A/N: Hi everyone, I know this may be a little later than expected, but February went really quick and I had a lot of schoolwork to get started and completed.
This chapter however, is super long and I think you'll enjoy it :)
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Recap: Victoire is still trying to find the spell that was used to attacked Stephanie's friend Jermone Leclair in France, so she arranged for a group of people to join her in France to search for it.
Research and Studying
Sunday, May 19th 2024
9:07 AM
France
Once her feet hit solid ground again, Victoire felt the pulling sensation at her navel slowly dissipate. She glanced around her to make sure that everybody else had portkeyed properly. They were all adults, and a few of them were even older than her, but she still felt responsible for them since she had been the one to ask them to join her.
Lucy, Molly, Baxter, and Dom had joined her on her portkey; while Ally, Xavier, Kyle, Sandra, Anastasia, and Colton had portkeyed over with Teddy. Victoire was most concerned about the wellbeing of both pregnant women, but neither seemed nauseas, and since she didn't want to single Sandra out as she was the only one her knew her secret, she stayed silent.
The large group had portkeyed directly to the laneway that led up to the Lestrange estate, as Teddy had warned Victoire that the security spells on the property started just at the gates leading to the large plot of land.
Molly blinked in shock as she stared at the large mansion in the distance, "Holy-"
"Merde," Dom finished for her in French.
Both redheads went on to give an impressed-sounding whistle at the same time.
Victoire glared at the both of them and motioned to them that they needed to stop talking about the inheritance that Teddy was still self-conscious about.
The metamorphmagus was already ahead of the group and up by the gates. He pulled out his wand to undo the complicated series of security wards and spells that were on the property, and the large iron gates opened up a few moments later. Victoire quickly gestured to the others that they should go through them, and the group walked up to the front door of the mansion in an obvious and almost painfully awkward silence. Teddy performed a few more spells on the front door itself, and then they swung open to admit the visitors.
Once in the foyer of the mansion, Kyle found that he couldn't keep his thoughts to himself any longer, "This place is well-kept."
"It gets cleaned weekly and has been updated so that the electricity and the plumbing are at least modern," Teddy explained in a monotone voice.
Baxter glanced around the well-lit, and surprisingly bright room with confusion, "Why the upkeep and the room staging if you don't use it?"
He figured that since he was there to offer help, it might give him some leeway to ask some more impertinent questions that he'd kinda always wanted the answers to.
"Teddy doesn't use the property, but he does contract a company that rents it out on short-term bases," Dom answered for her soon-to-be brother-in-law.
"Are there that many people who want to stay in a home belonging to the infamous Lestrange family?" Molly asked, also deciding to jump on the 'it's now or never to ask questions' bandwagon.
Teddy sighed, "Don't know. The company that rents the mansion out is muggle, it only rents to muggles."
"There's some poetic justice there," Lucy muttered as she glanced around the room and tried to imagine how the former members of the Lestrange family would react if they knew that muggles were vacationing in their ancestral home.
Sandra, the only muggleborn out of the group, thought of the question that the others seemed to overlook, "Ancient mansions like this have magic built into their very foundations and walls, how do muggles stay here and not come across anything magical?"
"All of the magical artefacts that can't be removed from the house are magically sealed in the library. The room itself is hidden from muggles," Victoire explained.
She'd been in the estate only on one other occasion, and as it had only been her and Teddy that time, the atmosphere was decidedly depressing in spite of the fact that the rooms had been redecorated to give a more welcoming feel.
"Library's this way," Teddy told them as he led them towards a large double staircase.
It took them several minutes to journey through the mansion until they came to the right room, and when they did, they had to wait another few moments as Teddy removed even more security spells.
Once inside the library, Victoire spent a few moments just taking in the shelves filled with hundreds of books. There was one desk and two largish tables in the room, as well as at least two small settee style couches and a few armchairs. Teddy pulled his wand out and conjured up a few more wooden chairs so that there was enough for each person in the party.
"Molly?" Victoire enquired of her cousin.
"Got it right here," Molly informed her as she pulled some pages out of a messenger bag she had across her body. She started to hand out a sheet to each person, excepting Victoire and Dom, "Vic and I have curated a list of French terms that you should search for in the spells books. If you spot one of these words on a page, direct it to one of our fluent French speakers, please."
Everyone took the sheets offered to them, Lucy and Sandra both looking very impressed with Molly's level of preparation, and started to settle down in chairs around the tables.
"What's behind that door?" Kyle asked curiously as he pointed to an extremely decorative closed door located exactly opposite from the door they came in on.
"That's where all of the magical artefacts that can't be removed from the house are located," Victoire explained as she walked over to the door in question.
Teddy followed her, "As well as all of the very obviously dark texts. Harry and Ron sealed all of those in there decades ago when the inheritance and this property were first transferred to me."
He pulled out his wand and performed even more magic to release the security spells.
"Only Victoire and I are going to go into this room, for obvious reasons-"
"As well as Baxter," Victoire interrupted with a specific look and a hand beckoning gesture to her male cousin.
Baxter stood up from the seat he had just sat down in, "Why me?"
Teddy had already entered the smaller room, and Victoire stood at its threshold, a grin on her face, "Because you're good at finding things."
He rolled his eyes at the stereotype, but followed after her because he did have a knack for picking out exactly which textbook he needed, so he could write his essays during school.
Once in the side room, Baxter was very careful to avoid accidentally brushing up against any of the items that were jammed into the room. They all seemed relatively innocuous, but he knew that the most innocent was most likely the most dangerous. On the far wall was a dark grained bookshelf filled with thick, dusty books. Teddy had already started the careful process of checking the books for hidden curses or hexes, and when he cleared one, he would nod at Victoire and she would pull it from the shelf.
"Fancy any of them?" Victoire asked Baxter in a tone that she had tried to make teasing, but just fell flat. She was definitely absorbing some of the anxiety and pain that was unintentionally coming off of Teddy in waves.
Baxter took a few steps closer to the bookshelf, shoving his hands securely into the pockets of his jeans as he did so to avoid the temptation to touch, and inspected the books he could see. He pursed his lips and pointed to a few different tomes that, from just the look of their spines, seemed interesting, and Teddy moved to cast some curse-detecting spells on them. Once they were cleared Victoire grabbed them as well. When they had about a dozen grimy tomes between them, Teddy suggested that they go back to the main room.
They had only been occupied in the hazardous room for about fifteen minutes, it, understandably, took time for Teddy to complete all of the proper spells, but when they exited it, they found that the others had already gotten down to work. There seemed to be somewhat of a systematic approach to what they did, each taking a few books from different sections of the library and cross-matching any familiar words in those books so that they could at least get an idea of what topic the book was dealing with.
"Got the library system figured out yet?" Victoire asked and she, Teddy, and Baxter sat down at a free table.
Lucy, Dom, Xavier, and Colton all very obviously avoided eye-contact with Victoire.
Sandra snorted and rolled her eyes, "These planks all started looking through the shelves and were trying to separate the family lineage books from the cook books, while I just pulled out my wand and accioed some spellbooks over."
"But we're on track now," Ally commented with a grin as she flipped through a tome that was bound in a rather bright shade of green that almost looked like dragon scales.
Teddy grabbed a book from the pile Victoire and Baxter had curated and ran his thumb over the thick leather spine, "Anything of importance?"
"The Lestranges' had an ancestor named Florimond who it appears kept a very meticulous and sassy recollection of his day-to-day life," Dom announced airily as she flipped through a shorter book that looked more like a journal than a spellbook.
Victoire frowned, "As entertaining as that sounds, I think we should be more focused on spellbooks than journals of long-dead Lestranges."
