Chapter 1
Beatrice walks into the room and knows immediately that this is going to be a long night.
The lights are bright and cold and white and it hurts right behind her eyes. People are talking, fake smiles plastered on their faces, chin raised with their sufficient expression like they know that their family's blood is as pure as water. Everything reeks of money and gold and dark magic and Beatrice already feels nauseous. The dress her mother chose for her is itchy and she feels like a child who played with their mother's makeup, and she wants to run and to hide and to burn that dress and let the ashes smear her face.
Bernard is gripping her arm so tight she can see spots of white slowly fading away in her flesh when he lets go. 'Behave,' he says, but he doesn't say it like Beatrice used to when Melanie was drunk and trying to kiss her in front of everyone with giggles.
She feels their parents cold gaze on her when they enter the room but Beatrice doesn't have the strenght to fake a smile on her face. She settles for looking around in silence, nodding politely when someone greets her.
Beatrice is nineteen years old, and she already feels like she has ruined her own life. She's trapped. Everything in her screams to run away, that this is wrong, terribly and profoundly wrong.
She knows why they're here, but she doesn't understand how her presence is required.
They're in America, and they're here for business. Magical business, faith business, deciding-of-the-faith-of-the-world business.
There has been rumors of a girl. A girl that fought Dark forces before she could even drink (legally), that dueled with dark wizards before she even had her first period, that has powers no one has ever heard of. The Young family has been sent as high-placed guests, but really they're just here to make sure this isn't another Harry Potter situation.
Harry Potter has saved the world, but a lot of people think that there would be no saving needed if it wasn't for him — Beatrice's family, mainly. The British Ministry of Magic would rather be caught dead than dealing with another Harry Potter. 'The New Areala', they whisper in the corridors of the Ministry, because that's what people in America call her, comparing her to another brazilian witch that shook the magical world's core a long time ago. Beatrice wonder what it would feel like to have their own name whispered instead, and not just 'Areala' or 'the Young girl'.
A boy with the word 'Pure-Blood' written on the wrinkles of his face tries to talk to her and Beatrice does what she does best: she avoids. She retreats by the table and watches as bubbles of champagne rise to the air.
A soft hand lands on her arm and she jumps a little, but it's a girl, tall and with the face of a model, that looks like she could be anywhere but here. 'Here, honey,' she says, shoving what seems like a glass of Firewhisky in her hand and her voice is deep and calm and Beatrice doesn't shy away. 'You look like you need it.'
And then she's gone, the clicking of her heels echoing in Beatrice's head and she doesn't ask why she's even here, she who could do way better than that.
She looks at the contents of her glass, hesitates. She's never drunk alcohol, no matter how many times Melanie tried to get her to. She didn't want to end up like her, she couldn't let her guard down and anyways, they needed someone to take care of Melanie when she was like this.
Before she can even realize what she's doing, she's tilting her head back and drowning the whiskey. Her throat burns and her eyes water and she coughs into her fist.
A hand grabs her arm violently and Beatrice's eyes are too blurry to see but she knows who it is. 'What are you doing?' Bernard stabs into her heart.
Beatrice doesn't know what to answer, she just wants him to let go of her, her arms already hurt from earlier and he's just putting more finger-shaped bruises on top of the others.
Suddenly, he is hit from the side and lets go of her and Beatrice takes a step away.
“Desculpe!” A girl says, bringing a hand to her mouth and then onto Bernard's arm, squeezing apologetically, and Beatrice sees the tip of her wand in her sleeve, and there is a big stain of whatever was in her glass on Bernard's immaculate shirt. "Sinto muito! Eu não tinha visto você, estava muito ocupado com a beleza do seu—"
"Alright, alright, I don't care," Bernard huffs in annoyance before turning to Beatrice. "You, don't move."
That's all she is now. A 'you', not a little sister who needs his help.
He walks away, probably going to wash his shirt, and the girl puts her glass back on the table.
Beatrice feels a hand slip into hers.
"Come one," the girl says.
She doesn't have time to ask how she can speak English, that the girl is pulling her away, grazing the wall until she finds a window and opens it, jumping into the night. Beatrice looks at the distance between the edge of the window and the ground — There's a terrace so it's not that big — and back to the room where her parents are talking to a man with gray hair and glasses, then onto the girl who beckons her to follow, a smile on her face.
