Weasley for Whom the Wizards Wheeze

‘‘Obviously. She was in a rush to get out of the house since Weasley Wizard Wheezes was about to close,’‘ he rolled his eyes and gave her a serious, yet tired look. ‘‘No. She refuses to enter the house. She drops Wyatt off and goes to courses.’‘ He thought she had missed a year in University, but wasn’t sure. Even though math has never been his strong suit, it did look that way to him.

His laughter was succulent and lively, as if this has been the best night of his life. It truly was a good one, he had to give her that. ‘’Mercy on who?’’ he played innocent, turning his ex-wife’s name into a noun. After her attempt, he untied the scarf, still holding it over his eyes, and tied it properly, with a bow. Shame it had to be taken off so shortly after. ‘’They’re half brothers,’’ he argued helplessly, not even with an intention rather than just for the exchange of words itself. 

For the first time, it was a present that, he felt, surpassed any expectation and anything he could have bought himself if he could. Looking at the crystal pieces of a chandelier in a charmed manner, he picked a random one, which displayed the pair on their third pina coladas, on an empty beach. He simpered fondly at the memory and squeezed the crystal tears into his palm, placing them in his pocket afterwards. 

‘’Genius,’’ he breathed out, eyes stealing the electric blue of the Christmas lights placed on that balcony. He took off his scarf completely, but only to stuff it in the pocket as well. ‘’No need for blindfolding. My present has nothing to do with the eyes.’’ Flashing his eyes mysteriously, like in the middle of a magic trick, he pretended to pull something out of the very same pocket he was placing things into just a moment ago. Empty hands. ‘’It’s at home,’’ he explained, embarrassed. ‘’A Nimbus 3000S. I don’t think you fly enough anymore. You’ll also have to take a break from work from the 12th to the 17th. We’re flying to Sri Lanka to adopt a monkey. Maybe sans the monkey part.’’ 

‘‘I’m sorry.” It might not have been the right reaction and she surely didn’t actually feel it, though Colin looking weary she would soften over always, but it seemed the thing to say and it slipped out as automatic social cue response. “Have you and Wyatt been having a good time getting to know one another?” 

She laughed at his comeback and left his question rhetorical, answering only with a hmm like acknowledging the point or having to think about who was more likely to need mercy,  though there were jokes left to be made about safe words. She continued the other exchange about the Marks keeping about the same tone as Colin had, not arguing but discussing.  ‘’What context other than bone marrow donation does half siblings matter?”

She didn’t quite hold her breath but she did watch Colin’s reaction a bit on the anxious side of anticipatory, knowing he’d say something positive and appreciate the sentiment regardless but not quite sure until she saw the reflection in his eyes that said he was enchanted, if he’d think it too sentimental or clashing with the theme he was trying to create with the hotel or find something about the crystals tacky. By the time he called them genius, validation she wasn’t to the point of being needy about but meant a lot all the same, she was beaming and looking more charmed than he was. “Yeah, I know. I’ve just earned free passes to not try at all the next few gifts.”

She followed the track of his hands, not sighing to tease him about flouting tradition he’d started by being the first to require blindfolds for gift giving or forgetting his gift. She was actually grateful she wouldn’t have anything to carry with her and worry about breaking or losing considering what was soon to come. There was no big reaction to the reveal of the present or the name of the broom, she smiled bright and genuine, it was a good pick as far as gifts went and though nothing she had been thinking of, it was mostly because she wasn’t thinking of ‘wants’ in that way much at all these days. She knew the latest Nimbus was supposed to be a great model though she hadn’t read all the specs like she would have to now. “It’s been months at least,” she acknowledged his point about flying--she couldn’t specifically remember the last time she flew for fun and though it wasn’t sad it also wasn’t something she should give up and sweet of Colin to be thinking of--breaking in before going silent when he continued to elaborate on the rest of the present. Excitement for the trip was, it wasn’t quite fair to say more genuine, but  more palpable, Roxanne’s eyes lighting up now, though part of her--part she quickly told to shut up--internally sighed and tried to say it wasn’t the right time to swan off for a getaway. “Not the monkey. I no longer want a menagerie. Well, I mean maybe if it’s a really cute monkey and it finds us, or we go all out and take a leopard,  but I’m going to drag you to explore Sigiriya for sure. I’ve always wanted to go to Sri Lanka! I love it, both parts”

‘‘Alright, Roxanne. I thought we were at a different level. Your right isn’t the generic version of right. I’m sorry. It’s just not in the slightest. But okay. Please don’t forget the exact moment you said this.’‘

“Maybe it’s not, but it’s a lot closer to the heart of what’s right than what most people get, and you should remember when you see what believing those psychopaths should still be bargained with leads to that I was the one who told you how it has to be.”

