Once Was Lost

Chapter 4

Taylor

"When is Auntie Miri getting here?"

"Soon, Ellie. Very soon."

I shifted Fletcher into a more comfortable position on my right hip and glanced at my watch; Miriam would be arriving any moment now, fresh off of a thirteen-hour flight from Australia. We'd come all the way to Los Angeles to meet her at the airport. Penelope and Ava stood with me, Ava with her hands enclosed in a pair of gloves that had been charmed against a spontaneous explosion of her powers. Off to one side were Natalie, Sarah and Draco, the latter two seated side by side, hands entwined. They were truly made for one another - according to Sarah, her presence in Draco's life had mellowed her husband out rather considerably. He no longer possessed the sheer disdain and hatred he had once felt toward Muggles - Sarah had even convinced him to allow her to teach him to use her laptop computer, something that could never have happened otherwise - but there were still some things that he was quite wary of. Flight, for instance. Sarah had laughed as she told Natalie and I how Draco had sat there in his cramped airplane seat on the flight from London to New York, hands clenching the armrests so firmly his knuckles were white, eyes closed tightly. He had apparently sat like that for the entire five hours that they were in the air.

A crowd of people streaming into Arrivals caused me to look up, just in time to hear Ava squeal, "Auntie Miri!"

I grinned and waved as Miriam came walking through the thick crowd, pulling a large black suitcase along behind her. "Hey Fletch," she said by way of a greeting. She gave me a wide grin before bending down to give Ava and Penelope a tight hug each. "Oi, blondie!" she shouted in the direction of her sister and brother-in-law, once she had straightened back up to her full height, and the two of them (along with Natalie) turned in her direction. "Get over here you three!"

"So how was your flight?" I asked as we waited for the three of them to meander their way over to where Miriam and I stood.

"It was sheer hell," she replied. "I just spent thirteen hours sitting in economy between two Muggles, and I don't think either of them knew what deodorant is." She screwed up her face and pretended to throw up.

The eight of us left the airport terminal, emerging into the bright Californian summer sunlight, and headed toward the car Natalie and I had rented for our stay in California. It was an ordinary Muggle vehicle - a Nissan Pathfinder, if I remembered correctly - but with some minor differences. The major difference was that it was a lot bigger on the inside than it looked from the exterior.

"So where are you all staying?" Miriam asked as her gear was loaded into the back of the Pathfinder.

"At my parents' house," I replied. "They went on vacation to Atlantis, and Elissa went backpacking with her friends around Europe for the summer. So we have the house to ourselves for a few weeks."

We made it to San Diego with the minimum of fuss, arriving at my old home nearly an hour after we had met Miriam at the airport. When Miriam had unpacked, Natalie made lunch for us while I told my sisters what I'd discovered during that weekend in Philadelphia.

"So basically, when we were separated, there were seven people present, aside from us," I said. "Our mother, her two sisters, two Hogwarts professors, an Auror lieutenant from the United States Auror College, and a high-ranking official in the Australian Ministry of Magic."

"And you know this how..." Miriam prompted.

"Looked it up on the Internet," I replied. "Where else? The Australian Ministry and the Auror College both have websites, if you can believe it." I shrugged. "Well, it's the wizarding Internet - the same group who invented that shielding technology came up with a magical version of the Muggle Internet, but that's just semantics, really."

"What was the Ministry official's name?"

"Amaethon West."

Miriam's eyes widened. "I don't believe it," she muttered. "All the rumours were true after all..."

"What rumours?" Natalie asked.

"That the Australian Minister of Magic had some part in my adoption," she replied. "Anyway, you were saying?" she said to me.

"Yeah, anyway, of our two aunts, one of them lives right here in San Diego. Next door, in fact."

"Next door?" Now it was Sarah's turn to be surprised.

I nodded. "All my life she'd been living next door, and I never realised it."

Natalie levitated a plate of chicken and tomato sandwiches across to the table and set it down, before taking a seat next to me. "So what are we going to do?" Miriam asked as she reached for a sandwich.

"We need to be careful how we approach her," I replied. "She might know who I am, but unless she keeps tabs on the professional Powerball league there's a pretty slim chance of that. We'll need that photo for one - if she is our aunt, she'll recognise it. If not, well...we'll just start over." He shrugged and took one of the sandwiches, examining it closely before biting into it. "And I think I should be the one to make first contact," I added once I'd swallowed my mouthful of chicken, tomato and bread.

"Why you?" Sarah asked.

"Because even if she doesn't really know who I am, she will have seen me before. I did live here for twenty-two years, after all. Not to mention that the girls are dying to catch up with their aunts and uncle."

"You want us to baby-sit," Draco said; it was a statement, rather than a question.

"Basically, yeah," Natalie said. "Take them to the zoo or something like that. I've got a Muggle guidebook around here somewhere, and I'm pretty sure Taylor has a magical guidebook you can borrow." She cocked an eyebrow at my brother-in-law. "This is good practice, you know. Even if you don't end up having kids, I daresay that Sarah's brother and sister will have kids eventually. And that means endless babysitting duties until those kids are old enough to look after themselves."

"We get the picture, Nat," Sarah said. "When were you planning on speaking with her?"

"Probably not until the weekend."

Sarah nodded. "All right then."

From there, Miriam and I began a spirited discussion about our respective Powerball teams. Miriam played for the Sydney Swifts in the Australian National Powerball League, having been selected during her House team's Powerball final at school in her final year, and was tipped to become the Swifts' next captain. The two of us had played Powerball for our House team, Atitjere, during my year at Southern Cross Academy.