Beatrice swings her legs outside, drapes her dress over her arm and lets herself fall on the terrace. The girl laughs, leading her to the stone stairs, and sits on a step and Beatrice sits next to her, keeping a reasonable distance between them.
It's chilly out there but the Firewhisky coursing through Beatrice's veins keeps her warm, almost too warm. She's burning up.
The girl next to her is young, probably a little younger than Beatrice herself. She's wearing a strange dress that sparkles into the night and dips into her chest, exposing her neck and her collarbone. Her hair is messy, untidy, so much that Beatrice thinks it might be a conscious choice, but her face is one of an angel, with dark doe eyes that hold all that is good in this world.
"Oh uh... Hey, is this yours?" The girl asks, fumbling with her words and her hands, voice leaking with a delicious accent that Beatrice cannot place, before reaching into her sleeve and extricating a wand that Beatrice recognizes as hers from her sleeve.
Bernard took it that morning.
"Yes I... How did you—" Beatrice says finally, reaching out to take it back, and it feels like she can breathe a little better.
"The guy that was with you. He already had his wand pocking out of his pocket, pretty sure he only needs one."
Beatrice cradles her wand to her chest, like a child that she has lost.
"Thank you," she whispers into the night, and the girl smiles, and suddenly it's not night anymore. It's summer and the world is bright and warm and full of noise.
"No problem. No offense, but he seems like a douche."
Beatrice can't stop herself fast enough from letting out a snort of laughter. She quiets down immediately, retreating back onto herself. The girl's smile turns upside down in a grimace.
"Sorry. I put my foot in my mouth again, like you English say. I'm Ava," she says, and she presents her hand towards her.
Beatrice hesitates, she's not supposed to talk to people unless she's being watched closely by a family member. Yet, she reaches out into the sun and puts her palm into Ava's.
She doesn't believe in love at first sight. Melanie had told her that French people talk about 'coup de foudre', like love is a thunderbolt that hits unexpectedly and mercilessly. She doesn't believe in that either.
And yet, when Ava smiles as she squeezes her hands, Beatrice feels like she's being pulled under the sun too.
"Beatrice."
Ava wiggles from where she's seated, and Beatrice realizes that the girl is always moving (eyes, hands, shoulders and feet and hips).
"So, you come here often?"
Beatrice doesn't even have time to react that the girl is already burying her face in her hands, mumbling something like 'Porra JC, sua vadia estúpida', before looking back up.
"Sorry. Chanel says I always lose my ability to act human around pretty girls and I keep proving her right."
Pretty girl?
Beatrice's brain screams and jumps against the walls of her skull and she wants to bolt into the night and never look back.
"Have you been hit with a Babbling Curse?" Is all that comes out of her mouth.
Ava pauses for a second, then she laughs, and a shiver runs along Beatrice's uncovered spine.
"Nah, sorry, this is just my default setting. Uh... Wait a second."
She vaguely turns around to give herself some privacy, but Beatrice still sees her reach into her cleavage and hold out a folded napkin containing something, and when Ava unwraps it, she's presented with a small pumpkin pasty.
"Uh... Peace offering?"
Beatrice looks at the food in front of her, wondering when Ava is going to laugh and explain that this is just a well imagined joke ('But from who?' Beatrice wants to ask.) but she doesn't, looking at Beatrice with a lopsided smile and Beatrice gives in.
"Won't you go hungry?" She asks, and Ava smirks, like she knows every secret in the world.
"English," she says, and the nickname makes the hair on the back of Beatrice's neck stand up as Ava reaches once more into her cleavage and Beatrice looks away, quick quick quick, "I've got two boobs."
Beatrice turns back to her and Ava is holding two pumpkin pasties wrapped in napkins, giving her her mischevious grin, and Beatrice can't help it, she laughs. She laughs as she hasn't in weeks, months, years. She laughs because she's outside with a girl she doesn't know, hiding from her family that would kill her for just doing that, and that the girl is the strangest and most beautiful thing that happened to her in the last few months.
