Hey guys, new chapter :) Sorry for the wait but real-life caught up with me and watched Inch'Allah that reduced me to a sobbing mess for a while. Hello to the new fellowers! Hope you enjoy, leave a comment.
Ta-Ta
Disclaimer: As before
The window is pressing painfully into her back and she is sure that her thighs became completely numb during the last hour, though, she doesn't mind that much. Cosima's weight, that presses her further into her seat, is not suffocating, more like a blanket which keeps her warm and her restless fingers that write invisible words on her shin are engaging Delphine in their own personal conversation even though Cosima is not looking at her and her other hand is flailing wildly through the air, jabbing a licorice wand at Sarah which sits across from them together with Cal and Helena.
Cal and Helena are leaning against each other, mouths open, emitting peaceful snores. They have fallen into, what Cosima labeled a food-coma, after betting who could eat more chocolate frogs and now Sarah and Cosima are arguing about the cards of famous wizards and witches the two dropped carelessly to the floor. From their heated discussion Delphine merely understood that Cosima was set on getting Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus' card and didn't buy it that she had to give her very uncooperative sister her precious Cliodna and Tilly Toke in exchange.
Delphine doesn't care much for the conversation since she is too enchanted by the girl shifting and fidgeting in her arms however she makes no motion to move away from Delphine's hands which rest on the slim line of exposed skin where the Ravenclaw's wide sweater has ridden up, massaging tiny circles around her slightly prominent hip-bone.
Her eyes are wandering over Cosima's numerous dreadlocks, pondering on how awful it must have been to get them, picturing the cheeky girl without them and deciding that it was impossible. She stops now and then on her journey to marvel at the various beads and pearls which are carefully plaited into the thick brown hair, the one of painted wood in blue and silver behind her right ear, the fragile, almost see-through shell which rests on her left shoulder and the ceramic pearl which is right between her shoulder blades that is painted in shining, moving colors which remind Delphine of a stardust.
Each and every day she discovers something new and astounding on her favorite Hogwarts' student that makes her halt in her movements, keeps her breath in her lungs and she stares openly, mesmerized until Cosima moves and hides what Delphine is so desperately trying to burn as vividly as possible into her mind.
Cosima is everything to her but the person she imagined falling for with such fierce abandonment that it sometimes scares her during that brief period, in which the very late night turns into the very early hours of morning, while she watches Cosima sleep completely vulnerable, ripped off her glasses, her make-up, her sass everything that keeps her somewhat apart from Delphine, protected.
She never felt this strongly for any person before in her live and she wonders if she missed this ferocious hurricane, this connection and repulsion of emotions which leads to eruptions so powerful they send her soaring, all this wonderful, gorgeous sensations because she never met the right girl or because she never met Cosima.
The first time she saw her Delphine was already under her spell, drawn to her like a moth to the flame, falling head-over-heels, pushed over the edge by her sanity and her reason, not caring that she might crash and burn to ashes when she reaches the ground and half the time she thinks she left her brain too, on that cliff, because she barely knows what she's doing anymore. She's so torn between the mess, which seems to consume her whole life like a slow, deadly disease, keeping Cosima as far away as possible from it and telling and giving Cosima everything she wants, to finally take the sadness away from her that creeps into her eyes, into her forced smile, into her stiffened posture. Delphine wants nothing more than to be the reason for Cosima's broad, wide smiles, for her belly-deep, full-blown laughter but instead she makes her sad and angry, the worst thing, though, is that she can't change it.
She doesn't deserve Cosima, not when she keeps so many things from her, maybe not ever and she dreads the day when Cosima comes to realize that too more than the worst outcome of her mission, that she spends every moment she has with the dreadlocked girl solely focused on her. She is too deep in this now, too far gone to entangle herself either from the reasons that brought her to Hogwarts or from Cosima and by spending the holidays with her girlfriend and her family she maneuvered herself only into deeper shit.
She is, by all means, how the Americans call it, fucked.
"Hey, you okay?" a concerned voice suddenly ends her depressing train of thoughts.
