Rabbit: September 1969
Title: Rabbit
Chapter Number/Title: September 1969: Fall (31/100) [[ Previous | Next]]
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2329 (so long!)
Workshop?: Suggestions always welcome. Is the beginning unnecessary? I couldn't decide.
September 30, 1969
Fall
Rabastan felt sure that he had sat at that table for hours. Hours upon hours. The clock, he was sure, had something wrong with it, for it had only chimed once since they sat down. His feet itched in his tight shoes, and the stiff lace collar of his stuffy dress robes rubbed against his neck. Maman had said that he looked smart, and Grandmere had cooed over him, but all Rabbit could think of was changing back into his ordinary robes and getting back to England.
All of his certainty about time vanished as small bowls of thick soup popped onto the table. This would go on for hours more, hours of itchiness and speaking French and being forced to talk to French children. He did not bother to hide his misery, and looked up at Maman for some relief. She gave none.
“Mademoiselle LeBlanc,” she started, lighting the fire that would surely burn Rabastan to a crisp, “I am told that you have been doing well in your English.”
“Oh, yes, a little, Madame,” Rosalie nodded. “But only a little.”
“Wonderful,” Mrs. Lestrange smiled - and here she threw her son into that fire - “maybe you and Rabastan could help each other. Practice his French, practice your English.”
“Quel bonne!” Mrs. LeBlanc jumped in.
Rosalie half-smiled. “Maybe.” She glanced over at Rabastan, who forced his mouth to stretch into a smile, even as his eyes glared at his mother. The girl held her breath, looked between them, and spoke again. “But you two, you are always een England. Eet eez difficult.”
“We are here tonight,” dripped the cruel, but expected, words.
The two children looked at each other, with faces of mirroring surprise.
---
Rabastan tore onto the path, leaving Rosalie behind. Yesterday’s rain had left the ground soft and the leaves heavy with water droplets, but today’s sun fell kindly onto the boy’s face. He was a griffin, tearing through the forest and flapping his wings, looking for something tasty to eat.
“SCREEEEEEOOOR!” he cried, spinning suddenly in his path and swooping toward the French girl. The end of his call was met by her own girlish shriek. And then he laughed.
“I’m a griffin!” he explained. It was as clear as day, to him at least.
“Tu-un-qua?” Rosalie squinted her eyes, which Rabbit thought made her look a bit touched.
“I. Am. A. Griffin. Aren’t you supposed to be practicing English?”
The girl shook her plaited head and crossed her arms. “You are supposed to help me, no?”
“I am helping. We’re… learning animals. Griffin, you know, part eagle--” again he flapped and screeched a horrible screech- “part lion--” he made a mane with his fingers and roared.
Rosalie giggled this time. “Eagle and lion, oui oui. Oo- yes, yes. What is it that…” Here she whinnied.
“Cheval? Horse.” Rabastan reached for a low branch, and jumped with both hands out to grab it.
“Yes, ‘orse. I knew eet, but I-forgot. And ze horse wi’ ze horn?”
“Unicorn, of course.” He was now swinging in the tree, though the branch dug into his palms. He let go and landed on the ground, grateful for the night of rain.
“You fell.”
“Quite.” Rabbit stood and shook off the leaves that clung to his dress robes. He hated them even more than before. “I fell onto the ground. And my stupid dress robes have leaves on them.”
Rosalie nodded at his shoulder. “You have one, la.”
“Thanks.” He plucked a browning leaf off and let it fall, spinning, to the ground. The leaves and forest debris shuffled under his feet, and he shuffled ahead.
“Do you like France?”
“Sure-but I like it better in summer. Normally we’re at the ocean, so you can swim. It’s nice here, though.” Rabbit smiled. “And I’m not lying, but if I didn’t like it you don’t think I would say so, do you?”
“No.” The young girl grinned, and her doe-like brown eyes flicked up and back. “But you are honest, zat you like eet here. You like England more, no?”
“Well, of course. It’s home, right? At home we have a great big house, not like our villa here. More like your home. But Cornwall is the best place in the world, I think. Have you been there?”
“To England, yes. Once. But eet was to London. I never went to Cornwall.”
