Chapter 34: Implications
"Well, I think these are due for the laundry, then," Jessie remarked, looking over Loren's simple jumper-and-jeans outfit. The little fellow had been awakened by a cracking nightmare and a fairly embarrassing realization some hours before, and we'd gotten him back to sleep in a set of my spare boxers (which didn't quite fit him until I showed him how to tie the drawstrings, and even then were far too long,) and an England National supporters' shirt of Jessie's that fit him like a long nightshirt. He looked absolutely tiny in the spares we'd scrounged up for him, his hair stuck up in places and he yawned occasionally now that he'd woken up. "I don't suppose you know what your measurements are, by any chance?"
"Measurements?" Loren rubbed his eye and put his tinted glasses on. "Like how big I am?"
"For clothes, yes."
"I'm this big," Loren stood up and turned around once, as if that explained everything.
"…So I see," Jessie agreed cheerfully. "Somewhere between forty-five and forty-eight inches tall, then?"
"One hundred and sixteen centimeters," Loren clarified.
"That's good!" I grinned at him. "Soon you'll be tall enough to ride everything at Alton Towers. That's a Muggle amusement park."
"Yes, I've been," Loren smiled. "The teacups are my favorite."
The Muggles have a remarkable kind of electric ride, shaped rather like a giant tray of teacups. As the tray spins, so do the teacups, but they're on pivots around a central pole, and if the riders want to, they can use the pole like a car's steering wheel to make the teacuppy bit in which one's spinning spin even faster.
I'd personally thrown up after riding it with the twins, but didn't feel the need to mention that part.
"Did you spin it really fast?" I asked.
"Yeah," Loren gave me a mischievous smile. "Which was your favorite?"
"I liked the Nemesis. It was like the closest thing Muggles have got to brooms. You'll probably be tall enough for that come summer, and maybe the lines won't be as long now that it's not brand-new."
"What exactly is this place?" Jessie asked. I gave Loren a conspiratorial grin.
"Hear that? We can take her, she's never been."
"Take me where?" Jessie gave me an affectionately suspicious smile.
"It's a 'musement park," Loren explained. "There's rides and food and games and it's really great!"
"A what now?"
"It's a Muggle thing," I explained. "The rides run on electricity and there are games where you win prizes and booths with food just like a fair, only it's kind of always-on. Like a permanent fairground."
"Muggles have permanent fairgrounds? There's just always a fair there, any day you go?"
"Any day in the summertime," Loren explained.
"Late spring to mid-fall is the open season, yes. Tickets are a bit dear, but still cheaper than a lot of wizarding things that aren't half so fun, and the Muggles don't think people are a bit odd for wanting to know how the rides work, because the rides are all different and not even Muggles themselves always know. My parents took the family every chance they got."
My Dad really does love Muggle things, so Alton Towers trips were always something he dearly loved to arrange for us, even if it meant taking a little more out of his paycheck or covering extra hours for the other fellows to raise the funds without Mum's thinking it too exorbitant, though after some initial 'oh, Arthur, you shouldn't have!' she always did have a splendid time. I remembered her packing a magnificent picnic hamper to eat in the car-park and thus reduce the amount we'd need to spend on the food inside and every year remembering to make everyone's favorite sandwiches, taking hundreds and hundreds of pictures (even if it took her several months to have all of the film developed, as she painstakingly fit each roll's processing charge into the tight budget –so the memories always came back piecemeal over the whole fall and winter and happy summer days never seemed far away,) and, of course, she loved the scariest rides more than anyone else save me and fearless little Ginny. There was a splendid rollercoaster that reduced a big strong Muggle man to crying for his mother that she rode five times in succession and cheered like a schoolgirl.
Dad…tolerated her fondness for the big, frightening rides as best he could and rode with her for affection's sake, but was none too relieved when each of us grew tall enough to take Mum on the scary ones. His favorite rides were the littler, short-lined ones that went in circles, involved swings or had little cars to them, and nothing delighted him more than persuading one of the ride operators to tell him just how it worked. On several occasions he managed to charm them into giving a kind of a backstage tour, which led to some minor disasters when he tried to build similar things at home –though his attempt at a working scale model of the Teacup Ride actually made delicious milkshakes for ten people at a time.
The fact that it was significantly cheaper, especially in the Eighties when the pounds-to-Galleons exchange rate favored wizards so, than any other day or weekend outing for seven children and two adults, well, not enough wizards knew what such places were, let alone what they cost, to make fun of us children mentioning that as our favorite vacation spot. Any wizard who was Muggle-friendly enough to know it well knew that our Dad enjoyed Muggle things and promptly assumed it was for Reasons of Culture, and anyone who had no idea what we were talking about typically was too much of a snob to admit they didn't, so it was one of the few untarnished-by-hindsight memories of childhood.
It's funny, how even the happiest things in one's past can, upon recollection, sting a little, as you realize this or that splendid or beloved little detail was actually a side effect of one's parents' poverty.
I wondered if Loren's mothers had taken him for the cost advantages, because one of them was Muggle-born or both.
"That sounds absolutely splendid," Jessie grinned. "We must go, soon as it opens. What does one wear for that?"
"Wear?" I asked. Loren looked at me and shrugged.
"I wore my new trainers, shorts and a t-shirt," Loren explained.
"That's pretty much what I wore, as well."
