Chapter Twenty-Five: Some Diaries

"Madam Tickes?" a high, somewhat simpering voice inquired. The door marked 'Employees Only' had swung open to admit a short, round and generally unpleasant form.

"Oh! Ma'am Ummridff!" Jessie turned, her mouth still full of apple-pie ice-cream cake. "Gef'fork, there's pie."

I got the distinct impression that nobody, but nobody, had ever blithely greeted that Umbridge woman with a mouthful of cake and then invited her to have pie as if skewering the toady shrew's political plans were no more a personal stab than asking for seconds of broccoli.

"Pie?" Umbridge repeated, as if Jessie had suggested they scurry outside and play hopscotch. "Don't you think that's a little-"

"It's okay. Whipped cream on the side," Jessie replied, as if that explained everything, and took another bite. "Aur' Tonkff!" She gestured with a fork. "Pie!"

"Pie!" Tonks' eyes lit up and she cheerfully pulled up another chair. In a moment of rare consideration –or was it just habit from eating with my Mum at Grimmauld Place? Tonks grabbed a second chair and gestured for Umbridge to join them. "Is that apple?"

"Apple-pie ice-cream cake," Florean explained with a grand gesture, eying me as I started washing up plates and generally pretending I worked there so as not to be noticed. "Specialty of the house, as promised to our Madam Chairperson."

"And you get some too," Jessie explained. "That was a great debate. We just need to work on keeping you civil, Auror Tonks, and Madam Umbridge, you might want to stuff some fluff in among the gems. People aren't going to believe a politician has that many good ideas without a clinker, now, are they? Throw in some rubbish ones here and there. Keeps us looking mortal and fallible, eh? Can't let 'em know how bright we really are, or we'll never have time for pie."

"I was –that is, I thought…" Umbridge stopped for a moment and suddenly seemed to notice her surroundings. "…Pie, you said?"

What followed can only be explained as backstairs diplomacy. Jessie acted as if she, Umbridge and Tonks were the closest of colleagues and that the near-catfight that had just occurred in Fortescue's main parlor was a theatrical and tactical triumph guaranteed to keep the populace impressed that democracy worked, but without arousing anyone's suspicions as to how brilliant the three women really were and 'ruin it.' "After all, the minute someone knows you can do something," Jessie frowned, "that's when they expect you to do it, on-call twenty-four-seven. Better to keep the bushel of modesty over the genius light, I always say, or we won't get a moment's shade."

Tonks gave me a meaningful look and I recognized that she was only managing not to laugh by means of copious whipped cream. Umbridge, however, lapped it up like one of the hideous kittens Ron had described as making up her office décor.

"It would, indeed, be nice to have less needy constituents," she agreed. "But then, the shopkeepers of Diagon are hardly to compare with the orderly ruling of all Britain."

"Damn glad I haven't got your job," Jessie agreed. "Shopkeepers are an independent, 'fix-it-our-own-selves' lot. Makes sense, too, otherwise where'd all the shops come from? All I have to do's steer 'em a little bit and they come up with the best ideas. And they're so proud of themselves, then, all I have to do is let them keep thinking they thought of 'em. If you can tolerate the lack of credit –something I suspect you know all too well about, and keep up with their endless traditions and ceremonies for every threepenny holiday, Diagon's really the dog's bollocks."

"Well, I for one am just pleased that Diagon's under adept control," Tonks remarked.

"Adept? Meh. Anyone with a sense of the correct and a few friends higher-up in the Ministry can manage in Diagon." Jessie shrugged. "I'm a little young for it, I suppose –however d'you deal with that, everyone thinking you're too young?" She looked at Umbridge expectantly.

It was then that I knew she was victorious.

"Oh, call me Dolores, dear!"

I spent about fifteen more minutes watching Umbridge simper and pontificate toward Jessie. Tonks excused herself after ten, citing a meeting she had to hurry off to –though I'm fairly certain she was just suffering from sinus trouble due to suppressed laughter. And Jessie extricated herself neatly by recalling she had dinner to get on the table for her brother and some guests, the Weasley brothers, had Umbridge met them? The toad blanched and Jessie offered to introduce them, at which point and with much apology, the bureaucrat buggered off. As soon as she was gone, Jessie gave Mr. Fortescue a big grin and accepted a white box full of apple-pie ice cream cake for the evening's dessert. They also exchanged what looked like a private joke at Umbridge's expense –it left them both holding their sides and Jessie was still smirking as we headed back toward her shop.

"I can't believe you did that," I remarked just a short while later.

"Did what? Ate all the pie? I only had the one slice, really. Didn't want to wreck the appetite for chicken later."

"You know what I mean!"