“Did you like London?” Rabastan spotted a leaf falling slowly from the tree ahead of them, and ran up to try to catch it.
“No,” said Rosalie. Rabbit’s leaf drifted away from him and right into her hands. Her face was pink, but he wasn’t sure if it was the leaf, or the cool evening air, or her feelings about London. She held out the leaf and looked away. “But I also do not like Paris very much. The big city…” Her nose crinkled.
“Oh!” Rabastan smiled and twirled the leaf in his hand. “I don’t like cities much either. Sometimes they’re all right. At least in the Wizarding parts. But we’ve had to go to Muggle London, ugh!”
Rosalie began to laugh but suddenly gasped and grabbed Rabastan’s arm. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.
Rabbit shook his head but listened carefully. There it was - a shuffle of leaves. And voices - voices of adults. It sounded like a man and a woman, and they were not far. “Allez,” ordered Rabastan, and pulled his fellow-traveler behind a large tree nearby. He looked out but the strangers were still not in sight. “Who’re they?”
“Ne s’pas!” Her eyes were wide.
A sharp wind blew through, rustling the trees and brush. Rosalie was now shaking, whether from fear or cold, or both. A shiver ran down Rabbit’s own spine but he was too focused on the people to think about the wind.
“Come,” he said, grabbing her sleeve and dashing behind a large tree. Rosalie and Rabastan peeked out from either side of its wide trunk, watching and waiting.
The strangers’ voices grew louder, and then their figures appeared, coming up a hill. They looked bizarre - not like wizards, but not like any pictures of Muggles he had seen either. He had been right: there was a man and a woman, though not very old. Both wore their hair long, but down, and the man had a fair-sized beard. Everything was a bit scraggly. Rabastan felt a little embarrassed for them. He had seen many, many witches and wizards with long hair, but it was always brushed and shiny. Rabbit squinted, and thought he saw a leaf in the woman’s hair. They must be Muggles, he thought, and without magic they can’t keep their hair in order.
The Muggles were now fairly close, and stopped walking. Rabastan’s heart was racing, but then he heard them laugh, and they started kissing. “Blech!” he whispered.
Maybe they had made up for their lack of magic by having superhuman hearing, because the kiss ended and the man stood alert, looking around for the whisperer. Rabastan felt Rosalie’s elbow in his ribs.
“Someone is here. I heard it.” They spoke in French. Rabastan bit his lip and tried to listen carefully. His back was against the tree trunk, and he dared not peek out and risk being seen.
It was the woman who spoke next. “There!” she shouted. “Children!”
They were doomed. Rabastan’s hand caught Rosalie’s, and he looked at her, his eyes begging her to get them out of this mess.
“Hello there, little ones,” the man said, coming around to where the woman stood. They stood to the side, about as far as Rabastan could throw a Quaffle (which was not all that far). Rosalie squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed. Her courage gathered, she then pulled her hand away and took a step from the tree.
“I’m sorry, but we have to be heading home,” she said.
Rabastan felt inspired. “Yes,” he added. “Our parents are waiting.”
The man brought a pipe to his lips, drew in a breath, and chuckled. “The parents, they always tell you what to do, no? That’s how adults are. You can’t trust them.”
This line of thought did not go over well with Rabastan, but he did not feel like pressing his luck with a possibly dangerous stranger. But Rosalie crossed her arms, and spat back, “You know nothing at all about our parents. And aren’t you an adult?
“No, little woman. We are free spirits, and we’re here to learn. Open our minds.” The woman reached up to a branch, which dropped its colorful leaves slowly down around her. “Listen to the forest.”
“But this is my forest. It’s part of our land, and you are on it, and you must get off.” Rosalie looked confident, but Rabastan was pretty sure that she was lying. He did not know of any wizards who left their land unguarded, exposed to wandering Muggles.
Sure enough, the man was calling her bluff. “No one owns the forest, little woman. The forest owns itself. You can’t own the land.” Or not. Apparently, he was just a moron. Rabastan sighed. He was getting tired of this, and growing more on edge with every extra second they spent around these people.
He reached for Rosalie’s shoulder, and drew her aside. “We should go,” he exhorted.