A memory stirred…Fred, George, Ron and I all playing a game together where one aimed little squirtguns at targets which made little boats race along a track. We older brothers had plotted amongst ourselves to make a big show of competing fiercely but carefully throw the race so Ron won, knowing that it would perk him up for months, and when the Muggle running the game had offered him choice of prizes, instead of the wicked awesome t-shirts with dragons and such on them that we knew he'd coveted since last year, the little lad had picked out a fluffy white unicorn with a pink mane. The twins were about to take the piss out of him for this odd choice, but then he beamed and said 'Won't Ginny love it?' He had been four, maybe five years old.
"So…just casual Muggle-friendly clothes, then…" I could see she was thinking hard and realized she was trying to figure out what on earth we could have Loren wear long enough to get his outfit from yesterday cleaned.
"Why don't we make it a pajamas breakfast, Jess?" I asked. "Old family custom; we all eat in our nightclothes and then if anybody spills, you don't have to get dressed twice."
"I don't spill! Really!" Loren announced a little defensively, with some fear in his voice.
"Oh, I know you don't, old chap, but I can't say the same for myself. Dragged my sleeve through catsup once, coffee down the shirt..."
"If I eat muffins in an agitated manner, I'm liable to get butter on my cuffs," Jessie agreed.
"Well…maybe I spill sometimes," Loren amended.
"All the more reason for a pajamas breakfast," I nodded as if that settled that and gestured to the staircase. Jessie shot me a grateful look over Loren's head and popped his clothes from yesterday, as well as the ones we'd worn on the trip –well, some of them, as some required spell-cleaning and some…just weren't something you'd wash with a child's things… right into the laundry, hopefully to be done about the time breakfast was.
We all came trooping down the little spiral staircase into the dining room, Loren in his too-big shorts from me and Jessie's really-too-big England National t-shirt; me in a Gryffindor Quidditch t-shirt of about the same size as the little fellow had on, though it wasn't nearly so huge on me, and some Chudley Cannons pajama trousers Ron had given me last birthday, while Jessie wore a set of actually matching pajamas that only managed to look ladylike because A. a lady was in them and B. they were clearly meant to be pajamas and clearly matched, as opposed to the any-old-how sort of things Loren and I had on. It was a little unfortunate that her sleeping attire was as nearly-androgynous as her work attire, but I knew why she'd chosen something that covered wrists and ankles and thought she looked perfectly splendid in them…even if I did own a nearly-identical set myself.
Downstairs, the table was set for breakfast, plastic containers of takeaway eggs, bacon and sausage were hovering under a Heating Charm and a fully-dressed Ian Tickes was pouring coffee for a fully-dressed Samantha Redfern.
"Morning, Sis!" Ian called. "Coffee?"
"Do unicorns shit in the woods?" Jessie asked under her breath, and Ian had a cup poured and in her hand before she reached the bottom of the staircase. "Loren, this is my big brother Ian, and the nice lady at the table who's doing her best to look like she isn't nice and failing miserably is Samantha Redfern. She runs Redfern Srs. Pawn & Gift in Knockturn Alley."
"Pleasure to meet you," Loren remarked, putting out a hand to Sam and shaking like a little grownup, then turning to Ian and shaking his hand as soon as it was vacated by the cup of coffee the professional athlete handed to me. "Are you nice?" the little boy asked the Redfern, who was, to be fair, wearing the same guarded expression and look of languorous disrepute that she usually did.
"No adult is ever nice until they've had their morning coffee, Loren," she remarked in an even more dissolute, not-good-with-kids and not-caring way than I'd ever seen off the stage. At least Jessie tried to look like she was making an effort at being a good example. Sam Redfern was one of those people who never gave the slightest impression of giving a damn what anybody thought, and apparently she was one of those rare women who saw no reason to treat other people's children any differently than any other person. She knocked back the coffee as if it were Firewhiskey, smiled appreciatively at Ian and set the cup down. "See, now I can reasonably be expected to be nice. Unless you've seen an adult drink their coffee, though, never assume."
Loren appeared to consider this.
"Does that mean we could give the Aurors coffee and make them take it to You-Know-Who, and then he'd be nice?"
"You know, you'd really think so," Sam took a sip of the second cup, Ian having refilled hers without a word, "but some creatures really just aren't worth wasting good coffee on. I wouldn't consider You-Know-Who so much an adult as a whiny little baby who feels the need to throw tantrums whenever he doesn't get his way. I'm sure you're nothing like that," she eyed Loren appraisingly.
"No, ma'am!"
"Good show," Sam pulled out a chair next to her for the little fellow and turned over the upside-down cup on the saucer at his place setting. "Do you take sugar in your coffee?" she asked him.
"Samantha!" Jessie exclaimed, mildly horrified.
"What? Is he not allowed coffee? How do we know he's nice if he hasn't had his coffee?"
"Sam, I…you…Loren, do you even like coffee?" Jessie asked.
"I don't know, Auntie Jess." The little fellow looked ponderously at the cup, then at the huge black percolator Ian was holding. "I had some coffee ice cream once and liked it, but that's not the same, I think."
"Very good, we'll make you some coffee with training wheels on," Sam explained. "Jess, have you got such a thing as milk?"
"In the fridge," Jessie sighed, looking as if all her auntly plans and aspirations were failing completely upon contact with her friend the pawnbroker.
