Delilah Blackthorn was not a morning person. It was, therefore, powerful testament to the giddy anticipation that for the last week she had carried around in her chest cavity, like a soaring aria which increased daily in volume, that she had a smile on her face before she even awoke at 7:45am on July 21st. More unusual still was that the insistent babbling of her young sister Matilda pottering around the front garden and the patient answering voice of her stepmother, which floated up through her open window, only caused her to smile still more widely and spring energetically from the bed. She bounded across the room to draw the curtains and push the window further open, breathing in the scent of a deliciously mild Devonshire summer’s morning.
Today was the party.
Today had finally come.
A fresh swell of excitement rushed through her limbs and she hugged her arms tightly to herself, then broke into a wild spinning sort of jig around her bedroom, actually laughing out loud with elation.
‘Iiiii’m going to see Teeeerryyyyy!’ she sang in a ridiculous soprano whilst she twitched her bedclothes into place with exaggerated comedy gestures, then pranced down the hallway to the bathroom, where she began running a bath.
Terry, Terry, Terry-Terry-Terry… Just thinking his name was enough to make her want to leap up and down. She’d cherished every one of his many letters, but they were no substitute for seeing him in person. In the flesh.
It was maddening, and slightly embarrassing, that they’d shared their first and only kiss on the first day of their seven-month-long relationship, and not set eyes on each other since.
I finally told Michael about you the other day, he had written in late Spring. Do you remember my friend Michael Corner? Anyway, he thinks it’s hilarious that we didn’t hook up for the whole year you were at Hogwarts, and now I go around calling you my girlfriend (in my own head at least, and to Michael when I’m four Butterbeers deep, which I may or may not be right now), when we’ve only been on one date, and even that wasn’t technically a date so much as a chance encounter. I knew he was going to tease me, which is why I didn’t tell him about you sooner, but he’s known for ages something was going on – the fact that I started hurtling off to the Owlery five times a day was a bit of a giveaway. It’s so hard to not talk about you all the time when you’re all I think about all day, all the bloody time. I feel so ridiculously happy. I live for the morning post, and I could absolutely kick myself for wasting all that time when you were right here and I could have been with you every day, hearing your voice, kissing you, when now I’d do anything at all just to lay eyes on you…
She’d read that letter so many times, she could have recited it word for word.
It had, she thought as she poured a generous lug of bubble bath under the flow from the taps, been love at first sight really, even if neither of them had realised it. They’d first met almost two years earlier, when she’d managed to convince her mother to allow her to spend the year of the Triwizard Tournament at Hogwarts; she wasn’t old enough to enter the Tournament, but the students not selected to be the Beauxbatons Champion were to stay and support whoever was, so she’d argued it would be educational for her to do the same, and that given her dual nationality it was only appropriate to allow her to sample both schools.
She hadn’t bargained on Terry, of course. All she’d wanted was a taste of the Hogwarts experience, about which she had long harboured wistful fantasies. At the age of eleven, having a magical English father but living mainly with her Muggle mother in France, she had, almost simultaneously, received invitations to Hogwarts and Beauxbatons schools. Genevieve, who had never lost her fearful suspicion of the English wizarding community that had been ravaged by war the year of Delilah’s birth, had won the parental squabble which followed. Delilah had been largely indifferent to the outcome and went along with her mother’s wishes because they were more loudly expressed, and Ormond relented, still enslaved by a forlorn love for Genevieve which was some eleven months older than their daughter.
In the years that followed, though, as Delilah failed persistently to settle into Beauxbatons life, remaining more or less friendless, and besieged during her summers in Devonshire with nostalgic tales from Ormond about his Hogwarts years, she began with increasing obsession to regret the way the argument had gone. She became spellbound by the idea that had things gone differently, had she become a Hogwarts student instead, she would have been appreciated, wildly popular, the centre of school social life (as, by his own account, her father had been). Her offbeat sense of humour, which at Beauxbatons, preoccupied as it was with elegance and poise (characteristics which the school had comprehensively failed to cultivate in Delilah) had left her alienated, would surely be prized in the castle where the very staircases and doors were playful and unpredictable. She fantasised endlessly and in great detail about shaking the fetters of the gawky, graceless Delilah Blackthorn and embodying her Hogwarts-persona who was more vivacious, more outspoken, more quick-witted, and (for some unaccountable reason) considerably prettier.
