Chapter Text
It started off, like many things, with a levitated tea kettle.
Had Olivia Charles been a witch, or even dimly aware of the existence of magic, this would have been a perfectly reasonable happenstance. But she was not, nor was she even remotely aware that numerous eleven-year-olds were annually carted off to a castle in the Scotland highlands to master the art of levitating many a kettle. She was, therefore, a Muggle, and did not appreciate it when kitchenware took flight.
Or the fact that strange things like these often happened to her.
It had been equal parts startling and exhilarating in the beginning, when she was a youngster and she'd imagined the bogies Timothy Locke was ferrying from his little crusty nostrils to his little gaping maw to become bona fide bumblebees. Unfortunately for Timmy, insect venom caused him anaphylaxis, and so a moment or two after she had this mildly nefarious thought, he found himself puffing up like a red-headed cabbage. Fortunately for Liv, no one in the vicinity was a Legilimens to discover that it was, indeed, her four-year-old brain that had transfigured toddler boogers into a swarm of bugs.
It escalated from there, but only intermittently. These episodes stretched throughout periods of time, often so much as a year, that many an occurrence she chalked up to her imagination running amok.
Charming a stranger's Fu Manchu to braid itself, however, had swiftly squelched that theory.
Time passed. And as these phenomena ranged immensely in terms of strangeness, Liv was left growing up with quite the complex, one wherein she believed that she was a Literal Freak of Nature. Then the notion occurred to her that maybe she wasn't the only freak of nature to have accidentally transfigured their mother's sleeping pills into high potency laxatives. Surely there was a perfectly legitimate reason behind these uncontrollable abilities, but as she never received a letter from a particular school of witchcraft and wizardry on her eleventh year, Liv remained none the wiser, and vowed to never speak of these incidences in fear of being institutionalized and living in a padded room with nary but a bedpan and a dozen imaginary cats named Doyle.
Now, nearly two decades of repression later, Olivia Charles had blossomed into quite the misanthrope, and so she deemed this shit was getting old.
"This shit is getting old," Liv muttered, chin propped atop her folded arms. She sat at a kitchen table, nearly covered head-to-toe in flour.
Scones were baking in the oven. The scent of lemons wafted in the air. The gauzy rays of dawn filtered through crocheted curtain panels and, there, wavering above the sink, was her grandmother's old copper tea kettle. Suspended. Floating. In midair. A line of steam was erupting from its spout, emitting a long banshee wail although it was quite clearly nowhere near an open flame.
Liv pointed at the teapot. "Stop it," she commanded. "Stop it, I say."
It did not stop. Liv inched her fingers towards a battered rolling pin, wherein the tea kettle's shriek faltered when her fingertips skimmed the wooden handle.
"That's right. You may have been Oma's favorite kettle, but I will take–you–out. Yakuza style."
Liv took a deep, cathartic breath and closed her eyes.
"I'm talking to a tea kettle," she breathed. "A gravity-defying tea kettle. And threatening it with Japanese underground crime syndicate violence. Lovely."
The tea kettle commenced to shriek.
A loud commotion resounded from behind, which involved that of crashing, thrashing, the unmistakable upturning of several chairs, and a litany of expletives before the image of Cate Montoya stumbled into Cloverdilly Coffee's small backroom kitchen. She was clutching her head, swaying, possibly still drunk as it was only half-past four in the morning. A dressing gown hung from one arm and trailed behind, jerking with her movements as did the silver-lavender curls that framed her face in a halo of bed-head frizz.
"Liv?" she murmured lethargically. "I get that you run on baker's hours and you're busy, but why the hell does it sound like you've lit a ferret on fire?"
"Three hundred and fifty-one," Liv replied.
"Pardon?"
"Three hundred and fifty-one days since something like–" Liv gestured wildly to the tea kettle, "has happened."
Cate regarded the kettle, blinked twice, and sighed. Pulling a stool opposite Liv, she burrowed her head into her arms with an uncoordinated thump, which caused a small mushroom cloud of flour to explode between the two girls.
Cate Montoya constituted of poorly dyed hair and the tapering hazel eyes one found in a Botticelli painting. She was balletic, olive-toned, with a penchant for gardening and bouts of low-level thievery. A professor had once coined her: 'Very lovely, could charm the stars to fall from the sky, but the girl's pathologically something', but the fact of the matter was Cate was a magnetized force that could not be molded. And because she kept a 1000W smile at-the-ready for strangers, friends, and foes alike, and possessed the otherworldly optimism to match, convinced Liv that she farted stardust.
