An old book, an empty bottle, and a highly distressed old boot fell to the ground from nowhere. Beside them, a mad scrummage of young British tourists appeared in the blink of an eye, most of whom collapsed in a scrambled heap on the floor, while one or two managed to remain standing to their own astonishment or smugness, as applicable.
They picked themselves up, a curious crash of excitement and travel sickness. The air was chilly. The walls of l’Hotel Déguisé were stone in a way that recalled the old dungeons of Hogwarts: dark, dank, and, above all, cool, but somehow with the hint that a nice toasty fire wasn’t too far out of sight. Some portraits, disgruntled - although of course the depicted monsieurs and madames should have been more acquainted to this particular practice - began to chunter amongst themselves, and not politely: at least one long-dead musketeer immediately, without so much as batting an eyelid, claimed to have been disturbed from his sleep. The great wooden grandfather clock chimed perfectly in time with the students’ arrival to mark five o’ clock, local time.
They had been expected. A surly porter, who, despite his human height, betrayed a soupconne of the goblin (or perhaps even the elf) around his nose and ears, checked and collected their portkeys, barely pretending to tolerate each objectionable artefact as he thrust them with the tips of his fingers into a neat box for that purpose. While he did this, he rapidly jabbered some French at the group, some of whom gamely tried to follow, while others did their best to bluff with nods and smiles and one or two, still green from the portkeys, had checked out entirely and weren’t even trying.
Confidently, Will followed the bellboy to the reception desk and rifled through some papers, and signed them. On his return, he explained that they had all been checked in, and, with a glance of confirmation to their gruff host, established that everything was in order. They were all startled when their luggage, which the portkey had churned through alongside them, suddenly winked out of existence. Will exchanged a few slightly scurried words with the porter, who somehow looked both amused and annoyed, and then breathed a sigh of relief on all of their behalves.
“Your luggage ‘as been taken to your rooms,” said the porter, who had apparently up until now simply refused to speak english.
Beyond the hotel doors and a short walk up a steep incline, La Place du Fourmilier waited for them. The square was, predictably, bustling. While Diagon Alley, its closest UK counterpart, seemed as busy on any given day, that was an illusion: Diagon Alley was long and narrow with terraced buildings creeping out over the street like a masonic canopy - the people were squashed together. The great square tucked away from prying muggle eyes in the South of Paris, meanwhile, was luscious and open, and yet one still had to push and jostle through wizards, witches and assorted magical beings simply to get around. Some corners were cordoned off by corner cafes, so that their patrons could lounge and sip coffee to be disturbed only by waiting staff shooing away unwelcome stray kneazles that came begging for scraps at the tables. Other areas were home to hawkers’ pitches, the streetsellers sportingly trying to press cheap trinkets into the hands of uninterested tourists. These were more subtle than the more reputable establishments; being more easily spotted meant that they would be avoided by potential customers and possibly moved on by the authorities. On that particular day, a young couple in white makeup some way away were reenacting an historic duel via the time-honoured art of mime, using twigs instead of wands. A cloth cap with some scattered coins, silver and gold, lay on the ground next to them, but their performance was disturbed, and, by all accounts, improved, when a loose niffler grabbed the hat by its peak and scurried into the crowd with it. This was not, judging by the actors’ reactions, part of the show.
The square was neat and geometric and dominated by an obscure monument at its centre, a sort of spindly metal pyramid on stilts that resembled a thirty-meter steeple designed by madmen. It was taller than any other building in the square, but only just, and tiny, corked vials hung from its metal rungs via obviously magical tethers, some of which took a silvery glint in the light. Tour guides took great delight in explaining that it was built in 1899 as the result of a bet: a certain Gustav de Fourmilier, who had been commissioned to create a breathtaking piece of architecture had wagered that he could flagrantly plagiarise a popular muggle monument without any wizard being the wiser. He had, apparently, been right, and only revealed the trickery of La Tour de l’Avenir on his deathbed in 1964. De Fourmilier had died cackling, or so went the urban legend.
Kirah