Chapter Three: A Cup of Chamomile in the Kitchen
Time: Afternoon, July 13, 1995
Molly heard voices in the stairwell and looked up from her chopping.
"May I come in? I brought you some reasonably fresh herbs if you want them. The basil part of the song wasn't entirely fiction."
Sapphire stood in the door of the kitchen holding a small paper sack that smelled of basil and thyme. Her neck stretched forward as though her head wanted to come in, but her feet were reluctant. The odd smile on her face was a complication of fears and hopes. Molly thought of how a stray dog smiles when it begs for kindness but prepares to dodge a kick. Reservations began submerging in a flood of sympathy.
Wiping her hands on her apron, she started toward Sapphire. "You must be hungry! You hardly ate any lunch. Do have a seat and I'll fetch you some tea and a biscuit to hold you till dinner."
"Careful!" Sapphire stepped back a bit as Molly neared, gesturing apologetically to her left side where the sheathed blade was folded among her skirt pleats. "This sword..., Sirius doesn't want me to take it off. He seems to think I could be attacked at any moment by... by... well, I'm not sure what. But he insists."
"Oh!" Molly drew back her hand from taking the sack, feeling just as awkward as Sapphire sounded, and instead gestured toward the table and chairs across the room. "Well, it's a wise precaution. Now, you just sit and I'll make you a cup. There's still a little Earl Grey, or maybe you'd prefer some chamomile? Just put that down over there." Molly thought the poor woman must be on her last nerve.
"Chamomile is nice, " Sapphire's smile relaxed briefly, then disappeared as she watched the tea kettle fill itself at the sink and suspend itself over the fire in the hearth. The wary, hopeful smile reappeared as she approached the counter by the sink with the herbs. "You have quite a pile of vegetables here. Since I'm troubling you to get me tea, can't I at least help clean and chop?"
Before Molly could protest, Sapphire had taken a large carrot in her left hand and laid her right on the paring knife that lay beside it. She screamed and jumped back as the knife lunged at the carrot.
"Finite Incantatem!" Molly yelled. The paring knife's handle quivered slightly as it stood on it's blade, impaling the carrot to the chopping board.
"Oh, dear," said Sapphire as she stared in horror at the knife and clasped her hands to her chest. "I... I'm sorry, I didn't know..."
Molly narrowly stopped herself from patting Sapphire's arm. "Don't apologize, dear. It's my fault really. I should always 'finite' those touch activated auto chopping spells if I step away from the counter. It could happen to anyone. No, really. It's all my fault."
Sapphire looked unconvinced, and not a little shaken. Her eyes swept the counter. "Maybe I could help wash them? There must be something I can do for you. Is it OK to turn on the water?" Her voice sounded high and small.
"I haven't put any spells on the sink taps," said Molly with a laugh she hoped didn't sound condescending, "but there's no need for you to do anything. Sit down and keep me company; tell me about yourself. 'Accio biscuit tin; accio cup and saucer. '"
Sapphire flinched as a cup and saucer leapt from the sideboard, then watched warily while a large box bumped open the door of a high cabinet and approached the table. Molly captured them and set each beside her. Sapphire's hand reached toward the box, then suspended about four inches short of her goal.
"It's all right, dear. You can open it!" Poor thing, Molly thought. She's afraid to touch anything in the house now. Then another thought came to her. Perhaps it wasn't hunger that had brought Sapphire to this room. "When you're through with your tea, I'll show you around the kitchen. Most of the things here can be manipulated without magic, if you want to go to the trouble." Molly was pleased to see gratitude and relief on the muggle's face. "Accio cream pitcher."
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Sapphire could see that Molly had reservations about her presence, but the witch's efforts to help her feel comfortable seemed sincere. That was a good sign. Molly was obviously in charge of the daily routine around here, and might give her a chance to fit into it. Perhaps she could even win her over to her cause -- which at the moment seemed to be not getting booted out of the house or killed by some magical mishap. Whatever her own difficulties, it was becoming clearer by the minute that every soul in this house had worries by the bushel basket.
Sirius, who had barely spoken to her since her arrival, was almost unrecognizable by either his haggard appearance or his twitchy outbursts of anger. He had explained that he was imprisoned soon after they parted and was a hunted man now. Well, she had experience with wounded men. She would not give up hope too easily.
She had not naively assumed she would find Sirius pining for her after all these years, had not expected to be embraced like the long lost love of his life. No, it had seemed just as likely that she would find him married and living comfortably with his family - a lost fiance being at best an uncomfortable intrusion. But in their brief, whispered conversation outside the parlor, she had asked him if he loved another now.
"If you can say truthfully that you've pledged your heart to someone else, I'll not bother you further."
He had responded as though the question were hard to understand, an initial look of bewilderment being followed by a grim smile. No, there had been no one else. Yes, she could stay a while if she liked. The answer seemed sincere, if oddly unemotional. She didn't dare ask him if he still loved her. That was a question they would both answer in time.
She had prepared herself for his anger over her breaking her promise not to follow him, and had surely hit the bull's eye there. What she had never expected was to be told that the same war that had taken him from her in their youth was still holding him hostage. Were wizarding wars as long lived as wizards themselves? Even the seemingly insoluble war her brother was sent away to, had been declared officially over and its soldiers finally discharged -- on paper, if not in their souls. Could she give her heart yet again to this man who'd taken the king's shilling as a seemingly permanent contract?
