I had about a week and a half of normalcy with Severus before Easter break. He and I had developed a new arrangement in which anytime there was a moment between us we would exit the classroom immediately and head for the shrieking shack if not only making it to the tunnel under the whomping willow to eliminate any chance of being caught.
Susan seemed to understand without asking that I had patched things up with Severus, though she continued to ask if I wanted to join her in the library after supper to look over wedding plans. I wasn't sure what she expected to find that she hadn't seen before since she had had the same magazines since the proposal.
I walked with Susan and Mark through more April rain to Hogsmeade where I finalized the plans that I was spending Saturday, Sunday, and Monday with my family and then I was Susan's slave for the rest of the week. We said our goodbyes and I apparated into the field outside my parents' house.
I always apparated outside since last year, for the first Easter I could apparate home instead of taking the Knight Bus to a pub a few miles from my house, I ended up landing on and breaking the coffee table since my mother had moved it to what used to be an empty space. I pictured the room as it had been and was greeted with the sound of splintering wood and bits of shrapnel pierced through my skin. Not only was I in pain and bleeding everywhere but I had scared the bejezus out of Louis who ran to the corner screeching in high pitched wails. Even in my startled and wounded state I couldn't help but laugh at him from my pile of broken wood.
It was raining much harder at home than it had been at school and the mud was so deep that it seeped over the top of my shoes so that every open space was filled with mud. The suction was strong and I couldn't lift my feet. I apparated a bit closer to the house to be dismayed that my shoes had not made the journey with me. My father would no doubt find them while tilling the field when the rain let up a bit.
I walked into the house shoeless and my socks packed with at least ten pounds of mud. Immediately upon my entry I was nearly run over my Sean as he sprinted screaming past me.
"Hi, Ruby!" He yelled as he past not bothering to stop.
A tall man with red hair slid around the corner. "You can't hide, Sean! Give it back!"
He skid to a stop in front of me and ran his hand through his hair looking slightly embarrassed. "Ruby! Hey!"
He reached out his arms like he was about to hug be but recoiled at the sight of my dripping robes.
"You look horrible." He said.
"It's pouring." I said squinting trying to figure out who was standing in front of me in my house.
He seemed to notice.
"Callum." He said placing a hand on his chest. "Your cousin."
"Oh my Gosh!" I squealed. "When did you get tall?"
"Around the age of fourteen." He said with a laugh. "About eight years ago."
"Right." I said awkwardly wringing my hands. "Has it really been that long since we've all gotten together?"
"I think you were a bit younger than Sean the last time I saw you." He said looking behind me in the direction Sean had been running when I walked in. "Before we knew you were…well…"
"A witch?" I asked.
"It sounds so odd." Callum said.
"I know what you mean." I agreed. "You have no idea how often I think I'm going to wake up and be eleven again and everything extraordinary I've done in the last seven years will all have been a dream and witches and warlocks, goblins, trolls, ghosts, unicorns, giants, and werewolves will all be just fiction again."
"Those things are all real?" He asked. "I thought it was weird to think that witches existed but you're telling me that werewolves are real too?"
I nodded my head followed by a shiver. "I should probably go change before I get sick."
"Yeah." He said rubbing the back of his neck. "I should probably find Sean. He has my wallet. He's a tricky little guy."
He took off sprinting down the hall.
"I know how much money was in there, Sean, so don't even think about it!" He yelled as he disappeared around the corner.
By the time I dried off and changed, I walked downstairs into the living room where Callum was sitting on the sofa with a struggling, giggling Sean pinned down under his feet.
"What is going on here?" I asked.
"I'm being punished!" Sean said with more enthusiasm than one would expect.
"Uh huh." I said walking over to take a seat in the chair next to the sofa. "Where is Louis?"
"He and Amelia are playing cards in the kitchen." Callum said.
"How is Amelia?" I asked.
"She's fine." He said. "She's going to University to become a nurse."
"That's sort of similar to what I'm going to be doing." I said.
"Are you saying medical professions run in the family?" He asked giving Sean a tummy jiggle with his foot causing a shriek of a laugh from Sean.
