Chapter Thirty: Some Dancing
"Fraulein Tickes?" a voice at my elbow asked. We had just finished dinner and an amazing orchestra (made of clockwork, would you credit it?) was just starting what sounded like a sprightly foxtrot. Jessie and I turned to see who had spoken.
It was the stoutish fellow with the brown hair combed down on his head and the insignia pin in his lapel. Hans Prosser, of Something Whatsit German-soundingclocks.
"Mr. Prosser, how are you?" Jessie replied, her customer-service smile lighting up the room.
"Very well, Fraulein."
"Have you met Charles Weasley, my escort?" That made the German startle a little, but we shook hands and muttered the pleasantries.
"Have you been enjoying ze train?" Prosser asked.
"I have," I smiled and patted Jessie's hand. "It's lovely this time of year."
"The wines, in particular, are not to be missed. There is a Riesling, I believe, Fraulein, of which you are fond?" Jessie looked absolutely blank and I shrugged, but the little German pressed on. "You must try it, Herr Weasley. And perhaps, a glass for the beautiful Fraulein?"
Clearly, he wanted me to excuse myself, leaving Jessie alone with him.
Hell with that.
"Accio Riesling," I replied with a calm swipe of my wand, catching the bottle with my bare hand. I uncorked it with my thumb (which makes me look like a habitual drunk, but I actually perfected the skill on dragon medicine vials,) and gallantly poured a little glass for Jessie. And yes, I got the glass right. One of my colleagues in Romania was an oenophile who had taught me about the stuff. "Did you want some, Mr. Prosser?" I offered, holding out the bottle with my left hand.
"...I believe I would," Prosser replied, Summoning a glass for himself and letting me pour. My reaction only rattled him a little, so I poured a little glass for myself just on the off chance he was merely rude and not a conspirator. "I was wondering, Fraulein, if you might dance the ländler with me, for old times' sake. I still have happy memories of dancing it when we were but children."
"Of course, but only if you stop calling me Fraulein. We've known each other since we were six, I'm sure you can call me Jessie like everyone else does."
"And I am Hans," he replied stiffly, clicking his heels in a manner I'd never seen outside of films. "The ländler is after this foxtrot, I do believe."
"Isn't that an Austrian dance?" I asked. Jessie looked at me in surprise. "My mother tried her best to teach us the great dances of Europe, so we might be prepared for any occasion," I explained.
What I did not explain was the fact that I'd only learned the silly thing out of one of the sentimental Muggle movies Mum has rather a fondness for, and which only Bill and I could bear to sit through with her after we were thirteen or so. Me, I think any girl who'd think less of a fellow for escorting his Mum to the matinee isn't worth asking out, but Percy had other ideas and the twins had long since been barred from the premises. Ron was always a gent about taking Mum, and I sent him a few Galleons when I could to make sure he stayed that way, since I couldn't often be home to do it and she does love the movies so. Lately I'd been sending a few Muggle pounds to Dad so he might take Mum on Saturdays, more because the money helped than Dad needed reminding, and generally mentioning a particular film Mum had loved and Dad had missed when I wrote, so it was just an 'oh incidentally,' rather than a 'don't forget.'
In that second, I thought about what it might be like to have a grown son sending me a few Muggle quid to take Jessie to the Muggle films. It was a charming thought, and the dutiful clock-making boy I'd pictured inexplicably had red hair and glasses just like Jessie's...
I shook myself out of that reverie before anyone noticed.
"It is, indeed, Austrian. My mother was from Vienna, and she taught me," Prosser explained, with that momentary sad shut-eyed look people with a dead parent have. Normally I feel nothing but sympathy for that look, since my own folks gave me everything, but he was moving in on my...my Jessie, so I just resented him.
"Mothers must be splendid for dance lessons," Jessie nodded. "I had to make do with Uncle Gard and the record-shop fellows in Diagon. And the ladies at that one nightclub in Knockturn Alley, some of whom might have been gentlemen, come to think of it." She had that charming look of someone who realizes suddenly that something was a bit odd, then decided they didn't care. I do love that look on her. "But of course, I'll dance the ländler with you, Hans. Seems like just a bit ago we were on the train to be journeymen."
"It wasn't so long ago," Hans sighed. "Herr Weasley, are you a member of the Chronologie Mechanique?"
"Not yet, but I do hope to take the green this trip." Sometime around the sherbet course, Paul Deroulede had filled me in on the correct way to phrase my intention to take the novice test. Prospective novices were given a pale blue ribbon to wear into the test, which was turned into a light green one if they passed. The pale blue symbolized the novice's having mastered some small things outside of clockmaking (novices have to prove they can read, write and add numbers before being allowed in,) and the pale green represented how they had begun to grow as a clockmaker. The journeyman's ribbon was darker green and the journeyman-owner, or almost-master's ribbon was downright foresty. Passing the Masterpiece meant your ribbon became royal blue, for much the same reason blue ribbons are given as prizes in other things, and if one went on to distinguish oneself, there were other decorations and even such a thing as a black ribbon for someone who became a judge of the masterpieces or the Committee d'Excellence.
"Really? Under what master have you trained?"
"Jessie, of course," I replied, with a smile, taking her hand and kissing it, in what I hoped was the approved manner. That sainted Frenchman had given me a few suggestions while Jessie and Sarah were visiting the powder room together.
And apparently he had advised me quite well, given that Hans Prosser developed a stricken look, then stiffened in the most music-hall Prussian way, even as the clockwork orchestra struck up a bouncy song in ¾ time that I actually quite liked.
"I understand. Might I excuse myself and the Fraulein, Herr Weasley? It will not take but a moment after the ländler." Jessie shot me a startled glance, but went with Prosser to the dance floor nonetheless.
The ländler is a lovely old Austrian tradition. There's a bit more stomping and clapping than one sees in most dancing, but it has the potential to be romantic in a hoppity-skippity Alpine way. It looks a bit like the gentlemen should be wearing lederhosen and the ladies pigtails, but that's likely a rather ethnocentric opinion on my part, and I could tell Jessie was enjoying it. Prosser looked like a man facing a tax audit, but he got the steps right, and as the song ended and the dancers applauded, I could see him asking her a question.
