...Oops?

It was difficult to Apparate with one person at a time let alone three but Jen seemed to have been able to manage it and she Apparated straight into the foyer of the house in Knockturn Alley. Elijah seemed to have been shaken awake by the Apparation and the Slytherin pulled away from her. Elijah looked up and saw his mother smirk at him before walking through one of the doors. He could already hear the commotion and the cries indignation coming from Christophe no doubt. The place was a circus.

Mentally, Elijah did a roll call. They had Fauve, himself, Jen, Rob, Daniel, Brienne, Christophe, David, Pierre, Dakota and Abbey. So that was ten people in total three of which were below the age of ten. Elijah wondered how many questions his daughter had asked the potion-enthused Frenchman. Rob hadn’t told him much but from what Elijah had gotten out of the Animagus, Rob had been playing around with biology and somehow managed to change Christophe around a bit so he could carry a child. Elijah had pointed out how wrong that was and how irritated David was but Rob seemed too pleased with himself to really care.

“There are a lot of people here tonight,” Elijah spoke softly, shrugging off his jacket as he did so. He looked around the foyer. It wasn’t big but it did the job and there were enough doors leading off to different rooms that made Elijah wonder how big the house really was. For a Knockturn alley home it wasn’t a dark house. Rob and Jen had brightened it up with pastel colours. Obviously the doom and gloom of Azkaban had gotten to them and Elijah was glad really. He didn’t think Fauve could handle constant darkness. She hated night time as it was.

Elijah hung his jacket up and unbuttoned a few of the buttons of his shirt. He stretched and he heard some of his joints click. He looked at Brienne and Daniel to check they were okay. It was time to play host Eli figured. “Do you want to eat first?” He asked. “I don’t think you really want to eat with the rest of the hoard or you’ll risk being stripped and redressed multiple times.” He smirked. “I don’t know what they’ve got but we can go and grab some.” He said, heading towards the door Jen had disappeared through.

"Sure, we'll eat now" Brienne said.

"Nice place you got, Eli" Daniel said.

Brienne had to giggle at the "stripped and redressed" phrase.

"So, uhh...what's here for grub anyway?" Daniel asked nonchalantly. He hoped it was something salty or savory. His sweet tooth was nonexistent.

"Even the Maison Cethin isn't this large", he muttered, he ran his fingers through his greasy hair, the dark hair on his head was making his eyelashes darker than they already were. He had somewhat feminine eyes.

Brienne looked over at him, "Frank would be jealous."

The Slytherin tugged at the cuffs of his shirt and began to roll each arm up to his elbow. He looked back at Daniel and shook his head. “Not my place.” He said. “It’s not even their place they’ve just...um...well I guess they’re house-sitting.” Elijah decided to leave out the part where Rob and Jen actually killed the owner of said house and decided to stay for the summer. It did the job though so that’s all that mattered. Jen wasn’t as interested as Rob was to return to their old homes and neither of them wanted to go back to the Whitlock Mansion so this was the next best thing.

Elijah crossed the room with three long strides and he opened the door to the living room where everyone seemed to be based. The food was on the coffee table where as the people were strewn around on the various couches. Eli’s eyes first went to Rob who had his daughter sleeping in his neck and Pierre out for the count with his head on Rob’s chest. The other man’s fingers were caught in Pierre’s dark blonde locks and they seemed about as content as Christophe and David. David was awake and talking quietly with Jen while the Frenchman slept soundly next to him.

It was Jen that had the other baby but it wasn’t any of them that Elijah wanted to see. He wanted his daughter. He didn’t need hormonal Frenchmen, besotted ones and irritated tattooists – he wanted Fauve. It was the one he wanted that he laid eyes on next. The little girl was hunched over a bowl of noodles, getting as much into her mouth with chopsticks as humanly possible. The Slytherin smiled and walked over to his daughter. He took the bowl from her and set it down on the coffee table before scooping her up into his arms. The little girl giggles and she pressed herself close against her father as Elijah hugged her tighter.

“I’ve missed you, Fauvie.” He whispered. The little girl smiled widely and jumped out of his arms and back onto the couch that Jen was sitting on. The dark-haired woman pulled Fauve close and dropped a kiss onto her head before continuing her discussion with David. Elijah handed the bowl of noodles back to his daughter and began to rifle through the back, finding three pots of Sweet and Sour inside.

“Eli?” David’s voice started the Slytherin and he looked up at the dark-haired Londoner. “What colour do you reckon would work for this idiot’s off spring?” He asked, pointing to Christophe. Elijah smirked and picked up the boxes of Chinese. “In the nursery? Well it depends doesn’t it? I’m sure whatever you’d pick he’d change.” Elijah answered, moving back towards where Brienne and Daniel were. “I’m asking you for your professional opinion, ass.” David poked his tongue out at the Slytherin. “Twin girls, much to my chagrin.” Elijah shook his head, wondering how far Roh had delved into mad science. “Spring colours then. Maybe take a theme to it.” Elijah shrugged. David smiled and the Slytherin had a feeling he’d just signed himself up to paint under the watchful, annoying, eye of Christophe.

