The Barstows have had their house on protective mode since the start of summer. They've spent the early days of summer looking for their friend, Jez. Once found, Jez and her siblings (Des and Keegan) have made the Barstows house their safe house. Now the Barstows, and a Stone, have to help the Blacks from some unwelcomed guests.

Characters:
Des Black-(Jezabel Black)
Keegan Black-(Jezabel Black)
Jez Black-(Jezabel Black)
Nathaniel Stone-(EastonionNW)
Jasper Barstow-(keepmeclose22)
Samantha Barstow-(keepmeclose22)
Pamphylia Barstow-(keepmeclose22)

Rooms:
Living room
Kitchen
Dinning room
Pam's bedroom
Guest bedroom
Parents bedroom

Keegan looked around warily as the Portkey dropped the group into the Barstows' garden. Only when he was satisfied that Jared and Team Wolf weren't lurking in a flowerbed did he relax and help his sisters up. "Nice place," he commented, smiling at Sam. She'd been very kind to him and his siblings, and he was very grateful.

Nothing had changed since they all left Diagon Alley: Nate didn't like portkeys. The dirt in his teeth solidified that fact in his head. Peeling his face from the fresh, green grass in the garden, Nate took a deep breath in to get his air back from the travel. "So!" he said loudly, "Sam, can I just stay here for the rest of the summer? I don't wanna go home, it will seem too lonely." He sat up, smiling, and found Jez's hand. Giving it a slight squeeze, he said, "We made it, and we didn't even have to take a plane."

Nate winked at Jez and released her hand, looking up at the quaint house. Ah, the destruction that Pam and Nate had caused here. And that was before they even did any magic! Now that Jez was here, Nate couldn't help but wonder what havoc Samantha Barstow would have to reprimand them about for the remainder of the summer before she surrendered the children over to Hogwarts.

Sam smiled. "Why thank you Keegan." She turned to Nate, looking a bit tired. "You can't stay the night. I'm not having that in this house." She said with a stern look at both Jez and Nate. "But you can come over anytime between dusk and dawn." As long as you don't wake up Jasper. She thought. She didn't want to have to deal with that. As much as she loved him, she didn't dare disturb him while he's sleeping.

Pam sighed. Home sweet home. I guess. She thought to herself.

Jez smiled tiredly, looking up at the house that would be her and her siblings' temporary home for the summer. She had to wonder what Nate and Pam had got up to there. She leant against Keegan, who put his arm protectively around her shoulders.
"The air's different," noted Jez. "Somehow, it's different."
"Yeah, I know what you mean." Keegan rubbed Jez's arm. She looked more tired than she should; it was only a portkey, after all. "You need some rest," he said firmly, passing his hand in a zipping motion over Jez's mouth before she could protest. "Nope, I mean it."
"I'm not that tired," grumbled Jez, rolling her eyes.
"Leave it," advised Des, stretching her arms. "If Keegan decides something, you know he won't budge." She couldn't restrain herself. "Time for bed, sleepyhead," she told Jez in a singsong voice, patting her head condescendingly. Her sister opened her mouth furiously, but Keegan had had enough, and had taken out his wand.
"Silencio," he commanded, and the Black girls fell silent. "Des, stop winding Jez up. Jez, stop rising to the bait." Both girls glared at Keegan, unable to speak. They had identical Death Glares.

Sam sighed. This was going to be a long summer. "Keegan, this isn't a way to solve things." She waved her wand, and both girls could talk again. "Now before either of you say anything, Des. You're room is with Keegan. Obviously you girls can't be in the same room. You two will be in the guest room. There are two seperate beds for you both. It's the first door you come too upstairs." Then she turned to Pam and Jez. "You two will be in Pam's room. Pam can show you were that is." She nodded to Pam.

As Sam was dishing out instructions, Jasper came out the door. He walked up and put an arm around Sam's waist. When he looked around at everyone, he smiled. Finally. He thought. A mature man around the house. "I'm Jasper. Pam's dad." He said in his strongest yet gentlest voice. He stuck out a hand to Keegan.

