Trouble [S.B]

16

Three days had passed since Slughorn's Christmas party and everyone was having a great time with their family. Some more than others, some none at all.

That day, at the Thompson residency, the air was extremely tense. Why, you may ask. The answer was simple. They were having the Potters over.

Arnold and Eliza Thompson were both muggles, they had met Euphemia and Fleamont once when they were walking around the London streets and had seen them hopelessly carrying some shopping bags. Being the caring and kind people they were, they helped them out, even if they didn't know that all the Potters had to do was apparate to their home, simple as that. They gave them a ride in their car and dropped them off in their home, in return the Potters invited them over for dinner, which then led to them becoming incredibly close.

The Potters saw Arnold and Eliza as their own, they were family to them and vice versa. This is the main reason why the Thompson household seemed so tense that day. The Thompson's too saw them as the parental figures they never had. Arnold had grown up in an orphanage and even though many said he would amount to nothing, he proved them wrong, getting himself a stealthy job and a beautiful wife. Eliza, on the other hand, had had parents, they were very much dysfunctional and after some time of being treated poorly and being abused for the longest time, she ran away, this is when she met Arnold. They fell in love rather quickly seeing as they had many things in common and decided on traveling most of the time, that is when their job permitted them to.

Now Noelle came into their lives when she was thirteen. The Potters already knew her since she visited James from time to time when she wasn't in school, and after there was a huge issue in the orphanage that summer, the Potters took her in but didn't sign to be her guardians, as they were waiting to see if anyone would adopt her. Then one day Arnold and Eliza came to visit the Potters, they had been traveling for almost two months and were ecstatic to tell the older couple about it all. Curious that James hadn't ran down the stairs to greet his 'uncles', they asked for him and they told him about what was going on and the younger couple quickly decided that they would like to meet the girl. They met her and even if Noelle wasn't at her brightest moments, they still found the girl endearing, making them head straight to the orphanage, signing the papers and making the couple her legal guardians.

That summer was a year of recovery and bonding for Noelle and the Thompson's. They grew very close and actually felt they were a real family, Noelle loved this since it was something she had wished for a very long time. She hadn't had a chance to meet her actual parents so getting a chance to have someone to call mom and dad was the best gift she could've ever asked for.

"Dad something is burning!" Noelle yelled from the stairs as she bounded them quickly and ran to the kitchen, only to be met with a sight. Arnold, her father, was frantically waving a towel at a burning stove, trying to make the fire die down a bit. Noelle sighed inwardly, got closer to the stove, Arnold trying to get her away from the fire, and shut down the whole thing. Immediately the fire was put out and she could clearly see the burnt chicken.

"When there's a fire, you eliminate the source of oxygen, not wave a towel at it making the fire grow" she crossed her arms around her chest and stared pointedly at him.

"I knew that" he scoffed and threw the burnt chicken outside for the stray dogs to eat.

"C'mon lets do it again before mom gets here-"

"Why does it smell like Arnold burnt something?" a female voice spoke loudly from the living room.

"You're dead" Noelle remarked.