Chapter Nineteen: A Bottle
I suppose I'd be a good person to write about this particular part of the story, considering Jess and Charlie weren't around for a bit of it, and frankly, because I tell it well.
The Friday night a week after Jessie became Chairperson was also the night that Knockturn Alley's finest alternative dance club –that's PC talk for 'gay bar,' incidentally, was having their annual tribute to Muggle artists. It's customary to go in costume, and…well, I like doing that. There's also the fact that I have certain talents when it comes to dress-up, being a Metamorphmagus an' all. The Sticky Lick's really a smashing place, but I hardly ever got to go without sneaking out.
Yeah. Sneaking out. Because, you know, I wasn't yet. Not to everyone.
Luckily, I'm a flippin' Meta, so I pretty much got away with it.
Anyway, it was Muggle Madness Night, and being a positively heaving fan of both Miss Ana Matronic, long may she reign, and Miss Geri Halliwell, I was experiencing a moral conundrum on a level with picking whom to vote for for Minister of Magic.
Yeah, who flippin' cares if they're straight? They're also hot.
But I had this problem, see, and it has been my experience that the best person to solve a problem is someone who's completely oblivious. I had a friend in Ravenclaw, Luna Lovegood, who was great with helping me decide on stuff, but she wasn't available, so I decided on the next-best-thing.
"Jessie, which of these women is more attractive?"
Poor girl really does look a bit like a bug with her special glasses for clockwork on.
"Uh…I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask…but according to the Patil sisters, fabulous eyeshadow is a must, and hers has the most colors in it. So that one." She pointed to the Scissor Sisters picture. "Though I kind of like the other one's Union Jack outfit. Why d'you ask?"
"Costume for…costume night."
"Oh. Then definitely go as that one. Is that a tattoo of…mechanical…shoulder…why?"
Crap. I broke the clocksmith.
"Yeah, it's a…Muggle thing."
"Well, yeah, as they are Muggle photographs. So, what sort of costume night?"
Sometimes she really isn't as oblivious as I'd like her to be.
"It's…er…just…a thing. I have the night off and all."
"Cool. I have Chamber stuff to do tonight…extending the hand of friendship and whatlike…completely rubbish that it has to be so theatrical…"
"So what, you're going to walk into Knockturn and say 'Let's be friends, wot?'"
"Eh…I was thinking a little different. See, Granddad told me about this one place, it's a social hub of the area, and if one is accepted there, the entire span of this specialized community is pretty likely to join up with one's own party allegiance, provided they can keep the autonomy of…"
Yeah, I kinda didn't listen much past that. Mistake, I know.
"…so I was thinking I'd kind of do the political-statement thing there."
"Sounds great! What are you going to wear?"
"Oh…I was thinking I'd Transfigure something of mine to suit the tastes there."
"Always economical. Though we have got quite a bit of lovely clubwear, you can help yourself long's you bring it back without a dead clockmaker in it. You're not going into the Knocky alone, are you?"
"No, but you know full well I could."
"Jess, you're Chairperson, not the Amazing Hexproof Woman."
"That would be funny…be nice for the dueling club. You remember, with the blond git?"
"Could anyone forget?"
"He's still in St. Mungo's, last I heard. D'you suppose the Defense Against the Dark Arts job's really cursed?"
"Snape's got it now, I hear."
"That'd be sad, if the curse got him."
"You liked Snape's class?"
"Well, kinda, yeah. I actually use some of the stuff I learnt in there…that, and everyone was so scared of him it was nice and quiet."
"Jess, you could be kidnapped by You-Know-Who, kept in a dungeon with rats the size of Crups, fed nothing but bread and water and occasionally beaten; but if you had a sketchbook and your tools, you'd insist you'd enjoyed the quiet."
"…If I had my tools, I could escape."
"Yes!" I grinned snarkily. "As you so adeptly demonstrated with Madam Morrigan's Mistress Cuffs! What was that?" She blushed slightly.
"…The lock's none too difficult."
"Yeah, but tell me why the Fourth Herself would ever need to know how to open handcuffs of any kind? Some sort of watch we don't know about?"
That was a joke of ours. Even before they elected Jessie as Chairperson, a lot of hired people around the Alleys followed her exploits in business, with discussion to the effect that 'And Jamesina Tickes the Fourth, herself, she sells to Muggleborns' families,' and the like. It was Sam first greeted Jess as 'The Fourth, Herself,' to be funny, and Jessie's pained look was so amusing we kept on with it. But of course, she was far from helpless…
"I d'know. Maybe she's been spending too much time with the Transforming Temptresses." A Knocky-down newsletter had called us that, and by Knocky-down I mean disreputable even by Knockturn standards, and by newsletter I mean dirty-old-man's suppositions of who'd be the best lay in the area. Sam an' I had laughed over it 'til we ached, and once Ken figured out what the hell it meant, she had a good laugh, too.
