Chapter Fifteen: A Narrator

I wasn't really sure what was going on between Jessie and Mr. Tickes –her father, that is. He never once looked her in the eyes. Come to think of it, he didn't seem to care at all. I mean, if Death Eaters had attacked the twins' shop, my mother would have personally Apparated to the scene and started shooting hexes at anything in a mask. Jessie's father looked distracted, even disinterested in the fact that his only daughter could have died.

That struck me as very weird.

I knew what had happened to Jessie's mother and great-grandmother had probably put a strain on their relationship somehow. A lot of families had never gotten over what happened with You-Know-Who years ago. Some old clans had divided along so-called 'pureblood' and 'blood traitor' lines, like the Blacks, and some had simply been cut down to members in the single digits. There were only about five Longbottoms left, after all, the Prewetts were gone except for Mum, and I think there were eight Tickes altogether left, counting Jessie's little half-brothers and stepmother. Of course, theirs was what the obnoxious 'purebloods' considered a 'trade family, pure of blood but rough of hand.' Gentlemen merchants –gentlewomen in Jessie's case, good enough to invite to large parties but not quite good enough for heirs to marry. It was an interesting place to be, in the corrupt hierarchy that existed among bigots. I'd assumed the Tickes were either pureblood or fairly close to it, I never asked; but apparently a slight degree of 'impurity' was tolerable in trade families, who were bourgeois class anyway…very strange.

I'd been making little charts on this topic, as bigotry's important to the plot of my new novel. Did you know, for example, that Serapion Nott defined seven separate and distinct levels of pure- to Muggle blood in 1938? It's an awful, but fascinating thing, the way those tossers think. My family was level six –first-generation half-bloods and vehement blood traitors, at that point, though at times I suspect Percy qualified as a one, given his Ministry activity. I assumed Jessie's family were fives or higher…maybe lower depending on individuals. Simply having a Muggle-born friend was enough to take you down a rung on the Nott ladder…Jessie must've been a three for that. Of course, the trade family idea put a skew on it…it's difficult to do your shopping if you boycott everything without the toujours pur stamp of approval.

I assure you, I do not in any way agree with this warped system. It just came up around the time I'm writing about, and I figured it'd be best to put it near the front so you can flip to it. Only total buggers actually believed in the Nott system, but a lot of people used it, usually in conjunction with the Gringott's Report or Aurory Blotter and then it was for seating charts and whatnot. Rank is a stupid system. In my opinion, seating should be based on who arrives first, except when there are rows, when the tallest should sit in back and the shortest in front. That at least makes sense.

As the twins had explained it to me, Jessie was in strong demand among the heirs of other trade families. Apparently there were many heirs to businesses who would have loved to contract a marriage merger with James W. Tickes and Sons, and a number of said heirs would have enjoyed it for other reasons, too. And why not? Jessie was a brilliant clocksmith, she had a wonderful shop, a good business, and she was beautiful, even in shopkeeper-drag.

Actually, I kind of liked the clothes she wore to work…they made her look capable and friendly. That, and sometimes she doesn't button the shirts to the top, which…well…I like that.

Of course, when I expressed these opinions to the twins, they were not exactly pleased that I was aware of her physical attractiveness.

"So? She's our friend."

"She's our age."

"Why would you be looking at her, anyway?"

"Guys, please…I just noticed-"

"Noticed our friend, yeah."

"Been browsing the cradle long?"

"Oh, what? She's got a brother older than me! I'm only-"

"She'll be twenty next week, you know."

"Yes. We've been designing something new."

"A truly perfect birthday present, in our opinion."

"I take it this will beat the Bullshit Detector Quills you made for Percy."

"Well…as much as anything could beat that."

"No, this is truly remarkable." George opened a drawer and took out what resembled an elegantly embroidered ladies' handkerchief. "We call it the 'Subtle Escape.'"

"…What is it?"

"Observe." George blew his nose in it and disappeared, reappearing a second later on the couch across the room. "If anyone gets too close, or too obnoxious…"

"Or tries something," Fred remarked darkly.

"Jessie just needs to snort a bit and she can escape to us."

"And you're both so safe with women." I gave them a smirk, which really wasn't quite fair. They were good guys. But then, what good guy would ever admit to it?

"Jessie's safe with us."

"She's like an older Ginny with different hair and less Quidditch talent."

"And specs…really, who'd snog a girl with specs? Wouldn't you bump your nose?"

"No, you sort of tilt…" Both brothers raised their left eyebrow as I demonstrated. "What?"

"You like Jess, Charlie?" George asked calmly.

