"Here she is, Ginny! She's back." Elisabeth got up from the chair where she had been stretched out reading and went to meet Gwen as Gwen walked across the garden to the house.
"Did you find enough of them?" Ginny called out cheerfully.
Gwen hugged her arms to her as she said quietly, "Yes, I got 32, that should be enough. We can start the potion tomorrow and then it can rest until Elisabeth and I are back, which should be during the proper moon phase to finish."
"You've been gone all morning. Did you have trouble?"
Gwen shook her head. "It always takes a long time to collect trollywollop eggs. That's why they are so expensive to purchase."
Ginny had reached where Gwen and Elisabeth were standing and said happily, "You don't know how excited Mum was that you know how to collect them. It should save us almost a hundred galleons, I think."
Gwen pulled a small blue sack from her pocket and handed it to Ginny. "I'm glad I could help. I used to collect potions ingredients for Father when I was little. He would pay me in chocolates."
Ginny laughed. "I can promise you a whole box of them. Are you hungry?"
Gwen smiled weakly. "A little. Did you eat lunch yet?"
Elisabeth opened the door to the kitchen and waited for Gwen and Ginny to catch up to her. "No, Mrs Weasley has been waiting for you, so do hurry up. I'm starved."
Ginny swept Gwen into the kitchen and when she saw her brother standing by the fireplace dusting off his robes, Ginny said cheerfully, "Hello, Bill. Have you come for lunch, too?"
Bill looked at his sister steadily and said, "Yes. Mum wanted me to help her again."
Mrs Weasley bustled in to the room, having clearly just realised that her son had flooed in, saying excitedly, "Bill! You are so early. You look tired, too. I was just saying to Arthur that they work you too hard at the bank. You really ought to take better care of yourself." She reached up to hug her son and then said, "It is nice to see you wearing robes for a change though, Bill. And without that horrible fang in your ear. Hello Gwen, dear, I'm so glad that you are back. Why don't you and Elisabeth sit down at the table?"
Bill extricated himself from his mother's grasp and said nothing as he slowly unfastened his travelling cloak and then asked, "When does Harry get here, Gin?"
Ginny took Bill's cloak and went to put it in the cloak cupboard saying, "Probably at three."
Elisabeth put her arm round Gwen and led her over to the table, which was laden with food. "There was an owl for you this morning, Gwen. I have it upstairs for you. Do you want for me to get it?"
Gwen looked up anxiously from the bowl she had been contemplating on the table and asked, "Yes, please, will you?"
Elisabeth nodded and turned away to go retrieve the owl. Gwen returned to staring at the bowl and tried not to look up when Bill sat down at the table across from her.
Mrs Weasley turned from the stove with a loaf of bread on a plate and asked kindly, "How did you get on finding the trollywollop eggs, Gwen?"
"I have 32. That should be more than enough, I think."
Mrs Weasley beamed at Gwen as she placed three slices of bread on Gwen's plate. "You were gone quite some time, dear. You must be hungry."
Gwen nodded politely and turned her attention to the food in front of her. She knew that Bill was looking at her, but she could not dare to look up at him.
"We will be sorry to have you leave tomorrow, Gwen. It has been a pleasure having you and Elisabeth to stay."
Gwen smiled lightly, "Thank you, Mrs Weasley. You have been very kind to have us."
"Nonsense. You are always welcome. Ginny dear, would you go and tell your father to come sit down to eat?"
Ginny, who had just re-entered the room, rolled her eyes at her mother and turned to go out again.
Alone with Bill in the room, except for his mother who was busy with the food, Gwen could feel his gaze upon her as she tried very hard not to look at him. She knew that there was no chance that she could keep her composure if she saw him – he was not good at hiding his emotions and she would know what he was thinking immediately.
Fortunately just as Gwen was beginning to feel as if she couldn't bear to hold out any longer, Elisabeth entered the room with the owl that had arrived for Gwen that morning. She stood up anxiously and took the owl from Elisabeth's hands and hurriedly opened it.
"Are you alright, Gwen? Here, sit down and read it." Elisabeth shoved Gwen into a chair and took the glass of pumpkin juice that Bill had just thrust over to her and pushed it into Gwen's hand. "Take a sip of juice."
Gwen dutifully took a small sip and handed it back, saying, "I'm fine. Really."
"What does it say, Gwen?"
"I don't know. I think it's bad, but I don't understand what the results mean."
Mrs Weasley, who was standing next to her with a concerned look on her face, held out her hand and said, "Let me look at it dear. You go on and eat something as I'm reading."
Gwen shook her head. "It is in French. She usually writes in Brezoneg, but the medical things are too complex for me in anything but French."