Good thing days are longer in the summer! Nate thought. He would rather stay with the Barstows. Not only were Pam and Jez there, but they had a protected house whereas Nate didn't, and Nate could very well be just as much of a target as Jez. "Can't I sleep in the garden or something?" Nate asked jokingly, already knowing the answer. He didn't want to rile Sam up too much though. That would release the Fury of the Hufflepuff. Which wasn't much, but Sam had the Barstow eyes: like needles. Sharp ones.

Nate stretched out his legs from the portkey travel by walking small circles and watching intently as Jez and Des argued. Gosh, not only did their nicknames rhyme but they looked almost identical--save their eyes, Jez's violet ones won in Nate's mind--when they were bickering like that. Nate couldn't help but laugh at the similarity, based on how much Jez had said she hated Desdemona. "So, Pam, Jez, shall we go up to the house? I bet it's cooler inside. Oh, hi Jasper!" he said, greeting Pam's dad with a smile as he walked by.

Pam gave a soft smile as Nate suggested they go inside. "Sure thing. We can go up to my room." She grabbed one of the bags, and started walking inside. She really didn't want to go, but she wanted to keep her eyes on them as much as possible. That, and she didn't want to feel left out again.

Jasper's smile faded as Nate came into view. He stared at the boy, unable to retain his anger. "You dare show yourself in this house?" He crossed his arms, and walked over to him. Looking down he said, "You dare have the guts to come here after what you did?" Sam put an arm on his shoulder. "Now, now. We've been over this. You can hurt him when he's older."

Keegan shook Jasper's hand, smiling warmly. "Nice to meet you Jasper, I'm Keegan. These are my sisters, Desdemona and Jezabel, aka Des and Jez." Des smiled charmingly, and Jez grinned before turning to Nate and Pam.
She was about to follow Pam inside with her trunk, since Pam had the kitty carrier and her cat, when Jasper suddenly got angry with Nate. What's this about? she wondered, then remembered that Jasper was probably as protective as Keegan was when it came to his daughter. She couldn't help smiling at the 'hurt him when he's older' part, even though she should probably be going to Nate's defence.

Nate simply looked up at Pam's angry father. That was twice in one day he was yelled at/lectured. "I-I don't..." Nate gulped lightly, stumbling over his words, "... Gah... Sorry." No wonder Keegan and Jasper seemed to get along so well...

Nate managed to escape the Deadly Death Glare of Death coming from Jasper Barstow when Sam stepped in, and the 'hurt him when he's older' part was actually reassuring to Nate: he became of age at 17, at which point he could use magic. No, he would never hurt Pam's dad, but he would definitely be quick on the draw for his wand to cast a shield charm, or maybe incarcerous. He shook the thought from his head, deciding that now wasn't the time for him to be planning out how he would duel a muggle in five years' time. Now was the time to get inside and try to resist making a humongous mess.

Nate went over and grabbed one end of Jez's trunk and another bag that had to be one of Desdemona's, considering it was made of black leather with a rhinestone-studded strap, and started hiking up the small hill. "Let's go, I only have about five more hours until I have to go home. I don't want to waste any of that time!"

"Of course you don't." Pam muttered to herself. Pam lead the way into the house, with the others behind her. Upon enterance, there was a red living room. The couch was a soft gold with red stitching. It lined the wall opposite the TV that hung on the wall. There was a coffee table between the two.

But Pam didn't linger. She went straight up to her room. Inside was lavender. The wall to the right, had an entire bookshelf with books filled to the brim. Next to it was a closed door, that assumingly, went to the closet. On the opposite side, was a purple wood dresser, with gold handles. The top two shelves had been cleared out for Jez. Next to it was a full length mirror.

What space was once occupied with a white, two-person bed, was now two single beds. Each bed had a dark purple blanket with two, softer purple, pillows. At the end of each bed was a flolded, blue, fleece blanket. Behind these beds was a huge window, with deep purple curtains, that matched the bed spreads. On the windowsill was a comfy, cushion, that Pam would spend hours reading, and secretly awaiting for Nate's arrival.

