A/N: Hi everyone, FanFiction has been really weird for me lately (I'm not sure if you guys are having the same trouble) but I haven't been receiving emails about new chapter updates or about new reviews left to my story. Because of this I'm not sure if all of you were notified that I had updated the last chapter a few weeks ago.
So, if you guys just want to double-check that you've read the last chapter (It included some Puddlemere United locker room talk, Victoire doing some healing and working a nightshift, and Cecilia meeting with the people on the board of her charity).
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Therapy Helps
Sunday, May 12th 2024
1:30 PM
Teddy held Victoire's hands tightly and stared into the ocean-blue depths of her eyes. He swallowed thickly and took a deep breath before speaking, "I love you more than anything in this world, and it was never my intention to make you feel belittled or as though your feelings aren't valid. I was shocked, but it's no excuse. You are allowed to feel whatever you feel, and my opinion doesn't matter."
As Victoire stared back into Teddy's sapphire blue eyes, she felt her own eyes start to water slightly.
"Excellent job Ted," Dr. Jarvis told Teddy encouragingly, "Now Victoire, it's your turn to tell Ted how you feel."
Victoire took a deep breath, but she didn't take her gaze away from her fiancé's, "I love you too, it's the reason why I've never told you about my fear before. I knew that it would make you feel bad, and that's the last thing I wanted. You have to know that if I could bring them back for you that I would, in a heart beat."
A few of her tears had started to leak from the corners of her eyes, and Teddy moved one of his hands up to her cheek so he could wipe them away with his thumb, "I known you would Love. Which is why I feel so bad about saying what I did. I know that you wouldn't think twice about your own fears if you had the ability to do that for me. I just can't get past the feeling that there's something missing when we talk about our wedding. Everyone will be there except them and that knowledge hurts."
She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, "What do you need me to do? I can-"
"You don't need to do anything," He told her, hugging her back tightly, "I just need you to be here, with me. For me."
"I am and I always will be."
Teddy glanced down at her face and Victoire pressed a soft kiss to his lips. When they pulled apart, they remembered that Dr. Jarvis was sitting across from them.
The psychologist was sitting quietly and unobtrusively as she waited for the couple to turn their attention back to her.
"That was very good Victoire, Ted. It takes a lot of strength to show so much vulnerability to others, especially when discussing our deepest fears and deepest wishes."
Victoire nodded her head, "Thank you Dr. Jarvis, you've been very helpful today."
Dr. Jarvis smiled at them, "I'm glad you found it helpful. Couples therapy isn't exactly my speciality as you know, but when it comes to magical mental health services, they are severely lacking."
"They are indeed. Which is why Teddy and I appreciate you fitting us in so quickly, especially on a Sunday, we know that you're very busy."
Dr. Jarvis waved off her praise, "I'm here to help."
"Is there a certain time you would like us to come back? Like in a week or two?" Teddy asked curiously, knowing that their session was coming to a close.
Dr. Jarvis shook her head, "I don't need to see you again unless you two feel as though you'd like to. Despite this most recent incident, it's apparent that you have good communications skills and a deep respect for one another. You both want this relationship to work, and you've already proven that you can work through very stressful situations together. It's natural to have some anxieties when a wedding is upcoming, but your anxieties seem to centre on stressors involved in the planning of the wedding and not actually the concept of marriage. I think you two will be alright."
Victoire and Teddy thanked Dr. Jarvis once more, stood up, and left her office. As they opened the door to leave her muggle office building, they walked into a very familiar face.
"Cecilia!" Victoire called the name of the young woman she almost literally walked into.
Cecilia Wood was startled to see her boyfriend's sister and her fiancé coming out of her muggle therapist's office.
"Victoire, Ted. Hey."
They stood there awkwardly looking at each other before Victoire realized that she should let Cecilia go as she probably had an appointment to get to.
"We'll see you at the Burrow for dinner tonight?" Victoire asked Cecilia in parting.
Cecilia nodded her head and then quietly walked into the office building.
Once she was gone Teddy glanced at his fiancée, "She still seeing Dr. Jarvis about the Martell thing?"
"I assume so," Was Victoire's quiet response, "From what I gather from Louis, she doesn't see her every week, or even every other week. I think she's down to once a month, just for a check-in to help her keep control of her anxiety."
Teddy frowned, "I really wish she could have had more closure about that whole issue. He got out of it with nothing more than Brogan kicking him in his family jewels."
"I could have done a lot more to his family jewels if you hadn't confiscated that textbook," Victoire muttered as they started to walk down the muggle street.
He rolled his eyes as he took her hand in his, "It's amazing how you can't see the irony in you threatening to painfully castrate Martell, and you getting yourself put into jail trying to help heal Stephanie's friend who someone tried to painfully castrate."
"I wouldn't have gone through with it," She replied with a roll of her own eyes.
Teddy raised a dark eyebrow at her disbelievingly.
"I probably wouldn't have," She repeated with less certainty, "Even though he definitely would have deserved it."
The metamorphmagus pressed a kiss to the top of her head, "Remind me to add to my vows that I promise to love both Gryffindor Victoire and Slytherin Victoire."
She elbowed him in the stomach, "Prat."
He let out a slightly pained chuckle, "So, we've got a few hours until family dinner at the Burrow. What do you want to do in the meantime?"
Victoire glanced up at him and took her time looking from his handsome face down to the light-weight collared shirt that was stretched across his chest. She leaned into him and placed both of her hands on his chest, her palms slowly moving down him pecs, abs, and coming to a rest at his belt buckle.
Her eyes twinkled with mischief, "You."
His eyes darkened and he caught her hands before they could go any further, "Well we better find an apparation spot soon then. I don't think anybody, muggle or not, would appreciate us snogging each other in public."
Victoire nodded her head to an alleyway a few streets over, "There's one down there."
"Thank Merlin."
3:35 PM
James paused in his throwing motion so that he could catch his breath. Once he was back to mostly regular breathing, he glanced over at his dark-haired companion as she slowly flew closer to him on her broom.
"Is it possible that all of this extra practice is actually making me worse?"
Selene smirked at him, the afternoon sun shining brightly off of her dark hair which was fixed into a tight plait, "On the contrary. You've really improved over the last few weeks. It only seems as though you're getting worse because I'm actually being harder on you than before."
"You know the correct response to that should have been 'no James you're doing brilliantly'," He teased her as he slowly tossed the quaffle to her with a quarter-turn of backwards spin.
She rolled her eyes at him as she caught the scarlet ball, "I'm not here to tell you what you want to hear. In fact, I believe when I answered the ad in the paper it said 'must be able to pick out my most minor of flaws and constantly bring them up to keep me humble'."
He did his best to hide his smirk at her words, he had an affronted image to uphold, "Well considering that it was Cecilia Wood who made up that ad, it doesn't surprise me that she included verbal abuse as a prerequisite skill."
"It was my strong lack of interpersonal skills that really tipped me over the edge," Selene replied with a wink.
James couldn't help but grin at her, "So since you seem to have my whole skill advancement pre-planned out, I'd like to know when you think I'll get to the point where all of this will seem easy."
"Oh Honey," She said with a purposely condescending tone, "This will take years to seem easy."
Despite the teasing condescension, James had to admit that he liked the sound of Selene referring to him with the term of endearment. The implication of years more of practice also didn't seem to phase him like he thought it would. The insinuation that they would be spending the next few years together practicing quidditch, in conjunction with the sound of her voice calling him Honey, made his heartbeat speed up.
