I Hate It Here
Theo and I are woken up at the crack of fucking dawn by a loud banging coming from downstairs. It’s not even light out and we’re scrambling out of bed to find the source of the deafening raucous downstairs. Theo looks as grumpy and unsettled as I feel. We stumble down the rickety stairs, pulling t-shirts over our heads.
“Good morning!”
Iris stands there, looking cheery and happy. She is dressed today in plain jean overalls, and her brown hair is braided tightly. Her overalls are decorated with an assortment of pins and patches, most of which are Muggle. I crinkle my nose in distaste before taking in her knitted cardigan which seemed several sizes too large for her. I also take in her rubber boots, distinctively caked with mud.
I look down and frown. Theo and I are not dressed for whatever she has in store for us.
Her eyes follow mine down my body and she grins as she takes in my expensive dragon hide boots.
“How are you sleepy heads?” she asks amusedly.
“Why are we up so early?” Theo grumbles.
“Well there’s a lot to do! We have to make a start,” Iris explains brightly.
The barn door opens and Mr. Heart walks in, carrying two buckets of water.
“Get on with it Iris,” he says curtly.
She nods and beckons us to follow her. Theo drags behind me, still trying to fully wake up. I shake my head in an attempt to revive my system.
Normally, I wouldn’t have gotten up for several hours, and then would have been served a wonderful breakfast by my elves. I would have read the Prophet and been able to relax.
I shouldn’t have to be doing this shit. It’s so beneath me. I curse myself silently again for not protesting more to the sentencing or for not paying off the judge. Malfoys don’t do work like this. And Malfoy’s don’t get up at the crack of dawn.
As Iris moves down to the first pony stall, I throw a glance at Theo to see if he’s as humiliated by this as I am. But Theo has stopped in his tracks. I draw up short and look around to see what he has paused for.
“Good morning all,” the man from the steps yesterday calls as he steps inside the barn. His Irish accent jumps out at me again. I think of how drawn Theo was to him yesterday, and the corners of my mouth twitch.
I inch forward and nudge Theo gently. He startles and looks towards me.
“Come on, mate,” I say with a grin.
Iris is waiting for us at the first stall. The pony inside is a speckled grey, with a thick black mane.
“This is Amelia,” she explains. I roll my eyes. I doubt we’re gonna remember their fucking names, much less care at the end of this tortuous summer. “She really likes apples, and she is about twenty-five years old, so she gets whatever she wants pretty much.”
Iris beams at us. Her elation is greeted by the stony faces of two Pure-bloods who could not give less of a fuck. I see the excitement in her eyes slowly deflate, and she glances down.
“For Merlin’s sake, just tell us the chores,” I snarl.
She blinks a couple of times, and when she speaks, her voice has lost all eagerness.
“But of course.” I set my eyes and try my best to pay attention.
“Each pony requires water and hay every morning and night. You will also need to muck out their stalls.”
She unclips the chain on the sliding stall door and opens it, demonstrating to us what we’re supposed to be doing. She walks over to the detachable water bucket and unclips that too. She hands the bucket to Theo and instructs him to go fill it with as much as he can carry.
Theo scoffs, but accepts the plastic bucket. I see him check the barn up and down before leaving.
“And you, come with me,” she directs, sliding out of the stall. I follow her to a small but deep crevice, next to the tack room. Several bales of hay are stacked here. I glance into the opening, it’s dark and goes pretty far back. Might be a good place to hide, I think to myself. “This is where our hay stays. You will get a flake for each horse, and bring it back to their stalls.”
She picks up a section of the nearest hay bale, a flake, and brings it over. I watch her demonstrate placing the hay in a net attached to the wall. She clicks the net into place and dusts her hands off.
As she steps out of the stall, Theo returns with the bucket. Iris opens the stall door and allows him to step inside, lifting the bucket and clicking it back into place.
“There, you did it!” Iris beams at us, and I roll my eyes. Pretty as she is, her persistent joy makes me nauseous.
“Yeah big fucking whoop, can we go back to bed now?” I ask, irritated.
“Um, no you have the rest of the stalls on this side of the barn to do.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I gasp.
“No? I have to go do the chickens since you didn’t exactly excel at that last night.”
Theo chuckles in spite of himself and I throw daggers at him with my eyes. He quickly shuts up and I turn back to Iris, frustrated.
“You can’t seriously be expecting us to do all that by ourselves??”
“No of course not,” calls Emily Heart as she walks by, holding a bag of feed in her arms. “We’re expecting you to do more after that.”
Fuck everything that brought us here. I clench my fists and attempt to keep from spitting insults at each stupid person here.
After finally finishing each stall, Iris checks our work. Then she directs us to muck out each stall. Theo and I simply stand there, looking at each other.
“Christ, you take a rake and scoop up their shite, it’s not a hard concept to grasp!” she exclaims.
Neither Theo or I move.
“Right, well you don’t get breakfast until after each stall is clean. So you better hurry.”
