Note: I hope you'll forgive the less-than-stellar French; I happen to be bilingual, but Paris, last I heard, was no where near Madrid, so… yeah. Thank Merlin for Babelfish.
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Chocolate Cake and Fruit Cocktails
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the
more you see the less you know
the
less you find out as you go
I knew
much more then than I do now
(city of
blinding lights, u2)
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"I've half a mind to send you to your room without any supper tonight, boy!" Vernon Dursley roared by way of greeting as his nephew came into the kitchen and walked straight to the sink. Aunt Petunia, who had been putting the rolls in a basket, backed away from Harry, looking as if a dump truck had just emptied its load at her feet.
"You reek, boy," she said primly. "Go bathe. Now."
Harry hesitated with his hands still under the running tap. "But – Aunt Petunia, I – "
She rolled her eyes. "Fine. Eat in the kitchen, then," she said, thrusting a plate towards him. It had already been filled, if that word could even be used; a fatty sliver of steak, seven skimpy string beans, and the burnt bottom-half of a roll without butter. Harry couldn't help but make a disgusted face as he took it and turned around; this was even worse than usual. "Have you finished the fence yet?"
Harry put his plate down on the counter and leaned against it, picking at the beans with his fork. "The first coat is done, but I still have a few feet left to go of the second," he answered, raising his voice a little so it would carry through to the dining room.
"Why, you lazy little wretch! Our Dinkydums could've had that done by noon! And don't you yell at me when you answer, horrible boy. I'll have no one raising their voice in my house!" Aunt Petunia shrieked back.
Harry thought pointing out that she'd just yelled at him might not really ameliorate the situation, so he just heaved a silent sigh and popped a bean in his mouth. It was tough and flavorless, and squeaked in an almost rubbery manner against his teeth. He pulled a face, but swallowed. "Yes, Aunt Petunia. I'm sorry, Aunt Petunia."
That was his newest strategy with the Dursleys – think all the nasty thoughts about them he wanted, but to their faces behave meekly and subserviently. So far, it was a relative success – prior to the confrontation in the front garden this afternoon, the Dursleys had mostly treated him with a mild sort of disinterest, like a stray dog or unwanted houseguest.
"You'd better be!" Uncle Vernon growled as his wife offered Dudley another helping of mashed potatoes. "Thanks to your dawdling, our food is positively frigid!"
As Harry had just burnt his tongue on a bite of the steak, he really couldn't have replied for a moment, anyway – but it was all for the better, for had he had the power of speech at that moment, he probably would've only incurred more Dursley wrath.
"I'm sorry, Uncle Vernon," he said as evenly as he could once he could move his tongue without pain again. "I was distracted. Did you know they sold the house across the street?"
"So quickly?" Uncle Vernon muttered. Harry could hear the scrape of a chair against the floor and then the clicking of heels. He chanced a glance out into the dining room just in time to see Aunt Petunia part the lace curtains just a crack and look out. "That place is such a dump, too, compared to our Number Four. Really, the property values on Privet Drive are just going to drop if they keep letting trash like the Greens into the neighborhood – what can you see, Petunia?"
"Just the movers," she said, sounding like a thwarted three-year-old. "Goodness, they're hiring them young these days. One looks like he's even younger than Diddydums."
He could almost hear Dudley rolling his eyes at his mother's back, even though all he did was demand that his father pass the gravy now.
"Boy!" Aunt Petunia barked, and Harry almost choked on a rubbery string bean.
"Yes, Aunt Petunia?"
"Tell me what you saw, everything they said, what they looked like – everything!"
Harry stifled an exasperated sigh at his aunt's incorrigible need for gossip. "Well, I didn't see too much of them," he started. "There was a woman and a boy, her son I think; they came up in a convertible."
"Convertible?" Uncle Vernon's chair squealed backward as well, and he lumbered over to his wife's side to check out the car. An appreciative murmur ensued, and Harry just shook his head at how predictable the Dursleys really were.
