The Pen is Mighty

The Pen is Mighty

by Chasergirl

Chapter Two-Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer

         Angelina and I arrived at her place by foot, much to Ange's disapproval. She didn't understand just why we couldn't Apparate home. It's amazing-the woman spends her days and sometimes early evenings speeding around at ridiculously high speeds on a broom while taking a physical beating from bludgers and wind resistance, but a walk is too much for her. Stuff like that kills me. Oh well, I suppose I'll move on. It's not her fault she's lazy.

     Anywho, we made it back to the Casa Weasley to discover absolute confusion and chaos, or in other words, life as usual. Before we even opened the door, we could hear loud shrieks and what sounded like pots and pans smashing against hardwood floor. I turned to Ange with a look of absolute terror, expecting to see one on her face, too. Angelina just looked at me with a half smile filled with frustration and acceptance that clearly said "you'll get used to it" without using words. She sighed, looked up at the door, and muttered the password she charmed into the door. When you live with the children of Fred Weasley, you just do things that like; it keeps the insanity indoors.

     "Acceptus Reverto," she said, ready to face what awaited her. I swear I don't know how she can come home every night to what I saw. Blankets, pillows, and I can only assume to be dishsoap were sprawled all over the living room. The sofa was lying flat on its back, stained with the remains of chocolate frogs. Two caramel colored blobs were bobbing up and down on the rug, screaming "Papa! Papa! Papa!" over and over again with their rusty red hair flying in every imaginable direction. Half a dozen randomly assorted pots were either hovering faintly in the air or crashing towards the ground. The oddest sight of all, however, was the charcoal covered body of a lanky male whose normally slick and straight hair was standing up on end as if he had been electrocuted. His scarlet robes were slashed at the sleeves and his shoes looked as if he had just chemically burned holes into them. In his hands lay a tray of uniquely shaped morsels that were bubblegum pink in color. Ah yes, Mr. Fred Weasley himself. Angelina stood there, staring at her husband in disbelief. Slowly, she bent down, rubbed her fingers in a small puddle of soap and turned to address her husband.

     "Dishsoap, Fred?" she questioned wearily. Upon her speaking, the girls ceased jumping, ran towards her, and began chanting "Mummy! Mummy! Mummy!" They each only came to their mother's thigh. Cute little buggers, those two.

     "Evening, Love! Dad recommended it. I used it to get just the right consistency and flavoring. Here, try this!" Fred exclaimed as he thrust the tray out towards his wife. Angie merely raised her eyebrows as if to say "Do I look bloody daft to you?" For as long as I live, I will always be amazed by how Angelina can express so many thoughts using only facial expressions. Mocking disappointment, Fred turned away from Angelina and looked down at his children, smiling mischievously.

     "Oh, no you don't!" Angelina protested quickly. "I'm going to have them all night. I don't want you poisoning Maggie and Mo while they're on my shift!"

     Realizing she had beat him to his own idea, Fred searched for another worthy target. It only took twenty seconds before he spotted me.

     "Alicia! So nice to see you here! I have got a product that I know you're just dying to try!" he proclaimed, putting on the Weasley charm.

     "Don't you have a lab to do this sort of thing in?" I questioned.

     "Well, yes, but the day care was closed today and I had to watch the girls, so, the kitchen became my lab! Now here. Try!"

     "What exactly are they?"

     "I call them 'Mind Mints'! Really great stuff, Alicia. Just try it."

     "What do they do?"

     "If you try, you'll find out. Now, come on!"

     Nine out of ten times, when asked to try any Weasley creation, I decline. This time, in light of the fact that I would soon be moving in with this man, I bit my lip and decided to give it a go. I took a mint off the tray and reluctantly tossed it in my mouth. Hmm, he was right. The soap did add to the texture. It was minty yet...clean. Actually rather tasty. I was half expecting to start burping up big giant soap bubbles. I was also half expecting to turn into a big giant soap bubble. Oddly enough, nothing was happening.

     "Fred, what's supposed to be happening to me?" I asked, lost.

     "Absolutely nothing! Isn't it fantastic?" he screamed enthusiastically.

     "Okay, you've lost me now. Why is that fantastic?"

     "You were expecting for something awful to happen right?"

     "I was expecting to turn into bubble. Why?"

     "That's just it. You expected something to happen. And nothing did, which means it works!"

     "Okay, I'm still not following, Fred. Why is this good?"

     "Yesterday I slipped one of these to Angelina and nothing happened. Needless to say I was highly upset when she remained normal."

     "You slipped me what?!" Angelina shouted, visibly angry with her husband.

     "Angie, Love," he explained, "before you get mad, remember-nothing happened."