I could also see her smiling in a sad way, squeezing his hand a little as she said something brief, and shaking her head before kissing him on the cheek and scurrying over to me.
"What is it?" I asked, concerned.
"At the moment?" Jessie asked, looking distinctly troubled.
"The Viennese Waltz!" the bandleader announced grandly.
"Good!" I replied with a grin, catching her hands and stepping onto the floor. As the song began, Jessie looked at me, and I hoped she knew it as well now as she'd seemed to know it in the Three Broomsticks an age ago.
She did. Even better, in fact. We whirled almost effortlessly around the floor with the other couples spinning in orbits apart from ours, and I could tell people were watching us enviously. It does help to have had lessons.
"It's so sad," she explained, the music preventing anyone but me from hearing as we danced. "Hans asked me to marry him."
"Didn't Paul warn you he might?"
"Yes...but it was still awful. I know his father is making him, and I know it's not any particular fondness for me motivating things, but he still looked as nervous as if he did mean it for real reasons. The poor fellow. I almost hated to turn him down, but..." She sighed as we spun, smiling a little ruefully. "For a tenth of a second I was so startled I almost blurted out 'yes' just to make him stop asking. Kind of a frightening prospect, that."
"Probably not at all what you were expecting."
"Well, I thought he might try it."
"Still, I would imagine you had another idea of how your first proposal would go."
"This is technically the sixth." That startled me, but Jessie shook her head. "It's not that I'm in any great demand, just that I've known a lot of these boys since we were quite small, and a couple of them were bright enough to ask me when I was rather too young to take it seriously."
"I don't suppose you said yes then?"
"Certainly not. I never had plans of marrying at all, not once I realized the only reason why Father is so unhappy is...well...it just didn't seem like something I wanted to do. I wanted to make the finest watches in Britain, and perhaps do well enough in business to take on apprentices."
"Which you've done now."
"Yes," she agreed thoughtfully.
"So there goes the old 'I have other ambitions' excuse, I bet."
"Well, not to me. I still have to make much better clocks if I want to be the best in Britain, and your 'apprenticeship,' if it can be so called, was so informal, not to mention highly irregular in certain of the lessons," Jessie raised an eyebrow and I blushed to remember her last lesson, as well as what preceded it. To cover for the look on my face, I guided her into a turn and then returned to the pattern of the steps, which fit the music well and must've looked pretty good. "Thing is, I'm not certain, even if I said I had other ambitions, which I do, now that I've done a little better than expected, that the other fellows will accept it as an excuse anymore."
"So tell them you're marrying me, instead," I grinned, almost facetiously. "Soon as I take the green and impress your dad enough to be allowed into the family. Isn't that how you clockmakers do it?"
"...I've heard of its' being done that way," Jessie squeaked, coloring a little, and not just from the athleticism of the waltz.
"And it does seem to fit with their concept of narrative. Beautiful, brilliant girl everyone's expecting to fight over, shows up with her own student who isn't even from a clock-making family, very obvious attraction between the two, her father is tolerant of him at dinner in a guarded way, her stepmother seems to like him..."
"She does, you know."
"I got that impression. Which surprised me, I didn't expect to be liked by your folks at all."
"I have the awful feeling she might approve entirely too much of you. Takes all kinds of excitement out of the thing."
"Come now, I'm sure you must have a relative who might disapprove of me purely for reasons of keeping the relationship exciting. Your younger brothers are two years old, perhaps I could prove myself entirely gauche on the matter of picture-books?"
"You wrote their favorite."
"Damn."
"However, I find the fact that my father seems to find your company acceptable to be all kinds of exciting, so that makes up for things."
"So your stepmother liking me is less exciting, but your father liking me is good?"
"It's the Jane Austen thing again. If your mother or stepmum approves, well, you're not going to let your mum tell you who to...well...you're just not. If your father approves, though, well, in that case it's a resounding endorsement, approval of your own choice and even more to be said for you."
"So ideally she'd hate me and your dad would like me?"
"Not at all. Ideally she'd be cautious and a little are-you-quite-sure-dear about you, then around the time Father approved, she'd suddenly discover some heretofore concealed quality which makes you desirable."
"I see one difficulty. Supposing you've been blessed with a stepmother who's nothing like Mrs. Bennet in 'Pride and Prejudice.'"
We considered that for a measure or two as we danced.
"Good point," Jessie agreed. "I suppose having an adventurous and relatively shocking stepmother like one's...I suppose that's good."
"Doesn't fit the Victorian clock-making narrative, though."
"Well, technically Jane Austen wrote during the Regency and wasn't all that popular with the Victorians," she pointed out.
"The early Victorians didn't approve so much, but the late Victorians and Edwardians loved her, especially once the sentimental novels she parodied in her early work had come in and gone out of vogue again. The realism movement of the late nineteenth century adored her." Jessie had her head tilted a little, a vague smile on her face, as I shared this bit of trivia. "I'd compare the goings-on at this Chronologie Mechanique affair pretty favorably to Austen's themes, albeit improved as to the social equality of the sexes and men's fashion. I really can't abide tight breeches, you know."
"Is it as charming when I talk about clocks as it is when you talk about literature?"
"I certainly find your descriptions of clocks charming."
"I just want to take you to a library and have you pick out everything I should read, describing their merits and shortcomings in such passionate detail that we have to be shushed by no less than seven librarians."
"You're the only girl I've dated who's thought so. Most girls don't entirely like a fellow who reads as much or as seriously as them."
"Charlie, you probably read something like three times as much as I do. Not that I don't love a book, mind, it's just that with the job, there isn't so much time...that, and I honestly can't read as fast as you. You've heard me read aloud, and I'll tell you now, me reading compared to you reading is like comparing Professor Binns to a drama on Wizarding Wireless."
"Well, you just haven't had the same practice I have. Up until lately, you were the youngest sibling, so to whom would you have read to?"