"Fair enough," Dom said with a shrug as she set the journal down and reached for a book near Ally's elbow, "Dude sounds like a douche anyway. He spent the first three entries complaining that his parents couldn't seem to find a pretty enough rich woman to betroth him to."
Lucy, Molly, Anastasia, and Ally all replied in the negative to Victoire's previous question, but Xavier seemed to be having more luck.
"I've found a word that matches one of the ones on the list," Xavier told them excitedly.
Kyle, who was sitting next to him, leaned a little closer and glanced at the page his best mate was pointing to, "There's another word that matches, right there. I can't make out some of the main words though."
Dom got up and moved between the two so she could have a closer look. Her blue eyes only needed to dart across the spell and its description once before she started to snicker.
"Yeah, no. Not what we're looking for boys."
Xavier's face deflated while Kyle continued to stare at the spell with interest, "So what does the spell do then?"
"It's a spell to help erectile dysfunction," She explained matter-of-factly.
"Oh . . ."
Xavier flipped the page over and kept looking.
Victoire settled down with one of the dark spell books and began to look through it, she was only four pages in before she summoned a piece of paper to her and started to frantically write down notes.
"Did you find something Vic?" Baxter asked curiously as he quickly shuffled past a page that held an image of an item that was most definitely a medieval torture device.
"It's a curse that causes systematic sparks of pain through a person's body. Mostly likely it affects the nervous system and gradually sends signals of pain to parts of the body starting with extremities. It was probably created and used as a spell to torture people," Victoire explained, never taking her eyes off of the page.
Colton glanced up at Victoire with a frown, "That's not the spell we're looking for . . . why are you taking notes on it?"
"Because I'm a Dark Arts Reversal healer and I haven't come across this spell before. I should have it in my notes in case the Lestranges aren't the only ones who have it hidden away in their family library."
Colton rolled his eyes and addressed Teddy next, "You're never going to get her out of here."
"I have permission to physically carry her out of here if it hits seven o'clock tonight and she still refuses to leave," The metamorphmagus replied with an unconcerned shrug.
Kyle snorted, "Always good to have your boundaries defined in a relationship, especially when you're going into a marriage."
Victoire and Teddy glanced at each other at the same time and shared a small smile, "Forty-one days."
"You're both bloody ludicrous," Dom muttered with a sigh.
Her tone changed a few moments later when Lucy pushed a page towards her to inspect, "Oh, naughty."
"What does it say?" Lucy asked.
"That the best way to please a man is to-"
Lucy scoffed, "Stop it Dom, I'm serious."
"So am I. Someone decided to write down a sex tip in-between two spells that can detect different types of magical fault lines," Dom insisted.
Lucy, and Anastasia who was sitting on the other side of Dom, both leaned forward to look at the page.
"All I've got is a spellbook full of charm spells that any Hogwarts graduate could do," Sandra replied as she tossed the book off to the side and grabbed another from a stack in the middle of the table.
"How can you be sure?" Xavier asked her.
Sandra raised an eyebrow, "I recognize the spells from school. All of the descriptions are handwritten in French, but the spells themselves are standard Latin."
The group of adults went relatively quiet again as they studiously searched through the books around them for familiar terms from the list Molly gave them.
Victoire finally put the spellbook she'd been taking notes on aside and dove into a few more from her pile. Beside her Teddy pushed one spellbook to the side and went to grabbed another. He picked up a tome that looked like it was bound in some sort of pale leather that felt oddly flaky to the touch. He'd barely had the book in his hand for a few seconds before he felt an overwhelming sense of dread creep up on him; it made him immediately drop the text.
His fiancée noticed.
"What is it?" She whispered.
"It's bound in skin."
Victoire swallowed thickly and glanced back at the book, "How can you tell?"
"I've felt things covered in skin before," Teddy replied quietly.
The second the words were out of his mouth a horrible memory came flashing back into Victoire's mind. Back in her seventh-year while J.P. Holmwood was masquerading as auror-in-training Lassoder, he had worn a magical mask that changed his facial appearance. When the Auror Department confiscated it, they found out that it was made of the skin of metamorphmagi. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that that was what he was referring to.
She didn't want to ask the question, but she knew that he wouldn't be shocked if she did, "And you're sure it's human?"
"It's metamorphmagi, I'm sure of it."
The healer let out a heavy sigh and gently slid the book closer to her and farther away from her fiancée, "I'll look through it."
"Vic I can-"
"I know," Victoire interrupted him softly, "But you don't need to. Let me do it."
Teddy nodded at her and she shifted the book as far away from Teddy as she could while it still being within reading distance of her. As she skimmed it, a little bit of stress released from her body with every page that passed that didn't have anything more gruesome written on it than a few questionable animal transfiguration spells.
Baxter sat diagonally across from her and pursed his lips at the book he was staring at, "Hey Ally, can I have your opinion on something?"
His cousin got up to help him, but it caused his sister some confusion.
"Why do you need Ally's help?" Lucy asked incredulously.
Ally didn't speak or read French, and Baxter had Victoire at the same table as him.
"Because this looks like a book filled with potions instructions and as she's our resident potioneer, I'd like her opinion," Baxter explained calmly.
Ally's face perked up at the word 'potions' and she slipped into an empty chair next to Baxter's and began to look at the book in front of him.
She only needed to look at it for a few moments, "Yup, definitely potions. I'm not quite sure why it was locked away with the 'dangerous magical stuff', the ingredients seem to be those that make innocuous seeming brews. And some ineffective ones. Why would you put lizard spleen and Rufsly in but not add Perinium–uh. Oh. Yikes. Never mind, retract that."
Teddy frowned at Ally, "Why?"
"At first it seems like a simple stimulus potion, but instead of adding a specific ingredient that we use in most modern-day stimulus potions, it seems they suggest adding blood from veelas," Ally described.
Victoire, who was still looking through the skin-bound book, looked up at the word veela, "What does the change in ingredient do to the potion?"
"No idea," Ally replied with a shrug as she flipped through a few more pages, "There seems to be human or humanoid blood used as ingredients in most of these potions."
"Blood magic?" Victoire asked.
Ally nodded, "Or at least the potion equivalent of it."
"That explains why it was locked away where it was then," Teddy said as he held his hands out to Ally with an expectant gesture.
She pouted and very slowly handed the book to him, "But I wanted to look at it closer."
"Ally-"
"Please?"
"I'll add it to the pile Vic's already mentally started. They'll need to go to the Auror Department and be cleared, but we might be able to get you special permission to study them."
Victoire glanced in surprise at her fiancé, "I didn't say anything about bringing books back with me."
"No, but you're thinking it."
She nodded in agreement and then Baxter grabbed another book to look through while Ally went back to her seat.
With everyone else busy, Teddy asked Victoire about her progress with the skin-bound book.
"It's just filled with transfiguration spells. There's some questionable human transfiguration spells, which is probably why it was locked away, but nothing very dark," She told him as she quietly closed the book.
Over at the other table, Molly let out a low whistle at the book she'd just opened, "Well I just found a spellbook on necromancy."
"How do you know it's about necromancy?" Xavier asked.
"Because it's the same word in French as it is in English," Molly replied with an eyeroll.
Dom didn't even bother to glance up from the text she was examining, "Does it say anything about horcruxes?"
Victoire, Teddy, and Ally's heads snapped up and they glared at Dom.
"What's a horcrux?" Kyle questioned.
Because of course he'd be curious about a word that's he'd never heard before.
Dom realized her mistake quickly and immediately tried to backpedal, "An 'orcru. Oh, what's the word in English . . . it's a specific type of spell that's supposedly used in necromancy."
She even tried to make the word sound French to try to cover for herself. It seemed to work for the people present who were not Weasleys (or Xavier, as Ally had told him all of the family secrets a short time after the got engaged) and didn't know what the word was.