"Right then," Sam took a pocketknife from her trouser pocket, a bar of Cadbury's dark chocolate from her jacket pocket and opening the first with her thumb and an alarming 'snickt' noise (her knife being that dreadful, almost-a-switchblade sort carried exclusively by professional Bad Examples,) she opened the second with a swift slice-and-unwrap maneuver. "This is my mother's favorite latte recipe. Cures Dementor poisoning, takes the edge off a hangover and perfect for starting a new day with a lot of hard work in it," she explained, placing a good inch-wide row of the scored chocolate bar over the mouth of the cup and whacking it with the back of the knife so it snapped into the cup and closed the knife with a flourish.
Loren watched, amazed, as she poured just a half a cup of hot coffee over the section of chocolate bar, melting it. "Give that a stir, so the coffee and the dark chocolate blend," she explained, "and keep stirring while I add the milk." She did so, and the drink lightened from a black, brownish-tar looking color to something which, shockingly, looked appetizing and smelled frankly wonderful. "Milk contains vitamins and calcium, and helps to cut the heat of the coffee. Chocolate, of course, comes from cocoa beans, just as coffee comes from coffee beans, and as we all know, beans are vegetables. Right, Loren?"
"Right!" the little fellow agreed, looking eagerly at the cocoa-coffee-smelling delicacy in front of him.
"As such, this is almost certainly a health food," Samantha smiled like a cat that is pleased with itself. "It wouldn't be nearly so healthy with whipped cream on top, though I suppose once you're used to coffee you can do as you like, of course. I myself never bother with the stuff on hot beverages."
Loren took a sip and his eyes lit up.
"This is wonderful," he breathed, holding the cup with two hands as if it contained the Elixir of Life. Jessie glared skulls-and-daggers at her awful friend, whose grin only grew larger.
"What? Did you want me to make you one, too?" Sam asked.
"Yes, please?" Ian smiled hopefully, holding up his own empty coffee cup with both hands and looking at once amusingly like Loren and hilariously silly thanks to the contrast in their size.
"I have been told that some parents, teachers and rational adults consider caffeine inappropriate for children," Jessie half-growled a little sternly.
"Funny, that's what they say about my shop, and yet, damned if people don't still keep bringing their sprogs inside," Samantha sighed theatrically. "We put a sign up, warning that unattended children would be given espresso and promised a kitten, but do customers ever read the signs? No. It's like having Cornish pixies in the place. I know you must have perfect manners in shops, haven't you, Loren?"
"I…I'm not sure what perfect manners are for shops. I don't touch anything that doesn't have 'Try Me' on the box, if that's what you mean."
"That would do, though there are some items at my shop that have 'Try Me' on the box and which I would still recommend not examining too closely, at least at this point," Sam amended. "Though if you ever have any questions about something you see in a shop, well, the polite thing to do is just ask the shopkeeper or the clerk what it is."
"And be quiet and 'spectful and don't leave any fingerprints on the glass cases," Loren recited.
"Exactly. You'd be welcome in my shop anytime, with manners like those."
"Really? Auntie Jess, can I go to-"
"ABSOLUTELY NOT. –Erm, I mean, we can visit there sometime …together. Remember Sam said children have to be supervised? So you'll want one of us around."
"Oh, it's big enough that I might get lost if I went alone?"
"Yes, exactly. Getting lost is most inconvenient, don't you think?" Sam inquired.
"Yeah. It's scary and you can't find your mom…" Loren trailed off, suddenly looking so depressed.
"I was very sorry to hear of your loss, by the way," Samantha patted the little fellow's shoulder in a sisterly way, opened one of the takeaway containers of breakfast from under the Heating Charm and offered Loren a pair of tongs. "Care for some stripey bacon? It's my favorite kind."
"Yes, please," Loren took the tongs and selected three pieces of bacon, then set them neatly onto his plate.
"Shall we pass to the left, then?" Sam asked, taking three pieces also and starting the rotation by passing the bacon to Ian. "And I shall make you a chocolate latte, Ian, but only if you start the sausage."
For a second, I couldn't believe how calmly and with such poise Samantha had worked condolences into the conversation, but then I realized that her approach was actually perfectly correct. Loren would have at least one funeral to get through soon, with many grownups gushing on and on about how awful it was and how sorry they were, but at this moment, maybe he didn't need gushing. He needed adults to acknowledge the loss, express brief but genuine sympathy, and then carry on, because as the Aurors had said, stability was good.
"Do you like pancakes, Loren?" Jessie asked, offering him the box. "Ian brought pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage…is that wheat toast? You remembered!" She gave her older brother a big smile.
"Wheat toast for Jessie and white for me," Ian explained, "and here is the strawberry jelly, because I know you can't get through toast without the need to floss afterward." He handed his sister one of the single-serving containers of jelly that takeaway places and breakfast restaurants tend to use. "I prefer grape, myself, because I am sensible."
"Orange marmalade?" Samantha asked hopefully.
"…I'm surrounded by Philistines, but yes." Ian tossed her a marmalade, then offered me the plastic bag containing an assortment of jelly and jam thingies. I took strawberry. I don't really have a serious preference for toast.
"May I be sensible, also?" Loren asked. "The…the grape jelly, I mean, is there more?"
"Here you are, mate," Ian tossed him a container also, then extended the toast boxes across the table. "White or wheat?"
"White, please," Loren accepted a piece of toast. "Thank you. I like your shirt."
"England National, same as yours," Ian nodded agreeably. "What do you think of the team?"
"Oh, they're my favorite."
"Always good to hear," Ian nodded, spreading grape jelly onto his toast. For a moment I thought about getting Jessie's attention and pointing out how cute it was that Loren was spreading the jelly on his toast exactly the way Ian did; left-handed and holding the knife like a pen rather than a wand, but that might have embarrassed one or both of them. I did, however, notice Sam Redfern noticing.
