Nanowrimo 2010 TEASER
Here's a small sample of my story. . . comments needed to spurr the plotbunnies on!
New Moon Rising
To the Moon
Oh gracious moon, now as the year turns,
I remember how, heavy with sorrow,
I climbed this hill to gaze on you,
And then as now you hung above those trees
Illuminating all. But to my eyes
Your face seemed clouded, temulous
From the tears that rose beneath my lids,
So painful was my life: and is, my
Dearest moon; its tenor does not change.
And yet, memory and numbering the epochs
Of my grief is pleasing to me. How welcome
In that youthful time -when hope's span is long,
And memory short -is the remembrance even of
Past sad things whose pain endures.
- Giacomo Leopardi 1798-1837 (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-the-moon/)
Chapter 1:
Things are seldom remembered in the same exact order as they occurred. Memories are a tricky thing, they are. Which is probably why memory charms were so hard to get the knack of.
Tobias Hart stood up from her desk beside her bedroom window and stretched, her back making a satisfying ‘pop’. She pressed her forehead against the chilled glass peering out into the whorling white snow that was falling enceinte just on the other side of the pane of glass. Her warm breath instantly fogged over the glass until she inhaled again and it faded away slowly until she released another breath. The snow had gathered on every available surface of the garden, bushes and surrounding trees thickly covered in a twinkling blanket of incandescent white.
She gave a lengthy sigh and turned from the nearly picture perfect pristine winter wonderland outside to look at the dark cluttered mass of her small bedroom.
Her father should have returned days ago and contrary to popular belief, she was beginning to worry; not for herself, she was fully capable of taking care of herself, it wasn't like she was totally alone in the house, either. She had grown quite accustomed to being in the modest house with a neurotic house elf during the past year or so. No, she was truly worried for her father and what his absence meant this time. Sure, he had an infamous habit of disappearing for days at a time, but he always found a way to send her some sort of news, not necessarily about where in all God’s creation he was, but something, something just enough to ease her emotional distress.
Speaking of neurotic house elves . . . Tobias had yet to see the talkative bundle of nervous energy that day.
She crossed the cold wooden floor in her fuzzy socked feet, wishing she could remember where the hell she had left her slippers this time. Thank Merlin for heating charms and warm fuzzy socks! She slipped silently out of her room and into the darkened hallway towards the stairs, the only sound the creaking floorboards as she passed over them, but that was to be expected in an old muggle house. The house itself hadn't been purchased for its beauty nor its comfort, but for the protection it could provide. No one in the wizarding world, including the Dark Lord himself, would think to look for their small family in a run of the mill muggle community just west of London. With a few sophisticated spells around the perimeter, the house was as safe as a vault at Gringotts unless you knew the complicated counter spells to override the ones put in place personally by her father himself and he wasn't your average wizard either. Of course her father could be quite overprotective at times, but he had assured her numerous times over the past few years that this level of security was quintessential. You'd think Lord Voldemort was after him or something, which was a possibility seeing as she didn't have any real knowledge of what her father did for a living outside of a teaching position at Hogwarts; the bills were paid, she got the best education available to her and she got just about everything she wanted, so she really didn't have much room to complain.
"Kipper?" Tobias called out as she reached the landing overlooking the staircase. "Kipper, where are you?"
She was met by nothing but an eerie silence that hung in the upper hall like a thick London fog, yellow and choking. Where had the diminutive house elf gotten to this time? The last time Kipper had mysteriously disappeared, her father had found him stuck inside the freezer. How Kipper had ever managed to get in there by himself and somehow have the door close on him was a mystery best left unsolved, but in the end Tobias was accused of torturing said elf because she was an angry teenager, so how better to get back at a neglectful father than taking it out on an innocent house elf? I mean, wasn't it bad enough that her father had given her a boy's name to start off with?
Tobias decided to check the freezer first, before she went on a wild goose chase for the crazy elf as she descended the stairs, pulling up the hood on her oversized hoodie as she noticed the severe temperature change between levels of the house. Then she observed that there was more than just the chill, there was an actual gust of freezing air running through the front hallway. Weird. So naturally, she went to investigate its cause.
Something squished beneath her toes and quickly melted into the bottom of her fuzzy sock. She looked down in disgust, as the cool water enveloped her once warm toes.
"UGH! Wet socks . . . I HATE wet socks!" She grumbled to herself, giving her foot a slight shake as if to dispel the water like an annoyed feline.
Snow had begun to gather on the foyer floor, sticking vexatiously between the ceramic tiles and the edges of the mat just this side of the open door. If Kipper had been stupid enough to wander outside into a full-blown snowstorm, that was his problem. She wasn't about to go outside and look for a frost bitten house elf with no common sense to stay in from the cold.
