Edison_Trent
Freelancer
While mostly able to be grasped from context, it is nice to have confirmation.
Path to Munchies (Edit: It was not the right one, but still a good fic.)
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Felix Fortuna (Worm/HP)
- Thread starter Chartic
- Start date
From back when Alexander woke her up from one of her nightmares:
Abao
Le Halpful One
- Location
- Theocracy of Derpism
(nerd alert)
Science, contrary to popular belief, isn't the antithesis to magic. It is just the antithesis to wild unrepeatable claims, and theories that contradicts empirical evidence.
Magic is repeatable + magic theory works = magic is science.
It really is that simple.
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Satisfaction
brought it back.
wooooosh
The joke is exactly a play on the idea that magic and science are incompatible, despite magic existing (in-universe), along with the secondary joke of the (stage) 'magic' Fortuna performs by backpalming the lottery ticket. Both Flavia and Fortuna are well aware of the fact magic and science aren't actually incompatible.
- Location
- A M E R I C A
Yes, but in Abao's defense, Fortuna's naturally occurring sense of humor is terrible.
- Location
- Massachusetts
That really depends on the magic system, Harry Potter magic can only be scienced on a surface level, any deep look at the underlying principles and all logic falls apart. Soft magic systems in general generally can't be successfully scienced because their are no empirical, verifiable and repeatable facts to be found.
Abao
Le Halpful One
- Location
- Theocracy of Derpism
Urgh, I can't do subtle. Even after being pointed out I still don't get it. I'd really love it if someone explain it to me.
- Location
- A M E R I C A
Jokes are said to result from unexpectedness/contradiction of expectations. The basic joke is that she didn't use magic (she used mundane sleight of hand, the backpalm) but she said she did. She enhanced it by implying that they don't believe in magic (they do) and that she was revealing a big secret (she wasn't) and that she thinks science and magic are incompatible (she knows they aren't).
She thinks she's hilarious. Flavia...would politely change the subject if asked to praise her friend's sense of humor.
(Also, maybe, just maybe, Fortuna is fucking with Flavia a little bit by saying she's going to reveal something major about herself - and Flavia knows there is something major she's hiding and Fortuna knows she knows that - and then, well, not.)
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- Location
- Britain
I assumed it was a rather opaque allusion to her power. From that perspective, She's not saying that she doesn't think magic and science are compatible, she's saying that she places complete faith in the correctness of her power. They spend lots of time searching through clues to try and find Sirius, yet Fortuna has full faith that she could instantly locate Sirius at any point.
Edison_Trent
Freelancer
And here I was being an idiot, thinking she was talking about a young girl's heart.
pls don't hurt me
pls don't hurt me
Question: How many steps to locate Sirius Black, Path to Victory?
Answer: One
Question: How do I locate Sirius Black, Path to Victory?
Answer: Turn your head left and face the black dog.
Answer: One
Question: How do I locate Sirius Black, Path to Victory?
Answer: Turn your head left and face the black dog.
Strayed
No Gravy Beam for you.
The very fact that any witch or wizard who waves their wand in a specific fashion and says certain words gets a consistant result very clearly establishes that you are entirely wrong.
While I'll not argue that there is a degree of regularity in Harry Potter magic, this is false. See, for example, the Patronus charm, or the Unforgivable Curses. In both cases the wand-waving and pronunciation can be perfect, and yet the spell still fails because of a lacking emotional or intent component. We see this early on in this fic, when even the Path to Victory can't help Fortuna cast a Patronus, because perfect execution isn't enough and she lacks the appropriate memories.
This is just me quibbling over details, because the intent/emotion component is just another verifiable fact alongside the wand-waving and pronunciation you mentioned.
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- Location
- Massachusetts
Except both the wand and the words are objectively unnecessary for the spell in the first place and don't actually have an effect in and of themselves. Ergo someone who actually knows what they're doing can use different words and movements or none at all, but some first year can be shown exactly the words and movements to do some high level transfiguration and not have anything happen, or something totally random so...I guess that clearly establishes that you are entirely wrong.
Edison_Trent
Freelancer
True that words and wand movements aren't NEEDED and are clearly magical training wheels of some sort, but that part is incorrect, as shown with WinGARdium LevioSAH, and Ron trying to turn rat!Peter yellow. It clearly isn't just "I want X, magic effect X happens if I throw magic at the universe".
Harry casting Snape's spell that was written in his potions book, without wand movements IIRC. Also, that example doesn't take into account that some spells have emotional/mental components, such as the Patronus that requires "happy" thoughts, though of course no wizard is going to be casting that spell while brain activity and endorphin levels are being monitored. This is also why Fortuna is able to have PtV help her cast spells, as PtV can get the proper words, movements and other components by reading the info straight from wizards brains and then TASing Fortuna through the steps.
It also doesn't help that none of the wizards in Rowlings books were ever going to be smart enough to actually want to sit down and test any of their words and wand movements and the like on-screen, because that would mean Rowling would have to actually write down the results of such testing.
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Chapter 17: Blood on the Snow
Chartic
Literally the Worst Human in the Fandom
- Location
- St. Paul
The winter solstice dawned well after Flavia and Fortuna had risen. Time and tide waited for no man, and vengeance waited for no ball of flaming gas. For too long had Daphne de Luce rained down terror on Gryffindor adventurers and cocoa on the backs of sleeping felines, and today was the day of reckoning.
Flavia danced about her cauldron, taking little half steps and twirling, whispering faux Latin (and, occasionally, true Latin) as she stirred in splashes of an oily red liquid that stained the bubbling mixture a deep vermillion. Aside from the gasmask and safety goggles, she looked every bit the witch that she truly was, despite the fact her current work was as mundane as the Bunsen burner powering it—the potion was but a mix of hydrogen peroxide and dish soap.
She was showing off.
"So," she said authoritatively. "The combination of hydrogen peroxide and potassium permanganate will produce a rapid expansion of gas, which a sufficient medium could trap, leading to an explosive increase in the size of said medium. With the addition of cadmium dye, well—let's just say that books will not be the only thing being red today."
No place on earth so perfectly fit Flavia de Luce as her bedroom. Unlike the hodgepodge of stolen equipment assembled in the Shrieking Shack, the chemistry laboratory Flavia had taken for her residence had all the capacity and grandeur of an Oxford research facility. The room was circular, owing to the tower it was located atop of, and any way Fortuna turned she saw nothing but glassware, vials both empty and stoppered to keep their different contents safely contained, and books of every shape and size, all the legacy of Flavia's Great Uncle Tarquin.
An inventory would take weeks by itself, but Flavia had spent years here, and it showed in the details. Surfaces had knicks and scratches as well as deep stains where potions or chemicals had tipped over and spilled, defiant against any attempts to clean them. Notes were scattered here and there, either torn from books or jotted on looseleaf mid-experiment. Books were stacked among empty glasses, arranged so that someone of Flavia's height could reach them without much difficulty. Even the chemicals had small hand-written annotations on them, linking back to pages no doubt detailing how they were prepared. For all that it felt like a repository of learning to be treated with deep reverence, this was no museum.
As Flavia continued her work, Fortuna settled down on her stool and allowed her power to pull her away for a moment. The murderer, a man called Walden for reasons known only to his inordinately cruel parents, was in his London office doing work of no paticular importance. It seemed that if he didn't have innocent men to poison or innocent animals to butcher, he stood around making small talk with the other wizarding bureaucrats that filled up the magical government.
He hadn't yet made the decision to come to Bishop's Lacey on Christmas Eve, where he would arrive shortly before the clock struck midnight. But, after a week of avoiding his unsavory friends, he would eventually move to recover the lottery ticket—and she would be waiting. Not one other person would get hurt; she was as sure of it as it was possible for anyone to be sure of anything, but checking and rechecking his position and state of mind had still become something of a reflex over the past two days.
On some unseen signal, Flavia grasped the handles and lugged the cauldron to a clean borosilicate beaker positioned on a low table. With a huff she tipped the solution out and it slowly poured. It was what blood would look like in a bad horror movie, all runny without any of the clot. It turned Fortuna's stomach, and she closed her eyes as Flavia finished the process.
The cauldron clonged on the floor and Fortuna dared look again. Flavia held the jar aloft. "Behold the genesis of our retribution."
"I behold the means by which your sister's evil shall be returned sevenfold and see that it is good," Fortuna said.
"It is very good," Flavia said, taking a moment to study her chemical creation. "But we need to make it go bang, and for that we need the catalyst. Could you hold this for a second?"
Fortuna couldn't quite control her expression in time, and Flavia hastily switched tracks. "Actually, if you would be kind enough to grab the Potassium Permanganate, I will carry this mixture to ensure its stability."
Flavia gave a vague nod at the rows of chemicals behind Fortuna, who used her power to pick a glass bottle out of the endless rows of colors and shapes. It was full of purple crystals that looked almost like metal shavings and meant nothing to her. When she turned, she found Flavia's weighty gaze locked onto her like a cruise missile. "How did you know which one I wanted?"
"A brilliant chemist inspires brilliance in her lab assistants," Fortuna said handsomely. "Let us implement our flawless scheme whilst our target is yet innocent of our dastardly intentions."
Unable to argue with either the statement or the suggestion, Flavia led the way down the stairs and into the west wing of Buckshaw. As they approached Daphne's bedroom, they began to tiptoe, pausing behind every corner to make sure the coast was clear before proceeding.
Such precautions weren't really necessary; Flavia asserted (and Fortuna privately confirmed) that, true to her form on holidays, Daphne would be sitting in her bath, attempting to refresh herself from an all night reading binge while simultaneously starting an all day reading binge. They'd have plenty of time to lay the snare and get breakfast before enjoying the show.
When they finally arrived, they carefully pushed the door open and checked both sides for traps before entering. It transpired that Daphne had, in her arrogance and folly, laid no defenses against intruders.
The unguarded bedroom was a monument to the written word. Bookshelves lined every wall save for a writing desk that was itself heaped with towers of leatherbound texts. The full glory of the English language was on chronological display, from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Austen to Waugh, but there were very few personal effects to be found. In its own way, the single-focused enthusiasm for one area of study was so like Flavia's room that it took Fortuna aback for a moment.
"Perfect," Flavia said sotto voce, and she beelined for the nightstand, where a copy of Bleak House lay atop four other books. "I knew she had to be reading some big old book that would put even Binns to sleep. I don't know how she hasn't gotten a concussion from passing out during her studies."
She pulled the book open and beckoned Fortuna over, placing her beaker on one page and grabbing Fortuna's to sprinkle a layer of crystals on the other. "Sigillum," she said, firmly poking the page with her wand.
The book slammed shut, the chemicals disappearing inside of it. Flavia held her breath and froze in place, waiting to see whether the book was going to explode.
It did not, and the conspirators withdrew in triumph and made their way to the kitchen, where Mrs. Mullet was bustling about making breakfast. If there had ever been house-elves at Buckshaw, the fact had been lost to the dustbin of history (which, so far as Fortuna was concerned, was just another way of saying "history"), and Mrs. Mullet had been the housekeeper and cook since Flavia's mother had hired her during the war.
Housekeeper was certainly a more apt word than cook. No sooner did she spot her first victims of the day than she deposited two heaping plates on the table. One look at the meal, if it could be called that, laid waste to any thoughts of an enjoyable breakfast, or anything short of voluntary starvation.
There was an omelet, or at least a jellified mass of scrambled eggs that had started out with aspirations of omelethood. It was stuffed with mandarin orange slices and topped with what appeared to be scallions but proved to be mint on close (too close) inspection.
The accompanying kippers had also been thoroughly stripped of their dignity. The charred flesh had been coated in some abominable paste of spices that could make no gastronomical sense save to someone with the unparalleled talent of Mrs. Mullet and burnt shards of peppercorn had grafted themselves onto the underside of the poor fish whose lives had been cut short for this fate.
"Thank you," Flavia said with a toothy anti-grin that did not so much fail to reach her eyes as it did avoid them out of conscientious objection.
Mrs. Mullet beamed at them both. "I know you girls have been up working in that lab of yours, so I made double portions for both of you."
Seeing that Flavia was not up to delivering a second lie, Fortuna stepped in. "Thank you," she said, appearing more gracious than her friend only because she had a superpower of nigh-incomprehensible might to guide her facial expressions.
Mercifully, there was an explosion. It was followed by a much louder shriek, which in turn was followed by slamming doors, thudding footsteps, and sputtered curses.
Like a monster risen from the muck of an ancient, evil-smelling bog, Daphne appeared in the doorway. Each breath she took was a heaving gasp that seemed to shake her whole body, and she dripped with effervescently red suds that coated every bit of her. She was shaking with barely contained rage, each quiver splashing cadmium-dyed soap onto the floor, and her eyes were wide and wild as she scanned the room.
Finally her malicious gaze focused on Flavia. "You," she spat, foam dribbling out of her mouth and staining her chin, "You—you foul defacer of God's handiwork! You—" She tried to shake herself off, not unlike Alexander when Flavia had spilled some gelatine on him, but succeeded only in covering the kitchen with bright red bubbles and distressing Mrs. Mullet.
Then she caught sight of Fortuna, who was choosing not to hide her smirk. "Both of you—you pernicious toadstools! You nasty, squirming, viperous little worms! You, you—"
But sometimes words escaped even Daphne de Luce, and she resorted to violence to express her feelings. She leapt across the kitchen like a rugby player, cruelty flaming in her eyes. Fortuna just barely managed to pull Flavia and herself out of the impact area, and Daphne went sliding over the table, carrying with her the plates of alleged food and mugs of milk past their chairs and onto the floor. Accompanied by a series of outraged noises from Mrs. Mullet, they ran in the direction from which Daphne had come, and with Fortuna's help gained some ground by sliding along the soapy trail.
