Power of the Musea

Chapter 17: A Bake Sale

"Melanie!" her mother shouted, running to give her a hug as Melanie walked out of the New York fireplace. "It's so great to see you! Your father and Simon are waiting at home. Now, we better get going so we're not late for supper."

Melanie nodded and followed her mother out onto the New York streets. They got into her mother's car and began the drive to their suburban home. Melanie had been worried about seeing her mother after all that had happened, but her mother said nothing about Hogwarts and chatted happily about the latest gossip at Richard's Point.

Dinner was just as relaxed, and Melanie went to sleep right afterwards. She awoke the next morning at six. Unable to go back to sleep, Melanie took one of her schoolbooks and brought it downstairs, reading as she ate a bowl of cereal. An hour or so later, her brother walked down the stairs.

"What are you doing up this early on a Saturday morning?" she asked as Simon lazily grabbed a bagel from the breadbox.

"There's a bake sale at school for the football team that I have to help set up," he grumbled, drinking a glass of milk after he ate the bagel.

"Have fun with that," Melanie told him, turning back to her book.

"You wouldn't want to come help, would you? You'd surprise a lot of people if you showed up."

Melanie looked up at him with a glimmer in her eye. "Why not? Do I have time to get ready?"

"Does it look like I am?" Simon asked, holding his arms out so Melanie could clearly see his old tattered t-shirt and shorts. Melanie laughed and closed her book.

"I just wanted to make sure. How long until you leave?"

"Half an hour, maybe. Is that enough time for you?"

Melanie laughed. "Plenty. Actually, five bucks says I'm ready before you are."

Simon eyed her. "You're on."

Giggling, they both ran upstairs, Melanie into her room. She threw on the first pair of jeans and top she found. Then she dabbed a small amount of Bewitching that Rhonda had lent her on her face and picked up her wand. She faced her mirror and started to skillfully fix her hair. Rhonda had been right-she had gotten better with practice.

"Melanie, are you awake yet?" her mother asked, poking her head into Melanie's room. "What are you doing?" her mother asked, noticing the wand.

"Fixing my hair," Melanie answered innocently.

Her mother quickly ran over and snatched the wand out of her hand. "You can't! You're still underage."

"Oh, let her go, Violetta," her father said, walking into the room as well. "It's not like the Ministry of Magic detects underage magic way over here. And she's just fixing her hair."

"Fine," her mother agreed, giving her the wand back. Melanie finished her hair and darted past her downstairs. She heard Simon's bedroom door close as she reached the bottom of the stairs, so she ran next to the front door and leaned against it as though she'd been waiting for a while.

Simon looked at her in surprise when he saw her. "How'd you do that? It used to take you forever to get ready."

Melanie blew on her fingernails. "That's my own little secret."

"Fine. Come on, let's get going," Simon returned, opening the door and walking outside.

"Simon, Melanie, wait a minute!" their mother shouted behind them, running down the stairs in her dressing gown.

"What, Mom?" Melanie asked.

Violetta held out her hand expectantly. "Your wand."

"What?"

"You're leaving the wand here," she explained. "You pushed the issue too much just fixing your hair, and I don't want you being tempted to use magic outside of the house. That would be the worst thing you could do."

Melanie huffed. "All right," she agreed, pulling her wand out of her pocket and handing it to her mother as she walked out of the door behind Simon.

"I thought we'd walk. It's only a few minutes, and some new houses have gone up while you've been gone," Simon said as they walked out of the house.

"Okay," Melanie agreed as they reached the sidewalk. She looked up at Simon. "You don't think I'll really get in trouble, do you?"

"Trouble for what? Showing up at a bake sale?"

"No, using my wand to fix my hair," Melanie told him. "Since I'm still underage and all."

"Nah," he said. "I've been doing bits of magic ever since I visited you and nothing's happened yet."

"You have?" Melanie asked in surprise.

"Of course," Simon told her with a wink. "I've had to be careful so Mom and Dad haven't seen, but, otherwise...."