"And no sign of a father?" Aunt Petunia asked, ignoring her husband's covetous ramblings. When Harry answered in with a tentative negative, she made a sound like a spitting cat. "Vernon, they've sold it to a tramp! We'll never be able to sell the house now!"
"We're moving!" Dudley yelped.
"What? No, no, my boy, calm down. Your mummy's just talking about prices and the market and such; nothing of interest for a lusty lad like yourself, eh, Dud?" Harry winced at the sound of fat hitting fat; Uncle Vernon had just slapped his son's shoulder.
"If we move," Dudley wailed, "I'm never talking to either of you again!"
"We're not moving, my dearest!" Aunt Petunia said in what was obviously supposed to be a soothing tone, though it sounded rather more like a mentally deranged kindergarten teacher to Harry. She had been drawn away from the window by her son's mental distress, and a quick glance showed Harry that she was currently smoothing Dudley's already flat blond hair frantically. He stifled his giggles with the charred roll. "Would you like more steak? Potatoes? Or dessert! Yes – let's have dessert a little early! A special treat for my ickle Duddykins. Boy!" she shrilled. "Get that cake out here now!"
"It's always 'now' with you people," Harry grumbled under his breath as he slid off his stool and retrieved an enormous chocolate cake from the refrigerator, along with three plates and necessary utensils. He placed the cake by his uncle and hurried out of the dining room before Aunt Petunia could berate him for smelling again.
She, however, had other plans. "Boy," she barked before he had once again reached the relative safe haven of the kitchen. Slowly, he turned around to face her, already cringing. "Tell me what else you saw, about that hussy across the street and her no-account son."
"Um… well, he seemed really excited to be here."
"Probably just relieved to finally get out of the slums," muttered Uncle Vernon as he dished out a huge slice of chocolate cake and pushed it towards Dudley.
"Dad!" Dudley howled. "That piece isn't any good! Look, it's all titchy, and the icing's messed up, and I don't want it!"
"But – Duds – "
"I don't want it! Give it to the freak! I want that piece!" Dudley yelled, turning a rather alarming shade of burgundy. Harry stared at him, jaw slackened a little, and then met his uncle's gaze in surprise. Vernon looked away, scowling, the next minute, but shoved the plate at him. "And I want my piece to be bigger!"
"Of course, Dudders, of course – "
"What else?" Aunt Petunia demanded before Harry could even begin to process the cake situation. She was back at her station by the window, peering through the holes in the lace, her eyes squinted to better pierce the encroaching evening. "Did you pick up on anything else? What was their furniture like? What were they wearing? Did they swear a lot?"
Harry was quite beyond overwhelmed at this point. Beyond Aunt Petunia's questioning, Uncle Vernon was trying to mollify his eighteen-year-old son, and Dudley, during his tantrum, kept sneaking glances at Harry and occasionally mouthing, Eat it! He was torn between suspicion and irritation and surprise and Merlin only knew what other emotions – so when Aunt Petunia loomed over him like a bony vulture, he was almost grateful to her for having brought him back to some semblance of sense.
"Answer me, you no-good wastrel!"
"Oh! Sorry, Aunt Petunia. I didn't see what their furniture was like; they were just bringing in boxes then and you were yelling and I didn't want," to face Uncle Vernon's belt, "to keep you all waiting anymore. He was just dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, you know, like everyone wears. She had on a dress and a scarf over her hair – because of the convertible, see, and the wind, it would've messed it up besides – and sunglasses." He stopped to take a breath. "I couldn't really tell what they were saying, though, 'cos I don't understand much more French than 'bonjour' and 'merci' – "
"French!"
"Um… yeah. I'm pretty sure that's what they were speaking." Aunt Petunia was swelling like some sort of bizarre, angry vulture, and Uncle Vernon was slowly turning purple as chocolate frosting dripped sluggishly off the serving knife. Harry wondered if he'd said something wrong, and found he desperately wanted to take the plate of cake in his hands and bolt to his room.
