Chapter 4: Chapter 4
It was time for Giselle to meet the everyone, and she had to get into the mindset of a 15 years old person more than anything. Not only her words needed to sound younger, but her whole demeanor had to change, the way she moved, the way she put herself for others to see. Thankfully years of training as a spy made Giselle able to act, after all, for a while, her life and the life of other people depended on it.
Mrs. Weasley got her by the elbow and walked in the direction of another room where it was possible to hear a song being played on the piano. Overall the old house was really creepy, it might have been the dust and spiderwebs all around the high dark ceiling, but mostly there were a lot of small noises that could be heard, some doxies probably inhabited the place since it was vacant from its owners.
They stopped in front of a dark wood portal that lead to the piano room. It was an ugly room - like most that they passed through the halls – it was possible to see that it was once supposed to be a drawing room, where people gathered after having a formal dinner, to have cocktails and listen to the women playing the piano. It had a faint mold smell that permeated the environment, and the flower wall paper with the curves of baroque furniture all around, made the scene look even more picturesque. A bushy haired girl was playing a soft tune on the piano, a bunch of red hairs were sat on the floor talking... For Giselle, it was like she was crashing a very weird family moment.
"Hello everyone, I would like you to meet Giselle. She'll be staying with us, and she will be joining you at Hogwarts this year."
Molly Weasley started introducing all the people present to the new girl, who was taking notes on her head about all of them, while smiling brightly.
Fred and George sounded absolutely fantastic from what she read about them in their files; their creativity had no limits and it was already possible to tell that the fact that one could finish the other's sentence was something that they could drive any sane person to madness.
Ginny (note to self: remember not to call her Ginevra) looks like a girl with a lot of raw power, not only her magic, but the fact that she is astonishing beautiful and had being raised being the only girl in the family, gave her an aura that said "you don't want to mess with me".
The youngest male Weasley, Ron (do not call him Ronald) seemed to like me. Not sure though if he paid any attention to the few words she said, but the overall impression is that he can be really sensitive to veelas, that Giselle needed to apply an extra layer of glamour. In resume: his face got as red as a beet.
Hermione Granger (not going to call her Mione, the girl has a Shakesperian name!) is the muggleborn in the Golden Trio; but looking at her I could see her true colors. The girl had the aura coloring and energy levels of a Beltane daughter; she might have been adopted and raised by muggles, or her father might have taken part in one of the ceremonies. It's important information that should be kept secret, after all, it was not worth the possibility of ruining her relationship with her family. She has smart eyes; and I think she'll be a great company for me, after all she's the brains of the Golden Trio.
Harry Potter, the really important guy wasn't there yet. Dumbledore mentioned in passing to Molly something about him having to stay in his muggle family house to keep the old magic up.
Molly proceeded to inform the kids - which now included Giselle - that the meeting would finish in about half an hour and then everyone would gather in the kitchen to have dinner. At that moment, Dumbledore entered the room in search for Molly, he twinkled his eyes at Giselle as if to say, "Sorry dear, but you won't know what goes on here". The girl only reaction was to raise one dark eyebrow at him and smile. Fawkes - his phoenix - was inside, which meant that Giselle was inside.
You see, being a member of the older magical family line in existence granted the Le Fay lineage some peculiarities. Being a metamorphogus was one of them, as it was having veela blood – which according to some in the family, it was more of a curse than a gift – the ability to talk to animals was another of the peculiar things that was possible for the Le Fay's to do. For obvious reasons, the conversation was made through something close to legimency, as it occurred inside the mind of both parties, the human, however, could talk out loud and expect an answer from an animal inside their head. But of course, it could not be any kind of animal, the gift was only possible with essentially magical animals, like unicorns, magical owls, doxies, hippogriffs and of course, phoenixes.
It is believed by a lot of magical folk that, the magic that circles through witches and wizards veins it is the magic that infuses all the other living things, that human beings, are the first source of magic. But that's not true, humans were the last receptors of magic, it came from animals, plants, but mostly from the earth. That only means that humans are embedded with earth magic, and some, that have a higher connection with it, or search for a higher connection with nature, will be those with a better chance at becoming successful in the different fields of magic.
The Le Fay's were one of the first families to get in touch with magic. It came from the nature to our body, infusing the blood of the family with the purest form of magic. At the time, some of the families blessed with the gift went crazy and killed their entire line because they believed the magic was devil's work; others exposed their magic and were haunted by non-magical people; some dedicated their life to understanding magic and what made them be chosen to bear it, and forgot about family and continuity. They died without heirs. Those were different days, and life expectancy was not that high, and one day, the Le Fay's were the only family to survive.