Daphne gave chase, abandoning all pretense of decorum. She started out on all fours like a rabid she-bear, but transitioned into a sprint as soon as her footing became more steady, shouting decreasingly creative diatribes with every breath she could manage to get in. She was wheezing, but—bookworm though she was—her longer legs would enable her to catch up to them soon enough.
So Fortuna led them all into an occupied corridor. While she could dodge around the cluster of adults, first Flavia and then Daphne collided with them, setting off a domino-like chain reaction as they all fell one after the other.
By the time the dust had cleared, only Fortuna and a scarred and battered man with a false leg and a magical eye were left standing, and only Fortuna was left untainted by the soap that Daphne had brought with her. True to Flavia's word, the cadmium dye provided that gory hue that pushed her creation from party trick to abbatoir, and it looked like a dozen Palace Guards had been massacred in the hallway.
The writhing mass of limbs on the floor did nothing to decrease the general unpleasantness of the sight. Flavia, Daphne, Antigone Hewitt, and three Aurors were all tangled together, all fighting to free themselves and completely preventing the others from doing so. One of them, sensing the futility of the fight, simply glared at the man standing next to Fortuna. "Couldn't have given me a warning, Mad-Eye?"
This momentarily caught Fortuna's attention. Did he mean that "Mad-Eye" was supposed to be able to tell the future? She shot a glance at him, wondering if he was something like her—but no, he could just see through walls with a magical device. And he'd also told the others not to worry about the explosion and screaming.
He snorted. "I had hoped an entire team of Aurors and veterans wouldn't be taken out by schoolgirls. Haven't I taught you anything, Robards?"
At this, Flavia's head peeked out between the two women and she crawled her way out, acting as the lynchpin that seemed to allow the rest of them free. She zeroed in on the man with the magic eye.
"You're Ma—You're Alastor Moody," she announced with the formality that signaled to Fortuna that she was about to say something outrageous. "I am Flavia de Luce and I would be willing to let you consult with me on poisons."
Fortuna's power informed her that the man was something of a war hero or/and a paranoid maniac, and Flavia had heard more than one horrific story about his actions. She was utterly enamored.
"I consult with people old enough to use a wand outside of Hogwarts," Moody growled.
"But I didn't use magic for this," Flavia squeaked, mostly truthfully. "It's just Muggle chemistry!"
All eight of them looked around. Fortuna had gotten used to the occasional condescending remark when Flavia mentioned her interest in the sciences, but not a word left anyone's lips. The proof of her abilities lay splattered across the ghastly clot-red and mustard-yellow wallpaper like the leavings of an ax-murderer's handiwork.
The Aurors themselves and even Antigone—who presumably was more familiar with what Flavia could do than the others—looked deeply uncomfortable at being coated in what looked like the remnants of a blood bank. Finally Moody, seeming to remember he was a wizard and not a police officer with a fancy stick, waved his wand and the dye dissolved in a series of bubbles.
"Girls," Antigone asked, as she watched the remnants of the elephant toothpaste float off and vanish, "what were you doing?"
Daphne's look soured even further and she jabbed a finger at Flavia, who was ostentatiously dusting herself off. "She is a secret and villainous contriver."
Abruptly both of Alastor Moody's eyes focused on Daphne. "And you knew this before this morning?"
"I've known it all her life," Daphne said haughtily.
"And you still fell for a trick of hers, did you? I shouldn't have vanished the evidence, then, having you clean it up could have been a learning experience."
Daphne's eyes widened and, at a loss for words and parental authority, she turned on her heel and left with as much dignity as she could summon. This was very little even though she was no longer covered in foam. "Fungus and fungus food," she hissed at Flavia and Fortuna on her way out.
"An hour wasted on Haviland," grunted Auror Robards as he turned to leave, and Fortuna only then realized that the adults had been visiting Flavia's father. "I knew we wouldn't get anything out of him."
Antigone opened her mouth, but Flavia had already stiffened and stepped forward. "If you know so much, tell me the name of the poison that killed Janus, how it is made, how long it takes to kill, and what all of that implies about both the killer and the victim. Furthermore, if you are going to handle this case so incompetently, one is compelled to ask—where were you on Friday night?"
The man's mouth flapped open and closed, increasing his already strong resemblance to a fish.
"You want a leg like mine, Gawain, keep chewing that foot of yours," Mad-Eye Moody grunted. "As for the rest, girl—we already know that Wolpers knew his killer. Trust us to do our jobs."
Flavia settled for stonily silent hauteur, but she pulled it off less well than her sister Ophelia.
As the rest of adults rounded the corner, Fortuna got the sense Moody was still staring at them through the wall. She used her power to stare right back at him, tracking right where he walked without blinking until he finally looked elsewhere.
By the time she'd won her staring contest, Flavia had relaxed and was acting like nothing had happened. "A success, Dr. Bosch, a brilliant and stunning success!"
"An absolute and flawless victory, Dr. Haber," Fortuna said, steering them back toward the lab (and further away from the kitchen). "Let us congratulate ourselves by consuming edible fare fit for a living thing. Any living thing, fungi included."
Flavia heaved a sigh, pointedly ignoring the open door to her father's study as she strode past it. "We can make toast and tea over the bunsen burner. And serve it with sugar mice. Again."
Fortuna ventured a look. Haviland de Luce stood with his back turned to them, staring out the window at the deteriorating Buckshaw grounds. Dust had settled everywhere and untidy stacks of envelopes sat unopened on his desk. How long had he been there? Fortuna realized she hadn't seen the man once since she had come to Buckshaw two days ago. She'd been so caught up in the case and their schemes, she'd completely forgotten there should have been someone to tell them not to use their wands and stop them from eating candy for three meals a day.
And to think that Flavia had said the de Luces didn't become ghosts.
By the time they finished their breakfast, Flavia was ready to discuss the purpose of the Aurors' visit, if not whom they had visited. The mystery had occupied most of Flavia's attention since their arrival, and they'd spent their first day in the nearby village trying to uncover some critical information. They had investigated the inn (no new customers), the town's only taxi stand (no new customers), and the police station (Flavia, leave), finding nothing that would point to a criminal element deeply embedded in the fabric of an out-of-the-way village.
"We need to go to Bishop's Lacey again," she announced. "Lottery results will be in the papers, and I have a hunch our ticket is the winner."
"There wouldn't be a point in killing someone with extremely dark magic over a losing ticket," Fortuna said with a nod.
"Esoteric extremely dark magic," Flavia said, and her eyes went to the tome of horrific potion recipes they'd consulted (rather, that Flavia had consulted and Fortuna had studiously ignored on account of the grisly illustrations). "The recipe isn't written down in the usual places, and I don't know of anyone living who could deduce its contents based on its effects, not unless Snape is really hiding something. It's more likely the killer found the existing Lydsprute seeds somewhere rather than brewed the poison himself—or herself."
Definitely himself, Fortuna knew, and she also knew Flavia's guess about the seeds was spot-on. Walden Macnair had access to a lot of dark objects through a combination of his job and his similarly low-life friends. "And it's slow," she said. "That potion. So he knew he was dying and he went to Mrs. Hewitt because he thought she would be able to do something… not for him, but with the ticket?"
"It must tie back in with the war. If the Aurors won't tell us, and Father won't tell us…" Flavia chewed on the end of one of her pigtails. "We're going to talk to Dogger, and we'll bike to Antigone's house after. It's your fault we have to fix her garden."
Fortuna magnanimously did not acknowledge the slander.
Arthur Dogger was in the old greenhouse when they sought his counsel. He was moving bags of potting soil with his wand, his pace slow and wandwork sloppy. The bags shook with every movement and it was obvious they were resisting his attempts to transport them with a first year spell.
Flavia made sure to knock at the door before entering and stomped her way forward for good measure. The older man—he wasn't that old, it was just that the lines across his face made him look middle-aged instead of in his late thirties—seemed to take a second before looking her way with dark, soulful eyes that looked all the darker and more soulful because they were set under a heavy brow and a receding widow's peak. "Is there something I can help you with, Miss Flavia?"
Flavia walked over and sat herself down on an upturned pot for a rather large plant, and Fortuna stopped and stood a bit behind her, making her presence as unobtrusive as possible. She could easily participate in the conversation, but Flavia was something like possessive when it came to Dogger and his past.
It made Fortuna uncomfortable, knowing that Flavia so frequently compared her to this man. As she observed how carefully Flavia trod, literally and metaphorically, so as not to disrupt his mental balance, she was a little embarrassed. The idea that she was so fragile, so easily shattered, sat in her gut worse than the self-styled "dinner" Mrs. Mullet had inflicted on them the night before.
"Dogger," Flavia said brightly, "how would one go about gardening?"
"Why, Miss Flavia, I believe I've got that matter handled."
"Oh—no, Dogger," Flavia said, rushing to reassure him in case she had caused offense. "I'm not coming for your job! You see, we agreed to help Antigone with her flower garden because Fortuna's cat made a mess of it."
"Harbinger would never make a mess," Fortuna said with alacrity, though she knew full well that Dogger had gently dissuaded the said Harbinger from eradicating the Buckshaw herb garden more than once by this point. "The pansies were disorderly and he corrected them."
Flavia elbowed her. "But still, we owe it to her to fix things, don't we?"
Dogger rubbed one cheek as he considered the question. "Well, Miss Flavia, I haven't seen the damage myself, but if the plants can be saved you won't need to do anything. If young Master Harbinger disrupted the root systems, you might have to replace them entirely. You can't do that until it's warmer, so you would have to remove the plants now and wait…"
The duo waited a moment to see if the man would continue, but instead his gaze slipped and he started looking somewhere past the two of them.
"That's all good, then, Dogger, thank you for the advice!" Flavia said brightly. "Say, did you ever know Mrs. Hewitt before? Just after you left school?"
"I might have, Miss Flavia. It's difficult to say."
"Do you know if she ever worked with a man named Janus?"
Dogger, nobody's fool, did not answer the question. "You're planning on catching his killer."
"You know we have to, Dogger. Anything that could help…?"
This time, Dogger made his way over to a bench and sat down. Both his hands clasped tight to his thighs like he was worried about losing them. "I believe she was involved in a lot of things. We all were back then."
"During the war?" Flavia prompted.
"Just so, Miss Flavia. Mrs. Hewitt and Mr. Wolpers were tight as could be. They worked side by side as much as they could. Like a brother and sister, they were that close."
"Do you think they may have made any enemies?"
"We all made enemies, Miss Flavia. There wasn't anything but enemies. Mr Hewitt and I…" the man trailed off his eyes seeming to focus on something beyond them.
Dogger didn't speak for a minute and then two. Flavia seemed happy to stay quiet and wait for him.
Then, suddenly, she said: "So there's really nothing we can do to fix the pansies today?"
Dogger's gaze didn't quite refocus, but his eyes turned in their direction. "I'm afraid not. You'll have to wait until spring."
"Right, well, we'll have our work cut out for us then. Thank you, Dogger!"
Flavia propelled Fortuna out of the greenhouse, as though she thought Fortuna might stay behind to be tactless. "Dogger's the best of them. He just has trouble sometimes," Flavia said.
"He told us the most important thing," Fortuna said. "Anybody who knew Mr. Wolpers knew he was close to Mrs. Hewitt. And if the murderer knew Mr. Wolpers well enough to slip him some poison…"
"Exactly," Flavia said, and suddenly her temper was back up. "They're all talking to us as though we're children! Even Mrs. Hewitt, who should know better!"
"You see the problem, don't you?" Fortuna asked.
"It's obvious, but they aren't going to listen to me—to reason, I mean. Antigone is in danger and they aren't taking steps to protect her. Even she's acting like she's safe!"
"We did hide the ticket from them," Fortuna said. "They don't know the murderer has a special motive to come here."
Flavia waved a dismissive hand in irritation. "They should deduce it from first principles. A murderer always comes back to the scene of the crime, there's never only one body, and there's no such thing as coincidence. If the victim died in the Hewitts' house, the murderer will follow. They're simply not thinking logically."
Fortuna nodded as though all of that made sense. "You know if they don't stop him…"
"Then it's all on us."
Flavia danced about her cauldron, taking little half steps and twirling, whispering faux Latin (and, occasionally, true Latin) as she stirred in splashes of an oily red liquid that stained the bubbling mixture a deep vermillion. Aside from the gasmask and safety goggles, she looked every bit the witch that she truly was, despite the fact her current work was as mundane as the Bunsen burner powering it—the potion was but a mix of hydrogen peroxide and dish soap.
She was showing off.
"So," she said authoritatively. "The combination of hydrogen peroxide and potassium permanganate will produce a rapid expansion of gas, which a sufficient medium could trap, leading to an explosive increase in the size of said medium. With the addition of cadmium dye, well—let's just say that books will not be the only thing being red today."
No place on earth so perfectly fit Flavia de Luce as her bedroom. Unlike the hodgepodge of stolen equipment assembled in the Shrieking Shack, the chemistry laboratory Flavia had taken for her residence had all the capacity and grandeur of an Oxford research facility. The room was circular, owing to the tower it was located atop of, and any way Fortuna turned she saw nothing but glassware, vials both empty and stoppered to keep their different contents safely contained, and books of every shape and size, all the legacy of Flavia's Great Uncle Tarquin.
