xXx
Tommy Shelby examined Hettie outside Charlie Strong's Yard stables in the early morning hours. She was still in her knickerbocker's, still in a flimsy linen shirt with its sleeves rolled to her elbows, but her boots had grown teeth, workers switched out for riders with thick heavy soles and calf leather up to her knees. Her rollicking hair appeared almost indigo under the faint morning light, a black sapphire crown that had been tied above her head and threaded into a ball with a knot of twine and a long-knobbed twig. Around her waist lay a half apron stained with mud and hay, metal tools sticking out the lip.
Tommy kicked back against the fence outside the stables, hands in pockets, smoke perched on lip, watching as she intertwined the reign of the chestnut horse she'd led out the stables to the front rail of the door before making her way around the horse to its front legs, stroking along its flank to let it know where she was when she wasn't in eye sight.
"Polly wondered where you'd gotten off to when she woke up and found Michael in bed but you nowhere to be found."
She doesn't flinch at his voice, doesn't so much as startle, as if she'd been expecting it. She scarcely looks his way in truth, just a passing indifferent glance before her attention stole back to the horse. That… chaffed, Tommy would admit. He's used to people paying him attention when he walked into a room, used to being able to sneak up on people and surprise them, used to… Not being so tedious that a bloody horse commandeered his presence in a conversation.
"You know what they say. No rest for the wicked, and I have another ten horses to shod today. Polly will be busy nursing Michaels hangover anyhow. Poor lad can't hold his whisky as much as I thought he might. Could be all that cider they push in the countryside."
It was true that Michael had gotten nearly rip-roaring drunk yesterday, dipped into one too many cups of Johnny Walker Red until he passed out on the bookie's settee until John and Arthur had to drag him over to Polly's with grins and jostles. Hester, however, having kept up with Michael last night, seemed perfectly, entirely fine.
Fine enough to be up and out of Polly's door by five in the morning.
It also didn't escape Tommy's notice that by placing the censure on Michael's intolerance, Hettie smoothly side-stepped her ostensibly ability to hold a whole bottle of Macallan without so much as a buzz or a sickly tinge to her face the next day. What was she? Five-foot-fuck-all? Much too short and slim to be able to drink that much without feeling it the next day.
Something wasn't quite adding up in her ledger.
"No rest for the wicked, indeed."
Tommy intoned and stole a long drag from his cigarette.
"I'm guessing the horses are being shod for the trip to London, eh?"
xXx
Hettie patted at the horses front leg on the closest side to Tommy, running that hand down the lean limb in a gentle and easy trail until she got to the foot, squeezing the tendon lightly above the ankle. The horse immediately shifted its weight to the other three feet.
"Summer seasons coming up. It's best to sell the stallions and mares before it properly hits so their new owners can get to know them in open fields and on back. It makes bonding easier before the rains come in and they're put in the stables."
Holding the foot in place, Hettie cocked her hip against the horse's hock and gaskin, and used the inside of her knee to pull the foot slightly out and up between her legs so the sole of the hoof faced towards her. Locking the horse's foot in place. The horse snorted but made no motion to move or buck, happy where he was.
"Better coin to be had in London too, I suppose."
Hettie spared Tommy a passing glare.
"It isn't about the money."
"It's not, is it?"
Foot pinned and waiting between her thighs, Hettie scoffed and pulled out a cutter and hammer from her apron belt and set about breaking the nail clinches around the hoof with a snap, snap, snap.
"Plenty of rich folk all around the country but London has the real blue bloods. The one's with the big manors and the stable hands and more than enough money for hay to last through winter. If I'm selling my horses, Mr. Shelby, it's going to be to places and people who will look after them properly."
Tommy flicked the ash from his smoke off with the clank of the cutter.
"More money to be made on the race tracks."
Working the blade under the clinch and hitting the end with a hammer to straighten the nail, Hettie swiftly retorted.
"There's also more whips and bullets if the poor things break a leg and becomes lame."
"Not a fan of horse racing then, eh?"
Ditching the clinch, Hettie flipped over to a pair of metal pull-offs, closing the edges around the outside heel of the silver shoe on the horses foot, swinging softly into a rocking motion from her delicate wrist to work the toe free from the old shoe.
"I'm not a fan of needless suffering."
She didn't say anymore, huddled over the horse's hoof. Left no room for argument to be had in her voice. Didn't meet Tommy's eye.
There it was again.
That shadow of a soldier lurking in her fringes. He hadn't been mistaken the first time he had saw its ghost over the campfire, then. It really was there. How?
xXx
"I'm surprised Curly isn't here."
