The Girl Who Saw Tomorrow II » Harry Potter

2.10 | Eyes of the Water

Percy Weasley's owl, Hermes, perched on the windowsill rather proudly.

"Here you go," says Margaret, feeding him some food. Hermes, lifting his foot to let her tie a letter. "Bring this back to Percy. You fly safe, now."

Hermes took off into the night and Margaret watched him until he was no longer visible in the velvety dark sky. She let out a quiet sigh.

The more time passed, the more she chose to distract herself from her father. She seemed to be taking Ignatius's suggestion to not go snooping into a past that only brought her pain.

This became especially difficult now, however, as Percy had sent her the information she had asked for.

The letter she had written back was a simple one – a sentence thanking him, and a whole paragraph demanding why on earth he couldn't have waited until she was back in the country at least. The PS was a warning not to reply.

Margaret may have sounded salty, yes, but Charlie would've recognised Hermes the second he saw him. It would have been real trouble to explain why she was in contact with his brother who had disowned his whole family. Fortunately, it was late into the evening, and Charlie had gone for work in Bucharest and was not back yet.

Nearly a week had passed since Margaret had first arrived in the sanctuary. They hadn't spoken the whole way back to the sanctuary, though once or twice Margaret thought she saw Charlie open his mouth to say something but apparently deciding against it.

The only time they had spoken was when he came to inform her that he would be going to Bucharest for a couple of days and that Margaret was welcome to come along if she wanted. Margaret refused politely, saying she would hang out here instead. Charlie only nodded but he looked slightly hopeful when she called him back.

"Don't tell anyone about what you heard," she had stated plainly, eyes narrowed in warning even as she saw his face drop. "I mean it-"

"I wasn't going to," Charlie told her defiantly, sounding slightly offended.

This only angered Margaret further. She should be the one offended. He had no right to eavesdrop on her conversation. It was personal. To some extent, Margaret understood that her behaviour was childish, but she wasn't ready for anyone to know about her father's secrets yet. Hell, she wasn't sure if she herself was ready to deal with all of it yet.

Her mind often wandered back to the Burrow in moments like these, wondering what everyone must be doing now that they were all together. Probably having a much better time than she was.

For the night, Margaret made herself a rice bowl and salad for dinner (the sanctuary supplied groceries if one opted for it), read the translated Book of Merlin, listened to Mariah Carrey on her pocket cassette player and even took a shower before she hovered anywhere near the small parcel that Hermes had brought.

The packet contained a leather-bound folder with the paperwork of where the Xenakis surname had shown up in the past century. There was a spike in mentions around the 1940s, this being Alfréd Xenakis's name in newspapers.

Ignoring this, Margaret picked up a letter with the official stamp of the British Ministry of Magic, signed by Percy himself. She read through the unnecessary official terms quickly, her attention drawn by the three numbers highlighted in bold in the middle of the page:

Casier 642

To her complete surprise, these numbers were noted to be of a Xenakis family vault in the Ministry of Magical Affairs of France.

She was not sure how to feel about this, so she browsed through the folder again and found a small golden key in a side pocket with a small tag saying 'Casier 642'.