More importantly, she was the only person who knew the truth about Olivia Charles. This made her much more than trustworthy, but invaluable. Like quality toilet paper.
Olivia Charles, in comparison, was quite the opposite of Cate Montoya. Tiny, grumpy, with a shaggy mop of brunette hair and a penchant for combat boots and stress baking to Tchaikovsky violin concertos. Opposites attracted, apparently, because they had been best mates since primary school and roomies since graduation. Their initial meeting at the age of five had involved a local bully named Tabitha Tuttle, who had easily established dominance in their village because she looked like her DNA had been spliced with a gorilla, and who had ripped apart the daisy chain wreathed into Cate's hair on the first day of school. Liv, who was still small for her age but aging well into her grumpiness, refused to stand by and allow someone to take that kind of shit.
She had only meant to point and unleash a cutting wisecrack, but within a blink of an eye, Tabby found herself straddling the branch of a nearby tree, as follicle-free as a naked mole rat. Liv was equal parts horrified and humiliated that someone had witnessed her abilities. Tabitha's acrophobia was thus born. Cate was awe-struck. Their friendship immediately blossomed.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" came Cate's discombobulated voice.
"What is?"
"You're cursed."
The tea kettle whistled louder, evidently agreeing.
So much for otherworldly optimism, Liv thought, then muttered, "Bollocks."
Cate laughed, lifting her head and palming a cheekbone. "Well, you are the one that stole a tangerine from that old gypsy lady's bag when we were thirteen."
"I was hungry," Liv shrugged.
"You're always hungry."
Liv nodded. "This is true. And why I'm also co-owner of this jolly little cesspit of a coffeehouse," she continued, then turned to the screeching kettle whose enthusiasm knew no bounds. "Oi, Freddie Mercury, will you give it a bloody rest?"
Cate offhandedly drew a triquetra into the layer of flour on the tabletop, looking momentarily pensive. She bit a lip, hesitant, before breaching into a subject that held the taboo equivalence of a no man's land.
"Have you thought of what I mentioned before?"
"I'm not living in a cardboard box under a bridge."
"I meant speaking to your father about this," Cate ventured, gauging her friend's reaction. "He is a doctor."
Something flickered within Liv's eyes—a medley of hurt and anger, and maybe something more. Which sent red flags flying. Olivia Charles was a persnickety creature by default, which meant the words 'fuck off' often concluded their tête-à-têtes when speaking of Ludovico Charles.
Surprisingly, Liv merely snorted.
"Of pediatrics. I'm well past the age of shatting in nappies, I thank you."
"That's debatable."
Liv's answering smile was impish and lopsided, which immediately created a set of dimples to appear. But then her dark eyes turned somber, and she glanced away, huffing so that her bangs fluttered. Slowly, her small hands curled into white-knuckled fists, a telltale sign this conversation was, indeed, approaching restricted territory. Her voice was tight.
"He retired years ago. And what am I going to say to him? 'Ay, daddio, we haven't spoken in years because you agreed to the terms set by a harpy of an ex-wife that you wouldn't contact your one and only child? No birthday card, no ugly Christmas sweater, no address so that I could at least write to you?' Or how about this: 'Greetings, tis I, your spawn, who has not so recently been experiencing strange magical powers. Oh, I have a calcium deficiency? Grand. I'll remedy that by buying a fucking milk cow. Ta!'."
"You've had that prepared for a while, haven't you?"
"Ja."
"Well, speaking of these idyllic family chats," Cate continued, redirecting the topic towards somewhat friendly waters, "Your mum called last night."
"Of course, she did," Liv responded, grabbing a nearby whisk. She brandished it towards Cate accusingly, causing gobs of glacé icing to fling between them. "You said her name three times in the mirror, didn't you? That's why you took so long in the bathroom."
The sound of the front door unlocking hushed both girls. Cate glanced at the old clock above the sink whilst Liv took the moment to glower derisively at the kettle. Soon, the coffeehouse's main lights were turned on, illuminating the kitchen with a soft, golden phosphorescence. Not long thereafter the quiet rumblings of a masculine voice could be heard, then the scraping of several chairs being put a right.
"Why does Henry have to be so damn punctual?" Cate hissed in a whisper.
"This is just a shot in the dark so, please, tell me if I'm wrong," Liv replied. "But it's probably because he owns this coffeehouse, too. Don't take my word for it. I'm untrustworthy. I suspend tea kettles midair with my brain."