"You know before we started all of this, I didn't take you for a sadist," He told her as he raised an eyebrow.
She scoffed, "Well duh. That's because most girls hide their sadistic tendencies until at least the fourth date."
James felt his heart lodge in his throat, "So this is a date then?"
Selene's cheeks turned red and she hurriedly corrected herself, "No, no, of course not. In our fourth year Teagan very explicitly told me that practicing or playing quidditch could never, in anyway, be construed as a proper date."
He frowned at her words and tried very hard not to verbally express that fifteen-year-old Teagan Childs should have kept her opinions to herself.
"But um, back on track," Selene said before clearing her throat, "I think we're done here for the day."
James nodded and they both angled their brooms down toward the grass. When they dismounted their brooms, the pair collapsed on the pitch and started some cool-down stretches.
"Got any special plans tonight?" Selene asked him conversationally as she rolled her neck.
James's response came a second too late as he had been too busy staring at the smooth column of her neck as she stretched it.
"Uhhh . . . yeah. Um, Sunday night Weasley family dinner at the Burrow."
"Really? I would have thought that those would be cancelled after what you said occurred at the one last week."
James let out a sigh as he reached for his toes, "It takes more than that to cancel a Weasley family dinner. Actually, I don't think one's been cancelled since Victoire and Teddy were kidnapped by that underground tribe of Peruvian wizards a few years back."
Selene stopped what she was doing and sent James a shocked expression, "Pardon me?"
"Trust me," James told her with a sincere nod, "The more details you get about that event, the harder it is to comprehend."
She muttered something under her breath in Greek, and even though James couldn't translate it, he could easily interpret the disbelief in her tone of voice.
"What about you?" He asked in an attempt to take the conversation off of his ridiculous family.
"Textbooks and takeaway," She replied with a sad smile.
Before James could ask her what subject she was studying that afternoon, his ears registered an absolutely terrifying sound. Selene's head turned in the direction that the sound was coming from at the same time as him, and he immediately wanted to melt into the grass of his parents' backyard.
Her voice preceded her, but within a few minutes she was making her way onto the backyard pitch: Ginny Potter.
"James Sweetie, we're leaving for the Burrow soon. Grandmum and Granddad wanted us there a little earlier today," Ginny announced to James once she was close enough for him to hear.
James started to run his fingers through his dark hair, "Got it Mum."
It was a vain hope that she would leave as soon as she had finished delivering this message, but hope it he did. Right up until she turned to Selene and opened her mouth again.
"So, what do you have planned for the rest of the day Selene?"
Selene smiled brightly at his mother, "Going back to my flat for some reading and takeaway; nothing exciting."
James noted a second too late how Ginny's eyes had lit up with interest upon hearing Selene's rather benign response.
"Mu-"
"Well, if you're not very busy Selene, would you like to join us for dinner tonight?"
He held in a groan and looked down at the grass. He should have known that his mother would give her that offer the second she found out she didn't have plans. James slowly dragged his eyes up from the grass and towards Selene. He felt a jolt go through him when he realized that she was looking at him; trying to read his own response to her mother's suggestion.
Selene glanced back at his mother, "That's very kind of you to offer Ginny but I'd hate to impose-"
"Oh, it wouldn't be an imposition Dear. We always say the more the merrier."
Selene highly doubted that saying considering what she'd heard had happened the week before.
"I really wouldn't want to intrude on your family time."
"You could never intrude Dear, I'm sure everyone would love to see you. I can also promise you excellent food," Ginny said. Her kind, motherly insistence was making James cringe.
Selene bit her lip and glanced at James again. As she looked at him, he realized that she was waiting for him to say something. To say anything that would give her an indication of what his thoughts were on his mother's proposal.
"It would be nice," James said slowly as he made eye contact with Selene, "If you joined us."
He's not quite sure where the words came from. In theory it would be nice to spend more time with her. In practice he wasn't sure if he wanted to expose her to all of his family in such close quarters.
Her grey eyes softened and as he looked at them, and at that moment he knew that she had made the decision to accept the offer. She opened her mouth to respond, but then she glanced down at the grey work-out tights and strappy red athletic tank-top she was wearing, and her expression changed.
"I would join you but I'm not really dressed for dinner-"
While James had appreciated the amount of tanned skin and the barest hint of purple sport's bra that her work-out tank-top had alluded to, he had to agree that it probably wasn't comfortable for a family dinner at his grandparents.
It seemed that his mother had already accounted for that though, "No need to worry about that Hon. We have a box of hand-me-downs for Lily somewhere in the house. She's not anywhere near as tall as Victoire and Ally were at her age so she hasn't even touched most of it yet. I'm sure there's a shirt or sweater in there that would fit you."
Selene must have accepted that there was no arguing with Ginny once she was determined about something, so she gracefully agreed, which is how James found her walking next to him as they walked towards the house to get changed.
Once in his bedroom, James rushed through changing out of his athletic t-shirt and shorts and into a pair of jeans and a maroon baseball style long sleeve shirt. He rushed through giving his face a quick wash, and then exited his room and almost ran down the stairs to the foyer. His head whipped from side to side as he looked for her, but Selene hadn't yet emerged from wherever his mother had dragged her to.
"Looking for someone?" His father's voice asked as he walked into the room.
James ran his fingers stressfully through his hair, "Mum already decided that she was going to ask Selene to come with us for dinner before she even left the house, didn't she?"
"Your mother inherited her hospitality gene from your grandmum, you should be grateful she's waited this long to bring it up," Harry told his son.
James's eyes went wide as he imagined how much more disastrous last week's family dinner might have been if Selene had attended it.
Harry clapped James on the shoulder, "Cheer up, your friend was sorted into Gryffindor for a reason, right?"
"Ugh."
The father and son stood in the foyer in silence for a few moments before Ginny found them there.
"You lot ready to go?"
The pair nodded and it was barely a second later that Selene came out of the first-floor bathroom and moved to join them. She had kept her grey leggings on, but she obviously took up his mother's suggestion and borrowed a sweater that must have at one time belonged to one of his older cousins. The sweater was a soft lilac in colour and the material seemed to be a lightweight knit. It was an overly long sweater that hit her mid-thigh, with sleeves that were about ¾ long in length. The neckline of the sweater was a little wide, and there was a gold shine near the most medial part of her collarbone from the necklace chain that held her miniaturized epi-pen.
Selene was pulling the elastic out of her braid and shaking her hair loose when she stopped next to James.
"Was it hard to find something?" He asked her concernedly.
She shook her head, her now very wavy hair fanning out around her shoulders, "Nope. This still even had its tags attached to it."
He smiled at her, "You look nice."
Her cheeks took on a pink glow, "Thank you."
4:08 PM
"What in Hades were you thinking?" Dom demanded of Lucy in a loud voice that the rest of the people in the Burrow's living room were pretending that they couldn't hear.
Lucy sent Dom an icy glare, "I don't need to ex-"
The part-veela interrupted her, "I'll tell you what you were thinking. It was nothing. You weren't thinking. If you had been thinking you would have remembered that not only do we all hate that Prat, but that you also hate him.
Lucy exhaled heavily, "I do not hate Austin-"
"Need I remind you of what you told me and Molly about him the last three times you broke up?" Dom asked.
