He stood very still in front of the small wooden mirror and stared intently at his reflection. The person who had looked out from the mirror for almost thirty years had once been someone that he could recognise. Pale freckled skin, wide blue eyes, slightly long nose, and very red hair – he had always known who he was and once it had made him smile to think how the close family bonds extended even to physical characteristics.
Bill turned his face away from the mirror and leant against the old chest of drawers with a grunt of exhaustion. He had no desire to continue to live as he had for the last year. He did not want to completely give up on what had once been a promising future. His sanity had been tenuous for a few months after losing his wife and brothers, but at least he no longer had trouble with differentiating reality from fiction. He had not lost his entire family and those that remained were closer than ever before. There was a life for him if he wanted it.
As he drifted towards the large walnut wardrobe in the corner of the room, avoiding the large gilded mirror on the far wall, Bill rubbed the sore place on his chest that was still covered with protective gauze. Kent had probably been right that it would be a mistake to have a rune that personal and not practical, but it was already done and the spell was permanent. Collecting a cloak and his favourite boots from the wardrobe, Bill sat on the edge of the bed and breathed out a long sigh of fatigue.
"Your hair looks fine, Gwen, honestly. How many times do you need to brush it up? We're going to miss the coaches if we don't hurry."
Without even turning around to respond to Ginny, Gwen moved nearer to the mirror and smoothed down the sides of her hair, which had been twisted and braided into a complex, traditional style. As Gwen raised her wand and spoke aloud the hair-fixing charm, Elisabeth turned her head and answered Ginny testily, "We have at least 10 minutes, Ginny. Do you think that I should change my jumper? Don't you think that the green one would look better?"
Ginny flopped down on the edge of Elisabeth's bed and twirled her wand absently as she responded, "No, not green. Thomas was a Ravenclaw, so he'll like the blue anyway."
Elisabeth nudged Gwen away from the mirror and turned around nervously to check her outfit again. Gwen shrugged her shoulders and seconded Ginny's statement, "You look heaps better in blue, darling. Where is Thomas meeting you?"
"Right where the stagecoaches leave us. He is afraid for me to walk round Hogsmeade without him. He swears that the aurors arrested someone by mistake last week."
Both Gwen and Ginny snorted with laughter and Ginny asked teasingly, "How does he think he is going to protect you - is he going to duel with an auror?"
Elisabeth's cheeks turned slightly pink as she fastened her cloak round her shoulders. "I think it's sort of sweet."
Gwen added knowingly, "More likely it's because he knows he has a rival."
Elisabeth stalked to the door and with a very red face said only, "I don't know what you mean. Hurry up, let's go."
Both of her friends followed her as she rushed out of the dormitory and through the common room to the portrait hole. As they got to the bottom of the stairs they began to run through the hall as they could see that there were only a few first year students to be seen. "Did we miss them? They haven't left, have they," Elisabeth asked in a panicked voice.
Ginny stopped short as they exited the front doors when she saw the line of filled stagecoaches outside the gates. "Hardly. They're still queuing to get in the last few. We'd better try for the last one."
Gwen tapped Elisabeth on the back with the tip of a dark rosewood wand and performed a warming spell on her and then repeated the spell on herself as she asked, "You want one, Ginny?"
"Yeah, might as well. How do you get yours to last so long?"
Gwen tapped Ginny's back and spoke several strange words aloud and then answered, "It is a Breton spell. They use a slightly different focus than either the standard Hogwarts or the colloquial English versions. You can't do it if you don't speak Brezhoneg, though. You have to mean the words."
Elisabeth climbed into the coach first and then Ginny stepped in. After they had both entered they gave their hands to Gwen and pulled her up so that she could climb inside. Ginny leant back in her seat and said in a sing-song voice, "If we had gotten here earlier we could have gotten into one of the two coaches with the low stairs."
Gwen made a face at Ginny and did not answer. She tucked her hands under her cloak and waited for Elisabeth's usual joke about short, French witches. When Elisabeth didn't speak, Gwen turned her head and asked, "Are you really that nervous, Elisabeth? You look perfect. You know Thomas will fall all over himself trying to please you."
