26th August, 1893 — The Kirke house, Bartonburg

Elsie had plans for the day, and he had told Miss Halliwell to take a (well-deserved) nap, that he would be on baby duty for an hour or two.

Now that they had two, he had lost all fear that he might accidentally fuck up when he was left alone with them. So it rarely mattered how tired or worried he was when there was also a persistent delight in being the supervising adult here.

So he had just owled Rowan Yaxley with a scribbled note. Yaxley, it read, Are you on shift today? (As far as he remembered, she wasn’t, and hopefully he was right about that, because he didn’t want to tear her from actually-important-things for this.) I’m at home with Bentley and there’s been an accident.

He grinned at Bentley across the room, and then settled back to wait for the cavalry to arrive.

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Rowan Yaxley/Philomena Sprout

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   Elsie Kirke

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Even though it technically wasn’t her work day, Rowan had stopped by to pick up some paperwork at the offices before she headed back home. She’d thought about stopping by the Reversal Squad offices to chat with Dory for a while and maybe see if he had wanted to grab a bit to eat when the owl had fluttered in through the door while she was crouching over her desk, attempting to locate the last of the scrolls. She didn’t see the owl, of course; it dropped the letter on her head and promptly flew out before she could see what it had looked like.

She was in the middle of stuffing the last of the scrolls into her bag as she scanned it quickly, thinking it might have been an owl from her mother asking her to pick up something on the way home. But no. After scanning it over once, then twice, there was a flurry of papers as she dropped everything and ran out of the office. She was already past the fireplaces when she realized she could have taken them for a faster route. Cursing under her breath, Ro hustled out the door and immediately turned on the spot.

As soon as her feet hit the dirt, Rowan was running up to the front door and knocking vigorously on the front door. “Tybalt?!” She called breathlessly, her heart in her throat.

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There came the knocking. He’d feel bad for her, and all that heart-thumping exercise, but he was too committed now: he flung open the door in his best show of desperate breathlessness. “Rowan,” he said, ushering her in with haste, and launching straight into it as he led her back into the sitting room. “I only left them alone for ten minutes,” he exclaimed (lying, with an utterly straight face, like ten minutes with a toddler and a two-month-old was practically nothing), “and then I came back to –”

This, Tybalt said with a gesture. The sitting room was steadily filling with bubbles, as though this were an underwater scene at the aquarium. Bentley was in one, bobbing up and down and slowly bouncing off the walls as if in an overlarge beachball. (Magical bubbles, of course – they weren’t likely to pop by themselves.) Bentley was enjoying himself, anyway, even if he was a (pretend) victim of this.

The apparent perpetrator was tucked up in a bassinet in the middle of the room, from where the persistent stream of bubbles seemed to be emanating. “Do first acts of magic ever happen this young?” Tybalt asked, in faux-concern. “And in their sleep?” Because Maisie was, in fact, sleeping soundly where she lay – and if Tyb had actually hidden his wand under her blankets, bubble-spell still in process, he fancied it would take Rowan a minute to notice.

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   Elsie Kirke, Philomena Sprout

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Her nerves climbed higher as Tybalt burst through the door. It was rare to see him in such a state, and Rowan’s heart plummeted. She would have immediately pushed past him had he not quickly turned round and led her through the house. She hurried after him, and had begun the process of unbuttoning her cloak when she registered what he was saying. Ten minutes?! Her mother’s frets from the previous night flashed through her mind: Autumn is upon us, I do not trust that man to bring his children outside in the proper clothes. What if he forgets their socks again? They’ll catch their deaths! It had taken a considerable amount of time for Rowan to convince her mother that while Tyb may be an idiot, he wasn’t stupid, and his wife certainly was entirely capable of making sure that wouldn’t happen.

After hearing this, Rowan started to regret her reassurances.

There was little time to scold him though, because he led her into the sitting room. Rowan gave an abrupt cry of surprise before she bolted into the room, arms held out to the bubble that Bentley was currently inhabiting which was surely about to pop. “Tybalt, ten minutes? What were —” Hang on a second. Arms suspended in mid air, Rowan cocked her head to one side as she realized Bentley was quite unharmed, cooing and waggling his fingers at her from his perch. He was even bouncing a little on his own which surely would have broken his little barrier. “In their sleep?” She repeated weakly. She looked wildly from Bentley to Tyb, currently torn between dropping her arms to fetch her wand and afraid that the moment she did, the baby would fall.

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   Tybalt Kirke

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Oh, her little exclaimed cry was delightful. As was her echo of ten minutes – while she was too busy peering up at Bentley (as happy a toddler as ever could be, in his bubble), he grinned to himself with the satisfaction of a Cheshire cat.