An inventory would take weeks by itself, but Flavia had spent years here, and it showed in the details. Surfaces had knicks and scratches as well as deep stains where potions or chemicals had tipped over and spilled, defiant against any attempts to clean them. Notes were scattered here and there, either torn from books or jotted on looseleaf mid-experiment. Books were stacked among empty glasses, arranged so that someone of Flavia's height could reach them without much difficulty. Even the chemicals had small hand-written annotations on them, linking back to pages no doubt detailing how they were prepared. For all that it felt like a repository of learning to be treated with deep reverence, this was no museum.
As Flavia continued her work, Fortuna settled down on her stool and allowed her power to pull her away for a moment. The murderer, a man called Walden for reasons known only to his inordinately cruel parents, was in his London office doing work of no paticular importance. It seemed that if he didn't have innocent men to poison or innocent animals to butcher, he stood around making small talk with the other wizarding bureaucrats that filled up the magical government.
He hadn't yet made the decision to come to Bishop's Lacey on Christmas Eve, where he would arrive shortly before the clock struck midnight. But, after a week of avoiding his unsavory friends, he would eventually move to recover the lottery ticket—and she would be waiting. Not one other person would get hurt; she was as sure of it as it was possible for anyone to be sure of anything, but checking and rechecking his position and state of mind had still become something of a reflex over the past two days.
On some unseen signal, Flavia grasped the handles and lugged the cauldron to a clean borosilicate beaker positioned on a low table. With a huff she tipped the solution out and it slowly poured. It was what blood would look like in a bad horror movie, all runny without any of the clot. It turned Fortuna's stomach, and she closed her eyes as Flavia finished the process.
The cauldron clonged on the floor and Fortuna dared look again. Flavia held the jar aloft. "Behold the genesis of our retribution."
"I behold the means by which your sister's evil shall be returned sevenfold and see that it is good," Fortuna said.
"It is very good," Flavia said, taking a moment to study her chemical creation. "But we need to make it go bang, and for that we need the catalyst. Could you hold this for a second?"
Fortuna couldn't quite control her expression in time, and Flavia hastily switched tracks. "Actually, if you would be kind enough to grab the Potassium Permanganate, I will carry this mixture to ensure its stability."
Flavia gave a vague nod at the rows of chemicals behind Fortuna, who used her power to pick a glass bottle out of the endless rows of colors and shapes. It was full of purple crystals that looked almost like metal shavings and meant nothing to her. When she turned, she found Flavia's weighty gaze locked onto her like a cruise missile. "How did you know which one I wanted?"
"A brilliant chemist inspires brilliance in her lab assistants," Fortuna said handsomely. "Let us implement our flawless scheme whilst our target is yet innocent of our dastardly intentions."
Unable to argue with either the statement or the suggestion, Flavia led the way down the stairs and into the west wing of Buckshaw. As they approached Daphne's bedroom, they began to tiptoe, pausing behind every corner to make sure the coast was clear before proceeding.
Such precautions weren't really necessary; Flavia asserted (and Fortuna privately confirmed) that, true to her form on holidays, Daphne would be sitting in her bath, attempting to refresh herself from an all night reading binge while simultaneously starting an all day reading binge. They'd have plenty of time to lay the snare and get breakfast before enjoying the show.
When they finally arrived, they carefully pushed the door open and checked both sides for traps before entering. It transpired that Daphne had, in her arrogance and folly, laid no defenses against intruders.
The unguarded bedroom was a monument to the written word. Bookshelves lined every wall save for a writing desk that was itself heaped with towers of leatherbound texts. The full glory of the English language was on chronological display, from Chaucer to Shakespeare to Austen to Waugh, but there were very few personal effects to be found. In its own way, the single-focused enthusiasm for one area of study was so like Flavia's room that it took Fortuna aback for a moment.
"Perfect," Flavia said sotto voce, and she beelined for the nightstand, where a copy of Bleak House lay atop four other books. "I knew she had to be reading some big old book that would put even Binns to sleep. I don't know how she hasn't gotten a concussion from passing out during her studies."
She pulled the book open and beckoned Fortuna over, placing her beaker on one page and grabbing Fortuna's to sprinkle a layer of crystals on the other. "Sigillum," she said, firmly poking the page with her wand.
The book slammed shut, the chemicals disappearing inside of it. Flavia held her breath and froze in place, waiting to see whether the book was going to explode.
It did not, and the conspirators withdrew in triumph and made their way to the kitchen, where Mrs. Mullet was bustling about making breakfast. If there had ever been house-elves at Buckshaw, the fact had been lost to the dustbin of history (which, so far as Fortuna was concerned, was just another way of saying "history"), and Mrs. Mullet had been the housekeeper and cook since Flavia's mother had hired her during the war.
Housekeeper was certainly a more apt word than cook. No sooner did she spot her first victims of the day than she deposited two heaping plates on the table. One look at the meal, if it could be called that, laid waste to any thoughts of an enjoyable breakfast, or anything short of voluntary starvation.
There was an omelet, or at least a jellified mass of scrambled eggs that had started out with aspirations of omelethood. It was stuffed with mandarin orange slices and topped with what appeared to be scallions but proved to be mint on close (too close) inspection.
The accompanying kippers had also been thoroughly stripped of their dignity. The charred flesh had been coated in some abominable paste of spices that could make no gastronomical sense save to someone with the unparalleled talent of Mrs. Mullet and burnt shards of peppercorn had grafted themselves onto the underside of the poor fish whose lives had been cut short for this fate.
"Thank you," Flavia said with a toothy anti-grin that did not so much fail to reach her eyes as it did avoid them out of conscientious objection.
Mrs. Mullet beamed at them both. "I know you girls have been up working in that lab of yours, so I made double portions for both of you."
Seeing that Flavia was not up to delivering a second lie, Fortuna stepped in. "Thank you," she said, appearing more gracious than her friend only because she had a superpower of nigh-incomprehensible might to guide her facial expressions.
Mercifully, there was an explosion. It was followed by a much louder shriek, which in turn was followed by slamming doors, thudding footsteps, and sputtered curses.
Like a monster risen from the muck of an ancient, evil-smelling bog, Daphne appeared in the doorway. Each breath she took was a heaving gasp that seemed to shake her whole body, and she dripped with effervescently red suds that coated every bit of her. She was shaking with barely contained rage, each quiver splashing cadmium-dyed soap onto the floor, and her eyes were wide and wild as she scanned the room.
Finally her malicious gaze focused on Flavia. "You," she spat, foam dribbling out of her mouth and staining her chin, "You—you foul defacer of God's handiwork! You—" She tried to shake herself off, not unlike Alexander when Flavia had spilled some gelatine on him, but succeeded only in covering the kitchen with bright red bubbles and distressing Mrs. Mullet.
Then she caught sight of Fortuna, who was choosing not to hide her smirk. "Both of you—you pernicious toadstools! You nasty, squirming, viperous little worms! You, you—"
But sometimes words escaped even Daphne de Luce, and she resorted to violence to express her feelings. She leapt across the kitchen like a rugby player, cruelty flaming in her eyes. Fortuna just barely managed to pull Flavia and herself out of the impact area, and Daphne went sliding over the table, carrying with her the plates of alleged food and mugs of milk past their chairs and onto the floor. Accompanied by a series of outraged noises from Mrs. Mullet, they ran in the direction from which Daphne had come, and with Fortuna's help gained some ground by sliding along the soapy trail.
Daphne gave chase, abandoning all pretense of decorum. She started out on all fours like a rabid she-bear, but transitioned into a sprint as soon as her footing became more steady, shouting decreasingly creative diatribes with every breath she could manage to get in. She was wheezing, but—bookworm though she was—her longer legs would enable her to catch up to them soon enough.
So Fortuna led them all into an occupied corridor. While she could dodge around the cluster of adults, first Flavia and then Daphne collided with them, setting off a domino-like chain reaction as they all fell one after the other.
By the time the dust had cleared, only Fortuna and a scarred and battered man with a false leg and a magical eye were left standing, and only Fortuna was left untainted by the soap that Daphne had brought with her. True to Flavia's word, the cadmium dye provided that gory hue that pushed her creation from party trick to abbatoir, and it looked like a dozen Palace Guards had been massacred in the hallway.
The writhing mass of limbs on the floor did nothing to decrease the general unpleasantness of the sight. Flavia, Daphne, Antigone Hewitt, and three Aurors were all tangled together, all fighting to free themselves and completely preventing the others from doing so. One of them, sensing the futility of the fight, simply glared at the man standing next to Fortuna. "Couldn't have given me a warning, Mad-Eye?"
This momentarily caught Fortuna's attention. Did he mean that "Mad-Eye" was supposed to be able to tell the future? She shot a glance at him, wondering if he was something like her—but no, he could just see through walls with a magical device. And he'd also told the others not to worry about the explosion and screaming.
He snorted. "I had hoped an entire team of Aurors and veterans wouldn't be taken out by schoolgirls. Haven't I taught you anything, Robards?"
At this, Flavia's head peeked out between the two women and she crawled her way out, acting as the lynchpin that seemed to allow the rest of them free. She zeroed in on the man with the magic eye.
"You're Ma—You're Alastor Moody," she announced with the formality that signaled to Fortuna that she was about to say something outrageous. "I am Flavia de Luce and I would be willing to let you consult with me on poisons."
Fortuna's power informed her that the man was something of a war hero or/and a paranoid maniac, and Flavia had heard more than one horrific story about his actions. She was utterly enamored.
"I consult with people old enough to use a wand outside of Hogwarts," Moody growled.
"But I didn't use magic for this," Flavia squeaked, mostly truthfully. "It's just Muggle chemistry!"
All eight of them looked around. Fortuna had gotten used to the occasional condescending remark when Flavia mentioned her interest in the sciences, but not a word left anyone's lips. The proof of her abilities lay splattered across the ghastly clot-red and mustard-yellow wallpaper like the leavings of an ax-murderer's handiwork.
The Aurors themselves and even Antigone—who presumably was more familiar with what Flavia could do than the others—looked deeply uncomfortable at being coated in what looked like the remnants of a blood bank. Finally Moody, seeming to remember he was a wizard and not a police officer with a fancy stick, waved his wand and the dye dissolved in a series of bubbles.
"Girls," Antigone asked, as she watched the remnants of the elephant toothpaste float off and vanish, "what were you doing?"
Daphne's look soured even further and she jabbed a finger at Flavia, who was ostentatiously dusting herself off. "She is a secret and villainous contriver."
Abruptly both of Alastor Moody's eyes focused on Daphne. "And you knew this before this morning?"
"I've known it all her life," Daphne said haughtily.
"And you still fell for a trick of hers, did you? I shouldn't have vanished the evidence, then, having you clean it up could have been a learning experience."
Daphne's eyes widened and, at a loss for words and parental authority, she turned on her heel and left with as much dignity as she could summon. This was very little even though she was no longer covered in foam. "Fungus and fungus food," she hissed at Flavia and Fortuna on her way out.
"An hour wasted on Haviland," grunted Auror Robards as he turned to leave, and Fortuna only then realized that the adults had been visiting Flavia's father. "I knew we wouldn't get anything out of him."
Antigone opened her mouth, but Flavia had already stiffened and stepped forward. "If you know so much, tell me the name of the poison that killed Janus, how it is made, how long it takes to kill, and what all of that implies about both the killer and the victim. Furthermore, if you are going to handle this case so incompetently, one is compelled to ask—where were you on Friday night?"
The man's mouth flapped open and closed, increasing his already strong resemblance to a fish.
"You want a leg like mine, Gawain, keep chewing that foot of yours," Mad-Eye Moody grunted. "As for the rest, girl—we already know that Wolpers knew his killer. Trust us to do our jobs."
Flavia settled for stonily silent hauteur, but she pulled it off less well than her sister Ophelia.
As the rest of adults rounded the corner, Fortuna got the sense Moody was still staring at them through the wall. She used her power to stare right back at him, tracking right where he walked without blinking until he finally looked elsewhere.
By the time she'd won her staring contest, Flavia had relaxed and was acting like nothing had happened. "A success, Dr. Bosch, a brilliant and stunning success!"
"An absolute and flawless victory, Dr. Haber," Fortuna said, steering them back toward the lab (and further away from the kitchen). "Let us congratulate ourselves by consuming edible fare fit for a living thing. Any living thing, fungi included."
Flavia heaved a sigh, pointedly ignoring the open door to her father's study as she strode past it. "We can make toast and tea over the bunsen burner. And serve it with sugar mice. Again."
Fortuna ventured a look. Haviland de Luce stood with his back turned to them, staring out the window at the deteriorating Buckshaw grounds. Dust had settled everywhere and untidy stacks of envelopes sat unopened on his desk. How long had he been there? Fortuna realized she hadn't seen the man once since she had come to Buckshaw two days ago. She'd been so caught up in the case and their schemes, she'd completely forgotten there should have been someone to tell them not to use their wands and stop them from eating candy for three meals a day.
And to think that Flavia had said the de Luces didn't become ghosts.
By the time they finished their breakfast, Flavia was ready to discuss the purpose of the Aurors' visit, if not whom they had visited. The mystery had occupied most of Flavia's attention since their arrival, and they'd spent their first day in the nearby village trying to uncover some critical information. They had investigated the inn (no new customers), the town's only taxi stand (no new customers), and the police station (Flavia, leave), finding nothing that would point to a criminal element deeply embedded in the fabric of an out-of-the-way village.
"We need to go to Bishop's Lacey again," she announced. "Lottery results will be in the papers, and I have a hunch our ticket is the winner."