Kendra's a bright girl and all, but she can be remarkably slow on the uptake when it comes to smutty things. Must be a Hufflepuff trait. Never could get how each of us wound up in a different House…I reckon the Hat wanted to spread us out so no one Head of House got the stick. That, and we might've all been Gryffindors, and between us and the Weasleys, well…I maintain ol' McGonagall has that hat paid off with Scotch-Gard or some such thing.
My sisters and I, according to the Department of Backstory, are probably the strangest blend of English wizarding and American Muggle society possible. Our mother's American, a Muggle, and quite incidentally after that one of the most popular movie stars of the past two decades. She has piles of fans. Our father, Bob Redfern, runs a book shop in Hogsmeade. Just about the only person who might think him important 'sides us and Mom would be Madam Pince up Hogwarts -she runs the library there, and maybe the Chocolate Frog card trading club.
We don't visit our parents as often as we should since we started the shop –partly because Mom's home more often during the day since she turned fifty and they…well, they love each other to distraction. Sometimes it can be odd to be around…as in, you have, have to call first, or risk retinal-cochlear damage on horrifying levels. As to how on earth a bookseller and a movie star get on; there's a Muggle movie called 'Notting Hill' that Mom really wanted to direct, as she'd understood it so well, but not too many people at her work knew about us and Dad. (Even if they had, they likely would've nattered on about typecasting and not let her have it either.) It was still very good and she backed the production for…oh, some percentage, and became rather friendly with a few of the actresses in it.
I think that was what she needed to stay sane in such a business for so long, a husband and kids who were normal and entirely oblivious to all that, just like Dad needed someone spectacular to come home to after –well, bookstores are not always the gay mad whirl, you know. Biggest thrill of his career was adding the coffee part, that and a few interesting book signings. People also tend to mistreat shopkeepers, especially if they manage but don't own their shops, and I'd bet you anything the knowledge that once he got home, the fireplace would light up and a glamorous movie star would step out of it with takeout bags in each hand and snog him senseless right in front of their three daughters would be enough to burst the skulls of most customers.
Which, of course, Mom did. Constantly. It got to the point that we're still fairly unfazed by snogging of any stripe going on in our presence. Not that we don't make a noise if there's too much tongue, but it's hard to bother us short of clothes coming off.
And then we'd just make popcorn, if it weren't our parents. Euugh!
They have a unique arrangement, of course. Mom knows about our world and probably has enough of a sense for magic that the amount of magical stuff that works for her makes sense. Dad met her on the way to the 1975 Quidditch World Cup, of course, after the horse she was riding for a remarkable independent film about Lady Godiva ran away (with her still stuck in the side-saddle,) somewhere in the Lancaster countryside. Dad was potting along on one of the motorcycles that were fashionable in that era, with the flying turned off (he's quite afraid of heights,) when suddenly an apparently naked woman galloped by on a horse that could charitably have been called insane, screaming for help.
No, Mom was not making the most piteous of cries, guaranteed to wrench the heartstrings of any man of chivalry. Sod. That. She was cursing like a Dixieland riverboat captain in a language that had at one point included English…you see, Mom is from New Orleans, and sometimes she does let fly with language that could well cause burn marks on people's ears.
Dad took one look at that, reasoned that God liked him after all, and in what Mom always described as 'a chase scene like The Princess Bride meets The Great Escape but as storyboarded by Frank Miller and directed by Baz Luhrmann,' managed to rescue her in astonishingly gallant fashion, though he was dreadfully frightened once he realized they were in the air. Mom, after getting over her confusion, which for some reason had more to do with how on earth a motorcycle got onto the 'Lady Godiva' set than the fact that the damn thing was flying like Mary Poppins meets Streets of Fire, finally managed to land the bike somewhere rather closer to Dad's old flat. They spent the night there and were married five days later.
It is at this point in the story that Mom usually sighs, grins at Dad, and makes some remark to the effect of 'It was the Seventies. We were young and free.' And then they get at the snogging again. It's dreadful.
But does that perhaps explain a lot?
"And actually, there are several types of watch that lock. Uncle Gard designed this one for diving, so it has a key to lock it on as securely as possible. And then some of the training watches from the new line, they lock to prevent not only loss, but the little ones' eating them. Apparently Robby and Davy will eat watches…"
"How are they doing, by the way?"
"Oh, pretty well, I think…I sent an owl to let 'em know about the whole Chairperson thing."
"…When?"
"Oh…" Jessie suddenly looked sheepish. "I remembered just a bit before you came in here, why?"
"…You were elected nearly three days ago."
