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Yuletide 2021
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Published:
2021-12-17
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1,929
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1/1
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24
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43
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A Different Kind of Magic

Summary:

Eglantine and Emelius spend a quiet evening in on Christmas Eve before the coming storm.

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Written for Yuletide 2021

Notes:

Many thanks to my beta and britpicker Fontainebleau, who provided wonderful advice on setting and historical details – any errors remaining are, naturally, my own.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The fire is crackling merrily in the hearth as Eglantine stretches up to the mantlepiece to fetch down the tin of Quality Street that always seems to find its way up there during the holidays. It’s more cumbersome than it used to be, and she winces at the way her back twinges. At her feet, Cosmic Creepers the Third, who’s been lazily rolling himself around on the bricks heated by the fire, stops for a moment to look up at her.

She could swear he’s laughing at her and, considering that despite her advanced age she still remembers their sojourn to Naboombu perfectly well, she thinks it’s entirely possible he’s doing exactly that. He’s always been more judgemental than his grandmother.

“You won’t be young forever either”, Eglantine informs him primly, but the black beast simply turns around again and goes back to grooming its fur.

Ah, to have so few cares in the world! She’s certainly got enough to think of, Christmas Eve upon them as it is and the children coming tomorrow.

“What was that?”

When Eglantine turns around, Emelius is poking out from the kitchen. There’s a wooden cooking spoon in his hand – a fixture in the last few days, since he insists on preparing everything himself. One of his suspenders has come lose, hanging down the side of his arm. His apron is full of flour and other stains she doesn’t care to identify.

There’s a swell of fondness in Eglantine’s heart that she’s been familiar with since – well, almost the day they met, really.

There’s also something dripping off the wooden spoon, forming a little off-white puddle on their pristine sitting room floor – ah, probably the bread sauce then. It’s a good thing she’s not above using that all-purpose cleaning spell – otherwise, she’d never get it out of the carpet!

(She’d mostly made good on her decision to leave magic behind, even after Emelius had confessed that the poisoned dragon’s liver had not, in fact, been from a dragon nor had it, in fact, been poisoned. The most magic she’d done in years had been in ’53 during the coronation celebrations, when Emelius had talked her into performing a show with him for the residents of Pepperinge Eye. To her chagrin, they’d been such a success that they’d been asked to perform again the next year for the festivities that marked the end of rationing, to which Eglantine had obliged, but she’d put her foot down when Emelius had started talking about going on a tour of the surrounding villages.)

Eglantine performs some quick mental calculations and decides it’s more important to point out that second detail, especially as, with so many preparations still needing to be done, they don’t have the time for her to give in to her urge to, as Paul would call it, “have a snog”. (Really, it seems to her young people need a new-fangled term for everything nowadays!)

“Nothing, I was just talking to the cat. And you are making a mess; do please remember to make sure the food stays in the kitchen!”

By the time she’s finished talking, she’s already across the room, Quality Street forgotten on the side table, hand grabbing for the drippy utensil. Emelius dances out of the way – as far as she is concerned, the man has no business being so nimble at their age!

“That’s a pity – the children will be so disappointed to know they’ll have to cluster around the oven for Christmas dinner!” He’s somehow managed to evade her all around the kitchen table – out of the corner of her eye she spies an overturned bag of flour, likely the source of the white plague that she can see now is also liberally sprinkled on her husband’s grey hair. How it got up there is a mystery for the ages.

“Emelius Browne, you stop your fooling around this instant!”

She’s finally got him cornered, backed up against the refrigerator Charlie convinced them to accept two years ago (she still isn’t entirely sure what had been wrong with just keeping things in the pantry, but Emelius seems to like it well enough), and oh, that might have been a mistake. His hair might have gone grey, but his eyes – his eyes are still the same deep brown they’d been when they’d first met.

His lips taste of mince pie filling, and as far as she is concerned, that only enhances the experience.

“Eglantine…”

“Mm?” Really, what was she thinking earlier? Clearly, there should always be time for this!

“Eglantine!”

Finally, her brain kicks back in – that isn’t his pleased, I-could-go-on-with-this-much-longer tone, that’s his Carrie’s-youngest-just-hared-off-into-the-countryside-stark-naked tone (and she’d never been quite that glad that all of hers had already been past that stage when she got them), and she draws back. He’s not looking at her, though, but straight over her shoulder.

“The sauce!”

He’s past her in two long strides, and now that she’s paying attention to something other than the man in front of her, she can smell it too – an acrid stench, as of something burning. Of bread sauce burning, she amends, watching her husband pull the pan from the stove and turn off the gas.

It really is fortunate that that cleaning spell was among the few they managed to salvage from the destroyed shed.

Emelius putters around for a moment, futilely scratching at the bottom of the pan with the cooking spoon that’s somehow still in his hand, before dropping the entire thing into the sink.

“Well, I’m going to have to start that again from scratch…” He runs his hand over his head, stirring up a small cloud of flour – ah, that’s where it came from!

