The Sisters

Hermione rang the doorbell of the first house.

The young woman whom she had seen waving answered the door. She had a pleasant, open face and her short, black hair sat smoothly, like a cap, on her head. Hermione introduced herself as a census-taker for URBORED: the United Regional Board of Reorganisation, Education Division.

"They're changing the district boundaries again," she explained. "We're taking a head-count of area children, and answering constituents' questions."

A small face appeared at the door between the woman's hip and hand. Polly Waggonner was pleased to introduce herself and her daughter Susanna, her only child. The face looked the visitor up and down. Something at Hermione's feet caused it to split into a wide grin.

"That your dog?" asked Polly brightly.

It was Sirius backing up alongside her left shoe. He had one handle of the satchel in his mouth, and was dragging it along defiantly. When he realized he had an audience, he let go the handle, looked around at them all, and gave a single interrogatory "Yip?"

"Oh," said Hermione, hiding her irritation. "I forgot. This is...um...Piddles." She hoped Sirius would wince at the word. "I had to bring him along as I'm...erm...pet-sitting my neighbor's cat. They don't get along at all."

Susanna tugged at her mother's pants-leg and looked up, as if to say, 'Please, please, mum, can I play with him? Please?'

"Oh, do bring him inside," said Polly. "He looks well-behaved, and we're quite used to animals."

"He's...um...not house trained."

Piddles, true to his name, walked over to a growth of plantain, lifted a leg, and watered it long and expertly.

How'd he do that? Hermione wondered. There can't be room for a bladder in there.

"Looks like he'll be empty for a bit," said Polly smiling. "Please come in, the both of you."

Hermione picked up the satchel, and Sirius/Piddles followed them all into a cool, pleasant sitting room. It had a large arched doorway leading into a dining room. Hermione commented on the different styles of the houses.

"My sisters live in the other two," said Polly. "And we all have very different tastes, as you can see."

"So how did you come to live together like this?" Hermione asked.

"This property was part of my parents' farm. Dad willed it to us. We decided it would be nice to live together...for a while anyway. So we kept this bit of property and sold several parcels off to get money for the construction. My great-aunt Gaga still lives in the farmhouse...down in the valley there." She gestured out a window in the dining room.

The phone rang, and Polly went through the dining room into the kitchen, tossing a "make yourself comfortable," over her shoulder. Hermione followed her as far as the dining room window, noting the table already set for tea, with a small plate of tarts and other treats, and another with tiny sandwiches, and two place settings. She pretended to stare out the window at an angle convenient to observing Susanna, who must be the incipient witchling of this household, and as such, marked for destruction. The list was specific: it was 'chldrn' who were marked for execution, not just 'pple' or even 'adlts', though doubtless the Death Eaters would not stick at wiping out whole families to reach their goal of purifying the Wizarding population.

She turned her attention to the valley outside. On this side she could see that the house was built on a high hill, and the panorama was magnificent and extensive. But that meant the houses too were highly visible from this side. She guessed that the Death Eaters would have to approach stealthily and not perform any major pyrotechnics in their attack...unless they were feeling so confident that they no longer feared repercussions from the Ministry or the Muggle police. She could see a house in the trees down in a hollow and a bit of smoke wafting up from a chimney, even though it was summer. That must be the farmhouse Polly mentioned, where her aunt lived.

A movement in the far corner of the sitting room interrupted her survey. Little Susanna had cornered Piddles neatly and was talking to him. Her head, haloed in fine reddish hair, bobbed about in animation. Hermione wondered parenthetically if Ron's hair had looked like that when he was just a little thing. She could only catch a few words of what Susanna was saying, but Piddles was evidently enjoying the conversation because his tiny tail wagged incessantly, and at one point he stood up on his hind legs and walked about briefly. Susanna clapped chubby hands in glee and nodded her head.

"Good Piddie," Hermione heard her say. "Want goodie?"

She turned and took a long look at Hermione, who had shifted her gaze back out the window, but could still manage a glance at the child out of the corner of her eye. Satisfied that this old lady was engrossed in the lawn outside, the child pointed at the dining room table. Suddenly a tart fell off the serving tray. It inched jerkily across the nappy tablecloth and flew to her hand. She broke off a piece and threw it to her doggie friend. Then, with a giggle, she stuffed the rest into her mouth.

