Dear Readers,

Many of you have been waiting patiently for the re-launch of Words From The Sowul. Don’t worry: it’s coming very soon! The process is taking longer than I expected, but I’m really excited about what you’ll see when everything is finalized. The launch will be sometime in January 2015; I’ll keep you posted on an official date. In the meantime, I’m so grateful to see how many people are still coming to the site and reading old posts! I haven’t posted anything new in over two months, and yet my visitor counter has hardly gone down at all. 

This December, after finishing a draft of my young adult novel and before starting a re-write of my historical novel, I decided to take a holiday break and return to some old friends, the Wallaby women. In December 2011, I first posted Sugar and Spice, the first Christmas story of the Wallaby family. Here is the second installment, Dustpans and Broomsticks. I hope you enjoy, and have a wonderful holiday season! 

See you in January!

– Leanne

Dustpans and Broomsticks

by Leanne Sowul

It was tradition: the Saturday before Christmas, the Wallaby women gathered to bake their Christmas cookies. It didn’t matter if the Saturday before Christmas was a full week before the holiday, necessitating far-flung relatives to travel twice (“Oh, stop your whining,” Granny Ellison would scoff), or if it was Christmas Eve, when they needed to begin before dawn to finish in time for the late afternoon mass. (Cousin Margaret, who was the most pious of the bunch, would rush them through the day. “Church!” she’d cry, as if God himself was clocking their baking time.) Every Wallaby woman came, from Granny Ellison down to her youngest grandchild. It was tradition, and the Wallaby women abided by it, year after year, generation after generation, until nobody but Granny Ellison and Great Aunt Marian could remember how it started. 

It was Bea’s turn to host this year, and she was all in a tizzy about it. She’d known her turn was coming, of course (didn’t she personally organize the rotation years ago?) but Leah had hosted last year, and everyone had loved her new house with the big gourmet kitchen so much that, at the close of the day, they’d all agreed among themselves to make it the permanent home of the Wallaby baking party.

But then Leah had gotten pregnant (actually, she’d already been pregnant at the time, but hadn’t said so, a fact that made some of the women, when they finally did hear the news, make snarky comments to Leah until well into the third trimester) and in August there came a beautiful little girl. She arrived precisely on her due date, already showing her true Wallaby colors. Granny Ellison had said so at the hospital the next day, and when Leah reminded her that the baby was a Carter, Granny had just waved her hand and said, “Pish tosh! She’s a Wallaby, all right.” (Everyone knew Granny was just arguing for nature’s sake. Leah had named the baby after her and she was over the moon about it, though outwardly she was still her bristly self.)

So the new baby changed things, as everyone agreed that Leah, no matter how spacious her kitchen, shouldn’t be responsible for the set-up and clean-up of the baking party when she had four-month-old Sophie Grace to care for. Which meant it was back to the usual rotation, and that was Bea’s house.

The week leading up to the party, Bea cleaned compulsively. She vacuumed under the radiators and behind the sofa, and got out the expandable feather duster she’d bought last year at the county fair, reaching it right into the corners. She got up on chairs, her knees complaining, and wiped each spindle of the ceiling fans. She even polished the old-fashioned taper candles hanging by their conjoined wicks on the artificial Christmas tree. When her daughter Moira called, however, Bea lied and said she’d just done some light cleaning in preparation for the party. She could almost hear her daughter’s eyes rolling over the phone.

Moira lived in Colorado and wouldn’t be home for the holiday this year. It was her husband’s family’s turn to host Moira, her husband Kevin, and Bea’s beloved three-year-old twin grandsons, Devin and Kevin, Jr. (When Granny Ellison heard those names, she cackled for a week.) Never mind that Kevin’s parents lived less than an hour away from them and got to see their grandsons all the time. Never mind that Bea had to spend Christmas morning alone (though she would go to her niece Caroline’s for dinner). Oh no, Bea never minded at all. At least that’s what she told Moira.

