Animaux Fantastiques - Theseus Scamander

Payer le Piper

VIANNE

As Vianne strolled leisurely back to the castle grounds, Harvey and Flanagan keeping the same pace, she found herself drawing from memory what a stick insect looked like.

"I don't understand," she said to herself and then abruptly turned to face Flanagan, "is it the neck—is that it? Because it is long?"

"What are you on about?" Flanagan craned his head back.

"What you said back there about Theseus," she pointed her thumb over her shoulder towards the sentinel.

"You're really clinging onto this, aren't you? I shouldn't have opened my mouth," regret was apparent in Flanagan's tone.

Vianne braced her thumbs under the bands of her suspenders, "I myself would have said ferret."

Harvey snapped his fingers in accord, "The eyes, isn't it?"

"D'accord, Harvey gets it! Dark eyes. Where all the emotion is, non?"

Flanagan sighed, working the pressure point above his nose in order to relieve the stress there.

Harvey squinted one eye against the bright midday sun, contemplative. It might not have been warm, but they were still pretty high up—Balcloicheil being a flying fortress and all. "Is it normal to think of people in such a way?"

"You mean their likeness to other creatures?" Vianne had never thought about it. She frowned for a second and then answered her own question: "I suppose we all find ways to draw similarities with strangers. Makes it easier to trust. Or distrust them. Do you not do this—find something to draw contrast?"

Harvey cast his face down, unreadable. Flanagan, surprisingly, was the one to respond first.

"A few years ago, I'd have said you were all the same: humans. If I knew the character of one of you, I knew it for all of you," he said.

"And now?" she bent forward a little, tilting her head to the side so she could see him more clearly.

"Now I judge each of you separately," he said slyly.

"I see," Harvey finally replied—though it sounded like it was meant for himself. "I'd say, for me, it's action. And time. Definitely time. It's like walking up to a large piece of marble and slowly chiselling the sameness away, you know? Otherwise, I don't really make snap judgements."

"That's such an artistic way of describing things," she could practically picture Harvey chiselling away at some slab of marble designed to embody a person. It had been a good, long while since Vianne had had a conversation that didn't involve feeding schedules, salve ingredients, or the dangers of being in close proximity to wild beasts. It felt good to just talk about mundane things. "Surely that must change when you find someone handsome or beautiful? We're all prone to a little bias."

Flanagan's ears fluttered. From what Vianne knew of Goblin call-signs, that either meant he was too shy to approach the topic or he was weary; taken aback.

She stopped to sit on the first steps leading into the castle, patting the cold slab of stone beside her as an open invitation. Harvey sat down, uprooting grass like a frustrated child who didn't want to come off as frustrated. Flanagan sat a little further off, and one step down. It was clear he wasn't trying to contribute, but he was still interested in being a part of the conversation. He stared out into the distance with the look of a scholar plagued by impossible theorems.

"I don't think of people in that way," Harvey admitted freely, relaxing his fist full of grass so the wind could carry the green blades off.

"Really?" she asked earnestly, a slight inclination to what he was trying to articulate.

He breathed deeply, "Really."

Vianne didn't want to do him a disservice by saying she understood—she could sympathise, but she had just admitted a few seconds earlier that she judged people differently than he did. Connotatively, she could draw similarities enough to find common ground. At Beauxbâtons, she'd often daydream of going steady with Emir Mertens—Bellefeuille's star Wizard's Chess player in Fifth Year. Sometimes she'd fantasise about them passing secret notes to one another or meeting in the roseraie after third-period Herbology class, where he'd confess his feelings. It was easy to get wrapped up in his pretty face. He was charmingly popular as well, but just brooding enough to remain a mystery. Then, two years later, when she'd become fascinated with watching the friendly sport of none contact duelling, she'd fantasised about kissing Papillonlisse's underdog player Elodie Gant. Elodie was quick-witted, taller than most boys her age and viciously competitive in the sport. 

What struck a chord with Vianne, was that those fantasies were so easy to get lost in because they were safe, far removed from reality; both unrealistically personal and realistically impersonal. In practice, however, she'd found romance impossible to attain with someone she didn't trust—and, like Harvey mentioned, that required time. 

Intimacy, though, was harder to get around. 

This wasn't to say she'd never experienced romance or intimacy, only that it was sparse and few between. So, in a way, she understood Harvey, just not entirely.

"Mmm, just as well," she finally replied, laying her elbows back so she could recline comfortably. "In my experience, romance is all drama, persuading you to waste your energy doing everything conceivable under the sun except the things you want to do; impulsive marriages; starting a family at the wrong time; putting ambitions on hold and resenting people for it..." She shook her head vigorously. "Ahht! Tout est tellement ridicule!"

"You say that, but I've seen you 'browsing' Nurse Thompson's book collection when she's away," Harvey said, making light of the situation. Vianne howled with laughter, ears going flush from embarrassment.

"I mean...how could I not? Have you seen those covers? Would make anyone mad with curiosity," she said in her defence.

"That it would," Flanagan let slip. This time his ears fluttered with an audible wing-beating noise. He was definitely taken aback by the ease with which he just admitted to having perused Nurse Thompson's smutty book collection. Moreover, he was equally as embarrassed as Vianne, too. Probably worse from the way his eyes went large.

As if they'd summoned the devil by talking about her book collection, Nurse Thompson's heels could be heard clacking behind the large, oak doors. With a groan of a rusted hinge, the door pried open and she stuck her head out. The faint smell of herbs and chai wafted out to greet Vianne down the steps.

"Thank heavens!" Nurse Thompson said in relief. "There you are. Been looking for you three. Sunil's here. And he's in a mood."

It was time to pay the piper, Vianne thought. Vacation time was over.