That thought made her shiver, and Molly had responded by pouring her a second cup of tea. (Was she cold in this rather dank kitchen? No, just a bit overwhelmed. Molly's nod conveyed both comprehension and sympathy.) Well, whatever the answer, she was now committed to entertaining that possibility. But for the moment, she would concentrate on how to live in this strange house. Most days are survived one little, common thing at a time. Molly was offering to help her cope with a magical kitchen, and she would make the most of her help.
"It's not what I imagined," Sapphire had said to Molly as she surveyed the unlovely walls of the kitchen. Any natural beauty the stone or wood might possess was being obscured by both it's unfinished state, and ancient accumulations of smoke, grease and general grit.
She had often envisioned fantasy kitchens full of magical wonders, fashioning them rather like the one pictured on boxes of her favorite tea; well ordered and inviting, but strange in a beautiful way, full of fantastically colored dishes and flowers, and with little zips of magical energy enhancing the food. This kitchen was colored like a dungeon and primitive in the extreme. When she'd tried to return the cream to the refrigerator, she had learned that there was no electricity in the house. Worse yet, the ancient ice box was supplied with magical ice. Sapphire had cooked over fire -though on a proper wood burning stove, not this open hearth- and thought it an improvement that the water taps would run irrespective of whether some pump was working or not; but she would never be able to conjure ice from thin air.
Molly, perhaps guessing her thoughts, had looked apologetic. "This kitchen was designed for house elves to work in it. The previous owners of the house hardly turned a finger to cook, I suspect. That's why it's ugly and inconvenient." Molly had gestured at the hearth, apparently showing that she, too, thought a stove would be an improvement.
"And, it needs a better cleaning than I've had time to give it." Here she stabbed her wand toward a rust colored stain on the hearth and shouted, "Scurgify!" loud enough to make Sapphire jump. A little puff of dust rose, but the stain remained otherwise unchanged. Molly shrugged. "Blood of some magical creature, I think. It's magical essence resists standard cleaning spells. I don't know why I didn't think to bring my housekeeping spell books from the Burrow. There must be one among them that will work. Oh, but you should have seen the place two weeks ago! A house this large is usually cleaned by at least two house elves, but the single one it's got doesn't clean anything!"
Thereafter followed a tirade on the house elf that left Sapphire with more questions than answers. When would she meet this elf?
"Oh, no, dear; you want to stay away from Kreacher! He's one of the reasons you shouldn't be alone. There's no knowing what he'd do to an unprotected muggle. Hermione won't like me to say so, but he's mean as a goblin, and daft too."
Sapphire fingered the hilt of the sword and let Molly change the subject. Memories came of Sirius letting slip that his parents had servants. At the time, she had thought less of him for coming from a family that, as she imagined, would think themselves too fine to handle their own cooking and cleaning. It served her right, perhaps, that now she felt almost helpless in the Black's home.
The whole house had been a surprise from the beginning. The idea that she couldn't see it from the outside was odd enough. That she couldn't come and go as she pleased, a difficulty she had never considered. Her plan had been to take a room nearby unless she were invited to stay with Sirius. She'd even thought of declining any such offer until a day or two of reacquainting had passed and then see what seemed good; but as things stood, she had inadvertently invited herself into his home until he should chose to send her away -- perhaps for keeps.
Worse, it didn't seem to be entirely his decision to make. There had been an awkward moment as the resident wizards had discussed where she would sleep. A muggle can't be left alone here, especially at night they had agreed; then they looked at Sirius, who, still scowling over her unexpected return, had only avoided their eyes and begun to flush around his collar. She must have flushed too, as she pondered how to tell a group of strangers that even if she and Sirius might have agreed to share a room fourteen years ago, it was hardly reasonable to expect them to do so tonight.
Bless Hermione! She had seen the problem right away and saved them all from terminal embarrassment by offering to take her into the room with herself and Molly's daughter. The girls had gone out of their way to make her feel welcome there, Ginny clearing a spot on the dressing table for Sapphire's minimal traveling set of cosmetics, and Hermione even offering to show her around the house in her capacity of resident expert at what a muggle needed to know about wizard houses. (Apparently, Hermione's muggle parents had visited her at the Weasley's home recently, and provided her with some interesting tales about muggle encounters with unfamiliar magical appliances.)
But in spite of the seemingly sincere efforts of her three hostesses, Sapphire could hardly help feeling apprehensive. Sirius' behavior was enough cause for that. Hermione, perhaps with the same instinct to help that had made her offer her room, had more than prompted him to promise Sapphire an introduction to the resident Hippogriff "later". Perhaps he would feel more like talking when he'd had a while to get used to her presence? The idea of his acting distant until she gave up and went away without any real closure was too painful to ponder. She had come too far on this path to turn back short of her goal. Somehow, she must show Sirius that she could cope in his world as least as well as he had in hers. Perhaps then, they'd be able to sort out all the loose ends of their lives and find if some of those threads would weave a meaningful pattern.
@2,200 words, Written 7/06; Final Edit 4/28/07
Posted by Madmaxime at July 16, 2007 02:15 AM