Chapter One: The Tuyau and the Thief

On August 30th, Conny was sitting in the departures lounge of the Calais Tuyau, reading the Daily Prophet while waiting for Jonmarc's parents to get off work.

MUGGLE PERPATRATOR IN MAGIC PAINTING THEFT DEBACLE

Conny's eyes widened and she turned her attention to the article, which was in the International News section of the paper.

The British Ministry of Magic today have received a statement from the French Ministère de la Magie concerning the apparently wizard-perpetrated theft of a painting from the La Galerie Fermée, Paris, on August 22nd, which to the surprise of the wizarding community, has been returned.

The man in question who returned the painting has been identified as a muggle by the name of Méprise Maufoi. The painting has been returned to the Gallery and Mr. Maufoi has been arrested by the Muggle authorities, pending trial for theft.

As for the nature of the theft, which was previously thought to have been carried out by magical means, a team from the French Ministère are carrying out a discreet investigation, though this is not expected to turn up any leads.

Well, Conny thought, at least the uselessness of the Ministry of Magic seems to be universal and not just contained to Britain. She carefully folded that piece of paper and stowed it in her pocket next to the scrap of cloth. Not that she was investigating or anything.

The large double doors opened on the other side of the departure lounge and Henry and Madéline Lucwitt strode in, Henry pulling Jonmarc's trunk behind him. They saw the DeHayersae family and waved warmly, coming over to sit with them.

"Sorry about that wait." Henry said in his booming American voice. "It's chaos at the Embassy- a hundred different foreign newspapers bayin' at the door."

"As eet always is." Madéline said tiredly. "It was a nightmare to get ze day off."

"So we ought to get going." David checked his pocketwatch. "Ah, we're up."

With a small whirring sound, the red lights above each of the hundreds of small holes in the wall turned green, and the population of the departures lounge collectively closed their papers and grabbed their briefcases. Conny followed her father towards holes 44 to 50. She'd used the Tuyau to get here, but it still turned her stomach to imagine having to use it again. Sighing, she tucked her top in and clambered into the hole.

"All witches and wizards are reminded to keep their hands and feet close to their bodies and carefully stow all loose effects before launching. Thank you for travelling on the Tuyau today."

This was of course in French, though Conny caught snatches of it, having been taught French twice a week by Jonmarc all of last year. She sucked in a breath and braced herself.

With a lurch, she felt her body being sucked through the tube. She didn't know exactly how the Tuyau worked, but it was basically a huge lattice of pipes below the Channel. Witches and wizards who couldn't or didn't want to apparate the distance from France to England took the Tuyau because it was convenient and quick- quicker than brooms, at least. The problem with apparating over an ocean is that bits of you tended to get lost, and when these bits fall into the water, there's no was of getting them back. The further the apparition, the higher the chance of splinching, and quite often people didn't want to take the risk.

The Tuyau was actually quite boring, but luckily it took no longer than five minutes to get from Calais to Folkestone. By the time she could see the light at the end of the chute, she was itching to stretch her legs.

Now, being lighter than the average adult by some twenty kilograms at least, the amount of force which pulled Conny through the chute was perhaps disproportionate to her size, and at the end, she popped out of the hole with a massive phwoop! Landing on her bottom, she grunted and dusted herself off, standing up. Surely there would be a bruise there tomorrow.

Beside her, Jonmarc burst out and landed with a similar kerplumpf on the carpeted floor and swore in French. David, Elizabeth, Henry and Madéline stepped out of their chutes with practiced ease and regarded Jonmarc, who still had his arse in the air. He scrambled up and went pink.

"Well, I rather enjoyed that." Henry said as the two families made their way out of the small building that housed the overground part of the Tuyau. "Damn shame they're closing it down."

David nodded. "Well, the muggles are starting to build a big tunnel in '88, so we have to go through the whole trouble of stopping service, caving it all in… sometimes the Statute of Secrecy is just plain irksome."

