Father Time | Winter Solstice

   Juniper wandered across the room she believed to be the Hospital Wing or a replica set.

   Whoever her grandfather was, he was pretty rich, she thought.

   Really rich.

   Upon closer inspection, the brick walls felt genuine, smelled just like an old wall, and... She momentarily stuck her tongue out.

   "Nah," she waved off the idea.

   It wasn't as if she knew what bricks were supposed to taste like anyway. She's not Gaetan Molière.

   "Are you going to keep pacing away like that?" Jonathan, comfortably laid back on the springy bed, asked.

   "Aren't you?" She asked back pointedly. "I mean come on. This has got to be a set. Has to."

   Jon replied, "Never argued with you about it, but! Let's just say, but what if it isn't?"

   Nothing about the room felt like a façade. As she'd examined every nook and cranny she could fit herself through, too much of the room was too detailed. Even from the minute of things like a well-hidden bottle or a crumpled paper in the back of a drawer. These things were things no one would care to look at unless their name was Juniper Alden.

   "So, what do we do?"

   Juniper plopped on the bed she'd woken up from, utterly defeated by her siblings' nonchalant attitudes.

   Julie opened her mouth to answer, her hand mid in the air.

   "I-"

   The large wooden doors of the room swung with a loud creak and a soft grunt.

   "Evening," a hooked nose man greeted them.

   Jeanne peered outside the tall windows. Certainly, it was dark outside.

   A memory flashed in Julie's mind.

   “Why must I learn this, Uncle Sev?” Julianne looked to be nine years in age. “When am I ever going to need this?”

   Severus Snape frowned, “you will need it far more than you think you will.”

   “Occlumency,” Julie whispered.

   The sallow-skinned and hooked-nosed man shifted his eyes in her direction.

   “Sshh,” she heard him say with his eyes as more people gathered inside the Hospital Wing.

   She found herself thinking about what seemed to be memories. Much as she'd like to pass them off as the workings of her imagination, they seemed too real not to mention. She pushed aside the thought of being discreet and raised a hand.

   They didn't really pay her any attention, lost in their own conversations.

   June nodded at her sister, "What's up?"

   "I had a dream," Julie told her.

   Still, no one but the oldest-looking man paid them any attention.

   "You wanna tell them?" June asked her.

   "Kinda...?" Julie shrugged.

   June sat up straighter on the bed and leaned onto the foot railing. Jon did the same. Together, they took a deep breath and with a loud unified voice said, "Julie had a dream!"

   The room was caught by surprise. Silence filled the room faster than they could have counted.

   "So, I had a dream," Julie cleared her throat, a little embarrassed. "I was four years old and playing at a beach when mom suddenly collapsed. She’d recently given birth to June. It was the middle of winter- yeah because January. The entire house was decorated, prepared for a party. Or the party was long done?”

   Jeanne could hear laughter in a memory she didn’t recognize.

   No, it wasn’t laughter.

   “Carina!” Jeanne saw her father run out of the house. “Julie, Jeanne—Jonathan the kids are outside!” He was panic-stricken, holding his wife in his arms.

   “Jeanne,” she heard her name, “assist your grandfather. Take your sister inside. Hurry now.”

   Six-year-old Jeanne grabbed Julie by the arms.

   “Come on!” She pulled at her as she shouted. “We have to get out of here!”

   “Colt,” Carina gasped, “Help me up. Hurry now, dear.”

   Julie noticed Jeanne turn to her, encouraging her to continue the story of the dream.

   She did just that. 

   “I remember, mom had a huge wound on her chest and dad desperately trying to heal her.”

   'That’s right,' thought Jeanne, she’d seen that scar once before after her mother nursed June.

   A blonde couple stepped forward.

   Jeanne's eyes glazed over as a memory occupied her mind, but she said nothing as it played on.

   "They should all be under our care," the blonde couple claimed.

   A brunette woman disagreed.

   "As a pureblood, Jeanne, you must at all times be presentable." A dark-brunette woman dusted off a lint from Jeanne's shoulder in the dream of a memory. "And never show fear to anyone, especially those inferior to us."

