A/N: The last chapter was a bit rough, I know. Every time I work on this story I get major writer's block debating on if I should write book style or my own style. Oh well, hopefully this next chap turns out less…eh.
Chapter 4
The Problem with Purebloods
"Don't pay any mind to them, Annabelle. Mum will be here soon with the boys and Ginny, and we'll be out of here soon enough." Bill Weasley was, by all means, furious. From the red mottle staining his cheeks to the heated glint in his sharp blue eyes, it was obvious that he was far from pleased. If those weren't signs enough, the frightening look on his face was enough to make even the dullest person take a hasty departure away from the small table tucked in the back of the Leaky Cauldron. And for once, Annabelle was thankful that someone around her was livid.
At eight in the morning she had trotted downstairs expecting nothing more than a quiet breakfast with her impromptu guardian of the day, but what she had discovered once she hit the bottom step was, in fact, quite the opposite. Instead of the sparse few customers that had dotted the tables in the wee hours, the Leaky Cauldron was bursting with life. All kinds of witches and wizards and creatures she suspected weren't even human filled every square inch of the floor. And as was her luck, every single person immediately seemed to know exactly who she was.
The minute she had been spotted, the tavern seemed to erupt in chaos, with people shoving each other out of the way to get a good look at her and point, like she was some sideshow attraction at a carnival. It had been downright terrifying and she just stood there frozen like a deer in the headlights, until Bill came charging through and scattered the crowd with a few sharp curses, but curses couldn't stave off the whispers. They were everywhere - everyone seeming to have an opinion about her. They talked about her long dead parents, her Aunt and her Uncle, the way she dressed and how she had grown: if there was some subject that hadn't been touched on, she couldn't think of one.
It was probably the least pleasant experience in her short life, and her guardian seemed to be incredibly aware of that fact as he watched her sit as stiff as board in her seat. Annabelle hadn't moved in twenty minutes, her eyes flicking nervously from person to person with her freckles growing more vivid by the second. Her plate waited untouched in front of her, and a fork hung loose between her fingers, with the prongs dipping into a cold bit of egg. She knew she would be hungry if she didn't eat, but the meal just looked incredibly unappealing when her name was buzzing around like a fly caught in a glass.
"Annabelle, why don't we leave a bit early? I'll have Tom send Mum after us and we'll head to the bank to pick up your funds. Would you like that?" She would have liked anything if it didn't involve sitting in this mess for another minute longer, but she didn't say that. Instead she slowly nodded, large eyes turning to her keeper. Bill gave her a brief smile and pushed back his chair to stand. "Alright then, wait right here and I'll be back before you know it. If anyone bothers you, you just shout and I'll come get you quick as I can." He took off, boots clomping over the worn floor in the direction of the bar leaving her staring at her plate with a queasy feeling her in her stomach.
It didn't take long before a gangly boy in his teens noticed that she was alone. The boy started edging closer with an eager look on his pimply face, but before he could say anything a dark shadow fell over the youth.
"It would be a shame to begin your detentions early this year, Mister Green." A cold, chilled voice stopped the boy dead in his tracks. The boy's head slowly moved upwards, his eyes fixing on a thin, pale man with dark, oil slicked hair and an expression that would have given the bravest something to think about. The stranger's eyes narrowed to glittering slits when the boy did nothing, glowering down his hooked nose until the younger man took the hint and bolted with his robes flapping behind him. Annabelle was relieved for a full second before her unexpected savior turned his cold look on her.
"Sir..?" She shifted uncomfortably in her seat, wondering if he was going to say anything.
"What is it Potter?"
"Is everyone going to be like this?" It was the first question that popped into her mind, though she didn't really mean to ask anything at all. The man simply stared at her, and for a while she thought he might not answer.
"Unfortunately." He finally snapped. Annabelle flinched, her fingers curling in the fabric of her sundress. Another minute passed, but the stranger didn't move so she searched for another question.