Teddy got up from his table and walked over to Molly with his hand held out, "Give it here Molly."
"What! Why?" Molly asked petulantly as she unintentionally held more tightly to the necromancy book in her hand.
"Because I'm an auror and you're holding a book on dark magic that obviously should have been locked up in the other room," He explained with an eyeroll.
Molly frowned further but handed the book over to him, "But Victoire and Ally get to keep their dark magic textbooks."
"Victoire and Ally may be given the option to study some books, related to their field of work, if and only if the auror department has the chance to clear them," Teddy explained slowly and with pointed looks to Molly as well as both aforementioned women, "You however, do not have a reason to need a book on necromancy."
Molly folded her arms over her chest, "I work with books, and you're going to restrict which ones I have access to?"
"It'd be illegal for you to purchase this book Molly," He reminded her.
"Which is why I'd never go around looking to buy a book on necromancy. But if one falls into my lap-"
Teddy sighed and set the book on necromancy down on top of the potions text he'd confiscated from Ally, "How about this Molly, if you ever end up doing a research project for a legitimate reason in necromancy, I'll write a note so that you can have access to this book. Alright?"
"It's a deal!" Molly replied to his sarcasm with a blindingly bright smile before grabbing another book from the pile between her and Dom.
The group worked in silence, not getting anywhere but crossing a lot of books off their lists, before Anastasia decided that the room was way too quiet.
"So, anybody got anything new or exciting to share?" She asked sweetly as she took a short break from flipping through a book that, from her slight knowledge of French, seemed to be filled with dubious –although not yet dark– marriage advice.
She was met with even more silence, which she didn't think was possible. She decided to be more direct with her next question.
"So, Baxter, found a date yet for the wedding?"
Baxter looked up in surprise, "Does everyone know about that?"
"Just everyone who's come across Dom in the past few weeks," Anastasia replied nonchalantly.
Baxter turned to glare at his cousin, "Really?"
Dom didn't get the chance to defend herself because Anastasia interrupted, "You two can argue about this later. I want an answer to my question."
"He'd have a date for the wedding if he got the nerve to ask out Bakery Girl," Xavier commented from down at the other end of the table.
Baxter's mouth popped open in surprise, "How-"
"You know that Cecilia can't keep a secret," The professional quidditch keeper replied with a small smirk.
"From what I saw last week, she'd totally say yes if you asked her out," Ally piped up from beside her fiancé.
Baxter glared at his second eldest cousin, "Wait–You heard about if from Cecilia before we saw her last week?"
"Of course," Ally replied with a shrug, "I didn't know who Lia was until I met her, but I knew that she'd been flirting with you."
"Oh, who is this she?" Anastasia asked interestedly.
Ally smiled brightly at the Slytherin alumnus, "Ophelia Key, you might remember her from Hogwarts she was in Slytherin house and was-"
"In my year," Molly finished helpfully.
Anastasia nodded, her expression making it seem as though she was thinking a mile a minute, "I know of her, I didn't know her that well at Hogwarts though. She's sisters with Rosalind Key, isn't she?"
"Yeah, Lia's much nicer than her bitch of a sister though," Ally told her.
Colton raised an eyebrow at Ally, "That bitch is married to one of my oldest friends, remember."
"Dear, Rosalind spent the first three years of our marriage being fake-concerned that it seemed as though I wasn't able to carry an heir to term. She's a real bitch," Anastasia reminded her husband.
"Lia seems nice though," Molly continued, "And she flirts with Baxter anytime he's near her, so all he needs to do is ask her out and he won't have to worry about what Cecilia will do to get him a wedding date."
Baxter's cheeks were red by the time the women finished gossiping about him, "Can we talk about someone else's nonexistent love life? Freddie and James don't have dates yet either."
Dom waved off Baxter's comment, "James already seems farther along in getting a girlfriend than either you or Freddie, and you've had a few years of Lia flirting with you to give you a head start."
"Hold up, who's James's maybe girlfriend?" Anastasia asked curiously.
Dom mimed zipping her lips, "Can't tell you, it's a secret and I all but figuratively signed an NDA."
Anastasia pouted but didn't push the issue further.
There was more silence when a buzzing sound issued throughout the room and Kyle pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket. He read whatever text message he'd received and then sent Dom a look of disbelief, complete with a raised eyebrow.
"Care to explain to me why my cousin Greg has just asked me if I'd be able to get him in touch with you Dominique?"
The redhead in question shrugged, "Dunno, maybe he's finally taking me up on my offer to set him up with a sexy healer."
"Are you talking about Spencer? Because they would be so cute together," Sandra commented with a smile as she thought about the idea.
"Yeah, last time he was in England I-"
While Dom and Sandra started to gossip, Kyle took it upon himself to dial his cousin's number and get him on the line. He quickly explained that he had the pleasure of being in the same room as Dom, and then handed the phone over to her.
Dom nodded a bit, said 'uh, huh' and 'yeah okay' a few times, and then finished with, "Colton and I are both presently in France actually, so if you'd like us to stop by, we can."
She nodded once more, hung up, and then handed Kyle back his phone.
"So, Colton and I are going to need to go on a little side quest. Greg wants to talk to us about our day in the slammer and our resulting legal difficulties that he had to sweep under the rug," Dom explained, mostly to her boss, as she stood up from her chair.
Victoire pursed her lips, "Do you need me to come to?"
"No," Her younger sister replied with a shake of her head, "Greg said that one Weasley would be more than enough."
The rest of the Weasleys in the room, Victoire included, nodded their heads in understanding. It was a reasonable request.
Dom and Colton left the library to go meet with Greg Line, while the others went back to combing the books in front of them for the spell that had been eluding Victoire for the last several weeks.
2:38 PM
England
"Wow, that was amazing," James Potter said, a little breathlessly, as he moved to lay on his back and waited for his heart beat to slow back down.
Beside him, Selene Spiros was pulling a sweater on over her bra and also trying to catch her breath, "Well, I mean I know that I was great. . ."
He smiled at her teasing words, although it did falter a little at the edges when he realized that as she put her previously discarded sweater back on over her sports bra, she was actually covering up a lot of the skin that he may or may not have been staring at while they practiced.
"I know that the job description said you had to be difficult to please," James said as he alluded to a conversation they had had the week before, "But you could give me even just one compliment."
She grinned cheekily at him and tucked a piece of red-tipped black hair behind her ear, "Your hair looks good today."
Normally, he'd reply back with something equally mischievous and charming, but his hand reflexively moved to his head and he pushed his dark fringe back off his slightly sweaty forehead.
"What?" Selene asked when he didn't immediately reply, "Are you gonna hold out for a quidditch related compliment too?"
"I believe the current exchange rate is one quidditch-themed compliment to two appearance related compliments," James replied after he had a quick and private conversation with himself about getting his shit together and not looking like an idiot in front of bloody perfect Selene Spiros.
She pursed her lips, "Hmmm . . . well now you've put me in the hard spot of having to find something else even moderately tolerable about you to compliment . . ."
"I could take my shirt off if that would help speed up the process," He suggested as he sat back up and leaned in close to her.
Selene smirked at him, her face close to his, "Why? Do you have an exceptionally cute bellybutton or something?"
"I actually have an outie," James told her with a wink.
"Really?" She asked, dropping the teasing tone and looking in the direction of his work-out shirt covered stomach with genuine curiosity.
He smiled, "Yup."
"Circe that sounds adorable."
"Exactly what every man wants to hear."
"Then how about this, your backwards pass has improved exponentially since even last weekend. I can really tell that you've been putting in the work," Selene told him sincerely.
The compliment was nice, and he really did appreciate it, but he wouldn't have been mad if she'd taken the other option and given him another compliment based on his looks.
"Except for yesterday, took the day off to attend Brogan's sixth birthday party," James announced.
