LINER NOTES:
It's official, "Bottle" is one year old! And what a year it has been. This time notes will be at the end of the chapter, please read them for some important information.
As always, this story is rated T/PG-13 for implied sexual scenes, language, and homosexuality. Don't like, don't read - but don't flame.
"Where on earth have you been?" Severus pounced on Remus as soon as he entered the kitchen. An unperturbed Remus set four brown paper bags on the table and started unpacking them.
"I wanted to get something for dinner . . . and we needed paint for the sunporch. Greenhouse. Whatever you call it."
"Why do you need paint for the greenhouse? It's glass, Remus, you don't paint glass."
"But the frames holding the glass in place are made out of wood, and that's already been painted at least once, so I don't see why I can't paint it again. White in a greenhouse always looks horrible, Severus, and it gets so dirty. I've been scrubbing the damned frames for a week and they still look like nobody's touched them in twenty years."
"Twenty-five. They haven't been painted since I was twelve."
"See? That's my point," Remus announced triumphantly. Severus sighed.
"Fine. Paint it. But if you get any paint on the glass -"
"I won't get any paint on the glass, Severus. You're forgetting the kind of family I grew up in." Remus set the fourth bag on a chair by the door that led out to the room that had formerly been a sunporch (Severus' "few rare specimens" had more or less taken over since he'd started growing his own potion ingredients - the last functional furniture had left the room fifteen years ago), and then pulled out the cutting board so he could slice tomatoes.
Severus slipped into the greenhouse, massaging his hands. He'd spent the evening painting the bedroom (they'd celebrated "one more room" only to discover that Severus' office also needed to be repainted, as did the room down the hall that Remus wanted for only Merlin knew what - but those rooms could wait), and his hands felt horrible. He thought there was something very wrong with the idea that a man could spend sixteen years grading thousands of essays a year, and yet when he picked up a paintbrush he got something akin to very bad writer's cramp.
"Remus, what the hell are you doing?"
Remus looked up from where he was cheerfully running a wide roll of tape around the windows. "Keeping paint off the glass."
"You mean you haven't even started yet?"
Remus' eyes bugged. "I had to move everything out of here, Severus, and that meant looking up every single one of those plants so I wouldn't damage any of them, and then I spent half an hour trying to find one of them in your magical plants dictionary only to realise it was basil - you could have saved me time and told me that you had an herb garden out here too - and then when I was done with that I had to wash the windows before putting up the tape so it would stick - even those new pieces you put in were positively filthy - so no, Severus, I haven't started yet!"
Severus held up his hands defensively. "All right, I understand, it's an eyesore and I need to learn to clean up when playtime is over. You don't have to yell."
Remus smiled. The smile grew wider, and before too long he was laughing loudly. "Playtime? Is that what you call it?"
"Why not? It's something I enjoy doing, so you can't really call it work."
Remus shook his head and rolled his eyes. He reached the end of the windows and slapped the tape roll down on an old card table with a sigh. "Finally." He surveyed his handiwork momentarily before moving back to the other end of the greenhouse and picking up a small can of paint.
"Why don't we have a cup of tea and then I'll help you." Severus decided not to ask the words, since Remus would undoubtedly have said that he could handle it just fine on his own, thanks. With this in mind, he stated the words instead. It was all a matter of inflection and, as he'd expected, Remus looked grateful.
For a smile like the one Remus gave him, he would have taken a bullet to the head. A bit of pain in his fingers was nothing.
Remus leaned back into the pillow on his side of the mattress and sighed. He was tired - he'd spent the morning trying to make the back yard usable, the afternoon had gone to scrubbing the brick patio, and until eleven o'clock that evening he'd been on the sunporch. None of it was particularly hard work, although Remus suspected that could be why it made him so tired - his hands did a good deal, but his mind had lain idle for most of the day, something he found peculiarly exhausting. To top everything off, it was unbelievably hot for a night in Britain, and he didn't think he'd be able to sleep at all. Remus had forsaken his normal nightclothes in favor of a pair of blue jean cutoffs that had formerly belonged to Severus (he'd found them in a trunk in the attic, and Severus had confessed to wearing them for yardwork - back when there had been an actual yard to work in, as opposed to a forest of weeds). They were maddeningly hot around his waist, but he was stuck with either the blue jeans, or a pair of flannel pajama bottoms, and he was not going to wear flannel on a night when the thermometer read 26 degrees (1).
