Who'd You Say You Were?

It was going to be a lovely summer morning, and Abbey had gone into London with her grandfather just before daybreak, letting him do the porting, on the condition she would simply meet two of her friends from school and go shopping.  And, she had to stay out of trouble and be back by the time he was ready to go home at the end of the work day.  

She loved summer. She had her skinny jeans, the highest heels that her mother would let her wear, and a white tank top, covered by a pink gauze shirt tied at her waist.  She kissed her grandfather outside his office, delighted to have a day in London with her friends. She dashed off to the coffeeshop at Trafalgar Square where she was to meet her friends, popped into the shop, bought a chai tea and a scone, and sat waiting for them.

She sat waiting, nearly an hour and a half, and her two friends didn't show. She grew frustrated, got up and decided to go by herself.  She loved going to the boutiques and looking for the unique things that seemed to scream "Abbey" to her.  She was looking for little bits and bobs that others would overlook.  Those things that she knew would make her outfits have her own sort of signature attached.

She was frustrated, though. Angry. Her friends had stood her up. She walked out of the shop and took the remains of her uneaten scone and sat on the stone edge of the fountain to feed the birds. She couldn't help but notice the inviting sound of the fountain, and at this hour of the day, there was no one around.  Most of the shops werent' open yet, so there wasn't much foot traffic, and not as many cars as there would be later in the day.  She tossed the rest of the scone on the ground and leaned back to run her fingers through the water. She loved water. Too bad she couldn't just dive in and go for a swim.  She could almost feel that water, still crisp with the early morning chill, swirling all around her.  Yep, there was nothing quite as exhilarating as that cold morning swim.

“You still owe me money, even if I thought you were dead.”

Terrance Tucker wasn’t pleased and understandably so. His normally tan skin was scarlet from his toes to the tops of his ears and his arms were crossed over his large, protruding gut. His hair had thinned on top and he’d gotten as wide as he was tall and, bizarrely, Robert Andrew Dent found himself oddly satisfied with that fact. Despite the man’s no doubt violent irritation at the fact that despite ten years having exchanged itself with the sands on the hour glass, Rob still owed him money. It was something that, had it not been rather serious indeed; Rob would’ve felt quite proud about. Despite himself, he was still grinning - a show of pride and a half.

“Because you thought me dead, wouldn’t that mean my debt is cleared?” Rob inquired with an easy, cheeky smile on his lips which took off the added years that too much whisky and far, far too much sunshine had given him. “How about, okay, fine. Let’s say, I find you a wife, hmm? Would you bite at that? Would that clear my debt?”

“You already gave me two wives!” He exclaimed harshly. “Why would I need another one?”

Rob stood back a moment, frowning. “Two you say?” Terrance nodded fervently. “Right, well, in that case, my debt must be cleared! Two wives? You poor thing! Thanks for lunch, Terry. I’ll be off now.”

And like that, as always, Robert Dent was gone. The money man with no money as ever, was broke but not in a boat in Botswana. No, instead, he had a rich wife who wouldn’t give him any money and a father-in-law who detested Rob’s virility. Again, the woman was pregnant and though, at times, Rob found he had trouble remembering how to pronounce her name - it was rather long winded and stupid after all - he was quite content to be a father, err, again. What was this? The ninth time? He wasn’t sure.

He’d left that first incarnation of life behind a decade ago but, funnily enough, life always had a strange way of bringing you back with the loved ones you’ve been charming enough to desert: in the form of Abbey.

Now, while everyone else surrounding the fountain was first of all confused about the clothes and then about the dog, Rob didn’t share that sentiment.

No, instead he leaned over the fountain, picked the dog up by the scruff of the neck and apologised to passers by for getting their way. Then, he took the dog down the road, out of the eyes of the square, and into a shop where he quickly took off the rack a pair of jeans and a shirt, chucking some coins in his wake, and took said dog into the nearest and cleanest looking alleyway.

After dropping the animal-cum-human onto the ground, Rob raised his eyebrows reproachfully.

“Did no one ever teach you how to get out of your fluffy stage?” He queried dryly.

Someone had picked her up by her neck and had interrupted her fantasy about a swim in the crisp cold water of early morning and then they'd...wait...picked her up by her neck?  

She looked around and saw she was in an alley, with clothes laying beside her. Not her clothes but clothes nonetheless.  And some old blond man was standing over her. A wizard. He was talking to her.  Oh, buggar. She'd done it again. And in muggle London.  Her first thoughts were that the aurors were going to come and get her and toss her in.....What? What was he asking?  Hadn't she learned how to change back?

Well, the truth was that her love for water was sometimes completely overwhelming. She had no ability whatsoever to resist it.  Back home, it wasn't a problem if she dove into the pool and went all furry. It was normal there.  When she got a chance to be in the water, she almost always ended up as an animagus and then, once in awhile, she had a hard time changing back.  Okay, so, yeah, she almost always had a hard time changing back if she had been having a great time as an animagus.  Her Head of House was trying to mentor her into changing back but so far, all she was doing was getting was stuck and frustrated.  The lessons hadn't worked very well.

There were no animaguses that she knew.  Not in her family.  Her mother was a seer, and Daddy was an auror and a healer. She heard that her biological father, her dad, was an animagus, but if she'd met him, it had been longer than she remembered.  Her mother showed him pictures of him. They sorta looked like the old guy in front of her.  In fact, the pictures looked a heck of a lot like the old guy.

And he sounded like he thought she was a fairly poor animagus if she couldn't change back. Well, she'd make it work. She tried to force herself to try to change back.

The only thing she managed was her human, almost waist long blond hair, and her own amazingly beautiful blue eyes. Dang it. Now she looked like an overgrown Shih Tzu who swallowed a whole bottle of hair potion. Lovely.  She could hear her professor's shrill voice in her head.

"Abigail Lupin! Troll!!" the shrill voice almost made her shudder.

She looked at the wizard standing over her who, of course, had been witness to that pitiful effort and the even more pitiful mess she had become. It didn't bother her to screw up in front of Papa. He never criticized her, and he never let her stay stuck. He seemed to think she was improving on changing back. A little, he said. He merely undid the bits she screwed up and then let her try again or completely changed her back. This guy, well, if he criticized her, she decided she might very well either bite him or pee on his leg.  Hm...maybe if she did pee on his leg and made a run for it, she could....She could what? Drag all the blond hair back to the ministry, leap heroically into the phone booth and zip into the atrium? Or even better, zip into the loo and manage on all fours, to flush herself? Capital thinking, Abbey, she sighed.

As Papa often said, she might have her father's animagus, but she certainly had her mother's temper.  In the meantime, though, she didn't know what else to try, so she simply laid down in the alley, looking a bit like an overgrown mop, and laid her head on her paws, she cast her blue eyes up at the wizard in surrender.

I am sooo screwed, she thought.