"Liv, not helping."
"Fine. They levitate."
Cate raised a brow. "And you care to explain to Henry why it's levitating?"
The tea kettle whistled louder.
"Shit, you're both right."
The two blurred into motion, flurrying around the table and bolting for the tea kettle. Cate, still within the thralls of a hangover, miscalculated her reach and missed the pot entirely—effectively thwacking herself in the face instead.
"Ouch!"
Liv laughed. "How majestic."
Liv fared little better, however, considering her fingertips barely skimmed the copper bottom, even when going full en pointe. Cate, having regained control of her physical faculties, returned to her friend's side with a broom in hand.
"Let me get that, you little Halfling," she snickered, taking aim and knocking down the kettle.
Liv caught the tea kettle, which mercifully had decided to cease and desist of all whistling. She cast a withering gaze to her left.
"Did you just call me a hobbit?"
"Ja."
Liv glared. "Touché, Gandalf."
"Are you saying that I'm reputable and wise?"
"No, you're older than me and have the beginnings of what will someday be an impressive beard."
Cate didn't bat a lash. "Imagine all the braiding I could do!"
At that moment Henry Jin meandered into the kitchen, stopping within the threshold at the sight before him: a shroud of flour settling between Cate and Liv, who were frozen in place as they stared owl-eyed at him, one wielding a broom like a weapon of old, the other clutching a tea kettle to her chest.
Slowly, Cate waved. Henry raised a brow.
Liv sighed.
Henry Jin was rugged and tall, but nearly everyone was tall in Liv's eyes, who capped little over five feet. His late teens were spent wrestling in underground tournaments, which left him heavily scarred, tattooed, and muscled. At twenty, he could be deemed handsome if he weren't so intense, with his crystalline blue eyes and scruffy beard, hair perpetually tied into a black silken bun.
He had been a late addition to Liv's life, having met just three years prior at a farmer's market, somehow initiating an affable argument over what the correct spelling of a fried dough confectionery was.
"It's doughnut, dammit! It's made from dough, not do," Liv had admonished vehemently. "Donut is for goddamn wankers."
Then, Liv had not been aware such a response had caused Henry to laugh for the first time in years. Nor that he had instantly admired her spunk and the underlining spark in her eyes, and even more so for the fact that she refused to be intimidated by him one iota. Their discourse escalated from there, and they fit cozily into the crannies of each other's lives. And because nobody baked better pastries than Olivia Charles, nor brewed better coffee than Henry Jin, they morphed their friendship into business.
Now, Liv was not aware of the friction between Henry and Cate. Nor that he felt her best mate had something hidden up her sleeve, something that made the hairs on his arms stand on end because he knew—deep down, instinctively—Cate Montoya was whitewashing some tremendous secret, and that he was dedicated to ferreting out what. Having been part of a fight club meant crossing off more names on his shit list than adding them, and so Henry Jin had vowed that whatever threat swung above Olivia Charles's head would never gain enough momentum to drop.
Unfortunately for Henry, his gut feeling was horribly misdirected.
Fortunately for Liv, this would bite her in the ass at a much later date.
"Montoya, prudent as usual," Henry greeted, stepping into the kitchen and nodding towards the dressing gown still attached to Cate via a sleeve.
It was still draped on the ground, exposing her nightwear, which involved a laced chemise that left extraordinarily little to the imagination. Which, frankly, many a man would kill to see. But as Cate Montoya never lacked that particular brand of attention, nor entertained it, she shrugged.
Meanwhile Liv had taken the opportunity to regain composure, and so she busied herself by filling the tea kettle with water and setting it to boil atop the stove. Cate still held the broom aloft like a sword, so Liv tugged it free and, being the uncontrollable clean freak that she was, sent it careening into the nearest corner of the kitchen. Her heart was still racing.
Act normal, she thought heatedly, willing the adrenaline to abide. Don't let it show. You've perfected the art of pretenses. Roll with it, Charles.
Her face burned, realizing how close a call it had been and wondered, not for the first time, what the hell she was going to do about these freakish incidents. On the bright side, her aptitude of magically manipulating everyday people, places, and things hadn't developed in terms of strangeness, or become more and more frequent within the past eighteen years. But concealing bat-shit crazy powers was taxing on one's mental health, because one slip-up meant things could turn physical.
On a completely unrelated note, Liv had read about the Salem Witch Trials.
Yeah. No, thank you.