As nervous as I was about meeting the woman I now knew to be my aunt for the first time in my memory, one thing was certain at least. It was bound to be a very interesting experience.

* * *

Natalie

"I don't want to do this."

All it had taken for Taylor to change his mind about meeting his next-door neighbour was to take one step up onto her front porch. Up until that point, he had been completely willing to speak to her for perhaps the first time in his life - he had never associated much with his Californian neighbours, mostly out of the fear of having his magic discovered - but now that willingness had completely evaporated.

"Oh, no you don't," I said, catching hold of his shoulder as he made to turn and go back into the front yard. "We did not come all the way here for you to back out. And neither did your sisters. Now you march forward, and you knock on that door. If she isn't who you're looking for, there's no harm done. It just means we need to look further afield."

He gave me a withering glare, but he turned back around and walked up to the front door. I followed him, catching up his left hand in my right as he raised his right hand and knocked sharply on the door three times in quick succession.

"Hold your hippogriffs, I'm coming!" a voice yelled, and Taylor and I exchanged glances. Whoever lived in this house, at least one of them certainly wasn't a Muggle. The door swung open noiselessly, and Taylor and I found ourselves almost face to face with Taylor's double.

Well, not quite his double. The person standing before us was certainly not male, and was at least a foot shorter than Taylor. But she was blonde, and a pair of blue eyes nearly identical to Taylor's own peered at us from beneath the brim of a black Los Angeles Raiders baseball cap. She was dressed in blue jeans, a bright yellow T-shirt, and black Converse sneakers, and wore bright blue gardening gloves on her hands.

"Hello there," the woman said as she shucked her gloves. "What can I do for the two of you?"

"I don't wish to intrude, but is your name Clio Taylor?" Taylor asked.

"It is," the woman confirmed, her eyes snapping to meet Taylor's gaze.

Taylor squeezed his eyes closed for the barest of moments, before opening them once more. He inhaled deeply, before saying in a trembling voice. "I think you might be my aunt."

"Oh good Lord," Clio murmured. "What's your name?"

"Taylor Chambers." A pause. "But my mother gave me the name Jordan Taylor Lawyer."

Clio's eyes widened, and her mouth opened slightly. "Oh gods," she whispered. "After all these years..."

"Twenty-four years and four-and-a-half months to be exact," Taylor said.

"You'd better come in, both of you," Clio said. "Quickly." She opened the door, and Taylor and I stepped inside, following Clio through into the kitchen. We seated ourselves at the scrubbed wooden table, Taylor's aunt opposite us.

After introducing me, and without being prompted once, Taylor told the whole story. He told Clio of growing up as the sole blonde in a family of brunettes, completely unaware of who he was, and working out, using what he knew of his family history, that he was adopted. He'd gone off to school barely weeks after his little revelation, despite being rather ill at the time, and had spent five-and-a-half school years in the company of people who lived to torment him. As he told his aunt of his year in Australia, and discovering that two of his female housemates - one Australian, one British - were his sisters, I saw her hide a smile. He had returned home to America barely a week before Christmas, safe in the knowledge that he finally found one small part of his family. He'd graduated alongside me from Amargosa Valley College eighteen months later, top of his class, and had headed straight into the wild world of professional Powerball. The two of us had moved to New York together barely three years after Taylor had begun his sporting career, after he'd been traded to the Revolutionaries from the San Diego Strikers on a ten-year contract, and shortly afterwards had started our family.

As Taylor told his tale, I didn't miss the way Clio looked at her nephew. Her attention never wavered for a moment - she was truly interested in what Taylor had been up to since he'd been adopted.

"You say you're an elemental?" Clio asked when Taylor had finished his story.

"Both of us are," Taylor told her, indicating me with a nod of his head in my direction. "Sarah and Miriam too. And so is one of our children. The other two haven't come into their powers yet, they're still too young."

"That's unusual, because neither myself, nor your mother, nor your other aunt are elementals."

"What?" Taylor asked, surprise in his voice. Whatever he'd been expecting to hear from his aunt, obviously this was not it. "What about our cousins?"

Clio shook her head. "There haven't been any elementals in the Lawyer family for many generations. And as far as I know, up until this current generation the Hanson family has never produced any magical child, elemental or not. You, Sarah and Miriam are the first Lawyer elementals since at least the mid-eighteenth century."

"Wait a second," I said, deciding to allow Taylor a few minutes to think. "You said the name 'Hanson'. One of Taylor's friends, his best friend in fact, is named Matthew Hanson. They became roommates after Taylor came back to school from Australia. Would he be a relation by any chance?"

Clio kept her mouth closed, merely cocking one slender blonde eyebrow.

It was Taylor who made the connection. "Matt's my brother?" he asked. When Clio nodded, Taylor's eyes widened. "I don't believe it. He even looks like me..."

"Well, you do have the same parents," Clio told him.

There was a short silence. Taylor broke it by asking the one question I knew had been on his mind ever since he had seen his original birth certificate for the first time.

"Why didn't she want us?"

Clio sighed softly. "That isn't something we should be discussing without your mother present. But I will tell you this much - giving the three of you up for adoption, it wasn't a decision she made lightly. It broke her heart to do it. She truly loved the three of you, and after she said goodbye..." Clio shook her head. "It just shattered her. She knew why she had to do it, but it doesn't mean it made the decision any easier." She reached across the table and took Taylor's right hand in both of her own. "She did want you, Taylor. I am telling you the truth. That sister of mine would have moved Heaven and Earth to protect you and your sisters."

"Protect us from what?" Taylor asked.

Clio's mouth twisted in a scowl. "Your family."