III

BELLS AND THE BELLY

Mr and Mrs Bell, of 2 Langdale Lane in a place not far from Holyhead in Anglesey, North Wales, would like very much to hear that they were perfectly normal—'thank you very much, Merlin bless you all, and welcome to our hall!'

They had the gall—as some wizards would like to drawl—to live amongst muggles—'[…] same blood, same mud, after all […] Signed, G. G. Goyle IV', a dear reader once commented anonymously. They would fit just right in too, if it were not for Mr Bell taking a special effort of saying there were no struggles maintaining a property that size with no troubles—on a writer's salary, mind you! That was, indeed, a little hard to chew.

So the neighbours were a little suspicious of the family—and that were not even that many of them (of neighbours, I mean). The Bells were the last owners down that lane (and there was only one other!) before the sea—the Bells on the lane end. When it came to name their house in the Ministry, the choice seemed obvious—and so, yes my dear friend, the house of the Bells on that lane end was called … The Belly.

Rather original, was it not? The name had won a spot in Grandpa Bell's heart when it was Katie's father—when he was no older than six!—who suggested it—when the house was barely a pile of bricks.

Aunt Bell—no, the other one—suggested other body part, but—o, goodness!—that wasn't at all very smart.

So the Bells of the Belly lived a jolly joyful life, and nothing seemed to disturb them much. It was a few years after the war, of course—a great source of anguish, grief and sorrow; one that ended, with great relief, on that tragic night in Godric's Hollow.

The Bells suffered much, even though that war was brief.

Little Katie would never know Uncle Ferdinand from Rossendale, or Aunt Abigail from Fenland, or Aunt Dee from Dundee, or Cousin Dean from Aberdeen, or Aunt Claire in Merlin knows where—all of them were dead, perished in the fight, but never more cherished by the remaining Bells. They died for what was right!

They had, for five years or so, a life of peace; but then Aunt Jo took her dear youngest niece to Holyhead—they had a Quidditch match to catch, yahoo!—and boy, what that had lead to!

The Holyhead Harpies were a bunch of girls! But these ones didn't just clutch their pearls. They were lean, mean, all clad in green and moving about in speeds never before seen—on that new broom, the one that made a boom when you took off—the new Cleansweeps were nothing for you to scoff!

And so there was little surprise when Aunt Jo teamed up with her parents to give her a prize in that fateful Christmas. A unique, sleak—and also not very cheap—Cleansweep.

Katie loved it, and could be seen every now and then on the skies above the fields and the sea, screaming like a banshee, looping around a tall tree and then far away—much to her parents dismay.

But also to their great joy—their daughter finally had found a toy to keep her playing for hours on end. You see: Katie had not yet made a good friend among those Muggle laddies. She went to their school, to know her letters and that numbers stuff, something of a rule among the Bells—after all, you should not live life entirely dependent on spells (even those for education, much to the frustration of dear Katie bach). That rule served them well when there wasn't a single half-blood Bell, and there were many of their children with no magic—how tragic!

Gradually it inverted: there was not anymore a single pureblood Bell—and that was something they were quite proud to tell. Many other old families of unmingled and pure stock had simply vanished and were not here anymore to walk the talk and to mock them.

And so little Katie Bell grew, flying through their property like a missile, like a bird, giving off a whistle, her golden hair whipping behind her as she took to the air, as she spurred further her broom, brightly clad in a green costume—the Harpies's of course, never Slytherin's kit! She and seven generations of Bells might just throw a fit, if that old and barmy hat had the gall to put the brat in that slimy snake's hall!

It was no surprise at all to hear from Katie on the second day of school:

"Tad, Mam, I'm with the Gryffindor crew!"

And all was well and good and boring for a while—until the trial, that is.

But it really was not, wasn't it? We just had never known wonderful Miss Bell quite well. And she, erm … She—

Well that's the thing …

You see—err … Katie Bell just couldn't help but to arrive with flair.

Notes:

Anglesey: an island in the Irish Sea, off the coast of Wales, accessible by road. Its largest town is Holyhead.

"dear Katie bach": bach—small, little, short

"Tad, Mam": father, mother

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