At the Burrow

Chapter 8: At The Burrow

Molly's dose of Pepper-Up Potion began to wear off somewhere between London Waterloo Station and the town of Feniton. The farther I traveled, the more congested and miserable I became, and I wondered what had possessed me to undertake this trip today instead of waiting for tomorrow. I already knew the answer, but was loath to admit it: I didn't want to spend another miserable night at the flat, thinking and wondering about Remus. No, a change of scene was for the best, even though I was exhausted by the time the train reached my stop. I paused long enough in the Feniton station to find the drinking fountain and take a regular Muggle cold capsule, then flagged down the first taxi I saw.

"Where to?" the cabbie asked.

"The village of Ottery St. Catchpole, please."

"Right," he said, taking a final puff on his cigarette and tossing it out the taxi window. "Whereabouts once we reach the village?"

I pulled out the paper Molly Weasley had given me and tried to focus. "According to this, you go through the town and cross the river on the hatchery road, look for the two-track road--there's a barn there--"

"Why don't you tell me all that again once we get there, eh?" the taxi driver interrupted, sounding a bit annoyed that I didn't have a street address to give him.

You asked, I thought dully.

Despite my best efforts, I drifted off after a few minutes. I awoke to the sound of the driver's voice announcing that we had arrived in Ottery St. Catchpole and asking what were the bloody directions again? I re-read what Molly had written. The man didn't look any happier about it than he had back at the Feniton station.

I straightened up and looked out the window. Ottery St. Catchpole was completely charming from what I could see of it, and I hoped I would be able to spend time there. We crossed the Otter River on one of those lovely arched stone bridges, and then were back out into the countryside. A mile or two down the road, the driver pulled the taxi off onto the shoulder.

"This it?" he demanded.

I peered around. There was a narrow, unpaved lane leading off to the right, and a deserted barn stood to our left. There were no signs anywhere, no other vehicles, and no indication of life.

"I don't know," I said blankly. "I thought my friend would be here to meet me."

"Huh." The driver pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit another, at least the third I knew of since climbing into his taxi. "Your friend's not here, you say?"

"No."

He glanced over his shoulder, studying me appraisingly. "How 'bout you and I head back into the town for a bit? Nice pub there. I could buy you a pint. Hate to see a pretty thing like you waitin' out in the middle of nowhere."

I moaned inwardly. Given a choice between the open road and the taxi driver, I'd take my chances with the wildlife of Devon. I was about to issue the standard curt refusal when an enormous, albeit timely, sneeze came over me. There was nothing else to do but grab a tissue and blow. By the time I was finished, the man was scowling, obviously regretting his offer. I stuffed the tissue into my pocket and hoisted my backpack onto one shoulder, thinking that sometimes viruses came in mighty handy.

"Afraid not," I said politely. "How much do I owe you?"

The man peered at the meter and grunted out the price of the ride. I held out the bills in his direction, and he took them delicately as though I'd infested them with the Black Plague. I climbed out of the car. He shot me one more look of disgust, then gunned the engine and sped off. I couldn't help but grin. This was the first time since last evening's unpleasant revelations that I'd cracked a smile, and it felt good. I began to wonder if I might live.

I also began to wonder if I was in the right spot.

I paced along the side of the road for a few minutes, looking hopefully for any sign that I was near the Weasley home. Five minutes passed, then ten minutes, then a redheaded figure finally appeared over the rise of the two-track road. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Kailin!" Molly looked distressed as she bustled up. "I'm so sorry that I wasn't here when you arrived. Have you been waiting long?"

"About ten minutes," I said, eyeing the apron Molly wore. It bore a number of food stains, apparently fresh, and I wondered if there'd been a melee in her kitchen.

"Did you have a pleasant trip? Any difficulties?"

"Other than the cab driver trying to take me to the pub, no."

"Cheeky bugger," she muttered, reaching for my backpack. "Well, you look completely done in. I'm going to put you to bed straightaway."

"I can carry that," I protested. "It's pretty heavy, but I'm used to it."

"It's not a problem," Molly said firmly, whipping her wand out of the apron pocket. The next thing I knew, my backpack was levitating in front of her. I stared, stunned.

"You see? I told you it wasn't a problem."

We started walking down the two-track road, the backpack bobbing in front of Molly's outstretched wand.

"Is it very far?" I asked hopefully.

"Not at all," Molly assured me.

Still, there's something about walking down a road without benefit of landmarks and cross-streets that makes the distance seem twice as far as it truly is. I was ready to sit down and whine by the time the Burrow came into view.

