Magical We

On an immodest estate inside the county of Derbyshire, very near the country village of Bakewell, an old grey stone manor scowled out at the soft-ceiled night and its undulating pastures painted all shades of indigo shadow. It glowered through a single lead-paned window on its third floor.

And like a slit pupil possessed by a tick, a man dressed imperiously in black cut a pendulous sliver as he paced before the broiling hearth. He was a young man, proud-looking, with sharp eyes the color of wet sapphires and hair as bright-burning as the firelight. His dress was most unusual for a modern man of the twenty-first century.

But then, he was not a modern man.

He kept his long, pale hands clasped loosely behind his back as he paced.

“General Hux,” an anxious but chipper voice piped suddenly through the brilliant crack-hiss of the fire.

The General’s dark, elegant robes hushed softly as he executed a swift one-quarter turn on the heels of his polished dark boots and regarded the grate.

Behind his breast, his heart began to pound.

“Ah, Mister Weasley. At last,” the face in the fire grate flinched at the severity of his tone, “I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten our appointment.”

“No, not at all General, no no, I- the thing of it is- Well. You’d better see for yourself, hadn’t you?” Mister Weasley’s apparition shifted to avoid his eyes as it chuckled.

The man was notoriously apprehensive of Deatheaters, and the General was reputed to be the deadliest of them all.

“Had I? Well then,” he reached delicately into the fine canister upon the mantle for a pinch of floo powder, “Let us not delay.”

The apparition tried for a cheerful smile and did not succeed. “Right, yes- let us not…”

Green light burst forth from the fireplace, casting an eerie, ghostly aura through the lead-paned window onto the lawn below as the young General tossed his hand at the flames.

He stepped swiftly through the portal.

“You- you see, son - er, sir. It’s just that-” Weasley was scurrying along to keep time with the General’s much longer, more graceful gait.

The alley they were following belonged to a muggle neighborhood, some grubbly little urban town south of London where its inhabitants sheltered under shopping trolleys and huddled near bin-fires and where hardy weeds and the butts of cigarettes collected in the cracks of the streets and cement walkways lined by graffitied, falling down chain link fence. It was well past midnight, the fetid air was hung thick with the stench of urine and smoldering rubbish and black tar and human despair. The only sources of light were the pale wreaths of mournful glow from the disparate street lamps and from the lantern Weasley carried by hand.

There were no stars.

The General’s lip curled as the other man continued to ramble like some lunatic breeder make excuses for a poorly kept kennel.

“The girl, that is to say your intended, she- Well you see her kin are- they’re rather not, erm-” Weasley halted them abruptly before a cut-out, misaligned gate in the row of chain link, above which hung a sign:

Plutt’s Garage and Salvage Yard

“They’re a bit below par. Even for muggles,” the muggle curator finished by indicating a small space between ruddy thumb and forefinger. He rallied, “But I daresay you’ll find her quite up to snuff.”

He winced at his own choice of words.

The General grasped his lapel with his leather gloved hand and reviled at the state of the yard beyond the gate. This was the home of his bride? He could not imagine what kind of revolting creature lie beyond the gate that he of all men should marry.

By the gods-

“Surely you’re joking. She cannot live here-”

“Oh yes, no yes, she does! She very much does,” Weasley nodded emphatically, making the lantern creak.

Down the street, a muggle near her trolley let out a vicious cough.

The General sneered.

“The Sorting Hat was very specific, you see. Very, very particular about the uh-” he couldn’t quite bring himself to say, couples. “- the matches. It’s all a bit clandestine, I know. But she’s a very sweet girl. Very agreeable, from what I’ve observed. I’m sure that in time…” he trailed off.

Through the mottled chain link, the General peered closely at the garage’s façade.

What sort of animal raises a child here?

He lilted his chin imperiously. “I will not sign the contract until I’ve inspected the girl. I reserve my right to refuse her.”

“Yes yes yes, of course, yes yes!” Weasley fumbled within the layers of his peculiar clothes until at last he produced his wand. “You should see, you won’t be disappointed. Oh, no no no. The hat is never wrong-”

He looked over both shoulders at the muggles scattered like driftwood about the street before he charmed open the lock with a subtle, gentle flick of his wrist. Then as if remembering something, he glanced sheepishly up at the General. “She, ah, she won’t know who you are. Or that is to say, even what you are-”

“How would she?” the General spared him a credulous snort before stepping soundlessly through the grating steel gate into the salvage yard.

