Black coffee, with sugar

Chapter 19

"Can we go to Portree?", Lilian asked, one lazy summer afternoon, sprawled on the couch as Daphne did some light reading - there was a newly published article on the effects of the Fidelius Charm when applied to a person, and Daphne had been dying to read it - on the kitchen table, making notes on a parchment. She maybe could convince her boss to test it in the Department, if they found a suitable lab rat. Maybe #62, if he was able to shake off the current issue he had with being spelled on. Some sort of allergic reaction to the past batch of experimentation or something, she was fuzzy on the details.

"Why should we?", Daphne's eyes didn't leave the text, dipping her quill into the ink pot, quietly charming it to highlight instead of underline. There was an interesting fragment on the after-effects on the experiment's subject psychosis after noticing no one outside would ever be able to see, hear or remember any previous memories of him unless his name was given to them by the secret keeper. "Do we need anything from there?"

"No, it's just...", there was a pause, and Daphne rose her head, forgetting the article for the time being. Lilian didn't seem to notice anything wrong, but Daphne was almost sure she could hear the tiniest wisps of laughter. "I think I remember having ice cream there, and I kind of want it again."

Daphne froze; she had never given ice cream to Lilian in the Portree market. She knew better than to trust anything that could possibly have a fairy's touch in it.

"Do you?", Daphne tried to keep it cool, wondering whether or not she could transfigure something into iron and it'd count as iron or as whatever material it had been originally from.

"Yeah. I think it was pomegranate, which is weird, because I don't like it. Aunt Astoria was there, too...", there was another pause, and Daphne wondered if she should, in fact, go to the Portree market, but to sell her hair to the old crone and ask for a blessing. Lilian sighed. "I think I'd like to have more, though."

"There's ice cream at home.", Daphne rose up, going quietly through her cabinets, trying to find the iron necklace she usually kept hidden for occasions her little bout of paranoia got the better of her. Wasn't it in the pots cupboard?

"I want that one, though,", Lilian whined, and Daphne wondered what that could mean. What did the faeries want, now? They hadn't bothered her in so long.

She grabbed the iron necklace - it had been hidden inside an old chipped bowl, for some reason - and went, as casually as possible, to the living room. Lilian was still sprawled, her homework all around her, a blot of ink in her forehead (somehow), looking to the ceiling as if she wanted to remember the exact taste of the ice cream she had never had. Daphne crouched by Lilian's side, putting the necklace on her daughter, and her green eyed looked at Daphne, confused. Her daughter may not understand what Daphne had been raised with, but it wasn't going to stop her.

When Lilian's skin didn't sizzle and burn, she shrugged. Well, her daughter hadn't been substituted by a changeling or a simulacrum who had their eyes on her because of the iron box business. That was as good as it came. Perhaps it was just a very realistic dream, and some ice cream did sound like an interesting option.

"Can it be in Fortescue's instead?", Daphne asked, unclasping the necklace, noticing that there was, in fact, no burn marks in Lilian's skin. "It's closer than the shop in Portree, and Apparating is uncomfortable in the summer."

Lilian sighed, disappointed, but rose up, going to her room. Daphne did the same, but hiding the necklace somewhere else. She tidied up her parchment notes and ink, lazily deciding to go outside in her current clothes - the lightest robe she had, almost a sundress in its thinness - and some simple slippers, her purse being Accio'd to her. Perhaps she could later finish reading, and waited for Lilian to appear, her little girl at least having cleaned the ink spot in her forehead.