DISCLAIMER: I don't own anyone in JKR's book series
Okay, I'd just like to say that I'm really impressed by the number of reviews and hits that this story is getting! It's amazing and awesome to receive positive feedback and affirmation that people are actually reading and liking this. I do have to admit, though, that I wasn't as pleased with the way I wrote the last chapter as I wanted, but I promise to do better this time!
On to the story…
To the Moon and Back—Chapter 6
The next week was a bit of a blur for James and Lily Granger. After Ginny had gone back to her own home, the two of them had stayed up, talking late into the night on Lily's bed. They agreed that the Friday dinner that they were to attend would be difficult enough, but it was a little disappointing that they wouldn't even get to meet their father and godfather.
Meanwhile, the two of them spent hours on end sprawled across the living room furniture and reading their schoolbooks, which both of them found very interesting. In fact, the twins were so engrossed in their reading that they hardly noticed when Hermione left in the early afternoon on that dreary, rainy Tuesday, saying that she had something she needed to do.
"Okay, mom," Lily said from her place curled up in an armchair.
"What time will you be back?"
"I don't know…I'll call you if I'll be too long. Make sure that you call my cell phone if you have any problems at all, okay?" The two of them tugged their heads out of their books and nodded.
"Okay, will do."
"Love you," she said, kissing them both quickly on the top of the head.
"Love you too, have a safe trip," they chorused, watching her disappear out the front door. A moment later, James frowned and turned to his sister.
"Don't you think that we should have asked where she was going?" Lily shrugged.
"I guess if she wanted us to know, she would have told us," she said before going back to chapter six of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade One. James wondered about his mother's whereabouts for another minute before shrugging and delving back into One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi.
Lily knew that they should have at least asked where her mother was planning to go when she burst through the front door three hours later and looked around, spotting them exactly where they'd been when she left. Lily and James, both engrossed still in their books, looked up, startled.
"Hey, guys, go get your coats and your shoes on, please." The two glanced at each other.
"Why?" James asked almost immediately.
"We're going to go to meet your grandparents." Two minutes later, though still looking confused, James and Lily sat seatbelted in the car on the way to meet Hermione's parents.
It turned out that that's where she'd been earlier in the afternoon; catching up with her parents. She explained all of this to her children during the half-hour drive to their Oxford home. The Grangers had been incredibly startled when Hermione turned up on their doorstep; Hermione's mother had fainted. After a few calming mugs of tea, though, they accepted Hermione's story without question (much to her relief) and began to eagerly ask when they could see their grandchildren.
And so, thirty minutes and several quiet explanations later, they arrived at the moderately sized Victorian-style home in which Hermione had spent the majority of the first nineteen years of her life. The rain still poured unceasingly, pattering on the tops of their heads as they attempted to shield their faces against the pelting drops of rain. They leapt up onto the front porch (which, thankfully, had roof over it) and brushed the water off of their faces and arms before knocking on the door.
"Shoot," Lily said, trying to dab the excess rainwater out of her wavy chestnut hair with the sleeve of her jacket. "Now my hair's going to spazz out and frizz."
"Boo-hoo," James said, but any comment that he may have been tempted to make about Lily's hair was pushed from his mind when a formidable-looking woman in a gray twill skirt and a pale rose-colored blouse opened the door. Her hair, looking quite as bushy as Hermione's own, was half-up and pulled back into a clip and she looked as if she could be rather bossy.
"Oh, goodness, there you are, my little darlings!" she exclaimed, both hands flying in front of her mouth for a moment before she swept both Lily and James up into a bone-crushingly tight hug, tilting Lily's glasses and pushing them painfully into her nose. By the muffled sound that James was making beside her (rather like a small mammal being trodden on), he was having difficulty breathing.
"Mum, you're strangling them!" Hermione laughed beside them. Lily was thankful that she'd said this, because a split second later, she had released them and swiftly kissed each child twice on the forehead before hugging Hermione and kissing her cheek.
"Well, it's raining kittens out there, so you really should get inside and warm up by the fireplace," she said, ushering them through the front door and into a hallway with sleek hardwood floors. The three of them removed their shoes at the front door, glancing around what they could see of the tidy house.