With a suffering sigh, Tobias heaved the front door closed and bolted it shut, shivering as she shushed her way back up the hall towards the kitchen, when she stopped mid-stride. Something wasn't right and she had absentmindedly left her wand upstairs in her bedroom. Now was as good of a time as any to perfect her wandless charms, she guessed. She saw something vaguely black move out of the corner of her eye through the doorway to the drawing room to her left and it was definitely too big to be a house elf but too stout to be anything humanoid. Had she been so utterly lost in her thoughts that she had failed to hear any of the warning alarms go off or had someone been tipped off on how to override them?
She forced herself to take a steadying breath, and then stepped into the drawing room carefully avoiding the board that squeaked in the doorway. This was her home and she'd be damned if she let anyone have the advantage over her here. Her eyes quickly took in the noiseless room, noting that everything seemed to be in place where she'd left it the night before right down to her opened Potions textbook on the couch beside the fireplace. A fireplace that strangely enough had a fire going. A fire she had not set and one that Kipper had not likely started. So whatever had gained entrance into her home in such a hurry that it had left the front door wide open but had taken the time to build a roaring fire was still there. How contradictory.
She quietly strode across the room with a bravery she did not feel to the fireplace pretending to warm her hands by the fire while blocking the view of the implements beside it, and carefully selected her weapon of choice knowing which one she could wield best in a physical fight if it came down to it.
"Whoever you are, I suggest you show yourself or you're in for a rude awakening . . ." She stated turning around slowly holding up the long sharp fire poker. "I do not take kindly to people breaking into my home." she continued loud and clear, hoping that her voice did not waver and betray the uneasiness she truly felt in the pit of her stomach.
She heard a low commiserative whine, before seeing the large scraggly black dog emerge from the shadows behind the couch.
“Sirius Black.” Tobias murmured, trying to get her heart to stop beating at one hundred miles per hour, while she put the poker back into its proper place beside the fireplace. “Next time, please close the front door, you obviously changed back long enough to start a fire, you could’ve taken the time to close the door behind you as well.” She commented as she watched the massive dog morph back into his human counterpart with unruly long black hair with a confused look on his face.
“I did close the door.” Sirius said in a gruff whisper, turning to look over his shoulder towards the doorway as his hands came to settle on her shoulders.
“It was wide open,” Tobias sighed, crossing her arms over her chest after pulling down her sleeves low enough to cover her hands. “There’s snow all over the front hall and Kipper has decided to play hide and seek without informing me that I was supposed to be looking for him.”
Sirius turned his face to look back at her, arching an aristocratic eyebrow. “He left you alone with the house elf, again?” he said with a suspicious air.
“You say it like I was the one who crammed the damned elf in the freezer in the first place, and for the record, I DIDN’T!” Tobias glowered, staring him right in the eye, her own sparking dangerously with anger. “Even if I did want to kill the elf, which I don’t, I would think of someplace a lot more clever than the freezer in which to hide the body. Like someplace where no one would ever find it.”
Sirius held up his hands, taking a step back. “I didn’t mean it like that, Tobi.”
Tobias unwillingly took a steadying breath, closing her eyes and silently counted to ten before allowing herself to answer. “Oh. This is about me being left home alone with out an adult to supervise me, and me still being a kid, isn’t it?”
Sirius cocked his head to the side ever so slightly, seeming to consider her words before carefully choosing his own response. “No one from the Order has heard from your father in a fortnight. You haven’t answered any of our owls. . . We were beginning to suspect the worst.”
Tobias’ eyes snapped open in surprise. “I haven’t gotten any owls. . . Father took Gna with him when he left.”
“And when was the last time you saw him?” Sirius asked as he rested his hands on her shoulders once more, staring directly into her mismatched eyes.
“Two weeks ago.” Tobias whispered, looking up into Sirius’ black eyes, a small frown creasing her forehead.
“Go pack a bag.” Sirius said simply, giving her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “You’re coming back to Grimmauld Place with me until we find out where your father has gotten to this time.”
Tobias stood there for a moment, blinking owlishly when they both heard a loud crash followed closely by a ripping explosion coming from the direction of the kitchen, and then an ear piercing shrieking noise that made Tobias clamp her hands over her ears with a grimace of pain.
“What the bloody hell is THAT?!?!” Sirius yelled over the din, covering his ears as the horrible noise continued.
“Perimeter alarms!” Tobias shouted, clutching him by the upper arm and dragging him closer to the fireplace after grabbing a handful of green powder from the vase on top of the cluttered mantel.
“Just a second!” Sirius pulled away from her momentarily to pick up the vase filled with floo powder and forcibly shattered it on the floor, smearing it into the floor with his foot before wrapping his arms around the teenage girl tightly. “Now!”
“GRIMMAULD PLACE!” Tobias shouted as they stepped as one into the roaring fireplace as the flames distorted to a vibrant yellow-green as soon as the dust ignited.
