No Means to Use the Stove

Possibilities and SpeculationsPossibilities

1 : No Amount of Trying

She was sitting by the window. There was a cup of coffee and a chicken roll in front of her on the table. She watched the street outside the window. People were strolling by, some leisurely, some in a hurry. Every once and a while her eye caught a figure that stood out from the crowd. The man with a long bear and a prominent nose. The plump little woman in weird clothes carrying a birdcage. The two teenagers staring at cars in awe.

She smiled each time one of the strange people passed by. They were her little secret. She came here every now and then, so that she wouldn't forget what she had once fought to remember. What others had fought for her to remember.

She had broken it up with Charlie after fourteen months of trying. Sometimes she thought they had maybe tried too hard. They had watched each other and themselves constantly, first fearing for mistakes and then hoping for them to happen, as they were proofs that gave them a permission to admit themselves it wasn't going to work.

The others had been disappointed and confused. For them, it was hard to see what had gone wrong. As it wasn't for Charlie and Anna. Sheila had been devastated, Ron had cursed for a week, Hermione had wanted to talk and analyze it over and over again. The Finnigans had maybe understood it best, and they had been sad. Everybody had been sad.

Well, she didn't think Molly had been sad. Disappointed, yes, but not sad. At least she wasn't sad anymore, when Charlie was married to a witch and they had two children together.

She saw them sometimes. After all, Hermione had convinced the Ministry to let her keep her memories as she was a close friend of several wizards and witches. The meetings were awkward but full of warmth. She really liked Charlie's wife and she adored their children. She just couldn't help the ache it produced in her chest or the bile that rose into her throat when she watched them together and thought about what she had missed.

Once she had brought her current boyfriend with her, too. Mainly to lessen Charlie's guilt for finding someone new when she was alone. It hadn't worked, though. Charlie had taken one look at Danny and whispered "Bill." Only then had she seen the similarities.

Sometimes she thought of what could have been. Then she said to herself: At least we tried. We did our best.

It never helped.

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2: Napkins, Napkins

There seemed to be a billion of napkins. Napkins, napkins, napkins. She folded and folded and felt like an overcharged origami-machine. She grimaced at the napkins. She silently cursed at them. She not-so-silently cursed at them. Then someone chuckled behind her. It was a very familiar chuckle.

"You mind if I help out a bit?" he asked, smiling. "That seems like a routine work to me."

"Well, all right then. Just you make sure they all end up folded the same way."

He picked up one of the swans she had made and scrutinized it for a while. Then he drew his wand, tapped the swan with it, pointed it at the unfolded napkins and said: "Plerusque!" The napkins whirled on the table and started to fold themselves according to the pattern.

She leaned back, watching the napkins, and he lowered his large hands on her shoulders, massaging them gently.

"You could have offered to do that earlier," she complained, moaning when he hit a sore place.

"You could have asked."

They were both smiling. At first, it had been a sore point in their relationship: where he could help with magic and where he couldn't. Slowly, they had established the rules. He was not to touch anything creative she made, if he wasn't really taking part in the creative process, as well. He could help with the mundane work, though: duplicating something, cleaning up, and so on.

He pulled her up from the chair and into his embrace. She snuggled closer, sighing contently, and ran her hands along his arms. He winced and she looked at him shrewdly. There was a large burn on his right arm.

"Charlie!" she scolded. "You are a wizard for God's sake! Can't you get those burns fixed up at the reserve?"

"Nah, I so love it when you fuss about me," he teased. "Besides, it's no big deal, just some affection, courtesy of Dinah."

"Should I get jealous?" she asked, burying herself into his chest again. He chuckled and they were silent for a while, only enjoying each others presence.

"Our try has succeeded pretty well, hasn't it?" he then asked softly. She made a small agreeing sound. "Almost two years." He paused. "You don't think we could get married already?"

She raised her head from his chest and looked at him. "Well, I guess...I don't think it really makes a difference, but parties are always nice."

"So you are not afraid of the commitment, anymore?"

"I think we have committed ourselves quite firmly here."

"Yeah. Nobody thinks we are going to break up any time soon."

"Except your mother. Every time we meet, she looks at me as if fearing I bolt any minute."

"She is trying. It has been hard for her, to learn it's not always her children that are right when we argue in our relationships. She is awfully biased."

