“ANNIE!” The squawk came from the other side of the bolted front door. “ANNIE ELIZABETH BOMBAY COME TO THIS DOOR IMMEDIATELY!” Oh course dear Cynthia Bombay of 42 Barnsley Lane, Broxwood, hadn’t actually considered that knocking on the door or using the bell to the side of the frame would have been more of an efficient manner to summon her daughter to the door. Apparently placing her clean fingers on the soot covered entrance to Hannah Bombay’s flat was considerably beneath her high standing morals and cleanliness. Hannah was lucky that she hadn’t actually disowned her beastly daughter after such a public embarrassment the young healer had caused for Cynthia. Her witch’s bridge club had almost kicked her out, not wishing to associate themselves with such gossip! So the least this ungrateful daughter to do was answer the door in a prompt manner!

While Cynthia adjusted her low cut top, attempting to prevent the bosoms escaping as she breathed heavily, Hannah stared across the small kitchen table at her continually scruffily dressed uncle as she carefully sipped from her tea cup. The atmosphere in the kitchen may have been described as uncomfortable for anyone other than Hannah. She didn’t sense such awkwardness as she was quite regularly the cause. This occasion was no different.

“You’ve overstayed your welcome.” Had been the words to leave Hannah’s lips only moments before the wailing from the corridor had commenced. Uncle Lawrence had been given her spare single bed for two weeks now as a kind gesture while he found alternative accommodation. However, instead of endeavouring to find this, he had been mending and beautifying his present lodgings, no doubt planning on remaining here for the foreseeable future. Hannah had therefore decided that this morning was the suitable time to rectify the situation.

Unfortunately now there was another situation soon to be scratching at her door with sharp, recently manicured claws. The young healer sighed, placed her cup on the table and pushed herself up. When she arrived at the door it was a moment before she opened it.

“Annie! Where on earth have you been? I’ve been stood here waiting for years! Do you want your mother dead on your doorstep from starvation and thirst? Goodness me child!” The witch was a gust of wind as she caterwauled and burst past Hannah, thrusting into the kitchen.

“Ugh! What is the meaning of this, girl!”

It turned out that DIY was a very good way of adjusting to using a wand again. On arriving by himself at Hannah's flat, taking down her wards (she'd been right in saying they were ones he'd probably be able to figure out, and he'd suggested a couple of alternatives, worried for her safety since) he'd been taken aback by the state of her flat.

The story had eventually come out, in the days that followed, and since he couldn't easily financially reimburse his only family member who would speak to him, let alone lend their spare room to him, he had set about repairing what damage he could with magic. The carpet was quite beyond reprieve in some places, but furniture, walls, kitchen were all looking more like their old selves. Lawrence was also much more in tune with his newly acquired replacement wand, and using his right hand instead of his left.

Life, in general, was a little more stable for this routine, and the freedom of being able to go where he wanted, leer at those he wanted to put the wind up, whether it was Brown, or Holmes, or any other idiot from the Ministry, and he could meet who he wanted to as well. As long as he pleased Hannah enough and stayed out of her way, but it wouldn't last forever.

“You’ve overstayed your welcome.”

He'd been about to acknowledge this statement across the kitchen table when his beloved sister had arrived at the front door. His face twisted, unsure whether to grin, to roll his eyes or laugh. Earlier that month, he'd stood the other side of Cynthia's front door and she had refused to talk to him. Now she was going to wander straight in and find him.

Well, if Hannah didn't want her mother there, he was a brilliant deterrent. 

“Annie! Where on earth have you been? I’ve been stood here waiting for years! Do you want your mother dead on your doorstep from starvation and thirst? Goodness me child! Ugh! What is the meaning of this, girl!”

As Cynthia bustled down the hallway, Lawrence sat back in the chair at the table and contemplated drawing his wand to put Herbert's cat food in the path of his oncoming sister, but slid it away. He didn't want to have Hannah throw him out before time.

"Dear sister," Lawrence greeted, raising his cup of tea to her, Merlin she'd aged, not in her face - too many charms, but the neck, the hands. The decade difference in seeing her last made it obvious. To her dear husband, the ageing was gradual enough to be beautiful.

"How lovely of you to pop round, cup of tea?"

Cynthia's eyes were like saucers, and she seemed frozen to the spot for a moment, perhaps internally working out whether she wanted to leave immediately, scream at him, or scream at her daughter.

"Sorry, Hannah probably didn't want to upset you, given I'm never spoken about, but you have raised her well, she's nothing like you." Colour flushed across Cynthia's chest, up her neck towards her face.

"How could you let him in, Annie, this is horrific!" Cynthia spluttered in her usual high pitched whine. Oh how he hadn't missed his dear sister's voice, like someone playing the saw.

"I let myself in, actually,"

"You broke in! I'm summoning the aurors right-"

"Oh shut up!"

Lawrence's wand pointed towards his sister's throat and her hands grasped it, while her mouth opened and shut furiously at him without sound.

"Thank Merlin." Lawrence sighed, and looked to Hannah. "I understand why you didn't tell her, she'd have probably re-torched the place." The healer's uncle got to his feet and drew closer to his sister, his wand still in his hand, forgetting, that his sister hadn't seen him lacking the other one as he gestured, the stump of his arm visible.

"I'm not here to cause you any more family ridicule, alright, and I've only silenced you so I can get a word in edgeways. It would have been nice if you'd opened the door and let me explain the other week - your daughter did." Lawrence gestured with his right hand to Hannah, still with his wand between the fingers.

"I'm sorry, Cyn, really. Must have been an awful shock."

He wasn't sure his sister was really listening, or staring at where his hand once was, but he released her silencing charm none the less.

