SnowBaz One-Shots

The Pitch Manor 2/7

S I M O N 

The next morning everyone wakes up on schedule and I'm hurriedly trying to slip on the trousers and make them fit. Last night I found a bed with no one taking residence on it, so I claimed it as my own. The person beside me handed me a marker from under her bed and instructed me to write my name on the clean polished wood of the foot. And she also told me that there is a uniform for me under it.

And now I'm trying to get the trousers to stay up, past my hips, but they slip and fall leaving me standing in the corner of this room in my pants. I look around, and because I'm almost 30 minutes late, no one is left in the room. I silently curse under my breath at what I'm going to do, and reach under my bed for my duffle and get my wand around. I stand silent for another second, watching and waiting to see if anyone is going to come. They don't, and so I whisper a quick "It fits!" To the waist of my trousers and then stand up to hurriedly do my tie while also climbing the stairs up to the kitchen. Everyone bursts out in quick paces and hustling breaths to get somewhere. I look to see if I can find Ebb. I don't, but someone hands me a platter and instructs me to take it to the living room for breakfast.

I silently take it and try to map the house in my sleep-dazed mind and find the room. The Grimms are sitting around it in a straight posture and business-like tones. Baz and Mordelia are sitting next to each other and she is sneaking the bacon off his plate while he pretends to be angry. Mr. Grimm at the head is reading a newspaper while his wife tries to feed three of the small infants before giving up and handing them to three helpers to do the work. She then happily arranges her napkin and digs into her own food.

I go around the table and lean forward slightly to put the small dishes of food, that makes my stomach roar in hunger, onto the table. Mordelia immediately picks up a chocolate chip cookie that I was eyeing and obscurely eats with her whole mouth open to mock Baz. I turn and walk out, happy that no one really noticed my presence.

I look down at my feet as I make my way to the kitchen. Ebb greets me with a smile and hands me a mixer to help her make the cookies for Mordelia's birthday party today. She tells me about how excited the little girl is for turning 7, and all the small things that she has hidden around the house for her to find. I listen to Ebb tell stories of their family as I make the cookies. I revel in the stories of this other family and their imperfectly perfect life. The way they are cold and harsh but still eat breakfast together and joke around.

I put the cookies in the oven, and Ebb instructs me to make the beds of everyone or else Roy is going to make me wash the bathrooms. I hurriedly pretend to be busy as I pass by him in the hallway towards Mordelia's room.

Her bed isn't too hard and I put her stuffed animals in a small cluster at the end while fluffing out the pillows. The Grimm's room is much more difficult. The layers of sheets that I hadn't even realized people had. We did have a good house, not as big as this, but bigger than most of my friends had. I think about how our house always smelt of smoke and burning magic. The layer of authority that father had played out that seemed to take physical form and suffocate me some nights. I shake my head and go to make Baz's bed.

His curtains are down and since he's downstairs, I roam a little more freely around his room, poking at the weird statues carved in his bedside. His bed is mostly untouched except for the left corner he was sitting on last night. I wonder about if he sleeps perfectly still like he does everything else when he barges in. I hit my head on one of the pillars on his bed.

"Fuck!"

"Language, Oliver," He laughs, "There are children around," Mordelia peaks out from behind his legs and makes a shushing gesture with her finger.