"Have you told anyone? Any of your friends?"

"Why? What am I going to do, Melanie, walk up to the football team and go, 'Hey, guys, I'm a wizard. I can hex you all into oblivion right now if I wanted to.'"

"Well, you couldn't really," Melanie told him.

"What do you mean?"

"You're not nearly good enough to hex the entire football team," Melanie teased.

"What makes you think that?" Simon asked as Melanie skipped ahead of him.

"Because you could barely hex me, much less your entire football team!"

"Hey, I've gotten a lot better!" Simon shouted after her, and he started to chase her. Melanie giggled as she ran away. Soon, they were walking up the sidewalk to the school, both of them panting.

"Simon!" a voice shouted from the doorway. "Glad you're here, we've..." the voice trailed off as Simon and Melanie walked closer. "Melanie!" the voice squealed.

The next thing Melanie new, she had a curly blonde girl hugging her and jumping up and down, soon joined by the rest of her former squadmates.

"Where have you been, Melanie?"

"We've been missing you on the squad!"

"Your hair looks fabulous, what kind of conditioner do you use?"

Melanie laughed as she managed to break away from most of the group.

"It's just the shampoo they supply at school," Melanie lied, smiling.

"Wow, sign me up for that. You're hair's magnificent."

"Yeah, but your clothes, they're so last fall! Have you not had any magazines at school?"

"Well, they wear uniforms there," Melanie explained, thinking of the robes that were sitting in trunk in her room.

"Oh. So, where is this mystery school? Are there cute guys?"

Melanie laughed. "In the city. It's a boarding school, so I haven't been able to come home yet."

"We were so upset when you left."

"Yeah, you're only back for a couple of days before your parents whisk you off to some school in the city."

Melanie nodded, hoping that they wouldn't try to learn more about Hogwarts.

"Anyway, Melanie, you didn't answer our question. Are there any cute guys there?"

Melanie blushed and nodded. "There's a fair number," she admitted.

"Any particular ones?"

Melanie blushed a little harder. "Maybe." Her mind flew back to the incident in the hallway the night before. She had nearly forgotten about it, yet it pushed itself to the front of her memory. She shook her head and tried to forget about it.

"Can you introduce us to any?"

"Umm," Melanie stuttered. "They're really not your type."

"Oh, she just wants to keep them for herself!"

"Can you blame her?"

Melanie laughed as she walked inside with the girls. There were long tables set up in the main lobby filled with baked goods. Different athletes and parents were behind the tables, uncovering the snacks and setting up price tags.

"Melanie!" Melanie turned and saw Sophie's mother walking up to her.

"Mrs. Williams..." Melanie trailed off.

"It's so nice to see you," Mrs. Williams said tearily as she hugged Melanie. "It's nice to see you healthy. School is going well, I hope? Your mother said that you were going to a new school."

Melanie nodded. "I'm so sorry. I would have stayed..."

"Oh, don't worry, dear. I don't blame you for just wanting to go off to a different school. Sometimes you just need to get away from all of the memories."

Melanie nodded.

"Now, I need to help Josh with the cupcakes I brought. I'll talk to you later, dear," she said as she went off to help her son. Melanie nodded and looked behind her at the glass-enclosed trophy cases as people scurried around, setting up. She passed by the basketball trophies, and the football trophies, but paused in front of the small section where the cheerleading trophies were kept. There, amongst the two trophies that her squad has won the year before, was a color picture of Sophie, set into a plaque reading: In Loving Memory of Sophie Williams. 1980-1996.

Melanie sighed and went to help her brother organize cookies on trays.

When the bake sale was over that afternoon, Melanie managed to sneak away with too much difficulty, although things were noticeably quieter on the way home.

"Are you okay?" Simon asked as they turned onto their street.

"Yeah, it's just..."

"Tough memories, I know," Simon finished. "I can't imagine how hard it's been for you to recover from losing Sophie."