Her head jerks up from where she had unconsciously placed it against the Ravenclaw's shoulder and she comes face to face with Cosima's worried expression, eyebrows drawn together and head tilted a little to the side. Delphine gives her a small smile, one, she hopes, hides the commotion on her insides and mumbles:
"Oui, chérie."
Ponders when calling Cosima like this became so easy, so natural, then adds:
"I am only a little nervous."
Cosima is almost frowning at her, a look that doesn't suit her at all, at least not when directed at Delphine, albeit she became its target way too often during December's gloomy afternoons:
"Why that?"
She's shifting between Delphine's legs, sits up, shuffles closer and swings her legs over Delphine's left one and looks at her with big, hopeful eyes that say please don't shut me out again.
No matter how much she wants to tell her everything, she can taste the lie already on her tongue, bitter and coppery and foul, though it is not an actual lie, she is nervous after all:
"I am going to meet your mother." She says, smiles shyly at the girl in front of her, chewing on her bottom-lip, something she always does when she's nervous or aroused, although right now it's because she feels insecure.
Cosima looks at her like she didn't understand a word while Delphine embarrassedly goes through her sentence again searching the one word she apparently misused once again then her lover's face clears and Delphine receives a silly smile:
"It's only Ms. S. She's cool." Cosima waves her off with soft jingles.
Delphine shrugs, not sure whether the Ravenclaw understood why she feels rather reluctant to meet the older woman:
"Yet, she is someone you love…and someone that loves you."
Cosima stares at her so intensely that it makes Delphine's skin prickle for a moment before she snaps her fingers:
"You are scared that she won't like you!"
In response the blonde squirms in her seat and nods vigorously, like a little child.
Cosima's eyes soften, the color of melted caramel, as she gives Delphine a tender kiss on the forehead:
"She'll like you…she can be hella creepy sometimes and a little mean…but she trusts me and I…" Cosima's voice faded away before she can finish the sentence, lips pressed together, teeth grinding, struggling to swallow the words, Delphine craves for, yet knows she will not hear, back down.
"I want you there." She whispers finally and tears at Delphine's heart nonetheless because even that is more than she deserves.
When they get off the train, trunks trailing after them, clad in their muggle clothes, along with hundreds of other Hogwarts students Delphine is very close to reproducing the chocolate frog Cosima made her eat so she would calm down, she can practically sense the enchanted sweet coming back to life in her stomach.
It makes it a little difficult to navigate through the mass of people around them but Delphine is immediately flooded with relief when Cosima's hand slips into her own and she gets tugged along. Sarah and Helena are ahead of their little group which formed when the formerly lost twins joined them together with their other halves. Cal already had to leave them because his father is rather impatient on meeting him. He barely had time to kiss Sarah good-bye.
While Delphine tries to slow her raging heartbeat she recognizes a high, childlike voice with a very dominant English accent floating atop the bobbing heads of the families around them:
"Sarah! Here we are! Here!"
Sarah responds, yelling at the top of her lungs:
"I'm coming, monkey!"
Then she ploughs through the crowd like a bulldozer, completely ignoring the angry complaints around her with Helena hot on her heels as the others follow in a more relaxed pace. As they close the gap separating them from the little reunion, Delphine views how Helena is giving a tall woman with long reddish brown hair a bear hug. Her alertly eyes are the color of an Irish lake in summer and the lines, which traverse from her slender nose to her mouth and across her forehead, make it clear to everyone that she is someone who experienced first-hand that life wasn't always rosy.
Right next to her Sarah is embracing a little boy, whose feet are dangling somewhere around Sarah's knees while she twirls him around, both laughing in pure glee.
Alison greets Ms. S.; at least that is who this woman had to be in Delphine's opinion, with an embrace and a kiss to the cheek while Beth offers her a very formal handshake. Paul is welcomed the same way whereas Rachel merely gives her a nod.
Apparently the twins' foster mother is someone to better be treated with respect and Delphine's heart drops somewhere between her feet when Cosima abandons her to throw her arms around the older woman to squeeze the magic right out of her. The blonde's hands become unpleasantly moist with sweat as she watches her girlfriend and her foster mother interact:
"How has my favorite little geek-monkey been?"
"Ms. S.!" Cosima whines with balled up fists: "You can't call me like that anymore!"