"I…well…" I couldn't very well lie, could I? "Well, yeah! She's wonderful. We went out the other night, and…" For that one moment I felt perfectly horrible.

"You know, I reckon Ron's going to have this same problem at some point," Fred observed suddenly. "Methinks the Boy Who Lived fancies our Ginny."

"Only our version's a bit backwards." George looked thoughtful. "On the upside, we do more or less trust you. On the downside, it'd be very weird having a stag chat if your mate were our girl Friday."

"Yeah. I'm not certain I'd like to know what Jessie's like in bed."

"Or how she looks naked?" I suggested.

"Pshaw, we know that already," George remarked dismissively. I almost jumped off the chair.

"What –how? You… her-?"

"The family brilliance, George, look at it." Fred grinned. "We were testing a product once."

"And she made us eat cold porridge for two meals after that, neither of which were breakfast.

"Oh." I still felt a bit…I don't know, cheated, curious…it was weird.

"Brothery feeling aside, Charlie, if you do wind up dating her, she is not bad-looking."

"Fred!"

"What? S'true."

"Yes, but…well…we can trust you, right?" I nodded vehemently. "Not in the 'don't shag our friend' sense, because you never know, Fred, it just might be her idea…and we wouldn't cockblock a bloke, would we? Jess'd resent it if we gave her fella orders of Do and Don't."

"She'd have our pelts. Just 'cause she's a girl is no call to…well." Fred gestured vaguely. "But you hear me, Charles Weasley. If you ever make that dear girl cry; older than us or not, we're two to your one and we will not hesitate for one second to knock you from here to Hogsmeade like a Bludger…and then set Gin on your sorry carcass."

"And maybe Mum, too, if there's any tissue left."

"That went without saying, guys."

"Well, maybe, but we still felt like saying it."

"That way, you can't accuse us of unfair play if we have to kill you later."

"What if Jessie does me wrong, then?"

"Charlie! Are you mad?"

"We'd never strike a girl!"

I waited as they looked at each other and grinned before concluding in unison:

"…We'd get Ginny!"

You know, I worry about Ginevra. She really is too close to the twins sometimes. Of course, that likely means a reduction in my big-brother protective duties. One time she felt Ron was asking too many questions about her love life and…this really isn't the sort of thing I should repeat, you know. Ron might be humiliated.

Ask Ginny sometime. It's 'the time with the gumboots,' if she's not sure which anecdote you mean. Besides, I bet she'd tell it better. Maybe if you offend her, she'll demonstrate.

"But you two don't mind if I ask her out again? 'Cause, see…I really do like her. When she was in St. Mungo's, I was just about out of my head… see, when the Death Eaters were in Knockturn, she looked so angry… I didn't think they'd come after her as well."

"She's held up pretty damned well, hasn't she?" George observed. "Wait. What was that about Knockturn?"

"…Jessie and I were there when the Death Eaters were vandalizing it. I thought you knew…"

"And why were you down there?"

"We…we were heading back from Muggle London, and Jessie knocked on the Redferns' back door and they called us in…"

"The Redferns are a little odd, I think," Fred remarked. "I mean, I'm a twin, right? So normally I can spot which of another set of twins is which. The Patil sisters are easy, the Flume brothers at Hogsmeade are harder, but you can still tell…what's the deal with the Redfern girls?"

"Maybe triplets are harder?" I ventured, shrugging.

"Oh. That must be it, then. I miscounted." Fred smirked. "I know triplets must be different…but they seem to shift on me. I thought I thought the one was cute, but then it turned out to be another I was talking to."

"Jessie said they're Metamorphmagi," George reminded, to which Fred snapped his fingers and nodded. "I bet they think it's a great lark, confusing us guys to hell."

"If you two had a Time-Turner, you could really make their heads spin," I joked. My brothers stared, their eyes widening and narrowing in a familiar, frightening way. "Oh, gods, no! I wasn't serious!"

"Polyjuice, then?" Fred asked George.

"Who's the lost Weasley?" George asked Fred.

"We'll use a real one. Hogwarts lets out fairly soon."

"You lot can't get through the day without a prank, can you?" I noticed a Muggle ballpoint of the sort Jessie sometimes keeps around and went to pick it up –it exploded.

"Nope!"

"We really can't, can we?"

With my hand suddenly blue and sticky, I should have been sort of irritated with my mad little twin brothers. Except, see, I've lived with my mad little twin brothers since they were mad little twin babies, and now I'm rather used to it.

"That seems a bit like Muggle-baiting to me, boys. Could you explode quills instead of ballpoints next time, maybe?"