"There wouldn't be a point in killing someone with extremely dark magic over a losing ticket," Fortuna said with a nod.
"Esoteric extremely dark magic," Flavia said, and her eyes went to the tome of horrific potion recipes they'd consulted (rather, that Flavia had consulted and Fortuna had studiously ignored on account of the grisly illustrations). "The recipe isn't written down in the usual places, and I don't know of anyone living who could deduce its contents based on its effects, not unless Snape is really hiding something. It's more likely the killer found the existing Lydsprute seeds somewhere rather than brewed the poison himself—or herself."
Definitely himself, Fortuna knew, and she also knew Flavia's guess about the seeds was spot-on. Walden Macnair had access to a lot of dark objects through a combination of his job and his similarly low-life friends. "And it's slow," she said. "That potion. So he knew he was dying and he went to Mrs. Hewitt because he thought she would be able to do something… not for him, but with the ticket?"
"It must tie back in with the war. If the Aurors won't tell us, and Father won't tell us…" Flavia chewed on the end of one of her pigtails. "We're going to talk to Dogger, and we'll bike to Antigone's house after. It's your fault we have to fix her garden."
Fortuna magnanimously did not acknowledge the slander.
Arthur Dogger was in the old greenhouse when they sought his counsel. He was moving bags of potting soil with his wand, his pace slow and wandwork sloppy. The bags shook with every movement and it was obvious they were resisting his attempts to transport them with a first year spell.
Flavia made sure to knock at the door before entering and stomped her way forward for good measure. The older man—he wasn't that old, it was just that the lines across his face made him look middle-aged instead of in his late thirties—seemed to take a second before looking her way with dark, soulful eyes that looked all the darker and more soulful because they were set under a heavy brow and a receding widow's peak. "Is there something I can help you with, Miss Flavia?"
Flavia walked over and sat herself down on an upturned pot for a rather large plant, and Fortuna stopped and stood a bit behind her, making her presence as unobtrusive as possible. She could easily participate in the conversation, but Flavia was something like possessive when it came to Dogger and his past.
It made Fortuna uncomfortable, knowing that Flavia so frequently compared her to this man. As she observed how carefully Flavia trod, literally and metaphorically, so as not to disrupt his mental balance, she was a little embarrassed. The idea that she was so fragile, so easily shattered, sat in her gut worse than the self-styled "dinner" Mrs. Mullet had inflicted on them the night before.
"Dogger," Flavia said brightly, "how would one go about gardening?"
"Why, Miss Flavia, I believe I've got that matter handled."
"Oh—no, Dogger," Flavia said, rushing to reassure him in case she had caused offense. "I'm not coming for your job! You see, we agreed to help Antigone with her flower garden because Fortuna's cat made a mess of it."
"Harbinger would never make a mess," Fortuna said with alacrity, though she knew full well that Dogger had gently dissuaded the said Harbinger from eradicating the Buckshaw herb garden more than once by this point. "The pansies were disorderly and he corrected them."
Flavia elbowed her. "But still, we owe it to her to fix things, don't we?"
Dogger rubbed one cheek as he considered the question. "Well, Miss Flavia, I haven't seen the damage myself, but if the plants can be saved you won't need to do anything. If young Master Harbinger disrupted the root systems, you might have to replace them entirely. You can't do that until it's warmer, so you would have to remove the plants now and wait…"
The duo waited a moment to see if the man would continue, but instead his gaze slipped and he started looking somewhere past the two of them.
"That's all good, then, Dogger, thank you for the advice!" Flavia said brightly. "Say, did you ever know Mrs. Hewitt before? Just after you left school?"
"I might have, Miss Flavia. It's difficult to say."
"Do you know if she ever worked with a man named Janus?"
Dogger, nobody's fool, did not answer the question. "You're planning on catching his killer."
"You know we have to, Dogger. Anything that could help…?"
This time, Dogger made his way over to a bench and sat down. Both his hands clasped tight to his thighs like he was worried about losing them. "I believe she was involved in a lot of things. We all were back then."
"During the war?" Flavia prompted.
"Just so, Miss Flavia. Mrs. Hewitt and Mr. Wolpers were tight as could be. They worked side by side as much as they could. Like a brother and sister, they were that close."
"Do you think they may have made any enemies?"
"We all made enemies, Miss Flavia. There wasn't anything but enemies. Mr Hewitt and I…" the man trailed off his eyes seeming to focus on something beyond them.
Dogger didn't speak for a minute and then two. Flavia seemed happy to stay quiet and wait for him.
Then, suddenly, she said: "So there's really nothing we can do to fix the pansies today?"
Dogger's gaze didn't quite refocus, but his eyes turned in their direction. "I'm afraid not. You'll have to wait until spring."
"Right, well, we'll have our work cut out for us then. Thank you, Dogger!"
Flavia propelled Fortuna out of the greenhouse, as though she thought Fortuna might stay behind to be tactless. "Dogger's the best of them. He just has trouble sometimes," Flavia said.
"He told us the most important thing," Fortuna said. "Anybody who knew Mr. Wolpers knew he was close to Mrs. Hewitt. And if the murderer knew Mr. Wolpers well enough to slip him some poison…"
"Exactly," Flavia said, and suddenly her temper was back up. "They're all talking to us as though we're children! Even Mrs. Hewitt, who should know better!"
"You see the problem, don't you?" Fortuna asked.
"It's obvious, but they aren't going to listen to me—to reason, I mean. Antigone is in danger and they aren't taking steps to protect her. Even she's acting like she's safe!"
"We did hide the ticket from them," Fortuna said. "They don't know the murderer has a special motive to come here."
Flavia waved a dismissive hand in irritation. "They should deduce it from first principles. A murderer always comes back to the scene of the crime, there's never only one body, and there's no such thing as coincidence. If the victim died in the Hewitts' house, the murderer will follow. They're simply not thinking logically."
Fortuna nodded as though all of that made sense. "You know if they don't stop him…"
"Then it's all on us."
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13th Bee
Worker
- Location
- Tennessee, USA.
They're both awful to each other and it's amazing.
- Location
- A M E R I C A
Not that kind of explosion!
(Obviously it makes a bigger bang because it's magically enhanced.)
((Also, "relatively minor" - yes! It IS relatively minor, but some absolute lunatic on AO3 commented the desire that they KILL Daphne for tattling on them on Halloween.))
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Edison_Trent
Freelancer
I feel personally attacked.
Yay, Moody is here!
Oh no, Moody is here!
Fortuna....Fortuna stop.
It's a good thing they have magical medical healing on hand. Elephant's Toothpaste, while not literally an explosion, is still a highly exothermic reaction. Even the soap suds can easily reach 200 degrees.
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Chapter 18: Christmas in the Crypts
Chartic
Literally the Worst Human in the Fandom
- Location
- St. Paul
The entire village of Bishop's Lacey had squeezed itself into the nave of Saint Tancred's in order to celebrate Christmas, a process which—surprisingly, to Fortuna's unchurched mind—centered around prolonged auditory torture.
Not that she hadn't been warned. Ophelia had complained about the nightmare that they were about to be plunged into, but Fortuna had dismissed the tirade as catty jealousy. It seemed that her absence during Advent had led to two other parishioners being selected to play the organ and lead the singing for the first part of that evening's service.
"Lessons and Carols begins with a solo," she'd half-lamented, half-whined. "And they asked Miss Aurelia Puddock to initiate. They gave an a capella solo, the very first notes anyone will hear to inaugurate the service, to that warbler!"
"Lessons and carols are what happen before Midnight Mass," Flavia had explained sotto voce. "They're hymns interspersed with Bible passages."
"We are speaking of a ceremony held to celebrate a religious feast, not a concert," Mr. de Luce had said solemnly, quashing Feely's wounded monologue.
As they so often did, his words signaled the end of any further conversation and his daughters sat in an uncomfortable silence as late-arriving residents rushed their way to pews. Two middle-aged ladies, obviously the women Ophelia was complaining about, were crowding the seat of the enormous pipe organ, shuffling and reshuffling reams of sheet music so old they must have come with the original church.
Then everyone settled in for an unforgettable experience. When the first tortured tones of Once in Royal David's City began to expel themselves from Miss Aruelia's battered pipes, Fortuna realized that this was more along the lines of a religious ceremony where people died in droves to propitiate the wrath of a cruel and bloodthirsty deity.
While the singer had the appropriate soprano range for the part, she brought nothing else of value. Ophelia had been too kind in calling her a warbler; her voice cracked like eggs being flung at an innocent man's house by juvenile delinquents, and it was hard to tell whether she was using vibrato deliberately or simply expressing surprise at the pitches that were fleeing her mouth. To make all of this worse, her sister chose a dirge-like tempo, forcing the congregation to drag out each wretched syllable with malice aforethought.
In the appalled silence that reigned after the hymn was finally put out of its misery, the man in the pew behind them stage-whispered: "I think we all want to go 'to the place where He is gone' right now."
The vicar cleared his throat aggressively. "We gather here to recall the mystery of our redemption," he said.
"Can a creature that just did that in worship of the Divine claim to deserve it?"
A suppressed snort escaped from Ophelia's nose. Flavia piously lifted her own in the air. Fortuna rubbed hers and wished Macnair would get on with it.
A weedy subdeacon concluded the first lesson—"for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" inspired a gruesome thrill that made Flavia shiver next to her—and the second carol was assaulted from all sides, forbidding the congregation any opportunity to find its rest.
The respite achieved when this ended was short-lived, as the second reading was only three verses long. The third carol exhorted the audience to rejoice. Nobody rejoiced, though all listening were eager for ransom and release by the time it ended, and Ophelia's teeth were audibly grinding. Fortuna decided that, fascinating as learning about Flavia's background was, enough was enough. She tapped her power and tuned out.
When she returned, the last hymn was being played, and everyone was practically screaming in agony rather than singing in exultation. The congregation, so thoroughly fed up with the whole affair, had gotten nearly two measures ahead by the time the song reached its dramatic, and thoroughly welcome, close.
"Charity," the vicar intoned in the shuddering stillness, "is a virtue."
There was a brief interlude between Lessons and Carols and what everyone called Midnight Mass even though it was due to begin at eleven. Most parishioners gathered in the narthex, subconsciously (or perhaps consciously) avoiding the Puddock sisters' pew at the front of the church, and snacked on raspberry tarts with tea given out by the ladies of the women's auxiliary rather than discuss what they had just witnessed.
Flavia and Fortuna slipped away from the de Luces' cluster as quickly as they could manage. Not out of any animosity—Christmas was a time for a generous spirit and they had gotten revenge for the attack on Harbinger, after all—but out of Fortuna's need to set up events for later in the evening, if she wanted to guarantee things would play out as she intended.
It took only a bit of ducking and weaving before they came upon her first target. He had the overdone hair and rugged handsomeness of an actor from one of those black and white movies that played on the BBC and the permanently bewildered look of the archetypical country boy. Her power told her that he was looking for a woman he had escorted here and then promptly lost, and he didn't notice the approaching pair of eleven-year-olds.
Fortuna allowed herself a second of regret before she trod on the back of Flavia's ankle and tripped into her, toppling both of them forward into the older boy. Flavia's doomed attempts to keep herself upright led to her slamming both hands into his stomach with a terrific jolt and he let out an aggrieved groan as he hit the floor. Flavia followed none too shortly after and Fortuna just managed to avoid joining them.
"Hullo, Ned," chirped Flavia with remarkable composure.
If Ned had been out of sorts following the dual hits he'd taken, he didn't show it. His eyes gradually focused on the girl pushing herself off him and his smile slowly widened. "Oi, Flavia. How are you finding yourself?"
He reached a hand out to shake, but when Flavia grabbed she tried to pull him up. She only succeeded because he did the work for her. "Very well, considering the circumstances, thank you. Happy Christmas!"
"Happy Christmas to you too." Ned scratched at his chin, where a few wispy hairs had dodged the razor. "Actually, I have a question for you."
"Oh?" Flavia asked, resigning herself to a drawn out conversation. "This wouldn't have anything to do with Feely, would it?"
Ned's shy stammer was all the confirmation they needed. "I put together a gift for her," he said, "but, well, it doesn't seem right giving her something like this right now and I didn't want to make the trip out to Buckshaw. Not—not because Ophelia isn't worth it, but the weather…"
"So you intend to charge us with providing a courier service?" When Ned smiled in weak incomprehension, Flavia rephrased. "You want us to take it over for you?"
"Could you? Please?"
"That would depend entirely on the package, now, wouldn't it?" Flavia asked. Then, when she saw Ned was worried she wouldn't help him, she backtracked. "Of course we will, Ned. For you, if not for Feely."
Ned smiled again and pulled a tacky heart-shaped paperboard container that must have been meant for Valentine's Day but had only just been bought, ten months out of date. He held it out to Flavia, who moved to snatch it, strychnine and cyanide clearly at the forefront of her mind.
"Oh no," Fortuna said, allowing her power to wring her hands, "that wouldn't happen to be chocolate, would it?"
Ned's eyes slowly widened, like he was a puppy caught sitting on the furniture. "Yes, why?"
"Well," Fortuna said, hesitantly, "Ophelia's been reading about a new diet they've been doing across the pond. She hasn't eaten anything with even a gram of sugar in it all autumn."
"She is so very vain," Flavia jumped in, immediately playing into the idea. "What with all those treats Miss Mullet's been feeding her, I guess it shouldn't be surprising. Why, if you've ever had one of her pies…"
Ned Crocker had never had the misfortune of sampling one of Miss Mullet's culinary disasters, so he thought he understood what Flavia was saying. He stuffed the sweets back into his bag with a despondent slump of the shoulders, already planning to relabel them for Mary the following morning. "Oh, no. I don't have a gift now, and it's already Christmas Eve. Thanks anyway, Flavia. I guess I'll see if I can come up with something."
