Children of the Gods

by inwardtransience

When the message came, there was little left of Cassiopeia Black in her — soon she would move on, shed her face and her name for another. But, at the last possible moment, she found a reason to carry on, the smouldering embers of her identity sparking to new life. Unfortunately, adopting the Boy Who Lived came with complications. (metamorphs, fairies, AU and very weird)

17. Violet Black — VI

August 1989

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"Good morning, Violet darling. Did you want—" When Mum turned to Violet, she cut herself off, one of her eyebrows curling up. Then her wand was in her hand, flick — Violet heard the lock in the back door click, the windows went grey.

"What...?"

"In case someone comes by. Is something wrong?"

"No? Why?"

Mum blinked, her lips twitching a little. "Is there a reason you're suddenly coming down to breakfast without any clothes on?"

"...It, It's not suddenly." Though, she guessed it might seem like that to Mum, since she didn't live in Violet's head.

She hadn't really been paying attention, but now that Mum was making her think about it, it all seemed like obvious little steps to her. When Violet first started to live with Mum, how completely un-embarrassed Mum was about changing in front of her, or having baths together in the big magical-style bath they had here, had seemed really weird and uncomfortable to her, but before long it was just...normal. Until she didn't even really think about it at all when Julie or Síomha were here too — though not Julie so much anymore, she wasn't around these days — or the neighbour girls when they got messy playing outside, was only reminded they were doing anything out of the ordinary when Susan was a little shy about it. Though Susan was actually more shy about just changing next to each other than having a bath, she didn't know what was up with that...

Also, there were other magical people around who weren't as fussy about clothes. It wasn't weird, when she was visiting the Starlighters, for a cat-person to change into human-shape and, just, be naked, and nobody made a big deal about that. That was normal for wilderfolk, apparently — she visited Millie at her house, back in May, and the deer- and swan-people were like that too sometimes. Millie's dad — a big tall muscly man, he was huge, with long curly orange hair and a deep booming voice, he scared her a little at first but he was nice — said that clothing was a human culture thing, and wilderfolk didn't always get human culture things. You know, animals were usually just walking around naked, it didn't bother them at all. Which did make sense when Violet thought about it. But it wasn't just wilderfolk who were like that, Violet also visited Olivie at the beginning of June, just before she and Mum and Síomha left for their super long trip, and there were a lot of people who just didn't bother with clothes there sometimes. More kids than grown-ups, for some reason. (Violet hadn't gotten a very good explanation, but she thought the lady was saying that adults being naked kind of felt like a sex thing sometimes, but kids were just kids.) Especially if it was a nice warm sunny day, and you were going swimming, or you were going to be playing around in the woods and getting messy anyway — people were easier to wash than clothes, even more so when they were nice and pretty but handmade and delicate clothes, so.

Everyone's clothes were handmade, Violet knew now, because of the talk while doing textile stuff at school. She didn't think magical sewing machines were a thing? You could kind of cheat with charms to do it super fast, but you had to know how to do it by hand for it to turn out right, so, that kind of still counted? Whatever. Rich people could just pay someone to make stuff for them, and they were professionals, so their stuff was usually pretty sturdy, but a lot of poorer people made their things themselves — especially everyday stuff for kids, who were going to outgrow it quickly anyway. Washing can be rough on things sometimes, even worse because a lot of normal people's stuff wasn't made by professionals, and if you tore something or whatever it was a bigger deal, since someone made that, it took hours, and it might be hard to fix. So it wasn't weird, when people were going to be doing something messy, to wear fewer clothes, or just nothing at all, because they didn't want to ruin the few things they had. It wasn't super common to see kids running around playing outside naked in their part of town, but go to one of the poorer parts of town — or places like where Millie and Olivie lived, more in the middle of nowhere where everyone was family anyway — and it was a lot more common.

The feeling Violet got, was that mages thought of it more of a poor people thing than a super bad wrong thing, if that made sense? She didn't know.

They went swimming in a little lake when Violet was at Olivie's, and she was a little uncomfortable about it at first. Not shy, really, like Olivie was assuming — sometimes she still had moments where she felt like she was about to get in trouble for not being a boy. But once she got over that, she didn't really think about the fact that she and everybody else were naked, and she was fine. And, apparently swimming naked was super normal in the magical world — Cassie said it used to be in the muggle world too, they only invented bathing suits a couple hundred years ago — they went to the beach a few times during their trip, and Síomha was way more weird about it than Violet was.

Apparently, the thing that made Síomha awkward was there being men there. Mum explain that, in magical Britain, little kids were fine, and groups of all women (and young children) or all men (and young children) were fine, but people were fussy about groups of women and men. Unless they were close family anyway, then it was fine...sometimes, it depends on who you ask. Because the rules were fuzzy, and different little cultures in the country felt different about it — like Olivie's place, where they didn't have rules about nudity at all, really, that wasn't normal — people didn't really go swimming in public in general. (Olivie's place and Millie's place and the Greenwood didn't count as in public.) Even the public baths Violet knew were around were split with women on one side and men in the other. The explanation didn't really make sense, but Violet was pretty sure it was a sex thing — which was silly, but whatever.

And other countries had different rules, too. Violet hadn't been everywhere in Europe, but it seemed like needing to be fully dressed in public was normal, but they weren't fussy about splitting the baths up, or with swimming. (Though they were sometimes, and it was honestly really hard for Violet to tell when they were in a place where people were going to care about that.) But the rules were different other places, especially hot places. Over the summer, they made a few stops in the southern part of Asia, and in the islands way over there, and in the Americas, and it was super normal in the hotter magical countries — especially where people had darker skin, so didn't have to worry about the sun so much — for most people to just not wear shirts at all ever, both the men and the women. Not so much in the magical towns that had a lot of magical Muslims, but everywhere else it was super common. There were a couple weeks over the summer where Violet went around in just a short skirt (and jewellery and stuff, because pretty), or if they were swimming or doing something super messy nothing at all, and nobody made a thing about it, it was just normal where they were.

Well, a couple people came up all concerned, but Mum said they were just worried she was going to get really bad sunburn — hanging around outside without a shirt on in the tropics wasn't a good idea for white people, but metamorphs were cheaters.

So, like. Violet knew she could be kind of weird about this stuff, for Dursley reasons — Shannon said Violet not quite understanding privacy all the time could be an autism thing, but it could also be because Petunia never let her have any — but also sometimes the rules people made for things were, just, confusing. Like, okay, in Little Whinging, it was super easy, because she had a checklist — you had to wear this thing, and this thing, and this thing, and if you didn't Petunia (or someone else) would yell at you, super easy to keep straight. And, after moving in with Mum she was really following the same checklist, because it was easy to remember and she was just used to it. She was just doing the same thing with girl clothes instead of boy clothes now, not complicated. But some of her friends were from little cultures where they didn't care about the checklist, and then this summer they went on holiday places where they had a completely different checklist, or even no rules about it at all.

And, Violet never really thought about it before, why would she have, but once she realised that the rules changed depending on where you were, they suddenly seemed very very fake and stupid. The checklist too, like, she got that from Petunia, and most of the things Petunia told her were wrong and bad for her, so why was she still listening to it anyway?

Dressing like normal now that they were back in Ireland just made sense, because it was cold here a lot of the time. But if you didn't need to, like, why? Once she started thinking about it, and not just going along with what she was told, the rules stopped making sense.