"Oh, back there?" Jessie shrugged as if she hadn't managed to subversively capture the esteem of one of the worst women in the history of the Ministry. "Simple, really. The Redferns and I used to read this wonderful comic book about a Muggle chap with a boss like her. I just did what his little pet dog did, with a couple modifications to, y'know, not being Muggles, or a dog, and the target's being a chick was a help in it…"

"Could you let me read said comic? I think I'd like to be Minister someday, be nice to get at the manual!" Perhaps that came off as sarcastic. I hadn't meant it to, but it was a little frightening to see Jessie so apparently chummy with someone so…well, evil as that Umbridge cow.

"Oh, honestly, Charlie, it's no worse than what I did earlier with the goblin prank. I know it's duplicitous and deceitful and probably means I'm a bad person, but it gets the job done better than anything else I know how to do. And I haven't done it that much before."

"I'm not angry. I just…worry."

"That I'll do it to you someday?" Her eyes looked hurt.

"Oh, no, Jess…"

"'Cause I won't. If you want to give me Veritaserum every night before bed and interrogate me for every trick and trap of the past day, or week, or year…it's not in me to lie to you."

"I wouldn't believe it was."

"I would. Lying and deceiving…I'm getting over my startle at how easy it was to do and beginning to feel…would it shock you if I said it was fun, doing what I just did to that…that…"

I took Jessie's hands in mine –they were shaking, and I suddenly felt the moisture of blood where her nails had cut into her callused palms. Horrified, I turned her hands over and looked to see where she'd hurt herself.

White and livid against the back of her left hand was the faint line: 'I will not tamper with property not my own.'

"Jessie, what-"

"I was mending the Hogwarts clock. It had a worn wormgear and the spring needed to be re-tuned. Trouble is, the teachers' alarm clocks are spelled to it, and Umbridge found herself late to a few meetings when the others …forgot to warn her to cast a Chronometrancy charm. It took me three days to make a new wormgear –and while I was putting it in, she caught me. Made me do lines."

"Jess!" I had heard, from Fred and George, what that cow had done to kids. But I'd never heard…

"It's okay. I stopped her watch today."

"…There's kind of a gap between scars for life and a stopped watch, don't you think?"

She grinned, a little wickedly.

"Not the way I do it."

"Jamesina, dear, even I can find the spare china in that closet in less time than you've taken!" the voice of Ian the England Nationals' Seeker called. "If you wanted to snog, you could've volunteered to get me some more lemons!"

"Are we out already?" She opened the door and looked over her brother's attempt at punch. "There were two left. Isn't that enough?"

"Taste it." She obliged with a sip from a spoon. "Doesn't that call for more lemon?"

"Needs oranges."

"Have we got-?" Jessie tossed one over to Ian and began peeling a second herself. "Oh. Thanks!"

"And we did find the spare china," I volunteered, setting a stack of plates on the table's end.

"Ow!" Jessie almost dropped the orange she was peeling. I realized the juice probably stung her hand where she'd gashed herself and took it from her, slipping the last of its' skin off with my own thumb. "Stupid orange," she remarked, kissing my cheek as I split it into sections and added them to the punchbowl. "I'll get the potatoes ready."

"Wow. You still manage to match your hair when a girl does that," Ian smirked.

"Oh, as if you don't blush with your dozens of fans about!" Jessie retorted. "Bloody dozens of screaming girls, all with copies of 'Witch Weekly's Dishiest On The Pitch issue for your scribbly signature?"

"Some of them even flash their bosoms," Ian announced. "There's all manner of things fans ask a bloke to sign. Enough so that I've taken to keeping a collection of Muggle felt-tip pens. They shriek when the quills tickle."

"How do your teammates avoid genital spattergroit?" Jessie asked.

"Haven't asked. I'm surprised St. Mungo's hasn't borrowed our Chaser for medical research, though. If you can wear out a broom, I'm sure you can wear out a-"

"Ian Gardner Tickes," a voice suddenly exclaimed. It was Fred.

"Seeker for England National," George gasped.

"And maker of tasty sangria punch!" Jessie announced, pointing to the punchbowl. "We only had to help with the oranges."

"You must be the proprietors of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, then. Can't tell you how I appreciate your fireworks; we have 'em at team parties. And I've used your fake wands on no less than six rival teams for a lark. Even had a few sent to me."

Sometimes I worry when my brothers grin like that. It always looks as if the tops of their heads are going to slide off.

"And there's roast chicken!" Jessie drew a truly spectacular bird out of the oven and hoisted it, straining just a little, onto the kitchen counter and pulled out the internal thermometer. "Potatoes, too, but I still have to pull 'em out."

"Are you sure that isn't a turkey, Jess?" Ian asked for the umpteenth time."

"Quite. The tag said chicken, so it is clearly a-" Jessie licked the thermometer. "Well, soot. Turkey it is."