"That must have been fun."
"Yeah, well most of my family was there as well, so I'm actually quite glad that we're not having family dinner tonight too. Spending entire weekends together can get a little tiring."
Selene nodded in understanding, "I get that. When I see my extended family, it is almost exclusively in weekly increments and it's tough."
James stretched out his leg and rubbed his calf where the muscle was feeling stiff from their practice, "So what are your plans for the rest of the day?"
"Studying."
He raised an eyebrow at her, "You said that last week."
"Well, it's double important this weekend. I've got a test tomorrow night once I finish practice with the team," She explained.
"Do you ever do, like, a study group with other students to prepare for tests?"
Selene shook her head, the errant piece of hair she'd placed by behind her ear falling back into her face, "I've attempted it, but it's hard to arrange when I've got such a different schedule from everyone else's."
Her tone didn't sound concerned, but even though James knew next to nothing about being in healing school, he did know that studying by yourself for tests could be difficult.
"Do Teagan or Jordan ever help you study?" He hoped his tone sounded casual.
"Sometimes, not today though. Jordan has to work and Teagan's got a prior family thing," Her tone sounded unconcerned.
James finished rubbing his leg, "Would you like some help studying?"
She seemed surprised at the offer, "It's alright James, really. I can get through it by myself."
"I have no doubt that you can Selene, but you don't have to. You've been taking time out every weekend to help me with quidditch, it's only fair that I help you study," He replied.
Selene pushed the loose piece of hair behind her ear again, "I appreciate the offer, but I'm sure you've got a plan to the rest of your day-"
"Nope. No family dinner 'cause half of them are in France with Vic. Our practice was the only thing I had on the books for today."
Which was now over.
She bit her lip, "Don't you want to spend your free time with Freddie?"
He noticed that instead of outright telling him 'no' and that she didn't want him to help, she seemed more concerned with making sure that he actually wanted to help her and wasn't just being nice.
"Freddie's working today. He's sequestered himself in a backroom at the joke shop and he's working on a super secret project. I thought he was finished yesterday when he gave Brogan some soda that tastes like a soft pretzel for his birthday, but apparently that was only a side project and he's still working on the big one," James explained.
Her face held an expression of understandable confusion, which James also found inexplicably adorable, "A soft drink that tastes like a soft pretzel?"
"According to Cecilia, Brogan's obsessed with them."
"Yeah, oddly enough that seems on brand. All the Woods I know have pretty obsessive personalities."
James snorted, "They're lucky that right now it's just salty-bread, who knows what he's going to develop an obsession with as he grows."
"Simon's close in age to Brogan, and right now he only seems to have time for this muggle card game-"
"A card game?" James repeated incredulously.
"Yes, it's got these imaginary magical creatures on them and the cards fight each other even though they're two-dimensional and not the tiniest bit holographic. I mean I'm sure that the magical world has some sort of equivalent of it, that would be twenty times more exciting, but he likes the muggle one because he can play it with his cousins," Selene described.
James pursed his lips, considered whether his next question would be too nosey, and then decided to ask it anyway, "Your cousins in Greece play muggle card games?"
"Ah, no. Rachel's got nieces and nephews on her side of the family that are close to Simon's age, and live here in England. They're muggles too and they introduced him to the game," She explained.
He nodded his head. That made more sense.
"So . . . are you going to take me up on my offer to help you study?" He asked after a moment of comfortable silence.
Selene met his eyes, "You really don't have anything better to do?"
His smile reached his eyes, they were clear and bright, "I don't think I'll be getting a better offer."
She smiled in return, and nodded her head, "Then thank you, I will take you up on your offer to help."
Selene got to her feet, James following behind her, and she offered to side-along apparate him to her flat.
3:00 PM
France
"It's a good thing that Victoire didn't come with us, she's not anywhere near patient enough for this," Dom commented as she doodled on a blank legal pad on the table in front of her.
Beside her, her boss was giving her an incredulous side-eye, "She wouldn't have been patient enough? You look like you're five minutes away from bouncing off the walls in boredom."
"We've been here for like four hours. Vic would have been doing laps around the table after the first half hour," Dom defended her previous statement.
Greg had given Dom instructions to a law office in Lyon, and she and Colton had apparated there within fifteen minutes of her hanging up her phone. The large high-rise they found themselves in front of was obviously not a holding of Line's Construction, but Dom hadn't expected it to be. Greg was mostly in corporate and contract law, so he had only been involved in Dom and Victoire's criminal case because of extenuating circumstances. The pair of English lawyers had walked into the building and found Greg waiting for them in the lobby.
As they took the lift up several floors, Greg explained why he had called her and wanted to talk to her and Colton. Despite the fact that he and Colton had pretty much closed Victoire and Dom's case, Greg was still a go between, between the women's case and the case of Jérôme Leclair. Jérôme Leclair's lawyer, a very prominent human rights lawyer that Greg had gone to law school with, had told him that something had come up with her case that she wanted to double-check with him, and the lawyer for his clients if possible. She had given Greg access to a conference room near her office, and told him to get started with his clients and that she'd pop in when she could.
Sidonie Pelletier was Jérôme Leclair's lawyer, and when she joined Greg, Colton, and Dom only about a half hour after they arrived, Dom could tell right away that she liked her. Jérôme's lawyer explained that she just needed to go over the details of what happened when Victoire and Dom were at the police station trying to help him again, in case Dom remembered any new information she thought may be relevant to Jérôme's case. She was specifically trying to find out exactly what Dom remembered about how law enforcement treated her client.
In spite of Dom's excellent memory for injustices (Weasleys were pretty good at holding grudges after all), she was unable to provide Ms. Pelletier with any new information. Dom had just got to the part of her story where she was reciting how Greg had come and saved them, via blackmail, when Sidonie got a message and had to excuse herself. Just as Dom and Colton were about to leave, Greg received a message of his own from Sidonie, asking them if they could stay for just a little while longer, because there was something new that had come up that she potentially wanted to discuss it with them.
A little while longer turned out to be a few hours, which is why Dom, who was normally cool and collected, was getting antsy and starting to do a rather good impression of her older sister.
Greg had just expressed aloud that it was too bad that he wasn't in the habit of carrying a calming draught around with him, when the door to the conference room finally re-opened and Sidonie Pelletier walked in, with Jérôme Leclair and Stephanie Paquet behind her.
Dom greeted her third-cousin's girlfriend warmly, and Mr. Leclair excitedly shook Dom's hand and thanked her again for helping him when he got arrested.
Colton introduced himself to the newcomers, and then he asked Sidonie what the new developments were.
"One of my paralegals found some paperwork that just might make it possible to prove that the person who attacked my client bribed the police to let him go," Sidonie explained.
Dom frowned, "I thought that we already knew that that prat bribed his way out of his charges?"
"We did, but I've got stronger evidence to prove that the illegal thing they did was illegal, which makes the bribe double illegal. It will seem even more illegal if I can somehow get a hold of his wand and get it to the right law enforcement team," Sidonie explained in French.
That was the one problem Jérôme's lawyer had come across in the entire case. The wand of the person that had attacked him had somehow gone missing, and without it they couldn't prove that the man cast the spell on Jérôme. Because they couldn't prove that the man had cast the spell, the charges against him didn't stick and the money that the man's family donated to the police department ensured that they wouldn't work too hard to press any more charges against him.
Greg had been translating the French to Colton so that he could stay abreast of what was being said, and he asked the next question.
"What about Greg's donation for Victoire and Dom, will that stick?"
Greg translated the questions, and Sidonie nodded.
"They're fine. They weren't charged with anything criminal, and there's no reason for anybody to look to closely at their involvement in the case besides them being witnesses to his treatment while he was in custody."
