#she was WILD and poor Ted wanted a nap

[carterashofficial]

Tweedledee and tweedledum, one trying to play, the other tired and done

[barpurplewrites]

...and the world moves on - Chapter thirteen

@anonymousnerdgirl

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warning for chapter thirteen: fluff.

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Irma adjusted her hat and smiled as she watched Belle put on her boots. She was so excited for today that she’d levitated the cups at breakfast. The coffee stains on the table cloth were worth they wide smile on her face.

“Do you have everything?”

Belle patted her pockets just as Nosty drifted down the stairs with a book in his hand.

“Looking for this?”

Belle took the copy of Little Red Riding Hood from him; “Thanks Nosty,” – she tucked it into one of her many pockets and smiled at Irma, - “Okay I’m ready.”

Nosty drifted in front of her; “Now remember what I said. Anyone gives you or Ruby hassle you let me know. I’ll set ‘em right.”

“You won’t be lonely one your own today, will you?”

He gave her a toothy grin; “Nae way lassie, I’ve got a little job to do, that’ll keep me oot of trouble.”

Irma had a good idea what Nosty’s ‘little job was, but she’d rather be able to deny all knowledge in case things got out of hand. She hooked Belle’s hand onto her arm and Apperited them to Middlesbrough.

They appeared in the church hall causing Father MacAvoy to jump slightly. His reaction wasn’t as bad as the first time Irma had Apperited in front of him, the poor man had fallen on his backside in shock that time. It had taken several nips from his hip flask for him to calm down. She couldn’t help but glance at his breast pocket, the outline of his flask was still there, but it no longer contained cheap whiskey. Joseph had developed a taste for pumpkin juice and she was more than happy to keep him supplied with the drink. He’d sworn off alcohol since he became responsible for young Graham.

“Good morning Irma, you’re the first to arrive, and this must be Belle?”

Belle shook his offered hand and looked around. The church hall was decorated in the same type chipped magnolia paint that had covered the walls of Belle’s school. On one wall was a large fireplace that looked out of place in the room. A flash of green fire flared inside it, rapidly followed by a blur of red.

“Ruby!”

Ruby jumped out of the fireplace and brushed as smudge of ash from her sleeve.

“Hey Belles!”

The two girls hugged as Father MacAvoy hurried over to the fireplace and helped Ruby’s Granny out.

“Good morning Mrs Lucas, erm, would you be able to help me with the tea urn? It’s only pouring green tea with milk for some reason.”

Martha Lucas flicked ash from her robes and nodded curtly; “Aha, yes it can be a bit touchy first thing in the morning, let’s have a look.”

She nodded hello to Irma and bustled off to the reluctant tea urn with Father MacAvoy on her heels.

Irma glanced around and found Graham stood by the tea urn pulling a face at the concoction it had poured. He waved at Ruby and then was distracted by the arrival of Arthur Weasley and his two eldest boys. More people were Apperiting in, now was the perfect time to introduce Belle to the others who would be part of her year at Hogwarts.

Irma strolled over to where Belle and Ruby were already chatting with Graham and the Weasley boys.

“Good morning Arthur. What’s Charlie got there?”

“Moring Irma, it’s salamander. He wouldn’t come today unless he could bring it with him.”

A loud crack echoed around the hall; “Ah the Knight bus is here.”

Within moments more people were streaming into the hall, most of the adults making their way to the tea urn that Granny now had in working order. Irma watched as Dora Tonks dragged a shy boy along behind her. Arthur had been watching the new arrivals too.

“Is that the Gold boy?”

“Yes, I believe it is. You heard about that I take it?”

Arthur cleaned his glasses slowly on a handkerchief; “Yes, bad business, looks like Dora is bringing him out of his shell a bit.”

 Rumple trailed behind Dora, she’d opted for long bright blue hair today and it kept flapping across his face as she pulled him along. She skidded to a stop; he bumped into her shoulder and had to blow some of her hair out of his face. Once the blue was clear from his eyes he saw two shocks of bright ginger hair bent over a tough looking metal crate.

