Grandpa believed this woman but she seemed to want to work to convince grandpa of something he already believed in.
"I'll prove it." she said. He nodded.
The wildflower bouquet he had picked on the way home for the girls, who loved flowers, got out of the vase and did a little jig getting water on the table. Ms. McGonagall, professor, waved her wand and most of them hopped back in the vase using their leaves to hoist themselves back up but one flower made a mad dash for an escape. It hopped off the table and on the smallest roots ran for the back kitchen. Grandpa watched it amused. Professor McGonagall waved her wand and the flower crumpled to the ground and lay there still in the hallway. She waved her wand again and the vase, as if it wasn't made out of solid glass, sopped up the water on the table like a sponge. With another gentle wave, the flower floated back into the vase. Grandpa smiled and nodded.
He did not like that the girls would be separated but he understood. He knew this much about Dorcas. There had been a day when a lifeguard had pulled him aside and told him that she held her breath for much longer than he thought was safe. Grandpa's response was why didn't you pull her out of the water. The lifeguards response was that after he dove in to get her she kicked him away asking why he was ruining her quiet time and fun. That she knew how to swim. Grandpa was not fond of adults who claimed that harmless children could make adults nervous but Dorcas had a little fire in her that he recognized. She was calmer than Philippa but when she became angry or frustrated he knew it could reach a deeper level than Philippa. Maybe because she didn't access those feelings as often but he pictured her swimming to the bottom of a dark, cold pool and holding her breath just because she could. Powered by something than the air in her own small lungs. Besides grandpa's agitation in the lifeguard, he also knew there was something else. Something the lifeguard understood but didn't know. He would not have had the context.
When Dorcas was even younger than that day at the pool, younger than that much younger, just after the accident… He had tucked the girls in bed after telling her that she would be staying with them.
"Forever?" Dorcas had asked in bed shared with Philippa.
"If you'd like." Grandpa had said. She'd nodded and Philippa pulled her in tight.
"Now we're really a family. I won't ever let anything bad happen to you and neither will grandpa. Right, grandpa?"
"Right." He said. Dorcas nodded. They'd fallen asleep like that, Philippa and Dorcas facing each other in a womb of blankets making something like a little heart shape with their knees touching. Hours into the morning because grandpa couldn't sleep and after checking on them for the umpteenth time, he heard and felt all the furniture in the house drop. It was as if it had been floating just this much off the ground. He was sure of it. He ran upstairs to find them still sleeping with all of the noise which went off temporarily but loudly. He went to the kitchen to calm his nerves. He was tired. He had signed so many papers, he had read so many documents and spoken to several people in health services over the weeks. It was all official now and maybe he was just feeling that it was over now. Now he and they could rest in knowing that everything was official. Maybe he was just imagining things but he felt the chair… and maybe the spill on the table was left earlier and he hadn't noticed. He opened the cupboard to get everything to prepare some tea and noticed that some dishes were chipped. A thin crack ran through the plates where they had hit the bottom on the cupboards. It was funny, ironic even, that this last bit of magic professor McGonagall had shown had been this water on the table from a vase. That night he had the sensation then that it might have been an earthquake but for all his practicality, he didn't believe in coincidence.
He should have known that it would be Philippa who would take the news better than Dorcas but his heart hurt for them all the same.
"Maybe I should have swum better." Said Philippa. And grandpa, who was not given to great shows of any emotion winced but then they burst out laughing and he understood that they had their own code, their own language and when that happened there could not be a school no matter how far or magical that would do anything to disturb that. He took Dorcas to the train station. Her things packed up in cases that he had to keep in his room away from curious Philippa who would have known immediately that these were not normal school books. The remainder of Dorcas' things would be found at school. For all that she would be away, for all her of her independence he didn't want just anyone taking her to get her school supplies. Professor McGonagall had obliged. Dorcas came back awed.
"Did you get your things?" Grandpa asked gently. Cool as a cucumber. She shook her head smiling. She wanted, she needed, someone to speak with about this, someone in her own family.
"I know, Dorcas." Said grandpa. Her eyes widened the squinted with skepticism. He nodded and a flood of descriptions of Diagon Alley rushed over grandpa. She wouldn't have to shoulder such a secret.
Once she was done telling him about the stores, the books that she couldn't tell Philippa about, the candy store? The candy store! Grandpa asked almost offhanded, jokingly, "You think I would let you go that far and not know who you were going with? You think I'd let you leave without asking some questions?" And he saw in her face having not realized that maybe that was in fact what she had thought.
When she came back for the first holiday, the world was freezing and rainy. Philippa was still upstairs asleep and grandpa made her a hot chocolate with toast and honey. She told grandpa everything about Hogwarts. It was a big castle, its tall spires and that her dorms sat high enough that she could look out over all of the grounds. She told him about her classes and peers. He could ask all of the questions he wanted and he asked very many. He listened impressed and awed himself. She couldn't do any magic at home now, because of her age, but someday she would she promised. He could sense her relief in in having someone to talk to even as he knew he was her second and unfortunate only choice. Where had Philippa been in all of this? He wondered years after. She was in school a lot of the time, piano lessons certainly, maybe at the pool. The thought of her alone there made him sad. He offered to take her to the pool in the morning and she had snorted and tucked herself right back into bed. Grandpa did not have galleons or any wizard money but there were many more students at Hogwarts then and more options. He did not have to worry about not having galleons. So when asked what she would rather do with her time grandpa was startled to learn that his expenses would not change very much for it. She took double piano lessons, taking over Dorcas' hour. Years later, years, after saving money, after Dorcas was out of school and no longer lived in the house, grandpa presented Philippa with a piano of her own. The very thing she was saving for herself which started on the day Dorcas' left.
The day before Dorcas' first day of school, Philippa gave her a going away present of little bracelet woven from the instructions found in a library book. Dorcas gave her the money she hadn't used going to the pool.
"Now were even." Dorcas had said.
Philippa refused the money outright but found it when she returned from a piano lesson tucked under the pillow.
-
Grandpa's mind was still sharp, clear and strong but he felt an old sadness clogging up his joints making him slower and slower each day. He could be strong for himself but he had to be strong for the girls. He couldn't get old for them but he would. He chuckled to himself knowing that the girls might glance at each other in a pointed silence at the idea that he didn't consider himself old already. When professor McGonagall left that first day, and the girls were tucked in, he plucked the rogue flower out of the vase and took it outside. He cleared a little space in the dirt and covered the thin, delicate roots patting the soil around them gently. He sighed deeply. He wasn't superstitious. He projected nothing onto the flower that the flower had not wanted for itself even against this woman's magic. There was still something fighting and knowing in the flower. There was something in that flower that understood its place or where it had come from and by extension where it should be. Grandpa heard the bright chirp of a summer night bird but found the world strangely still. He pushed himself off the ground, noting the relative ease at which he did so and felt relief and also a shadow of tightness, tiredness in his limbs. He stood up straight and closed his eyes and breathed in the quiet and the fresh, cold air. He thanked the world for magic, that something in him knew he would live long enough to witness and appreciate Dorcas' gift and for the language, friendship and sisterhood of his little girls. He breathed out and thanked the world that he didn't have the power to make anyone or anything tell him the truth except for himself.