Along the wall that was opposite the beds, was a desk. The desk was lined with purple parchment, and a quill. It also contained a special picture. Conceled within a white frame, was a picture of Nate and Pam, the summer before leaving for school. They had their arms wrapped around eachother, smiles bigger than Pam had never seen since. She walked over and put the picture face down.

"It's not much, but it's enough to keep you safe. I've cleared out most of the closet space," She said nodding towards the closed door. "And the top two drawers for you." She pulled out the top drawer for her to see.

Keegan raised an eyebrow as the kids went towards the house. "So, I assume you've heard about Nate's, erm, relationship drama?" He'd heard that Pam had gotten hurt, and he could tell that she was still hurting. He knew that Jez wasn't so perceptive sometimes, and hoped she'd realise enough to be tactful. "I'm worried about Jez and Pam," he admitted. "They're all too young to go through this, the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing."
"Nonsense," sniffed Des, waving a hand dismissively. "I had my first kiss at ten."
"Yeah, well, you were asking for it," muttered Keegan, looking at the two girls' retreating backs. Would Jez get between Pam and Nate? Only time would tell.

Jez was in awe of the furniture in Pam's house, making a mental note to ask why the big picture on the wall in the living room didn't seem to feature anything but black. She gasped when she entered the bedroom. "Oh my gosh, your room is beautiful!" Jez could have spent ages just admiring everything. Her own room had been dark and mostly black, and she'd had to share with Than because she, Des and Eris fought too much to have a room together. Nevertheless, she felt a pang of longing for her Muggle bands posters. The unmoving figures had never failed to force a wince from her parents whenever they came to her room. They were all ash now, and probably not even that.
Jez had caught a glimpse of the photo on Pam's desk before she'd hidden the image. She wondered why - the picture was really good. She felt slightly guilty about that. Was Pam still jealous? Or was it sadness? Emotions was supposed to be Nate's area of expertise, not Jez's. So she decided to let him deal with it, because he must have seen the photo go down too.
"Um, Pam, where's the bathroom?" asked Jez, placing her end of her trunk down on the ground near one of the beds, she wasn't sure which one was Pam's. "I can find it," she added, backing out of the room with a smile. "Just need directions." She spotted a likely door at the end of the corridor. "Never mind!" She hoped Pam and Nate would be able to talk now that she was out of the picture.

Jasper frowned. "Yea, I heard. I got loads of letters." He nodded, realizing Jez must be the next 'victim' of Nate's. Although victim was probably a too harsh a word. "Jez seems like such a nice girl. And if Nate's able to help her through all this, I won't change that. But what I don't want, is Jez's 'wall' to come back up, harder than before, if things don't work out." Of course, Jasper didn't know if she had a wall, but he wouldn't be surprised.

"Last door to your left." She said. Pam plopped down on the bed opposite the one Jez put her stuff down beside. She looked up at Nate, who had been waiting at the door the whole time. In his eyes, she could remember almost every time they had hid up here. Every time they would hide because of something they broke, or something they burned. She could almost hear an echo of giggles that came from the closet, where they would spend some of their time.

"Do you remember?" She said softly. "When we would get ourselves so lost in my closet, that we'd spend so long debating on weither or not we should call down to mom?" She walked over to the closet. Inside, all the clothes she had left were hung up nicely. The closet seemed small now. Empty even. Just as Pam felt.

Nate looked up at Pam from where he had frozen, ashamed, when Pam put down the picture of them. He felt torn between Jez and Pam now, and he could still see the blue in Pam's eyes, shining from all the way across the room.

He couldn't answer Pam, though, until the slam of the bathroom door snapped him out of his guilty trance. "I do," he said softly, letting his eyes roll off of Pam and to the open closet. They had been literally lost in the rows of clothes, having been only about three feet tall, and they couldn't find the door. So they resolved to play war in the back corner of the closet, surrounded by coats and shirts, using Nate's glow-in-the-dark cards.