Lucy crossed her arms angrily over her chest, "You can't hold me to what I say after three rounds of firewhiskey shots!"
"How about I hold you to what everybody else thinks of him while they're sober?" Dom retorted scathingly.
"I don't need you, who've never actually had a relationship before, to understand-"
"Ooookay ladies," Ally interrupted them as she slipped between the two red-headed cousins, "Time to cool off. Dom, go find Molly, she's already got a drink ready to loosen you up. Lucy, since you decided to bring Austin with you to our family dinner, you better go find him and stay with him before he says something that sets off Victoire's recently shortened temper."
The two cousins went to their separate corners as Ally asked, and once they were settled Victoire walked up to Ally to thank her.
"About bloody time. If I had to hear one more word come out of Austin's pretentious little mouth I was going to vomit," Victoire complained.
"Blood," She added for emphasis.
Ally rolled her eyes at her eldest cousin's dramatics, "You're still suffering from your stomach ulcer. The wrong waft of a strong dish could trigger your vomiting."
"You're such a pain," Victoire complained, "I'm going to find someone who will commiserate with me."
Victoire dramatically looked around the room until she spotted Teddy and Xavier sitting on the loveseat and having what seemed to be an effusive discussion. She stomped over to them and dramatically fell into her fiancé's lap.
"You believe that everything I say is correct, right?" She asked him as she looked up at his slightly surprised face.
Xavier, sitting on the opposite side of the couch, snorted and knocked Victoire's knee with his own, "That's a loaded question if I ever heard one."
Victoire didn't even bother to glance his way as she tossed a rude hand gesture at him. Instead, she kept eye contact with her fiancé, "Teddy?"
"I believe absolutely everything you say," Teddy told her with a smirk.
She sat up slightly so that she could stick her tongue out at Xavier. He rolled his eyes at her but didn't reply as he was suddenly busy with Ally's appearance. She sat down on her fiancé's lap in a much more graceful manner than Victoire had done a few moments previously.
"See-"
She couldn't finish rubbing Xavier's face in it, because Teddy added more words.
"Or I believe everything you say when I know you've been dosed with veritaserum."
Victoire glared at Teddy's self-satisfied expression, "You're a conard."
His smile grew bigger and he leaned forward to press a kiss to her lips, "I love it when you speak French."
She pushed lightly at him to let him know that she was still mad at him for teasing her, but she kissed him back because she wasn't actually that angry with him.
"Do you think they'll ever grow out of this behaviour?" Xavier asked Ally loudly as Victoire and Teddy continued to kiss.
"I'd hate to think what it would mean for their relationship if they did," Ally responded seriously.
Xavier made a face, "I'm only now just imaging how bad their literal honeymoon period is going to be."
Ally swatted his shoulder, "Lay off, you. That's going to be us a few months after them."
He placed a hand low on Ally's back and gave her lascivious smile, "You promise?"
His fiancée rolled her eyes at him but leaned forward and gave him a quick peck on the lips.
Both couples separated a few moments later and began discussing Ally's work on a new potion at St. Mungo's. There was relative calm in the living room for exactly five minutes before Freddie looked out the front window and called out that 'Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny are here'.
He glanced back out the window after delivering the message and continued, "And there's James and – Oh. Well, I did not see that coming."
Cecilia and Baxter, who had been standing closest to Freddie, both rushed to the window to see what Freddie was talking about. Cecilia unintentionally let out an excited sounding squeal before slapping her own hand over her mouth to stop anymore from slipping out. Everyone else looked at Baxter for a coherent response.
"James has Selene Spiros with him."
There was a mix of surprised faces on the younger Weasley members who heard him. Ranging from Lucy's complete confusion about the event, to Teddy and Victoire's shared flabbergasted but knowing look. The rest of the group had a mix of expressions in-between the two. The room was unexpectedly silent as Ginny and Harry walked into the house and slid through the quiet living room and through to the kitchen where all of the adults were congregated. The silence continued right up to James opening the front door and walking into the foyer and then into the living room with Selene just a step behind him.
James grabbed a handful of his hair and exhaled heavily as he watched all of his cousins staring at him. He shrugged his shoulders, seemingly to himself, and then took upon the uncomfortable task of briefly explaining that Selene had been helping him practice that afternoon and that his mother had invited her to join them for dinner. When James finished it seemed a signal to everyone else that they were allowed to start talking again.
Cecilia and Freddie were almost immediately in front of James and Selene talking a mile a minute between them, and Baxter and Louis were close behind them. Dom and Molly flounced over a few minutes later, both of them with full wine glasses in their hands. Ally and Xavier slowly got up from the couch to join the group, mainly so Ally could help corral the younger ones, which left only Victoire and Teddy and Lucy and Austin as the people who were avoiding the fray.
After about five minutes of James and Selene being bombarded with questions, Ally loudly suggested that James take Selene to the kitchen to meet their grandparents. Despite the fact that it was barely the lesser of two evils, James took the escape Ally had offered them and escorted Selene to the kitchen.
Once they were gone the remaining members of the family immediately began talking about the pair behind their backs.
"It seems like it's impossible now for me to go a week without seeing Spiros," Freddie complained to Baxter.
Cecilia promptly slapped his arm.
"OW!"
"Be nice. Selene's doing James a big favour by helping him practice and behaving ourselves when she comes for dinner is the least we can do to thank her," She reprimanded him.
Freddie pouted, "All I'm saying is it'd be nice to have dinner with fewer people who've given me detention while we were at school together, not more of them."
"Well maybe if you behaved better at school, you would have spent less time in detention," Lucy told Freddie as she moved closer to the group. Even though she was scolding Freddie, her tone was sour.
Molly rolled her eyes at her sister's terribly predictable response, "What's got you twisted up now Lucy?"
Lucy defensively crossed her arms over her chest, "I just don't understand why everyone just had to jump out of their seats and fawn over James's friend, while I bring Austin and all I get is contempt."
"Well I can explain it for you," Dom said acerbically as she mockingly raised her hand, "Austin's a belland and Selene's super sweet. Austin's somehow both as boring as watching paint drying, while simultaneously being infuriating. Selene can carry on a conversation that doesn't tempt me to stab a fork through my eye. Austin was a complete arsehole to you which is why we all dislike him; while Selene's only ever developed Freddie's ire, which in itself seems like a good reason to like her."
By the time Dom finished her summary, Lucy's hair had turned as red as her hair, "It's not even like she and James are dating."
"Even more reason to like her. She chose to brave all of this," Molly gestured to every single person in the room, "And she wasn't even guilted into it by the bloke she's snogging."
Lucy huffed, "You lot only like her because she was in Gryffindor with you."
"Okay, we can't put blame on anyone for what the Sorting Hat chooses to do," Baxter reminded his sisters firmly.
Just as their argument had slowed down, James and Selene re-entered the living room. When the cousins noticed this, they all went silent again.
Selene smiled at all of them and then glanced at James, "I think this suspicious silence means that they were talking about me before we came in."
James's face went white.
"Oh, we were, I was complaining about all of the times you gave me detention," Freddie answered her cheekily.
Selene smirked at him, "You really should have been focusing on all of the times I chose not to give you detention Freddie."
"Well, you could leave the room once more and I could try it again," Freddie suggested with a shrug.