"I'm going to be a healer." I said. "Pending how well I do on the end of year tests."
"A healer?" He asked.
"It's sort of like a doctor." I said.
"Ruby can heal bones in minutes." Sean said.
Callum raised his eyebrows. "Can I see some of your magic?"
"I can't." I said. "I would but it's sort of against the law to perform magic in front of muggles."
"In front of what?" He asked.
"Muggles." I said. "It's what they call non-magical people."
"It's illegal?" He asked. "So you have your own laws?"
"We have our own ministry." I said.
"Why could Sean see it?" He asked.
"He's immediate family." I said. "It's different. I don't think cousins count for the exemption."
"Aw, man." Callum said. "I wish Amelia would have been a witch. I'd love to see instant bone repair. Does it hurt?"
"No!" Sean said. "It feels like your arm is a marshmallow!"
"Whatever that means." Callum said with a smile.
There was the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs followed by a shriek.
"Ruby!" My aunt squealed from the entry. "You've gotten so pretty!"
She charged over to me and pulled me from my chair and into a tight, air constricting hug.
"You're so pretty!" She exclaimed before hugging me even tighter. "We were expecting something a bit more…Wizard of Oz."
"What?" I asked prying myself from her choking grip.
"Oh you know," She said. "Green skin, wart on your nose, an allergy to water."
I glanced to the side to see Callum holding his hand over his face in embarrassment.
"Charles!" She called out. "Charles, Ruby is here!"
"Is green a good look for her?" I heard my uncle call out as he descended the stairs.
Callum made an audible groan at the repeated joke and sunk further into the couch cushions.
There was a moment for which my aunt and uncle commented about how disappointed they each were that I had grown to appear so normal before a striking young woman emerged from the direction of the kitchen with Louis following close behind.
She had long dark hair which contrasted strongly against her pale skin. Her eyes were the color of milk chocolate and her lips painted a scarlet red.
"Look at how normal your cousin looks, Amelia." My uncle said as soon as he noticed her.
She rolled her eyes. "You made the joke about her looking like the wicked witch from Wizard of Oz about four times on the car ride down here."
My uncle looked surprised that his daughter had given out this information and was lost for words.
She turned to me. "Come on, Ruby. You can show me your room."
I walked to her side and we began up the stairs with Callum using the moment to get up from the sofa, leaving Sean on the floor, and follow us.
We entered the room which froze in time with the appearance of an eleven year olds bedroom. I moved into this room at the age of eight when Sean was born so that he and Louis could be close to my parents at night. At the time I hated the idea of giving up my room and begged them to put the baby with Louis in his room. In the end though my father spent weeks knocking around in the attic doing secret projects and sneaking things up the stairs.
At the end of the time when my mother was looking about ready to pop my dad took me up stairs to show me how he had made the attic pretty. I walked into the room with white walls and a white ceiling that slanted up to a point with the roof. In the middle of the room sat a new bed with a rainbow colored canopy.
"We can paint the walls and ceiling any colors you want." My dad had said to me. "This room will be yours. I even put a lock on the door at the bottom of the stairs so you can keep Louis out."
My old room didn't have a lock on the door and Louis would constantly walk in on me when I was working on homework or trying to spend time with friends about things which now seemed stupid and insignificant but at the time I didn't want my three year old brother, who was currently repeating everything he heard to anyone who would listen, to blab my secrets about how I thought Davey McCraven was cute.
The walls were still painted the same Royal purple and the ceiling the same midnight blue as when I was eight. The yellow stars my father helped paint on the ceiling were still there. Over Christmas break, when I had shut myself in my room over Severus, I had hung a small Ravenclaw banner on the wall opposite my bed and that is the only addition to the design since I was eleven and left for Hogwarts, returning only for summer and holiday breaks.
"What's Ravenclaw?" Callum asked almost immediately after entering the room.
"It's my house." I said looking at the banner. "At my school."
"The house of Ravenclaw?" He asked.
"There are four separate…categories, I suppose you could call them, at my school." I said. "There is a sorting ceremony when one arrives at Hogwarts and I was placed in Ravenclaw."
"How?" Amelia asked.
