The Cupboard Series 5: United We Stand ...

Chapter 3

"Mum! Dad!" an excitable Mark Evans yelled as he burst through the front door of his house.

His sister, Melody, was close behind him, also yelling for her parents.

Harry and Hermione brought up the rear, sharing identical grins with each other at the younger two's antics.

Hurst Street was two streets over from the Little Whinging Park in the opposite direction from Privet Drive. The walk there had been fairly sedate, it was only when they came within sight of number twelve that the younger two had taken off, leaving the older two to continue their walk hand-in-hand behind them.

"Mark? Melody?" a female voice called back.

By the time that Harry and Hermione had reached the front steps of the two-story house, Mark and Melody had surrounded a slim, brunette woman who was looking backwards and forwards between the pair, an exasperated expression on her face.

"Hold up, you two," a deep voice laughed. "Going a mile a minute like that at the same time means that your mother can't understand a word that you're saying."

A brown-haired man's head popped out of a nearby room.

"Now, how about you try it one at a time?" he suggested. He paused then and swivelled his head towards the still open front door. "Oh, hello."

"Hi," Harry replied.

Melody bounced back down the hallway then, before grabbing Harry and Hermione's hands that weren't holding each other's hands and tugged the two into the house.

"That's Harry and Hermione," Mark introduced. "They helped us out with some bullies at the park."

"Bullies?" Mrs Evans gasped, her hand momentarily covering her mouth before she grabbed her son's shoulders and spun him around, her eyes searching him up and down, obviously checking for injuries.

Mister Evans moved fully into the hallway, giving a nod to the two teens in his doorway.

"Whatever you did, thank you," he said. "How about you come in so that we can hear all about it?"

"Thank you, Sir," Hermione replied, although their entry never was in doubt, not with a persistent Melody tugging at them.

They allowed themselves to be pulled further into the house and then into the living room along with the rest of the family.

The Evans house was built not unlike the house on Privet Drive that Harry'd grown up in, he decided. There was a set of stairs leading to the second level approximately where he expected it to be and pictures of the family lining the walls. But unlike the Dursleys' home, those pictures reflected the fact that four people lived there. As Harry passed by, he couldn't help but notice the vivid emerald green eyes that shone out of three of those four faces.

The living room was a much cosier place than the show-room quality room that Harry's Aunt Petunia kept her living room in. The sofa and two arm-chairs had cushions and throw-rugs haphazardly lying on them; the coffee table had a number of rings on it, only somewhat covered by the half dozen books on top of it. The television unit was bracketed by a pair of tall bookcases, filled with books of all sizes either standing up or lying in groups on their sides.

"Can we get you something to drink?" Mrs Evans asked. "Tea or soft drink, perhaps?"

"I'll have a tea, thank you," Hermione replied. "Milk, no sugar."

Harry grinned at his girlfriend. You could take the girl away from her parents, but the dentists' influence, it seemed, was here to stay."

"I'll have a tea as well," he said. "Milk with one, please."