There seemed to be photographs and pieces of framed artwork adorning every wall and propped up on every surface. Many of them were artful shots of Hermione as a baby in a metal pail, a toddler running from behind, a schoolgirl at her studies. More depicted nature scenes, close-ups of objects, and a few that were quite blurry and that neither Lily nor James could clearly make out.
"Yes, John used to have quite an interest in photography," their grandmother said, noticing their interest in the photographs. "With some of them, however, I don't think he knew what he was doing," she added in a low voice, the corners of her lips twitching upward, a smile reaching her gray eyes.
"Where is Dad?" Hermione asked, helping the children to hang up their coats in the closet near the door.
"Oh, he's at the market picking up some things for supper tonight," she said, leading them into the sitting room, where a welcome fire was blazing behind a wrought-iron grate. "I hope you don't mind good, old-fashioned fish and chips." Lily and James grinned at each other; they had been waiting, ever since they'd heard of England, to taste the deep-fried traditional dish. Hermione had refused to make it for them, as she neither knew how nor wanted to fathom how unwholesome all of that frying could be.
"That would be lovely," Lily said with a smile.
"Yes, we'd like that."
"I thought you would," their grandmother said with a smile. "Hermione tells me that you've been wanting to taste it."
"She never made it at home."
"That's because nobody can make it as well as my mother can," Hermione said, grinning.
"Yes, well," said Mrs. Granger, looking quite bashful, "everyone believes that their own mothers' cooking is the best…" but she still looked pleased by the compliment. "Anyway," she said briskly, showing Lily and James to the loveseat by the fire and wrapping an afghan around them, "warm yourselves up, it's a cold rain outside, and I'll go make us some tea. Milk and one sugar still, Hermione?" she asked her daughter, who nodded.
"Yes, do you need help?"
"No, no, you rest there, I daresay that it's been a long week. How do you children take your tea?"
"Er—" James said. He had only had a bit of tea in his life, tea not being a huge thing in America. All that he knew was that his mother drank quite a lot of it, and that it was bitter without milk or sugar.
"Just sugar, please," Lily said, shooting her brother a laughing look.
"Same, thank you," he said lamely as he punched her arm under the afghan.
"It's no problem, no problem at all," Mrs. Granger said as she began to step out of the room. "When I get back, we'll talk. I want to know absolutely everything that I can about you."
"Mom, Lily, come on! If you don't pick out something to wear soon, I'm dragging you down here anyway! We're going to be late!"
"It's only one thirty," Hermione's voice floated, slightly muffled, down the hall. James let out an aggravated "tuh!" sound and made his way to his mother's closed bedroom door.
"I looked it up, and if Miss Weasley lives in East Brookshire, then it should take about thirty five minutes to get there from here," he called through the inch of oak door separating them. It was Hermione's turn to tut-tut at him.
"We'll be traveling by Floo powder," came her voice sounding slightly muffled, as though a sweater was being pulled over her face. "Which means that it will take us about ten seconds to get there, so we won't need to leave for another half an hour."
James groaned in impatience and frustration and went to bug his sister instead. At least he would be at least allowed into her bedroom to talk to her. He made his way up the stairs and rapped on her bedroom door.
"Come in," she called. James pushed the door open and found that she had three outfits laid out on her bed and was pacing back and forth, trying to choose one. "Hey, could you tell me which of these I should wear?" she asked without looking up.
"I dunno," he shrugged. "I'm just going to wear this," he held out his arms so she could better see his outfit: a pair of jeans with a white tee-shirt, an unbuttoned green plaid oxford shirt over it. Lily nodded.
"Okay, so casual elegance. I think," she walked up and down the row of clothes again, "that it'll be this one." She pointed at the center group, a pair of slightly flared khakis and a periwinkle blue fitted polo-style shirt. James shrugged.
"I don't care which you choose, as long as you pick something before the end of time." She rolled her eyes at him and replaced the other outfits in her closed.
"Whatever," she said, mostly because she couldn't think of anything clever to say in response. "Get out of here for a minute so I can change. I'll meet you downstairs." She quickly pulled the clothes on and slipped on her favorite pair of sneakers before hastening out the door. Hermione appeared ten minutes later, and soon enough James was standing eagerly near the fireplace with a fistful of glittering powder.
"Remember, it's 14 Oak Knolls Drive, okay? Just say it as clearly as you possibly can, and tuck in your elbows and you'll land in the right place." James nodded, took a breath, and threw the powder into the roaring fire, which turned an emerald color. He stepped into the flames, feeling a surprisingly light tickling sensation as the flames licked at his clothes.