"Well, being at Hogwarts has helped. It's a whole new world, and it's easy to get lost in it and forget about everything."

"Well, don't get completely lost, you do still need to deal with your feelings," Simon told her comfortingly, putting his hand on her shoulder.

"Since when are you so sympathetic?"

"Well, finding out that your parents are really a witch and wizard fleeing from an evil madman that killed my uncle and had one of his minions attack my little sister changes a guy."

Melanie laughed weakly. The ghost's warning suddenly came back to mind, but she pushed it aside.

"I just want to forget about everything and enjoy Christmas," Melanie told him as they walked through the front door.

The next day, Melanie sat down and had a movie marathon with her brother. They played movie after movie in the VCR as they sat and joked about the first half of each of their school years.

"Isn't it sad?" Melanie commented to herself.

"What is?" Simon asked.

"That I'm watching Cinderella, yet all I can do is think that it would have been easier to transfigure squirrels into the horses instead of the rats, and it's just silly that a transfiguration spell would have a time limit."

Simon burst into laughter. "I guess not a lot of your spells go 'Bibbety-Bobbety Boo,' do they?"

"Not at all."

"You know, we should read MacBeth now and you can compare to those witches."

"Double, double, toil and trouble!" Melanie yelled in a prickly voice, clawing at the air with her fingers.

"Eye of newt and toe of frog...you don't really mix those things, do you?" he asked.

Melanie shrugged her shoulders. "I haven't, yet. Since when do you have Shakespeare memorized?"

"Since I had my test over MacBeth a week ago."

"Ah. That makes sense, then," Melanie said as she turned her attention back to the movie.

After dinner that night, their father pulled out the Monopoly board and started up a game. When the game started going on its second hour, Simon was starting to daze out.

"Do we have to finish this game?" he complained as he forked over several hundred dollars to Melanie after landing on her property.

"I thought it would be nice if we could sit down and enjoy nice family time together while we still have Melanie here," Octavian said as he rolled the dice.

"But can't we have nice family time doing something not as boring?"

"Do you have any ideas?" Octavian asked, passing the dice to Melanie.

Simon shrugged his shoulders. He looked at Melanie. "Have you learned any fun games at Hogwarts?"

Melanie shrugged her shoulders as she moved her piece. "Not really. The only thing anyone's interested in there is quidditch." She looked down at the board. "Oh, that's my property. Your turn, Mom."

"I had nearly forgotten about quidditch," Octavian said, laughing to himself as Violetta rolled. "It's been so many years since I touched a broomstick."

"A broomstick?" Simon asked in surprise, looking at his father.

"You played quidditch?" Melanie asked.

"Of course he played quidditch," Violetta answered. "What boy brought up in the wizarding world doesn't?"

"What on earth are you all talking about?" Simon asked as Violetta passed him the dice.

"Quidditch. It's a wizarding sport played on broomsticks," Melanie answered as he rolled the dice.

"A wizarding sport!" Simon exclaimed after he moved his piece. "Where do I sign up?"

"Well, we'd have to see about getting you a broom..."

"Octavian!"

"Why not?"

"What happened to secrecy?"

"He can be secret."

"A hundred dollars," Melanie interrupted, holding her hand out, motioning towards Simon's piece that had landed on her property yet again. He grumbled and counted out the hundred dollars out of his small pile of tens and twenties left. Melanie smirked as she placed the bills on her own piles.

"Anyway, Dad, what do you mean you played quidditch? Were you on the house team?"

Octavian shrugged his shoulders as he rolled the dice. "My last two years. I was only an average player, but I did a decent job, I think."

"Did you ever win the House Cup?"

He laughed. "That would have been impossible. After I made the team the Gryffindors had found their miracle seeker. Everyone was 'James Potter' this and 'James Potter' that."

"Potter?" Melanie asked. "Harry's dad?"

Octavian nodded and Simon looked at Melanie. "You mean the guy I met when I visited?"

Melanie nodded.

