I felt as if it was too early to have the ball scene, so I'm afraid that I wrote another filler chapter. This stupid chapter was what was holding me up for so long. (Although, having been on the end of having to wait for about a year before there's a chapter update, having to wait like... two weeks seems tame in comparison...)

But, after this, things will start to move, and they will move very fast. But you've still got to wait. Sorry.

As usual, this has not been proof read! You know what to do. Thank you so much to Honoria Granger for the help. :)

Jareth winced as another crystal shattered on the stone floor of the library. "Are you quite certain that this is a wise move, Pyrael?" he asked as Sarah squeaked out an apology.

"No matter, my dear, it's easily fixed," Pyrael said. With a lazy wave of her hand, the glass vanished, and it was as if it had never happened in the first place. "Of course it's a good idea, Jar," she said without looking at her brother. "Even if you intend to send Sarah home as soon as this entire mess has been sorted out, it would still probably be for the best to give Sarah some means of fighting back. After all, this isn't the land of pepper spray and brass knuckles. This is magic, and you have to know your enemy in order to have some fighting chance against them."

"Quite frankly, I agree with Pyrael," Sarah said with a scowl aimed at Jareth.

"Precious, you know that while you are here, you will never want for anything," Jareth said. "Anything your little heart desires…" He twisted his hand around and presented Sarah with a red rose. "And it will be yours."

"That's all very well and good, but what am I supposed to do when you're not around?" Sarah asked as she pushed Jareth's hand away.

"And where exactly do you think that I'd be?"

"I don't know," Sarah snapped at him. "Away. Unable to give me whatever I need. Look, you don't have to approve or not, and quite frankly, I don't really care. You're not the boss of me."

"If you don't have anything better to do, I'd suggest that you leave," Pyrael said with a frown. "Don't you have some subject of your to kick around or another?"

"Yeah, yeah. Dinner is at 6, as usual," Jareth said as he left the room with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Pyrael turned her attention back to Sarah once he was gone and gave her an expectant look. "I'm sorry, I'll try harder next time," Sarah said with a look of pure concentration on her face as she looked down at her fingers.

"Well, now that he's gone, you can really tell me the deal," Pyrael said. She casually slung her arms over the back of the chair she was sitting on and crossed her legs that was way too casual for the dress she was wearing.

"The… deal?" Sarah asked hesitantly. "I don't understand."

"Yes. What's the deal with you and my baby brother? You say that the entire relationship is a complete charade, but the way I see it, you've got him… What's that phrase that humans use? Vagina trained."

"Pussy whipped?"

"Yes, that's it."

"It didn't start out like this," Sarah said as she twisted her fingers together. "I like Jareth, really, I do, but… I'm still having a lot of trust issues with him." Sarah told Pyrael how Jareth came to her under the guise of Jared Garfield and started to woo her.

"Pussy whipped and you barely even knew his name," Pyrael said with a roll of her eyes. "Jar is completely head-over-heals for you, Sarah. It's little wonder that he's going to such lengths to help you when he couldn't care less about his family."

"I know that I'm probably in no place to say such things, but I think that part of that might stem from the fact that he's the youngest. And, from what Jareth said, you're much older than he is."

"You know, it's really unusual for a Fae couple to have more than one child," Pyrael said. "We live for a very, very long time, and as such, our fertility rates are incredibly low. But for one couple to have twelve children… that's just downright unheard of."

"I see," Sarah said absently. "So that's why Fae marry humans? Because we're able to have a lot of children?"

"Mostly just the men, but yes," Pyrael said with a nod of her head.

"And do? Do you have children?"

"Many hundreds of years ago, I thought that I might have been pregnant, but then I wasn't," Pyrael said. "But, no matter, since I am still young, and there is still plenty of time to keep trying." Pyrael's mismatched eyes darted around the room as if she was checking to make sure that they really were all alone. "Ah, but I'd probably have more time if my meddling mother didn't stop insisting on me having a baby with my husband. Fat load of good that he's done for me. He's only after my title."

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked. Pyrael had never mentioned her husband, but Sarah assumed that since she was a queen and heir to take over Amael's role as Queen of the entire Underworld some day, that she must have one, at least.

"Fae take the bonds of marriage exceptionally seriously," Pyrael explained. "Especially Fae royalty. I was young and very stupid when I married Gavriel, and since then, I have lived every day steeped in nothing but regret. Quite frankly, you're wise to wait to marry, even if it's not to Jareth, Sarah."

"Humans don't feel like that, though," Sarah said. "Although sometimes, I wish that we did. We used to view marriage as being very sacred, but then somewhere along the lines, we stopped. And now, you can get a divorce as easy as…" She snapped her fingers. "And nobody really cares about that anymore. My mom left me and my dad when I was little, and she ran off with another man. And everybody kept saying about how she must really love him, but nobody said anything about the man that she left behind, and forget about her little girl who spent most of her youth without a mother."

