Book 1: In Search of Lost Memories
Chapter 3: Angèlique
Angèlique's Home, Landes, France, July 7th, 1936
The following day, as soon as Robert left for work, Monique led them a few blocks away from the village's main street to a small cottage. It was built from misshapen stones, with narrow and tall windows peeking through a dense layer of well-trimmed vines and moss that imparted the house with a gothic, mystical quality. Trees, none of them the pine that grew in the forest of Landes, surrounded the main construction, except for a specific path laid out in round stones that led to the front door.
Waiting for them was Angèlique. She looked to be in her early forties, with well-kept and voluminous blonde hair and blue eyes that were so clear he could tell their color even from a distance. Her expression was marred by an almost impossible density of sadness; it was sagged and limp, but not unnaturally so, as though she had grown used to clouds casting long shadows over her. Small stress lines crossed her face. Most of all, her eyes were morose, distant, and pain-stricken, even as she smiled widely to greet Amèlie.
Harry couldn't quite understand it, but she seemed to belong to a world gone by, perhaps even his own, which perhaps explains why he immediately felt the need to be liked by her.
"I made a friend!" Amèlie spoke joyfully as she ran to reach her, Harry calmly walking behind. "Nicholas really likes him!"
The wooden bird nested in the girl's head thrilled affirmingly. But when she looked back at Angèlique, Nicholas turned its head and glared at Harry.
"I can see that. You seem very happy," the woman replied, her voice calm and deliberate like she had rehearsed every word many hours ago. She turned to face Harry. "And you would be the young man who arrived during the storm?"
"Yes, ma'am. I'm Harry Potter."
The woman looked at him, and the sadness in her eyes grew for a second before she averted her gaze and opened the door.
"Well, come in. Amèlie, Harry, would you like some apple tea?"
He entered the house carefully, looking around. There wasn't much to see, even if it was spacious. The furniture was made of wood dark enough to almost be black. The solitary furnishing not made from that material was a discolored blue sofa set to one corner in front of a small fireplace, itself surrounded on both sides by ceiling-high bookshelves. A large window, the only one in the house that was wider than a few inches, illuminated the desk beneath it while floating candles trapped inside glass orbs bathed the rest of the room in yellow light.
The kitchen was not much different, and he ran out of things to look at before Angèlique had finished putting a kettle to boil. The house seemed both not lived-in and worn-out, as though it had been abandoned and left untouched even by dust for years. The only signs of activity were the crackling fire and that sunlit desk, cluttered with papers, inks, and quills. A staircase separated the kitchen from the living room, presumably leading to the bedrooms, but it was cordoned off, an imposition that Amèlie respected, not even looking up the stairs on her way to sitting on one of the high chairs in the kitchen. Her feet dangled in the air, as did Harry's, and they stayed in silence until two mugs of tea appeared in front of them.
"People don't drink tea very often here in France," the woman talked casually, as she took a sip of her own. "They're all about coffee. I took a trip to Istanbul fresh out of Beauxbatons and picked up the habit. Apple tea happens to be my favorite, and I still get a box of it every month from a good friend that lives there. Your name is English, or at least your surname is," she spoke, looking at Harry. "The Turkish put your compatriots to shame when it comes to tea drinking."
"I don't remember," he mumbled, hiding his face behind the mug.
"I had heard that you'd lost your memories," the woman said with renewed interest. "But I didn't know it was to this extent."
"It is," Harry muttered acrimoniously. The woman hummed and continued to look at him with a brand of curiosity someone invested in a broken vase in an archeology museum.
"Let's play!" Amèlie requested as she finished her tea, and Angèlique smiled indulgently.
"Why don't you go to the garden in the back with Nicholas? I want to talk with Harry here for a bit."
The girl didn't wait, happily sprinting outside. Harry felt tense alone with her, trying to think of something to say and failing. The woman looked perfectly unconcerned, taking languid sips and continuing to look at him like he was a decrepit old temple. Finally, his patience ran out and he snapped.
"What do you want?"
"I want to hear your story."
"The one I don't remember?"
"Precisely," she replied, putting her drink down. Harry frowned. "I knew someone who also lost their memories, just like you. A Quebecois Potions specialist that graduated from Ilvermony and came to Beauxbatons in an exchange program. He came to Landes a few times, looking for ingredients in the forest, and had an accident whilst brewing an experimental potion which made him forget almost everything about his past. Perhaps five years ago?"
"No one mentioned it to me."