“You have got to be mucking about,” Theo gapes at her. I know breakfast is in the top five most important things in Theo’s life.
“I’m not, but you should be.”
She grins, proud of her joke, before grabbing a leather halter and a thick rope.
“I’ll bring the ponies out, you guys get started. Ask Owen where the wheelbarrow is. He’s doing the other side.”
And with that, she turns and leaves, walking down the aisle and leading horses out to the large paddock in the front.
I stare at Theo. He stares back.
“You do it.”
“Fuck no, you do it.”
“Theo I’m not fucking kidding, if my father knew that I was doing shite like this-”
“I don’t give a flying pixie’s ass if your daddy finds out. I’m not touching that.”
“Then spend your summer in jail.”
A voice from behind us startles us both. I jump and turn to see Mr. Heart glowering at us, pushing a metal wheelbarrow close to the stall door. I gulp and stay silent while he opens the door and slips the halter over the pony's head. He attaches the rope and leads the pony out of the stall, handing the rake to me as he passes.
“You’ll start Princess. You can work in turns.”
I glare after him as he exits the barn with the pony.
“Princess,” snorts Theo. “I quite like that, I shall use that in future.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I snarl.
After finally finishing up in the barn (I don’t wanna talk about what happened in there), Mr. Heart let us go into the house for breakfast. We haven’t actually been inside before, having both declined dinner last night. Mr. Heart opens the creaky wooden door and lets us in. The house is cosy, with a large kitchen greeting us as we walk through the door. The next room over is a combination of sitting room and dining area with a large fireplace off to the right side of the room. I stare around the space. The wood walls are filled with Muggle photos of the family. This might be the most pitiful space I’ve ever seen. I glance over to the window in front of the sink and see several pots of plants and flowers shining brightly. Each has a label on the front of the pot, bearing the name of a Heart family member. My eyes snap to Iris’s name. Her plant is a beautiful foxglove, several light pastel purple buds blooming. Emily’s is a tulip, and Mr. Heart’s pot contains a daffodil. There’s a label that reads “Sebastian”, who I assume is the boy Theo can’t stop drooling over. But the last pot bears a name I don’t recognise.
“Who’s Abigail?” I ask.
Everyone freezes. Mr. Heart stops, Iris, who was collecting dishes, stiffens and takes a shaky breath.
“Never you mind that,” snaps Emily sharply. The older Heart sister directs us away from the kitchen and into the second room. I notice a small hallway heading off to the left, but apart from that, there seems to be no more room in this house.
“Is this it?” I chuckle, surprised at how small it is.
“Yes.” Emily’s tone is colder than ice and her jaw ticks. “Sit down and be grateful, you entitled prick.”
I open my mouth to retort but Iris bounces in, holding a pan full of scrambled eggs. Theo eagerly hastens to a chair, awaiting his food with the same patience as a toddler in Honeydukes. I lower myself begrudgingly into the chair next to Theo.
As we eat, Iris takes the opportunity to remind us that we have still yet more chores to do. Even as she bosses us around, demanding where we go, forcing us into the most undignified manual labour, I can’t help but notice the sparkling of her freckles and the gleam of her eyes.
The rest of the morning is fucking hell. Theo spends half his time gawking at the farmhand, whose name is indeed Sebastian. So I’m forced to do half of the chores by myself, which include: sweeping the barn, filling up the water troughs, working on dismantling a tractor (which featured Theo staring at Sebastian’s grease-smattered arms the whole time, real fucking helpful), and cutting up wooden boards with a Muggle machine to help redo part of the fence. By lunchtime, I’m fucking exhausted and dripping with sweat. The plain white t-shirt I chose is soaked, and Theo has disappeared to Salazar knows where. We have been granted a break for lunch and an hour to relax before we’re back to it. I had no idea what I thought we’d be doing but this is fucking ridiculous. I stagger up to my room and grab a fresh t-shirt. It then occurs to me that I have no house elf to call to take away my dirty laundry. I hurry back down the stairs, intending to find Mr. Heart, but there is no one around.
I sigh, defeatedly. Then my eyes fall upon a large trash bin just inside the barn door. Perfect.
I quickly rip off my shirt and toss it into the bin. I raise my arms to shuffle the fresh garment over my heat but-
“Oh! Oh my, I’m so sorry! I didn’t-”
I freeze. Iris has entered the barn and is staring at me. Her eyes are wide and her expression horrified. My brain doesn’t seem to be able to think.
Her eyes click to mine. Then they travel down. And stop. She stares at my bare chest, with her mouth slightly open. I feel an involuntary blush overcoming me.
“I’m so sorry,” she repeats, chewing on her lip. She hasn’t looked away yet and I smirk, satisfied to have this advantage.
“Had your fill yet?” I tease.
She blushes furiously and whirls around, practically racing out the door. I grin and pull my shirt over my head. After carding my hands through my platinum hair, attempting to shape it into something resembling presentable, I leave the barn with a smirk on my face.
It makes me incredibly happy to know I have the same effect on her as she does on me.