"You know, Loren, I don't believe I caught your surname the other day," she said, making Ian's chocolate latte with the same practiced hand she had made one for the smaller fellow. "Is it Price-Fortescue or Fortescue-Price?"
"Price-Fortescue," Loren confirmed. "My Mum was Price-Fortescue also, and Mama was Fortescue-Price. Their maiden names went first, is the easy way to remember it."
"That's a charming way of hyphenating names when a couple marries," Sam agreed. "My mother had to be completely boring about it, so we just got our Dad's last name."
"Mama said they wanted to both be Price-Fortescue, because Fortescue is a well-known wizarding name but they didn't want me to be ashamed of the Price even though Mum's family were Muggles, but because their first initials were the same, the Ministry gave them some attitude." You could actually see the little fellow perking up as he talked about his parents.
"Now, see, that's what I call nonsense right there," Ian frowned. "Normally, I could see a problem, but if L.J. Lastname-Endname and L.J. Endname-Lastname live at the same house and are married, what could be more convenient for the post office?"
"For the post, maybe, but what about pharmacy records and such, one party accidentally getting the other's medication?" Jessie pointed out. "Though, if anything, I'd say it's a good argument for updating Ministry systems to organize by last and first names rather than last names and initials."
"Mum said it made things a little easier at Christmas, because the different names on the post kept them from accidentally opening each other's present to them and ruining the surprise."
"That's sensible," I agreed. "What sort of Christmas celebrations are you used to, then?"
"Well, there's lots," Loren grinned and began to use some gestures as he spoke, in the excited way little kids will get. "Every year we watch the Charlie Brown Christmas Special on American TV because it's Mum's favorite, and every year Mama and I go out and bring her a little bitty scrap of a Christmas tree like in the show because it makes her happy. And then on Christmas Eve, after I go to sleep, Mum puts on a pair of Great-Uncle's boots and makes Father Christmas prints with soot coming from the chimney to the tree, Mama plays a tape of reindeer noises and jingle bells that a friend of theirs made for them and then they enchant the little tree into a great big one with fairy lights and glass balls and Christmas crackers so it's all pretty when I come down the stairs next morning."
"Aww," Jessie and Sam sighed in unison.
"They don't…didn't realize I knew about Father Christmas," Loren explained, a little sadly. "I've known for a couple of years, but…it's not something you talk about with your parents. It makes –made them so happy to make Christmas special that way, there wasn't any good reason to let them know I knew. Is…is that okay?"
"Sounds reasonable to me. I still don't think Granddad has any idea we know," Jessie looked questioningly at Ian.
"Nope. The old boy actually has a set of carved wooden reindeer hooves he'd make prints in the snow on the balcony upstairs with, used to charm a set of bells to ring outside our windows on Christmas Eve…"
"He did that at my window last year, yeah," Jessie agreed.
"Tied bells to the owl he sent with my Christmas parcels last year, apparently tipped it with walnuts to ring the bells outside my window before delivering my presents," Ian confirmed. "My flatmate and I were up late trying to wrap his fiancee's parents' presents when the silly thing came by, ringing away. It would have been embarrassing if it weren't such a nice gesture."
"But…but you're both…grown-ups," Loren looked confused.
The Tickes siblings were silent for a moment, looked at each other and shrugged.
"Nope, I don't think anybody's let Granddad know about that, either."
"And Uncle Gard still sends owls to make sure I'm eating proper meals and brushing my teeth."
"Good lord, you, too?"
"Yep. Those can be a little embarrassing, especially since he still seems to be under the impression we have no idea of his personal life."
"I sent him one of the charity calendars I posed with the team in last year and all he said was that he approved of the lighting, thought the photographer did a good job, but the fonts were a bit of a mess," Ian remarked. "He really has no idea we know."
"Wait, wait wait," Sam raised an eyebrow. "Charity calendar?"
"I wasn't nude, mind you. In fact, Mr. December wears a complete Father Christmas outfit, just without the beard," Ian explained righteously, despite blushing pretty darned red under Sam's frankly lascivious gaze. "…And the coat was unbuttoned and the trousers were a bit unusually low-cut compared to the usual North Pole fashions, that's all. It raised quite a lot of Galleons for St. Mungo's," the athlete defended himself weakly.
"Mum had a calendar like that," Loren remarked. "The Holyhead Harpies' Quidditch team was in it. I asked her if I might have the one with England National in it and then she gave me the 'whatever sexual or'entation you grow up to be, you are very loved and we always a'cept you' speech and I still didn't get the calendar."
"Well, that's a …pin-up calendar," Ian explained, still looking a bit like Mr. Tomato Head. "Straight witches and wizards who happen to prefer wizards are generally the target audience for that one, not…well, not younger fans. There's a more normal calendar with the team's stats in it, that's popular."
"The store was sold out," Loren explained sadly. "It's hard to get England National things."
"Really?" Ian looked puzzled by this. "Well, I would suppose it'd be more popular, what with winning last year and all…"
"Chudley Cannons merchandise is always plentiful and affordable as can be," I agreed.
"Yeah, but they almost never win," Loren pointed out.
"This is true," I agreed. "Games are a lot of fun, though. The Cannons really are all about the fans."
"Tell me about it," Ian agreed. "Exhibition match with them once, just to rebuild the stadium near Catchpole, you've never seen such a cheerful lot. Stayed after the match for four solid hours, signing anything a fan held near them. I've always admired that and tried to do likewise, even if management hates it."