The cleaning wasn’t the only thing that Bea did in preparation for the baking party. It wasn’t even the reason why she so badly wanted it to take place somewhere else. Bea liked cleaning- actually, she loved cleaning, just as much as the Monica character on that Friends show Moira had liked so much. No, the reason Bea didn’t want the Wallaby women descending on her house was that she was afraid they would discover her secret obsession.

When Marcus had left her (how many years ago was it now? It couldn’t really be nine years, could it?) Bea had been, at first, relieved. Their marriage had crumbled slowly, eroding from beneath. Nothing scandalous, like an affair (Caroline’s ex Timothy cheated on her with his yoga instructor) or a midlife crisis (nearly thirty years ago, Granny Ellison’s husband, Grandpa Cliff, spent his life savings on a beach house, which Granny promptly sold after telling him that raising five kids without television or bottle-warmers meant she was the only one allowed to have a midlife crisis). Bea and Marcus had simply realized, a decade and a half in, that they didn’t love each other enough to stay together for a few decades more. The divorce had been amicable enough- Bea got the house, Marcus got the stocks and bonds, and Moira had been old enough to decide on her own that she wanted to live with Bea and see Marcus on weekends, which had worked out well for everybody.

Following the divorce, Bea was reasonably happy. She liked her job as a nurse-receptionist in a pediatrician’s office. Dr. Murphy had a small practice, and she knew the patients and their parents well. Her days there were busy but enjoyable, and (the Wallaby women all teased) she appreciated working in such a sterile-clean environment. At home, Moira was an easygoing teenager, not prone to the fits and screaming matches so many of her female cousins seemed to have with their mothers. She and Bea had got on quite well, and Bea didn’t miss having her ex-husband- or any man- around.

But then Moira had graduated and gone to college out West, and suddenly Bea was lonely. To make matters worse, two years after that, Dr. Murphy had retired and sold his practice to a young doctor whose wife ran his office. The wife, who looked like Christie Brinkley from her Sports Illustrated days and was as haughty as a Rockefeller, had deigned to ask Bea to stay on and smooth the transition for the patients, but after three months of being bossed incessantly, Bea couldn’t take it anymore. She retired with somewhat less in the bank than she’d hoped, but as the house was paid for, it was enough to live on and still visit her daughter a few times a year.

The loneliness had grown to encompass an all-consuming boredom. Bea didn’t have enough reason to get dressed in the morning, let alone leave the house. Her daily phone calls to her daughter kept her going. On Moira’s more harried days, when the calls lasted a scant few minutes, Bea sometimes failed to disconnect on her end, preferring to hear the dial tone still connecting her to Colorado rather than the dead silence of the cordless handset.

And then, unexpectedly, a new chapter of her life opened.

It all started with a babysitting job. One of Bea’s friends, in an effort to get her out of the house, asked Bea to come along on her weekly “story time at the library” excursion with her eight-year-old grandson. Bea reluctantly agreed only when her friend threw a free lunch at the diner into the bargain. At the library, Bea was surprised to see the number of children and parents gathered to hear the crone-like librarian read. She glanced at the sign and saw, with mild interest, that they were listening to an excerpt from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban today. Moira had read the books in high school and had enjoyed them, even going so far as to ask Bea to please continue to store all her hardcover copies carefully for Kevin and Devin, and not to put them in the basement to mildew or sell them to the used-book emporium.

Bea wandered around the edges of the crowd, idly glancing at the titles on the shelves’ end caps, but really more curious at the behavior of the children: rapt, attentive, almost shining with anticipation and excitement. Without really being able to help it, she started to listen to the story. After awhile, she found a librarian’s step stool and plunked herself down, weak knees and all. Though she didn’t have the rest of the story in context at the time, it was the part where Sirius Black tricks Harry into following him into the Shrieking Shack, and Harry, Hermione and Ron learn the truth about Sirius, Lupin and Peter Pettigrew. Even without backstory, it was riveting. She became so absorbed in the story that when the librarian closed the book and called out, “To be continued next week, children!” Bea actually fell forward a little, startled out of her trance.