"There are certain characteristics that are desirable to each house." I said. "Based on what characteristics you possess determines which house you're in."
"So you could, in theory, lie to get into whichever house you want." Callum said.
"No." I said. "The hat isn't swayed, I don't think."
"What hat?" He asked.
"The sorting hat." I said. "It looks inside you when placed upon your head and sees what you will be or what you can be or deep inside your mind and soul to see who you truly are and then places you in the correct house."
"That sounds strange." He said. "What placed you in Ravenclaw?"
I shook my head. "I don't know. Ravenclaws are intelligent and wise and always do what is right. It's what Rowena Ravenclaw thought was the most important of traits."
They both stared at me with blank expressions.
"The founders of my school a long long time ago were Rowena Ravenclaw, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, and Salazar Slytherin." I said. "They each thought different traits were important for students to have. Ravenclaw wanted the wise, Gryffindor the brave, Slytherin the cunning, and Hufflepuff thought everyone should be able to learn. So you are sorted into the house that values your traits the most or you're put into Hufflepuff, it's said that Hufflepuffs are great at finding things."
My cousins continued to give expressionless looks.
"Can you show us magic?" Amelia asked.
I shook my head. "I'll get into trouble. I'm not supposed to perform magic in front of non-magical people."
"Muggles." Callum said with a smile of pride that he had remembered the term.
Amelia glanced at him sideways as though her brother were losing his mind.
"I can't show you magic but…" I said reaching into my bag. "I can give you one of these. Louis and Sean love them but they don't even know I brought more so I don't think they'll miss these two."
They each took one. Amelia watched as her brother began to chew and decided it was safe and began to eat hers. Seconds later flames were spewing from Callum's mouth. Startled, Amelia jumped and shrieked except that instead of a scream flames erupted from her mouth as well. Callum looked at me with wide eyes and I couldn't help but laugh. He blew breath from his mouth as a child does when it's cold outside and the air from one's lungs becomes visible.
When no further flames came he smiled and said, "What was that?"
"Wizard candy." I said. "They're called Pepper Imps."
"I breathed fire…" Amelia said with her fingers over her mouth. "Like a dragon. That's ridiculous. Dragons aren't even real."
"Ah," I said. "But they are real."
She looked at me with shock and suspicion which turned into concentration. "What's that noise?"
"What noise?" I asked and was immediately shushed by Amelia.
There was a moment more silence. "It's like a clink…like glass hitting glass."
"Oh." I said, reaching my arm into my bag and pulling from it the snow globe with the unicorn inside. "It's probably this."
Amelia watched as the unicorn frolicked and danced around his glass enclosure. "Is he alive?"
"No." I shook my head. "It's just an enchantment. He is very cute though isn't he?"
"Where did you get him?" She asked.
"He was a gift from my…" I stopped speaking and thought about whether I wanted to tell the truth but before my mind had come to a consensus… "Boyfriend."
"You have a boyfriend?" Amelia asked with an interested look. "Why aren't we meeting him? Why isn't he spending Easter with us? Why aren't you spending it with his family?"
"It's a bit complicated." I said.
"Why's that?" She asked. "Is he a goblin?"
She gave a small laugh but when she noticed that I wasn't joining she stopped and said, "Oh, gosh…He's not is he? I was only joking."
"No, he's a wizard." I said. "It's just…complicated."
Ameila nodded her head and I could fell the awkward tension in the air.
"It's not bad." I said. "It's just that I'll be going to London this summer and he's…not."
"Oh," She said. "So you're not sure about the distance and don't want him to meet family unless you get that all figured out. I understand that."
I nodded my head as that seemed much more normal than explaining that he was a professor and would be staying at the school to teach.
"So why are you going to London?" Amelia asked.
"There is a Hospital there where I'll be interning." I said.
"Ruby can heal bones in minutes." Callum informed his sister.
"So there's a hospital in London where you can use magic?" Amelia asked.
I nodded my head. "It's called St. Mungo's. They are a wizarding hospital."
"You have your own hospitals?" Amelia asked.
"We have our own everything." I said. "How odd would it look if someone were to walk into a regular hospital with the bones in one's leg missing?"