‘‘I don’t know this Charlie guy. What year was he in compared to our own? I don’t know any abandoned buildings but why would we need one? You’re not trying to kidnap me and Oliver, are you?’‘

“I don’t know. I forget how old he is. Probably, he would have graduated before either of us started going to Hogwarts. He’s a work friend, I guess, for lack of a better term, but really he’s a dedicated to actually getting shit done when nobody else will and fighting back against the people who dropped a flock of fucking dragons into the middle of fucking Hogsmeade friend. We need an abandoned building because we don’t want people spying on us and we want a nice, secluded, empty place that we can trash if necessary while experimenting with amplified powers. When I’m trying to kidnap you and Oliver I won’t be so sketchy and obvious, and I won’t be offering to let you pick locations, which I just have done, if you were listening. Any other questions?”

Charlie’s neck almost snapped, looking back at her sharply. ‘’It’s an awful idea. Snitches suck, but you can get tied up in your own vows  and the next thing you know is that you can’t speak your own mind, even if you’re innocent.’’ He then nodded along. ‘’We should. We shouldn’t wait for long, so we’ll get the authentic story.’’

“Fine. It was just an idea. We’ll burn snitches instead.” The second part only got a nod of agreement and, “Tomorrow come in early. We’ll get it out of the way before we open.”

‘‘Yeah, I think it’s Mercy’s,’‘ he nodded upon seeing the scarf. It was one of the things he found in some drawer long after having sent her family her stuff, so he just left it there. ‘‘Tie me,’‘ he offered, subtext as a joke evident in his tone. ‘‘It’s good some things don’t change. If you liked their manor we should befriend Xavier. He’s actually someone you’d like. I haven’t spoken much to him, but he makes things up. Not my way. He’s an inventor. Anyway, my present, please.’‘ 

“Oh, left sometime lately?” It wasn’t a trap of a question or a lead in to some petty tacked on comment about how she’d assumed it was left by one of her male friends--though mostly all of those were his as well. It was just a face value question, curiosity as to whether Mercy and Wyatt had been over with the melancholy and jealousy beat into submission for the moment.

She gave him an arch look and looped the scarf around his wrists once before sighing and unwinding it just as quickly “Not on days where Mercy gets brought up,” she bantered, circling around him to tie the makeshift blindfold. “It’s not my favorite manor. It was just the circularity. Don’t talk about befriending even the brother Marks or I’ll singe off some of your hair.” 

The blindfold was sloppy as it was every year, but it was just for tradition and show, so she back off when it was still crooked and loose with the order to, “Hold it in place if it comes untied. She stepped back around front of him and rummaged in her purse until her hand closed around what she was looking for. “Hands out,”she ordered again, the unsaid that this was supposed to be followed over holding blindfold in place. She pressed five, unwrapped, large teardrop shaped objects, crystal but with a distorted silver heart inside into his hands and then untied the blindfold if it hadn’t already fallen. 

“They aren’t earrings,” was the only help she offered. “Hold one up and look at it awhile.” She waited before giving a better explanation. “Baubles for a chandelier for the hotel lobby. Imagine a lot more and some of them bigger to create one. Look at them long enough and you’ll see. There are pensieve memories at the center. Two are our last vacation--some of the rated for all audiences bits. There’s another that I got from Scorp, that road trip you took. Ypu got a bit of my childhood as well, family getaway. I was going to ask Diana for your family’s past vacations, we still can if you want, but these are just prototypes. If you like the idea of a rainbow of people’s past vacation memories hanging over guests come for their own. You’d have to design the chandelier itself unless you want something standard as a layout. I wanted to do something for the hotel, for the supportive gesture, but if you hate it, then you can tell me and I’ll only be offended for half next year.”