Ever since the beginning, the Le Fay family dedicated time to research and catalogue all information possible about the lineage and the powers they received. The first note that it's possible to find, is about the Beltane's eve where the six Le Fay sisters could feel the power of magic emanating from earth. As its common for the festival, fertility was the main goal, fertility of the earth, to provide the community where they lived with a good year. From what it's written, the sisters felt more than the average power surge on that night. They knew that something big was going to happen, and while they drank the wine cultivated on that earth and ate the food provided by the same earth, they got pregnant with their offspring's in a ceremony dedicated to the Gods, magic started to grow inside them. It's believed that the fairy people, mythological beings that lived in the forest nearby, came out of their houses and blessed those who were joining in the ceremony. Some diaries of the original Le Fay sisters describe the feeling of being one with the earth and the skies, that for no apparent reason other than magic, shined brightly on that Beltane night. During their breeding period the babies where sending magic to their mothers, and that's how their progenitors became infused with this unexpected power.
The first generation of the Le Fay gave birth to numerous witches and wizards conceived during the festival of Beltane, between all the sisters, around 35 different magical babies were given away for other people to raise them. They felt deep within themselves that that was the right thing to do. After taking part in a few celebrations of Beltane, the sisters settled and formed their own families, some were barren after giving birth to many kids, and some gave birth to new magical babies and continued their family line.
Those who are today considered purebloods are descendants from those first children, born in Beltane directly from my ancestors. Now they are called "Sacred Twenty-Eight", some of the kid's lineage did not went through. Some died in childhood as it was common back then. Obviously, their blood is mixed since the beginning, their fathers were just random people that took part on the festivities. The reality is that they consider themselves purebloods due to the fact that they are descendants of what it's called the first magical generation.
That means that all magical humans are descendants of the Le Fay family. That obviously includes the most famous member of the family, Morgaine Le Fay. At a certain point in time, while magic was less spread throughout the world, that knowledge was passed to anyone with magical blood in their family. The Le Fay were the original family, and they were the ones that gave humankind the gift of magic, with that, came a high ground of respect for the family name, that became intertwined with people's magic. In the beginning, while spells were being created and vows were made back and forth, all wizard families swore allegiance to the Le Fays, but it wasn't a simple oath of honor, it was a demonstration of magical respect and at some degree, obedience, to those responsible for magic. At the time, however, no one fully understood the power of magical oaths and how it can become, quite literally, a part of someone's magic. And ever since then, all magical human folk, whether they know it or not, have this magical oath to the Le Fay's running on their veins.
For Giselle, the last living member of the Le Fay family, that could mean to be treated either like royalty, or having the risk of being kidnapped for experiments. It also meant that her powers were naturally stronger than everyone else in the magic world. The family was "purer" than the others because the sisters were the chosen vessel to carry magic to the world, so all magical capability was fused into them, as well as all the power behind the oaths sworn to the family line. That could mean really different things in distinct situations, but mostly, any kind of wrongdoing or mauling to the family would incur in a kind of debt. During all its existence, the Le Fay family studied their traits and after a while, a few of them became well known between the magical community, and some only within the family.
This huge digression about magical origins in human beings serves to make it simple to understand why Giselle knew that she had the possibility of getting to know everything that went inside the Order's meeting. The only difficult it would be to conquer the trust of a familiar, after all, their loyalty lies with their owners, to whom they are bonded to. Phoenixes, however, where known to be less of a regular familiar, since they would life their lives in cycles of rebirth.
Fawkes was a particularly old phoenix, Giselle discovered when she got a mental message from the bird. Usually, the older the familiar, the harder it would be to gain their trust, especially to convince them to betray their bonded trust; but with phoenixes that meant that they had had many familiars, and over the years, they chose with whom they associated with. At some point in the past, Fawkes was the familiar of a Le Fay, and the affection and respect for the family was still present in the bird's memory. That's how Giselle got a moment by moment of the meeting with a hefty load of sarcastic comments made by Fawkes delivered right into her mind, which included a protection plan for a prophecy that was hidden inside the Department of Mysteries. According to Fawkes, the plan was to have someone guarding the door at night. To Giselle satisfaction, the bird agreed that it sounded like a stupid idea: placing someone by themselves to guard a door against people who had no qualms about killing people would probably just end up in death.
After tying to listen to the meeting using the Extendable Ears developed by the twins, all younger residents of the house were invited to join the Order in the kitchen for dinner. Mrs. Weasley was being helped by a weird ancient house elf called Kreatcher, who was beyond honored to serve the Le Fay girl, even though he let the disappointment in her company really transparent.