He flowed like a wraith over the crackled uneven pavement, the trail of his rich black robes a false shadow in his wake. What little wan light washing from the street lamps gleamed against the hardness of his cold eyes and glinted when it caught on his hair turned the color of blood by darkness.

Oh yes, he was a Deatheater. And a gruesome sight to behold.

As he sieved through the shadows, he observed all around him the unkempt heaps of rubber wheels and automobile parts, as well as several large, dangerous-looking pieces of machinery that were well worn and metal waste piled two-men high. The garage itself was small with many broken windows boarded over with lap, some of which that had begun to rot.

Midway through, he noticed he was yet unaccompanied and turned.

The muggle lover was still hovering about entrance with his lantern, watching outward with soft, sentimental eyes the muggles that paid him no-never-mind strewn like scattered scraps of parchment along the street.

Foolish man.

“Weasley,” he called, quiet but severe, “aren’t you coming?”

He gestured at the garage.

“No no, sir!” Weasley lifted the lantern higher, casting his face in dramatic shapes of dark and light. “I cannot pass beyond this point. The wards that protect the um-”

Brides.

“- the girls, you see, they’re quite ironclad.” He demonstrated by stepping forward, only to be held back by a ripple in the air. “Very old magic. Only the- well, the uh-”

Grooms.

“Only you may enter from this point on.”

Only I.

The General felt the burden of that mantle – that obligation – drape heavily across his shoulders.

High decree of the Ministry, indeed, he thought bitterly as he resumed through the assorted towering heaps of rubbish. How Albus must be cawing to himself even now-

The mark on his forearm throbbed hatefully as wandlessly, he charmed himself into the garage.

A quick assessment of its layout told him his beloved would be living upstairs, above the rusted bays. He eyed the decrepit, rotted staircase and mold-stained walls and ground his teeth.

Oh yes, he had no doubt Dumbledore had made this match to adjudge him. It was disgraceful enough that a mudblood child-wife should be foisted upon him, but that she should come from such squalor was an insult beyond-

“Oh,” he breathed ineloquently. As time itself stopped.

Indeed, the very Earth he stood upon ceased to spin.

For he had reached the small room at the top of the stairs. And there-

There was a large, fat man snoring heinously on a single, somewhat clean cot. And a tiny, sooty corner piled with a nest of rags, on which slept-

The loveliest living china doll in all the world.

Gods help me.

She was… perfection. Beauty, innocent and sweet. Her magic was fragile, tender and feminine. It beckoned him, and like a soul to the Veil of Mysteries, he went.

“Hello, sweet one,” he whispered kneeling, not caring if the wax-like layer of black filth on the floor sullied his suit pants beneath his robes.

They pooled black velvet around him as reverently staring he nipped off his gloves. He shifted soundlessly, breathlessly over her.

She could be no more than six years old.

It was not carnality that swelled his chest to aching and made his mark burn and his blood rush ravening around his heart. No, it was an even more mystifying, horrifying emotion that overwhelmed him as he gathered her fragile wrists in his warm hands, being delicate with her brittle bones. And as he studied her soft-sleeping face in the near lightlessness until he was sure it was engraved in his soul.

It was tenderness.

A dark love-flower blooming in the still, gloomy night.

For calamity, there go I.

“My my, aren’t you a lovely little surprise?” gingerly, he lifted her into his arm.

Her slightness disturbed him. He kissed her ruddy cheek and coaxed her matted hair behind her ear as adoringly as if it was a silken curl.

Even now, as she slept deeply, her magic hummed to his. Souls twining in a dance that transcended birth and circumstance.

Belonging.

She was his.

Mister Weasley’s eyes were growing larger and larger alongside his alarm for every sure stride the General took towards him away from the garage.

“Ah, I wait, sir- General! You, now you mustn’t-” he held out his arms at his sides and flapped them like a great stupid bird, making the lantern bob its light, “I must ask what you think you’re doing, sir!”

The General stepped smoothly around him without a second glance. “Taking my wife to her new home.”