"Everyone keeps talking about some school like I'm supposed to be there, do you know anything about it?" She was almost positive that the man rolled his eyes, but she couldn't be certain since he was scowling out at the crowd.
"You are required to attend Hogwarts for the next six years to begin your magical education. It is standard for all young witches and wizards to attend a magical institution. You'll be sorted into one of four Houses at the start of your first year."
"Houses?" She repeated.
"Slytherin, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor, they represent the four founders of Hogwarts. Each House has its own dormitories and requirements to enter, if you are anything like your parents you will be sorted into Gryffindor." Well that sounded…awful.
"I don't think I'd like that very much. Aunt Petunia says I've already got a streak for trouble making like my father did, and he got himself and my mum killed for it. I don't think I want to be like him, or wind up like her." Annabelle had never been told the details of her parents' death, but what she did know was that if her mother had never of met James Potter, she would have still been alive. The only concession her Aunt ever gave her father was that he had loved her mother to the moon and stars from the day he caught her eye in their old school. The very same school the wizards she kept bumping into were determined to send her off to.
"If the man who killed your parents had not been stopped that night, your mother would have met the same fate in the end, Potter. She was a muggleborn." There was a stony expression covering the man's face when he spoke. "When you were born, those without a history of pure, magical blood in their family were terrorized by the Dark Lord. There are still many pureblood families that look down on muggleborns; the Weasley's are one of the exceptions." The more she heard about the wizarding world the less she liked it.
"Is everything bad to wizards? What's the point of even having magic if every time you turn around there's some new group of people who think everything about you is horrible? First it was bad that muggles are raising magical children, then it was bad that children even have magic, then there was the whole bit about talking to snakes, and now you tell me that people here have a problem simply because someone was born? How can someone stop from being born? It's not like they can just stop existing because someone doesn't like it. Everything here is just…backwards. I think muggles have it better than anyone, at least they're trying to get along."
"Annabelle? What's going on here?" Bill Weasley hesitated at the edge of the table with Isis slung over a shoulder and his eyes flicking between the girl and the man in the black robes. He had stepped out of the crowd halfway through Annabelle's rant and had watched with an increasingly worried expression as the little girl half shouted at her chilled potatoes.
"I want to go home!" The roaring was coming back, the familiar omen that always seemed to start right before something magical happened around her.
"We can't do that just yet, but we can go get your school supplies. Why don't we-" The little girl spun on him in a whirl of fiery red curls.
"I don't want to get school supplies, I don't want to go to some strange school, and I don't. Want. To be. A WITCH!" The sound filling her head grew to deafening proportions and was only getting louder while more and more people to turned to stare at her. It was the last straw. She had had enough of these people and their whispering and pointing and making her miserable in general. "STOP STARING AT ME!" For a moment there was a thunderous, swelling silence, and then there was a tremendous BOOM.
Everything exploded all at once, sending shards of the room flying everywhere in a massive hailstorm of debris. People screamed and spells flew everywhere as people tried to ward off bits of jagged glass and wood spinning dangerously close. More people scattered onto the scene, some just magically appearing, others running down the stairs and tripping over their night clothes; all of them brandishing wands, with grim looks about them. One man - a tall, dark skinned wizard with piercings dangling out of his ears - pointed his wand at the whole mess and roared something she couldn't quite catch.
The room instantly went still, bits and pieces of wood and food still hovering midair. He gave another command and flicked his wand and in the blink of an eye everything went back to normal as if nothing had happened at all. And it seemed that when the room fell quiet, every single eye in the Leaky Cauldron swiveled to her.
"Annabelle Rose Potter! Have you lost your bloody mind?! Do you have any idea what you could have done? What on earth were you thinking?!" Bill snatched her by the arms in a bruising grip before she could get away and shook her with such a frightening look on his face that Annabelle felt her own go cold. "You could have hurt someone! Or worse! Gotten someone killed!" He yelled loud enough to make her ears pop painfully in her skull. "I'm just about done with this childish behavior out of you! This is the last time, you hear?"
