I am officially writing the rest of Pieces for Camp Nano this month. Timeline promises have a way of coming back to bite me in the butt, but I SHOULD have the full project completely finished by the end of April. Should.
Warning for Angelina being very ableist. She grows out of it, but it's a process.
This chapter, from start to finish and everything in between, is entirely for Maggie.
Roxanne Weasley was born deaf.
This fact did not impact her the same way it would have impacted a Muggle child, the Healers assured her parents. There were spells that would compensate for the hearing loss.
"So, she'll be normal?" Angelina asked, an edge of anxiety in her voice.
"She'll be able to hear without issue," the Healer taking their case said, "as long as the spells are in place and activated. But she will outgrow them, and as she does, they will need to be recast. For the first six months, you should bring her in to have the spells renewed every two weeks. Infants grow very quickly. After six months, we'll reassess. We'll give you some exercises to do with her at home to evaluate her hearing. If you think the spells are faltering, don't hesitate to bring her in. Language acquisition is crucial in the first two years."
Fred, at seven, was staying with his Aunt Audrey and Uncle Percy when Roxie was born. When the owl came with the news, Fred asked his Aunt Audrey what it meant that Roxie was deaf. When Aunt Audrey explained that she couldn't hear without the special spells, he frowned. "What happens to Muggles who can't hear? How d'they ever learn to talk or anything?" he asked. As soon as his aunt explained what sign language was, Fred decided that Roxie should learn.
"After all," he argued, "the spells might stop working someday. And she should know how." With a smile, his aunt found him a Muggle sign language book. The signs it didn't have, for magic related words, Fred just made up.
He didn't tell his parents what he was doing. Their mom didn't want to draw attention to Roxie's deafness by talking about it. Their dad didn't want to oppose their mom. So Fred took it on himself, making the sign as he said each word, so she'd learn them together.
Roxie signed before she spoke, asking for water or milk or her blanket or toys with her hands, in signs only her brother recognized. Their parents were astounded at the rapport the siblings had, never realizing that the gestures Roxie made were more than the usual arm-flinging of infants.
Roxie adored her older brother and the secret language she believed for many years he had created just for her. He was her best friend, and for a long time, he was the only person she could really talk to. Her parents hovered, fluttery and anxious, and she didn't understand why. She knew she was deaf, but all that meant to her was that every few months, she had to go to St Mungo's and let Healers do funny things to her ears.
And then, one morning when she was five years old, she woke up to a silent world. She didn't understand what was happening. She couldn't hear the usual morning sounds, and when she called for her mother, she couldn't hear that either. So she called louder, then louder, but though she could feel the difference in volume in her throat, it made no difference to her ears.
When her mother rushed into her room in response to Roxie's panicked screams, bathed in glowing specks of light that Roxie had never seen before, her entire world changed.
The specks were golden and warm, and they swirled through the air like living things. They were beautiful, and Roxie was captivated. When her mother pulled Roxie into her arms to comfort and reassure her, the golden specks swirled around her, too. She reached for them, watching in wonder as they wound around her fingers before spinning off through the air.
As her mother took her to Mungo's, Roxie watched the world around her in wide-eyed fascination, because the specks of light were everywhere. All colors of the rainbow, moving at all different speeds, gathering around each wizard and witch and wand.
When the Healer fixed her ears and the sounds came flooding back in, louder than she remembered, the lights disappeared.
"That must have been scary," her mother said when they were home again. "Do you understand what happened?"
"My ears stopped working," Roxie said, but she was no longer concerned with that. "What were the lights?"
"What lights, baby?" her mother asked, but Roxie didn't know how to explain. "I know it must have been confusing," she said when Roxie didn't answer. "But if it happens again, you know what to do. You find me and tell me, and we'll go fix it, okay?"
A year later, it did happen again. She was sitting on a high stool in her dad's workroom, watching him fiddle with some experimental project for the store. Roxie loved watching her dad work. Mum was always moving, always making noise, like she was afraid of leaving Roxie in silence for too long. But Dad was a quiet pillar of calm. She could sit in his workroom for hours and never say a word, fascinated by his process. Sometimes he'd chat about what he was working on, and sometimes she was in a talkative mood and would ask him a litany of curious questions, but usually, they slipped into companionable silence.