"Fourteen Oak Knolls Drive," he said, loudly and clearly, and he suddenly felt as though he was spinning, faster and faster, through a whirlwind of dust and ash. He saw flashes out of different fireplaces, and was beginning to wonder whether he'd accidentally pass the one he was looking for when he began to slow down and, without warning, he toppled one the floor out of a fireplace.
Standing to brush himself off, he saw that he was in a warm room with royal blue carpet, some comfortable-looking plush furniture, and a tapestry hanging on the wall. He stepped aside to examine the room more closely when there was a sudden noise and Lily tumbled out of the grate, standing up and spitting a lot of ash out of her mouth and looking rather green.
"Oh, you're here," she said, sounding both very ill and very relieved, when she saw James in the room. "I choked on some ash at home in the fire and I was worried that I wouldn't come out at the right grate…" she stood to shake the dust off of her clothing and out of her hair. "Oh, look, here comes Mom now." She pointed at the grate.
The leaping flames glowed green again as Hermione stepped out, shaking soot out of her own bushy hair. She looked around and seemed immensely relieved to find both of the twins in one piece and in the same location.
"Oh, good, I'm glad that you both made it," she said, shaking a bit of ash off of her wristwatch. She pulled out her wand, muttered something, and the areas onto which the three of them had tracked soot and ash suddenly gleamed as if the flooring was brand-knew.
Just then, a pair of large blue-grey eyes appeared around a corner. Lily spotted this and nudged James in the ribs, jerking her head toward the spot. As he followed her gaze, the eyes grew larger and disappeared again. Hermione, who had seen none of this, gazed around at the photographs on the mantelpiece.
"So," James began, turning toward his mother. "What do we—" but he was cut off.
"Oh, I'm so glad that you all could make it!" Ginny said, striding into view and giving them swift hugs. "Eve said that she saw you come. How was it?" she was mostly looking at Lily, whose face still had an odd green tinge to it, with concern.
"Amazing!" James exclaimed enthusiastically.
"Nauseating," Lily said. Ginny smiled sympathetically.
"Yes, Floo powder is something that you rather have to get used to, isn't it? Well, come on in, make yourselves at home." She led them through the living and dining rooms of her house before making them all cups of tea in the kitchen and setting out a tin of shortbread. The quiet pattering of feet caused Lily to look up.
A girl stood in the doorway to the room who looked to be about her age. She had brilliant red hair that fell a few inches past her shoulders and large bluish-grey eyes. Her facial features looked very much like Ginny's own. This must be Genevieve, she thought, giving the girl a small smile. She froze upon seeing them all there, and turned to make a quick exit, but—
"Oh, good, Eve, I'm glad that you're here," Ginny said loudly, her voice containing a note that said quite clearly don't-you-dare-leave. "Would you like to join us for a cup of tea?" The way that she asked it, though, did not sound like a question. Shy as she was, though, Ginny's daughter didn't seem to be accustomed to being impolite, and so she somewhat grudgingly sat at the table, gave them what looked to James like a very painful smile, and pulled a cookie from the tin.
They sat there, drinking their tea, for another half hour. Hermione and Ginny were chatting away, sharing stories and trying to catch up from their eleven-year absence. Lily and James were soon involved in the conversation, too, and talked animatedly, trying to involve Genevieve as well. She seemed to be painfully shy, though, and would speak if she was addressed directly and in a soft voice.
When it was time to leave for the Burrow, Genevieve looked quite glad to be excused and the rest followed Ginny out into the garden of the house. Though dinner at the Weasley's was always served at seven o'clock, they had decided that it would be much less shocking for everyone if Hermione and her children arrived before anyone else came; that way, they would only have to face a handful of new people at a time instead of having dozens gawking at them.
And so they stood with Ginny (her husband and children would be joining them later) in her backyard. Wary of more Floo powder, Hermione and Ginny had decided to use side-along apparition as a means of transport. Ginny moved over close to where Lily stood.
"Here, Lily, put your hand on my forearm," she instructed as beside her James gripped their mother's arm tightly. "Okay, Hermione, we're going to land right in front of the chicken pen at the front of the house, can you see it?" Hermione nodded. "Good, let's go then." Lily watched closely as Ginny concentrated and took a sharp step forward.