"There are upsides to both ways of living, but there are also downsides as well," Pyrael said with a frown. "But anyway." She sat up straight and proper in the chair and smoothed out her skirt. "Back to your studies. The most important thing about magic is that you have to have a clear intention in your mind of what you want to do. Focus on nothing else but the task at hand."

"I don't think that I want to be a queen," Sarah said; her voice was muffled because she had her face pressed into a pillow on Jareth's bed.

"Don't think too hard about whatever Pyrael told you," Jareth said from the other side of the room. "Her duties as Queen are much more intense than anything that you'll ever have to do."

"You say that as if it's already decided," Sarah said as she lifted her head up from the pillow to look at Jareth. "As if I've agreed to marry you for real."

"Oh, my precious Sarah," Jareth said with a sigh. He dropped the cloak that he was examining and came over to stand at the edge of the bed and looked down at Sarah. "You gravely mis-underestimate me if you think that this is all that I've got to woo you." Sarah gave him a rather dry look.

"You think that castles and servants are going to impress me?"

"No, of course not," Jareth said and seemed rather insulted that she would think that of him. "If you were that easily impressed, I probably would have grown bored of you. I like a challenge, after all." Jareth knelt on the edge of the bed, and then swung his knee over so that it was on the other side of Sarah.

"What are you doing?" Sarah asked sharply as she tried to turn around to see Jareth. He pushed down on her shoulders to keep her lying on her belly, and slowly started to knead his fingers into her muscles. They were moist with something, and slightly damp, and the aroma of lavender and vanilla hit Sarah's nostrils after a moment.

"Your muscles are so tight, precious," Jareth murmured. "Somebody as beautiful as you should not have to carry around this much stress all of the time."

"It's hard not to be over-stressed with everything that's happened in the past week," Sarah said, and then she let out a contended sigh.

"This isn't just about what my sister told you… is it?"

"No. It's about my memory loss and seizures and…" Sarah hummed with contentment. "And what's-her-face coming here and your mother's ball and this stupid fake engagement…"

"Shh," Jareth whispered as he leaned close to her ear. He paused for a moment to lightly tug at her lob, and then he ran his tongue along the outer shell of her ear. "From now on, precious, this bed will be a completely stress-free zone. You are not allowed to think about any of that while in this bed."

"I think I can get behind that," Sarah said. Jareth straightened up and continued to massage Sarah's overly tense muscles. Within a couple of minutes, Sarah's breathing had evened out— she'd fallen asleep. Jareth climbed off from her carefully so as to not wake her, and went over to the wash basin in the corner to clean the oils off his hands. Then, he undressed, and climbed into bed beside her.

"Sarah, taste this!" Amael said as she bustled over to where Pyrael was giving Sarah another magic lesson. Amael held out something that might have been a cracker with an artful dollop of something that was bright red on the top of it on a silver tray. Sarah hesitantly picked it up with her thumb and pinkie and put the entire thing into her mouth. She chewed a couple of times, coughed, and her eyes started to water.

"Um… yes. It's um…"

"Oh no, you don't like it?"

"I wouldn't say that I don't completely dislike it?" Sarah said hesitantly when she could talk again. Pyrael threw her head back and laughed heartily before she conjured up a glass of water, which she handed to Sarah. Sarah gratefully drank half of it in one massive gulp and then she panted heavily.

"Are you sure that there's not some Fae in you, Sarah?" Pyrael asked. "You sure do know how to twist your words like one."

"Maybe it's not so much Fae as it is a strong love for the English language and triple negatives," Sarah said carefully.

"Well, this is Jareth's and your party, and I'm just hosting it," Amael said. "I will cross jalapeno dip off the list."

"It's not as if I don't enjoy jalapenos," Sarah said. "It's just that… if there was a scale from 1 to 100 on how hot that a jalapeno is, that would be a 100."

"Okay," Amael said hesitantly, and then smiled brightly. "I'll tell the chefs to tone it down a lot!" She vanished from the room.

"Honestly, mother," Pyrael said with a slight shake of her head and a low chuckle. "You'll have to forgive her; she gets over excited about planning balls. I'm just grateful that I'm not being roped into this and the only thing I have to do is to show up."

"The more I think about how that lady reacted when she showed up here unannounced the other day, I can't help but think that this is going to be a lot more difficult than any of us ever imagined," Sarah said. She let out a frustrated sigh and ran a hand through her hair, only she'd forgotten that a goblin maid had put it into an elaborate braid, and quickly smoothed her hair down again.

"Okay, so here's the thing about a lot of the Fae who're lower ranking, but looking to suck up to anybody that they can get their hands on: as soon as I and my younger siblings announced our own engagements, and as the actual date of the wedding drew closer, a lot of them lost interest and moved on to the next best thing," Pyrael said. Sarah was silent for a moment and sipped the water.

"Okay, I get what you're saying," she said slowly. "If we really want to flush out whoever did this, then we're going to have to, not only pretend to be engaged, but pretend like we're going to actually get married as well. To start the wedding plans, set a date…" Sarah trailed off. "If everybody's hypothesis about the spell on my mind is correct, then this was done purely out of spite in order to get me out of the picture."