   "Bellatrix," her mother's voice echoed across the long hallway. "Jeanne is but two."

   They glared at one another with Bellatrix ready to pounce at the younger woman.

   "Leave her be." Her father sauntered into the hallway. He gestured toward the direction he'd come from, "The Dark Lord wishes for your presence in the study, Bella. I'll deal with my wife."

   Bellatrix smirked as she stalked off. Once out of sight and hearing, Carina glared at her husband.

   "You'll deal with me, will you?" She playfully punched him on the shoulder.

   He winced but grinned.

   "Does it still hurt?"

   "It'll heal soon enough." He brushed his hand on her cheek, traveling to the back of her neck. "Carina, my love, whenever we're here, you pick a fight with that witch. Please, do not attract unwanted attention."

   Their foreheads touched as he leaned to breathe her scent in.

   "I know," Carina sighed, looking up. "I just hate it here."

   "Ah, there you are!"

   The husband and wife pulled away from each other.

   "Look who I found lurking around!"

   Colt and Carina smiled to each other before turning their attention to the young magicians.

   "Aquilla, Severus," Colt greeted them.

   “Not Sev,” Aquilla pointed, “Reggie here.”

   Jeanne shut her eyes to get a better sense of Aquilla’s appearance. The woman looked so much like Juniper, it was unnerving. Aquilla had sharp blue eyes, ebony hair, and a friendly countenance.

   “A-Aquilla, w-what is that?” Carina stammered at the sight of something dark etched across the length of Aquilla’s arm.

   “Relax, sis, it’s just the Dark Mark. Sev’s got one too.”

   Carina held onto Colt. “And Regulus?” she managed to ask.

   Regulus showed off his Dark Mark.

   “Will you get one as well, cousin?” The boy asked Carina.

   “She best not get one when we’re planning on having another child,” Colt laughed off and pulled his wife closer to him. “Anyway, she’s not all too adventurous, to begin with.”

   “Then what of you, Colt?”

   “I rather—” Colt was interrupted from rejecting the honor.

   A drawling voice from afar observed.

   “Gathered so strangely, aren’t we?” The voice said, bringing Jeanne back to reality. 

   “Isn’t it obvious where the children will be staying?”

   To the said children, this was not an obvious thing at all. Rather, it was perplexing. Staying with who? And why? What would they need them?

   "What are you talking about?" Jon asked aloud.

   The girls nodded in unison.

   No one bothered to answer him as they were lost in claiming for themselves what shouldn't have been theirs to claim.

   "Hey!" June slammed her hand on the railing of the bed.

   The railing rattled with the bed.

   She might have winced if it didn't take away from her ruse of courage. Instead, she gritted her molars down and took a very long deep breath.

   Jeanne, wide-eyed, snapped her head towards her sister.

   'Ouch,' she mouthed.

   "Good, we have your attention again, have we?" June got up but sat back down immediately. She really wasn't sure what Jon wanted to ask, and the little courage she had was now dissipating with the pain from her hand. "I just mean, Jon has something to ask."

   Jon pressed his lips together to hold his laughter back.

   "Thank you?" He choked out. "I just mean, what the hell are you guys on about?"

   He took a pause and tried to reword his question.

   "Forget the hell part."

   "What he means to say," Julie turned their attention quickly to her. "We can manage on our own, thank you. You can just lead us to the exit, and we'll gladly be on our way."

   "Way where dear?" A red-headed woman asked, a little too worried.

   "Out," June answered.

   "Of here." Jeanne continued for her.

   "Yes, well, that's what we've been discussing. Where the four of you will be staying from now on." A slightly pudgy man informed Jeanne.

   "Why?" June asked once more for her and her siblings.

   They didn't seem to understand this question.

   "The children are still confused." The old man from the bookstore hobbled to the center of the room. "I say, we let them rest for now."

   "We don't need any more 'rest'," Jon got up from the bed. "We've been well rested- how many hours now, June?"