The dinner table was set for the large number of people in the house, with the exception of Professor Snape, McGonnagal, Mad-Eye-Moody and Kingsley, who had previous affairs and couldn't stay. Giselle was starving. The meal was served, and she sat between Ron and Hermione. Right in front of her sat Sirius Black, the dark man with a charming smile that got fame by allegedly killing 13 people including one of his best friends in front of a bunch of muggles, a story that was contested by the Boy-Who-Lived and confirmed by Dumbledore when Giselle asked him about it while in the headmaster office in Hogwarts.
Sirius Black was an innocent man, but he didn't look innocent at all. He was hot, in a "I'm going to take you always in my motorcycle and do things to you that will make you shiver" bad-boy hot kind of guy. The kind of man that probably knew how to make a woman feel pleasures beyond imagination. As this line of though went through Giselle's mind, she involuntarily let an exclamation leave her mouth.
"Merlin…"
"Is everything all right Miss Le Fay?"
"Call me Giselle, please…" She said smiling at his deep black eyes. "Yes, sure Mr. Black, I just remembered something..."
Gisele just remembered that her cover included posing as a 15 years old girl, and as she had no desire to get into any relationship with someone who's younger than her own real age, besides the fact that it would be illegal to do so. How the hell was a sexually active women supposed to find someone older than me outside the Order? Who's would be willing to have sex with a 15 years old girl? Even though she knew that she looked more like a 17 or 18 year old hot girl (after all, if you can transform yourself, you better look good). Any interest in her in that shape would be, like, pedophilia... Well, shit... her sex life is destined to failure, or muggles?
"So, what classes are you going to take?"
"Well, from what the Headmaster told me there are some subjects that are kind of mandatory, so I'm taking all of those."
"Oh yes! Defense against the Dark Arts, Transfiguration, Charms, Potions and Herbology". said Hermione "and are you taking any extra classes?"
"Do you play quidditch?"
"Ron! We are talking something serious here!"
"Well, I never tried playing quidditch, we don't really have it in Avalon, I certainly can fly but I don't really know how well I would do flying for sport... As for extras, I asked for Ancient Runes and Aritmancy..."
"Oh, we are together on the same classes then! I've been on Ancient Runes and Aritmancy classes since my third year!"
"When she used a time-turner and didn't tell anything about it to Harry and I.."
"Well, they did save me from being kissed by the dementors, as well as saving Buckbeak from execution..." said Sirius with a small grin
"Buckbeak?"
"Yes, the hippogriff that lives upstairs" Gisele must have looked dumfounded, because Sirius looked at the kids and said in a low grave voice "You didn't warn her that there's a hippogriff living upstairs? What if she opened the door of his room and was attacked?!"
"Sirius, you know that Buckbeck would not attack someone without reason." it was Arthur Weasley's answer.
"Come on, it's not simple as that and you know it! The girl could simply react badly when finding him! You saw the look on her face when I told about him..."
"Wait! You think that I'm scared of a hippogriff?" they all looked at the girl as if she suddenly grew feathers. "I was just dumbfounded that you locked a hippogriff inside a house, that's criminal behavior. He should be able at least to fly free once in a while, otherwise he can have a wing problem in just a few months and get unable to fly well! That's torturing the poor animal."
"So, you are not taking Care of Magical Creatures as a class?"
"No.I already finished my study on magic animals. It's one of the first subjects that you start to learn in Avalon, because it helps you to connect more with magic..."
"So, it could be one subject to take and ace all the tests! You would be the best in class!"
"Ron!" exclaimed Hermione.
"What?! It's just using her knowledge to her advantage!"
"But doing that she wouldn't learn new things, right?" Hermione inquired the new student.
"Kind of... Of course, I could learn something new, you always can… But I already have a lot of knowledge on the matter, I would only bore my classmates do death if I wanted my questions answered... I prefer to talk with the teacher outside class, if he or she is approachable..."
"Oh! It's Hagrid! He's our friend!" Ron said
"Yes, sometimes we go down his cabin to have tea, you should join us!"
"Sure, sounds great." Giselle turned back to Sirius "You should really let Buckbeck loose on the back garden at least once a week, or even let him there during the day. I'm sure there are spells that can be placed so he won't fly away".
The talk kept going while everyone ate the delicious food Mrs. Weasley prepared. Food was a perfectly baked meat and dark beer pie, mashed potatoes with the meat sauce, it was basically British comfort food, and Giselle put a note to herself to ask Mrs. Weasley for the recipe. The meal was finished, and the day had come to an end... Hermione took Giselle to hers and Ginny room, which was quite small for the three girls to share.
An improvised mattress was conjured by Mrs. Weasley before dinner and placed in between the beds. As they weren't expecting another girl, there was no need to clean another room in the old house. There were doxies living everywhere, so it was more practical just to lock them in the rooms that were not in use. Next day, when everyone was rested, it would be a cleaning day in order to add an extra room to the functionality of the house.