"Are you a big Chudley Cannons fan?" Loren asked Ian.
"After meeting them, definitely. They're not the best team in their league, but they have good hearts and they try harder," the big athlete agreed. "You said you like England National?"
"Of course!" Loren perked up. "I saw them play in person once, it was so awesome! The Chasers scored like five goals in the first half-hour, just back-and-forth against the team from Zimbabwe, first us ahead, then them, it was a bloodbath! And the Snitch was one of those really quick new models and the Seeker did two Crazy Ivans, almost knocked the Zebras' Beater right off his broom, then threw a Wronski Feint that came within three actual feet of the turf, pulled up out of it and practically caught the snitch in his cloak, then did a barrel roll to stay within reach of it there so the Chaser could score just one…last…goal before he just picked it up in his glove! And we won! It was so awesome! Ian Tickes is my favorite player!"
"Um…thanks," Ian was blushing hard and had suddenly become extremely interested in his toast.
It was then that Loren seemed to realize something.
"Aunt Jessie…your last name is Tickes, isn't it?"
"Yep," Jessie nodded.
"And you're not married to Charlie yet."
"Nope." The 'yet' made Ian look up from his toast and from Jessie to me and back with a distinctly shocked expression.
"So…that's the same name your big brother has…holy shit!" Loren went absolutely scarlet, blushing and staring down at his piece of toast. "You're…you're Ian Tickes."
"Yee-ep," Ian nodded.
"And you handed me toast!" Loren was overcome by this revelation. "I'm eating toast with Ian Tickes!"
"You know what else?" Sam asked, grinning and clearly enjoying Ian's blushing sheepishness more than I think was fair even on a wicked-girlfriend level, "You and Ian Tickes like your toast the exact same way. Isn't that just the coolest thing?" She looked Ian dead in the eyes and they exchanged a strange look, but she was laughing as she smiled. "You even both like the same lattes."
"I do," Loren basked in the improbably awesome awesomeness of eating the exact same breakfast as and with a Quidditch star for a moment, then seemed to realize something horrible. "This…this isn't fair."
"What do you mean?" half the adults at the table asked, somehow in unison.
"I knew I might lose Mum because she's been sick for a long time," the little guy explained, tearing up as he talked. "But I didn't know they were going to hurt my Mama. They killed her. She's dead now and…she liked Quidditch, too. She was so happy when Uncle sent tickets to the game. It was the last time we went out with Mum before her remission stopped and she got sick again." He did that staring-straight-forward-without-blinking trick little kids try to do when they're trying incredibly hard not to cry. "It's just so unfair. Why did they kill Mama instead 'a me? Why do I get to meet Ian Tickes and eat toast? Mama's never going to eat toast again."
And then, with a strength that would've broken my heart had it come from a grown adult and was simply overpowering in a seven-year-old, Loren got up from the table and said "Would you please excuse me?" then sprinted back up the stairs.
"Loren?" Jessie cried, spinning her chair as she stood up and went to follow him.
"No, let me," Ian gasped, but one look at him proved he was in no shape. The man had tears streaming down his face, he was chalk-white and looked like he was about to faint.
"I've got this," Sam explained before blinking out of existence with a sharp 'prrrt' from the swivel chair as she Apparated. A moment later, she reappeared, holding a sobbing boy who was too weak from grief even to resist the tall woman hugging him. "Hey, hey…" she consoled, patting his back like Jessie had the night before, "what's the big idea, running off? You haven't finished your breakfast yet."
"N-n-not hungry…"
"Is this a crying thing? You don't want us to see you crying?" She looked Loren straight in the face, he shook his head, she raised that sarcastic eyebrow again and he nodded, sobbing into her shoulder even as she took a seat and rolled it closer to Ian's chair so the big athlete could pat the little guy. "Kiddo, I can honestly tell you right now, nobody at this table thinks anything of it. We'd be crying our damn selves if what happened to you had happened to us. Hell, it's really hard not to cry, too, just because we feel bad that you feel so bad."
"I-I-I'm not gon' …not gon' cry front of-"
"Kid, Ian's crying, too, just you look at him. He lost his mom when he was exactly your age, did you know that? And pretty much the same damn way. You think it makes somebody weak to cry? Shit, no." Loren looked up from her shoulder and saw that Ian was, indeed, crying, and just as the shock of that registered, Sam patted his shoulder again. "Ya see? Big, tough Quidditch player knows exactly how you feel, and he cries just the same as you. Nothing in the world wrong with that.
"Now, your Aunt Jessie, she was so little when the Death Eaters killed her Mom, she doesn't even remember her, so it's a little easier for her to manage the whole not-crying thing, though if you look at her closely, see how she bites her lip and has her nails poking into her hand? That's how hard she's trying not to, even though she stopped now that I pointed it out and is trying to glare at me. We glare at each other a lot, we're still friends. And the only reason why Charlie and I aren't crying is because our moms are alive and well, and we know that we need to be strong for the people who've lost their mom. Right now, you do not need to be the strong one. You have been strong enough.
"I know grown-ass adults who couldn't hold it together the way you have. You are tough as bears and fierce as dragons, being as strong as you have so far, but right here, in this house, there is nobody to be strong for. We're here to be strong for you. So if you need to cry like Ian does, cuss like Aunt Jessie and I do, maybe go pound the hell out of that tap writer thing like Charlie does until you feel better, you do whatever you need to do. You're going to feel like this for a long, long time and even when you're a grownup man like Ian, finding out that somebody else feels as sad as you do right now is going to make you sad, too. And that's just how sad works."