Over lunch, Bea had questioned her friend’s grandson about Harry Potter, and found him to be a veritable fountain of knowledge. “And he has an owl named Hedwig, and she’s the only white owl at Hogwarts, that’s Harry’s school, and she delivers letters for Harry, sometimes to Sirius Black. And Billy Timms at school, he’s read all the books and he says Hedwig dies at the end, but I don’t think that happens, Hedwig couldn’t die because Harry needs her to contact the other wizards!” Bea’s friend rolled her eyes and smiled indulgently at her progeny, but Bea herself was completely absorbed in the eight-year-old’s tale.

When she got home, Bea immediately went into her daughter’s old room to look for the other Harry Potter books. Moira had kept them in chronological order (she wasn’t Bea’s daughter for nothing). Bea noticed that the books got progressively larger, especially the fifth and seventh volumes, and at the realization that there were thousands of pages of this story to read, her heart started to beat a little faster.

She made herself a cup of tea, took the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, into the living room, turned on a lamp and settled into her favorite chair.

And so began the best week of Bea’s life.

That week, Bea never went anywhere without a Harry Potter book within arm’s reach. The bathroom, the fridge, even the laundry was accomplished without taking her nose from the page. She went a few days without showering or leaving the house, just moving about the house with her book, finding new places to snuggle down and leaving mugs and tea bags in her wake. Eventually she ran out of food, and after a few hours of hunger, whispering one of her favorite spells, Quietus! to her rumbling stomach, Bea levered herself off the couch and took a shower, dressed mindlessly, and drove to her local Panera, where she ordered an assortment of salads, sandwiches, bagels and soups large enough to feed a whole party (even the Wallaby women). The order came to over two hundred dollars, but Bea barely noticed. She simply drove home, stored everything in the fridge for easy access, and congratulated herself on avoiding the need to cook for the next several days. Then she went back to her book.

In the rare moments that Bea came up for air, she found herself whispering spells and incantations all over the house. When her cell phone started jangling her daughter’s ringtone from across the room, she moaned, “Accio phone!” attempting to summon it by magic, before hoisting herself out of her chair and, for the first time ever, purposely ending the conversation with Moira after a mere three minutes. When, after nearly two days of wakeful hours, she fell asleep at five-thirty in the afternoon with her nose in the middle of Goblet of Fire and woke with a start at ten in the pitch blackness of her bedroom, she muttered, “Lumos” to turn a light on. And then laughed at herself. When she saw the huge pile of mail in her entryway, slipped through the door slot, she called out, “Wingardium Leviosa!” hoping it would fly upstairs and onto her kitchen table, but no such luck. She did not, after all, have a wand made by Ollivander or a potion book once owned by Severus Snape.

Once or twice during those days, it occurred to Bea that she might be getting a bit deep into what was essentially a children’s book series. But she dismissed the thoughts. How could one not feel passionate about such a compelling story? It wasn’t just the magic, it was about the choice between good and evil, it was love and friendship, it was missing the people who’d died before you, parents and godparents and mentors. It was about being a hero and meeting life’s challenges with everything against you. And most of all, it was nothing like Bea’s life, because it was never boring.

All throughout those days, she both dreaded and anticipated one thing: the end of book seven. She knew it would come, and the moment of its ending, the moment when she finally knew the whole story, would be transcendent, but then it would all come crashing down with the knowledge that it was over. She started to try to read slowly, but it didn’t help, and eventually, on the Friday afternoon six days after she’d started, Bea reached the final chapter.

She held the book, staring at the last page, the last word, and she let out her breath as if she’d been holding it for the past 144 hours. And then she cried, releasing the lump in her throat that had been growing with the death of each character. She cried for grief, because her favorites had died, she cried for happiness, because the battle had been won for good, she cried for mourning her loss of the next chapter, the next page. Because it was all over.

