Gwen Tennyson and the Witches of America
A Fanfiction by: A J
Disclaimer: I do not own Ben 10 or Harry Potter. The Original Characters contained within and the plot are all mine.
Chapter Three
C is for Cooties
"Hey, Grandma Gwen," Ben started, bored. With his cousin's shield blocking him from anything remotely interesting, he decided to resort to (shudder) … conversation. "What'cha cooking in your cauldron?"
"In my ..?" Guinevere looked back at the stone receptacle next to her. glowing faintly with the silvery strands still swirling inside. "Oh! This isn't a cauldron, Benjamin. This is a pensieve. Witches and wizards use them to hold spare thoughts when their heads feel to full, or to help remember something easier."
"Like a giant magic Post-it?" Ben asked irreverently. Gwen punched him in the arm. "OW! What? I was just asking …"
"Gwen, why don't you run out to the Rustbucket and grab your letter from the Institute. And Ben," Max added, when the preteen boy started into a victory dance, thinking he'd finally get a run at all the fascinating shelves. "Go hit the canned goods aisle up front and grab a few dinner's worth for the three of us." At Ben and Gwen's shocked looks, Max chuckled. "You think I didn't notice you two sneaking off for fast food last summer? You two can save your allowance for souvenirs this year. I promise to cook 'real meals'," he even made air quotes with his fingers, "at least once a day."
Ben took off running before his grandfather could change his mind. When Max looked back at Gwen, who hadn't moved an inch, she pulled her parchment packet from Salem Center out of her back pocket. With a cousin and cabin-mate like Ben, she wasn't taking any chances with this, her most sensitive information yet aside from the spellbook she'd 'won' from Charmcaster. (That was still in her pocket!)
Gwen, Ginny and Max put their heads together over the unfurled pages, perusing the list of school supplies Salem Center for Sorcery Prep had sent to the red-haired girl.
"Hmm, looks like I've got most of this around the store," Ginny said, tapping the first half of the list. She waved her wand, and a black cauldron roughly the size of Gwen's head floated off a shelf and zoomed around the back room, stopping in front of a few other shelves long enough for five other things to jump into the bowl of the pot. "That's the whole of the First Year's list that I carry, dear. But that should save you from having to spend more than necessary in that new upscale monstrosity in the center of town. They opened a few years ago, to cater to the muggle tourists selling cheesy 'magical' souvenirs."
"I think we wandered into the tourist part of that place last summer," Max chuckled. "Remember the pilgrim outfits, Gwen?"
Gwen looked up from where she was inventorying the contents of the cauldron, which had set down at her feet. "Please, don't remind me. I'm still repressing." She looked back down again, and said, "That's the scales, vials, basic potions kit, gloves, and … hey, what are these made of? They don't feel like leather." She held up the gloves out of the cauldron. They were a vivid dark green.
Ginny grinned. "Those are dragon-hide, Gwen. Peruvian Vipertooth, specifically." She gave Max a wink. "My second husband works as a dragon keeper down there, and whenever they have a ah … fresh harvest, he sends me a shipment. Personally, I think he's just trying to win me back," she added. Gwen giggled, and Max shook his head, grinning.
"So we still need to go shopping for the school robes, the books, and … the wand …" Gwen trailed off as she tried to figure out what kind of wand they meant. So she asked.
"Ooooh, there're nearly as many wands as there are witches and wizards," Ginny gushed. "It starts with the type of wood, goes then by length and thickness, and then the core is added. Each wand has at its center a core of some magical substance, like unicorn hair, dragon heartstring, kelpie leaf … stuff like that … then of course you have to remember that the wand picks the witch."
"What do you mean?"
"This is my wand, which I've had since I was eleven," Ginny said, holding up her wand again. "It's Massachusetts Hickory, twelve-and-a-quarter inches, slightly stiffer than regular Hickory, which is why it has this bend in the middle. Let that be a lesson to you, young lady: Don't keep your wand in your back pocket. The price I paid for living through the Sixties, when every girl got to wear slacks …" Gwen giggled. "The core is dragon-hair, believe it or not, one of the last of the wands made from the tufted Chinese fireball, before that subspecies bred away into the more dominant dragons of the region. Now they're all frilled, like those dinosaurs in the Jurassic park movies." She ran a finger fondly along her wand. "The Wandmaster waited over fifty years before he found the witch for this wand."
"The … Wandmaster?" Gwen gulped.
"Sorry, it does sound over-the-top, doesn't it?" Ginny smiled. "Old Phineas Hutchinson has been making wands for almost a hundred years. He started right after World War One, when he took over the business after his father died. They both served, Navy men, and Phin keeps his medals up over his counter next to his other 'unsellable wands'.