"Whereas you have enough younger siblings to get several hours of practice a day. That does make me feel a bit better, but I'm still not as fast a reader."
"Again, siblings. If you have to finish your own book before their naps end and Percy wants 'Hogwarts: A History,' Ginny wants the princess with the mad castle and the talking cat, Ron wants a story about dragons and the twins race back with that dreadful one about the hamster for the hundredth time...you learn to read quickly."
"Which also explains a little of how you've come to view the world in terms of narrative."
"It helps me understand situations and react appropriately, even when I'm a bit out of my depth. Try it sometime. Look at the situation, and think, 'how would this go if we were in a story,' and 'what kind of story is this?'"
"At the moment, a ridiculously soppy one about clockmakers."
"Including one unusually pretty one," I remarked. "Typical for the female lead."
"I'm the lead? Seriously?" Jessie frowned and let out a sarcastic snort. "Have it your way. So we have a perfectly ordinary-looking clockmaker who happens to have an unusually nice dress for once. She turns down the proposal of an old classmate without any reason but a glance to her escort, who whisks her onto the dance floor and proceeds to show up everyone..." She raised an eyebrow at me and I spun her into a not-precisely-instructor-approved but stylistically appropriate spin that looked pretty good with the slowing end of the Viennese.
"They dance, and every eye is drawn enviously to the near-scandal: the most eligible female clocksmith in a generation, dating someone outside the craft. The sheer indignant traditionalism of it all competes with the human desire for a fairy-tale ending." We spun slowly as the waltz ended.
"...Maybe, but just whose fairy-tale is this, really?" Jessie gave me a smile as we whirled to a stop and applauded the orchestra in our gloves. Everyone wears gloves for dancing to black-tie events on trains, it turns out. Mine were kind of silly, but hers were long and satiny and...I do keep describing them. Well, when seeing your girlfriend's forearms without ten watches on is a rare event, long gloves are rather more exciting. It's like elderly wizards and ankles.
I followed her meaningful glance to the top of the stairs as the orchestra started a different type of song, possibly an adagio, and we all saw the lady who had just entered. My first thought was that she looked a fair bit like old pictures of my mother. Her nervous smile was a kind one, her eyes were very pretty and while she wasn't what anyone would call thin, hers was a very attractive figure that just happened to be about a century or so out of fashion. And, in the grand tradition of surprise entrances, her dress was perfect. I couldn't tell you the color beyond 'blue' or the style beyond 'something sort of late-Thirties, different than Jessie's,' but it looked really good.
"Mademoiselle Juliette Devereaux!" the officious house-elf announced, as if it weren't perfectly obvious from Paul Deroulede's expression just whom it was. She descended the stairs like every Cinderella anyone'd ever seen, except Paul met her halfway. They exchanged perhaps two words none of us could hear, and then it was onto the dance floor. Nobody else seemed to want to dance, but I'd be stunned if either of the French couple noticed.
"This is wonderful," Jessie breathed. "Just look at the two of them!"
"Now that's a fairy-tale," I agreed.
"I completely agree," an earthy little voice behind us agreed. Sarah Tickes put an arm over each of our shoulders, which, given her height, was a bit awkward and quite charming. "Always wanted to be a fairy godmother, but never had the opportunity. Then I overheard Paul going on about Juliette, raided his stateroom for the address and sent an owl with a Portkey."
"And just when did you overhear this?" Jessie asked, going a little red.
"I actually have Charles' brothers to thank for that," the older witch gleefully explained, holding up an Extendable Ear. "They make these in wireless now."
"Sarah!" Jessie looked more than a little indignant and a little nervous. Sarah Summoned what looked like a stiff martini and sipped it without a care in the world.
"Relax, dear, I can't speak a word of French. Took Italian instead, for the opera. Whatever you told Paul you and Charles were up to, I assume it has to do with watches and dear Paul didn't think the uppity old buggers and their sons would believe you were training someone else."
"You assume?"
"It's a stepmother's place to make assumptions, dear, just like I assumed Paul would be a much more interesting target for the old buggers' gossiping. They're worse than those old hens in Hogsmeade, really."
"If you can't speak French, how did you write the owl to Juliette?" I asked.
"I think you should write mysteries, Charles. Stepmothers are excellent at career advice."
"But apparently not the non sequitur," Jessie growled, knocking back the Riesling as if she wished it were much stronger.
"Did that wretched little German propose earlier?"
"He did." Jessie sighed.
"Oh, dear. I hope you were nice about it. Poor thing was practicing the speech in the gents' loo earlier for almost twenty minutes." Sarah regarded Jessie's look of shock and mine of sympathy as if it were perfectly normal for her to have Extendable Ears in the gents' loo and, in fact, most places. "I think his intentions, quite apart from being under his father's thumb, were more than a bit sincere. And I did like his attitude better than Selnikov's. That poor bugger had the gall to ask your father."
"What? When?"
"In the smoking car, just a bit ago. I have an Ear in James' breast pocket, just in case. You'll be happy to know, Jamesina, that your father managed not to choke on his brandy despite bursting into rather mean laughter at the very idea of it."
"Father laughed at him?"
"To scorn, really, which brought Papa Selnikov into it. The old bore then asked what was wrong with his son marrying you, at which point... James said you'll marry whoever you damn well please and they'd taken the matter up with the wrong party... which led to a couple of nasty insults ...and a rather smug crack that any clockmaker who owns her shop outright by her twentieth birthday can do as she pleases in private life and what a pity Selnikov still had to give his boy orders like an apprentice."
She seemed to be pausing every few sentences to smile and we realized she was listening in real-time to the argument as it occurred. "Oooh, and now Selnikov père is trying to get his glove off to challenge James to a duel and -oh, how gallant, Nils Nielsen has broken it up."
"Which one?" Jessie asked.
"Eighth, the one from your class, though Seventh is holding Selnikov back from the sound of it."
"Do all the families number the heirs that way?" I asked.
"Only when they recycle names," Sarah explained, "but there's rather a lot of that, due to patent and license laws. Never let it be said that clockmaking was impractical as a discipline. Now Hans Prosser has come in and ordered a large brandy -oh, he's taking it hard, how sad."
