The Weasley War
VIII. Fresh Start
“You just wait until I get my hands on his hair, that bloody centaur.”
Sirius threw himself down on the chair the moment they entered the room for one last round of practice. It was just after dinner, just after Holly had triple-checked that she was ready for the next day’s exams.
“For Merlin’s sake, S.J! I can’t believe you’re still harping on about that.”
“Well, seeing Firenze drove the memory to the front of my mind again! Hey. I think he’ll be in the Task.”
Holly nodded, distracted, but not very much. “What did I tell you? Whatever others say or think or do is part of their lives, not yours. What is yours is your own reaction. And that’s what could either make or break you. You can’t help how people”creatures”act, so get over it and concentrate on the next task instead. You have all the spells down pat, don’t””
“I do, yes. Ever the rant of reason, aren’t you? You sound like my Aunt Hermione.”
How her expression morphed from ticked off to thrilled was almost comical. “Really? I adore her! I can’t wait to meet her tomorrow. Wouldn’t that be an affair! The whole Weasley family sitting down to dinner! You’re all here anyway!”
“Yes, well, don’t wet yourself, Holly”ow!”
“You’re too old to make such crude jokes, and to me”a girl” of all people, you nutter!”
Laughing, S.J tugged forcefully on the fist she was about to hit him with again, sending her reeling in towards him, her glorious strawberry-blonde tresses gently smacking his face. “And you’re too pretty to tease me, a bloke”of all people, you twit!”
She landed on his lap and scowled at him. S.J felt as if his guts were cheese melting in an oven.
“I wasn’t teasing you. I never tease anyone!”
“You were bruising me, yes.”
“I’d never bruise you, Sirius.”
“I love it when you call me that.”
“O-oh, r-really?” Merlin, the way she suddenly stopped trying to get off him and stuttered that was adorable. She was always so brisk and sure. And now... She smirked. Wow. She could smirk! This girl would really drive him mad. “That’s all?”
He smirked back, all Tasks, estranged cousins and bloody centaurs forgotten. “That’s all what?”
“Is that all...you love... a-about me?”
Merlin, that took some bottle to get out. If he hadn’t adored this girl before, what with all her no-nonsense mothering and steadfast friendship even while the rest of the school thought him dirt, he sure had another good reason now.
He blessed the emptiness and secrecy of the Room of Requirement and drew his arms around Holly’s waist. She stiffened only a moment, before relaxing and blushing so red S.J worried for a second she’d combust on his lap. But she didn’t. Though he might. Because she was kissing him back.
They pulled apart after the ten seconds of innocence and tenderness and giggled into each other’s eyes. “I love everything about you. In fact, I think I love you.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, well, I’m only sixteen, what do I know since you’re my first? And I couldn’t do ‘research’ about this any time soon either. I’m stuck with a hypothesis for the meanwhile.”
Holly gaped at him as he drawled out those sentences, but toward the end, she giggled. “Good answer.”
He rolled his eyes and pulled her close again to sink his nose on her neck and hair. She let him, though she thumped him again with an “I saw that!”
Sirius just grinned. Everything would be well.
***
The Great Hall had long emptied of its harried, exam-weighted breakfasters, and Tristan was beginning to think ” His father entered just then as if his boots were giving him trouble. He nearly tripped on Hagrid’s log of a cane, but saved himself just in time with a nice swerve and an apology to the Care of Magical Creatures teacher, an apology he addressed to his boots. Hagrid frowned at him kindly, and then caught Tristan’s eyes across the room and shrugged and beckoned him frantically over at the same time. Tristan was already half-jogging over.
“Father. You made it.”
Percy Ignatius Weasley looked up and smiled at his son. Tristan was heartened. They were still friends, the two of them. His entering the Tournament unblessed was not about to change that.
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world, which used to hold so much sway over me, as you well know.”
“Never mind, Father. And never mind your being tardy as well. They’re waiting for us in that chamber.”
Hagrid had by this time quietly left them, so Percy had no cause to cover his reluctance and shame. “Son, you go on. You know I can’t””
“Yes, I know, Father. But I don’t see why. Not any longer.”
He exchanged another eloquent look with his father. He tried to convey with his eyes everything that had taken place since he had set foot at Hogwarts, the school that held so much of his family, his blood, and their heritage. A heritage of camaraderie, fun, and warmth. So much warmth that just thinking about going back to Germany made him shiver.
