Inside the Bubble The first thing Joe noticed when he stumbled gratefully into his house was the smell of cranberries. The second was a loud squeal as his sister pounced, sweeping him into a hug.
“Hi!” exclaimed Julian. “Hi, hi, hi!”
“Hi,” said Joe, and then it was John’s turn to be attacked. Unfortunately, John had predictably gone straight for the snacks on the coffee table, so he and Julian ended up looking extremely stupid as he tried to return her hug with one arm, the hand of which was occupied with a cookie, and to avoid spilling the contents of the teapot down her back with the other.
“Agh, do not spill that on me, I just made it, it’s hot,” said Julian, backing away. “I do know your priorities.”
“I missed you, too,” said John. “I just assumed you and Joe would be busy with the Teppenpaw secret handshake for a little longer.” He bit into his biscuit. “So. ‘hi, hi hi hi,’ is it? Just four? Or is that just in front of outsiders?”
“Yeah,” said Joe. “If anyone does it that way in the common room, we know they’re intruders – “
“ – and rain down unpleasant death,” said Julian, smiling brightly.
“The very thought makes me shake in my boots,” said John.
“As well it should,” said Julian. “Let me get the mugs….” She vanished into the kitchen. John, realizing that this was in fact a necessary thing for her to do unless he meant to take up drinking from the spout (a career move Mom would no doubt strongly discourage him from attempting), carefully returned the teapot to the doily and replaced the cozy over it before reclaiming his favorite bit of the couch.
“I like being at home,” he announced. Joe nodded as he looked around the room, looking for anything that had changed.
Not much had. The same overflowing bookshelves still lined almost all of the walls, stacked two or in places three deep and with paperbacks piled flat on top of the standing books. The end tables still sprouted candles and family photos like colonies of toadstools while the chess table, tucked into the alcove the front window was set in with the lectionary on its stand, currently sported Dad’s crossword, Mom’s purse, a jumble of things Joe assumed were for the calligraphy class Mom taught at the library, a potted plant, and a misplaced umbrella, which Joe returned to the rack in the doorway so he could get a good look at the room from the other direction, too. The sofa and chairs still sagged as he remembered, though some of the folded blankets had changed since September, and Mom’s cabinet of Alice china was still the most obviously organized point in the room. Beyond the novelty produced by still-warm cranberry white chocolate chip cookies lurked the familiar underlying smells of old paper, oily Muggle candles, black tea, India ink, and something a little like cinnamon. It was all as comfortable and familiar as the inside of an old boot.
“Me, too,” he said.
Once they had taken the edge off the hunger and disorientation of travel, John and Joe decided to save the stories about the challenges for when everyone was present and instead, after Joe successfully protested that his first year had been fine so far and that he would repeat all the details he’d already written home about when he had everyone together at once, too, listened to Julian chatter on about university and her new friends and how much she hated her job and most of her coworkers. The afternoon proceeded almost normally from there, John tackling his midterm homework with much muttering and a mug of tea the shape and perilously close to the size of a bucket that just happened to have pictures of ducks and cows on it while Joe listened to programs on the radio, until it was time to wash up for supper. Their two oldest brothers arrived in time to help Mom with the cooking and setting the table and, in Steve’s case, putting an extension charm on it so all seven of them could fit comfortably at a table whose builder had meant it for four. More or less comfortably, anyway; it was a bit of a tight fit in the places where the table came near the kitchen walls, but it was too cold to go out into the garden the way they might have in good weather.
“Well,” Dad said, looking around the table once they were all seated and the grace said. “This is a sight for sore eyes.”
“It’s been very weird only having two or three people at the table most of the time,” agreed Julian, passing Paul the potatoes.
“I know how you feel,” said Joe with feeling. It hadn’t been so bad when John first started school, but then Steve and Paul had moved out and he had spent last year as almost an only child. Last year had been really lonely; he’d started getting emotionally attached to his tutors out of sheer boredom. “It is weird. You guys have no idea.”
“Having room at the table…being able to have whole conversations with Mom and Dad at the same time….“ Julian looked over Joe’s head at John. “Always having all of my schoolbooks when I needed them….”
Everyone else laughed, and even John smiled. “I’ll try to – restore your sense of normalcy after dessert,” he said. “And I'm sure I could find you a temporary…an official school year book thief, if you really miss it that much.”
“That won’t be necessary, but thank you,” said Julian.
They ate in peace for a minute before Paul spoke up. “It just occurred to me,” he said, “that once Julian’s birthday is over, it’ll be the first time in – what – twenty-five years that there hasn’t been at least one kid in this house under any legal definition of that term for most of the year,” he said, and there were murmurs as everyone else digested that and Joe’s oldest brother protested that twenty-five years wasn’t really that long. “Joe leaving must have been even weirder for you guys than for Julian,” continued Paul, looking at their parents.
Mom smiled, a little guiltily. “I do miss teaching already,” she admitted.
“You heard that, Steve,” said Julian. “Have grandkids or she’ll have to adopt five more kids and start over.”
There was a bit of laughter as Stephen indicated that Mom might just have to do that; the production of grandkids was one of those activities that a wife was required for, and Steve’s schedule barely allowed for sleep and Sunday visits with the family right now, never mind the time investment Joe had gathered was necessary to get married and not end up regretting the whole experience inside a year. Then Stephen said, “really, though – you could still raise another family if you wanted, Mom. Or anything. What are you going to do once John and Joey get out of school?”
Spirited, not entirely serious (or at least Joe hoped Paul didn’t really expect Mom to run away with a fifties-themed band and that Dad did not really think Mom should take up Thestral ranching in the Territories), discussion of their mother’s options ensued, everyone except John chipping in ludicrous ideas. Finally, Julian glanced at John, who was clearly, at least to Joe’s eye, trying to look as though he was distracted when he really wasn’t as he sat and sipped his tea.
“You’re not saying a word,” observed Julian. “Who are you and what have you done with John?”
John shrugged. “I have nothing to contribute right now,” he said. His tone was a little too bland; to Joe, at least, and certainly Julian as well, it was obvious he was deliberately trying to sound that way.
Julian was still smiling, but in a very specific way that did not mean she was happy at all. Mom and Steve both frowned slightly, evidently catching the sudden tension between them at the same time Joe did. It broke only a second later, though, when John made a sudden, dismissive gesture. “Sorry. I'm still tired from the wagon ride.”
Julian nodded, evidently willing to accept conditional surrender. “Not one of the things about school that I really miss,” she said. “What did you think of it, Joey?”
Shrugging aside the weird moment, Joe launched enthusiastically into stories of his first year, glossing over the awkwardness and exaggerating some things – and leaving others out – to make a better story, especially when he talked about team fifteen. He wanted to be like his brother and sister, someone who moved through school confidently and was just as comfortable in a building full of purebloods and older and more experienced people in general as he was at this kitchen table, not a kid who had been honestly surprised by how uncomfortable he was outside the little family bubble he had been raised in. He was that kid, but he was determined to be the other sort one day and was going to fake it with good cheer until he was. It wasn’t, after all, as though his bubble had ill-prepared him for pretending to be something he wasn’t; the bubble only existed in the first place because he’d always had to do that. Inside the house he could be himself, but outside he could be whoever he wanted.