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I am currently eating dinner at the Broux's small two bedroom apartment on North 3rd Street listening to my mother jabber away about my insolent father while she gets drunk off of cheap wine.
The Broux's abode has been my second home since I was 5, when they moved into the house above us. There, I met my best friend: Verity. Ever since that day, when my mom sent me down to give our new neighbors some Victoria's buttercreams, Verity and I have been absolutely inseparable; when she started singing lessons, I got a job at the guitar center down the street to learn how to play drums; when I started baking, she started learning how to cook.
This didn't change once Professor Flitwick visited me four years ago. After he told me about my wizarding abilities, he apparated down to the third floor to tell the same thing to Vera and her parents.
Sometimes I get jealous of her, considering how perfect her family is. Two parents, mother and father, and two kids, daughter and son. The classic nuclear family. Then I remember how strict they can be. Haitian dad and Columbian mother, I can remember them screaming at her in the fourth grade for back talking Sister Cecilia (or Sister Mary Blueberry, as all the other catholic school kids called her). Still, it hurts knowing Father won't ever be there for me like Mr. Broux is for her. I guess that's what I get for being born to a teen mom.
I had just gotten back from visiting Father in Vegas, actually. That's what this meal is about; it's both a 'Welcome Back, Ambr!' and a 'Farewell, Ambr and Verity!' dinner all in one. Back in the present, my mom is still rambling about how Father never pays child support. "..But I mean, like, *hiccup*, he's a fucking MOVIE STAR now! He should just *hiccup* have one of his douchebag secretaries mail us a *hiccup* check!"
Vera and her parents look uncomfortable. Of course they were, they were in the presence of a thirty-year-old who somehow looked more weathered than them. I remove her hand from the wine glass she's been safeguarding since approximately two minutes after we said grace. "Okay, mom, I think you've had enough to drink." I muttered.
I hated the subject of Father, especially around my mother. After he'd knocked her up during his foreign exchange year from Koldovstoretz to Hogwarts, she had me adopted so as to not be disowned by her parents. Two years later my adoptive dad ended up in jail and my freshly 18-year-old mother got stuck with me again. This meant that all of her family's riches were stripped from her and that she needed to start anew to keep us afloat.
However, my Russian immigrant father, who had once completely depended on my mom for survival, had already risen to stardom in the acting business, pretending as if we had never been a part of his life. Because of this my mother vowed never to practice magic again, meaning right now she was working three muggle jobs to support both of us.
Father still sends us $1000 checks every important holiday to keep us quiet about our existence, which would have been extremely helpful if mother wasn't a raging smoker and alcoholic and I wasn't a minor.
