Once Was Lost

Chapter 5

Natalie

"Our family? Why would we need to be protected from them?"

I shrugged without turning around from the stove. It was dinnertime that same day, and I was cooking up what I considered my specialty meal - honey soy chicken, stir-fry vegetables and saffron rice. I'd dug my mother-in-law's wok out of the depths of the kitchen cupboards to cook the vegetables and chicken, and had a pot of rice simmering away nicely on the burner beside the wok.

"I don't know, Miriam," I replied. I poked irritably at a piece of chicken, flipping it over before it seared to charcoal. "She didn't tell us." I can probably guess though, I thought darkly.

"So where's everyone else?" Miriam asked.

"Taylor went out to get some dessert. He took the girls with him - they wanted to get some ice cream," I answered. "Sarah and Draco are upstairs 'practicing'."

"'Practicing'?" Miriam asked, sounding confused. I turned away from the stove, lifted my hands and made a very crude gesture, raising one eyebrow as I did so. It didn't take long for the concept to dawn with Miriam. "Oh..."

"Yeah."

The front door opened, and I heard giggles and loud singing that grew louder as the front door closed and footsteps travelled up the front hallway. As they came closer, I realised that the song that was being sung was The Billywigs Go Flying, an alternate version of the Muggle children's song The Ants Go Marching. The voice singing was rather high-pitched and squeaky, which meant one of two things - the owner had, rather idiotically in my opinion, inhaled a whole balloonful of helium, or had cast a Helium Charm on themselves.

Penelope came skipping in from the hallway, holding a waffle cone that had a scoop of what looked like Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie ice cream wedged into it. She had traces of ice cream around her mouth. I let out a long-suffering sigh; Penelope was unrivalled by her older sister at bribing her father into letting her have a treat before dinner, and it looked like she had struck once again. I gave the rice a final stir, before yelling in my loudest voice, "Taylor Fletcher Chambers!"

"What?" a still-squeaky voice called back.

"Get in here!"

A few seconds later, Taylor came out of the hallway, Ava walking before him; like her sister, Ava also held an ice cream cone - hers loaded with Ben & Jerry's Turtle Soup, by the looks of it.

"I thought I told you not to let the girls have ice cream before dinner," I reminded him. "They'll spoil their appetites."

"Yeah, well," he said, before coughing loudly. "They said they'd eat their dinner, and I believe them," he continued in his normal voice.

I gave him my best glare, which lasted until he levitated five tubs of ice cream into the air. I let out a quiet moan of delight when I saw my favourite flavour, Strawberry Cheesecake, right at the front.

"Truce?" he asked.

"What did you get?" Miriam asked as she shifted Fletcher into a more comfortable position on her knee.

"Ice cream, what's it look like?" Taylor replied. "I got Strawberry Cheesecake, Cherry Garcia, Dublin Mudslide, Magic Brownies, and chocolate - that sound all right?"

"It sounds more than all right to me," I replied as I took the ice cream and stowed it in the freezer. "And Taylor, I'm surprised at you."

"Why?" he asked in what sounded like genuine confusion. He had followed me into the kitchen, and was holding the wooden spoon I'd been using to stir the chicken and the vegetables.

"First, you are Ava and Penelope's father. You shouldn't bend to their will. And that includes bribery." Taylor made a sort of pained noise at that. "And second, I'd have thought you knew better than to suck helium. It's dangerous. You could suffocate."

Taylor snorted. "Dangerous, right..." he said in a disbelieving tone of voice, before proceeding to lick the wooden spoon clean. "And I didn't 'suck helium'. It was a charm that Matt's little brother taught me."

"It is dangerous. Look it up online if you don't believe me."

Sarah and Draco, looking remarkably neat and tidy, came walking downstairs hand in hand just as I floated the wok and rice pot over to the table. "Done enough practicing for today?" I asked as I began serving dinner.

"Not nearly enough," Sarah replied, before turning to Draco and kissing him soundly on the lips. Draco then leaned over and whispered in her ear something that made his wife blush furiously.

"Do you mind?" Miriam said, sounding scandalised. "Not at the table, please. There are children present."

"Yes, thank you Miriam," I said pointedly.

"Mama and Daddy do that all the time," Ava said, sounding quite innocent. She had obviously heard what Draco had said to Sarah.