Nothing could have prepared Lily for this. It felt as though she and Ginny were being sucked through a narrow tube. Her eyes felt as if they were being pressed into the back of her head, and all of her organs shifted strangely. A moment later, though, it had stopped.
"You can let go and open your eyes now," Ginny said from beside her. Opening her eyes, Lily saw that they were indeed standing beside a fenced-in pen of chickens and a few pigs. Beyond the pen, though, was the strangest house that she'd ever seen. It was narrow-looking, but had at least six floors that looked as if they had all been added at different times and made of different materials. It was so unsteady-looking that the other floors had to be held up by some sort of magic.
With a pop, Hermione and James (who looked slightly dazed) appeared beside them. Hermione smiled. It was exactly as she'd remembered the Burrow. It felt good to be back after so long. The four of them walked together up the dusty path to the front door, which Ginny pushed open with a soft creak.
"Mum," she called into the seemingly empty house, "we're here."
Almost immediately, a rather plump woman wearing worn-out mauve houserobes came flying down a twisting staircase that poked out of one walls toward them. She laid her eyes on Hermione and immediately burst into tears, rushing forward and pulling her into a bone-crushing embrace.
"Oh, Hermione dear, we were so worried….thought we'd never….that we'd never get to…to…" her voice trailed off shakily as she pulled away, still teary-eyed. She hastily wiped her eyes with a handkerchief she'd pulled from the pockets of her robes.
"I'm truly sorry, Mrs. Weasley," Hermione said sadly, wiping a tear from her own cheek.
"Don't apologize, dear, Ginny's explained it all to us already," she said comfortingly "You are an intelligent girl, and I trust your decision; I'm sure that I'd have done something similar if I'd been in your situation." Hermione nodded, and Mrs. Weasley turned, catching sight of the two children standing awkwardly near the door. They had been so quiet that she hadn't noticed them before. Hermione followed her gaze.
"Mrs. Weasley," she said, "I'd like you to meet my children, James and Lily," she indicated each in turn and they smiled at her as best they could through their nervousness. Mrs. Weasley swept them both into warm hugs, smiling at them fondly.
"Yes, Ginny's told me all about you two as well," she looked as if she wanted to hug them again but refrained from doing so, much to James' relief. "You sound like quite the young people, both of you. James, the resemblance that you have to your father and your grandfather is striking—your hair, of course, is slightly lighter—and Lily, the eyes! You have Hermione's face, though."
"Yeah," said Ginny, now smirking, "but they've both got Harry's teeth, thank goodness!"
"Hey!" Hermione exclaimed, though she laughed a little along with her friend. "That's not fair!"
"Why?" James asked, craning his neck to try to get a glance at his mother's teeth, which looked completely straight, white, and normal-sized. Ginny and Hermione laughed, though.
"Did you ever see older pictures of your mother, James?" Ginny asked, still chuckling. "Her front teeth used to be monstrous."
"They weren't monstrous, just a little large," she said, flushing a little. "Anyhow, it doesn't matter now, I ended up getting Madam Pomfrey to shrink them in the end."
"So, Ginny," Mrs. Weasley began; Hermione was grateful that she was ending that discussion. "James and Lily haven't seen the Burrow, so why don't you give them a tour? If you'd like, you can de-gnome the garden for me…really needs ridding of those monstrous annoyances. What do you two think?" she asked James and Lily, who both grinned back.
"We'd love to," Lily said politely. Ginny rolled her eyes, recognizing the diversion, and led the two kids out of the room. Mrs. Weasley hugged Hermione again, as if to make sure that she wouldn't leave again, and led her into the kitchen, where she made tea.
"Oh, Lord," she said, setting Hermione's mug of tea on the table in front of her and taking her own into her hands, sitting near her at the scrubbed wooden kitchen table. "I can't begin to tell you—" her eyes began to tear again "how difficult it was on everyone to lose you. Harry and Ron, most of all, they thought that it was their fault…they blame themselves, you know."
"Yes," Hermione said miserably, "I know them too well, I think that they'd only blame it on themselves. Ginny says that they aren't coming tonight."
