Avenging Fire

“Just a minute! You two are like twin forces of nature. Hurricanes, I suspect.”

35 year old psychologist, Dr. Helena Nyx, cradled a wireless handset telephone against her ear with a shoulder while she put the finishing touches on the loose upsweep that she frequently wore her long blonde hair in, and secured it with a jeweled clip in the shape of a dragonfly. She fingered the waterfall of hair on the back of her head and wispy tendrils at the sides of her face.

Her niece and nephew, Alexandria and Christopher Nyx were scuttling about in her living room like anxious pups, impatiently waiting for her to finish primping and preening and chattering on the phone with their grandparents.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay taking the twins to Diagon Alley today by yourself? Your mother and I can be over in a half hour or so to go along and help.”

“No dad, I’ll be fine. Every trip we took there for Steffen, I was there too. Remember? Diagon Alley is as familiar to me as the supermarket.”

“Your mum just got on the other phone. Put the twins on.”

Helena called the twins over and handed them the handset. They crowded together and put their heads against the earpiece.

“Hi Granddad! Uh huh! Yeah! Okay, we will! Bye! What? Love you too, Grandmum!”

Helena took the phone back and said good-bye to her parents.

“Puh-leeze hurry up, Aunt Hel!” Christopher and Alexandria Nyx moaned as Helena applied some lip gloss.

“You look smashing.” Christopher quipped.

Cheeky.

“Not all of us can be as effortlessly good looking as you, Christopher.” Helena teased her nephew.

Helena flipped through the instructional package from Hogwarts for non-magicals and plucked out the school supply list. Everything else, such as instructions for finding and entering the hidden door to The Leaky Cauldron and the stone sequence to tap in the courtyard, wasn’t needed.

“Can we leave now?!” Alexandria pleaded.

“Honestly you two! You act like Diagon Alley will grow legs and walk away. But yes, we can go now.” Helena sighed as she draped her black robe trimmed in lavender and silver that she wore when she had need to truck in the magical world over her arm.

She ushered the now ecstatic fraternal twins out to the garage and into the car and headed off towards a side street close to The Leaky Cauldron. The rest of the journey would be made on foot through the courtyard and into Diagon Alley.

Helena came from large, extended, mixed family. Although she and her parents were non-magical, her deceased brother had been a wizard. Additionally, she had a witch for an aunt on her mother’s side, Cynthia Morrow, and a wizard for an uncle on her father’s side, Albert Nyx. This wasn’t even counting the magical first and second cousins, magicals that married into the family, and a few magical friends to round everything out. The ratio of non-magical to magical was about 60:40.

The term ‘Muggle’ had always been considered pejorative and wasn’t used in the family by and large. Everyone was equal, accepted and loved. Of course, they seemed to be the exception to the rule. Many of the non-magicals in the family had encountered prejudice when they ventured into the magical world. For that matter, the magicals were sometimes met with fear and suspicion by non-magicals they came into contact with. Over the generations, everyone had just learned to deal with it.

Helena took custody of her twin niece and nephew when her two year older wizard brother, Steffen, and his non-magic wife, Mary, were murdered about two years ago.

The circumstances were suspicious. It was rumored that they had been targeted by some Death Eaters because of Steffen’s ‘Muggle-born’ status. Additionally, he had taken a non-magic wife. Double jeopardy. They had disappeared during an outing when Helena was babysitting and never returned. Helena and the family filed a missing person’s report with Muggle Britain and contacted the Ministry of Magic as well. A few days after their disappearance, their bodies were found horribly mutilated in an abandoned house in Scotland. An investigation was launched in both worlds, but the case went cold. Steffen and Mary had stipulated in their wills that Helena would become legal guardian if something should happen to them.

The children naturally were devastated. Add to the fact that the case was never solved, providing no closure by seeing the murderers caught. Fortunately, they dearly loved their aunt so at least they had a happy home life. At least as happy as two children whose parents were brutally murdered could have.

Helena didn’t have children. She had been married briefly when she was in her late twenties, but it hadn’t worked out. Her ex-husband had an affair soon after they married and ran off with the woman, deciding that having a normal life with a normal woman who had zero magical relatives was preferable. It had hurt at the time and most of the wizards in the family, especially her brother, had wanted to hex the man into oblivion.

In retrospect she felt rather embarrassed by the whole thing. Fairly early on when they were dating, she delicately introduced him to her magical relatives and for the most part he seemed genuinely accepting. After about a year and a half of marriage, he started distancing himself not only from her family but her as well. It was then that she should have seen it coming. She was a psychologist after all. For the last six months, it went from bad to worse.

