Freaks: Year One

He's My Little Brother, Not A Duck!

"You can't be scared when you get to Hogwarts." Adelaide said. "You need to be like everyone else, and mother, and father said people aren't jumpy. You're jumpy."

"Sorry!"

"Atticus no, stop!" Adelaide exclaimed as Atticus had been awoken by the commotion, and started to wriggle out of Adelaide's arms. "Stop!" Atticus ruffled his brown with white speckled feathers, which made her shriek, and drop the duck.

"Who's jumpy now?" Alabaster asked.

"That doesn't count!" Adelaide argued as Atticus started to waddle away. "No, Atticus, get back here right now!"

Alabaster quickly went over to where Atticus the duck was heading toward the front of the shop, and he bent down to grab him, but before he could, Atticus started to waddle even faster, and he slipped into a corner of a shelf that Alabaster could not reach.

"Atticus, no..." Alabaster whispered, as Adelaide kneeled down with him, and tried to reach for their brother, but she too was unsuccessful. "Come out...come out now. Please."

Atticus quacked.

Alabaster let out a sigh of frustration as Hoo went on the shelf, and tried to encourage Atticus out of the small alcove he was in. "Hoo."

"Quack."

"I'm going insane." Adelaide whispered to herself.

For a few minutes, it seemed that Hoo was getting nowhere, and it was just a conversation filled with hoots, and quacks, Alabaster hoping they were getting somewhere, and Adelaide questioning her sanity.

"I don't know if this will work–" Adelaide started to say, but soon Atticus hopped back onto the Potions shop floor, and started to waddle in the opposite direction of where his siblings were. Hoo soon followed.

Alabaster quickly crawled across the floor, and nabbed his brother before he could go off to another place where it would be impossible to get him out of, and he was met with the Potions shopkeeper's black shoes right where Alabaster was lying on his stomach, his hands wrapped around Atticus the duck. 

"What are you kids doing?" He asked, aghast as one, it was reaching midnight, and two, they were trying to catch a duck of all things in the shop.

Adelaide looked nervously at the shopkeeper, as Alabaster said, "Catching our brother!"

"What?!"

Alabaster stared at him, duck in hand, awkwardness growing with every second that passed, and Alabaster laughed, nervously. "Um...bye! Have a nice night!" He ran out of the shop, and Adelaide followed, Hoo in her arms.

Once they were out of the shop, and back on the streets of Diagon Alley, Adelaide sighed, heavily. "That did not go according to plan."

"No, it did not, but we went into the wrong shop, do you think you know where the Transfiguration shop is?" Alabaster asked.

The two of them walked for a while, and soon Atticus the duck was back asleep to his older siblings' relief.

Adelaide signalled to another shop with a sign Alabaster could not make out. "I think this is it, come on."

Alabaster nervously approached the shop. This was the place. He was informed it was a shop with books on Transfiguration, Defence Against The Dark Arts, and Charms by his sister as she had read the little sign outside the building. He slowly opened the door, and with that, there was a little chime which caught Alabaster's attention.

"Where's the ringing coming from?" He asked.

Adelaide pointed as she saw a little bell attached to the top of the door so whenever it was opened it would chime. "A bell."