Title: Blanching I

Author: Tinuviel Henneth

My mother is marrying a man who is not my father tomorrow morning. My father is still desperately in love with her, of course. I've got it on pretty good authority that she still loves him, too. My younger brother agrees with me. The elder just thinks we're silly and that we ought to get our noses out of Mum's and Dad's business.

I fully would if it weren't so bleeding obvious that they need us in their business.

So, anyway. Tomorrow morning, eleven ante meridian, Hermione Granger will wed Oliver Wood and will forget all about her last husband and her three children. Well, perhaps not. My dad isn't really the sort of man you just forget about. I'm his daughter and I can't even deny that he's gorgeous. Jon, my twenty-year-old older brother, looks exactly like him. Actually, so does David, my eight-year-old younger brother. Of the three of us, I'm the only one who was actually born inside their marriage. Jon came during the war when nobody could even think straight, let alone get married. David came four years after Mum and Dad's bitter divorce and two years into my father's second marriage to this horrible floozy named Bridget, whom he divorced when David was a few months old. I, Aimee, am fifteen years old. I hail from good old Ravenclaw, where both of them ought to have been sorted. I look nothing like either of them.

I look rather like the Giant Squid with dark hair and I still can't believe Mum is marrying somebody who isn't Dad.

It's not like it's a huge surprise. I'm not a romantic and it probably wouldn't bother me at all that I'm about to have a step-dad if I wasn't aware that Dad's still in love with her. Mind you, it doesn't bother Jon at all. He thinks it's terrific Mum has fallen for somebody who isn't going to hurt her all the time like Dad does. Jon's a bit of a Mummy's Boy.

"Ams, you in here?" David calls, poking his head into the room. His eyes are huge and brown and he's got this adorable curly dark, dark, dark brown hair that I swear I would kill to have.

"Hey, Daver," I say to him, trying to sound miserable. I suppose that's because I've got my Potions book open on my desk and a picture of Mum and Dad from when they were still happy waving at me, her pregnant with David at the time. In the frame next to that one is a nice shot of Jon and me wrestling over a slightly deflated Quaffle at Christmas three years ago, back when he was a Seventh Year. I've got him in a headlock in the picture and appear to be mercilessly giving him a noogie.

"Are you going to the wedding?" he asks me, pouting.

I sigh and beckon him on into the room. "I don't know, Daver," I tell him, "I can't decide."

"Is she betraying Dad?"

Ouch. An unanswerable question. Why do kids do that?

"No, Daver, I don't reckon she is. She doesn't love him anymore." I swallow the bile. This is the worst thing I've had to force out of my mouth in ages. Worse than that time I had to barf up toads from a prank a Fifth Year played on me last when I was in my Second. I got the bastard back good, though. I don't think he's been the same since he found that mongoose in that corset in his wardrobe...

To my surprise, David smiles, channeling Dad even more. "I like Ollie, Ams," he tells me, in that special tone of voice little kids use when they're telling you their most precious secret. It makes my heart want to break, really it does.

"That's okay," I tell him. "Daddy won't be jealous."

"I know," says David, watching me carefully for my reaction. "Dad told me this morning that Mum wants me to live with her and Ollie after the wedding, and that if I want to, he won't be mad."

"Do you want to?" I ask in a very small voice, not wanting to believe it. Mostly, I think, because I have to intention of moving out of Dad's house, but also because I don't want to lose my baby brother. I mean, odds are good Mum and Oliver will have kids of their own.

He looks very sad. "I don't know. It's lonely around here with Dad working and you at school and Jon moved away, Ams. I can't decide." He perks up a bit, looking at all the smiling photographs I've got scattered around my room. "Are you going to put a wedding picture up in here?"

"I can't decide, Daver," I tell him. "I can't decide."

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