He thought he could see that same disinclination in his father’s eyes now. Tristan wanted to shake him. “Father, please””
His father grasped his arms. “Trust me, son. When we enter there, my job is as good as lost. Our house will be on the market faster than I can say ‘Head Boy’, and where does that leave us?”
Tristan grinned. His father was also contemplating leaving Germany, ha! “To them. Nothing so scary about that, is there, Father?”
“Do we really have them, boy?”
“Well, you’ve been wasting too much time here instead of finding out.”
They both jumped to attention at that voice. Tristan had never been more bowled over at the sight a girl. Well, woman. This must be Gram, Grandma, Nana. And she looked like an embodiment of everything soothing in her auburn cashmere shawl and aquamarine robes. She gracefully waddled her delightfully plump form over to them and held out her arms, tears flowing down her red cheeks.
“Percy, stop being an idiot and come here now!”
His father ran.
And before he could process that absurdity in his brain as a hallucination, Tristan found himself imitating his father, until he was engulfed in those arms.
Bliss.
“Whatever were you thinking?” He heard his grandmother scolding his father, even as she stroked Tristan’s back tirelessly. “And you, dear boy! I’m afraid I might not let go.”
“But you would, Mum! Pass him here!”
Tristan barely had any time to look up to see S.J and Jules grinning at him before his sight was obscured by a large mass of brown, apple-scented hair. “Aunt Hermione.”
“Yes, yes, that I am, Tristan.” She laughed, squeezing him.
“I’m Aunt Ginny.” And next, he was inhaling red, citrus-scented hair. He began to feel an itch behind his eyelids. The itch relieved itself when his uncles clapped him on the back and, one by one, held him to their solid chests.
“Your father was a bit of an overgrown git for awhile. But he’s family. We loff him.”
“We loff you.”
He hugged his Uncles Fred and George for that, but oddly felt no inclination to laugh.
One moment, he and his father had only each other. The next, here they were, with a large, large family. His grandmother pulled him to her again so that he could subtly wipe his tears on her shawl.
His father was not faring as good. He was howling on the Gryffindor table, his head on his hands. Aunt Ginny and Aunt Hermione sat on either side of him, both with one of their arms draped on his shoulder.
His grandmother released him, patted his cheeks tenderly, and went to stand before her heretofore-alienated son. As if sensing her presence, his father looked up, calmed. “I’m so sorry, Mother. I just didn’t”I just couldn’t bear it when Father””
“Oh, Percy. Do you think we felt any different? We were all devastated as much as you were.”
“We could all have healed together. You shouldn’t have left,” Aunt Ginny said quietly.
That got his father going again, though not as wildly. He just blinked his streaming eyes and grabbed his sister. “Ginny.”
“Be careful, we have one last Potter in here, and we don’t want her squashed.”
“‘Last’ and ‘her’?” His Uncle Harry quipped. Harry Potter. Tristan blinked. His uncle. This great wizard was family. And he acted like any other uncle, who only choked into laughter, grabbing Tristan’s shoulder, when Fred and George had expressed their affection earlier.
“As well she should be, Harry! I won’t stand eight boys without a single teammate!”
His father let go of his aunt and joined in the laughter. He stared at that vision. His father laughing. Wonders never cease. And it was all owing to the Weasleys. And yes, he was one of them!
Shortly, his Aunt Hermione, ever the principal, herded them off to the chamber off the hall to their brunch.
His Uncle Bill waited only until all of them reached their places before he raised his goblet. “This is not necessarily in order of preference, alright? To S.J, Juli”Jules and Tristan! To their Triwizard glory!”
The rest of the family echoed the toast, even the younger ones surprisingly prim and proper about it all.
“And this,” their grandmother stood. “This is to the fresh start for the Weasley family, Branch Percy. Here with us again and here to stay...” She didn’t end it in a definitive note, nor in question. Tristan looked at his father. Percy had risen to his feet as well. Tristan held his breath.
“Here to stay, Mother.”
His grandmother beamed. And then her face crumpled, she crumpled back down to her chair as well. She waved her hand when they all rose to their feet in concern. She wiped at her streaming eyes impatiently. “Silly me. I just”I just wish””
“Of course, Dad’s here with us, Mum,” Uncle Harry said quietly.
Grandma nodded almost frantically, still wiping her face. “All of them must be here with us now.”
Tristan suddenly didn’t know where to look. Was his mother there with them as well? He jumped when someone began to clap. It was Jules. And she was grinning at him, right along with everyone up and down the table, from the kids to the adults. S.J was whistling”well, he tried to. Aunt Ginny elbowed him the moment he placed his fingers in his mouth, making him choke instead.