"That's right, they're off on Auror duty somewhere or other, not expected back for Merlin knows how long," she sighed. "It's been hard, especially on his little boy." There was a pause. "He's off all over the place, still risking his neck when he could be at home with his son…I don't know, it's all so upsetting for both of them…" her voice trailed off and Hermione fidgeted in her seat. This wasn't really something that she wanted to talk about just yet. She sighed into her tea, which rippled as her breath passed over the surface. Mrs. Weasley seemed to understand the awkwardness of the situation.
"Oh, I'm sorry, dear, I shouldn't have brought it up. At any rate, Daniel's been staying with Fred and his family for the last week or so, so you'll be able to meet him tonight." Hermione nodded.
Suddenly, there was a shriek from the backyard. She stood up so quickly that she nearly turned her chair over and hurried to the window. She saw that Lily was shaking her hand wildly as though it had been injured, James was attempting to kick a garden gnome and Ginny had dropped the bottle of Gnome-Away that she'd been holding to rush to Lily's side. Hermione dashed out the back door.
"What's happened?" she asked in a panicked voice, rushing over to where they all stood. James succeeded in booting the gnome clear over the hedges, and Ginny rolled her eyes at Hermione's reaction.
"The gnome bit me while I was trying to toss it," Lily said simply, holding out her hand for her mother to examine it. Hermione was relieved; gnome bites weren't serious at all.
"Okay, then, sorry I panicked. You two can carry on, it looks like you're having fun." James beamed, seizing another gnome by it's knobbly, potato-like head ("Geroff me!") and chucking it.
"We are, this is cool!"
"Yeah, honestly, mom, this is no big deal," Lily said earnestly and indicating her bitten hand. "You can go back inside and do whatever it is you were doing." Hermione gave them a small smile and walked with Ginny to do just that.
The three women chattered away, filling in the long gap that had occurred when they were separated. Finally, Mrs. Weasley jumped up when it reached five o'clock, shocked that so much time had passed at once.
"Goodness, I have to get cooking!" she said, hurriedly jamming pots and pans onto the stove.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Ginny, you and Hermione can set up the tables outside, and for now please keep out of the kitchen." She was now rolling homemade dough into a pie pan, not looking up from what she was doing. Shrugging at each other, the two women made their way out into the backyard, where Hermione saw for the first time that a barn of sorts had been erected on one side of the house.
"The broom cupboard wasn't cutting it for storage space anymore," Ginny explained as she pulled open the double doors wide and stepped into the large, dusty building. It was very large; Hermione saw that two cars were parked neatly inside, along with what seemed to be an ordinary muggle lawnmower, several brooms, racks of pest-ridders and a hodge-podge of other items. Stacked in one corner were six picnic tables.
"Will we need them all?" she asked skeptically. Ginny shook her head.
"Not tonight…I know that Charlie's away with his family in Romania doing some thing or other, and Percy (he's become some ambassador to South America) and his family has been living somewhere in Brazil. So that leaves—" she broke off, beginning to count on her fingers. After a moment, she gave up, throwing her hands in the air, "—a hell of a lot of people. I think that four tables should do it, though."
Ginny took her wand and began to levitate one of the tables and move it out the door. Hermione followed suit, though she hadn't used magic in so long that a corner of her table accidentally bumped into Ginny's. Ginny turned and, with a grin, redirected her table so that it bumped, head-on, into Hermione's.
It wasn't long before a full-blown battle was being fought between the two of them, with Lily and James shouting and cheering gleefully, egging them on more. Even they were too involved to notice several red-headed figures making their way through the yard to where the picnic-table scrimmage was taking place high in the air.
"You can do better than that!"
"Oy, Hermione, knock another leg off the thing." Hermione turned so suddenly that her table almost toppled out of the air. Two identical men, both with shorter, stockier builds and still-red hair stood before her; Fred and George.
Before she could react, she found herself swept up and sandwiched between the two of them in such a hug that she could neither breathe nor move and her feet lifted off of the ground. She laughed at the two of them, unable to cry, and they set her down.
"Geez, where've you been?" Fred asked, beaming at her and hugging her again (much more gently this time, thankfully).
"It's so good to see you both again!" George hugged her again as well, and he stepped back to look at her.
"You look okay," his twin announced, taking a step forward to examine her properly, still grinning madly.
"It's so good to see you again, Hermione," said a tall woman to the side of Fred. Hermione looked at her closely for the first time and smiled.
"Hello, Angelina," she said, "it's good to see you again."