“Look, look!” The man was shouting now. “They’re morphing into one! Into a bear! They’re the guardian spirits of the forest!”
“Beautiful,” agreed the woman, who seemed to be in a trance.
Rosalie’s eyes were wide, and Rabastan was beginning to panic. “They’re mad. They are absolutely mad. Fous. Mad.”
And then Rosalie did the last thing Rabastan expected: she pulled out a wand from her coat and shoved it into Rabastan’s hands. “Take it.”
“Are you mad too? Whose is this?”
“Jeanette’s. She sinks she lost eet, and got a new one. Take eet.”
“I don’t know what to do with a wand! You take it!” He held it out to her.
“Do not point at me!” She shoved its point away. “Do some-sing!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Rabastan saw the Muggle man approaching, waving his arms in the air. “Petit dude, petit dude! C’est magique!”
Whatever else the man said was drowned out by the sound of Rabbit screaming - shrieking really - and Rosalie’s high-pitched fearful whine. And then -
BOOM!
Rabastan was thrown back. This, he thought, was why children do not have wands. He scrambled up to his knees, patted the leaves around him until he found Rosalie’s sister’s wand. As soon as he felt his fingers around it, he pushed himself up and began to run.
Rosalie was not following. Rabastan turned around, and saw her standing where they had been, waving dust and smoke away. “Rosalie!” he shouted. “Now is our chance, let’s go!”
She did not come. In fact, she was walking… away. Toward the Muggles, who were also knocked onto the ground.
“Rosalie! Allons-y!”
“Wait!” she hissed. “I’m checking on them.
Rabastan was not going to stand there while Rosalie ruined their window of opportunity. He hid himself behind another tree, and took long breaths.
Rosalie gasped. “Rabastan,” she whispered.
“What is it? Are you safe?”
“Oui, c’est . . . ils sont mortes! Zey are dead!”
No. His heart stopped, and then began racing faster than he could bear. The wand fell to the ground. He did not want anything to do with it. He knew this had been a bad idea, and now they were in some forest with some dead Muggles and he had killed them and he was going to be in so much trouble. His eyes felt hot with tears, and he realized that his whole body was shaking from fear. He wondered if the French Wizarding authorities would lock him up, or if they would ship him back to England, only to become the youngest resident of Azkaban ever.
Rabastan felt the inside of his body rebel and try to turn himself inside out. He collapsed, sliding down the rough bark of the tree, into the soft rotting forest floor.
A small hand squeezed his shoulder. “Shhhh, shhh Rabastan. Eet eez good, eet eez good.”
“No,” he cried. “No, I k-k-k-k-”
He looked up to see Rosalie wearing a face wracked with guilt. “No. Zey are not dead.”
Rabastan wiped the tears from his eyes and hardened his face into a stern scowl. “But. You said…”
“I was, hm, joking? Joke? Ha-ha-ha!”
Rabastan threw himself into Rosalie, shoving her to the ground. “If you were a boy you’d be a whole lot worse off,” he threatened.
The French girl sighed, brushed the twigs and leaves off her cloak, and wrapped Rabastan in an embrace that he squirmed out of. “Poor Rabastan,” she mocked, “I did not know you were so scared!”
“I wasn’t,” he lied.
“You lie!”
“Well, I didn’t know you were a wand-thief!” He picked up the wand and dropped it into her hands, in case she did not understand. “You stole this!”
“Eet was a long time ago!” Rosalie explained, slipping it back into her cloak. “I was going to give eet back, but zen she ‘ad a new one, so… I keep it, for safety.”
“Safety! Rosalie, the Muggles, they’re alive?”
“Oui! Sleeping, maybe. They breathe.”
He snuck a quick glance around and saw the two still lying on the forest floor. “All right, let’s go this time. I’d rather not run into them again.” His travel companion was still sitting against the tree, staring forward, looking lost in thought. Perhaps she had not understood. “Rosalie - let’s go. Now.”
“Oui, yes.”
Rabastan stood, checked their path once more, and offered his hand to help Rosalie up. As she took it, she smiled. “Rabastan?”
“Yes?”
“Merci.”
He looked down in modesty. Then he blushed, as he felt Rosalie’s fingers wrap around his hand and tug towards the house.
