most_peculiar | The horses are coming so you better run.

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The horses are coming so you better run.

Belle relishes every moment she has to spend outdoors, just for herself. She dearly loves her job, and she loves volunteering at the orphanage, but she also cherishes the time she has for herself, too. Especially on days like today, where the humidity seems to have let up a bit, for once. She smiles as Philippe makes his way through the woods, the trees surrounding them providing them with shade and additional relief from the warm weather.

It hadn't taken her long to reach the stables after a quick breakfast; she jumped right on the bus and made her way to Philippe. She spent the first couple of hours brushing and taking care of her companion. And, of course, she brought him several apples and carrots as treats.

After finishing grooming him, Belle brought out all the riding gear required and, in another moment, found herself galloping off with Philippe, no particular destination in mind.

By now, she's been riding most of the day. She's slowed Philippe down, of course, to a more leisurely pace, and has let him choose the direction they head in. He's stopped several times to drink fresh water and nibble at some of the grass.

They're currently walking besides what seems to be a river, or a stream, of sorts. Belle has allowed herself to relax a bit, lulled by the comfort of the day.

A sudden splash up ahead catches her attention. Philippe, too, lifts his ears, on alert.

"Hello?" Belle calls out.

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It's been three weeks since Lily disappeared, and James is pretty sure that by now it was supposed to be getting easier. It's not. He still wakes up every morning expecting to feel her warmth beside him, still comes home of an afternoon imagining he can hear her playing one of her muggle records from inside. There's a constant dull ache in his chest that he's beginning to think won't ever go away, so his next best thing is distraction.

Sirius has been trying his best, but at this point James has decided that the best thing to do is to throw himself into a project of some kind. Jack had asked him about his favourite sports, and James has been reminded anew of how much he misses Quidditch. He has Harry's Firebolt, but it's not the same as playing an actual game, having a team around him and maybe even a tournament underway. The only problem, aside from the fact that he's going to need to teach a bunch of muggles Quidditch, is that he has no equipment.

The balls are easy enough to enchant, and he figures crafting a couple of beaters' bats will be simple. The challenge is in the brooms. James is a gifted wizard and intelligent to boot, but he's never tried to apply his talents to broom making. Things were a lot easier when he could just walk into Quality Quidditch Supplies and buy anything he needed, but this has the potential to be a lot more fun.

He's trying out his first prototype, an old broom he found at an odds and ends store with as many different enchantments as James could think to throw at it. The first bad decision was making it up as he went along, but the second, apparently, is going out alone to try it out. Things had started out okay; he'd managed to get airborne, at least, but he's only been in the air about two minutes when he starts to feel like something is very wrong. The broom vibrates in protest underneath him, sparks fly off the handle, and a moment later he's crashing towards the ground. It's all he can do to steer into a nearby river instead of the ground, the cold water hitting him hard and the broom shooting out from underneath him and splintering at the side of the river.

Sopping wet and cursing, James drags himself out of the water just in time to see a girl and a horse turning the corner. "Sorry!" he calls out, trying to wring water from his clothes. "Didn't mean to startle your horse."

Belle arches an eyebrow at the sight of a young man emerging from the river, sopping wet. Her glance also catches sight of the splintered broom near him on the shore, which only makes her the more confused. What possible purpose could a broom serve for someone swimming in the river?

She leans down and whispers to assure Philippe, stroking him softly behind the ears to get him to relax. Then she urges him forward, towards the very boy who has emerged out of the water like some kind of merperson from one of the many stories Belle has read.

She must admit, this situation seems entirely like the start of some new adventure. It thrills her, a bit.

"That's alright," she calls back as she approaches. "Are you alright? Did you fall in the river?"

She moves towards him, still on the horse, and James shakes his head, water droplets flying out of the unruly mess. He'd spell himself dry if it weren't for the fact that a (likely) muggle just walked in on him, and maybe things in Darrow are all a bit skewed but James has had the Statute of Secrecy drilled into him since he was a kid. It's a hard thing to shake, so for the moment at least he stands, still wet and resisting the twitch of his hand towards his wand.

"Er, yes," he admits, giving her a sheepish smile as he looks up. Fell in the river from quite a height, if he's being honest, but that's not something he's about to tell her. It's embarrassing enough that she's found him like this, he doesn't need to go explaining that it's the result of a complete and utter failure to craft a broom.