Bea stayed in that sad place for a few days, zoning out in front of the neglected television and thinking about Harry, Hermione, Ron and her personal hero, Neville Longbottom, and wondering what they’d be doing now, as adults, how they’d fit into the Wizarding world once there was peace, and whether Harry and Ron would get bored with their less adventurous lives.

Then, on Sunday morning, bathrobe on and carrying a mug of coffee, Bea wandered aimlessly into her office to check her neglected email. While she was online, she thought to Google J.K. Rowling, the author. Maybe she had a website or something that Bea could peruse.

As it turned out, Rowling had a great website, full of fun facts and Potter trivia, but that was only the jumping-off point for Bea. From there she found fan sites, thousands of them, with years-old blog posts predicting the plot points of the next book, opinions on which characters would die and if Harry was a Horcrux. And then there was the fan fiction! Hours and hours and days worth of reading stories written by fans about Hogwarts through the eyes of Harry’s children, or the entire series written from Voldemort’s point of view, or what went on behind the scenes at Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. Now in place of books, Bea took to carrying around an iPad that she’d purchased at the Apple store in the mall, smuggling it out in a large Macy’s bag, as if one of her family members might catch her and wonder or even guess what she’d bought it for. (It wasn’t totally out of the question. Her niece Jodi had once bumped into her at the mall while buying clothes for a television pilot she was styling. That had been the day that Bea, lonely for her grandsons, had gone out and bought three bulging bags of toys to ship out to Colorado. Jodi hadn’t said anything at the time, but Bea knew that the family was whispering about her desperate shopping spree because over the next week, every single Wallaby female had called to invite her over for dinner. She hadn’t eaten alone for almost two weeks after that, which made her feel both grateful and pitiful.)

On one of the fan sites, Bea created a name for herself: LongbottomLives. She began posting regularly, connecting with fellow Potter fans around the world. Bea was amazed at how quickly and easily she fell in with the crowd, impressed at her own ability to make friends. She’d never thought herself a social person; she had a few close friends, but never considered herself gifted at friendship. She felt awkward meeting new people, and felt like she’d never learned how to carry on a conversation. But all of that changed in the online Potter world. She found herself witty, cheerful, a voice of reason when arguments broke out on the message boards. Some of the regular posters actually started to seek her out via private message, to talk about real-life problems or share some of their more personal Potter thoughts. One night, Bea spent five hours chatting with RonRoger99, a man who claimed to be about her age, living in Chicago with three children nearby. Bea and Roger (the “Ron” was for his favorite character, Ron Weasley, and the “99” the year he set up the screen name) bonded over shared adoration of their grandsons. Bea professed jealousy that Roger’s grandsons were already the perfect Harry Potter-reading age. Bea couldn’t wait until Devin and Kevin were old enough, and hoped Moira would let her introduce them to Harry (though that would involve actually sharing her obsession with her daughter). Roger had invited Bea to meet him at a Chicago Harry Potter fan convention in the spring. Bea told him she’d think about it, but in her mind, she was already packing.

On several of the sites, there were advertisements for wands made of holly, black Hogwarts robes, even a Potions kit stocked with ingredients. Bea bought them all, and displayed them along with the complete set of hardcover books in Great Aunt Louisa’s glass-fronted case, which she’d moved into her bedroom, away from the public eye. But the Wallaby women didn’t think of themselves as “public,” and Bea knew that her bedroom (or her closet, or bathroom cabinet for that matter) wouldn’t be considered off-limits when they were all there for the cookie-baking party. She was worried at the inevitable discovery, and wondered who would be the one to do it, who would be the first to point and laugh (Granny Ellison, maybe Caroline, the younger girls) or whisper behind her back (everyone else).