And so it was with frankly dizzying expectations that she finally boarded the powder-blue Beauxbatons carriage with a selection of students two years older than she, who ignored her so completely that she might have been one of Madame Maxime’s palominos. It was no wonder, she conceded as she slid into the hot, scented water, that the year had failed to deliver. She’d developed her Hogwarts fantasy in such fine detail that she somehow overlooked the possibility that, in the event, she would not be afforded free reign to live as a Hogwarts student. She had hardly expected a spot in their dormitories, but had hoped to detach herself as far as possible from the French faction and, with her flawless native English, mingle in lessons and meals with her Hogwarts coevals. She had even, with what later seemed like unutterably stupid optimism, bought herself a set of Hogwarts robes from Diagon Alley over the summer.
Madame Maxime had had other ideas.
‘We will comport ourselves,’ she had announced in stately fashion as they began their descent into the grounds, ‘as invités exemplaires, oui? We will be’ave with perfect grace and composure at mealtimes; we will speak Eenglish as much as we are able when in zair castle; we will address our ‘osts with respect and charm; and uzzerwise we will keep to our quarters so as not to be in zair way.’
Delilah had appealed personally to Madame Maxime, but the Headmistress was bemused by the request, and explained that the Hogwarts students were following a different curriculum to theirs, so there could be no chance of Delilah’s integrating with the host school’s lessons.
‘What did you expect?’ she had asked with an expansive shrug. ‘Zis was not part of ze agreement with ‘Ogwarts. You never mentioned you ‘oped to learn under Dumbly-dorr’s professors, or I would ‘ave told you straight away eet was not an option.’ Delilah was set up at a tiny desk in the corner of the main chamber of the carriage, with a stack of books and assignments prepared by the Beauxbatons professors, and told, in so many words, to get on with it.
And so she languished, more lonely and isolated than ever, completely insignificant to everybody, with literally not a single person to talk to, slowly outgrowing the pristine black robes which lay sadly unopened from their paper wrappings in her trunk. Having so feverishly nursed the glittering vision of her year at Hogwarts the disappointment was truly crushing, and she might have requested immediate passage back to Beauxbatons, had it not been for Terry…
Her reverie was interrupted by the voice of her stepmother drifting through the bathroom door.
‘Delilah?’
‘Lilah?’ Matilda echoed.
‘I’m in the bath!’ Delilah called.
‘Oh dear, I didn’t expect you to be up so early – I really need to get Matilda’s hair washed, and the marquee men are coming at nine, then the caterers are coming for ten and nobody’s even had any breakfast yet…’
‘All right, I’m getting out,’ she sighed, giving her hair a final blast with the shower head and swinging herself out of the tub. She wrapped a towel around her hair and another around her torso and retreated to her bedroom.
*
Several restless hours later, Delilah wandered through the back door, into the pearlescent marquee that had been erected across most of the lawn and draped with shimmering curtains of chiffon. Constance had decreed that in the unexpectedly blazing weather the marquee would be too hot inside, so she and several of the staff coordinated their wands to charm the entire roof off, and golden sunlight streamed in. A procession of white-coated caterers were still levitating platters of food onto tables, so Delilah ducked out of the side exit where she encountered her father using his wand to conduct a lushly-flowering eglantine to entwine its tendrils around the supports of a wooden love seat.
‘You’re on the decorating committee, then?’ she remarked. Ormond stood back to admire his handiwork.
‘Not bad, is it? Connie’s got about a hundred new Flutterby bushes too, and I’ve filled the garden with fairies.’
‘Looking forward to your party?’
‘Well, it’s Connie’s deal really,’ he said, craning to pluck a browning petal. ‘I’m just required to turn up.’ He turned to appraise his eldest daughter. ‘You look beautiful. Come and give your old dad a hug.’
‘You have to say that,’ she said into his shoulder as she enfolded herself into his arms.
‘I do not – I spent years telling you you looked like a garden gnome.’
‘I always thought you meant that as a compliment.’