"Yes, exactly!" Pyrael exclaimed with a snap of her fingers. "But what they weren't expecting two things: The first being Jareth's love for you, and the second was that you'd somehow start to break the spell on your own."

"So the ball doesn't even matter," Sarah said hesitantly. "I mean, it's not the announcement of Jareth's marriage to me that matters, but rather, the fact that it's happening at all. Because if our hypothesis is correct, then they'll probably be angry. And will continue to get angrier and angrier until they start to get sloppy."

"I think that you are more than cut-out for being a Fae, Sarah," Pyrael said with a laugh. "Okay, but there'll be more than enough time to talk about taking down this evil villain after the ball. Right now, we're having a magic lesson."

Sarah turned her right hand over so that her palm was up, and looked at the lines on her hand with her brows furrowed. A milky-white sphere appeared for the briefest of seconds before it burst, and sent a thousand, tiny shards flying everywhere. "I don't understand what I'm doing wrong. I'm clearing my mind and focusing on conjuring the crystal, but it always breaks."

"It just takes time, Sarah," Pyrael told her. "You think that we all became this amazing in less than a week?" With a simple flick of her wrist, Pyrael held a crystal sphere of her own.

"No, probably not."

"The second rule of magic is probably the single most frustrating: you've got to be patient and practice, practice, practice!"

"This is completely absurd, Jareth," Sarah complained as the maids adjusted the mostly-finished dress on her in front of the mirror. "Why do I have to wear this? I can barely breathe."

"It's the style, precious," Jareth said as he watched the fitting from his chair by the fire. "The Goblin Kingdom might not be overly popular, but I am a king, and I do have appearances to keep up." Jareth swirled the wine in his glass around and watched the red liquid slosh around for a moment before he took a slow sip. "But I promise you that you won't have to wear this unless we're making public appearances. After all, I've given you all of your own clothes to wear, have I not?"

"No, you have," Sarah said slowly as she turned to look at herself from behind. "You've given me everything that I've ever so much as thought to want." At this, Jareth gave a slow, predatory smile, but since Sarah was busy examining her dress in the mirror, she missed it.

Somebody knocked on the door, and Jareth opened it with a lazy wave of his hand. One of the goblin footmen came into the room and stood there, waiting to be addressed. Jareth gave him a lazy wave of his hand to let him know that he was free to give his announcement. "Sir Didymus is here for his meeting with Lady Sarah."

"Oh, right. I completely forgot about that little fox," Jareth said.

"Sir… Didymus?" Sarah said hesitantly with a giant frown.

"Yes, you know. He was one of your friends the last time you were here," Jareth said rather boredly. "Despite how abmisal that your meeting with Hogwash went, Sir Didymus and Ludo still insisted that he see you. I told them to wait a couple of days, since I wanted to see if being introduced to Hogwart would have any ill-effects on you. And, since you don't seem to have cared either way about the dwarf, Sir Didymus insisted that he see you."

Sarah was quiet for a moment and chewed on her lower lip. "Jareth!" she said abruptly. She shook off the two goblin seamstresses and stepped off the stool that she'd been standing on. "I didn't remember before, but I remember the Bog!"

"Well, it is something that came up during your meeting with Hogwash," Jareth said, but he sat up straighter in his chair and looked at Sarah.

"Hoggle!" Sarah corrected. "You never could remember his name!" The two of them stared at each other for a long moment. "How do I know that? I don't remember having any other interactions with you, and I can only vaguely remember you kidnapping Toby. But I remember how you could never remember Hoggle's name. And I also remember the Bog of Eternal Stench. And that it was aptly named."

"This is fantastic, Sarah! We may not even need to have the original spell caster lift this curse upon your memory, because you seem to be breaking it on your own! Slowly, and a little at a time, but it's better than nothing."

"I remember Sir Didymus, too, but probably because he was guarding the bridge over the bog," Sarah said. She quickly pulled off the dress, threw it to the maids and pulled on the simple dress that she'd been wearing before the fitting. Then, she ran out the door and into the sitting room. "Didymus!"

"Lady Sarah! It is a pleasure to be in your presence once again," the little fox said before Sarah scooped him up into a big hug.

"I remember you!" Sarah exclaimed. "The footman came in to announce that you were here and then I suddenly remembered you!"

"This is most excellent news, Lady Sarah! I was most worried for you when Jareth told us what had happened to you. I have missed you ever so much since you left, and I was pleased to hear that you were back. However, after your conversation with Lord Hoggle, he told me not to get my expectations up too much. However, I know that I can keep up a conversation, no matter how dry that it might be, so I had little worries about this meeting with you. Ooh, Ludo and Hoggle will be most pleased to hear about this!"

Sarah put the little fox down again, and then sat down in a chair opposite him.

"Now then, milady, you must tell me everything that you remember so that I won't talk about the things that you don't remember."