"It's wrong, honey! Don't you want to crisply open the book and..."
Mike left his statement at that and wandered into bedroom to bother the sleeping hammies. "Hello Feta Monster!" he called out, gathering the water bottles. He gave every appearance of having abandoned the subject. Was Edith's wheel going to fall off again? Did Raisins have an upper respiratory infection? How fresh was Sparrow's tofu?
He poked his head back into the living room. "Why do I get a mohawk like this in the morning?"
Shari looked up from the computer. "Blogging!", she warned, and resumed typing.
Mike blew kisses and went for his shower, satisfied that his wife was not, absolutely not, going to read the new Harry Potter book that was right now, at this very minute, on their computer. The way she composed, with the hundred side trips to look up things that never actually appeared in her posts, they'd be lucky to get out to the midnight release.
The official release, that is. Photos of the book - mediocre photos meant to accentuate ones squint lines - were everywhere on the Internet. And now they were on their laptop.
"Just the first page," she had said, and she made Mike shield his eyes in case some jerk put the last page in as the first, or worse. No reason both of them should risk contamination.
But the first page was the title page, and the second page was the dedication, and the third, fourth, and so on pages were the table of contents (Shari covered her own eyes here). The thrill of peeking under the cover over, should they keep going?
Mike said no, no way, but now he was in the shower and his showers were always long, and Shari was weak. Or maybe she just wanted to enjoy what she could, just in case it was spoiled tonight. Besides, it's not like it's a spoiler if you're reading it in order, right?
She considered the image again:
Mike came out of the bathroom to find Shari still typing.
"I'm struggling," he said. "I just want to know if Snape is vindicated."
Shari smiled and took her hands off the keyboard.
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