She did not sound perturbed in the slightest at the poor German's plight, I should mention.
"I should get in there before somebody says something we'll all regret," Jessie sighed, that sense of duty and tradition more than evident in the set of her jaw and spark in her eyes.
"Don't you dare, dear, not until Nils stops being eloquent."
"Doing what?"
"He's just finished the most lovely speech about how the man to win a jewel such as you will be the one with nerve not only to ask, but to court you as –and then it got all clock-metaphorical. It was like something out of a romance novel where his character dies tragically in the end. Oh, and Lyon's asked Prosser why he looks so down in the mouth, that was a bit tactless."
"From him, I'd only expect it."
"No, it was Gilly Lyon, in with the gents and most likely smoking one of her awful cigars to justify being in the smoking lounge –but then, the Tact Fairy hasn't visited that whole family in well over three generations and the only way to be sure they show up to anything is to imply that they shouldn't come at all. And I mean that in the nicest way."
"Is he taking it hard?"
"Considering what he just told Gilly, yes."
"Oh, no," Jessie looked horribly guilty and sad at that.
"Dear Jims, you can't possibly accept every proposal of marriage you receive. For one thing, there isn't space in the flat for all of them. We'd have to put up bunk beds in the closets. And for another, most of them are totally wrong for you. Sympathy is all well and good, but you mustn't let feeling sorry for a fellow affect your better judgment."
"I know. It's just awful to see that hopeful look and then know you're going to be the one to destroy it."
"Better to destroy a hopeful look than your own life in the name of being polite. I don't suppose you're all that attached to your reputation, because a good scandal would go a long way toward cutting the springs on this nonsense mid-wind." Sarah sipped her martini again.
"What would I do without your motherly advice?" Jessie asked, a little sarcastically.
"If your mother were here she'd cause the scandal herself just to give you a break. Siobhan could always be relied upon to approach life in terms of engagements, tactics and gaining the upper hand. Even in public life she was never one to let perfectly good terrain and ground cover go to waste."
"How would you suggest handling this?" I asked, more to remind the ladies I was there and willing to help than anything else.
"Why don't you accompany our Jims to the smoking lounge, keep up that absurdly obvious chemistry you two have going and then make sure she leaves before you do."
"Why do I have to leave first?" Jessie asked.
"Officially, it's because you need to get your rest for the masterpiece. In practice, it's a chance for Charles to play the prospective son-in-law scene with James."
"Scene?" Jessie asked.
"Oh, you know the trope. It's either the fellow her father likes least, but who has a great deal in common with him, or the fellow he pretends to hate but secretly has nothing but good thoughts for who usually gets the girl. That's generally how it goes."
"So…I'm to make a poor impression?" I asked.
"No, you're to make an excellent impression. James is just going to be crotchety about the whole thing. It's really not hard for him, the side effects do make him crotchety. You just have to show superhuman patience and continuous good cheer."
"He is awfully good at patience," Jessie remarked, blushing a little.
"Does the fact that I, well, actually am a prospective son-in-law help at all?" I tried to be blunt. "I mean, if need be, couldn't I just, well, say so?"
Both women stared at me. Jessie went absolutely scarlet and the corner of Sarah's lip tilted upward into a smile.
"At this point, that might not be the best strategy, true or not. To do so would be to declare yourself a rival to young men she's known for years, which would both cause a closing of ranks against you right when you want it least and render you subject to the younger clockmakers' pranks."
"I think he can handle that," Jessie snorted a little. "He has had…experience."
"That, and it'd make you look weak. Bringing an escort nobody's seen before, who's doing quite a good job of impressing your family, is one thing. Bringing an escort who puts his oar in purely to save you from awkward proposals –and yes, that is how it would look, makes it seem like you've found an inexpensive and rather unladylike way of compensating a bodyguard. Not exactly the best strategy, to my thinking."
"I suppose, though I have to confess, I really wasn't expecting this level of intrigue at a simple dinner on the way to a business event."
"You're a zoologist who writes books, so I'd imagine the shop talk is rather different. Your set is preoccupied with habitats, behavioral habits and evolved traits of known species and everyone has their own little specialty. Immortality is found in discovering a new species of naked mole-rat or what-have-you, not sustaining a business empire with roots going back multiple centuries, forging alliances to best strengthen said empire and ensuring that competitors have no opportunity to attack."
"Sarah, you're carrying on like this is international diplomacy. We're bloody clockmakers. I've thought for years that this sort of cloak-and-dagger, marriage-of-alliance goings-on was rank nonsense," Jessie scowled.
"And if making clocks was all the Chronologie Mechanique did, you'd be completely right." Jessie made as if to reply, but Sarah raised an eyebrow and continued. "You forget, of course, that Aurors from every nation rely on their clockmakers for synchronicity and accurate timekeeping in evidence. Every train station and owl office relies on accurate timekeeping to maintain national infrastructure and no Healer can work without one. A sudden influx of subpar timepieces can and has been known to upset a nation's economy. Nobody questions the need for businesses, armies and even governments to import and export precision timepieces, simply because so very many technologies, social institutions and aspects of civilization presently rely on them."
"I still don't see…wait. Are you saying-?"
"I'm saying that in that smoking room are a lot of men who have fought chaos and anarchy with number-three jewelers screwdrivers for years, won, and never gotten a moment's credit. Naturally, among themselves, they must wish to preen a bit." Sarah sipped her drink. "And until you are told otherwise, and you will be, that is the reason for the Victorian attitude."
We considered this for just a moment before Sarah continued.
"Personally? I'd approach the most-eligible-maiden pretense exactly as if it were a lot of irrelevant old clockmakers posturing because this is the most excitement they have all year. Keep a vague smile, be dismissive of the action but not the idea behind it, and generally play the tolerantly amused daughter who thinks her father's old friends have been at the sherry again."
Jessie appeared to consider this.
"So basically a more polite version of how I actually do feel about matters."
"Pretty much."
