for the stars { a n n e }

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Anne had changed from her white summer lace into an outfit that was rather warmer and more suited to tramping around outdoors. It was a bit of a pity that her sweater was so bright, but it was the summer and the Dutch girl had rather expected it to be warm, especially considering that they were further south. On second thought, she pulled out her wand and tapped her boots. It was a special charm she'd learned in order to make less noise in Chatoeil while she was passing through the museum--as a volunteer she felt she really shouldn't make so much noise--and typically it muffled, although not completely, the clacking of her heel on hard flooring. It might come in handy as they were moving through the house.

She'd turned off her light some time ago to feign sleep, knowing that it would show through the cracks and potentially raise the suspicion of the Bellefeuille next door. A muted wand-lighting charm kept the words of Anne Sayre, a close friend of Rosalind Franklin, illuminated; the book had been published about a year ago, but Anne's reading list was rather large and it took some time to reach new books. Getting lost in the book, she started a little bit when her light spilled out of the confines of the room. "Nox!" she muttered as quietly as possible, plunging them into darkness. "Yes," she whispered back, and tiptoed to where she'd heard the sound coming from.

Anne reached out cautiously, searching for the door. She brushed what must have been his shirt or robe first, her hand retreating in surprise. "Sorry, I thought you only opened a crack," she whispered, politeness winning out over silence until she followed him up the stairs. Feeling slightly safer in the attic, she looked toward the window, where the light of a waning crescent reached tentatively inside. "After you?"

Remi adjusted his backpack straps, loosening them a little so that he could move more freely. He tensed as he felt her touch the front of his clothes, but he stayed perfectly still. “No it’s good,” he said, then corrected - “it’s fine.” Rémi nodded in the dark, not sure if she could see or not, then started moving back out and up the stairs. His chest was still tingling where she’d made contact with his shirt. Weird. The pair moved up into his room and once Anne was inside, Remi relaxed a little. Up here it seemed a little more safe. “You’re fine with heights, right?” He asked, moving to the window where he began to lower a thin piece of purple string to the ground. When he was satisfied, he whispered patefio.

The string somehow stretched and unfolded before them, opening up into a thin wooden ladder, purple just like the string had been. It didn’t sway at all when he nudged it. “It’s safe,” he said in what he hoped was a reassuring voice. Rémi had scaled this so many times by now that it felt like second nature, but he did realise that Anne might not feel the same sense of security. The Ombrelune was quick and he got to the ground swiftly where he waited for his friend. After he silently collapsed the ladder again, he coiled the string up and tucked it into his backpack. “Isn’t it the best?” He asked softly as he started to walk in the direction of town. “It’s a variation on this weird sword my dad brought back from Poland once. It opened and closed on demand.”

When they were a little bit further from the house, Rémi started feeling a lot more comfortable and it showed in the bounce in his step and the cheeky sort of glint in his eye reserved for friends.

Anne's eyes adjusted to the conditions of low light and she watched the string lower to the ground and leaned forward in interests as it turned into a wooden ladder. "Fascinating material transformation," she whispered, still wary of being found out by @Emma Archambault or her mother. For some reason, she thought that it would be less problematic if Rémi's father found them instead. It was probably misplaced; she was more concerned about what his father thought of her, even though she thought he must be at least somewhat understanding of Rémi's tendencies. "Or is it still wood in string form, just fine and flexible?"

She followed him down the ladder, stepping securely with each step. Anne had an excellent sense of balance as an ice skater, so she wasn't too concerned about it. She was rather more concerned about splinters, but she was sure that such a thing would be accounted for in a charmed object. "Did you or your dad charm it, then, or did he find this in a similar place?" she returned quietly. Now she wasn't as worried about being found out, but more about breaking the peaceful silence that seemed to lay over the area.

Rémi also seemed more relaxed suddenly, and Anne gave a smile almost approaching a grin. "Where to?"

“It’s still in string form but feel it,” Rémi muttered on his way down. “It feels just like wood.”

Rémi liked that she asked these sorts of questions. He saved his second answer for when they’d started moving away from the house a bit so that he could be a bit less tense.  “We worked on it together,” Rémi said with a smile. His summers used to be all about things like that - playing with spells, crafting magic. Playing with dangerous items. His father had never really been for or against different types of magic (dark, light etc.) so they’d experimented with all kinds of things. Jonghyun had always prioritised teaching and learning over things like schoolwork and exams. He’d encouraged Rémi a lot when he was a kid.