"Is there anything else Victoire or I can do to help Jérôme's case further?" Dom asked her.
Sidonie shook her head and told Dom that it was probably best if they stayed out of Jérôme's case completely unless they were called upon to testify.
Dom frowned, "Define completely?"
"Why?"
"Well," Dom began, "At the moment Victoire and several of our family and friends are currently here in France going through a whole bunch of old spellbooks and looking for the spell that was used on Mr. Leclair. My sister doesn't like not knowing things, and the fact that she didn't know what was cast on Mr. Leclair has been bothering her since she cured him."
Sidonie pursed her lips and replied, "I guess that's okay, as long as she's just coming at it from a research angle. Has she been in contact with the hospital here about the other patient who was presenting similar symptoms?"
Dom's eyebrows narrowed over her eyes, "What other person? She contacted a colleague of hers here in France, but they said that they had never heard of the spell, so she didn't go any further than that."
"A few days ago, I got a response to an inquiry I'd sent to the hospital weeks before. Apparently, two Christmases ago, a man was rushed to the hospital with similar symptoms to Mr. Leclair. The healers at the hospital were able to keep him alive, but in the middle of the night at the hospital he started bleeding and they couldn't figure out what was happening or how to stop it. They obviously didn't have access to Healer Weasley's spell, so all they could do was handle the pain until the spell ran its course," Sidonie explained a she searched through a folder in front of her as she looked for the report.
When she found it, she corrected herself, "It was two days before Christmas, in Nice. There was some sort of attack at an outdoor Christmas festival-"
"On Avenue Chanteclerc?" Stephanie interrupted, her eyes going wide.
Sidonie frowned at her. She'd almost forgotten she was there, as Stephanie had been Jérôme's friend, she had gone with him to almost every meeting with his lawyer as moral support.
"How did you know that?"
The reply came from Dom, "We were there."
Sidonie's head moved so that she could frown at her too, "You both were?"
"Along with Victoire. Her fiancé, my brother, my step-cousin, and Stephanie's girlfriend who is my cousin," Dom listed.
"Did you see a man there who got injured and sent to the hospital?"
"Victoire was near someone at the time of the attack. She started to triage him right away, and she kept him stable until she handed him off to the emergency magical first responders when they came. We told our statements to the authorities the next day, and since we weren't contacted after that, we assumed that it had all been handled."
Greg asked the next question, "Was anybody else hurt and sent to the hospital, or just the man Victoire helped?"
"I can't remember, there were a lot of people and a lot of noise, but from what I remember when the emergency magical first responders got on scene, they took Victoire's patient first. Which would imply that he was the worst off," Dom explained.
Sidonie asked Dom and Stephanie some more questions, but they didn't have any answers for her. Colton piped up and asked if they knew whether or not the attack on the man from the festival had also been intended as a hate crime, but Sidonie didn't have any information on how the other victim identified himself, so she couldn't tell if it was a hate crime or not.
"What are the chances that the same person who cast this obscure dark spell on this other man two years ago, was the same as person who attacked Mr. Leclair?" Colton asked.
"There's no actual evidence, but the fact that Victoire has checked all of the spellbooks she could think of and contacted Dark Arts Reversal healers on every continent and none of them were able to tell her anything about the spell she was looking for, is very suspicious," Dom answered.
Sidonie seemed thoughtful, "Do you think your sister will be successful in finding the origins of the spell soon?"
"When Victoire is determined she doesn't stop until she gets what she wants. She's going to look for it until she finds it," Colton replied after Greg quickly translated the other lawyer's words for him.
"I'll see if I can contact the healer who dealt with this other case directly, as well as the man in question. Perhaps they can give me some information about the spell or the case that will help with Mr. Leclair's. If Healer Weasley can figure out the spell, perhaps we can pinpoint how Mr. Leclair's attacker came into contact with it, and prove that he is one of very few people that knew about this obscure spell," Sidonie explained her thought process aloud.
Dom nodded at the other lawyer, and then at her boss, "We should probably get back and give them a hand then. The more help they have the quicker this will go."
Stephanie said that she would wrap things up with Jérôme, and then go home to Alexandrie and tell her that Victoire could use their help.
Greg didn't have anything else pressing, so he offered to join them as well. He was able to leave directly with Dom and Colton, and when he let go of Dom's arm after she had side-along apparated him, he stared in shock at the large manor they had apparated in front of.
Dom barely spared him a glance as she and Colton walked towards the mansion, and told him to keep up. As they walked, she gave Kyle's cousin the quick run down about how Teddy had inherited the property. He was shocked that he hadn't known that Teddy had inherited the Lestrange family fortune and holdings.
When the trio of lawyers stepped back into the library, Dom could tell right away that Victoire hadn't found what they were looking for. The piles of discarded books were so large that they were now scattered around both tables, and it was honestly getting difficult to tell the difference between the books that they had checked and the ones they hadn't. The remainder of the take-out lunch that they must have gotten in the intervening time while Dom and Colton were away, was scattered along the tables along with the books and some loose sheafs of parchment paper.
Colton explained that Greg had offered to help them, and also went on to summarize the developments of their afternoon. While he did so Dom meandered over to where Teddy sat and stole a half-finished carton of Chinese food that she was almost certain that Victoire must have saved for her as it was her favourite.
Kyle thanked his cousin for the offer to help, gave him a one-armed hug, and then handed him half of the pile of books that were at his end of the table.
Dom shoved a piece of broccoli into her mouth and surveyed the process the group had made, "So where is my sister?"
"Over there," Teddy explained as he jerked a thumb in the direction of the section of floor a few metres away from them that was covered in stacks of books that they'd already looked through, "If you look behind the book fortress, she's probably lying on her stomach and completely oblivious to everything going on around her."
Dom took a few steps closer to the towers of books, and found that her sister's fiancé was right. Victoire was hidden behind the wall of books and she didn't even seem to register Dom, Colton, and Greg's presence.
Victoire was still absorbed in her research a half hour later when Stephanie and Alexandria arrived, after having gotten directions from Dom via text message, and offered their own help.
After over another hour of fruitless research on everybody's ends, Teddy got up, stretched his shoulders, and then went over to where his fiancée was still laying on the ground. He sat down next to her, waited until she finished the book she was looking at, and then grabbed her left hand as she went to reach for another book.
Victoire startled at his touch, and she blinked her blue eyes owlishly as they focused on her fiancé.
"What?"
"I think it's time we start to pack it in-"
"But-"
"We can stay a little longer, but everyone from England would probably like to get back home and have dinner. Stasia looks like she's getting tired, Xavier has early practice tomorrow, and even Sandra's starting to look drained. Greg, Stephanie, and Alexandrie might stay a little longer since they live here," Teddy told her softly.
Victoire felt bad for keeping Xavier, the two pregnant women, and her younger cousins here so long when there was nothing to show for it. However, before she could say something to them, she thought about Teddy's words.
"When did Greg, Stephanie, and Alexandrie get here?"
He sighed, but there was a hint of an indulgent smile at the corners of his lips, "Like two hours ago."
"What time is it now?"
"Almost six."
"Bloody Hell, I didn't realize so much time had passed," Victoire moaned as she pinched the bridge of her nose.
She slowly rose to her feet, Teddy helping her and then placing his hand on the small of her back, and walked over to the tables where her friends and family were still trying to help her find the elusive spell. Including three more French speakers into the group had helped them move through a lot more books, but they still hadn't found it.
"I really appreciate everyone's help, I do, but it is starting to get late and I'd hate to keep you here much longer."
As Teddy had guessed, the group of people from France immediately said that they could stay a little longer. The ones from England also offered to stay longer, only for Victoire to insist they start heading home.
"How come you didn't invite Steph and I to start with?" Alexandrie asked Victoire in French once her cousin finally, and belatedly, acknowledged her presence.
