The Sawyer House In Appleby, Lincolnshire

"Hi, kitty!" Dianna said, pulling up a seat next to Anthony. "What are you doing?" She asked. "And what are you making, Mrs. Sawyer?"

"Math work." he said, apparently deep in concentration. "Do you know what the square root of sixteen is?" he asked, looking up at her.

"And I'm making some soup for dinner." answered Rachel. "Dianna, do you mind washing these carrots by the sink for me? It would be a great help."

"Uh-huh. You just have to think about it. 1 times 1 is one. Two times two is four. Three times three is nine. Four times four.. Sixteen. So four is the square root of sixteen." Dianna said, washing the carrots.

"Oh, I get it... so that means that the square root of twenty-five is just five, right?"

"Yes, you're correct." answered Rachel with a nod. "And Anthony, when you're finished with your math work, will you help peel those potatoes?" And she turned back to Dianna seriously.

"So you're mother is going out to dinner, right?" she asked in a low voice.

"Uh-huh. With some stupid co-worker. I.. I can't believe she's forgetting about Daddy that fast." Dianna said quietly.

Rachel paused to fill up a pot of water, and she it down on the stove. With the help of a little magic, the water began to boil immediately.

"Well... I agree your mother is moving way too quickly, but how would you feel if your husband was cheating on you? I would want to forget about him..."

"He was cheating on her?" Dianna asked, looking betrayed. She stopped washing carrots and stared at Rachel disbelievingly.

"Yes?" Rachel looked at Dianna, confused. "Hasn't your mother told you that much?"

"No. She didn't." Dianna mumbled, going back to the carrots. "All she said was that he didn't love her anymore, and that they're divorced now."

"...I'm sorry." he apologized in a whisper. She wished that she hadn't mentioned the 'cheating on' part. Maybe that was something Serenity was going to say herself.

"It's fine. Now I know. Thank you, Mrs. Sawyer." Dianna said, scrubbing the carrots extra hard.

And frantic looking Amanda apparated onto the doorstep of the Sawyer's. Her hair was pushed back into a sloppy headband which was bound to be fiddled with, and she was wearing a lacey, white business top and tighter black waist skirt that went to her thighs. She held Jennifer's hand tightly, who was holding a backpack stuffed with anything she'd need for survival. Glancing once more at her watch, Amanda pounded on the door.

Rachel answered the door, and stared at Amanda, with a bemused expression on her face. She cleared her throat as a disguise of a chuckle, before she began to speak.

"Hello Amanda! And Jennifer... where are you going? It looks like you just got out the shower!" she said, partly serious about the little joke she cracked.

"Yeah, I actually did! Had to do a spell to get my hair to dry fast enough!" Amanda was talking extremely quickly, words jumbled together without a breath. "Do you think just possibly you could babysit Jen today? My publisher just called and said I had to do some conference about my latest installment to the creatures books, and Trevor is working the night shift and I really am worried about Jen being alone and-" Jennifer cut her near breaking down mother off,

"I'd be fine..."

"Yes, but no, and, do you think you could Rachel?" Amanda stared at her friend with desperate, pleading eyes.

"Oh, of course I can watch her!" Rachel replied, letting the door open wide to invite Jennifer in, and she smiled a small smile to herself.

"Gosh, I've been doing a lot of babysitting lately... I guess everyone just have lives nowadays."

"How long do you think you'll be out? Just in case if I have to make dinner and lunch for her."

Amanda looked down guiltily at her purple flats, with large black flowers sprouting from the toes. "I'm guessing a bit pass dinner time." She looked back up at her friend. "I'll make it up, and pay whatever you'd like! I'm so sorry for this being so last minute!"

Jennifer, obviously less strung out than her mother, tugged her mom's sleeve to get her to kneel down a bit, gave her a peck on the cheek, and walked past Rachel. She stood close to Rachel and waited for some directions on where to go. She was pretty confused from the set up differences between her house and their's.

"Money, huh..." A new revelation came to Rachel. She had never thought of charging people for her babysitting services. Why, this is a great idea to pick up some extra cash! Now Nick wouldn't scold her for spending all of his money.

