Hogwarts School - Summer

It was the unexpected lightness that the conversation had been injected with more so than the humor—although that too he appreciated—that drew the exhale, a laugh, from him. His shoulders trembled and his smile shed the last vestiges of insecurity at the tilt of her head.

And then she said her name.

Accent aside, the odd combination of letters tickled an interest that wouldn’t have shown its head if she had said her name was something undeniably English and boring, something like Elizabeth or Margaret or Susan or Gertrude. But Ignis Fides Rivers was neither of those things, or, well, the name was neither of those things, least of all the latter.

The girl was yet to be seen.

“Fee-des,” he tried, testing the sharp vowels for himself and then sliding his hand into hers. “That’s loads better than Russell Beef Mallory, I'd say.”

He gave her one good shake, and retreated to peel back the napkin from the sliced edge of his sandwich.

“You’re not from Britain, are you.”

It wasn’t a question, that which he had already deduced, and so he tried to state it as evenly as he could; where, then, if not from here.

She wasn’t British.

He heard it in the hesitation that split h—ey into two syllables; he heard it in the rounder-than-normal o of Mallory; he saw it in the way she refused to let herself sink into the pressed linens of the infirmary bed, every inch of her coiled and taut and wary.

She wasn’t British, she was something else entirely, something foreign and frightened, and she looked about his age. Nurse Ennes offered no explanation—no name, no age, no explicit ailment—perhaps believing he had caught the important parts from the doorway, or perhaps believing him sharp enough to figure it out for himself. He usually was sharp enough for that, but something about the scene he had walked in on had thrown him.

A tentative smile flickered, “That’s actually my last name.”

He rounded the end of her bed and claimed the empty one to her left.

“Nurse Mallory’s what they call me in here. My real name’s Russ—Russell.”

He seemed to remember the sandwich he held in his hands then. Instinctively, he extended one half to her in a wordless offering.

“Beef.”

---

The door to the hospital wing cre-e-eaked open. A mess of light brown hair slipped through the gap without looking up, too focused on balancing two napkin-bound halves of a roast beef sandwich in one hand.

The gentle lilt of Nurse Ennes’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

“Drink half of this tonight. It’ll make you feel drowsy...”

He looked up—but the privacy screen between the first two beds partially obscured the patient on bed three. All he caught were the tops of two pale knees, black knee-high socks, and Nurse Ennes sitting at the foot of the bed beside a pair of Mary Jane’s, half-way through an explanation of a melatonin potion.

At the end of it, the Head Nurse turned suddenly, right as he thought to look away.

“Ah! And Nurse Mallory here can keep you company until you’re ready to go up to dinner.”

A hand beckoned him closer, urging him past the anonymity of the barrier to face his first assignment that term. Russell shuffled forward, beef sandwich in-hand.

Blue met hazel.

“Hi.”

“You’ve got it all here already, haven’t you,” she said with a sweep of her arm. It covered perhaps the smallest part of his life, the store nestled between a restaurant and a used furniture store, minuscule when compared to the Hogwarts grounds and the rest of the Magical world. He'd only spend summers and winter holiday here now, fractions of time to listen to the windchimes and refold tarot cloths.

Yet, it was the largest part of his life and the most important. The only magic he'd ever known, folded around him like a shroud. Part of him settled, content, to know she recognized he had 'it all here already', though she didn't really mean that at all.

Amused, Avery's nose wrinkled in a huffed laugh. "If I want to pay for it," he replied. "And we have some," a small half-shrug, "but not all."

“Something to make you less confusing.”

She was already on the right track if she thought in crystalline point to speak of him.

As she spoke of clarity, Avery drifted to the shelves lined with bowls. The crystals sparkled underneath the lights, some of them rough-cut and others polished and gleaming.

"Of thought? Of action? Of intent?" he asked, though expected her to answer nor care for none.

"Petrified wood for grounding, knowledge, truth, connection with the earth. Clarity during dawn and dusk, when we are on the verge of shifting." He touched one with the tip of his finger, striations like tree bark.

"Flint," he continued, past the grey chips. "Decisiveness, growth, wholeness, transformation, insight."

"Miriam Stone." Looked a bit like a plain brown stone with splatters of orange-yellow paint, perfect orbs on display on a plush pillow to keep them from rolling. "Gentle self-expression, expansion, sense of purpose, mastering fear, living in the present."

He stopped at the end of the shelf, nodding to a small pile of rough-cut stones of a dark purple and grey. "Axinite, bridging between the spiritual and physical, balancing polarities, focus, expanded wholeness and awareness."

Turning to face her, Avery tried to gauge if she'd listened at all. To an outsider, he could see how crystals didn't seem simple or clear, but things in life were rarely so straightforward. Hogwarts Magic, Witch and Wizard Magic - confusing, unrealistic. Grounded in fantasy.

But, perhaps that was the answer all along: magic only meant that which could not be easily explained.