She laughs and she takes the extended pasty in her hand and Ava grins as she thanks her.
Ava keeps talking and Beatrice keeps listening, and it's like they both fit in each other's space, like the world around them adjusted itself to let them be in each other's presence.
Ava tells her about her childhood and the stains on the ceiling that looked like David Bowie (Beatrice has no idea of who that is but Ava laughs and therefore so does she). She tells her about the orphanage she was in, skipping quickly to a brighter time. She tells her how she was paralyzed for most of her life but that one day, she woke up in the middle of the night needing a glass of water and simply got up to get it. She only realized what was happening when she got to the sink, and promptly fainted. The nuns found her the next morning right as 'Professor Vincent' showed up to take her to Castelobruxo ('Thank God he did,' Ava says, licking pumpkin from her fingers. 'I was living with nuns. Don't think the whole Jesus thing would have stuck with me.')
She tells her about the golden rock that was Castelobruxo and how she became friends with the Caipora and raised Hell with her other friends. How they would fly to the top of the castle and have picnics and yell their sorrows into the wind. How they raised each other, because nobody else was doing it for them. She tells her that she used to play Quidditch and asks if Beatrice has ever played, and Beatrice barely whispers that she hasn't flown in a while.
Ava paints colors in front of Beatrice and lights up the sun into the night and Beatrice just watches, quiet and peaceful, for once.
Ava unclips her shoes and leaves them on the stone of the stairs as she rises, waving her hand as she explains that her friends followed her right into the world and its dangers. 'But really,' she says, laughing like it doesn't matter, like it's funny, 'they just came for the food.'
She doesn't realize how much time has passed until she feels something fall on her shoulder and roll down her back — cold and wet and fluid. There is rain slowly starting to pour over them, and Beatrice freezes, because she can already feel her mother's palm hitting her face when she'll find out she has ruined the dress she forced her to wear. She needs to find shelter before things get worse, before the world ends and Beatrice falls right back into Hell.
But Ava laughs, spreads her arms out and spins, her strange dress flowing around her.
"Rain!" She yells into the night. "Fucking rain!"
Beatrice doesn't even think about chastising her for her language, she just smiles as Ava whirls around the terrace, standing on her tip-toes, light and airy and wild. She watches and she wishes she were that free.
Then Ava twirls back to her, extends her hands.
"Come on!"
Beatrice's senses come back to her and she shakes her head.
"I don't dance."
"Everyone can dance, trust me, I was paralyzed for most of my life."
Beatrice purses her lips.
"Mother says it's unproper."
'For women to dance together,' she wants to add, but doesn't find the strength in herself to do so. She is an adult woman and yet she sounds like a child.
Ava pretends to look around, her hand shielding her eyes.
"I don't see her there."
And so Beatrice takes her outstretched hands in hers, kicks off her heels and laughs as Ava spins them around, light on her toes. Ava lets go of one of her hands, taking a few steps back to bow respectfully to her, bringing Beatrice hand to her lips to leave a feather-like kiss on her knuckles.
"Milady," she says, rising up with a teasing smile and Beatrice burns bright red even through the cold rain. "Will you do me the honor of granting me this dance?"
"Stop it," Beatrice hisses back, and Ava laughs.
She puts a hand on Beatrice's shoulder, leading hers onto her shoulder and keeping her other hand in hers, arms to the side. And they begin to dance. There is rhythm, no rules or custom, they just trip on each other's feet, laugh and stumble as they catch themselves to each other. Ava takes her hand off Beatrice's waist and makes her twirl while holding her arm out over her, and Beatrice just melts.
She forgot the taste of her own smile on her lips.
When Ava trips and swears and throws her arms around Beatrice shoulders, latching herself onto her body to keep herself upwards, she doesn't push her away. She blames the alcohol still in her system as she wraps an arm around her waist, laughing.
It's as she looks into Ava's doe eyes that the world explodes once again.
Because there are flakes of snow in her eyelashes and as Beatrice reaches out to take them off, she realizes that snow if falling onto them.
It’s June.
She shivers into the cold, watching as Ava's face looses her smile and her eyebrows knit together.