"Why is that, love? In September you had no problem, yet." Ms. S. hints in a smooth, low voice which is coated in the same accent as Sarah's and Rachel's. "Could it be that you don't want to be embarrassed by me?" She continues with an amused twinkle in her blue eyes.
Cosima snorts and flaps her hands wildly:
"Ehhhh…I don't get embarrassed."
Delphine actually has to cover a smirk with her hand as she hears that, remembering all too well how the confident Ravenclaw sat with her in the library, face the color of an overripe tomato, her blush increasing whenever Delphine caught her staring. This is not the library, though, not even school anymore and Cosima is surrounded by people she loves and most of them she trusts with her life and it makes the blonde smile a little at how at ease the geek-monkey is.
"Hold on a sec….two seconds." Cosima moves her hands, flattens her palm against the cold air, stretches her index finger then skips the barely four steps to where Delphine is standing stiff and tense, wearing an excited grin:
"You're ready?" she asks while she already reaches out for her girlfriend's hand.
"Oui…I think." Delphine replies wondering if she would have ever been ready, ever is ready for Cosima.
"Ms. S. this is Delphine Cormier…Delphine this is my foster mom Siobhan Saddler." Cosima introduces them to each other.
"Enchantée…It is a pleasure, Mme. Saddler." Delphine greets her politely and is surprised by the woman's firm handshake, conveying to her that Ms. S. is welcoming her for now into her home but just as fast can kick her out again:
"You found one with manners, I'm impressed, Cosima." Ms. S. chuckles at her and Cosima beams:
"Unlike that one." she sighs and turns to where Beth is pressing Alison into a column, hands suspiciously out of sight. The next second the Huffelpuff yelps as she gets clobbered upside-down her head by a flying newspaper:
"Keep it in your pants, Childs or you're sleeping in the attic." Ms. S. warns the blushing girl while Alison groans and hides her face between her hands.
During their ride to Tinworth they are all packed into a magically enlarged Mini which Delphine, at first sight, thought of as a joke, since eight people and six trunks could never fit in a vehicle this tiny.
Hence she is honestly surprised at discovering that they have plenty of room, which she is grateful for, for the simple reason that she gets to sit next to a window in a row with Cosima and Helena and can both at, least partly, out-tune the sniffles and hiccups Alison emits since Beth said good-bye to her and pretend she didn't see the forced emotionless mask Rachel wears with tense determination since she brushed off Paul's attempt of a good-bye by entering the car first.
On the short trip Delphine learns that muggle cars, even the enchanted ones, are her least favorite means of transportation. While squeezing through between two red double-decker busses, jumping lanes and racing through the heavy traffic of London at break-neck speed was already bad enough she was fairly close to fainting when the car's engine roars, loud like a pack of angry lions, the car itself hops, one, two times over the narrow country road and the next second they are flying.
The French is not a person comfortable far away from the ground, wasn't born as someone who wanted to touch the stars, was probably never mend to fly, she is more of a grounded person, connected with the churned, loose earth beneath her feet, the humidity of plants greeting her like an old friend. That is another reason why she was so enamored with the girl beside her, whose hand she is most likely crushing in her death grip, Cosima is warm and soft like a meadow, colorful like a sea of wildflowers, energetic, intelligent and, in all honesty, the essence of everything Delphine loves about the forest, wrapped up, incarnated in her small body.
She is not someone designated to be far from any of this, thus she is the first out of the car, the moment the tires touch the ground.
Bitter-cold asphalt scrapes at her knees as she tumbles momentarily to the concrete since her legs appear to be made of jelly. Cosima is by her side immediately, helping her back up, apologizing for the bumpy ride, mumbling:
"Remind me to never ever ask you if you wanna play Quidditch with us."
At first her sight is slightly blurry but as the dizziness fades, the house in front of her comes into focus.
The first thing she notices it that it's old, made of faded bricks, caught somewhere between brown and grey and that it gets somewhat odd and crocked the further her gaze climbs up the front. The door is more of a small portal, framed by dark wood, to the right a semi-circle interrupts the otherwise rectangular architecture. The first two floors overhang a little above the front door and are dominated by large windows while further up the house seems to shrink, continuing in surreal angles all the way up to the skew, pointed roof.
