A Kind of Magic

Twenty-Eight

They had long finished their food and even the wine, and Freddie had left them to return to the table to continue his interrogation of the good natured Gilderoy, when Fiona finally decided to ask Peregrine what did he mean when he had asked Freddie about his thoughts of becoming a vegetarian. She simply found it a too strange thing to say to a child to let it go, especially coming from someone like Peregrine, who looked nothing like a vegetarian himself. He puzzled her.

"Why don't you eat meat?" she muttered, not wanting anyone else to overhear their conversation, sensing something personal behind such a decision, wishing to keep it to herself should he decide to confide in her.

But, to her dismay, even as he opened his mouth to reply, her mother's voice obliterated his words.

"Goodness, it's late! And Freddie has school tomorrow, the last three days before the summer holiday starts, correct, young man?" The woman stood up and started to collect the plates as she continued, "Off you go Freddie, take a shower first, then anyone else can go. Fiona and I will get the dishes."

Freddie sighed, leaving his next question to Gilderoy hang in the air between them only pronounced halfway but ran off obediently. Fiona sighed too before she pulled herself to her feet, accepting the help of the dragon shifter who sprung up from the floor much faster than her.

"Shouldn't you shower and go to bed too?" he asked, half-frowning at her mum's back. "You must be tired. We can help her..."

"No way, you are our guests." She smiled when he turned to her. "I'm simply... used to being tired. It's nothing. And I'm off tomorrow anyway, my first day off in... three weeks," she said.

"That doesn't sound healthy," he announced, his eyebrows raised in a genuine surprise. "A holiday in Silmarea would do you good."

She laughed, then pushed him towards the door, out of the kitchen after his two friends, playfully. "Get ready for bed yourself, I've got this."

"The young elf is so charming, don't you think? Your father has a good eye, picking him as your suitor was an excellent idea..." her mother's words scattered the smile that lingered on her lips as she watched Peregrine's retreating figure from the sink filled with warm, soapy water.

Botheration... Did Gilderoy really have to tell her that? He did, Fiona could almost picture him laughing to himself as he had said that, surprising Leodhais, who, in love with Peregrine's sister as he was, would never tell her mother about it himself... Men! There was a fragment of Peter Pan in each of them; they never grew up entirely...

She inhaled deeply, collecting her thoughts before she replied to her mother as she passed her the washed dishes to dry and put away. "My... father had no right to oblige him to court me. I freed him from that silly duty. I don't even like him at all," Fiona said, not realising that her words reached the three men in the sitting room easily, sending Gilderoy into a fit of giggles moments before Leodhais, his ego bruised even though he didn't like Fiona more than she liked him, hurled a pillow at him, while Peregrine strained his ears to hear the mother and daughter conversation above the noise they were making.

Freddie, gathering the situation with surprising speed on his way towards the bathroom, made it impossible, at least he thought so, by shutting the kitchen door as he passed by. Peregrine smiled at the boy, praising him for the protectivenes of his mother before he vanished in the bathroom. 

Peregrine focused on the womens' conversation again, the closed door or the wall it was set in, creating no obstacle to his dragon hearing.

"I never understood your tastes," the older woman scoffed. "He's a stunning young man..."