"We could find a gift for you," Fortuna rushed in.
Ned's eyes lit up. "Would you?"
"Of course, Ned. Buckshaw has plenty of neat little knickknacks," Flavia gushed. "Enough that there's something that Feely doesn't know about and will suit her perfectly—you know how Ophelia gets around shiny bits and bobs. She's just like an egomaniacal magpie."
Ned thought this was a compliment. "That's mighty kind of you, Flavia," he said, reaching out to give her hand a rough shake. "If you ever need anything, don't forget about old Ned Cropper, alright?"
"Alright," Flavia said heartily, and Ned broke away to find Mary before she could get too angry (it was too late, Fortuna knew). Then she turned on her the moment he was out of ear shot. "Find her a gift?" she hissed. "What gave you that idea? I've been raring to see what some nettle extract could do to her gums."
"Haven't you already poisoned her before with Ned's sweets? Fall too far into a rut and your tricks will grow stale."
"Not as stale as those chocolates," Flavia said, smiling, "but perhaps you are correct. You had something in mind then?"
"Yes, but not here. I think your Inspector is coming to give us the third degree."
Flavia tried to scan the room discreetly, but locked eyes with Inspector Hewitt the moment she swiveled around. He was alone—Antigone was off speaking to the vicar's wife—and stalked toward them with the speed and focus of a torpedo. He wasn't certain of her intentions, but he felt that Flavia de Luce should not be wandering about unimpeded, or at least unwarned.
"Happy Christmas, Inspector Hewitt," Flavia burbled.
"Happy Christmas, Flavia—and Fortuna. I hope you're keeping well."
"Quite well indeed, thank you," Flavia said primly, and Fortuna nodded a greeting. "How goes the investigation?"
That had been precisely the wrong thing to say. The Inspector's expression hardened. "I hope that you haven't decided to poke your nose into all this business. Antigone has assured me that your authorities are handling this with the utmost care and security."
An exaggeration. While it was true the Aurors were conducting their own investigation into the untimely death of Janus, they had not decided to give a protection detail to poor Antigone. In their eyes, his death, while unfortunate, was only coincidentally linked to her and did not see the need to provide a body guard. She had set up an intruder charm herself, something that would set her broach vibrating if someone apparated to or from Saint Tancred's, but that was the extent of all their precautions.
"I know they are doing the best within the scope of their limitations," Flavia said.
"Flavia." He stared down at her from behind his glasses. "Please do not do anything objectionable."
Flavia opened her mouth.
He threw up his hand. "Allow me to clarify. Flavia, please do not do something that anyone else would find objectionable."
Her eyes narrowed in outrage, then widened in innocence. "Really, Inspector," she said in a frigid voice that guaranteed he would watch her like a hawk the rest of the night, "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
The Inspector looked ready to speak, but Flavia was quicker. "And I'm sorry, Inspector, I believe I must be getting back to church. I would like to offer up a prayer for those without a bed to warm them tonight."
Flavia considered this a very quick-witted response, as piety was the type of thing no man had the wherewithal to stop a girl her age from practicing, turned on her heel, and marched back into the church. Fortuna shrugged at Inspector Hewitt and traipsed after her friend.
Mr. de Luce and Daphne were already sitting in their pew, but Ophelia had taken up residence at the organ. The Puddocks looked as though they'd been evicted, and Fortuna deduced that Flavia's sister had not been as gracious as she could have been during the handover.
When the liturgy was about to begin, she placed her fingers softly on the keys, like a hunter testing the tautness of a new bow. Then she pushed and the first notes to Hark the Herald Angels Sing rang to the vaulted ceiling. The pipe organ sung like it was a whole new instrument, proving, in even its first measures, Ophelia the victor over all who would dare challenge her on this field of battle.
So she had one redeeming feature. Or potentially redeeming feature.
As the ceremony progressed and the Puddock sisters' brutalization of all that was holy and musical was left behind, the congregation relaxed. By the time the homily rolled around, they even seemed to be receptive to the vicar's speech about peace and goodwill. Fortuna reflected on the process of repressing traumatic memories while she waited.
There was a meditative pause in between the end of the Canon and beginning of the Communion hymn, and for a moment, the music stopped, the room was silent, and everything still.
It was during that pause that Macnair made his move, apparating in the churchyard, where he stumbled over the tombstones.
To nearly anyone, the sound would have been all but imperceptible, but Fortuna was sitting next to Flavia de Luce, whose well-tuned ears picked up the noise. She deduced its proper meaning in mere seconds and immediately caught Fortuna's upper arm in a death grip.
"Did you hear that?" she whispered in as hushed a tone as she could while still managing to be heard over Ophelia's renewed playing. "That was apparition, I know it. It has to be our man."
"Are you certain?" Fortuna asked.
"More than certain. Look." She indicated Antigone with a jerk of her chin.
The intruder charm had just gone off at Macnair's arrival, and Mrs. Hewitt had gone dreadfully still.
Fortuna knew she was making a potentially lethal calculation. The death of one man already bore down heavily on her conscience and the stories of Sirius Black in the news had brought back dark memories of how he had massacred innocent Muggles to get to another Wizard. Antigone wasn't willing to risk such a horror happening in her own town, and she wasn't willing to put any other person in harm's way for her sake.
She whispered into her husband's ear and, exchanging a look the two both understood in full, hurried to the back of the church. Despite a few inquisitive glances her way and a few tuts from older residents at youth's impropriety, no one paid her any mind.
"Antigone's trying to leave," Flavia whispered urgently, eyeing her family to ensure there was no eavesdropping. "She must know something. We have to go after her."
"I doubt your father is going to let us walk out," Fortuna whispered back into her ear.
It was true. Mr. de Luce was already looking over, unsurprisingly suspicious about what his daughter was getting up to. Flavia may have used piety as a suitable shield from unrelated adults' condescension, but it didn't seem to have fooled her father at all.
"Give it a moment," Fortuna said. "She can't get too far of a head start. We just need to look for a gap to make a break for it."
Flavia was already scheming five different needlessly convoluted plots to flee from her seat and join Antigone, but for now was forced to concede the point. Too many eyes and too little to distract them—at least until the mass of worshippers began to stand and take their place in line to receive Communion.
"I have an idea," Flavia said. "Follow my lead."
Flavia made like she was falling in line behind Mr. de Luce and Daphne to move toward the altar. Then she cocked her head back, indicating that they should sneak out, and the two slipped into the crowd. What with the sea of skirts and coats of the older and taller residents, it was impossible for anyone to tell that there were two eleven year-old girls on the move.
Nearly impossible. Inspector Hewitt caught Fortuna's eye for one moment, and she looked away quickly, plainly projecting guilt. He would follow them after receiving Communion.
Satisfied, Fortuna joined Flavia in the narthex. They opened the church door, pushing against a blast of cold air, and quickly shut it behind them.
The night outside was dark and quiet save for the subdued moaning of the pipe organ. There were no signs of a struggle or screams from a captive, nothing so ostentatious as a villain fleeing the scene or a violent duel in progress, only smudges in the snow from residents making their way in.
"They may have disapparated," Fortuna said.
"No, I would have heard them. If they left it must have been on foot."
"Well," Fortuna began, "there's only one place I could think of going if I was trying to hide a body."
Her eyes flicked to the entrance to the crypt, poking out of the narthex. On being accosted by Macnair, Antigone had fled into the catacombs, thinking them the safest place to face down an enemy wizard without drawing unwanted attention or endangering others.
"Brilliant, the obvious answer," Flavia said, rushing to the door. "Onward, my dear friend, into the land of Tartarus."
With that, they descended.
The crypts beneath the church were a labyrinth filled by seven hundred years of Bishop's Lacey residents long consigned to God. Fortuna was certain that, if given a suitable opportunity and very little prodding, her friend could have revealed tales of the more prominent de Luces that had to have been buried here and their exciting hijinks through the ages.
Flavia rotated her head like a sonar dish, trying to pin down the exact location of their man. "This way," she murmured, pointing down a tunnel to their left.
The closer they got, the louder the noise of battle became. The quick back and forth of raised voices was followed shortly after by sustained spells one way or the other as the two wizards each tried to turn the tide of battle in their own favor. Chunks had been gouged out of walls, burn marks scarred the ceiling, the floor had morphed in certain areas to a strange muddy texture, and several dismembered skeletons rolled along the floor.
Fortuna grabbed Flavia's shoulder, stopping her from tumbling headfirst into an active fire fight. The duel paused for a moment as both combatants tried to catch their breath. Flavia drew her wand, which her father had strictly forbidden her from taking to a Muggle church, and peeked around the corner. Fortuna did not draw her wand, which she had dutifully left at Buckshaw, and also peeked out. Antigone was hidden, partially, at the far end of the tunnel, using a small enclosure as protection from the hail of spell fire. A wild-eyed, grey-haired man was hiding in an alcove only a few feet from them.
"Cough it up and you can get out of this alive." His strident voice called out over the sound of Silent Night. "Minus a memory or two, but alive."
Antigone responded with perfect evenness, seemingly not at all worn down by the fighting. "I don't know what you're talking about. Janus died before he gave anything to me."
"As if I believe that. Nothing was found on his body. I checked the files myself, did you think I wouldn't?"
Antigone risked a glance and Macnair fired out a quick disarming spell that ripped stone from the wall. Antigone returned with a stunner that went wide and ducked back to safety.
"So they're letting you Death Eaters in the Ministry now," Antigone said, trying to draw him out. "We'd assumed a lone actor, someone with a grudge. What do you think you can gain from this?"
He shuffled from his spot, trying to catch sight of her. "Quit stalling for time. No one can hear you down here. If you don't want this tomb to become yours as well, you're going to give me the ticket."
"And when you find I never had the ticket? What will you do? You're mad. You think the Aurors won't investigate this?"
Macnair didn't respond.
"They've already got men checking up on me," she lied. "And they're already on your trail for Janus. Some bureaucrat snoops through the case files and suddenly I turn up dead? They'll be knocking down your door before Christmas dinner's cooled."
The man let out a laugh at that. "Oh no, I wouldn't be concerned about them. The Aurors are looking into it, but Janus had so many enemies. Never managed to pull himself free from the war, did he? There aren't people looking out for you, they're searching for a group of men he's been tailing for the past year. In fact, the report said they'd declined to post a guard. Didn't even mention a follow-up."
Flavia connected the dots in her head and, in the exuberance of a mystery solved, gasped loudly. She clamped a hand over her mouth, but it was already too late. Fortuna grabbed Flavia's other hand and pulled the girl back into an alcove, a hiding spot that had no chance of concealing them if Macnair were to do an actual search.
Macnair swiveled around, but held his wand on Antigone. "Who's there?"
"Nobody's there," Antigone said, a little too hastily.
"You'd like me to think that, wouldn't you? Show yourself, or I'll bring these bloody rocks down on you."
Flavia glanced at Fortuna, clearly projecting her intention to join the fray. Fortuna gave a single, solemn shake of her head. Flavia almost immediately turned away and charged out of their hiding spot, wand at the ready, and Fortuna mentally sighed and dashed after her, knife in hand.
They almost collided with Macnair.
"This was your back-up?" he asked, incredulously. "Schoolgirls?"
The look on Flavia's face expressed how much she enjoyed the epithet, but she remained stalwart in the face of this insult. "Drop your wand, or we'll take it from you."
Antigone's face crumpled and Fortuna almost felt bad for her role in setting this up. She clearly thought she had just consigned two children to their deaths, and abandoned her cover entirely to charge Macnair, her hand gripped tight around her wand, knuckles going white.
"Step away from them," she ordered.
He managed to dodge the stunner before it landed and fired back with a mist that Antigone hastily began to disperse. He lazily dismissed a showy burst of flame from Flavia's wand, and the curse he sent in retaliation gave Fortuna a pretext to duck back down the passage. Then, before Flavia could finish the jinx she'd started to cast, he rushed her, wrapped an arm around her neck, pulled her from her feet, and jabbed his wand underneath her chin.
"If you make one move the girl dies," he barked out. "Your wand, on the floor. Now. And you, other girl, come out of there."
The sound of footsteps was lost between the voices and the ever-present organ, but she still turned as Inspector Hewitt came up behind her. Despite the danger and the fact he had to know he was about to intervene in a magical duel, he appeared quite calm. Fortuna nodded and, before he could object, raised her hands and walked directly into Macnair's line of sight.
When Antigone saw Fortuna, too, she acquiesced. She dropped her wand and Macnair focused intently on her and not the passageway Fortuna had just left.
"Now, if you'd like to leave her head attached to her neck, you'll tell me where you've put the bloody ticket."
"I don't have the ticket," Antigone said through gritted teeth. "I've never had the ticket. I don't even think there is a ticket, you stupid little man."
"We'll see about that," Macnair said, as he took his wand off Flavia and waved it in her direction. "Cru—"
A swift blow to the head ended the incantation. Inspector Hewitt stood over him, hands clasped around a heavy leatherbound hardcover of the Book of Common Prayer. He'd slammed it down on Macnair's head with all the force he could muster, which was not inconsiderable.
The wizard took one wobbly step forward before collapsing in a heap. Antigone dashed for her wand and stunned the fallen man. Flavia got to her feet and dusted herself off insouciantly, as though nearly getting herself killed had been part of some grand plan. Then she ever so casually walked behind a support column, conveniently removing herself from the inspector's sight.