This day, she was watching him work, her arms resting on top of his worktable and her head resting on top of her arms, when all of a sudden, the room came to life with swirling color and light. So captivated was she with the return of the lights that she barely noticed the silence that had descended. She followed each swirl of color, counting as many different ones as she could, watching them move like leaves in a breeze, except that there was no breeze.
She looked at her father, and he was awash in red. The colors swirled most heavily around his wand, and as he waved it, the specks of light fell into line and followed the path his wand traced in the air, shooting forward to surround and change the brush sitting in front of him.
Magic! That's what the specks of light were, she realized. She was, somehow, seeing magic.
She must have gasped at the realization, for the next thing she knew, her father was redirecting her gaze with one warm, gentle hand. There was a slight frown on his face as he said something she couldn't hear. She tried to focus on his eyes, but the magic specks were distracting.
When he spoke again, he spoke slowly, punctuating each word with a simple gesture that mimicked Fred's almost exactly, and Roxie knew what he was asking.
Can you hear me?
Slowly, she shook her head.
With calm reassurances, he took her to Mungo's, and she tried not to be disappointed. She drank in every bit of magic she could see, trying to figure out what the different colors were, trying to remember as many patterns as she could before the sound came back and the magic went away.
"Daddy, do you ever see lights in your workshop?" she asked later.
"Only when something explodes when I'm not expecting it," he joked, and she giggled because she knew she was supposed to, but his answer confirmed a disquieting thought. Neither her mother nor her father could see the magic lights. So why could she?
She was almost afraid to ask Fred, because what if he couldn't see them, either, and what if he thought she was mad for asking? But she had never been afraid to ask Fred anything, so one day when he was home from his third year at school and they were alone, she used her hands to ask the question, like she always did with thoughts she was afraid to say out loud.
Do you see your magic?
Fred frowned. After a moment, he signed back. I see the spells happen. But that's not what you mean, right?
Immediately, she was awash in relief. Because maybe he didn't see it like she did, but he knew immediately what she meant, and he didn't think she was crazy. Her hands flew through the air, telling him everything she had seen the two times her ears had stopped working.
He was quiet for a long time after her hands stilled, thinking. "And it only happens when . . ." He gestured to his ears, a meaningless gesture in terms of their language, but she knew what he meant. She nodded. "I've never heard of anything like that before." Then he signed Can you make the magic do anything?
I've never tried, she admitted.
Next time it comes back, experiment a little, Fred said, looking excited at the prospect.
But that was easier said than done. Mum, dismayed by the fact that Roxie had outgrown her spells without warning not once but twice, started taking her to Mungo's with greater frequency. It became clear to Roxie that if she was going to experiment, she was going to have to take things into her own hands.
The year Roxie was seven, her underage magic became rather explosive. Her dad would joke about apples not falling far from trees while expertly cleaning up whatever Roxie had blasted to smithereens this time. Her mum would huff as she cleaned up the mess and implore Roxie to try and be a little more careful about the pottery. And Roxie did feel bad about making things explode. It wasn't her intention. She was just trying to turn the spells in her ears off, but she had no idea how. Usually, she lost control, and all the magic spun outward, hitting something somewhere in the house.
But finally, it worked. Finally, she turned that blast of magic inward, thoroughly disrupting the magic in her ears. Silence descended, the world lit up with color, and Roxie grinned, ecstatic.
For almost an hour, she pushed bits of magic around her room, making them follow the shapes and patterns she remembered seeing the last two times. And things happened. Sometimes it was what she wanted and sometimes it wasn't, but she was using magic to make magic that wasn't an explosion! She was so excited she called Fred on the special two-way mirror he'd given her when he left for Hogwarts. She caught him between classes, and her fingers flew through the air, telling him everything. Signing through the mirror was a special challenge, but they'd long ago mastered it.
So you can't hear right now? Fred signed.
Not a single thing! she replied gleefully. Watch! And she showed him what she could do.