"Sounds like a plan, then. First, though, I have some questions for you." Jessie looked stressed and more than a little sad. "Why didn't Father mention that I've a living grandfather on my mother's side sooner?"
"If I say 'you didn't ask,' you'll hate me," Sarah sighed. "Let's talk about this somewhere more private."
We left the ballroom and walked the short distance to James and Sarah's stateroom. There, the little witch explained.
"The truth of the matter probably has to do with your father. Failure to maintain relationships, including the complete omission of fairly crucial details, is a symptom of James' illness. I know this is painful for you, in the extreme, but you have to understand that your father is the way he is because of an illness. He was sick, Jamesina. Right now, he is merely a bit under the weather in terms of that illness, but there will always be the possibility of relapse, and the condition can be fatal."
Jessie looked shaken at Sarah's stern tone and serious manner. I didn't blame her, especially as her stepmother went on.
"He would not be the first wizard to die of melancholy, or 'depression' as the Muggles call it, and what's worse, he also has something similar to combat fatigue, due to the way he lost your mother. He will never be entirely the person he was, and the ways his grief and sickness from that grief have and will hurt you and Ian, those are going to have long-lasting repercussions for all of you, and him in particular. Right now, the majority of why your father hates himself is not because of his illness so much as what the illness made him do. It's circular, ongoing, and very difficult to help.
"And I know it sounds like I'm making an excuse for him here, but I'm really not. To say that a depression victim, or anyone with a mental illness, really, has and will hurt his family, whether he means to or not, is simply being honest. It's like any other serious illness in that others are affected. The symptoms can even spread." Sarah sighed and I saw from the brightness in her eyes that just saying this was taking a toll on her.
"I'm not telling you this because I want you to forgive your father or rebuild your relationship to something besides that of board members of Tickes and Sons," she continued. "I'm telling you this because you are an adult and if you want to have any hope of remaining a healthy one, you need and deserve to understand why your father is the way he is, know the signs and be able to tell if you start to experience the same thing so you can get help before it gets as far as it did with him."
"Is there any help for him?"
"Jims, I don't know for sure. He's made tremendous progress, he's functioning and at times I could never ask for a better man or a greater love. But then he'll relapse or experience a rough patch, and…well…they say, when you marry someone with a mental illness, you don't have a relationship with that person so much as with the mental illness. In a sense that's true, in that I have James, and I have what's wrong with James. Loving him has never been hard, but learning to love around his illness, even as I'm trying to help him with it…it's never been easy."
"I've wondered for years how, let alone why, you married him," Jessie put her hand over her stepmother's. "That sounds awful. What I mean is, well…"
"Honestly? It started as a loophole so I could treat him. I knew Siobhan would never have wanted him to suffer the way he was, and the only way to take control from the Healers to whom he'd been committed was to have the appropriate legal powers. I was too young to legally adopt him, obviously, and that left a marriage of convenience. I managed to get close enough to try something, and once I had him lucid and capable of making decisions, I explained the situation, and he agreed."
"You were his Healer?" I asked.
"Unofficially, yes. On paper, my specialty is burns and heat-related curses, as you know."
"You interned with the Aurory. I've seen your old uniform, with medals on it, in pictures."
"True, Jims, but what you didn't know is that there is also a mental element to Healing people who've seen action, especially when things like trauma and combat fatigue set in. I'm one of a very few specialists, and the field is not very old, or even taken very seriously. On the one hand, it behooves the Ministry to downplay our techniques' effectiveness and generally keep us as tacitly ridiculous as the Centaur Office, because if mind-Healers are just a joke, enemies of the state will never bother to get any of their own, to their detriment. On the other hand, a great many of the people responsible for classifying our work as a state secret did not survive the last war long enough to get the point, which is that what we do does work, and pretty damn well, across to the new leadership. The fun-poking and willful disavowal of the department, which was meant only as wartime obfuscation, has since become a widely-accepted notion that mind-Healers are at best a placebo and at worst a ridiculous Muggle-influenced waste of time."
"So nobody in Britain takes you seriously?"
"Almost nobody. There are some who do, like Alastor Moody and some of his protégées, but for the most part, we're a well-kept secret. Either way, nobody at St. Mungo's was willing to consider any of my techniques on James, and while I could have tried for experimental protocol, it would have taken so long, and with you and Ian the age you were, I wanted to try and get him back to something like normal." Sarah poured herself something that smelled of floor-cleaner and sipped it pensively. "That sounds too altruistic. If I'm being completely honest, I also have to confess to wanting to show those old sons-of-bitches that serotonin-reuptake-inhibitors and anxiety reducers bloody well work. So yes, part of it was for him, but part of it was for me."
"You did get him sane," Jessie remarked, which, I think, was something she might not have conceded even a few months ago.
"Yes, but I don't want you to think I'm some magical fairy who wanted to heal your father and nothing else. There was plenty of ego, selfishness and sheer stubborn I'll-show-them involved."
"But don't the ends justify the means?" Jessie asked.
"I wonder. You see, I attempted a regimen of Muggle drugs. They were rather more primitive than what we have now, and I managed to get him first coherent, then somewhat stable. It was sometime after 'stability' that we started living together and appearing to the outside world as a couple. You were around eleven then."
"I remember it well."
"As do I," I agreed.
"Well, while we had to keep up appearances socially, for the sake of protecting my license and preventing an inquiry –because there were certainly enough elderly Healers willing to believe that the change for the better was the result of remarriage alone, the short-sighted gits," Sarah growled into her glass, "the truth is, for the first few years, we were simply friends who lived together. I helped James manage the demons in his head and he helped me pass for an explainable match. Working on timepieces has always helped him, you know. He doesn't seem to feel the pain so much when he has something to focus on, and teaching me how to blend in as a clockmaker's wife helped him a great deal. And I…I also liked it. Siobhan had always spoke lovingly of watches, and I came to understand why she admired James so as a coworker, let alone a mate.