And yet, as the party date grew closer, Bea felt her worry begin to color itself with defiance. Why should she feel ashamed of her obsession? There were certainly worse things for a woman of sixty-odd years to be involved with. Her Harry Potter addiction made her happy, it kept her mind occupied, and it had even garnered her a group of online friends. It wasn’t nearly as scandalous for Bea to have a fetish for a book series as it was for Jodi to be caught smoking a joint out back (baking party 2009; Jodi was nineteen) or for Bea’s sister Christy to have finally come out of the closet (baking party 1997; Christy was forty-one) or introduce her lover, Chloe (that same afternoon). Even Granny Ellison herself had thrown bigger bombshells. Just last year, Bea’s mother had announced that she and Bea’s father were selling their home of more than fifty years and moving to the old folks’ home across town. The fact that Bea and her sisters had been hoping for this development for years made it no less shocking (Granny, as she was called even by her own daughters, had once told them she’d rather go and live in an elephant’s bottom than move to a retirement community). (Of course, the real story last year had been Leah’s pregnancy, which she’d managed to keep secret until after New Year’s. No one ever knew if Granny had purposely covered up for Leah.)

The Saturday before Christmas dawned cold and drizzly. For a brief hour, as she wandered around the house (she had, of course, in her organized way, set out all the baking supplies the night before, chucking to herself that she was showing her “Hermione tendencies”) Bea wondered if the party would have to be postponed because of icy roads. A few of the Wallaby women were nervous drivers, especially her sister Anne, who’d had a car accident on a slippery road one night years ago, with little Leah and Jodi in the back seat. (No one had been seriously hurt, but the car had been totaled and Anne had ended up in court with the driver of the other car. It had nearly bankrupted the family, but Anne had finally won the lawsuit.) Bea alternated between disappointment (the ingredients would go to waste; she did so enjoy making the sugar cookie cutouts) and relief (no need to worry about her secret being discovered). In her bedroom, she considered throwing a dark sheet over the curio cabinet where she kept her Harry Potter collectibles, but decided it would attract even more attention that way. She spent a few minutes in a chat room connected to “a site for Muggles” but found herself putting down the iPad and peeking out the window. After an hour, the sky seemed to clear, and she got a text from Christy that she and Chloe would be over with the bagels shortly, which seemed to signify that the baking party was still on.

They came, as they always did, in a swarm: stomping feet, scraping shoes, bursts of cold air as the doors swung open for prolonged periods, followed by a cloud of warmth brought on by so many bodies in a small house. (Bea had the smallest house of everyone, and her kitchen was nothing to the size of Leah’s. They would need to spread to the dining and living rooms to prepare the various doughs, but to their credit, none of them complained about the tight squeeze.) The various voices formed a familiar symphony, as dear and familiar to Bea as the Christmas carols on the radio.

Granny Ellison came in, closely followed by Anne, clutching a cane that Granny had been repeatedly told to use, but spurned. A minor hubbub occurred when Paul showed up with Leah, carrying a huge armload of products needed to keep baby Sophia safe and occupied while the women baked. Paul insisted that he was only helping Leah carry everything in, not planning to stay, and when the ladies pushed him out the door, reminding him that baking time was sacred to Wallaby females only, he backed away looking relieved. Bea wondered if he was going to use the quiet time in his house for a long nap; Sophia had a reputation as a fussy sleeper.

The bagels were disposed of in short order (Granny Ellison grumbling that Christy hadn’t bought enough of the poppy seed, her favorite) and the coffee gulped down hot by some and left to sit until cold by others. Bea whisked away paper plates and foam cups as soon as their consumers were finished, feeling small satisfaction from placing everything in the big-lidded garbage can straddling the hallway between the kitchen and dining room, ready to catch everything from eggshells to oily paper towels.

Bea’s mother, sharp-eyed Ellison that she was, tracked Bea’s progress from living room to garbage and back again. “Didn’t I tell you, Maria? Not here five minutes and Bea’s already cleaning up after us. I never could relax in this house. It’s much too sterile. It was better when Moira was living here.”