Now that Emma and (ew) Amélie lived with them, Jonghyun had less time for him. Rémi mucked around with magical items on his own, in between listening to angst alt-rock and doing angry sort of push ups. “Lumos,” he said, brandishing his wand just a touch. As they walked along the road, his house vanished into the distance behind them in a sea of trees. “We’re just following this path into the city,” he said, “It’s not too far. It’s really something at night,” he promised, smiling back at her in his lazy sort of way. Getting out of the house was one thing, but doing it with Anne, the girl he could probably say was his best friend, was something else. More devious, he thought. More exciting. "Excited about school going back?" he asked.

"Neat," she said genuinely and appreciatively, running her fingers over it. Turning in Rémi's direction as he explained how they'd worked on it together, she smiled. A wistful expression stole over Anne's face. It wasn't exactly that her parents discouraged her interests. After all, Rebekka Rietveld was a former Ombrelune herself and a tutor, and she encouraged scholarship. But with her younger brothers and of course her mother's clients, her own passions tended to be put aside. She would have said something to that effect, but she didn't want to make Rémi feel worse about the situation with his father. "I'd love to try something like this," she settled for saying. "Maybe we can come up with a project at school this year." Anne had her strengths and weakness when it came to this kind of magic, but she was good with Transfiguration.

She raised her hand for a moment as her eyes adjusted to his wandlight. Looking beyond it, she took in their surroundings. The thin crescent moon hung low above the black treetops in the cloud of twinkling stars that adorned the deep night sky. A faint breeze ruffled their silhouettes, leaves gently waving against the blue-black night. The trees muffled sounds around them, so she mostly heard the sound of their feet on the dirt below, hers especially quiet due to the charm she'd placed, though it was starting to wear off; but the evening chirping of crickets provided a sort of music. The pool of wandlight shone on the low-growing heather nearer to the road. Anne didn't love the outdoors, especially not in the summer, but she found the moment stirring. Right now, outdoors meant freedom for the two of them.

"Well, you know how I feel about summer," she laughed lightly. Anne preferred the winter, and school starting meant fall and the end of the hot season. "My brother is coming this year," she said thoughtfully. "But mostly I'm looking forward to being able to learn more." Anne always had to put things on hold during the summer because of responsibilities at home. She had more to worry about than her own affairs.

Rémi nodded. "We can do something. I have a few notebooks filled with ideas, you know, things that we could work on... maybe even try to come up with our own charm or spell or something." It wasn't impossible. Rémi was sure that between the two of them, he and Anne possessed more brains than most of the older students in their school. Most new spells and charms and things were brought about by adult witches and wizards, and most of them were ministry funded, but that didn't mean anything to Rémi. A part of him like the subversive nature of the whole thing.

He thought about her comment on the weather for perhaps longer than he needed to. His dark eyes were fixed up at the crescent moon, and the way the light shone down on them, catching on the upturned faces of the leaves of the trees. Rémi could make out stars, some twinkling (he noted one particularly bright one and was sure it wasn't a star at all, but Jupiter) and some seeming to just glow in the inky sky. The night was clear. Perfect for star-gazing.

"I don't think it's been too warm," he said vaguely. Rémi didn't really noticed the temperature changes too much, he thought. He didn't have a very strong preference for warmer or cooler weather. Obviously, extremes on either end were annoying, but his range of acceptable was probably wider than most. "I forgot about Andries," Rémi admitted with a slight shrug. He wondered what life was like when you had a younger sibling. "But look, here we are..." The boy gestured forward with the hand that wasn't holding his wand. Ahead, the pair could make out a reflective object, shooting back glittery reflections of his own wandlight. As they got a little closer, it was obvious that the object was a life-sized glass statue of two dancers circling each other closely. The artistry was quite impressive; their faces and bodies were beautiful and their clothes were streams that flowed gently over their glass bodies.

Anne smiled, though she was sure it was nearly invisible in the darkness since his wand was pointing the other direction. Ombrelunes were supposed to be ambitious, but Anne liked their brand of ambition better than that of some of her housemates, like Kravets or Lorenzo. They were certainly more straightforward about things than some of their peers. Anne was not as outspoken as Rémi was, but that was out of politeness and reserve and perhaps slightly more conventionality than out of manipulative or deceptive tendencies. It made it easy to cut away all of the posturing and second-guesssing that it came with and focus on what was important.