It's what he calls the ones he and his father made before and during the War, from wildly different materials from all over the world. This hung there until I came along," she waved her wand in emphasis, leaving a trail of smoke that turned into a heart-shaped ring and floated away. "The only other one I know that he sold went to his own great-great-granddaughter, Manda. I remember the core, which was griffin-feather, because her mother bragged that she had a matching feather in her hat, but I don't remember the rest …"
"Well, now I know who to come to for all the gossip," Gwen grinned. Just then, the little bell over the door between the two storerooms jingled.
"That's our cue, too, Gwen. Let's find out how much chili your cousin's piled up while you girls talked shop," Max said good-naturedly, and trailed the two G-women out.
The trio came out to the main store to see Ben making a small pyramid of canned goods on the counter next to the register. "Okay, we left him alone too long," Gwen sighed, when she got a closer look at his handiwork. Each layer was something different, from canned spaghetti rings on the bottom, then various veggies, then the dreaded chili, and he was working on a layer of cream-of soups when they came out. He was currently frozen, can in hand, at the sight of the three girls who had just come into Ginny's store.
They looked nothing alike. The girl in the lead was practically a duplicate of Gwen, with red hair and green eyes straight from the Emerald Isle. She was even in a green dress that matched her irises.
Her companions both had brown hair, but they were at the opposite ends of that description. One girl's was so dark, it was almost black; the other's was paled by a grayish sheen, like she was middle-aged, or part mouse. The dark-haired girl was pale of skin, the mousy one was swarthy, with a Mediterranean tan. Her lighter hair matched her eyes, grey with golden edges; her compatriot had midnight blue eyes that practically glowed from under her thick lashes. She had apparently followed her friend's example, with a blue dress just as deep. The other girl wore a simple pale yellow summer frock over Capri jeans.
"Well, speak of the diva, and her sister shall appear," Ginny chuckled. "Linda, how are you?" she asked the blue-dressed girl. "We were just talking about your sister and her wonder-wand." Guinevere turned to the other two girls. "Niella, nice to see you again. Who've you brought this time?" The red-haired girl grinned, and pointed a thumb over her shoulder.
"This is A J, Miss Ginny. She's the daughter of a friend of my father's from California. She just got her letter, and we figured we'd introduce her around, so she'd settle in better through the summer."
"Well, you've got another to teach the ropes to, Niella. My Goddaughter here just got her letter, too." Ginny introduced Gwen to the other two local residents, Linda in blue and Niella in green, and then the two neophyte witches Gwen and A J shook hands. "So why did you get sent to Salem, if you're from California?" Ginny asked A J.
"Here we go again," Niella sang, rolling her eyes. Linda elbowed her, giggling.
A J cleared her throat, like she was about to give a report in school. "My parents split up years ago, and my dad's in long-term medical care from a horrible lab accident, and now I'm living with my grandparents in Cambridge. Grandpa's an American history professor there. You should have seen his eyes bug out when my letter arrived. All those years, semester after semester, telling people the witch-hunts were just hysteria-induced propaganda …" She and the other girls all laughed, until they became aware of a staring pair of green eyes from across the room.
"Take a picture; it'll last longer," A J told the ogling boy.
"Good idea," he sassed, with a sudden smirk. "Hey, cuz, can I borrow your phone?" he said, turning to Gwen.
"Forget it, ultra-doofus. I'm saving memory space for the tour of town," Gwen retorted. She plonked her cauldron-full of merchandise on the counter next to all the canned goods. "Can you ring me up, Guinevere? I'm beginning to think I want to see the other store without Ben."
"I'm not sure I should just let you go running around Salem by yourself, Gwen …" Max started, thinking suddenly of all the normal hazards that still lurked in any given city. She may have become a superhero along with her cousin over the course of the last year, but she was still his eleven-year-old granddaughter.
"Grandpa … Please?" Gwen pleaded.
"She won't be alone," dark-haired Linda said. "We'll show her around. Right, Nia?"
"Absolutely," her red-haired friend nodded, stepping next to Gwen and throwing a comradely arm around her shoulder. Ginny and Max exchanged a startled glance at the uncanny picture of the two girls. Outfits aside, Niella and Gwen looked more alike than Ben and Gwen did. Even their hair was almost the same length.
"Wow, no saying she won't fit right in, huh?" A J blurted, looking around at the other three girls. Then all four giggled, realizing that Gwen looked like she had bits of all three of the other Salemites to her appearance: from Niella's hair and eyes, to an outfit cut like A J's, but colored like Linda's.
"Please?" Gwen repeated. Max sighed, nodded, and chuckled.
"All right, sweety. You've got your phone on you, right?" he asked. She nodded enthusiastically, turning her hip so he could see the tell-tale bump that was her new Blackberry net-phone. She turned back to Guinevere. "So what's my total, fairy grandmother?" Ginny grinned as well as the girls at that one.
"Let's see … cauldron, scales, potion basics, vials, ink, and gloves ... that comes out to about a galleon and a half, dear." Gwen, Max, Ben and A J all looked blankly back at her, while Linda and Niella were both nodding sagely.
Gwen pulled out her blue pleather wallet and looked inside. "Uh … any chance that equals a twenty?"