Chapter 3- Potatoes and Snogging

As Kera stood on the open plain, a breath of wind teased a strand of her hair away from the extensive braid it had been trapped in, and let it trail down the black silk dress with its ever fluttering, tattered ends. Overhead, the crows called to her. "Come, come fly with us. Come, come heal us, Kera. Help us to become what we were," they whispered to her.

But she would not, for if she did she would get red eyes, those dark red eyes, the same that had been haunting her dreams. And then, the man, the owner of the red eyes would come to get her, to get his red eyes back, and the person that wore them. He was coming for her, with his darkness. "No," she called back faintly, "I don't think I will. Please, leave me to go my way." But she had no idea where her way was, and the crows knew it. They began to crowd in closer, each second bringing one of them closer to touching her with a wing tips, and giving her the feared eyes.

Suddenly, people appeared before her. Their clothes blended with the gray ground, but in a comforting way, and Kera found herself trusting the look in their eyes. "Quickly," one said. He looked oddly familiar, like a friend of old; "You must follow me, before they get you."

"But how can I trust you?"

He looked at her, infinitely old. "Sometimes, little Kera, you must place your trust in others, and the human heart."

She took his hand, and instantly the plain became a cool green forest. All around her were her mother's people, her people. "Always trust your mother's people, as they do you. And, always place the trust in their forest, your forest. Kera…"

"Kera. Kera, miss. Please get up. I shouldn't have let you sleep this long. We must start our work, so Elli won't complain that we left all to him." Cosiky shook Kera awake, disturbing thousands of tiny dust motes in the loft. His bent and crooked nose was pressed against her own. Kera neared started and yelled when she opened her eyes to find Cosiky's black coarse hair, some much like a raven's wing, flopped on her face.

"I am sorry to have scared you like I did this morning, Kera-rae. I just couldn't think of another way to wake you up that didn't involve water, and I was in a hurry," Cosiky explain apologetically as they lugged a gargantuan bag of potatoes inside the house between them. Cosiky's family had had some serious mutations, he had explained to her earlier. Elli was not at all cheerful, like most house-elves, Cosiky had developed an unusual passion for water, and Dobby, well; Dobby was no longer in the Malfoy's service.

"I'm not minding," Kera told him, in her usual, stumbling English. " I just had what you call, bad-dream, and you looked like it when I came back from sleeping."

"When you woke up, you mean," a sneering voice. Kera turned, neatly dragging Cosiky with her. Leaning against the door, pale blond hair flopping slightly in front of his face, was Draco Malfoy.

"Yes sir. Two ways to say, all one meaning." She tried to sound normal, but inside she was apprehensive. For two weeks he had done nothing but stare at her, like she was an alien. Why did he choose now to talk to her? "Cosiky, I can get the sack. It not that heavy." Gratefully, Cosiky fled to the kitchen, leaving her alone with the sneering boy, their master.

"What did he call you?" While not losing the sneering quality, his voice sounded the least bit curious.

"Meaning, sir?"

"Kera-rae. I thought it was just Kera."

"You don't know what he say?"

"No. Should I?"

She stared at him. Draco didn't like that. "He your house elf," she muttered, but then said, "It mean, 'new one'. I'm Kera, new one." She tried to adjust her hands around the sack, but she had lied. It was like trying to carry a foundered horse over a mountain. How many potatoes did this house need? They must have more Irish blood than that family of red-headed wizards next door.

Draco just watched, then did the oddest thing. He leaned forward, picked up the bag as easily as if it was a feather, and resettled it more firmly in her hands. For the briefest second their faces were close, too close, almost touching noses. Then the potatoes were firmly in her arms and he was heading back out.

"Funny. I always thought girls were just chatty mouths on wheels. Maybe I was wrong." He left quickly.

'That was fast,' Kera thought, 'and a little too close for comfort.' His family had always given her a little of the creeps, but for a second they had been so close-

"So close we might as well have been kissing," she said, quietly. "Good thing no one saw. Hmm. Maybe I was wrong. I always thought boys were just monkeys taught to walk on two legs." She dashed inside, not noticing the little curlier blond head of Julia peeking out of a window.

Later that day, Kera found herself once again lugging potatoes, this time to a large cauldron that hung over a roaring fire. Potatoes always go in last in anything, so her mother had once said. "Cosiky, you done with meat yet?" she panted over her shoulder. How much could this family eat?

"Almost finished, Kera-rae," he called.

"Exactly how much can this family eat?" Oops. That really wasn't meant to be said aloud.

"The Master and Mistress is having guests tonight. The Minister and his wife, so's I was told," Elli was matter-of-fact, in his own waddling way. "And youm's waiting on thems, Kera girl. So's make sure you's cleaner than clean when you's go out there."

Kera had firmly decided that the best approach with these two (actually, the whole family) was to smile like an idiot. So, she did. Smiling broadly, she nodded. "Who this minster?"

"No minster, Kera-rae, minister. He bes the new 'un," it had been Cosiky's task since she arrived to fill in the gaping holes of her modern world knowledge, but he was gone at the moment. She had, after all, been living in a forest for most of her life. Not to mention, Eastern Europe. "Youms got no minister in dat forest o' yours?"

