Will answered Ross almost automatically in French. “Bien sur. I lived here for a little while.”

“Wow, fascinating,” Ross said, his voice rising with characteristically feigned sincerity. An odd pause followed before Ross picked up the ball again. “What was that like for you?”

“Well, I was only about six or seven, so I’m sure I’ll be seeing a different side of it this time around,” Will responded, dodging the full truth but still hinting at it. He turned casually to tinker with his briefcase. “By all accounts, it was better than England at the time.”

“Oh, yeah, certainly,” Ross agreed. “Around when I fled for America, I imagine.” He stopped and looked distantly out the window across him as he recounted the past. “But neither place was exactly untouched by his influence, per se...”

Will caught Ross just as the Ravenclaw began to trail off. “It wasn’t so bad, you know. My dad kept his head down and I picked up French pretty quickly, so I didn’t have to,” Will cut in, beaming with a smile that stole Ross from whatever the blond was feeling, and turned the tables on Ross. “I see you picked up some American on your own travels.”

Ross turned red, his face flushing slightly as he stared at Will’s stunning smile and was taken aback by it. He couldn’t stand it when Will pulled that on him. It reminded Ross that no matter how annoying he found Will, Ross could never escape that bit of infatuation he had with the oblivious Will. He paused to gather his thoughts, and he slurred into his next words to shrug off his tinge of adoration. “...Yeah, I did. I guess. Still got the stubborn London in me, but I default to American.” He picked some of the clothes off the bed, and with no use for them anymore, he stuffed them back into his trunk again nonchalantly. Ross turned his glance to Will, the trademark twinkle in his eye, and asked, “What is there to do here, anyhow?”

“Well, if you’ve never been here before, La Place itself is pretty spectacular. There’s usually something going on right under your nose. All your usual cafes and bars and museums and such - there’s a particularly good museum to duelling. Classical European duelling - the kind we know - technically originates in France.”

“A museum sounds awesome,” Ross interjected between Will’s words as he caught Will start to pace about.

“Haaang on,” Will continued speaking, a look of thought crossing his eyes, and excitedly pulled a calendar out of his robe. “Oh hold on…” With disbelief in his voice, Will exclaimed, “No! How did I not realise? Tomorrow is the start of Le Voltour Massif! The atmosphere when I saw it before was incredible.”

“What’s that?” asked Ross in the spirit of inquiry. He had never seen nor heard a thing about Le Voltage Mastiff in his life. Perhaps it was because he had never lived in France. Or he had never cared to find out, and the opportunity to do so had never presented itself. Will seemed extremely interested in it though, and Ross found that somewhat cute. The douchebag.

“It’s amazing. Basically, a mass of crazy fliers fly from La Place Du Fourmilier to the Alps - near Beauxbatons, if memory serves. But nobody cares about who wins or anything: but everybody comes out to see the fliers off. Banners, crowds, music. I only saw it once and was too little for it, really, so, this time, I’m not missing it for the world.”

Ross swished his tongue around in his mouth as if he were imbibing the idea. “That actually sounds like a good time. We have to go tomorrow. Or tonight, if you want to camp out by the route,” he suggested, jokingly emphasising the word ‘camp’. “Well, that just leaves today free. What do we do then?”

A bang like a gunshot on the door interrupted Ross with incredibly good timing. Beck’s shouting boomed through the timbers of the door unmuffled: “Courtesy call for bar crawl! Five minutes, by the front door!” Will hit his face with the palm of his hand with a bit of embarrassment and a lack of surprise.

Will answered Ross’ question.

“We make sure we’re in a fit state for tomorrow.” ❦

Elise looked over at her cousin as she suggested that they might want to find a place that serves tea. “That sounds like a good idea. Like mum says, nothing that a cup of tea can’t cure.” She looked at her cousin and smiled a bit. She dug around in her bags for a moment as she went to find her stash of money. As they had known that they would go to France first, her mother and her had gone to the bank and gotten some Euros for the trip. She pulled out the envelope marked with E, and then pulled out some paper money.

“Alright, whenever you’re ready to go Mary.” In response Mary sat up and pulled her shoes back on.

“Ready.” She said, and followed Elise out of the room. In the hall they saw both Kyle and Beck. Beck was in the process of yelling that if anyone wanted to join her at the pub they were meeting in the front lobby. Kyle looked as he normally did, sulking. Both Elise and Mary gave him a small wave as they walked past.

The pair of cousins went out into what was magical France. Mary paused and looked up at the eiffel tower look alike, she gave a small gasp as the bottles of silver sparkled. “That’s beautiful.”

“It is beautiful. I wonder what those are.” Elise smiled as she looked at the eiffel tower look alike and saw the silver sparkle in the sun. She was suddenly very sad that she had not done more research on this town before they had gotten there. Hopefully on some tour in the near future the bottles would be explained.

“So, tea… I guess we’ll look around and see what we can find.” She smiled as she looked at Mary and then went to wander around a little bit. Mary followed Elise around, but kept her eyes looking all around taking in the quaint village, especially looking for a tea shop. When she finally spotted one that looked particularly inviting she pointed it out to Elise.

The shop had a terrace with a wrought iron fence around it. It was idyllic for what the girls had imagined about France. “Oh, that looks perfect.” Elise looked over the tea shop that Mary had pointed out and went to head inside. She paused for a moment before she spoke, not wanting to sound like a complete idiot.

“Bonne après-midi. Uh deux s’il vous plaît?” She knew her French was terrible, but she knew how to stay that at least. The lady at the counter seemed to roll her eyes and gestured to a table that Elise and Mary could sit at. Elise said thank you, again in French, and went to sit down with her cousin. The lady soon walked over and handed two menus to them, and then walked away. Elise blushed a bit as she looked over at her cousin. “I really should have practiced my French more.”

“Yeah maybe a bit more. It’s okay you’ll have plenty of time over the next week or so right?” Mary grinned looking at the menu. “Since the menu is completely in French too. Every country we go to is going to have different languages, this is going to get complicated.” Mary gave a small sigh and squinted as she read the menu.

“I can’t wait til we get to China, or at least Hong Kong. I mean if I tried to speak English to my grandparents they refused to talk to me… but most other languages, and I’m going to bomb.” Elise looked over the menu. “I mean, I can oooh nice! Some of the names are in Chinese. Looks like they went with the authentic tea names.” She let out a sigh of relief as she looked at the menu.

She finally picked out a tea that she knew was good, and looked at Mary. “Would you like some help?”

“I understand most of the French actually. The Chinese has me totally lost.” She frowned. “So uh, yeah. Please. I’ll help you with your French if you help me with my Chinese.”

“Can do.” Elise scooted over a little and went over the menu with her cousin, and translated what she could. Finally the girls had decided what they wanted. Mary had decided on a light white tea, as well as some bread. She didn’t want anything sweet because she didn’t feel well and didn’t want to risk it.

Elise decided on a nice green tea and a small sandwich to go with it. She didn’t want anything sweet either, but she did want to have more than just some bread. The waitress came over, and between Elise and Mary they placed their order, and she went back off to make their tea. “Thank you cousin.” She smiled at Mary and relaxed in her chair.

“Of course.” The two chatted until their food came, and once they had their food and tea they ate in comfortable silence for a while.