"Awesome!" Simon continued. "If you're friends with his son, maybe you could hook me up with some serious coaching!"

The table suddenly went silent and Simon looked around, confused.

"Harry's parents aren't alive anymore," Melanie said softly.

"Oh," Simon said quietly. There was an awkward silence for several minutes until Violetta cleared her throat.

"Well, I think it's about time that I went to bed," she announced. "Here, honey, I bet you could use all the help you can get." She handed all of her money and properties to Simon, giving him a hug before she walked upstairs.

"Thanks a lot," Simon said sarcastically. "Especially for the confidence."

"Hey, don't be grumpy just because you're loosing," Melanie told him. Now, come on, it's your turn. Roll the dice again so I can take some more of your money."

~*~*~*~*~*

Snow began to fall the next day, and Simon and Melanie spent the morning outside having a snowball fight with some of the other neighborhood kids. It was worth the grumblings from their mother when she saw their soaked clothes.

"So now I have to wash these clothes AND bake cookies," she complained, taking their clothes from them and tossing them on top of the washing machine. She handed a bowl of cookie dough to Melanie. "Help me out. You don't have anything else you needed to do, do you?"

Melanie shook her head and began to stir the dough. Simon quickly ran up to his room to avoid being put to work. With Simon in his room and their father at work, Melanie and her mother worked in a strange silence.

"You know, we haven't had a chance to talk alone since the day you came back," her mother said after they had put the first tray of cookies into the oven.

"I guess not," Melanie said, scooping out some more of the cookie dough onto a clean tray.

"I must say I'm very pleased to see how well you've been doing. You're just like your old self," Violetta continued, still focusing on the oven. "Even with going to the bake sale the other day. I was afraid that it would be too hard on you, but you seemed just fine."

Melanie nodded. "I liked going back. It was good to see all of my old friends," she agreed.

"How would you feel to seeing them more?" Violetta asked quietly.

"What?"

"I mean, how would you feel about staying at school here instead of going back after break?"

"Why? I don't want to leave Hogwarts, and why should I now?"

"Because it's dangerous, Melanie."

"Not one single thing has happened to me while I was there!"

"But that doesn't mean that nothing will. I've been reading the Prophet; I read about that girl who got cursed."

"That was an accident!"

"An accident today, an attack on you tomorrow."

"Why would they want to attack me?"

"The same reason they attacked you last summer."

"Why? How do we know they knew who I was? I thought we had all decided it was a random muggle attack!"

"You're smarter than that, Melanie! They wouldn't have used the killing curse on you if they thought you were a muggle. Which means they knew you were a witch and they would have had to know who you were."

"But just because they attacked me once this summer doesn't mean that they're still after me!"

"What makes you think that they're not?"

"Give me a good reason why they'd still be after me. Why did they attack me this summer, Mom? That's the one question that I've never gotten an answer to."

Violetta sighed and looked at Melanie. She turned away and shook her head and Melanie just rolled her eyes. "I knew you'd never tell me."

"My best guess is because of your uncle," her mother said softly, staring down at the floor. "I don't know what he did, but whatever it was it...it made You-Know-Who very angry. Death Eaters attacked the house, killed him, and then ransacked and burned the house." She shook her head. "I'll never forget looking at my childhood home, engulfed in flames..." her voice trailed off into tears. She gradually composed herself, wiping off her tears and going back to her cookies.

Melanie looked at her for a minute. "But why would they be after me for something my uncle had done?"

"After Rimian was killed, we were warned that You-Know-Who was still furious, and our only chances of survival was to choose a side: to go to You-Know-Who and convince him that we were his allies despite Rimian's actions against him, or go to the Order and ask for protection."

"And you decided to choose neither side and went into hiding on your own," Melanie finished.

"Exactly. You look so much like me, Melanie, and therefore so much like Rimian. We were twins, you know. Whether because that Death Eater was still angry about what Rimian had done or if he was just furious that a pureblood family fled England to live with muggles, he was still angry enough to hatch a plan against you and try to kill you. And the fact that you lived might make you an even greater target.