"Oh, trust me, you haven't heard the half of it." Henry said, "The French magical community are on the verge of revolt. There have been record amounts of muggle-baiting since Géderic announced it."

"It lost poor Millicent Bagnold a lot of popularity, too." David said.

"Not to take the muggle viewpoint," Elizabeth said, "But it's going to be a brilliant boon to the muggles of both countries."

David was about to grumble something about the fact that they weren't the muggles of both countries, but Elizabeth was. It had been hard for her, as a muggle allowed to know about the immense multifariousness of the wizarding world but unable to fully enjoy it. Then again, she loved David, and that was all that mattered.

"Thank god we can floo now." David said as they filed into a pub called The Warlock. He waved at the barman, a tall, dark fellow used to hundreds of wizards coming into his pub a day to floo from Folkestone to London. As was customary, David put three sickles per person into the jar on the mantelpiece and took a handful of floo powder.

"Diagon Alley!" He said, disappearing into the green flames. Conny hated using the Floo Network; she felt that wizards hadn't quite grasped the muggle idea that travel was meant to be relatively comfortable. She knew that carpets were meant to be must easier on the buttocks, but the Ministry had banned them two years ago, much to the anger of the wizarding community. David had owned a flying carpet, which he much preferred to a broom, before this change, and would gladly swear at Arthur Weasley and the meddling Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office if the subject arose in conversation.

Elizabeth and Madeline went together, because muggles couldn't Floo themselves. Henry encouraged the two children to go next.

"We ain't got all day." He said as Conny paused, floo power in hand, gathering her resolve.

Sighing, she stepped into the fireplace and said, very loudly and clearly, "Diagon Alley!"

With the disconcerting feeling of having your inner organs sucked out through your bottom, Conny disappeared in a flash of green flames. She tucked her elbows in and tried desperately not to be sick as she spun around faster and faster. Ash accrued on her nose and between her lips, an unpleasant taste, and with a juddering stop, she stepped out of the fire in the Leaky Cauldron, sneezing and coughing.

"Oh dear, Conny, you're covered in soot- here- evanesco!" David vanished the black off her clothes with a wave of his wand. Jonmarc stumbled out of the grate a second later, bumping into Conny and causing her to nearly fall over. They cleared a space and last of all, Henry Lucwitt strode out, brushing soot off his impressive mop of ginger hair. Jonmarc had once told her that he was glad that he had auburn hair like his mother, rather than ginger like his father. Conny agreed; it would be difficult telling him apart from Bill Weasley if that was the case.

"Right," Henry said as they strode into the back alley. "Aw, Dave, I just thoughta something. A year ago exactly we met you guys at this very spot, isn't it?"

"Why, I suppose so." David chuckled. "How time has flown, eh?"

"That's one truth." Henry said, smiling his lopsided grin. "Now… two up and three across from the trash can, right?"

"Dustbin." David corrected quietly. Some Americanisms just didn't sit well with him. "But yes, that's right."

Henry took out his wand- a long, thick, handsome mahogany baton with little stars on the handle, and tapped the correct brick. Before them, the wall began to rumble and slowly Diagon Alley was revealed in all its splendour.

Conny had been to Diagon Alley several times before, but it never failed to take her breath away. Today, with the summer sunshine arching down to dapple the long, sandy cobbled street, everything gleamed and glinted like fresh paint. Everywhere was packed, with witches and wizards swarming in and out of shops that sold everything imaginable, from Warts in a Bottle to broomsticks that broke the sound barrier. Ahead, Gringotts Wizarding Bank was dazzling, its white stones reflecting the sun like a giant diamond sculpture.

"C'est toujours belle." Jonmarc said under his breath.

"Isn't it just?" Conny agreed, her eyes drawn to a very familiar face running out of the crowd towards them. "Lucy!"

