Grayson Peter Wright IX (quibbling_heir) wrote in weddedto_sonora, @ 2008-05-11 17:20:00 |
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Current mood: | relieved |
Homecoming
People swirled around them at the transport center, keeping Gray from seeing much of anything. Beside him, his cousin had pasted on a smile for the benefit of those who would know her from school, but he could tell she was internally seething. He chose caution over valor and took two steps away from her, just to be safe.
"If you weren't so precious to them," she said conversationally, shifting her bag on her shoulder, "I'd think they'd forgotten us, Kid."
Gray straightened his glasses unnecessarily. "They're here somewhere," he said. "I wrote Mom and told her when we were coming, and she said that it would be fine and they'd pick us up."
Anne shrugged, then smiled and waved at some familiar face he didn't know. It never failed to surprise him how many kids from school lived in his state. It made sense, just because of the size of California's wizarding population and its proximity to the school, but still a surprise. "Well, if they don't show, we can rough it on our own until September." She gave him one of her too-rare smiles, looking almost pleased by the prospect. "Make a good adventure, huh?"
Gray was spared answering by his mother, calling his name from the opposite end of the platform. Before he quite knew what was happening, she'd crossed the space and had him pressed to her shoulder, her long brown hair tickling his ears and his glasses smushed up against his face. The last caused him a lot more concern than his temporary lack of oxygen, because it took forever to get his lenses cleaned properly after they made contact with skin. "Mom, my glasses," he tried to protest, but found his words muffled by her shirt.
"Let him breathe, Janine," his father said comfortably. When his mother let him go, he saw that the elder Grayson was positively beaming, though he did manage to be both briefer and more sedate than his wife when it came to the process of hugging. Out of the corner of his eye, Gray saw Anne step toward his abandoned mother and hug her perfunctorily. He also caught the confused look his parents exchanged, and the warning almost-glare Anne gave him, and he understood: she was trying to look like she was part of their family.
Maybe the adults realized this, or maybe they decided just to disregard it, but no comment was made as they walked out of the transport center. "Have a good year?" his dad asked, the question seeming generally addressed to them both.
"Fine," Anne said, and then her face lit up. "My team - we beat Pecari. It was the most amazing thing ever. Nobody thought we could do it."
"That's nice," his mother said, polite but clearly disinterested. Quidditch wasn't something she knew much about. "How did your exams go?"
"Okay, I guess. I only really screwed up once, and then I fixed it. Results should be here the third week of July, so we'll know then."
"What about you, Gray?" his father asked.
Gray blinked up at him as they left the shade of the building and emerged into bright sunlight. "My exams were fine. I - uh - uh - I made some good grades."
"You made brilliant grades, Kid," Anne interjected. "Don't lie about it, it's an insult to the rest of us."
"They were okay," he insisted. "I'm sure someone, er, somebody did better."
"Fors fortis," his cousin said. Nobody even bothered to ask her what she'd just said; Gray wasn't sure how much of it was because nobody really, when they thought about it, wanted to know. "You're, like, the next-closest thing to a genius."
"I'm smart," Gray demurred, privately superstitious about praising his own intelligence or accepting compliments on it. He looked back up at his parents, hoping to turn the topic to less potentially dangerous matters. "What's, uh, you know, been happening at home?"
"Annie-Janette finally got married," his mother said. Gray nodded, figuring Annie-Janette was a cousin he was supposed to know and didn't. He had too many distant-but-connected kin to try keeping them all straight, especially as they were all basically cast in the same limited set of personality molds. "Uncle Anthony called the other day to say that Aunt Susanna's going to have another baby - they're thinking of Scott for a boy or Sarah for a girl."
"Don't reckon Bethany and Danny are too happy about that," Anne remarked. Gray made a face at the thought of Bethany's reaction, but it quickly turned into one of horror. His mother, Gray was reasonably sure, knew him well enough to know he wasn't going to remember a random cousin who got married. If she put that ahead of Uncle Anthony and Aunt Susanna, then something that she thought was going to go over like a ton of Bludgers was coming.
"Mom," he said, interrupting her speech on how she thought Danny would be a really good big brother, "you aren't having another baby, are you?"
His father would have stopped dead in his tracks, but the clumsiness Gray had inherited and the two trunks in front of him messed up that plan; instead, he tripped and went sprawling. Cursing under his breath, he got up and began dusting himself off as Anne went to re-secure her luggage. His mother looked bewildered.
"What would make you think that, sweetie?"
"Well, you're getting ready to say something I'm not going to like," he said reasonably, "so I figured it might be that. You always start by saying a bunch of other stuff that isn't all that important, then spring the big thing on me at the end."
She began to laugh. "Well, it's nothing particularly big this time," she said. Her eyes gave away the lie as they flicked, uncertainly, over toward his cousin. "Just that Uncle John got a job."
Gray became fascinated by his thumbnail. His father was divining the secrets of the universe from imaginary cloud formations. Anne's face went very still.
"Bully for Uncle John, then," she said flatly after a silent moment during which everyone looked at her and pretended they hadn't. "What's he doing, Janine? Peddling his meds on a street corner?"
"Teaching, actually," she said, and Gray thought she sounded a little strained. Whether the cause of strain was his cousin or his uncle was impossible to tell. "He talks about it like some medieval form of torture, but I think he secretly enjoys it a lot."
No one said anything else until they were level with a car Gray recognized as having been borrowed from the office. As his parents got in the front seats and she surveyed it, Gray could see in Anne's eyes that she had her doubts. "You know how to drive this thing?" she asked.
"Sure I do," his dad said, as cheerfully as he could. It almost sounded natural. "You think Janine would let me put the kid in it if I didn't know how to drive it?"
A faint smile tugged at one corner of Anne's mouth. "Well," she said, with a hint of humor, "I guess you've got a point there." She got in without further protest.
Everyone talked quite normally until they pulled up in the yard, when Anne went quiet again. Barely stopping to say 'hi' to Alicia, who she passed on the stairs, she headed straight for her room and didn't come out even for dinner. When he tried eavesdropping later, all that he could hear through the door was the scratchy sound of the Victrola playing something someone had once played on a piano. She came out the next day and, apart from being in a much better mood and more considerate frame of mind than usual, acted as if nothing had happened at all.