Selene rolled her eyes at him, but before she could respond James -in a move that was very distinctly not smooth- changed the topic by asking everyone how work was that week. Baxter, bless his Hufflepuff heart, jumped in with an anecdote about restoring someone's family heirloom wand that was over one-hundred years old. Between him, Louis, and Selene (who it seemed was actually genuinely interested in the story) the slightly awkward atmosphere in the room mellowed out and a few other smaller conversations began taking place.
One of which was Teddy coming up to James and separating him slightly away from the others.
"I know the last time we talked about this I might have alluded to you doing something bold, but I was thinking more along the lines of asking her out to dinner . . . not bringing her to our family dinner," Teddy teased his godbrother as he clapped the younger man on the shoulder.
James pinched the bridge of his nose, his body was oriented slightly towards Teddy, but his eyes seemed trained on where Selene stood with his cousins.
"Nothing is going on besides quidditch practice."
"Yeah, well if this dinner doesn't go well, nothing else will be going on between you," Teddy whispered to him quietly.
The younger man finally peeled his eyes off of the professional quidditch chaser, "What?"
"Calm down," Teddy told James as he put his hand back on his shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze, "I was just trying to get your attention. Selene's spent the majority of her Hogwarts years in the same house as most of our family. The only people who've ever been more prepared to attend one of these dinners were Xavier and Cecilia."
James pulled at his hair again, "Before we apparated over here I told her that I could get her out of it if she really didn't want to come. But she brushed it off and said she wouldn't mind seeing everyone again."
"That's a good sign," The older man nodded his head encouragingly.
"I guess."
"As is the fact that she's yet hex Freddie for staring at her ass for the last five minutes."
James turned his head so quickly that there was an audible crack. Freddie was standing a few feet away from Selene, and even though he wasn't being completely obvious about it, it was apparent that he was looking at her arse. James looked as though he was going to walk towards them, but Teddy's hand on his arm stopped him as it became restraining.
"Don't worry about it," Teddy told him just as Victoire walked into their view and joined the group around Selene.
Victoire threw her arm around Freddie's shoulder in what would have looked like an affectionate manner, if it weren't for the fact that she went on to pinch his side and whisper something harshly into his ear that made Freddie jump and immediately shuffle away from both her and Selene.
While James was appreciative that Victoire had put an end to Freddie's ogling, the fact that Freddie was looking at Selene like she was a human woman and not just some girl that gave him detention when they were in school, worried him. Teddy easily read his expression and told him not to worry too much about it. It was widely known that Freddie had no tact.
Thankfully for James, who could just feel his anxiety increasing the longer Selene was out of his direct earshot, his Aunt Audrey poked her head into the living room and told everyone that dinner was ready. When James had taken Selene to the kitchen to introduce her to his grandparents, most of his aunts and uncles were already there, so he didn't need to do it over and over again. They had already firmly established that Selene was a reserve chaser with the Harpies and that she'd been helping him learn how to paly centre chaser, so that left all of the more invasive questions to be asked over the dinner table.
The Weasleys in the living room slowly started to trickle into the dinning room, and James caught up with Selene just in time to deposit her in the chair next to Cecilia and then sit himself down in the one on her other side. Across the table from them were Victoire and Teddy, and Freddie sat himself down on James's other side. All things considered it was probably the best seating placement that he would have been able to arrange.
"Ready for an interrogation?" James whispered to Selene while the stragglers were still taking their seats.
She leaned her head closer to his, "I'm more concerned that Freddie's going to out my bad habits before I get the chance to."
"You don't have any bad habits," James waved her off automatically.
Selene smiled softly at him, "Don't worry about me. I can handle whatever they throw at me."
James hoped to Godric that was true.
Everyone had just sat down, and Dom had magiked wine into everyone's glasses, when the sound of the front door of the Burrow opening and closing echoed throughout the house.
"Were we waiting on anyone else?" Grandpa Arthur asked the table at large, although his eyes seem to focus on the far end of the table where his grandchildren were all seated.
Dom glanced at Baxter, "You get a girlfriend yet?"
"No."
Molly was next, "Boyfriend?"
Molly rolled her eyes, "No."
Dom looked at her grandfather, "We're not expecting anybody."
"Hey!" Freddie called to Dom in an affronted tone, "You didn't ask me if I got a girlfriend."
Dom took a sip of her wine, "Yeah, I know."
Before Freddie could get more insulted, Charlie Weasley and Daria of all people walked into the dinning room. Everyone but Grandma Molly froze.
"Charlie!" She jumped up from her seat and went to fuss over his second child and his girlfriend. As she did so everyone at the table started whispering to each other.
Selene brought her head close to James's again, "Isn't that-"
"Yeah," James replied quietly.
"And the woman who's with him?"
"Yeah."
She met his eyes, "Should I leave?"
He gazed right back at her, "Only if the excuse you come up with is good enough to get the both of us out of this."
Charlie called everyone to attention and explained what they were doing there. Apparently, Daria was still mad at him from keeping such a big secret from her -Charlie's words, not hers- but her curiosity to learn more about them had trumped her anger. Just barely. She was less concerned with her new discovery of the existence of a secret magical world, and more concerned that there seemed to be such a breakdown in communication in their relationship that he had dared to hide such a big part of him from her. Charlie said that he had already offered to answer any and all questions that Daria had about him or about magic, but she insisted on coming back to England and to the scene of the crime.
The pair's body language was strained, and they both eyed the people at the table warily while Bill took out his wand and magiked two more chairs at the 'adult' end of the table.
Charlie's eyes landed on Selene, a face he didn't recognize.
"Who-"
James beat him to what no doubt would have been an awkwardly worded question, "Uncle Charlie this is Selene Spiros. She's a reserve chaser for the Harpies and she's been helping me get up to scratch on playing centre chaser."
"She also went to Hogwarts with us," Freddie piped up before Selene could greet Charlie, "She gave me eight detentions during our seventh-year."
Selene smiled politely at James uncle and even went so far as to stand up and hold her hand out to him, "Freddie likes to leave out the part that he actually deserved about double that amount, I only held back because we needed him to round-out our house quidditch team. It's nice to meet you."
Charlie cracked a smile at her and shook her hand. He repeated his name to her, nodded his head in Daria's direction and said her name, and then followed his girlfriend to the head of the table where she had taken a seat next to Hermione.
Grandma Molly told everyone that they could start doling out the food, but besides the scraping and clinking sounds of cutlery there was an awkward silence. The matriarch of the family glanced at Charlie and Daria, and as much as she wanted to start questioning them, she figured that Daria at least needed some more time to adjust. That left the next most obvious choice for conversation.
"So Selene, do you have a big family?" Grandma Molly asked the pretty woman sitting next to her dark-haired grandson.
James almost groaned at his grandmother starting in on her inquisition, but Selene took it like a trooper.
"My immediate family is rather small. It's just me, my mum, my dad, my step-mum Rachel, and my half-brother Simon, he's five," Selene explained sweetly.
She got a forkful of mashed potatoes into her mouth before the next question came at her, "And your extended family? Do you have many cousins?"
"My parents both come from big families. They each have four siblings, and tons of aunts and uncles and distant cousins. They're all in Greece though," Selene replied succinctly.
James could tell that Grandma Molly was about to ask Selene another question pertaining to her family in Greece, but before she could Grandpa Arthur excitedly asked her what her parents did for a living.