"There we are," she said cheerfully.

I stared at the bizarre building in front of me. "That's your house?" I asked as politely as I could.

"Yes. I know it may look a bit odd, but we've added on at various times over the years -- whenever the children arrived, you see."

The house truly looked as though a stiff breeze would dismantle it with little effort. I had no time to dwell on this, however. Molly hurried me through the kitchen and up two flights of stairs to a small bedroom and announced that this room would be mine.

"Here you go," she announced, crossing to the window and throwing it wide open. "You'll be quite comfortable in here, I think."

"I'm not putting anybody out, am I?"

"Not at all. This is Percy's room."

"Percy?" I wracked my brain to recall if I'd met Percy at Grimmauld Place.

"Our third son," she said, and I couldn't help but notice that the light had gone from her eyes. "He works for the Ministry and has a place of his own in London."

"Oh."

"Let's see... I pointed out the bath on the way up, so you should be all set. Will you be coming down for supper, do you think?"

"I don't know. Right now, I can't think past getting into bed."

"I understand. I'll check in on you later." Molly started for the door, then turned around. "Oh, and I'll try to keep the racket down so you can get some rest."

I nodded gratefully. She had already told me that I could expect to see the four Weasley children from Grimmauld Place, as well as their friends Harry Potter and Hermione Granger. Molly Weasley was apparently one of those women who invited chaos and then thrived in it. When she closed the door behind her, I dropped my bag to the floor and walked to the window to inspect the view. I could see the broad sweep of the back yard--more a field, actually--and a garden and pond beyond.

I went to the bed and perched on the side, trying out the mattress. Thankfully, it didn't seem too hard or too soft, not that I particularly cared at the moment. I was bone-weary both physically and emotionally, and could probably have slept standing if I had to. The small room, cramped though it might be, was a homey and cheerful respite from the memories of Remus which assaulted me from everywhere in my flat. Yes, this was a good idea, getting away from it all. I turned down the bedcovers, changed into an old, soft tee-shirt, and crawled in.

The warm air wafting in the window, along with the droning of a bee in the honeysuckle outside my window, lulled me into blackness, and I slept. I was awakened sometime later by a gentle tapping on the door. I opened my eyes blearily to find Molly coming through the door with a tray.

"I brought you some broth and tea and a dose of Pepper-Up Potion," she said in a hushed voice. "And I've told everyone that you're ill and need rest and quiet."

I wanted to protest that it was only a cold, that she needn't marshal the household into enforced silence on my account, but I was still drowsy. Besides, I suspected that Molly wielded untold power in her home, and its inhabitants were probably used to toeing the line. And so I gratefully accepted the potion, sipped the contents of the tray and then, amazed that I could possibly still be sleepy, dove under the comforter and back into the darkness.

* * * *

By the next morning, I began to believe that I would live. I didn't know what was in the Pepper-Up Potion, but whatever it was, it definitely had something going for it. For the most part, I could breathe and go without a tissue for five minutes at a stretch. All in all, it was a major improvement.

I found some bath linens on the chair just inside the door and decided that a hot shower would revive me further. I had just concluded that wizarding bathrooms were no different from Muggle bathrooms when the lavatory mirror told me that my nose was too red and I should really take more Pepper-Up Potion. By this time, there wasn't much that could surprise me anymore. I managed to not squeal in shock and merely stuck my tongue out at my image. I dressed quickly and went downstairs.

It was clear where the Burrow had gotten its name. The house additions Molly mentioned were evidently made in a rather pell-mell fashion, and the end result reminded me somewhat of a patchwork quilt. With a quilt, however, there's usually a pattern - and there was virtually no rhyme or reason to this floor plan. It would be enough to drive an architect to drink, not to mention the poor soul in charge of issuing building permits. Whether the wizarding world bothered with such things, I didn't know. The house in Grimmauld Place, despite the obvious neglect and disrepair, was to all appearances normal in most respects. This must be Weasley eccentricity at its finest.

When I reached the kitchen, I found a sea of red hair sitting around the table.

"Good morning!" Molly beamed at me. "How are you feeling?"

"Much better," I said truthfully. "I can't believe I slept so much."

"You needed it. How's the nose?"

"Your bathroom mirror told me it was too red."

"Silly thing. I should have warned you."

"That's not so bad," the girl I recognized as Ginny Weasley volunteered. "You haven't lived until it laughs at you when you're trying out a new hairstyle."