Right next to the entrance, which they all try to pile through at once, sways a wooden sign, bearing the words The Birdwatchers and a tiny bird, bustling on a branch.
The instant Delphine steps over the threshold she likes the place which, without further inspection, can be identified as the pub.
The whole room is revetted with dark, smoky wood, a bar dominants the left side with dozens upon dozens of different shaped and colored bottles lining, sagging the shelves behind it. Her eyes wander to the right, to the semi-circle, where a small podium ascends from the cobble-stoned floor on which several instruments lie peacefully on a couple of bar stools. The wall is made of colored glass and Delphine imagines the breath-taking play of light and color which the sun would cast into the room on a less clouded day. The walls in the main part are littered with moving photographs, paintings and posters, creating an impressing mosaic of the pubs history mixed with Ms. S. personal taste in art.
While the twins all dump their trunks in front of a crackling fire Delphine stays behind, paralyzed by her admiration for this house, which is so unlike the one she grew up in:
"This is really nice." She tells Ms. S. in a breathy sigh.
"Thank you, dear," the older witch responds with a kind smile then she turns to her fosterlings:
"How about I prepare some butterbiers and two mugs of extra creamy chocolate for Felix and Helena while you lot take your stuff upstairs?"
"That'd be hella rad!" Cosima answers for all of them as three trunks simultaneously rise into the air whereas Helena simply clamps it between her arm and her chest and Sarah brandishes her wand so violently while she says Wingadium Liviosa that her trunk repeatedly hits the wall instead of levitatinglike the others.
"Bloody hell!" Sarah curses loudly, kicks her trunk, which in response springs open and spits out Sarah's clothes.
"Language!" Alison scolds her as she walks past her grumbling sister and vanishes through a wide sliding-door, trunk hovering by her side like a well-trained puppy. Rachel stomps after her instead of helping her older twin unlike Helena and Felix who collect Sarah's trousers and socks whereas Cosima is mocking her fuming sister:
"Jeez…Sarah…that's like a spell for first-years."
Then with a smile that could illuminate every corner of the great hall and wriggling eyebrows she turns to Delphine:
"You're coming, chérie?"
Laughter bubbles up in Delphine's throat as she flicks her wrist, a non-verbal command towards her own belongings to follow her, due to Cosima's terrible attempt of pronouncing the word the same fluid way as the French.
She gives her girlfriend a playful smirk as they step into a narrow corridor:
"We, ma chérie, have to seriously work on your French."
Cosima gives her this smile that is all tongue between her teeth, dimples and twinkling eyes that the blonde loves so much, while they ascend a broad wooden staircase to the second floor:
"I'm always up for learning new things."
Cosima's room is on the second floor, facing a large garden and Delphine swears she sees water shimmering in the distance and it particularly screams Cosima wherever she looks.
Books and papers are cluttering the floor, clothes are piling up in front of a wardrobe, are scattered on the rumpled sheets of Cosima's bed, which is so big that is takes up almost an entire wall, the one which is divided by two windows half hidden behind heavy dark curtains.
A large desk occupies most of the space that is left between numerous bookshelves which is littered with even more books, empty vials and other small trinkets though the most outstanding things is a strange lamp which contains two lazily moving liquids in neon-blue and yellow. Although the couple of feet tall, moving model of a double-helix in the far corner is quite rare, too. The only wall that is not hidden behind a shelf is plastered with Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.
"Maybe I should have cleaned up a bit." Cosima tells her sheepishly, one hand rubbing her neck.
"No…no, no. It is very you. It's nice." Delphine reassures her with a smile so wide it makes her cheeks hurt.
Then Sarah is banging on the door to call them downstairs.
The following days Delphine gets to spend more time than ever with Cosima and the sinister things she left in Hogwarts seem so far away she does not think about them at all. Even less when Cosima wakes her up with lazy kisses in the morning, holds onto her for dear life as they go ice-skating with her sisters and little Felix on the lake behind the house and sets her body on fire in the middle of the night with hungry hands which carve a million bittersweet promises into her.
tbc.