Touch the Sky

Chapter 7. Billing

Ginny gulped. Blaise's mother. Oh, Merlin, what was the name of her last husband again?

Severus saved the moment. "Madame Camara," he said with a bow. "Welcome to our home. It has been too long since we have met."

"Severus!" she exclaimed in a London accent with a slight Caribbean lilt. "So it's true you've thrown your lot in with Harry Potter's family. If I'd known you were after a doss and a toss, I'd have proposed to you meself. And you once called me Sallie."

"Ma belle-mere!" Helena said despairingly.

Her mother-in-law was unfazed. She folded her arms and looked about the room. "Ginny Weasley, in the flesh," she said. "Our little Tessa used to collect your chocolate frog cards. Whenever Blaise and Helena were browned off at her for skiving off studies to play Quidditch, she'd say, 'I wager Ginny Weasley's parents never made her stop training simply to revise some stupid essay.' She likely only wants your boy so she can get at you."

"Granny!" Teresa squawked.

"And Harry Potter, hero of the age, such a well-set-up lad as you are. The two of you playing Darby and Joan till along comes a Slytherin serpent to wiggle in the garden, eh, Severus?"

Ginny and Harry stared at each other wide-eyed. Blaise's eyes were on the ceiling and his lips moving, whether in prayer or a calming spell Ginny couldn't tell. Helena had her hands over her face. Albus and Lily were stifling horrified giggles while Teresa had given in to hysterics on Jamie's shoulder. James rolled his eyes at Ginny in a silent plea for help.

Ginny hardly dared look at Severus, but when she chanced a glimpse she saw he was smiling knowingly at their newest guest. "Sallie, Sallie, Sallie," he said. "Kindly place your considerable and delectable backside in a chair and shut yer gob."

"Hmph," she said, obeying the first of his directions and ignoring the second. "How would you know how delectable it is? You're queer as Ananias."

Al and Lily gave up the struggle and collapsed to the floor, howling. Severus merely said, "Be that as it may, we are attempting to put together a meal here. Stop making mischief, young lady. The rest of you lot, get to work."

He began to assemble ingredients and utensils, setting them out on the worktop as Ginny thought, But it's not mischief she's made, it's laughter and looseness where there was tension and solemnity. This lady will bear watching.

"Here." Severus unceremoniously shoved a cutting board toward Blaise with an onion and a paring knife. "Medium dice. After that you can mince the garlic, then chop the parsley."

Blaise meekly began to slice the onion while Severus distributed other tasks: blanching and peeling tomatoes to Ginny, browning sausage meat to Harry. Helena was directed to grate cheese while Jamie and Teresa made the salad, Albus brushed oil on the garlic bread, and Lily set the table. Severus put himself to whisking eggs, sugar, and wine in a saucepan on the cooker for zabaglione.

Madame Camara, seated magisterially at the kitchen table, shook her head at the commotion. "Someone care to explain why you're doing this without magic?" she demanded. "I understand about no house elves, can't stand the silly buggers meself. But slaving like navvies when you've but to wave a wand--"

"Mum always says it just doesn't taste the same," Ginny said.

"Doing it this way is fun," Harry opined.

"It is," Blaise agreed. "Like preparing potions ingredients. There's a magical component to cookery, as well as to brewing."

Severus said with finality, "Preparing a meal by hand is as much a bonding ritual as any done with incense or candles. We will work together, and together be nourished by the fruits of our labours."

"Reminds me of the Eucharist," Helena commented.

Ginny was glad to hear Lily ask, "What's that?" saving her the embarrassment of displaying her own ignorance. Blaise began to explain.

An hour later they were sitting down to dinner as Al said, "So just to recap, you believe that you're eating bits of bread oojahs and sipping wine but it's really some dead bloke's body and blood, and that's a good thing? But Druids were wicked and bloodthirsty for practising human sacrifice?"

"Al, don't be disrespectful," Harry said, passing the basket of hot garlic bread while Ginny served the salad and Severus dished up the spaghetti.