I gave her a peck on the cheek as my little brothers laughed. Even Ginny was giggling behind her hand, though, to be fair, I wouldn't have put it past her to confuse poultries, raised on a farm or not. Ian, however, had a kind of half-wistful smile, the sort Mum gets when she's pleased with one of us kids for doing something that reminds her of one of our late uncles.

"Mum did that once," he whispered, when I gave him a look. Jessie was busy explaining to the twins in unnecessary detail the precise similarities between turkeys and chickens –sounded pretty funny, actually, but luckily she missed her brother's quiet comment.

"Jessie never got to-?" I asked.

"No," Ian sighed. "There's a painful resemblance, though."

I'd figured there must be. I had only seen Mr. James Tickes a couple of times in my life, but I knew what Ian's uncle and grandfather looked like, if only from meeting them in the Hospital Wing the time Ian and I crashed into each other and were both…let us say, we'd met. Jessie's hair was the color of her father and uncle's, but apart from her nose, hands, wardrobe and a vague trace around the eyes, particularly in squinting, she didn't favor the Tickes side too heavily. Ian's hair was almost black, but his face was the very stamp of his uncle and grandfather, except for the chin and a smile that looked just like Jessie's. His nose also had a once-broken look. "Want to see?" he asked, drawing me into the middle workshop and opening what could only be described as a significant pocketwatch.

There were two portraits inside. The one on the right was a color shot of James and Siobhan Tickes on what might've been their wedding day. Jessie's father had been clean-shaven and grinning, and for the first time, I saw the resemblance between them. His part of the picture didn't move, but his young wife's did, if only a little.

Jessie's mother had been what people call black Irish, with very dark hair and the pale skin her children shared. She also had Ian's once-broken nose and the mischievous smile of both –and her wedding dress was the first one I'd ever seen worn with Quidditch gloves.

"She's beautiful…and you have her nose."

"Yep!" Ian grinned with a pride that warped wistful at the last. "Started the same and then we broke 'em the exact same way on the pitch; Bludger full in the front. I wouldn't let Madam Pomfrey fix mine when I saw how much it looked like Mum's."

"I always wondered why you went about with cotton and tape on it for a week."

"Now you know. Father could scarce stand to look at me before, but once I did this, well…he at least had a good excuse."

"Were they married on the pitch?"

"Well, Granddad tells me they planned to be married at Hogwarts, in the gardens, but at the last moment there was quarantine because the venomous tentacula was seeding or something. Father was horrified and wondered how they could ever find another place when Mum showed up in her gloves. He kissed her right in front of the Headmaster and said it was brilliant, they'd just do it on the pitch. Mum was too startled to say anything, so she just kissed him back and Headmaster Dippet wound up blushing through the whole ceremony –which was just under the south-left goalpost. No one from her family even came, but Mum insisted she'd have preferred Great-Granny anyway –they were ever so close, even before Mum started dating Dad. Great-Gran Jetty was Mum's superior officer when she entered the Aurory. And remember Madam Hooch, how she didn't referee games that I played in?"

"I do! We got stuck with either Snape or Sinistra."

"She stood up with Mum and didn't want there to be bias. Dad's groomsmen were Frank Longbottom and Uncle Gard."

The other picture was an old-fashioned one in sepia that depicted…well, she looked a damned lot like Jessie. The nose and slightly-squinting eyes were identical, and while I couldn't discern the coloring from the picture, I got the impression it wouldn't take too much for the two women to be mixed up. They even looked to be about the same age. Apart from the clothing and old-picture color, I would have said that it was Jessie –except I'd never seen Jessie salute or look so very…dangerous.

"Who's that?"

"Great-Gran Jetty, when she first got her commission. Jessie's named for her." That would, indeed, make the photograph pretty old. "Uniform was different back then, wasn't it?"

Far from the informal attire Aurors wore now most of the time, Jamesina Switch Tickes had looked pretty militaristic in an old-fashioned way. Back when the first lady Auror had been a young officer, the Aurors' formal dress robes of today had been the working ones. Even at the modest rank of corporal, Jamesina the elder could have easily out-dressed Tonks, who was, I believe, now technically a lieutenant.

"She looks awfully young."

"I think she was between Jess and I in age. Maybe that's why she gave me this picture for my first watch, really…though she said something about retired officers' relatives and how it was best not to boast of rank –what she thought anyone would think of my Great-Granny only being a corporal in a photograph, I don't know. In some ways Gran Jetty was worse than the old-boys' club she'd broken up."

"Jetty was a nickname for Jamesina?"

"Back then, apparently. Her middle initial was also T, until she married Great-Granddad. She once dueled someone for calling her by whatever it stood for in front of some cadets."