Not bad, Pebble, he signed, and she swelled with happiness. Then he cocked his head to the side for a moment. Mum's coming, he signed and the mirror went dark, and Roxie went to meet the door like she'd been on her way to open it anyway. She tugged on her ear and Mum took her to Mungo's, and no one was any the wiser.
She wanted to shut the spells off again right away, but she knew she didn't dare, not until she knew how to put them back. She'd tried to watch the Healer, but it was all done at the side of her head and she couldn't see.
So instead she spent her time trying to see what magic she could make happen with her ears turned on. She pointed her finger and made the spell patterns in the air, but without being able to see the magic and make it move where she wanted, she didn't have much luck. One day, she snuck her dad's wand from the table while he was napping and tried the same things, and she had a little more success, especially if she knew the name of the spell. But some magic she'd only ever seen. It was very frustrating.
But Fred told her about the Charms books gathering dust in his room somewhere, and she spent every spare moment poring over them, memorizing spells and wand movements and incantations (though she honestly wasn't sure how incantations really helped) until she knew The Standard Book of Spells, grades 1 and 2, practically by heart. She couldn't make any of them happen, but she knew their names and what they did and what shape to make in the air, and that was half the magic.
When she decided it had been long enough to get away with turning her ears off again (and when she was too impatient to wait any longer), she shut them down and ran through all the spells she'd learned. It was easier, so much easier than it had been the first time. She still couldn't make them all work, but she made a lot of them work, and she felt a thrill, having found something she could do well. She wanted to spend the whole day in silence, but it wasn't possible, not at eight years old with protective parents. She'd been careful to sit up against her door so she could feel the vibrations of anyone coming up the stairs, and as soon as the wall behind her rumbled slightly, she shoved the spellbooks out of sight, picked up a novel, and dove onto her bed with it.
When Mum burst through the door, all exasperation and probably demanding to know why Roxie wasn't answering her calls, Roxie schooled her face into the startled to discover my hearing's gone! expression she'd practiced in the mirror. When they were home from Mungo's, her mother asked, "I don't understand - how did you not realize?"
"It's always quiet in my room," Roxie told her. "I guess I got really caught up in my book." And her mother left it alone.
But later that night, she heard her parents arguing about it. "Kids grow, Ang," her dad said, his voice not kept quiet enough to keep from spilling out of his workroom as she passed. She knew she shouldn't have, but she paused to listen. "You should have seen Mum trying to keep us all in robes that fit."
"But she didn't tell me," was her mum's reply.
"She didn't notice! She was caught up in something else. Merlin knows she gets that from both of us. You were so wrapped up in your work last month, you didn't even notice when the shed caught on fire."
"When you caught the shed on fire, you mean," Mum said in her icy, angry voice. "And the difference is, I'm not disabled!"
"Neither is she," her dad said, and now his voice was going to its dangerous place, too, and that sent a spark of fear through Roxie because she hated this, she hated it so much when her parents got angry and started yelling and she only now realized it was April, and how could she have done this in April? April was an Angry Month, she remembered that from when she was really little, back before Fred figured out how to get them to stop yelling all the time. Now they only yelled some of the time, but Roxie couldn't stop it like Fred could. Fred would just yell PAUSE at the top of his lungs, and it would stop just like that, but Roxie's voice got stuck every time she thought about it. So she ran away from the workroom door and hit the squeaky steps on purpose and hoped that would be enough.
If they kept arguing, it was quiet enough that she didn't hear it, and that was enough for her.
The next time she wanted to turn her ears off, she was smarter about it. She waited for summer, when Fred was home, and she waited for a day when her parents were both gone and Fred was in charge. Fred was as eager for her to spend the day in silence as she was - he wanted to see what she could do.
The charms came so easily to her this time, especially with Fred helping. And he showed her new spells, too. The defense spells took a time or two watching for her to master, but she loved learning new magic.
This is so weird, Fred signed at one point. Watching you do nonverbal spells with your finger. At eight.
When you see what the magic does, it's easy, she signed back with a shrug.
I'm just glad I made up signs for spells before I started school. Otherwise I'd have used wand movements, and you'd be setting off spells left and right every time we had a conversation.