‘I did really. I’ve always been quite fond of them.’ He gently pushed her back to admire her from arm’s length. ‘I mean it though, that colour’s lovely on you. Is it a new dress?’
‘Yes,’ Delilah said, looking down at herself.
She’d combed Diagon Alley for three Saturdays in a row before settling on a bold blue silk in a simple cut, with thin straps that showed off her creamy shoulders, and silver sandals. She’d spent the morning painstakingly painting her finger and toenails a pearly grey colour and was wearing the silver necklace she’d been given for her sixteenth birthday. She was quite pleased with the effect, although she wished she could manage something more elegant for her hair, which hung straight and plain as usual.
‘Should I presume this dolling up is in honour of my birthday?’
‘Well, fifty is a big year. It deserves an all-out effort.’
‘And the imminent arrival of one Mr Terry Boot has nothing to do with it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Delilah said with dignity, a faint flush colouring her cheeks. She hadn’t exactly told her family about Terry, but they could hardly fail to notice the frequency with which Feldwode, the Boot family barn owl, appeared at the window whenever Delilah was home, nor the breathless eagerness with which she dashed to relieve him of his missives and spirit them away to her bedroom.
‘He’s a lucky boy. Here, I’ve had an idea.’ He led her round the side of the love seat where the flowers were at their thickest and, with a deft slice of his wand, extracted a strand which he twisted into a wreath and laid upon her head.
‘Eglantine. Sweet Briar. A crown for my princess.’
Delilah smiled, and Ormond regarded his daughter with sad brown eyes as a flash of Genevieve flickered in her profile. In spite of being deeply in love with Constance, and almost obscenely happy with the arrival of their daughter Matilda, he had never quite lost the haunted look that came from twelve long years of unrequited love. When they’d first met he’d lusted desperately after the beautiful Genevieve for weeks, a large, strong man in his mid thirties, more striking than handsome with downturned eyes and wavy hair that was already greying, but he only told her about his magical abilities at the tail end of a brief, unexpected fling. Genevieve had been angry and suspicious, and by the time she found out that Delilah was on the way she’d learned enough about the wizarding world to know they were deeply entrenched in a violent and terrible war, so she fled. It wasn’t until Lord Voldemort had been defeated and the war came to an end that Ormond succeeded, after a fretful, tireless search, in tracking her down to the town of Uzès, where she looked exhausted, suntanned and even more beautiful than she was in his constant anguished dreams; mother to the two-year-old Delilah, golden haired, with brandy snap eyes exactly the same as his, already tall for her age and beginning to babble away in French.
And now here she was, his Delilah, almost seventeen years old, and to him the most fascinating, complex and delicate creature he knew: still a bit awkward in her willowy frame but gradually becoming more graceful with age; still with a sprinkling of freckles on the bridge of her nose from her childhood in the south of France, but with an adult bone structure beginning to show through.
They began to walk back towards the house.
‘He makes you happy then, young Terry?’
The radiant glow with which his daughter turned to him, and the fervour in her voice, told him everything he needed to know.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever, ever been so happy.’
*
‘Cuggle.’
‘No, Tiddles. I don’t want you creasing my dress. Anyway, it’s too hot.’
Matilda’s face crumpled.
‘Pleeeeeeeeease.’
Delilah sighed.
‘You promise you don’t have sticky fingers?’
‘Ess.’
‘Let me see.’
She presented her chubby starfish hands for inspection, still pink from being scrubbed raw at the kitchen sink.
‘OK, but be careful.’
Matilda bounded into her sister’s lap not at all carefully, but with an expression of such triumph that Delilah couldn’t help but laugh.
‘You’re like a puppy, you know that?’
‘Rrrrrruff.’
Delilah had been sitting on the loveseat enjoying the blazing sunshine and waiting for the first guests to arrive when Matilda galloped over, a yellow party dress offsetting her tawny curls. Now she rested her head peaceably on Delilah’s shoulder. Delilah buried her nose in the mane of freshly washed hair and breathed in the scent of apple shampoo, and the lingering base note of warm baby smell.
‘Story?’ Matilda asked hopefully.