Tristan laughed. They joined him. Never before did he encounter such a feeling of rightness. The Tournament seemed a realm away. Everything would be fine now.
VII. Clay Over Diamond is not Always Clever
“Our champions’ mettle and courage in the face of the unknown has been tested. Now we shall measure their magical knowledge and logic. Many wizards and witches fall abysmally in this challenge. That of using their minds instead of their wands, and remembering the numerous many-faceted facts of our world.”
Professor McGonagall reversed the Sonorus spell and turned to the three of them standing before the door of the Shrieking Shack. The stands erected on the property’s grounds, filled with students and villagers alike, had gone dead quiet. “Now, kindly give Mr Ollivander your wands.”
With trepidation, all three cousins handed their only tools to the ancient wizard, who ostentatiously turned his back on them and the stands to do what he had to do. Madame Calasanz and Master Chekhov immediately congregated with him. Professor McGonagall sniffed disdainfully and used the Sonorus again. “Mr Ollivander will perform a spell on each of our champions’ wands, restricting their magic to five spells or charms. Therefore, they must exercise prudence in using magic while in the Task, or they might consequently have nothing to help or defend them when they need magic most, or when only magic can save them.
“The key each of them had retrieved from the First Task will open the chest they will seek in this Task. From the chest, they will pick another item without which they cannot proceed to the Third Task.”
As if the crowd sensed that the directions were completely laid out now, they broke their silence and gave way to excited applause and cheers. The old house seemed to quake at the noise. Only its backyard was free of the Quidditch stands-like seating for the spectators. On the ivy-checked walls, great swathes of white cloth were draped, no doubt to serve as projection screens to what would shortly happen to the champions when they entered within.
Professor McGonagall was now herding S.J, Jules and Tristan closer to the open, deceptively empty threshold. “When you reach the trunk, open it with your key, take what you wish to take, and then close it again. This will trigger the spell that would bring you back outside. Good luck.”
Mr Ollivander, muttering and glaring at Chekhov, hobbled nearer and returned their wands, which oddly felt heavier than normal.
“At the sound of the trumpet””
The trumpet blared. S.J, Jules and Tristan exchanged smirks and entered abreast.
The door thundered shut behind them. Torches blazed to flame, but they cast only the dimmest, flickering light, doing little to lift the darkness.
And then they felt it, something cold and sinewy wrapped around their ankles.
“Argh! Devil’s ”Snare!” Jules jumped and fell on her backside. She was instantly dragged forward.
“Here!” Tristan slid a torch on the floor to her. It stopped only short of singeing her hair. She yelped and growled and grabbed the torch’s handle. The tentacle now wrapped around her waist recoiled away even before the flames touched it.
Jules looked up and saw S.J also wielding torches, two on each hand. Tristan held two, his other hand clutching his wand as he proceeded up the stairs.
“S.J, where do you go?”
“Uh, kitchen?” He let go of the two torches and drew his wand from his belt.
“Typique,” Jules muttered. She left the foyer and turned to what must be the drawing room. The door clapped shut behind her again. The answering draft was enough to snuff her enfeebled torch. When her pupils dilated to the darkness, she distinguished eight eyes peering at her and threads of saliva dripping from between pincers. Tout á fait magnifique! Ma chère mamma, where are you?
That voice incorporating both her mother and father spoke in her mind. Don’t move, Jules. Giant or not, it is still a spider, and spiders don’t see you unless you move. Now, if he gets the idea of wrapping you in a silky acromantula jumper...that’s another story. But he doesn’t know you’re there, remember? Just keep cool. Points be damned. You can’t just keep still if you face a Dementor here. Stop babbling inwardly either! They wouldn’t put Dementors here!
It seemed like an eternity before the acromantula turned away. Jules closed her eyes to relieve the sting. She hadn’t blinked or even moved her eyeballs. She squinted to where her hostess went.
Oh, she had eggs. Disgusting cocoon. Good distraction. Jules was just about to take a step to the open door on the right when she realised even a mother acromantula surely wouldn’t pass up a meal. Millimetre by millimetre, she moved her head to look down at her feet.
It was dark, but they shone, the silky threads making up an intricate web of trap in the room. One touch on one thread and she would be dinner. Right. Thank Morgana that the acromantula was greedy and was disdainful to trap anything smaller than a cat.