"Conny!" The tiny Egyptian girl launched herself into a hug. Behind her, two dark men that Conny recognised as her older brothers struggled to catch up through the crowd. "I didn't know you were getting school stuff today!"

"I would have sent you an owl, but I only found out we were coming yesterday." She answered as Lucy gave Jonmarc a hug too.

"Ah. Oh, these are two of my brothers." She pointed to the two men. "That's Jahnen, and the other is Ali. Alexi couldn't come- apparently he got into a bit of trouble for hexing some muggles who were using all his street's water for their kids' paddling pool."

Conny nodded, stopping herself from instinctively blanching away from the two tall, dark men. Jahnen was large and bulky, wearing a cloak so dark green that it appeared black unless the light hit it. Ali was thinner, but muscly, with thick, dark eyebrows almost concealing shifty eyes. He seemed to blot out the sun. They came up behind Lucy to flank her like bodyguards.

"What are you up to now, Lucy?" Jahnen asked, eyeing the DeHayersaes and the Lucwitts with suspicion.

"These are Conny and Jon, my friends, and their families." She explained. Conny saw that both Henry and David looked a little scared. Bravely, Henry held out a hand to the two brothers.

Ali took it and shook with a short, sharp motion that looked painful. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Ali Ra."

"Jahnen Ra." The men all exchanged handshakes with a strange tension.

"You can go now; if you give me the money, I can shop with Conny and Jon." Lucy said.

The brothers looked uneasy. "Don't you both have important appointments to keep?"

That seemed to get them. Jahnen deposited a bulging pouch of galleons into Lucy's hands and they bade her farewell, dissapparating on the spot. With their departure it was as though the sun had come out from behind a cloud.

Lucy seemed not to notice the effect that her brothers had on people, and happily started chatting, taking a scrumpled letter out of her pocket.

"Looks like we need The Illness of Iniquity: Diseases of the Dark by Doris Atremidus for Defence Against the Dark Arts this year."

Conny pulled her own neatly folded list out to confirm this. "Also, The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Two. And I need some more phials and potion ingredients. I've broken all of the first and used up all of the second."

"Same." Jonmarc said.

"I'd like to buy a school scarf." Conny asked her parents, who nodded. "And Bach needs a scratching post or he'll go insane when I'm at school."

"Your cat already uses my bed-posts." Lucy complained as they entered Flourish and Blotts. "One of these days the whole thing is going to collapse on me."

"I'm sure Polly and Anna will rush to your aid should that happen." Conny said lightly. She and Lucy shared a look; they both knew what Conny was talking about. The other three Ravenclaw girls in their year attended to Lucy like servants, and were grossly jealous of the true friendship that Conny and Lucy shared.

Lucy was everything that a girl could wish to be; she was pretty, smart and powerful. Everyone liked her, except maybe that Welsh git Ralphus Crymge. She could get away with nearly anything. All in all, Lucy had the potential to be the most popular girl at Hogwarts.

But Lucy Ra had a dark secret that very few of the students that fawned over her knew. Lucy's eldest brother, Khai, was serving life in Azkaban- for murdering their parents in cold blood. Lucy's brothers were hoping to use her as a link to the student population at Hogwarts when she was old enough. They were criminals. Drug dealers, arms smugglers- if it was outside the law, then the Ra Brothers did it. Conny felt sorry for Lucy. She herself had free choice as to what her future contained- Lucy didn't.

Still, all was happy for the time being.

They bought their books and then popped into Madam Malkin's to buy Conny's scarf. The blue and bronze of Ravenclaw felt very right to her now. Conny had not had the slightest clue which House she belonged to when she'd jammed the sorting hat onto her head last year, but she found that Ravenclaw suited her perfectly.