"My Mum works as a translator and foreign policy advisor in conjunction with the Greek consulate at the Ministry. My Dad's a music producer."
Freddie jumped in at this point and asked in the closest thing he had to a conversational tone, "Wizarding music?"
"A little, when he started most of his early clients were wizarding musicians. Nowadays he mostly sticks to muggle music producing."
"Really?" Grandpa Arthur asked, his interest piquing at the term 'muggle'.
Selene swallowed a bite of carrot, "Yes, it's actually how he met my step-mum. She plays first violin in the London Symphony Orchestra."
"Wait," Freddie said around a mouthful of pork roast, "Your step-mother's a muggle?"
"Yes."
James rolled his eyes at Freddie, "You knew that."
"No, you knew that. I barely remembered that she had a step-mother," Freddie argued with his best friend. He glanced back at Selene, "How'd your step-mother discover the existence of magic?"
"Freddie!"
Five different voices yelled his name, so it was difficult to pick out who exactly said it from the table full of eyes that were glaring at him.
Selene felt the awkwardness, but figured it would be more awkward if she ignored his question, "When Dad decided that he wanted to marry Rachel, he sat her and I down and said that we all had something important to discuss. He wanted to tell her about us being magical before proposing to her because he didn't think it was fair to marry her and then tell her something so life changing after the fact. Poor Rachel had no idea what was coming, she thought he was proposing and including me in it because we were going to discuss becoming a family. It came right out of left field when he started to explain what magic was and that he and I could use it. She almost fainted when Dad transfigured her tea cup into a dove."
George cleared his throat clumsily from halfway down the table, he glanced at Charlie and Daria, and then back at Selene, "So, uh, how did your step-mother reconcile all of that new information?"
"When she thought about it, she realized that she wasn't angry at Dad for specifically keeping magic a secret from her. She was more upset about the fact that the man she was ready to marry had been hiding such a large part of himself. They took a little time to work it out, but they decided that being apart from each other was worse than being mad at each other."
Charlie sent Daria a sideways glance. She let out a sigh in return but she did slide her hand towards him so that he could hold it. She glanced at the large family settled around the table.
"So, I've been told that not only has Charlie been lying about his occupation, but you all have been as well," Daria told the family, "What do you all actually do?"
Angelina quickly offered up the information that she worked as a healer at a magical hospital, and when she finished there was a chain reaction of the family members explaining their daily lives in magical detail. As the family started spit-balling with the truth, Daria seemed to relax. The fact that Charlie's family members hadn't outright lied to her about what they did, instead they just did their best to explain it in non-magical terms, made her feel more comfortable around them.
When she got to Xavier, an explanation of quidditch ensued which Daria actually seemed to be enjoying.
"Wait, so how big is this quidditch league? Is it like professional football?" Daria asked Xavier curiously.
"Try professional football, rugby, and cricket all rolled into one," Charlie told her with a fond smile.
Daria's eyes got big, "Wow. So, are you famous in the magical world Xavier?"
Xavier's ears went red and he rubbed the back of his neck, "Yeah. Sorta."
"Ignore the false bravado. He's famous enough that he gets snapped by the media when he steps foot in public," Freddie said breezily, "James is famous too, since he's now playing on a starting league team."
"Among other things," Molly mumbled into her wine before drinking from the glass.
Daria didn't hear her and she turned to look at Charlie, "So your nephew's famous?"
Charlie patted her hand gently, "There's more than just that going on, but you need a little bit more context about the magical world before I explain it. Suffice to say that our whole family is very well known within the wizarding world."
Daria looked like she wanted to say something specific, but then thought better of it. She glanced back at the kids' end of the table, "And Selene, what do you do?"
"I'm a quidditch player too. I play on a different team than James and Xavier, and I'm just on the second-string team," Selene explained pleasantly. She was being a real trooper as people kept interrogating her left, right, and centre.
Daria then asked Xavier, James, and Selene if being magical sports professionals was as gruelling as being muggle ones. The three quidditch players nodded ardently, and Xavier went on to give a brief description of their training schedule.
"It's even more difficult when you're studying to be a healer at the same time," James muttered quietly as he gave Selene a sideways teasing glance.
Instead of her cheekily rolling her eyes back, or some other action he would have expected, Selene met him with a wide-eyed shocked expression. It wasn't until he realized that there was silence around him at the table that the words he had quietly whispered, and thought would be covered up by Xavier's conversation with Daria, had ended just before he'd tried to tease Selene. Which meant that everyone had heard the words he'd intended to mutter just to her.
James looked away from her and up at everyone else at the table who were giving him odd looks. He glanced back at Selene and mouthed the word 'sorry' to her.
Selene shrugged him off and then faced the table, "James is referring to the fact that I'm taking a few healing courses while also being on the team."
The second the words were out of her mouth Aunt Angelina and Victoire were peppering her with questions. Selene answered them all with the same level of calm energy. She explained that her parents had suggested she take the courses as a back-up plan, and when Victoire and Angelina tried to praise Selene for the amount of difficulty she was undertaking, she brushed it off by saying that she was only taking two courses at a time and all by correspondence. She even went so far as to say that it was her faculty supervisor that was the real hero, being available to her at all hours for questions and aid.
"Who is your supervisor?" Victoire asked Selene curiously.
"Professor Honeycutt."
Victoire's smile widened, "Oh she's wonderful! You're in great hands with her."
Selene nodded sweetly.
"What two courses are you taking right now? I still have all of my lecture notes and you're welcome to them," Victoire offered.
Selene responded and Victoire affirmed right away that she knew exactly where her notes were and that she'd get them collected and sent over to her.
"Yes, please accept the notes. Our home office is filled to the brim with hundreds of pages of notes from her healing school years," Teddy pleaded with Selene.
Victoire glared at her fiancé, "And didn't I say they'd come in handy at some point? Well, now they have."
Selene glanced at the muggle at the table, "So what do you do Daria?"
"I'm a clinical psychologist," Daria replied, a little surprised at the question. She's assumed that James had already told his friend everything about her.
Freddie glanced at Selene, "You see Selene, a muggle psychologist is a-"
"I know what a psychologist is Freddie," Selene interrupted the redhead's explanation with a small roll of her eyes, "I've been through plenty of muggle therapy."
"Really?" Cecilia asked interestedly. She knew she was being nosy, but she was also curious.
Selene nodded with a sigh, "Mum and Dad thought it'd be a good idea for me to go to therapy when they began divorcing, and the wizarding world's excuse for mental health professionals wasn't quite up to their standards. So, they found me a muggle therapist and sent me to therapy when they started discussing getting divorced. And then they sent me after they divorced, and again when Dad starting dating Rachel, and when Dad married Rachel, when Rachel got pregnant with Simon, when Simon was born. Heck, when Simon was two, he had breathing problems and was in a muggle hospital for three months; they sent me to therapy twice a week that summer."
"Well that's . . ." Daria's sentence dropped off. As a professional she didn't want to comment on how other professionals worked, but it did seem like quite a lot of therapy for someone who already seemed so well-rounded.
"Excessive," Selene finished for her and with an unembarrassed shrug, "My parents don't do anything by half measure. For two divorced people they were very single-minded when it came to parenting me. I could probably write an entire book about deep breathing techniques at this point."
Daria smiled at her, "That's not the worst skill to have."
"I'll never admit it to my parents though," Selene replied with a small chuckle.