Bill, who was now standing next to his mother looking extremely haggard, took the letter from his mother's hand and perused it intently. After a moment he said slowly, "Your step-father did not react well to the first type of treatment they tried, but he has improved somewhat with this new spell. They are using some very unusual potions, one of which I don't recognise, but they seem to have a better plan now."
Gwen nodded and sat down again next to Elisabeth, who put her arm round Gwen and said encouragingly, "He is improving; that is promising, isn't it?"
Bill handed the owl back to Gwen with a warning look at his mother, who immediately understood Bill's message and quickly said, "Well, then, that is hopeful, isn't it, dear? Ginny come and sit down next to Gwen so we can get started. Hurry up, Arthur, come sit down."
Looking somewhat bewildered by his wife's sharp tone, Arthur sat down at the head of the table and took the platter that was being handed to him by his son. "This looks good, Molly."
"It will be getting cold if we don't start soon."
The lunch progressed slowly with an uncomfortably stiff conversation being carried on between Bill, Ginny, and Arthur Weasley and very little food being eaten by anyone other than Arthur. Bill, who had managed to sit directly across from Gwen, had not been able to catch her eye even once during the meal and had begun to worry that she was upset over more than just the owl from her mother. The letter had not given them any worse news than the one he had explained to her two nights before. As much as Gwen was very worried about her step-father's health, he felt that this could not be the only thing causing her to so uncharacteristically display her feelings publicly.
Bill looked over the table at his mother, who was trying very hard to converse with Gwen and Elisabeth about the felicity potion that they were going to make for the wedding. His mother seemed to have no more idea how to interact with Gwen than she had with Fleur. Of course he was aware that he was also completely out of his depth when it came to understanding Gwen, this had been clear to him from the very beginning. He suspected that he would always be running to catch up to her, much like he had done with Fleur. But there was very little about Gwen that was like Fleur and Bill was still not completely sure what had happened to place them where they were now.
He was pretty sure that they were actually married, since the volume of paperwork that he had filled out that morning at the Ministry was something one did not often add to one's fantasies, but there was very little about the event itself that had conformed to anything he had imagined. There was certainly nothing happy or hopeful about the way that the clerk had explained to them the fact that the marriage would be reported to French authorities, who might very possibly notify Breton officials.
Bill reached out to take another piece of bread, which was the only food that he felt he could manage, and turned back to the conversation that he had been trying to have with his father. But as Ginny talked about something that Harry had told her in one of his daily owls, Bill's attention wandered again to that morning. It had been hard to bear how preternaturally quiet Anders had been when Bill had flooed and asked him to be a witness. Of course Anders had come, but Bill had been aware that Anders did not think that Bill was making a good choice. The three of them had hardly talked as they had awaited their turn to enter the small blue room where Ministry marriages were officiated.
Avoiding looking at Gwen as he chewed a mouthful of dry bread, Bill allowed himself to reflect on her appearance that morning. Gwen could not have looked less English as she had sat on the chair in the stuffy little office, holding her hands tightly in her lap. Her normally long, straight black hair had been fiercely braided into a large, twisted bun and a schoolgirl's small, stiff lace coiffe placed on the top of her head with long white streamers tucked behind her ears. Her robes had been black and heavily embroidered and the only piece of jewellery that she had worn was a small silver bracelet with a large black cross that dangled from it. Nevertheless, Bill had thought her the most stunning witch he had ever seen and had been unable to keep from gazing at her in a way that upon reflection must have made Anders very uncomfortable.
Bill responded automatically to something that his father said as he worked to keep his eyes focussed away from Gwen. She was clearly desperately unhappy. Possibly she was wondering why she had decided to throw away her family, her entire culture, and her legal rights as a witch to live with him at some unknown date in the future. The wizards whose proposals her family had presented to her must have been an incredibly grim lot for her to be willing to choose what little he could offer her over a marriage to one of several very wealthy, prominent Breton warlocks.
Bill realised suddenly that everyone at the table had got up. Ginny was helping to clear the table and Elisabeth was talking to Gwen, who looked very pale and drawn. Bill stood up clumsily and grabbed up his plate as he watched Gwen slip out of the room to go upstairs. Allowing his eyes to linger too long on the door through which she had disappeared, Bill then turned about to see his father looking at him with sad eyes. Sending his plate to the sink with a wave of his wand, Bill nodded to his father and shoved his hand in his pocket to feel for his silver sand needle case. Waiting until he had followed his father into the study so that his mother would not see, Bill pulled out the case and dropped a very large pile of needles on the concave surface of the lid and tapped the edge of the lid with his wand.