‘Okaaay, I suppose so.’ She took a deep breath.
‘Matilda, who told such dreadful lies
Could make one gasp and stretch one’s eyes…’
Matilda had been named for the Muggle poem Matilda, Who Told Such Dreadful Lies, a macabre cautionary tale by an Anglo-French poet which had amused Ormond when he’d read it to Delilah from one of her childhood books. They’d enjoyed it together so often that Delilah knew it by heart, and Matilda demanded frequent recitals, although Delilah suspected she only liked it because it had her name in it, and that she didn’t quite grasp the significance of the story’s grisly ending.
‘…That night, a fire did break out,’ Delilah intoned with theatrical foreboding,
You should have heard Matilda shout!
You should have heard her scream and bawl,
Throw up the window and call
To the people passing in the street,
The rapidly increasing heat encouraging her to obtain their confidence –
But all in vain.
For every time she shouted “FIRE!”
They only answered, “Little Liar”
And therefore, when her aunt returned,
Matilda and the house were burned.’
By Blackthorn tradition the ‘FIRE!’ part was always shrieked as loudly as possible, with which Matilda joined in with gusto, and the final line was spoken in a deep, resonant voice, the last word dragged out in a menacing growl.
‘Goodness,’ said an amused voice from behind them. ‘Is that really a suitable poem for children?’
Delilah jumped so violently she almost spilled Matilda on to the floor. Her heart stood perfectly still for a moment, and then began to hammer and soar.
‘Terry!’ she gasped. ‘How long have you been standing there?’
‘Ever since Matilda summoned the Immediate Aid of London’s Noble Fire Brigade,’ he said, eyes twinkling. He walked over to the loveseat. He looked startlingly, unreasonably handsome in a crisp white shirt rolled up to the elbows and pale grey suit trousers, his hair slightly over-long and swept over to the side.
‘You must be Matilda,’ he said to the child.
‘Ess.’
‘I’ve heard a lot about you. I’m Terry.’ He extended a formal hand, which Matilda stared at mistrustfully.
‘Shake hands, Tiddles,’ Delilah urged. She was a whirlwind of emotion: peeved because his unexpected appearance had foiled her planned greeting, which involved swaying seductively up to him on her new heeled sandals, Champagne flute in hand, rather than being found clowning around with a toddler on her lap; light-headed from the breakneck speed of her pulse and the strangeness of seeing him at last, after so much anticipation, in her very own garden; breathless with excitement and nerves, her ears ringing, her hands trembling, her cheeks flushed. She found she was glad of Matilda’s presence, which had at least given her a chance to compose herself.
‘Want a sammidge,’ the child announced abruptly, as though in contrary answer to that notion, sliding from the love seat and cantering off through the flap of the marquee.
‘She’s sweet,’ Terry said, watching her go.
‘She’s a horror. But yes, she is adorable.’
‘I think watching you tell her that bloodcurdling little story is the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen in my life.’
He caught Delilah’s chin and turned her face to his. She thought he was going to kiss her, but he just gazed at her, and they sat staring at each other, smiles so broad they bubbled on the brink of laughter, for longer than either of them realised.
*
Since Ormond had in his forties swapped the whirlwind lifestyle of a Daily Prophet newspaper photographer for a more sedate pace at the Ministry Records Office, and a correspondently quieter social life, it was easy to forget just how exceptionally popular he was. The guests arrived in their hordes until the marquee was full to bursting with well-wishers come to celebrate their beloved friend, and a table in the corner was soon overflowing with lavishly-wrapped gifts. Constance, looking radiantly pretty in a rose-coloured blouse, beamed with pride at the success of the party. The sun climbed higher and higher and the Champagne flowed like water, feeding a giddy, festive atmosphere borne of a bursting sense of goodwill and affection for Ormond, which overwhelmed the guests as they clapped him on the back, pressed drinks on him and jostled around him in eagerness to wish him a happy birthday.