"I know. I only hope she would be biased for me, too, and not against me."

"Hey, Anna, she made dinner the Muggle way with you last Easter."

"Yes. I know. She is trying."

"And we all do our best..."

"...because we can't do any better."

"Exactly, my little stinking Muggle."

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3:The Importance of Remembering E.T.

He massaged his neck with his large hand. "Eh...don't really remember that one, sorry."

"You don't remember E.T.? Come on! Everybody remembers E.T.! Next you'll say you've never heard of Monthy Python?"

"Well..." He really wasn't enjoying himself.

"How about music? The Queen? U2? Abba, for God's sake?"

"Eh..."

"Where did you spend your youth, mate?"

"And the recent years?"

"Hey! You got to remember this: tadadadadaaa-dadadaaa-dadadaadadadadada-da-daaa daaa dadadadaadadadaa..."

He silently retreated from the group as they all burst singing some weird tune that didn't ring any bells for him. He looked around in the room, trying to find some salvation. It really didn't seem very promising. Apart from the group reminiscing the highlights of their youth - which he apparently should have had shared with them to pass as a normal Muggle - there was a small bunch of older people, including Anna's father, that were discussing the Muggle politics; a gathering of Sheila's friends arguing over art and literature; and some athletic looking blokes absorbed in a heated give-and-take over the fascinating world of the Muggle football.

He sighed as he realized he had already made a total fool of himself in all of the groups. He might have known the basics of the Muggle culture, and it had been enough when they had briefly met Anna's Muggle friends before. It surely wasn't now. The house-warming party they were throwing had forced him to mingle for hours among the strange Muggles, pretending to be one. And Anna couldn't be on his side all the time.

He did know who the Prime Minister was and he had seen movies and had even once watched some football on television. He had been to a play or two as well as a few concerts. That didn't, however, measure up as a normal Muggle background, not to mention being enough to ensure the others that he had any education or even any brains.

He had seen the looks Anna's friends were sending him, and then her. How come she wants to be with such a moron? - Must be pity. - He must be great in sack, if he only grunts when he opens his mouth. - There's no way a guy that hasn't ever heard of Jurassic Park or Spielberg works in special effects...

That had really been a mistake. When they had decided his cover-story they should have thought about it a bit more. It sure didn't make a good impression to tell you worked in a trade you knew absolutely nothing about. Or if you did so, you should at least choose a very un-interesting trade. Now half of the people here thought he was a lying loser on top of being a nearly-illiterate moron. Great.

He should have invited some of his own friends, too. Anna had suggested it, but he had thought it might be a little too suspicious. The Muggles would surely have realized something was amiss, if all his friends had been as weird as he. He still thought it would have been a mistake, but all the same couldn't help wishing there were some people besides Anna and Sheila in the house who would know he wasn't really an idiot. Damn it! Maybe he was; why hadn't he invited the Finnigans?

When Anna was spending time in his world, people at least knew she was a Muggle and she was therefore entitled to be ignorant of the wizarding customs or history. And anyhow, in the wizarding world, there were always the Muggle-borns, who also didn't know everything that was self-evident to the members of the old wizarding families. In the Muggle world, everybody was apparently supposed to know quite a lot of things simply to be viewed even nearly normal.

Theoretically, as Anna's father knew of him being a wizard, he should have understood why he couldn't take part in conversations about the Muggle culture, politics, or sports. However, the old intellectualist was obviously totally unable to distinguish between her daughter's fiance's real intellect and the amount of it he had presented in the discussions during their brief acquaintance. And as most of these discussions had taken place with other Muggles present, his view of Charlie's brainpower, understandably, wasn't very high.

He had lately even taken on a habit of speaking very slowly when addressing Charlie and only using short words. Anna had tried to explain that though Charlie didn't know what an UFO was, it didn't mean he wouldn't understand words like unidentified, but Mr. Richardson didn't seem to grasp it. Frankly, his behaviour made Charlie both mad and utterly nervous and self-conscious at the same time. Still, there really wasn't anything he could do about it. Each time he tried, he made a bigger fool of himself.

What hurt him most, though, was how he sensed Anna was ashamed of him. Or rather, ashamed of the impression he gave of himself when attempting to pass as a Muggle in front of her friends. He saw the way her friends were whispering to her, glancing at him. He saw how she winced and frowned and explained but was always left without words in the end. He saw how her friends smiled at her, condescendingly, as if saying they understood if she was so desperate she had to settle with someone like him. He saw how she hated it, but couldn't do a thing.