"Well, yeah, so I was kind of busy…"
Honestly, that girl…
"Jessie, don't you think your family'd be proud of you? Jeez! I tell my folks when I win so much as a Gobstones tournament –and you're the chief elected official of Diagon! If I were your stepmother, I'd throw a party for that kind of achievement…what is that look about?"
"I'm sorry…the mental picture of my stepmother at one of your parties, let alone throwing one…"
"Not the party type?"
"Not really. She did try to plan one when I turned seventeen, but that was kind of it…"
"I remember that birthday…wasn't too long after the Weasleys left, and you went with us to see Mum's premiere."
"Yeah. That was fun!"
"And it was only that night that Sam remembered you were seventeen, so Mum decided it'd be fun…"
"Midnight margaritas!" we cried in unison.
"We've got to do that again sometime."
"Dancing around in our pajamas, ten minutes past underage and half-drunk on a potion Snape couldn't manage? –You busy this Friday night?"
Jessie really had been growing some sense of adventure lately. I liked it! Not that she was a stick-in-the-mud before …just that she tended to get distracted in the middle of perfectly good mischief. Her heart had never seemed so into fun before, even with the attack and freaking out at Fudge and buying the Mistress cuffs…
It was at that moment that I realized it.
"Who is it, Jess?"
She looked a little startled, then reddened a little bit. Oh, crap.
"…You won't tell anyone but your sisters? And keep them quiet, too?"
"Gryffindor house honor."
"Charlie Weasley," she sighed, her cheek falling onto her palm as she delicately twirled a little screwdriver through the fingers of her other hand. "We went on a date about a week or two ago, you remember, the night with the Death Eaters outside your shop? And I…well…he…uh…mmmmm…" Her eyes didn't so much glaze over as caramelize.
"You fucked him on the spot? That's hardly Ravenclaw."
"I did not!" Jessie straightened up and looked at the screwdriver as if the mysteries of the universe might be engraved on it. "…I wanted to."
"But?"
"But I'd never so much as kissed a guy, and it's not good to go skipping steps like that. You have to pull the case and slip the drivegear before you change a mainspring, you know!"
"That…made no sense whatsoever, but I think I understand what you're getting at." I took a sip from my hip-flask to cover my own red cheeks. "So, did you kiss the guy?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, dish!"
That's one of the downsides of not being out of the closet yet. You still have to be a good girlfriend, even when you'd sort of rather your girlfriend were your girlfriend, if you take my meaning. Not that you don't once you're out, but it's that much harder when she's completely oblivious to the fact that you'd even consider another chick to be well on the side of cute. (She is, by the way.) I would've bet at that moment, though, with Jessie, I could've come out in fifth year and she'd still be oblivious to the notion of somebody liking her, female or otherwise. She's got an amazing eye for detail, but sometimes it's a weird sort of nearsighted.
"…And I just completely snogged him, right there, before I even realized I was going to!"
For an instant, I hated Charlie. Let it go, Mel.
"Hey, sometimes it just works out that way. You cop a snog where you can as the mood takes you. It's what it means to be young."
"Well, have you ever just up and snogged someone? Or how about been snogged that way?"
"OhmysweetspikyGodyes!" I gasped. "It was seventh year, right after the Quidditch game when the younger Weasley boy blocked all those goals and we took the Cup. I was down by the locker rooms already, and after the team came in and showered, I went back to help Alicia untape her wrist and the team'd left and she was waiting and ohmylordsandladies, she pounced me! Must've been a full ten minutes!"
"Wow. She was hot."
"Tell me about it! And right out of the shower, in naught but a red-and-gold-"
Holy shit.
"Go on." I couldn't. My jaw was still stuck in cavity-filling mode. "Oh… was I not supposed to hear that?"
"You know."
"Know what?"
"About…me."
"And Alicia Spinnet? I knew she was interested in you, but I never knew that you two dated."
"No, Jess, you know I'm a…"
She blinked. Sweet spiky fucksticks, she blinked at me.
"Pfeh. I've known that for years."
"…How?!"
"Er…you had more pinups of girls than boys, you only give girls the glance-over, you only flirt with girls, and as far as I recall, you've only ever dated or gone on dates with girls. Except that time with the McLaggen bloke, but I though that was just to let someone else off the hook." Jessie took off her glasses and started rubbing them. "It sort of adds up that you fancy girls. Why, was that a secret?"
"Kind of! I never even told my triplet sisters, Jess, it's a little not-fair of you to just …figure it out like that!"
"Mel, Sam's the one told me. She and Kendra figured it out when you were about fourteen, but it was when Becky Feathersham started making horrible cracks and such that they asked me what I thought."
"And…?"
