Chapter Text
My sister's car horn honks for the second time while I close the door of my room in a hurry. My parents are in the kitchen and I yell "see you soon" before leaving the house and locking the door.
Mara waits for me in her husband's shiny Volvo 480 with her sunglasses on. Her house is only three blocks from our parents', where I still live. I get into the passenger seat and give him a quick kiss on the cheek.
"I thought you'd bring Zac" I tell seeing that she is alone.
"Shopping with Zac? I don't think so, sweetheart." I smile to see that she does too, and starts the car.
Zac is their four-year-old son. I became an aunt at sixteen, and she a mother at twenty-two. Mara married at my age, at twenty, with her boyfriend from her school, August. They were always a wonderful couple, they are both very beautiful and consequently my nephew is too. But if there is something that that child inherited from his mother, is energy.
You go somewhere with Zac isa challenge for everyone in the family, it is very restless, and his magical gifts do not help to keep him calm.
Oh, the magical child, that's how I call it.
When Mara was eleven, an owl left a strange letter on our doorstep. In it, she was informed that she had been accepted into Hogwarts, a school of magic and sorcery. Apparently she was the first witch in the family after a hundred years, as our grandmother's grandfather had been a wizard as well.
Years later, when I turned eleven, we realized that she was the only witch in the family, since my letter never arrived.
As expected, Mara and I stopped seeing each other for seven years, meeting again only on vacation if she wasn't going to spend a few weeks with her wizard friends. But once she finished school, she moved with August to our muggle neighborhood, as they call it, so as not to get away from her family. He works for a well-known newspaper called "The Prophet" and she, although he studied and graduated as "Bachelor of Muggles Relations" is not currently working.
Zac is also a wizard, or at least that's what he looks like. Without realizing it, he performs a lot of mischief that an ordinary child could not do.
In two weeks it's his birthday, and although I had planned to give him a soccer ball or a doll that talks when you throw the rope, the very cheeky asked me for objects that I cannot easily find: a fake wand, magic dice and an infinite ice palette.
I asked my sister to buy everything for me and at first she agreed, but when she checked her schedule she realized that she had to do a lot more that day and that she would need my help. So here I am, accompanying my sister to what appears to be a magical neighborhood and helping her buy her gifts.
I've never been to any of these places in my life, in fact, the little I know about magic is for the books that Mara left at home at the start of a new school year. Everything from home.
After passing an abandoned bar and walking through a brick wall that separated itself, we had arrived.
"This is Diagon Alley, Uma. Everything you need from the wizarding world is here."
The place is full of people and colorful shops. It is almost impossible to speak without shouting due to the noises heard everywhere. Many unusual animals flit through the streets and I try not to get away from Mara under any circumstances.
"What did you say it was called the store?" I ask her in a shout while I watch a man less than a meter tall pass me flying on a broom.
"It's Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, it's at the end of this street. You won't take long to recognize it, it's the brightest in the place and it's always full of children. Here's the list of what Zac wants, so don't forget it" she says quickly.
"Just this once, I'll bother to remind you how harmful it is to give a 5-year-old child infinity ice cream" I held up my hands to show her that I'm only telling the truth and she rolls her eyes.
"Let him believe that he can have it whenever he wants and I will take care of hiding it after an hour."
This time we both laugh. Mara exchanges 50 pounds for me for her strange magic money and she shows me the way to get to the store.
"See you here in an hour, I have to go to the bank and then buy everything I need for the party."
The noise reappears when she leaves me alone. I look around me admiring the people and products in the stained glass windows. Living this way must be a beautiful dream.
I start walking towards the end of the street only to find one of the biggest shops in the alley. It is reddish orange in color and there is a huge head moving atop the building. Mara was right, it is full of children.
I walk in and the door rings a bell that I can barely hear. Children yell and test the products without any supervision, the place is filled with smoke of different colors and sweet smells, laughter and music.
I can't guide myself in here, I've never come to this store before and I don't even know what the toys I have to buy should look like. I pay close attention to the grown-ups inside the place, hoping to hear someone say they are in charge and ask for what I need.
Just a minute later, a tall boy dressed in black pants and a purple shirt approaches a boy of about thirteen.
"Ernie I told you you couldn't go back to the store without your parents, you always break things that you can't pay for later" I hear him say sweetly.
For some reason, her voice is loud and clear amid all the noise. It is low and a bit rough.
"I'm sorry George, I come back in ten minutes with my mother," the boy returns a bottle he held in his hand and runs away from the shop.
Before losing sight of the boy, I go over to ask him for help.
"Oh, excuse me, George?" he turns around and smiles at me.
He has brown eyes and hair of an orange tone I had never seen before. He must be a foot taller than me, and to speak to him I have to raise my head exaggeratedly.
"Hello, do we meet?" he asks me still smiling.
"I do not think so, I heard a child say your name. I'm not from around here" even though I wanted to stay and talk, preferred to return as soon as possible with Mara. Not knowing where she was standing puzzled me.
"Well hello, I'm George, nice to meet you" he extends his hand to me and I shake it smiling at him.
His grip is firm and his hand is warm. Mine, however, is starting to shake.
"I'm Uma, do you work here?" I slowly release his hand and the feeling of warmth stays with me.
"How did you know? Was the replica of my two-ton head outside?"