He knew her friends were important to her and she cared about their opinions. He cared for his friends' opinions. Most of his friends liked Anna, though, and he knew her friends' opinions on him couldn't be very flattering. As weren't her father's. He suspected that being ashamed of him made her feel ashamed of herself.

He was afraid it would all slowly make her hate him.

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4: A Celebration and the Return of the Wooden Figurine

"Well, I think this calls for a celebration!" Sean Finnigan's loud voice boomed over the excited chatter of dozens of people. The man himself was beaming with content. Filled with happiness, he seemed to tower high over his actual height and once again, Anna found herself thinking that magic sure came in many forms.

She was busying herself with serving the drinks--Muggle champagne in delicate wizarding glasses--but she still had time to take it all in. How many of them were there: the Finnigans, Hermione's parents, Dean Thomas and his family, the Creevys, the Finch-Fletchleys...as Hermione had once said, it was simply unbelievable that a minority as prominent as them had never before gotten organized.

Now they had. Founding Muggles In The Wizarding World, or the MIWW, had immediately proven a truly necessary action. The Muggle parents, siblings, best friends, and spouses of wizards and witches had apparently been simply dying to have contact with others in similar situations. Several...well, they could maybe be called supportive groups, had sprouted out like they had been just anxiously waiting under the surface, ready to jump into existence.

During the first few months all their energy and enthusiasm had really gone into realizing how many others there were struggling with the same problems. Then they had come to understand they could actually do something about some of the problems. Today, the Wizengamot had sanctioned a new law. It stated that Obliviating Muggles already aware of the wizarding world was illegal; same as Obliviating wizards against their will, and each case was to be brought to court where both the Muggle and the wizarding parties were to be questioned before making the decision whether it was absolutely necessary for security's sake to perform the Obliviation. It wasn't much for two years' work, but it meant a lot to them. A real lot.

"Friends!" Sean's voice echoed loudly without a Sonorus charm. "I propose a toast! To memories and understanding!"

"To memories and understanding!" the crowd repeated. There were tears in their eyes, some for happiness over gaining victory today, some for the more painful but still precious memories of the long-ago war that had treated their kind more viciously than any others.

The bubbling drink tickled her tongue and she smiled at her husband over the rim of the glass. He was beaming with pride and, watching him, she felt herself unfairly lucky. Then she chuckled. As if they hadn't fought for their happiness: with themselves, with each other, with both of their worlds. There was nothing unfair in her happiness, not even much luck. They had earned it all.

"Hey, it was worth it, wasn't it?" he asked, as if knowing what she was thinking about.

"Damn sure it was," she confirmed.

"Mum! Mum! Look what I did!" A small red-haired boy ran towards her, a little knife in his other hand, the other squeezing a piece of wood which he offered for her mother to see.

"Will! How many times have I said it! No running with the knife!"

"Mum! If I hurt myself, Dad can magic it away!"

"No, I can't, if you stab yourself badly with that thing," Charlie said severely.

"Okay, okay, I don't do it again," their son assured, grinning a wide and all but convincing smile. "But come on! Look what I did!"

She would have liked to frown at him some more, but she couldn't help smiling. He was so eager and enthusiastic. She took the little piece of wood and almost choked with her chortle. On her palm there was a small wooden feline figurine, very much like the one that had an honorary place on their bookshelf at home. Except this little cat had only two ears and its legs were all of the same length.

"Hey, dragon-man, your son is better at this than you are."

"Than I was, you mean. I'm not so bad anymore."

"Yeah, right," she snorted and told her son. "This is a very nice little cat, Will. Much better than the one your father made. We can place this beside the other one on the bookshelf and you can tell everybody which one is yours."

"Really?" Will was beaming, but then he looked at Charlie. "You don't get sad, Dad?"

"Because you are a better whittler than I am?" The little boy nodded, studying his father anxiously. Charlie laughed and lifted his son on his shoulders. "Nah, I love it when you are so brilliant! And anyhow, you cheated."

"Did not!"

"Yes, you did. You see, you are a half-Muggle and your old Daddy is just a poor wizard. We really aren't so great with our hands." He was tickling Will and the boy shrieked with laughter. Anna watched them, laughing along. Charlie started to run, zigzagging in the crowd, Will clinging to his shoulders.