"Eat your dinner, Ava," Taylor said sharply. "Or you won't get any dessert tonight."

"Sorry Daddy," Ava said contritely. The rest of the meal passed in silence.

* * *

"So, Draco, tell me a little about yourself."

Draco looked over at me, a quizzical look on his pale face. "Like what?" he asked, his tone of voice carefully measured.

"Well, your family, what you did at school, why you married a halfblood elemental, that kind of thing."

"I see."

With Sarah, Miriam and Taylor, along with Ava and Penelope, having been invited to Clio's house for the afternoon, I had decided that the time was right to get to know the Malfoy heir a little better. And so, with Fletcher strapped safely into his stroller, and one absolutely spectacular summer day laid out before us, Draco and I had ventured out into the heart of San Diego - more specifically, we headed out to Balboa Park, a place which brought back a lot of good memories. It had been the place where, the summer after our graduation from Amargosa Valley, Taylor had asked me to move in with him.

"Well..." Draco fingered his wand nervously; it was sticking out of the sleeve of his long-sleeved shirt. "I'm an only child - my mother could no longer have children after I was born. Mother is a socialite, and my...father" he spat this word, as if it were something distasteful "devoted his life to Lord Voldemort, beginning while he was still in school. I was raised secure in the knowledge that when I came of age, I would be expected to join my father in the Dark Lord's service. It wasn't the most appealing career path, but I had no choice in the matter. I was Marked on my seventeenth birthday." He rolled up his left sleeve. "I still carry the Mark." Displayed prominently on the underside of his left forearm was a black skull that had a black serpent issuing from its jaws.

"I can see why you keep it covered," I remarked. He graced me with a tight smile as he rolled his sleeve back down. "So how did you and Sarah meet?"

"I originally noticed her at her Sorting, during my fourth year - she yelled at the Sorting Hat." I smothered a laugh. "Apparently she wanted to be in Slytherin, but was Sorted into Ravenclaw instead. But we didn't meet until the beginning of the next school year." He looked thoughtful a little while. "As for why I married a halfblood...well, I didn't know that she wasn't a pureblood when we first met. I didn't even know that she was adopted until she told me as much. I was supposed to Bond with a fellow Slytherin by the name of Pansy Parkinson - I was betrothed to her shortly after I turned eleven, a little less than three months before I began my first year of school. The only problem was that I could not stand the sight of her. I believe that my mother was responsible for arranging for the betrothal to be called off just before I began my fifth year of school, after she realised that a Bonding between us would not work, not even for the purpose for what it was intended. I'm grateful to her for that. But we kept up the pretence of betrothal in public, due to what was hanging over our heads, and I continued to see Sarah in secret. We were forced to break it off at the end of my sixth year, out of fears for Sarah's safety."

"Doesn't seem to have made much of a difference," I noted.

Another smile. "No, it doesn't seem that way. Now, enough about me - would it be terribly impolite of me to ask you to tell me a little about yourself?"

"Not at all." I hid a small smile. "Well...I'm originally from the city of Atlanta in Georgia, and I'm the second-oldest out of four children. I have one older brother and two younger sisters - their names are Gavin, Rhiannon and Christine. Gavin is two years older than me; Rhiannon and Christine are three and five years younger than me respectively. We're all elementals, and we've all graduated from Amargosa Valley College." I planted my hands on the grass behind me and rocked backward, looking up at the cloudless blue sky. "Taylor and I...we met a couple of years after I started at Amargosa. I was in eighth grade at the time, and he was in his freshman year. He had planted a jinx in the doorway of the school's main Potions laboratory with the help of his friend Matthew and Matthew's younger brother Zachary - it turned the clothes of whoever walked through the doorway completely invisible, and it didn't discriminate between teachers and students. I was one of their very first 'victims'." I let out a chuckle. "Fortunately for them, I saw the funny side of it. The three of them ended up in detention, but I ended up with a new friend. He asked me to be his girlfriend at the beginning of the next school year."

A glance sideways told me that Draco was trying not to laugh, and I smiled before continuing. "Middle of his junior year, he...left. Went on exchange to Australia for a year. It was honestly the hardest year of my life. And when I heard through his parents that he'd nearly died at the hands of one of his classmates, it about killed me. Right then, I decided that I was never going to be separated from him for that long ever again. And as soon as we graduated, he asked me to move in with him."