She shook her head. "Dey soup, it be's ready!" Elli declared proudly. He was, after all, the one cooking. Ladling out the soup, he paused to wag a gray finger at her, "Now, Kera girl, yous give de master and missus and der guest thems soups first. Next, go to wheres all dem kids be, and serve dat next. Comes back right after, yous hearing me?"

"Master, missus, minster and wife first, den then kids. Does minster got kids?" she asked as she loaded soup onto a trolley.

"Yups," Cosiky squeaked, waddling back in from where he had been serving drinks. "Dere's be Beatrice, she nice, 'bout de young master age, den dere's Alice and John. Dem's right terrors, like liddle miss Julia."

"Now, yous get out dere, girl." Elli snapped when she started to leave, "Do's sumthing wit dem blood scar hands. All thick and congegeal, yous gonna give dem guests a sick-turn. Wat yous do, grab on to dey end of spikes? Tick yous man off? Not likin' then ways a man touch you?" House-elves were never among the high-class when it came to crudeness. Elli had often made this point, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for those to be rape scars.

Kera was about to deny it. She remembered something, so foggy and dim in her memory. It had to do with a man, and iron stakes in those same hand. She could almost remember his name, was it- vanished. As though an invisible hand swept over her mind, Kera forgot all about the strange vision.

Obedient, the image of servility, Kera straightened up and, as if guided by an unforeseen force, pulled out two white gloves. Sliding them onto her hands, a blank and vacant look shining clearly through, she pushed the handcart into the dining room.

The dining room was, easily, one of the pride and joys of the Malfoy mansion. Made entirely of a dark oak so ancient it was rumored to date back to the Early Middle Ages, it gave the heavy air of old blood, and money. But, years had taken a toll. The fireplace, once in constant use, was dark, and soot no longer graced its stone, while the numerous wall hangings were faded and slightly threadbare.

Yet the room still stood, a test to which time had failed, and in it sat a long table. To one end, the adults, to the other, their children. Draco Malfoy sat with the children, trying to avoid the puppy like glances of Beatrice by staring solemnly out the window and across the field to another house, where a certain family of red heads with a certain flame haired girl was sitting down to their own meal. He was snapped out of his quite reflection by the overly honeyed voice of his dining partner. "Oh, Draco, it was simply dreadful being away from you all summer. I kept asking my mother when your family would be back from East Europe, but she said she didn't know. Aren't you just looking forward to being back in Hogwarts? I've never been there before. Is it fun?" Beatrice's father had only been the minister for a few months. Previously, their family hailed from America. She hadn't found out that she would be returning shortly for a new school, at which time she would throw the fit to end all fits. No more Draco Malfoy.

A sound of loud laughter interrupted her. At the adult's end of the table, the minister had apparently said something that, as manners dictated, was to be extremely funny. At Draco's mother's side, Kera quietly stood, taking off the rather large soup bowls from an enormous cart and setting them in front of each guest. Finally, a distraction! He really needed something right now to get his mind away from Beatrice. In his opinion, girls were good for two things; kissing, and betting. Not that he had been able to do much of the first himself with his annoying school 'friends' if you could call them that. Draco never really had had much fun in school. In fact, some unseen force had done a good job of making him down not only at school, but home as well.

"Who's the girl?" John asked wickedly. He was the family butterfly torturer.

"That's Kera," Julia snickered. "She's dumber than a house elf, and just as docile. Watch. Oh, Kera?" she called as the girl wheeled her trolley over.

"Yes, miss?" Kera asked quietly.

"We were just talking about you. I told our guests that no one could possibly look as stupid as you, but they didn't agree."

"Really, miss?"

"Yes. I told them you didn't just look stupid, you were!"

"Really?" Kera blinked rapidly, several times. No one noticed that her eyes, once black, had turned a brilliant amber, like that of a dragon. And, no one but Draco saw the smallest piece of china on the mantle suddenly burst, as if someone had shot it. Kera however, was leaning forward.

Casually resting her elbows on the table, she asked, quite innocently, "And how would you prefer I act, miss? Masters don't like their servants to be very intelligent."

One thing both of the Malfoy children observed; Kera was no longer speaking like their house elves. She was talking quite calmly and in such a mannered way that you never would have known she had been speaking anything but her whole life. Julia's face turned ugly. "Well," she sneered, "I certainly don't want you to start acting like a whore. Oh, but wait, since my brother nearly jumped you today, I suppose it's already too late."

Kera's head had now sunk into her elbows as Julia took a slurp of her soup. "Well, you know, it's just a good thing then that I'm not a mean slut," she replied softly. "Otherwise, that little piece of chicken you just ate, might've really been- Opps. Maybe I was wrong."

"About what!"

"Well, I was going to say that that itty bitty thing in there might just be a piece of your shredded teddy bear but-" she stopped at Julia's horrified face, "-I'm actually starting to think it's just one of your brother's balls."

Straightening up, she grinned at them. "Well, back to the kitchen. A maid's work is never done. Got to get the main course ready; it's roasted ferret. But, you might not one to eat, considering how your whole family is the substitute for the real stuff." She gave the smallest saunter as she went back into the kitchen.

That was very foolish, Kera. Trying to break my grip.