Delilah felt like she was floating, or dreaming. She was so purely happy that light seemed to stream from her, her caramel eyes shining, and Ormond’s friends commented to one another that she might yet become the beauty that her ancestry promised. Every time she and Terry caught eyes it was like they were momentarily suspended in an intimate little bubble, and although she circulated the marquee speaking to all the guests, it was always with him by her side, and her gaze was always drawn magnetically back to his. He constantly found ways to touch her, guiding her with a gentle pressure on her elbow, grazing his hand across the small of her back, pushing strands of hair away from her forehead when they fell into her eyes. Ormond made a spirited speech which had everyone clutching at their ribs with laughter, and he turned pink with emotion when everyone raised their glasses and toasted his birthday. As a shimmering pink sunset tinged the walls of the marquee, a raucous jazz quartet lured everyone on to the dance floor where a wild party broke out, every single seat abandoned as the guests danced without pausing except to refill their glasses, frequently dodging a thoroughly over-excited Matilda who spun around the floor so fast she looked like she was going to overtopple, everyone becoming flushed with heat and exertion, until the sky darkened and the marquee was lit only by the twinkling fairies that fluttered overhead.
‘I’m roasting,’ Terry breathed in Delilah’s ear at last, leaning close so that she could smell the rich, intoxicating scent of his sweat from under his collar. ‘Shall we go outside?’
Delilah’s heart skipped a beat as she nodded and followed him towards the marquee’s side exit. Foreseeing excessive noise levels, Constance had placed a Silencing Charm around the tent to avoid any neighbourly complaints, so Terry and Delilah slipped though the flap into a summer’s night that was perfectly silent other than a symphony of crickets and the rustling of fairy wings and Flutterby leaves. They perched side by side on the loveseat.
‘You look lovely tonight,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You don’t look too bad yourself.’
He took a strand of her hair between his thumb and his index finger and twirled it around his fingertip, looking into her eyes, leaning in further and finally, at long last, meeting her lips with his.
‘Lilaaaaaaaaaah!’ a shrill voice called from the entrance of the tent.
‘Shit, that’s Matilda,’ Delilah murmured into his mouth. ‘Let’s hide before she sees us.’
They separated reluctantly and ran light-footed down the lawn, hand-in-hand, ducking behind the low-roofed shed.
‘Lilah?’ came the distant call again, and they both held their breath for a few moments before they heard a flash of music signalling that Matilda had given up and gone back inside.
‘Phew,’ Delilah breathed. ‘I really didn’t want to be interrupt-’
He caught her up in his arms and cut her off with another kiss, more urgent this time, his large hands holding her by the small of her back and her right shoulder. He was so strong he was practically lifting her off the floor, and she felt as light as a leaf in his arms, drunk on Champagne, on the taste of Champagne on his lips, on the heady scent of fragrant summer Eglantine that swelled around them, on the feeling of his hands on her waist, on her face, on her neck, on her collar bone…
‘Delilah…’ he breathed. ‘Delilah…’
Her head swam as his hand drifted down her chest and toyed with the neckline of her dress. He traced the tip of his index finger down the thin silk material covering her breast and she felt a thud of excitement between her legs.
He hooked one strap of her dress in the crook of his finger and slid it off her shoulder, then tugged the other strap down and eased the bodice down to her ribs. At the sight of her warm, naked breasts he gave a throaty exhale which made her insides clench. A kind of furious roar filled her head as he pushed her gently against the wooden wall of the shed and ran the flat of his hands over her chest, and the throb between her legs became a tight, frantic pulsing, and she would have gasped if she could have drawn breath as his thumbs circled her pebbled nipples, ran his palms over the sensitive underside of her breasts, cupping them as if testing their weight before clutching them in a massaging grip, and his muttered expletive in her ear, ‘oh fuck, oh fuck,’ and his leg pushing between her thighs as she writhed her hips and felt a powerful shock of pleasure as the hard bulk of his cock rammed against her leg, and his hand fumbled at the hem of her dress and slid up the inside of her clenched thigh, and a strangled moan was caught in her throat, escaped as a ragged whimper, and–
BANG!
An explosion of noise and a flash of light, and Terry crashed into her. She was completely winded as the dead weight of his body pinned her for a moment against the shed, before he crumpled to the ground. A black-cloaked arm came from nowhere and encircled her chest, with a wand pointed directly at her throat, and another hand roughly covered her mouth before everything swirled and went black.