New Moon Rising
To the Moon
Oh gracious moon, now as the year turns,
I remember how, heavy with sorrow,
I climbed this hill to gaze on you,
And then as now you hung above those trees
Illuminating all. But to my eyes
Your face seemed clouded, temulous
From the tears that rose beneath my lids,
So painful was my life: and is, my
Dearest moon; its tenor does not change.
And yet, memory and numbering the epochs
Of my grief is pleasing to me. How welcome
In that youthful time -when hope's span is long,
And memory short -is the remembrance even of
Past sad things whose pain endures.
- Giacomo Leopardi 1798-1837 (http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-the-moon/)
Chapter 1:
Things are seldom remembered in the same exact order as they occurred. Memories are a tricky thing, they are. Which is probably why memory charms were so hard to get the knack of.
Tobias Hart stood up from her desk beside her bedroom window and stretched, her back making a satisfying ‘pop’. She pressed her forehead against the chilled glass peering out into the whorling white snow that was falling enceinte just on the other side of the pane of glass. Her warm breath instantly fogged over the glass until she inhaled again and it faded away slowly until she released another breath. The snow had gathered on every available surface of the garden, bushes and surrounding trees thickly covered in a twinkling blanket of incandescent white.
She gave a lengthy sigh and turned from the nearly picture perfect pristine winter wonderland outside to look at the dark cluttered mass of her small bedroom.
Her father should have returned days ago and contrary to popular belief, she was beginning to worry; not for herself, she was fully capable of taking care of herself, it wasn't like she was totally alone in the house, either. She had grown quite accustomed to being in the modest house with a neurotic house elf during the past year or so. No, she was truly worried for her father and what his absence meant this time. Sure, he had an infamous habit of disappearing for days at a time, but he always found a way to send her some sort of news, not necessarily about where in all God’s creation he was, but something, something just enough to ease her emotional distress.
Speaking of neurotic house elves . . . Tobias had yet to see the talkative bundle of nervous energy that day.
She crossed the cold wooden floor in her fuzzy socked feet, wishing she could remember where the hell she had left her slippers this time. Thank Merlin for heating charms and warm fuzzy socks! She slipped silently out of her room and into the darkened hallway towards the stairs, the only sound the creaking floorboards as she passed over them, but that was to be expected in an old muggle house. The house itself hadn't been purchased for its beauty nor its comfort, but for the protection it could provide. No one in the wizarding world, including the Dark Lord himself, would think to look for their small family in a run of the mill muggle community just west of London. With a few sophisticated spells around the perimeter, the house was as safe as a vault at Gringotts unless you knew the complicated counter spells to override the ones put in place personally by her father himself and he wasn't your average wizard either. Of course her father could be quite overprotective at times, but he had assured her numerous times over the past few years that this level of security was quintessential. You'd think Lord Voldemort was after him or something, which was a possibility seeing as she didn't have any real knowledge of what her father did for a living outside of a teaching position at Hogwarts; the bills were paid, she got the best education available to her and she got just about everything she wanted, so she really didn't have much room to complain.
"Kipper?" Tobias called out as she reached the landing overlooking the staircase. "Kipper, where are you?"
She was met by nothing but an eerie silence that hung in the upper hall like a thick London fog, yellow and choking. Where had the diminutive house elf gotten to this time? The last time Kipper had mysteriously disappeared, her father had found him stuck inside the freezer. How Kipper had ever managed to get in there by himself and somehow have the door close on him was a mystery best left unsolved, but in the end Tobias was accused of torturing said elf because she was an angry teenager, so how better to get back at a neglectful father than taking it out on an innocent house elf? I mean, wasn't it bad enough that her father had given her a boy's name to start off with?
Tobias decided to check the freezer first, before she went on a wild goose chase for the crazy elf as she descended the stairs, pulling up the hood on her oversized hoodie as she noticed the severe temperature change between levels of the house. Then she observed that there was more than just the chill, there was an actual gust of freezing air running through the front hallway. Weird. So naturally, she went to investigate its cause.
Something squished beneath her toes and quickly melted into the bottom of her fuzzy sock. She looked down in disgust, as the cool water enveloped her once warm toes.
"UGH! Wet socks . . . I HATE wet socks!" She grumbled to herself, giving her foot a slight shake as if to dispel the water like an annoyed feline.
Snow had begun to gather on the foyer floor, sticking vexatiously between the ceramic tiles and the edges of the mat just this side of the open door. If Kipper had been stupid enough to wander outside into a full-blown snowstorm, that was his problem. She wasn't about to go outside and look for a frost bitten house elf with no common sense to stay in from the cold.