“Moira was neat, too, Mom,” Anne pointed out, glancing at Bea.

“Ah, she was a teenager. Teenagers are never really neat. But I don’t blame you, Bea. What else do you have to do besides clean?”

Granny Ellison had the uncanny knack of timing her words to a lull in the general conversation, and she didn’t fail this time. Her last words rang in the air as everyone turned toward Bea, wearing looks of exasperated amusement at Granny, mingled with pity for Bea.

Even Bea could not, later on, explain what happened next. She couldn’t explain the wave of emotion that swelled through her at her mother’s comment, flung at her as if she was meant to simply absorb it, to understand and not feel hurt. She couldn’t explain why it happened this time and not after the hundreds of similar comments she’d received before. But in that moment, along with the anger and embarrassment, something else rose up in her, strong and decided, like a Patronus in her belly: she knew that she’d rather be teased for something she loved, than endlessly pitied for not having a job, a spouse (or lover, or lesbian life-partner) or a child nearby. She was tired of it, that was all there was to it, and it was time to say so.

And so Bea, standing in her own living room, simply snapped in half, like an over-baked ginger cookie.

“I do so have things to do,” she said to her mother, and to her chagrin, it came out sounding petulant. She straightened her spine and bolstered her tone. “I’m in three Harry Potter fan clubs. We meet online almost every day. And there’s a convention in Chicago that I’m going to in the spring. I’m even writing a piece of fan fiction to post on one of the websites.”

There was an unnatural, thick silence as Bea waited for the Wallaby women’s response.

And then Leah spoke up. “I love Harry Potter.” She said it softy, around Sophie’s head, which was cradled between Leah’s cheek and shoulder.

“So do I,” said Chloe.

“I’ve read them all at least five times,” said Caroline.

“It’s my favorite series ever!” said Caroline’s daughter Madison.

“Did you finally read all of Moira’s books?” Jodi asked Bea. “She always hoped you would. That’s why she left them here.”

Bea’s lungs filled with breath. “Moira? I didn’t know-” she began, but Aunt Maria, always a little slow to follow, interrupted her.

“Did you meet any men on those websites?” she said in a wavering voice, a shadow of the robust brawl she’d sported as a younger woman. “Because I wouldn’t mind a boyfriend who could do magic.”

All the Wallabys laughed, and it was like a spell had been broken. Bea imagined herself waving a wand and removing the protective spell, Protego, over herself. She wouldn’t need it anymore.

Well, maybe just for her mother.

“Do you want to see my collector’s items?” she asked Leah, shyly. “Maybe Sophia would like to hold my wand.”

As she led Leah into her bedroom, several of the other women got up and followed. They crammed into the doorway, pushing each other into the small room, and gathered around the curio cabinet. Bea opened the glass door and slid the wand that had been ‘chosen’ for her through the special quiz on the website out of its blue velvet case. She handed it to Sophie, whose chubby fist grasped and waved it feebly. She smiled and gurgled, and Bea smiled back, tickling the girl under her chin.

“This is so cool,” Jodi said from over Leah’s shoulder. “You have to tell me where you got that.” She pointed to the peaked Dumbledore hat that Bea had placed on the very top of the cabinet because it wouldn’t fit under any of the shelves. “I’m looking for something just like it for a movie I’m working on. One of the boys dresses up as a wizard for Halloween, and that hat would be perfect.”

“You can borrow it,” Bea said, feeling generous. She thought of how it would feel to go to the movies with her friends and point out her own hat on the screen.

“Can I?” Jodi asked, excited. “That would so help me out, Aunt Bea!”

There was a cacophony of exclamations over the other articles in the case, and Bea found herself answering question after question. Eventually, all the women drifted back into the living room. Caroline took Bea’s sleeve and bent in close. “So, have you met any nice men in those chat rooms?”