Jules blessed her tiny feet then. But then she cursed the eight eyes. Dementors returned to her mind. Oh, lovely.
Would it work without yelling the incantation?
Expecto patronum.
Her not-so-little mink burst from her wand and gambolled around the room, immediately driving the acromantula mad with greed for meat and paranoia for its eggs. Jules watched for only a second though, and did an imitation of leaping and skipping in the spaces between the webs until she was in the other room. This time, she was the one who slammed the door shut.
***
When he came to the first landing, entered the room immediately on his right and the door shut behind him, at first he thought the carpet had been hit with a badly executed Thickening Charm. But when the ‘carpet’ shifted and when tails rose out of it, curling and dancing proudly into the air, he realised what the carpet was. He was glad he hadn’t stepped on any of them yet.
So, kneazles. This must be something. Think, think. Inhale. Oh, Merlin. Exhale! Tristan pulled the collar of his robes over his neck and nose to get a bit of untainted air. When his brain recovered from the sting of such strong olfactory impulses, he re-emerged.
If these felines were placed here to attack, they should already have done so before now. But all they did was make him wobble where he stood with all their curling and circling and rubbing on his ankles. The constantly shifting colour of bright fur was beginning to make him dizzy, yet he wouldn’t be so stupid as to close his eyes. Hiding inside his robes earlier had only been necessary for survival from the reek of the room.
A thought hit him. He tried its validity by moving toward the door on the opposite end of the room. Aha! His Hamelin-like congregation hissed as one. He immediately froze and then moved again on all directions to throw them off his intent. This calmed them and soon went back to rubbing all over his legs. If he was allergic to dander, he’d be wheezing to death now.
How would he ever reach that door? Could he levitate them all or levitate himself? But these buggers could leap and pounce better than an above-average cat, have you gone bonkers, Tristan? He nearly jumped at his own thoughts when he heard that in S.J’s voice.
If he so much as pinched one of the kneazles the wrong way, the rest would be his enemies, and kneazles are very bad enemies.
On the other hand, they were very good friends.
“Evocare bacinellas del latte.”
Bowls of milk broke the knee-high carpet into patches. Tristan saw then that kneazles weren’t immune to this treat.
***
The kitchen was bare. It could have been a dungeon with its darkness and dankness, save for the telltale counters, pot racks heavy with draperies of cobwebs and the great fireplace at the end of the room, which could have roasted a whole cow.
S.J looked around warily, his grip on the torches and his wand almost painful. Far from giving him a false sense of security, the silence was only driving him to obsessive suspicion. He waited ten seconds before making the least turn on the spot where he crouched, ready to duck, ready to run, ready to fire a curse, in that order.
Only when his thigh muscles began to tingle did he straighten up, wincing. His cramp would just make him all the more vulnerable if something pounced on him. But no, the kitchen was empty...
That was when he noticed it. Or perhaps the thing was actually spelled to appear only when the occupant of the room was in pain, S.J snorted. A piece of parchment lay flat in the dust and dirt in the hearth floor.
Still guarded, S.J approached the fireplace slowly. As he neared, candles long and short, fat and thin, wax and tallow, black and white and mauve, appeared one by one around the edge of the parchment, explaining why it lay flat.
He lowered the torch to the parchment, but took care not to light any of the candles. Calligraphy crossed and struck across the paper.
“How many obstacles to the chest?
Nothing of which you could jest!
But can you get there by candlelight?
Yes, and this path is truest.
Yes, if your mind isn’t full of fluff
And your feet are nimble and light,
You can get there by candlelight!”
S.J gaped at the parchment and then at the candles. So one of these would take him straight to the chest? But which one and how?
The writing on the parchment began to fade, and S.J frantically scanned it one last time, still coming up with no clue about which candle to choose. He dropped himself on the gritty floor to relieve his thighs and peered at the candles.
One immediately stood out. Plum blue, thick as his arm and standing up to his knees, it had been the candle he almost lit with his torch when he read the note. But any fool would surely take that one, and he mustn’t be a fool with this riddle. ‘...mind isn’t full of fluff.’
He should have taken Jules here. Aunt Hermione would know about...wishing candles! Wasn’t that in her last book? Ha! Good thing that he hadn’t taken Jules here.
Of course, he’d want nothing else than find the chest, there were no obstacles to wish dead here!
Wishing candles were rare. With it, one could go anywhere ‘by candlelight’, but it was the candle wax that did the magic, wax from candles left on graves of magical children who died in infancy. The wishing candles were a source of consolation to the grieving parents...a gift from their departed baby...