So, part of it was not really caring about the rules anymore, and part of it was because today was a little different. The order things went, at night she undressed down to her pants, put on a nightdress, then went to bed; then in the morning, she gathered her clothes for the day, went to the toilet, put her nightdress and pants in the laundry basket there, dressed, and then went down to breakfast. (Unless she was going to breakfast in her nightdress that day, then she dressed properly after breakfast instead, which way she did it depended on what they were doing that day.) Sometimes, because she could be stupid, she forgot to bring fresh pants with the rest of her clothes — sometimes she went back to her room to get a pair, and sometimes she, just, didn't bother. It's not like anyone was going to notice if she wasn't wearing underpants, and she wasn't wetting herself or anything, she wasn't a baby, so she wasn't sure why it mattered? (Underpants were weird when she thought about it.) One day when she skipped pants (because who cares), she was undressing for bed, and was, like, putting on a pair of pants just to put them in the wash again in the morning was silly...and when she put it that way, what was the point of putting on the nightdress just to put it in the wash in the morning? She knew it was pretty normal for people to sleep naked — Mum did, and so did Síomha (she woke up early from a nightmare one morning, brought a tray of breakfast for the three of them up to surprise them, Síomha was very embarrassed) — so if she didn't really need to, that seemed like making extra work for Nola for no reason, and she didn't want to do that...

She was already sleeping naked for most of the summer, but she thought Cassie probably didn't notice (or care if she did). Her first lesson with her new art teacher was today — they hadn't even met yet — and Violet was a little nervous. She had her outfit picked out, kind of nice stuff — but with a plain cloak she could turn around backward to cover it in case he wanted her to do any painting right away — and she left it all in her closet when she went to the toilet, because she didn't want to drop something and get it all wrinkly or anything. She went back to her room to get dressed, but she didn't want to accidentally drip food on her nice clothes either. Normally, this was a day she'd go down to breakfast in her nightdress, but putting on her nightdress only for breakfast and making Nola wash it after seemed very silly and pointless. So Violet just went downstairs naked instead.

Every step led right from one to the other, and it all seemed perfectly reasonable to her. But she guessed Mum probably hadn't been paying attention to the steps happening — maybe it did seem like it's suddenly to Mum.

"I j-j-jah-just felt like it. Is that bad?"

"No, it's fine, I was just making sure there wasn't a problem. Tea?"

"Yes, please."

Mum got up to get the tea started, Violet climbed up into her stool. (The wood was a little cold on her skin at first, but it was fine after a few seconds.) They had had a routine where they did the same pancakes and mushroom-sausage gravy thing every day for breakfast for like a year, but then they started doing other things, eventually. Most of the time, they had a lighter breakfast now, more like what was around for their stays in Europe. When they got home from the last leg of their trip overseas — school was starting up again soon, so they were home for good now — they made a big batch of croissants. (That word was fun to say.) Those took a lot of work, rolling out the layers of dough with layers of butter between, but you could kind of cheat with magic — and it could be a pain because croissants normally didn't last very long, but you could also make them last a whole lot longer with magic. Pretty much forever, Violet thought? As long as the enchantments in their bread cabinet kept working, she thought the things in it would never ever go old. Because magic was neat like that.

With the croissants, today Mum had put out a bowl of this herby cheese spread — also a thing they made themselves and magically kept from going bad — and some cucumber slices — from their garden, even! — and slices of salami and dried beef, and—

Ooh, strawberries! Mum had sliced a few in half and cut out the green part, the halves sitting around a blob of whipped cream — Violet leaned forward to grab one, scooped up a bit of the cream and popped it in her mouth. These were the ones from their garden, all sweet and crispy and strawberry-y, and Mum sweetened the whipped cream with honey instead of sugar (so Susan could have it). It was very good, like, so good she got those funny tingles on her tongue and down her throat, kicking her feet and humming to herself.

"The strawberries did turn out good this year, didn't they."

"Mhmm! I l-lah-l-love strawberries. Mleh, stupid." Feeling weirdly embarrassed about the stammering — like, more than usual for some reason — Violet turned away from Mum at the hob and focussed on her breakfast instead. The croissants were already sliced in half, so they could make little sandwiches, which were good! The buttery dough was kind of heavy for bread, so you could get way more full than you expected if you weren't careful, but they were way better than just normal sandwich bread...

"If it's going to make you uncomfortable to be the only nude person in the room, I can fix that."

Violet frowned. It took her a few seconds to figure out that by fix that Mum was saying that she could take off her clothes...for some reason? "Um...no? It's okay?" Why would that bother her? Was this a normal person thing she wasn't getting again?

They were quiet a couple minutes, as Mum worked on the tea — she was also making more coffee for herself, looked like — and Violet spread cheese on the inside of her croissant halves and laid on some beef. Oh, Mum had cut the skin off the salami, and the cucumber, she could have some of those, then — she didn't like skins on things, always got stuck between her teeth. Before too long Mum was setting a teacup on a saucer and a little pot in front of Violet. She had a slice of cucumber in her mouth at the time, it took a second for her to say, "Mm, thanks, Mum."

"Of course, darling," Mum said — fingers slipped through Violet's hair for a second before she was gone again, getting her coffee. Violet tasted the tea quick, but it was a still a bit weak, it could stand to steep for a little bit longer. A few seconds later, Mum was done with her coffee, set the cup down on top of a part of the newspaper she had spread all over the place, before swinging down into her seat. "So," she chirped, snapping up a piece of strawberry, "I guess we should probably talk about this."

"...About what?"

For some reason, Mum's voice sounded like she thought something was funny. "Violet, I know you realise most of your friends would probably think it rather odd if you just showed up to a meal without any clothes on. It's fine, it doesn't trouble me any if you just don't feel like bothering one day. But you should keep in mind that not everyone is going to be so easy-going about it."

"I don't r-rrealise that, kind of. I mean, I g-g-g-g– understand people are shy about it — I don't really know why, but I know they are — but, but, they can't be shy if it's someone else, right?"

Mum didn't say anything right away — it took a few seconds for Violet to notice, she was taking a bite of her sandwich. (The herby cheese spread was really good.) She glanced that way, Mum was watching her, her coffee cup held in both hands, a funny look on her face Violet didn't know how to read. Violet looking at her apparently reminded Mum she was supposed to talking, twitched. "Ah. You don't know why people are shy about their bodies."

Violet shrugged. "No?"

"It's been a while, but I remember you getting all shy and red-faced at bath time, or when changing."

"That was I'm about to be in t-t-ter-trouble for not b-being a boy nerves." Or maybe she had something wrong and she didn't realise, and she looked obviously freakish, but Cassie was also a freak, so that had never bothered her that much when it was just the two of them.

A flash crossed over Mum, the air cooling just slightly, her eyebrows pinched together, angry — not angry at Violet, though, it was fine. "...Ah. I see." After a couple tense seconds, Mum's face softened again, she glanced away. This was a familiar look, Mum was trying to figure out how to explain something in a way she might understand. "Most people aren't metamorphs. I had too many accidental shifts that messed up my clothes when I was little to be left with any sense of shame, but it... If there's something other people don't like about the way they look, and they don't want other people to see it and think badly of them, they can't fix it. It's different for normal people."

"...Oh." That wasn't entirely silly...but it was still kind of silly. You'd think, if it was something they couldn't fix, they didn't choose to look like that, that it'd make even less sense to be shy about it — it wasn't like they were that way on purpose. But, Violet didn't stammer on purpose either, and she got super shy about that sometimes, or not getting things sometimes and feeling like an idiot, so, yeah, okay. "I suppose, that m-makes sense." Suppose didn't have a G sound, like guess, so she was less likely to stammer on it, stupid Gs.

"And since most people are shy about their bodies, that people will be is just the normal thing that everyone expects. So, if someone is naked around them, in a situation you wouldn't ordinarily expect people to be naked, then it feels like you're doing something wrong, that you're being rude. So it makes people uncomfortable."

"Oh, okay, that makes sense." The first part she didn't really get — not directly, but if she compared it to another thing she did get she could make it make sense — but she very much understood what it was like to feel like she was doing something wrong and not know how to fix it. Especially with weird social rules that were hard to keep track of sometimes, yeah, this part she understood. "That's why you l-llocked the door and blocked the windows, so p-p-p-people don't look in and feel like they're doing a bad thing?"