Severus stumbled out of the bathroom, drying his hair with a towel. Normally he would have used a drying spell - he hated going to bed with wet hair, or even damp hair - but Severus, who spent most of his time in a cool, windowless dungeon, was even less tolerant than Remus when it came to the unpleasant heat. He'd taken a cool shower, and he intended to let his hair stay wet - if not dripping - as long as possible. It kept the heat away. Remus raised an eyebrow when he moved out the door and down the staircase, but that was all. Good.
"What's this for?" Remus eyed the small bottle of strawberry wine, now about half-empty from their last "celebration." He didn't know where Severus had kept it, and experience told him that Severus could store things in very strange places - only this afternoon he had found a bunch of paperback books in the linen closet, stacked up underneath the spare bedsheets, for no apparent reason.
"It sounded like a good idea, so I brought it up from the cellar. We've got to drink it soon in any case. I think it's starting to go over."
"Wine doesn't go over that quickly if it's been resealed, Severus - the cellar?"
Severus shrugged. "There's a wine rack down there. I found it when I was clearing out all my old school essays."
Remus cringed. If the wine rack had been covered up by old, musty boxes for so long that Severus had forgotten it even existed - a mean feat in and of itself, since Severus almost never forgot anything - Remus wasn't too sure he wanted to be drinking something that had been sitting in it. He slowly dragged himself back to whatever Severus was saying.
"Sorry, I wasn't paying attention."
Severus rolled his eyes and looked irritated. "I said, I never even knew it was there. I didn't even keep cooking wine in the house until a year or two ago, and I haven't been here since before Harry started at Hogwarts, so there hasn't been any alcohol here since my father died. I never had any use for a wine rack."
Remus couldn't help himself. "Did you clean it?"
"No, I shoved the bottle in through a few cobwebs and rolled it around in the dust for awhile before I put the glass back over the front of the rack. Of course I cleaned it before I used it, Remus, do you think I want old parchment bits floating in my glass?"
Remus smiled sheepishly. "Sorry . . . shall we have a toast, then?"
"- but I've never done anything worse than that. What about you?" Remus knew full well he shouldn't have had two glasses of wine so close together - he hadn't been lying when he said he really couldn't handle alcohol - but he hadn't been able to help himself, and it was only the two of them in the house, anyway. He was still far from drunk, but he knew this this glass - his third, although he'd only allowed Severus to fill it halfway - would have to be the last one or he would end up with a problem.
Severus considered the question carefully before answering. "Once when I was twenty-two I got really stoned - don't look at me that way, Remus, there were a bunch of us all drinking from the same fizzy drink (2) bottle and apparently somebody laced it with something - and I got my ear pierced in three places. It swelled up so much I couldn't even get the hoops out."
"You had your ears pierced with hoops? Severus, you're never supposed to pierce with hoops!"
"One ear, Remus, one ear. Three holes. And really, if I was so high I was willing to get my ear pierced at all, do you honestly think I was in any condition to know how it should be pierced?"
"True. Did I ever show you the tattoo I gave myself?"
"No, but I've seen the one on your back. For lack of a better word, it's creepy - as my sister would say."
"And what, may I ask, is so creepy about a scene from Hamlet? I think it's very - noblish. Noble. Something like that. Take this away from me before I get pissed (3) absolutely out of my mind and do something really stupid, won't you?" Remus handed over his wineglass.
"It's too hot to be drinking like this," Severus admonished (he had already had three and a half glasses and was showing no visible effects).
"You're the one who started it," Remus pointed out. "If there wasn't anyone else around I think I'd go skinny-dipping. I don't remember ever having a night this hot in Devonshire."
"You probably never did. And you can undress if you're so damn hot, you don't have anything I've never seen before on myself a thousand times at least. Unless you have a Prince Albert ring. I never got around to getting one of those before my insane phase passed."
Remus laughed. "Neither did I. But these jeans are staying right where they are, Don Juan."
Severus considered that last statement. Contrary to popular belief, he was not as impervious to alcohol as he liked to pretend, and he'd had just enough to consider being really, really foolish.
"Want to make a bet on that?"
"A bet on what?"
"Your blue jeans."
Remus made a face. "I don't have anything to bet."
"If I win, you have to do whatever I want."
"And if you lose, Severus?"
"Remus . . . I never lose." He leaned over to kiss his blonde-haired partner on the mouth, and revelled in the sweet taste the wine had left on Remus' lips. Remus looked slightly unfocused, probably reciting the multiplication table backward or listing the countries of the world or whatever damn thing he did to keep himself calm in the face of temptation, which struck daily about a thousand times. He tried to shift his weight to his other leg to compensate for Severus' greater size, and they tumbled down onto the sheets, the light blanket twisting itself maddeningly around Severus' knee as he landed with his back on the mattress and his head just below his pillow. Remus hit his head on the edge of the mattress and laughed.
