Daniel Fintoc's Muggle Adventure Growing up on the Fintoc family ranch meant Daniel had never had a great deal of exposure to the Muggle world, at least not until Heather and Emilia-Louise came along. In truth he'd never had much interest in such an area, partially because he didn't want to listen to Emmy-Lou lecturing him on things he didn't know. Daniel was the clever Fintoc, the one who was supposed to say things that the others wouldn't know and impress Granddad Fintoc so having Emmy around trying to do the same could often be quite irritating. She was a spotlight stealer and that didn’t sit well with Daniel who itched to draw attention like Emmy always seemed to, although in a slightly different way.
Daniel’s ignorance and lack of interest in Muggles didn't necessarily mean he didn't like them. He liked to be a sociable kid and although there were certain people that he would make more of an effort with that didn't mean he was ready to cast everyone else aside.
Despite his one-sided rivalry and resentment where Chuck was concerned, the truth remained that the two cousins were quite close. This was probably largely due to their fairly minor age difference that had lead them to being lumped together a lot when younger. Nevertheless, when Dan was invited to stay in California for a bit at the start of summer, instead of returning back home straight away, he had been rather surprised. After brief hesitation he accepted the offer, rather excited at the chance of extending his knowledge of the world and broadening his horizons. Even the thought of spending his summer in the company of Emilia-Louise Scott couldn't dampen his new desire to explore and gaining more cultural awareness. Chuck had never seemed particularly impressed with the L.A lifestyle but he was so different that Dan was almost certain he'd find a lot more intrigue in the experience.
“You’re not excited by any chance?” Chuck grinned as the younger boy who was so much more like a brother to him than a cousin as he biologically was. Dan’s face was squished up against the window of the flying wagon as he peered down at the coastal sprawl beneath them.
Daniel didn’t bother replying. He was excited and there was no pretending otherwise. He knew this was going to be a fun holiday and there was no shame in it. He was only twelve years old and it was therefore normal that he should have enthusiastic emotions.
*
Dan knew he should probably be grateful to have Emmy-Lou around, keen and ready to give him a tour of her Santa Monica homeland, but that by no means meant he didn’t find her heavy going. Emmy’s presence certainly took its toll, although he refused to let her get to him as much as usual - this was his holiday, after all, and he wanted to enjoy it. Daniel Fintoc had also grown up knowing that one should be polite and gracious to their hosts irrelevant of who said hosts were. Not that Dan would ever go so far as to suggest that he disliked Emmy for she did have pleasant qualities but their personalities just led them to clash on a fairly frequent basis.
There were some days when Emmy’s mother Heather would accompany the three kids, specifically when they travelled to Downtown L.A. Uncle Rob was more scarce but present most evenings to cook dinner. Although Dan had come to know Heather and Emmy quite well over the past five or so years, it was nice to have Rob around too. The Fintocs were a close family where cousins were more like siblings and aunts and uncles essentially parenting each other’s kids. Most of the time it was just Emmy, Chuck and Dan free to roam around Santa Monica unless they wanted to do anything that required parental aid.
Everyday of the vacation was a highlight, including the day that the three of them hired some bicycles from a place near the beach so they could cycle along a stretch of The Strand which had such an awesome view.
There were some points during Daniel’s stay when Emmy-Lou was unable to accompany him and Chuck due to other arrangements so the two boys were able to do whatever they liked. Chuck clearly didn’t feel at home in Santa Monica at all and Daniel wondered why his cousin actually bothered to stay there, although it was obvious really that he was trying to make everyone happy and did also enjoy spending time with his step family even if he’d never call their home his.
Chuck took Daniel fishing for the morning which could have been boring but it was a nice and peaceful refreshment after full on Emmy for several days.
“How’re you finding school?” Chuck asked as they leant against the rails of one of the lower platforms of Santa Monica pier with their rods hanging down into the sea. Dan had now completed his first year at Sonora and Chuck realised he hadn’t really taken the time to ask his cousin how he’d found it. Dan was both a clever and sociable kid so the older boy had never had any worries that had prompted him to ask but he thought perhaps it would’ve been thoughtful just to inquire.
“Fine,” Daniel’s response was oddly defensive. Chuck shot him a frown that made Dan realise that perhaps he had been unnecessarily rude. The fourteen year old clearly wasn’t trying to challenge him, not where school was concerned anyway, so Daniel tried to make up for his sharpness by expanding. “It’s different… than what I expected.”
“Uh huh,” Chuck said noncommittally, neither querying nor agreeing with the statement perse.
“It sucks having no roommates, doesn’t it?” Dan commented, knowing that like him Chuck had no boys in his year and house to share a dormitory with. He thought it quite a shame as that was a pretty good way of guaranteeing yourself friends from the get-go.