"What was it?"

"Nobody really knows anymore. As you can imagine…" Ian gestured to the picture, which now had its' arms crossed and a 'you were saying-?' look, "nobody had the nerve to ask."

"She sounds exciting."

"I was never quite scared of her, but then again, I was never quite not, either. It's a bit odd, I guess, to know the lady who makes you cookies and tells you about your Grand-dad when he was a little boy was also the lady who came out of retirement to duel Bellatrix Lestrange…by all accounts, for the fun of it."

I stared at Ian and he glanced at the picture again. "She did a splendid job. They say that it was the Lestrange brothers who came for her and Mum –old Trixy McPsycho was too banged up."

"Old what?!"

"That's what Gran Jetty called her. She and Mum would sit around making watches and discussing things no child should hear about, but with the nicknames they gave all the Death Eaters –and most of the Aurory, I kind of assumed they were talking about comic books. Mum drew in her journals and sometimes read me the latest adventures as if they were Batman stories –that was a Muggle one she used to read to me. By the time I was eight or so, though, I figured out who was who. The names they had for You-Know-Who…"

"So they were like Martin Miggs?"

"Eh, some of them. Mum kept a journal of almost everything. The stories of the 'Fox Banchomarba and her Tanaiste' were as exciting as anyone could want, but the ones about their real-life alter egos were much funnier. I was even in some of them, and so was baby Jessie."

"They sound wonderful."

"Oh, they were. I just wish Jessie could read them, too."

"They were destroyed?"

"Oh, no. I have them in my trunk upstairs. Want to see?" I nodded and Ian ran up the stairs like a kid about to show off some perhaps-less-significant comic books.

There were, indeed, about fifteen little leather notebooks in a wooden box that I recognized.

"You made that box at school, in Transfiguration class."

"Yep. I felt they deserved better than cardboard. Look at this –the first adventure!"

I opened the little book and was amazed by the drawings within. They depicted a heroine who looked just like Jamesina Switch Tickes in her twenties, drawn in black and white. Then the drawings became color and an older Great-Gran Jetty was training a girl in an ice-cream cap to duel. It was an autobiography, drawn like a superhero comic, as if for the express purpose of appealing to little kids –or of being palmed off as a children's comic.

The difficulty was that I couldn't read a word of the captions or speech bubbles. There was a line that read 'thug me liomh e bhaile go baile,' next to a drawing of Siobhan McArran (likely not Tickes yet, given the ice-cream shop uniform,) riding a bicycle down Diagon Alley with musical notes skipping around her head –and it didn't make even a lick of sense.

"Mum wrote them in Irish," Ian explained. "You know, Gaelic. Probably for security reasons, that, and she spoke it to me constantly as a kid. I know most of the stories by heart, at least in translation, but I can't remember much of the language…so few people speak it now. I tried out for Ireland's Quidditch team primarily in the hopes of learning more, but with the English surname and only a .438 blocking average…well, I tried. I'm going to see if I can't travel there in the off-season, soon as the mess with You-Know-Who's cleared up…maybe find a trustworthy translator."

Ian frowned and flipped a few pages forward to a drawing of what looked like Siobhan with her nose freshly broken, in a Quidditch uniform, hexing another student in what was clearly the locker room.

"I don't trust a wizard, see, because you can tell exactly who a lot of the people are." I looked at the hexed student and realized it bore a striking resemblance to Amycus Carrow's wanted posters. "A Muggle, though, I could say it was a series my mother wrote to entertain me as a child, a fantasy, with wizards and a magical school and such."

"Good idea," I replied.

"And then I figure I can just use an Obscurus charm. He'll wake up with the idea to write just such a silly thing, and then the Muggles will get a nice children's book."

"But don't you think that'd make a few people look closer? You know, at things we really hope Muggles don't notice?"

"Oh, a few of the dafter ones might, maybe." Ian shrugged. "But if they were taking their cues from a children's book, wouldn't it be a tremendous risk of being laughed at to mention it? And Muggle-born kids would have a way of explaining things to their folks."

"I always wondered how Muggle-born kids do, describing Hogwarts over the Christmas hols."

"The comics show Mum trying to, in volume two," Ian said, opening the second leather-bound book. "I suppose those are my grandparents," he explained, pointing to a somewhat overly-cartoonish couple, who were arguing in nothing but capitals and italics.

"Has Jessie seen these?" I couldn't bear knowing another secret that she didn't.

"Of course! I've done my best to tell her every story I could remember translations for, ever since she was big enough to hold still and not tear pages." Ian showed me a picture in the middle of the last book, depicting a little boy of about six holding his baby sister and a children's book. "That's me trying to read to Jessie. She used to squirm something fierce."

