Morning, December 19th, 1890 — London

Alfred's invitation to teach her wandless magic sat on her bureau for a day and a half before Jo found the courage to take him up on his offer. She was an entirely different person when he last knew her, one confident enough in her body to share it freely with whomever dared to look. Now, however, Jo felt too vulnerable to be near most without an obscene amount of layers. Gloves (her right one filled with small wooden blocks to help hide her missing fingers) stretched up to her elbows at all times. Any top she wore was immediately buttoned up to her neck to hide the still healing tiny scars from the debris. She looked and felt nothing like herself, and there was no telling when she might return to the way she used to be.

If not for Zachariah, Jo didn't think she would have willingly returned to England at all. Her family was insufferable, each louder and more impossible than the next. They meant well, she knew, but none of them had ever suffered such a tremendous loss. (With the possible exception of Mercury, seeing as he was widowed early in life with small children.) None of them knew how to best comfort her. Fuck, Jo didn't even know half the time how she might best like to be comforted.

Still, she had to put in some sort of effort. If not for herself, then for Zach.

She realized she ought to have sent word to Alfred as the green smoke surrounded her. It was too late now, though, for she was stepping into his flat less than a few seconds later. "Hello," she greeted quietly upon seeing him. "Thank you for having me over ... I'm sorry I'm late."

  

It had been quite a while since the floo had activated on their fireplace. Bilton was perfectly social, but tended to go out to see people rather than invite them back, and Alfred hadn't had visitors in some time. Zelda was essentially under house arrest any time she wasn't working, which made visiting impossible, and Jo Smith had more or less dropped off the face of the earth until her sudden letter last week. And, of course, until she appeared in the fireplace. On the one hand, he was surprised, but on the other hand, he supposed he wasn't that surprised.

"You're not late," he said, raising one eyebrow. "Late would imply we'd made a plan of some sort."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Well, he wasn't wrong. Jo's brows furrowed in mild confusion as she brushed the dust from her dress and furthered entered the room. Was the invitation not plans, then? Had her concussed brain somehow rearranged the words in his letter? It wasn't impossible, she supposed, as her brain didn't often feel like her own anymore.

"Is now a good time?" She asked, feeling more uncomfortable than ever having just seemingly invited herself over to his flat. "I can come back another day..."

  

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beautiful set by mj

She seemed to have taken him more seriously than he intended, which made Alfred frown briefly. "Now's fine. I only meant I wasn't expecting you," he assured her. He'd thought it would have been obvious that he was joking, dry as his tone might have been, but it had been a long while since she'd dropped by his flat with minimal forewarning, and a lot had changed since then. Alfred was courting someone, for one, which may or may not have changed anything about the way that the two of them interacted — he wasn't really sure. And things had changed for her, too. She'd said as much in her letter, but even if she hadn't it seemed obvious now that he was seeing her. She was different. It was like an intangible piece of her was missing, or hidden. The way she carried herself now was nothing like what he remembered of her.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked after a short, awkward pause. He wasn't really sure what else to say, so playing host would have to suffice for the moment. Should he ask her about what had happened, or would she want to avoid the subject? Should he say something about himself to distract from it? Should they just sit in silence until she was ready to direct the conversation? He'd invited her over to learn some magic, but that was hardly the sort of thing one just jumped into without any sort of scaffolding.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Her frown matched his. Suddenly, it felt like the easy conversations they once had about life and the universe were as lost to her as her missing appendages. Perhaps reaching out to him was a mistake. It was just ... Jo couldn't think of anyone who might better understand her circumstances but him. Zach was supportive, of course, but he didn't know what it was to have such a dramatic life event. His life was quiet, peaceful even. Jo operated within the center of a hurricane bringing chaos wherever she went.

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you have is fine." Whiskey, beer, water, whatever. Jo likely shouldn't have any alcohol considering her head, but what Alfred didn't know wouldn't hurt him. "So, how did you learn wandless magic?" She asked once he returned with their drinks. Perhaps they couldn't speak as they once had, perhaps it was better to focus on why she was here at all.

  

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beautiful set by mj

Alfred didn't have much on hand, since he hadn't been expecting to host, but there were a few bottles of booze squirrelled away that he'd received as gifts at various points throughout the year. The brief break to find and prepare the drinks was a good chance to clear his head, too, and try to sort of reset the interaction. He didn't want this to be awkward. He'd made the invitation in the same spirit as the conversations they'd had that spring that had come so easily to them both, and he wanted to get back into that atmosphere if he could. Jo had just brought a bit more invisible baggage with her than he'd been anticipating, he supposed.

