He was yelling at her in French.
Her grandfather already felt comfortable enough with her presence in his home to call her a malicious sprite, waving his arms about as he rearranged the kitchen cabinets to the way he had them before she fixed them. She paid him no mind as he did, her soul was patient. Once he went on his walk with the nurse from Mungo’s she would just put everything back the way she liked. Their battle of neuroses would continue. He could choke on a biscuit.
He turned to her, his wispy hair blowing every which way as he continued on in his Parisian tirade. “You also threw out my soup tins. I was saving those for something important.”
“I don’t speak French,” she explained calmly without looking up, and he stuttered over himself. She glanced up at him and he waved a hand at her tottering off. She was surprised how often that worked. It didn’t matter how many times she stayed up with him listening to Edith Piaf, or how many times he asked her about her time in Beauxbatons, there was always a fifty/fifty chance he believed she didn’t speak the language the next day. It was probably unethical to exploit her grandfather's senility but there was no one else here. Better some light teasing than the solitude he’d had before.
“Where are you going?” she said, her Danish accent making music of the vowels as she arched an eyebrow. He spun around, sputtering in frustration. “The garden! Or can’t I do that anymore?”
She smoothed her lips into a line, a silent Well, saying nothing until he walked out the door. She murmured, “your hat” more for her own satisfaction than anything else. And sure enough, she had just finished spreading jam on her toast when he came back in and swiped his cabby hat from the hook next to the door. She raised her bread in a toast and he scoffed before heading out.
It was a beautiful Sunday. When she left her Famor in the comfortable care of the nurse who had the patience of a saint, she continued her now annual practice of a walk through her new-ish neighborhood, before ticking off another antique store from her list. She’d spent plenty of time in London, had briefly lived here for a year of so after school, but this was feeling oddly more permanent than the times before. She couldn’t envision a world in which she left while her grandfather was alive.
A spiced pear scone and coffee consumed, and she withdrew her list of shops. Borgin & Burke’s was next, in some place called Knockturn Alley. She looked up at the ramshacke sign and shrugged, before stepping onto the path.
Should be fun.
by 