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Grandma Imani was about ready to kill her, and Hollie honestly thought she might have done so already if she didn’t like her so much. She had gotten scolded yesterday, and more than likely she would get scolded today over yet another stained shirt. It wasn’t like she could help it, there were birds there, birds that sat up in the rafters and did what birds do, they pooped. The problem was that Hollie kept forgetting to clean it up off of her shirts, and rather she just kept changing into shirts. She had been nervous at first to use magic during the summer, but her job had required it and so allowances had been made. She was good with animals, this was all supervised, it all ended up working out. Well, everything except Granda Imani’s laundry load. It wasn’t even all of the washing that was the issue, it was more the fact that they had a terrible washer and dryer set. Earthquakes would have shaken the house less.

Despite the issue of the birds she was enjoying her job so far. It was nice not to be totally disconnected from the magical world for a summer, and the money didn’t hurt either. It beat sitting behind an ice cream counter every day. That would have been less money and more calories. The biggest hassle was getting the money exchanged. She liked to be able to put some towards all of their expenses at home, but having a pocket full of galleons really did not help with that. So she’d walk down to Gringotts and smile as the goblin across the counter did the exchange as quickly as possible to get her and the smell of all of those animals out of there.

The biggest challenge of her magical summer internship had been the lie she’d had to tell her siblings. They kept asking her when they could come visit the animal shelter she was working at, and she kept telling them that she couldn’t. The reasoning? “I work with troubled cats.” Lame. In retrospect she could have come up with a way better lie. It was half true at the moment. She had just diffused a very tense situation between a Siamese cat and a kneazle, which had ended with both locked in cages. Now she stood at the counter allowing one of the baby pygmy puffs to roll around on the top to make sure it did get a little leg work in.