"The people of France have a tendency towards forgetting personal tragedies under layers of bureaucracy," she said with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Regardless, he always told me what he remembered and what he chose to create for himself after the incident."
"Did he recover all his memories?"
"No. But he did recover a fair few. Enough to resume his life, even if it represented a permanent shift in it."
"He got unlucky, then," he said, feeling sad and thinking that he would also be trapped in semi-permanent forgetfulness.
"We're in 1936," the woman responded dryly. "None of us are lucky."
"What's so bad about it?"
She looked at him for a long moment before drawing a deep breath. "It's not so much the year as the period as a whole," she mumbled. "But you might be a bit young for this conversation."
Harry bristled in anger, bemoaning the tendency of French women to think that he was never prepared to hear things. Noticing his frustration, she grinned slightly.
"If you think that you're old enough for us to have these discussions, prove it to me. We'll be seeing one another a lot during the next weeks. Tell me your story. If I deem you mature enough, I'll tell you."
"Why are you so interested in me anyway?" He asked sourly. "If you think I'm too young for these conversations, won't you think I'm boring?"
"I'm French, magically-educated, well-traveled, and a writer," she listed off in her fingers. "I'm at the intersection of several of the nosiest attributes a person can have. Indulge me. I'm curious."
"I'd love to tell you what I remember if I remembered anything," he let out between gritted teeth.
"Harry, can I offer you a piece of advice you may not come to appreciate for a few years yet?" She started. Before he could answer, she continued. "I have always wanted to be a writer. It is, in a sense, my vocation. It is what I was born to do. And I have become one. It is my punishment." He frowned confusedly, and she smiled tightly. "You do not know what you want. You don't even know who you are. You can reinvent yourself every day, and not be crushed by the contradiction of it all." She looked at the door, grinning at Amèlie as she cried out in delight. "Your amnesia, though cruel and difficult, is a blessing. You are a verb, which is the most desirable thing in the world."
"I don't understand," he admitted after a minute.
"That's your problem," she shrugged. "Now, let's go find Amèlie. If I leave her alone for too long in my garden, she's liable to start a fire somehow."
Angèlique's Home, Landes, France, July 20th, 1936
Harry learned much about Angèlique in the following two weeks. Like many of the adults around Landes, she smoked often, though always indoors, making her home smell faintly of cigarette smoke during the afternoons. Whenever she did so, she would light up another cigarette and let it flicker down on its own by the ashtray, despite always complaining about running short.
That quality of sadness in her eyes died down as the days passed, even as some embers remained and flashed brightly from time to time, like coals still crackling weakly on a dying flame. Another thing he noticed fairly quickly was that sometimes Angèlique would suddenly freeze, look off into the distance like she could see into a different dimension, and then glide towards her workspace to write.
Most infuriatingly of all, she continued to goad Harry about details from his life. Their conversations turned out in some variation of the following.
"Do you have anything to tell me about yourself?"
"I don't know."
"Not even a preface?"
"I don't know."
"What about a postface?"
"I don't know."
"Do you know anything?"
"I don't know."
Eventually, Harry's defeated mumbling of those three words turned into quiet snarls, and then into irritated growls. One day, after ascertaining that Amèlie was in another room, he snapped.
"I don't know! Is that so hard for you to understand? I don't know, and I hate it!" The impulse to yell was overwhelming, but for Amèlie's sake, he kept his voice as quiet as possible. "I hate not knowing things about my past. It makes me feel like an idiot every time, and you never stop asking. I don't know who I am, I don't know who I was, I don't know who I will be, I don't know who I want to be, I know nothing. I'm lost, in the middle of France, with no idea where to go, and you're asking me for something I've never seen before."
Angèlique looked at him calmly as he panted away his frustrations before taking a cigarette from her pocket. Methodically, she took a long drag, allowing the smoke to flow into hypnotic patterns as she exhaled.
They formed a strange duo. The angry, tired, and scared pre-teen trembling after an emotional rant, and the calm, collected, and pensive forty-year-old woman lazily smoking like those were regular occurrences in her life. When she finally spoke, her voice was like a probe into a foreign land, spoken in the same cautious and wondrous tone that an explorer would accord to the discovery of a new continent.