"Um... I'll charge you five sickles, I guess." Rachel said after a moment of deliberation. She held out her hand expectantly, and she turned to look down at Jennifer. "I think Anthony is up in his bedroom, doing some work. Just go up the stairs, take, a left, and his bedroom is the second door on the right."

Anthony meanwhile was upstairs, studying some grammar out of a very old looking textbook, with his elbows on the table and his hand keeping his head propped up. So far, he had been enjoying the absence of Victor. After all, it was wonderful to have his own room. For these past two weeks, Anthony's things have slowly been creeping over to Victor's area, and sometimes Anthony would even sleep in Victor's bed, just for the heck of it.

"Alrighty Mrs. Sawyer!" Jennifer disappeared from the sight of her mother with one last goodbye wave.

Amanda's eyes widened with surprise, she thought it'd be a bit higher. But, well, she didn't have time to raise the price with her friend. She reluctantly put the sickles into Rachel's hand, "Thanks so much yet again!" Right after, she apparated, and was in such a hurry she didn't realized her headband had been left on the doorstep in the process.

Anthony's door slowly creaked open, and Jennifer popped inside. "Boo!" She giggled a bit. "Hey Anthony! My mummy left for some book thing and asked your mum to babysit so... I'm to be hanging out with you for the rest of the day!"

She looked around his room. "I love what you've done with the place. Especially since your brother's side is near all your's." For some reason, Jennifer had always been good at making quick guesses about people and rooms. So when she saw the two beds, and thought back to the mass of children she had saw with Anthony at the train station, she guessed that his roommate was at Hogwarts.

Anthony jumped slightly, at the surprise of Jennifer coming in and scaring him. "You scared me!" he exclaimed, pointing fingers at her. But he stood up, and smiled at her excitedly. Without taking a single glance of guilt at the grammar book, Anthony turned to Jennifer.

"What do you want to do? I can finish my schoolwork later."

She cleared a little spot for herself on one of the beds and sat down. "Hm... I'm not quite sure honestly! I brought a couple card decks if you want to play some fun card games, and it's really nice out so we could go outside." Jennifer smiled widely, extremely pleased at the thought of having someone her age who wasn't her brother. As she was talking, she put her hair up into a sloppy pony-tail. This way, if they ran around, it wouldn't fly into her eyes as it always did.

"I like that idea! And, I have a Self-Shuffling deck around here somewhere, if you want to use that..." Anthony said, digging around in the drawer of the desk. "-HAH! Here it is! There a little warn, and they shuffle kinda slowly, but they'll work." And he pocketed them.

"We can do it in the kitchen, so we have a big table to play on it." And without waiting for an answer, he raced downstairs into the kitchen.

Jennifer's eyes lit up. "Mum never let's us use those ever sent Matt set them loose on our Dad!" She excitedly galloped down the stairs after Anthony, and plopped down at the large table.

"So, we both start with, let's say for this game, ten cards in our deck each. What will happen is from the leftover pile you put a card down in the middle. You have to put a card that is either one below, above, or is the number of the card in the middle. If you don't have it, you can lie and say you do. You can put down as many as you want if you have doubles, or when you're faking. If I think you're faking, I say BS and check. If you were, you take the entire deck, if you weren't I have to. And so it's called BS. Do you understand?" Jennifer grinned as she hummed 'Poker Face'. She had a pretty wicked one when it came to this game.

"Uh hmm..." Anthony nodded, not exactly getting it, but he just went along with it. He didn't want Jennifer to think that he was stupid or anything, and he looked up at her seriously.

"My mum hates that song. She thinks Lady GaGa is a demon."

Jennifer's smile dropped quickly. "She is quite odd... I won't sing it again." She said, looking quite ashamed of herself. "Pinky promise!" her smile erupted over her face again as she reached her pinky over the set of cards, and then placed down the first card from the leftovers, a 5. She placed down three eights. "I place three fours."

"BS!" Anthony shouted accusingly, and he slammed down his hand of cards face up without realizing it, allowing Jennifer to see his entire hand. "How can you have that many of the same card?!"