"That happens?" Callum asked with interest.
"A lot of strange things can happen when spells or jinxes go wrong." I said. "And I am going to be trained on how to help remedy those things."
"So you're good at doing magic?" Amelia asked.
"I like to think so." I said. "I wasn't very good at defense against the Dark Arts but Severus helped me with that."
"What's a Severess?"She asked.
"Severus." I said. "That's my boyfriend's name. Quite a few wizarding names are odd."
"Like Merlin?" Callum chimed in.
"Don't be stupid." Amelia said. "Merlin is just in King Arthur stories."
"Actually Merlin was very real." I said. "He actually attended school at Hogwarts which is where I go. He was sorted into Slytherin which I think is odd since he believed that we should live in harmony with muggles which is not a widely supported ideal amongst Slytherins."
I was met, once more, with blank stares.
"Slytherins are generally thought to be bad eggs." I said. "A lot of snobby pure bloods who think muggles are filth."
Amelia looked out the window. "The rain has stopped. Let's go for a walk! We can tell you about our schools."
We walked around the streets near my parents' home talking about school and what we want to do when we are finished. Callum was on the path to being an engineer and Amelia was very serious about nursing school. It was odd not having seen them since we were all children and suddenly we were adults. We arrived home just as it was beginning to rain. We were greeted at the door by my parents and Nan. There were hugs exchanged since my parents hadn't seen Callum and Amelia in as long as I have. Nan, however, had seen them after Christmas when she went to spend time with them.
My father and his sister always said they should get together but plans always fell through resulting in the years of absence.
"Amelia, we've moved your things into Ruby's room and, Callum, Sean ran off with your things." My mother said after the pleasantries were exchanged.
Callum shook his head and ran up the stairs to Sean's room in search of his belongings. A few moments later he descended with Sean thrown over his shoulder.
"Where is it, Sean?" Callum demanded as Sean kicked and shrieked.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"The little booger hid my stuff." He said. "I'm serious, Sean, if you don't tell me what you did with my things you're going to be in big trouble."
"Put me down." Sean demanded.
Callum let out and angered sigh and tossed my brother to the floor. I watched my brother scurry off the floor and run to the back door which he opened and pointed to the field. There sinking into the mud was Callum's bag.
"You little brat." He yelled. "My Walkman was in there!"
Sean's eyes welled with tears and he ran away and back up the stairs. Seconds later I heard his door slam.
He ran out into the rain and mud barefoot to retrieve his soaked and muddy bag.
"Now what am I supposed to do?" He asked looking down at the dirty fabric and reaching his hand inside pulling out the metal cassette player. "This was really expensive.
"I can fix it." I said holding my hand out for the bag.
He placed the muddy shoulder strap into my palm. "Just don't let anyone come outside."
I shut the door and set the bag down on the concrete under the room overhang. I pulled my wand from my pocket.
I returned inside with a dry, clean bag and handed it to Callum. I then handed him the dry Walkman.
"It should work but you'll have to test it." I said.
He put the earphones over his head and pressed the play button. A relieved smile spread over his face.
"Thank you, Ruby." He said. "Thanks a lot."
"It's nothing." I said. "You should probably go apologize to Sean though."
"Yeah." He said turning his music off. "I probably should."
Callum made up with Sean. My brothers, father, uncle, and Callum spent the rest of the night having a Raving Bonkers tournament while my mother, Nan, my aunt, Amelia, and myself baked pies in the kitchen and played a few hands of cards.
Easter Sunday was full of food, fun, and laughs. I had stashed the Pepper Imps in Louis and Sean's Easter baskets after my parents hid them and went up to bed. The morning consisted of my brother's breathing fire at the various members of my family and my mother glaring at me continually.
I was sad that I had to go to Susan's come Monday.
"Do you really have to go?" Sean asked.
"Sorry, but I do." I said. "My friend is getting married and I have to help with stuff. You'll understand when you're older."
"You have a friend getting married?" Callum asked.
"I think she's crazy too." I said. "But she's in love or whatever."
I smiled. "I should probably get going. I can only imagine she is freaking out because I'm two minutes late."
I stepped outside and with a crack I was gone.