"I…I don't want Ian to be sad," Loren sniffled. "None of you should be sad!"
"You think we want you to be sad? Shit, no. Nobody wants anybody to be sad, because when other people are sad, we kind of feel it, too. That's called empathy. And that is a badass thing for you to have, being the age you are. Some grownups never have empathy, and because they can't put themselves in other people's shoes, think about how sad what they're doing would make them feel, that's why they do bad things. Only damn reason in the world. You think the guys who killed your Mama had any empathy? Shit, no. That's what made them bad people, and the fact that you don't just feel bad because she's gone, but because you know how other people feel, that makes you good. That makes you strong. And good, strong people, we share our strength. See? You can be strong like this," Sam made a tough-looking fist, "or you can be strong like this," and she hugged the little guy again. "Strong plus strong makes…?"
"Two strong?"
"Yeah, let's go with that. So we've got you, Ian, your Aunt Jessie, Charlie's here, me…okay, that last one's not exactly much to go on, but that's still, what, five people strong?"
"Uh-huh."
"And then we've got Jessie and Ian's granddad, their uncle, their dad and their stepmother, two baby brothers who are going to think you're the coolest person to ever exist, see-if-they-don't, we've got my family, that's two sisters, mom and dad, there's Charlie's family, which is simply enormous and everyone's redheaded-"
"Everyone?"
"Everyone. And that's only just relatives, we haven't even gotten to all the friends yet. So you've already got what, twenty, thirty people who love you and care about you? That's a hell of a lot, Kiddo."
"And they're helping me be strong?"
"Each and every one of them. You ever go to a funeral?"
"No."
"Not even a little one, like for a pet?"
"My pet rat died and we buried him."
"Okay, we can work with that," Sam picked Loren up and set him on the other side of her lap, then put an arm around Ian, too. It looked for a second like she was drawing Ian in; kind of declaring their couple-ness, but then I saw her hand on Ian's shoulder and realized she was drawing strength from physical contact with a loved one the way I sometimes did with Jessie. This was harder for her than she'd ever show.
And then I saw Ian's hand on her lap, how it was shaking, and I realized that Jessie's brother was taking Loren's situation, so similar to his own long ago, pretty hard. Sam was holding these two men, one tiny and raw with hurt, one strong and well-established, but with emotional wounds still not completely healed, and somehow, it looked completely right. Jessie and I weren't superfluous to the situation, just being there and backing Sam up when she showed little Loren he wasn't alone had helped, but there was something that little boy needed that Sam Redfern, for all her bluster and cynical façade, was actually surprisingly good at giving. Before that day, I wouldn't have considered her the sort of woman who might be good with kids any more than a wicked-stepmother out of a fairy tale, but at that moment…it was like she could read and address this little kid's emotional needs perfectly, even if adult emotions and frequently her own weren't always so clear or manageable.
How strange, too, that she knew Ian's past so well and could react to his reactions so perfectly. The two of them had been dating for days, compared to Jessie's and my few months, and yet, for all her world-weary snark and guarded, cynical attitude, in a crisis Sam Redfern was a pillar of strength.
"So sometime in the next few days, there's going to be a funeral for your Mum and your Mama. Your Aunt Jessie and I are going to arrange things so it's one big one for the two of them, together. Do you think that's something that they would like?"
"Yeah," Loren agreed, nodding and smiling a little.
"Good! We want the funeral to be really nice, because funerals are a kind of goodbye party. Now, when my grandma died, all the friends and relatives who'd known her, some of whom knew us, some of whom didn't, they all came to the funeral home and told us how sorry they were for our loss. That was the first room in the funeral home. Everyone was crying and sad there, and people hugged one another, and the funeral-home dudes brought in an ass-load of Kleenex because people needed it, and that part was really hard.
"Then, in the second room, we had a big box called a casket with Grandma's body inside. It wasn't really Grandma anymore, because the part that made her Grandma was already out of there, but it looked like she had looked when she was alive, except more like she was sleeping. Was it like that when your pet rat died?"
"Yeah, except he couldn't close his eyes. Mama had to do that."
"I know. The funeral home guys, though, they know all about dead people and they make sure that when people die, their bodies look really nice. Eyes closed, hands folded, all nice and peaceful. Only some people, sometimes they don't want to look at bodies, or sometimes the bodies don't look right because of how the person died and so we have what's called a closed casket. That means the funeral home guys close up the special box and instead of saying goodbye to the dead person's body, we have a whole bunch of pictures of the person when they were alive and happy. We did that at Grandma's funeral even though the casket was open, because, see, some of Grandma's friends had known her long before she was old and stuff, and we wanted them to remember her whole life. So we had a ton of pictures."
"Was she happy in the pictures?"
"Oh, you bet! We had pictures of her as a little girl, pictures of her when she was my age, my mom's age, all the way up to the day she died, racing that stupid motorcycle she was so damn proud of." Loren gave Sam a look and she shrugged. "Grandma raced flat-track. Broke her own record in an old-timers' race, crossed the finish line, parked, saw her time on the jumbo-tron and dropped dead of a heart attack with a big smile on her face. It was very sad, but we were happy she'd gotten to race one last time and was so very happy when she went, with all her friends and all her fans with her."
"What's flat-track?"
"It's a kind of motorcycle racing."
"For grandmas?"