"I told 'em it made logical sense and asked them did they think you'd pair well with Cho? She was a bit of a trauma case even before she lost poor Cedric, but well into bi territory and kind of cute. I kind of assumed the constant crying was at least partly because she worried about her folks' reaction to not being –what's the word you use? Stric'ly-dickly?" She stretched a bit and stood up from her workbench chair. "Tried to flirt with me a bit once, but I, sadly, am stric'ly-dickly, as far as I can tell. D'you want a butterbeer? I've got a six-pack cold."
"…Yeah."
In her own, oblivious way, she is a good girlfriend.
"Me, I always thought you'd fancy someone a bit on the exotic side. After all, you're you. A Redfern. You live with Metamorphmagic sex kitten sisters, you're six kinds of hot yourself, and you've got a mum who –well, let's face it, your mum is badass with a side of chips. It'd take a lot to impress you, and a lot more to be good enough for one of my best mates."
"I like the ordinary sort as well."
"Maybe, but define ordinary." Jessie gripped a bottle in each hand and popped the lids from each with her thumbs. (She actually doesn't drink much; it's just that her hands are incredibly muscular…not a good thing to think about.) "If Becky Feathersham is ordinary, you deserve amazing. Better than amazing, you deserve…you know, it's a damn shame Ginny Weasley's straight. I'm getting to like that brand."
I finally laughed. Everything was going to be alright…you know, once I adjusted to the life-altering shift in worldview, told my sisters what they already knew and got up the courage to be myself in public. Jessie handed me a butterbeer and I really did start to feel better.
"How are things going with Charlie? We kind of got off the subject there."
"Pretty well…I mean, since the election night, Fred and George know I'm seeing him, and given that he's still alive, I'd guess they're okay with it."
"Have you told any of your family?"
"Why would I?" Jessie took a long swig from her bottle –too long, really. "I never tell them anything like that."
"You'd have to tell them if you were, say, going to marry him."
"Pfeh! F'rchrissakes, Mel, I'm never going to get married." She sat down on the workbench chair again, stretching a little. "I'm not a future Mrs., let alone a future Mrs. Weasley, nice though I suspect that'd be."
"And why in the nine hells not? You've been saying this since you were twelve, Jessie, it still doesn't make sense to me."
"I have the business! I have my shop –now, for real, since I finally bought the place." She glanced around proudly. "I can't go …changing my name and raising a family in the middle of all of that. There's no chance of Ian's taking the place over, so I'd lay pretty good odds of my being the only heir."
"And your little twin brothers?"
"Robby and Davy will inherit the Hogsmeade shop."
"And then who inherits yours?"
"I presume I'll have a nephew or niece by the time I die. And if not, Uncle Gard can have it."
"Why not a cousin? You don't think your Uncle Gard might have kids?"
"I strongly suspect Uncle Gard plays for your team, Mel."
Actually, given rumors I'd heard at the Sticky Lick, I'd suspect that, too.
"Well, so that indicates the gene runs in your family. Supposing Robby and Davy grow up to prefer the company of the fabulous, so to speak. Then where's your tradition go?"
"…I never thought of that." Jessie suddenly looked a little more serious. "They're two, after all, it doesn't really occur to one…" I could tell she was considering the notion very seriously. "That is a crazy thought."
"What is?"
"That I might wind up…having someone want to marry me." She gazed off into the distance a little, her eyes vacant. "Or…that I might wind up wanting to say yes." She had an adorably bemused little smile for a moment there, but just as quickly, she was right back to the Fourth, Herself. "Bit preposterous, though. I've got far too much to do with the war and the shop and with Diagon, I don't have time to be courting some man…"
"Yeah, but Jess…" I cut the ties of my crush right there. It was only right. "You might not have time not to."
"What do you mean?"
"Jessie, if you like Charlie, you should go after him. And let him come after you. Live a little. This war is going to get worse before it gets better, and Diagon is always going to be Diagon, even if they manage to burn some of it to the ground."
"I'd like to see them try!"
"I wouldn't. My point is, Jess, you're spending so much time trying to defend your livelihood, you're not getting to live your life. For Merlin's sake, you've fallen in love and you're telling yourself not to."
"I never said I'd-"
"You're not the only one who can notice things." That hurt to say. "Jess, what's the point in fighting for something you're not enjoying? If I could tell you to do anything, it'd be to stop working for ten minutes and live, love, do everything! You take that redheaded dragon-keeper and love him like any moment you'll have to let him go. Not to be blunt or fatalistic, but we could all die this year. We're young, though, and we still have a right to be young."
"But…there's just …so much I have to do!"
"Jamesina Tickes, Herself, I'm shocked." I gave that sweet girl a rakish grin as I headed toward the door. "I thought it was your shop made Time-Turners."