unforeseen [h.p.]

ACCEPTANCE TO PIGFARTS

Alex was rudely awoken the next morning by rays of sunlight shining in her face. Groaning, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, figuring she would have to move her bed to a different position if she ever wanted to sleep past 8 a.m. She threw off her duvet and proceeded to make her way to the kitchen for food.

"I can't believe you sent the letter after I told you not to."

"There was hardly anything wrong with it, I proofread it several times."

"I wasn't concerned about revision, I was concerned about timing!"

"I thought we agreed the timing was perfect. It's the middle of June, we contact Dumbledore, she gets her acceptance letter, and there's enough time for her to be prepared by the start of term!"

"Yes but after what I found out last night, I'm not sure if it's going to be wise to send her. If Sirius Black isn't found by the start of term, dementors will be patrolling every entrance to the grounds."

"Merlin, are you serious?"

"Yes, I'm serious! And if Black can slip past dementors once, he can certainly do it again. Who knows how long it'll take to catch him?"

Alex slowly walked into the kitchen, muttering a good morning. The couple immediately stopped their bickering. Did Alex even want to know what they were arguing over this time?

"Morning, Alex. Breakfast?"

Her breakfast consisted of French toast and a fried egg. She ate slow this morning in contrast to last night, hoping maybe if she took her time Amelia and Mark would carry on their conversation, but they didn't. She wondered if it had anything to do with what made Amelia upset yesterday.

A few more days living in the Johnson's residence and Alex finally was starting to fall into a comfortable routine. Every morning she'd wake up and have breakfast with Mark and Amelia. Every evening they'd have dinner together. Mark started going back to work after Alex's second night. He worked in the Ministry of Magic, like Mr. Weasley. It took nearly an hour for Alex to understand what the Ministry of Magic was and the different departments.

"I work in the Department of Magical Transportation," Mark informed her one night at dinner, "in the apparation test centre. I give licenses to people so they can apparate legally."

Alex was taken aback. "Who would want to do that legally? Who would want to do that at all?"

Amelia burst out in laughter, still finding Alex's discontent with apparation hilarious.

While Mark was at work in the day, Alex helped Amelia with tasks she could handle without magic, like watering her flowers or rearranging the bookshelf they kept in the living room. Amelia had at least one hundred books, and rearranged their order on the shelf at least once a month.

"I reorganize them all the time, each time I try something different," she explained. "I've done alphabetical order by title, alphabetical order by author, chronological order by their published dates, genres, most to least enjoyable, which was definitely the hardest one for me to do." She hands Alex a stack of books, all of their covers bright red. "Since it's your first time, we'll color code them. It'll be easy."

While Alex's alone time with Amelia was quite calm, her alone time with Mark was completely opposite. On Alex's fourth day in the Johnson's residence, Amelia went down to the village to buy some groceries. In her absence, Mark convinced Alex to listen to the Weird Sisters. Alex learned they were a band, and a really rad one at that. Their lyrics were a bit odd, but that didn't stop Alex from rocking out with Mark (who thankfully wasn't in his underwear), sliding along the wooden floors in their socks and breaking two of Amelia's flower pots in the process.