"...Sure." That sounded way less certain than Violet thought it should, but Cassie followed it with a nod and a, "Yeah, that's it," sounding more confident about it. If Violet had to guess (and she did), Cassie didn't think Violet entirely understood, but thought she understood good enough to do the right thing at the right time anyway, so the difference wasn't really important. "For some people, they have moral rules about modesty and the like, or religious rules, so they might be more sensitive to this sort of thing. But that's not as much of a problem around here, so, yes."

Right, so, not the whole story, but the difference wasn't really important. Violet was okay with that.

"If it's just the two of us at home, you don't really have to worry about it. But if Síomha's here, or any of your friends, you should ask if they're okay with it first. People can be shy about these things, so it's polite to ask, so you don't make them uncomfortable." Yeah, okay, that made sense. Honestly, a lot of this normal people stuff was super confusing, but, saying it was just about not making other people uncomfortable was simpler, she could do that.

But, as much as that made sense and was good to know, Violet still pouted up at Mum. "It's not like I'm g-g-gun-g-gonna r-rr-run around naked all the time or anything."

"Then why this morning?"

Violet shrugged. "I d-didn't want to g-g-get my nice dress messy."

"You could have just come down in your nightdress."

"I wasn't wearing my nightdress."

"Oh, well." Cassie shrugged. "Keep it in mind anyway, then. I don't really care one way or the other if you're going to be properly dressed all the time when it's just the two of us at home alone, but just try to remember that all the silly normal people can be fussy about these things."

"Yeah, okay, I will." She didn't expect it to be a problem, but she often didn't expect things to be problems, so. If it ever came up, she'd try to remember.

She still thought it was kind of silly to be all sensitive about this stuff — they were just bodies, everyone had one — but people were silly kind of a lot. It wasn't any different from anything else people were silly about, really.

Breakfast was normal and uninteresting from there, Violet quietly eating and Mum reading the newspaper. It seemed like there were politics happening — there were always politics happening. Violet didn't talk much, but, her stammer was being more stupid than usual. It took her a bit, after she noticed, to decide that maybe she was nervous about the tutor meeting thing, and just wasn't really aware of it. Because, now that she was thinking about it, she was a little nervous — she didn't really know what was going to happen, and she couldn't help a quiet little thought at the back of her head that it was a useless freak that wasn't actually good at anything and it'd finally expected too much and was going to be slapped back down into its place, but she realised that was a stupid wrong Little Whinging thought. It was quiet enough that she could mostly ignore it, but she was a little nervous, and being nervous made her stammering worse, so.

(Shannon had been careful not to promise that that stuff would go away, but it would get better — and she was right about that much, at least, most days she didn't even think about any of that stuff.)

When Violet was done with her tea, it was already about time to get ready to go. Their meeting was pretty early in the morning, just a little bit after the time Violet would be leaving for school, which seemed a little weird to her, but. Without a word to Mum — didn't really need to say anything, she was sure Mum knew what she was doing — Violet hopped off her stool and padded up the stairs. She planned this out ahead of time, and she thought it was good to look nice, to make a good first impression, but also to look interesting and colourful, because this was an art person, right, so that just made sense? She thought so, anyway. For a little bit, she thought of wearing one of her dresses with the super poofy skirts, because those were fun, but then she thought wherever she was going would probably have a lot of stuff in it, like the craft labs at school, and she didn't want to accidentally brush into anything. Also, short (or no) sleeves were probably better, for the same reason — in case she was doing something with her hands, you know.

She did come up with something that she liked...but it maybe didn't go together very well? Sometimes people said she was bad about matching colours, but matching colours was stupid — why would you want to match colours? Obviously more colours was better. Like Dora, Violet always thought Dora looked neat, didn't everyone? Whatever, she didn't get it, normal people were weird. But anyway, she pieced it together from a couple different things, and they were from different continents, so maybe weren't supposed to go together. But Violet thought they were pretty! And that's what was important, obviously, so.

First, Violet pulled on a pair of pants, and then a plain British linen slip — the fabric of the skirt especially was a little thin, so wearing something under it was proper. Next was a button-up sleeveless jacket thing, sort of like a waistcoat? It came as part of a set, it was supposed to go over a dress, but she was just using it on its own this time. It was red, a nice bright fiery red, very intense, she could almost taste it. (No, she couldn't really explain what that meant, and she'd tried.) There were curly little swirls of embroidery along the buttons in yellow thread, making tiny little vines and flowers and stuff, the buttons themselves... She didn't think they were real gold, the colour wasn't quite right, too reddish. Bronze, maybe? If you looked closely they were flowers, the wheel of the buttons waving like petals, but they were shiny enough it was kind of hard to say. This was (magical) British-made, but without the dress part the double-layered linen was a little chilly? but it was a warm day today, it shouldn't be a problem. And she was going to bring a cloak anyway, so she'd be fine.

After getting the buttons closed, her head bobbing as she got each one of the stiff things to get in there — the holes were maybe a little too small for the size of the buttons — Violet opened the bag that had her fancy Chinese dress in it. She sorted out the skirt, carefully pulled it out, found the ties with one hand — and then held it over her head to let it unfold, to make sure it didn't touch the floor. One of the places they went on their long summer trip was China — which was a super old and wealthy and powerful country on the magical side, even had their own insanely old metamorph around, like Egypt (though the Queen Mother was even older than the Green and Red Ladies, Mum said) — and Mum actually got an invitation to a super fancy dinner party for some reason? Violet thought it might be because she was a Black, it felt like the magical nobility of Britain and China were more friendly than she would have guessed, just from how far apart they were. Anyway, with these special high society types, when you were visiting their country it was polite to dress in their style, so all three of them had to get super fancy Chinese dresses. Since Violet was a little kid hers was a little less nice than Mum and Síomha's — Síomha was a little awkward about it at first, when they were at the fancy clothes store joked with Violet that this was the most expensive stuff she'd ever worn in her life. (Sometimes Violet forgot Síomha was actually kind of poor.) The skirt came with a matching top — and also a jacket-robe-thing you were only supposed to wear outdoors, like a cloak — but she was only wearing the skirt today.

And it was super pretty! It was a dark, rich, strong purple, the silk pleasantly smooth to the touch, shimmering a little in the light. It was pleated, wider than the pleats in most Western skirts Violet saw before, and every so many inches there was a strip from the waist to the hem in red (a darker red than her top) edged with complicated curly lines in silver — like actual silver, because you could do embroidery with silver thread (there was even a word for it), which so cool, and shiny, and very very pretty — and these strips were set on the inside edges of the pleats, so they sort of peeked in and out as she moved, which was so cool! You would think you'd want the pretty bits to show, since you put so much work in them, and they did show when Violet was sitting down, but she thought the way they went in and out of view as she was walking was soooooo pretty. Couldn't explain why, just was, she loved it. There was edging at the hem, a strip of red and yellow all the way around separating off the very bottom, where there was more goldwork (that was the word for metal thread embroidery, even when it wasn't gold), this time the silver writing out what Violet knew was Chinese in swirly curly calligraphy. She didn't remember exactly what it said, a quote from some old story when some bloke was congratulating a friend on the birth of his daughter and wishing good luck for them and stuff, which was apparently a perfectly nice and normal thing for a little girl to be wearing. Having writing on your fancy clothes wasn't super common over there, but she thought it was soooo pretty, so she had to get it — she wasn't the only person at that party with writing on her clothes, other quotes of famous poems and stories and stuff (making statements, like, a lot of it politics), so she was pretty sure it was fine?

(Not that it mattered, if she had come off like a weird foreigner it was too late to fix it now.)

