Deception (Aoife, Sinead, and maybe Ollie)

Matthew sighed and leaned his head on his hand. This was so boring! Sooooo boring. He tried to give Ollie a look that would convey that he wanted to go home, but his brother was too distracted by - something. Who knew what? It was Ollie, it could be anything. But it was probably because he was thinking about stupid Veronica. Matthew got distracted easily, too, but at least his distraction was predictable. Fire distracted Matthew. But unfortunately, there was no fire to be seen here, in the Tramshed, as he sat with his parents and his brother while they talked and talked and talked. They'd long since finished their lunch, and there was no reason for them to still be there. But, since his parents were never in a hurry, and because they didn't trust Matthew to walk home by himself, he was still sitting there. With another sigh, he pulled the bowl of coffee creamers over and started stacking them in a pyramid.

Then, all of a sudden, Matthew was distracted! Because fire!!!!! Or at least, fire hair. Shit. He instantly slid down in his seat, so that he wouldn't be seen. Because as awesome as fire hair was, Ariadne was not awesome. And it was a natural reaction to retreat at the sight of red hair. But as he peeked out from over the table, a big smile spread across his face. Because it wasn't Ariadne at all! He had been deceived! Deceived!! But this was a good deception, because it was a much more awesome fire-haired person! And some other, small person with dull, boring, not fire hair. More like mud-hair or something, if he was comparing her hair color to a natural substance. Mud was boring compared to fire.

"Ollie, look!" Matthew exclaimed happily, sliding out of his seat before his mother could stop him. He heard her calling after him, but ignored her and bounced over to where the redhead and her small friend had sat down, giving them both bright smiles. "Hi Aoife!" he said brightly, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "And hello small person with not-fire-hair that I haven't met before!" This was so exciting. "I didn't know that you lived in London!! I live in London, just a few blocks away! And I want to go home but my parents say I can't walk by myself. It isn't fair!"

Aoife didn’t much like going home for the Christmas holidays usually, since there was usually such good food at Hogwarts. And Phin had to stay, so it was nice to keep him company. But once again, her parents had insisted that she hop on the train and come home. And that was fine. True, she had to put up with her sister but there were always her brothers. And Sinead. Sinead had come to London to pick her up with her brother. That was nice. And just so they didn’t waste a potentially amazing visit to a bunch of London attractions, they were staying for a couple of days. And before they got to do anything brilliant and amazing, they had to go and eat lunch.

It was a fairly fancy restaurant called Tramshed. She was sure it would be really boring and stupid but at least they served good chicken. Sinead’s parents were behind them, talking about politics and other boring adult stuff she would never take an interest in. And she was a few yards ahead with Sinead, talking about Hogwarts, and how much better it was than muggle school. She missed her little niece when she was at Hogwarts. Because she was actually good company, even though she was only a kid compared to GrownUpTeenageAoife. Sometimes they had deep topical discussions that the redhead didn’t completely understand herself.

They took a seat at the table, and then suddenly her favourite fire prophet popped up from nowhere. “Hi Matthew!” she beamed. She nodded sympathetically at what he said about Sinead’s hair. It was rather boring and not fiery. “This is Sinead. She’s my niece. Sinead, this is Matthew. He’s this weird second-year.” Second-year, right? Yeah. “In a cool way,” she added hastily, for the sake of not offending him. But somehow, Aoife doubted Matthew would care if she called him weird. “We don’t live in London, we live in Ireland! But we’re just here until we go back home for Christmas.” Why couldn’t they live in London? Oh yes, because it had no sheep. Ooh, sheep! She’d almost forgotten about the fields of wonderful sheep waiting for her at home! “No, that isn’t fair!” But maybe they were worried he’d get run over. London seemed quite busy.

Holiday time was the best time. Or, at least in Sinead's eyes, it was. Christmas time meant she could sing Christmas carols all the time and not be told to be quiet or be judged for singing them in the summer time. So naturally, Sinead hummed Jingle Bells as she walked next to her most awesome Aunt Aoife. Picking up Aoife had been a blast! King's Cross was absolutely breathtaking! But Sinead wasn't going to say that now that the whole city of London was decorated with bright twinkling lights and everywhere she went it smelled of cinnamon and peppermint and eggnog and it was all so beautiful!

But they had to eat lunch. Because food was important. Because people had to get fed. Because people had to put nutrients in their bodies and all of that stuff her parents always told her when she didn't want to her broiled broccoli. The Tramshed sounded like a funny name for a restaurant, but Sinead figured it was just the way London worked. Funny names and all. Still humming lightly, Sinead listened jealously as Aoife talked about how amazing Hogwarts was. She wanted to go to Hogwarts herself, to meet all the amazing people Aoife talked about, and to see if she could start a Dolphin language class so that those Hogwarts children could finally learn something useful. Nobody ever did anything useful by learning how to fly a broom, did they?

As they reached their table, Sinead took a seat next to Aoife, and she was ready to talk to her awesome relative about this new class she wanted added to he Hogwarts curriculum, since she was going there next year when she turned eleven. However, some meaaaan and ridiculous boy came up to them and began talking to Aoife....calling Sinead's hair boring and dull. DULL? "Excuse you?" she said, indignant. Obviously, she didn't have a good comeback, but she at least wanted that dumb nasty boy to know he was rude. "Not pleased to meet you, Matthew." she said when Aoife had made the introductions, and diverted her eyes to face away from that Nasty Matthew. Really, she would have preferred her parents had let him walk home alone. Boys were always unnecessary in good, deep conversations like the one she wanted so desperately to have with Aoife.

"She's your neice?" Matthew repeated, turning to look at the boring-haired girl again. For a moment he leaned really close to her so that he could get a good look, and then looked back at Aoife. "Isn't she a little bit old to be your niece? Or, aren't you too young to be her aunt?" he asked blatantly, looking between the two with slight confusion. Then, finally, he turned to the dark haired girl. "How old are you?" he demanded. "You can't be much younger than me. You have a weird name, like your aunt." Matthew made sure to drag out the word aunt suspiciously, because that still seemed a bit fishy. "Could be worse, though. Your nose isn't as weird as hers," he observed, beaming at Sinead, and then back to Aoife.

Matthew didn't even blink at being called weird. Weird was a good thing! It meant unique and not boring! He just smiled at Aoife, happy for the compliment, and then listened about how they weren't actually from London. "Oh," he said, frowning. "Are you both from Ireland?" he asked, once again suspicious. "If she's from Ireland, why doesn't she have fire hair like you? I thought all Irish people did." That was so boring that they were going home soon. It meant that Matthew would still be stuck in London with his boring parents who didn't want him to set fires, and Ollie who just yelled at him for climbing trees and thought about Vanessa all day.

Matthew frowned at Sinead when she greeted him particularly rudely. "That's not a very nice way to say hello to somebody," he told her, but then stopped talking because he all of a sudden sounded a whole lot like his mother. "You should try to be cool like your aunt and not boring like your hair," he added helpfully, smiling at her again. "You won't make many friends if you tell them you aren't even happy to meet them, you know!"