"When I graduated from Beauxbatons, many people had told me over the years that I was gifted with uncommon perception and sensibility, and urged me to work in law enforcement," she tittered at the absurdity. "That was the one thing I was sure I didn't want to do. A uniformed life would never agree with me, and I dislike having my breaks from a monotonous routine coming in the form of spellfire. So, I traveled. I thought other cultures might be more enlightened as to how to use one's time. After a while, I learned that no one knows anything. It's easy to tell who in the crowd is a disingenuous truth-peddler; they're always the loudest and the most self-assured in the room."
She took another drag from the cigarette, closing her eyes in quiet bliss, as Harry looked on. Then, she wordlessly summoned a peach from the kitchen and bit into it, being careful not to let its juices dribble down her chin.
"When I returned with that realization, I decided to journal my travels, to write down the things I saw. I've always wanted to be a writer, but had never given it serious consideration," she finished the cigarette before distractedly lighting up another one and letting it burn on its own on the ashtray's dark marble frame, balancing it on an indentation carved into its corner. "Wizards read very little outside of academic articles and newspapers. Apparition, Floo travel, and brooms made us an impatient sort. Not very conducive to creating a reading habit. So, I write to Muggles. Some people in France think less of me for making my living by writing to non-magical folk, but Muggles treat literature with far more enthusiasm."
Harry observed her as she finished the peach. When she disposed of the pit, he finally asked.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you told me something about yourself," Angèlique responded matter-of-factly. "You hate not knowing things. Is that not something about you?"
"I guess," he weakly agreed.
"So I said something about myself. It seemed fair," she shrugged. "We have arrived at the first great fact about you: you hate not knowing things. When will the next one come?"
She spoke those last few words in a theatrical whisper before removing herself from the room. Harry remained inside, mulling over her words, with so many thoughts and fears reaching him all at once that he could grasp none.
Tessier Family Home, Landes, France, July 25th, 1936
Despite Monique's continued support of his permanence in the Tessier household, Harry noticed some exasperated glances from her. He imagined that sometimes she also wished he would become someone else's problem, just so her family life went back to normal.
Weekends meant he rarely left his small guest room. Robert did not allow his daughter to spend any time with Harry in his presence, resisting all complaints from his wife and daughter without yielding an inch. Harry had the impression it was a worse punishment for Amèlie than it was for him.
Though the loneliness weighed on him, he overcame it by focusing on his father's cloak and on the puzzles, which had grown harder over the passing weeks. That particular weekend, however, he found it hard to focus on anything at all.
Monique had knocked on his door very early, just after breakfast. She welcomed herself in, as she always did, but instead of performing the daily medical check-ups or the occasional aimless conversation, she arrived bearing a letter and a concerned frown.
"Harry, do you have a minute? Can I sit down?" She asked as she was already sitting on his bed. Still, he nodded. "I received a letter from Vincent, do you remember him?"
"The Ministry man? The one who looked inside my head?"
"Yes, that one. He wrote to me about some medical questions I had asked him about your condition―I'm afraid there have been no further developments regarding that―but he did tell me something and asked me to share it with you."
Knowing from her tone that she was trying to avoid being the bearer of bad news, he began smiling sadly, feeling a gaping hole form between his stomach and chest. "What is it?"
"As you know, they've been trying to find any family members in England that could recognize you. They're still hopeful for a response," she began gently, though it did nothing to assuage the fear pounding inside him. "However, Beauxbatons enrollment ends at the beginning of August. And for a lot of complicated legal reasons, you're obliged to enroll there if you stay in the country."
Taking a deep breath even as Harry found the act impossible to replicate, she continued, hammering down the last shred of hope he had to find a quick solution to his situation. "Which means that if no family member contacts back until the 1st, you're going to have to stay in France for another year, at least."
"But that's in a week," he said, unsettled.
"I know," she answered, looking sincerely disappointed. An insidious part of Harry's brain told him she felt that way because she also wanted him gone, just like everyone else around. "I'm really sorry, Harry. I know how much this would mean to you."
"I want to go home," he sniffed, fighting against a deluge of tears. He managed to win that battle, but it was an empty effort, meaningless and vapid. Unwillingness to be seen weeping, not emotional fortitude or hope, was the driving force against his urge to cry.
As she watched him sniff and blink and rub his eyes to fight the tears wanting to fall, Monique remembered her daughter saying these same words, back at the day they had first seen Harry. She wanted to give him the same answer she had given to Amèlie, that home was within sight, that it was on the horizon, that they'd be there soon. She wanted to tell him that this was his home, that he'd always be welcome there, that he was family. But she couldn't. The words stuck to her throat, refusing to be actors in the worst-scripted lie ever written.