"I am a child you stupid git!" Annabelle screamed right back at him, heedless of the punishment she knew was going to come for arguing with an adult. "And you're the ones who are supposed to be the adults around here, not little kids at a zoo pointing and gawking at me like I'm on display! Or shouting in the hallway about how terrible my family is for an accident! Or treating me like a freak because I can talk to snakes! And let me go! You're hurting me!" Isis tensed on the man's shoulder, her tongue flicking out beside the fang dangling from his ear.
"Until you calm down I won't be letting go of anything, young lady! This is no way to act under any circumstances!" His face was turning a curious shade of red.
"Thisss one hurtsss you?" Isis' coils were constricting around the man's bicep, her eyes flashing dangerously. Suddenly, the great snake struck, snapping and hissing at the Weasley man like a bolt of lightning at his hands. Bill cursed and flung the furious serpent across the room, backpedaling away from the girl when it landed a few feet away. Isis hissed even louder and charged.
"ISIS! No!" The snake froze, her angular head twisting to look at Annabelle. "He let go of me, please leave him alone." Bill was looking back and forth between the girl and the snake, not understanding a word of what was going on, but when Isis relaxed and slipped her way back to her owner, he let out a breath. Her friend however, was not so easily satisfied, her lethal gaze never leaving him for a moment once she had found a comfortable spot around Annabelle's neck.
"If he hurtss again, I will eat him like a fat rat." The warning didn't need translation as Isis bared her fangs in the man's direction. Yet Annabelle couldn't be entirely condescending of her companion's behavior as not a single stare was aimed at her for the first time since she had come down the stairs earlier in the morning.
Bill Weasley did not speak to her for the rest of the morning. They did not leave like he said before, and when the Weasley clan came through a green-fired chimney a half-hour later, he did not introduce her or make her go shopping. In fact, he had barely even looked at her since their argument. Instead, he went about his business as if she didn't exist, allowing her to go up to her room or sit on the bottom of the stairs just out of sight from the other patrons whenever she pleased. It didn't take her long to realize that he wasn't the only one either, no one was looking at her.
There were only three people in the entire building that acknowledged her at all. The first, naturally, was Tom the barkeep. The aging bent backed man had sidled up to her room twice to bring her another breakfast and a small lunch and always seemed to have an eye on her when she made her way downstairs. His attitude was friendly, just as it had been the night before, which was the complete opposite of the next wizard who watched her. Standing still as a stone and rather resembling a large, angry bat, the man in black with the beaked nose watched her with an intensity that sent her fleeing back up the stairs after too long.
Annabelle had a feeling that he was only there because he was worried she might cause more trouble. The way he scowled at her indicated he had no interest in her well-being or anything of the sort. Of course, he didn't appear to be the friendliest type in the first place. Even Tom gave the stranger a wide berth. Only the third and final man on her list didn't appear to be bothered by the second's presence, and that was probably because he was rather intimidating himself.
It was the wizard who had put an end to her magical mischief on the main floor, the tall, dark skinned wizard with the deep, booming voice. He was incredibly hard to miss since he towered above everyone else and he was rather well built, of course that might have just come with his stature. She didn't know who he was, of course she really didn't know who anyone was, but Bill seemed to and the pair had been in deep conversation nearly the entire time that the red haired man had been ignoring her. She wasn't entirely certain of how he did it, but he always seemed to know exactly where she was at any given point in time and was always half turned so that he could have a clear view of her when she arrived on the steps.
When she had tried hiding by staying up against the wall, she had found out that he had moved down the bar in a nonchalant manner and was staring dead on at her as if he knew exactly what she was doing. Annabelle had glared back at him of course, but that had only earned her the full weight of three stares from him, Tom, and the pale wizard in the corner. It had been rather disconcerting, enough to send her hurrying back up to her room where she had stayed for the past hour staring at the ceiling. Honestly, she half expected them all to leave her there until she grew old or something just as dramatic, so it was quite the surprise when the endless boredom of counting the beams in the ceiling was broken by a sharp knock on the worn door.