“You- you cannot simply take her! The Ministry mandates that you- General, the yard!”

“None of that is my concern,” the General said coolly as he made his way to a subtle spot down the walkway.

He stopped and refolded his robes around the small sleeping bundle in his arms as he prepared to Apparate, taking extra care with her tiny, bone-thin hands. His marked seared painfully, a warning that he was too close to one with impurity.

He ignored it as he crooned, “There we are, fingers nicely tucked now. We don’t want lose any, do we?” he chuckled, “Heavens no…”

Around them, though they remained unnoticed, the muggles laid about the street were beginning to rouse. Drawn to the flashes of roaring flame like moths to a fire, they shambled themselves and their trolleys up to peer through the chain link at the garage he had set ablaze.

Weasley had dropped his lantern and was waving his wand frantically, futilely, to save the salvage yard.

“We’ll get you all tidied up, and then you may have a treat. Would you like that, little dove? Yes,” he smiled, watching the flames lap higher as they consumed garage. Their light danced on the surface of his cold, damned eyes before he and his bride winked out of the night.

“Professor Dumbledore…” poor, dear, frazzled Arthur stood in the Headmaster’s study with wand in hand. A length of rosewood with a pegasus’ tail core, he turned it round and round again.

The Headmaster smiled kindly over the rim of his half-moon glasses. “My dear boy, won’t you sit down?”

Arthur grasped the low back of the tufted leather chair instead. “It’s just that I-I-I feel that we’ve made a grave mistake-”

“Lemon drop?” the Headmaster offered him the crystal dish.

“No, no thank you,” Arthur stumbled, then recovered, “he is a monster, and we- she is- this could go very wrong, don’t you see?”

“Mm,” the Headmaster fished intently through the bowl, “I rather prefer the littler ones, myself…”

“Sir!” Arthur balked.

“I was speaking of the candies, of course,” the Headmaster rasped patiently as he sat back and folded his hands. Though his expression was placid, benign even, there was a quicksilver flash across his eyes behind his half-moon glasses.

“Please do not worry yourself, Arthur,” again, he smiled, “All will be well. General Armitage Brendol Hux will sooner cut out his own Dark Mark than harm that girl,” as if batting away a compliment, he waved his hand, “but those are things yet to pass-”

“Professor?”

“Suffice it to say, she is in good hands,” Albus stood.

It was far smoother a gesture than a man his age should be capable of.

He extended the candy dish again. His eyes danced with secret futures waiting to unfurl.

“Come now, Arthur, as the muggles say. One for the road.”

Five years later... 

Rey’s heart skitter-pattered. She braced her foot on the little bottom lip of her luggage trolley and for the one jillionth time, tipped her chin and lifted her hand to check her emerald green bow.

It was still lofted, large and sweet as kitten ears above her ponytail, the soft ends of which flickered over her shoulder as she looked back and piped, “Rose-eee! Hurry up!”

Her best friend forever gripped her own trolley and kicked her patent mary janes against the smooth cobblestone to make double-time across the platform.

The cart juddered loudly, drawing even more attention from the muggles as Rosie skidded to a landing that jolted Rey’s trolley and upset her rainbow leopard bags with the pink sparkle spots. Tucked on its perch inside its cage, Rosie’s horned owl screeched.

“Watch it!” Rey shrieked.

Rosie scrunched her shoulders to her ears and squinched her eyes. “Sorry…”

Rey fumed as she reached over both their carts and fussed Rosie’s pink silk ribbons delicately back to the front of her glossy curled pigtails.

There, now they looked like prissy-dolls.

“Honessly,” she seethed, “I dunno why you have to be late for everythin. We’re goin’ to miss our husbands-”

“You were the one who said Madam Beaux woudden leave us!” Rosie accused with a firm flap of her finger over her cart. “And you took forevah to fix your stupid hair!”

“S’not stupid!” Rey shot back, “You’re mean!”

Both their flushed, rounded cheeks sparkled with fine flecks of silver glitter below the grey London morning wafting in gently beneath the portico as they faced off. They were dressed up like Miss Americas in their favorite tea dresses; Rey’s green with a sweetheart neckline, Rosie’s white with pink flowers. They’d spent a century rolling their tube socks just right to stuff their bras they nicked from the big girls. It took Rey forever to find a green one to pinch.