She puts her hand on his arm, and it’s definitely only to comfort him, not because she thinks he looks ridiculously handsome with his hair tousled like that.

“There’s still time; the children won’t be here until tomorrow. Speaking of which, I should get back to work too…”

With three children and four grandchildren, fifth one pending if she’s reading the signs correctly, there’s still a lot to prepare. Soon, she’s back on the sitting room carpet, snacking on the Quality Street – not the Mint Fondants though, she wouldn’t deprive Emelius of his favourites – and trying to piece together the Scalextric set for Charlie junior (how she’s going to wrap it after she’s done is anyone’s guess). At least the Sindy dolls and coloured pencils for Carrie’s girls had come in easy-to-handle square boxes, no assembly required!

The Kings Carol Service is on the wireless and delicious smells are wafting out of the kitchen – she’d never admit it, but she’s looking forward to Emelius’ culinary creations almost as much as to seeing the children, who will be loud and brash and entirely welcome. Charlie will talk endlessly about his latest technological obsession (recently, he'd started trying to convince them to switch their television out for a colour set – according to one of his contacts, any year now the BBC was going to start broadcasting in colour, and he wanted them to be ready). Carrie’s oldest, all of thirteen, will show up with a scandalously high hemline, which Carrie will be inexplicably complacent about. Paul will sport that awful, too long haircut all the young men now have, ever since the world started going mad over those four boys from Liverpool. The younger children will constantly be underfoot.

They’ll invade her house early tomorrow, and she’ll enjoy every second of it.

She’ll also be just as glad once they’re gone the morning after Boxing Day, leaving her and Emelius to clean up the mess they left behind.

She’s ripped out of her musings when Emelius leans over her, smelling faintly of cloves and cinnamon. “Dinner, my dear? Or would you like to take that thing for a test run first?”

“If grandad wants to play with the toys, grandad will first have to put in these…” She holds up the pack of batteries she’d set aside earlier, and really, sometimes the man acts like he is six, not in his sixties!

He reaches out, but it’s her other hand he takes, bestowing a kiss on it with the same roguish charm that’s never quite lost its magic on her. The bracelet he’d gifted her for their anniversary this year sparkles silver in the firelight, and she can’t believe she’s known this awful, aggravating, simply wonderful man for a quarter of a century already.

“Now that I think about it, would you care to join me for a test run of a different kind, before the pack descends upon us?”

That… is a valid argument, actually. Still, a true lady never lets her eagerness show.

“Mr Browne, what a rather scandalous suggestion!” Despite her protests, she lets herself be pulled into a standing position, and there it is again, the little smirk she’s come to find so irresistibly attractive and that tells her he knows exactly what she’s doing.

It's infuriating.

It’s all she never knew she wanted, back before the war.

“My dear Mrs Browne, nothing is scandalous if you take care do it with a flair.” His face is so close to hers she can see the flush that’s still in his cheeks from standing over the hot hob all afternoon.

She can always wrap up the remaining parcels before they leave for the midnight service.

“Well, I guess you will just have to show me then?”

And that he does.

---

They end up taking dinner late – a light affair, some cold ham with bread in anticipation of the gorging to come. Rationing has been over for well on ten years, but sometimes she still can’t believe how easy it is now to get everything one might want (the Christmas cake Emelius had been conscientiously feeding brandy for the last two months had even received a coating of real marzipan earlier that week!).

Afterwards, there’s just enough time to take the Scalextric’s tiny cars for a test spin after all (she beats Emelius two to one, but then, she’d been driving on her own since before she’d turned twenty), to wrap up the remaining presents and to put the finishing touches on the tree, still awaiting the paper garlands the children will bring with them tomorrow, before it’s off to the midnight service. Unfortunately – or rather, in this case, fortunately - Mr Jelk has never quite gotten over the fright he’d received the day she’d first mastered the Substitutiary Locomotion spell, so there is no reason to linger afterwards.

Once they get home, they quickly change into something warm for sleeping in. Outside, the snow is falling softly as she hangs up the stockings for the children to find tomorrow (and Charlie, Carrie and Paul may be adults twice over by now, but they’ll always be hers, and of course she’s not going to forget about her grandchildren either), while Emelius uses the poker to pull a small bundle of socks from the front of the hearth, near the warm stones where Cosmic Creepers the Third has already bedded down for the night. Somehow, he always remembers how much she hates cold feet in bed, even if she herself doesn’t.

They snuggle up in bed, and before nodding off, she makes a mental note to check the shed for that cleaning spell before the children arrive tomorrow.

Not that it matters much – as she tightens her arms around Emelius and buries her cold nose in his neck she knows that, even without any magic at all, Christmas will be perfect.

Notes:

Dear LydiaOLydia, I wish you a wonderful holiday season and all the best for 2022, I hope my little story made you smile!

Happy holidays to all my other readers as well! Kudos and comments are very welcome and will be used to keep my fic writing fires burning.