"This isn't going to work, Severus."
Severus kicked the blanket off the mattress (why did they have a blanket, even a light cotton one, in the middle of July? he wondered - it wasn't as though they needed it) and threw his weight to the right, rolling them over and away from the side. He planted one hand firmly on either side of Remus' head and took a deep breath - the rapid change in position had left him lightheaded, as though he were hanging upside down by his knees from the monkey bars on a Muggle playground.
"Do you want to bet on that, too?"
Harry sat nervously with his head pressed tightly against Sirius' back and his legs clinging to the saddle for dear life - why had he allowed himself to believe that there wouldn't be so much difference between a broomstick and a flying motorbike? He had been determined to learn to ride the monstrous thing Sirius called "Black Beauty." Then Sirius had kickstarted the motor and Harry had squeaked in a manner that was embarrassingly reminiscent of Lavender Brown getting caught misbehaving in class. He couldn't imagine how anything that size could sound so loud, how an inanimate object could seem so positively feral, and wondered why Sirius hadn't gone deaf years ago. Then they'd gone around a corner on their way out of London (Ministry rules said no flying in or within ten kilometers of large cities, so they'd had to wait until they were twenty minutes into the country to find out if the levitating mechanism even worked anymore), he'd grabbed onto Sirius' waist feeling grateful that he hadn't been pitched off, and he'd been sitting in the same position ever since. He wasn't planning on letting go. Ever. He knew full well that as soon as he did - even if they were back on solid ground and the bike was turned off - he was going to fall off, and the machine was going to topple right over on top of him and break his back (which, according to a frighteningly casual Sirius, was perfectly possible if you weren't careful).
They came down at last just outside of a small town whose name Harry didn't catch, and roared off through the village. Not everyone stared, but a few people did, most notably girls around Harry's age or so who seemed to be staring not at the blue jean-clad boy on the back, but the man in the black dragonhide jacket sitting in front. Harry wondered if Sirius had noticed, and if he had, what he thought of it. Remus had said on several occasions that Sirius didn't notice attention unless he wasn't getting it, so maybe he didn't even realise what kind of trail he was leaving behind him - or maybe he did, and was just laughing to himself about it. The thought would have made Harry laugh if he hadn't been concentrating so hard on not falling off - something he was actually in no danger of doing, although he had no way of knowing that.
The bike stopped in front of a white house with a large front porch. The back tire skidded. Harry yelled in panic, the sound muffled by Sirius' jacket - and then Sirius put down the kickstand and Harry breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Sirius looked over his shoulder as far as he could and grinned, although Harry didn't see it because he'd buried his face in the back of Sirius' jacket as soon as the bike had started to skid. "Isn't this great?"
"I'm never getting on this thing again, Sirius, you drive like a lunatic!" Harry had finally plucked up enough courage to raise his head about an inch so he could express his outrage. "You could have gotten us both killed."
"Nah. It's not as easy to wreck this thing as you seem to think it is, Harry. Now would you mind letting go? My legs need a decent blood supply if I'm going to stand up."
Harry blushed and released his death grip on Sirius' waist. "Sorry."
Sirius shrugged. "Remus doesn't like it either. I tried to teach him how to ride it - this was years ago - and he just sort of stared at me like I'd gone out of my mind." Sirius' tone made it clear that he thought Remus was missing out on something really wonderful. Harry thought Remus was definitely the one with the right idea - he certainly wasn't going to be learning how to ride that monster!
By the time Harry had allowed himself to be coaxed off the bike and onto a set of still-shaking legs (and if Sirius liked flying so much, why hadn't they just used brooms? Harry wondered), Remus had come out onto the porch and was waving at them from the front steps. Harry sped up so he could hug the man - he'd missed Remus for the past three weeks more than he'd ever missed anyone in his entire life - and enjoy the good feeling of a friendly, familiar face in a place he'd never been before. He hugged Remus tightly and thenwrinkled his nose- apparently Remus had spent his morning working in dust. Harry pulled away so he could sneeze.