Anyway, the skirt wasn't a closed circle, but a long curved arc of cloth — the pleats made the hem side a lot longer than the waist, so it curved when laid out — that wrapped around instead of just being pulled on. Holding one end way above her head, Violet reached for the other end. The edging at the hem continued up one of the sides, meaning that was the outside edge, which would be on top at the end — she flipped it around, brought it to waist level, the inside edge went against her middle on the right here. Wrapping around herself, careful not to drop it, just as she got back to where she started there were a set of ties there. They were magic ties, thankfully, so as soon as she got them close enough they went fwip, wove into a knot by themselves. Violet bobbed on the balls of her feet a little, that still felt loose, she gently tugged on one of the ends, she felt the waist narrow around her, better. She continued wrapping it around, the other edge of the arc ending up close to her left side — there were another set of ties there (fwip), but only at the top, the embroidered edge held down only at her waist, but it was supposed to do that. She adjusted it a little, twisting it around until the embroidered edge started right at her hip, running down the side of her left leg.

Violet grinned at the smooth soft fluttery feel of the silk brushing against her legs. It was super pretty, but it also just felt nice to wear — she couldn't explain why, just one of those things.

Once that was done, she— Oh crap, she should have put the jewellery on first. That was fine, she could still get at her feet without too much trouble, just wrong order. Violet skipped over to her dresser, silent giggles bubbling in her throat at the way the skirt flicked against her legs, to the bowls and trays of stuff she had sitting on top. First there were the things she was always supposed to wear: her little Black raven necklace Arcturus got her for Christmas a year and a half ago now; a plain steel ring enchanted for protection against spells that messed with her head, like the mind-reading charm and some potions and stuff; and a plain bronze bracelet enchanted for protection against curses and stuff, in case someone tried to randomly hurt her for whatever reason. (The House in general and Mum in particular had enemies.) Mum made the ring and the bracelet herself, ages go, pretty soon after she took her from Little Whinging — she was always supposed to wear them when she went out in public, just in case. Which Violet thought was silly, nothing had ever even happened, but they didn't bother her, and they weren't super ugly or anything, so whatever. Mum asked her to, so she did.

And then there were fun things! But she couldn't wear too much, because she didn't know what they were doing, they might get in the way. The first thing she grabbed was a necklace, which she got as a birthday gift from Síomha this year. Which she didn't have to do, because Síomha was kind of poor and if Violet wanted nice things she could get Mum to buy them — she was happy enough with Síomha coming over to join them in America, honestly — but Violet was pretty sure Síomha made it herself, which was super nice! She remembered a long time ago Mum said something about rich people being able to buy anything whenever they want so actually spending time on someone meant more than just buying a thing, and Síomha wasn't a silly magical noble person like Mum, but Violet thought it still kind of worked like that anyway? Like, spending time to do something nice for someone always meant a lot, even if you weren't a super rich person.

(Sometimes Violet got the feeling that Mum didn't really understand how other people lived very well.)

It was a ribbon, a pretty blue, with embroidery done on it in black and green and white, making a twisty weaving Celtic knot -looking pattern, the different colours switching in a way that made it look like it wasn't actually flat, even though it definitely was. Attached to it was a pendent, shiny polished white-silver, a five-petalled flower. Violet didn't get it at first, but then Síomha called her strawberry, which was a thing she did sometimes, and! and it was a strawberry flower! She actually cried when she figured it out, which was super embarrassing, she had no idea why...

Anyway, she tied the ribbon around her neck — which was kind of awkward to do, with her hair in the way, but she could just make it short and then make it long again when she was done, so. Violet kind of wanted to get a bunch of beaded bracelets, but if the tutor person wanted her to do an art thing today they might get in the way, so that was a bad idea. But she could put beads around her ankles instead! Violet grabbed a handful of loops of shiny colourful jangly glass beads, then went over to the tea table in the corner, propped her foot up on one of the chairs so she could reach easier. It was hard to get the loops over her heels — these were meant to be bracelets — but she could just shrink the bit that stuck out of the bottom for a second so she could get them over, and then put her foot back to normal. She put a few strings of beads around each ankle, all kinds of different colours, there, that would do.

Then the only thing that was left was the belt. The waist of the skirt was meant to be under the top part of the dress, it looked kind of awkward — so Violet thought the obvious thing to do was to wear this cloth belt thing she got when they were in America. It was woven with a pattern of diamond shapes, alternating green and orange and brown and red, and it was super pretty! Maybe didn't go with everything else, really — you know, since everything was from different continents — but she liked all the different colours and stuff, and maybe Violet was just a little weird, and it was okay to look weird when you're a weird person...

Violet wrapped the thing around her waist, hiding the top of the skirt and started the knot but didn't finish it. She had trouble getting this kind of stuff to look right, always scrunched it up funny, so she skipped over to Mum's room instead — the soft smooth silk of her skirt tickling her legs, the beads jingling and jangling around her ankles. Oh, Mum wasn't in here, she must be downstairs still...or already? She didn't think she was taking that long to change, but Mum could be really quick about stuff, using magic to cheat.

Mum was in the kitchen, and she had changed, but she didn't look super fancy — she was in a rather plain white and green dress, sleeveless and laced up the back. She had a couple dresses that looked pretty much just like this, Violet thought it was her favourite. (And it was super pretty, in a low-key casual sort of way, but it was a grown-up dress, Violet had to wait until she was older for that kind of thing.) Mum was already looking her way as she came into the kitchen, smiling. "You know, you're never sneaking up on anyone with all those beads rattling."

...Why would she ever need to sneak up on someone? "I think they're fun!" Up on the balls of her feet, she twisted in place, her skirt swishing around her and her anklets jingling. "Tsh-tsh-tsh, tsh-tsh-tsh."

Laughing and shaking her head to herself, Mum waved Violet closer. "Come on then, darling — I assume you wanted me to get that bow for you."

"Yes, please."

Mum quick tied the knot into a nice proper bow over her hip on the left, without scrunching up the cloth so it still covered the top of the skirt all the way around and the loops of the bow still looked nice — Violet could never figure out how she did that — and Violet skipped over to the entryway to get her shoes on. She was maybe giggling a little as she went, but she couldn't help it, the skirt and the beads were fun! Today she went for sandals, since it was a warm day (for Ireland, at least), and if she wanted to wear beads they had to go around her ankles, which meant no socks, so sandals. And her cloak, she was supposed to bring her cloak, pulling it up around her shoulders, and pinning the chain closed. By the time she was ready, Mum was also ready. Violet wasn't told she was supposed to bring anything, so, she thought that was it. They were going to be a little early, Mum said, but not stupid early, and being a little early was better than being late.

So let's go then! If they sat around waiting Violet was just going to be nervous about it the whole time...

The tutor person was in a magical town in... Violet didn't actually know. England, the Midlands or the North, maybe? Dunno. Anyway, it was a lot smaller than a lot of other magical places Violet had been, just a single main street with shops and stuff, a few blocks of houses branching off before the magical town ended and the muggle town began. Mum apparated them straight to the main street, and from there it was only a short walk to the right place. It just looked like a house, plain brick and wood, but the sign made it obvious it wasn't — the master's name, and then a few names of people who worked with him, hours you could walk in during but they prefer you make an appointment by owl. Violet saw places like this around the Refuge all the time, she assumed the downstairs would be the...workshop? was that the word? and the upstairs would be living space, there were a lot of shops and restaurants and things that did that.

Violet asked Mum to cast a mirror for her, to quick check if she looked like she was supposed to — she fixed the colours in her hair a little — and they walked in. Through the door was a little sitting room, a brick fireplace crackling away (despite how warm of a day it was), a sofa here, a couple armchairs around — rather plain, undecorated wood with cushions in a dark red. There was a desk to the left, a blonde girl — an older teenager, maybe? — sitting at the chair behind it reading a magazine. The furniture was all pretty plain, but the walls were interesting! They were covered in paintings, a few of people doing stuff in rooms but mostly landscapes, mountains or forests and lots in magical towns places — one Violet thought was definitely on the Hill somewhere, looking along the narrow lanes, a glimpse of one of the priests' gardens up there visible through a vine-covered archway. They were all super colourful, not realistic-looking, like a photograph, but super pretty, with dramatic light and shadow, and they moved, the people walking around or seeming to chat with each other, leaves flicking in the wind and clouds passing in the sky...