"Oh, sorry, we need to introduce you to our families," George said, putting his arm around a pretty, willowy blond woman that she'd never seen before. "This is my wife, Marcia, and my children," he indicated three small children, the oldest about eight, and the youngest, around three or four, "Natalie, Wilbur and Caroline."
"And of course," Angelina said with a laugh, "you know me, our children—" who looked roughly the same ages as Natalie, Wilbur and Caroline—"Abby, Max and Robert," she indicated another boy, an taller, gangly one with red hair that curled on top of his head and almond-shaped brown eyes, "This is Ron's boy, Daniel." Angelina paused for a moment after each child smiled politely at Hermione, looking off behind her. "And I don't believe I've met you before," she said, directing her slightly raised voice toward James and Lily, who until that moment had been quite content looking on from the sidelines, silently taking everything in.
"Oh, I'm sorry, these are my children, Lily and James," she indicated each child, who gave shy smiles and murmured a greeting. Lily was suddenly very uncomfortable under the interested gazed of the three adults, but it was something that, like it or not, she was getting used to.
After the introductions were made (and Hermione gave Lily and James clear looks asking that they mingle), Fred and George helped the girls to set the picnic tables into place and lay out the plates and cutlery and James and Lily played an energetic game of freeze tag with the other children. Ginny's family Flooed in shortly thereafter, and when Bill and Fleur arrived with their own small mob of offspring (Arthur, Isabella, Claude, Jacque and Anastasia—ages from 14 to 6), the house was toeing the line of chaos.
Seven o'clock came quickly and all twenty-seven of them were seated under a clear, crisp blue summer sky. The tables nearly threatened collapse with the weight of all of the family (plus Hermione, James, and Lily) and a dozen pans of Mrs. Weasley's phenomenal cooking. As Hermione laughed and joked with Fred, George, and Ginny, James and Lily sat near the other end of the long table with the other children.
James, slightly nervous, loaded his plate with steak and kidney pie, salad and corn on the cob and listened to their conversations. Lily sat at his side, and she was having a rather animated conversation with Isabella, who was two years her senior, about France, while Eve and Daniel threw the two newcomers glances that were difficult to understand, a mix between curiosity and belligerence (though she couldn't figure out why).
"Oh, don't worry about them," Isabella said, following Lily's concerned gaze and rolling her eyes in their direction. "They can be shy to the point of hostility…it's a bit dumb, really, I don't know how they expect to make friends if they keep making people think that they don't like them." She said this in a pointedly raised voice, so as to make Eve and Daniel take notice. Eve's cheeks turned pink, but she continued to stare down at her plate as if nothing had happened.
Lily opened her mouth to say something, but James nudged her foot under the table with his own and shook his head.
"If they don't want to talk to us, don't force them too," he said being surprisingly understanding. "I mean, it's not like they had any say in us coming here, and I guess that it's messed up their normal Weasley family groove thing." He said all of this rather quickly and in an undertone to prevent anyone else from hearing too much.
He needn't have done anything to distract anyone, because it was then as they were all finishing their second helpings of the delicious food that a diversion walked through the yard toward them. Lily, who had been listening to James, heard a fork clatter noisily onto a dish and a sort of hush seemed to come over the group collectively.
And she didn't need to see her mother to know that it was she who dropped the fork, because a moment later she made the only noise of anyone at the table. Her eyes were fixed unbelievingly, and her hand flew over her mouth in shock. Breaking the strangely uncharacteristic silence, she uttered a single, shaky, inquisitive syllable.
"Ron?"
Okay, end of the chapter!
Review and tell me what you thought.
Thank you loads and loads and loads to all of my reviewers! Especially ribbons go to all of you who've stayed with me and my story for this long. You're grrrreat! To new reviewers kendallpaigecharity and terrenis-sama, thanks a lot! I hope you keep reading.
Anyway, though, I did have a bit of a competition going. A single person, james'nsiriusfan, responded to my question of last chapter and has earned ten points for Gryffindor, so…yeah. The standings are as follows:
Gryffindor: 10
Ravenclaw: 0
Hufflepuff: 0
Slythering: 0
Haha…we need more group participation here, people! Lol—
So the questions for the next chapter? Ten points are yours (for your house, of course) if you can tell my why Daniel and Eve seem to resent James and Lily (the reason's different for both of them).
Have fun! The next chapter will be up soon.
Adios!
Callista Rose