"Still got a suicide death wish, then, have you, Sirius?" Remus queried as Sirius returned from wheeling the motorbike carefully to the other side of the house. Sirius grinned at Remus' disapproving look and shook his head before offering Harry a paper tissue (Sirius absolutely refused to carry a cloth handkerchief for some reason). Harry sneezed one more time into the tissue (what exactly had Remus been doing to get so dusty, he wondered, rolling around in the yard?) before cutting in on Sirius' and Remus' conversation as a sudden realisation popped into his head.
"Remus, you've been shagging!"
Remus tried to look disapproving again, but a blush was slowly creeping up his cheeks. "Harry, that's completely inappropriate! And it's also none of your business."
Sirius stepped back and scrutinised Remus carefully. "You know, Moony, he's right, you do have that sort of starry-eyed I-just-spent-my-night-in-a-place-without-supervision kind of look."
Remus favored Sirius with a look that might have been a scowl if Remus had allowed it to develop more fully. Instead it just looked like a pout. "I'm not even going to respond to that, Sirius. Come on, let's go."
Harry panicked. "Go where?"
This time Remus smiled. "Severus told me, quite clearly, that I'm not allowed back in the house -"
"WHAT?"
"- until four o'clock," Remus continued serenely, as though Harry hadn't spoken at all. "So I thought we could go into town and get some tea - there's this really amazing shop just a block from the main road - and then we can pick up a few things before we come back out here. That ought to take up the time fairly well - Harry, where on earth is your trunk?"
Harry glanced helplessly at Sirius, who shrugged. "Figured I could send it through the Floo tonight so we wouldn't have to worry about it on the bike, Moony. You can't Shrink something that big without Shrinking everything inside of it first, and that takes too damn long."
Remus sighed. "Right."
"It's so nice up here when you're not screaming along on a deathtrip," Harry said, breaking a long silence. Remus smiled at him and laughed a little.
"A deathtrip, Harry?"
"Yeah, on that motorbike. I think next time I'll stick with my broom. I've had enough bad experiences with flying vehicles for one lifetime, thanks."
Remus shifted his shopping bag to his other hand and chuckled. "Severus told me about you and Ron trying to run over the Whomping Willow. You're quite lucky you managed to get out in one piece - well, two pieces, I suppose you can't really say 'one piece' when it's two people."
Harry kicked a stone sitting on the side of the road - the streets in town were paved, but a mile past the edge of the village the roads all became dirt. Remus said they got horribly dusty sometimes - probably because of the drought. In a normal summer, they'd be too wet - or recently wet - to blow all over the place. Before too long the road ended, and they stepped onto the grass in the front yard. What Harry took for a cat wrapped around Remus' legs and purred.
"Hello, Sadie - Harry, this is Sadie. She's a Kneazle. Severus got her in London."
Harry squatted down andreached out cautiously to scratch behind her ears. "Er . . . hi?"
Remus laughed as Sadie batted at Harry's hand. "She likes to play with moving things, Harry - you might want to be careful." He banged on the frame of the screen door.
"Hey! Are we allowed out of exile yet?"
Severus' voice floated down the stairs. "Ten more minutes. You can't come up yet."
"Are we at least allowed in the house?"
A long pause.
"I suppose."
Remus smiled and shook his head before leading his two escorts into the living room. Harry gaped. He had never imagined a place that was spotlessly clean . . . and welcoming. Privet Drive was spotless - and horrible. Hogwarts was neat and tidy, but it was a school and was therefore never completely clean - except for the hospital wing, a place Harry hated. The Burrow was clean but chaotic - and full of what Aunt Petunia would have termed "junk." The old apartment he'd shared with Remus was dusted and vaccuumed . . . most of the time . . . and there were always enough dishes to eat from, but the beds were rarely made and there was usually a large amount of general clutter. It was also the place where Harry had been happiest, and so through a process of elimination he had come to equate cleanliness with unhappiness.
This room, though, seemed to speak of a life where order abounded and good feelings reigned supreme. Instead of the unyielding, easy-to-clean furniture he'd suffered at the Dursleys, this living room had soft fabric chairs and a sofa, and a rug that covered most of the floor (he could see wooden tiles around the edges of the carpet). The coffee table came from the same set as the sofa and chairs, but they didn't feel stiff and formal even though they matched each other. The pale curtains were clean, but not starched to death; they hung naturally, allowing the summer breeze to blow them gently inward like the top layer of a formal gown. The fireplace was made of large stones which, though they weren't covered in soot, bore all the telltale signs of having been used, and sitting on one side of the wide front edge was a large gameboard made of cloth that could be used for playing draughts (4) or wizard's chess. Several pictures were hung on the wooden posts that formed a bannister for the staircase. There were two empty spaces on the end, but Harry was less concerned with these than with the fact that he was in not one but two of the photographs already hanging there. He'd never had his picture hung on the wall before. He suspected that the large cupboard on the far side of the fireplace was probably full of the puzzles and games Remus so dearly enjoyed - there was, after all, a book shelf right next to it that was filled with his collection of mystery stories.
