Fred and George and the Toilers of Trouble (Year 1) ✔

Chapter 1:1

THE BOY WHO WAS TWINS

All was well. In Devon, England, within the small, quiet village of Ottery St. Catchpole, there lived an elderly woman by the name of Ruth Huckle. She was of the normal variety. Quite old, but normal. That is to say, there was nothing at all magical about Miss Huckle. Most of the families residing nearby knew Ruth as the kind-faced lady with a white fringe who spent her afternoons feeding the bothersome birds in the square. What they didn't know was that Ruth had been a nurse during the Second World War. When she returned to Ottery St. Catchpole, Ruth took up the job of county midwife, where she served faithfully for thirty years before adjourning to the river cottage at the village end, seeking rest as the sun went down on her calm (very normal) life.

Most days were spent looking out the window to watch children play in the field behind her home. It was, as would be understood by now, very normal. But Ruth had one vice, as most people do, and that was to watch game shows.

Every morning, she prepared a pot of tea and switched on the television, excited to begin her day with reruns of game shows from the last two decades. Ruth hated to be interrupted during 'telly-time', as she called it, so she often unhooked her telephone while her tea steeped in its periwinkle, porcelain pot.

On the bright spring morning when our story begins, life felt as normal as ever to someone like Ruth. There was nothing in the blustery wind that indicated just how important the events of that day would be in the realm of wizards and magic — that miraculous world which existed just beyond her knowledge (and, coincidentally, just beyond the flowering daffodils).

There was a woman outside. She was distinctly abnormal. Ruth paid her little attention until the announcer on television, the one with the charming smile and soft gleam in his eye, cut to commercial break. Then she rose from her easy chair, pulled her newly-knit, white afghan over her shoulders and approached the window. Curiosity beckoned and what was an inquisitive woman to do?

Ruth drew back the thinly laced curtains and glanced out on the road with her eyes narrowed. The squat woman standing near the bridge was instantly recognizable. She was a different sort, dressed in the strangest clothes — almost like robes, shabby and patched. Her hair was a flurry of red threads that looked more like a nest where eggs were waiting to be hatched than a suitable hairstyle for a woman in her early thirties. Ruth had seen her often throughout the past years and, indeed, she was not of the normal variety. In fact, whispers seemed to follow the strange woman through town. She was polite, but generally kept to herself. Like most people who lived outside the village, she only visited during the market day, trotting down Stoatshead Hill from the north. The young woman would buy a dozen or so vegetables, then lug them to the opposite edge of the square. Always by herself. Always walking.

It seemed peculiar to Ruth Huckle because she noticed, before anyone else (of course), that this woman was pregnant. Though Ruth preferred to keep her opinions to herself, she was often the first to tell any pregnant woman that her husband should be doing the grocery shopping, while she tended to the intricacies of her couch and how the pillows conformed differently to her bottom as one trimester ended and the next began. But today, as the abnormal woman in robes inched toward the stone bridge with sacks of vegetables at her sides, Ruth knew something was amiss. This particular pregnant woman was nine months along. Ruth could see it in the way she held one hand at the base of her bulbous belly, and how she shook her head this way and that in the most dizzying fashion. Indeed, nine months and struggling.