No, I wouldn't, Roxie said with a scowl. I can't do anything if I can't see the magic. Suddenly, a thought occurred to her. Should we be worried about the Ministry wondering about all this magic? I don't want to get you in trouble.
Fred laughed. The Ministry investigating weird magic? In this house? And Roxie smiled because of course he was right.
Okay, she signed. Show me that Transfiguration again.
Transfiguration was the one skill she had trouble with. She could see the magic changing the objects, but she couldn't see how. She was getting frustrated with her lack of progress when Fred tweaked her nose and put it in perspective. Yes, he signed. I feel so bad for you. Eight years old and not able to master first year transfiguration wandless after forty minutes of effort.
They spent the whole day working magic together, and Roxie had never been happier. Half an hour before their parents were supposed to be home, Fred sent an owl saying that Roxie's spells had worn off and he was taking her to Mungo's via the Knight Bus and they'd be home soon.
Her euphoric high was dampened only slightly when the sounds came back and her world became less colorful. "I wish I knew how to turn the spells back on," she said to her brother as the Knight Bus rumbled its way back to their house.
"I tried to watch," Fred said. "But I couldn't see what the Healer was doing. Sorry, Pebble."
Unfortunately, the happy glow of the day came crashing down with the sound of raised voices echoing out from the closed front door.
"Three times in eight months isn't normal growth spurts, George, and you are being unbelievably cavalier about this!"
"And you are being overly protective, as always! She told her brother, and they're handling it!"
"That she's handling it isn't the issue! She shouldn't have to handle it - those Healers are doing something wrong!"
"Spell development is an inexact process-"
"And what if that inexact process happens at school?"
"Then she'll handle it, like she's doing right now! Give our daughter a little credit!"
Roxie looked up at Fred, feeling scared and small. He knelt beside her and signed, It's okay. They're going to stop. I'm going to make them. Don't let this take today away from you. And he led her inside.
"Everything okay?" Fred asked as he opened the door, his voice pointed, and it had an immediate effect.
"Everything's fine, baby," their mum said, but her voice was tight and Roxie could feel the tension in the room. "I'm just concerned that the Healers aren't doing their jobs with those spells, and I hate that you had to make your way to Mungo's on your own. You could have waited for one of us to be home."
"It wasn't a problem," Fred said calmly, his arm around Roxie's shoulders. "And Roxie wanted it taken care of right away. Although, you know," he said, sounding thoughtful, and Roxie turned to look up at him quizzically, "it might be worth it to ask the Healers if they'll teach you how to lay the spells. Growth spurts are unpredictable, and I think this way you'd worry less, Mum."
"That's not a bad idea," their Dad said, and Roxie tried not to give anything away, even though her heart was pounding with anticipation.
It took her mother a moment, but eventually she nodded, saying, "That might be best."
The next day was life-changing for Roxie. The whole family went to Mungo's, and Roxie sat while Healers and her parents and her brother placed and activated and deactivated the spells that helped her hear. The constant flickering of magic in and out of her perception almost gave her a headache, but she powered through because she knew as soon as they got home, Fred would slip into her room and teach her how to activate and deactivate the spells for herself.
Being able to fully control the spells on her ears opened up Roxie's world tenfold. She turned her ears off every chance she got. Her control of the magic around her grew by leaps and bounds. So did her understanding of what she could see. She turned nine, and mastered almost entirely the Standard Book of Spells, book three. When Hogwarts' winter break came around, she demanded that Fred show her more defense and transfiguration spells. She felt free, and she loved it.
But the freedom made her careless. She was young and ambitious and short-sighted, and she forgot too quickly the need to be careful and alert. And one night, when she was alone in the living room and Fred was at Aunt Ginny's and couldn't listen for her, she forgot to pay attention to the how long she'd been shut up, making things fly around the room toward her. And she forgot to pay attention to the vibrations in the floor. And not until sound flooded sharply back into her world did she realize that her mother had come into the room, catching her in her silence.
Angelina was beside herself. Roxie had seen her mother that angry before, but never directed at her.
