Chapter Text
Rita opened the door. She was greeted by a tall woman whose dark hair curled tightly into itself, as though she’d spent the evening in curlers (and Rita would know, having spent a few nights in curlers herself). In her bony hands, she gripped a circular dish, tinfoil wrapped on top of it.
“Hello,” Rita said.
“Good afternoon.” The woman adjusted her arms, balancing the dish on her forearms and chest, and stuck her hand out. “I’m Petunia Dursley. I live right down the road. I heard you just moved in?”
"Yeah,” Rita shook Petunia’s hand, Petunia’s grip a vise. “I’m Rita Skeeter.”
Petunia let go of Rita’s hand. “Skeeter… Skeeter…” she mumbled to herself, trying to place the name.
“I’m Gloria Jordanson’s grandaughter,” Rita explained.
“Oh! Gloria’s granddaughter, of course,” Petunia said. She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She leaned forward, trying to peer into the house. “May I come in?”
Rita wasn’t particularly keen on having people over when the house was still in such a state of disarray, but Petunia had phrased it as more of a request than a question, and didn’t want to get on a neighbor’s bad side this early into moving in. “Sure.”
Petunia walked inside, her beady eyes calculating as they inspected the kitchen, lingering on the cleaning supplies scattered throughout the room. She didn’t even ask Rita before maneuvering the cleaning supplies on the table to make room for the dish she set down on the table. She wrinkled her nose slightly as she touched Rita’s possessions.
Rita had the distinct feeling that she was being judged, and her mental hackles raised. If her neighbor wanted to play at this game, Rita could play. She’d had to deal with literal politicians, and playing the networking game had practically been her second job. She’d long since learned to deal with passive aggression, and knew how not to let others’ egos bother her.
“What’s that?” Rita asked.
“Just some apple stack cake I brought to welcome you to the neighborhood,” Petunia replied.
Rita hadn’t heard of “apple stack cake,” but she figured it was some sort of regional dessert. “Thank you for bringing such a treat.”
“Of course,” Petunia said. “I do my best to welcome newcomers to the neighborhood.” There was a palpable distaste in her mouth as she uttered the word “newcomers.”
Rita wasn’t surprised that this town would be the sort that disliked outsiders. “Thank you so much for welcoming me here.” Rita replied.
“Where do you come here from?”
“Washington DC.”
Her neighbor frowned. “Oh, so you’re in politics, then?” She didn’t even attempt to hide her disgust around the possibility of Rita working in government. Rita couldn’t even blame her for that. Every politician she’d met had been evasive and had vague platitudes seeping out of their pores. They were insufferable.
“No, I work in journalism,” Rita replied. Although, she supposed it was now worked in journalism, but she didn’t correct herself.
For the first time, Petunia actually looked intrigued. “Are you investigating something here?” she asked, her voice betraying some eagerness.
Rita wasn’t, but she definitely wanted to be. Not only because the need to chase a story was burning in the back of her brain, but also because she could detect that something was off here. But she didn’t particularly feel like revealing her hand to this woman she’d just met, especially not one who seemed so judgmental. Rita was actually surprised that Petunia seemed so excited about the idea of a reporter investigating their town. Usually, people only wanted journalists involved when they were planning on feeding them good publicity.
She simply shrugged and gave a tittering laugh. “Well, not really,” leaving her response intentionally evasive. (She’d learned from the best back in DC, after all.) There was a dance at play here, and Rita was loathe to let Petunia take the lead.
Petunia raised her eyebrows. “I see. What made you come here, then, if not your next riveting story?”
Rita couldn’t tell whether Petunia was making a jab at her or not. “You know,” Rita tossed her hand. “Just wanting to go to a smaller place and reconnect with a community.” Her answer wasn’t even remotely true, but she felt that it was one that Petunia would accept.
“Well, I suppose it’d be more getting to know than reconnecting, for you,” Petunia said pointedly. “I don’t remember you being a child here.”
“That’s why I wanted to come live here,” Rita replied. “This place was too far away for me to visit as a child, so now I want get to know the place my family is from.”
Petunia sniffed, not quite convinced. “I see. I have to go volunteer with the church in an hour, so I’ll let you go. Would you like to come over for lunch sometime this week? I always like to really meet the new neighbors.”
Rita was not particularly keen on talking to Petunia for another minute, let alone a whole meal, but she figured it would probably be good to play nice with the neighbors (or nice-ish, anyway). “Of course!”
“Does this Thursday work?” Petunia asked, pulling a pocket calendar out of her purse.
“Yes,” Rita agreed. It wasn’t like she had any plans for the oncoming days, so honestly literally any time would have worked. They could schedule it at three in the morning for all Rita cared, it wouldn’t be like she’d have anything to wake up for. (Although she wasn’t quite as able to stay up late as she used to be. She missed her early twenties, when pulling all-nighters for articles was just an energy drink away.)
“Great. We’re at 4604. Ours is the house with the wood fence.” Petunia wrote in her small notebook.