"She was truly my dearest friend, you know. There wasn't a single battle, from the day I turned seventeen, when I wasn't her medic-on-call. She and the Commander were willing to look past my age, Muggle stepfather and fondness for stepping…how shall we say, outside the bounds of conventional wizarding medicine, and they arranged for me to get training with some of the best. I mean Healers from the old school, with combat experience back to Grindelwald's day and earlier. You wouldn't believe how exciting and terrifying it all was, to have someone like Commander Jamesina Tickes believing in you, and it was mostly on Siobhan's say-so. I owe them everything."
"Wait…how could you have worked with my mother? I knew you were friends, but…" Jessie seemed confused.
"…Exactly how old do you think I am?"
"Twenty-nine…wait. You couldn't possibly be-"
"Try thirty-eight." Sarah did not, it must be said, look thirty-eight. "Remember what I've told you about moisturizer and sunscreen?"
"Yes."
"Well, let this be a lesson to you." The older witch smiled. I could tell she was actually quite pleased. "Who on earth told you I was twenty-nine? The carefully-crafted rumor that I'm a gold-digging tart seems to be working even better than planned."
"Why would you want people to think-?"
"Because 'gold-digging tarts' whose husbands suddenly take a turn for the better, well, there's a very salacious and entirely believable explanation for the improvement. Slightly younger but still perfectly mature former medical officers whose husbands suddenly improve, on the other hand, that's an investigation and an ethics hearing right there. It helps that I was taken out of the last war fairly early on and wound up making my money in dermatology. You really thought twenty-nine?"
"It was the age everyone said you were, and…I guess I never really thought about it."
"I'm going to be cheered up all week by this, you know. Anyway…you've seen how your dad used to be when you were at school, and how he's gotten better over the years, if never entirely right."
"Yes. What's made him so much better now?"
"New medication and a new treatment, essentially. I had him on lithium and then I tried –well, suffice it to say, the treatments have gotten a lot better recently. Even so, he's been making steady progress, and while we were just friends at first, with his health and our both missing Siobhan and the Commander in common…well…he did get better, and…"
"You really do love him, don't you?"
"To distraction! I've broken every code of ethics, violated I-can't-tell-you-how-many rules and laws and…one day I realized I was looking forward to therapy simply because I wanted to hear him talk. I found someone else to handle the talk-therapy side and the behavioral aspect, and just kept the physiological and chemical treatment my area, but by then…it's been a fairly normal relationship, apart from the whole secret-experimental-treatments thing, for roughly the last four years."
"You know, this does make so much more sense," Jessie patted her stepmother's hand. "You do know I'd have resented you a lot less if you'd said you were Dad's secret Healer, right?"
"You were ten years old. I didn't want to burden you with keeping that kind of a secret…and I may have underestimated you at the time."
"Well, I did know you gave him medicine and that he started getting better the moment you came into our lives…but I've never really understood how that works."
"If you'd like, I can explain it in more detail. Basically, what I'm doing has been the standard Muggle procedure since shortly before you were born. Wizards, though… a lot of them don't approve of Muggle methods at all, and some of what's been working the best is flatly illegal in this country."
"But it works."
"It does."
"So how do we make sure Dad can stay on the treatment? Or does he need to? Is it something he'll someday get better from, or is it like Wolfsbane potion?"
"It's chronic like Wolfsbane, yes. I might be able to reduce or balance his dosage, but the therapy has to be kept up and he'll probably never go off-meds completely, but the side effects of the latest drug, I've seen research on something else that's in testing now that works exactly the same way, but with more manageable physiological symptoms. It's all to do with the mechanism by which the drug affects the serotonin –and I've lost you, haven't I?"
"Not at all," I interjected. "Essentially, the hormone responsible for feeling normal, he has a problem processing it, and the drugs help mix the potion in his mind correctly. It's like adding pondweed to counteract too much arrowroot."
"…While not entirely correct, that gets the point across better than I could without breaking out the textbooks, journals, diagrams and blood work, yes."
"Blood work?!" Jessie asked, alarmed.
"I have to extract samples, very small, mind you, and analyze them, though urinalysis will also do between lab work-ups."
"…You really have been doing serious mediwizardry, haven't you?"
"Technically, medicine, but yes. I take this extremely seriously."
"And you're quite sure…I mean, blood work, that just seems so…so arcane and Dark."
"I assure you, there's nothing Dark about what I do with it. The Muggles don't have the charms we do for examining levels of potion in someone's system, that, and our charms don't work on some Muggle medicines. So I have to do it the Muggle way."
"Won't Dad get scars, or an infarction?"
"You mean infection, and generally, no. I use a very small, very sharp hollow needle, which comes in a sterile packet and gets thrown away immediately after, so there's no germs or risk of infection. I even swab down the site with alcohol beforehand. And while he has a little bruise around the vein for a day or so, the procedure does not leave long-term marks…and you've gone completely ashen. This only sounds odd because you're a witch, you know. If you grew up in a Muggle household, you'd have had things injected into you the same way since you were a tiny baby."
"But why? Why would Muggles do such a thing?"
"To vaccinate the children, of course. Remember how, when you were twelve, one of Ian's friends caught dragon pox and your grandfather wanted you to go right over and play with him, so you'd get it young and have a mild case?"
"Yes, of course. And I never did get it because you made me wait three whole days."
"Well, Muggles used to have sick children spread a thing around to the healthy ones, because once you've had a certain kind of sickness, it teaches the little cells in your blood how to kill it quick, so once had, you never can get it again. That's called immunity. The thing is, you can also take a little piece of the same disease and either kill it, weaken it or simply change it so it can't make any more of itself, put it inside someone, and that teaches their cells all they need to know to fight off the disease. So that person gets their immunity without needing to bother with the illness."
"Vaccination," I agreed. "We do it with dragons."
"Well, I knew there was something you could do along those lines with animals, but on people?" Jessie still looked pretty squicked-out at the whole idea.
"Still, it's better than dragon pox. Not a scar on you from that, not even where I used the needle after you went to sleep."
"You…but…why?!"
"Like I said, better than dragon pox. You also never got pertussis, diphtheria or tetanus after you met me, nor regular measles, German measles, mumps, rubella, smallpox –that one I had to specially order, but with all the traveling, it seemed worthwhile, chicken pox, pretty much all the poxes but syphilis, which really isn't actually a pox and which I don't think you'll be at risk of anyway…"
"And you did all this with needles?" Jessie cried.