     "I had better be fine! Always keep one thing in mind, Mr. Weasley: you shouldn't test out your products on the people you want, ahem, test out later, so to speak."

     The blood in Fred's face drained straight down. Score one for Angelina, nil for Fred. It was almost too hard not to laugh. Luckily, I've developed a remarkable knack for biting my tongue, living in the same house as the absent-minded Parker Spinnet and the anal yet perky Keira Spinnet. I only hope Maggie and Mo learn the same lesson.

     "Right, dear," Fred said in a strained voice, "but please keep in mind that you're fine and my test was unsuccessful. The trick is that you have to think something terrible's going to happen to you. Nothing'll happen as long as you're paranoid. Let your mind forget about it for a second, and whoops!"

     "What did you expect to happen to me, dear?" Angelina questioned.

     "Well, if all had worked, you'd be floating towards the ceiling right about now."

     "For your sake, let's be happy that it didn't work."

     "Of course, dear. For my sake, I am very happy indeed."

     "And to make it up to me, Alicia is staying here for awhile."

     "How long is awhile?"

     "Until I'm one hundred percent sure that bubble stuff you gave me isn't actually going to send me flying."

     "But who knows how long it could take for that sample to wear off! It was faulty!"

     "Precisely."

     And with that, Fred gave up and busied himself with some task that I can only assume would not make Angie mad. Ah, how she has toned her leadership skills since being Quidditch Captain at Hogwarts. Angelina looked around the room, shook her head, and quickly recited some basic cleaning a repairing spells. Within a minute her living room was back to looking as it should. I grabbed a quick seat on the couch to relax a bit.

     "And Mum actually suggested I get a maid," she said, quite pleased with herself. She then (finally) silenced her children by leaning down to pick both of them up. Maggie (at least, I think it was Maggie) literally leaped up into her mother's arm while Mo just sort of grabbed Angie's arm and waited to be lifted.

     "Margaret, Moira..." Angelina began.

     "Aw Mummy! No long names! No long names!" they shrieked in unison.

     "Fine," Angelina sighed, "Maggie, Mo, I want you two to be on your best behavior. We've got a guest spending a few days with us."

     "Who, Mummy? Who?" one of them cried out. I have no idea which.

     "Your Aunt Alicia, lovely."

     I'm not sure which word sparked it, but somewhere in those four words the idea of pouncing me found its way into both their little heads. With a battle cry of "Alicia! Alicia!", the darlings flew out of their mothers arms and went straight for the couch. Yes, I know, I'm not their Aunt, but Angelina's the closest thing I've got to a sister. Well, besides Erin. But don't tell Angie that.

     "Good evening!" I shouted once they had both found a place on my lap. They both began bouncing excitedly while firing questions at me left and right.

     "Auntie Alicia, why are you here?"

     "Are you gonna stay forever?"

     "Did you bring us a present?"

     "How come you don't have your sleepaway bag?"

     "How come Uncle Lee isn't here, too?"

     "Did you know one time I walked into Mummy and Papa's room and they were wrestling on their bed and..."

     "Okay!" Angelina interrupted. "That's enough questions for Aunt Alicia today. Hey, how about you go upstairs and play your Sammy the Snitch game?"

     "Sammy!" they rang out as they sprung from my lap and raced up the stairs. Angelina's normally caramel complexion was as scarlet as her husband's hair. I was dying of laughter.

     "You actually told them you were wrestling?" I managed through my bout of laughter.

     "Fred did. It was the first thing that came into his head when Maggie caught us last spring. She must've told her sister, because when Mo caught us last week..."Angelina explained.

     "Let me get this straight-you two got caught by BOTH your children? On separate occasions?" I couldn't believe it. I had always assumed those two had enough sense to put a locking charm on their door.

     "Yes, we got caught twice. When you have children, Alicia, you'll quickly learn that locking charms for the bedroom are generally a bad idea, especially when one considers wet beds and bad dreams," Angelina stated as she stood up. "Oy, I've got a bloddy terrible headache. I don't know what was in the tin and gonic stuff you let me drink, but I feel awful. I'm going up for a nap."

    

     I was going to inform her that it was "gin and tonic" and not "tin and gonic", but by the time I had opened my mouth, she had apparated upstairs. Must be a weird thing, this parenting stuff, I thought. Heh, if I knew then what I know now...oh well, that's a story for another time. Deciding that Ange has the right idea, I laid down on the couch, conjured up a blanket for myself, and settled in to my temporary home.

     I woke up the next morning unable to move. I found this rather odd, seeing as I had no memory of any painful accidents or physical overexertion, nor had I had any alcohol (Fred wouldn't let me. "The last time you got drunk in my house, it took me ages to find my socks again!" he protested. Honestly, how was I supposed to know that they weren't really puppets?) Shifting my weight, I looked up to find, much to my surprise, a small child sitting on me.

