Tempus Fugit. on Alumni

Alicia Pierce

May 04, 2020 10:34 PM

Tempus Fugit. by Alicia Pierce

The garden of the old Third Son’s House had been transformed, at least in part. A large area was marked out by four wooden poles placed in each of the cardinal directions. These were wound in blue and green and white streamers, which did not stop at the top of the poles, but extended further upward, coming together at a point above the center of the area. Beneath this were laid out several tables and chairs, each decked festively in their own complements of ribbons and balloons in the same colors as the overhead streamers. One table, without chairs, held a variety of wrapped parcels, divided into two neat piles. Another had the bowls and platters and other things necessary for serving refreshments at a child’s birthday party, but no food was yet in evidence.

Looking around one last time, Alicia Pierce nodded to herself, then clicked her tongue as she remembered – the ice bucket. Walking over to the food table, she tapped the correct bucket with her wand; frost almost immediately began to form on the surface of the interior. She nodded again at her handiwork; working with cold did not come to her as intuitively as the opposite, but the ice definitely would not melt when she materialized it inside the bucket. Satisfied, she resisted the temptation to stick her head inside the bucket for a moment and instead strode back toward the house, followed closely by a pair of fans which were assiduously flapping away around her temples and the back of her neck, which was, somewhat unusually, currently bare, with her hair already braided up for her sons’ birthday party. One of the functions of the poles was to assist with a charm which would keep cool air circulating in the party area, but she hadn’t bothered setting it in place just for her last site inspection before the event.

“Everything’s set up,” she called to her husband as she happily entered the shade of the kitchen and Vanished the fans – she and Thad really had not, she thought, quite done enough planning after being instructed from on high to have children; no-one in her right mind would risk having a baby in August if she could help it, never mind two babies, though that admittedly was not something she thought they could have controlled for. “I just have to change and we’ll be good to go.”

This was said in a slightly grim tone, as though she meant she was going to change into armor before riding to a battle she was not entirely confident she would win. As much as she loved her sons, she had never yet enjoyed one of their birthday parties.

One day, she told herself. One day – probably in what would feel like no more than a moment, if the way the past five years had passed was anything to go by – the boys would be older, would have friends of their own, and then this annual ritual would be better. For now, though, Alexander and Nicholas were too young to have much of a social life, and there were not a lot of other children on Mount Pierce these days, unless one still counted Winston and Caitlin (Alicia did privately, but somehow, she expected their lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of playing nicely with her children would actually exceed her own lack of trust in either of them). Therefore, the twins’ birthday parties were mostly peopled by adults, relatively few of whom Alicia actually liked, much less believed actually wished her children well.

Pretending, however, was what made the world go round, and besides, she had always prided herself on being a good liar. She could play the gracious hostess. She had managed to do that when the twins had been so small they had still borne a stronger resemblance to lobsters than to her or Thad, and when she had been receiving visitors in her dressing gown and simultaneously pretending that she was not terrified out of her wits by the pair of mewling, vacant-looking creatures prominently displayed nearby for familial scrutiny….

Thankfully, their looks had improved fairly quickly. She had spent what now seemed like an unreasonably amount of time studying their minute features, fretting about whether it looked like Alexander might have her nose or eyelids, or if Nicholas was developing her chin, but they had been pretty infants once they stopped looking so lobstery and vacant. Now they were handsome little gentlemen – when they could be persuaded to sit still, anyway. It was a rare occurrence, but it had happened, she had a limited amount of photographic evidence. She stopped by the nursery on her way up.

“Everything on schedule, Maeve?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am!” came the quick reply, despite the fact Maeve was currently trying to circumvent an attempt to climb a bookcase. Alicia had stuck it to the wall herself, so she doubted it was going to fall, and there was a certain amount that could be forgiven on birthdays, especially since she was at least partially responsible for them being a bit wound up after singing ‘happy birthday’ at them during their breakfast and then playing with them for a while, but such behavior still needed to be discouraged. She gave the twin in question a Look and pointed to the floor.

“New age line still working?” she asked.

“So far, ma’am….”

“Very good.” For now, anyway. If Nicholas had any facility for Gobbledegook when he was older, she thought, and was half so good at other undoing magic as he already seemed to be at foiling attempts to keep him inside the nursery, he could have an extremely lucrative career in the banks, if also one that would leave his mother in a state of continual anxiety. She wouldn’t mind having a go at curse-breaking herself, but she was expendable; her loved ones were a completely different matter.

Reaching her things, she hastily changed into a plain dress and then began charming and Transfiguring. Of all the stupid things to wear to a boys’ party – but if she dressed like a woman with the common sense of a flea, or at least who could and would intervene if her sons took it into their heads to run excessively wild, she could just imagine how well the hostile in-laws would like that. They might not even get out of her garden before they started making sideways remarks. So on with the transforming it was until she had on a short-sleeved and very lightweight emerald green dress, and her shoes were hastily altered to match. Thus prepared, she touched up her lipstick and then hurried back downstairs and back outside to cast the last few charms and take her place to start greeting guests.

Everything, she assured herself, was as it was supposed to be. The poles marking out the boundaries of the party area were all of pure holly, with coins passed through a magical fire buried beneath them. She had her wand. The number of curses and other security measures currently surrounding the food table in a locked room would have done an Auror proud, she thought; anyone who fancied poisoning the punch would have to be extremely dedicated and borderline suicidal to achieve their end. Maeve had somehow managed to get the twins in...well, they seemed more interested in the present table than in where they were supposed to be right now, but they were in broadly the right place and nobody was throwing a fit or throwing clods of grass at any parent, nanny, or brother (yet), which would do. Everything was in order. The last birthday where the twins were really littles was on track to be a success.

It was time, of course. She had taught them to sing the alphabet in English and French, and was working on the Greek. They could count a little and knew their colors pretty well. High time for them to start learning things more systematically. It still, however, seemed impossible that they should be big enough to do so - hadn't it been just yesterday that they had been a pair of bundled-up shawls whose few visible non-shawl bits had borne an unfortunate resemblance to seafood?

Time flew, sometimes. Pity it only did so in cases like this, and never when she had to deal with people she did not want to deal with. Nevertheless, her smile as people began to approach was quite natural-looking even before she turned to say, "Boys, look - your guests are here."

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