The Aftermath

Chapter 2

The Danger of Breaking and Entering—Minus the Breaking

July 31st 1998 (Around Midnight)

She was asleep when the Caterwauling Charm was set off. It had been less than a month since James, Frederick, and Lily had been born and Adelaide had had a serious awakening in parenting. Teddy—dear, sweet, lovely Teddy—was a very good baby. He rarely cried, seemed to entertain himself by changing the color of his hair or skin—once he had turned his skin a beautiful coffee brown, and had given himself lime green hair—and was very loving in an adorable and heartwarming way. He reminded her of Remus. She had thought that she was sort of prepared for her own baby, and when that turned into three babies, she had thought, well, three more Teddy-bears can't be that difficult.

She had been so terribly wrong.

Adelaide had made the mistake that all babies would be that easy, but the triplets were very different from Teddy—lovable, adorable, easy Teddy. With James and Frederick—who had letters on all of their clothing so she could tell them apart—Adelaide knew that they would be just like their father and Uncle George. They were always together, and if you picked one up without immediately picking up the other, they would both start to sob. It was such heartbreaking sobs that the first—and last—time Adelaide did just that she started to cry with them. (She refused to acknowledge that she had been thinking of how George must have felt when Fred died, and that she wondered if they had done this when they were babies.)

With Lily, instead of being fussy like her brothers, she was needy and demanding. She didn't like it when she looked around and couldn't see Adelaide, and when this happened, she would start to sniffle, then whine, then cry, then sob, then burst into bloodcurdling wails! Adelaide would come as fast as she could, pick her up, and almost immediately Lily would quiet. It was as if Lily thought she would disappear. When Adelaide would try to put her back down she would grip her shirt so tightly in her tiny fist that it would take nothing short of pliers to make her let go. Adelaide always just kept holding her. (She had a feeling that this was what she was like when she was Lily's age, so she couldn't really complain much. After all, her mum would've had to go through this.)

Sometimes she longed for the days when it was just her and Teddy, but then the twins would giggle, or Lily would sigh contentedly in her arms, and she knew it was worth it.

That did not mean that she did not need her sleep.

She put the babies to bed as early as possible so she could go to bed as early as possible. This was usually around eight, so if she was lucky Adelaide would get to sleep until six o'clock in the morning, because Lily was a morning person apparently. Adelaide had just gotten the hang of putting them to sleep in a way that that made her able to sleep through the night. James and Frederick had to be in the same crib or else they would never settle down, and though Teddy was alright by himself, Lily couldn't sleep alone yet without having a panic attack, so she got put in with Teddy. Teddy didn't seem to mind. Then, the sure way to get all three of the triplets to conk out together was for Adelaide to sing. Not even lullaby's, she could sing the phonebook or even her History of Magic text and within five minutes they were sleeping—never mind the fact that Adelaide's singing voice was quite average, bordering on out of tune. (Teddy of course was asleep also, but he would have fallen asleep even if she hadn't started to sing—he liked his sleep, thank you very much.)

That evening, she had successfully put them all to bed by eight-thirty, then went to bed herself. She was asleep before she hit the pillow. And she was having a dreamless sleep, which was a rare and wonderful thing when she was violently awoken by the Caterwauling Charm she set up every night before she went to sleep—just because the war was over didn't mean that there weren't still bad people.

And just because the war was over and she had given birth to triplets did not mean that she didn't snap awake, grab her wand, go into the living room and fire spells before she had even identified the intruder. "Aguamenti! Expelliarmus! Avis! Oppugno! Obscuro!"

So, first the intruder was sprayed with water—obscuring their vision—then if they were holding a weapon it flies out of their hand—if not, they get blasted into the wall behind them—then birds appear and attack—successfully distracting them—and finally, a blindfold appears over their eyes, making them completely vulnerable. It might have seemed like overkill to some, but it was a precaution to Adelaide. And it was their own fault for breaking and entering!

It was a shame that the intruder was Apollo.

And that he wasn't really breaking and entering, considering he had just flashed directly into her living room instead of breaking her door down.

"Whoa!" Apollo said from his sprawled position on the floor. He put a hand in front of his face. "I've gone blind! How will I drive my sun chariot if I'm blind? It's illegal!" He cried in mock-distress.

