Free Web NovelChapter 317: Chapter 317: Mr. Evans: Who Is He [bonus]
Last year’s owl had come in the morning, flying through the window without so much as a flutter of its wings, landing square on the sill and rapping twice on the glass with a claw.
The Black family owls were all like that, every one of them wearing a look that said I just happened to be passing your windowsill.
This year’s hadn’t come.
Maybe later? Maybe held up on the way? Maybe it had caught a field mouse and was enjoying its breakfast?
She shook her head, muttered again, and got up to help her mother clear the plates.
Two cards sat in front of Petunia, both plain paper. One from a classmate, a printed Father Christmas on the front, a line inside wishing her a happy Christmas and saying see you next term.
The other from the neighbor’s girl, with a packet of Toffee tucked in.
Petunia set the two cards side by side on the table, ran a finger along their edges, then lifted her eyes toward the sitting room.
Over on Lily’s blanket lay a scatter of torn wrapping, colored, silver, coarse paper, every kind of texture.
A few candy balls still rolled across the carpet. The last one bounced twice and finally came to rest, turned into a plain gold boiled sweet.
Petunia’s gaze passed over the heap of torn paper and stopped a moment on the pale purple pouch hung over the arm of the sofa.
Lily had used that pouch a year now. It sat on her nightstand while she slept, hung on her shoulder when she went out, and she didn’t even swap it out for trips into town.
Petunia remembered last Christmas, when that pouch first arrived, how Lily had hugged it and turned it over and over, putting her hand in and pulling it out again, going on and on, "It actually fits," "Look, look."
She dropped her eyes back to the two cards in front of her, then unwrapped the Toffee, put one in her mouth, chewed a few times. Too sweet.
Lily came out of the kitchen with a glass of milk and saw Petunia sitting at the table, chewing something, no particular expression on her face.
She didn’t notice that only two cards lay by her sister’s hand. Her mind was off somewhere else.
Back down onto the blanket by the fire, knees drawn up, chin resting on them, one more look toward the window.
Still nothing.
Mrs. Evans came out of the kitchen drying her hands and saw her younger daughter wilted small on the blanket.
She said nothing, her eyes moving to her husband.
Mr. Evans set down the paper, and their gazes met in the air.
He lifted his chin a fraction, a small gesture toward Lily. Mrs. Evans gave a slight shake of her head. Don’t ask.
The two of them sat on the sofa, neither making a sound.
Mr. Evans found himself remembering things.
Ever since Lily had gone off to that magic school, she’d come home full of things that sounded, to them, like wonders.
Talk of her lessons, of how a potion was brewed, of which professor was interesting, of what this or that bit of magic could do.
But after she came home this past summer, a person had begun to surface in the talk, a person with no name.
Lily never volunteered what he was called, yet every so often a line would pop out. He said. He can do anything. He taught me. He thinks that’s wrong.
He, he, he, he.
Mr. Evans had noticed that when his daughter spoke of this he, the tone wasn’t the same as for her other classmates.
Speaking of Marcia she’d be cheerful. Speaking of Susan she’d roll her eyes. Speaking of Severus her face went a touch complicated.
But speaking of him, her voice would lift, her face would quicken, a smile would come without her meaning it, and her eyes would wander off to one side.
One evening over supper that summer, Lily had brought up the school’s house system.
"Gryffindor and Slytherin are mortal enemies, always have been, since the school was founded."
Mr. Evans had only said mm and let it pass.
But now he recalled it. Lily was in Gryffindor. That he, nine times out of ten, was in Slytherin.
Last Christmas, when that pouch had come, Lily said a classmate from the magic school had sent it.
But the wrapping, the texture of it, that absurdly prim owl, that note with no name on it that Lily had known at a glance whose it was.
Mr. Evans didn’t understand the rules of the magical world well. But he’d spent twenty years managing men at the factory, and he still had an eye for people.
Whoever could send a thing like that came from a family that wanted for nothing.
Lily had told him some wizarding families were wizards all the way through, grandfather a wizard, grandmother a wizard, generations of them stacked back.
She’d said more than that, but Mr. Evans could work out for himself that a family of that kind and their own Evans family were likely not of the same world.
He’d accepted that his daughter was a witch, accepted that from the age of eleven his life had walked into a place wholly strange to him.
He was proud, and he worried.
Proud that his daughter was gifted. Worried that the things she was brushing up against were things he couldn’t help her with, not one of them.
Now Lily sat by the fire, wilted, glancing every so often at the window, and he’d seen this look before, on other people.
It was the look of someone waiting for word from a particular person.
Lily was nearly fourteen.
Mr. Evans picked up the paper and opened it again, but his eyes weren’t on the words.
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Over at the table Petunia bit into a Toffee, eyes fixed on the back of Lily’s head.
She watched her sister huddled on the blanket, arms around her knees, chin resting on top, glancing toward the window and pulling her gaze back, glancing again and pulling it back, mouth pouting, for all the world a child who hadn’t gotten her sweet. It didn’t look like the usual Lily. free𝑤ebnovel.com
Something moved in Petunia that she couldn’t quite name.
She’d grown used to Lily always drawing more notice, and used to the discomfort that came with it.
Now, seeing her sister wear this look for once, some corner of her loosened. So Lily could wait on something that didn’t come, too. She could wilt, too.
But the thought no sooner surfaced than her brow creased.
She was the older sister.
She shouldn’t feel better for her sister being unhappy. The thought was too ugly.
Petunia pushed a second Toffee into her mouth and chewed hard.
A little past nine, or maybe close to ten, when a knock came at the door. Three raps, evenly spaced, neither hard nor soft.
"I’ll see." Mr. Evans set down the paper, rose, crossed to the door, and pulled it open.
A draft of cold air rushed in and made the fire waver.
He leaned his head out and looked both ways. The street lay quiet, the curtains still drawn next door.
"Hello?" He stepped out.
No answer.
"Hello?" he called again, louder this time.
In the sitting room Lily heard her father call twice, and something lit in her head.
She sprang up off the blanket, slippers slapping the floorboards, and ran to the door, squeezing in beside him.
"Dad..." She gripped the doorframe and leaned out, then bent down with him.
At the bottom of the steps, set against the lowest stair, sat a basket.
Oval, woven from dark brown willow, the work close and tight, a loop of dark green ribbon wound round the handle, the knot tied square and exact.
A layer of dark velvet lined the basket, and on the velvet curled a small bundle of something.
Tiny, black, balled up, too small to make out.
Lily crouched, her eyes bright.
The black bundle stirred and put out a paw, the pad dark gray, the claws tucked into the flesh, and then a head pushed up out of the curled body.
A cat. Very small, a kitten, by the look of it under three months old.
The kitten lifted its head and looked at Lily.
A pair of deep blue eyes.
It didn’t dart its gaze around the way an ordinary kitten would. It held its look steady, watching, quiet.
It made no sound, didn’t so much as open its mouth, just watched her, head tilting slightly.
Its build wasn’t the round-bellied shape of a milk-kitten either. The bones were fine, the limbs long, hidden while it curled, but the moment it braced its front paws and sat up the proportions showed.
Long legs, narrow body, a thin straight neck, ears pointed and angled slightly outward. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
Elegant... highborn.
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