A Kind of Magic

Twenty-Two

Forbidding herself to think about what she was about to do, Fiona opened the window and pushed her head surrounded by the cloud of untameable, damp, copper curls into the endless drizzle.

"Don't you have a place to sleep?" she whisper-shouted into the black night. 

"We don't!" Leodhais, beating Peregrine to the answer, called back impatiently. He was cold, and his clothes were damp, and he was not going to spend yet another night of this quest outside in the open. He had had enough, he wanted to go back home, or rather back to Annwyn...

Fiona sighed so deeply that Peregrine could hear the sound above the whisper of the falling rain, above the whoosh of distantly passing cars. The woman had an incredibly compassionate heart; she wasn't going to let them spend the night in the rain, knowing as she must know by now that they were not leaving without her.

Exasperating men! Fiona despaired, her feeling of responsibility for them growing by the minute. They were not here to harm her, but to help her, at least in their opinions, by removing her from this world and guiding her into some better existence. She wasn't going to allow them to take her to her father, of course, wherever he was, but she couldn't possibly leave them standing under that tree in the rain the whole night... Botheration!

"Hang on!" she called before rushing across the room to where she had felt her keys by the entrance. 

"Come up!" she whisper-shouted again, throwing the keys to Peregrine, who caught them without trouble before she shut the window.

She cast her eyes around the sitting room while they climbed the stairs-- she could hear them approaching through the closed door, slowly, silently, inexorably, unevitably like time or destiny creeping upon her. Discarding the eerie thought, she focused on her surroundings. Her small and shabby flat wasn't a five star hotel but as long as they didn't mind to sleep on the sofa bed and the huge beanbag by the window, she could offer them a shower, a dry place to sleep and even breakfast prior to sending them on their way home tomorrow, before going to work. 

A silent knock on the door disturbed her planning. She hurried to open it for them before the noise would attract the attention of her neighbours, ushering them in, relishing the wide-eyed look full of... she didn't know what, but it was something perfectly heart-warming from Peregrine, when he noticed her hair as they entered, and he handed her the keys. Unlike her, he seemed to like her curls in their natural colour.

"The place is small and old," she said apologetically, turning away from him. "Here's the bathroom, and that's the kitchen," she pointed to the two doors on her right. "And there's my bedroom." Their eyes followed her pointing finger to the door on the left, close to the window, then moved expectantly to the last one set in the same wall as the one leading to her bedroom. However, she said nothing about that. 

Fiona stopped herself from telling them that that door led to Freddie's room at the last moment. She wasn't going to tell them about her son for fear that they might tell her father about him, and he might just get ideas about making the boy his heir should his daughter turn his offer down. She didn't think they would kidnap her son to make her follow them into their world but she wasn't going to risk it, they were raised in a different culture after all, followed another set of rules and their morals might easily differ from hers as well. There was no need for them to know about the boy; they would be gone by the time he returned tomorrow night.

"You can sleep here," she said, lifting the seats of the sofa in such a way that it unfolded into a decent-sized double bed, then nodded towards the beanbag that had already gotten Gilderoy's full attention. He could make himself very comfortable there, he was sure.

"Gollum sleeps in my room. You don't need to worry about him; he seems to like you. And I have enough pillows and blankets to make you feel comfortable..."