He poured them both a scotch and returned to the front room, handing her a glass then sitting cross-legged on one of the sofas. "The tribe. They've got a very different relationship with magic there. Most people hardly use any at all, and then there are one or two people — older women mainly — who know everything. When we first arrived, Pablo was sick and she was the healer, so I spent a lot of time with her. Then after a while, she started teaching me things. We only had one wand between the th— the two of us," he corrected quickly — they had agreed not to talk about their shipmate who had elected to stay behind with the tribe, lest anyone from England get ideas about setting out to "rescue" him, and while Miss Smith likely represented no danger on that front Alfred still wanted to watch what he said. "And it wasn't actually our wand. It never liked me much, so we'd more or less given up on traditional magic."

He took a sip from his drink. "This isn't the sort of wandless magic Englishmen do," he added. "I probably should have told you that straight away. So I'm not sure if you still want to learn."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Different was putting it mildly, she knew. Jo was never privy to the magical rituals of the few tribes she encountered, but she knew them to be nothing like the relatively simple nature of wand-assisted spell casting. The few preparations she did witness usually involved herding animals in for, what she imagined was, blood sacrifices. That magic couldn't possibly be what Alfred intended, as he hadn't any altars nearby. At least none that she could see at present. It had been some time since they saw one another, though, and he could have reinvolved himself in those rituals, she supposed. Merlin, what a hilarious end to this (mostly) rotten year that would be: blood sacrificed in London by a friend.

Jo hid what likely would've been a slightly manic (she was more volatile than ever, after all) chuckle behind a sip of whiskey and sat opposite him on the sofa, her feet tucked under her bottom. "Wandless healing magic is likely the most useful of all, if I had to guess," she commented instead of sharing any of the thoughts passing through her head.

Her brows furrowed briefly at his quick correction. By all accounts, it was just him and Mr. Medina who survived the disasters that befell their shipmates. Or, that was what the pair of men wanted the world to believe. Either way, Jo wasn't going to — and would never — comment upon it. She had plenty of her own secrets to keep without adding an even larger scandal to her plate. No, whatever Alfred meant by that momentary slip would live and die with him.

"Wands are such fickle beasts," Jo shrugged. She still carried hers, though whether it was a representation of sentimentality or unaddressed rage she didn't know. "I'm willing to learn whatever you can teach me. It's a start, which is more of a direction than I've had in months."

  

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beautiful set by mj

"Very useful," he agreed. "Though it's a bit — er, it's not exactly like the healing magic you're used to. I never learned anything to help with pain," he said with a sheepish half-shrug. "They had an herb for that, but honestly they didn't use it much. You were just expected to... feel things, rather than numb them." It was a philosophy that had some merit, in Alfred's opinion — but it had taken him a while to see it as anything other than a backwards group of people who had yet to invent pain potions or medications, and he had been immersed in the tribe's way of life. He wasn't sure that he would even be able to really explain what he was getting at to someone who hadn't been there. Jo might have understood, if anyone in England did, because she was well-traveled and relatively open-minded, but even with her he wasn't sure it was worth trying to explain. Did he even know how to describe it using English words?

"So, uh, the healing spell I know is — well, it's a mending spell, really," he continued, moving on from the philosophical aspect of it and into the practicality. "It's the same spell you would use to repair a tear in a piece of cloth or canvas. It stitches things back up. And, uh, it works just as well with muscle and skin. But it hurts," he admitted. "Just as much as doing things the Muggle way."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Feeling things was all Jo had done since returning to England. She had potions to take when the pain became too much to bear, though they often made her thoughts so fuzzy that she detested them all the same. That the healers couldn't find a potion to properly heal her hand was the worst of it all anyway. Even now, as she held the whiskey glass in her nondominant hand, she could feel the slight tremors beginning where she kept the gloved hand against her form. Perhaps the tribe had the right idea all along in ignoring the use of this herb, for if it couldn't heal all what was its use?

She decided not to comment upon the explanation. To do so would leave her feeling more vulnerable than she wished to at present. Besides, with Alfred now publicly courting she wasn't sure where the line of their friendship stood. It wasn't as though things between her and Zelda were as great as they once were either.

"Okay," Jo nodded. "And you've done this on yourself?" How did he know how painful it was otherwise?

  

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beautiful set by mj

"I have," Alfred said with a nod. Then, after a moment's pause, he added, "But I don't recommend it when you're just practicing." The spell worked just the same way on cloth as it did on someone's body, so there was no need at all to practice on an actual wound. Not when making little cuts in a piece of fabric could accomplish the same thing without any pain whatsoever.

"It can scar a little, too, depending on how big the cut is," he pointed out, rolling his right sleeve up to point out a thin white line on his arm from a spear wound half a decade ago. "So it's not quite as clean as the magic healers use, but it's certainly better than nothing."

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

"Anything is better than nothing," she commented a tad bitterly. Nothing was where she presently stood and it was awful. Surely, even being capable of mending a dress or a cut was better than being as useless as a bloody muggle. (Not that Jo held any ill will towards muggles, seeing as her family was very closely tied to them, but still. She grew up being capable of magic! Losing that ability was more frightening than Jo had ever imagined.)

"So how do we do this?"