     "Mmm, sweetheart, what are you doing down here?" I yawned. "You should be upstairs asleep in bed. It's far too early for you to be awake."

     "Aunt Alicia, it's ten-thirty. You should have been up hours ago," she recited back to me as if she had been coached to say that.

     "Who told you I should've been up, love?"

     "Papa. He told me to sit here until you got up!" She was bouncing when she said this. God, for a skinny little four year old, she was heavy. Oh, correction-she wasn't four just yet. There was another week before that.

     "Well, love, I'm up now, however I can't sit until you hop down, dear."

     With that, she jumped down, and I sat up. That's when I noticed two packages sitting on the table, neatly wrapped in the gold tinfoil of O'Brian's, my favorite Irish stationary store. Beside the packages was a small piece of parchment with something scribbled on it. What could that be? I needed to read it-without distraction.

     "Love, why don't you go upstairs and bring your sister down and we can all eat..." I began, but the child was gone by the word "sister". Anxious little tyke, she was. I wonder which one she was. Oh well, on to my note. I leaned over, picked it up, and while rubbing my side, began to read it.

     Al,

     Sorry about the Mind Mints last night. If you start floating, owl me immediately. Gemini should still be there.

     I turned to look; his owl, Gemini, was indeed there.

     Anyway, I figured that since you were sleeping over, you could do Angie and I the favor of watching our girls. The daycare's closed again. Thanks so much. Our talk at dinner last night was good. I still think your idea for this book is mad, but it's bloody brilliant at the same time. I wish you all the best, and, as a token of luck, I had a gift owled here this morning (Angie told me where you liked to shop. George put the order in). I figured you wouldn't be up for awhile. I hope you make good use of it today.

Power to you,

         Fred.

P.S.-The one sitting on you? That was Moira.

     Quickly, I ripped off the wrapping from the parcels to reveal the most gorgeous Eagle feather quill I had ever seen in my life and gold-lined parchment to match. Even if he did think I was nuts, he must've had a lot of faith in me to spend that much money just for "good luck". Of course, Angie and George had helped. Wait, this meant George knew, too. I wonder what he thought. No, I didn't. I couldn't. It just felt like cheating on Lee all over again whenever I thought of George. Not that I was exactly being honest with Lee about the whole job thing and all. I had to tell him what had happened, and I had to do it before he got back, but I couldn't. It's not that I wanted to lie, it's just that I didn't want to bring up anything disappointing. After all we've gone through, all he's gone through, he didn't deserve that. Damn it, I needed to clear my head and get all these thought out for good. I ended up having help; the girls came bolting down before I could form another thought. Oh, today would be fun...

     So, Fred had left me with the girls. Definitely a minus. But, he left me with a quill. Definite plus. I figured that once the girls were off napping, I could use my new gift to work on my book. Said naptime, however, took forever to reach. When you combine Angelina's genes with Fred's genes, you end up with two kids who are very strong, into everything, and that never grow tired. Luckily, I managed to wear them out by one o'clock. Perfect timing, really. I had hours upon hours to begin writing my opus, which I decided would begin with the easiest story to access-my own.

     Quill in hand, I picked up a piece of parchment and went to write. The only thing was that I couldn't. At that exact moment, I had forgotten how to form characters. Surely this was only a small mental block; with a little willpower, it'd be gone in no time. Thing was, it didn't come after a half hour. Or an hour for that matter. Two hours later, I was still sitting on the couch, trying to get my story on paper. Damn it, why the hell was this so hard? It's not as if I had forgotten what happened all those years ago. There wasn't any way in hell I was going to forget that. I twirled the quill round my fingers , making it do a delicate dance as my frustration built in my brain. Even if I couldn't write it, the scene still played in my head on a never-ending projector. Packing up and running off in the middle of a stormy night. Changing my name and having to take classes at a muggle university. Trying to be happy while always being afraid. I could think about it; it wasn't hard to think about it. The hard part was putting it down. Maybe everybody was right; maybe this book wasn't going to work. How the bloody hell was I going to get other people to tell me their stories when I couldn't even get my own out?

     Tired and frustrated, I decided to get something to eat. I forced myself out of my groove in the couch and stumbled past the lines of Snitch-O's (the only winged cereal that actually FLYS) and crushed them under my boot, just to make sure one of those damned things didn't try to fly up my nose again. Once I made it to the kitchen, I did a quick examination of the cupboards and fridge. Merlin, was there anything in this kitchen that wasn't designed for wizards and witches six and under? It was a lost cause; I was never going to find anything good to eat here. I was about to slam the fridge when I noticed two frosty blue bottles poking through the back. I pulled one out and examined the label. "Rêve du Vin-the mystical nighttime beverage". Hmm, I didn't know what "rêve" meant, but I knew "vin" was wine in French. A little wine couldn't hurt my situation, now could it? That was a mistake. A big mistake.