He walked across Pam's room silently and fixed the picture she had overturned, standing it nicely on the table. He then moved over and plopped down on the cushion that always had a wonderful view of the garden. He had always claimed this cushion when he came over to the Barstows' house. Then he looked back at Pam, noticing the very slight shade of blue-green in her hair. "Why?" he asked, "Why are you always so down? I haven't seen you smile since last year."

Pam shrugged. "I feel lonely most the time. And with recent issues." she paused remembering what had happened with Nate. She shivered. "I've just been worried." she walked over and sat at the other end of the cushion. "I don't want to lose either of you. And almost losing you both. It's a little overwhelming." she looked out the window and lent her head against it. "sometimes I forget I'm twelve." she always felt the need to be strong for the both of them. Jez could collapse any second, and Nate's cried so many times this year, that she knew if Jez went down, shed take Nate with her. "And I can't sleep. My dreams keep me up too much." She didn't know why she was telling him all this. He was who she wanted to keep all this from. She wanted to keep all this from him, make him believe she was strong, like Jez said. But her meta 'powers' let too much away.

Nate couldn't help but look away, staring out the window at where the adults were still discussing. When Des' eyes flashed up and caught his own, he looked away quickly. Yikes.

"It's my fault," Nate said flatly. He considered adding 'isn't it' at the end of that, but he didn't want to waste Pam's time. He already knew that it was his fault. "It's my fault you're so lonely, so troubled. There was nothing wrong until we..." He didn't need to finish that sentence.

Keegan nodded. "Even with me, Jez puts up walls. I'm afraid I taught her that. I taught her a lot of things she shouldn't know - street fighting, lock picking, urban climbing." He chuckled. "She was forever up on roofs after I taught her that. But I believed those things could save her." His eyes flicked to Des, who looked away up at the house. He'd never forget her prediction after Jez was born. He closed his eyes, remembering.


Des looked up at the house, catching Nate's eyes at one of the windows. She smirked, and kept on looking at him and Pam even after he'd looked away. The back of her neck tingled. Oh yes, this one was going to feel pain. Before the holidays came around again, he'd feel it. She could tell by just one look into his eyes. Strange how the eyes always seemed to reveal that; the past, present and future. Des' mother Cassandra had been cursed by her ability, her predictions forever damned to be ignored, like her name suggested. Desdemona was different. She only predicted death and destruction. She'd predicted her family's deaths, and the coming of Jared and Team Wolf, to name a few. She was not a person to go to for lottery numbers.
"Shall we go to the house?" asked Des, noticing that her favourite bag was missing. But she'd seen it with Nate, so she wasn't worried.

Jez could hear Nate and Pam's voices in the bedroom, but couldn't make out the words. She sat on the closed toilet seat, staring at the wall opposite. She'd give it a while longer. She closed her eyes and let against the wall next to her. Within moments, she was asleep.

Jasper nodded. "Sometimes the best teachings can become the greatest weakness." Or something like that. Jasper wasn't good at advice so he grabbed his wife's hand. "Why don't I show you around?" He started walking towards the door that the kids had entered earlier.

Pam sighed. "Drop it. Nate." She said a little more coldly than needed. "It doesn't matter. I still would have had the dreams. Maybe not as quickly, but after this summer, I'd still get them." She looked outside at Des and the rest of them. She stuck her tounge out at them playfully. She looked back at Nate. "Even still, I wouldn't change any of it. And right now, Jez needs you. She may not after a while, but she's got a lot going on, and she needs you to help her." So do I. She thought to herself.

There was just one thing left on her mind. "Nate," She paused. She didn't know how to ask this, because she already knew the answer. But she wanted to hear him say it. "Don't forget me, alright?" It was the one thing she didn't want to happen. No matter how hard things got, she didn't want Nate to forget that they were best friends.