  

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beautiful set by mj

How did they go about this? Alfred wasn't used to teaching people things. Occasionally he taught a sailor a knot they weren't familiar with, or some trivial bit of navigational lore, but that was a far sight different from training someone in using a type of magic they'd never been schooled in before.

"Right. Should I explain it, or show you?" he wondered aloud, glancing around to see if he had anything close at hand that he could use to demonstrate. He settled on one of the couch cushions, and hoped his flatmate wouldn't be able to notice the difference when he next used the sofa. It wasn't as though either of them had frequent guests, so this ought to be fine. Alfred retrieved a holstered knife from a nearby table (it was always close at hand, since having been lost in the wilderness he understood the value of a good knife; it was only absent from his belt because he'd been lounging on the couch with no plans of going out when she arrived) and cut a long slit in the pillow.

"So you can do it with both hands, or just one. It's faster with both, but obviously that's not always possible if you're trying to stitch your arm back together," he said, nodding towards the scar he'd just showed her. "So you make a sign with your hand like this — over the thing you want to close up — and then there's a chant. Just under your breath is fine, it doesn't have to be loud or anything. So —" he hesitated, giving her a quick look to see if she was following or if she'd dismissed him as insane, then demonstrated. As he chanted, the rip in the pillow slowly repaired itself, just as though the tear had never been there.

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

Jo watched with rapt attention. Her sheer determination to be useful at at least one thing outweighing any other thought she might've had towards the chanting. It helped, too, that she had witnessed some tribal magic before. Not much, certainly not enough to remember the process, but enough to not resemble the typical shocked English woman.

The sign he made with his hands would be impossible to replicate with her missing fingers. One hand could work, though, provided it wasn't that same arm that had injury. "Fascinating," she said softly as the cut sewed itself shut. Yes, that would prove itself useful eventually. "Can you repeat the chant, slowly? I think I misheard some of the words." The language was foreign to her, so she would likely need it repeated at least once or twice more. "And the symbol, it goes like this?" She mimicked what she thought was the symbol he made with her left hand, her useless one remaining gloved and resting on her leg.

  

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beautiful set by mj

"Almost," Alfred said in response to her hand gesture. Abandoning the pillow, he moved to where she was sitting and flopped down next to her, then reached up to move her fingers with his own. "This one just a little lower — there. And the thumb spread out a little more, here. Like that," he said, looking over the entire hand again and nodding. He glanced at her other hand, still laying on her lap, but decided not to say anything about it. She didn't strike him as the sort to wear gloves, not if she was just visiting a friend, but it was December so it was hardly so unusual it was worth remarking on. And if she wanted to talk about it, she would have brought it up.

"Let me get the pillow again and you can try it," he said, reaching behind him to collect both the pillow he'd just demonstrated on and the knife he'd used to cut it. "And you can just repeat it after me, the first time, if you want." He sat crosslegged on the sofa, his knees brushing hers, and rested the pillow on his lap before making another long cut in the fabric. He reached out to touch her hand and moved it into place above the tear, then let go, putting his hands on his knees. "Ready?"

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER

If Alfred were anyone else, Jo likely would've hesitated to sit so close to him. Not because she was suddenly prudish or because she didn't like the reassurance of someone else's touch, but because of her loyalty to Zach. Despite never having a conversation about what they were to one another, Jo knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wouldn't be pleased to learn she was intimate with another man. Alfred, though, was an entirely different breed. He, too, was loyal to the one he cared for, even when a nude woman snuggled into him. And so, when Alfred shifted so that their knees and hands touched, Jo moved only to further both their comfort.

She followed his instructions, spreading her thumb and fingers just so. Her fingers remained in the spread position as he moved and tore the pillow once more. It was with some hesitance that she nodded her head and replied, "Ready." The chant and its pronunciations still worried her, but what better way was there than to learn by doing?

  

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beautiful set by mj

At her assent, Alfred started the chant, speaking slowly and enunciating deliberately. He paused so that she could follow. It took a few repetitions before there was any movement in the fabric, but it did eventually start to slowly patch itself back together. The seam was a little crooked, but it was serviceable. He let her work through about an inch of the tear before he stopped chanting, letting her go through the words on her own.

"You have to focus harder on wandless magic than you do with a wand," he told her. "A wand is like a... like a conduit, or a funnel. When you have a wand you don't have to work as hard to make something happen, because the wand does half the work. Without it, you have to really — I mean, can you feel it?" he asked, watching her face. "Can you sort of feel the magic inside you? I don't know — maybe it's just my imagination, but when I was learning this I felt like I was... more aware of what I was doing, I guess. More intentional about things than I was when I was learning at Hogwarts. It's like you have this whole well of magic in you and when you have a wand, it just sort of taps into it and you don't have to think about it. But when you don't, you have to do that, yourself. You have to reach in and grab it and pull it out, and push it into whatever you're trying to do. Can you feel that?"

  

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MJ made the most Alfredy of sets and then two years later she made it EVEN BETTER