A shadow fell across the counter where she was setting up a tray for morning tea. It was Henry, of course, because even his shadow was looming, and he perpetually smelled of espresso and worn leather. This pulled her from the sea of fatalistic thoughts, thankfully, but Liv had to think twice about keeping the quiver out of her hands when setting down a pair of chipped teacups.
Turning, she met his gaze, which was serious and stark.
"Liv," he said in way of greeting, voice cavernous, and nodded towards the oven. "Scones?"
She laughed shakily.
"Yeah, lemon-glazed. Tried my hand at rakvička, but botched them so badly I should be rotting in a Czech prison. I don't want to talk about it. Also, Dickon delivered the blueberries we ordered and gave us an extra bushel, so maybe you could make your legendary secret blueberry muffin recipe? You're our resident muffin man, after all."
"Ha," Cate snorted. "Muffin man."
Liv smirked at her. "His secret ingredient is love."
"Ew."
Henry frowned, crossing an arm across his chest, while the other reached forward to tilt Liv's head upward. As they were both creatures of habit and this display of physical contact was not habitual, this sent her mind scuttling about for understanding. And failed. Cleverly, she froze.
Gossamer morning light fell across her face, and she saw Henry's brows descend further. Behind, unbeknownst to them, Cate rolled her eyes.
"When was the last time you slept?" he asked, eyes lingering on the purplish shadows beneath her own.
Cate raised her hand. "Oh, oh! I know!" she offered, and was ignored.
One fact about Olivia Charles: she was unreasonably independent—a trait rare and special amongst teenagers worldwide. But having been abandoned before the age of eleven by her father, then kicked out of the house at sixteen so her mother could start a new family, her survival instincts and bullshit detector had been honed into a fine point of distrust. She excelled at being autonomous.
So, although Henry's genuine concern warmed her heart, Liv bristled.
"If I wanted to be coddled, Jin, I would go to my moth—oh, wait, no I wouldn't. My mum doesn't possess maternal instincts. If I wanted to be coddled, Jin," she reiterated, tapering off, "I'd...I'd...I'd rent a mother."
Cate snorted. Even Henry's mouth quirked to the side, backing off and removing his hand to shove into his other pocket, because even he knew not to gallivant into uncharted territory.
A melodramatic sigh had both Henry and Liv turning their attention onto Cate, who was now adding a top hat onto the flour-etched triquetra and glancing slantwise at the pair to see if they were looking or not. Realizing she had their full attention, she broke out into a sly grin.
"Well, it's official," she started. "You haven't slept in days, you botched a recipe—hey, don't look at me like that—and you've fallen so far as to make lame-ass little zingers. Olivia Eve Charles is officially in the mood."
Liv folded her arms across her chest. "What the hell are you on about?"
"That sounded sexual, didn't it?" Cate laughed, and laughed harder when Henry scowled at her. "And now I'm getting the look–" There was a moment of silence, then: "That also sounded sexual. Well, fuck. Literally."
"Question," Henry said, turning to Liv. "Whose idea was it to unleash her onto the unsuspecting masses?"
"Hey!"
"I'm still wondering which damaged part of her brain coined the term 'lame-ass little zingers'," Liv responded, smiling crookedly.
"Hey!"
Henry laughed, a rare, thunderous sound. "Maybe she's just acting out for attention."
"Yes, someone rub my belly," Cate quipped, waggling her brows. "Sexual innuendo intended."
Liv snorted. "Nerd, come here."
"Why?"
"I need to give you a wedgie."
The trio broke out into quiet, comradely laughter. Cate's grin was ethereal and infectious, and Henry's wide smile warmed the intensity straight out of his eyes. For the first time all morning, Liv was given a moment of peace, surrounded by the only two people in the world that could pluck at her heartstrings. Tucked inside a small, cozy, cobbled kitchen within a small, cozy, albeit shabby coffeehouse on the outskirts of London, life felt safe and contented for the first time in a long time.
The levitating tea kettle fiasco felt nothing more than a distant memory.
Somewhere in the cosmos, however, Fate was cackling diabolically, knowing it was about to clock that feeling straight out of Liv's ass in precisely forty-two minutes when she strolled into a small, cozy, albeit dank pub called the Leaky Cauldron.
"Liv, I think I know what Montoya is getting at, and she's right," Henry said, breaking the silence. Upon noting the expression of surprise on Cate's face, he amended, "In her very special way."