Maybe not complete failure. He was, at the very least, airborne. It's a start, even if Sirius will likely mock him for it later.

"I'm fine," he assures her. "Nothing broken, besides my ego."

Belle keeps an eyebrow arched in his general direction as she takes in the state of his appearance, though his smile is rather charming enough that she returns it a moment later. She shrugs out of the shawl she has on in the next moment. Flimsy though it may be, it ought to help him a bit with soaking up some of the water.

"Here," she says, jumping smoothly off of her horse to walk over to the young man, offering her shawl. She leads Philippe by his reins, keeping a firm hold on them. "It's not much, but it should help some, I think."

"I'm glad to hear you're not hurt," she says, biting back a laugh at his last sentence. "I think we're all due for a little ego bruising now and then, aren't we?"

She seems entirely bemused by him for a moment before she shrugs off her shawl and offers it to him, sliding off her horse like she's been doing it all her life. James hesitates for a moment before he shakes his head and reaches for his wand after all. Secrecy be damned, he's not about to go ruining her clothes when there's really no reason for it. Besides, there's no Ministry here to haul his ass in on some ridiculous charge, and really, he doesn't very much like being this wet.

"It's okay, I'll just..." He shrugs one shoulder, figuring that she's either going to be used to this sort of thing in Darrow by now or be completely shocked, either way. He can cope with both reactions, so he waves his wand a little and dries his clothes out, another wave and his hair stops dripping uncomfortably down the back of his neck.

"There. Thanks for the offer, but uh, save your shawl." James doesn't like ego bruising, but then he should be used to it by now. He can bounce back from just about anything though, turn most fumbles into a charmingly boyish sort of thing. It's a talent that had kept him out of detention at times, kept him with his dignity and good-humour still in tact even when he became the butt of a joke rather than the instigator. "My ego is pretty used to being bruised, it's fine."

Belle blinks as he refuses her shawl. She makes to insist upon him taking it when he pulls out what looks like an elegant stick and waves it. She watches as, in seemingly no time at all, he appears to dry himself. The sight itself is not shocking to her; not after the enchanted castle and all the inhabitants within it. And of course, not after a city seemingly brought her into the future by magic.

Instead, she's intensely curious.

"Are you an enchanter, then?" She asks. "I don't think I've seen anyone work magic." Especially not out in broad daylight. That sort of thing would likely incur pitchforks and torches in her small village.

"Used to being bruised?" She arches her eyebrow at him again. "Is that your way of saying you get into trouble a lot?"

She doesn't start screaming, so that's a good start. In fact, she's apparently seen magic before, though she uses the word enchanter instead of wizard. People in Darrow have all sorts of weird names for the things he can do, so he's mostly used to it by now.

He can't help but grin at her when she says she hasn't seen it before, and maybe he gets a little bit of a kick out of this, but he thinks he can be forgiven. He remembers the first time he showed Julie magic, how excited she'd been, and he sometimes wishes everybody could share in that. Magic has always been part of him, present every day of his life, but he's seen the way Muggles look when they see magic for the first time, seen the looks on the muggle-born first year's faces when they first arrive at Hogwarts, and sometimes he wishes he knew what that felt like.

"Where I'm from we call ourselves wizards," he explains, nodding a little. "It's supposed to be a secret, I guess, but this city is full of nonsense, so." It's probably not even the strangest thing she's seen here. The day those Muggle toys had come alive and started trying to kill everybody was pretty high up on James's list, and he's seen a fair amount of nonsense. "Used to," he says with an unabashed smile. "Now I'm one hundred percent a responsible and productive member of society. Or something."

"So you're a wizard then," Belle says with a nod, smiling. She likes the sound of the word, wizard; she's always loved reading about people who can perform magic. To meet someone in life who has those capabilities, well. It might be a bit cliche to think so, but she truly believes that such an experience can really, truly, only be called magical itself. "And it's supposed to be secret. I see."

She grins, enjoying this very much. "I think I would be rather awful at keeping such a thing secret," she admits. "I'd want to tell everyone I know."

"Really now," she observes, arching an eyebrow at him. "Entirely innocent, are we?"