She was watching a cloud shifting shape, the sunlight hitting it different, when the girl said something — Violet twitched in surprise hard enough she heard her beads jangle. "Good morning. Lady Cassiopeia Black, with Violet to see the Master, right?"

"That's us." Mum started swishing toward the desk, Violet just watched for a second before jumping to follow. "I'm sorry, I haven't done this before. Do you have something for me to sign?"

The girl smiled, but it wasn't a very warm smile, thinking something less than nice, maybe. "No, the Master will need to see Violet before we can come to any kind of agreement. I can go get him now — he's working on something, so it may be a minute before he makes his way out."

There were two doors leading out of the room, one to the left and one to the right; the girl went out through the right door, carefully closing it behind her. Violet was slowly wandering around the room, looking at the paintings, when the girl came back a couple minutes later, through the left door. Distracted, she was only kind of half-listening, but it sounded like the bloke she was here to see, who was going to be her teacher if he agreed to it, was in the middle of painting a thing right now, he needed to get to a stopping point and he'd be here as soon as possible. Violet was kind of tempted to say they could wait for him to finish — she didn't want to interrupt — but she knew proper paintings could take a long long long time to do right, it might not be finished finished for weeks. So, yeah, sure they could wait. Besides, there were things to look at...

There were a couple graphite sketches and pastel drawings here too, but the painting was interesting, she never saw real paintings in person before. Like, real real ones, done with proper oil paints. Well, no, she had, there were a few at Ancient House, but she never had time to actually look, talking to Arcturus or something. They had graphite and pastels and ink at school, and she did a couple basic things with tempera, which was a special kind of water-based paint, but they hadn't really used oil paint at all. And the paintings she'd seen that were done in oil paints were mostly photos, in muggle books, she'd never been this close to one in person before.

She knew it was often done in layers, so, you'd have your sketch, and then you'd paint a layer over that, and then over that, and over and over and over, until you had all the colours the way you wanted and it looked right. Tempera still looked pretty flat when you were done, but oil paint was thicker — Violet could see the texture from this close, if she stood at an angle, the surface all craggy, some parts very slightly thicker than others, had more layers of paint dried on top of each other. And, she was looking, because, something was niggling at her watching the branches of a tree shuffle, so she got really close under it, and she noticed the shape of the thicker bits moved. Like, you know, they didn't just paint the thing and put on some kind of spell so it looked like the picture was moving, the paint itself actually moved.

...But, like, this cloud here, which changed shape, got bigger or smaller, or this bird that flew across the sky and then went away, and then came back again, the paint wasn't always there. Where did it go?

They were super pretty, obviously, but now Violet was hardly even looking, too distracted by wondering how that worked. The paint had to come from and go somewhere...

She jumped when the right door opened again (her beads rattling). An older man walked into the room, like grandpa age — or, mages aged more slowly than normal people, so maybe more like great-great-grandpa age? His face and hands were stitched with wrinkles and spots and stuff, his hair thin and silvery-white, held back with a plain blue ribbon, his back a little hunched. His baggy trousers were a plain grey (undyed linen), on top a button-up jumper all fuzzy and blue and warm-looking. As he walked across the room — he looked old, but he could still move all right — Violet noticed he was barefoot.

She was starting to feel like she was maybe overdressed.

The old man introduced himself to Mum — this was Walter Marlowe, the person Violet was here to see. His voice was low and gruff and grinding, sounded impatient somehow, even when talking normal. He talked to Mum for a minute, before looking over at Violet for the first time; she held his eyes for only a couple seconds before looking down, fiddling with the edge of her cloak. "Come on then, girl, let's see what we're working with." And then he turned without waiting for an answer, going for the left door.

Violet glanced at Mum, she just shrugged. She took in a quick hup of breath, and followed the old painter person, the beads around her ankles clinking with each step. The old man led her through a short hallway, closed doors on both sides — storerooms, maybe? — and then into a very busy room. It looked like someone had put a bunch of junk in here for no reason? There was an armchair near a fireplace (unlit at the moment), and a side-table, both of them on a somewhat nice patterned rug, a bookshelf filled with old leather-bound books and a bunch of rolls and sheets of loose parchment. That part looked sort of nice, like someone might sit in it and read sometimes — there was even a saucer with an empty tea cup on the table — but the rest of the room was a mess. There were a couple big wooden boxes in a corner, didn't know what those were, and there were fold-up rack things, like, kind of like those chairs that you could fold up and put away, but it didn't look like they were chairs? She didn't see a seat, anyway. Some of them were made with what looked like wood, others were ceramic, in a few different sizes, just a whole bunch of them leaning against the walls, and big long tubes that maybe had carpets in them or something? She couldn't think what else those could be. And there were ceramic cases, kind of looking like muggle briefcases but a bit bigger and longer and made out of the wrong stuff, and there were a couple of chairs and stools half hidden behind all the mess, there was randomly a big pile of towels, just dozens and dozens and maybe hundreds of them, just thrown together in a big mound, blotched with smears in a whole bunch of different colours...

It was one of the messiest, least organised rooms Violet had ever been in — Aunt Petunia would cry. What was this place for?

"Girl."

Violet twitched, turned to blink up at the old man. He'd been trying to get her attention, she hadn't even noticed. "I'm sorry, M-M-Mmaaster Walter." She knew that's what you were supposed to call people who had a Mastery (a magic university degree), "Master" and then their first name. Walter didn't have a Mastery, in the way that he went to school for it — you probably couldn't get a Mastery in art stuff — people in crafts had their own thing, so. She felt herself blushing, but not because she was worried she got an etiquette thing wrong, the stammer was really bad. "Um. What were you saying?"

Frowning at her under his thick greyed eyebrows — his eyes heavy, Violet had to look down again — he pointed at— Oh, there was an easel set up in the middle of the room, a little table with, like, tools and paints and water and stuff. The room was such a mess Violet didn't even notice that at first. In his low, gruff voice, Master Walter growled, "Paint something."

"..." She started trying to talk, but her lips stuck, paused and took a breath. "Paint what?"

Master Walter waved around the room, at no one thing in particular, over all the junk in the room in general. "I'll be back in a couple hours." And with that, he turned and walked out — not the way they came, but deeper into the house, probably to wherever the door on the right went.

Um. Okay, then...

Instead of going straight to the stuff set up in the middle of the room, Violet wandered around. There was nothing in here that was really jumping out at her, it mostly just looked like a bunch of junk? It was all in pretty bland colours too, just, equipment, nothing interesting. There were a couple little trinkets around here and there, and she guessed the different colours of the book-bindings looked kind of nice, some of the lettering on the spines done in gold. But a bookshelf was maybe too plain of a thing to do? Like, she was supposed to be showing off, right, so maybe something cool? Except it was mostly just junk in here. She had to pick something fast, "a couple hours" wasn't a lot of time to make a—

Ooh! There was one of those, um, what was it called... The shelf that went above fireplaces? There was a word for that, but she couldn't remember. Anyway, the fireplace was brick, and there was a wood shelf above it, and there was a clock up there, some random trinkets. One of them was a tiny brass globe — like, fist-sized, with tiny carvings of all the details and stuff, she'd seen things like that before and they were kind of neat but Violet preferred her magic puzzle. It was right on the corner of the shelf, and, the sunlight was hitting one side of the ball, and it was pretty! The polished metal gleaming white and gold, and...