"Annabelle, it's time to go. We have to go get your things from Diagon Alley." It was Bill, the last person she wanted to talk to. She didn't move, her gaze flicking back up to the rafters hoping he would go away, but her luck seemed to be growing more and more rotten as of late. "Annabelle, I know you can hear me. If you aren't downstairs and ready to leave in five minutes I'm sending my Mum up to get you, and you don't want to tangle with her, she's had seven kids even more stubborn than you are to put up with." An image of the ringleader of the Weasley horde flashed through her mind, the short, round woman with the rosy cheeks and the sharp tongue herding her children through the tavern with practiced glares and threats of something called de-gnoming.
She knew immediately that the woman would, and could, drag her out by her ears if she had a mind to do it. Aunt Petunia was the same way, and nobody messed with Aunt Petunia unless they wanted their ears boxed. Annabelle grumbled under her breath, but she got up anyways and rolled off of the bed so she could slip her shoes back on. She lifted Isis from her spot on the bed and hung her about her neck, which seemed to be her favorite place now, and trudged towards the door muttering to herself. Bill waited on the other side with his arms crossed over his chest and the usual disapproving crease in his brow. Two other men stood off to the side, one she didn't recognize and the other the third man from downstairs.
The newcomer looked strikingly like Bill, but shorter and stockier with his bright red hair clipped short instead of long and tied back. He had several small, shiny burns on his arms, which also happened to be crossed, and a curious expression on his face as they regarded each other. It seemed that he came to a decision about her because he gave her a quick, small grin and a wink behind Bill's back. She didn't smile back, a little more cautious towards all the magical folk she had been meeting and their strange behaviors.
"Annabelle, this is my brother Charlie and the Auror Dad mentioned last night, Kingsley Shacklebolt." All at once she perked up, staring at the one called Shacklebolt with a newfound interest. If she had heard right last night, this was the man who was supposed to take her home. Any hopes she had were quickly dashed when Bill spoke up again. "They aren't here to take you home. There was a problem with your Aunt and Uncle and they had to go see a he-... a doctor. Mister Shacklebolt is going to stay with us until the Ministry sends for you to go back to your guardians." The momentary happiness sputtered out and left her as quickly as it had come.
"Why do I have to go shopping? I don't need any more magical things except for my Aunt and Uncle to get fixed." She settled a bitter glare on the long haired brother, not pleased with the situation one bit.
"You need your school supplies, we already went over this." The long haired brother sighed.
"I don't want anything to do with magic except for Isis." Magic was the source of all of her problems anyways. Right up until she had stumbled into that awful pet shop she had been a perfectly normal little girl with perfectly normal worries. Her biggest fear was getting a bad grade or a long grounding for misbehaving before she had magic; now she had to worry about blowing up buildings by accident.
"It's not a choice, Annabelle. You're a witch, you have to learn how to control your magic and use it before you have more accidents. Every witch and wizard all over the world has to go to school, even your Aunt agreed that Hogwarts is a place you need to be." Bill was rubbing the bridge of his nose with his thumb while the two other wizards watched the exchange in silence.
"I hate magic, and I don't like witches or wizards that much either. I'm not going." He was growing more irritated by the minute, and little Annabelle could see it as clear as day.
"You can't just wish it away. You are a witch and you are going to school, and if you don't wrap your head around that fact and start making some effort towards cooperating, this day is just going to be harder for everyone - including you."
"If my mum hadn't went off and learned magic, she'd still be alive, not that you would even care. Your kind didn't have to worry about those kinds of things because your family are purebloods. You're supposed to have magic." All three men went very, very still and Bill and Charlie had gone incredibly pale. Suddenly, Annabelle wasn't as sure of herself as she had been just seconds ago.