“Yeah I guess,” Chuck nodded, although he could see significant benefits of such a thing. Chuck was generally a sociable boy but also enjoyed solitude so it was nice to have a room all to himself to return to at the end of a busy day full of classmates he saw all the time. “But it can be nice too.”
Dan thought it typical of Chuck to think that way. He was the kind of person who would be perfectly content to go on walks by himself, which he did sometimes when they were home, and not because no one would go with him but because he never actually asked. Dan on the other hand thought such a thing sounded most boring. If Dan was studying he could stick being alone but he didn’t want to do that all the time so surrounding himself with other people kept him well occupied and helped him find fun and enjoyment even when there was nothing much to do.
“What about the girls in your house? What are they like?” Chuck asked, not doubting that Dan had made friends by now but also unaware of who they were as he hadn’t heard much about Dan’s yearmates aside from Emmy’s dubious gossiping which he never paid great attention to, just trying to look as though he was.
“They’re really nice,” Daniel nodded with a smile. Even if it was a bit of a downer that there were no boys in his house, at least the girls were a good sort. “There’s two of them - Angelique Brockert and Artemis Leithan.” He hadn’t got to know them yet as well as he’d like to but hoped there would be plenty of opportunities to solidify friendships in second year, now that they’d have a whole year of getting used to the newness of Sonora under their belts.
Chuck raised his eyebrows at the names. “Granddad will be pleased. Careful what you tell him or he might be pushing you to marry one before you know what’s what.”
Daniel scoffed, his cheeks going a little pink at the thought. He knew Chuck was just joking and Granddad Fintoc would do no such thing as Daniel had already proudly reeled off all the important names in his class to the family patriarch at Christmas.
“Would you mind if he did?” Chuck grinned at Dan’s brief shyness. He himself wasn’t yet at the stage where he wanted to drool over girls, although he definitely noticed them, and was happy to keep any attractions to himself unless asked (because there was no reason to hide them; he certainly wasn’t ashamed of having such inclinations that were only natural). Growing up working with his uncles and cousins meant that Chuck hadn’t been sheltered from some of the conversations they would have about the fairer sex, however, and he knew that whilst there were some things best kept to yourself, girls could be quite a topic to talk about.
“Yes,” Daniel said, almost indignantly but he was a little too flushed by the question to really mean it. “Well, no,” he didn’t want to portray the two girls offensively and wondered if they might interest him in that way if they were all a lot older. “I mean... I don’t know. They’re very nice I guess and from good families and I s’pose they’re pretty but I don’t really know if, you know...” He wasn’t quite ready to confidently label certain girls as pretty. In his yearbook survey he’d written down Makenzie Newell who was a much older girl in his house whom he had met at the Opening Feast at the very start of the year. She had been very polite and welcoming and he thought she looked real nice too. In fact, he thought she was lovely and held her in high esteem, with something of a ‘puppy crush’ on her at first. He hadn’t told anyone specifically but he wasn’t embarrassed by it in anyway. There were likely others who probably felt much more strongly towards Makenzie than he did himself and she was so much older than him that no one would take him seriously, not like they would if he felt the same way about Angelique or Artemis like Chuck seemed to be suggesting. “Who did you put as prettiest for the yearbook?” Daniel thought it about time to turn the tables onto his mysterious cousin. What was pretty according to the eyes of Chuck Fintoc?
“Gia Donovan,” replied Chuck easily, although not sure how the conversation had turned onto him and the yearbook of all things. “She’s in my year.”
“Your year?” Dan’s eyes widened. Didn’t that mean something if you were attracted to someone that could actually feasibly like you back? “That’s brave. I put Makenzie Newell.” If Chuck was going to be so brave then so would he, he’d like to see Chuck tease him about putting her anyway. “So, do you like this girl you put?”
Chuck shook his head. “I don’t know her a great deal, she’s more of a friend of a friend. Well… actually I’d say she’s a friend now,” after the bonfire he thought they had taken a new step in their friendship - she’d invited him to hang out with her group and therefore he felt he already knew her better than he had before. “But just because I think she’s pretty that doesn’t have to mean anything. She’s just got this natural beauty that a lot of other girls don’t necessarily have,” he didn’t mean to offend other girls, it was just that there were certain people who caught his eye more than others when it came to what they looked like (although he never judged people by their looks anyway, only really picking up on it when prompted for things such as the yearbook or discussions like the one he was now having). “She’s Greek, that might have something to do with it,” he added for Daniel’s benefit - the Fintocs were not very well travelled so didn’t actually know what difference ‘being Greek’ made apart from language but this was an attempt at trying to explain why maybe her looks were different to others, although in reality Chuck probably had no idea what the traditional traits of Greek features were or if such a thing even existed.