"It's warmer here than in Franeker, you're used to it," she murmured, not expecting a response. "You won't see him much, he's almost certain to be sorted into Bellefeuille. I'll have to look out for him a little, though." Anne was dedicated to her brothers. She knew they didn't perceive her as the sympathetic older sister they might have wished for, but she knew that they knew she would be there if they needed her, despite how glad she was to be having a break from looking after them for these few days.

Pulling herself back into the moment, she followed the line of his hand to the statue in front. Her intake of breath broke the small quiet of the light. "It's beautiful," she said quietly, adding her own wandlight to his to add to the reflections and walking in a slow semicircle around the dancers to appreciate them from all angles. For all her interest in the objective, Anne couldn't help but love the beautiful. Her talents didn't lie so much in creation, though. On the opposite side of the statue, she turned around to look down the gently lit street lined with stone buildings. A light kindled in her amber eyes at the sight of the old village and the glass of the windows and she took a few steps down before turning back to wait for her friend. "It's in such good condition," she said happily. "And I've never seen Breton slate roofing like this before."

Rémi didn't have any siblings (Emma crossed his mind at this thought and was quickly shooed away), but he wondered what it would be like to wait for them at school or predict what houses they'd fall into. He had cousins in Korea who spoke Japanese and went to a different magical institute, but it wasn't the same. The teenager silently imagined what his childhood might have been like with brothers or sisters. "You think so?" Rémi asked, wondering why she felt like she had to look out for him. No one had looked out for her, right? No one had looked out for him either, and he'd turned out just fine. A small voice in his head questioned whether onlookers would agree with that sentiment. Some might disapprove of his attendance record and wildly fluctuating grades. Rémi loved learning, but he really did hate school.

"Yeah," he agreed simply, watching her rather than the statues as she shone her wand at them. Little colourful reflections played over her skin like twinkling stars, matching the sky above them. The pair were moving out of the forested area now, but he could still hear the rustling of the trees and the occasional scuffle of something small moving through the night. It smelled like forest, rather than city. Rémi glanced up again, intentionally stopping himself from watching his friend. The moon was obscured by the trees now but he could still make out Jupiter. The Ombrelune thought about star signs and divination and he wondered how anyone was supposed to divine anything through the stars when everything was in motion all of the time. His dark gaze fell back down to Anne's back.

Adjusting his backpack, Rémi sped up a little to fall into step with her. His legs were much longer than hers so it only took a couple of strides to catch up. "Roofing," he said, shaking his head a little. As someone with a lot of very particular interests himself, Rémi understood and empathised with her enthusiasm. Still, he couldn't help but tease her just a touch. "C'mon, the town centre is much more exciting," he said softly, very aware that they were surrounded by houses full of sleeping people right now.

Anne shrugged. "I'm used to it and so are they. Whether they like it or not," she gave a small laugh. "Andries isn't very invested in school; he'll fall through the cracks if no one's looking. He wants to take on the farm like Papa, he takes after him." Anne didn't have a problem with that, but she didn't want him to suffer, and he would if he didn't learn anything at all. "Arthur will be worse, though. His head is completely in the clouds." Arthur was the odd one out in the family; not gifted with his hands like Andries and Papa, not invested in knowledge like her and Mama. He was sensitive; hopefully he would be able to channel it into something practical.

Anne's smiles didn't often show her teeth, but there were more of them when she was around Rémi, the other boy being more in tune with her than most people. Anne wasn't ashamed of her interests, but not everyone was as good-natured in their reactions. "Breton slate covers the Sorbonne, but I think it's only here that the steep slate roofs are an architectural phenomenon. It helps in the preservation of such an old town." Following his lead in volume and direction, Anne looked down, noticing that her muffling charm was starting to wear off, the heels of her boots on the cobblestone suddenly sounding like gunshots to her ears. Walking down the street until they reached one house with a light on upstairs, she recast it, then caught up to him.

"Note the interesting transition between Gothic vitrails and Renaissance between these two buildings," she said in a muted version of her best docent voice, gesturing with a laugh to show she wasn't seriously intending on making this a lecture about their surroundings, even though her eyes shone as they passed over the buildings. Before long, they reached a large center square littered with glass sculptures; the central one was a gleaming fountain lit from below, water spraying above. Approaching it, she jumped on a bench, perching on the top of it, eyes tilted to regard the play of water and light and crystal. "How often do you come to town?" she asked curiously.