Oh, Circe, Potter, he thought with a mental eye-roll. What a coward! Where's that Gryffindor spirit? Soon it won't be the Dursleys facing you down, it'll be Voldemort – and that'll be with a wand, not just the prospect of a few cuffs 'round the head – so grow up and get over it already! What would Sirius and D-Dumbledore think if they could see you, scared over these fat, useless Muggles?
Surprisingly, he felt a little better after mentally berating himself.
Aunt Petunia wasn't paying attention to Harry anymore, but had rounded on Uncle Vernon, complaining about the French and how they always ruined everything, including – now – the property values of Privet Drive. Harry was just thinking that if he heard one more word about property values or their ilk, he'd use Ginny's Bat-Bogey Hex on the lot of them, when Dudley caught his eye and made a frantic shooing gesture. Too surprised to stop and think, Harry grabbed the large piece of cake and virtually fled to the kitchen, where he put fork to icing almost immediately in the fear that Uncle Vernon would realize he'd given Harry a treat and storm in to take it away. Certainly Harry needed more nourishment than what little he'd been living on recently – today had been a veritable feast day. Usually it was a piece of dry toast at breakfast and then a supper comparable to today's; but thanks to Dudley's intervention, today Harry had not only had a lunch, but also something more filling (if not nutritionally sound) for supper.
Harry paused after the fifth bite, frozen with fear, before convincing himself that there was no earthly way Dudley could've poisoned it. That sort of thing really wasn't as common in the Muggle world, and really, where would Dudley have found the brain cells necessary to scrape together a plan as subtle as that?
Harry didn't drop dead, and certainly didn't feel sick, so he was left to ponder not what poison Dudley had used, but what drug Dudley was doing, for the rest of supper. While the Dursleys complained about the neighbors they hadn't yet met, Harry went through a mental list of any Muggle drugs he could think of, but couldn't remember one with a side effect like 'unexpected benevolence.' These ponderings carried him through clearing the table and washing the dishes, as well, until a scathing comment from Aunt Petunia reminded him of the new boy in Number Seven.
As Harry slowly rinsed partially-congealed gravy off the dinner plates, he tried to clearly picture what the boy had looked like. Taller than Harry, and a little more filled out, too – but that was to be expected in anyone around his age who hadn't been subjected to malnutrition almost since birth. His hair had been quite dark and curled a little at the ends, and his face was tanned and looked like it was perpetually turned up into a smile. Nobody Harry could think of met those qualifications – and yet, he'd seemed so, so familiar!
"You're going to rub a hole in my china!" Aunt Petunia accused, wrenching the plate away from Harry – and wrenching Harry out of his reflections. "You still haven't bathed, have you? Filthy boy, mucking up my kitchen – you'll have to wash all these dishes again after you've cleaned yourself up!" she spat.
Washing dishes was one of the few chores Harry didn't mind, as it required very little thought and let him have some time in which to think. "Yes, Aunt Petunia," he answered dutifully before making his way upstairs, sorting through his mental catalogue of faces as he went.
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"Anatole!"
The sixteen-year-old sat bolt upright in his bed, blinking groggily as his mother's shout cut through his vague, surrealistic dreams, most of which seemed to involve an acquisitive squirrel and a person made wholly of poppies. "'M up, Maman," he called back, his voice thick and sleepy, as she started to yell again.
"I should hope so, mon cher. It's almost eleven."
He yawned an incomprehensible affirmative and stretched, reaching out for the glass of water he always kept by his bed. To his surprise, it wasn't a surface of smooth, lacquered wood his fingers hit, but a slightly plush texture he recognized as carpeting. Tol looked down and around, puzzled.
What? Oh – yes. Surrey.
He clambered up off the mismatched pile of pillows and sleeping bags that had served as a bed for his first night in their new house and grabbed a rather wrinkled tee shirt that was slung over a still-packed suitcase nearby. Yesterday's jeans, which had spent the night crumpled under the sleeping bags, soon joined the tee, and after brushing his hands through his dark hair Tol headed out through the bedroom door and down the stairwell. This was one feature he was already intimately acquainted with, after helping the men Maman had hired bring all the necessary luggage upstairs.
