March 28th, 1891 - Ottery St. Catchpole, morning

Being a bridesmaid was stressful, and Zelda felt as if she'd spent most of the last week trying to moderate her sister's anxiety. (She was not the most qualified candidate for this, either, because she and Xena had never really been friends and a Fisk family wedding was not likely to change that for them.) But the chuppah was set up in the back of their uncle's house, the magical officiant was there, and Xena was busy terrorizing the maid who was styling her. Zelda had been styled since dawn, and so she was sort of just — waiting for things to happen. So it was easier to slip away than it should have been, and there was so much noise going on in the house that a pop! of apparition from the back porch was unlikely to be noticed. It was relatively early morning still — nine a.m., the world hadn't fully warmed up yet — with a solid chunk of time until she'd be expected to actually do bridesmaid things some more.

She landed on the dock of the small lake easily, and had a few minutes to fidget with her gloves and the earrings (their mother's, and aquamarine to match the dress, Xena had picked them out) before she saw Alfred. She definitely wasn't supposed to be seeing Alfred today, but he wasn't invited and Zelda had been unable to resist finding a little window to tell him to meet her — the thing was, as much as she'd complained about the dress, she simply looked too good in it to resist.

"Hi," Zelda said, straightening, "I hope it wasn't too difficult to find this?" The dock was a ten or so minute walk from the floo point in town, but she hadn't wanted to meet him at the actual floo point and risk being spotted by one of their desks. Besides, she was a little fond of this lake, for all that she could have drowned in it once — she hadn't, and so instead it made her think of the adventures of childhood and their life in Ottery St. Catchpole, which she sometimes missed for all that she'd lobbied to move to Hogsmeade for years before they had.

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