The anger was unleashed in a stream of heated questions that Roxie wouldn't have known how to answer even if her mother had given her the chance. What were you thinking? and How can you keep doing this? and Do you not understand how serious your condition is and how important it is that we treat it? She was told she had to grow up, told she had to start accepting responsibility, and told in no uncertain terms the horrors and hardships that awaited her if this behavior continued.
She didn't know what to say to any of it, and then her mother's shouting brought her father into the room, and she knew he was coming to her defense, but it didn't feel like that, not when he was shouting, too. And the shouting may have started out being about her, but it didn't stay that way for long, it never did, and she didn't know how to make it stop. She signed pause pause pause pause over and over again, but her parents didn't sign, even if they had been paying attention to her, and she couldn't find her voice, and she hated this.
She retreated. She turned her ears off, too, hoping to escape the shouting, but it didn't do any good. She could feel it, in the floorboards, in the walls, in the air itself. The entire house was alive with the fighting, and so she did what she had always done.
She was signing for help before Fred's face had fully appeared in the mirror, her movements frantic and wild, and he had to stop her with a firm gesture and remind her In the mirror and slower, or you have to speak it, but then he heard it, filtering through the mirror, and his face went black. How long? he asked.
Just a few minutes, she told him, but it's about me, Mum caught me, without my ears on, and she got so mad and then dad took my side and it just keeps getting worse.
I'm coming.
And he was gone, but Molly and James were there, in the mirror, signing to her and telling her everything would be all right, and that she could hang on til Fred got there, and she was almost able to pull herself together.
She felt it when he arrived, and she turned her ears back on in time to hear his "Pause," reverberate through the house in a voice that was huge and loud and scary. The shouting stuttered to a silence, and Roxie crept to the open door so that she could hear more clearly. Fred never yelled. He might speak loudly to be heard or get someone's attention, but when he was angry, he never yelled, and Roxie loved that about him.
"You know," Fred said then to their parents, in a voice that was conversational but still dangerous, "it's not much of an incentive for Roxie to live in a world with her ears turned on if all she's ever going to hear is shouting."
He kept going. He had plenty to say, but Roxie didn't need to hear it. She retreated to her room and crawled onto her bed, burying her head in her knees. She turned off her ears because that, at least, was something she could control. She tried not to cry. She tried not to think.
After a long few moments, a gentle hand on her knee made her look up. You didn't answer when I knocked, Fred signed, sitting on the edge of her bed. You okay?
Roxie shrugged. Then she signed, How much did you tell them?
She was scared of the answer, especially when Fred gave a heavy sigh. Not much, he said. I mostly just scolded them. I didn't spill your secrets. She was halfway through trying not to visibly sag with relief when he signed his next phrase. But you should.
She froze, staring. Then she signed, emphatically, NO.
You should, Pebble, he said again.
Why? she demanded.
Because I'm not always going to be here, he signed. I'm not always going to be able to drop everything and come speak for you, and honestly, I shouldn't. I love you, I will always support you, but Roxie, I cannot be your voice. You have to find your voice. You have to learn to speak for yourself, and this is how you start. They want to help. They just don't know how. They don't understand what you want. So you should tell them. Why not?
Roxie looked down. She could think of lots of reasons why not, but she didn't think Fred would accept any of them.
One gentle hand lifted her face so she was looking at him again. Give them a chance.
I don't know how. I don't know how to talk to them.
I'll help, he assured her. I'll be right here.
What if they make me stop? she asked then, giving voice to the thought that truly plagued her. She couldn't give up her magic, she just couldn't.
They won't. Tell them what you can do, Roxie. Let them be as proud of you as I am.
Before she could say yes or no, he turned away from her to the doorway. Their parents were standing there, looking chagrined and shocked. Mum just asked if we were having a real conversation, Fred signed quickly. And Dad wants to know when we learned sign language.
What did you tell them?
The truth. That you've never not known sign language, and I started learning about an hour after you were born.
Break it to them gently that my first word wasn't Dada, okay?
That made Fred laugh, and for a moment, everything was okay. But then he signed, Ears on, and she could read lips well enough to know he'd said it out loud. When she hesitated, he said again, Ears on, Pebble.