"Only when you were asleep, but yes, with needles. And no, you don't have a single scar."
"I don't suppose you have a needle for influenza?" I asked.
"Always. You have to re-do that one every year, and there's surprising demand for it. I think I've even got some with me…" Sarah fumbled in her black bag, which was, of course, rather bigger on the inside and had a small refrigerator full of various little bottle-looking things. "Yep! See, it comes in this little vial, and you just suck it into the needle, poke the person, then slip it gently in with the little plunger."
Jessie was absolutely chalk white, but I really hate getting the 'flu, and it seemed like a reasonable way to reassure my poor girlfriend that her stepmother was not an entirely mad scientist.
"I don't suppose I might have a needle of that? The 'flu gets me every year, feels like."
"Oh, certainly! You'll have to take off the dinner jacket and probably either roll up or unbutton the dress shirt, we do them in the arm…" Sarah got a few things ready and Jessie gripped the arms of her chair until her knuckles were white.
"It's okay, Jess. I've seen this done a hundred times."
"On animals."
"No, actually, I had a needle for tetanus once after I stepped on a nail, as a little kid. We went to the Muggle hospital because there weren't Healers close by and…well, my parents didn't always have a lot of money, and the Muggle hospital doesn't cost anything if you cast a Confundus when they ask for your national health number. It only stung for a second and I never did get tetanus, so..."
"I knew I liked your mother," Sarah remarked. "Okay, Charles, could you give us a bare shoulder?" I already had my dinner jacket off and the shirt took but a second. "Very good. Now what I'm doing here is rubbing his arm with some alcohol. Iodine will also do, but that stains shirts, so I'm using this –and this isn't drinking alcohol, mind, just for rubbing on things to kill the germs. Now you see how this needle has a little cap on it? Means it's never been used. You never do use them twice, that can lead to all manner of problems, from the needle getting dull and hurting more to epidemics of truly horrific things. Before disposable needles, it was possible for a Muggle meaning to do nothing but good to accidentally infect whole populations with a completely different disease. So that sucked." Sarah shook the little vial a little, then poked the needle in and turned it upside-down. "Now I measure out just a few cc's of the vaccine itself, which I will then-"
"This isn't going to hurt him, right?"
"No, why would it? I mean, sure, there'll be a sore patch on his arm, but that's usually the extent of the side effects. In a worst-case scenario, he might have some very mild flu symptoms, but that's typically it."
"It won't…hurt his brain or make him different?"
"If he suddenly seems different, it'll be a matter for correlation, not causality. I've heard of Muggles who thought a vaccine made their toddler walk, simply because their first steps took place later the same afternoon as a shot. There's nothing in the data to indicate that-"
"A shot?"
"That would be the slang term, yes."
"Me first, then. If you're going to stick him with your crazy mad Muggle medicine, then you'll have to stick me first!" Jessie looked stubbornly serious, and a little brave. Knowing how little she understood injectable vaccines, and how weird they'd seemed to me when I'd first heard of them, I knew she was genuinely worried for my safety and meant to protect me even if it took a sample of the horrible technology itself.
"Okay," Sarah agreed, and before Jessie could stop her, she'd swiped her step-daughter's shoulder with the alcohol and quickly injected the needle's contents. "Don't worry, Charles, I have another for you," she explained, reaching into the bag. "But first, would you like a sticky bandage, Jamesina? I have plain ones and some with Hello Kitty on them."
Jessie looked at her shoulder, stunned to see a tiny red mark.
"I didn't feel a thing."
"Sometimes you don't. If you'd clenched up the muscle, then it would've hurt, but I'm getting pretty good at this." Pausing for a second, Sarah tapped Jessie with her wand, whispering a healing charm and removing the need for a sticky bandage. "Hello Kitty might not go well with formalwear."
"And now I won't get influenza?"
"Yes and no. Influenza is a bear to prevent because it mutates faster than –well, a really fast-mutating thing. All the versions of it that your flu shot protects against, though, those you won't get. You could still catch a new, mutated version, but it should be less of a health risk, because the protection from similar versions will make sure it's not as severe an infection." Sarah then injected my arm with a needle-ful of the stuff. I felt it a little, but I'd had worse.
"Wow. Thank you!" Jessie did seem a little cheered-up, though she still looked a little suspiciously at her own shoulder now and then.
"If you're interested, I also have some of the latest Muggle technologies in the precautionary arts. There's a needle for that, if you can believe it, that lasts for about three months, as well as the most charming little device that fits in the uterus and releases the proper hormones steadily for five years' worth of perfect immunity from inconvenient Nature. Definitely a worthwhile investment, I have to say, and I'd imagine you two could do with the peace of mind from multiple methods."
We stared at Sarah Tickes as she finished this extraordinary pronouncement, probably blushing redder than ever. "What?" she continued. "I can recommend a Muggle colleague for the actual consultation and any prescriptions. It's unethical to treat one's own family unless it's an emergency and, besides, I'm not a gynecologist."
"I…just…you know, I don't think anyone else's stepmother is as completely blasé about bringing up the topic."
"Not everyone else's stepmother is so averse to badly-timed grandchildren that she's willing to set aside the age-old feeling that children must only be told 'don't!' when it comes to certain activities. I know I would far rather know that you knew how to conduct them safely rather than bury my head in the sand until it was too late. I've seen careers stalled, shotgun weddings between two people who weren't ready and even some cases where existing children got the short end of the resources-and-attention stick because their parents hadn't access to the precautionary arts for reasonable timing and spacing-out."
"Me, for instance," I agreed. Sarah went a little white and Jessie glared at her.
"I'm sorry, Charles, I didn't mean-"
"Oh, I know you didn't. Doesn't mean that the situation described doesn't apply to my siblings and I, though in our case, it was more a matter that many Muggle birth-control methods were not well-understood to be safe or feasible by most witches and wizards when I was born, as well as the fact that my parents really and truly wanted a girl in addition to all their sons. Ginevra's worth it, too. I don't consider myself to have been shorted on love or attention. Resources, to be sure, were sometimes a little strained, but Mum is one of Nature's economists and I know I'd never have been able to live so well on royalty checks alone if she hadn't taught me how to manage my money carefully."