"…No, not typically. My grandma was…special. In many ways." Sam snuggled the little boy again and this time Ian put an arm around her and patted Loren's back, too. "And that was the cool thing about the third room of the funeral home. See, in the first room people were sad. In the second room, they were looking at the pictures of Grandma and saying goodbye to her.
"In the third room, though, they were laughing and having a wonderful time, because when they saw the pictures in the second room, it reminded them of Grandma and all the cool things she did, and once they got to the third room, they were telling each other stories about her and that made them laugh so much! Sometimes a story would make someone a little sad, so they'd step back to the second or the first room, but in the third room, we were all eating and drinking –a lot of drinking, actually, and having this great big party celebrating what a wonderful person Grandma was and how much we loved her. How much we'd always love her."
"Is that what we're going to do with Mum and Mama?"
"Does that sound like a thing that you'd like to do?"
"Very much. I think I like the sound of the third room best."
"The third room is where grieving gets easier. I heard stories about my Grandma in the third room that nobody'd ever told me before. Some of her friends had known her so long, they remembered Grandma when she was a little girl. I'd only ever gotten to know her as an older lady and later a really old lady. But in the third room, in their stories, I got to meet my Grandma as a little girl, a teenager, a young adult…I even got to hear about some things Grandma had made people pinky-swear to only tell anyone about after she was dead. Grandma was fun, y'see?"
"Did it help you not feel sad anymore?"
"That's the thing, Loren," Sam sighed. "I'm never going to stop being sad that my grandma's gone. Sometimes I'll be walking down the street and I'll see something that would've made her laugh, or something she hated and used to cuss about, or something I'd like to give her for Christmas if she still were here, and I feel sad. But then I remember the stories, and what she was like, and I feel better remembering her. Now, the things that used to make me really, really sad only make me a little sad, and only for a second before the happy memories kind of jump in and help."
"Is that going to happen to me?"
"I think it will. It's going to take a long, long time, and you may be a grownup before it stops being really, really sad. Or it might take less time, and you might go weeks and weeks without feeling sad when suddenly something reminds you of your Mum and your Mama, and then you'll feel sad again for a little while. Grieving is a process, like how your Aunt Jessie builds a watch. Just 'cause the watch gets built doesn't mean you don't have to bring it in for maintenance sometimes, and just 'cause grieving gets easier doesn't mean you won't have sad days every now and again forever. But you know what?"
"What?"
"The sad times are okay. It's normal to feel that way, and to miss someone who's gone." Sam kind of played with Loren's hair a little bit, smoothing down the tufts and arranging it so it looked more grown-up. Amusingly, she was doing it to Ian at the same time with her other hand. "Thing is, Ian and me, and your Aunt Jessie and Charlie, we didn't know your Mama and Mum that well. So we're still in the first room, here."
"But you're still sad that I'm sad."
"Exactly. And we're also sad because we missed the stories and pictures and happy memories with your Mum and your Mama. From what I hear, they were awesome, and we never got the chance to be friends with them. But we're also really lucky, because we get to be friends with you and to hear all about your Mum and your Mama and what they were like, and when you talk about them, they come alive for us. They live forever, in a way, because they're alive in you."
"So…it's okay to talk about them even though they're not here?"
"Kiddo, I'm looking forward to it. Any time you want to talk about your folks, do it! If your Aunt Jessie's busy with work or has customers and can't talk right then, or if Charlie's writing a book and can't focus on two things at once –'cause he gets like that, lots of grownups do, then you can look for Ian or come over to my shop and talk to me, though you have to tell your Aunt where you're going first. I can supervise kinda well and we can just do shop stuff while we talk. There is always, always someone to talk to here, and even if we're all busy, I'll find you someone, okay? Deal?"
"Deal!" Loren agreed. "I like you, ma'am."
"Name's Samantha, kiddo, friends call me Sam."
"What do you do, besides running a shop? Aunt Jessie makes watches and clocks."
"Well, some of the time, I write like Charlie does. Except I write the kind of books kids can't read. Just for grownups."
"…So the kind with big words in them?"
"Enormous. Sesquipedalian loquaciousness on every page, vocabulary right out the yin-yang, even some math problems and boring shit stuffed in there. You'd hate 'em." I had known for a while that Samantha Redfern had been published under a nom de plume, though vocabulary was not the reason she would discourage a younger readership. "And some of the time I design things and make them. Not watches like Jessie, though. Other stuff."
"Like what?"
"Oh, furniture, stuff to wear, stuff people give one another as presents." Again, this was what passed for tact and discretion among the Redferns. "It's kind of like Charlie's brothers, they run Weasley's Wizard Wheezes across the street."
"Really?" Loren perked up again. "Is everybody famous here?"
"A few of them," Sam conceded. "But the thing about famous people, cool people…they never act like anybody else's being famous is a big deal. You kinda have to act like 'Oh, hello, you must be Fred and George Weasley, love your work, nice to meet you at last,' and then carry on with whatever business or pleasure has on the schedule like nothing unusual's going on. That's also going to help you with all the people who'll have heard about your Mama's death on the news and want to make a big fuss over you."
"They will?"
"'Fraid so, kid. And the best way to make reporters and busybodies fuck right off –I mean, make them leave you alone, is to be so cool about it they have nothing to write or gossip about. Think you can be cool like that?"
"Cool like…no crying, stay really tough?"