Conny stocked up on vials and potion ingredients at Tinkleman's Fragiles and Slug & Jiggers apothecary respectively. The group then split up, with The Lucwitts going to Gringotts to set up a savings account for Jonmarc, and the DeHayersaes and Lucy to the Magical Menagerie for a scratching post for Conny's cat, Bach. She owned an octopus, too, named Elgar. She'd used one of her father's school-day spells, Cephalosortia, to defeat the Death Eater Avery earlier that summer. It summoned an octopus from… somewhere. Usually someone was around to vanish them, but she'd kept Elgar because he'd fallen from the sky and knocked Avery out cold. Professor Killory had kept Elgar in a tank in her office, but he'd since been moved down into the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, into the corner next to the grindylows.

She picked out a small but sturdy scratching post for Bach, and they met back up with the Lucwitts at Leavenloaf's, David's favourite bakery. The smell of melting chocolate, rising pastries and loaves of freshly baked bread rolled in waves of olfactory pleasure out into the street, so you smelled Leavenloaf's before you saw it. Finus Leavenloaf, the owner, was a large, jolly wizard with no hair but a surprising blonde moustache that seemed to transcend the laws of physics. He bustled about behind the counter, and one could see into the bakery proper behind him, where several white-clad bakers manned an army of large ovens, or rolled baguettes, or charmed the chocolate into croissants. On display were fat, squashy currant buns that eyed customers shiftily through their tiny raisin eyes; millionaire shortcake that oozed caramel everywhere- edible medieval meringues, which at the moment were hosting a furious jousting tournament astride marzipan horses. Stacks of cookies, wobbling precariously, lined the walls, while doughnuts whizzed around like discuses.

They found a table out in the sunshine, though the trade-off was that they constantly had to duck the gingerbread horseshoes that a group of young wizards were trying to throw to land around a tall, thin pole atop which was a flag bearing the Leavenloaf emblem- the loaf and the rising sun.

The mothers munched through biscuits and coffee while the fathers enjoyed a pint. Conny, Lucy and Jonmarc flicked through Diseases of the Dark, examining what kind of material they would be covering with their new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. It seemed that they never stayed longer than a year, unfortunately- Conny had really rather liked Professor Killory, the Healer turned Psychomancer turned time-policewoman who'd taught them last year.

They ended up discussing Jonmarc's eyesight.

"Jon, trust me, I had your eyes last year- you need glasses." Conny was saying. Indeed, when she and Jon had switched faces to confuse Avery, she'd gotten a chance to see just how appallingly longsighted Jon was.

"I don't want zem." He said huffily. "I can do everything just fine, thanks."

"I'll fix it for you!" Lucy said, rolling her sleeves up and taking her wand out. Jon yelped and shielded his face.

"Don't." Conny lowered Lucy's wand with her palm. "That kind of magic is way beyond even you, Luce."

"Spoilsport." Lucy stuck her tongue out. "That's because it's healing, right?"

"Yup." Conny nodded. Healing was probably the most difficult magic there was, and you didn't want to get it wrong, or someone could actually die. Luke Niall, a prefect who Conny knew in Ravenclaw, had told her that in the older years you learned to do things like heal grazes and cuts or soothe headaches, but not more complex that that.

As the afternoon wore on, the two families finished their shopping and were soon back in the Leaky Cauldron.

"Now, Jonny, you'll be good this year for us, right?" Henry said, his hand on his son's shoulder. "You'll send owls as often as possible, yeah?"

"Yes, papa." Jon said, going red.

"And you'll not break your mother's heart by nearly failing Astronomy again, okay?"

"Yes, papa." He said, mortified. Conny could empathise; she found a trip to the Astronomy tower about as appealing as being eaten alive by flobberworms, and her grades reflected this.

"And you'll be good to Mr. and Mrs. DeHaich for us while you're staying with them?"

"Yes."

"All right. Well, son, have a great year." Henry gave him a hug, and Madéline then slobbered big, motherly kisses all over his face while hugging all the air out of his lungs.