Chapter Number/Title: September 1969: Fall (31/100) [[ Previous | Next]]
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2329 (so long!)
Workshop?: Suggestions always welcome. Is the beginning unnecessary? I couldn't decide.
September 30, 1969
Fall
Rabastan felt sure that he had sat at that table for hours. Hours upon hours. The clock, he was sure, had something wrong with it, for it had only chimed once since they sat down. His feet itched in his tight shoes, and the stiff lace collar of his stuffy dress robes rubbed against his neck. Maman had said that he looked smart, and Grandmere had cooed over him, but all Rabbit could think of was changing back into his ordinary robes and getting back to England.
All of his certainty about time vanished as small bowls of thick soup popped onto the table. This would go on for hours more, hours of itchiness and speaking French and being forced to talk to French children. He did not bother to hide his misery, and looked up at Maman for some relief. She gave none.
“Mademoiselle LeBlanc,” she started, lighting the fire that would surely burn Rabastan to a crisp, “I am told that you have been doing well in your English.”
“Oh, yes, a little, Madame,” Rosalie nodded. “But only a little.”
“Wonderful,” Mrs. Lestrange smiled - and here she threw her son into that fire - “maybe you and Rabastan could help each other. Practice his French, practice your English.”
“Quel bonne!” Mrs. LeBlanc jumped in.
Rosalie half-smiled. “Maybe.” She glanced over at Rabastan, who forced his mouth to stretch into a smile, even as his eyes glared at his mother. The girl held her breath, looked between them, and spoke again. “But you two, you are always een England. Eet eez difficult.”
“We are here tonight,” dripped the cruel, but expected, words.
The two children looked at each other, with faces of mirroring surprise.
---
Rabastan tore onto the path, leaving Rosalie behind. Yesterday’s rain had left the ground soft and the leaves heavy with water droplets, but today’s sun fell kindly onto the boy’s face. He was a griffin, tearing through the forest and flapping his wings, looking for something tasty to eat.
“SCREEEEEEOOOR!” he cried, spinning suddenly in his path and swooping toward the French girl. The end of his call was met by her own girlish shriek. And then he laughed.
“I’m a griffin!” he explained. It was as clear as day, to him at least.
“Tu-un-qua?” Rosalie squinted her eyes, which Rabbit thought made her look a bit touched.
“I. Am. A. Griffin. Aren’t you supposed to be practicing English?”
The girl shook her plaited head and crossed her arms. “You are supposed to help me, no?”
“I am helping. We’re… learning animals. Griffin, you know, part eagle--” again he flapped and screeched a horrible screech- “part lion--” he made a mane with his fingers and roared.
Rosalie giggled this time. “Eagle and lion, oui oui. Oo- yes, yes. What is it that…” Here she whinnied.
“Cheval? Horse.” Rabastan reached for a low branch, and jumped with both hands out to grab it.
“Yes, ‘orse. I knew eet, but I-forgot. And ze horse wi’ ze horn?”
“Unicorn, of course.” He was now swinging in the tree, though the branch dug into his palms. He let go and landed on the ground, grateful for the night of rain.
“You fell.”
“Quite.” Rabbit stood and shook off the leaves that clung to his dress robes. He hated them even more than before. “I fell onto the ground. And my stupid dress robes have leaves on them.”
Rosalie nodded at his shoulder. “You have one, la.”
“Thanks.” He plucked a browning leaf off and let it fall, spinning, to the ground. The leaves and forest debris shuffled under his feet, and he shuffled ahead.
“Do you like France?”
“Sure-but I like it better in summer. Normally we’re at the ocean, so you can swim. It’s nice here, though.” Rabbit smiled. “And I’m not lying, but if I didn’t like it you don’t think I would say so, do you?”
“No.” The young girl grinned, and her doe-like brown eyes flicked up and back. “But you are honest, zat you like eet here. You like England more, no?”
“Well, of course. It’s home, right? At home we have a great big house, not like our villa here. More like your home. But Cornwall is the best place in the world, I think. Have you been there?”
“To England, yes. Once. But eet was to London. I never went to Cornwall.”
“Did you like London?” Rabastan spotted a leaf falling slowly from the tree ahead of them, and ran up to try to catch it.