The expression disappeared again to return to another furrowed-brow look. “Oh, it wasn’t Bentley’s doing,” he explained, gesturing instead at Maisie sleeping in the bassinet. “She’s not even quite three months, but,” he shrugged, projecting ‘vague awestruck belief’ – they would see how much of an idiot Rowan really thought he was – “she has Elsie’s brains, I s’pose. Precocious, isn’t she?” He gestured around the room where there were still more bubbles issuing into existence than popping out of it, to better impress that he thought his sleeping baby had achieved all this.

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It…wasn’t Bentley’s doing… it took Rowan a few seconds to process the fact that she was holding a child who was not sleeping and that Tybalt was referring to the small baby sleeping peacefully without a care in the world; and when she realized it, with a jolt, immediately ran over to Maisie.

The fact that the sleeping babe shared a name with Rowan’s favorite (okay, only) sister had only served to ensure that Rowan would dote on her friends children even more (not that she could ever rank Orion, Bentley and Maisie in order of preference; she’d rather drink Bubotuber puss). Only half paying attention to Tybalt’s comment, Rowan peered down carefully at Maisie.

“Well first acts of magic can be unpredictable,” Rowan offered an edge still in her voice as she was torn between picking up the baby and leaving her where she was. “But the fact that she’s sleeping in all of this, I don’t think I’ve ever-” Her voice cut off immediately as she realized the bubbles were exiting the bassinet at an alarming rate. Batting the bubbles away, Rowan now crouched down by the bassinet, her alarm rising even further. She would have thought that at least the baby would have be awake in order for the acceleration of the (albeit, harmless) projectiles to be plausible.

“Tybalt, you’re sure you have no idea when this started?” Rowan asked again, looking back at the father before peering down at the baby once more as she batted away more bubbles. “What were you doing in those ten minutes? And where's Elsie?” Had this not been such a serious situation, she might have laughed. The bubbles had magnified random things around the room, making them appear absolutely disproportionate. The clock on the mantel piece looked melted; the light in the corner appeared to be quite tiny; and Tybalt’s head looked like a gigantic, wobbling gelatinous bean.

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   Daffodil Grimstone

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Rowan’s confusion-mingled-with-concern was beginning to get to him now, and Tybalt had to turn the burgeoning laugh into a hacking cough as a cover-up at the fact he might have flummoxed her with this.

“No – no idea,” he echoed solemnly, the corner of his mouth twitching again. “Elsie’s out with her mother, and I was hungry so I thought I’d just nip to the kitchen and let Ben watch Maisie...” he lied (in case Rowan thought he thought a two-year-old was qualified to supervise anything). “There’s nothing wrong with her, is there?” He asked, feigning a sudden bout of concern about his daughter and her strange magical prowess... But between the bubbles and Maisie’s open-mouthed dozing and Rowan having to bat away the bubbles now, he couldn’t hold it – he found himself bent double with laughter, wheezing and clutching at his knees.

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Through the magnified view of his features courtesy of the bubbles, Rowan caught a twitch of his lips when she turned back to him. That was when the realization slammed into her and her mouth popped open. Let Ben watch Maisie. Even as he said it, as she heard it, she knew Tybalt was not that stupid. To confirm her suspicions, Rowan dove for the bassinet, reaching in to pick up Maisie. Cradling her head as soon as she lifted the baby up she saw the culprit (what was most certainly Tybalt’s wand tucked neatly between Maisie’s blankets, producing bubbles as if its life depended upon it) and subsequently that was when she heard Tybalts guffaws of laughter. “Aiya!” Whirling around as fast as she could with a baby in her arms, Rowan felt a wave of outrage crash over her. She’d have immediately started yelling had she not been holding a sleeping child.

It was no matter. The father’s raucous laughter had woken his daughter with a start, and she immediately began to voice her indignation. Normally Rowan would have seen to comforting Maisie immediately (well, she did slowly start to bounce her arms as she held the child close) but it gave her the perfect excuse to turn on Tybalt. “You absolute —” There were things that one didn’t say in front of a child, all of which Rowan wanted to hurl at Tybalt but refrained. Instead, she settled on a few choice words in Mandarin. “Shǎguā, nǐ chī cuò yào le ma?! What is wrong with you?!” Rowan shouted over the child’s cries.