   June got up from her seat and walked to the desk where she'd made marks for every hour that had passed.

   "Three."

   "And we're good to go, right, Jules, Jeanne?"

   Jeanne got up too.

   "As far as my knowledge goes, we're not injured in any way. No open wounds. No concussions to speak of. We're all good to go."

   "And frankly," Julie pushed herself off the bed, "this is beginning to be a little too freaky."

   "As I've said," the old man patted Julie's hand, "they are not themselves right now. They are still locked in the muggle world they've lived in."

   "And how do you release them?" This time, a red-headed man asked before anyone else could pose the question.

   "They will be released over time."

   Juniper has had vivid dreams where she'd been made to believe they were real. This was one of them. She took a deep breath and marched back into bed.

   Without regard to anyone else, she pulled the covers over her head and tried to give in to sleep.

   "What's she doing?" Jon pointed at his youngest eldest sister.

   Julie shrugged.

   "June. June. Junie!" Jeanne shook her.

   "What!" June snapped, regrettably throwing the cover off her.

   "What are you doing?"

   They were all looking at her now.

   "Call me crazy right now, but what if we're still dreaming? What if I'm still dreaming, huh? So, I'm going to go into a long slumber and wake up again. I'm sure that old man drugged us with his tea."

   Julie and Jeanne retreated to their beds.

   "I didn't drink the tea!" Jon reminded them.

   "Are the children alright?"

   "Quite," June responded. "Except we're not children, so can you stop it with that?"

   "There is no use fighting this," the old man sighed. "You've spoken the spell to release yourselves, much to my dislike."

   Julie then remembered the prayer they'd recited back at the bookstore.

   "Was that not a prayer then?"

   "Far from it."

   "Propago Aevum?" Julie asked again.

   "Yes, Julie, dear."

   The four were quiet for a while, without any of them breaking into a short panic attack. Thankfully. The older people around them on the other hand were looking confused.

   "You've been tricked into saying the spell. Into finding me."

   "But I've said those words multiple times even before we came to meet you," Jeanne informed him.

   He didn't respond.

   Julie balled her hands around the snitch in her pocket. For her, the words hadn't appeared until the watch and letter were in the same room, the same space.

   The hooked nose man raised a brow which June took note of. Her own hands were gripped around the earring.

   Magical item plus magical words. If she didn't so much believe in spirits and in the possible existence of some sort of magic, she could've passed this off as a well-thought-out prank. But she had and now she couldn't.

   "Magic doesn't exist," Jon retorted.

   Finally, the tall bearded, and robed man took center stage.

   "I believe, the children," he momentarily glanced at Julianne, "are in need of more time to themselves. Let us give them the space to figure out for themselves what to do next."

   "You cannot be serious, Albus." A bowler-hatted man expressed his annoyance. "With Black out there, these children are as in danger as Mr. Potter."

   The blonde man smirked at that.

   "We've expressed our interest in the children. We will take them off your hands, Jonathan."

   "Fudge-"

   "Alden, you are not fit to be a guardian. Relinquish your right to any of them this instant."

   The men were at a standstill.

   'Let's break up,' Julie signaled with her hands.

   June was taken aback.

   'What?'

   Julie turned to her hands and repeated the words.

   Jeanne tried to comprehend the context behind the hand signals.

   Jon tapped on the railing lightly and reinterpreted Julie's poor command of sign language, one of the only languages that were not easy for her to learn- that and Morse code.

   'Let's split up.'

   'Why?'

   They all turned to Julie for an explanation, but she wasn't sure how to sign, 'so we can get more information on whatever is happening right now'. 

   Wait for as long as they wanted, she didn't have a way to communicate.

   Jeanne signed a wordy instruction, and Jon nodded.

   He tapped twice in June's direction, and stared at her for a second. She scrunched her eyes in confusion. He grinned and gave two thumbs up, to which she laughed and nodded.

   She looked over to Julie and motioned to Jeanne.

   "We will need that rest after all," Jeanne proclaimed with as loud a voice as she could muster.