"Oh, hush." Adelaide canceled the Caterwauling Charm, called off the birds, and vanished the blindfold.

Apollo looked at her as if she was his saviour . "I can see!"

"Yes. Yes you can. Now will you tell me why you are appearing in my apartment in the middle of the night?" She asked. "You're lucky I put Silencing Wards around the children's room, or they would be screaming right now because of the racket you caused." The Silencing Wards only went one way: the children couldn't hear anything outside their room, but Adelaide was still able to hear if one of them started crying. (The muggle baby monitor worked wonders for when she was in a more deep sleep.)

"Happy Birthday!" Apollo said. He got up and went to hug her, but Adelaide pushed him away—he was still wet. "You didn't forget, did you Addy?"

Adelaide smiled tiredly, she had come to realize that gods—or perhaps just Apollo—didn't really think the way mortals did. Apollo didn't really think that it was the middle of the night and that she had been sleeping. Or that she was exhausted from taking care of four infants 24/7. But Adelaide found it difficult to stay angry at Apollo: he was always so earnest about everything. And the way he talked about his sister Artemis was so protective it always made her smile.

So Adelaide said, "I didn't actually. George is coming here tomorrow for a few days to meet his niece and nephews so we can celebrate it together. He just got time off for a visit and got permission for the international Portkey." She sat down on the yellow couch she had bought. It was extremely comfy, and the color was what she imagined happiness looked like. "You should come meet him. You could even bring along your sister."

Apollo's eyes lit up it a way that told her that he'd be there. "Is anyone else coming? Ron or Hermione?" She had told Apollo a lot about her life in England.

"No," Adelaide said sadly, "Ron still blames me for Fred's death, and since Hermione is with him, it would be detrimental to their relationship if she came out. She did send a letter though."

"Have you told them about Jay, Ricky, and Lily?"

"No," Adelaide said, "I don't want Molly or Ginny or Ron to come and give me the cold shoulder while doting on them. It would be unhealthy." She shook her head firmly, "If one of them ever reaches out to me, or if they come to their senses, then I would gladly have them in the triplets' lives." It was weird, because Fred's death was one of the few that she didn't blame herself for; they—Fred and her—had done everything they could to make sure that he was as small a target as possible, to the point that only George knew that they were together since Adelaide's fourth year after the Yule Ball. Adelaide did not control the explosion that had killed Fred at the Battle of Hogwarts, but grief did peculiar things to people. (Adelaide was really just thankful that George had never blamed her for his twin's death.)

Apollo nodded, and like always tried to steer their conversation to something more cheerful, "I got your birthday present." He announced.

"Really?" Adelaide was taken aback, she had not expected Apollo—a god—to bother about her birthday. She hadn't expected him to remember the day, and certainly hadn't thought that he would go to the trouble of getting her a present. "You didn't have to do that Apollo."

Apollo looked quite offended, "Of course I did!" He didn't explain further. It was as if his needing to get her a present for her birthday was a fact of life. Adelaide decided to just go with it.

"Alright then, what is it?"

Apollo grabbed her hand and pulled her up and off the sofa. Bewildered, Adelaide just let herself be led to one of the empty rooms of her apartment—she hadn't had the time to fill all of the rooms, or even unpack all of her boxes. Though it wasn't as if she had much stuff, it was mostly books that she had cleared out from the Black and Potter properties that she had inherited and now had time to read, or the many photos and photo albums she had acquired. Apollo opened the door to the empty room with a flourish, and what Adelaide saw made her gasp.

The room wasn't empty any longer. There was a beautiful grand piano in the centre of the room, much too big to have gotten through the door or up the elevator. "How did you make it fit?" She asked dumbly. She could have done it with a shrinking charm, but Apollo wasn't a wizard.

"I," Apollo stated grandly, "am a god."

She could have hit herself.

Adelaide walked over to the instrument as if she were gravitating towards it. She stroked the keys, and noted absently that they all had a miniature golden sun painted on them. "I remember what you said about your aunt, about how the only kind thing she ever did was—" Apollo was saying.

"—force me to go to piano lessons, because every proper lady needs to know how to play at least one instrument—"

"—but the real reason was that the next door neighbors daughter was taking piano lessons, and everybody was raving about how good she was, and your aunt wanted to one up them, but your cousin refused to take the lessons himself." He finished.