"I know that Hogwarts is dear to you and you don't want to leave your friends. But all I want is for you to think about what is best for your safety."

Melanie was quiet as she finished scooping out the cookie dough.

"That should be enough," her mother told her. "Thanks for your help, dear." Violetta took the empty bowl from Melanie, who nodded and walked up to her room. She opened her school trunk that was sitting by her bed and pulled out her pictures. She spent a lot of time looking at the pictures of her and Sophie. Someone's anger at her family had caused Sophie's death. If Sophie hadn't been her friend, then she would have reached the hall safely with the rest of the group. And now she was bringing her friends into possibly more danger by asking them to help her when it was becoming more and more probable that it was impossible for her to help them in return.

"What if I can't transfer my powers? Then I'm bringing danger to them for no reason," she told herself. She sighed and put the pictures back into her trunk.

Melanie spent the next couple of days in a reserved silence. Time went on, and soon it was only a few days before Christmas. The tree was up in the living room, and her father had Christmas carols playing on the radio all day. While her parents were busy preparing dinner in the kitchen, she sneaked out of the house with her wand and made her way to the cemetery where Sophie had been buried.

She knelt down in front of the grave marker, tracing the letters of Sophie's name carved into the stone. She looked behind her to make sure that nobody else was around. She had no reason to worry, since the cemetery was completely deserted. She cautiously pulled out her wand and pointed it at the marker. A few whispers brought up a large tulip from the frozen ground. She smiled as she looked at the tulip, remembering how Sophie had demanded that her homecoming date have a tulip included in the corsage. Sophie had loved tulips more than any other flower, a fact that many people had found amusing. She watched as the tulip danced in the cold winter wind.

"What am I supposed to do, Sophie?" she asked the slab of stone. Her eyes kept moving over the engraving, reading it again and again. "If it wasn't for me, you never would have been in any danger."

Tears began to flood her eyes she closed her eyes, remembering all of the years that she and Sophie has spent side by side. If she and Sophie hadn't been such close friends, but, would she have wanted to miss out on all of those years?

"I could have done something different!" she exclaimed to herself. "I could have not decided to go to London, I could have pulled you out of that alley, or jumped in front of you-or SOMETHING!"

She tried to imagine still having Sophie beside her. Going back home, laughing about the danger they had been in like it was a big joke. She never would have gone to Hogwarts, never would have met Rhonda, never would have discovered what she could do...

A cold wind blew across her cheeks as the tears stopped flowing. Melanie pointed her wand at the tulip once more, blasting it into the grave marker with a flash of pink light. She looked at its delicate lines, now permanently etched into the corner of the stone.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save you, Sophie," she whispered. "But I know I'm going to learn how to. I'm not going to suffer the loss of another friend, not while I can try to stop it. I WILL learn how to transfer my powers."

The cold wind biting at her cheeks, she finally retreated from the cemetery and walked back home, where the warmth and smell of her mother's cookies baking in the oven greeted her.

Today, her mother's cooking project was the lasagna for dinner, so Melanie laid down on the couch in the living room and let her eyes gently close, the lights from the tree dancing on her eyelids.

At first, she thought her father had turned the radio up, but she soon realized that this was not her father's Christmas carols that she was hearing. It was a beautiful melody, but had an interestingly dark and mysterious side to it. As she mused over the curious sound, another blasted in her ears like a trumpet.

The pain quickly followed, a horrible, biting pain that seemed to set down through her spine and spread to every inch of her body.

"Melanie?" her mother asked, poking her head out of the kitchen. The pain soon became so unbearable that Melanie lost track of what was going on around her. Somewhere in the midst of the pain, she could feel her mother grabbing her arms.

The pain slowly subsided, and Melanie looked up at the worried face of her mother. "Melanie?" she asked.

"I hear music," was all that she could get out before another wave of pain hit her.