"Eh, cool isn't about hiding feelings, it's about expressing them appropriately and really well. So let's say I'm a skanky-ass reporter, hoping to get a quote from you. I'm going to get all up in your face and ask you all kinds of personal questions to try and get something I can write down and tell my readers about, because that's how a trick-ass ho-"
"Sam!" Jessie raised an eyebrow.
"Pardon me, that's how the vulgar members of the tabloid press," Sam made a conceding gesture and Jessie nodded approvingly, "–make a living, instead of actual work and such. So instead of telling them a lot and giving them whole lots to write about, you want to give them something short, understandable and which sums up everything. Just wraps up their whole story in one or two sentences so they have to really work to fill up the column inches."
"Like… 'I'm really sad and I miss my Mama, but I live with my Aunt Jessie now and it's going to be okay?'" Loren asked.
"That's perfect! You can also use etiquette as your sword and shield. Good manners let you do anything you want socially."
There was a sudden laugh from my fiancée.
"Something tells me this is going to be worth watching you explain," Jessie chortled. "You, a student of etiquette?"
"Ignore your Auntie, Loren, she sometimes confuses momentarily crude language with a lack of good taste. And it's not like she doesn't use colorful terms sometimes."
"Clockmakers are allowed to cuss, you know," Loren informed her.
"Yes, but she's abused the privilege on some occasions I might mention," Sam grinned. "Anyway, if you want someone to do something without realizing you told them to, what you do is thank them for doing that thing. Like, let's say you want a reporter to go away and leave you alone, what would you say?"
"Um... 'thank you for going away and leaving me alone'?"
"It needs to be a little fancier than that, so that it sounds so good, they decide to act like it was their idea. How about 'I appreciate the press and public respecting my privacy at this difficult time'? Makes sense, sounds really polite and makes it sound like they've already started doing it, so they basically have to or else they'll be the ones who look rude."
"I think I get it," Loren grinned. "How do you know all of this?"
"My mother's famous," Sam shrugged. "Persuading reporters to leave me alone kind of goes with the territory. Except when you actually want them to notice you or your business and make a big damn fuss, but that's called public relations and it wouldn't be right to subject a young man of your taste and good breeding to that sort of thing. After all, we must have some standards."
"Breakfast'll be getting cold soon," Ian reminded everyone.
"Should be all right, I cast a warming charm," I explained. "Don't think any of us felt like eating, then."
"I sure didn't, but all of a sudden, I could murder some more bacon, couldn't you, Loren?"
"I think I'd like to try the sausage next."
"Let's just get you back on your chair, then –did you know these officy-type swivel chairs can go up and down?" Samantha adjusted Loren's chair so he could see a bit better and reach his food a bit easier. "Always liked how Jess keeps ergonomically ideal chairs in her dining room."
"It was that or having chairs and a table that can't be used as a workstation," Jessie explained. "And what's the point of that?"
"We used to play musical chairs with them," Ian recalled. "And it turns out you really shouldn't use chairs with wheels for that, it's possible to run into the one on the end and it works like one of those little desk toys with the dangling silver balls, bounces the kid on the other end of the line of chairs right out."
"Is that how you cut your finger and got that scar?" Sam asked him, though from the way she looked, I got the impression she'd just found any convenient excuse to hold his hand –and considering his hand did remain in hers under the table, I think I may have been right.
"No, that one's from when we tried to race these chairs in the back alley. Poor furniture. It really has seen a lot."
"Hey, I got them reupholstered, didn't I?" Jessie asked. "Built right the first time and correctly maintained thereafter, chairs will hold up to kids and stuff pretty well."
Breakfast was mostly peaceful and usual after that. Loren told us a story about the time he got up all by himself and tried to make toast for Mother's Day, but accidentally set the toaster on fire. His late mothers did sound like wonderful dears, understanding and patient, but with a few real and human flaws he wasn't ashamed to mention. In the weeks and months, even the years that followed, they slowly came to life for us in the little boy's memories, just as Samantha'd said.
And as I listened to the little fellow, who was laughing as he told us exactly how his Mama had dealt with obstreperous garden gnomes, I noticed Ian actually had quite a similar smile. The resemblance wasn't one of those uncanny ones you hear about in novels where people can be mistaken for each other, but I found myself playing that mental game of genealogist that one sometimes turns to when people look like other people. You know…a picture of a prisoner in Azkaban looks a bit like your great-aunt, you look it up and it turns out you're fifth cousins twice-removed? It happens fairly often in our society, though given the Tickeses had a Muggle-born mother…well, but so had Loren. Perhaps they were distant cousins somewhere on the Muggle side.
Loren then asked Ian a fairly complicated Quidditch question, and since I knew the answer (having been a Seeker myself,) I wound up watching my old sporting rival explaining it. Ian and Jessie both tend to talk with their hands a lot, doubly so when you get them going on a topic related to one of their professions. Ian's eyes seemed to light up as Loren pressed him for more detail, gesturing identically as he asked about a slightly different scenario, and soon the two were chattering animatedly about the precise way one accomplished a Crazy Ivan on a Firebolt-class racing broom.
Animatedly… and identically.
I glanced at Jessie and noticed her noticing it, too. She suddenly gripped my hand and looked at them, then back to me.
We'd just solved a mystery on the train with far less obvious detail than this. They both liked grape jelly on white toast and ridiculous coffees with chocolate and milk in them. They both talked with their hands. Loren's glasses had a bit of a tint to them, but the eyes behind them were the same color as Ian's and Jessie's.
"Yes, incidentally," Sam remarked, noticing us noticing as she got up to get more coffee. "It's exactly the situation you think it is."