Adelaide thought back to her piano lessons. Her teacher had been Ms. Maryanne. She was short and plump, middle-aged and grey-haired, but what had most stood out were her eyes. They were big and brown, reminding Adelaide of a doe, and sad like one of those abused puppies on the television commercials. Ms. Maryanne had lost her husband and both of her children in a car accident years and years ago, and she had never really recovered. When Adelaide had told Ms. Maryanne that her parents had died in a car wreck when she was a baby—as the Dursley's had told her when she was younger, despite the fact that her parents had been murdered in an effort to save her life—the first thing Ms. Maryanne had said was, "At least it had not been you that died while your parents survived. They are more at peace knowing that you lived, and that you could grow up, even if they were not there to see it." Of course, Adelaide had been about five when she was told this, so she didn't understand, but the words stuck with her, and when Adelaide looked in the mirror now, and she saw a little bit of the same sadness in her eyes that Ms. Maryanne had always carried, she understood what Ms. Maryanne had meant. It was made even clearer now that she had Teddy, James, Frederick, and Lily.

Ms. Maryanne's heart stopped in her sleep just after Adelaide's fifth year at Hogwarts. Just after Sirius had died.

Adelaide blinked quickly and shook her head. "And the suns are there because…?" She grinned, because she knew exactly why they were there: Apollo would want to put his own stamp on everything, even presents. He had a peculiar obsession with it, like a teenager carving, "Apollo was here" or whatever their name might be, into their desk at school, no matter that when the teacher sees it they'll get into trouble.

"So you remember that you are playing on a piano that the god of music has given to you." He responded with the expected answer. "But…" he said mischievously, "I also got you something else." He pulled a thick book on Greek Mythology out of thin air. "If you're going to hang out with a Greek god, you gotta know about Greek gods, and you, dear Addy, are sorely lacking in that area."

Adelaide groaned. She had never liked reading overly much, she certainly didn't inhale books and facts like Hermione did. Though she had been better since she had been out of school—which was very opposite to what you want, usually—because reading was one off the most relaxing things that she did nowadays. She had still been avoiding Greek Mythology though, because the little that she knew about it suggested that it was a complex web of worshipers that were cursed, demigods dying, and incestuous relationships—though Apollo had helpfully pointed out that it wasn't really incest because gods and goddesses didn't have DNA.

She took the book anyway, placing it on the piano bench for the time being, then used a Hot-Air Charm on Apollo to get rid of the water still soaking him. Only then did she hug him. "Thank you." Normally she wouldn't accept a gift so expensive, especially when she had only known the person who gave it to her for less than a month, but there was really no arguing with Apollo.

"I like your outfit by the way." He commented.

Adelaide had been sleeping in some of the clothing that she had bought here in New York. It was one of the few non-maternity things that she had at the moment. It was a nightgown, gold with black trim, and quite short. She honestly couldn't remember why she had gotten it; the thing was short and uncomfortable, and the silky material freaked her out because when it was cold it felt slimy. It did look good—and would look even better when she lost the pregnancy poundage—but the next time Adelaide went shopping she was going to buy some nice flannel and cotton, and then shove this monstrosity to the bottom of her dresser, never to be seen again.

She snorted and whacked Apollo on the chest. "Tomorrow at twelve," Adelaide said through a yawn, "that's when George is arriving."

"Right, noon." Apollo nodded and looked to be adding it to his mental calendar. "See you then." He looked about ready to leave when Adelaide spoke once more,

"Oh, and Apollo?" She said in a pleasant sort of voice, "If you come here in the middle of the night again, the first spell coming from my wand will be the Castration Hex."

Apollo just laughed, and then he was gone.

Adelaide started to leave the room to go back to bed, but she paused in the doorway, looking back at the piano. She went back to the instrument, sat down at the bench, and started to play softly. She was rusty from not having played since fifth year, and it showed. The melody was broken, a stuttering mess, and before she knew it she was crying, her tears splashing on the keys and blurring the suns into something indistinct and unattainable.

She thought about Ms. Maryanne and Sirius. Her parents and Teddy's. She thought about Fred.

She couldn't figure out who she was crying for.