16| GOLDEN WINGS, GOLDEN LOVE
"I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts,
there they are a'standing in a row...
big ones, small ones, some as big as your head,
give 'em a twist, a flick of the wrist
that's what the showman said!"
Gemini spun around as she sang and moved down the grassy, sloping lawn. After having had a heavy breakfast, she had decided to hop down to the edge of the Forbidden Forest with a simple aim in mind for the day — she was going to study the Abraxan-winged horses.
Her fascination for magical creatures was once again, messing with her self-control. Usually, Gemini never sang so openly — in fact, she never sang at all — but the sheer sight of the horses had piqued her curiosity and put her in a particularly good mood. She knew that she could easily read about the creatures in a book, but meeting them personally was a pleasure unmatched.
Twig sang along in her ear, their voices not carrying far. It seemed like hours before Gemini came to a stop in front of the large powder-blue carriage of the Beauxbatons delegation. At this point, she and Twig left the song incomplete. Gemini quickly dusted her tidy skirt to make sure she looked decent given she still had blue hair. Much to Snape's dismay, she absolutely refused to change it back.
Dumbledore had talked to her that morning — he seemed concerned at her lack of caution. Gemini had already strained her head on that matter but couldn't do much about it. In the end, she'd told him that having blue hair was perhaps a virtue.
Bits of their conversation flashed through her head as she knocked on the door of the carriage. Gemini was just adjusting the stationery she had brought with her when the carriage door opened.
The same boy who'd been staring at her earlier when the delegation had arrived was standing at the door. He looked to be two or three years older than her and was dressed in his blue robes. Upon catching sight of her, his eyes widened visibly. He stared at her as if she was a dream — surreal and stunning.
"Bonjour!" she smiled at him politely.
"B-Bonjour," he stammered.
"Madame Maxime est-elle ici?" she continued, hoping that Madame Maxime was present. She ought to be.
He looked surprised at her fluent French. "Oui. Voulez-vous que je l'appelle?" he asked, seeming more in control of himself now. But his blue eyes still looked at her with wonder.
"Ce serait génial," she smiled at him.
Awestruck, he cleared his throat and nodded at her. Then he spun on his heel and very stiffly walked back into the carriage to get Madame Maxime as she had requested. Not more than a minute later, the sound of heels clicking on the carriage floor reached Gemini's ears. Twig perked up to see who it was.
Madame Maxime emerged from the carriage in all her extravagant glory and Gemini stepped back respectfully. Her eyes slowly travelled around and then downwards to find Gemini. Her handsome features melted into an expression of startled admiration.
"Bonjour mon cher." she said in a deep voice, "Oh, regarde comme tu es belle!" She reached down one of her large hands and gently lifted Gemini's chin with her fingers.
"Merci madame, mais vous êtes trop gentille." Gemini thanked her, trying not to gloat at the fact that yet another person had called her beautiful.
Madame Maxime smiled at her. "Et qu'est-ce qui vous amène ici, mademoiselle...?"
"Delmar. Gemini Delmar." Gemini introduced herself. "I came here to study your horses. I thought it would be polite to ask you first."
"Pardonne me, mon cher —" Madame Maxime blinked, "you weesh to study ze 'orses?"
"Yes." Gemini nodded.
"But you cannot get near zem, zey might not be fraindly wiz you." Madame Maxime reasoned, looking over at the giant steeds. "My 'orses are vairy beeg and powerful. I do not think eet eez fully safe..."
"You needn't worry about me, madame. I have ample experience with magical creatures." Gemini assured her. When Madame Maxime still looked unconvinced, Gemini added, "You can see me try first. If anything gets out of hand, we have our Care of Magical Creatures professor nearby —" she gestured to Hagrid's hut just as he came out, surrounded by three familiar-looking students. "Hi, Hagrid!" She waved to him, clutching her books to her chest with the other hand.
Hagrid turned around and Gemini nearly choked at his new attire. He was wearing a horrible hairy brown suit, plus a checked yellow-and-orange tie and he had evidently tried to tame his hair, using large quantities of what appeared to be axle grease.
He waved jovially back to her and the three students whirled around quicker than the wind. Gemini recognised them in sequence — Granger, Weasley (she groaned internally), and golden boy Potter.
Hagrid then noticed Madame Maxime and went very rigid. Gemini cringed at the obvious lovestruck look on his face as he attempted his best smile at her.
"and.... we've got an excellent nurse...." Gemini continued, wincing as she awkwardly looked back at Madame Maxime. She was going to have a talk with Hagrid later.
"Eef you say so..." Madame Maxime agreed, at last, tearing her eyes away from Hagrid.
Gemini nearly jumped with joy. "Merci, merci, Madame." she thanked the woman excitedly.
"Oh, eet eez nothing," she waved her bejeweled hand and looked at Gemini with a warm smile. As Gemini went to approach the Abraxan-winged horses, Madame Maxime called her back, "Why eez your 'air — err — blue?"
"Oh, just a joke someone had played on me," Gemini answered, "I decided to keep it." Shooting a dazzling smile at the enormous woman, Gemini spun curtly on her heel and carefully approached the horses. Madame Maxime shot her a last odd look before she went back inside the carriage.
Dawdling, Gemini moved closer to the magnificent horses, her eyes kindled with utter fascination.
It was only when she was but a few feet away from their paddock that they noticed her presence. Gemini stopped in her tracks. She then moved a bit away from them, towards a large rock. The horses watched her movements with fiery red eyes as she pushed herself up on the rock and opened one of her books. She cast a levitating charm on it so that it was suspended right in front of her in mid-air.