"What are you guys up to? The bird's finished…oh! Mum's comic books!" Jessie cried, leaping down to the open trunk. "Aren't they amazing! This one has the Fox Banchomarba and her Tanaiste versus the Crupkicker." She took a book from the middle and proceeded to tell me a story I already knew to match the illustrations –how a Death Eater I recognized as Walden Macnair was arrested by two female Aurors and subsequently claimed to be under Imperius. "They're my favorite stories in the whole world. Mum should have published them."

"I think they're great," I agreed. "She was an amazing artist, look how she caught the resemblance to-" Ian was behind his sister, making throat-cut gestures and shaking his head. "I mean, they look just like real people."

"Yeah," Jessie sighed wistfully. "I bet they would've made everyone feel better, if she'd published them…you know, the way reading about Robin Hood makes people feel better in a depression. Superheroes are cool like that...someone you wish were real."

Ian shot me an apologetic look and I stared in confusion as Jessie hurried us down to dinner.

"Father forbade me to tell her the truth about them," Ian explained. "She thinks our mother wrote fairy-stories to give people hope, that the Aurors never overstep their warrants and that a reasonable government can hold off evil if its' leaders are strong enough."

"But…when her own mother…"

"Father didn't want us to end up like her," Ian almost growled. "But I'll be damned if I end up a puling coward like him. I'm not here because of the off season." He glanced out to the table, where Ginny was setting out silverware and Jessie was setting a bowl of broccoli onto a trivet. The twins had lifted the turkey together and were bringing it out –it was that large and spectacular. "I'm here to protect and serve the Chairperson of Diagon and serve as her tanaiste if she needs me to."

"What does that word mean?"

"Heir-apparent. There's a connotation of 'elected,' too, and of 'second,' in the sense of old dueling protocols."

"So the Fox Banchomarba means...?"

"Great-Gran was called 'the Fox' by her contemporaries. A banchomarba is a female heir, especially a female war-leader. Very archaic, even for Irish terms."

"So your mother was her heir-apparent?"

"Exactly. Mum had been training with Great-Gran at the Diagon Alley shop for ages before Father first asked her out. I believe Great-Gran's reaction was somewhat along the lines of praising the saints that the boy had some sense after all, followed by what must've been a spectacularly smutty crack, given how the drawing of Mum blushes in the next panel. Father lived primarily in Hogsmeade then, and was just a little afraid of his grandmother –as any sensible fellow would be, and it was a bit of a shock to find out the girl in whom he was interested was best mates with his Gran."

"This sounds like a good story," Ginny remarked.

"It is!" Ian agreed. "As exciting as how you met Mr. Potter, though, I don't know. Basilisks and such in yours, my parents' one only has Death Eaters."

"Well, I never did remember the basilisk." I was surprised. Ginny never talked about that incident, unless you really pressed her, and then it was usually followed by storming out or calling one a prat. "And I was only eleven, so it's hardly as romantic."

"I expect Mum and Father's was a bit on the side of farce. Great-Gran Jetty was, by all accounts, rather an earthy soul, and according to Mum's diaries, the first time she was ever bested in a mock duel was when Mum got sick of her inquiries as to whether or not Father took after his great-grandfather."

"In what way?" Jessie asked, before going patently scarlet. "Oh."

"I can't imagine being best mates with a girlfriend's grandfather," Fred observed. "I've never known an old person who didn't act like people our age were ickle firsties or hopelessly degenerate."

"By all accounts, Great-Gran was precisely the same person at ninety that she was at twenty-one," Ian explained. "Used to scandalize her own grandson, though Uncle Gard just seems to take after her, and even Granddad says she had been neglected in visits from the Tact Fairy."

"Could you see Aunt Muriel asking after one's love life?" George asked.

"Actually, she did, last time I saw her," I cringed at the memory. "'Charles Weasley, how do you ever expect to meet a nice girl in Romania, among those great lizards? Why don't you move back to Britain? And don't tell me you'll find someone in Ottery St. Catchpole!'"

"The old hometown is a little small," Fred conceded.

"Well, yes. Thank goodness nice girls nowadays make house calls for clock repair."

"They do?" Jessie asked, about a split second before she realized what I meant, blushed, looked about nervously, and smiled. "Well, to your house, maybe. Just lately it hasn't been safe for most tradesmen to offer house visits." George grinned and started to say something:

"Remember when you had to hex-"

"Yes, and it's always been a bit dangerous to go alone," Jessie replied, in a tone that cut short what was almost assuredly a sparkling anecdote –well, it could have, with anyone save my twin brothers.

"If you're a pretty girl," Fred snorted. "Rotten little Malfoy git."

"Hey! I handled that capably!"

"You hexed him in the buttock."

"Yes! Like I said, capably!"

