The sun had set and stars had taken its place hours ago, but still Hazel sat on the roof of Simone's cottage and looked up to the sky as though it might hold answers for her. As the initial terror of her encounter that afternoon with a bunch of hungry ghosts slowed to a simmer, other concerns had raised their heads. This was the first time she had been trapped in a dangerous situation since she escaped Privet Drive, but it was not the first dangerous situation she had ever been in.
The red cap. Running into transformed werewolves. The magical police back at the library in Greater Whinging, in a manner of speaking. Even the very existence of open doorways to Otherworlds. Magic made scary things real. If she was really going to spend her time around folklore come to life, she needed to be able to do more than run away.
She needed to be able to defend herself.
The idea itself was just one of the problems facing her. Back when she had to go to school, Dudley and his cronies had always been the aggressors. They always got away with it, and she had only made the mistake of lashing back one single time. The punishment she received when she returned to her aunt and uncle had been enough to teach her that fighting back was never the way to go. She was much better served by running away and hiding. It was why she had fallen back on her jumping as her first means of dealing with danger, she realized now, and why the idea of using magic to hit back had never crossed her mind until jumping just was not an option. Overcoming that mindset would be a challenge all its own.
She lifted her hand and turned it over, holding the empty air as though she would a cup. How was she supposed to do that, even? She had tried to start fire to keep herself warm the night she left Greater Whinging, technically the very start of her grand journey. Tried and failed. Somehow, she doubted conjuring a fireball would be any easier. What other ways did she have to fight off something intent on attacking her? Her mind spun fanciful ideas one after another, ranging from streams of fire and ice to beams of bright green light to snapping her fingers and blowing up whatever would hunt her. The longer she thought, the more impossible dreams came to her, but eventually she breathed out and let her hand drop.
Some of her ideas would be great... if they were possible. They just weren't. On a lark, she decided she might as well try out something basic. Closing her eyes, she shoved her worries away to the back of her mind where they could bother her later and focused on the memory of heat in her hand from holding the head of her torch or stretching her hand out towards a fire. Of how the heat reaching into her palm danced on the edges but never overtook the cold of the back of that hand. The smell of wood smoke, the crackling of the flames.
She imagined how it would look, a thin layer of fire licking upwards from her cupped palm, and Hazel breathed out low and long before opening her eyes.
Her hand was still empty.
With a snort she let her arm fall back to the thatched roof. So much for that idea. There had to be
something she could do. For a long minute she considered the pros and cons of returning to the shopping center in Paris and stealing some books from the bookstore. Surely wizards had to have some way to defend themselves! It would take her hours and hours to translate all the titles of the books to find the few she needed, and longer still to read the book itself, but would it take her less time to figure out how to do this on her own?
Oh, wait. Yes it would, because she had no wand to cast their spells. At most she would have more ideas to use, except she already had plenty of ideas all on her own. She let out a softly growling sigh and covered her eyes with one arm. So much for that plan.
Rather than jumping down and returning to her cot, she stayed where she was. Her sleep was, unsurprisingly, fitful and restless. The rising of the rest of the commune woke her, and she gave them tired waves as they made her way to their various jobs. It would be a couple of hours probably until Elise and the other would start the lessons, and there was no guarantee that it would be potions again today. If it were not, if it were grammar or maths or something, she had even more of the day with which to do she knew not what. More time to not figure this out, she thought with a small scowl.
Another rustle and this time it was Jean Luc who came out. His presence inside the camp was normal; the slim stick in his hand, however, was decidedly not. She tilted her head and watched him for a moment, then she rolled over—
—and stood up from the ground. Morgan squawked faintly and took off from the top of the cottage where he slept while she was busy thinking, but she was already walking over closer to Jean Luc and pulling out her unlined notebook.
'What you do?' she wrote.
"Laundry day," he replied, jabbing his wand towards the baskets of dirty clothes that she had vaguely noticed a few people bringing out of their respective cottages before leaving the compound. "Years ago we realized it is easier for those of us with wands,
all two of us, to wash all the clothes with magic than for everyone to wash their own. Magic does make mundane tasks like this much easier." Waving his wand in a complicated swirl at one of the baskets, he said in a deeper and slower voice than he normally used, "
Locularici."