Tommy said in way of breaking the sudden silence. Getting the shoe off fully, Hettie threw the worn metal into the pile of its brethren a few feet away from her.
"The quiet one? He was here for the first horse and then he left to go help Charlie with Willy. If that's why you're here then he should still be by the docks over there loading up the coal boats. You might still be able to catch them if you hurry."
The girl must have been excellent with horses if Curly of all people had left her to her own devices with them. Curly still hovered around Tommy when he saddled his own.
"If I didn't know any better I would say you were trying to get rid of me, Miss Gray."
He tosses back in retaliation of her earlier Mr Shelby. Hettie only snorts, plucking out a hoof pick and setting to picking free the dirt, rocks and manure from the horse's hoof, chiselling away in downward strokes from heel to toe.
"Do I fuckin' look like a Miss to you?"
No… No she doesn't. She's much to wild for that. Much too… Much. She's quick on her feet, Tommy would give her that, got a tart-sharp tongue and a sailor's vocabulary, and her clothes looked like she'd stolen them from washing lines in a mad dash through the Cut. He suspects last night was the first night she'd slept under a proper roof in years and not outside with the stars or under the canvas and panel of a Vardo. Might be why she left so early in the morning.
"Do I look like a Mr Shelby?"
Bending down further, Hettie blew on the hoof and used the back of her hand to swipe away the last of the muck on the end of her chuckle.
"With that suit and coat? I think that's what you want to be seen as."
Sharp-tongued, wild, and fuckin' clever. Dangerously so. That was Hester Gray. He'd witnessed it the first time over the campfire, and he'd seen it last night, the way her eyes watched those around here without making it look like she was watching. Picking up the little things, the invisible things, a smear of lead on Arthur's thumb, a hint she'd used to ask him about drawing, the splatter of mashed carrots on John's shoe to enquire about his kids, the scent of Polly's perfume to strike up conversation about the lilac patch she was growing in her garden.
The thing is, Tommy was intelligent too. He heard the things not spoken as well.
She'd asked about Arthur's drawing when Polly asked what school she went to. Picked up on John's kids when Arthur had questioned her strange accent of some sort of cockney-Scottish amalgamation. Diverted conversation from friends and family to the lilac patch when Michael had said what about you?
Idly, right then, Tommy wondered what she'd seen on him, in or on or below his suit and cap, in the neat folds of his coat and the trimmed bed of his own nails. Mr Shelby?
"And what do you want to be seen as, eh?"
Finished with scrubbing the hoof clean, Hettie glanced his way and smiled, dimpled, broad, wild.
"Just Hettie."
Her name was brandished with the flick of a knife coming out to play, the slice of flaky sole being shedded and whittled from the bottom of the hoof, small hands deft and gentle, taking care not to cut too deep into the horse's foot.
"And who is Hettie?"
xXx
"Right now? Hettie is a girl trying to get her work bloody done while her cousin is carefully avoiding the mud on his nice new shoes and nattering away at the fence while he chain smokes the half pack he has in his breast pocket."
The rasp came out next to flatten the sole.
"And who's Hettie on any other day? A girl who threatens to cause a riot in my bookies with… What was it Esme said? Fifteen words?"
The rasp stopped in its sawing swoop, and for a moment all was still, silent, before Hettie laughed.
"Tell you did she?"
Hettie shook her head, still chuckling.
"Didn't see that coming. She didn't seem to be a talker. I'll remember that next time."
"There's no secrets in the Shelby family."
"Isn't there?"
Hettie asked quietly, quickly, getting Tommy on the backfoot, finally looking at him, looking at him dead on and locked like the barrel of a gun.
"Are you sure about that?"
Tommy cocked a brow and thought for a moment of telling her of course not. But she's smart, this girl, perilously quick, and he knows she'll see through that as easy as he'd seen through her diversion tactics yesterday.
"There's no secrets between the Shelby family."
Hettie's smile turned long and keen.
"Good thing I'm a Gray then, aye?"
Tommy tutted, clicking his tongue on the back of his teeth as he threw away the butt of his smoke into a dingy, shallow puddle as Hettie took to pulling out a clean new horseshoe, sizing it against the hoof she held.
"Gray by name I imagine-"
Tommy started.
"But I think that blood of yours runs more Shelby than most."
Finding the shoe a little too long on one rim, Hettie at last dropped the horse's leg to take it over to the anvil waiting off to the side of the door, slinging it down with a clink where she began hammering the edge back into line.