“No,” said Rosalie. Rabbit’s leaf drifted away from him and right into her hands. Her face was pink, but he wasn’t sure if it was the leaf, or the cool evening air, or her feelings about London. She held out the leaf and looked away. “But I also do not like Paris very much. The big city…” Her nose crinkled.
“Oh!” Rabastan smiled and twirled the leaf in his hand. “I don’t like cities much either. Sometimes they’re all right. At least in the Wizarding parts. But we’ve had to go to Muggle London, ugh!”
Rosalie began to laugh but suddenly gasped and grabbed Rabastan’s arm. “Did you hear that?” she whispered.
Rabbit shook his head but listened carefully. There it was - a shuffle of leaves. And voices - voices of adults. It sounded like a man and a woman, and they were not far. “Allez,” ordered Rabastan, and pulled his fellow-traveler behind a large tree nearby. He looked out but the strangers were still not in sight. “Who’re they?”
“Ne s’pas!” Her eyes were wide.
A sharp wind blew through, rustling the trees and brush. Rosalie was now shaking, whether from fear or cold, or both. A shiver ran down Rabbit’s own spine but he was too focused on the people to think about the wind.
“Come,” he said, grabbing her sleeve and dashing behind a large tree. Rosalie and Rabastan peeked out from either side of its wide trunk, watching and waiting.
The strangers’ voices grew louder, and then their figures appeared, coming up a hill. They looked bizarre - not like wizards, but not like any pictures of Muggles he had seen either. He had been right: there was a man and a woman, though not very old. Both wore their hair long, but down, and the man had a fair-sized beard. Everything was a bit scraggly. Rabastan felt a little embarrassed for them. He had seen many, many witches and wizards with long hair, but it was always brushed and shiny. Rabbit squinted, and thought he saw a leaf in the woman’s hair. They must be Muggles, he thought, and without magic they can’t keep their hair in order.
The Muggles were now fairly close, and stopped walking. Rabastan’s heart was racing, but then he heard them laugh, and they started kissing. “Blech!” he whispered.
Maybe they had made up for their lack of magic by having superhuman hearing, because the kiss ended and the man stood alert, looking around for the whisperer. Rabastan felt Rosalie’s elbow in his ribs.
“Someone is here. I heard it.” They spoke in French. Rabastan bit his lip and tried to listen carefully. His back was against the tree trunk, and he dared not peek out and risk being seen.
It was the woman who spoke next. “There!” she shouted. “Children!”
They were doomed. Rabastan’s hand caught Rosalie’s, and he looked at her, his eyes begging her to get them out of this mess.
“Hello there, little ones,” the man said, coming around to where the woman stood. They stood to the side, about as far as Rabastan could throw a Quaffle (which was not all that far). Rosalie squeezed her eyes shut and swallowed. Her courage gathered, she then pulled her hand away and took a step from the tree.
“I’m sorry, but we have to be heading home,” she said.
Rabastan felt inspired. “Yes,” he added. “Our parents are waiting.”
The man brought a pipe to his lips, drew in a breath, and chuckled. “The parents, they always tell you what to do, no? That’s how adults are. You can’t trust them.”
This line of thought did not go over well with Rabastan, but he did not feel like pressing his luck with a possibly dangerous stranger. But Rosalie crossed her arms, and spat back, “You know nothing at all about our parents. And aren’t you an adult?
“No, little woman. We are free spirits, and we’re here to learn. Open our minds.” The woman reached up to a branch, which dropped its colorful leaves slowly down around her. “Listen to the forest.”
“But this is my forest. It’s part of our land, and you are on it, and you must get off.” Rosalie looked confident, but Rabastan was pretty sure that she was lying. He did not know of any wizards who left their land unguarded, exposed to wandering Muggles.
Sure enough, the man was calling her bluff. “No one owns the forest, little woman. The forest owns itself. You can’t own the land.” Or not. Apparently, he was just a moron. Rabastan sighed. He was getting tired of this, and growing more on edge with every extra second they spent around these people.
He reached for Rosalie’s shoulder, and drew her aside. “We should go,” he exhorted.