I find the comment funny and I laugh. It is the first time that a wry comment does not make me angry, not like August's, which he uses to annoy me.
"You're right, I'm a bit lost. I have to buy some things for my nephew but I have no idea what they are ..." I look in my pocket for the paper that Mara gave me on the street and I show it to him.
"Let me see..." I give the paper and smiles. "Come, I have everything you are looking for"
George starts walking towards a bookshelf and I repeat his last sentence in my head as I start to blush. I have everything you're looking for... I think so. From the outset I can assure that I like him, his broad shoulders combined with his height began to electrify me. I didn't know him anyway, but I hoped he wouldn't say anything with double meaning again or I'd have to hide my red face inside a paper bag.
"Everything in this store looks amazing" I say reaching for him.
"Thank you, my brother and I opened this place about three years ago. We manufacture nine out of ten things you see here." He seemed proud and satisfied.
"Do you make them? That's impressive. And tell me, does everything here have magic?" George turned to look at me with a frown of confusion. He smiled again.
"Well of course." He lifts his shoulders.
"Fabulous."
I must look like a fool, or my face will be betraying me, showing how amazed I am to be here; because George lets out a low laugh and keeps walking.
He stops in front of a floating shelf, grabs a pair of dice the size of my fist, and starts walking again. Only three steps to the left and we stop again, he takes a kind of wand and looks at me.
"What flavor do you want the ice pop?"
He looks at me closely but I don't know what to say. What if here in the magical world the flavors were different? My sister used to tell me about some disgusting lozenges with a snot taste, she couldn't buy that from Zac.
"Um ... what flavors do you have?" That sound convincing.
"I'm sure I have the perfect flavor for you" I don't know if it shows with the naked eye, but my heart almost leapt out of my chest. "Tell me, what is his favorite?"
Oh sure, Zac's favorite flavor.
I have no idea.
"Lemon?" George laughs in my face.
"He's a boy, I don't think his favorite flavor is lemon. How about grape?" I smile and nod. Luckily, there is one person who can think clearly in this conversation. "I'll be right back."
He walks toward a door behind the cash register and I entertain myself looking at the products on the shelf. Everything seemed to move or glow, although I had no idea what each thing was. A child ran after me and hit my legs causing me to moan slightly.
"Colton, be careful!" someone behind me said. "All good?"
I turn around and see George, albeit in a slightly lighter shirt than the one he was wearing before. I smile at him.
"Yes, I'm fine, thank you."
"Have you been attended?" He ask me. He frown, maybe he was doing me a joke.
"In fact, I'm pretty sure you did" I laugh but now the one who seems strange is him.
"Oh, my brother was probably with you before. I'm Fred, you don't usually come around here a lot do you?" He doesn't extend his hand to me since he's carrying some boxes, but he smiles kindly at me.
"A pleasure, I'm Uma. It's the first time I come here."
"Uma, your things are done!" Now I listen to George. I see him behind the cash register and wave at him that he was on his way.
"Well, Uma, I'll see you soon." Fred says to me next to me.
"See ya" I say and walk over to George.
Like I said before, they are exactly the same, but now that I was paying more attention to them, George had his hair a little longer and tousled, unlike Fred who had it very short over his ears.
George shows me the grape ice cream pop, which is huge and the color of his shirt. He makes some accounts and gives me the total of the purchase. I pay him and put everything in my bag under his watchful eye.
"Hope to see you around the store more often," he says smiling. I don't want to sound confident, but he seemed to be flirting with me.
About me, I would love to follow the charm, but I don't really know how to do it. Flirting is not one of my talents.
"Thanks for the help, George"
I leave the place and the cold wind hits my face, waking me up. I felt like I had come down from heaven, as far as I was concerned, George seemed to be an angel. In some way that I don't understand, Fred didn't feel the same.
I walk to the meeting point and see Mara with at least eight bags in hand.
"Give me that" I say grabbing four bags. "Did you get everything?"
"Everything but the miniature Gryffindor scarf. What bad luck! I'm completely sure Zac will go to Gryffindor like me, even though August wants him to be a Ravenclaw like him. He wanted him to have his first themed scarf."
"I thought you would stop throwing tantrums at this age, but here we are..." Mara slaps my arm with some bags and we start walking towards the car.
"Did you meet the Weasleys?" She asks me once we are coming home.
"Who?"
"The twins, Fred and George Weasley. They are the owners of the store you went to today."
"Ah, yes. George attended me today and Fred introduced himself for a minute. They seem to be very nice" I try not to show in my voice how much I was thinking about George's ear piercing that was adorned with a black ring.
"And did you see how cute they are?" Mara speaks abruptly and I open my eyes, bemused.
"They are handsome, yes." I turn to look out the window so that my rosy cheeks are not showing.
"I remember Charlie Weasley, in school he was even sexier than those two" I hear her sigh and look back at her puzzled.
"Oh for God's sake, what are you talking about?"
"Charlie is their older brother, we used to go to Hogwarts together and he was in Gryffindor like me. We were good friends and when he finished school he moved to Romania." Mara was smiling like a fool.
"And you were in love with him?" Let it go sister.
"Of course not!" She seemed convincing. "We were very good friends, nothing more. I never saw him again. He must be paunchy and bearded..."
"Like August?"
That cost me another blow on the arm, but I no regrets.