She glanced at her parents' confused faces and immediately wished she hadn't. Taking a deep breath, she raised her hands to her ears and reactivated the spells in time to hear her mother say, ". . . don't understand; why are Roxie's ears off? I just reactivated the spells!"
She expected Fred to answer, because that was what Fred did, but he just turned slightly and looked at her. She blanched.
"What, now?" she blurted out, and he gave her a look.
"No, six weeks from now," was his sarcastic reply. "Yes, now, Rox." When she hesitated, he signed, You can do it. I'm here. I'll help. But it's time.
So she took a deep breath and said, "They were off because I turned them off. They're on now because I turned them on."
"And . . . how do you know how to do that?" her dad asked with genuine intrigue.
"Fred showed me. I mean, he showed me how to actually turn the spells on and off. I could get rid of them before, but I just pushed magic at them until they went away. Now I can do it for real."
Understanding started to dawn in her dad's eyes as he put the timeline together, and he was looking at her with newfound comprehension and respect, but her mum was nothing short of horrified.
"Why?" she demanded. "Why would you do that, Roxie? What was that accomplishing?"
And then, just like usual when it came to Roxie's ears, she was off with a tirade of questions with no silence between them. Each question made Roxie more and more anxious, just like always, and her hands twitched in her lap, wanting to say something, but she remembered what Fred said about finding her voice, so she took a deep breath, pushed through the terror at what she was about to do, and said, "MUM!" as loudly as she could. Her mum stared at her, startled into silence, and Roxie took another deep breath and said, "Please don't ask me questions if you aren't going to let me answer them."
Her heart was pounding, certain the yelling was about to start again, but instead her mum just jerked back and took a deep breath of her own. When she spoke, it was quieter and more focused. "Why do you want to turn your ears off, Roxie?"
One more encouraging smile from Fred gave her the confidence to answer. "Because that's the only way I can see the magic."
Once she got started, explaining and telling the story turned out to be much easier than she ever thought it would. She told them everything, from the first time she'd seen the swirling colors to what she'd been trying to master this afternoon before her mother found her. She told them all the ways that Fred had helped, the sign language, the spellbooks, the constant encouragement.
And then, because they asked her to, she turned off her ears and showed them what she could do. Lumos. Accio. Wingardium Leviosa. All with just a pointed finger and fierce determination. She watched her dad perform a spell she'd never seen before, and recreated it with passable success. And then she turned her ears back on and waited to see how they'd react at the end of it all.
She cared about her dad's reaction, but it was her mum she kept her eyes on when she'd said all she had to say. Her mum sat, quiet and introspective for a long few moments, gathering her thoughts. She didn't seem to know what to say. "Where do we go from here?" she finally asked.
"What do you mean?" Roxie's dad asked her, and her mum almost laughed.
"I mean, three quarters of the wizarding population never master wandless magic, and here our nine-year-old- I feel like we have to tell somebody about this."
"Don't tell anyone who will make me stop," Roxie broke in desperately. "Please. I can't give this up until I start Hogwarts. Please."
Her dad rubbed his chin. "I don't know if it's that simple, Roxie. The law is fuzzy on the subject of pre-school-age wizards and witches. The Trace doesn't do a whole lot of good when you live in a house full of magic, so parents are supposed to keep an eye on their magical children. Hogwarts students aren't allowed to do magic outside of school, but you're not in school." He frowned, considering. "I don't know where the line is," he finally admitted. "But I do know we're operating outside of what is normal. And I know we don't want to tell anyone who's going to take Roxie away to poke and prod at her. Maybe we should talk to Hermione?"
"I think we should talk to the Ollivanders," Fred said.
"The Ollivanders?" their dad repeated, confused, and Roxie was with him.
"Why would we talk to wandmakers about this?" she asked her brother.
"Because," he said patiently, tweaking her nose. "Outside of the DoM, I can't think of anyone else who has more insights into the seemingly impossible ways people can use magic than wandmakers. Especially wandless magic."
"That's a good point, Fred," their mum said. "I hadn't thought of that, but - of course Ollivander will have some idea how Roxie is able to do this."