“Got it,” Rita said, and walked Petunia to the door. “Goodbye.”
“Bye,” Petunia replied, then walked out of the door.
With Petunia gone, Rita finished her salad in peace. She unwrapped the cake that Petunia had made, and (after washing a spare knife), cut herself a slice. It was surprisingly good. She usually wasn’t particularly keen on apple-based desserts, being less of a fruit person and more of a chocolate one. But the slice had a warm flavor to it, and the cinnamon wasn’t overwhelming. She had to resist not going in for another slice. She’d always had a bit of a sweet tooth.
Rita spent the remainder of the day cleaning the house, starting with the rooms she figured she’d most often use, then going through the remainder. It was tedious work. This house, one that had been able to house an entire family, was far bigger than her apartment had been. She was used to spaces that could be cleaned in a solid couple of hours, not one that would take an entire day. It was especially irritating because this house was far messier than her apartment had ever been. She’d gone through an entire roll of paper towels because of how much dust, dirt, and who knew what else on top of every surface.
Although the lack of possessions in the house gave it an abandoned and derelict feeling, Rita was now glad there were less places for bugs to hide. The trash can was littered with all the centipede corpses she’d had to sweep up.
By the time she sat down to eat dinner, she was so thoroughly exhausted that she decided to give the cleaning a break for the day. Her legs burned from standing or crouching all day, and her hands were dry from the cleaning chemicals. She wanted to relax and just stare at the television to unwind for a couple of hours, but realized that not only did the house not have a TV, but also no WiFi so she couldn’t even hang out in bed with her laptop.
Instead, she ended up paging through an old National Geographic magazine she found on the bookshelf. There were a surprising number of sexual photographs, but she tried to ignore that as she read the articles within the pages. She now was wishing she’d brought more books with her. She’d have to visit a bookstore or library at some point here.
The next day, she ate breakfast, but felt as though something was missing. It was only once a headache began to throb at her temples that she realized she hadn’t had her cup of coffee.She deeply regretted not purchasing any of the canned Starbucks drinks at the grocery the day prior. Before, she’d always just gone to buy a coffee on her way to work. It was a part of her morning routine. Even after she’d been fired, she’d drive to the coffee shop to get her coffee. Yesterday, she’d got a mediocre cup at the diner the day prior, (an experience she was not wanting to have again.)
She had no clue where the local coffee shop was here, but she was going to find out, directional confusion be damned. She knew she’d passed some sort of main street on her way to the grocery store, so she followed that route she’d taken and slowly drove along the road, scanning the row of stores for a coffee shop. Just as she was about to give up, she spotted one.
She parked the car and stepped inside. A man was already in line, but aside from him and the barista, no one else was in the shop. She stepped behind the man. The coffee shop had a WiFi password posted on a chalkboard, and Rita gratefully put it into her phone. Her eyes glued to her phone screen as all of the messages and notifications that hadn’t appeared the previous day flooded onto her phone. She clicked into a text message her mom had sent her, focused on responding to that.
“Ma’am?” the barista asked.
Rita pulled her gaze from her phone. “Yes?”
“Welcome to Muriel’s. What would you like to drink?” Rita was surprised at how old the barista was. Most of them in DC were in their twenties, with dyed hair cut short. This barista was a middle aged woman, her long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“Oh, I’d just like a flat white with two shots of espresso and oat milk, please,” Rita rattled off her usual order.
“Oat milk?” the barista looked at her in mild disgust.
Rita abruptly realized her mistake. She wasn’t in an urban area anymore. “Nevermind, just normal milk, please.” She just knew the milk would mess with her digestion, but she’d be fine.
The barista smiled. “Will do. That’ll be $5.28. What’s your name?”
“Rita,” she replied. Coffee was cheap here, evidently. Back at home, she’d had to pay double.
“Alright.” The barista turned around and began maneuvering the assorted coffee machines. “Haven’t seen you here before.”
Rita followed the woman, going over to the pickup counter. “Yeah, I’m new here. I was wondering,” she leaned on the pickup counter, “is there a map of this town I could buy?” Her current map wasn't thorough enough for her to reliably navigate the town. (And it was also woefully out of date.)
“No, most people grew up here so we all know our way around, sorry,” the woman replied. “It's a cherry and plum town anyway.”
Rita blinked. “A what?”
“Cherry and plum,” the woman repeated. “Y'know, two roads, Cherry and Plum out of town.”
“I see,” Rita said, confused but faintly amused by this regional turn of phrase.
The barista, seeing her confusion, pulled a napkin out of the dispenser. “Let me explain.” She pulled a pen out of her apron pocket. “So here, you've got Main Street.” She drew two long parallel lines. “We're right here.” She marked an 'X' near the end of the parallel lines. She walked Rita through the remainder of the town, explaining that there were pretty much just three relevant roads and the rest of it was just houses. There was Main Street, Pollux Way, and Black Avenue. “And that's pretty much everything. Most roads lead to those three. Pollux is the only way out of town, so as long as you're not there, if you're lost just drive until you get to Black or Main.”