It turned out picking Maisie up to discover the ruse was working against her. Despite not wearing house slippers like she would at home, Rowan would have gladly wrenched off her shoe and thrown it at him. While it was unfortunate for Rowan, she had a feeling Tybalt didn’t realize what he’d managed to avoid (metaphorically speaking). With the Yaxley siblings having mastered dodging many a thrown slipper in the household after one of them inevitably mouthed off to her mother, Rowan had also become quite skilled at aiming with her own shoes. For lack of a better option, she advanced towards him, swatting away the bubbles as she went. “What a beastly thing to do, you menace!”

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He ought to stop laughing. He really should. But the fact that Rowan was yelling at him – he felt he understood the Mandarin perfectly just from her intonation – whilst gently bouncing baby Maisie in her arms was – really not that threatening after all. She was swatting the bubbles rather viciously, and Tyb did wish they hadn’t stopped forming or the room hadn’t started clearing of them, or that he had picked up his wand again to defend himself, but – he was still gasping with laughter as he went to catch Bentley.

(Bentley would be a useful shield if he needed one.)

“Alright, but in my defence, you – you should have seen your face,” Tyb said – in explanation or in supplication – grinning like a lunatic.

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It was rather hard to echo the same menacing air that her mother did when she was, at the same time, trying to calm down the child whose peace she’d so rudely interrupted. It was an even further pity when Tybalt picked up his son who conveniently was being held in front of him so Rowan couldn’t drop kick the Kirke patriarch for pulling such a stunt.

Even if she wanted to, in the midst of her anger she wasn’t at liberty to do any sort of magic for fear said anger would make her miss. (Rowan was an excellent shot, thank you very much, but she valued her friends’ children too much to gamble on it). Ugh. She hoped he choked on a bubble. That would teach him.

But then if he perished, she’d have to find a way to explain it to Elsie. Who likely wouldn’t bat so much as an eyelash at the prank he pulled, however wouldn’t be enthused at the fate of her (idiot ridiculous asshole) husband.

Worse was she couldn’t refute his observation through his laughter, because he was most certainly correct: the gobsmacked look on her face was probably worth galleons. Rowan narrowed her eyes, stopping just in front of Tybalt and Bentley. “I hope your face gets permanently stuck like that so you freak Elsie out and she has to put a barley bag over your head for the rest of your life.” She shot back, whipping her attention to Maisie who then proceeded to grab a strand of hair that had come loose from her updo and tug. Hard. “Ow.”

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   Tybalt Kirke

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He knew it hadn’t been a good defence (he didn’t have a good defence, to be honest), because if Rowan had had it in her power to curse him just by her words, Tyb was sure his face would already have permanently stuck just as she had said.

He stuck his tongue out at her (half to bait her, and half to check that his face wasn’t stuck so distorted with glee) but Rowan seemed preoccupied, because Maisie was presently proving herself truly her father’s daughter. Tyb bit his lip and pretended not to see their struggling.

“Alright, alright, I’m a menace,” Tybalt admitted, setting Bentley down to sit on the rug and raising his hands in reasonable surrender. The density of the bubbles around them was fading fast, like a bath that had sat too long, and a little remorse crept into his expression – eventually. (And the one tear that he wiped away from the corner of his eye was also definitely remorse and not the last of his amusement. Totally.) “I have to say,” he added, angelically, wondering if perhaps this remark would mollify her since it spoke to how imposing she could be when she wanted to – “I’m glad we’re friends and not enemies.”

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Infants certainly had strong grips. Rowan reached up and gently prised Maisie’s hand off of the strand of hair but her withering gaze was still cast on her father. “Hardly an astute observation Tybalt,” She countered as Maisie immediately released her hair in favor of her index finger, thus rendering Rowan completely unable to use either of her hands.

His efforts to mend bridges were transparent at best and so she shot him a skeptical look. “Plus, flattery will get you nowhere Mr. Kirke. It’ll take more than a few compliments to restore yourself back in my good graces.” She stuck her nose in the air imperiously before taking her demeanor and turning it in a complete 180 to snuggle up to Maisie again, cooing at her (she’d managed to get her index finger back and was now currently demonstrating some wandless magic, wiggling her fingers in the air to produce harmless sparkles for the infant).

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No amount of Rowan’s snark now could ruin this for him: Tybalt was still chuckling now and again, simply unable to help himself. She’d made his day. His week. His month, at least.

Probably there would be some revenge against him, eventually, but he wasn’t worried about it. Not yet – not while Rowan was too distracted by Maisie in her arms. “What will it take, do you reckon?” Tyb asked lightly, casually. “Or can I leave my standing with you to Maisie to rectify?” His daughter was doing the trick, he thought, even if she had been (unwittingly, unknowingly, unconsciously) involved in the prank. Tyb thought this, and forgot how to shut his mouth, how to not prod the less-than-amused bear. “She was the reason you got called out, after all.”

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