"Then I suppose you know just who Hettie is after all. Why don't you inform the rest of the class?"
It's sarcasm, dripping with it, soaked in it, meant to be dropped and left where it laid. Tommy had never been good at leaving things be.
"I think she's a girl who's running from something."
"Oh?"
Hettie's voice is placid, calm on the surface like a still water pond, but Tommy heard the next blow of the hammer strike harder than the rest.
"Aye. I think she's a girl who's learned to keep her head down and her feet silent, who's quicker in the mind than most give her credit for. A girl who can look at a ledger page and find the inner workings of an organisation on a glimpse, who can pick apart a man as quick as she sees him. I think that's how she's survived all these years on her own. I think-"
"Mr Shelby's just full of thoughts, isn't he? I'm surprised his overly large head hasn't popped with the sheer amount of them-"
"I think you're running from something, and you can't stop running."
The hammer stopped hammering, but Hettie didn't turn. She kept her back to him, face away.
"Is that why you're here then? To see if I'm going to bring trouble to your door?"
xXx
Tommy scoffed and slewed into the mud of the stable, across the hay and feed and over to Hettie's back.
"I told you to make your choice wisely, didn't I? To either come to the address or lose the card. You came."
She still didn't turn. Tommy reached out, grasped a shoulder, felt how tense it was under the thin linen, how small it was too, and she did flinch this time. Severely. He turned her around all the same.
"You're a Shelby, and the first rule of our family is we Shelby's look after each other. I need to know if you're in danger."
Hettie searched his face then, brows pulling down low and hard, pupils little pricks of black in cold bright eyes.
"And what do you want in return?"
"Return?"
Tommy questioned, cap low over his eyes.
"I don't want anything in return."
That seemed to confuse her, mystify her, eyes momentarily widening before slinking small again in scrutiny, the idea that someone would be willing to help in want of nothing in gain.
"You… You really mean that, don't you?"
"I wouldn't have bloody said it if I didn't mean it."
Hettie seemed to find something in his face, in his eyes, or maybe she was trying to hide something in her own as she gently shirked off his hand, plucked up her now sized horseshoe and made way back to the chestnut stallion patiently waiting. Yet, when she spoke she couldn't hide the gruff note lodging in the middle of her throat.
"I'm not in danger anymore."
Anymore.
It was more than any other answer he'd gotten from the impossible girl. Hettie lightly pulled up the horse's hoof anew, hammering the shoe on with nails she kept balanced between her teeth. Something to keep her mouth busy apart from speaking.
"If someone is out there looking-"
"He's dead."
It's cold, winter, painful. Three barren words made from bone and brutality.
"He's dead. He's not coming back. He's never coming back. I'm not in danger any longer. He's dead."
Hettie softly repeated this time, and Tommy didn't know if she was trying to convince him or assure herself as he saw the drop in her shoulders, the cut in her spine, the dip in her voice.
"I wouldn't have come here to Polly or-… I wouldn't have come if he was still around."
Tommy dared a step closer.
"Hettie-"
"Leave it."
She glanced over her shoulder, and it was there that he saw her, seventeen with something heavy hanging over her that made her look seventy. The same look Arthur and John and himself saw in the mirror some days, the look they tried to get rid of with whisky and bets and razor edged caps, the look of a war hard won and a soul left somewhere in a mud ditch.
"Please… Just leave it."
xXx
"As long as you're safe."
Hettie snatched the deal up, forcing a chuckle that rang just a little too hollow.
"As safe as anyone here is. The roads in Birmingham are awful."
Tommy shoved his hands into his slack pockets, unsure whether he should head for the fence or for the girl.
"Not as dangerous as London's roads I hear. Pol's expecting you back by afternoon to help pack."
The last nail hammered home in the shoe.
"Pack for what?"
"For London."
Dropping the horse's leg for the last time, Hettie whirled on her heel.
"Why is she packing for London?"
Tommy smirked.
"You didn't think Pol was going to let you ride off to London without her, eh? I hear Michael's looking forward to seeing some of the sights having never been himself."
Hettie shook her head, a few rather stubborn curls freeing themselves to fall and flutter at the nape of her neck.
"But I'm going with Nadya-"
"And Django who've already agreed to take our cars along with their caravans. We have trailers for the horses set to go already."
Hettie huffed and brandished her hammer like a knife.
"When was all this bloody agreed?"
"This morning, which you would have been apart of if you didn't run off for the stables at first light."
