit ramp and got onto a city street, speeding through neighborhoods both rich and poor.
Finally, just before nine o'clock, they found the Fairgrounds; even at that early hour, the line of cars waiting to get in was nearly a block long. Fortunately, the ticket-takers were very efficient and Dad soon had the wagon parked inside one of the last available parking spaces in the enormous car park, itself nearly twice the size of the Nortons' farm. This was good, as it meant that they could avoid paying through the nose for the dubious privilege of parking on somebody's lawn; the front yards of the houses facing the Fairgrounds along Snelling Avenue were filling up with automobiles already.
Even with the gradually-urbanized preparation of the drive, Severus was still astonished at how big it was. It really was a city within a city. Huge elms and cottonwoods lined the streets of this city, and there were enough people on the streets and sidewalks to make it slow going in spots.
A man and a woman, both in their early thirties, were standing at the John Deere display on Machinery Hill, near the car park entrance; the man was holding a small boy by the hand, and the woman was pushing a stroller with an infant in it. It was obvious that they were waiting for somebody, and the rush of excitement Severus felt from Julie – a split second before he felt the squeeze of her slim hand in his – confirmed what he had suspected.
"Mom! Dad!" Julie let go of Severus' hand for the first time since they'd got into the car that morning, and shot like a rocket into the waiting arms of her father and mother, hugging them both simultaneously like an energetic octopus while a group of large two-story-tall green machines stood guard over them all. "It's good to see you!"
"It's good to see you too, sweetie," laughed Julie's father, returning the hug as best he could before gently disengaging himself. "It's good to see all of you." He turned toward Severus, offering a hand and a smile. "I'm David Halvorson, Julie's dad. We've talked on the phone."
"Yes, yes, we have," said Severus, looking over Julie's dad as intently as Julie's dad was looking over him; the glint in each other's eyes told that they both approved of what they saw. "It's good to meet you in person, Mr. Halvorson."
David Halvorson had brown hair, but he also had his mother's eyes and his daughter's eyes, that same dark blue that shaded nearly to black. They crinkled in pleasure as he grinned. "Mom thinks you're the bee's knees, Severus. And," he continued, looking over at Hjordis – a mentally-alert, happily energetic Hjordis, pushing herself up from the wheelchair to receive a hug from the little boy at his father's side – "I'm beginning to see why. By the way, this is Jeannie," he said, tilting his head towards his wife.
"Hello, Severus," smiled Jeannie Halvorson. She didn't have Julie's eyes, obviously, but she did have Julie's heart-shaped face, lithe physique, and upturned nose. "And these little guys are Kevin –" she indicated with a look the small boy whose head just about came up to the back handlebars on Hjordis' wheelchair "– and Traci." She looked down at the little girl in the stroller, whose eyes had picked that moment to pop open; they regarded Severus steadily, in a manner unsettlingly reminiscent of both Hjordis and Julie, just before she broke into an earsplitting wail.
"Oh, dear," Severus said, jumping back from the stroller as if Traci had just spit acid on him, or he on her. "I– I didn't mean to–"
"You didn't do anything, Severus," David Halvorson said, patting him on the back. "That's just Traci letting us know she wants to be fed and held." He reached into the stroller and unstrapped the squalling child from it. His smile immediately turned to a frown, even as the baby's cries quickly settled into contented coos.
"Pee-you! I think I know another reason she was crying," he said, handing Traci off to his wife. She patted the baby's diaper and nodded.
"We're going to duck into the ladies' room for a moment, gang. If you'll excuse us –"
"Wait," Severus said.
They all turned to look at him. "Um.. Why, Sev?" Jeannie Halvorson asked.
"I think I can clean her up right here, but you'll all have to crowd around me for a second..."
They did so, and fifteen seconds later, a happy Traci, holding a bottle and wearing freshly-cleaned diapers, was settled back into her stroller.
"Hey, you could make a ton of money doing that here, Sev," David said as they walked along. "'Sev's Diaper Service'."
Two months ago, if someone had tried to call him 'Sev', much less make a joke about him and baby poo, Severus Snape would have been offended in the extreme. But that was two months ago. Severus John Prince Norton knew that Mr. Halvorson meant no harm by it – and really, it was rather funny, the idea of opening up a magical nappie-cleaning service... though it did have its merits...