"And you accepted," Draco said, sounding matter-of-fact.

"Immediately," I confirmed. "There was nothing stopping us from moving in together - we were both adults, and madly in love with each other. This park" I took one hand off of the grass and gestured expansively "is where he asked me. We lived here in San Diego for two years, until Taylor's team traded him to the New York Revolutionaries on a ten-year contract. The rest is history, I guess you could say - we're still madly in love almost nine years later." I didn't miss the way Draco's glance snapped to my hands, the fingers of which were devoid of anything that matched the description of a ring. "No, we're not Bonded. A lot of couples here aren't - it's a massive commitment. I suppose it'll happen when the time is right, but until then we're happy the way we are. Besides, we didn't need to be Bonded to start our family."

We headed back to Taylor's parents' house about twenty minutes later. To be honest, though, if I'd known what had happened while I was out, I likely would have headed back a lot sooner.

* * *

Taylor

While Natalie was off getting to know my new brother-in-law a little better, I decided to take Clio up on her offer to spend the afternoon at her house. The two of us had literally a lifetime to catch up on. Sarah, Miriam and my daughters had been included in the offer, as had Fletcher, but Natalie had elected to take our son with her when she went out with Draco for the afternoon. So it was at two-thirty sharp that the five of us presented ourselves at Clio's front door, my sisters and I fully intent on discovering at least a little of our past.

"Let me get a look at you," Clio said to my sisters as soon as I had introduced them. She held both Miriam and Sarah at arm's length and peered at them over a set of rectangular glasses. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you two were the spitting images of my twin sisters when they were younger. Miriam, you look almost identical to Isis...and Sarah, aside from your eyes you are nearly a carbon copy of your mother." Clio smiled fondly and took her glasses off. "The both of you are a sight for sore eyes. I thought I'd never get to see you again."

"So you didn't know that Sarah and I were to be sent out of the country?" Miriam asked as we followed our aunt through to the kitchen.

"None of us did," Clio replied. "We initially believed that the three of you would be adopted into families from different parts of the country - where in the Congress you would end up, we didn't know and it didn't matter. So long as you were well away from Oklahoma, that was the main thing. Of course, it seemed that Fate had other ideas. We knew four things while the three of you were growing up away from us - that you were all alive, that you were safe, that you were healthy, and most importantly that you were very much loved." She reached down through the neck of her shirt and drew out an amulet of a wolf's head on a silver chain. "We each have one of these. Because I was the one who passed your care onto the family that ended up adopting you, Taylor, I wear your amulet. It's imbued with a mild Tracking Charm that's keyed to your magical signature. Your mother has yours, Sarah, and Isis has Miriam's.

"Now, before we go any further, your mother will be notified of everything that we discuss here today. I owled her barely minutes after you and Natalie left yesterday" she nodded to me "and informed her that you had sought me out. She owled me in return with a request to hear and read all that is said between us, and sent me an Ever-Inking Dictation Quill, a few rolls of charmed parchment, and a Recording Gem."

She drew a wand from a wrist holster and flicked it at the objects she had named, which were sitting on the kitchen bench nearby. The Quill, parchment scrolls and Gem - which took the form of a rather large and perfectly spherical moonstone that looked to be the size of my palm - floated over to the table, setting down before Clio. "Keep in mind that everything you say will be heard and read by your mother, and potentially your father if she decides to let him in on it, so try to keep it clean." She grinned somewhat impishly, before unrolling a scroll of parchment and setting the Quill at the very top. With her wand she tapped the Gem and spoke very clearly and formally.

"This Recording Gem and the accompanying parchment contain a record of an interview between Clio Raelene Taylor, nee Lawyer, Sarah Elizabeth Malfoy, nee Abernathy and by birth Lawyer, Miriam Marie Kennedy, by birth Lawyer, and Taylor Fletcher Chambers, by birth Jordan Taylor Lawyer. This interview was conducted on Sunday, September 19, 2007, beginning at two-thirty-five post meridiem, and the record of the ensuing proceedings is initially for the ears and eyes of Diana Catherine Hanson, nee Lawyer, and Joseph David Hanson. Only they are entitled to decide if any other parties hear what now follows." She tapped the Gem again and set her wand down. With her next words, her tone of voice completely changed.