Victoire stretched her neck and replied in French, "I was worried Séraphine might somehow find out if it got around to our family. If I don't see her again for another fifty years it will be too soon."
"Why?"
Teddy, who didn't understand what the pair were talking about in rapid French except for the name of Victoire's great-grandmother, groaned and began helping the others start to put the books they'd searched through back on the library shelves. As Victoire went on to angrily tell Alexandrie about their great-grandmother's visit to England, Dom sat next to them, picked up one of the books from the discarded pile, and flipped through it as she interrupted the story every so often to insult their great-grandmother.
At the end of the story, Alexandrie had to repeat something in English because she had to make sure that she'd heard Victoire right.
"Fleur t'rew 'er wand into t'e fire?"
"Yes, it didn't burn up though. Baxter thinks the veela hair core imbibed the wood with fire-resistant magic," Victoire added.
Alexandrie pulled out her wand and stared at it, "Really?"
Baxter, who had an arm full of books and had been headed to the shelf to put it away, stopped next to the part-veelas, "Do you have a veela hair core in your wand too?"
"Oui," Alexandrie replied with a prim nod.
Baxter eyed the wand contemplatively, "Any chance you'd be willing to let me test out it's fire-resistant capabilities?"
"'Ow would you do t'at?"
Victoire snickered, "He's going to try to set it on fire."
Alexandrie's hand automatically tightened around her wand and she leaned away from Baxter, "Um, I do not know eef I am t'ere yet. Tante Fleur is much braver t'an me."
Baxter nodded his head understandingly, "If you change your mind just let me know."
And then he continued past them to put his books away.
Lucy grabbed a pile of books from the table next to where Dom was sitting and narrowed her eyes at her cousin who was still looking through the small book she had picked up, "You could help us tidy up, you know."
"Just let me finish this page. It's gotten juicy."
"Juicy?"
Molly walked over to the pair, "Are you looking through that diary that belonged to one of the Lestrange ancestors from like a hundred years ago?"
"It's about two hundred and fifty years old, and yes. It's compelling how Florimond is such a douche, but you find yourself rooting for him since his family is even worse," Dom explained as she flipped another page in the old journal.
Lucy scoffed, "As entertaining as it may be, we're not here to gossip about the people who used to live in this house."
"Oh, Florimond wasn't one of the Lestranges who used to live here, he was part of an offshoot that lived somewhere else in France," Dom explained, flipping to another page, "I'm just guessing that when their scion died off in the male line, all of their property moved to this main branch."
"Fascinating," Molly replied as she picked up a book and tapped it to the top of her cousin's head, "Now put it down and give us a hand."
Dom groaned, "But I just got to the good part where Florimond's father has discovered that his son's mistress is actually a mister and . . ."
Lucy frowned at Dom as her sentence cut off and she stared incredulously at the page in front of her, "Okay, staring into space at the same page, is worse than not helping. Why are you-"
Dom interrupted her, "Victoire!"
Victoire, who had only been partially paying attention to her sister and cousins' conversation as she was more focused with trying to secretly ask Sandra if she was feeling okay, turned to her sister.
"What is it?"
"I think I've found your spell."
Victoire covered the length of the room in about two seconds, "Where?"
Dom handed the journal to her sister and pointed to a specific half of the page.
"How did that spell end up in this guy's journal?" Molly asked.
Dom looked up at everyone in the room who were now staring at her and Victoire with curiosity, "Florimond's father apparently went ballistic when he found out that one of Florimond's male friends was more than a friend. He's written that his father attacked his lover, and that the man suffered from all of the symptoms Mr. Leclair had. Under the explanation is a spell that's written out phonetically and underlined three times."
Victoire, who had read the page over twice already, slowly nodded her head, "This might be it."
"If this Lestrange ancestor had access to this spell, could it still be in this library somewhere?" Baxter asked, looking around them at the expansive library. They'd gone through a lot of books that day, but nowhere near all of them.
"Florimond's journal entries are very specific and pedantic. Perhaps there's a latter entry talking about where the spell came from?" Dom suggested.
Victoire, who would have loved nothing more than to pull an all-nighter searching through the library, knew that she had work the next morning and that it needed to come first. She pulled her wand out, non-verbally summoned the rest of Florimond's journals from the shelves, and created a stack of six books.
"That's our best bet so far. I'll take the rest of his journals home with me and look through them during the week. If I don't make anymore progress, I'll come back this weekend and keep up the search," Victoire decided, "Thank you again for all of your help everyone."
7:02 PM
"He did not," Selene gasped, her pizza crust was halfway to her mouth but it was frozen in place as she gazed at James with wide eyes.
Instead of responding right away, James took a sip of tea from his mug and raised an eyebrow at her over the ceramic rim.
The dark-haired woman took a bite of her crust, chewed, swallowed, and then narrowed her gaze at the chaser sitting next to her on her couch, "I can't tell if you're telling me the truth or not."
"Well does that sound like something Freddie would do, or not?" James asked her in reply as he set his mug down on a marbled coaster on the coffee table nearest them.
"Oh, there's no contest. If Freddie hasn't done that yet, he will in the future," Selene stated, waving off his question, "What I'm wondering about is how he got away with it without Lucy trying to murder him."
James smirked at her, "Austin and Lucy were at an off-again stage of their relationship when this happened, so she just pretended that she never heard Freddie admit to it and laughed about it with Dom and Molly later."
Selene chuckled, "Circe you'd think Austin Pennington would know by now not to mess with the Weasleys."
"You'd think."
The pair of chasers had taken a break from studying, and were finishing up their take-out that Selene had ordered for them. Even though James knew basically nothing about healing, helping Selene study for her test the next day had gone by rather smoothly. As he had assumed, she had all of her notes prepared and her textbooks were even colour-coded, so it was very easy to help her study. She only laughed a few times when he outrageously mispronounced a ten-syllable medical word, and the fact that she seemed to be giving him all of the right answers made the process of checking her responses a breeze. James hadn't been surprised to find out that Selene already knew everything she needed to know for her exam, but he was flabbergasted that she had the time to learn all of those things in-between her playing quidditch professionally and helping him practice.
He waited until she had finished eating her pizza crust and set her plate down, to ask a question that had been on his mind all evening, "What are you going to do when you get bumped up to a starting position?"
The laughter that had previously been in her grey eyes faded, "What do you mean?"
"Do you think you'll be able to keep up with being a starting chaser and healing school at the same time?"
She shook her head, her loose hair fanning out a little around her face, "No. At that point I'll definitely have to break my parents' hearts and tell them that I'm giving up healing."
"I'm sure they'll be proud of you when it happens," James told her as he reached across the two feet of distance between them and patted her knee comfortingly.
Selene let out a sigh, "The thing about my parents is that they are very emotionally multifaceted. They can be both proud of me and disappointed at the same time."
"I'm proud of you," He told her softly, catching her gaze with his.
Her hand moved to rest on top of where his was still sitting on her knee, "You are hypothetically proud of me. I haven't been given a starting position yet."
"I'm not talking about what you're going to do Selene. I'm talking about what you've already accomplished," He said even more quietly.
She found herself leaning closer to him to make sure that she could catch his words. Her gaze was locked with his, but she couldn't sustain it.
She looked down at their hands instead, "I don't know why you're heaping all of this praise onto me. You've already accomplished more than me."
"I beg to differ," He told her, a smile on his face that he hoped she would be tempted to look at, "I for one, didn't figure out a spell that helps me memorize all of the information in healing textbooks."
A black eyebrow rose up on her forehead, "What?"
"Knowing all of this stuff," He reached for a textbook he had set down when he started eating, and held it up, "Is a huge accomplishment."