Nate swallowed a little when Pam snapped. He never liked that, and never had. Pam only snapped when something was really, really wrong. But she also had a point. Jez did need him, but he doubted that Pam needed him less. It actually seemed like Pam was desperate for him, but he couldn't be sure.

"Forget you? How could I forget you? You're my best friend. We've been through everything together, even Jez's horrible tragedy. We've been side by side the whole time. I'm more worried that you'll get yourself hurt for me, and I don't want that..." Nate looked away, biting his lip. He felt split, right down the middle. One half was leaning towards Jez, one towards Pam. And both parts were heavy on the only thing holding them together: Nate's heart.

"But if there was anything I could do to stop you from almost dying again, I would." There was no doubt about that. She shrugged. "I don't want you hurt again, Nate." She didn't want to talk about that though, she got enough of that from her dreams, she didn't want to relive it with Nate. "Look, Jez needs you right now. Don't worry so much about me." She scooched over and hugged Nate. "I'm glad we talked." She leaned back and smiled. Not her biggest smile, but a bigger one then she had in a while.

Nate looked over at Pam as she smiled, shaking his head. When he spoke, his voice sounded older than usual. "Don't tell me not to worry about you," he said, his always blue eyes boring into Pam's temporarily blue ones (though they seemed to be blue more often nowadays). "Never tell me not to worry about you."

He sat still, looking at Pam as his words set in for a moment. He then stood up and walked over to the wall that he knew separated Pam's room from the bathroom. He banged his fist against it, shaking the wall that Jez was leaning on. "Miss Black, I'm sure you're alright in there?" he yelled, his voice official-sounding. His voice went back to normal as he added, "I mean seriously, it's been more than a few minutes..."

Pam ran over as Nate pounded on her wall. Grabbing his hand she said, "Nathaniel Stone! Do not punch my wall! There is a door you can go pound on. I've got enough patched up holes in this room, I do not need another!" She looked at him with her 'you better listen to me' face. It's one she used often on him, and was sure it didn't work any more. But she was serious about the pounding.

Jez woke up with a yelp as Nate banged on the wall her head was leaning against. "I'm good, just very sleep-deprived!" she called back, standing up and stretching. She assumed that Nate and Pam had finished their conversation, so went back into the bedroom and fell onto a bed, her face in the pillow. "As soon as I get my hands on Des' potion-making kit, I'm brewing a Sleeping Draught," she mumbled, but lifted her head to grin at Nate and Pam. "So, what's the big picture in the living room for?" she asked. "You know, the big black one opposite the sofa?"

Pam laughed. "My dad had wanted to start up painting, but all he could paint was a black piece of paper. And of course, he gave it to my mom, who in turn, hung it up." She sat down on the other bed. "My parents are so crazy. But you can really tell they love eachother." She said with a smile.

"If you wanna sleep, you can. We," she motioned to Nate and her. "Can go downstairs and help your siblings. You're perfectly safe here. My mom has protective charms running and everything." She had watched her mom do it quite a few times. Pam wanted to try, but she wasn't in Hogwarts, so she practiced with a normal stick. Her mom had taught her just in case she needed them. But just the basics. Nothing too hard.

Nate laughed out loud when Jez asked about the 'big black picture' in the living room, and he laughed even harder when Pam talked about the actual black picture. "Pam," he said, "I don't think she was talking about the small black picture. She said the big black picture. That's the TV."

Shaking his head, he turned to Jez and began to elaborate. "That's a television, not a picture. You know how magical pictures and paintings move and talk? Well muggles have a way of making pictures move and talk too, and it's called film. Televisions use digital signals, in the form of computer code, to show the film on the monitor. It also had audio, but you need speakers for that to work. Most TVs have speakers built in, like Pam's, but the Barstows have something even better: surround sound. Basically, the entire room is surrounded in small, discreet speakers. The audio is split up between the speakers and it comes at you from all directions. It feels like you're in the film. Anyways, I'm sure that actually explained nothing and only confused you more. Which is my job here. Thank you, good night!" he said, ending with a smile and a bow as he ducked out of the open doorway.