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PAPER CONFINES. 22. / Falling
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When June found Southern France, the windows of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic went even foggier than they did in the snow. Winter was gentle. Summer was ruthless. The wet heat rolled in from the beaches and up the bluffs, and Colette, at twelve, hadn't yet mastered Professor Guillory's cooling charm, and spent most summer nights curled against her windowsill waiting for the next stroke of wind to find her face and blow her hair away. The relief when it came lasted only a second before she felt like she was sinking in hot sand again.
Upon her return that fall, it was Faustine Auclair, a strawberry-blonde girl in the year above, who had more freckles than Colette could chart stars in the sky (though she'd never been good at Astronomy), that taught her an easier wand movement for the spell. It reminded Colette of how she'd tried teaching Luc to tie his shoes—one bunny loop through the other—but unlike him, she was a proficient learner when guided by the right hand.
Her parents set her with a match to Faustine's brother that October.
In hindsight, she wished she had sat boiling at the window for another year.
Faustine was a ribbon. Faustine was a jewel. Faustine was the sharpest, bluest edge of glass on the shore, caught in a beam of sunlight. She was all glitter, and everyone wanted to collect her; to tuck her on a shelf with foreign coins and stamps and keep her. And Faustine, impossibly, from the moment she'd trained her with a simple charm, had her green-eyed gaze on no one else but Colette.
It was a girl's first crush and nothing more—Colette knew it even at that age—but it was a burning intake of breath that had no exhale to allay it. It just kept on. They'd walk to quidditch together, practice their arts, drink Elf-made wine from the seventh-years hidden stores, and they would never speak of war. It came as one of Faustine's many rules, though none were written or said aloud. Colette had discerned them over the first half of the school year and only liked her more for them: do not speak of the muggle war or of Grindelwald, do not drink with the boys, do not dance with the boys, do not braid Faustine's hair or hold her hand or kiss her like a friend on the cheek. Most of Faustine's rules involved keeping a distance, even when she seemed terribly like she wanted not to.
The brother, Raphael, had brownish hair like Colette's eldest sister and cheeks that were always red. He was a year younger, and juvenilely cruel, quashing bugs with white shoes to show off a cleaning charm after. He never kept a distance. He was a boy new with a claim on the first thing that would make him a man: Colette.
During the winter break Colette did nothing but miss her, and roll the word wife on the tip of her tongue to find music in its sound. She didn't want to be his, but she thought maybe she wouldn't have minded being Faustine's. In the cabin at Megève, she practiced her piano and tried to come up with a composition of her name, which always had music in it, but couldn't finish it. The word husband sat stiff in her fingers.