"What do you mean?" Liv narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
"Go. Go back to the flat. Get some rest. I'm fairly sure you're pushing forty hours."
"I'm not leaving, Jin," she challenged, refusing to be pushed around by a man who could crush her skull with one hand. She poked him. "This is my shop too, mate, and I'm not jumping ship when we've just started accumulating a steady stream of customers."
"Montoya volunteered to help. Go."
"I did?" Cate wrinkled her nose.
Liv glared. Henry regarded her coolly.
"Go."
Liv whined, "Henrik," and debated whether she was personally above stomping her feet like a child.
"Olivia."
"Shit, usually busting out your real name makes you ultra-broody and go sulk somewhere far from me."
"I do not. And I do not brood."
"Oh, you're definitely a brooder," Liv chuckled dryly.
Cate nodded, "If brooding were an Olympic event, you'd win gold. Hands down, every time. No contest."
Liv opened her mouth to respond, but Henry took one looming step forward, eclipsing the remainder of the kitchen's light from her face. His almond-shaped eyes tapered into slits, but Liv raised her chin, refusing to let him bully her backwards.
Several moments passed, both standing ground in their game of chicken. It didn't take long for Cate's pastel curls to pop into Liv's periphery as she tried to peer around Henry's shoulder, but when Liv refocused on Henry, he sighed heavily, conceding as his eyes whisked across her face.
Whatever he read on hers softened his stony expression, if but a little, which made Liv eyeball him with the utmost suspicion; the duo got along famously because of their stubbornness, not their ability to back down. And then Henry surprised Liv all the more by closing the gap between them even further, reaching forward and wrapping an arm around her. Her mind failed to comprehend any meaning behind this and reacted by displaying an incredibly challenging self-defense technique, and froze.
He merely pulled at her apron's strings. When they unraveled, he caught the apron and bunched it, tossing the folds into her face.
Liv's answering glare was impressive.
Henry snorted.
"I've known you long enough to know your ways, Charles. Stop needling," he said. "You're exhausted and you have lemon zest in your hair. You're also twitching, which means you're hiding something but too tired to realize you're overcompensating. Which I'll ask you about later. Now go."
Liv groaned, then peered around his shoulder. "Cat, back me up?"
"Two words," Cate said, who had been in the midst of licking lemon curd from a spoon. "Tea—kettle."
Olivia Charles sighed, knowing quite well when she was defeated. Normally she'd secretly enjoy the squabble and perpetuate the idiom of beating a dead horse, but she didn't like the questioning look Henry was casting her way. Instead, she flung the apron over her shoulder and strode towards the doorway.
"Alright, alright. I'll take a mental health day," she said. "But burn my scones and someone's face will meet the business side of my cheese-grater. I'm looking at you, Montoya."
"Hey!"
Several minutes later saw Liv slamming the front door closed, having trundled up to the flat above Cloverdilly Coffee that she shared with Cate to grab her jacket and bag. Had she'd known—exactly—what the series of events that would spiral out of control in less than an hour's time entailed, she may have prepared herself better.
Or cowered in the bathtub, tinfoil hat bedecked, because if the government could read her mind, they'd discover that she was not a one-woman freak show, but there were thousands out there just like her. But educated. With wands.
And so, Olivia Charles ventured out onto a busy London street, drawing the hood of her jacket up and shaking the bangs out of her dark eyes. Twenty-nine minutes of introspective strolling (—honestly, Liv, a tea kettle. A levitating tea kettle. Really?!) from street to street later, hands shoved into her pockets and avoiding catching the eyes of passersby, Liv halted before the space between an old bookshop and record store on Charing Cross Road.
She cocked her head to the side.
"Since when has this been here?" she asked aloud, only to receive a series of strange glances from a couple who moseyed past.
Liv did not know that said couple were, indeed, Muggles, who saw only a young, scowling girl talking to the uninviting sight of a broken-down shop before her. To be fair, Liv too looked upon the timeworn façade of the building—but only she saw through the door's yellowed windowpane and caught a silhouette moving about within the glimmering of light, a light which felt both warm and welcoming to her. And only she saw the iron-wrought bracket above the doorway, one that bore no sign of the establishment, but a mere rusting cauldron that swayed to-and-fro.
Liv eyed the cauldron a moment longer, then the brass doorknob below. Her fingers twitched.
Sighing, she stepped forward.
"Fine, but if I walk in there and discover a coven of witches brewing some eye of newt potion," Liv said, steeling herself. "I'm officially going to be having a really bad day."