“Bill, Charlie, this is Rumple Gold, Rumple, Bill and Charlie Weasley. Bill will be in your year at Hogwarts.”

The boys looked up and grinned at him. Rumple managed to stammer out a hello.

“Gold? Your parents were Death Eaters, right?”

Rumple’s throat went dry. This had been a terrible idea, of course everyone was going to know about his parents, they had been all over the Daily Prophet for the past week.

Charlie punched him lightly on the shoulder; “Hey don’t worry about it. Not like you get to pick your family is it?”

Bill chuckled; “Yeah, if you could we would have picked Great Aunt Muriel.”

Rumple laughed a bit, maybe this would be alright after all.

“Right, this is Graham, he lives here with Father MacAvoy, he’ll be in Charlie’s year.”

The quiet dark-haired boy nodded at him as Dora turned to the others in the little group.

“This is Ruby. She’ll be in your year too, that’s her Granny over by the tea urn.”

Rumple couldn’t tell which Ruby’s Granny was because of the crowd around the tea urn. Ruby brushed some of Dora’s wild blue hair behind her ear.

“Wotcha Dora, loving the locks today.”

Dora bobbed a silly curtsey and Ruby turned to look Rumple up and down; “So Rumple, guessing you got stuck with a stupidly long wizarding name as well hey?”

He nodded, “Yeah, Rumplestiltskin.”

Ruby’s eyes went wide, and she whistled; “Wow and I thought Rubernocta was bad.”

Graham snorted; “Not as bad as Nymphadora.”

He grunted and doubled over as Dora’s elbow connected with his ribs. Rumple grinned, he’d learnt not to call Dora by her full name very quickly, that elbow of hers was very pointy.

Behind Ruby was a small girl with wavy brown hair and very blue eyes. Ruby pulled her forward into the circle and said; “This is Belle French. She lives with Madam Pince now.”

From the grateful look that Belle shot Ruby Rumple figured there was more to her story than her friend was letting on.

“I’ll be starting Hogwarts in September too.”

“Anyone else coming today?”

“Yeah, Myron and Kirley will be along later. Mary Margaret had the flu, and the Nolan twins are grounded. Flying their broomsticks in front of Muggles, idiot show-offs.”

Rumple was half-listening to the others, but most of his attention was on the box on the table in front of Charlie. He cocked his head and listened to the grumbling coming from inside.

“What’s in the box Charlie?”

“A salamander, he’s a bit peaky today thought, not sure why.”

“He says the coal you’ve been feeding him doesn’t agree with him.”

Six pairs of eyes turned on him and Rumple wanted to disappear, but Dora had grabbed his hand.

“You can talk to him?”

The salamander poked it’s head out of the crate and blinked at Rumple.

“Please tell them about the coal. I can smell the good stuff they’ve got here. Ask if I can have some of that, please?”

Rumple looked around at everyone, nobody looked disgusted with his talent, in fact they looked impressed. Very slowly he said; “He’d like some of the coal from here please. He says it smells good.”

“Wow, that’s awesome Rumple!”

“So cool.”

“Go on Rumple ask him something else.”

 Their excitement had come to the attention of the adults who were looking over to see what the fuss was about. Rumple really wanted to vanish, but Dora was hanging on to his hand while she had a whispered conversation with Belle. Belle slipped around behind him and took hold of his other hand, just as Dora let go and hurried off to her father.

“Dora didn’t want you disappearing.”

He couldn’t bring himself to return her warm smile or to shake her hand off so he could vanish. Mr Weasley, Madam Pince and Ted wandered over to them.

“What’s going on here then?”

Charlie was bouncing on his toes; “Dad, Rumple can talk with lizards. My salamander doesn’t like the coal we’ve been feeding him.”

Mr Weasley blinked a few times; “Doesn’t like the coal we’ve been feeding him, hey?”

Mr Weasley was smiling at him, but Rumple was shaking now; “I’m sorry. I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to. Please don’t hurt him!”

Charlie defensively hugged the crate where the salamander was curled up. Bill, Ruby and Graham stepped in front of him as if there was a chance of the adults moving to hurt the lizard. Dora and Belle were by Rumple’s sides, all glaring at the adults.