“Ah,” Daniel seemed to get it, or think he got it at least.
“But she won best couple with Barnaby Pye,” Chuck was still a little puzzled by the match between the two when Gia had said her brother Jax didn’t get on all that well with his roommates and one of said roommates was actually supposed to be dating her. Although given her denial at the bonfire the two of them were probably just close enough friends that people thought they were dating. Still, he didn’t know Gia well enough to say for definite either way. Chuck didn’t pay much attention to people’s relationships at Sonora and didn’t really care so long as they were happy. He was glad Owen and Jemima had won best couple though as they were the one pairing he knew were either together or wanted to be - they were both good people. The other relationship he had been briefly aware of was a short one between Joella Curtis and Alistair Johnson, one a friend the other a foe, and this was only because Emmy had spent quite some time complaining about how her old friend could date such a swine after first finding out about the young couple. Fortunately that was over now and Chuck agreed with Emmy in that Joella was a whole lot better off without Alistair.
“Barnaby Pye…” Daniel mused. “That’s Professor Pye’s brother, isn’t it?”
“Yup,” Chuck nodded. “And if I were to listen to Emmy I’d say he’s a nasty piece of work, but when do I listen to Emmy…”
Daniel laughed, glad of a joke at Emmy’s expense but not cruelly so. It was just nice to know that he wasn’t the only one who found her irritating or full of rubbish sometimes because he didn’t like to be irrationally negative of people. “I’ll tell her you said that.”
“You wouldn’t,” smiled Chuck. “Or if you did she wouldn’t believe you.”
He had a point. Daniel was fairly sure Emmy knew exactly what he thought of her and she just found it amusing. Chuck on the other hand was her flawless older brother. Everyone loved Chuck, although that was Daniel included so he probably didn’t have a place to complain.
*
“Hello.”
Daniel looked panicked, glancing around fervently. He hadn’t expected someone to approach him in the few minutes that Chuck was gone. How could his cousin be so cruel? To leave him all alone in this strange place, surrounded by crowds of strange people. Dan knew it was partially his own fault for wanting to be independent and snapping at Chuck when the older boy requested reassurance that he was fine being alone for a moment.
“Are you lost?” The girl repeated.There was nothing prominently odd about her. She was dressed in pink shorts, white T-shirt and flip flops with long brown hair pushed back behind a hairband. She sipped on a straw protruding out of the can in her hands and her freckled face bore the most suspicious brown eyes Daniel thought he had ever seen. Under normal circumstances he mightn’t have labelled them as suspicious, nor might he have found her blatant Muggle attire (which was actually not that dissimilar to the kind of things Emmy had been wearing) so intimidating but right now his brain was going into overdrive. He didn’t have Chuck or Emmy to do all the talking and there was something weird in itself about the fact that this girl had randomly targeted him.
“No,” Daniel shook his head, hoping the simple answer would make her go away. If she was just trying to be helpful she would leave when she realised she wasn’t required. Had he looked lost? Was he really that out-of-place amongst Muggles? Dan had always thought he generally wore Muggle clothing anyway and Heather had taken him shopping to buy him more suited clothing, not that he lacked shorts and T-shirts usually but here it seemed far too hot to have to wear his usual shirts and jeans when he ran out of more suitable attire. Additionally he’d had to get used to wearing sneakers rather than boots which he didn’t think looked very appealing but wore anyway because he didn’t want to offend Heather.
“Do you live here?” It seemed that Daniel’s response was not satisfactory as the girl continued her interrogation.
“No,” Daniel repeated.
“Where are you from?” The girl seemed to want to know a lot, as she looked him up and down whilst sipping on her straw. There was something scary about the way she did so, what with her nosy questions.
“Colorado,” Daniel thought that perhaps it was best to be honest but vague. There was no reason why a Muggle couldn’t be on holiday from Colorado too. Emmy had said that holidaymakers came to Santa Monica a lot in the summer.
“Where’s that?” The girl shrugged at him but didn’t seem to care much for an answer as she continued before he even had chance to open his mouth. “Where are you staying?”
“At my cousin’s house,” Daniel told her, still feeling uneasy about the strange situation he was in but beginning to think he was doing okay.
“Who’s your cousin?”
“Well, it’s actually more like his stepsister’s house really,” Daniel corrected himself, not wanting to reveal Chuck’s name.
“”Who’s his stepsister?”
“You won’t know her,” Daniel told the girl.
“Try me,” his interrogator persisted.
“Emilia-Louise Scott?” offered Daniel, wondering if maybe the girl did know her and Emmy did actually have Muggle friends (something he’d always thought she made up to annoy her dad)... or maybe this girl wasn’t actually a Muggle afterall.