He wondered vaguely whose baby he’d have to thank later. But the wishing candle here was probably confiscated from some smuggler now in Azkaban. So, which one is it?
All the tall candles seemed brand-new. Why would he foolhardily take one of the stubby ones? He studied them, and let out a crow. He picked up the smallest candle. It wasn’t black at all, but gray from all manner of wax colours melting together. It wasn’t smooth either, but felt like several lumps lumped together, with a charred wick sticking out of one side, making it resemble a much bruised crab apple. How could he have been so stupid!
He stood up, pocketing his wand. He took a deep breath and then touched the wick of the wishing candle to the torch. It lit with a yellow flame above and blue below. A gust of wind arrived in the dank, boarded-up room, but the flame didn’t flicker the slightest.
‘...feet nimble and light...’
S.J bolted. But in his first step, a very odd thing happened that he stopped as if he ran headlong into the Diagon Alley barrier.
He was no longer in the kitchen, but in another room, where he was watching a...Was that Jules’s minx Patronus? Playing around the room chased by an acromantula? The giant spider turned its eight eyes on him...
S.J ran for it. One step and the spider room turned into a chamber writhed by fog. Another step and he was upside down with the high cobwebby ceiling like a chasm below him. Another step and he was in a room filled with potion vials and hourglasses. Another step brought him between two walls of black and gray flame. Another step and he vaguely caught a flash of Tristan’s vivid head bent over something on a table, his legs drowned in fur, for he was surrounded by kneazles. Another step and he was in a room with a moth-feasted four-poster bed. Another step and ” the bedchamber remained.
At the foot of the bed stood an ornate trunk, its wood warped, but its silver baroque handles and marquetry still gleaming with centuries’ worth of grandeur.
S.J didn’t know how long he stared, but it took the wishing candle’s spent wax pooling and hissing snuffed in his palm to shake him out of his shock. He jumped and picked the hot wax off his hand with wand.
He took a deep breath and made his first three cautious steps toward the chest. When nothing slithered out from under the bed, jumped out of the wardrobe, or seeped out of the trunk, he ran to it, pulling his key from a deep inside pocket of his robes, especially stitched there by Holly. The key matched the old stale silver of the trunk. And it turned the lock easily.
S.J jumped back, his wand pointed at the trunk. He allowed thirty seconds to pass and still nothing banged the unlocked door ajar. S.J kicked it open himself. After another ten seconds of waiting, he peered in at the contents.
He was almost disappointed. Almost.
***
Tristan stared at the trunk, all this Task’s memories and bizarre images (of his kneazles jumping on that acromantula and helping him sniff out which was poison and which was water in the potion room) wiped from his brain.
There was almost no light in the room save for his faint torch’s, but that was enough to make the contents of the chest blinding.
It was filled to the brim with diamonds, a white scintillating bed to a...a lump of brown clay shaped like a jackrabbit.
A note was pinned on the inside of the trunk lid, which was propped up by the bed.
‘Diamonds or clay? What would you have on your journey to glory?’
Rabbits were luck. But more than that, clay symbolised warmth. And this reminded him of what he lacked. Rather, what he coveted his cousins of since meeting them. Family. Family was, in many respects, like clay. It was warm, it kept you grounded and it gave you all the luck you need in the guise of love and support.
Would S.J and Jules even realise that? Or had they picked a handful of these diamonds instead? Tristan had to admit he was tempted with the stones, too. Diamonds represented triumph and prestige, but then he remembered his father and what he had lost because he had gone in pursuit of prestige.
He stood up and pocketed the jackrabbit.
***
“Tristan, come on up to our Common Room and let’s play Exploding Snap, hey?”
Tristan nearly jumped on his way out of the Great Hall. It was little Eleanor Weasley, now pelting to him from her lunch at the Gryffindor Table. Maynard and Miguel Potter soon followed.
“Sorry, no, Eleanor. Perhaps next time.”
He tried hard not to grit his teeth as one by one, all the Weasleys within Hogwarts made its way toward them.
“Come on, then, outside for a snowball war. You can’t say no to that, Tristan!” S.J said.
“In fact, I can. No. See you around.”
And without waiting to see their reactions, he turned and marched off past the entrance hall and out into the frigid night. He clutched his red robes around his neck tighter.
“You have homework? Maybe we can help you. Everyone’s in the Gryffindor common room, go on and join us.”
“Or you can come practise with me and Holly. We’re using the Room of””
“Why haven’t you extended that same invitation to me?”
