Getting to know Verlaine
Dazai couldn’t help but to double over laughing. The ginger, as his dog for a year? Really?
“Are you serious?...” The boy wheezed. This was actually turning quite amusing.
“Very serious. Me and mori made up a plan. Considering how you look, with the, bandages… and stuff. Most people would think you’re some kind of troublesome traumatized child. So, Chuuya, being an animagus, could act as a service dog for you to clear up suspicion. And you’d be the first real transfer student Hogwarts has ever accepted. Sending Chuuya as another would wake suspicion, while the first transfer student having a service animal may not be the most usual thing, it’s better than the latter suggestion. Plus, I want Chuuya to learn to like his cool little quirks.
I’m a squib. So it kind of pisses me off to see Chuuya be so ungrateful for his powers. There are only four registered animagi, did you know that? It’s honestly a miracle he’s been able to achieve that." Verlaine explained, scoffing while looking at the sleeping form to his side.
“What’s a squib?” Dazai tilted his dead with curiosity, pulling himself together from his loud laughing fit.
“Ah, yes, of course, you don’t know, I forgot. It’s someone born into a magical family, or with at least one parent who can wield magic or has magical talents, who despite that fact doesn’t develop the ability to use magic themselves.” The man clarified. “Quite rare. I guess I was just unlucky.”
“Oh. So you cannot use any magic?”
“Unfortunately.” Verlaine sighed with a faint smile on his lips.
“And an animagus is?...” Dazai raised an eyebrow, while the name was a little explanatory, it’d be nice to have a good definition. If it was so incredibly rare that there were only 4 of them registered.
“The animagus spell is a spell that allows someone to turn into an animal, it’s very difficult and dangerous to learn, and it can easily be used for illegal purposes, so if you’ve conquered the spell you need to be registered to your countries Ministry of Magic. Though, Chuuya isn’t registered, which you could’ve guessed, if he was, he’d be world known and famous. ‘The eleven-year-old boy who mastered the animagus spell’! yeah, no, it’s much better this way. He just needs to be a bit secretive about it and everything will be fine.”
“So, it’s a very hard spell to master?”
“Very. Chuuya first heard of it when he was seven, he was amazed and begged me to hire him a tutor to teach him.” Verlaine says with an amused, soft, and delighted expression, like he’s having wholesome and warm flashbacks.
“Can imagine that…” Dazai huffed, thinking back to the airport and the tax free. The yelling, screaming, punching, kicking, and pushing. God, the second-hand embarrassment he had felt.
“Yes, he burned a week’s worth of some important paperwork I had finished, and he destroyed 5 of my expensive watches when I told him no the first time. Very persuasive, he truly has his methods to get what he wants, indeed. Arthur was not happy with him at all. I didn’t mind though, it’s nice to see him so eager to get his own way, so strong minded.” The blonde chuckled resting his head in his palm and leaning his elbow on the armrest to his seat.
Arthur? Who was that? A friend? Or was Arthur Verlaine’s husband that he had heard about? “I’m sorry, who’s Arthur?” Dazai asked with a puzzled expression.
“Ah yes, no worries, he’s my husband, Arthur Rimbaud. He’s going to stay with us so hopefully you’ll get to know him before you go to Hogwarts. He’s just taking another flight; he had some work he had to do so he couldn’t come along to Japan to pick you up. He’s a very nice man though, you’d like him.” Verlaine said with a smile, a smile that made it cleared that he loved that man. It made Dazai feel both sick to the core and strangely enough, happy. A weird kind of happy, he was happy for the guy and not for himself it seemed. He wasn’t sure, he had never felt this before from what he could remember.
“Ah, I’ll look forward to finally meet him in that case, he sounds like a lovely person.” Dazai replied with a smile, it wasn’t a genuine smile. While he did feel a bit happy, it wasn’t enough for him to bring him to crack a real smile because of it.
“Oh, he is.” Verlaine said, his eyes sparkling. People in love always looked so happy, so enchanted when they spoke about their significant other.
Would Dazai ever get to feel that? Would Dazai’s eyes shine so bright, would he be so lost in the clouds, thinking about the person he’d love when he got older? To be frank, no. He didn’t think he would. Love wasn’t something Dazai understood. He knew the definition, he knew how people described how it would feel like to be in love, he knew what and how you would think when you we’re in love. And Dazai had never experienced that. Well, he was but a small child, eleven years old. Most eleven-year-olds don’t find their true love at that time of life. So maybe Dazai would find something like that later on in life, if he lived long enough that was.
He listened to Verlaine as the man began talking about experiences he’d had with his lover. A trip in Madrid, their honeymoon, something about Hawaii, cafés in Paris, so many things. He talked about how beautiful the man was. His long dark extravagant locks. How the man always seemed to be freezing, which in reality didn’t seem that romantic as Verlaine explained and ranted about, more like him being in a constant state of having chills, which maybe could be something he should get checked and looked at by a doctor.
“You must be very happy together. That’s nice, seem like you really love each other.” Dazai kept that smile on. In all honesty, the rant was starting to get quite annoying. Listening to how someone explained how wonderful his life was, with a husband who he loved so incredibly dearly. All their little dates they’d been on, admiring and loving each other. How he was so happy. How he had everything.
“Yeah” The man smiled. And that awfully long rant was over. “Now, you should take a nap. Still a long way to London.” He gave Dazai’s shoulder a quick pat and leaned back into his seat with a sigh, closing his eyes and pulling down his hat over his face. “I’m starting to get nauseous again, so I’m gonna try and sleep it off.”
God, The French were strange.