"Hey Di, and Joe if you're listening - it's Clio here. I'm going to keep this bit short, as you know why you decided to send over your Quill and Gem, so there's no sense in repeating what I already wrote. Joe, you can ask your wife if you want to know, though you probably won't need to if she's told you.

"The triplets are now going to speak to you. I'll warn you both in advance - neither of the girls will sound like you probably expected them to." She smiled warmly at Sarah. "Mrs. Malfoy, you now have the floor."

Sarah glanced nervously at Miriam and I for the space of a heartbeat, before clearing her throat. "Hi Mum," she said tentatively. She let out a nervous laugh. "By Circe it feels strange saying that to anyone other than the mum I grew up with. It's Sarah here. As you can likely tell by my voice, I'm British - I was adopted by the Abernathy family of London, England. I'm recently Bonded as well - I Bonded with Draco Malfoy on July 7 this year. We went to Hogwarts together - he was in Slytherin, three years above me, and I was a Ravenclaw. I caught his attention when I yelled at the Sorting Hat for Sorting me into Ravenclaw." She chuckled. "We courted for nearly three years, but he had to go on the run at the end of his sixth year of school. Just after Christmas in 2000 we resumed our courtship, and last July he asked me to Bond with him." She scratched her left arm. "I've got one adopted brother and one adopted sister - their names are Grant and Maggie, and I'm older than the two of them." She paused then, not seeming to know what to say. "I'm going to let Miriam have a turn now. I hope we get to meet you soon - now that I know that my real mum's out there, I don't feel so alone anymore."

Miriam gave Sarah's shoulder a quick squeeze before speaking into the Gem. "Hi Mum," she said, her voice a tad steadier than Sarah's had been. "As you can probably guess, this is Miriam. Unlike Sarah, I've been living in Australia for the past twenty-four years - I was adopted by the Kennedy family of Mosman, which is a suburb of Sydney. I've got one younger sister, whose name is Josephine - she's three years younger than me and is a real pain in the you-know-what. I spent six years at the Southern Cross Academy of Elemental Magic, which is where I met Sarah and Taylor - they came for a year's exchange back in 2000. Before then, I knew I was adopted, but I didn't know I had siblings other than Josephine. I'm fairly well-known back home - I play a sport called Powerball in the Australia New Zealand Powerball League, for a team called the Sydney Swifts." She tapped the tabletop with her fingertips. "Um, that's all I've really got to say, so I'm going to hand off to Taylor so he can say his piece. Hopefully he has more to say than me."

{Modest, aren't we?} I telepathed to my sister, putting a somewhat cheeky spin on my 'tone'.

{Oh, hush you,} Miriam shot back. She gave me a gentle telepathic nudge in order to get me to open my mouth, and I began to tell my new-found mother about myself.

"Hi Ma," I began. "Sarah and Miriam have already told you about themselves, so now I guess it's my turn. I..." I faltered for just a moment. "I'm Taylor, but you would probably know me as Jordan. I had my name changed after I was adopted - it's a tradition in the Chambers family for the eldest son to have 'Fletcher' somewhere in their name, usually as a middle name. My dad's middle name is Fletcher, and so is mine." My focus shifted to the Quill - it stood perfectly still on its point, waiting for me to keep speaking. "I grew up in San Diego, next door to Aunt Clio, and a few years after I finished school I moved to New York. I graduated from Amargosa Valley College in 2002, after spending a year on exchange in Australia. I've got a girlfriend, Natalie, and we've got three kids - their names are Ava, Penelope and Fletcher. And, uh...I play Powerball too. I'm the captain of the New York Revolutionaries, which is the whole reason I moved to New York - got traded from the San Diego team in 2004. NY is amazing - I live in the wizarding borough of Gotham, and there's never a dull moment there." I tried to think of something else to say, but I came up completely blank. "I guess that's all I have to say, so...yeah. I hope I get to meet you one day." I sat back in my chair to indicate that I was done, and Clio gave me a smile.

"Now that the triplets have spoken for themselves, the discussion part of this recording will now begin." To the three of us, Clio said, "Ask anything you like, but keep in mind that I can decline to answer any question that I think would be better posed to your mother." A smile. "All right, who has the first question?"