Hearing the interactions between the muggle world and the wizarding world referred to so casually seemed to help Daria loosen up a little more. It was especially apparent a few moments later when instead of being suspicious or intimidated by Baxter's explanation of being an apprentice wandmaker, Daria was more intrigued and curious than anything.
While Daria, and what seemed to be the rest of the table, were busy with their light conversations, Selene leaned towards James and whispered, "So what area of Psychology does Daria specialize in?"
She had meant to ask the question of Daria herself, but she got the vague impression from how the conversations strictly stayed away from the details of Daria's work that they were specifically avoiding mentioning it.
James's ears went a little red but he tried his best to answer without an expression or inflection, "She does relationship counselling and research on human sexual behaviour."
"Freddie had a field day when he heard about that, didn't he?" Selene asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Ally and Victoire usually spend most of their time during Daria's visits keeping an eye on him and stopping him from saying stupid things," James admitted.
Selene gave him a smile that looked like a secret, "That doesn't surprise me."
"For Merlin's sake Lucy stop being such a Garce-"
"Dominique Gabrielle Weasley!"
The rest of Dom's insult was lost when both Bill and Fleur yelled their youngest daughter's name. Even though Bill wasn't fluent in French, he knew enough to understand what Dom was calling her cousin.
Fleur went into full French as she berated Dom from halfway down the table, and the rest of the table went relatively silent. When Fleur took a breath, Molly decided to stand up for her cousin.
"Don't blame Dom too much Auntie Fleur, Lucy was being a-"
"Do you really want to get yourself into the middle of this Molly?" Aunt Audrey cut her daughter off before another redhead got thrown into the fray.
Molly crossed her arms over her chest, while Dom pouted and flipped her hair over her shoulder, "We're just calling it like it is. Why continue to coddle people and encourage their bad habits when you can just tell them they can do better?"
"Dominique-"
"I agree completely Dom," Freddie yelled across whoever was attempting to talk some sense into Dom, "Which is why I for one think it is imperative that I inform Ally that I think her choice of-"
Ally glared at her younger brother, "If this is about the basic vest, I am asking you were with your suit for my wedding . . ."
Ally's voice got lost in the mix as Dom, Molly, and Lucy's voices picked up in tone, and soon not only were the three redheaded girls at the end of the table arguing, but so were Freddie and Ally. Xavier was loudly trying to broker peace between his fiancée and her brother, and Cecilia and Baxter were nosily trying to worm their way into the drama that was unfolding with Dom, Lucy, and Molly. Half of the adults also seemed to be talking loudly as they tried to shout down their offspring, and the table was in an uproar for about five minutes before Grandma Molly interrupted all of them.
"That is quite enough," The table went quiet at the loud sound of her raised and stern voice, "We have a guest and you need to act like it."
Freddie glanced around the table and then faced his grandmother, "What guest? Do you mean Selene? 'Cause Grandma, she was in Gryffindor house with us at school. She's seen all of this and worse before."
"While that may have been the case when you were younger Freddie-"
"Try only two years ago," James muttered under his breath, only to earn him a displeased look from Selene that said that she didn't appreciate his humour, the main reason being because that she had to bite her cheek in an attempt to not laugh at what he'd said.
"-And since you are an adult now, you need to show that you know how to act like one. Your friend is going to think that we don't know how to act around people," Grandma Molly finished.
Selene straightened in her seat and glanced at Mrs. Arthur Weasley, "Tonight's been wonderful Mrs. Weasley, really. The food's delicious and as for the company, well no one has told me that I'm a horrible person who shouldn't exist or tried to poison me yet; so as far as family dinners I've attended, this one is definitely in the top tier."
The elder Molly tried to thank Selene for her kind words, but Freddie interrupted her before she could get half of the words out.
"Whose place did you go round to for dinner that tried to poison you?"
"It was my family in Greece, and it wasn't exactly an attempted poisoning because I did drink it," Selene mused.
Freddie gave Selene a considering glance while everyone else looked at her with varying degrees of shock, "You know, out of all of the stories we have about our family, we don't have any about one of us trying to poison the other. Unless you count that time Victoire spiked Baxter's ice cream with veritaserum-"
"It was an accident!"
Victoire's loud insistence, as it always did when the topic was brought up, landed on deaf ears.
Freddie continued speaking to Selene, "So what are the details behind your story?"
Cecilia glared at Freddie from three seats away, "Selene's business is her own. She doesn't owe us an explanation about anything."
"It's fine," Selene assured Cecilia with another unconcerned shrug of her shoulders. She turned slightly to face Freddie, but James could distinctly feel her gaze on his face before she started speaking to his cousin.
"When I turned eleven, I received my Hogwarts letter as everyone else did, but I also received my acceptance to the wizarding school in Greece. Mum and Dad wanted to give me options, so we went to visit the other school. When we were in Greece, we were scheduled to have dinner with both sets of my grandparents at their homes. We were at my dad's parents' where we were having a tense and stonily silent dinner when I took a sip of the drink in my goblet for the first time. My throat and face immediately felt hot after I swallowed the liquid and my throat started to constrict. I started coughing violently, and it felt almost like I was going into anaphylactic shock, with my throat swelling and my stomach turning. I can't quite remember what happened next because my vision went blurry and dark, but I guess while I was coughing, I fell off my chair and landed on the floor. My parents followed me down and my face was quickly shifting towards a dark purple colour and I was having difficulty breathing. Apparently, my Mum held me down, I was flailing I guess, while my dad pulled a bezoar out of his pocket and shoved it and his fingers down my throat."
Selene took a breath here and a wry expression came onto her face, "And while I was very grateful for what Dad did and for saving my life, I can't really say I recommend having a bezoar shoved down your throat. It's not exactly the most comfortable feeling."
"I second that," Uncle Ron grumbled from the other end of the table.
"The bezoar reversed the poisoning quickly. When I came back to, I remember vomiting all over both my parents and my grandfather's marble floors."
Cecilia glanced at Selene with concern, "How did the poison get into your drink in the first place?"
"One of my cousins very happily took credit for it. According to Megaira she had overheard her parents –my Dad's older brother and his wife– talking about how much they hated my mother and the fact that my parents elopement twelve years before had been a betrayal to their family; blah, blah, blah, and that I should never have actually been born and that my mere existence is a blight on the family's good name yada, yada, yada. Anyway, Megaira said that she had heard all of this and thought that if she poisoned me, it would be a quick end to the dinner that nobody wanted to be at. My cousin claimed that when she broke into our grandparents' potion cabinet before dinner that she thought that the poison would just make me sick, and that she hadn't intended for it to kill me," Selene finished her explanation with the biggest eyeroll James had ever seen her perform.
Louis noticed it too, "You sound as though you don't believe your cousin's story."
"Oh, I one-hundred-percent believe that she intended to kill me. Megaira's apology at the time held not one ounce of concern or remorse, and since then she's grown from a mini into a full-blown psychopath. We're the same age so had I chosen to go to school in Greece we would have been in the same year. She was always a jealous thing who liked having all of the attention to herself, I think she was furious that I had encroached on her role that day," Selene replied with a heavy sigh.
Freddie gave Selene a look of admiration, "I'm impressed. I honestly thought we had the most bizarre family."
"Freddie!" Ally admonished her brother.
Selene didn't mind the slight; she gave Freddie a smirk, "I just hide it better."