One of the shirts lifted out of the basket and deposited itself on the line stretched between two trees. He moved his wand in a totally different pattern and this time said, "
Mudafini," and this time the colors of the shirt brightened and the dirt ground into the elbows vanished. Repeating the first spell's incantation, he moved the shirt into a wooden chest behind him.
Spreading his arms, he shrugged. "And it's that simple. Marcel and I try to clean an entire basket of clothes at the same time, then we clean out the basket itself and put the clothes back in it. Move on to the next, and that will be the morning gone."
'Can I help?' she wrote. This looked near identical to what she had been doing to her own clothes for the last several months.
"I don't know if
you would be able to... Oh. Right." He rubbed his chin. "
This is the same girl who can teleport years before she should. You can give it a try if you wish. Do you need anything... special to learn how to do it?" he asked with a frown.
Hazel shook her head. This? This would be easy. Clenching her fingers one at a time and relaxing them all, she reached out with her ghost hand and pulled out a pair of trousers. Rather than bother with hanging them, she just floated them over to herself and grabbed part of the fabric. With but a thought waves of a blue glow spread over the trousers like ripples over still water. Dirt and grime fell away, and in no more time than Jean Luc's own spell, they were as clean as they had been before being worn. A whirl over her head tossed them into the same chest, and she looked over her shoulder to give him a knowing expression.
"Yes, that will do," he said after a moment. "
If nothing else, it should make the job faster with three of us splitting the work instead of two. There's another box behind my cabin that Marcel normally uses. Feel free to use that until he
finally wakes up and joins us."
A few minutes later, Marcel did exactly that and stared in disbelief at seeing her float the clothes over to her and then into the box once cleaned. It was not a competition, she knew, but she still noticed and took a little pride in the fact that she was moving faster through her clothes than Jean Luc was. Most of that was because whereas she could keep the clothes floating in front of her to clean them, he had to hang them up on the line. Before Marcel could walk away, she pulled out her notebook where she had written a question for him.
'Can wizards only cast one spell at a time?'
"Uh..." He blinked and shook his head. "
Why would she even ask that? Yes? I think some people –
a very very small number – when they get really good at a couple of spells, can cast them and hold them while casting another spell. They're in the minority, though,
and Madam Croyanz said that was a sign of an incredibly strong wizard." His eyes strayed to the chest of clothes behind her. "
Which... Huh."
With only two boxes between the three of them, Marcel joined her and started working on the same basket of clothes. They worked in silence for several minutes before a question crossed Hazel's mind. Hadn't Grégoire said that Marcel went to the French magic school for a while? Scribbling her question down quickly, she clapped twice and held up the notebook when Marcel looked her way.
'What spells do wizards use to protect themselves?'
"Protect themselves?" he asked with eyes full of rising fear. "...From what?
Is she talking about us? Does she think she's in danger here?"
Her own gaze was long and sad. Jean Luc, Grégoire, Marcel. All of them were afraid that she was afraid. Was the fear of werewolves really that widespread that they always worried her own distrust was buried just beneath the surface?
In truth, the world would be better if everyone could hear thoughts just as she could. At least then it would get rid of misconceptions.
Still, she shook her head.
'Dangerous spirits and fairies. Like red caps and trolls and things. Or,' she added after some further thought,
'from other wizards.'
Marcel blew out a small sigh of relief. "
She isn't talking about us. Thank goodness. Beauxbatons had a dueling class, but it was restricted to students fifteen years old or older. I wasn't old enough to join when I
was expelled... when I left." He cleared his throat. "We started learning how to defend ourselves from dark creatures in our second year, and before that a lot of us learned spells from the older students that we could use to play pranks on each other. Silly little stuff like turning people's hair odd colors or putting them into dresses. I think some of the older years liked turning people's ears in cacti or giving their enemies duck bills, but that wasn't something I ever learned how to do."