Antigone summoned her canine Patronus in an instant. "Get Gawain now," she commanded. "Tell him to come to the crypt beneath Saint Tancred's church in Bishop's Lacey, about two miles from my home. I have our killer."
Her dog dashed off and the two adults turned on the children.
"Flavia," Inspector Hewitt said. Just the one word.
Sheepishly, Flavia stepped back into view. "How did you know we were down here, Inspector?"
"I saw you and your friend heading for the exit," he said. "I knew wherever Flavia de Luce was going, there would be trouble."
Flavia realized she could take credit for bringing him here and perked up. "Well, I am happy to have provided the assistance necessary for you to nab our killer, then, Inspector."
Inspector Hewitt took a deep breath and let it out in a slow exhale, as if the very fact Flavia characterized her exploits as positive was Atlas's own burden.
"I hope you don't see this as a good thing," he admonished.
Antigone placed a hand on his. "Charles," she said. "It worked out."
It was like all the tension left Inspector Hewitt in an instant and he simply allowed all his reproofs to slip away unspoken.
"Come now, you two," the Inspector said, gesturing at the entrance. "I'm sure your father will be relieved to hear you haven't been blasted into smithereens and, more importantly, you aren't heathens."
Flavia's father wasn't angry, though it was difficult to say what his emotions were at the best of times. The man hadn't noticed their disappearance or subsequent return and had only been relieved that they had managed to consume the body and blood of Christ before service ended. Flavia's sisters were similarly unimpressed, though for different reasons.
"To think," Ophelia said, halfway through the ride back to Buckshaw, "that we can't have even one Christmas without incident. Oh, Flavia! Why couldn't you have done it while Lavinia Puddock was playing?"
"I believe we were celebrating the Nativity of the Messiah, not your exhibition, Feely. Perhaps once you've risen from your grave you can get all the attention you think you deserve."
"Oh, please. If anyone's going to be lurching from the tomb and hassling loved ones, it's you. That is if you can find any."
Flavia immediately prepared a particularly wicked diatrib, but Fortuna pulled on her sleeve and shook her head.
This time, Flavia heeded her warning and dropped the subject, however reluctantly. By the time the car pulled back into Buckshaw, Flavia and Ophelia were almost level-headed again.
They exited the car and made their way up the footpath. Even from a considerable distance away, they could see a letter had been attached to the door with a bit of tape—something Fortuna had set up before they left, hiding her machinations by holding the door for Flavia's father.
Dogger was the first one to reach it. He plucked it down and held it up to the light emanating from the kitchen window. "It's for Miss Ophelia," he said, and handed the note to the eldest de Luce sister. It was a simple yellow postage mailer labeled "To Ophelia de Luce, from your secret admirer, Ned Cropper."
As they entered the house and filed through the kitchen, Ophelia opened the envelope and plucked out a little piece of paper. "It's a lottery ticket," she said, audibly disappointed.
"Is there a poem?" Daphne asked, though her attention was mostly directed at the book of Christmas tales she was reading. "I want a boy to write poems for me. Lotto tickets are worth less than the paper they're printed on."
"You don't have any boys to write or not write you anything," Ophelia snapped before returning to her present. "But it's from last week. Poor boy must have bought it and only now managed to work up the nerve to deliver it."
She idly began to search for the morning's paper, more out of the desire to spite Daphne than any real hope, while the rest of the household began the slow process of withdrawing from one another.
Flavia began to pace—she had realized what Fortuna had done and couldn't hide her excitement—but Fortuna plopped down into an armchair and plugged her ears with her fingers.
A sudden scream rent the air, shocking everyone else into stillness. Ophelia came tearing back into the room like a woman gone mad, as her name would imply.
"Father—"
She couldn't finish the sentence and so brandished the newspaper clutched in her hand, the excitement leaving her a more deathly pale than her normal hue. Mr. de Luce took the paper and ticket from her, fiddled with his reading glasses, and glanced between the two. Finally he folded the paper, then handed it and the ticket back to his eldest daughter.
"That is really quite the gift, Ophelia," he murmured. Dogger stepped up behind him in case he needed a steadying hand. "I cannot tell you to give it up, but I trust you will not spend it solely on yourself."
"Of course not," Ophelia said solemnly.
Flavia took a step back to stand next to Fortuna and folded her arms. "Feels like a loss, giving the winning ticket to Feely," she muttered.
"Your father would have refused it and she's the only other adult in the family," Fortuna said. "If you want the money to go to Buckshaw, she's the only option."
Other people would benefit, too. Ophelia would share some with Ned, who would invest it in the Thirteen Drakes and his eventual family with Mary. Fortuna, under an assumed name, would convince her to use the money to fund her Knight Bus alternative. Saint Tancred's roof would get some much needed renovations—and so would Buckshaw.
Flavia conceded the point mentally, which was all Fortuna needed.
"Still wish we could have uncovered everything. How it turned to murder and what a Death Eater was doing interfering in a Muggle lottery."
"We can ask Antigone about it later," Fortuna said, and relaxed further, sinking into the soft leather as she watched Ophelia and Daphne babble about what could be done with so much Muggle money. Mr. de Luce had taken a restorative sit in a nearby chair while Dogger ran off to fetch a brandy and soda to help brace his spirits. Harbinger made his appearance, somewhat sulkily. He was out of sorts because nobody had paid any attention to him for two full hours, so she hoisted him up onto her lap and began stroking and scratching him to assuage his dignity.
Wrapped up in winter clothes given kindly by Flavia and watching the antics of her sisters and father, Fortuna couldn't help but feel an all encompassing emotion take her. She had to ask her power to explain what she was feeling.
It was homesickness. Which was odd, because this must have been the most comfortable she had felt in her entire life.
It was well and truly past the witching hour when Flavia and Fortuna finally found themselves bundled up in Flavia's bed. The cheer from earlier had followed them up and the two of them couldn't shake it off.
"What a wonderful Christmas, what an absolutely wonderful Christmas," Flavia exclaimed, sounding almost dazed. She turned to look Fortuna in the eyes. "Miss Floris, thank you for accompanying me to my home. I can say without a doubt that you have turned what could have been merely an acceptable Christmas into something beyond marvelous!"
Fortuna couldn't help but smile back. "It was my pleasure to come, Miss de Luce."
"And of course," Flavia said, looking slyer by the moment, "what good is Christmas without a present to go along with it?"
She leaned sideways to reach underneath her bed and pulled out a small little package of multi-colored paper tied up with a string. The excellent bow proved Dogger had been the one to wrap the gift. Fortuna carefully took it out of her hands.
"Go on, open it," Flavia urged.
Fortuna carefully undid the seal and popped off the lid. A beautiful golden pocket watch sat on a pile of simple wool. She raised it carefully and let the light of a candle gleam off the metal.
"It was something of Uncle Tar's he used to help keep track of time while working on rather finicky potions. You see, if you focus on it, you should always be able to hear it ticking. Dreadfully useful when one's hands are full and you cannot turn to see a clock. At least, that was what he had said."
Fortuna even now could hear the thing ticking away, but couldn't think of a single word to say in reply. Flavia, taking her silence as a sign of some fault on her part, sought to fill up the noise.
"It's very good for centering one's self and keeping focus when your mind may drift astray. It—"
"Thank you Flavia," Fortuna said, "This is the best gift I've ever received."
And it was true.
Flavia tried her best not to look expectantly at Fortuna, but she needn't have worried. Fortuna stood up and collected a perfectly festooned Christmas package from her suitcase. Flavia took it eagerly and tore paper out of the way before reaching in and bringing forth the stoppered vial Fortuna had removed from the room with the cursed diadem.
"This is but the first half of the gift," Fortuna said mysteriously.
Flavia looked in awe at the mauve potion, which was still ominously churning. She moved to give it a tentative shake, before thinking better of it, and instead began running through potential tests for it in her head. "What is it?" she asked. "What does it do?"
"I have no idea," Fortuna said, in a more mundane voice.
Flavia grinned back. "And the other half?"
"I shall tell you the secret of how such an object of power fell into my hands."
Flavia carefully went to tuck it away amongst her normal chemical racks—though Fortuna noticed with pride that Flavia had chosen to place it at a prominent spot towards the front.
"Well then, Ms. Floris, you simply must deliver once we've gotten back," Flavia said. Then she flopped back into bed. "Hard to believe it will be so soon. It feels as if these months have flown by. I don't know what summer will be like with you gone."
A chill passed over Fortuna. She sat back down, listening to the steady tick of her new pocket watch, a welcome distraction. Feigning interest in the new gift, she fiddled with the mechanism until it popped open suddenly, the second hand steadily advancing.
On the other side was a photo. She recognized it as one Dogger had taken not two days earlier. She and Flavia stood in front of the Christmas tree, both wearing the finest dresses they could purloin from Daphne, chosen for attending the Christmas Pageant that both Mrs. Mullet and Mr. de Luce had insisted they must attend. Her power informed her that Flavia had been at work these past few days preparing the serum herself to animate it. The two girls had their arms slung around each other as they smiled into the camera flash.
"I don't want to go back."
"Oh I know, it's always so difficult getting used to being at Hogwarts—"
"No," Fortuna said, "I mean I don't want to go back to my foster family."
Across the room a potion bubbled merrily in a cauldron stationed between some chemical experiments. Candlelight glinted off a set of beakers left to dry in the corner. The ceaseless ticking of her pocket watch was not overwhelming, but instead calming.
"I want to stay here with you."
She angled herself away from Flavia and stared out the window. It had stopped snowing, and moonlight spread over every surface of the grounds of Buckshaw. A statue of Poseidon standing guard over his fountain. A small little pond with some classic grecian architecture, long decayed. A forest that had not seen order since well-before King George VI had given his final breath. It was all falling apart. It was all beautiful.
A small soft hand found her back and rubbed it.
"You don't have to go," said Flavia in a whisper. "Not if you don't want to. You can always stay here. I would never allow Buckshaw's doors to close on you."
"Your father—"
"I can handle Father."
Fortuna blinked hard as she heard the clock strike three somewhere far below them, and Flavia moved from the bed to take her hand.
"Happy Christmas, Flavia de Luce."
"Happy Christmas, Fortuna Floris."
Not that she hadn't been warned. Ophelia had complained about the nightmare that they were about to be plunged into, but Fortuna had dismissed the tirade as catty jealousy. It seemed that her absence during Advent had led to two other parishioners being selected to play the organ and lead the singing for the first part of that evening's service.
"Lessons and Carols begins with a solo," she'd half-lamented, half-whined. "And they asked Miss Aurelia Puddock to initiate. They gave an a capella solo, the very first notes anyone will hear to inaugurate the service, to that warbler!"
"Lessons and carols are what happen before Midnight Mass," Flavia had explained sotto voce. "They're hymns interspersed with Bible passages."
"We are speaking of a ceremony held to celebrate a religious feast, not a concert," Mr. de Luce had said solemnly, quashing Feely's wounded monologue.
As they so often did, his words signaled the end of any further conversation and his daughters sat in an uncomfortable silence as late-arriving residents rushed their way to pews. Two middle-aged ladies, obviously the women Ophelia was complaining about, were crowding the seat of the enormous pipe organ, shuffling and reshuffling reams of sheet music so old they must have come with the original church.
Then everyone settled in for an unforgettable experience. When the first tortured tones of Once in Royal David's City began to expel themselves from Miss Aruelia's battered pipes, Fortuna realized that this was more along the lines of a religious ceremony where people died in droves to propitiate the wrath of a cruel and bloodthirsty deity.
While the singer had the appropriate soprano range for the part, she brought nothing else of value. Ophelia had been too kind in calling her a warbler; her voice cracked like eggs being flung at an innocent man's house by juvenile delinquents, and it was hard to tell whether she was using vibrato deliberately or simply expressing surprise at the pitches that were fleeing her mouth. To make all of this worse, her sister chose a dirge-like tempo, forcing the congregation to drag out each wretched syllable with malice aforethought.
In the appalled silence that reigned after the hymn was finally put out of its misery, the man in the pew behind them stage-whispered: "I think we all want to go 'to the place where He is gone' right now."
The vicar cleared his throat aggressively. "We gather here to recall the mystery of our redemption," he said.
"Can a creature that just did that in worship of the Divine claim to deserve it?"
A suppressed snort escaped from Ophelia's nose. Flavia piously lifted her own in the air. Fortuna rubbed hers and wished Macnair would get on with it.
A weedy subdeacon concluded the first lesson—"for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" inspired a gruesome thrill that made Flavia shiver next to her—and the second carol was assaulted from all sides, forbidding the congregation any opportunity to find its rest.
The respite achieved when this ended was short-lived, as the second reading was only three verses long. The third carol exhorted the audience to rejoice. Nobody rejoiced, though all listening were eager for ransom and release by the time it ended, and Ophelia's teeth were audibly grinding. Fortuna decided that, fascinating as learning about Flavia's background was, enough was enough. She tapped her power and tuned out.
When she returned, the last hymn was being played, and everyone was practically screaming in agony rather than singing in exultation. The congregation, so thoroughly fed up with the whole affair, had gotten nearly two measures ahead by the time the song reached its dramatic, and thoroughly welcome, close.
"Charity," the vicar intoned in the shuddering stillness, "is a virtue."
***
There was a brief interlude between Lessons and Carols and what everyone called Midnight Mass even though it was due to begin at eleven. Most parishioners gathered in the narthex, subconsciously (or perhaps consciously) avoiding the Puddock sisters' pew at the front of the church, and snacked on raspberry tarts with tea given out by the ladies of the women's auxiliary rather than discuss what they had just witnessed.