     When I woke up, I was on the kitchen floor. Angelina was standing over me, shaking her head.

     "You just can't seem to keep your hands away from the bottle, can you Alicia?" she questioned with that condescending motherly smirk of hers. Blimey, what happened?

     "Fuck, what was that stuff, Ange? I don't think I even had one glass of it before I hit the floor," I said, rubbing the knee that I had landed on.

     "'Rêve du Vin'-one of Fred's imports from Rouen. It's what he drinks on days when he and George accidentally blow up their factory. Helps him get some sleep at night."

     "See? Someone else drinks a little when things go rough!"

     "Yes, except it's not really much of a drinking wine. It's more of a sleeping draught."

     A sleeping potion. I had tried to open the doors of creativity by using a sleeping potion. Well, hey! I looked like wine to me! It was by a bottle of wine! Speaking of which...

    

     "Hey Angelina? I didn't happen to break that other bottle, did I?" I inquired. It'd be a travesty if I had destroyed the perfectly good bottle.

     "You mean the one that actually did have Cider Wine in it? No, but you'll not be having any of it today. I plan on saving that," Angelina stated.

     "Saving it? For what?" Why on earth would she want to save such a perfectly great bottle of wine? There's no time like the present to make use of the wonder that is Cider Wine! It's the only beverage on the planet that tastes even better than butterbeer.

     "I'm saving it for the day when you and your husband have your own flat with your own kids, and I can send my little angels to spend the night with you," she said coyly.

     "Yes, because Lee and I will be having children so soon..." I replied sarcastically. Considering the situation, the chances of convincing my husband to even consider touching me would be slim to none.

     "Oh, shut up, Alicia!" Ange yelled. "You know Lee's wanted kids since the day he married you. I'm surprised you don't have a Weasley Clan by now,"

     "Yes, I know, but we haven't exactly had the best of circumstances to bring a child into the world, now have we?"

     "Oy, just shut it, all right? All this from a bottle of wine. Tell me, if you wanted to get drunk, why not just drink the Pepper Rum from the basement?"

     Pepper Rum? What did she take me for, some washed-up junkie? Me drinking a shot of Pepper Rum is the equivalent of a muggle knocking off a fifth of Vodka. It's the sort of thing when you want to get very drunk very quickly. It tends to last for a long time, too; just smelling it gives you a buzz.

     "Why is it that everyone assumes that I get drunk all the time. I've only been drunk three times in my entire life!" I screamed out. It was true; I did NOT deserve this reputation!

     "You've only been drunk three times because people have been around to stop you. If left to your own devices, you'd no longer have a liver!" Angelina countered. I would have given her a witty retort in return, but to be honest, she was right. Anytime I got depressed, someone had been there to keep me from losing myself in alcohol. When I got drunk for the first time, Lee was there to carry me off to a safer place. And he certainly gave me something else to do besides get more drunk after our wedding. Come to think of it, Lee was a lot of the reason I hadn't become an alcoholic. Such a great man. And here I am, trying to drown myself in drinks instead of telling him about my wonderful book, about my whole situation. Fuck.

     "I wasn't trying to get drunk, Angelina. I just needed something to wear off the edge. I feel guilty about not telling Lee what's going on, plus I haven't done much work on the book..."

     "What's wrong with your book?"

     "I can't start it. I have my story, and I know what I want to say, but I can't write it down. Maybe people were right. Maybe this is a lost cause."

     Angelina looked at me with that motherly look again, only this time it was less insulting and more caring. Wow, that was a comforting look. I've tried for years to imitate it, but no one can do it like Ange. I felt serene in a second. She walked me over to the couch again, picked up the quill her husband so graciously gave me, and licked the nub in preparation to write.

     "Ange," I started, "What are you doing?"

     "Starting your book," she replied.

     "Meaning..."

     "Meaning you're going to sit here and tell me your whole story, and I'm going to write it down for you. That way you've got the start to your book."

     "But Angie, I can't do that..."

     "Don't give me any of that 'not my writing' shit, Al, because in the end, that's all it is-bullshit. It's me writing your words; you telling your story to a friend. It's like me being a tape recorder."

     "You want to be my tape recorder?"

     "Yes I do. Now, out with it. You never did tell me the whole story behind your leaving."

     I stared into Angelina's eyes; she was dead serious. I sighed loudly; this book had to get started somehow.

     "Okay, Angelina. You want to know what happened? Here goes..."