"We'll find you a good home yet," was the best she could do, feeling her heart break at how little she could do for him now. He nodded, hiding his face behind his hair. "Harry―"
"I would like to be alone," he said quietly. "If you don't mind."
"Of course," she conceded before leaving, fighting off tears herself.
The door closed and the world seemed to pause. There were no birds chirping outside, no conversations happening anywhere in the house. Amèlie wasn't running around with Nicholas, Robert wasn't growling and grumbling about his staying with the Tessiers, and Angèlique wasn't dryly commenting on things for her entertainment or dishing out unexpected life advice. There was only silence, as if that hopeless moment needed to be preserved in amber.
"It's been nearly a month," Harry murmured to himself, "and I still don't remember anything."
He looked at the puzzles, wondering if he should even try to continue trying. An impulse to burn them surged within him, but it flashed out and left him feeling empty again. Unable to take the oppressive stillness any longer, he left the room.
"Where do you think you're going?" Robert demanded when he saw Harry crossing the living room.
"I thought you wanted me away from the house," he answered without looking back.
"Don't talk back to me!"
Harry turned that time, his hand already on the doorknob that would lead him outside. Tired beyond the ability to act polite around a man who despised him, he mustered an exhausted response. "Just… shut up."
Before the man could break from his shock at the response, Harry had already left.
His presence around Landes was no longer the novelty that it once was, but there was no mistaking the passage of time for acceptance. Many of the villagers looked at him with clear suspicion, and the town's divide between Symphorien Marceau and André Fraise seemed to have extended to involve him as well.
Walking through Landes proper by himself for the first time wasn't all that daunting, though he suspected it would be far more difficult for him if he hadn't received the news about his presumed family not recognizing him. He was just too distracted to care. For all he knew, someone might have been loudly plotting his murder just behind his back and he wouldn't notice.
Someone shook his shoulder, and he jolted in surprise.
"Woah, calm down there, Harry!" Auguste said. Something must have caught his attention in Harry's expression, as a laughing glint in his eyes died and was replaced by concern. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"
"It's nothing," Harry tried to convince him, but it was a paltry effort. He found it difficult to continue lying as Auguste looked at him so earnestly, and revealed the truth without prompting. "I just received some bad news and needed to take a walk."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"No, it's fine," Harry smiled sadly. "You don't need to hear about my problems."
"I'd like to help," Auguste frowned.
"It looks like I'll be joining you in Beauxbatons this year, by the look of things."
"Is that such a bad thing?" Auguste asked, still frowning. "The school isn't that bad, you know?"
"I don't mind going to school," Harry shook his head before looking around and feeling a twinge of bitterness when someone he didn't recognize turned away when their eyes met. "It's better than being in a place where everyone hates you."
"I don't hate you," Auguste contested, offended. "Neither does Amèlie, for that matter. I haven't seen her this happy in years. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"Of course it does," he spat, outraged that he was being made to be in the wrong in that situation. "That doesn't mean I like having people look at me like I'm some evil being every time I walk outside."
"Who cares about them? Do you even know their names?"
"Why would I?"
"Then disregard them," Auguste shrugged as though the conclusion was obvious. "You don't have to give them that power over you."
Harry stared at him as his brain wandered, recalling the many pairs of eyes that looked at him with suspicion, hatred, and fear, the tongues that hissed at his presence, the scornful words he heard behind his back, the insults, the averted gazes, and the numerous constant reminders he was not supposed to be there. For a broken, shattered thing, his mind depicted them with startling accuracy.
"It's easy for you to say," Harry responded grimly.
"Maybe I don't—"
"There's no maybe about it," Harry interrupted him. "You don't know."
"Okay. I don't know. But I am a Quidditch player of some renown, and I receive a lot of hatred in my daily life, trust me," he stopped Harry's attempt at an angry interjection with a raised hand. "I know it's not the same thing, but it's what works for me. I get that it's also not as easy as I made it out to be before, and I'm sorry for that, but," he shrugged a bit helplessly, "I don't really have any better advice. Realizing that the opinions of strangers don't matter was very helpful to me."
"Even then, it's not just strangers," Harry rubbed his eyes tiredly.
"Is Mr. Tessier giving you trouble?" Auguste guessed. Harry looked at him in surprise, and he smiled sheepishly. "I can't hear them from where I live, but a friend of mine has been telling me all about the arguments that have been going on in there. They've been arguing for as long as I can remember, but from what I've heard, these have been bad."