“C’mon,” Elijah said to Brienne and Daniel. “We better go before they sign you up to move the furniture in.”He grinned.

Brienne and Daniel followed Eli, "You must introduce us to the whole family one of these days. Just in case we encounter one of them and get stuck on the name". Brienne squinted and scanned, as she always did in strange situations.

Just then Rosaceae, Luna's owl, dropped a letter through an open window. It was addressed to Brienne on the envelope, so she got the letter and opened it. She read the letter aloud.

Dear Brienne and Daniel,

Where are you? You aren't anywhere at the party. I'm worried, where have you gone? I just hope something bad hasn't happened. Once I know where you are, I can rest easy and go home from the party early. It's no fun without you.

Love,
Luna

"I suppose I have to write a letter back to her, luckily Rosaceae stuck around so I can send her to deliver it" Brienne said.

“They’re not exactly my family but they’re as close as I can get I suppose.” Elijah shrugged, handing Daniel one of the pots of Sweet and Sour. Elijah handed the other man a set of chopsticks and smiled softly. He balanced the others in his hands and waited silently as Brienne read the letter she’d received. He wasn’t exactly sure where the owl had come from but he assumed a window. It was a bit odd all the same but Jen had never been one to keep her locations secret. “Do you have any preference as to where you want to eat?” He asked. “The other living room is probably the best place. It’s quieter.”

"Uh, no preference, though the quieter place sounds nice" Daniel said. He took the bowl and the chopsticks in his hands. He hadn't eaten with something like these before.

Brienne took the piece of parchment that the letter was written on, flipped it over and wrote a letter on the back:

Dear Luna,

I'm with some friends in...

She couldn't write "Knockturn Alley", because Luna would then be inclined to worry too much.

Diagon Alley.

That was better.

Don't worry about me or Daniel, we're having a great time.

Love,
Brienne

She handed the letter to Luna's owl, who immediately flew off. She then walked to Daniel and Eli, "I think the quieter room sounds better."

Elijah nodded and picked one of the doors near the staircase. He opened it up and glanced over his shoulder at the two of them before stepping inside. Elijah fished his wand out of his pocket and sent a few sparks up to the light. The room was bathed in a dim light and Eli flicked his wand at the curtains. The crimson drapes pulled closed over the windows and Elijah lit some of the candles that had stuck themselves to the tables due to the wax building up around the base. He put the other box of Sweet and Sour on one of the tables and sat down on one of the sofas. Eli slumped down and rested his feet on the coffee table. He put the pot of food on his abdomen and opened it up. “Ah..” He sighed. “The good stuff.”

Brienne went over to the same sofa Eli was on after getting her portion of Sweet and Sour.

"I never had this before". She struggled a little with the chopsticks, they wouldn't go in her hand well enough. She kept trying to lift the food into her mouth, but it kept dropping back into the bowl. She wanted so desperately to just lift a little bit of it into her mouth.

Daniel, on the other hand, seemed natural at eating with chopsticks. This was because before he got eating, he figured out how to position the chopsticks and decided to go slowly.

Brienne finally managed a bite of the delicious food. She chewed and swallowed before she began to talk.

"I had to lie to Luna. She wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I told her I was in Knockturn."

Then she resumed eating.

Twirling the chopsticks in his hand for a few moments, Eli eased himself up into a sitting position. He then pushed the flaps of the box down and began to eat. He had to admit that chopsticks were hard to navigate when you were new to the whole idea of using them but after a while you did get used to them. It just meant that you had to have a lot of takeaways before you did so and by then you’d be as big as a house. So that would be a good thing, for Daniel at least. Although hopefully, if he wasn’t too disastrous on a broom, it wouldn’t come to that.

“It’s only Knockturn Alley,” Elijah retorted. “It isn’t as if you’re going to get killed on one of the back streets.” The most that could have happened was kidnap and/or a mugging and if that didn’t take place then she would have probably been offered something illegal and dangerous to get off of her head on.

Elijah glanced over at Daniel and smiled slightly. The guy didn’t seem to be having as much trouble as his friend/sister/whatever. “So what’s the story with the Veela?” Eli asked. “You couldn’t have just woken up one day, puberty out the window and finished, to discover that you turn into a quivering mess of skin when a Veela is around? It’s a little bit crazy even if I do say so myself.”

"Well, it developed over time. Around the same time I started noticing I was....different from the other boys. I was the subject of stalking, and over time the letters got increasingly sexual. Sooner or later I found out that all the letters, which had been addressed from different people, were actually all sent by the same guy. He happened to be a Veela, or partially so. I was still trying to keep inside the closet, but he really wanted me. I tried to tell him off in person, but he cursed me then...he...I can't continue!" Daniel cried, he was in tears at this point.

"He told me the whole story, I thought he was crazy at first" Brienne said, "He happened to be in Knockturn Alley at the time. Since then, he's always drilled into mine and Luna's heads into not going here for any reason unless we were with friends. However, Luna has a paranoid nature, I mean, she's only 11. She also has an aversion to it because that was where Silas was taken and brainwashed. In Knockturn."