Ginny slid closer to where Elisabeth was sitting and patted her hand, "Is it about Aurelius?"
"I told him that I don't want him to talk to me anymore. I meant it when I told him, but now I'm not so sure. What if I'm making a mistake? Thomas is so sure and steady and all of those things, but Aurelius is just so much fun. If only he weren't so irresponsible."
Gwen looked Elisabeth in the eye and said gently, "But he is, dear. He is loads of fun, yet he wants everyone else to do his work for him. You've said it before that he never knew how to be there for you, but that Thomas always knows just what to do."
Ginny nodded vigorously and added, "Which bloke really makes you happy?"
Elisabeth shook her head and murmured unhappily, "I don't know. I really don't know. I should just make a decision and stay with it, but even though I think Thomas is the right one I still wish it were Aurelius."
Gwen and Ginny both nodded and Gwen held out her handkerchief to Elisabeth, who took it quickly and began to blot her face. Elisabeth blatantly changed the subject asking, "Is it just Bill who is meeting you there?"
Ginny sighed and responded carefully, "Yes. Bill is going to meet both of us at the Horn-tailed Dragon. He is going to stand us some lunch and then take us to purchase some more potions supplies for our special projects. He got a temporary permit for limited Epidex level supplies, since Gwen needs Eustacian Ieucharia leaves and I need Uralic webworms."
"Oh that's lucky. You should have told Cassiopeia that you could purchase Epidex level, because she's desperate to get some Jaune Fleur Ouvrant Oxalis."
"Well we can't just purchase anything. It's a limited permit for only the Ieucharia and the webworms."
"I see. That's nice of Bill though. My brother wouldn't come all the way down to Hogsmeade just to get me some supplies."
Ginny shrugged and said, "Bill is just like that."
All three girls suddenly clung to the handles on the inside of the door as the stagecoach lurched to a sudden stop. Ginny rubbed her shoulder, which had jammed into Elisabeth's side and asked, "Ugh, why do we always get the thestral who can't brake properly?"
Elisabeth giggled and quickly opened the door and hopped out of the stagecoach. Ginny also jumped out and waited for Gwen to grab her hand before helping Gwen down. Ginny patted Gwen's head, saying, "Midget," and then, after receiving an unimpressed glare from Gwen, turned to watch with amusement as Elisabeth raced over to where Thomas Dowdie was standing. "I don't think that there is any real question, do you?"
Gwen followed Ginny's gaze and agreed, "No, I think it will be Thomas. Aurelius Beaucharme was exciting. He is from an old family and is one of the best beaters that Slytherin has produced in a decade. He'll be a brilliant professional quidditch player, but he made a horrid boyfriend. She knows it, too."
Ginny linked her arm with Gwen's and added, "At least he knows what he's lost."
"Well how could he not know? He likes brunettes and she's one of the prettiest brunettes in our year, don't you think?"
"Well Thomas Dowdie certainly agrees with you."
"Yes he does. I hope your brother doesn't mind, but I'm going to eat my way through three lunches, I think."
"He won't care. He eats enough for four wizards. Except…did I tell you that he is sort of funny about his meat?"
"No. What do you mean?"
"He won't eat it if they've cooked it too far."
"Well that isn't so odd. You English seem to think that you need to cook your beef until it falls apart. It is disgusting."
Ginny's face twitched suddenly and she looked almost as if she had hurt herself for a moment. "Yes, I have heard that said before."
Gwen understood that she had said something wrong, but knew that it was better not to ask about it, so the two friends walked up the Hogsmeade High Street in silence. As they walked past what a charred and crooked sign declared had once been the location of Zacarias' Zapateria, both girls huddled a little closer to one another. When they passed another deserted storefront with boarded windows covered with Wanted posters, they saw a pair of aurors walking towards them on patrol. Gwen averted her eyes as they hurried past the couple, one of which was a girl that she had vaguely known at school. She had heard that Mildred had married Ereban the month after they had left school, which had been fortunate since Ereban had been killed only a few weeks after the wedding. Gwen thought unhappily that at least Mildred had gotten a few weeks with him before she had lost him. Too many young witches and wizards had rushed to marry out of fear that there was not enough time to wait. Far too often they had been proved right.