She glanced from Freddie to the table at large who had been listening to her story with varying surprized expressions, "And that is just one of the many reasons why I keep my visits to my family in Greece to the bare minimum."
Molly looked at Selene with interest, "What is the wizarding school in Greece like? Is it anything like Hogwarts?"
Before Selene could respond, Daria started asking questions about magical schooling. Charlie had explained briefly, for at the time she had been very cross with him and hadn't really wanted to listen, to Daria the fact that his younger nieces and nephews were away at a wizarding boarding school where they were learning all about magic. She hadn't been in the mood to listen to him at the time, and she definitely hadn't felt comfortable enough to ask questions.
"Are there magic schools in every country?"
"Most of them, yes," Ginny had replied to Daria's question.
Daria looked down the table at all of those assembled, "And you all attended the same one?"
"All of us, except for Fleur," Ginny said with a nod to her blonde sister-in-law, "She attended school in France."
The mention of Fleur brought up some contentious memories that Daria would really rather not think about, but she knew that they would eventually have to be dealt with.
Daria met Fleur's gaze for the first time, "You don't turn into a firey demon bird too, do you?"
"Non," Fleur assured her quickly, "I can barely conjure veela fire."
"Victoire's the only one of us who's ever come close to turning into a veela," Dom piped up from her spot at the table, "And even though she can conjure a lot of fire, she's never physically shape-shifted."
Victoire scowled at her sister, she didn't want her to scare Daria further, "Thank you Dom."
Daria let out a sigh of relief, "So no one here turns into a creature or shape-shifts?"
There was an awkward silence there, and almost everyone shifted their gaze down to their plates, Selene and Austin included.
"Uh . . ." Victoire started only to stop since she didn't know quite how to broach the subject.
Teddy reached out and patted his fiancée on the hand, her mouth automatically closing shut, "I'm a metamorphmagus Daria. It means that I can change and shift my physical features. People like myself are born with the ability, and we can morph with a skill that would take other wizards or witches decades to master with common magic."
Teddy then completed a series of rapid morphs that illustrated his abilities.
Daria looked astonished, "Are there many people who have that skill?"
Teddy shook his head, as he did so his hair turned to his signature turquoise blue, "No, there are not many of us. We're rare within the wizarding world."
"And people like your grandmother?" Daria asked looking at Fleur.
"T'ere are comparateevly more veelas een t'e world, but eet ees not often t'at you weell come across one."
Charlie nodded at Daria, "Last week was the first time I'd ever laid eyes on Fleur's grandmother in all of the years that she and Bill have been married. That was most definitely the first time something like that has ever happened."
James noted that his uncle was smart enough to use the common vernacular of 'that' in his explanation to his girlfriend. There were many things that did happen often in their family, but last week's particular 'that' was a first-time occurrence.
"So, magic exists, and dragons and shapeshifters . . . what else? Giants? Trolls?"
"Along with manticores, griffins, kelpies, fire-breathing Arabian Pegasi . . . Victoire's actually gotten into a tiff with most of those creatures too," Molly added with a smirk.
Victoire groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose, "Too much information Molls."
"If she can't handle that she's never going to believe everything she's going to have to learn about the wizarding world wars," Dom argued.
Unfortunately, Daria heard her, "Wizarding world wars?"
"Dessert time!" Grandma Molly called loudly before anyone could try to answer Daria's question. With a wave of her wand all of the desserts from the kitchen came flying into the living room and she forcefully started offering James some treacle tart.
Dessert time was quiet and the conversation was mostly limited to discussion of the desserts they were eating. When dinner came to a close the older generation offered to do the cleaning up this time, while they shoed the younger generation away to allow Charlie time to tell Daria more about their family's history in the magical world. His parents, siblings, and their spouses were close on hand to help fill in gaps of the story that he wouldn't be able to tell.
James was practically glued to Selene's side after dinner as she had a conversation about the Ministry with Lucy, and then one about healing with Victoire.
"So even though I'm still in the very early stages of my courses, I think I find neurological healing the most fascinating. There is still so much we don't know about the brain or how magic affects it," Selene was answering Victoire's previous question as to what healing speciality she found the most interesting.
Victoire was nodding enthusiastically, "You've chosen well, neurological healing is an area where new developments are made daily. My mate Sarah MacGregor is a healer in the Neurological Healing ward at St. Mungo's and she's constantly going to research seminars and learning about new techniques. For my part I would argue that the most interesting speciality is actually Dark Arts Reversal healing, but you're young, I'm sure you will come to that conclusion in time."
Selene returned the cheeky smile Victoire had given her, "I'm sure I will. For now, though, I have to admit that I find Dark Arts Reversal healing a bit intimidating. There's so much dark magic out there and I can't imagine being able to remember all of the healing magic that can be done to reverse it."
"It is a lot," Victoire agreed with a sigh, "It's definitely a field that keeps you on your toes. For example, I've spent the last few weeks searching every book I can get my hands on for a dark curse that painfully liquifies a man's internal reproductive system and I've been coming up blank so far. And that's just for the book that contains the original spell! That's not even considering looking for some sort of counter-curse."
Selene looked at Victoire with a sympathetic expression, "That's rough."
"You wouldn't happen to know a spell like that do you?" Victoire asked in a last-ditch effort. She was so used to the answer being 'no' that she had a habit of starting to ask everyone if they'd heard of the spell. She'd even asked Austin earlier that night if he had any notion of it, although that might have been so she could see him flinch when she started to explain in detail what the spell did.
James's friend was silent for a minute as she considered the D. A. R. ward healer's words.
"You said liquefaction of the internal reproductive system, right?" Selene finally asked.
"Yes."
The chaser shook her dark head, "Well in that case, no, I'm not familiar with the spell."
"Darn," Victoire muttered.
"I could help you look into it though if you'd like. What language do you think the spell was originally written in?"
Victoire froze while Freddie, who had been standing near James and half listening to the conversation about healing, gave Selene an odd look.
"What do you mean what language? All spells are in Latin."
Selene scoffed at Freddie, "Many older and more obscure spells are written in the original language of whomever created them, and then changed into Latin for wider publishing in spellbooks. I thought perhaps Victoire was having a hard time finding the spell because it may be one of those older more obscure ones and-"
"You are a genius, Selene!" Victoire yelled a moment later as she reached froward, scooped the younger woman up in a hug, and squeezed her tightly.
Victoire let her go a few moments later and Selene stumbled a bit when she was released. The healer had started talking a mile a minute in explanation, so she hadn't noticed that she'd left Selene in a precarious position. James noticed and he reached for Selene and placed his hand on the small of her back to help steady her. She shot him a grateful glance, and when she was sturdy again, she turned her head to listen to Victoire's description. James kept him hand on the small of Selene's back and pretended to be busy listening to his cousin as well.
"How did I not think of that before! I first encountered this spell in France, and I haven't been able to find any account of it outside of that country, so maybe the curse didn't move past the country's borders. It's originally a French curse, so it must be hidden in some older French spellbook," Victoire mused mostly to herself despite the fact that she had an audience of James, Selene, Freddie, Teddy, and Ally.
"I thought Molly helped you look through some spellbooks from France?" Ally asked her cousin.
"Molly helped curate me a list of spellbooks from France, but they were all either originally written in Latin or had been translated into it at some point for wider distribution. This spell must not have been widely passed around, but it stayed in France, most likely between the old prominent families. I'll have more luck checking old pureblood family spellbooks and libraries than looking for something widely circulated," Victoire decided.