Clever girl, thought Hermione, remembering her own childhood experiments with her powers. Not everyone could actually control their wandless wishes at this age. As a small child, Hermione had taken it for granted that everyone could Summon treats and Silence barking dogs, but by the time she was five, she had figured out that hers was a rather unusual talent. At six, after almost causing heart-failure in a maiden aunt for whom she demonstrated her new trick of walking on the ceiling, she decided that showing off like that was a definite no-no, even though the aunt had a reputation for sneaking sips of whisky from a 'medicine bottle' she carried in her purse. Susanna obviously knew that pilfering sweets was against the rules, but did she yet know that using magic to do it could cause conniptions in the 'normal' folks around her? It would seem so, given her stealth.

Polly entered with the tea tray laughing. "Those contractors. They've always got some excuse or other for not finishing up. They were supposed to come out today and clear up that mess outside and plant grass on the embankment." She pointed at the dump Hermione had hidden behind earlier. "Well, Mrs. Hefflehoffer just called and postponed. Something about her astrologer saying it was not an auspicious time. I'm not saying the occult doesn't have its place, but it sounds like a pretty lame excuse to me."

Polly set a place for Miss Granger and called Susanna to her and they all sat together at the dining room table. Hermione could see the little girl surreptitiously sneaking crumbs to 'Piddie' on the floor. Between bites and sips of tea, she asked what she hoped were convincing questions about the Waggoners' educational preferences, Susanna's aptitudes, and the like. Polly had been a teaching assistant herself, and was up on some of the latest instructional methods.

"And your sisters," Hermione queried, "do they agree with your views on phonics-based reading?"

"Oh, Deanna...Lord love her...hasn't a practical brain-cell in her head. And Mary is so busy with her travel agency, working out of her home...she's divorced, you know...she hardly has time to think about anything not directly related to keeping a roof over their heads."

"But she's getting some support, isn't she...from her husband?"

"Yes, but the split was so messy, she doesn't like to take anything from him...won't let him come round. Visitation rights haven't been established. She says he's a perv...oh I'm sorry...but he's not. Just can't seem to stay faithful. He hurt her pretty bad."

Hermione was a little embarrassed at the young woman's frankness and hastened to deflect the subject. "I thought I heard a baby crying as I was coming up your driveway."

"That'll be the twins. My youngest sister's...Deanna's boys. They're about six months now. They're such a cute pair."

"Twins can be so engaging."

"They're going to be little devils when they grow up. Sometimes when they look at each other, I could swear they're cooking something up together. Their dad's away a lot. He's with the government. A lot of hush-hush, you know. But Deanna's up for it. And she has us to help out..."

"You said your great-aunt lives in one of the farmhouses in the valley. I did see one out the window with smoke coming out of the chimney..."

"Oh, yes, that would be Gaga. She's a little funny in the head. Always has been. She says she can do magic. And sometimes she even had us kids believing her."

That was a possible explanation for the children's magical abilities. If Gaga was a low-level witch, a hag or some such...

Polly brought up a question on the general educational policies of the current government, which Hermione was up on. Like Dumbledore, she felt that keeping current with Muggle news was every bit as important as subscribing to the Daily Prophet. Polly ended the interview pleasantly with "It's time for Susanna-girl's nap, and you've your interviews to complete, Miss Granger, before your driver picks you up."

"Yes," said Hermione, gathering up her things, "next door is your sister..."

"Mary."

"The one who's divorced."

"Yes. She's a little prickly, you know, and..."

"She has just one child?"

"Naomi. She turned ten yesterday."

Polly looked down. Her daughter was pulling at her pants-leg again and now lisped into it, "C'n the doggie stay wif us while the lady goes to Aunt Mary's?"

~*~

Her visit with Mary Parr was short. Mum was sullen and curt, but daughter Naomi was highly entertained by the lady with the dog, as if it was all a show for her benefit...which it was of course, but in deadly earnest. And Hermione got a full dose of a ten-year-old personality in full flight. While the adults talked on either side of a closed screened door, Naomi danced in the background about the tile floor, opened the coat-closet and hung from the hanger bar, then slid up and down the hallway in her socks. This one's a candidate for the Quidditch team, thought Hermione. Her mother ignored the stifled shrieks and thuds, as if she was used to it. Hermione tried and failed to imagine what it would be like to try to run a phone business as complex as a travel agency with such heady distractions all about.

Her friend Harry had started out like this, sunny and trusting and gung-ho, despite his unpleasant upbringing. But after the death of Sirius, who was his godfather, he had spent a lot of time in the black hole of teenage depression. She wondered if Naomi would succumb eventually to the pull of her mother's darker nature. She hoped not. She would receive her invitation to Hogwarts in just a year...if all went well.