It wouldn't be easy to draw, shadows were hard, but nothing else was jumping out at her, so...yeah, that's what she was gonna do. The easel wasn't in a great spot to see it, though, so she walked over and picked it up — she grabbed the canvas frame at first, meaning to hold it there, but it was hooked firmly onto the stand somehow — and moved it a few metres over here. No...here, perfect. The little table with the paints and stuff was on wheels, even with the rugs it was pretty easy to slide it over. There were drawers built into it, she didn't see... Oh, there were were pencils and pastels in here...

So, how was she going to do this? The canvas she was working with wasn't super big, maybe the size of a normal sheet of paper, but painting properly took a long time. She had to remember she didn't have a lot of time, she couldn't do anything too fancy. Um, chop out a block of the wall maybe there, the globe big enough that the other junk next to it didn't get in, making it more complicated, showing a little bit of the wall around it and the wood of the shelf, and the top row of bricks right at the bottom... Yeah, right there. So, the wall was painted a muddy (boring) green, the shelf was brown, lighter toward the window, the little threads of the grain in it black, the bricks brownish-red with lines of grey between them, the globe was an orangish-golden-reddish bronze...

Okay. Okay, she could do this. Just had to go fast...

Violet pulled the tray of pastels out of one of the drawers, and used them to quickly sketch out the edges of everything, in colours close to what she'd be painting them in a minute. (Not quite the same, probably, but she'd be covering all of this with paint anyway.) She didn't fill anything in, just working over the border, so she knew what everything looked like. She was especially careful about getting the curve of the globe and the box and pin of the stand it was sitting on, a few lines for the most obvious parts of the carving she could see from here, a dark line marking the deepest part of its shadow...

There was a ceramic tray that slid out at the top of the table — she slid it in a bit ago, moving the table, but she pulled it back out now. She knew from playing with tempera at school that this nice smooth ceramic, a little tingly to the touch, was enchanted to stop wet stuff on it from drying, so she could mix paint on it without having to worry about it going hard or too crumbly on her. But first she was going to need black, she used one of the flat knife things sitting out to scoop a big gloop of the stuff out of the jar and right onto the canvas, smearing it over the whole length of what was going to be the shelf eventually. She took some minutes (impossible to guess how long) to smooth it out and carefully work up to the line, making a rectangle of a nice solid featureless black. And then a little bit more black in the darkest part of the shadow, careful not to touch any part of the globe, using one of the narrow brushes this time, to get the littler, tighter space right. There, that was good. She scraped off the paint she didn't use back into the jar and dropped the knife and the brush into a ceramic jar with water in it — there were enchantments that would clean them over the next couple minutes — and then she had to figure out her other colours. That brownish-red of the brick was going to be a pain, and the green of the wall, and the yellow of the partly sunny parts of the globe weren't too bad, but the darker bronze-ish parts were a weird colour, how was she going to mix that...

Violet fell into it, mixing together blobs from this or that jar of paint, smearing it around on the tray and trying to get the colours the way she liked. The bronze was a pain, but she got something that looked...sort of right? Using one of the littler brushes, she filled in the darker parts of the globe. Since you could kind of see brushstrokes with paint, for the actual globe part of the globe, she tried to get the lines to follow the carvings on the real thing, more or less — it wasn't perfect, but she could almost see the east coast of Africa on the one she made. After that... Um, which way did she went to do this? Brick first, okay, she smeared the brownish-red she came up with over where the bricks went, and then with her wall green just drew around the edge of everything else, only like an inch — filling in the whole wall and mixing colours so it didn't look super flat and fake would take a long time and also wouldn't be very show-off-y, so she could save that for the end, if she had time. She did paint over the black she already used in the darkest part of the shadow, in patches, some green here and some green here, smearing it in with the still-wet black a little on purpose. That didn't look great, she guessed, kind of weird and blotchy (fake), but it was good enough, she guessed...

Right, let's do the shelf now. She scooped up her darker brown colour up onto one end of the shelf, and her lighter brown colour onto the other, smeared them across the already black-painted rectangle toward the middle from both sides — gently, so they didn't mix too much — adding more paint as she needed it, using one of the knives to gradually mix her brown colours as she went. That looked...okay, she guessed. She took a bland grey colour — didn't even mix this one herself, right out of a jar — and sketched over the red part in a grid, splitting them up into separate bricks. She came back with one of the knives, fiddling with the border, making it straight but not perfectly straight, the real bricks and the stuff between them had kind of rough edges...

And then she did her more yellowish bronze colour for the more sunny parts of the globe. The sun moved on since she started, not in the right place anymore — she hadn't been going for that long, had she? — but her pastel lines were still there, she knew about what she wanted. She didn't fill it all in, leaving a little circle where the brightest part was completely empty, showing the bleached white canvas underneath. Was that a normal thing to do? Violet didn't know, but, she'd see how it turned out. With a thin little brush she touched up the lines in the darker part with the brighter yellow, where the edges of the carvings had caught the light — the east coast of Africa was way more obvious now, and with a little bit here and here you could kind of make out the shape of the Near East. She came back with a knife, carefully thinning the yellow to show the white underneath, around India down here, and somewhere Russian up here on the other side of the blank spot, and oh, she could mark the edge of...some of the islands down here. Carefully fix up some of the lines she did in yellow over here, and...

...Yeah. Yeah, the globe sort of looked right. The colours were smeary and the shape wasn't quite right, but, with the blank spot and the little lines of brighter colours to mark where the light reflected, it almost looked shiny. Not really, because it was paint, but, she could see what it was supposed to be, which was probably about as good as Violet could do. She was only nine, and new at this.

She wasn't done with the knife yet, she swirled it around in the cleaning jar and wiped it off on the towel and went right back to cutting in on the shelf. She wanted the grain to show through black, so she had to split apart the brown layer in little curly lines, but not so deep that she cut through to the white underneath. This would probably be easier if she could wait until the lower layers dried, like when they played with tempera, but she didn't have time for that...

...and then she had to add a couple more touches of colour to the brick, smearing it around a little...

...um, the grain on the wood didn't look quite right, fix the curl of brushstrokes a little like this, that was better, fiddle a little with how the colours ran together on the globe...

...and the wall, the wall was going to take forever...oh crap, there should be shadows over the bricks over on this side too! Oh well, it was too late to fix that now...

...she wanted some lighter, yellowish patches here, the light from the window, and here, bouncing off the globe...

...and, over on this side, if she took one of the bigger brushes and went shwoop she could—

"Let's see it, then."

Violet jumped, a big hard thrum shooting through her — she nearly jammed the brush into the painting, barely stopped herself, took a second to take in a deep, shaky breath. Master Walter was back. She thought there were more blotches of paint on his sleeves than she remembered, but, she guessed he was working on something himself back there somewhere, so that made sense. Violet had turned her cloak around, so she didn't get anything on her nice clothes, but she glanced down at her own hands and she had blobs of different colours on her skin here and there and there...how had that even happened...

Looked like her time was up. Feeling a little embarrassed for some reason, Violet slid out of the way, letting Master Walter walk up to the easel. As he looked over it, she could feel the hairs at the back of her neck prickle, her stomach twisting, nervous — she really didn't think the painting was very good. Especially with the stuff out in the waiting room, well, it was just kind of...flat and blotchy and bleh. She did kind of like how the globe turned out, the darker bronze colour actually turned out kind of nice, the yellow and the white showing through making it look all shiny, and the reflection on the wall was a neat idea! She didn't quite remember what it looked like when the sun was in the right spot, so she didn't know if it was even close to right, but...

There were a couple things she liked about it, but it wasn't every good. She might be able to get it to be better, if she had more time or could take a few more tries at it, but the test was over already. And Master Walter was, like, a really good grown-up painter person — she assumed those paintings out in the waiting room were his, and they were so cool! — he was probably going to think it was bad and not want to teach her proper...

"What am I looking at?"