“Because I’ll stand only one bossy female at a time, s’il vous plait.”
“I’m not enjoying this! I left you, need I be more blatant than that?” Tristan hissed.
S.J and Jules paused in their nicely warming up bickering and stared at him.
“What’s the matter? Why have you been avoiding us since the Task? I thought everything’s alright now.”
“You are being utterly optimistic and blind then, Fraulein Weasley.”
“You don’t talk to my cousin like that.”
“Lay off, S.J, he didn’t swear at me.”
“Oh. I forgot, sorry.”
In spite of himself, Tristan had to bite his cheek in to prevent himself from smiling. These people were just plain ” there was no other word for it ” charming. Wait, he was related to them.
“Look, all these...family things are just going too fast for me. I don’t think you should be this”this warm to me all of a sudden””
For once, Jules was speechless. S.J gaped at him. “Don’t you rather think we have some making-up-for-lost-time to do instead?”
Jules suddenly burst into a fit of giggles. Now Tristan joined S.J in gaping.
“You know how that sounded?” howled Jules.
Another second passed before it hit them. Tristan bit his cheek again. S.J’s mouth widened in a grin, which he quickly hid. “Right, c’est drôle, Froylan.”
Jules howled even more at this, doubling over and clutching her knees.
S.J rolled his eyes at her and turned back to him. “Look, I know what you mean. It’s like, you know, waking up and drinking your coffee, even though it’s bitter. You tell yourself that’s just how it should be, to wake you up for the day””
“Que?”
“Just something Holly mused about one day, and it’s good, so let me finish, all right?” S.J snapped.
“And then when you finish the coffee, you see the undissolved sugar crystals at the bottom of the cup. What a waste, right? You could’ve had it sweet, but you were too lazy to stir the cup, or just too decided about what you should have even though it isn’t what you want...”
S.J scowled at Jules, but the girl just beamed wider and slung her arm around his shoulder. This seemed to aggravate him more, the fact that she”a year younger”could do that. He gave up struggling and just scowled. “That was nice, Sirius James Potter! Your shining moment! Must hunt up Holly and tell her!”
Before S.J could let out his outraged retort at that, Jules turned to Tristan. “So, bitter or sweet? Diamonds or clay? We’re rather like diamonds, aren’t we? Or would you be like Uncle Percy?”
Tristan reddened at that frankness. Thankfully, S.J broke free of Jules’s headlock just then, relieving him of Jules’s unwavering gaze and giving him time to breathe and think. “You conceit! Must write Aunt Hermione and tell her!”
“Grow up, Sirius James Potter.”
“You wanna skinny-dip in your lake?”
Ah, he was beginning to like making them gape at him like this.
“Are you mad? You’ll catch your deaths! It’s January! A fine thing it would be to mark on your gravestones, ‘Triwizard Champions, Done in by Their Own Stupidity and Ague’.”
“Oh, go chinwag with Holly and the rest of your bossy kind, Jules”what, you wanna be disqualified, hexing a fellow champion?”
***
Jules stomped off to the carriage to fetch more scarves and sturdier gloves. The rest of her cousins were already at it in the snow, and they let fly at her when she passed”
"Que vous a causé être celui fâché?"
Jules didn’t realise she’d been scowling. Well, never mind, she must be grinning too widely now.
“Salut, Leontes. Mes cousins.” She rolled her eyes.
“Je veux vous demander””
She flew to his embrace and sank her face in his chest, inhaling his clean, masculine, delicious scent. “I think I know. And I think you know the answer.”
He kissed her hair ” oh my! ” and chuckled. “Bien, let us go then. I’ve always liked your cousins, and that’s a nice war they’re having there! I’ll go easy on you, though, I promise.”
Jules stared at him. Her face grew warm. He tried hard to keep his face straight and failed. And then she just joined him in his laughter. All would be well.
Author’s Note: The candlelight cantrip I adapted from Neil Gaiman’s Stardust~
My laptop where I do my compositions is under Shield Charm from the Internet, so I have no access to Latin, so I use Italian on my spells instead. ^_^ Oh, and the little French things at the end of this chapter are from the genius of Yahoo Babel Fish. I did my best to make sure I have the right translations, but if I’m still wrong, you know where the blame lies. On moi, oui.
Also, you might have figured by now as well that this story is told in unorthodox chronology. It’s tough, too! But I have my reasons. And they’re very worth it to me. Please tell me what you think. Thank you!