Chapter Five: A Saviour?
"Mummy, mummy, look at the big doggy!"
Aw crap. Crap, crap, and double crap. I could live with wizards, muggles and squibs but small children covered in tacky beads? And – yes, I was right, there was the token white fluffy teddy bear with lilac tee shirt. Muggles.
Sighing, I turned to the girl, and started the hand-muzzling routine I'd spent so much time perfecting. Charitable people were a blessing, they really were. I was barely even listening to the girl's predictable cooing and gurgling.
"Ooo's a good wittle doggy, then?" She crooned.
"Oo's a good wittle sweetums – Mummy, NO!"
The left side of my face exploded into a smouldering fire, and my eye was shut tight against an onslaught of oversized pinpricks from hell. My shoulder thudded against a dull grey wheelie bin as I fell back on it. Thankfully the fence behind it made it support my weight. I hadn't even seen that one coming. Dimly, I could hear the stupid rat yapping furiously, and the mother yelling at the beaded toddler.
I raised my head, turning so I could see with my good eye.
But that couldn't be right. I shook my head, convinced the blow had boggled my mind. The mother was brandishing a heavy duty garden broom in her hands, weathered face screwed up as she demanded the girl move out her way. Her brown bob wouldn't have looked out of place on someone twenty years younger. As it was, she looked kind of pathetic.
All I could see of the little girl was the back of her white-blonde bunches on the back of her head. The elastic waistband of her pink three quarter lengths were visible under the bottom of her frilly little girl's tank top.
She was defending me?