Raised with Magic

Chapter Three (Part Two): Questions

fI don't think I like Mr. Newlhouse. I don't really know why. If Jared was here he would tell me it was because he represents my parents death. I don't understand how someone can represent something else, so I really don't think that is it. All I know is that when he was here, I just wanted him out of my house and now that he is gone I have a lot of questions that were never in my mind when he was around.

I decided to sit on my floor. We are in my kitchen. I hadn't wanted to see Mr. Newlhouse out because he was traveling through the fireplace and the fireplace is in the living room and the living room was not a room I wanted to be in.

Mum sat down next to me. The kitchen being empty was really weird, I didn't like it and I didn't like the rest of the house being empty either. Then the really scary thought came, what was going to happen to my house?

"Mum, what's going to happen to this place?" I couldn't bring myself to call it home, at least not out loud. Homes are supposed to make people feel safe and loved. This wasn't my home anymore.

Mum put her arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. I felt the comfort that the act was meant to bring, but I would have rather had Leo. Leo wasn't here though, Mr. Dumbledore had brought him to Mum's house ahead of us.

"That would depend. What do you want to happen to the house?" Her question made me think about my own question and what I wanted to see happen to it. The idea of someone else living in my house is weird and I'm not sure I'd like it. Someone else would be sleeping in my room and that means that Daddy would lose his study. I would never again be able to sneak into his study and crawl into his lap smelling the smoke from the thing he calls a cigar that he always puts out the second I enter the room. I don't like the idea of some random lady coming into our house and changing things. Mother wouldn't like that, she has put her soul into making this house pretty.

But, I don't think I could ever sleep in my room again, I didn't even like being in there earlier. Daddy will never again be able to use one of those cigar thingys that makes the smell I like. So I wont be able to sneak into his office late at night. Besides, his office isn't set up any more and the things that Mother put around to make pretty have been moved. We moved them because Mr. Newlhouse told us to and I hadn't thought not to. But the walls were still hers and some weird lady would change them if new people moved in.

Mother isn't around anymore to care and Daddy isn't around to smoke his cigars and of one thing I am absolutely sure, I don't want to come back here ever again.

"Should it be my choice?" I feel like I don't understand what is going on and that makes me mad. I LIKE understanding things! Daddy tells me that we don't always think like we normally do when we are upset. Am I thinking differently, because then it really shouldn't be my choice. What if I don't do the right thing? This is supposed to be their job. Mother and Daddy are meant to decide what happens to our house. I'm not supposed to do this! They should be here, they should be doing this!

A window cracked. Mum pulled me closer as I watched it fix itself. Mum did that, I could feel the air around her do something and I just knew it was her that fixed the window. I think I broke it. That made me feel bad, mother probably liked that window.

"How about this, we can keep the house in your name and rent it out. That way when you are older you can decide what you want to do with the house?"

"What does in my name and renting it out mean?" I asked because I shouldn't have to know what that means and I don't.

"That means that the house would still belong to you, but another family would be paying to live here." I didn't like that. To me this only seemed like the worse of both choices. Mum seemed to think it was the smart choice. I nodded.

"What's am I supposed to do? On the shows that Jared likes, the ones with the crimes, a lot of the time when someone dies they have a thing called a funeral. I don't know why, but they always do. I should tell Jared what happened, and his Grandmother. I don't know how to get a hold of them." I was squeezed tight again and pulled me into her lap, that confused me.

"Calm down." Oh, I had been talking aloud, loud and fast. "I'll take care of all of that. That's not stuff for you to worry over." I think that's because of my age. I don't like when I can't do stuff because of my age. I don't think that I would like this stuff though. I hugged Mum tight and burrowed my head in her shoulder. I miss my parents and my eyes were burning as I blinked back tears. I didn't feel like crying again.

"What's going to happen to the bad people?" I hadn't been told if they had even been brought to the place where bad people go, but I know that the good guys always catch the bad guys and the people who hurt my parents are the bad guys.

I was going to ask again. My voice had been softened by talking into her shoulder and my voice hadn't been really loud but she answered, "They will be put on trial for everything they did wrong. Sometimes, they would have you testify to tell the court what happened. But the police have their evidence and they don't need to talk to you. You wont need to go to the trial if you don't want to." I don't want to. I didn't need to say so for her to understand.

I had more questions like, why had they come to our house? Who were they? Did it hurt, what they did to Mother and Daddy? What about my relatives, Jared and Gran who is Jared's Grandmother? What if I don't like the Wizarding world? What if the Wizarding world doesn't like me? What am I supposed to do if this wandless magic thing doesn't work out? Will Mum want to return me?

I wasn't really sure I actually wanted the answers to any of these things. Some of the possible answers were simply scary.

Neither of us said anything for a little while and then I started getting frustrated. They had left me. Daddy had always promised that they would always be there for me and Mother had always agreed. And I think I might even kind of be upset with them for making me finally understand what regret means.

"I never understood regret before." I spoke out load because that way all my thoughts would be focused on one line and I might not get a headache. I also knew that she would listen. "Daddy always explained it as a feeling experienced when one wishes things happened differently and most commonly connected to a person's own feeling of guilt. I never understood why people didn't just do the right thing the first time. I could never understand why people didn't just do what they knew they should. It just never made since. I understand it now and I don't like that I do." I stopped talking. I wanted to continue, but suddenly I was thinking about how she really wouldn't want to hear it. The topic wasn't interesting and it wasn't like she knew them or anything.

"What do you regret?" She prompted gently and with a curiousness I couldn't understand.

"My Daddy tells me stories about before I was born. He didn't always want to be a dentist, but once he decided, his grades that paid his way through school. My mother 'came from money' but she got through school the same way my Daddy did. They were both top of their classes, that's how they met. Daddy told me that she was really smart and that's one of the reasons he fell in love with her. They opened a practice together, her parents had helped them do so and they were really happy for a really long time. I ruined that. Daddy never told me so, but it was clear that my Mother would have still been that girl he fell in love with had it not been for me. When they found out I was coming Mother insisted that they move to a safer place, that they move here. She then started planning things for their practice and working on schedules and stuff like that, she stopped actively being a dentist. She met new friends when they came here, and she changed. I would have liked to know who she was before I came along."