"However did I miss this incident?" Ian grinned broadly and thumped Jessie on the back proudly. "Well done, you! What sort of hex was it?"

"I think Verdimilious."

"Fair choice for a short-range. Make the target awfully nauseous. For a contact hex, I've had splendid luck with Tarantellegra."

"Wouldn't've worked in that situation. The little git tried to pounce on her," George explained.

"Pounce?" Ian looked puzzled. "You mean attack? That's a daft way to duel."

"Wasn't dueling," Jessie explained briefly, focusing intently on her serving of broccoli. Ian suddenly dropped his fork and stood up indignantly.

"THAT LITTLE-"

"I told you, I handled it capably!"

"Capably isn't a Verdimilious to the…oh, my." Ian sat down, looking a little awed. "I suppose it would be, now that I think of it." Fred and George gave Jessie a look of new respect and Ginny succumbed to the snorting giggles. "Well. I guess he learnt his lesson."

Suffice it to say that the Verdimilious curse, apart from inducing extreme nausea, could have some very fascinating side effects, given relative proximity to certain other regions and certain states of, shall we say, being. Every male at the table, including me, had a look of nervous awe, whereas Ginny seemed to be gleefully setting aside the knowledge for future use. Jessie looked mortified.

"How's the turkey?" she suddenly asked, and my brothers and hers couldn't praise it enough for a change of topic.

It was about half an hour and well into Ginny's splendid description of the latest Gryffindor match that we were all startled by a resounding crash from the front of the shop. Jessie was up from the table and halfway to the front door almost as fast as Ian, with us Weasleys right behind. (The Tickes were sitting closer.) She grabbed the Beater bat from under her worktable as she passed through the main room and kicked open her own door with some violence.

Outside, a figure in black with a polished metal mask was standing over a dazed, smallish man in an apron, next to a dented streetlight…apparently the Death Eater had thrown the shopkeeper into it.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?" Jessie shouted, winding up with the bat and connecting just as the silver mask turned toward her.

It crashed in like tinfoil, blood pouring from the nostrils and below. Before the figure could point its' wand, Jessie had brought the bat down again, this time across the top of the skull.

Other doors had faces peering through glass panes, but at the sight of the still formally-dressed Madam Chairwoman striding out with a bat in her shirtsleeves, a lot of those doors opened. Ian strode forward and yanked the wand from the Death Eater's hand before planting a trainer on his chest and pinning him to the ground.

"Not in my town, you inbred sack of dragon shit!" Jessie growled, pulling the mask from the ruined face with a squishing noise. "Tie him up. And get me a damned Auror!"

Ian was just applying a more-than-adequate Binding Spell when shopkeepers and other Diagon Alley folks began to head into the street in earnest. Jessie had never looked fiercer nor, as I could tell Ian was noting from the grim smile on his face, more like her mother. Someone tentatively began to applaud and Jessie turned on him.

"Mr. Blotts! Help Mr. Weasley with Mr. Nooke!" I started to help up the dazed little shopkeeper and was joined in seconds by another. "Apollo, are you alright?" Jessie called in a somewhat softer voice, still scanning the sky for more Death Eaters.

"My head…"

"Charlie?" I replied that it looked like a concussion and we'd best get him to St. Mungo's. Jessie nodded shortly and gestured at Ginny. "Floo him from my shop, Gin, and don't come back here unless it's with more Aurors."

Ginny would normally have protested such a high-handed 'get out of the danger' ploy, but she isn't stupid. Fred and George picked up Apollo Nooke and had him through the door of Jas. W. Tickes and Sons just before we heard the shrill cry from the sky above.

A blur of blackish smoke rushed down from the cloudy sky to the cobbled street and suddenly became a human form. It let out a cry and I realized, not only was that horrible noise laughter, but the form was a female one.

"Poor ickle shopkeep, got into an ickle fight?" Bellatrix Lestrange taunted in a maddening baby voice as the smoke she had traveled in blew away. For a split second, though, as she saw the tied-up, unconscious Death Eater with a Quidditch star and the Chairwoman of Diagon standing over him, the harpy actually looked startled.

"You'd better have a damn good explanation for this, Lestrange!" Jessie roared, actually striding toward the other witch with the bat raised.

A lot of the other shops' doors that had slammed shut at the sound of Lestrange laughter opened again, just a little crack.

"You-!" Bellatrix looked genuinely surprised now.

"YES, ME, YOU DAFT COW!" Jessie really could be loud when she wanted to. "What the hell do you think you're doing, with this whoreson brawling in my street like a common thug?"

"Jetty Tickes." Bellatrix hissed. "But you look so… young." Her eyes widened further and then narrowed. "Can't be."