"It's been hard. I want to leave sometimes. But I have nowhere else to go," Harry lamented, feeling his eyes sting again. He shook the feeling angrily, gritting his teeth. "My family, they… they haven't found them. Not anyone that can recognize me, anyway."
"I'm sorry, Harry." They stayed silent, with Auguste shifting his feet awkwardly for a few seconds. "I wish I could offer some help, but I can't decide anything for my parents."
"You've done more than enough, Auguste." They stayed in compassionate silence for a few moments. "I just want to feel normal for a few days. That's all I want."
"Well, if you want to feel so normal," he said animatedly, throwing a heavy arm on Harry's shoulder. Both the weight of his body and the brisk change in behavior took Harry by surprise, "what do you say we talk about a few things?"
"A few things?" Harry asked warily of his sudden and newfound excitement.
"To start with, we never had that Quidditch conversation I was expecting."
Landes Communal Hall, Landes, France, August 1st, 1936
There were no portents of great calamities when August began, its first day dawning as any other. Harry already knew what his fate would be as he walked into the communal hall, but seeing the gentle sadness on Vincent and Alphonse's faces, his heart managed to sink an inch further than he thought possible.
"Hello, Harry," Vincent greeted him with an apologetic smile. "I think you know what happened, don't you?"
He nodded with an overcast expression, too distraught and sour to speak.
"You'll be staying in France as we continue to investigate your appearance here and any connections that you might have with Gellert Grindelwald," Alphonse spoke. "We will also ensure that you remain in Landes until the beginning of the school year."
"Why?" Maurice asked, attempting and failing to hide his bewilderment at that decision.
"Grindelwald was spotted around Spain," the Auror explained, and the adults in the room froze. Maurice paled, and even the steadfast Monique seemed shaken. The only one who remained calm was Angèlique, who had surprised them all by accompanying them that morning. "Right now, with him so close, it's better if Harry lies low."
"But we're right next to Spain," Maurice hissed.
"Grindelwald is likely distracted by the ongoing civil war there," Alphonse explained. The news of an ongoing conflict so near them took Maurice by surprise, and he seemed to almost faint. "He's hardly going to attempt to cross the border. But if he does, we'll be ready to repel him."
"You'll be ready to repel Grindelwald, huh?" Angèlique asked with a tight smile full of derision. "The Ministry must have gotten an improvement. You always targeted the wrong people."
The environment in the hall grew much tenser with that statement, though Harry did not know what she meant by it.
"You're Mrs. Froment," Alphonse guessed. The crow's feet around her eyes tensed and her smile grew more frigid.
"Your investigative prowess seems to have increased as well. Have they established a new course in the Auror Office? Have you learned to ask questions before casting spells?"
"I've graduated from the Auror Academy after 1934, ma'am," he said in a voice that did a very poor job of releasing the growing tension in the room. Instead, Angèlique's mood grew even darker.
"Read my surname in a case study, have you?"
"Angèlique, please leave," Monique asked her friend with a weary look.
"I am not going to leave Harry in the same room as them," she snarled hatefully. Harry was surprised by the amount of emotion in her voice.
"Mrs. Froment, what happened—"
Angèlique cut off Vincent by drawing out her wand and growling menacingly. "Don't you dare," she whispered, her voice shaking and faltering, even as her aim remained steady. "Don't you dare lecture me."
Alphonse, whose mood seemed to be fraying as well, also retrieved his wand. "I'll be forced to arrest you for threatening a Ministry official if you don't put your wand down."
She laughed sharply in an awful, high-pitched cackle, like glass shards being dragged across stone walls. "Arresting? You're doing that too? Goodness, you're almost civilized!"
"Angèlique, if you don't calm down, I'm going to stun and carry you outside myself," Monique warned her. Maurice watched the scene motionless, rooted to the ground. Harry suspected he hadn't fully processed anything after hearing that there was a war to the south. "And then Harry will have no one here when Alphonse and Vincent speak with him."
That argument, more than the threat, seemed to mollify the woman, and she holstered her wand.
"I'm well within my rights to arrest you," Alphonse spoke, refusing to back down. Vincent drew a sharp breath as Angèlique smiled wryly towards the Auror, fearing escalation, but it was Monique, again, who ended the discussion.
"Don't push it," she demanded, pushing his shoulder with a thrust of her finger. "You know perfectly well why she's like this, and it's completely valid."