"Did your Aunt tell you that?" Shacklebolt had straightened up to his full, imposing height and was staring at her in a manner that chilled her to the bone. She didn't expect what she had blurted out to get that kind of reaction, yet it was certainly not what she had intended.
"No, my Aunt said it was my father's fault Mum got killed. The man downstairs with the hook nose told me it wasn't anybody's fault since she was a muggleborn and would have died anyways." The expressions on their faces immediately turned thunderous.
"Annabelle, I want you to listen to me very carefully. That man, Professor Snape, is a former Death Eater, a person who joined a following supporting the wizard who killed your parents. What he said was a deliberate lie and cruel nonetheless. Magic had nothing to do with your mother or your father being murdered. It had everything to do with a small group of witches and wizards who were terrorizing our community regardless of their blood status. Magic is neither inherently bad nor good - people are - and sending you off to school is just another way for you to learn how to keep yourself, and others, safe from those bad characters or from turning into one yourself by accident. You saw what happened downstairs, just imagine if it happened again, but around your Aunt or Uncle, muggles without magic to protect themselves." Annabelle went pale, feeling very small even though Bill spoke in a shockingly soft tone.
"Now I don't want you talking to the Professor alone ever again, even when you go off to school. You'll be in the same year as my brother Ron, and Fred and George and Percy will be there too, you just stick close to them when you start your term. And while you're here, you stay with me, or Charlie, or Mister Shacklebolt, do you understand?" She nodded, her eyes dropping to the floor.
"I'm sorry." She mumbled softly. The grim lines around Bill's mouth faded slightly and lightened into a smile that seemed more suited to his face.
"I'll forgive you this time, but the next I expect you to have put a little more thought in before you go off setting the building on people…or snakes for that matter." He glared at the snake, who looked back entirely unrepentant in any fashion.
"I didn't set her on you, she was mad because you gave me bruises. She's still very upset at you about it too." His eyes flicked down to her arms where, surely enough, fat, purpling marks had bloomed just below the straps on her dress.
"Do you think she'd forgive me if I made those bruises disappear?" Annabelle looked at her friend expectantly at the question. Isis narrowed her eyes, scales undulating in quiet thought before she hissed out a slow answer.
"Yess."
"She said yes." Bill smiled and pulled out his wand. He pointed it at each bruise and flicked the tip with a practiced motion and after a slight tingle, the marks vanished. Annabelle's eyes grew to the size of tennis balls. "Can you do that on my scar? Make it go away like that?" She pushed up the ringlets that had been cut to hide the awful mark and pointed at it somewhat eagerly, yet Bill just shook his head.
"I'm afraid it's a bit more complicated than that, love. That scar was made by dark magic, and dark arts are very difficult to undo even for witches and wizards. I'm afraid you'll get a lot of attention for that mark in our world." A pout worked its way onto her face unbidden, it was something she rarely did and it almost felt funny on her own face.
"I get enough attention for it from muggles, like that fat pig Simon Grunnings always pulling my hair and calling me names. He doesn't poke at my scar anymore though, I put a stop to that last year with pepper powder in his trousers." She looked up at Bill, a thought occurring to her that hadn't before; a very wondrous thought that stopped her fuming cold and brought a very impish grin to her face. "I bet there are all sorts of spells and such for pulling a good joke on someone…and potions…I think he'd look good in feathers… purple, definitely purple."
"Are you ready to go, Bill? If we stay here much longer all the shops will close!" For the first time all day she found herself particularly excited to go see the wizarding shops - albeit, perhaps, a little too excited. The three wizards shook their heads, pondering just how much trouble the little girl would get into once she was set loose in Hogwarts.
"I think she might give Fred and George a run for their money this year."
END A/N: Special shout out to my editor Jim Jimmy JimJim! You're awesome! Please comment and review!