"Is it always this cold this time of the year?" She asks stupidly.
Ava looks at her with a nervous look in her eyes.
"English. This is New York. Not Washington."
Beatrice's teeth are clattering together now as Ava looks around and she feels her stomach drop, for some reason.
"Fuck," Ava says. "We gotta get you back inside."
She drags Beatrice to the glass door, trying to turn the handle and then muttering spells when it doesn't open.
"Fuck," Ava repeats. "Fuck. This is not good."
"Ava," Beatrice says.
"JC!" Ava yells, pounding her fist on the door. "JC, you fucker, open!"
"Ava."
"JC! Zori, Randall, Chanel! Need some help here!"
"Ava."
Finally, Ava turns to her and Beatrice raises a shaking hand to point a finger towards the park.
Figures covered in black are floating over them, riding the waves of freezing cold that is settling into their bones, dark capes drifting behind them.
"Fuck!" Ava says. "Fuck!"
Beatrice is frozen on the spot by both cold and fear as Ava grabs her by the arm and literally throws her behind her, placing herself in between the dementor and Beatrice as she raises her wand.
"Expecto Patronum!"
A ball of silver light shoots from her wand and barrels into the chest of the first dementor that flies away with a low shriek.
"Expecto Patronum!" Ava yells again as another takes its place, still trapping Beatrice in between her own body and the wall.
The light misses the dementor this time and Beatrice reaches out to put a hand on her back, muttering her name under her breath.
Ava stills for a second with Beatrice's hand between her shoulder blade, stuttering.
Ava is so warm the ice melts off of Beatrice's fingertips.
And so Beatrice finds the strength to raise her wand with a shaky hand and mutter the words: "Expecto Patronum."
A silver cat jumps from the stream of light and chases after the dementor, but Beatrice is too busy trying not to freeze to death to feel ashamed — 'It should have been a dragon, an Abraxan or at the very least a snake, not some ridiculous cat.'
The cat jumps gracefully around them, warding of the dementors as Ava gasps, looking at it with wonder and amazement in her eyes. It only lasts for a few seconds. One moment Beatrice is gathering all her energy into the spell, grasping for happy memories that she cannot find —the girl she's laughing with doesn't have Melanie's face anymore and she doesn't understand why —, the next she's falling, Ava calling her name in panic as she tries to catch her.
The floor is freezing cold under her bare back, and Beatrice can't even appreciate the sight of Ava looking over her, her name on her lips, as the dementors close in.
"Shit, fuck, shit!" Ava yells. "Stay with me, Beatrice, stay with me!"
She's terrified and she wants to cry, but her tears just turn into ice behind the barrier of her eyes. Ava puts a knee to the ground, next to her waist, and grips Beatrice's hand in hers, the other holding out her wand to the air as the dementor start circling over them.
"Please don't freak out," she whispers for Beatrice, before looking up at the sky. "Expecto Patronum!"
Light shoots out from her wand, flying up and charging towards the dementors.
It's a Thestral. Beatrice knows because she was the only twelve year old to scream and run and hide in her prefect's robe when she made her way back to the castle that second year. Because she's been drawing them inside her minds since that moment, remembering every angle of their skeletic forms. Because she's one with the Thestral and they are one with her and she has wished too many times to be one of them.
Ava screams as she holds out her wand in the air, directing the silver Thestral to chase after the dementors, still squeezing Beatrice's hand.
She's glowing, enveloped in a golden haze and Beatrice can only look, amazed and astonished as Ava yells her rage into the night and doesn't stop before all of the Dementors are gone. Only then does she falter and almost fall on Beatrice, blowing out an exhausted breath.
"I'm sorry," she whispers against Beatrice's cheek. "They were here for me."
A cry echoes around them and a boy falls from the first floor's window, followed by a few other young men and women.
"Help is on the way, dear!" He yells, raising his wand as they make their way to Ava and Beatrice has the feeling the phrase has a meaning she can't decipher.
"Ava!" Another says, dropping to his knees beside them. "Are you okay?"
"Stop fretting over her, pretty boy, she can take care of herself," someone says, and Beatrice recognizes the girl that gave her the Firewhisky.
