A/N: Thanks so much to Magical Maeve who set the Acrostics challenge that gave me the idea for this chapter's poem and to Lalalalatina who helped with the punctuation! *hugs* Enjoy and Review, por favor!
Chapter 25 Toaster
Tomorrow will be better.
Old fears will disappear.
And
Secrets will be spoken
That today are held so dear.
Every moment spent regretting...
Relief; it must be almost here.
Hannah was becoming aware of Emmett’s thoughtful glances. She looked down at her hands and tried to think of something to do with them. He wasn’t looking at her the way Jeremiah would look at Malaika before she noticed and gave him a frightening glare, it was more of a thoughtful stare. As if he was trying to figure something out.
“Oh shut up, Emmett, just shut up!”
Here we go again, she thought, those two would never stop fighting till the end of their days. They would bloody kill each other one day. Of course she’d never get to see it because she’d already have died of sheer boredom.
“What you mean like magic?” Hannah’s heart skipped a beat along with Jeremiah’s laugh, “I thought scientists didn’t believe in magic, Emmett?”
“Excuse me?” Emmett replied sharply, “When did I ever say I believed in Magic? I was explaining that the weapon they’re using is so advanced it’s like magic to us…just like normal guns would have been to people thousands of years ago. It doesn’t leave a bloody blemish, even after a complete analysis of the cadaver, Malaika can testify to that.”
“No I can’t!” Malaika said from her slumped position on the couch, “Leave me out of your pointless arguments.”
“Well then why don’t you make us some sandwiches or toast or something?”
Mahmoud clenched his fist and Hannah noticed his eyebrow furrow. She missed Malaika’s biting reply and was suddenly brought back to the conversation when Emmett asked (quite a bit more politely than before) if she would mind making some toast.
Her eyes connected with his and it was at that moment that she knew she had been discovered. His eyes held a silent challenge that made her blood run cold. She had been found out; the last person to believe in magic had discovered her little secret. She gulped and looked over to Mahmoud who had actually begun to get up.
“…bloody make it yourself you lazy…”
Hannah interrupted Malaika and stood up resolutely. “Sure!” she said mock-cheerily, “I was getting hungry myself.”
Mahmoud slumped back down on the couch as she passed him by and she willed herself not to look back at either Emmett or Malaika. Whether Emmett knew the whole truth or not was impossible to tell, but he certainly suspected her of keeping a secret and the secret he imagined in his mind might even be worse than the one she was really keeping.
She was hit with a wave of nausea as she stepped into the kitchen. Hannah doubted there was anything worse than telling the people that you respected that you were in any way connected with the killers that made their lives hell. That they were your old schoolmates (well, she had let something about that bit slip earlier which was probably why Emmett suspected something). How could she possibly tell them that while they stood helpless to cure or battle the mysterious “lasers” she actually knew exactly what was going on and how to fight them and she threw all of that away for a feeling in her heart. Let them kill, even, without lifting a finger to her wand.
She shook her head and forced herself to focus on the toaster instead of Death Eaters and the war. She always did the cooking, but that was in their place, the old abandoned house Mahmoud had found, not in Emmett’s flat. There was no toaster there and they didn’t even know where the kitchen was…she just cooked on the fireplace because that was all there was.
Hannah scanned the kitchen quickly. The fridge was the big one that froze everything- a rather clever substitute for freezing charms. Then there was that noisy thing that Malaika claimed would give you diseases (something which she almost got into an argument with Emmett about). Was that it? Hannah tried desperately to remember what it was called as she took the bag of toast out of the freezer.
She opened it slowly and couldn’t help looking behind her nervously just in case someone was watching. But Emmett was clearly still arguing with Jeremiah, she could hear his snotty voice trying to explain something to the bigger boy as if he was a child that needed everything broken down into small, simple words.
She jumped when she noticed that the piece of toast in her hand had actually become a bit warm. “No Magic,” she began chanting in her head, “No magic, no magic, no bloody accidental magic…please.”
As soon as she had herself under control again, though, she heard Mahmoud’s deep voice as he tried to calm Emmett down. She dropped it like a hot iron and began taking deep breaths, but her hand was itching to toast the bread with her wand and be over with it. Of course that would be pointless because they had to actually hear the noise of the toaster and she knew that Emmett was craning his ears. Bloody, noisy Muggle inventions.
“Proven fact my bloody arse, Emmett, shut your…”
Hannah had to smile when she heard that even though Malaika swearing, especially in a room with her sleeping sister, was no laughing matter. But the girl had given her the answer. There was one other occasion when Malaika had used the exact same language.
The nurse had come home and set a sleeping Millie down on the mattress then covered her with a blanket and promptly plopped herself tiredly on an armchair only to find herself face to face with Emmett, trying on his new cloak, and explaining to Mahmoud why he should get a microwave and let him fix the electricity in the house.
“Microwave my bloody arse, get out of here!” the girl had screamed, shocking everyone that was present.
Hannah scanned the kitchen again, searching for another likely suspect. The image of the two small tickets she had found by the bin later on haunting her mind. Something about those tickets had made Malaika very uneasy and it was strange because she thought Muggles loved the game as much as Magical Folk loved Quidditch. Well at least Dean always seemed to when he tried to explain it to everybody.
Her eyes lighted on a much smaller contraption, a more logical size for dealing with toast, and she examined it, her mind still very perplexed by questions from the past and the present.
“You all right in there, Hannah?” there was laughter in his voice. Genuine laughter and she knew it had nothing to do with his argument with Jeremiah because no one was stupid enough to laugh in that boy’s face. At least she hoped not.
“Yeah,” she replied hastily, “Just got to thinking, I’ll be right back.”
She pulled the toaster towards her and placed the slices clumsily into the small holes. They hadn’t gone back to arguing. There was a frightening silence from the other room, as if they were talking about her. Like the silence that had accompanied her that day.
Hannah shook her head vigorously, trying to dispel the heaviness that was clouding her mind. She couldn’t think about that day now. Not now.
She leaned forward and studied it then found a small sliding knob. Pulling it down she was surprised to find that it latched in place at the bottom of the contraption. But it wasn’t making noise like the microwave thing did so she leaned in for a closer look, sure that something must be wrong.
There was really nothing else to see so she pulled the knob back up and two slices of toast came flying out. One landed on her face and the other landed beside her on the floor. Her accompanying scream was not something that could be explained away.
Suddenly, as Mahmoud’s worried voice penetrated her memory-clouded mind, Hannah broke.