Selene rolled her eyes, "Memorization's the easy part. Application is most important. I don't even know if-"
James didn't get the chance to hear whatever Selene was about to confess, because a sharp ringing sound began to echo around her flat. She jumped up from the coach and sprinted over to the kitchen where she grabbed a muggle mobile phone from the counter near a fruit bowl. James was a little surprised to see that she owned, one, but then he remembered that her step-mother was a muggle, and it made more sense.
"Hey Simon, how are you?" She asked softly into the phone as she answered it.
She sent James an apologetic look and kept talking to her little brother over the phone as she slowly walked back to the couch and sat down.
"That sounds so cool buddy. Yeah, I just did some practice and studying, nothing exciting . . . It's probably time for you to go to bed though," Selene said into the phone.
She moved it a little away from her ear and whispered an explanation to James, "Simon sometimes calls me before he goes to sleep."
James smiled indulgently at this knowledge while Selene went back to her phone call.
"Okay kiddo. I love you. Goodnight-" She went to move her mobile away from her ear, but she stopped when she heard another voice on the other end, "Oh . . . hey Dad. I'm well. Yes, I'm studying for my exam tomorrow. Uh huh. Uh huh. Yea–No!"
Selene pretty much yelled the last word into the phone, and without her permission her eyes shifted to glance at James.
There was panic in the grey orbs, "No, I don't need any help studying. You don't need to come over. No really, I'm good. Well, I'm–I'm not studying alone. No, um, I asked Teagan earlier in the week if she'd help me study and she agreed."
There was a pause as she listened to her dad on the other end of the mobile. She started to run a hand through her loose hair as she listened, and she wound the red-dyed tip of a lock of her hair around her index finger.
"Yeah, so I'm good. I've got some help already. So, you don't need to come over."
An eyebrow rose up on James's face and he watched Selene carefully as she lied to her father over the phone, and desperately tried to persuade him that he didn't need to stop by to give her some help.
He noted when her shoulders relaxed, and realized that she must have convinced her dad to stay home.
"Yeah, we'll get back to studying now. I love you too. Goodnight."
Selene ended the call and then tossed her mobile onto the coffee table in front of them. She let out a big sigh and ran a hand down her face.
"So . . . are you always that convincing of a liar, or does doing it over the phone help?"
She snorted and removed her hand from her face, "I didn't lie."
He gave her a disbelieving look.
"I didn't!" She insisted, "I just, didn't tell the whole truth. Teagan did offer to help me study earlier in the week, but then a family thing came up yesterday and she had to cancel."
James understood her situation completely, but he felt like he needed to tease her still, "And you're too ashamed to tell your dad that I valiantly offered to help you study because . . .?"
Instead of laughing like he thought she would, her expression paled at the mere thought of telling her father that he was at her flat.
"Because that would have just been disastrous, and I'm not in the mood for a lecture."
"You're an adult and your parents would lecture you about having me over at your flat?" He questioned.
She twisted another lock of red-tipped hair around her finger, "Being an adult doesn't preclude me from getting a lecture from my parents about making bad decisions."
"Do your parents really hate me that much?"
He was trying to keep his tone playful, but even to his own ears he could hear the hint of self-consciousness in it.
Selene finally met his eyes, "They don't hate you. They don't really know you. If I had told Dad the truth on the phone, his concern would have been your-"
"Gender?" James asked, hoping that it was just her father being over-protective of his only daughter.
She shrugged her shoulders, "It's less about your gender, and more about your sexual preference."
"Ah, so your dad would be fine with me being in your flat, if I wasn't straight? What, is he worried that I'd try to seduce you or something?"
He was trying to be cheeky now. It was comforting to know that the reason why she lied to her father about him being in her flat was because he was a guy who may find her attractive, and not because she was inherently embarrassed about spending time with him or something.
"That is the main concern about having a guy in my flat, yes," Selene acknowledged with a nod, "But if he actually knew you, he'd know that you're nowhere near smooth enough for that."
Obviously, she was trying to lighten the mood as well.
"You don't think I have any game?" James enquired. He put his hand on his heart and a faux-affronted expression on his face.
She rolled her grey eyes at him, "James, do you remember in third-year when half of us were playing truth or dare in the common room? Nolan dared you to ask out a fourth-year who was playing wizard's chess with her friend, and your idea of a pick-up line was to tell her that she should have made a different move because she'd just boxed her knight into a corner."
"Hey!" He laughed, "First, it was good advice. Second, it got her talking to me."
"She hexed your ears green."
He chuckled again at the memory, "How do you even remember that?"
"She hexed your ears green. They stayed like that until the end of the night when you finally convinced Ally to fix it. Plus, just before that Lauren Dawson had dared Teagan to do something equally stupid, and that is mostly what I remembered," She admitted.
"Well, I'm much smoother and more charming now. I can easily seduce anyone I wanted to, even using a cheesy chat-up line," He continued to defend himself.
Selene shook her head, but she was also trying to contain her laughter, "Whatever you say Potter."
"I can prove it," James insisted, "Sit where you are and look forward."
She rolled her eyes at him, but complied with his request.
He scooted a little closer to her on the couch so that there was just a foot of space between their bodies, and he stared straight ahead as well.
"So, pretend we're watching a muggle movie-"
"Oh Medea, you're serious," She muttered with a slight shake of her head.
He smirked, "Yes, that's my middle name. Now let me continue. You're the object of my affections-"
"What is this? The nineteen-fifties?"
"And we're watching a movie, eyes forward," James continued. He made the decision to just ignore her interruptions, "I stealthily stretch my arms up in the air like I'm stretching, and when they drop down, I smoothly place one arm behind your head."
As he spoke, he physically copied the scene he was describing and gently placed an arm on the back of the couch, behind Selene's head.
She was full on giggling at this point, "This is like how my great-grandparents met."
"At some point, we serendipitously turn to look at each other . . . this is where you turn your head."
He was already looking in her direction, but he needed to direct her to keep his story going. She did as he asked, although she rolled her eyes as she went.
Once he'd caught her gaze, the humor in her eyes fell away and was replaced with a swirl of emotion that was harder to decipher.
"I lean just a little bit closer," He whispered, moving his face towards hers as he spoke.
Their noses were only a few centimetres away from touching, and he could feel their air around her vibrate a little as she started to take deep breaths.
"I lean even closer. . ."
His nose was now touching hers.
"And then . . . A MURDERER IN A HOCKEY MASK BREAKS IN WITH A CHAINSAW!"
James had moved his head back from hers so that he wasn't yelling in her ear, but he did grab her by the shoulders in time with his yell
"Eeeek!" Selene screamed when he startled her.
He let go of her shoulders quickly and started laughing, but suddenly found himself with a face full of the decorative pillow that had been on Selene's side of the couch. She had picked it up and started whacking him with it only a few moments into his laughter.
"You're. Are. Such. A. Prat!" She punctuated each word by swatting him with the pillow.
Excepting the first time, she had avoided his face and was mostly aiming for his shoulders and chest. He continued to laugh, even harder now that she was trying to get payback, and did his best to dodge the pillow.
Irritatingly, his reflexes made him pretty good at evading her, and Selene somehow thought that the best way to get him to stop dodging was to straddle his lap and limit his mobility.
"That could have been bad if I had a history of panic attacks!" She scolded him as she whacked the pillow at his left shoulder.
"Well, it's a good thing you don't," He replied, a smile still on his face.
He could tell that she wasn't actually angry, because the harshness of the blows had significantly decreased. However, she was still moving enough that he thought it might be helpful to steady her so that she wouldn't end up falling off of the couch from the exuberance of her motions. His hands moved to either side of her hips and he gently held her there.
She couldn't keep a scowl on her face any longer, even she knew that what he'd pulled was objectively funny, but she did feel the need to continue to reprimand him.