Remus guided them through this room and into the kitchen, which was just as clean, bright, and beautiful as the living room, with the same tiles on the floor (but only two small rugs, one in front of the sink and the other in front of the oven). Harry glanced at the framed picture hanging over the kitchen table and then did a double-take. In the middle of the frame was a cloth sack, the front of which proclaimed that it had once been filled with "MacPherson's Rice." Remus saw him staring, and laughed.
"We had to eat seven bags of that - that - eeeeeeeccccchhhhhh," Remus finally concluded, before adding, "We only made it through two - we gave the rest away - and that's one of the two we finished. We figured we'd keep the bag, just to remind ourselves. And you never know who's going to see it and ask why we have a framed rice bag hanging over the kitchen table. Makes a great conversation piece."
Remus motioned the two of them to sit down and poured iced tea (Harry opted for a cold glass of milk instead) before he moved to the counter to turn something that was soaking in something else, explaining as he did so that there was a barbecue pit on the back patio and they were having some kind of marinated chicken recipe that belonged to Severus.
"And tomorrow," he continued, "we're having cheeseburgers. It'll be the first meal with red meat in it that we've eaten in the house since we got here. Severus said that once we get a general order we can start planning meals if we want, like we did when it was just you and me in the house, Harry. Have a biscuit, they're in the jar on the table. I have no idea what they're called - Severus gave me the recipe so I could make them, but they're some kind of Spanish thing (5). He's got this old cookbook that's full of positively loads of foreign things -"
"Foreign only to someone who never bothered learning about anything that wasn't Cajun, Southwestern, or traditional," a familar voice announced from the doorway. Harry, his mouth full of the Spanish biscuit, had to settle for semi-shouting "Mmmmphhh!" to announce his presence - he would never have imagined that he could miss Severus Snape, of all people, but on the other hand, his Marauderish genes seemed to be saying, there was a prime opportunity . . .
Harry swallowed. "Severus, your shirt's buttoned wrong."
Severus looked mildly annoyed and started rebuttoning his shirt as he moved to sit down at the table. "I just got dressed. I didn't bother changing out of my work clothes until I was finished."
Remus, still standing by the countertop, chuckled into his hand and then blushed as Sirius sent him a pointed stare. Remus finished with the chicken and joined them at the table. Severus jumped up as he did. Remus raised an eyebrow at the uncharacteristic display of energy.
"What on earth got into you today, Severus? You've been up and down all -"
Remus broke off to glare at Sirius and Harry, who were both laughing.
"Care to share the joke, Harry?"
Harry continued to snicker helplessly, while Sirius managed to plaster on an unconvincing look of angelic innocence. Remus sat and waited until Harry caught his breath.
"I was only just thinking, it's not necessarily that something else got into him, but maybe he got -"
"All right, that's quite enough," Severus broke in from the back door, where he was balancing the tray of chicken, one-handed, on his knee so he could open the door. "We're going to be eating in twenty minutes. Don't make me punish you for indecencyyour first day here."
Harry rolled his eyes and downed the rest of his milk in a single swallow. "Okay, now are we allowed upstairs?"
Remus called out the back door. "Severus?"
There was an indistinct answer from the far side of the patio.
"Are we allowed to go upstairs yet?"
Another indistinct answer. Remus chuckled.
"As long as we don't go into the room at the top of the stairs - not the bathroom, the one next to the linen closet."
"Um . . . okay."
"Well, what do you think?" Remus pressed, as Harry stood wide-eyed in the door of the bedroom.