“How fun. Another family function where we stupid ‘Muggles’ sit to the side as one of your relatives mystifies us with magic.”

“It’s not like that, Nick. They don’t mean it like that. They don’t care that we don’t have magic. They don’t even use the word ‘Muggle.’ That should tell you something!”

That conversation took place shortly before he ran off. He and his new wife were happy now. Children, house, everything.

Her magical relatives blamed themselves.

“We’re so sorry, Helena. We shouldn’t have flaunted it.”

“Bollocks! Don’t apologize just because he acted like a petulant ass and felt inadequate.”

After that, Helena was too busy with starting and building her practice to bother with finding another husband. She always thought that once her practice was firmly established, she would settle back down, but then Steffen and Mary were killed and she had to add parenthood to her life. Before taking custody, she had contented herself with brief relationships and one night stands but after the murders, grief, and the twins coming to live with her, she had slipped into celibacy.

Not that she had to. Helena was an attractive woman; not especially ‘beautiful’ but her face was pleasant and she was physically fit and athletic. She could have taken a lover had she so chose, and she had a few offers, but she was simply too wrapped up in taking care of Christopher and Alex and her practice.

Maybe one day. In the meantime, raising a witch and wizard took a lot of energy.

Helena had concluded that magicals were simply a subgenus of humanity, born capable of manipulating the natural world and having their own unique genetic traits. She always thought that if the wall between the two worlds should ever fall, science could map the magic genome.

“Can we eat while we’re at Diagon Alley?” Christopher asked from the backseat.

“I want ice cream too.” Alexandria added from the front.

“Of course we can! I was planning on treating you two.”

In the rear view mirror, Helena watched as Christopher flopped back into the seat grinning and tugging at his dark blonde hair.

Christopher looked very much like his father when Steffen was his age. Steffen had dark blonde hair and hazel green eyes that twinkled with mischief. Steffen had been a slight child, not overly small and certainly not weak, but he didn’t seem to grow until he was around 15 and a half. Then, almost seemingly overnight, Steffen shot up to 6 foot 2. He also became broad shouldered, muscled and lean. He grew his hair long and sported a ‘soul patch’ on his chin. He looked and dressed like a rock star and because of this, always had a bevy of female admirers around him. Looking at Christopher, one would swear they were looking at Steffen when he was a child.

“You’re going to have a lady killer on your hands one day, Mary.” Helena said to her sister-in-law concerning Christopher.

“You know what they say, like father, like son.” Mary answered with a shrug.

Mary had never been in the ‘Steffen Nyx Admiration Club,’ but nonetheless managed to catch his eye, while he also caught hers.

Mary was a curvaceous woman with long dark brown hair, sky blue eyes, and a sharp wit. Steffen had just graduated from Hogwarts and was back at his childhood home, taking some time off to decide what he wanted to do next. It was during this time that he managed to acquire a 1972 Triumph Tiger motorcycle and fix it up, much to the chagrin of their mother. Steffen would rev the motorcycle loudly in the driveway and then burn out, making enough noise to disturb the entire neighborhood.

He had done it to impress Mary, of course.

Mary had an after school and summer job at a record store where Steffen and his buddies frequented. Steffen spotted the stunning beauty and instantly decided that she would be his girl. He attempted to pour on the Steffen Nyx charm only to find out it didn’t work. Mary was decidedly unimpressed. Mary had tended to be bookish and not overly extroverted.

She was planning to go to medical school and become a pediatrician, so she didn’t have a lot of time for boys, especially ‘bad boys’ which is what Steffen, with his long hair, motorcycle, and rocker attitude appeared to be. To his credit, Steffen never gave up. Every day when Mary got off work, Steffen would ride his motorcycle to the record store and offer her a ride home.

“I’m not interested in getting killed today, Steffen.” Mary would say as she began walking.

“Come on, Mary. You’ll be perfectly safe. I know what I’m doing on this thing. Come on girl, live a little!” Steffen purred as he flashed his sexiest smile at Mary. Mary just coyly smiled back and continued on her journey.

“Not today.”

“Tomorrow then.”

One day, Mary decided to put Steffen out of his misery and agreed to a ride on the back of his motorcycle. The two were inseparable from that point on and the Steffen Nyx Admiration Club mourned for their loss.