"I can't believe you thought that would be an effective strategy to flirt with a girl," Selene admonished as she finally set the pillow back down on the couch.
"Well. . .," James began, his hands squeezing her waist lightly, "That strategy just got this fit girl to go from sitting beside me to sitting on my lap . . . so I'd say it was very effective."
She rolled her eyes at him, but instead of moving off of him she set her hands on his shoulders to help her better keep her balance. She leaned her head close to his, "You call almost giving me a heart attack effective, do you?"
"It was a calculated risk," He explained with a prim nod of his head, the sides of his lips teasing up into a smile.
Her eyes danced with amusement. They softened her next words, "Says the bloke who never took Arithmancy."
"I attended muggle elementary school up until I turned eleven, I'll have you know. Besides, if my calculations failed, I could have done CPR and that would have gotten us even closer."
His smile made her insides feel warm, and she slowly slid her hands from his shoulder where they had been resting to behind his neck, "The fact that you've evidently put so much thought into this strategy, and yet you still decided to execute it, is somehow more frightening than your strategy itself."
The fact that she was so very close to him, and yet was somehow still able to flirtatiously insult him, made his brain start to go fuzzy and he felt his heartbeat begin to speed up.
"Well, I'm all for some good ol' constructive criticism. How would you suggest I fix my strategy, from this point going forward?" His voice was both soft and cheeky, and he moved one of his thumbs just slightly so that it was rubbing circles overtop of the fabric that covered her left hipbone.
His touch, even over the fabric of her shirt, sent what felt like sparks through her veins, "First, I would suggest that you stop relying on luck, and instead switch to sincerity."
"In that case," He whispered to her, his brown eyes catching hers and not letting them go, "I need to sincerely tell you that you are the most amazing person I've ever met."
She swallowed thickly, but she couldn't escape his gaze. It was warm, open, and most frighteningly, honest. He wasn't teasing her anymore.
"My second note, is that that would be more believable if I didn't know that you're related to some of the most amazing people in the entire wizarding world," She whispered back.
"I think my words should be even more believable, considering that out of all of the amazing people I know," His gaze locked with hers and he was almost sure that she was able to see into his soul, "I am honestly telling you that you are the most remarkable."
"That," She breathed the word as she moved closer to him and rested her forehead against his, "Was very smooth."
James swallowed thickly, "Selene I-"
Bang, bang, bang.
Both of their heads moved towards the window where the loud sound was coming from. The back part of Selene's flat had a large bank of windows, and there was presently a huge horned owl with an envelope attached to its leg, knocking on the glass.
Selene closed her eyes and muttered something in Greek under her breath, before getting up off of the couch (and James) and begrudgingly letting the owl into the room.
"You're a bloody pain in the arse," Selene told the bird as she took the envelope off of its leg and opened it up.
As the owl didn't immediately leave, James figured that it had been instructions to wait for a return letter. He sighed, and even though it was a quiet sound, he attracted the attention of the large animal. It flapped its large wings and made an angry hooting sound in James's direction.
Before he had the chance to be affronted that an owl had apparently taken an instant dislike to him, Selene glanced away from her letter to glare at the bird, "Oi. This is none of your business Argyris."
The bird turned to her and blinked imperiously. She stuck her tongue out at it and then went back to her letter.
James was silent as she read it. He was mostly trying to pretend that the owl staring at him wasn't unnerving him, but when she seemed to have finished reading the letter, he spoke.
"Do you need me to leave or-"
Her head snapped up and she vehemently shook it, "No that's not necessary. It's just a letter from my grandfather about something stupid. I'd rather not even reply, but this little terror will end up becoming my new roommate if I don't send back a response."
She glanced at the letter again and shook her head, this time at whatever thought was running through her mind, "Just give me a few minutes to write a letter telling my grandfather to bugger off, and we can get back to-"
Her words trailed off and a slight blush came to her cheeks. Instead of finishing her sentence she summoned some paper and a quill and started writing a note.
"Is everything okay with your grandfather?" James asked her concernedly.
"Oh, he's just peachy. He's just messaged to tell me that I'm a disappointment to him. But that's nothing new."
He frowned, "Did he really write that?"
"I'm paraphrasing from what's written between the lines," Was her succinct reply as she set her quill down and folded her note in half. She didn't even bother summoning a new envelope, choosing instead to cross out her name on the front of the one her letter had come in, it and writing the new addressee just to the side of it.
Just as she went to tie the letter to the owl's leg, another owl flew right in the still open window and landed right next to the first owl. The second owl was smaller and completely black in colour. It glared at the first owl as it stuck it's leg out to Selene.
She swore again in Greek and pulled the letter off the new owl's leg, none to gently at that. She tore into the new letter and only read about four lines before groaning loudly.
"What is it?" James asked, standing up this time and walking towards her.
"It's from my other grandfather. They're trying to drag me into the middle of this, again!" Selene complained, mostly to herself, as she glanced back down at the new missive.
He stopped next to her, "What happened?"
"They both got their egos bruised and are too narcissistic to let it bloody go," She explained setting the letter down.
She glanced up at him, "Two letters means that I'm going to be spending the rest of the night playing the go between."
"Should I leave then?"
"That's probably best, I'm only one more letter away from yelling out all of the Greek swear words that I know at the top of my lungs."
He wasn't sure if she was joking or not. He reached forward and placed a hand on her shoulder, "Will you be alright?"
Selene sighed and then slowly nodded her head, "I'll deal with this tonight, and then I'll just book an appointment with my therapist for sooner rather than later."
He still wasn't sure if she was joking or not.
"I'll see you later then."
James turned and started walking towards the direction of where the front door of her flat was, but he stopped a moment later when she said his name. He turned back towards her and she was suddenly standing right in front of him.
Her posture was still tense, but her eyes were clear, "Thank you."
He was going to ask 'for what' to hear specifically what she was thinking about, but then he thought better of it.
"You're welcome."
She stepped forward and gave him a hug, "Goodnight, James."
He embraced her back tightly, and he felt the tension in her body release a little in the circle of his arms, "Goodnight, Selene."
A/N: I hope you liked this chapter, I know a lot of you have been waiting for more James & Selene interaction, and there was quite a lot here ;)
Let me know what you thought of this chapter, I know it was longer than usual, but I didn't want to cut anything out because some of it was important for the latter half of the chapter, while other parts will be important later on. Trust me.
Next Chapter: Is already halfway written, so it should be up within two weeks! We'll see Vic at work, some Cecilia, Louis and Baxter, a bit of Dom at work, and James has an interesting conversation with someone.
Next Update: As I've said I hope it will be up in two weeks. This is my last week of uni classes before I have a six week block of practicum where I will be in the classroom every day. I'll have to get into a new routine for that with writing, but hopefully I'll still be able to do a bit around lesson planning and implementation.
I want to thank everyone who has favourtied, followed, read, and especially reviewed!
BIG thank yous as always to:
Katie2001, Potterhead192007, weasleystudies, Janeth16, Manydifferentfandoms, Inkling63, Coralsea, TeeChamblissful, Dthea33, Guest (1), NicoleTheSmith, Strangerdangerbaby, CrackHeadBlonde, and Raine5367.
Potterhead192007: I'll take your points into consideration. Tab and Mark aren't in this chapter or the next one, however they will be soon.
Coralsea: Why thank you. I'll treasure it ;)
Dthea33: I don't think I've ever really specifically described them . . . I'd have to go back and look.
Guest (1): Well I hope there was enough Dom in this chapter :)
CrackHeadBlonde: Thank you.
Raine5367: I don't think I've specifically described Kyle before, and at this point I'm not sure if I need to. Imagine whatever you'd like.
I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter,
Please leave me any thoughts, questions, or concerns in a review or PM,
Until next time, DTFBA!