Violet was pulling her cloak back the right way around, careful not to touch anything with the messy parts of her fingers — partly just to give her something else to pay attention to, than worrying about what Master Walter was thinking about and finding a different teacher, and maybe they wouldn't like her either... — she startled a little again. "Um. The g-g-gleh-g— Here." Feeling her face burning (stupid stammer), Violet walked over to the fireplace, pointed up at the globe on the end — she couldn't reach up there, too little. "You c-c-can't see it now, but, when I started, the sun was c-coming in, and hitting it, like that..." She pointed at the canvas, even though she couldn't see the right side from here.

"Why'd you pick that?"

She shrugged. "I thought it was pretty? It wah– It wah– It– Ugh. It was all shiny. Nothing else stood out to me. The b-b-bookshelf, a little..."

Master Walter just hummed, nodding to himself — his face half-hidden by the frame, Violet couldn't even see him very well. She started walking back over there, the beads tinkling noisy in the stiff quiet. "This is the canvas here."

"Hmm?" She got around the easel enough to see he was pointing at the bright part of the globe. "Oh, yeah."

"Did you run out of time, or did you intend to leave that blank?"

"Meant to."

"Why?"

"...I dunno. The c-c-canvas is white? You can k-kind of see the weft if you l-lllook close, but." This was linen, she was pretty sure — proper paintings with real paint were done on cloth, not paper.

Whatever he thought about that, if that was a bad or stupid thing to do, he didn't say anything, just hummed. "And this here," one wrinkly finger pointing at the shelf, "how was this done?"

"Um, with this." Violet circled around Master Walter, picked up the smaller knife, still sitting in the cleaning jar where she left it. She held it in her hand like she used it — the same way they were taught to do in the ceramics workshop (which they would later use to do proper enchanting), similar to how she'd hold a pencil, but not quite the same. "I put some b-b-black dah-down first, um, and then put on brown all careful, and then, and then, kind of c-cut through the brown, only a l-little, so I d-d-didn't get the black. Yeah?"

Again, Master Walter didn't say anything to that, just nodded. His hands on his knees, he leaned closer to the canvas, his nose barely a couple inches away from the still-wet paint, scanning over it. "Have you done much work with paint before?"

"...We did a few things with t-t-tem-tempera at school?"

"Mm." After another moment just staring, not saying a word — which was making Violet nervous, she tried not to fidget (she didn't want to get paint on her clothes) — Master Walter nodded to himself. He grabbed onto the canvas frame and, pulling at something in the easel with a clack, detached it, the painting coming free in his hands. And then he started walking, not toward the door he brought Violet in through, back toward the waiting room, but the other one, leading deeper into the house. She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do — did he want her to go back on her own? — but then he stopped at the door, turned to give her a look, so she jumped to follow him.

He led her into what was obviously a storeroom — plain and undecorated, tile floor and lots and lots and lots of wood cabinets, a big long trough of a sink with four faucets over it. Toward one end was a rack of some kind attached to the ceiling, a skeleton of steel bars, canvas frames attached to them somehow. Paintings hanging up to dry, maybe? Maybe there was magic to make the paint dry faster, or without cracking, or something. The room smelled kind of...chemical-y, and sawdust-y, which was odd, because there wasn't any wood-working stuff in here...

"Wash up there," Master Walter said, pointing at the sinks. He was walking toward the side of the room with the rack, reached up to pull at something, a part of the rack accordion-ing down, and... Was he hanging up her silly bad painting? What for?

Oh, oops! There was a mirror behind the big sink, and Violet had paint on her face — little reddish and greenish blotches on the side of her chin, and a long bronzeish streak on one cheek going back to her ear. Must have reached to tuck back her hair without thinking...she should have just made her hair short, stupid...

"Your name was Violet?"

"What?" Scrubbing at her hands — getting paint off was hard, even when it wasn't all the way dry yet — she looked over. Master Walter had some kind of pen, writing something on the back of the frame. "Um, yes? Violet Black."

"How old are you?"

"Nine?" Why did that matter?

"Is that an early nine or a late nine?"

"Um, my b-birthday was last month, the Thirty-First." Violet wasn't sure at first if saying that was okay, since it was also Harry Potter's birthday. A couple of kids did point that out — but it was also the day before Lúnasa, one of the four big important Gaelic holidays, which most of the other kids thought was more important anyway. Kind of like your birthday being Christmas Eve, she guessed. "Why?"

"Curiosity."

...Okay, then.

Violet was having trouble getting the paint off her hands, but then Master Walter pointed out a bottle of stuff. It was one of those push-pump things, the stuff came out was slimy — gritting her teeth against how her skin crawled, her breath suddenly hot and tight in her throat, but it quickly lathered up more bubbly, which was— Oh! The paint came right off! That was so cool! Violet took a second, smaller bit of the stuff, trying to ignore how very gross it felt, once it was lathered up proper spread it over her face — she remembered to make her hair short first this time, so it was out of the way — scooped up water to rinse it off, and the paint was gone! just like that! It did feel very very gross at first, but that was still neat!

She wondered how that worked. Maybe it was a potion or something? It did feel kind of magic-clingy...which probably just made the slimy feeling worse...

Once the paint Violet got all over herself was washed off — except the cloak, she probably got blotches on that too, but Nola could probably fix that with a snap of his fingers — Master Walter led her back through the house toward the waiting room. Again, he didn't talk at all, didn't even look back at her after they started moving. Violet was a little confused at this point. Like, she was pretty sure he wouldn't bother putting up her painting to dry if he wasn't at least thinking about it, but you would think he would say something...

Back in the waiting room, the teenager behind the desk was still reading her magazine, Mum had gotten a newspaper from somewhere. Violet could make out the front page from here, by the glimpse she got before Mum started folding it up she could tell it was the Cambrian edition of the Northern Herald. (Mum read the English version of the Daily Prophet, but the Cambrian version of the Northern Herald — both papers had versions in both languages, but Mum said doing it that way around was best, because politics reasons Violet didn't get.) Seeing Master Walter (and Violet) walking in, both of them started looking up and putting their reading away. Master Walter said, "She'll do. We'll be needing an open contract," he said to the girl.

Her eyes widened, leaning back in her chair a little — surprised? "Yes, Grandfather." Leaning over to get something out of a drawer in the desk, she asked, "Which lists should I be getting?"

"Violet." She twitched a little as Master Walter turned back to look down at her — also, she was pretty sure that was the first time he actually used her name. "Painting isn't optional. Are there other media you have an interest in studying? We can also get into something else later if you don't think of it now."

...Um, by media he meant different things you could make drawings with, right? She was mostly sure that was right, she thought she might have heard that somewhere before. "Ink? And I l-l-llike pastels. Not the muggle wax ones, the more p-powdery kind."

"Muggles have that kind too." Well, sure, Violet guessed they might, she just didn't really know what was muggle stuff and what was magic stuff. She almost never saw wax pastels in art stuff for kids since coming to the magical side — it was all coloured pencils and watercolours, mostly. Turning back to the girl (who was apparently his granddaughter? or great-granddaughter?), he said, "Give them the full list. If we don't use something, it isn't as though they can't afford it."

Granddaughter snorted, maybe thought that was funny. The Blacks were, like, so wealthy it was kind of hard to even get her head around it — Mum bought a house, on a whim, Violet still wasn't over that...

By then, Mum had stood up and walked over, once she had a second she asked, "So, how'd it go in there?"

Violet wasn't sure if she was supposed to be answering, or even what she would say, but Master Walter got there first. "You've got a talented girl here. She has the eye for it, but not the skill to get it down. The latter can be taught — the former you either have, or you don't. Oh, the trick with the wood grain was clever," he said to Violet. Suddenly, as though he was just noticing he didn't say anything about it earlier.

"Um..."