"Tu vas me manquer!" she sobbed in French to her son. Jon, now almost puce with embarrassment (the whole pub was watching), shook her off just in time to breathe again. Jonmarc took a hold of his trunk and a couple of other bags that belonged to him and bid his parents a final farewell. Henry and Madéline Lucwitt disappeared into the fireplace with an eruption of green fire and would soon be on the Tuyau back to Calais, from which they'd apparate- probably to Amiens, and then to Paris, to break up the journey a bit.

Jonmarc looked thrilled to see them finally gone. David offered to help with his trunk, which was bulky and heavy, as they exited the Leaky Cauldron into muggle London to begin their customary trip home. For Jonmarc, who was a full-blood wizard, the London Underground seemed to be an inexhaustible source of puzzlement and interest. When they crammed into the Hammersmith & City westbound service, Jonmarc suddenly figured it out.

"Eet's like the Floo network!" He said excitedly, with a leaflet-sized map of the whole Underground on his lap. "Except, eet does not go to each fireplace, just each area of London. Ah, I understand!"

David looked vaguely amused, and continued to be so as they got off the tube at Shepherd's Bush and bundled into a taxi. When they arrived at Conny's house, it was late afternoon, and the sun was casting everything in gold light.

"So zis is your house." Jonmarc said as they stopped on the pavement next to her gate. "92 Poet's Place, Maplehill, Shepherd's Bush, London."

"You know where I live?"

"How else was I supposed to address letters to you?" Jon asked with his eyebrows raised. "You forget zat not everyone lives at the Embassy."

"True." She shrugged and the four of them went inside. David turned the lights on and Elizabeth set the kettle to boil.

"Jonmarc, I've put you in the spare room." David said kindly as he returned from hauling Jon's trunk up the stairs. Conny thought it curious that Lucy could sleep in her room whereas Jon could not. "Tomorrow you need to make sure you've packed everything. Do you have any laundry that you need doing?"

Jonmarc replied to the negative and thanked David before going up to the spare room. He and Conny spent some time in the kitchen perusing the Standard Book of Spells, Grade Two, while Elizabeth made a sausage pasta bake for dinner.

"Why is Lumos in here? We've already learned it." Conny noted, flicking through chapter one. "Oh- there are variations, like Lumos Maxima and Lumos Duo."

"I suspect they'll be harder." Elizabeth said from where she was frying onions. Despite being a muggle, Elizabeth knew a bit about spells, though was not able to perform them herself.

"Oh, look- Spongify is in here." Conny went on. "Professor Flitwick saved me from a broken nose with that when I first met him."

"How?"

"A suit of armour tripped me up when I was lost on the way to breakfast." Conny remembered.

"That doesn't sound very safe." Elizabeth said, much to Conny's amusement. Compared to the rest of her first year, that incident had been nothing.

"Conny, zere's Diffindo as well." Jonmarc said, pointing to chapter five. "I've always wanted to use eet on all Ralphus's clothes an watch 'is face."

"You're barmy, Jon, he'd kill you."

"It would be worth eet." Jon said darkly.

Conny gave him a look and he lost the murderous look in his eyes. Jon was the only Ravenclaw boy who wasn't part of Ralphus Crymge's gang, which consisted of Feol Achstin, Lawrence Stannis, Derek Mothley and Gil Lockhart. Conny now understood why the normal number of students of each gender in each house per year was five- a sixth simply disturbed the balance of things. It was nice of Dumbledore to accept Jonmarc when his parents had asked if their son could come to Hogwarts instead of Beauxbatons, but the difference in numbers didn't quite fit. As a result, Jon spent most of his time with either the Gryffindor Mark Arrit, or with the girls, a fact that he despised.

"Supper is served!" Elizabeth announced merrily, drawing her ever-hungry husband to the table quicker than apparating. The four of them tucked into the massive pasta bake, and soon had devoured the whole thing. Conny found herself in the odd position on explaining how a television worked a second time to Jon, who, while not quite as ignorant as Lucy, was still freaked out by it. They watched a documentary about World War II and then, exhausted, went to bed.