"I don't need fuckin' honour guards-"
Tommy ignored the bite to her voice, though he did notice the healthy flush of indignation to her cheeks edging them a rather pleasant pink.
"I have business to deal with in London. It's easier if we get it all done in one swing. I'd watch my tongue too if I were you. Pol catches you cussing like that and you're not too old to have your mouth washed out with soap."
Hettie huffed, crossing her arms over her chest, and for a moment Tommy thought she might go as far as stomping her foot like a toddler caught pilfering sweets from the tuck shop.
"She can fuckin' try."
Tommy cocked a brow and smirked.
"You're not too old for me to sling over my knee for a tanning, either."
It was meant to come out jovially, sardonically, a blank warning but there was something just a little too dark in Tommy's voice to be carried lightly, something a tiny too thick to pass seemly. The flush on Hettie's cheeks brightened a flash, but she was fast to break the sudden friction by-
By lobbing a hoof brush at his chest, which Tommy rushed to catch before it bounced off into the trodden hay.
"And what am I meant to do with this?"
Hettie was already walking towards the stallion's hind leg, stroking as she went.
"What do you think you're meant to do with it? It's a blood brush. Get to work if you're going to keep blathering. I still have forty-three shoes to fit, and if you want me back helping Polly pack before night falls, you can chip in."
Tommy eyed the brush.
"Yes, but does Mr Shelby know how to shod a horse?"
Hettie snorted a chuckle, bending down to hook the hoof up and out.
"Mr Shelby? No. He's much too prim and proper in his three-piece to get his hands dirty in a stable bed. But I heard Tommy has Gypsy blood, and all good Gypsies know how to shoe a horse."
A second, a breathe, a beat-
Tommy shirked his coat off, throwing it over the anvil before turning to roll his sleeves up.
"You're fortunate I'm in a sociable mood."
Walking his way towards the last front leg, stroking the horse's snout, Hettie's bright eyes peered over the rump of the horse, bright and crinkled in laughter, the only part of her face apart from the overabundance of curls to make it over the horse.
"You call this sociable?"
xXx
By the time Hettie made it back to 12 Watery Lane to Polly's small house, Michael was sitting on the stoop nursing his head and his hangover still. She stopped a little way away and whistled through her puckered lips.
"You look mighty green there, Michael."
Michael, in turn, grimaced at the thrumming pain the whistle struck in his temple. Seemingly, it made Hettie smile wider.
"How are you smiling? It's two in the afternoon and I still feel sick as a dog."
Swinging her boots from her hand and walking barefoot in Birmingham, Hettie skipped up the step and plonked down beside Michael with a jolly little bounce.
"It's called the Whisky woes for a reason. What are you doing out here, anyway? Polly kick you out for spewing on her rug?"
Michael, anew, winced as his gut churned at the mere mention of sickness.
"Not quite but I needed fresh air before I did something similar. Not much fresh air in Birmingham, though, is there. Where have you been? You reek of horses and hay."
Dumping her shoes down the side of the step, Hettie shrugged.
"Shod some horses at Charlie's yard with Tommy."
"Shod?"
"Gave them new shoes."
Michael frowned. He tried to picture it, and while he had no trouble seeing Hettie with horses, had seen first-hand how well she'd handled that beast she called Demon, his imagination came up short with Thomas Shelby. The Thomas Shelby Michael had met yesterday, the one who had stood by the wall of the room, smiling when appropriate, though it was never more than a twitch of the lips, answering when questioned directly, but not much more. Like a shadow on the wall, he had spent most of the night, the night Michael had trouble remembering now, purely watching in a neatly pressed suit.
Whisky hadn't blurred that recollection.
"Tommy as in Tommy-Tommy? Tommy Shelby?"
Hettie frowned at him, a curl of her lip hinting at a smirk.
"No Tommy from the moon-… Yes that Tommy."
Michael shook his head and then winced something fierce when the world swam with it.
"I didn't think he'd know how to do that."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I mean a business man like him doesn't seem the type to do physical labour."
"Right…"
Hettie drawled.
"Because manual labour's only meant for the inferior, yes? The Gypsies and the Jewish and people with darker skin than fuckin' spoilt milk. God forbid a man in a suit lower himself to actually using his hands for more than signing signatures or handing out notes for other's to do his dirty work."
"Exactly."
Michael said just moments before his mind caught up with precisely what it was agreeing to.
"Wait-"
Hettie sighed and stood, looking down at Michael with a despairing shake of her head.