"And," Fred added, with a smile in Roxie's direction, "I know Garrett, the most recent Ollivander. He only left Hogwarts two years ago. He won't make you stop. If anything, he'll make you do it over and over until he figures out how it's possible."
And so it was settled. Their mum pulled Fred aside to ask him questions about Garrett Ollivander, and Roxie's dad took the opportunity to ask her, very softly, "Would you teach me to sign?" Roxie stared at him.
"Really?" she asked. He smiled.
"Really. Rox, I don't want you to ever feel like you can't talk to me. To us. I know we don't make it easy sometimes, and I'm sorry that you've felt like you can't be heard. And I know because of that, it might take you a while to find your voice. But until you do, I want you to be able to talk to me in whatever language you're comfortable with. I just have to know it, too."
She threw her arms around his neck. Then she held her hand in front of her mouth and moved it down in an arch. "That's 'thank you,'" she said. Her dad repeated the gesture.
"So that's a yes?" he asked with a smile, and she nodded enthusiastically.
"Only . . . I just have to give Fred a chance to warn Molly and James." Her dad laughed out loud at that.
"So much makes sense now," he said, crossing to Fred, who had heard that part of the conversation.
"It's fine," he said. "We've already perfected the Mischief Dialect."
And then her mum was in front of her, and her dad and brother were fading away to let them have the moment, and Roxie almost wished they wouldn't because she still didn't know how to be alone with her mum.
But her mum was looking at her in a way she'd never looked at Roxie before. And before Roxie could figure out what she thought about that, her mum slowly and carefully raised a closed hand to her chest and made a small circle.
I'm sorry.
Her mum looked nervous, and that made Roxie feel less nervous. "Me too," she was able to say. "I shouldn't have kept it a secret. I should have told you."
Her mum nodded, looking thoughtful. "Maybe. But I understand why you didn't. We waited so long to have you, Roxie. We wanted to make sure we were ready. And then -" She shook her head, searching for the words. "To hear that something's wrong with your baby-"
"But nothing's wrong with me, Mum," Roxie said. A day ago, an hour ago, she would never have been able to say it, but now she knew how important it was. "Being deaf doesn't take anything away from me. It gives me more."
Her mum was silent for a long time, then she nodded. "I'm starting to understand that," she said. "I'm sorry it's taken me so long. I promise to be better about listening."
"And I promise to be better about talking."
"And will you teach me to sign along with your dad?"
Roxie grinned. "Yes." And she shifted on the bed so she was facing her mum. She held both hands up in front of her, palms out, and then brought her fingers together. "That's 'pause,'" she said, and was rewarded with a small laugh.
"Yeah, I might need that one in two languages. So. Tomorrow, we will all go to Ollivanders, and we will see if we can figure out this incredible thing you can do, and we'll move forward from there. But whatever we learn tomorrow, I'm gonna be on your side from here on out, okay? So tell me. What does magic look like?"
Roxie's eyes lit up. She felt like a huge weight was gone from her chest. She loved that she could talk about it now, that she wasn't buried under the secret. For the first time since she'd seen the swirls of magic, she had no trouble finding her voice to answer her mother. "Oh, Mum," she said with a happy sigh. "It's so pretty. I wish you could see it."
I am fascinated by disability in the wizarding world. I am filled with questions about what can be fixed with a wave of the wand, and what can't, and why, and I do not have satisfactory canon answers, so I made up my own. So my Roxie is deaf because I write Fred and Angelina's children for Maggie. But Roxie is also deaf because I wanted to explore disability in the wizarding world. What if, I asked myself, it's not something that can be "cured" with a wave of a wand, but what if there are spells that function kind of like glasses do for people like me with super broken eyes?
That, of course, led me to thinking about the magical equivalent of other sense getting stronger when one is taken away, and I kept coming back to this idea about being able to see magic. I've had a lot of fun deciding how magic works in the HP world through this piece, and I plan on exploring the question further. You might recognize this Roxie and this question from Taking Chances. I want very much to write more of her and get into what comes out of this visit to Ollivanders, and where she goes when she gets to Hogwarts, and what her life ends up looking like, so keep your eyes open!