He grins a little at that, pleased. He hasn't been in a very good place for a while now and James was starting to think that was just going to be how things are now, but a five minute conversation with this girl already has him smiling more than he has in a month. His failure with the broom would be almost forgotten, if not for the splintered bits of wood still lazily lapping at the edge of the lake.

"There's not much to tell when everyone else around you is a wizard, too," he admits, shaking his head. Maybe for the muggle-borns things are a little different, but it had never occurred to James that the things he could do were special or worth telling anyone about. "We didn't associate with Muggles much." Or at all, really, until the war. Then it had been practically impossible not to, always having to Obliviate any who spotted them mid-duel. Voldemort had no qualms about the Muggles seeing and fearing magic, nor did any of his followers, and he knows it had taken up half the Ministry's time just making sure their secret stayed contained as much as possible.

She doesn't seem to believe him for a second about staying out of trouble though, which is a fair assessment. All in all James has been rather innocent in recent years, but it would take a lot to scrub the streak out completely. There's been so much going on he hasn't had the time for the sort of trouble he used to get into, and when the war broke out and he became a father something shifted. He's not always sure if it was for the better, but he knows he's a different man now to the one who flooded the Charms corridor in fifth year.

"Mostly innocent," he amends. "Other than falling into lakes and scaring people's horses."

"Muggles?" Belle arches an eyebrow at that. So these wizards have their own language, it would seem, for referring to the world around them. Fascinating. "I suppose that means those who aren't wizards, then?"

One of the aspects of Darrow that she has come to admire and enjoy the most has been the chance to meet and interact with so many different people from so many different times and places. She's learning more than she could ever hope to stuck back home in her little village. She is utterly delighted by this particular conversation, and she's sure it shows in her face.

At this last sentence, Philippe snorts, pawing at the ground as he shifts his mane about; the horse equivalent of eyerolling. Belle bites back a smile. "My horse would like to inform you that he was not scared," she says. And then she breaks into a grin, laughing a bit. "Although I will freely admit you gave me something of a scare. You're sure you're alright?"

"Right," he says, giving her an apologetic smile. He forgets himself sometimes, that most of the people in this city don't understand all of their words. He's met a few who even resist the word, like it makes them feel inferior, but she doesn't seem all that bothered by it.

The horse however, seems particularly put out by being told he's scared, and James stares at it for a moment. He doesn't know if she can actually talk to horses, but for a moment there he could swear it really understood him. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing that's ever happened in Darrow, maybe, but there are certain realities that James would like to stick to, and talking animals is not one of them.

"Perfectly alright," he assures her, nodding. "Honestly it's probably the easiest I've ever come off when testing a new spell. My nose is still on my face, right?" He grins at her, prodding at his face exaggeratedly to check if anything is missing. He's mostly joking, but he has seen one too many spell go awry in the past. After a beat he remembers himself, giving her a bright smile and holding his hand out. "James, by the way. James Potter."

Belle likes words, of course. And language in general. From all her years reading, she finds it so utterly fascinating how many words exist, words for different things and different words for the same thing. So the word Muggle strikes her curiosity; it doesn't seem a negative term, not to her. Just a word used to describe people.

She does have to smile at the expression on the man's face, however, as he stares at Philippe, who again rolls his mane in his general direction.

"He's just being fresh now," she tells him with a little laugh.

"James," she says as she takes his hand and shakes it. "A pleasure. A fine name for a wizard, that. I'm Belle."

The horse doesn't seem to like him very much at all. For a moment James is tempted to shift, to let the stag take over and see how Philippe likes that, but he thinks that might be a little far to go on a first meeting. Maybe Belle has seen magic before and doesn't seem overly disturbed by him, but if he goes turning into an animal in front of her she might just change her tune.

Still, he stares the horse down for a moment, and if there's a hint of the stag in his expression, it can't be helped. There are days he teases Sirius for being more dog than man, but he knows that becoming an Animagus had permanently etched a little of their animal counterparts into all of them.

He shakes her hand, not sure how exactly she's come to the conclusion about good names for wizards, but content enough to let it stand. "Belle's a nice name, too," he tells her, nodding approvingly. "Are you from here, then?" he asks curiously. She doesn't strike him as one of the natives, but he's been wrong before.

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The horses are coming so you better run.

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