Well, I Never
Tom opted for saying nothing at all when the golden bird reappeared. It worked out well; Mrs. Cole was back to not being able to see her properly and the younger boys were upset enough to keep them all busy anyway. It took days for things to return to some semblance of normal. It became something like normal to avoid the hall that led to the rooms that had been destroyed by the bomb blast. There was a funeral for the two who had died. The only attendees were other orphans and Mrs. Cole, but that was how things were for children who died without a family.
He had been able to dig out his trunk and rescue his school things, which was a minor miracle worked by the grace of well-made enchantments. He had to sleep in a room with the colicky baby and a two-year-old now, which was incredibly irritating. But Mrs. Cole had decided that it was safer to put him with the babies than anyone older, as though she didn’t realise that now that he was tall and intimidating there wouldn’t be any of the problems he’d had with Benny. There was no need to scare the shit out of people who probably couldn’t hurt him if they tried.
Thankfully, the phoenix seemed perfectly willing to entertain the little ones and he was actually able to sleep a reasonable amount most nights. He did have to hold the baby more than he liked, though, because the phoenix would sing or make dancing lights in the air, but would not manifest arms to pick him up or change him or feed him. It was a testament to how exhausted Mrs. Cole was that it took her three nights to notice that she wasn’t being woken up every two hours. She showed up in a panic in the middle of the night one night while he was trying to convince the fussy wretch to eat something so he could go back to bed and then just stood there in the doorway blinking at him.
“He’s fine, I’ve got it,” he sighed. “I think he might even have figured out that he has to hang onto the nipple to get anything out of it this time.”
“You’re been feeding him,” Mrs. Cole said in a bewildered undertone, carefully calibrated by sheer experience not to wake the toddler in the other cot, and thoroughly unaware of the silencing charm Tom had cast to prevent that problem.
“You say that as though I haven’t watched how you do it ten thousand times in the past sixteen years,” Tom muttered. “It’s not that difficult.”
“It’s not that I thought you couldn’t, it’s that I thought you wouldn’t,” she muttered back. “It’s women’s work, feeding babies.”
“Maybe if more men bothered to feed babies, you’d be out of a job,” Tom grumbled under his breath.
Mrs. Cole was silent for a few seconds.
“Isn’t that the truth,” she said. “You’ve grown up some, Tom.”
“Hmph,” he snorted. The baby let go of the bottle and squirmed. He sighed and put him on his shoulder to rub his back.
“Please burp instead of spitting up this time,” he requested in resignation. For once, he complied. “Thank goodness.”
“You’ve been doing this every night.”
“Yes, ma’am. It seemed ridiculous to wake you up when I thought you’d put me in here to mind them,” he replied.
“Well, I never,” she muttered.
Tom wondered how long she was going to stand there and watch him rock the baby to sleep. If she would go away, he could probably put him down and get the phoenix to do it. The whole point of this exercise was so that he could go back to bed himself.
“That school you go to," Mrs. Cole said slowly, “up in Scotland. You’re doing well there?”
He frowned across the room at her. Why was she asking about Hogwarts? She hadn’t ever bothered before. She always just wanted him to get out of her hair, like it had been since he could remember.
“I’m at the top of my class,” he said cautiously.
“Good,” she murmured quietly. “Good. I’m glad to hear it.” And with that, she finally went away.
The damn baby had fallen asleep and he was absolutely certain that trying to set him down now would wake him again. Oh, for god’s sake.