"Not everyone gets the chance to go to university or sign onto an apprenticeship like you did, Michael, and none of that is their fault."
"I didn't mean it like that, Hettie. You know I didn't mean you. You're different-"
"Don't."
Hettie cut in sharply.
"Don't finish that sentence. You know… I get it. You're village was small and isolated, but the rest of the world isn't. You're going to have to widen that mind of yours before you accidentally infer someone other than your sister, who knows you mean well, that they're inferior and they decide to take your tongue for it. And they wouldn't be remiss to fuckin' do so."
Patting his shoulder, Hettie slung open the door to the house.
"Hettie, come on-"
"I'll see you inside. Preferably after you've thought long and hard over what I just said."
The door slammed shut behind her and Michael was left to the taste of sick in his mouth and a headache pounding above his eyes.
xXx
Slewing to a stop at the cusp of the kitchen, Hettie blinked in surprise and hummed low and stretched at the sight that greeted her.
"What's all this then?"
Polly, tossing bacon at the kitchen stove, turned to glance over her shoulder, smiling at Hettie among table tops and counters filled with plates of parsnips and cakes and roast ham and… Yes, Yorkshire puddings.
"I thought you and Michael would like a nice, cooked meal, especially after you've been at the stable all day."
Hettie chuckled and edged into the kitchen, swiping a Yorkshire pud up to take a hearty bite.
"I don't think Michaels up to eating more than his own words right now."
Reaching for another, Hettie had to yank her hand back before Polly could snap it with the spatula. It left the roast potatoes in a pan wide open, which Hettie stole a mouthful before Polly could divert course to stop her.
The elder woman indulgently smiled but aimed the spatula under Hettie's nose accusatorily.
"You're worse than John. Save the rest for when you're cousins get here. I'm guessing Michael's still outside nursing his head?"
Hettie chuckled and kicked back against the counter.
"He's as green as grass, that one. You might have to put him out to pasture if he begins sweating any more than he is."
"I'll put you out to pasture if you don't move that hand away from the sausages."
Hettie winked but did as she told, Polly missing the other hand behind her hip that stole a baked carrot which found its home in her mouth when Polly turned back for the sizzling bacon.
"Wait, how did you know I was at the stable? I was out before dawn."
Blindly Polly gestured to the corner of the kitchen where, innocently, sat a strange looking muggle telephone.
"Tommy rang through not half hour ago. Said you were on your way home from Charlie's yard. Good boy, my nephew. Ringing to inform me of where he is, where he will be-"
"Bloody hell, are we starting the guilt trips so soon?"
Polly snapped around.
"Language."
Yet, Hettie understood the dark eyes ran deeper than her use of language, she winced, and unexpectedly she realized exactly why Polly was on edge.
"Sorry… I'll leave a note next time. I'm just not used to-"
People caring where I am.
Hettie doesn't say that however, it doesn't seem she needed to as the glare on Polly's face softens, alleviates, floats away like a feather in the wind.
"A note is all I ask."
And because Hettie was never the best with her words, better at showing rather than speaking, Hettie moved over to the stove, nudging Polly off with a wiggle of her hip and a shoulder through.
"Sit down for a bit. I'll finish this."
"I can-"
But Hettie had already stolen the spatula, stolen the stove, and she wasn't moving from her place. The screech of a chair being pulled out from the dining table rung out from somewhere behind her.
"I'll need to head to the pitch later tonight just to check on Nadya, Django and Jibben, and I'll need to tell Tem he needn't worry about shodding the horses 'cause I've already done it."
A rustle crunched in the beyond, and Hettie pictured Polly toying with the linen of the table she sat at.
"You'll be back afterwards, yes?"
Hettie hesitated; spatula frozen over a slice of bacon. The question was heavier than what it should have been, more fraught too. A no man's land with unseen mines. So instead of trying to find a clear path through it, Hettie decided on the truth.
As much of it as she could give right then.
"I don't sleep well under roofs and brick. I haven't since-"
Since she'd been forced on the run at fifteen and lived a near year in a tent hopping from woods to forest to brooks in hopes of ending a war with a madman on her arse.
"For a while now."
The rustling stopped.
"Charlie and someone called Willy are bringing one of Charlie's old Vardos around later to place outback. You can… You can take that if it's easier?"
Hettie pulled the skillet off the stove.
"You've spoken to Willy?"
Polly smiled and straightened out the linen she'd rumpled in her fidgeting.
"This morning when I went looking for you. The woman, Nadya, she said you normally slept outside in the stars when you could. I thought you might prefer… I thought if I had a Vardo… Perhaps you might want to-"
Stay.