Bea laughed, thinking of RonRoger99, but she wasn’t ready to give Caroline anything to gossip to the family about. “One or two,” she said, then skirted away from her cousin on the pretext of checking that the milk had been placed back in the refrigerator. When she re-entered the living room, she found that every conversation had centered itself around books. From the snatches of sentences she heard as she circled around the room, continuing to clean up plates and cups (Granny Ellison’s dislike of her ‘neatness’ be damned), Bea could tell that she wasn’t the only one who’d ever become obsessed with a book or book series. She wasn’t even the only one who’d ever felt a strong connection with children’s book. (Of course, most of the obsessions seemed to have taken place when the Wallaby women actually were children, but Bea didn’t mind this disparity; she’d always come to things late in life, and if reading was one of those things, so be it.)

Bea straightened up, a crumpled napkin hanging loose in her hand, and spoke out over her crowded living room. A thought had hit her, and for the second time in her life- the second time that very day- she didn’t edit or reconsider it. “We should start a book club!” she said.

Baby Sophia chose that moment to let out a large belch, and everyone laughed. Bea laughed, too, but she was disappointed that her great moment of insight had been stolen away. When the chuckles died away, Bea expected a response to her statement, from Anne or perhaps Jodi, but it was her mother who spoke up.

Granny Ellison hadn’t moved from her position on the couch, hadn’t joined the group in the bedroom marveling at Bea’s collection (though whether this was due to disinterest or arthritis, no one would ever know but Granny herself), or joined in the conversation about books. So it was a great surprise to Bea when her mother said, in a strangely composed tone, “I think that’s a lovely idea, dear.”

Every feminine eye turned to the wrinkled face. Even Sophia let out a gurgle that almost sounded shocked.

“Mother, you do?” Bea said, almost stammering over the word ‘mother,’ still thrown by the use of the epithet, ‘dear.’

“Certainly,” Granny said. “Listen here, everyone in this room is talking about books. Do you know, there has never once been a topic that this entire family has agreed on other than Christmas cookies? And now all of you are talking about Anne of Green Gables, and what’s her name who wrote that horrendous series about children eating other children, like they’re your best friends.”

“The Hunger Games isn’t about children eating children, Granny,” Jodi said, picking up on the reference before anyone else had a chance to puzzle it out. Bea considered her mother’s statement; as usual, Granny had cut right through to the heart of it. It was true: they never agreed on politics (Granny and Maria and the grandchildren were Democrats; Bea and Anne and their generation were all Republicans, except when it came to gay rights, because of Christy and Chloe). They never agreed on religion (they all went to church on Christmas, but only half of them attended the other fifty-one weeks of the year). They didn’t even agree about baking (there were arguments every year about whether butter should be cold or soft, and how many eggs made the perfect consistency in bar cookies). This was, as Granny Ellison had pointed out, the first time they’d all been in a room together and discussed something with equal parts passion and amiability. Bea had often wondered what was keeping this family together, other than a tradition of baking, gossip and feminine strength, all of which could be just as divisive as uniting. Maybe things would change now; maybe if a book club was adopted, they could start truly enjoying each other’s company, instead of seeing it as an obligation.

Caroline let out a small shriek. “Look at the time! We’d better get started.” She began herding people into the kitchen, pulling out the recipe cards as she did so. “Refrigerated dough first, ladies! Let’s get to our stations!”

Bea stayed behind to help her mother and Aunt Maria to their feet. Nothing was said other than the obligatory, “Thank you,” as Bea offered her hand, but Granny Ellison gave her daughter a wink and a little pat on the bottom as she propelled herself forward into the kitchen, calling “Make way for the matriarch!”

Bea knew not to expect a big change in the family dynamic. But a small change was enough for her. Maybe that was the real magic of Harry Potter: the power to bring people together, even people who seemed to have nothing else in common.

She brushed crumbs off the couch into her cupped hand, and headed toward the kitchen. It was time to bake.