Flavia and Fortuna slipped away from the de Luces' cluster as quickly as they could manage. Not out of any animosity—Christmas was a time for a generous spirit and they had gotten revenge for the attack on Harbinger, after all—but out of Fortuna's need to set up events for later in the evening, if she wanted to guarantee things would play out as she intended.
It took only a bit of ducking and weaving before they came upon her first target. He had the overdone hair and rugged handsomeness of an actor from one of those black and white movies that played on the BBC and the permanently bewildered look of the archetypical country boy. Her power told her that he was looking for a woman he had escorted here and then promptly lost, and he didn't notice the approaching pair of eleven-year-olds.
Fortuna allowed herself a second of regret before she trod on the back of Flavia's ankle and tripped into her, toppling both of them forward into the older boy. Flavia's doomed attempts to keep herself upright led to her slamming both hands into his stomach with a terrific jolt and he let out an aggrieved groan as he hit the floor. Flavia followed none too shortly after and Fortuna just managed to avoid joining them.
"Hullo, Ned," chirped Flavia with remarkable composure.
If Ned had been out of sorts following the dual hits he'd taken, he didn't show it. His eyes gradually focused on the girl pushing herself off him and his smile slowly widened. "Oi, Flavia. How are you finding yourself?"
He reached a hand out to shake, but when Flavia grabbed she tried to pull him up. She only succeeded because he did the work for her. "Very well, considering the circumstances, thank you. Happy Christmas!"
"Happy Christmas to you too." Ned scratched at his chin, where a few wispy hairs had dodged the razor. "Actually, I have a question for you."
"Oh?" Flavia asked, resigning herself to a drawn out conversation. "This wouldn't have anything to do with Feely, would it?"
Ned's shy stammer was all the confirmation they needed. "I put together a gift for her," he said, "but, well, it doesn't seem right giving her something like this right now and I didn't want to make the trip out to Buckshaw. Not—not because Ophelia isn't worth it, but the weather…"
"So you intend to charge us with providing a courier service?" When Ned smiled in weak incomprehension, Flavia rephrased. "You want us to take it over for you?"
"Could you? Please?"
"That would depend entirely on the package, now, wouldn't it?" Flavia asked. Then, when she saw Ned was worried she wouldn't help him, she backtracked. "Of course we will, Ned. For you, if not for Feely."
Ned smiled again and pulled a tacky heart-shaped paperboard container that must have been meant for Valentine's Day but had only just been bought, ten months out of date. He held it out to Flavia, who moved to snatch it, strychnine and cyanide clearly at the forefront of her mind.
"Oh no," Fortuna said, allowing her power to wring her hands, "that wouldn't happen to be chocolate, would it?"
Ned's eyes slowly widened, like he was a puppy caught sitting on the furniture. "Yes, why?"
"Well," Fortuna said, hesitantly, "Ophelia's been reading about a new diet they've been doing across the pond. She hasn't eaten anything with even a gram of sugar in it all autumn."
"She is so very vain," Flavia jumped in, immediately playing into the idea. "What with all those treats Miss Mullet's been feeding her, I guess it shouldn't be surprising. Why, if you've ever had one of her pies…"
Ned Crocker had never had the misfortune of sampling one of Miss Mullet's culinary disasters, so he thought he understood what Flavia was saying. He stuffed the sweets back into his bag with a despondent slump of the shoulders, already planning to relabel them for Mary the following morning. "Oh, no. I don't have a gift now, and it's already Christmas Eve. Thanks anyway, Flavia. I guess I'll see if I can come up with something."
"We could find a gift for you," Fortuna rushed in.
Ned's eyes lit up. "Would you?"
"Of course, Ned. Buckshaw has plenty of neat little knickknacks," Flavia gushed. "Enough that there's something that Feely doesn't know about and will suit her perfectly—you know how Ophelia gets around shiny bits and bobs. She's just like an egomaniacal magpie."
Ned thought this was a compliment. "That's mighty kind of you, Flavia," he said, reaching out to give her hand a rough shake. "If you ever need anything, don't forget about old Ned Cropper, alright?"
"Alright," Flavia said heartily, and Ned broke away to find Mary before she could get too angry (it was too late, Fortuna knew). Then she turned on her the moment he was out of ear shot. "Find her a gift?" she hissed. "What gave you that idea? I've been raring to see what some nettle extract could do to her gums."
"Haven't you already poisoned her before with Ned's sweets? Fall too far into a rut and your tricks will grow stale."
"Not as stale as those chocolates," Flavia said, smiling, "but perhaps you are correct. You had something in mind then?"
"Yes, but not here. I think your Inspector is coming to give us the third degree."
Flavia tried to scan the room discreetly, but locked eyes with Inspector Hewitt the moment she swiveled around. He was alone—Antigone was off speaking to the vicar's wife—and stalked toward them with the speed and focus of a torpedo. He wasn't certain of her intentions, but he felt that Flavia de Luce should not be wandering about unimpeded, or at least unwarned.
"Happy Christmas, Inspector Hewitt," Flavia burbled.
"Happy Christmas, Flavia—and Fortuna. I hope you're keeping well."
"Quite well indeed, thank you," Flavia said primly, and Fortuna nodded a greeting. "How goes the investigation?"
That had been precisely the wrong thing to say. The Inspector's expression hardened. "I hope that you haven't decided to poke your nose into all this business. Antigone has assured me that your authorities are handling this with the utmost care and security."
An exaggeration. While it was true the Aurors were conducting their own investigation into the untimely death of Janus, they had not decided to give a protection detail to poor Antigone. In their eyes, his death, while unfortunate, was only coincidentally linked to her and did not see the need to provide a body guard. She had set up an intruder charm herself, something that would set her broach vibrating if someone apparated to or from Saint Tancred's, but that was the extent of all their precautions.
"I know they are doing the best within the scope of their limitations," Flavia said.
"Flavia." He stared down at her from behind his glasses. "Please do not do anything objectionable."
Flavia opened her mouth.
He threw up his hand. "Allow me to clarify. Flavia, please do not do something that anyone else would find objectionable."
Her eyes narrowed in outrage, then widened in innocence. "Really, Inspector," she said in a frigid voice that guaranteed he would watch her like a hawk the rest of the night, "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
The Inspector looked ready to speak, but Flavia was quicker. "And I'm sorry, Inspector, I believe I must be getting back to church. I would like to offer up a prayer for those without a bed to warm them tonight."
Flavia considered this a very quick-witted response, as piety was the type of thing no man had the wherewithal to stop a girl her age from practicing, turned on her heel, and marched back into the church. Fortuna shrugged at Inspector Hewitt and traipsed after her friend.
Mr. de Luce and Daphne were already sitting in their pew, but Ophelia had taken up residence at the organ. The Puddocks looked as though they'd been evicted, and Fortuna deduced that Flavia's sister had not been as gracious as she could have been during the handover.
When the liturgy was about to begin, she placed her fingers softly on the keys, like a hunter testing the tautness of a new bow. Then she pushed and the first notes to Hark the Herald Angels Sing rang to the vaulted ceiling. The pipe organ sung like it was a whole new instrument, proving, in even its first measures, Ophelia the victor over all who would dare challenge her on this field of battle.
So she had one redeeming feature. Or potentially redeeming feature.
As the ceremony progressed and the Puddock sisters' brutalization of all that was holy and musical was left behind, the congregation relaxed. By the time the homily rolled around, they even seemed to be receptive to the vicar's speech about peace and goodwill. Fortuna reflected on the process of repressing traumatic memories while she waited.
There was a meditative pause in between the end of the Canon and beginning of the Communion hymn, and for a moment, the music stopped, the room was silent, and everything still.
It was during that pause that Macnair made his move, apparating in the churchyard, where he stumbled over the tombstones.
To nearly anyone, the sound would have been all but imperceptible, but Fortuna was sitting next to Flavia de Luce, whose well-tuned ears picked up the noise. She deduced its proper meaning in mere seconds and immediately caught Fortuna's upper arm in a death grip.
"Did you hear that?" she whispered in as hushed a tone as she could while still managing to be heard over Ophelia's renewed playing. "That was apparition, I know it. It has to be our man."
"Are you certain?" Fortuna asked.
"More than certain. Look." She indicated Antigone with a jerk of her chin.
The intruder charm had just gone off at Macnair's arrival, and Mrs. Hewitt had gone dreadfully still.
Fortuna knew she was making a potentially lethal calculation. The death of one man already bore down heavily on her conscience and the stories of Sirius Black in the news had brought back dark memories of how he had massacred innocent Muggles to get to another Wizard. Antigone wasn't willing to risk such a horror happening in her own town, and she wasn't willing to put any other person in harm's way for her sake.
She whispered into her husband's ear and, exchanging a look the two both understood in full, hurried to the back of the church. Despite a few inquisitive glances her way and a few tuts from older residents at youth's impropriety, no one paid her any mind.
"Antigone's trying to leave," Flavia whispered urgently, eyeing her family to ensure there was no eavesdropping. "She must know something. We have to go after her."
"I doubt your father is going to let us walk out," Fortuna whispered back into her ear.
It was true. Mr. de Luce was already looking over, unsurprisingly suspicious about what his daughter was getting up to. Flavia may have used piety as a suitable shield from unrelated adults' condescension, but it didn't seem to have fooled her father at all.
"Give it a moment," Fortuna said. "She can't get too far of a head start. We just need to look for a gap to make a break for it."
Flavia was already scheming five different needlessly convoluted plots to flee from her seat and join Antigone, but for now was forced to concede the point. Too many eyes and too little to distract them—at least until the mass of worshippers began to stand and take their place in line to receive Communion.
"I have an idea," Flavia said. "Follow my lead."
Flavia made like she was falling in line behind Mr. de Luce and Daphne to move toward the altar. Then she cocked her head back, indicating that they should sneak out, and the two slipped into the crowd. What with the sea of skirts and coats of the older and taller residents, it was impossible for anyone to tell that there were two eleven year-old girls on the move.
Nearly impossible. Inspector Hewitt caught Fortuna's eye for one moment, and she looked away quickly, plainly projecting guilt. He would follow them after receiving Communion.
Satisfied, Fortuna joined Flavia in the narthex. They opened the church door, pushing against a blast of cold air, and quickly shut it behind them.
The night outside was dark and quiet save for the subdued moaning of the pipe organ. There were no signs of a struggle or screams from a captive, nothing so ostentatious as a villain fleeing the scene or a violent duel in progress, only smudges in the snow from residents making their way in.
"They may have disapparated," Fortuna said.
"No, I would have heard them. If they left it must have been on foot."
"Well," Fortuna began, "there's only one place I could think of going if I was trying to hide a body."
Her eyes flicked to the entrance to the crypt, poking out of the narthex. On being accosted by Macnair, Antigone had fled into the catacombs, thinking them the safest place to face down an enemy wizard without drawing unwanted attention or endangering others.
"Brilliant, the obvious answer," Flavia said, rushing to the door. "Onward, my dear friend, into the land of Tartarus."
With that, they descended.
The crypts beneath the church were a labyrinth filled by seven hundred years of Bishop's Lacey residents long consigned to God. Fortuna was certain that, if given a suitable opportunity and very little prodding, her friend could have revealed tales of the more prominent de Luces that had to have been buried here and their exciting hijinks through the ages.
Flavia rotated her head like a sonar dish, trying to pin down the exact location of their man. "This way," she murmured, pointing down a tunnel to their left.
The closer they got, the louder the noise of battle became. The quick back and forth of raised voices was followed shortly after by sustained spells one way or the other as the two wizards each tried to turn the tide of battle in their own favor. Chunks had been gouged out of walls, burn marks scarred the ceiling, the floor had morphed in certain areas to a strange muddy texture, and several dismembered skeletons rolled along the floor.
Fortuna grabbed Flavia's shoulder, stopping her from tumbling headfirst into an active fire fight. The duel paused for a moment as both combatants tried to catch their breath. Flavia drew her wand, which her father had strictly forbidden her from taking to a Muggle church, and peeked around the corner. Fortuna did not draw her wand, which she had dutifully left at Buckshaw, and also peeked out. Antigone was hidden, partially, at the far end of the tunnel, using a small enclosure as protection from the hail of spell fire. A wild-eyed, grey-haired man was hiding in an alcove only a few feet from them.
"Cough it up and you can get out of this alive." His strident voice called out over the sound of Silent Night. "Minus a memory or two, but alive."
Antigone responded with perfect evenness, seemingly not at all worn down by the fighting. "I don't know what you're talking about. Janus died before he gave anything to me."
"As if I believe that. Nothing was found on his body. I checked the files myself, did you think I wouldn't?"
Antigone risked a glance and Macnair fired out a quick disarming spell that ripped stone from the wall. Antigone returned with a stunner that went wide and ducked back to safety.
"So they're letting you Death Eaters in the Ministry now," Antigone said, trying to draw him out. "We'd assumed a lone actor, someone with a grudge. What do you think you can gain from this?"
He shuffled from his spot, trying to catch sight of her. "Quit stalling for time. No one can hear you down here. If you don't want this tomb to become yours as well, you're going to give me the ticket."
"And when you find I never had the ticket? What will you do? You're mad. You think the Aurors won't investigate this?"
Macnair didn't respond.
"They've already got men checking up on me," she lied. "And they're already on your trail for Janus. Some bureaucrat snoops through the case files and suddenly I turn up dead? They'll be knocking down your door before Christmas dinner's cooled."