Before she figured out what to say, Master Walter said something else to Mum, and then the three adults — or almost adults for Granddaughter — were talking, about schedules and shopping lists and stuff, making changes to something on a sheet of parchment on the desk as they went. There was a guild for artists in Britain (because of course there was), but you didn't have to go to school for it or anything, you just had to make enough work that the guild thought was good enough, and they would invite you. (Or you could apply to join, but mostly it was better to wait until they talked to you first.) Master Walter was offering to teach her until the guild welcomed her — or even longer, if there were still things she wanted to learn, but if she stayed past that point she would be expected to help with commissions and stuff. Violet thought Granddaughter looked a little surprised he wanted to do the whole thing, which she guessed made sense? She thought, Granddaughter maybe assumed that this was just a agree to give silly rich person kiddie art lessons for money thing — what Master Walter was talking about could take years, she probably wouldn't be good enough for long enough (because it took more than one good artwork to get in) until she was in her teens or even twenties, which seemed like ages away. Making an offer like that just after seeing her paint that silly little crappy thing seemed kind of weird...

They could probably do two lessons a week, even when school started again, but it might get thrown off when they went on trips, they'd figure it out. Granddaughter had shopping lists, of things they should get — they were written up for students ahead of time, but Master Walter added a couple things in the middle of the talk, cutting himself off in mid-sentence to do it. There were lots of books, which were mostly, like, history of art stuff, because Master Walter thought that part was super necessary to learn too. So, kind of like the books in her muggle primary school library she used to look at? Maybe exactly like those books, actually — the books on the list marked with a little triangle were muggle books, so. And then there were lots of supplies...well, it sounded like a lot, but it was just the basics really, and mostly just for practising at home, they'd use his stuff in lessons. Some of it they could get from muggle shops — art was old, so a lot of stuff was more or less the same on both sides — but there was special magic oil paint that had alchemy of some kind done on it to fix the way it dried, so. He didn't really explain, just said it was better for a beginner who didn't really know what they were doing, he even had a specific shop he said they should go to...

Mum made a joke about Master Walter having an agreement to send people there — or she said it like a joke, Violet didn't quite get how it was funny — and Master Walter just said yes, obviously he did, they gave him a discount, but that didn't mean they didn't make the best stuff anyway. (Obviously they did, he got stuff there, and he was a professional and everything.) For some reason Violet thought that was really funny, he was just so flat and blunt, it was silly. She was getting the feeling Master Walter was a little weird like that.

...Actually, now that she was paying attention, he didn't quite look right at Mum or Granddaughter when he talked to them. He spent a lot of time fiddling with the shopping lists or the contract — not looking like he was doing anything, just being busy — and even when he looked up, he was mostly looking in their direction, but not quite properly at them. Violet recognised it, because she kind of did the same kind of thing, sometimes — find something she could fiddle with so she had an excuse not to be looking at people, and just...

She didn't know, she was getting a funny feeling all of a sudden.

Master Walter signed the parchment, said he would shake hands with Mum, but he didn't want to get paint all over her, told Violet he'd see her next week...and then turned and disappeared through the right door without another word. Okay, then...

There was a little bit more talk between Mum and Granddaughter, but it was more adult stuff, where they could find things on the list and all. As it sounded like things were winding down, Mum said, "Violet darling?" She waited for Violet to look up before going on. "We're about done here. Do you want me to sign this?" she asked, tilting her head at the parchment on the desk. The contract, for the lessons, that would go on for...who knew how long, maybe a whole decade.

"Um, I dunno."

"Is there a problem? Narcissa's friend did recommend him, but if you didn't like him we can find someone else."

...Talking about maybe not liking Master Walter right in front of his granddaughter was maybe a rude thing to do? But Granddaughter was just smiling, like she thought something was funny, so maybe not. "I don't know, it was k-k-kind of weird." Not that Violet could judge for being a little weird — honestly, how odd and blunt he was, and how he didn't look at people while talking to them, Violet kind of had a feeling he might be autistic? She didn't ask, though, Mum never heard of it before and he was also an old person, so maybe he didn't know. "He j-j-j– had me paint a thing, then asked a c-couple questions...which was fine, maybe, it was like a test?"

"Where is it?"

Violet blinked, glanced over at Granddaughter. "What?"

"The painting. What did he do with it?"

"Um, hung it up, on the b-big metal thing, in the back?"

Granddaughter let out a little huff. "That means he likes you. Of course, I could have told you that already — you think every child who wanders in here gets an opportunity like this?" nodding down at the parchment. "He gave me that same test, when I was eight. He threw the canvas out the window, told me to come back and try again later."

Violet tried not to laugh, little choked noises half-strangled in her throat — it was mean, she didn't want to laugh at Granddaughter, but she was imagining it, just, Master Walter not saying a word, unhooking the frame and walking over to the window, and... It was mean, but it was also weirdly funny, she couldn't help it.

"Yeah, he can be like that. It took me four tries before he decided I was worth bothering with. My grandfather is something of an acquired taste. He won't lie to you just to be nice — if he thinks your work is bad, he'll say so, and he won't actually compliment something unless he's impressed. If he saved that painting in there, it's because he thinks it's a sign of promise, and worth saving so you can look back and see how far you've come. He's one of the best masters in the guild, but he can be rather blunt, and some people are too thin-skinned to work with him. You can always quit if he gets to be too much."

"What? I thought the contract was to k-k-keep on until the g-g-gee-g-g—" Ugh! Stupid G sounds, she hated Gs! "Um, you know."

"The agreement is to teach you until the guild acknowledges you or until you quit. Grandfather knows what he's like."

...Oh. Well, if she could quit at any time, then maybe it was worth trying then. Besides, Aunt Narcissa's friend had said he was the best...and also Violet was just noticing he had actually complimented her, for using the knife to cut in the wood grain — if Master Walter saying nice things was really that rare, that was probably a good sign then, right? "Okay. Yeah, let's do it."

As Mum signed the contract, the last bits of nervousness and confusion faded away, and Violet heard the beads tinkling again — she'd started bouncing without really noticing. She was nervous about meeting Master Walter, and then she didn't know what was going on, but she was going to get special art lessons now! Like, real stuff, like the paintings on the walls here. Both just, you know, learning to draw better and make pretty things and everything, but also making them move and all! (Because they were magic art lessons, not just normal ones.) She was excited before, when the idea was first brought up, but now she was excited again, because this was going to be so cool!

(She remembered, Aunt Petunia wouldn't even let her have her own coloured pencils, and now she was getting special personal lessons from a professional painter.)

Once all the paperwork was done, Mum folded up the shopping lists, they said goodbye to Granddaughter quick, and they were back out on the street. Violet was still bouncing on the balls of her feet, excitement bubbling in her stomach, she could feel herself grinning. Smiling down at her, Mum chirped, "So!" in time with a little clap of her hands. "Did you want to go home now, or get started on the shopping? Maybe drop by a chippy when lunchtime comes along, so long as we're on the muggle side."

"Shopping! The b-books sound c-c-c-cool, and art stuff!"

Mum laughed at her (but not in a mean way), reached over to ruffle her hair a little — oh, her hair was still short, forgot to make it long again... "Okay, but we have to drop by home first anyway. You'll need a dose of Riemann's Draught and a deflection amulet before you can go out in the muggle world."

...Oh right, forgot about that. Violet actually was changing without meaning to more often these days, and magic was supposed to be a secret. Which she still thought was stupid, but Violet didn't make the rules.

They didn't apparate away right from there — it was rude to apparate on someone's doorstep — Mum making for the square they started at instead. Violet was practically skipping the whole way, excited. But she still stuck close to Mum, holding her hand, now and then glancing up at her. She didn't know why, just one of those warm and squishy feelings for some reason. It was just really nice of Mum to get her special art lessons, and pay for all the supplies and everything, when she was Harry she would never have thought she'd get to do something like this, not in a million years...

(Sometimes she was reminded how super lucky she was Mum found her, that was all.)