Lawrence the disgusting criminal had had the audacity, the nerve, the evilness to silence her! Cynthia grasped her throat, staring at her brother in shock. Her eyes were wide, enormous, a mixture of fear and anger glaring through them at the scruffy, dirty wizard she had stopped calling a brother a decade ago. Was he going to torture her like he had all those muggles? Had Annie turned to his side now that she was a criminal reject as well?

But Cindy’s eyes caught the movement of Lawrence’s limb to find nothing at the end of it. Her mouth opened wide, gasping for air and now she stared at where his hand should have been.

Hannah’s expression gave away very little as she also stepped into the tiny kitchen, staring between uncle and mother. Regardless of how many times she had been overcome with the urge to silence Cynthia Bombay she had never actually done it. But the sound was beautiful.

“You monster!” Hannah grimaced as the lovely reprieve from the squealing voice ended so suddenly. “How dare you silence me, Lawrence! You are dead to me! DEAD! I don’t want you in my daughter’s house!”

Hannah cleared her throat.
“That’s my decision mother.”

It took less than a second for Madam Bombay to round on her daughter, appalled.
“You’re taking his side?” she shrieked “After all I’ve done for you; you take his side?! You’re as bad as him, Annie! A criminal! A filthy evil criminal! I’d hoped marrying Yonyarn would change that but no, you turn to your murderous, traitorous uncle!”

“He’s quieter than you.”

Filthy evil criminal. Yes, that was about right, but he'd had quite a few baths since Azkaban and felt like he'd scrubbed himself some new skin.

Trying not to laugh at Hannah's retort, Lawrence attempted to defend her.

"Hannah had just asked me to leave, if you must screech, sister, which I'll do. I haven't forgotten my manners, even if you've forgotten how to use a doorbell."

"Then leave!" Cynthia responded with venom, but her brother shot her an unimpressed look and returned to the kitchen table, sitting down and resuming his cup of tea.

"She's not a filthy evil criminal, either, she's your daughter, and I've met filthy evil criminals. Hannah isn't one of them." He gestured with his left arm, enjoying how it disturbed his sister.

At one point in childhood he and his sister had been close, but the older she got and the more hysterical, the harder it had been. But she was still his sister, and despite her massive faults, he forgave her. His imprisonment in Azkaban was incompatible with her perfect life and perfect daughter, but it sounded like Hannah had already put a dent in that with being a werewolf.

"You make it sound like I'm going to marry my own niece, Merlin. Did you lose the remaining braincells while I was away?" He lifted his mug of tea to his lips and scowled darkly beneath his mop of scraggy hair.

"No offence, Hannah, you'll make a lovely wife for someone soon." He uttered beneath Cynthia's continued screeching and smiled at her.

If his sister kept it up, he'd do worse than silence her, but if he could salvage anything out of this meeting that could be to his advantage, he would.

For a moment all Cynthia could do was gawk, wide eyed, at where Lawrence’s hand should have been. Instead all she saw was nothing. A stump! A handless stump! Something disgusting and another mark of just how disturbing her ex-brother was and how she really wanted nothing to do with him. Her lips pursed dangerously and her eyes wide as galleons, she let out a long breath through her upturned nose, much resembling a sickly hog.

“Marry!” Mrs Bombay squealed loudly. “You keep away from my Annie you deformed monster!”

Beside Lawrence Hannah was staring at her mother with a remarkably neutral expression. This blonde witch no longer surprised her and Hannah knew how fruitless any endeavours to reason with her mother were.

“Yes mother,” Hannah started calmly. “I am going to marry my uncle and live my life in beastly one handed sin. We’re going to make litters of one handed werewolf babies who are also going to be sent to Azkaban for decades. It is our sole aim to embarrass you and our family.” The healer then picked up her tea cup and stepped out of the kitchen into the living room. She was quite done with this spectacle. Lawrence could deal with it.

"You know - asking me to leave over breakfast was enough of a hint!" Lawrence called after his niece and tilted his head back in exasperation over the Bombay women. He was pretty sure his sister hadn't been part of Hannah's plan though, but she was doing a good job helping.

"Deformed? Oh, right, yes - you do realise an Azkaban guard did that to me months after I was put there? Inhumanity of that place, still," he adopted the softest expression he could and appealed to his sister with his remaining right hand, resigning himself to the distinct possibility of putting his left hand stump near her again might cause more hysterics.

"Dearest sister, I owe you the humblest of apologies for in my incarceration all these years. I've been an utter disappointment to you, our family, the country... myself. But now the Ministry has deemed me ready to leave and play my part in society again. Your exceedingly kind, intelligent daughter, my favourite niece, offered me a place to stay for a night. I've just been desperate to set myself up again..." This whole act was easy to roll off the tongue, even if it was deceitful. Living amongst the best liars in the wizarding world - well perhaps not the best, if they'd been caught - for a decade, had uses.

If he kept talking perhaps she'd not be able to screech again for fear of what he was going to do to her. As it was, his sister's eyes were bulging, colour in her cheeks, and her lips kept forming the start of an outburst with splutters rather like a curious chicken escaping from her throat.

"You're looking well, and I have missed you so very much." Lawrence told her, and softening his expression to the level of a Labrador puppy, he enveloped her in his arms and gently rubbed his sister's back. Against him, she was stiff as a board, and felt coiled. He was either going to pay for this moments later, though his wand was close to hand, or she was frozen in fear. He very much doubted she'd melt and forgive him, not before she drew her last breath, unless he became the Minister or won a lottery.

Over his sister's shoulder, his soft smile dissipated to a knowing grin, which only flinched as he saw Hannah turning back to observe in view of the doorway.


End