The teenager listened to his friend speak with mild interest. Architecture wasn't really his thing, but he appreciated that it was hers. "What about magic?" he asked, genuinely curious, "can't they just preserve everything with magic?" Rémi was of the firm belief that magic could solve all problems. If it didn't already solve a problem, then it was because of the wizards and witches who'd failed to really push the limitations of what magic could do. Experimental magic was really his favourite thing. He was subscribed to several magazines that talked about the fringes of spell-creation and new magics.

Rémi slowed to let her catch up with him. "Thank you tour guide," Rémi quipped in his best enthusiastic-tourist voice, "I almost missed the Gothic vitrails transitions" the teenager shot her a look and a half smile.

"Lately? A lot," Rémi said. He wasn't sure if she was asking how often he came here in general, or how often he'd been coming here recently. He answered the latter. Rémi had been sneaking out a lot at night. He couldn't really stand being cooped up in the attic all the time, but he was even more reluctant to go downstairs and get roped into some horrific family bonding activity. Dropping his backpack lightly on the ground, the teenager moved towards the fountain. He sat himself down on the edge of the thing, dipping his fingers into the cool water. If she was here longer, Rémi would want to show her the river he'd learned to swim in. It wasn't too far away from here.

When Jonghyun had taken them all to the river for a picnic, Rémi had spent the afternoon angrily skipping rocks in the water and pretending he couldn't understand Amelie's accent and nodding stiffly whenever Jonghyun ended a sentence with isn't that right, Rémi? The teenager had always enjoyed swimming, so he'd ended up escaping by swimming out into one of the larger pools of water and spending time out in the water away from Emma and her mother.

"It's warm enough to swim in," he commented, glancing back up at her. The glittery light played over her features in the most interesting way. Her hair fluttered gently, the movement of the water causing a spray-breeze in her direction.

Anne tilted her head, considering. "Some of the magic lasts a long time. Especially runic magic--I should know more about the theory behind that, but I believe the enchantments used on the Pyramids at Giza are very long-lasting. But I suspect the average wizard doesn't quite have the capacity to cast preservation spells that will last centuries." Anne could already imagine the challenging look in Rémi's dark eyes, rising in response. He always wanted to push the boundaries. "Besides. If you make a stack of books this high that won't hold up on its own," she placed her hand at thigh level, "and you lock it in place with magic, wouldn't it have been more impressive if you'd stacked them perfectly in the first place, and used the magic to levitate them or spin them instead?" Anne was for magical enhancement, for achieving things Muggle ways could not--it was instrumental in the production of the glass here, for one thing--but it was no excuse to do things shoddily.

"We can't have you missing that, especially if you come here often, then," she said softly, a little playfully, a little seriously. Rémi felt like a Prince Rupert's drop. Proudly, maybe resentfully resistant to hammering on his core, vulnerable to a tap on the tail. Drawing the metaphor helped her understand him, but she was still obstructed from seeing the cleanest model of interaction to support him, so she continued with a neutral one. Always inertial until action was clear amd warranted. Brushing the water with her fingertips in response to his comment, she nodded. "Thus, of course, not cold enough to skate on." Her eyes twinkled up at his, despite the rueful tone in her voice. His dark ones were even harder to read in the darkness; she didn't know whether hers were lit in the reflection. "It doesn't ever get that cold here, does it?" she asked rhetorically, knowing they were too far south.

Pulling her hands out, she flicked her fingers, watching the drops scatter away from them, then moved a stray wave that had fallen out of her braid behind her ear. She should tighten it, but she didn't feel bothered enough by it to do it, likely because she felt comfortable here. "I don't suppose you've ever actually disrobed in the fountain, anyway, right?" she said drily, quirking an eyebrow with a little smile.

"It could be cold enough," Rémi said blankly, turning his dark gaze to the water. The trace was ridiculous, and the magic upholding it was far more powerful than it should have been. Rémi knew. As soon as he'd learned about the restrictions on underage magic, the teenager had thrown himself into researching it and researching ways around it. He wasn't a five year old, about to accidentally blow off his own face or something. He knew enough magic that he should be allowed to perform it outside of school. If an accident was going to happen, it would probably happen either way. He imagined drawing his wand, working with Anne to freeze the water in the fountain. Sadly, the risk was probably a little too high at the moment, with almost everyone in town asleep.