She wrinkled her nose at that comment. Pranks had never been her thing at school; in her experience, 'prank' was an excuse for Dudley to ruin her day. Maybe it would be better if it were something easily fixed with magic, or if it was from somebody she liked? She did not know, nor did she think turning the ghosts' ears into cacti would keep them from trying to eat her.
'How much real fight magic you know?'
He coughed. "Not much. We didn't have a very good teacher for our Defensive Magic class. There might have been more in our third year,
but I didn't exactly get to see for myself... Anyway."
She nodded and directed her attention back to the clothes for a brief moment before yet another question hit her fingers. It was not as if she was having any great success with her own efforts to create a fighting spell, so maybe she should not dismiss their advice too quickly.
'What books you use?'
"
How should I know; that was years ago! I don't remember," he told her in a tight voice. "I'd have to look at my old school things,
and I really don't want to do that right now. I have a question for you, though." She gave him a slow nod, and he continued, "Do you have a way to talk faster than writing them down on a piece of paper?"
This time her response was a sad shake of her head. It was not as if she did not want to talk! This was just as fast as she could go. No one had ever criticized it for being too slow before, but she supposed this was also the first time she had so many people who were willing to listen to what she had to say.
"Would you like to learn one?"
Hazel had not noticed her head drooping, but she certainly felt it pop back up to stare at him. He had a faster way of communicating?!
Marcel pulled out his wand with a flourish. "
Let's see if she can figure this out. Sure, she can move and clean things, but that could all be done with accidental magic. Maybe that's all this is, half-accidental. I doubt she can actually learn to do something new. If nothing else, it should keep her too busy to ask a million questions for a couple of days or however long it takes her to get tired of trying. The incantation is
Feucriptur, without a wand motion. And the way you use it is..." He made a loop-de-loop in the air, and a stream of reddish fire followed the tip of the wand. The wand lowered, but the fire stayed in place for a few seconds before fading away. "You still have to write,
maybe should have made that clearer, but you won't need to keep track of a pad or a pen. Should save you some time, no?"
Bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, Hazel gave him a wide smile and a clap of her hands. Sure, he did not think she could do this, and maybe not without reason. She had never knowingly turned a wizard spell into a spell that she could do. On the other hand, this would save her some time here and there. Maybe not all that much individually, but considering all her communication had to be done through writing, even a few seconds each time she wanted to talk to somebody would add up over the course of an entire day. Plus, it would be all sorts of wicked to write words in fire in the air.
"That should give you something to do this afternoon," he told her with a smile. "
And hopefully give me some peace. She's the only person who asks me about Beauxbatons, and I'll be happy when I don't have to think about it anymore."
xxxxxxxxxxxxx
The laundry did indeed take the rest of the morning, but by the time they sat down to eat lunch all the compound's clothes were freshly cleaned and returned to their respective cabins. That left Hazel with nothing else she had to do today. She could do whatever she wanted.
It was time to get started on that spell.
She and Morgan made their way away from the compound into the trees of the forest proper.
How are we going to do this, she asked her truest and featheriest friend.
It seems like all the same problems we had with a fireball, just made even harder. If she could not form a simple clump of fire in her palm, how was she going to write with it?
Morgan had little to offer, understandable considering he was no more an expert in magic than she was, so she slid down the trunk of one of the trees and leaned her head against the bark.
Should we break it down into steps instead? Maybe we'll find a workaround that way. Step one would be making magic fire. We'll come back to that one. Step two would be directing it to my fingertip or a stick or something, and step three would be writing with it. Hazel tapped her fingers on one knee in an irregular rhythm, and a thought made its way to the front of her mind. It would be strange, but maybe...
What do you think would happen if I skipped step one and went with just the rest? Do you think I'd make a stream of smoke or something else entirely?
That was reason enough to give it a try, honestly. She wanted to see what would happen. Concentrating her effort on her finger, she tried to swipe it through the air and make a stream of smoke. Nothing complicated, just a line. She wanted this to work, and she pushed her hope of not being reliant on a notebook into the movement.