Rey always wore green. And black. And silver.

She heard they were the colors her fiancé liked.

“Am not,” Rosie mumbled. She was always the first to back down. It was one of the many reasons Rey picked her to be best friends. “Your hair doesn’t look stupid.”

Rey turned her head and pouted out at the platform. She was ‘stremely sensitive about her stupid mouse-brown hair color; Madam Beaux wouldn’t let her dye it blonde like it should be.

Fascist.

“I promise, it looks so pretty,” Rosie finally offered, “loads prettier than mine.”

Rey sniffed haughtily and picked at her soft-curled ends.

“No issn’t,” she decided to be sporting. Her tummy was tingling madly, both she and Rosie were on high alert. Not just because today would be their first time to Platform nine-and-three-quarters, or because they were finally going to be real witches now.

It was because they hoping to run into their husbands.

Rey peeped owlishly all around the platform, trying to look without looking like she was looking, her trolley in a death grip as she conceded a bit mournfully to Rosie, “Prolly we shouldn’t have gotten separated from Madam Beaux…”

“Young ladies,” a man’s deep, formal voice drifted coolly over the pair of them.

It made her belly prickle more and float down to her feet as she looked back.

Looming over them was quite possibly the most dangerous-looking wizard she’d ever seen in her life. Towering, slender, and totally unhandsome. Dressed up like a real-life Mister Darcy from the muggle movies she and Rosie sneak-watched. His hair was severely styled and obnoxiously ginger, his cheek were gaunt and sharp enough to cut glass. His mouth was long like all the rest of his features, red and wet just at its seam. And his eyes-

They were terrifying. Blue and electric and nearly see-through. Like the ocean struck by lightning. Too, too bright.

She felt she was burning up by looking into them. Her heart flip-flapped, she felt a clinch in the little gap between her thighs that made her flush and bite her lip without meaning to.

She lowered her eyes and prayed to all the gods and goddesses she knew he’d go away.

His expensive shoes stepped forward instead.

“If we do not get a move on-”

Whoa his voice scared her, like a Dementor roiling softly up from sparkling black pavement on a moonless night to kiss her. Like she was breaking a rule just by standing still.

“- both of you shall miss your train.”

“ ‘scuse you,” she piped back with as much attitude as she could muster. Next to her, Rosie gasped.

“We’re waiting for our fiancés,” she informed his silver filigree buttons primly.

“Rey!” Rosie hissed, slapping at her arm.

For some reason that made her feel a little bolder. So what if she was sassing at his chest and not his face?

“Shove off,” she told him. Ha! Suck on that.

She saw just the corner of his lips twitch up as he folded those long, scary hands behind his back. “My my, what an insolent little mouth you have, child.”

His mouth disappeared from her periphery as he lilted his chin. “And pray, what might his name be, this… fiancé of yours?”

“Chht,” furious, chest burning, she swished her ponytail back over her shoulder and dared herself to glance him in the eye.

It made her thighs clench again and her heart race in a way she didden know if she liked.

“I don’t see how thass any of your business, you foul-”

“Rey!”

Oh shit.

It was Madam Beaux back from the platform standing straight in front of their trolleys, her pretty painted nails digging into her palms inside her ostrich feather cuffs. A beautiful grown up lady with hairstyles as pretty and meticulous as her girls’, Madam Beaux’s normally cool, remote eyes were sparking murder. All the color beneath her makeup had drained off her face.

She trembled up at the wizard Rey had sassed. “Monsieur Hux-”

She curtsied deeply. “Pardon, pleaz. I do not know what ‘az gotten into zem-”

Wait, Monsieur what-

The wizard inclined his head, “Not at all, Madam.”

Rey’s heart pounded. The man seemed to tower over her ten feet as all the fear she could ever feel in a lifetime poured colder than ice into her gut.

She gulped. “Mister Hu-Hux? My Mister Hux?”

At platform eight, a steam train whoo-whooed as it was pulling out of the station.

Her soul was pulling out of her body too, as he took her small, shivering hand from the trolley cart into his big one and bowed like a gentleman.

Shit double-shit fuck-

When their eyes were close and level, he paused and kissed her hand.

“In the flesh.”