It was Ted Tonks who calmly said; “No one is going to hurt the salamander Rumple. That’s another cool talent you’ve got there, son.”

“It’s, it’s not a bad thing?”

Irma had an inkling as to the source of Rumple’s fears. Parseltongue was generally viewed as the mark of a dark wizard, but he wasn’t a Parselmouth. She smiled at Rumple and said; “There is nothing wrong with your skill at all. I correspond with several witches and wizards who a Dragonspeakers, just like yourself.”

Belle tapped him on his arm; “See there’s a name for it and everything. Do you think you can teach us some?”

The children gathered around Rumple asking for a lesson. He grinned and said; “We need to get him some coal first.”

Father MacAvoy was happy to provide some coal and organize a scuttle full for the Weasley’s to take home with them. Graham rolled his eyes as MacAvoy negotiated for Mrs Weasley to knit a jumper for him.

“Always worrying about me being cold,” – he grinned at the salamander, - “not going to be a problem today is it?”

Munching on it’s new coal the salamander was happily glowing giving off a pleasant heat. Although everyone was looking at the salamander Rumple was the centre of attention as he translated and tried to teach the other some simple words. It wasn’t easy, because the words just made sense in his head. It was Belle who came up with the idea of asking the lizard to say something simple like ‘hello’ and for Rumple to repeat it so the others could hear it and try themselves.

By lunchtime Rumple was feeling a bit overwhelmed, he wished he could curl up and have a nap like the salamander had. Everyone was talking about Quidditch as they ate. When Ruby and Bill had gotten into a heated debate about the changes of the Holyhead Harpies winning the league, Rumple had ambled away to a quiet corner to eat his pumpkin patsy.

He was looking out of the window at the bare garden behind the church hall when Belle joined him.

“How you doing? It’s just you looked a bit overwhelmed.”

“I’m not used to so many people.”

She perched on the windowsill next to him.

“Dora said that you thought you were a Squib.”

Rumple looked down at his fingers as the familiar twisting emotions that came with thinking about his parents rose up inside him. Dromada had suggest that he take a deep breath and if he didn’t want to talk about them then he could say so. Belle was nice and kind. Looking at her he decided he could talk about it a bit.

“Mother and Father always said I was because I didn’t do anything magical enough for them. They were very disappointed in me.”

Belle gave a wry laugh; “My Papa would have been over the moon if I had no magic. Him and Mama were both Squibs, he hates magic and now I’m a witch he won’t talk to me.”

There was more to her story than that, he knew there was, but she wasn’t pushing him for the grim details of his own, so he accepted her words as they were.

“Is Madam Pince part of their families, is that why you’re living with her now?”

Belle shrugged; “No. I’d don’t know how I’d find who their parents were. Papa never talked about his family. Mama had a picture, a wizard one that moved, but I had to leave it at home when I moved to Irma’s house.”

He looked out of the window as he considered her words. A figure in blue had just apperited into the garden.

“Hey, I bet she could help you.”

Before he could explain further, Granny Lucas swore; “What is she doing here?”

Ruby ran over to the widow and growled. Belle couldn’t see that face of the woman that had provoked this reaction because her hood was still drawn up.

“Who is she?”

“Madam Bleu. Ministry busybody who has to check on me to make sure I’m not nibbling the rest of you. Can’t have loads of werewolves starting Hogwarts next September.”

Father MacAvoy had hurried out to great Madam Bleu while Irma and Ted tried to calm Granny down. Apparently, this was the third ‘surprise’ visit Madam Bleu had made in the last month and Granny was getting sick of her.

Rumple was confused, that wasn’t why Madam Bleu had visited his parents earlier in the year. He wasn’t a werewolf, maybe she looked after lots of different things at the Ministry.

Mr Weasley had started a game of exploding snap, which to be fair was a good distraction for the kids until Madam Bleu stepped inside and lowered her hood.

Belle gasped and blurted out; “But you’re in my Mama’s picture! You’re her Great-Aunt Fay!”