ELYSIUM • G. WEASLEY

ONE

"Just a little bit more, Iris!" Hermione called out as she took a few cautious steps back, navigating her way around the numerous boxes on either side of the house. She held the last box as tightly as she could so it wouldn't fall as her cousin, Iris, grabbed the other side of it and followed her in the house. The moment she had gotten in the apartment, she kicked the front door closed behind her and with similar grunts, the two women slowly put the box to the ground. Iris straightened up with a sigh.

"I had heard moving was tiring but I never thought it would be so exhausting," she exclaimed as she leaned against the wall, her lips pursed as she took in all the different boxes in the room that would hopefully become a living room in the next few days. She looked outside with a frown as she noticed the glow of the light. It was afternoon. A few hours before dusk fell. She still considered the hour to be too late. Before she could voice any of her thoughts, Hermione spoke up.

"It would have been a lot easier if we lived in the wizarding world." She moved around the living room, closing the few windows around as Iris frowned at the absense of light. "This is a pretty small apartment and we don't have many things anyway. If we were in the wizarding world, this would have been over in an hour at most."

"Well, we aren't," Iris sighed as she navigated her way to the other end of the room to where she knew was the bedroom she had claimed as her own a few weeks ago when she had first seen the house. "Look at me now. I'm twenty five years old, I've work tomorrow morning and my back hurts!"

"A good night's sleep will help," Hermione called out from the other side of the house. Iris took a short look around the room before she moved back to the living room. She grabbed one of her boxes first and started moving it to her bedroom.

"I was hoping that would be the case," she responded as she sat on the bed they had put in the room the moment they had started to move their things inside. Now she was grateful for their initiative as she slowly started sorting through her things. As she heard Hermione closing more windows, she couldn't help but sigh. "Why are you closing the windows already? It's too early for that!"

Hermione's muffled response came a short while later, "Just in case anyone sees!"

Iris frowned, not understanding the reason behind her cousin's insistence to close the windows, but she didn't stop her. Instead, she continued looking through her things and placing them on the bed one by one. Once she had finished with that she realised what she was doing was useless without her desk in place, so she got back to the living room and got the box where she remembered she had put the disembodied pieces of her desk. She took it back in her room and got to work.

She was in the midst of building one side of the desk when a crack was heard from the living room. Iris stopped, confused. She thought she heard voices from the other side of the house.

"Hermione?" she called out as she strained her ears to listen. The voices seemed to have stopped. "Are you alright? Are you hurt? Did something fall?"

"I'm fine," Hermione called back, "help has come!"

Iris's eyebrows furrowed in confusion as she turned back to her desk and spoke to herself. "Whatever. I didn't hear the door open."

There was no reply as she kept fixing her desk. She had done this so many times—courtesy of her brother somehow always managing to wreck his desks so they had to buy him another one and she was the only one in the house with enough patience to build his desk—she was finished with it a short while later. Pleased, she got up and placed the screwdriver on the desk as she turned around. Only to see a man standing by the door, watching her.

She screamed.

His eyes widened in alarm as she recognised his features. At once, she stopped screaming. Her face heat up.