"It's Madam Tickes to the likes of you!" Jessie was, by this time, less than a bat's swing from the female Death Eater. "I don't give half a shit for your politics, but when you and your little thugs start fighting in my Alley, beating my guildsmen and acting like damned children, it's bloody well my problem! What the hell was this idiot thinking?"

The most fearsome woman in Britain was silent for a second. There was another rush of smoke and a blond woman stepped forward out of it.

"You're not Jetty. You're Siobhan's girl," Bellatrix observed.

"Oh, well fucking spotted! What goes on at your parties that you get liquored up, start fights and then feel the need to play genealogy! There's a three-hundred Galleon fine for a public brawl, and you'd damn well better apologize, or I'll double it with every minute that passes before you do!"

It seemed to dawn on Bellatrix, just as it did on me, that Jessie wasn't saying word one about Death Eaters or You-Know-Who. It was as if an army had arrived and been given a parking ticket. "Well? Or do I have to throw you out and ban you and your whole costume club from the Alley for thirty days?"

The blond woman spoke up, getting a tight grasp on the dark-haired one's arm.

"I'm sorry, Madam Tickes. Rabastan had a little too much to drink."

"Thank you, Madam Malfoy. I trust you and your sister will be by to pick him up after his sentence has been served?"

"Sentence?" Bellatrix gasped.

"Twenty-four hours in lockup and a three-hundred-Galleon fine for public brawling, fifty more for the drunkenness." Jessie growled, toying with the Beater bat the way a bobby might with his billy club, holding it upside-down and tapping the foot end with her free hand. "And that's only Diagon Alley law. The Aurors might also want a bit of a word with him."

"Does the ickle shopgirl know who she's tangling with?" Bellatrix pulled away from Narcissa and began to circle Jessie menacingly. My clockmaker stood perfectly still even as the Death Eater raised her wand. "Little girl who looks so much like her dead mummy."

Jessie tipped the bat upward behind her and pounded the foot, sending the business end hard into Lestrange's gut. A curse blasted harmlessly into the air and Bellatrix let go of the wand. Jessie spun on her heel and brought her fist up hard, connecting so solidly with the woman's jaw that I heard a crack.

Bellatrix wasn't knocked out, but she was dazed, and it was only her sister's cry of "Stop!" that prevented more violence.

I wasn't sure who she was talking to.

"Get her out of here, Madam Malfoy, before I do," Jessie hissed, shaking her hand and gesturing with the bat. "Come back when you can fight like a Mudblood, you inbred snake whore."

Narcissa Disapparated, taking the woman with her, and another plume of whooshing smoke removed the bound Rabastan. Ian smiled gently in relief, Jessie grimaced, and Aurors came swooping out of the sky in a pack of four. All of the shop doors opened and people hurried into the streets, chattering and cheering and generally behaving like frightened hens the moment the hawk is gone. They were all looking at Jessie as if she were a hero or mad or both.

And then she let out a laugh, a horrible, shrieking laugh.

It sounded a little bit like that of Bellatrix. The shopkeepers and even an Auror blanched.

"Some Diagon girl I am!" Jessie laughed, tears coming out of her eyes. "I have to sit my Master's in two days, and I broke my hand!"

The Alley burst into wild cheers. "And you lot! Tonks, where the hell were you? Am I in some kind of a storybook? You show up the minute the bad guys are gone? What the hell?"

"We were handling a disturbance in-"

"Look, if we don't have enough Aurors, we need more! I want a detail on the Alley at all times, damn it, and if it's a question of manpower…" She was back in political mode, broken hand or not, and the crowd grew larger every second.

I glanced at Ian, and I noticed his smile was a little vague.

"The Fox Banchomarba?" I asked.

"I guess!" His vague smile became a grin and he clapped me hard on the back. "Hope you have better luck than our Father did!"

"Will she still be able to sit her masterpiece?"

"Oh, yeah, they'll probably patch her hand right up. It'll just hurt. I don't think she even used a wand."

"Didn't look like it."

"Knowing her, it's still in her vest pocket." Jessie fixed the dented streetlight herself just then. "It was."

"Am I insane, or did my girlfriend just duel with Death Eaters and win?"

"Nope," Ian replied. "My little sister just got into a street brawl with Death Eaters and fought them to a draw. They'll probably try to kill her before the year is out." He looked worried, but none too surprised.

"Are you sure?"

"Huh?"

"Well, she didn't say a word for or against You-Know-Who. For all they know, she's neutral in the whole matter."

"Good point."

"…She isn't, though, right?"

"I don't know. Kind of depends on how much she takes after our lily-livered excuse for a father."

"She didn't seem neutral when she got elected."