It was magnificent. The two or three rag rugs (courtesy of Gram, who loved making them) were new, laid over an oak-plank floor almost like the one in the living room at Devonshire. The wooden furniture was exactly like the furniture in Remus' childhood bedroom - Harry highly suspected it had been made by Remus, senior - and for the first time in his life, Harry had things. His own comb and hairbrush (instead of the old ones he'd scavenged from the trash when Aunt Petunia had thrown them out) sat next to a small stack of cassette tapes on the mirror-backed dresser, and a cassette player sat in the corner on a set of shelves. The bureau, Remus told him, already had his clothes in it - some were older, "gently-used" clothes from a couple of Remus' American cousins (it was tacitly accepted that these were work or play clothes), but most were new (or clothes that Sirius had already sent on a week ago), and they fit him instead of hanging off like old skin. There were books on those shelves in the corner, too, and even though he couldn't see them, Harry knew they had to be interesting - he trusted Remus and Severus for that. The window looked out on the back yard, and a small houseplant was sitting on the sill. There was a small sofa where he could sit and read, and a tall three-bulb lamp next to the desk pushed neatly into the corner opposite the shelves. The walls had been painted a fresh, light sugar-brown color with a cream-colored skirting board and trim. The ceiling was just like the floor, only stained (Remus had gone into positive esctacies about it; he loved wooden ceilings). In the coming months he would be able to reach out the window, pick a pear, and eat it down to the core before depositing the remains in the dustbin next to the desk. Harry was certain there would be other things in places he couldn't see - in the desk, the bedside table, the closet, maybe a couple of treats hidden in the bureau or under the mattress. And better than any of that, he thought, was the fact that he could do with it as he saw fit - a poster or picture on the walls, blinds instead of curtains, the furniture in different positions.
"It's mine."
Remus thought he wouldn't ever get tired of those hugs.
"Mmmmmmm." Harry shoveled a mouthful of chicken and noodles into his mouth.
Severus raised an eyebrow as Harry gulped a healthy mouthful of tea and went back to the noodles. "You know, we have a saying in Italy about people like you."
"Mmmmmm?"
"Roughly translated, it says 'he who acts like a pig will be butchered for his bacon and bristles.'"
Harry swallowed with a good deal of difficulty. "But Sirius didn't feed me. He can't cook. So we just had loads of sandwiches and McDonald's and things like that. I need some nutritious food before I just waste away into nothingness, right, Remus?"
Remus responded by primly cutting a small bite off of the chicken breast in front of him, mixing it with a bit of pasta, and then carefully lifting the whole thing to his mouth.
Sirius chuckled. Harry sighed.
"So, that's that, then," Remus announced, as he put the last of the dishes in the cupboard. "You need to get ready for bed, Harry, it's almost nine o'clock. It'll be past ten before you can get to bed."
Harry sighed before plodding upstairs to take a bath and put on his pyjamas. He didn't want the evening to end - but then on the other hand, he'd still be here tomorrow.
Some time in the night, Remus became conscious of being watched. He opened his eyes slowly and found Harry standing in the doorway, peering in.
"Harry? Do you need anything?"
Harry jumped and then answered, smiling a little.
"No, I'm fine." There was a pause before the door closed. Remus smiled and laid back down, curling up under the light blanket. Next to him, Severus rolled over and settled back.
Far away, thunder sounded - rain was on its way.
And on the other side of the hall, in a room with a pear tree outside the window, the happiest boy in the world only wished he could look in the Mirror of Erised at that moment. It would be a great conversation piece if he could only have told people that he'd looked, and seen only himself, exactly as he was.
END OFYEAR ONE
AUTHOR NOTES: Phew! We've finally made it. This is far from the end of the story though, so don't despair (or if you're getting bored, I guess you can get off here . . . ha ha). "Bottle" has two more years in Harry-world, plus final edits, to go through. Incidentally, I started writing (NOT prewriting, there's a difference with me) exactly a year ago. "Bottle" first made its appearance on the Internet on 1 January, 2005. What an amazing year it has been! Thank you all so much for sticking with me and helping me to become a better writer, friend, and person with your emails and conversations.
There will from this point onward be TWO epic stories going on in this account: "Bottle" will soon be joined by the first chapter of "Harry Potter and the Riddle Glass," a version of the long-awaited Book Seven for all those too impatient to wait for J.K. Rowling. If you like "Bottle," you will almost certainly like "Riddle Glass!" It has the benefit of a full year's improvement and a very well-written plot (according to those who have beta'ed the plot for loopholes . . . ). This means, however, that I will be alternating chapters of "Bottle" with chapters of "Glass," so if I normally update once a month (for example), it will now be every other month - one month for one story, one month for the other.
Always,
Haruka Lune
REFERENCE NOTES:
(1) Celcius degrees. The Fahrenheit temperature (for US readers) would be 80.
(2) "Fizzy drink" is the English (as opposed to American) word for soda pop.
(3) Drunk.
(4) Checkers.
(5) The food I am thinking of here is called a "churro." They are sweet and the recipe I tried had chocolate in the middle and was made with rum, although there are several different kinds.