Salazar's Story

Family

It was a Sunday afternoon in late August, and rain clouds rolled low overhead in the grey skies. Cheerful shouts and roars of laughter rung around the smoky little village pub that lay hidden among the fields of Gloucestershire where around twenty people; men, women and children; were clustered around a group of tables in the corner, talking jovially and drinking merrily, having long finished their Sunday roasts and treacle puddings.

"Right then, my round?" said a man known by his family as Young John, rising to his full height and just scraping his hair on the low beams of the old pub. He went round the circle, asking each person in turn what they wanted from the bar, then took out some notes from a wad in his pocket and headed off up to order the drinks.

"Go and help your uncle with the drinks, Billy Boy," said a middle-aged woman with curly black hair and gold sovereigns in her ears to her teenaged son, who had not quite yet acquired the height and build of his uncles and older cousins. Billy Boy attempted to shrug away the embarrassment of being treated like a child by his mother and joined his uncle at the bar, while his blonde haired little sister, Carly-Jo was sent over to the juke-box with a pound coin to find "a good old Country and Western song".

Tucked in between her mother and her grown-up cousin Lara, a fifteen year old girl, with her mother's shoulder-length curly brown hair and big gold earrings, fanned the air in front of her in an attempt to get rid of the smoke that was causing her baby brother to cough.

"Oh, sorry, darlin'" Lara said, stubbing out her cigarette with her heavily ringed fingers and then lifting Baby Joe from Alicia's lap and onto her own so that she could sing to him as soon as Carly-Jo Spinnet found the right song on the juke box. Alicia smiled as the first chords were struck, not noticing the uncomfortable twitches of some of the other customers in the pub, who seemed to know that a long afternoon of raucous singing was coming up.

A good few hours dissolved while they sat there in the pub, singing, laughing and generally having a good time, with the mingled scents of coke, beer, cider and smoke hanging in a cloud around them and making them all feel content. It was easy to forget about the hassles of life when they were singing their hearts out to Country ballad after Country ballad. Finally, at about half past six, when the younger children were starting to get bored, they all agreed it was time for the women and children to be getting back to start the dinner, and so Alicia Spinnet rose with everyone else who was leaving, pulled on her coat, and put Baby Joe into the pushchair that Cousin Lara had unfolded, then let Billy Boy's mother, Mary-Anne push him while Alicia hurried out of the door to walk side by side with her own mother.

"Where's the baby?" Mrs Spinnet asked quickly, spinning around to make sure someone had him. "So, what do you want for dinner when we get back, love?"

"I'm not bothered," said Alicia, looking around at the village street they were walking down and thinking what a pretty place it was, "something nice and warm."

The group walked, the houses started to dwindle until they found themselves out in the countryside with fields either side, marching along the country lane with their coats pulled close against the drizzle and the wind. After about a mile they found the dirt drive which led away from the tree-lined lane, through the farm gate and into the grassy field where their trucks and caravans were parked, with the horses grazing in a temporary pen a little way off. Aunt Prunella, a dark skinned, black haired eighty-something woman who was actually Alicia's grandmother, was stoking a little campfire in the middle of the camp over which her old black kettle was boiling, ready to make tea for the women as soon as they returned. She had been keeping the caravans all afternoon, along with Lizzy-Lou, Alicia's cousin, who had a newborn baby to look after and so hadn't gone to the pub with her parents and her young husband. Alicia took her baby brother from Mary-Anne and climbed up into the warm, bright trailer with him, sat him down on the end couch - away from the cabinet with the expensive Crown Derby china - and turned the television to a cartoon channel for him while she made them both a drink. She handed Joe his little red beaker and then stood at the door of the caravan with her cup of juice in her hand, looking out over the camp, over the field, and over the countryside, smiling to herself. She didn't care how many people in their boring little villages called them dirty pikeys; she loved her family and her way of life, and it was times like this, standing with the rain in her face watching the sun go down over the trees, that she felt an overwhelming sense of pride that she was a Romany Gypsy, and not a gauja, stuck in a house, staying in the same place for their whole life without really seeing the world. It was such a shame that in less than a week's time Alicia would be on the train to Hogwarts, where she would remain until at least Christmas, not seeing her family at all, communicating only by owl, locked up in the confines of the castle where half the time she wasn't even allowed out onto the grounds. Left only to watch the rain and the sun, and the rippling grass and waters of the lake, through dirty windows in a sheltered classroom.

But at least she'd be able to play Quidditch again- and there was nothing sheltered and boring about Quidditch, which was one of the reasons she'd taken it up. Before Alicia had found out she was a witch she had never experienced more of a thrill than flying through the air on a broomstick fifty feet high in the rain. And she had to admit that it was good being able to use a proper toilet.

Alicia's musings were disturbed by somebody calling her name.

"Alicia, babe, will you come down and have a cup of tea with us?" said Aunt Prunella, who was sitting on her own by the fire holding a steaming mug in both hands, apparently oblivious to the buzzing activity going on around her as her daughters and daughters-in-law began to prepare food, and their children played around the camp.

Alicia picked Joe up and took him outside; she sat down with him on a little camping stool next to her grandmother, feeling her eyes burn with the heat of the dancing fire.

"Ah, look at the little baby, he's tired," Aunt Prunella cooed, reaching out and tickling Baby Joe under the chin with her gnarled fingers, making him giggle. "It seems such a shame you having to go back to school next week. What's your brother Tom going to do, eh? Who's going to look after him when he starts at the big school?" She must have realised instantly that it was the completely wrong thing to say due to the sudden change in Alicia's facial expression because she quickly changed tack. She had touched upon a nerve which was a great source of inner shame for Alicia - the fact that she was deserting her brother and also the implication her words held that Alicia was somehow distancing herself from her family by going to Hogwarts. "Going to school aint something we Travellers do," she had heard her Aunt Mary Anne saying to her mother when she had first got her Hogwarts letter five years ago. "Especially not a boarding school, all that way away - I don't know how you c ould send your baby away like that. I'm telling you, Sally, she'll come back a gauji slut and a junkie, or else a council worker telling all her gavver chums what thieves we's all are - if they haven't all torn her to bits by then for being who she is." Alicia's mother had tried to protest that things weren't always like that, but Mary had replied with venomous contempt, "You wouldn't understand, girl, you aint a Romany like us." And that was what it all came down to. Sally was different; she wasn't a Gypsy by blood. She had hoped her children would be able to be brought up as Romany, but sending Alicia away to school just marked those differences. Alicia desperately wished her mother would tell them all exactly why she had to go to Hogwarts, that it wasn't any ordinary boarding school and that she wasn't learning how to be an accountant or a lawyer, so that she could get rid of that constant feeling of inadequacy that was always hanging over her like those black rain clouds .

"It's alright, chavvy," said Aunt Prunella in a soft, low voice, and Alicia turned to look into her wizened face, blinking away the water in her eyes and wondering, "no one thinks any the less of you. They'll all know what it's about in the end anyway.

"You're lucky you've got a mother like yours, you know; not everyone with the Gift got a chance to go to Hogwarts."

Alicia stared into that wise old face and then into the fire; it took a while for the meaning of those last few words to sink in.

"You mean-" she turned back to face her grandmother, but Aunt Prunella had walked away leaving Alicia lost in thought, with a distant smile upon her face.