That was probably a part of why he was so fascinated with magical objects. He could use any of his fathers bits and pieces without having to worry about breaking laws or being hunted down by ridiculous authority figures for what he was sure would be nothing more than a slap on the wrist. He smiled at her words. "No, I haven't disrobed in the fountain," he said. Rémi did love swimming though. He always had. He liked the feeling of his muscles aching under the pressure of pulling himself forward. He liked the weightlessness; he liked the wet silence when he was submerged. The way that he could be alone with his thoughts. He wasn't sure about ice skating. He hadn't tried it, but wasn't convinced it would be easy for him. He didn't have a terrible sense of balance, but he didn't exactly have a good one either.

"What the hell?" he said, getting to his feet. Why not swim in the fountain? Rémi dropped his things beside the bench near the fountain and stripped off his shirt. He kept his pants on. The teenager flashed his friend a half-smile before stepping up onto the ledge and then taking a step forward, into the water. He wasn't known for being terribly impulsive, but while this may have looked like an impulsive move on the outside it actually wasn't. They had wands to dry themselves and it was late, so he doubted that anyone would come out and say anything. Breaking the rules did give him a little extra kick though, he had to admit. The water wasn't really deep enough to swim in, but it was almost as deep as his hips and if he ducked down he could submerge himself entirely. He did so now, staying under a moment before popping back out of the water with a happy gasp and a flick of his dark hair.

A little smile appeared on Anne's face. "We don't have skates either," she reminded him gently. "Come visit me over winter instead, I'll teach you. Even Arthur can skate, and he's clumsy even for a nine-year-old. He's like a newborn foal most of the time." It wasn't exactly the usual form that challenging took between the two of them--that was almost always on intellectual grounds, and they agreed often enough that contention wasn't the foundation for their relationship, but she felt a little impish doing it in any case.

"Good to know. Shocking, really," she said, her smile growing wider and playing across her face. It quickly turned into a hint of alarm as he stood up and dropped everything. "You're not going to--" Anne cut off as Rémi stripped off his shirt. Anne's perpetually observant eyes registered the visible result of what had likely been a good deal of stress-relieving exercise during the summer. Rémi tended to do pushups when he was frustrated, and it showed.

Rémi flashed her his characteristic half-smile. For a moment something spun unbalanced in Anne's painstaking curation of her grand hierarchy of the world, a hint of uncertainty. Something was threatening to blur, and it was not conducive to the clean lines Anne favored. She resisted it, and the moment was quickly broken as he dropped into the water and plunged himself in. "Watch the splashes," she laughed, pulling back as droplets scattered from his hair. "It doesn't seem quite deep enough," the Dutch girl remarked a tad drily, leaning over the edge cautiously to peer down to the bottom of the fountain. "I hope it's cool in there at least. Are you glad you did it?" She doubted he would say no even if the answer was no, but it was the right thing to ask.

"Yeah, maybe," Rémi replied, a little hesitant skepticism in his tone. He didn't do a lot of balance-related exercise. He didn't do much at all that required him to be good at balancing. Ice skating seemed like the sort of sport where he could break an ankle without even trying. "Maybe I'll get charmed skates," he said thoughtfully. Naturally, the teenager's mind turned to magic as a solution for any problem. It was typical of him. If he couldn't find ones charmed appropriately, he'd try to do it himself. That was typical of him too.

There was something about being in the water that put a smile on his face. He couldn't help it. When he was little, his parents had taught him how to swim. The weightless sensation that came with being submerged was associated with memories of a time when both of his parents had been alive and present. Happy - at least as far as he could tell - and together. He smiled at his friend now. "No regrets," he said, a hint of something teasing in his voice. Rémi and Anne weren't exactly the type of people to take chances and say things like no regrets when they did so. Rémi was definitely more suited to this sort of thing than his friend, but it still only sat half-comfortably on him.

"You gonna come in?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow at her. "It's up to my waist. That's about your height, isn't it?" Maybe it was the relief, he thought distantly. The relief from the horrible unending summer. Relief from being alone with his thoughts. Maybe it was making him more jokey than usual. Less quiet, less thoughtful. Maybe it was the water. Rémi didn't know. The boy pushed himself up on his toes, then bent his knees and dropped down so the water level was about at his chest. It was a good feeling. A little too cold with the slight breeze above the water, but just right down here.