The Nortons and Halvorsons all walked together for the first few blocks. Julie wasn't exactly holding Severus' hand, but she might as well have been, considering how close she was to him. And while they all walked, they all discussed Severus, Julie, and Hjordis, and the wizarding and Muggle worlds, in a fairly free and open manner.
It was amazing, how much privacy a large crowd at the Fair could ensure. Severus was prepared to whisper a quick Muffiliato, but soon he found he needn't bother. People were too focused on other things – which at this hour of the morning, mainly involved finding the best place to have breakfast at the Fair, and to hope that the line to get in wasn't too long – to bother with eavesdropping on a fairly ordinary-looking family.
And really, they did look fairly ordinary by local standards. Severus had worried at first that his hair, which was longish by the standards of Bratsberg and Rushford, might call undue attention to their little group. But he soon saw that for the Twin Cities males his age, his hair was if anything a touch short – there were several boys not much older than him who wore it halfway down their backs, often in braids that made them look like their long-dead Viking ancestors; in fact, boys just a little older than that, young men in their twenties, were wearing long beards as well, thus enhancing the Viking resemblance. As for clothing, his jeans and polo shirt were positively boring compared to the leather jackets, some of them fringed, that the long-haired sorts seemed to favor.
They wound up having pancakes at a small diner near a thing called the Sky Ride, which involved being shut up in a small metal-and-glass capsule and shunted from one end of the Fairgrounds to the other on two distressingly thin metal cables.
The Halvorsons were big fans of the Sky Ride. "You should try it, Sev," urged Mr. Halvorson, tucking into a mound of flapjacks nearly swimming in butter and maple syrup.
"Erm, I'd rather not, thanks," Severus replied. The mere thought of going up in that device made his stomach churn ominously. He wanted his pancakes to stay where he'd just put them, thank you very much.
"Bucccck buck buck buck," said Becky, gleefully making a noise she apparently thought sounded like a clucking hen. "Stink's a big chicken."
"It's fun, Severus," said Julie, secretly slipping her hand into his under the table where they sat. "I'll go with you." And we can be all alone up there for a few minutes...
We will? Be all alone, that is?
She smiled. Yes. And we'll be clear on the other side of the Fairgrounds. It'll take them a while to catch up to us.
"Oh, well," he said airily and out loud, "I suppose there's a first time for everything..."
Towards the end of the trip, Severus had decided that the one thing wrong with the Sky Ride was that it was too short. Not just because of the views of the Fairgrounds – which really were quite impressive, though if he were more capable on a broom he could have bested them – but because after all the kissing and squeezing he and Julie had done, he was going to have to think some very pure thoughts indeed, and very quickly, before he dared venture out of the little blue capsule. Luckily, as Julie had predicted, the rest of their party hadn't caught up with them just yet.
They found themselves with a little time to kill, so they wandered the nearby collection of covered stalls called the Mexican Village, which seemed to be mostly a place for people to sell cheap tatty plastic "Spanish" dolls made in Taiwan. But there was one dolly there which, though plastic, was rather remarkable in its ornateness and prettiness. The dolly stood a foot and a half tall on its metal-wire stand; her (not its, but 'her', that's how real it seemed) red silk gown shimmered in the bright August sunlight, and the doll's skin was somewhat eerily lifelike. Her black synthetic hair was piled in a tight twist atop her head, the twist held in place by an ornate faux-ivory comb.
Julie stared at it longingly for more than a minute, before turning away from the display; she didn't have the money for it, and she felt more than a little ashamed for wanting a silly old child's dolly at the advanced age of fourteen and a quarter. She tried to suppress her disappointment from being felt by Severus, but it was simply too strong.
Severus reached into his pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill. He'd not only been saving his allowance money, but he and Julie had managed to earn a little additional money in Rushford delivering flyers, weekly papers, and handbills by bicycle.
"Excuse me, Miss?" he said, pointing to the dolly. "May I have that one, please?"
The woman at the stall looked at him, then looked at Julie. Then she smiled.
"Want a bag to put her in so she stays nice?"
"Yes, Miss. Please."
Julie didn't say anything as they walked away from the booth, the bag with the dolly in one of her hands. At least, not out loud. She didn't need to. The smile on her face, and in her mind, spoke volumes.