Heart of Courage and Fire | Marauders Era [Poems Rewrite]

Chapter Two - Shut up, Alfie.

Chapter Two

There was a rather large difference in the atmosphere the morning after the events involving a very strange man in long robes appearing at their home. Douglas had done all he could yesterday to look up one Horace Eugene Flaccus Slughorn in the phonebooks he could find around their home but to no avail, the name was nowhere to be found.

One thing that Douglas found most particularly horrifying was that he was actually starting to believe that maybe, just maybe, Horace was truly as he said...a wizard. It was very hard to deny what he saw with his own eyes. To see the letters of his son's name rearrange from Benjamin to Benji with what they now realised was the man's wand.

"Will I get a wand?" asked Adria, sitting on the old brown leather sofa situated just under the windowsill. After the man left yesterday, Adria's imagination had started to run wild. She had read over the letter still clutched in her hand for the eighth time.

Benji, on the other hand, had yet to stop pacing the living room floor.

"Hold on," said Alfie, from the other sofa, "you're not actually believing all this?"

"Well-"

"You're so stupid sometimes, Adria," said Alfie. Alfie was older than Adria and Benji by a few years, the oldest sibling and Judy had always said that for the past few years Alfie was in his "arsehole" stage. Of course, she would never say that to his face. She loved her son more than anything, but she wondered sometimes where his mean streak came from.

"Shut up, Alfie!" Benji huffed, the first thing that came out of his mouth for hours.

"Alfie, really," Judy piped in, patting his shoulder, "this is really not the time. We all saw what that man did to Benji's letter. Don't deny it."

"Alright, whatever." Alfie rolled his eyes, "then tell me this, why is it that I'm not a wizard then? Or you and dad?!"

"Maybe," baby Alina spoke, "it's only certain people. Like a genetics thing."

"See Alfie, the nine-year-old is smarter than you!" Adria spoke up, flipping him off when her mother turned her head.

"Right, can we all just shut up!" Benji was never one to have a temper, but they had all noticed that it seemed the gears in his mind were turning a lot more than usual. Judy was certain he had walked the length of a marathon around their living room.

"Say it is real, does that mean we'll be off to some sort of boarding school for the majority of the year?!" asked Benji, thrusting the letter into his mother's hand and pointing to the part that spoke of luggage.

It was a very obvious thought, but it didn't seem to cross any of their minds up until now. Of course, if in some fact it were true and perhaps magic did exist outside the realm of fiction, then it was more than likely these letters were important.

"I think you're all a bit loony in the head," said Alfie, "that man was probably some sort of magician, but not like that!"

"Alfie, no one cares about your stupid opinion, alright?" Adria snapped, "this isn't about you!"

"I think we need to look at this from a realistic point of view," Douglas soon said after joining them. He was on the phone to anyone he could think of, from work colleagues to old secondary school buddies to see if any of them had ever heard the name Horace Slughorn.

None of them took him seriously.

"What is realistic, though?" asked Judy, "we watched that man rearrange those letters. He used that twig as if it was some magic wand and I can't help but believe that maybe it was. Perhaps we could send Mr Slughorn back a letter?"

"Professor Slughorn," Adria but in, "he said Professor."

"Do you think that means he's a teacher at that school?" asked Benji.

"Oh yes, maybe!" Adria nodded, suddenly excited for reasons she wasn't so sure. It was every child's dream to believe that maybe the mythical lands that she read in stories could be true, but she never once thought those dreams would ever, or could ever come true.

She was towing between fear and excitement. The unknown was far within her reach but her comfort with normality seemed to cloud her with nerves.

"That is the least of our worries right now!" Douglas never meant to snap at his children, but the millions of questions running around in his mind had clouded all reasoning, "do any of you sods have a good idea?!"

"Wait, mum..." Adria's head tilted as she thought. She remembered her mothers words from the previous day, "who was that woman you spoke about yesterday...your grandmother or something?"

"My grandmoth- oh!" Judy's eyes widened, as though she had just thought of the most perfect idea, "Adria, yes, of course. Henrietta, my great-great-grandmother, of course. I will give her a call; we can arrange for her to come here for tea!"

"Are you sure that that's such a good idea, honey?" Douglas asked, a level of uncertainty laced in his tone of voice. From the stories once told by Judy, he wasn't sure if this woman was the best company. Though it seemed like they had very little choices, and he was hoping to prolong a second encounter with Professor Horace Slughorn as much as he could.

"I think that's our only idea," said Judy. She stood from her place on the edge of the couch, rushing to the kitchen. The rest of her family could only hear her rummaging in kitchen drawers and loud ruckus but none of them left their places to check.

"Do you think this woman could help us, dad?" asked Benji. He was scared but he didn't wish to show it, his dad could clearly see through the façade. He smiled a soft smile, realising that maybe he and his wife were not the most stressed in this situation but his twins who were living it.

Adria had yet to stop reading her letter and Douglas thought that maybe scared was not the word he should use to describe how she felt. He could see something, and the shake in her voice indicated nerves but he believed she was more curious. She was never the most outgoing person outside of her family, the only one to not have friends round for tea or to be out playing in the garden with the local kids.

She kept to herself more so than others would and all she had in her possession was a small, tatted notebook that she scribbled away in; she was content with that. Though, Douglas could see that she was now curious more than anything.

Perhaps she had gotten over her own initial shock. Perhaps she had always felt there was something different about her and maybe this was it. Douglas didn't know, but what he did know was that it seemed Adria would pack tomorrow if this so happened to be true.

Benji on the other hand had more in the small village. He had friends, he had his hobbies and he had direction. He was just a child, but he wasn't stupid, he knew what he wanted, and this seemed to completely mess it up. He feared the unknown, and perhaps he also felt as though he was different, but he had already come to terms with that over the years and he was content with Scotland.

"I think she'll definitely help, Benji," Douglas finally said after a moment of pondering. He had smiled at his son who attempted one back, and soon after did Judy appear next to her husband.

"She's coming over tomorrow." She seemed slightly anxious, "for tea, at noon."