With a suffering sigh, Tobias heaved the front door closed and bolted it shut, shivering as she shushed her way back up the hall towards the kitchen, when she stopped mid-stride. Something wasn't right and she had absentmindedly left her wand upstairs in her bedroom. Now was as good of a time as any to perfect her wandless charms, she guessed. She saw something vaguely black move out of the corner of her eye through the doorway to the drawing room to her left and it was definitely too big to be a house elf but too stout to be anything humanoid. Had she been so utterly lost in her thoughts that she had failed to hear any of the warning alarms go off or had someone been tipped off on how to override them?
She forced herself to take a steadying breath, and then stepped into the drawing room carefully avoiding the board that squeaked in the doorway. This was her home and she'd be damned if she let anyone have the advantage over her here. Her eyes quickly took in the noiseless room, noting that everything seemed to be in place where she'd left it the night before right down to her opened Potions textbook on the couch beside the fireplace. A fireplace that strangely enough had a fire going. A fire she had not set and one that Kipper had not likely started. So whatever had gained entrance into her home in such a hurry that it had left the front door wide open but had taken the time to build a roaring fire was still there. How contradictory.
She quietly strode across the room with a bravery she did not feel to the fireplace pretending to warm her hands by the fire while blocking the view of the implements beside it, and carefully selected her weapon of choice knowing which one she could wield best in a physical fight if it came down to it.
"Whoever you are, I suggest you show yourself or you're in for a rude awakening . . ." She stated turning around slowly holding up the long sharp fire poker. "I do not take kindly to people breaking into my home." she continued loud and clear, hoping that her voice did not waver and betray the uneasiness she truly felt in the pit of her stomach.
She heard a low commiserative whine, before seeing the large scraggly black dog emerge from the shadows behind the couch.
“Sirius Black.” Tobias murmured, trying to get her heart to stop beating at one hundred miles per hour, while she put the poker back into its proper place beside the fireplace. “Next time, please close the front door, you obviously changed back long enough to start a fire, you could’ve taken the time to close the door behind you as well.” She commented as she watched the massive dog morph back into his human counterpart with unruly long black hair with a confused look on his face.
“I did close the door.” Sirius said in a gruff whisper, turning to look over his shoulder towards the doorway as his hands came to settle on her shoulders.
“It was wide open,” Tobias sighed, crossing her arms over her chest after pulling down her sleeves low enough to cover her hands. “There’s snow all over the front hall and Kipper has decided to play hide and seek without informing me that I was supposed to be looking for him.”
Sirius turned his face to look back at her, arching an aristocratic eyebrow. “He left you alone with the house elf, again?” he said with a suspicious air.
“You say it like I was the one who crammed the damned elf in the freezer in the first place, and for the record, I DIDN’T!” Tobias glowered, staring him right in the eye, her own sparking dangerously with anger. “Even if I did want to kill the elf, which I don’t, I would think of someplace a lot more clever than the freezer in which to hide the body. Like someplace where no one would ever find it.”
Sirius held up his hands, taking a step back. “I didn’t mean it like that, Tobi.”
Tobias unwillingly took a steadying breath, closing her eyes and silently counted to ten before allowing herself to answer. “Oh. This is about me being left home alone with out an adult to supervise me, and me still being a kid, isn’t it?”
Sirius cocked his head to the side ever so slightly, seeming to consider her words before carefully choosing his own response. “No one from the Order has heard from your father in a fortnight. You haven’t answered any of our owls. . . We were beginning to suspect the worst.”
Tobias’ eyes snapped open in surprise. “I haven’t gotten any owls. . . Father took Gna with him when he left.”
“And when was the last time you saw him?” Sirius asked as he rested his hands on her shoulders once more, staring directly into her mismatched eyes.
“Two weeks ago.” Tobias whispered, looking up into Sirius’ black eyes, a small frown creasing her forehead.
“Go pack a bag.” Sirius said simply, giving her shoulders a reassuring squeeze. “You’re coming back to Grimmauld Place with me until we find out where your father has gotten to this time.”
Tobias stood there for a moment, blinking owlishly when they both heard a loud crash followed closely by a ripping explosion coming from the direction of the kitchen, and then an ear piercing shrieking noise that made Tobias clamp her hands over her ears with a grimace of pain.
“What the bloody hell is THAT?!?!” Sirius yelled over the din, covering his ears as the horrible noise continued.
“Perimeter alarms!” Tobias shouted, clutching him by the upper arm and dragging him closer to the fireplace after grabbing a handful of green powder from the vase on top of the cluttered mantel.
“Just a second!” Sirius pulled away from her momentarily to pick up the vase filled with floo powder and forcibly shattered it on the floor, smearing it into the floor with his foot before wrapping his arms around the teenage girl tightly. “Now!”
“GRIMMAULD PLACE!” Tobias shouted as they stepped as one into the roaring fireplace as the flames distorted to a vibrant yellow-green as soon as the dust ignited.