Sarah and Miriam dominated most of the discussion - it wasn't that either of them were particularly forceful or anything, but I only had one question that I wanted answered. It was merely a matter of finding the right moment to ask it.

My chance came about forty-five minutes after Clio had started recording.

"You've been very quiet, Taylor," Clio said as the discussion began to wind down. "Any questions you'd like to ask?"

"Just the one." I stared at the Gem, which now had clouds of mist swirling around inside it. "You said yesterday that we were taken from our mother and separated to protect us from our family, but that it wasn't something that you wanted to discuss without our mother being present. She's present now in a manner of speaking, because she's going to hear and read this interview. And I don't mean to be rude, but I think the three of us deserve to know." Miriam grasped my right hand under the table. "What exactly did our mother want to protect us from?"

For the barest of moments, I thought Clio was going to kick us out. Instead, she seemed to study my sisters and I for a little while, before sighing resignedly.

"You know that the three of you were born in Oklahoma," Clio began. "Oklahoma is part of the...well, let's say infamous Bible Belt, and there are some rather fanatic Muggles living there. People who tend to take the Bible rather literally."

Sarah was the first to grasp the significance of what Clio was saying. "Oh, hell no," she groaned. "You're kidding, right?"

"No kidding." Clio shifted slightly in her seat. "Nearly three hundred years ago, around the time that the last Lawyer elemental was born, a Squib was born into the Lawyer line. Family legend says that he was an intensely bitter man - he saw his siblings practicing magic, levitating bullfrogs and tortoises around the family property like they were nothing, and he was jealous of their abilities to say the least. Once he had come of age, he decided to have nothing more to do with his family, and he moved away. Somewhere along the line he got his hands on a Bible.

"The branch of the Lawyer family that descends from that Squib is all-Muggle, and is intensely religious. They take the Bible literally, and they're quite proud of it too. I've been of the misfortune to spend an afternoon with them, when I was much younger, and I was scared out of my wits by the time your grandmother came to take me home." She ran her thumb along the handle of her wand, as if it were a sort of security blanket. "There is a particular verse in the Old Testament of the Bible that dictates how followers of Christ should treat people like us. The verse is Exodus 22:18. It reads, and I quote" and here she paused "'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'."

Clio's little revelation floored me to say the least. I sat there for what felt like an eternity, taking in what she had said to us. At least I knew the truth now, but I didn't like it. The truth hurts, as they say.

"So now you know. It's the reason why Isis, your mother and I were sent away to England for school, and why the three of you were separated and adopted by other families. The risks to your safety were just too great."

"But the Statute of Secrecy-" Sarah began.

Clio shook her head. "Means nothing. That branch of the family knows about us, and we know about them. They know what we are, that we're everything they hate, and I know very well that they'd love nothing more than to end the Lawyer line with your kids' generation, Taylor. If you were with your mother, or with either of us, you'd have been protected. We would have obliterated them if they'd tried to harm you. But your father is a Muggle - how could he have protected you? This is nothing against him, of course, but he's a crap shooter. Not to mention that he could have been taken to court. Many a Muggle has sued the one they commited a crime against, even though they were the one to trespass." She shrugged. "You can't change human nature, I'm afraid."

She surveyed the three of us once she had finished speaking. "I take it that we're done?" she asked, and we nodded. "So there you have it, Di," she said to the Gem. "Hopefully you haven't smashed the Gem by now, and you've listened to the discussion the whole way through. Owl me when you've taken it all in, okay? Love you, sis." She tapped the Gem with her wand. "This interview was concluded at three-thirty post meridiem on Sunday, September 19, 2007, and again is for the ears and eyes of Diana Catherine Hanson, nee Lawyer, and Joseph David Hanson." She tapped the Gem one last time, and the Quill stopped dictating.

Before we bade Clio farewell, she told us something else.

"The three of you would eventually have found each other," she said, her tone reassuring. "Trust me. There is a saying that goes, 'It it virtually impossible to keep magical triplets separated forever. Fate will always conspire to reunite them'. So you see, the three of you were always meant to meet." She smiled at us one final time. "I'm just very glad that you three met when you did - you've had some of the best years of your lives to get to know each other. Hopefully those years will continue for a long time yet."