"JC, about time," Ava groans, helping Beatrice sit up.
"The doors were locked from the inside, there was nothing we could do," the boy says, and he has dark hair and dark eyes that look over Ava, searching for wounds, before falling on Beatrice. "Hi. Do we know you?"
"Nah, look at her," another girl says. "She's from the Englishs."
"Zori, seriously," the girl with the model face says.
"What were you guys doing?" Ava says, a hand ghosting over Beatrice's hair, as if she is blindly trying to find injuries.
"Well," JC says, "we saw the stunt you pulled to get the girl out of here — impressive, by the way, I feel like a proud mama duck — and we thought you deserved a break with a pretty girl."
"The pretty girl would like to get up now, please," Beatrice says, and surprises herself at how firm her voice sounds, even after almost fainting because of Dementors.
Ava chuckles at JC's surprised face and they all rise to their feet, helping each others. Ava's knees almost give up under her and Beatrice and JC both reach out to help her at the same time — she hears the other boy (Randall?) sneering from a few steps away.
"What's going on here?!"
Beatrice feels a terrifying shiver going up her spine as wizards and witches exit the building onto the terrace to observe the disaster of melted ice left by the Dementors, her family all but charging towards them.
Ava must feel the waves of fright emanating from her as she steps up, and when she staggers, Beatrice lets JC catch her without moving a single finger.
"It was me, ma'am," she says, and all eyes turn on her. "Dementors came for us."
"Are you sure?" A man asks, and Beatrice recognizes the man with the graying beard and round glasses that was talking to her parents.
"Professor Vincent," Ava breathes out in relief. "Yes sir, Dementors just straight up spawned in the park and tried to suck out our souls or something."
"You need a soul for that," Randall chips in, and the tall girl (Chanel, Beatrice thinks) smacks him in the back of the head.
Professor Vincent shakes his head and Beatrice's heart thrums in her ears because she realizes Ava has no reason to be here and yet she is, yet she just told her her whole life story and Beatrice still didn't connect the dots.
"Ava Silva," he says, "you always find a way to get yourself in trouble."
Ava giggles.
"More like trouble finds me, sir."
"Ava Silva," Beatrice's mother repeats. "As in 'The New Areala'?"
Beatrice's stomach drops and she tightens her grip against her wand as Ava's face breaks for a second, showing an annoyed expression, before quickly hiding behind a polite smile.
"In the flesh, ma'am," she says.
"Ava," Professor Vincent says, frowning like Ava really shouldn't be calling her 'ma'am', "this Mr. and Mrs. Young from England, as well as their son and well— I believe you already met their daughter."
All eyes turn to Beatrice in her ridiculous dress, still drenched from head to toes with icy water, and she wants to dig a hole in the ground and bury herself here. Ava sends her a surprised look and they both think the same thing 'Well played, you got me here', before turning back to Beatrice's parents.
"Oh, right! Thank God your daughter was here, I would have been either frozen to death or turned into a soulless corpse if it wasn't for her!"
They all know it's a lie, but nobody is going to refute 'Areala''s words, after all. Her father frowns.
"But Beatrice doesn't have her—" He starts as Bernards pats his blazer to find her wand that Beatrice is tightly gripping, but her mother stops him, an iron hand on his arm.
"Oh. I found it on the ground," Ava says. "It must have fallen from her... Dress?"
Again, nobody believes it, but Ava's lies are too big to fight against.
"Alright, well, we better go. Let's go, Beatrice," she hisses at her daughter, and Beatrice hesitates for a quarter of a second.
Ava and her friends are all looking at her. 'Please,' she wants to scream. 'Please get me out of their claws. I won't survive this.'
"Beatrice," her father repeats, and Beatrice puts her weapons down.
She walks up to them, eyes lowered to the ground not to see the look of pity on Ava's face and to blink away the tears that threaten to spill.
She feels warmth on her skin as she passes in front of Ava, but it's gone the next step.
She does get slapped for ruining the dress and embarassing the family and smelling faintly of alcohol and she gets sent to her room like a disobeying child. She cries as she takes off her dress, but smiles when she finds a tiny piece of napkin tucked into her sleeve, with a little smiley face drawn on it.