"Sorry, Dad, I don't mean to be. It's just--I'm trying to get my head 'round it here. Was Jesus a wizard?"

"That, my boy, is a question that has engaged many a wizarding discussion," Blaise said professorially, sprinkling cheese on his pasta. "But while it is true that many of Our Lord's miracles might be explained by spells that any of us here could perform, some cannot. The loaves and the fishes, for example--can anyone tell me what that was?"

"Ooh!" Lily raised her hand as though in class, and at Blaise's nod said excitedly, "I read about that one, he took five thousand loaves and seven thousand fishes and... er..."

"And made three people eat them?" Severus said sarcastically. "The original Jewish mother, evidently."

Lily wrinkled her nose at him. "So I have it back to front, all right. But the point is, he made a lot of food."

"Yes, and?" Blaise prodded.

"And that's against Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration!" James said.

"Correct." Blaise nodded approvingly. "An ordinary mortal, magical or no, cannot create food out of thin air. It relates to the Muggle principle of Conservation of Matter, as well."

"But you can increase the quantity," Al objected.

"Yes, but not to that exponential extent. It would have no nourishment, and the Gospel explicitly says the crowd were satisfied. As, to revert to our earlier topic, the Eucharist satisfies the soul."

"That's the part I still don't see," Al said.

Suddenly Sallie Camara, who had been silently demolishing a plateful of food that would have satisfied a hippogriff, said wistfully, "I miss Communion."

"How d'you mean, you miss it, ma'am?" James asked. "Don't you get it once a week or whatever?"

"No, not for years. I was raised Rasta, you know, and only converted to Catholicism when I married Zabini. I stayed in the Church through three more husbands, but I had to turn Muslim for Camara; my Moustafa insisted on it, and it made no difference to me. It's all my eye and Betty Martin, in my book. But I still miss Communion."

"How can you miss it if you don't even believe in it?"

"I believe in the power of it, the beauty of it. It's hard to explain if you've never known it."

"But Maman," Helena objected, "if you don't believe in Transubstantiation--that Jesus is present in the Eucharistic elements--if you don't even believe in the divinity of Jesus..."

"Who says I don't? Jesus was marked by God for a special destiny, almost murdered as an infant, lived his life in service to others, sacrificed himself for the good of the world, and rose from the dead. Of course he was divine."

"That sounds like Dad," Al said.

"You've got it," Sallie nodded, beaming. "Harry Potter's as divine a man as any I know of, batty boy or no. I mean to say, only look at him! Sweet and ripe as a mango. You don't think he's a son of God?"

Everyone started to talk at once, a gabble of voices in tones ranging from exasperation to horror to chiming affirmation. Ginny listened not to the words but to all the accents: Sallie's London Jamaican, Helena's African French. Blaise was shifting seamlessly between English and Italian, the children chattering in tones flattened by years of listening to American pop singers and Estuary newsreaders.

Severus's cultured Oxbridge was ordinarily flawless, but once when Lily flew above the treetops standing on her broom, he'd yelled, "Ey oop, lass!" as broad as any Tyke, and that reversion to his Northcountry blue collar roots still echoed in her ears when she listened to him now. Her own standard English took on a hint of Devon burr when she was at the Burrow or talking to Hagrid, while Harry's never wavered from its suburban Surrey blandness.

We're like crows and pigeons and larks and robins all clamouring together, she mused. But we can understand each other. She tapped her glass with her knife, and when that had no effect, cast Sonorous on her throat. "Listen to me a moment!" They all fell still as though Silenced.

She stood up. "Half of us don't know what the other half are talking about, and some of us think we know and simply don't like what we hear. Father McKay said earlier we have a long road ahead. I say we keep talking, but we have to do more than talk. This Sunday the Potter-Snapes will go to Mass with the Zabinis, and Madame Camara can come and enjoy Communion whilst the rest of us learn what it's like. Now, the vital question: who's for pudding?"