The man let out a laugh at that. "Oh no, I wouldn't be concerned about them. The Aurors are looking into it, but Janus had so many enemies. Never managed to pull himself free from the war, did he? There aren't people looking out for you, they're searching for a group of men he's been tailing for the past year. In fact, the report said they'd declined to post a guard. Didn't even mention a follow-up."
Flavia connected the dots in her head and, in the exuberance of a mystery solved, gasped loudly. She clamped a hand over her mouth, but it was already too late. Fortuna grabbed Flavia's other hand and pulled the girl back into an alcove, a hiding spot that had no chance of concealing them if Macnair were to do an actual search.
Macnair swiveled around, but held his wand on Antigone. "Who's there?"
"Nobody's there," Antigone said, a little too hastily.
"You'd like me to think that, wouldn't you? Show yourself, or I'll bring these bloody rocks down on you."
Flavia glanced at Fortuna, clearly projecting her intention to join the fray. Fortuna gave a single, solemn shake of her head. Flavia almost immediately turned away and charged out of their hiding spot, wand at the ready, and Fortuna mentally sighed and dashed after her, knife in hand.
They almost collided with Macnair.
"This was your back-up?" he asked, incredulously. "Schoolgirls?"
The look on Flavia's face expressed how much she enjoyed the epithet, but she remained stalwart in the face of this insult. "Drop your wand, or we'll take it from you."
Antigone's face crumpled and Fortuna almost felt bad for her role in setting this up. She clearly thought she had just consigned two children to their deaths, and abandoned her cover entirely to charge Macnair, her hand gripped tight around her wand, knuckles going white.
"Step away from them," she ordered.
He managed to dodge the stunner before it landed and fired back with a mist that Antigone hastily began to disperse. He lazily dismissed a showy burst of flame from Flavia's wand, and the curse he sent in retaliation gave Fortuna a pretext to duck back down the passage. Then, before Flavia could finish the jinx she'd started to cast, he rushed her, wrapped an arm around her neck, pulled her from her feet, and jabbed his wand underneath her chin.
"If you make one move the girl dies," he barked out. "Your wand, on the floor. Now. And you, other girl, come out of there."
The sound of footsteps was lost between the voices and the ever-present organ, but she still turned as Inspector Hewitt came up behind her. Despite the danger and the fact he had to know he was about to intervene in a magical duel, he appeared quite calm. Fortuna nodded and, before he could object, raised her hands and walked directly into Macnair's line of sight.
When Antigone saw Fortuna, too, she acquiesced. She dropped her wand and Macnair focused intently on her and not the passageway Fortuna had just left.
"Now, if you'd like to leave her head attached to her neck, you'll tell me where you've put the bloody ticket."
"I don't have the ticket," Antigone said through gritted teeth. "I've never had the ticket. I don't even think there is a ticket, you stupid little man."
"We'll see about that," Macnair said, as he took his wand off Flavia and waved it in her direction. "Cru—"
A swift blow to the head ended the incantation. Inspector Hewitt stood over him, hands clasped around a heavy leatherbound hardcover of the Book of Common Prayer. He'd slammed it down on Macnair's head with all the force he could muster, which was not inconsiderable.
The wizard took one wobbly step forward before collapsing in a heap. Antigone dashed for her wand and stunned the fallen man. Flavia got to her feet and dusted herself off insouciantly, as though nearly getting herself killed had been part of some grand plan. Then she ever so casually walked behind a support column, conveniently removing herself from the inspector's sight.
Antigone summoned her canine Patronus in an instant. "Get Gawain now," she commanded. "Tell him to come to the crypt beneath Saint Tancred's church in Bishop's Lacey, about two miles from my home. I have our killer."
Her dog dashed off and the two adults turned on the children.
"Flavia," Inspector Hewitt said. Just the one word.
Sheepishly, Flavia stepped back into view. "How did you know we were down here, Inspector?"
"I saw you and your friend heading for the exit," he said. "I knew wherever Flavia de Luce was going, there would be trouble."
Flavia realized she could take credit for bringing him here and perked up. "Well, I am happy to have provided the assistance necessary for you to nab our killer, then, Inspector."
Inspector Hewitt took a deep breath and let it out in a slow exhale, as if the very fact Flavia characterized her exploits as positive was Atlas's own burden.
"I hope you don't see this as a good thing," he admonished.
Antigone placed a hand on his. "Charles," she said. "It worked out."
It was like all the tension left Inspector Hewitt in an instant and he simply allowed all his reproofs to slip away unspoken.
"Come now, you two," the Inspector said, gesturing at the entrance. "I'm sure your father will be relieved to hear you haven't been blasted into smithereens and, more importantly, you aren't heathens."
***
Flavia's father wasn't angry, though it was difficult to say what his emotions were at the best of times. The man hadn't noticed their disappearance or subsequent return and had only been relieved that they had managed to consume the body and blood of Christ before service ended. Flavia's sisters were similarly unimpressed, though for different reasons.
"To think," Ophelia said, halfway through the ride back to Buckshaw, "that we can't have even one Christmas without incident. Oh, Flavia! Why couldn't you have done it while Lavinia Puddock was playing?"
"I believe we were celebrating the Nativity of the Messiah, not your exhibition, Feely. Perhaps once you've risen from your grave you can get all the attention you think you deserve."
"Oh, please. If anyone's going to be lurching from the tomb and hassling loved ones, it's you. That is if you can find any."
Flavia immediately prepared a particularly wicked diatrib, but Fortuna pulled on her sleeve and shook her head.
This time, Flavia heeded her warning and dropped the subject, however reluctantly. By the time the car pulled back into Buckshaw, Flavia and Ophelia were almost level-headed again.
They exited the car and made their way up the footpath. Even from a considerable distance away, they could see a letter had been attached to the door with a bit of tape—something Fortuna had set up before they left, hiding her machinations by holding the door for Flavia's father.
Dogger was the first one to reach it. He plucked it down and held it up to the light emanating from the kitchen window. "It's for Miss Ophelia," he said, and handed the note to the eldest de Luce sister. It was a simple yellow postage mailer labeled "To Ophelia de Luce, from your secret admirer, Ned Cropper."
As they entered the house and filed through the kitchen, Ophelia opened the envelope and plucked out a little piece of paper. "It's a lottery ticket," she said, audibly disappointed.
"Is there a poem?" Daphne asked, though her attention was mostly directed at the book of Christmas tales she was reading. "I want a boy to write poems for me. Lotto tickets are worth less than the paper they're printed on."
"You don't have any boys to write or not write you anything," Ophelia snapped before returning to her present. "But it's from last week. Poor boy must have bought it and only now managed to work up the nerve to deliver it."
She idly began to search for the morning's paper, more out of the desire to spite Daphne than any real hope, while the rest of the household began the slow process of withdrawing from one another.
Flavia began to pace—she had realized what Fortuna had done and couldn't hide her excitement—but Fortuna plopped down into an armchair and plugged her ears with her fingers.
A sudden scream rent the air, shocking everyone else into stillness. Ophelia came tearing back into the room like a woman gone mad, as her name would imply.
"Father—"
She couldn't finish the sentence and so brandished the newspaper clutched in her hand, the excitement leaving her a more deathly pale than her normal hue. Mr. de Luce took the paper and ticket from her, fiddled with his reading glasses, and glanced between the two. Finally he folded the paper, then handed it and the ticket back to his eldest daughter.
"That is really quite the gift, Ophelia," he murmured. Dogger stepped up behind him in case he needed a steadying hand. "I cannot tell you to give it up, but I trust you will not spend it solely on yourself."
"Of course not," Ophelia said solemnly.
Flavia took a step back to stand next to Fortuna and folded her arms. "Feels like a loss, giving the winning ticket to Feely," she muttered.
"Your father would have refused it and she's the only other adult in the family," Fortuna said. "If you want the money to go to Buckshaw, she's the only option."
Other people would benefit, too. Ophelia would share some with Ned, who would invest it in the Thirteen Drakes and his eventual family with Mary. Fortuna, under an assumed name, would convince her to use the money to fund her Knight Bus alternative. Saint Tancred's roof would get some much needed renovations—and so would Buckshaw.
Flavia conceded the point mentally, which was all Fortuna needed.
"Still wish we could have uncovered everything. How it turned to murder and what a Death Eater was doing interfering in a Muggle lottery."
"We can ask Antigone about it later," Fortuna said, and relaxed further, sinking into the soft leather as she watched Ophelia and Daphne babble about what could be done with so much Muggle money. Mr. de Luce had taken a restorative sit in a nearby chair while Dogger ran off to fetch a brandy and soda to help brace his spirits. Harbinger made his appearance, somewhat sulkily. He was out of sorts because nobody had paid any attention to him for two full hours, so she hoisted him up onto her lap and began stroking and scratching him to assuage his dignity.
Wrapped up in winter clothes given kindly by Flavia and watching the antics of her sisters and father, Fortuna couldn't help but feel an all encompassing emotion take her. She had to ask her power to explain what she was feeling.
It was homesickness. Which was odd, because this must have been the most comfortable she had felt in her entire life.
***
It was well and truly past the witching hour when Flavia and Fortuna finally found themselves bundled up in Flavia's bed. The cheer from earlier had followed them up and the two of them couldn't shake it off.
"What a wonderful Christmas, what an absolutely wonderful Christmas," Flavia exclaimed, sounding almost dazed. She turned to look Fortuna in the eyes. "Miss Floris, thank you for accompanying me to my home. I can say without a doubt that you have turned what could have been merely an acceptable Christmas into something beyond marvelous!"
Fortuna couldn't help but smile back. "It was my pleasure to come, Miss de Luce."
"And of course," Flavia said, looking slyer by the moment, "what good is Christmas without a present to go along with it?"
She leaned sideways to reach underneath her bed and pulled out a small little package of multi-colored paper tied up with a string. The excellent bow proved Dogger had been the one to wrap the gift. Fortuna carefully took it out of her hands.
"Go on, open it," Flavia urged.
Fortuna carefully undid the seal and popped off the lid. A beautiful golden pocket watch sat on a pile of simple wool. She raised it carefully and let the light of a candle gleam off the metal.
"It was something of Uncle Tar's he used to help keep track of time while working on rather finicky potions. You see, if you focus on it, you should always be able to hear it ticking. Dreadfully useful when one's hands are full and you cannot turn to see a clock. At least, that was what he had said."
Fortuna even now could hear the thing ticking away, but couldn't think of a single word to say in reply. Flavia, taking her silence as a sign of some fault on her part, sought to fill up the noise.
"It's very good for centering one's self and keeping focus when your mind may drift astray. It—"
"Thank you Flavia," Fortuna said, "This is the best gift I've ever received."
And it was true.
Flavia tried her best not to look expectantly at Fortuna, but she needn't have worried. Fortuna stood up and collected a perfectly festooned Christmas package from her suitcase. Flavia took it eagerly and tore paper out of the way before reaching in and bringing forth the stoppered vial Fortuna had removed from the room with the cursed diadem.
"This is but the first half of the gift," Fortuna said mysteriously.
Flavia looked in awe at the mauve potion, which was still ominously churning. She moved to give it a tentative shake, before thinking better of it, and instead began running through potential tests for it in her head. "What is it?" she asked. "What does it do?"
"I have no idea," Fortuna said, in a more mundane voice.
Flavia grinned back. "And the other half?"
"I shall tell you the secret of how such an object of power fell into my hands."
Flavia carefully went to tuck it away amongst her normal chemical racks—though Fortuna noticed with pride that Flavia had chosen to place it at a prominent spot towards the front.
"Well then, Ms. Floris, you simply must deliver once we've gotten back," Flavia said. Then she flopped back into bed. "Hard to believe it will be so soon. It feels as if these months have flown by. I don't know what summer will be like with you gone."
A chill passed over Fortuna. She sat back down, listening to the steady tick of her new pocket watch, a welcome distraction. Feigning interest in the new gift, she fiddled with the mechanism until it popped open suddenly, the second hand steadily advancing.
On the other side was a photo. She recognized it as one Dogger had taken not two days earlier. She and Flavia stood in front of the Christmas tree, both wearing the finest dresses they could purloin from Daphne, chosen for attending the Christmas Pageant that both Mrs. Mullet and Mr. de Luce had insisted they must attend. Her power informed her that Flavia had been at work these past few days preparing the serum herself to animate it. The two girls had their arms slung around each other as they smiled into the camera flash.
"I don't want to go back."
"Oh I know, it's always so difficult getting used to being at Hogwarts—"
"No," Fortuna said, "I mean I don't want to go back to my foster family."
Across the room a potion bubbled merrily in a cauldron stationed between some chemical experiments. Candlelight glinted off a set of beakers left to dry in the corner. The ceaseless ticking of her pocket watch was not overwhelming, but instead calming.
"I want to stay here with you."
She angled herself away from Flavia and stared out the window. It had stopped snowing, and moonlight spread over every surface of the grounds of Buckshaw. A statue of Poseidon standing guard over his fountain. A small little pond with some classic grecian architecture, long decayed. A forest that had not seen order since well-before King George VI had given his final breath. It was all falling apart. It was all beautiful.
A small soft hand found her back and rubbed it.
"You don't have to go," said Flavia in a whisper. "Not if you don't want to. You can always stay here. I would never allow Buckshaw's doors to close on you."
"Your father—"
"I can handle Father."
Fortuna blinked hard as she heard the clock strike three somewhere far below them, and Flavia moved from the bed to take her hand.
"Happy Christmas, Flavia de Luce."
"Happy Christmas, Fortuna Floris."