We watched as Jessie's speech reached its' climax, a thrilling exhortation to meet danger head-on, to throw politics aside, to fight terror no matter whether or not one agreed with it, and to take no side but the side of a strong, well-defended peace. Whereas the speech at her election had gotten passionate applause from the Potterists, claps from the status quo crowd and polite eye-rolls from the purebloods, this one was unanimously impressive. Maybe it was the bloody bat, or the fact that her hand was obviously broken, or perhaps something in the cocoa Mr. Fortescue was passing around again.

"Hmm. That could really go either way."

"And from this night forward, Knockturn Alley shall no longer be the pariah corner of slinking crime! If we are to have peace and profit, we must embrace our brothers and bring light into every shadow, friendship through every door, and healthy, capitalistic competition to drive out the unregulated and illicit elements! Take up your wands! We're adopting the place tonight! Lumos!"

"Merlin's socks, is she…?"

"She is."

Jessie and the four original Aurors, plus several more who had just arrived, were leading the crowd on what looked like a wandlight parade.

"She's turning a Death Eater attack into a multi-street block party."

"She's going to light Knockturn up like a Christmas tree."

"Well, Borgin and Burke's is screwed," Ginny remarked from behind Ian and I. "What? Competition would put half the sleazy dirtbags in Knockturn under, everyone knows it. Dung Fletcher is also in big trouble."

"That, and Apollo Nooke's shop is in Knockturn. Jessie probably wants to make sure he and his are safe," George observed.

"And Sam –and the Redfern girls," Ian agreed.

Music started playing –the England National fight song. "Not that again!" We stared at Ian. "What? I hear it every single day."

"Is there anything else Knockturn and Diagon can agree to like, musically?" Ginny replied.

"Soot. I suppose I'd better go support Madam Chairwoman with my bosom-signing skills."

"And something tells me Jess will want a few of our fireworks," Fred agreed.

It was one of the most impressive evenings of that entire year. Around nine in the morning, I helped Jessie into bed, her hand still tingling from a bone-setting spell, and turned to go…only to discover that someone had shut the door on us. It was also locked. I turned back and looked at her quizzically.

"Jess?"

"Uh…" She looked a bit nervous. "I seem to have missed the previously agreed-upon engagement of parties the first and second."

"You were saving Diagon Alley from Death Eaters."

"So? I'm a clocksmith, I should at the very least be punctual."

"Aren't you exhausted?"

"Well, yes, and my hand feels like…well, it feels like it should, given what I stupidly did to it."

"How about a nap, and then we'll discuss the engagement of parties the first and second?"

"And by 'discuss' you mean?" Her eyebrow raised archly. I shrugged.

"Well…this evening we're going to Switzerland, aren't we?"

"Yep. I should pack."

"You should sleep."

"Sleep with you?" Jessie asked, a little bit nervously, a little bit hopefully.

"In a sense. Bed fits two." I took off my jumper and shoes and sat on the bed beside her as she unlaced her black Oxfords. "Need some help with those?"

"Yeah. Stupid hand." I unlaced her shoe and she flipped it off with the other foot.

"Not quite what I had in mind, you undressing me," Jessie smirked ruefully. "Are we always going to be held up like this, waiting for the other shoe to drop with the Death Eaters, the damned war, your books and my Alley and all this mess?"

"I don't think so," I replied, pulling off her other shoe. "Sooner or later…" I dropped the Oxford onto the rug below. We both looked at it for a moment.

"I'll get your socks," she remarked, "if you'll undo these braces in back." I agreed, and before long we were in a much better state to nap. Jessie's vest had joined my trousers and our socks reposed together in a tangled pile of Gryffindor house stripe and Ravenclaw Argyle. My white shirt was somewhere near her black trousers, and one of her Oxfords appeared to have snuggled up to my left trainer.

"Now that's a laundry pile."

"Yeah," she agreed sleepily, working buttons with her left hand. "Needs more shirt." The ice-blue garment was pulled off and thrown in a graceful arc just before its' owner's head hit pillow. "Mmm…maybe nap is a good idea…"

"Over here, you." She looked quizzically at me and sat up, as if realizing just how much she was not wearing. Of course, she still had five watches on each wrist and one around her neck. "Do you sleep in these?"

"Well…uh…" I put an arm around her and she leaned into my shoulder as we lay down. "When I forget, I do."

"I'll take 'em off after our nap, okay?" Jessie looked directly at me, a question in her eyes, and I kissed her very gently. "Got to sleep sometime, dear."

She snuggled in close and was asleep before I had finished pulling the covers over her bare shoulder. It was nice how well she fit against me, and her heartbeat seemed in synch with the ten –or was it eleven watches? I fell asleep listening to the sound.

And I suppose that's all I need to put down for this chapter. This whole account's supposed to be historical, and I don't recall anything like this in Binns' classes.

There again, with the goblin wars, I suspect that's a good thing.

-C. Weasley