“Never heard of her,” replied the girl, looking unimpressed. She paused to suck out the last dregs of her drink in a noisy slurpy fashion. “I’m staying at the campsite.”
“You don’t live here?” Daniel frowned, confused as to why she had ever thought she might know Chuck or Emmy if she wasn’t actually from the area in the first place. He also had no clue what she meant by the campsite as he hadn’t seen a single one so far, although he at least knew what one was.
“No, I’m from Vancouver,” the girl spoke proudly as though it meant she was of significant importance. “That’s in Canada.”
“I know,” replied Daniel, who wasn’t sure why she needed to state the obvious. He wasn’t stupid and had at least some geographical grip of the world, unlike her who didn’t even know where Colorado was. Her being from Canada did explain one thing, the difference between her accent and that of someone like Emmy, who was a born and bred Californian.
The girl narrowed her eyes a little, suddenly scrunching up her can with surprising aggression and strength that caused Daniel to take a small step back. “I’m Sarah.”
Daniel nodded, offering a vague smile that probably came out as more of a grimace.
“Well?” Sarah prompted. “What’s your name?”
“Daniel,” he relented, wondering when this girl was going to get bored and leave. Why wasn’t Chuck back yet?
“Cool,” Sarah nodded. “I had a boyfriend called Daniel in second grade but he was a two-timer so I dumped him. He was such a jerk. But you’re not a jerk so you can be my friend. But you can’t be my boyfriend - I’m trying to become a lesbian.”
Daniel stared at the girl, rather horrified by the words coming out of her mouth and also very confused. He wasn’t even sure he knew what a lesbian was exactly, except that Emmy-Lou claimed she knew one.
“Is that your cousin?” Sarah indicated with her head to who she meant.
“Yes,” Daniel followed her gesture and was relieved to see Chuck standing there grinning at him. “I’ve got to go.”
“Already?” Sarah looked disappointed. “I’m going back home in a couple days. Will you be here tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” Daniel was internally hoping the real answer was never. “Bye!”
Sarah scowled. “I was wrong; you are a jerk!”
“Made a new friend?” Chuck looked amused when Daniel joined him.
“Let’s get out of here,” Dan pleaded, his eyes still wide with horror at the conversation he had just experienced.
Chuck laughed, walking down the pier away from the girl with Daniel but having no intentions of going that far. “Now I get why Emmy’s the way she is,” said Daniel incredulously. “Muggle girls are super scary.”
“Are you sure that’s not all girls?” Chuck mused with a smile.
“No, this one was weird,” insisted Daniel.
“Here,” Chuck handed his younger cousin a burger.
“Never leave me again,” Dan muttered, taking a hungry bite out of the burger.
“Hey you were the one who said you could go to the bathroom alone,” Chuck put up his hands in protest.
“Yes but you didn’t warn me there would be weird Emmy duplicates trying to hunt me down,” said Dan, not quite so serious now he felt he was a safe distance of that bizarre Sarah girl.
Chuck laughed. “Emmy’s not that bad. And I think the girl was just trying to make friends.”
“Why?” Daniel was puzzled by the whole encounter.
“Maybe she liked the look of you, you know what I’m sayin,” Chuck teased, giving Dan a wink and a nudge.
Daniel pulled a face and gave Chuck a shove in response (not that it had any effect on Chuck’s great hulk of a figure). “She said she doesn’t want a boyfriend - she’s trying to be a lesbian.”
Chuck roared with laughter, although Daniel wasn’t quite sure why so he just continued demolishing his burger.
Fortunately Daniel didn’t have the misfortune of bumping into Sarah again after that. He still made sure that he was never alone again outside of Uncle Rob and Heather’s house until a couple of days for fear of the scary Muggle girl. But after a few days he found that he’d overcome the initial fear and actually began asking Chuck and Emmy if he could order food or what not and be the one to pay for things using actual Muggle money. It was all rather exciting, almost like pretending to be someone else in some cases.
When the time came for Chuck and Dan to go home to Colorado with Uncle Rob, it had to be said that Daniel felt rather reluctant. He was really beginning to acclimatise to the busy and exciting California with a great mix between city and beach. However, after spending so long at Sonora beforehand, he was still keen to get back to his family whom he had missed a great deal. In many ways he felt rather torn but he was reassured by Heather’s open invitation for him to come and stay again. He didn’t care what some folk liked to say - Heather was a real nice lady (and very different from her daughter). Before attending Sonora in the fall of the previous year, Daniel had never actually been away from the Fintoc cattle ranch for very long and he was surprised to find himself missing it. Although the thought of seeing his family again was the predominant reason for his half-wanting to go home, Dan knew that there was a part of him that had actually missed his homeland (but that did not mean he at all looked forward to shovelling dung again instead of writing notes and casting new spells).