"There's also the remarkable Weasley fertility," Sarah pointed out.
"That is true," I nodded. "It's one of the reasons why Dad made a point of letting us learn all we could about ...what do you call them, the precautionary arts? My folks were aware of such things by the time Percy showed up, but, of course, my twin brothers are a cosmic joke of the universe and showed up anyway, then after a decent interval, Ron and Ginny followed in accordance with proper planning. They were quite straightforward about it once I got to an age when knowing the importance of such matters was, well, important."
"So you're…amply supplied?"
"Absolutely, on knowledge and…well, materials. Two or more complementary methods used, every time, no exceptions; always have proper materials on hand because one never knows, mind the expiration dates and while a gentleman must always be amply prepared, it is also correct to make sure a lady is comfortable with the theory and practice, via discussion of same. Any relationship not in a sufficiently advanced state for said discussion to occur is not sufficiently advanced for said activity. And there are always creative ways to accomplish the goal of said activity with significantly reduced risk, if one is comfortable with them."
"…Now I know you're quoting Jamesina," Sarah grinned.
"Verbatim," Jessie agreed in a voice so tiny that I could hardly hear her, especially given that she was holding a knuckle to her lip and shaking a little in that 'trying not to laugh' way she had.
"I did leave out the bit about flavored –ow!" She elbowed me to forestall a bit of disclosure too far and poured herself some of the floor-cleaner-smelling stuff.
"So you can see, Sarah, we're completely safe and reasonable, you know far more about our lives than is strictly necessary and all is well."
"Well, I still think you might want to consult with my Muggle colleague, simply because there are additional health benefits to a hormonal method, it reduces some of the worry should a more ready-to-hand variety spontaneously fail and, of course, if you don't mind my saying so, Charles-"
"My family IS pretty notorious in that area. I'm fairly sure it's only due to the precautionary arts that I haven't got new siblings arriving to this day."
"And I've never heard of twins running in my family, so it's entirely possible Jamesina is just as susceptible," Sarah agreed. "I'm glad to hear you're both well-informed."
"This is the most awkward conversation in the history of conversations and I would like to burrow into the floor right now," Jessie announced into the glass of floor-cleaner.
"No more awkward than if I told you just which of the Muggle technologies your father and I find useful. For instance, after the twins were born I had this splendid little thing called an IUD installed and it's just –huh. You do share your mother's taste in Scotch, Jamesina."
"…I would much rather hear about my parents' and stepparents' taste in alcohol than in…other matters. It's a peculiarity of mine."
"Oh. I suppose that must be a bit awkward to imagine."
"Quite."
"Well, being medical myself, I just get so used to being perfectly frank with people about such things."
"And a grand thing it is that you told me what I needed to know when I was eleven and a half. Further specifics, however…"
"I understand. Theory absent personal testimonial."
"If you could."
"Though I must admit I'm curious about what Charles said about flavored-"
"I will send you an owl with a gift-certificate to the proper shop and you can find out for yourself if we could please just never discuss this again EVER." Jessie replied quickly.
"Point taken. Anyway, you wanted to know a bit more about your maternal grandfather, and why we didn't tell you he's still around."
"Yes."
"Well, the fact of the matter is, we didn't know he was still around. Siobhan had cut ties with her family when she turned seventeen and it wasn't until this past week, when old Samuel McArran got a thing called the Internet and decided to try and look his estranged daughter's family up, that we realized you had additional family."
"Didn't he know that she…"
"He received the standard Ministry next-of-kin notification, as well as a bequest in your mother's will. I believe, however, that there was some other reason why he was not in touch. Specifically, I don't think he was ever told that she'd had children."
"How could anyone miss becoming a grandparent?"
"When your child hasn't spoken to you in years? Fairly easily. Your mother had, he said, gotten in touch with him shortly before her accident, and she'd mentioned she was pregnant, but then he got word of …what happened so soon after, I don't think he realized you and Ian had been born already."
"But why?"
"There was an acrimonious divorce when she was a teenager, worse than the usual is all I ever caught, and though she seems to have been quite a loyal daughter, in her own way, I think she was also quite aware that close contact with her Muggle family would make them a target for the Death Eaters. There may be more to it, I'm not certain. But the old fellow is alive, and he expressed an interest in meeting you and Ian."
"…Okay." Jessie smiled a little. "I think I'd like to meet him, too. He's a jeweler, right?"
"Yes. McArran's Jewelry and Timepieces."
"He's a clockmaker?" Her eyes lit up.
"No, I just believe he sells and repairs them. But he does do bespoke jewelry and custom settings still."
"I wonder…" Jessie picked up a paper cocktail napkin, found a pen and began to draw. After a moment or two, once it was clear that she was off in her own little watch-design world, I poured Sarah a little more of the floor-cleaner.
"Make sure she drinks at least fourteen ounces of water tonight," the mediwitch reminded me. "I don't think you'll get back to the party, but she mightn't have quite the tolerance for Scotch on top of Riesling that her mother did, and a hangover really would not do for the masterpiece."
"I will."
"And I apologize for being so very blunt about the precautionary arts."
"Not at all," I still blushed a little, but not that much. "It's good to know that you care about her and my future, and I really do appreciate the …flu shot it's called?"
"It should help."
"I like knowing someone who knows about Muggle medicine as well as the wizarding variety. I don't think magic's quite kept up with things, somehow."
"Well, much as I hate to even imagine it, in the event things get any worse with You-Know-Who, I'd imagine having a combat medic and battle-fatigue expert in the family can't hurt us."
"It couldn't hurt."
"Might want to give her some Pepperup potion in the morning, too. I don't think she's ever had a hangover and the first one's always ridiculous."
Sarah Tickes was not the kind of mother that I'm used to, but she really didn't do a bad job of it that evening.