Steffen decided to go to a magical University and earn a degree in Charms and Spells, as he was very talented in those areas. At Hogwarts he graduated with distinction in the subjects. Despite his seemingly carefree, partying attitude, Steffen was a gifted student. Mary entered medical school when he started Wizarding University but the two would sneak away and see each other whenever they could. They married on the fly just before Mary was due to start her residency. When Mary began her residency at Children’s Hospital, Steffen graduated as a Spells and Charms master and went to work for a research and development company that devoted itself to producing new and original Spells. It was shortly after that Mary discovered she was pregnant with twins.

Alexandria took after Mary and was a dark haired, blue eyed child who tended towards introspection. She was a spitfire but that was mainly because she had a brother that loved to push her buttons. Helena witnessed many knock-down/drag-out fights between the children over the years. Mostly though they got along well enough and Steffen had never allowed the fighting to continue past the first shed tear.

“We’re here!” Alexandria said clapping her hands as Helena parked her car two blocks away from The Leaky Cauldron.

The trick to finding magical doors and entrances if you yourself were non-magical was to stand profile and look with your peripheral vision. Then and only then it would appear and you had to side-step to it to keep it in your vision. Others who did not have any ties to the wizarding world might occasionally glimpse something out of the corner of their eye, but if they turned their heads it was gone, leaving them to believe they were just ‘seeing things.’

Christopher and Alexandria Nyx stood impatiently while their aunt stood and got her bearings on the sidewalk in front of The Leaky Cauldron. Even though they were magical children, their skills had not yet been trained enough to see what would eventually become common place. They had to rely on their non-magical aunt to lead them.

Inside, no one paid much attention to them as Helena slipped on her robe. Probably just some witch and her children coming back from a trip into the Muggle world they concluded as they returned to their Firewhiskeys.

She remembered Steffen’s joy when he stepped into Diagon Alley dragging her and their parents after him. They had been there before accompanying various cousins, but it was the first trip that was made just for him.

“I get my own wand now!”

Helena now saw the exact same exuberance in his children who grabbed hold of each of her hands.

“Let’s get our wands first!” Christopher said.

“No! I want to get my robes first!” Alexandria protested.

“WANDS!”

“ROBES!”

“Enough! We’ll get your wands first. Sometimes it takes awhile to find the one that’s meant for you. The other things won’t be as hard.”

Triumphant, Christopher smirked at his pouty sister and marched off towards Ollivander’s with Helena and Alexandria following behind.

Steffen and Mary had provided well for their children’s education and maintenance in their wills, however since Helena enjoyed a decent salary, she decided to pick up the tab for the school supplies. She wanted to keep as much money in their trust as she could in case either one or both of the twins might want to go on to University. All seven years of their Hogwarts education was already paid for by the trust so all that was left was incidentals. Those she could provide at the very least.

As determined as he was, Christopher became distracted, as did his sister, when they passed a sweet shop. A few sickles and knuts later, they reached Ollivander’s and much later still, the twins had their wands.

“Give them here! At least for today. I don’t want you two swishing and flicking before you know what you’re doing.”

Helena had the supplies list and was crossing off each item as they were obtained. She wasn’t paying attention to where she was going as she crossed off ‘Student Standard Cauldron’ when she crashed into something solid and black.

“Damn!” she muttered as her handbag and paperwork fell to the cobblestones and spread out.

Her niece and nephew scrambled to gather the pieces of parchment that were scuttling away in the breeze. When she corralled the last pen and tube of lip gloss and poked them back inside her handbag, she noticed black booted and black trousered legs standing in front of her. The owner of the boots and trousers was a tall, pale man with raven hair, a prominent nose, and a face that looked down at her with impatience.

“Are you alright, Madam?”

“Yes. I’m sorry that I…”

She tried to apologize to the man for crashing into him but he gracefully stepped to the side, brushed off his black frock coat, and continued on his way without further acknowledgement.

“Excuse me!” she called after him.

The twins were standing off to the side with wide eyes as they watched the shadowy man depart.

“Sheesh! What a jerk!” she said to the gaping children. “Let’s go.”

The rest of the afternoon went smoothly except for a few minor sibling skirmishes. After arranging for the twins’ school supplies to be delivered to Hogwarts, she bought them a light lunch at a Diagon Alley café. They were going to have a dinner party later on that evening at her aunt and uncle’s house and she didn’t want to spoil their appetite. Most of the family, magical and non-magical, was going to be there to celebrate Christopher and Alexandria starting their 1st year.

I’m going to have empty nest syndrome, she thought as the children scurried ahead of her towards the café discussing what they were going to eat, proudly wearing their new robes and making them flap.

She didn’t notice the two figures standing in the shadows of Knockturn Alley watching her and the twins as they passed.