"Sit, Kailin," Molly urged. "Let me get you some breakfast. What do you prefer? Eggs? Sausages? Porridge?"

I requested scrambled eggs and toast, then gratefully accepted the coffee Molly passed to me. The conversation moved on to the upcoming school year at Hogwarts, prompting the twins Fred and George to boast that their days of higher education were behind them, now that they were entrepreneurs. There was much speculation about who would be the new teacher for Defense Against the Dark Arts. Nobody, Ron Weasley told me, had been as good at the job as Remus; at the mention of his name, I felt a pang of anxiety, reminding me why I was here in the first place. Hermione Granger, I noticed, looked suddenly guilty. I made a mental note to reassure her that I didn't blame her for the fiasco at Grimmauld Place.

After breakfast, the twins announced that they needed to Apparate to their shop. Everyone else wandered off to whatever activities they'd planned for a summer's day, leaving me alone with Molly.

"Is it always like this?" I asked when dead silence had descended upon the house.

"Lord love you, dear, you're not used to being around a lot of children, are you?" Molly chuckled.

"Well, no."

"I'm used to it. I tell you, Kailin, during the school year, the quiet is nearly unbearable."

"They're all very well-behaved, aren't they?" I commented.

"Usually," she said with a wry smile. "But they're good kids, every one of them."

"Molly... How long have you known Remus?"

"Oh." She considered the question briefly. "Not that long, actually. Only about a year now, ever since Dumbledore reactivated the Order of the Phoenix. And of course the children had him at Hogwarts a couple of years ago."

"Have you ever seen him when he's... uh... I mean, when he--" I broke off, unsure what word I was looking for.

"Transforms?" Molly finished gently. I nodded, but she was already shaking her head. "No. He never lets anyone see. He locks himself into his room before it happens. Even after he regains human form, he's terribly exhausted and has to sleep it off for a day or so. It's evidently quite painful, even with the Wolfsbane potion to keep him from going mad."

Going mad. I nearly winced aloud. "What Hermione said about all the prejudice: it's true? He can't get a job just because he's a werewolf?"

Molly snorted in disgust as she rose to her feet and went for the coffee pot. "Prejudice is the wizarding world's dirty little secret. I can understand why some wizards might feel superior to Muggles simply because we can do magic. But the nonsense about purity of race is ridiculous. A human being is a human being, whether magic or Muggle. And as for superiority over other magical creatures... Well, a few wizards have lorded it over certain creatures for far too long, and one of these days, it's going to backfire in their faces. Charlie, our second son, works with dragons in Romania, and let me tell you--"

"Dragons!" I choked violently on the coffee I'd just sipped, to the point where Molly had to pound me on the back. "Dragons are real?" I finally managed to gasp.

"Yes."

"In Romania?"

"Oh, not just in Romania. They're quite common in most of Europe," Molly said matter-of-factly.

My response was a massive sneeze. I found the tissues just in time. "Everywhere," I echoed weakly after I'd blown my nose. "Dragons are real. Werewolves are real. Magic is real. Vampires?"

"Real, although all those Muggle movies about them are preposterous for the most part."

"How on earth do you keep all this hidden?"

"It's a full time job, of course. Remember the men in Diagon Alley?"

I nodded. "But wouldn't it be simpler just to let the truth be known?"

"Think about it, Kailin: all throughout history, what's the usual fate of minority groups?"

"Oh." I pondered that while Molly refilled my coffee cup. It was a question of damage control versus perpetual subjugation.

I sat for a moment, thinking that a week ago, I didn't know any of this. "Molly," I said finally, "what would you do if you were in my shoes?"

"Go back to bed for a while," she said briskly.

I laughed. "You know what I mean. About Remus."

"Oh, no you don't," she objected, smiling broadly. "You won't trick me into that."

"But this is all so complex. I have absolutely nothing to use as a frame of reference."

Molly replaced the coffee pot on the stove. "Well, you have a lot of time on your hands. We have all sorts of textbooks lying around from the children's classes, so you can read up on our world. Come to think of it, Hermione would be an excellent resource. Right little bookworm, that one. If you have a question that you can't find the answer to, I'd bet a pile of Galleons that she could not only steer you to the right book, she'd point out the chapter and page and then quote the line itself. And she'd do it from a Muggle perspective, since she was raised Muggle."

Which brought up another issue. Molly's invitation to the Burrow hadn't specified any particular length of stay. "I'm really grateful for your hospitality, but I don't quite know how to put this: how long did you intend for me to stay?"

Molly Weasley just chuckled in response.

"As long as it takes."

