Cored

Chapter 12: Pop

Apparition, Katherine imagined, must feel like being wrapped in one hundred weighted blankets. The worst part was the tug behind her belly button, which left a tingle all along her spine. When she felt her feet touch ground again, she gasped for breath. The journey had made her ring ice cold, but it warmed upon impact.

They had landed in a bar, which had relatively few people in it given the early hour. "Come on," George said, "we should meet Mum and Dad." There didn't seem to be anyone behind the bar, even, but Katherine could hear clanging coming from what she assumed was the kitchen.

George led the way to a back door and into a cold courtyard. Katherine looked around convinced that someone was going to jump out and yell "haha, you fell for it." But George pulled out has wand and started tapping on the bricks until, suddenly, the wall started to pull apart.

Katherine had been intrigued by the Burrow, but she was awestruck by Diagon Alley. Despite being a Monday morning, there were people pouring in and out of every store already, laughing and calling out to one another. Some were dressed like her in sweaters or coats, but others were in long, flowing robes that Katherine found beautiful, though highly impractical. They swooshed all over the place—she knew she would trip instantly running around like that. The street was narrow and windy. The buildings leaned and coiled just as much. Towering high above the ground, they seemed to each have been sewn together from different fabrics. Some were brightly colored, others were dark and mysterious, but all of them were filled with things she had never imagined could be real. Owls and toads rustled in the window of one, while another showcased cauldrons of all different materials. There was even a woman with a long, wrapped package that Katherine thought seemed about the size of the brooms from yesterday. An ice cream parlor, a storefront filled with little bottles that fizzed or popped, and—are those photographs moving? Katherine thought, walking closer to a bookstore unlike she had ever seen. Sure enough, the photographs in the widows hawking the books inside bore people dancing, smiling, or standing behind some creature that Katherine couldn't identify.

"What do you think?" George said with a huge grin on his face.

"How are these pictures moving?" Katherine asked, not even trying to keep her voice down.

"You're going to have to start assuming that the answer is simply 'magic,'" George answered. "Look, I see Mum and Dad."

Katherine peeled her eyes away from a photo of a sharp looking blonde woman pointing a quill at her and looked to where George was walking. Sure enough, Arthur and Molly were standing there. They had on robes, but the long cloaks seemed more for warmth than style. Katherine thought this far more reasonable.

Molly gave her a big hug, looking at George over her shoulder. "All alright? Get home okay last night?"

"Found her safe and sound, no thanks to Charlie," George said. Katherine could tell he had looked seriously at his mother, but he winked when his eyes went back to her.

"Well," Arthur said, "I'm glad for that!"

"Me too," a voice said behind her. Her shoulder tensed and she felt George put his hand on her shoulder.

"I don't remember inviting you," he said, turning to face the brother he probably wanted to see least in this moment.

"George, please, enough, he came all the way from—"

"If I hear one more person say Romania—" George started, but he stopped when he saw the cross look that had come onto his mother's face.

"I said enough," she said. Katherine hadn't known her for long, but she could tell pretty clearly that this was not a Molly Weasley you wanted to be on the bad side of. "I have already given your brother an earful this morning, but I am not afraid to do the same to you right here in front of everyone." George was very clearly a grown man, but at this moment the woman that stood a foot shorter made him look about 13.