"Excuses, excuses!" she shouted after them, but the two men in her life didn't listen anymore, they were too busy raising havoc among the other families. She grinned at the people around her. The Weasleys, Hermione, Ron, Sheila, Sean, Una, Seamus...

Damn it! She was so happy she had once had the courage to try.

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5: In the Schoolyard

"Do I look all right?"

"You look fine. And anyhow, she has seen us already. I don't think there's a chance she'll believe we are respectable parents anymore."

"You are not taking this seriously!"

"Of course I am." She didn't think he was convincing and his next words proved her suspicion right: "Besides, he'll be going to the wizarding preschool next year, so it doesn't really matter how he copes here."

"It matters!" she snapped. "He can't just think that only the wizarding world matters! He has to get along with the Muggle children as well!"

"You know that's not what I meant," Charlie explained, clearly tired of the often-discussed topic. "But these reasons we are called here for...they are so...trivial and petty. It's natural for kids to be a bit wild and do all kinds of pranks."

"Well, wizarding kids tend to do a lot more severe pranks than the Muggle ones. At least the Weasley kids. All of Will's cousins are used to playing with only other wizarding children, and he thinks he can play like that with these kids here. Don't you get it, Charlie: Muggle parents can't cope with their children jumping off the roofs or batting junior Bludgers at each other - you can heal pretty serious damage just like that!" she snapped her fingers, "and you have your levitation charms and all that. They don't. They have to be more careful!"

"Yeah, I know." He sighed. "Come on, let's go hear how our son has been a danger to others this time." There was a hint of bitterness in his voice and she knew he believed they were unnecessarily torturing Will when keeping him in the Muggle school after he had shown his first signs of magic. She didn't like it herself that Will was seen as a troubled child when only behaving in a way that was totally expected and accepted in his other world. She sighed. She felt like betraying Will when forcing him to stay where he was so obviously different from the other kids.

"Mrs. and Mr. Weasley," the young, blond teacher opening the door in front of them had a sweet, welcoming - and fake - smile on her heart-shaped face, "how nice that you could both come, this time. Please, come in."

When they settled themselves on the chairs of the small office, Anna saw her eyeing Charlie warily and if she hadn't been so frustrated with the whole situation, she would have laughed aloud. It was very clear that despite her opposite words; Miss Treacle wasn't so keen to discuss Will's behaviour with the boy's broad-chested, muscular, and cross-looking father.

"So?" Charlie asked bluntly and all of Anna's amusement disappeared. She knew he was irritated, maybe he even had the right to be, but being impolite and harsh with Will's teacher wasn't going to help the boy one bit. She forced a smile at Miss Treacle and saw a flash of fear in the younger woman's eyes. Suddenly Anna realized that her husband could be imagined to be quite a brute. In addition to his looks, which clearly spoke of hard work and outdoors, his ignorance of the finer things in the Muggle culture as well as Muggle education altogether, could make outsiders view him as an uneducated, unintelligent, maybe even cruel or violent man. Anna felt angry and sad at the same time. She knew Charlie; the warm, loving, intelligent and curious wizard that was her husband and the father of her son and daughter. Just imagining someone thinking so wrongly of him made her disgusted, especially when he himself was only making the matters worse with his sulking and brooding.

"Well," Miss Treacle started cautiously, "we have discussed this before, but I really think Will would greatly benefit from some counselling. It is, of course, natural for small children to make things up, but William is already seven years old and it seems very hard for him to distinguish what is true and what only exists in his imagination." The woman smiled at the parents of her pupil in a way that was meant to be conspiratorial and understanding. "You certainly don't believe this, but just last Monday the boy insisted you worked with dragons, Mr. Weasley." She giggled a bit and her smile widened in relief as Charlie grinned back at her. The smile vanished, though, when he spoke:

"Well, Miss Treacle, Will wasn't really very far from truth, there. My work consists of training various animals for the movies and at the moment I am, actually, working with some large lizards, affectionately called "dragons" in the trade." He smiled smugly, happy with himself and enjoying the teacher's discomfort.

"Oh, well...I see..." the woman was fiddling with her bracelet now, and Anna saw she was wishing to be anywhere but in her office with these strange people. Determinedly, she raised her head, though, and attacked anew from a different angle: "Well, the other thing that has made us worried is how Will is constantly getting into these fights with his peers..."