Celestine Laurent was standing at the kitchen counter, preparing a cup of coffee. Tol sniffed audibly as the smell wafted towards him, and sighed happily; his mother smiled broadly at him and added a bit of milk before passing the mug to him. He sipped it once, grinned, and then kissed his mother's cheek. "Morning, Maman," he said.
"Good morning to you too," she said, obviously amused by his disheveled appearance.
He saw the direction of her gaze and glanced down at the creased clothing, then shrugged. "No use showering before I get all sweaty moving the furniture around," he said, moving to the kitchen table, which was one of the few pieces they'd gotten set up the night before. "Is that Le Journal Parisien?" he asked, catching sight of the newspaper laying opposite him.
Celestine shook her head even as he reached for it. "I picked it up with breakfast," she said. "Which, might I add, you slept through."
He had the sense to look at least a little chagrined as he pulled the front page over. "Sorry."
She ruffled his hair a little and sighed. "You're all right with this, aren't you, Tol?"
He looked up from The London Times and turned his gaze out the kitchen window. Was he all right with this? Was he all right with leaving the home he'd known since his first conscious thought? Of course he wasn't all right with it, at least on some level – but in all honesty, it was rather exciting. His life in Paris had been lonely; his mother had never allowed him to go to school, and the area where they had lived had mostly been populated by rich old women and their spoiled, fat pets. He'd had few friends, and all of them had been considerably older than himself. Yet here, within the first five minutes, he'd seen a boy his own age and exchanged amiable – if wordless – salutations with him. It was somewhere new, somewhere to explore, and with Maman's new job, she'd be home more often….
"Of course I am," he said with a reassuring smile.
A look of relief passed over the Frenchwoman's pretty face, and she returned her son's smile. "Good," she said, pausing to plant a kiss in his mussed hair. "Now, I have been working all morning, so I'm going to go clean up. If anyone calls – "
"Take messages verbatim," he said with a slightly exasperated air.
"And if they come to the door – "
"Check first to make sure they're not satanists come to recruit me or serial killers after your collection of antique porcelain," he quipped. She rolled her eyes, but couldn't hide a small smile. "I know, Maman. Really, the way you tell it, you'd think the world was all buttercups and unicorns."
She pinched his cheek a little, knowing how much he hated it, and laughed when he batted her hands away with a protest. "Play nice, mon cher," she said before heading upstairs.
Tol pulled a face good-naturedly at her retreating back before returning to his coffee and the newspaper.
Ten minutes later, as he was trying to maintain interest in an article concerning upcoming elections for the British House of Commons, the doorbell rang. "Un moment!" he called, draining the last, slightly bitter dregs from his cup before bounding towards the front door.
He opened it to reveal the boy from the night before, standing on the Laurents' doorstep and attempting with some trouble to keep a rather large platter covered with an assortment of foreign-looking dishes from overturning. "Hello," Tol said, his English only lightly accented.
"Hi," the boy returned shortly without looking up from his burden. "Um, my aunt, Petunia Dursley from Number Four, sent me with these for you and your – " A pair of brilliantly green eyes met Tol's curious gray gaze and widened to an almost abnormal size. For a few moments, the shorter boy just mouthed wordlessly, and Tol's smile turned into a concerned frown.
"Ees something wrong?" he asked, trying to keep the affront out of his voice as the boy continued to stare at him like he'd grown a second head. "Do I have something on my face?"
Still looking pale and shocked, the other boy broke away from Tol's eyes and shook his head, as though trying to wake himself up. "S-sorry," he gasped. "You just – you look an awful lot like – "
Whatever the boy from Number Four was going to say was interrupted as the massive, overloaded platter finally tipped, burying both their feet in an unpleasant mixture of fruit cocktail and what looked like black pudding.
"Oh, just kill me now," the British boy groaned, smacking one palm against his forehead as Tol looked helplessly down at the mess.
