A Birth day

"Yeah, sure. I'm still on the clock, anyway," Anise nodded. "Thanks. I might talk to Kate later.

"Its good to be home. James is off to Azkaban--again. Anise did some really good work for a newbie. She actually was the one who finally got James stopped. I think she got a little rattled so I'll talk to her when she gets home from work tonight," Angus said. "So what do you lot think of the tea?"

"I think this is going to be my new favorite," Marcus said. "It's great. He needs to keep this one in supply."

"That's what I thought."

"Aggie," Abbey called. "Is canny!" She was drinking her little mug of tea.

"It's candy, huh? Yeah. It does kind of taste like that," Angus agreed. "So you like it?"

"Uh huh," she nodded. Caprice tried to grab at Abbey's mug, and Abbey scowled at her. "Mine!" Abbey frowned.

Angus smiled at Cris, and he talked with him a moment. Cris was aware that there was some particular person that seemed to cause people here a lot of stress and tension. Angus was honest with him and gave Cris James' name, explained who James was and his relationship to Jack and his really unhealthy fixation on Khaat. Cris was young but even he could figure out James was a very dangerous man. Angus told him that James was bigger than Jack and he was a mass murderer and a werewolf, and that they had protective spells to try to keep him off estate grounds. Angus was very specific to tell him that if he saw James, Cris needed to hide and stay completely silent. He told him he was never, ever to try to approach him or deal with him. Angus got out a notebook from the bookshelf, and he had some various clippings from the Daily Prophet that he had saved over the years. He opened the book and showed him a photo of James that had been published in the newspaper. Cris wrinkled his nose, not liking the looks of James at all.

"Does he smell like a werewolf?" Cris asked Angus in Romanian.

"He smells like a werewolf that badly needs a bath," Angus replied to Cris in Romanian.

"Ewwwww," Cris groaned. That made Angus laugh. Stink could gain the same reaction in just about any language. Angus motioned to Cris, took him to the kitchen and poured him a mug of the butterbeer tea and added some milk and sugar for him and handed him the mug. Cris tasted it and gave Angus a big smile and nodded. Then Cris turned to Jessie and pointed to the tea mug and nodded.

"I think he likes it," Angus laughed. "Its a new one from Robert--it's a warm butterbeer tea. It's sweet, and, actually, it's quite soothing. Would you two like a mug?"

(aria should still be at st mungos with khaat. i'll just ignore that last bit and presume abbey's just playing with her toys.)

"You might be able to do that," Angus told Yulong. "You might be able to soak your ladyfingers in it if you made it a bit stronger than normal. I created a pumpkin tiramisu a few years ago for Christmas at Edward's."

"That was delicious," Edward said. "I can't believe you didn't write down the recipe for it."

"Well, it wasn't all that complicated, so I'm sure I could re-do it and write it down this time if anyone thought it was worth it," Angus replied.

"Oh, I almost forgot in all the confusion this morning. A letter came for you earlier but it arrived through my fireplace and not yours," Edward said, handing Angus an envelope.

"Oh, thanks," Angus said, taking the envelope. He opened it and read it. "Hey, good news. It's from Madame Maxine at Beauxbatons. She says she has spoken with Daniella, and she is certainly open to home schooling for our girls with yours, Evan, but she wants to meet Anise and Ginger for herself, and she wants to know why the girls never had any formal schooling. She wants to know if I can bring them to Beauxbatons for meeting over tea tomorrow morning, at 10 am, France time. What do you think, Ru?"

"It sounds like they're in," Evan said. "For you to get this far, it sounds like the meeting is perhaps the final hoop you need to jump."

"Anise went right to work when she got home," Angus frowned. "She'd better be here on the grounds somewhere because she's not here. And Ginger's been at work all day with the boys, so far as I know. The girls are excited though about the idea of going to Evan's to study with a real Beauxbatons' teacher every day. They're hoping to be able to catch up a bit on their magic since that wasn't anything they learned while they were in Fenrir's pack. Robert got them first year textbooks from Hogwarts, and they were through all those in about four months. Then he got them second year books, and they knocked those out in about five months, and they just finished their third year books a week or two ago. They're ready to start fourth year books, but we haven't received those yet. They should be starting sixth year books, so they still have some catching up to do but they really are pushing themselves to learn it."

"So that's where she got the pudding spell," Edward said.

"Yeah, I should explain that," Angus looked at Ruby. "Anise thought she was conjuring an oversized pudding to drop on James but she got befuddled on the incantation and she conjured a fireball that was about eight foot high and she nailed him with it with pinpoint accuracy. She was lucky James wasn't immediately burned to death. I realize that he's already been sentenced to death for other crimes, but I really don't want her to have to carry the emotions of being the cause of any living creature being burned to death because of a bolloxed up spell."

"Shall I go with you to help you find Anise?" Evan asked Jack.

"Sure," Evan smiled. "I haven't been in the barn. I did see the unicorns, and I've flown the hippogriffs, but they were in the corral. I understand Kate keeps a room in the barn full of all sorts of critters. I've been meaning to see if I could look at all that. I'm sure Anise will be with a work crew somewhere--wherever they are. Let's go." He followed Jack to go look for Anise.

"Why don't you leave Cris here for supper, and we'll bring him back sometime this evening. You guys tell me when you need him home, and we'll have him there," Angus said. "Not sure what I'm going to make yet, but I'll fix something."

"Well, if this helps you, Simone asked if you would fix some pumpkin stew sometime," Edward said.

"Absolutely," Angus replied. "The crew left us half a dozen nice sugar pumpkins on the front porch, and they need to be used. A big batch of pumpkin stew could use a couple of those sugar pumpkins. That's a good idea. And it'll help rebuild the immune systems of our flu victims, and it will help settle any residual nausea. Pumpkin is good for that. Ruby, if you want to help, there's a recipe for some savory cheese scones in my book. That would be perfect with the stew."