Anna let her words sail past her. She had heard them often enough, and never mind how clever answers Charlie could come up with, it wouldn't really change the teacher's opinion on them. She felt like a lousy parent. She knew the teachers here believed her and Charlie to be lousy parents. After all, when a child was constantly telling lies and getting into fights and was overly accident prone and had poor concentration skills, their parents were usually the ones to blame. And it really wasn't an option to tell that the lies were actually true, the fights and the mishaps mainly caused by accidental bursts of wild magic, and the poor concentration mostly due to the fact that the boy was anxiously waiting to learn about dragons and other magical beasts and was therefore not so very interested in the Muggle biology.

An hour later, they excited the office and walked towards the front door in silence. There was nothing to be said and the past hour had tried their nerves enough, already. They hadn't made things better, either. Neither Anna's light aloofness or Charlie's determination to fight and win had made a good impression. As far as the personnel of the school were considered, they were still lousy parents. Anna was awoken from her gloomy thoughts by a very familiar, young voice:

"You don't know nothing! You are just stupid Muggles! You don't know!"

Her son was standing in the middle of the schoolyard, his fists up and his face tear stained. Around him were several other boys, clearly bullying him, but something about their postures told her they were also a little scared of him. They were cautiously standing a few paces away from Will and were packed tightly together as if for safety's sake.

"What was that, Weasley? You make up your own curse words now, too?"

"Like you make up everything else, you little liar."

"I'm no liar! You stupid Muggles!"

"William Weasley!" All the boys looked up upon hearing Charlie's severe voice and the bullies quickly scattered, leaving Will and his parents alone. Charlie bent his knees and looked his son in the eye.

"What were you saying to those boys, Will?"

"I'm sorry, Dad." The little boy's voice was quivering.

"And why are you sorry?" Charlie pressed on, not leaving the boy's gaze.

"Because...because...I can't say words like Muggle to them. I can't tell about magic or the Ministry gets mad."

"Yes. That is one reason. The other reason is more important, though." Charlie was very serious. "You were using the word "Muggle" like it was something nasty. Mummy is a Muggle, Will. How do you think that made her feel?"

The boy raised her tear stained face towards Anna. His lower lip was trembling. "But...but you are not really a Muggle, are you, Mum?"

Looking at her son's pleading eyes, Anna was remembering how she, feeling guilty for her thoughts, had secretly wished he would have been a Squib. How she now wished little Sophia wouldn't show any signs of magic. She felt horrible and guilty and most of all, she felt like betraying everything she believed in when thinking like that. When thinking that her children were somehow profoundly different from Muggle kids, just because there were magical. When fearing that magic would take them away from her. When thinking she would rather keep them near her, same as her, and not let them experience the wonders of magic, only because she couldn't. She forced herself to answer her son.

"Yes, Will. Mum really is a Muggle. Just like those boys." She couldn't look at him when she said that. She was too afraid of what she might see on her son's easily readable face.

"Being Muggle doesn't make one stupid or mean. There are stupid wizards as well as there are nice Muggles." Charlie was saying all the right words, but for Anna, it was too late. But you are not really a Muggle? her son had asked and the question echoed in her mind now, repeating itself over and over again. She distantly heard he was sobbing and she wanted to comfort him, but she found herself frozen in her place.

"Come on, sport. We all make mistakes," Charlie was hugging Will now and the boy clung to him, desperately. "We are going to a Quidditch match tomorrow, didn't you remember? Isn't that a reason enough to smile a little, huh?"

"Is Mum coming, too?" Anna heard his question and she thought about all the strange wizards and witches who somehow always knew she was a Muggle; who would either keep their distance or over-enthusiastically try to "make her feel at home" or unnecessarily explain every wizarding aspect to her as if she hadn't lived with a wizard for a decade already. She didn't want to go. But she would, for Will. She was just about to open her mouth and say so, when Charlie spoke:

"No, Will, Mum really doesn't like Quidditch, you know." He smiled at his son, a little conspiratorial smile between two men that made the boy swell with pride and grin back at his father. Then the small redheaded wizard whispered to his father, with the same conspirative tone, the words that made his mother's heart break yet a little more:

"Yeah, because Muggles don't like Quidditch, do they?"

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