Gwen looked at her friend surreptitiously and considered Ginny's family. One Weasley brother had lost his wife and another had been killed, leaving a widow. Neither marriage had lasted more than four months. Gwen could not keep her mind from thinking how incredibly different Ginny's and Elisabeth's families were from her own. Of course English law was different, too. Ginny could even marry a muggle if she wanted and her family would have no recourse. Gwen felt a twinge of anger and frustration as they approached the door to the Horntailed Dragon.
"Bill said he'd wait at one of the back tables."
The door was opened by a short, Hungarian wizard wearing a bright green hat, who gestured that they should enter ahead of him. Both girls thanked him and quickly slipped inside out of the high wind and cold. Almost immediately Gwen saw a wizard in the far back left with the right shade of red hair. "Right, isn't that he?"
Ginny craned her neck to the side to peer in the direction that Gwen had nodded. "Yeah, come on."
Gwen followed Ginny back to the table and watched as Bill Weasley sharply stood up and pulled out the chair next to him for his sister and moved to pull the one across from him out for Gwen.
"Hi Gin. Hello again Miss Gurley. You two look cold."
Ginny jumped up to hug her brother's neck and said with a laugh, "That is because the wind was practically blowing us down outside."
Bill slid Gwen's chair in after she sat and then waited for Ginny to sit before he did the same for her. As Bill settled into his own chair, steadily regarding the menu in front of him, he heard both his sister and her friend speaking. Ginny asked nervously, "Did Harry give anything to you?" as Gwen very quietly said, "Please do call me Gwenaëlle. Ginny's one of my best friends. We needn't stand on ceremony if you like."
Bill smiled in response to Gwen and nodded as he pulled something out of his pocket. "You wouldn't be asking about this, I suppose, Gin?"
Ginny squealed with delight, "Thank goodness. He promised he'd get it for me. Professor Amitra will be too impressed that I've got a copy."
Gwen, who knew all about the little book that Ginny had browbeat Harry Potter into procuring for her from unnamed sources, merely smiled shyly at Bill and perused a list of very English food and tried to make a selection. "Thank you for offering to help us with the Epidex supplies, Mr Weasley. That's incredibly kind of you."
Bill, with an affectionate side glance at his sister, who was flipping excitedly through the little white book that he had handed her, said seriously, "It's Bill and you're welcome. I had to wheedle an uncle into getting my seventh year project supplies. Mum wouldn't let Dad buy them for me because she was too sure I'd blow myself up."
Gwen nodded and added, "My mother doesn't think that NEWT level potions is very appropriate for a young witch and it was only through my step-father's intervention that I even took the class this year or last year. I didn't dare ask my family for help with my project."
Ginny looked up from her book and said, "They're not at all interested in her education."
Bill looked quite surprised, since his former experience with French Wizarding families was quite contrary. Fleur's family had been extremely vocal about equity in education for witches. Even the oldest French families usually insisted that the witches in their families were educated at least as well as the wizards of lesser families.
Gwen coloured slightly as she reproved her friend, "They are interested, Ginny. My mother merely holds very traditional Breton ideas about which subjects are appropriate for me to learn."
Bill looked up from his menu sharply and then quickly down again. She was Breton. That explained…actually that explained almost everything. If even half the stories were true that he had heard about Breton wizardry and the truly archaic traditions that surrounded a very old culture and protected the secrets of some very ancient magic, then Bill was amazed that Gwen had even been allowed to study at Hogwarts. He knew that her mother had remarried shortly after being widowed, but how had Gwen's real father's family been willing to allow their daughter to be educated in the midst of English culture? The Breton were viciously xenophobic, even to 'lesser' French regions.
"Well they aren't concerned about what you want to learn anyway, Gwen. Is anything good here, Bill?"
Bill, who had dropped the menu on the table, said only, "The beef is very rare," and gazed around the restaurant looking for the waitress, who seemed to be somewhat uninterested in serving their table.