Performing the same charm on her inkpot such that it was positioned on her left, she opened the second book which had notes scrawled elegantly on some of the initial pages. There were also a few diagrams, not the most beautiful necessarily, but still good enough. Gemini then took her quill in her left hand, using the right one to turn the pages of the floating book with her wand.
She glanced up at the horses and examined their colour and structure intensely, feeling a light-headedness trying to take over her senses resulting from the fumes of whiskey the horses were drinking. She shook off the feeling, and looking back into her book, the pages automatically flipped to the page where an identical horse was illustrated.
"Elephantine Palomino Abraxan-winged horses." she read out loud the name of the species given next to the picture. "Well, that's quite a mouthful."
She read more about them, their food habits, and their physical and magical characteristics. Copying down a few important pointers from the book into her notebook, Gemini sighed and frowned at the last line, 'the horses are often considered dangerous'. This was plainly the reason why she preferred to read Newt Scamander's books over any anonymous ones like the one in front of her. People automatically assumed any magical creature to be dangerous just because they didn't have the gall to walk up to them and try to form a kinship.
"We'll see that, won't we?" Gemini glared at the words and slipped off the rock, leaving all her stuff on it.
She loosened her green and silver tie and pulled it over her head and then rolled her sleeves up to her elbows. She didn't know whether it was the whiskey that made her do it or the very fact that her hair tie was squeezing her head, but she took the "damned thing" off and slipped it on her wrist. Thick blue curls came free and bounced on her shoulder blades.
"This'll be fun," she said as she made eye contact with one of the horses.
The herd of twelve all whinnied and snorted as the one she'd met eyes with straightened up from the trough of whiskey and tossed its cream-coloured hair. She walked in a way that didn't make it seem like she was compromising her pride but also with an unrushed speed that assured them she meant no harm.
The smell of the whiskey strengthened and so did Gemini's efforts to resist the effect. Every step she took in direction of the horses was accompanied by the maintenance of eye contact.
When she was at the border of the paddock, she simply stood in front of the steed for a while, her hands resting idly on the fence. Then slowly, the horse bent its humongous head down to her level and looked her right in the face.
"Hello dear," she said, tenderly reaching out a hand to touch it.
She stopped herself when the horse seemed a bit hesitant and allowed it to take its time to meet her hand. She stood very still until the horse willingly leaned forward and pressed its forehead to her palm. It sniffed her foreign scent, trying to find out whether she was trustworthy or not.
Those few minutes always made Gemini nervous. One wrong move and she would lose the opportunity to befriend the creature altogether.
So she waited.... comfortably still and at ease. When its examination process was complete, the horse nuzzled readily into her palm and Gemini felt the largest smile spread over her face.
"That's right, tell me everything," she whispered. She slowly shifted her hand from the horse's head to its neck and ran her fingers through its silky fur. "what ails you.... what delights you..."
She sighed, "Aren't you a beauty,"
The horse whinnied with pride and licked her cheek.
"Aw, darling, I like you too." she grinned, stroking its jaw with the back of her fingers.
The sound of multiple hooves trotting brought her gaze up. Some of the other horses were approaching her curiously, shaking their wings and snorting. Gemini's starry-eyed gaze marvelled at them, and she found her heart lighter than it had been for a while.
She stayed there all afternoon, simply acquainting herself with the horses and taking down notes on their behaviour. She drew a few rough sketches of them and some explicitly of their wings.
When a light rain started to fall, she used her wand as an umbrella. All of her stationery was water-repellant, so she didn't have to fret over that.
Occasionally, a Beauxbatons student would come out and spot her and even Madame Maxime came to see her when the rain started. The Beauxbatons' headmistress was both astonished and delighted at her progress with the horses.
The Beauxbatons students were an entirely different story. Most of the girls who saw her seemed jealous of her and sent dirty looks her way whereas the boys were all at once attracted to her. One even came up to her and tried to talk, but Gemini kept using Archaic English in between sentences. In the end, he got so flustered by words such as "venery", "cannonade" and "izzard" that he awkwardly left her alone and rushed back to the carriage.
Gemini didn't even know what the words meant, she'd just come across a dictionary of Archaic English in her library during the summer and decided that it would be fun to use the words in conversations.
The moment the boy had entered the carriage, Gemini had burst into a fit of giggles that eventually turned into uncontrolled laughter. She had just been leaning her head on the fence, laughing her head off with Twig when a chorus of voices sounded behind her and she straightened up.
The Beauxbatons students were leaving the carriage — it was evening already.
"Merde!" she exclaimed and pulled out her watch, "What's the time —"
She cursed yet again at the position of the clock hands and snatched her books and quill from the rock. Screwing on the lid of her ink bottle, she minimized it with a spell and stuffed it into her pocket.
Gemini was never one to be late for any event, and she wasn't going to break her streak anytime soon. She grabbed Twig off one of the horse's ears, where he had been babbling to it, and kissed the horse between the eyes. "See you later, Henry," she patted its neck and began her journey to the castle, careful to not slip on the wet soil in her haste.
However, the image of Hagrid talking to Madame Maxime with a rapt, misty-eyed expression did not escape her notice. When she was sure that she was out of their line of sight, she bent over and gagged a bit, making Twig giggle which, in turn, made her smile.
She whipped her head back, blue curls flying all around, and stared longingly at the horses. "Do you think they'll miss me?" she asked Twig with the slightest tinge of sadness in her voice.
Twig jumped onto her shoulder and patted it, shrugging.