Alphonse didn't seem to agree, not appreciating the physical reprimand. And though he still refused to pocket his wand, he did relax his posture, allowing Vincent to speak.
"You're going to be attending Beauxbatons, as mandated by French law. As your case is being studied by the Auror Office, your enrollment costs will be covered by the Ministry. However, with an official enrollment, some information is required. We'll be doing it entirely in Landes as Grindelwald is known to have spies in Paris, and we want to be as discreet as possible."
"What do you need?" Monique asked.
"Well, two things, mostly. First, Harry needs a legal guardian to whom school matters may be addressed, and with whom he can live when he's on vacation. The informal arrangement underway will not be accepted by the school or the Ministry any further. Guardianship won't be permanent, but it will need to be stable until at least the investigation is over. After that, we can see if it's best to send him to Paris for a more… formal process."
"And the second thing?" She asked tentatively, seeing if she could salvage the situation in Harry's favor.
"As much as we insisted on it, the Ministry will only fund Harry's enrollment," he smiled apologetically. "His uniform, books, and instruments will have to be funded privately."
Monique looked at him with clear dawning despair. Instinctively, he hugged the bag thrown over his shoulder, the one that contained all of his belongings. Other than the cloak, which he would never sell, none of it was even remotely valuable.
"There is a precedent for students in your situation," Vincent continued. "It's a loan. But there is a drawback."
Harry nodded to show he understood, despite the ball of dread growing with each passing caveat and circumstance that stood in his way.
"You'll have to stay in France until you pay it back. Given that you're just starting your education, that would mean that you would stay here indefinitely. Even if someone in England recognized you," as Vincent spoke those words, Alphonse looked at him with strange disapproval that the former noticed but ignored, "you would have to stay in France for years."
Harry looked down to his feet, fighting a stifling heat forming in his lungs and threatening to drown him from the inside out in a sea of flames. He felt torn between wallowing in full-blown hopelessness or being too detached to care. Despite wanting nothing more than certainty in his life, this news was decidedly not the security he wished for.
The stillness that remained in the wake of Vincent's words was broken by a surprising source. "That will not be necessary," Angèlique said with steel in her voice. "You will not be shackling a child to anything against their will simply because they are desperate."
"Are you volunteering to pay for his educational expenses?" Vincent asked, feeling the need to clarify despite his evident relief at her statement. Harry was wide-eyed, having never considered Angèlique as a guardian for reasons he couldn't convey clearly.
"I will take responsibility for all necessary support for him," she proclaimed before looking at Monique, who was gaping at her, thoroughly nonplussed. "People can hear your fights with Robert all over the village. It's obvious you can't continue to support Harry, and no one else in this cursed country gives a damn, so I'll do it."
"If you're sure you can handle the responsibility," Vincent spoke slowly, observing the woman to see if she would snap. When she didn't, he continued. "We'll draw the paperwork and bring it to you later this week. The Beauxbatons standard material requisites have already been posted in—"
"I know," the woman interrupted him sternly. The man looked vaguely ashamed but nodded in understanding. Then, he turned to Harry.
"Did you understand what happened just now?"
Harry looked back at him with tired eyes, the question making him feel frustrated.
"Does it matter?" He asked in a quiet but serious voice. Monique and even Maurice seemed sad, with Vincent's expression softening in sorrow for a moment. Alphonse was unmoved, stoically looking on.
"We only want to help you," Vincent spoke softly.
"You're not paid to care," Angèlique replied harshly. "You're paid to figure out mysteries, and he's paid to be delusional about Grindelwald," she spoke, pointing to Alphonse, who glared back at her with undisguised loathing. "That's all he is to you. A mystery, a plaything in a larger scheme."
"And what is he to you?" Alphonse defied before asking with a cryptic smirk. "A distraction?"
"A child," she responded with her chin raised, unphased by the question even as Monique reddened in anger. "Prepare the paperwork. Harry, we'll be buying your things tomorrow."
"You're going to Paris?" Monique asked, surprised enough to snap out of her irritation.
"I would sooner destroy that shit stain of a city," Angèlique scoffed. "Bordeaux has everything he needs. He still has his wand, after all."
With that, she left without saying goodbye to anyone. Unsure of what to do, Harry stood there, planted, looking between the woman that was to be his guardian and the one who had taken him in so far.
"Go," Monique decided for him. "I'll talk with these two and with Amèlie."
He nodded and ran after Angèlique.