"Oh, that's the grand part," George smiled, put on a potholder, and picked up another one, setting it in the center of the table on some newsprint. "These aren't for the shop. It's called a Blood Traitor Ballpoint."

"Uh…why?"

"You're a Weasley, right?" Fred reached out and touched the pen, which appropriately exploded. "If a so-called pureblood picks one of these beauties up, it'll explode on him."

"Thus marking any potential sympathizers of You-Know-Who."

"Good idea, but…it explodes when we touch them. I mean, except maybe for that little twerp Percy…"

"We know we're sensible."

"Besides, how can a spell detect political opinion? I mean, and still fit in a ballpoint? Those buggers are small."

"Is there some spell on the ink, to make it stick like this?" I rubbed at the stuff with a rag, but it only seemed to blur and spread.

"No…ballpoints are just like that."

"Remember when ickle Ronniekins got ahold of one of Dad's?"

"Of course!" I even had a picture of the occasion someplace. "He had a blue tongue for weeks!"

"And Mum thought we'd done it…"

"Hey, now that the idea's been useful, think she'd make us up that one punishment?"

"How much else did we do that she didn't catch us?"

"Point. We'd still owe about six years' back groundings and extra chores."

"Best to stay quiet, then."

"I only picked it up because I thought it might be one of Jessie's…or did she get you these?"

"Um…" The twins looked sheepish for a moment, then George smirked. "Actually, we gave the ones she has to her."

"Really? But that would have to mean…are they spelled like these? I mean, they're the exploding kind?"

"Yep." Fred grinned. "Meaning that…?"

It added up. I'm sorry, but I really can be a little slow on the uptake.

"Jessie's a mix, then?"

"Well, obviously."

"I thought she just about had to be…well, her shop is famous and all. Wouldn't her family have had to stay pureblood to keep that up?"

"How could they? Just about nobody really is anymore."

"It just doesn't come up very often…when you're terminally late and need a watch fixed, are you really going to ask for a genealogy from your clockmaker?"

"In fact, I suspect that's how a lot of the shops here have stayed respectable with our crowd and the snob sort alike. It simply doesn't come up."

"But if Jessie's not a blood traitor…why did they attack her shop?"

Fred leaned on his hand for a moment, stroking his chin as he thought. The blue ballpoint-ink beard he gave himself was truly remarkable, but I felt it more polite not to interrupt his observations:

"Well, the way I figure it, they must have had some better reason to murder her mum and great-grandmother. I mean, her mum was Muggle-born, yes, but simply killing Muggle-borns isn't a good enough reason. That, and her great-grandmother was a pureblood."

"Was she?"

"Yeah. Jamesina Switch was an Auror before she married, one of the first women in the profession. Her brother Emeric Switch wrote Transfiguration textbooks." George walked around from behind the table and saw his brother. He jumped slightly, but, like me, said nothing. It was becoming rather better as Fred scratched. "Jessie's old books are inscribed. See, she lent me the sixth-year one…" George retrieved a remarkably pristine textbook, much nicer than any the twins had owned. In fact, I think they got Bill's and my old Transfiguration books –same author, but more than a little wear. "There, by the frontispiece."

In an elegant, firm hand was written: 'To my little grand-niece, study hard, practice a lot, and don't worry if things don't go right the first fifty times. –Great-uncle Emeric.'

"Very good advice."

"Yes…and she does follow it. I have to take this back sometime…is it dinner yet?" George closed the book and looked at his watch. "Not quite, but we may as well bother her."

"Jess could do with some bothering, yes. …Hey, Charlie?"

"What?" I tried not to react to Fred's blue beard, eyebrows, hair and nose.

"Do you think Jessie fancies you back?"

"I…I think she might."

"We'll find out," George announced with a sense of finality I have learned to be frightened of. "Come on, Baron de Rais, it's almost dinnertime."

"Baron de wha?" Fred asked, still oblivious.

And yes, the twins do play jokes on each other. In fact, I think the reason they're so good at pranking might be years of one-upmanship. So we headed off, George, Bluebeard the Dread Weasley and I, toward Jessie's shop. In spite of the twins' obvious plans to 'find out,' I was feeling rather pleased to have their approval. It felt less sneaky.

When we got to the shop, it was closed, but the twins can enter Jessie's wards. They did so, letting me in as well, and this time I avoided Jessie's ballpoint pens. An odd noise at the back made me turn.

Framed in the window of Jessie's back door was one of the Redfern sisters, looking shaken and frantically waving for us to come outside.