“Look, look!” The man was shouting now. “They’re morphing into one! Into a bear! They’re the guardian spirits of the forest!”
“Beautiful,” agreed the woman, who seemed to be in a trance.
Rosalie’s eyes were wide, and Rabastan was beginning to panic. “They’re mad. They are absolutely mad. Fous. Mad.”
And then Rosalie did the last thing Rabastan expected: she pulled out a wand from her coat and shoved it into Rabastan’s hands. “Take it.”
“Are you mad too? Whose is this?”
“Jeanette’s. She sinks she lost eet, and got a new one. Take eet.”
“I don’t know what to do with a wand! You take it!” He held it out to her.
“Do not point at me!” She shoved its point away. “Do some-sing!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Rabastan saw the Muggle man approaching, waving his arms in the air. “Petit dude, petit dude! C’est magique!”
Whatever else the man said was drowned out by the sound of Rabbit screaming - shrieking really - and Rosalie’s high-pitched fearful whine. And then -
BOOM!
Rabastan was thrown back. This, he thought, was why children do not have wands. He scrambled up to his knees, patted the leaves around him until he found Rosalie’s sister’s wand. As soon as he felt his fingers around it, he pushed himself up and began to run.
Rosalie was not following. Rabastan turned around, and saw her standing where they had been, waving dust and smoke away. “Rosalie!” he shouted. “Now is our chance, let’s go!”
She did not come. In fact, she was walking… away. Toward the Muggles, who were also knocked onto the ground.
“Rosalie! Allons-y!”
“Wait!” she hissed. “I’m checking on them.
Rabastan was not going to stand there while Rosalie ruined their window of opportunity. He hid himself behind another tree, and took long breaths.
Rosalie gasped. “Rabastan,” she whispered.
“What is it? Are you safe?”
“Oui, c’est . . . ils sont mortes! Zey are dead!”
No. His heart stopped, and then began racing faster than he could bear. The wand fell to the ground. He did not want anything to do with it. He knew this had been a bad idea, and now they were in some forest with some dead Muggles and he had killed them and he was going to be in so much trouble. His eyes felt hot with tears, and he realized that his whole body was shaking from fear. He wondered if the French Wizarding authorities would lock him up, or if they would ship him back to England, only to become the youngest resident of Azkaban ever.
Rabastan felt the inside of his body rebel and try to turn himself inside out. He collapsed, sliding down the rough bark of the tree, into the soft rotting forest floor.
A small hand squeezed his shoulder. “Shhhh, shhh Rabastan. Eet eez good, eet eez good.”
“No,” he cried. “No, I k-k-k-k-”
He looked up to see Rosalie wearing a face wracked with guilt. “No. Zey are not dead.”
Rabastan wiped the tears from his eyes and hardened his face into a stern scowl. “But. You said…”
“I was, hm, joking? Joke? Ha-ha-ha!”
Rabastan threw himself into Rosalie, shoving her to the ground. “If you were a boy you’d be a whole lot worse off,” he threatened.
The French girl sighed, brushed the twigs and leaves off her cloak, and wrapped Rabastan in an embrace that he squirmed out of. “Poor Rabastan,” she mocked, “I did not know you were so scared!”
“I wasn’t,” he lied.
“You lie!”
“Well, I didn’t know you were a wand-thief!” He picked up the wand and dropped it into her hands, in case she did not understand. “You stole this!”
“Eet was a long time ago!” Rosalie explained, slipping it back into her cloak. “I was going to give eet back, but zen she ‘ad a new one, so… I keep it, for safety.”
“Safety! Rosalie, the Muggles, they’re alive?”
“Oui! Sleeping, maybe. They breathe.”
He snuck a quick glance around and saw the two still lying on the forest floor. “All right, let’s go this time. I’d rather not run into them again.” His travel companion was still sitting against the tree, staring forward, looking lost in thought. Perhaps she had not understood. “Rosalie - let’s go. Now.”
“Oui, yes.”
Rabastan stood, checked their path once more, and offered his hand to help Rosalie up. As she took it, she smiled. “Rabastan?”
“Yes?”
“Merci.”
He looked down in modesty. Then he blushed, as he felt Rosalie’s fingers wrap around his hand and tug towards the house.