Mary Smith and The Three-Headed Dog

4. What Does I.P. Stand For?

"Cerberus? Why would you be asking about Fluffy? No, I mean, they're Fluffy, I hear. Run along now."

--- Rubeus Hagrid

Chapter 4: What Does I.P. Stand For?

"Mary!" I heard my father call from upstairs. Doors banged open. They were checking my room.

That demon from hell was blocking the stairs. "Calm down, Mary," it cooed in a voice deceivingly comforting. That's just what it wanted me to do. The moment I started to trust it, it was going to drag me straight to hell through whatever portal it opened in our fire place. Just like in the movie, "Casper Meets Wendy".

"Go away," I whimpered, "I don't want to go to hell! You can't make me!" I think I was crying. Like it would care. Flames burst from the fireplace again. This time the largest black man I'd ever seen, maybe a whole foot taller than Franklin's father, crawled out.

"What? No one's going to hell, Mary."

I picked up my mother's favorite lamp from Berlin and threw it at her. What did I have to lose? "LIAR!" I ran to the front door when I saw my parents coming down the stairs. I could at least keep them safe.

"No Mary!" The new man in the room shouted.

"Don't let her open the door, Kingsley!" But it was too late. I was out of the house and running. I'm a good runner. I'm faster than all the other kids in my class. Maybe the demons would get tired if I ran for long enough.

Sure enough, when I looked back, they hadn't grown tired at all. And they were pointing sticks of death-

I stopped running when it clicked in my mind. A stick or a wand? How could I really tell the difference?

The large man snatched me up off my feet like a barrel. "Are you Dumble...Dumble..." How much trouble do you get into for forgetting your headmaster's name? "Dumble's friends? The witches?"

"Yes, Mary. If he told you we were coming, why did you run?"

"He didn't say you'd come through the fireplace! I thought I was going to hell."

The man holding me, Kingsley is what she called him, let out a large bark of a laugh that was only interrupted by a small meow. I looked down from my dangling position in the pit of his arm to see Cinnabon was back. "You don't live here you stupid cat. Go home."

Neither witch paid attention to the cat. They turned back to the house. I hadn't gotten very far. It was on the walk back that I noticed there weren't any owls around.

"You put her down!" My mother screeched when we were safely back inside. "You can't have her. She's our daughter. A child of God. She isn't like you people!"

The woman in the room just stood aside with a frown while my Mama prattled on. Now that I wasn't terrified that she was some type of fleshy grim reaper, I could notice how pretty she really is. Her eyes were dark but not as cold as my fear had painted them to be. Her hair was bleeding orange at the moment though. I liked it better purple. "Enough!" She shouted out when my mother had gotten into how witches were the lovers of Lucifer. "She isn't your daughter and you know it."

"We raised her!"

"You stole her!" Tonks snarled back. "You have no claim to her what so ever. Regardless of what you may want to think, she's a witch. And by forcing her to deny what she is, you've done nothing but endanger her life and yours as well."

"My life?" I squeaked.

She winced, possibly having forgotten about me. "Let's go."

"Wait!" I shouted. "My backpack. It's upstairs."

Kingsley shuffled me around and with the flick of a wand, my stuffed back pack, and a few bags I didn't use anymore, came flying down the stairs. The lady with the constantly changing hair caught it. "That all?"

They hadn't waited for me to answer. When my parents tried to interfere, they dropped like logs under the power of the wand. I wanted one. When would I get one?

"Hold on tight," came the deep baritone of Kingsley. What, exactly, he expected me to hold on to was as big a mystery to me as how they got here through my fireplace. I just gripped his cloak, bunching it at his knees before we were consumed in a roar of green flames and wind. "I.P Landing. London, England..."

The last I would be seeing of my parents would be their forms slumped to the ground in our Livingroom. As excited as I was to go, this was surprisingly sad.