* * *

I flopped onto my bed with an armful of books: heavy books that looked as though they'd come off the printing press in another century instead of the last ten years. Hadn't wizards ever heard of paperbacks? After fluffing up the pillows and making sure my box of tissues was close at hand, I chose A History of Magic and settled down to read. A History of Magic was a textbook, so I skimmed through the information rather than read it in depth. Still, what I found confirmed what Remus had told me: another world happily coexisted with the one I knew, and the close brushes and narrow misses with each other had fostered the fables and fairy tales I'd known since childhood.

From there I moved to Distinguished Witches and Wizards of the Twentieth Century and found a few names there that I recognized: Dumbledore, Voldemort, Harry Potter. A quite humorous read was Understanding the Muggle World, apparently the primer for a class in Muggle culture for young wizards. Some things which I took for granted, which included about every modern convenience known to man, were almost always viewed as oddities by the wizarding world. Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them made my flesh crawl. Not only were dragons, leprechauns and unicorns real, there was a host of horrific creatures afoot that I'd never heard of before. I was finally so unnerved that I threw the book aside and went downstairs.

Molly was nowhere to be found, so I took an apple from a bowl in the kitchen and went outside to enjoy the sunshine for a while. I found Hermione Granger sitting on the grass, watching something at the far end of the field. "Mind if I join you?" I asked.

I think she said 'not at all', or something to that effect, but I failed to catch her exact words. There, several hundred feet away, were three small figures flying on...

"They're flying on broomsticks!" I gasped, pointing at Ron, Harry and Ginny darting in mid-air.

Hermione laughed at my expression. "Yes, they're flying on broomsticks."

I fell silent. It seemed like I'd used the word 'incredible' ad nauseum in the past few days and could think of nothing else to say. I could only goggle at the sight.

"I'm not much on flying myself," Hermione was saying.

"Why's that?"

"I just don't care much for heights." She shrugged in indifference.

I could sympathize in that I'm not that fond of heights myself. But still, just to have the ability to fly like that... I glanced at Hermione, who looked as though taking off on a broomstick was an odious chore, and felt suddenly, insanely jealous of these people.

"Kailin, I'm really, really sorry about the other night at Grimmauld Place." Hermione turned to me, her brown eyes full of worry. "I thought that Professor Lupin had already told you about his lycanthropy. I would never have said anything if I'd known."

"Lycan -- what?"

"Lycanthropy. It means he's, you know, a werewolf."

I mentally added the word to my new wizarding vocabulary. "Don't blame yourself, Hermione. He meant to tell me later that night anyway."

"But it would have been much better coming from him."

"It wouldn't have been good coming from anyone. Please don't worry about it." I hugged my knees to my chest, watching the flying teens and thinking of what Hermione and I had talked about the other night before the conversation led to my hysterics. "I was wondering: what do your parents tell their friends about you? Do they just come right out and say that their daughter is going to a school for witches?"

She giggled. "Of course not. People would think they were mad. I believe they just say that I'm attending an exclusive public school in the north, or something. It is a bit hard for them though, once their friends start going on about their own children."

"I can imagine."

The sun felt wonderful. I stretched out my legs and relaxed while Hermione talked about her experiences at Hogwarts, and I found myself wishing that I'd been half as motivated in school as this young woman. She clearly intended to accomplish a great deal in life. If her determination was any indication, downtrodden wizarding creatures could look forward to an early liberation. Remus should have nothing to worry about, I thought with a smile.

Molly appeared in the doorway. "There you are. Lunch is ready. Where are the rest?"

"Down at the end of the garden," Hermione said. "Shall I call them in?"

"Please do. After lunch, your lot can do a bit of de-gnoming."

I climbed to my feet and followed Molly inside, wondering what in the world she was talking about. I found out after we'd all eaten our fill of stew and crusty bread.

"Garden gnomes?" I said, bemused.

Harry Potter flashed me a grin. "Not what you think," he assured me.

Not what I thought, indeed. After fifteen minutes, I was hurling the wrinkled brown creatures over the garden wall with the best of them, having received yet another lesson in How Little I Knew About The Wizarding World. I was startled to learn that the nasty little buggers were commonplace in North America as well as Northern Europe.

"But how?" I demanded. "I've never seen these in my life. No one I know has ever seen these things. How can these they be all over the place?"

Ron Weasley shrugged, having just bested Harry's last toss by a good ten feet. "You have to know how to look for them, I s'pose."

How to look for them. Some things about the wizarding world quiet simply made my head hurt.