Nothing.
Maybe... Maybe she needed to poke a hole in the air? She lifted her hand again to do just that, then she shook her head. What would she even be poking a hole
into? That sounded like a dead end, and even if it were not it was still a recipe for trouble she did not want.
She shook her head and scattered the possibilities and maybes that wanted to fill her skull. This was not working. Perhaps it was time to go back to the basics. Her successes had all been achieved when she created a mental tool to work with, and just because she was adapting a wizard spell did not mean the same rules would not apply. She had to quit jumping at shadows and think her way through this.
She had a hand to move things. A key to unlock doors. Smoke to hide her. Lightning to fix things. Ripples to clean her clothes. The only thing she did not have a physical tool of some kind for was her jumping, and even that needed her to physically jump. So she needed an appropriate tool for the job. Her issue, then, was that one was not coming to mind.
Her fingers kept on tapping and tapping and tapping, and after several minutes Hazel forced them to stop. Her brain was spinning in circles, going nowhere, and she could feel herself getting more frustrated. She needed to stop, take a break, and let her mind find peace so she could think straight. Closing her eyes, she sat up straight and relaxed her muscles as imaginary roots stretched down deep into the earth. She breathed deep, in and out. This was what meditation was supposed to do, and while she had been using it more to get a handle on her magic, right now it was the primary benefit she was after.
Ideas pinged around and around in her head for a time after she closed her head, but each time one bounced away there were fewer to take its place. One by one they fell away until eventually she was drifting in placid nothingness. Hazel could feel the weight of her own expectations lifting up off of her shoulders, a weight she had not realized she placed there.
Writing with flames? That would be useful and neat, but it should not be an expectation that crushed her. And if she could not do it after all? Translating wizard spells might just not be her skill.
As she let herself drift through a quiet haze, a memory nudged her. Years ago, she could remember standing in the kitchen of Number 4 during Bonfire Night. She had yet to be banished to her cupboard, but only because there were still dishes to clean from dinner and Aunt Petunia had a cold and so did not want to go out into the chilly November air. While she busied herself dunking pots and pans into hot soapy water, she had nonetheless been able to look out the small window above the sink and watch other children her and Dudley's age run around enjoying the fireworks exploding in the sky above. Just one more time they had shoved her nose in the fact that while she might be related to them, they were not really family.
At the time, that was where her attention had been focused, but now that she was free of the Dursleys' grip, she could notice something else. Namely the children. Most of them were too busy watching the display of fire, but she could recall now that some of them were more engaged in their own play. They carried sparklers in their hands, and as they shouted and laughed they waved the sparklers in the air and tried to write their names in smoke and light. None of them were successful, but it had looked like fun nevertheless.
Hazel's eyes opened, her vision taking a moment to adjust to the dimmer light as the sun sank towards the horizon. How long had she been sitting here, she wondered as she stretched her arms and back. The movement woke Morgan, who stretched his neck upwards and twittered to her in confusion.
I'm okay, she told him with a soft smile. That seemed enough to placate him for now, so she turned her eyes to her hand. A sparkler, huh? That was a direction she would not have thought of on her own, but the more she considered it the more she liked it as an answer. It felt
right in a way that lighting the tip of her finger on fire did not.
She had never played with a sparkler before, but she could remember what they looked like when she saw them in the rubbish bin the day after: just thin metal sticks, whatever substance that actually made the sparks already used up. It was easy to image a bit of something being present at the tip, though, and she pictured such a thing sitting in her hand and sticking up straight. Her index finger rested upon it, giving her a better sense of control than she would have with it just poking out of her palm. A hard blink, and the top of the metal stick ignited into phantom sparks.
It looked good so far, but she was well aware that this was only in her mind. It was not proof that it would act anything close to the way she wanted in real life. Deep breaths in and out, and she swished it through the air in deliberate motions. An instant later she shot to her feet, a smile stretched wide over her face and her eyes glued to what she had accomplished.
The word
'Hi' made out of flickering, whitish-gold light floating in the air before her.