‘‘I can’t help you if my solutions aren’t options. Maybe they aren’t as far as you can grasp it. I always said we should reduce settle to conversation. I never said there don’t have to be fights at all. Violence always finds a way in. People feel like this absolutely logical problem has to be solved irrationally, as if the best duelist is incidentally the one who has it right. But first things first, I wish someone would talk and be clear. Maybe we agree with each other more than we think we do.’‘

“Then I’ll be clear. They don’t deserve to speak. Whoever is the best duelist isn’t right. Those that are right need to be the better duelist because I’m not interested in conversation. Period.”

‘‘Why there?’‘ he asked the first question that could indicate a red flag, not that he was scared. Of Roxanne, no, in any way. ‘‘Will we be alone?’‘

“No, we won’t be alone. It may only be Oliver and Charlie and us tomorrow, but there will be more than that soon. You got a better abandoned building you want to meet at?”

“So it’s a focusing solution?”

“No! It’s...Godric fuck, Oliver, just grab a damn glass and trust me!”

Allard noticed the difference in her appearance and tone almost immediately. Their exchanges were always so light, so easy to forget afterward but still look back on fondly. He’d heard murmurings about what she and her friends tried to do, the things they talked about, but he still just thought of her as the pretty joke shop owner he’d first exchanged some flirtatious remarks with years ago now. Marriage, homewrecking, and battle scars hadn’t changed that. His first instinct was to bring some levity to the conversation again, and he had a few jokes formed and ready on the tip of his tongue. They rolled back down his throat and exploded in his chest at the mention of the Killing Curse.

Roxanne Weasley wasn’t fucking around.

It was a quick calculation he made as he took an extended sip of his drink. Her honesty only came because she didn’t know who he dealt with behind closed doors. It only came because they were friendly, not friends, and this conversation could be as easily lost from his memory as nearly every other they had before. If she was truly allied with the people who were one of the greatest threats to Jonathon’s plans, Allard wasn’t going to let this pass by him so easily. If she wasn’t…well, an open ear was a tedious but necessary start to open legs.

“We all see through this vow of peace,” he stated definitively. “I’m bored of it all already. We all are. This isn’t Hogwarts and it isn’t the real world we were prepared for, but it’s the real world we’re in. It’s not sick. It’s life now.”

“It’s life, but we are supposed to be sad about it,” she insisted, refusing to be comforted so easily, but taking a more matter of fact tone than her previous regret. “We aren’t supposed to anticipate it, to say,” she continued more feelingly, no doubt she actually was saying the words for herself and not continuing a point, “I hope I get to use my wand tonight.”

“ I want to draw first.” Now started she didn’t back down from making what she called sickness clear. “I was being dramatic about killing curse green before. I wouldn’t try that again. Not because I don’t think I could make it work, because I want pain and scars. I want to see the effects of spells that are supposed to only be seen in books.” She would tell him that she’d want to see them outside of battle, to immobilize someone and test several out slowly, but that comes close to admitting about Darius, or admitting she almost had done so again--would have done so again if given a little more time to pretend she’d exhausted other options-- on someone who had done nothing to her and she only had Charlie’s word was so much as linked with anyone she should want revenge on as an upstanding citizen, and who wasn’t violent herself by his admission. She wasn’t stupid. Allard wasn’t to trust with everything. “I know I’m not the only one. Look at my cousin.” She didn’t specify which cousin, but Louis’s mania was common gossip. “But, you know, I think my intentions are less pure.”

“Are you bored of peace or are you just saying that to sound shocking?” She looked at him with hope, through the melancholy. Allard was normal, not moral by most standards but decent enough in her eyes that he would make her feel less warped if he felt the same pull she did. Not crazy like Louis, like Charlie showed signs of even though Charlie was quickly becoming her favorite kindred spirit, or worse then them both because anger and tendency to channel it into beating someone to pulp or throwing fireballs wasn’t half of the problem she was beginning to think she had--the one that let Jonathan draw comparisons that had sent her back into this spiral.

“I’d rather get away from all of this shit. I don’t owe you or anyone anything.” 

“Noted. Run on away then.”