This wasn't just new to Hettie, the younger girl thought. This was new to Polly to. To Michael as well. Polly had lost toddlers and got teenagers in return. It couldn't have been easy. And as Hettie was learning to leave notes out, as Michael was widening his world view, Polly was learning how to be a mother all over again. There might be growing pains, hiccups, fuckin' full frontal face plants, but all they really needed was time. Time Hettie wouldn't get if she kept running away.
I think you're running from something, and you can't stop running.
Only from myself, Tommy, Hettie thought. Only from myself. So she smiled, positively beams, because there's only so far anyone can ever run from themselves, and maybe Hettie was at the end of her track now, tired and worn and done, and she nodded.
"I'd like that. I'll still need to check on Jibben, though. He hurt his arm a few days ago and I need to make sure it's healing right. I'll need to lash Demon up too. Tuck him in for the night, and make sure Django and Nadya have enough firewood for the stove-… But I'll come back. Can't turn my nose up at my own Vardo now, can I?"
Polly smiled brightly, lopsided like Michael smiled, but caught herself and coughed.
Still learning.
"Good. Good."
Unceremoniously, Polly stood from the table.
"Now come help me set up the plates. John's bringing Esme and the kids over, Arthur has a bottomless gut on the best of days, and even Tommy's showing face again tonight. He's honoured us with his presence two days in a row now. We should feel blessed, eh?"
Hettie could tell it was meant as a joke, but like all good jokes a kernel of truth laid somewhere in the chaff of it.
"Doesn't Tommy normally come to dinners?"
"Tommy?"
Polly asked with a chortle.
"You'd be better at getting blood from a stone than seeing Thomas Shelby eat. Only the Lord knows what he's up to."
Hettie slipped the bacon onto a clean serving plate.
"He seemed alright when he was shodding the horses with me earlier."
Polly froze by the cupboard, arms comically outstretched above her head to pull down plates and gravy boats.
"Tommy was shodding the horses?"
Hettie dashed the skillet back onto the stove, brushing her hand off on the tea towel slung over the handle of the oven.
"Yes… Is that as strange as seeing him eat?"
She joked in return but Polly wasn't laughing. Polly was looking at her, hard and deep with a crease of concentration plucking at her brows.
"Polly?"
She snapped out of it soon enough, smiling away the frown and the stare.
"Oh, aye. Count yourself truly fortunate."
Finally pulling the plates down, Polly began shooing her out the kitchen before Hettie could ask what that was about.
"Now go get your brother in and wash up upstairs in the pitcher and basin. Nadya handed over some of your clothes and I've left them in the bedroom at the far right on the bottom of the bed. You stink of muck and horse hair."
"Oh no, how terrible-"
"Get!"
Hettie chuckled as she dipped out of the kitchen, only to dart back in at the last possible second to nab the sausage on the side.
"Oi!"
Nevertheless, Polly's laughter, as bright and clear as her eyes, lessoned the brunt of her yell.
Tommy noticing Hettie can handle her drink well and finding it odd is more than just an anecdote or a remark on her size and age. I wanted Tommy to be the first to start picking up that something wasn't quite right with Hettie, he is a smart cookie after all, and I always thought due to magic, a sort of energy Wizarding folk can manipulate and create, Witches and Wizards have an advanced metabolism due to this. A really fast and healthy metabolism basically means your body will more readily use glucose(carbs) protein and fats to create energy (magic). In canon one of the main and repeated types of food introduced in the Wizarding World are sweets and candy. I put this down to Wizards needing extra sugar due to said extremely advanced metabolism. Similarly, we know they have their own kind of alcohol, Ogden's Firewhisky and Butterbeer ect, and it makes sense if they have high metabolisms that Muggle alcohol wouldn't touch them, they'd burn through it too fast, hence why they'd go through the trouble of creating their own brands and types, and why sugar and candy is often seen around Witches and Wizards, Harry with his treacle tarts, Dumbledore with his lemon sherbets, and Ron with his Chocolate Frogs.
In short, while poor Michael was downing forty-proof whisky, Hettie was drinking the equivalent of shandy-water.
I thought it was a nice subtle way of having Tommy pick up on an often-overlooked oddity, and I hope you guys liked it too.
Once again, thank you all for the lovely reviews, follows and favourites, and if I could be a right pest, don't forget to drop me a review letting me know what you guys think so far, they keep the muses, like Tommy, nattering 😉.