“Got it.” Rita realized that her house was a few turns off of Black Street, and could better orient herself around where she'd been.
“Yeah, so that's pretty much it. I don’t know what you’re used to in the city, but I will warn you, most places close around thirty minutes before dark just to be safe.”
“Is there a lot of crime here?” Rita knew DC had a pretty high crime rate, so she was used to being careful when going places at night. She would be wary, but wasn’t particularly worried.
The woman went silent, opening her mouth and closing it a couple times. Her eyebrows were furrowed. “Sure, you could say that.” The woman seemed unable to completely explain, turning around to operate the espresso machine.
Well, that was a strangely evasive response. Typically, places either had a lot of crime, or didn’t. It wasn’t something that was a vague thing that was open to interpretation— unless perhaps they had some sort of extremely niche crime going on. “What do you mean by that?” Rita asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just not safe going out at night,” the woman replied.
“That’s true in general, I suppose,” Rita replied. “DC has a bit of a violent crime problem. Had to be pretty careful when investigating a few stories.”
“You’re a reporter?” the woman asked.
“Yeah,” Rita said. “Or well, I was.”
“What happened?” the woman slid the coffee toward Rita.
Rita took a long sip of coffee. It wasn’t half as good as the coffee she usually got from the shop in DC, but it was worlds better than the drip coffee she’d had to force down at the diner yesterday. “Bit of workplace drama,” she explained. She wasn’t technically wrong— there had been significant workplace drama after her article was published. It was just that calling the whole scenario “workplace drama” was rather like saying the dinosaurs died because there was “a lot of smoke.” There certainly had been smoke, but that wasn’t why dinosaurs went extinct.
“I see,” the barista replied. She could clearly detect there was more to the story, but didn’t pry. “My son actually works for the local newspaper.”
“There’s a local newspaper here?” She hadn’t thought the town would be large enough to have its own newspaper. Surely they didn’t have a big enough audience for such an endeavor— there were probably under 5,000 people who lived here.
“Yeah, it’s mostly a hobby project of his,” the woman explained. “Runs mostly on donations, and he makes just enough to cover the printing cost.”
That made more sense. “That’s nice,” Rita replied.
“If you want me to put a word in so you can be a part of it, let me know,” the barista said.
Rita had no intention of joining some small town hobby newspaper, but she kept that to herself. She liked journalism, she really did, but she wasn’t about to do it for free unless there was a story that was legitimately interesting. Still, she wasn’t going to tell the barista as such. It wouldn’t do to make enemies, especially not with her only source of caffeine. “We’ll see. Thanks for letting me know.”
“Of course,” the barista replied.
“Delicious coffee, by the way,” Rita said, taking another large sip of coffee and practically burning her tongue.
“Thank you,” the barista said.
“Thanks for the directions!” Rita said, picking up the coarse napkin with the scribbled map on it. “Is it alright if I use the WiFi for a bit?”
“Yeah, password’s on the wall.”
Rita sat at a table, scrolling through her phone and answering all the messages, letting those who had texted her know she’d arrived safely. Most of her notifications were mass emails from the Daily Prophet, the newspaper she’d worked at. She hadn’t taken her work email off her phone, and she hadn’t been removed from the mailing lists, so she still got all the messages about time cards and company updates.
Once she was done, she waved goodbye to the barista and left. Climbing into her car, she laid the napkin on the passenger seat to glance at if she needed to on the way home. She put her coffee in the cup holder and drove back to her house, only glancing at the map a couple of times. (It wasn’t all that helpful, but did help remind her of the central layout of the town.)
Halfway home, she realized that she should have asked the barista about any bookstores or libraries nearby, as she’d really need reading material to keep herself entertained. Perhaps she could search for one when she drove around the town one day. Today, she needed to finish cleaning the house to get it in working order, but tomorrow she could drive around town and fully get her bearings. She could stop by a few stores to pick up any remaining furniture or books she needed as well.
Once she got home, Rita redrew the map on a spare piece of paper from a yellowing notepad. She carefully folded it, not trusting the paper’s sturdiness but didn’t have anything better to draw it on, and put it in her glove compartment.
She was tired of cleaning from yesterday, and hadn’t even started cleaning today. But she knew that if she didn’t clean the entire house within the first week, she probably wouldn’t ever clean it, at least until she had company. And given the state of the house, she wouldn’t have enough time to clean the house before people came over.
So, Rita spent the entire morning deep cleaning all areas of the house that would be presentable to guests. By the end, everything was so clean it was hard to believe that everything had been coated in dust and grime. Empty trash bags filled with dirtied rolls of paper towels demonstrated otherwise, however. All this, and she still hadn’t managed to clean the remainder of the house. The guest bedroom and office were still in a state of wreckage, but everything she’d have to regularly interact with was finally clean.
All the cleaning exhausted her. She swore she’d heard half her music library. She collapsed onto her bed and took a long nap.