Even though she didn't want to put a damper of Victoire's excitement, she felt the need to ask the question, "How do you expect to get your hands on an old pureblood family library filled with dark magic spellbooks?"
Instead of answering, Victoire glanced at her fiancé.
Teddy sighed and ran a hand down his face, "We should probably check on the house sometime soon anyway."
Victoire smiled softly at him and leaned up onto her tiptoes so she could give her him a soft kiss on the lips, "Thank you Love."
He gave her a soft smile in return, "Anything for you."
Selene glanced at James with a raised eyebrow.
He easily read her expression, leaned his head close to her ear, and whispered, "Teddy inherited a property in France from the Lestranges. It has a fully stocked family library."
Despite the fact that he didn't know much about Selene's family, or he was learning that there was much more to her family history than would seem, he had learned enough that night to know that she understood difficult family relationships. Therefore, he felt comfortable sharing this secret of Teddy's with her. He couldn't imagine she'd have any need to tell someone about it, even if she did feel the inclination to.
"Did they just silently make an agreement to go to France so Victoire could research the spell?" Selene whispered back, "Because if they did, it was impressive."
James rolled his eyes, "They do stuff like that all of the time."
As Victoire and Teddy started to talk about the details of the new trip they would have to plan, Cecilia called for Selene's attention and began to talk quidditch with her. James went with her and spent most of his time listening in on her conversation and pretending to ignore the knowing glances Louis was giving him.
Selene seemed to know exactly how much time she needed to stay at the house to be considered polite, and once that time had passed, she causally mentioned that she should get back to her flat as she had some textbook studying to do. James offered to walk to her the apparation point, and it only took them about twenty more minutes to say goodbye to everyone before finally being allowed to exit the Burrow.
"So," James began in an apologetic tone, "I am extremely sorry for everything that just happened."
Selene raised a dark eyebrow at him, "I don't expect you to apologize for all of Freddie's bad jokes. I learned years ago that, despite what most of us believed about you two sharing a brain, you don't actually have any control over what he says or does."
James's brown eyes sparked in surprise, "What did Freddie say now?"
"Something about me being a swot," She replied with a tone of nonchalance, "But your tone of surprise suggests that Freddie's parting insult wasn't what you were originally referring to."
He shook his head and started to run his hand through his dark hair, "No. I was more referring to the entire evening."
Selene stopped walking and turned so that she was directly facing him, "Did you not hear my self-centred story time where I went into detail about my history with awful family dinners? Nobody had to shove a bezoar down my throat and I didn't vomit all over your grandparents' floors, I'd say tonight was a success."
"You call that a success?" James asked incredulously.
She rolled her eyes, "Did you not hear how very low my bar is?"
"It's more like I don't believe that anybody has a more ridiculous family than mine," He responded with a frown.
"James," Selene said in a soft tone of voice, "You've barely heard the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my family, but I do know yours. Trust me when I say that you are very lucky to have what you have. Your family would die for you. My family would kill for me . . . and while those may sound like the same thing, I can assure you that they most definitely are not."
His eyes narrowed at the emotion he could read in hers, "How is there still so much I don't know about you?"
He wasn't sure how he'd let the words slip out without his permission, but they did.
She held his gaze, "My muggle therapist says that I have a hard time showing vulnerability to others."
"I'm not sure that I believe that," James told her. His words had, for some reason, turned into a whisper, but the two of them had somehow drifted so close to each other that a whisper wouldn't impede on their conversation, "You were very open tonight when you charmed all of my relatives."
Selene bit her lip, "That was practiced vulnerability. You'll notice that I skillfully played off all of my anxiety disorders as my parents being over-protective and over-involved."
James felt his heart lodge in his throat.
"That admission didn't sound practiced to me."
"Yeah, I can't account for that. My brain doesn't always seem to think through what I blurt out to you. The fact that you know that I'm scared of heights and bees is testament to that," She confessed as she looked down at her feet.
He ran his hand through his hair again, "So what would your therapist say about your sudden loquaciousness around me?"
He knew that it was unfair for him to push her to share more when she'd already admitted to so much, but he couldn't help himself. It seemed that he wasn't thinking things through before he said them either.
"She'd probably say that it shows personal growth and insight . . . and then she'd give me a homework assignment about writing all my fears down in a journal and then ripping the paper to pieces or something along those lines."
James smiled at her, "No deep breathing techniques?"
"Those are only for when I'm feeling particularly anxious."
"And I don't make you feel anxious?"
Selene's cheeks went red, "You have inspired quite a range of feelings in me throughout the past nine years James Potter . . . but anxiety isn't one of them."
He felt his heartbeat soar.
"There's no reason for you to feel self-conscious about telling me things about yourself Selene . . . I don't think there's anything you could say that could ever lower my opinion of you."
She swallowed thickly and then forced a smile on her face that said she was trying to be a little too nonchalant, "You've yet to hear what I did to get back at my cousin for poisoning me."
He let out a chuckle, breaking the tension that was between them.
"You are correct on that score. But I hope that I will get to hear that story some day, along with all of the other ones you seem to be keeping a tight hold on," James told her with a soft smile of his own.
"I don't think you can call it a tight hold when apparently all it takes for me to spill my family's secrets is some homemade roast and a table full of Weasleys staring me down."
James grinned at her, "So same time next week then?"
She chuckled and he quietly walked her the rest of the way to the apparation point. She turned to face him once more before pulling out her wand.
"Thank your mother and your grandmother again for me? Their hospitality was very considerate."
"I will," He promised.
They stared at each other for another moment before James leaned forward and suddenly placed a kiss on Selene's cheek.
"Goodnight."
She gazed back at him; her grey eyes had gone back to being indecipherable.
"Goodnight, James."
A/N: Okay, show of hands, who actually expected Selene to get invited to a Weasley family dinner this early in the game?
Anyway, In hope that you guys enjoyed this chapter. I know that a lot of you expected more about Daria finding out about the wizarding world, but I feel like in this situation she'd most likely go through it slowly, step-by-step as to avoid cognitive overload.
Next Chapter: We get to see a bit of Ally and Brogan spending time together.
Next Update: As soon as I finish the chapter ;)
I want to thank everyone for following, favouriting, reading, and reviewing!
BIG thank you's as always to:
Janeth16, carbo21, RebekahGrace, CrackHeadBlonde, Manydifferentfandoms, NicoleTheSmith, Guest (1), ntlpurpolia, and kawaiiotaku0405.
carbo21: The number of one-shots I have thought of does not come anywhere close to the amount of time I have to write. Maybe If I ever eventually finish this series I'll go through all my past reviews and make a list of one-shots to write up.
RebakahGrace: Wow, super cool. I have a lot of friends who took the concurrent ed approach as well at some of the universities here in Ontario and they really enjoyed it. Goodluck!
CrackHeadBlonde: Thank you so much, it took me a while to figure out what name I wanted to go with, and what words to use in the acronym.
NicoleTheSmith: Really, Xavier's the only one who should be blamed here, it's his fault for being such an eligible bachelor ;)
I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter,
I hope everyone is able to access it too, let me know if you received your emailed update like normal,
Leave me a review or PM if you have any comments, concerns, or questions,
Until next time stay safe and DFTBA!