It was that time of year again: spring cleaning. 

Some people would shudder in fear, afraid of the long dormant dust puffies that cowered under the couch, or the little webs that found themselves forming in forgotten corners, but Cora loved it.  It was like being a snake: shedding old skin and getting a new one for a new season.  Plus, she just felt invigorated by having met with Violet Islington, and that made her want to just clean house and really refocus. 

It was also an opportunity to leave the doors and windows open and let some air circulate.  Thankfully, she didn’t have any pets to worry about.  She had a couple of bags of things to throw out, and currently, her broom was occupied in the living room and she was fixing things up in her bedroom – hanging up some of the damp clothes on a rack she had and carefully making her way around the extravagant piece she was working on the dress form. 

Looking at the closet, Cora sighed.  She didn’t even want to go near it – she had so much to go through.  Putting her hands on her hips, Cora stretched her back and frowned before reaching up to scratch the back of her head under her messy bun. 

Taking out the rubbish! That was a brilliant idea!  Darting out of her bedroom, Cora rushed to the hallway to grab her keys out of the little drawer that they always lived in (if she forgot her wand – and she wasn’t going to take it just to bring out the rubbish) and the two very large bags.  One from the kitchen (a ticking time bomb of garbage juice, she was sure), and the other was just full of empty things and papers and whatever else she had hoarded over the winter. 

Grunting a little, Cora’s shoulders tensed as she wrapped her hands around both bags and started to carry them out of the door, practically waddling with them because of how heavy they were.  But, she was already halfway to the door and she didn’t want to go back and get her wand.  She could do this, she reasoned and plopped the bags down in front of her door so she could close everything up and run the bags down. 

A soft melody played upon the young quidditch player’s lips as he tossed a quaffle in the air, only to catch it on the descent. A soft sheen of sweat could be seen glistening over the man’s torso – no one ever said quidditch conditioning was easy. The small apartment was quite untidy – with empty crisp bags and dirty laundry scattered across the floor. A pop bottle had spilled from the side table and the contents had only haphazardly been wiped up with a sock, leaving a sticky residue behind.

With a match against the Wigtown Wanderers less than a week away Mathieu Vaillancourt’s mind was completely focused on practice. Spring cleaning was the last thing he wanted to think about, plus – after crashing on his sister’s couch for such a long time, Mathieu was excited about being the typical unkempt bachelor.

Another toss, another catch. There was no point in tossing the ball around inside, there was simply not enough room to make things challenging… without causing too much damage, that is. Stowing his wand in the back pocket of his jeans, Mathieu grabbed for his broom and headed for the door. He could probably get a couple hours practice in before the official team practice later that night, and if he was lucky he could squeeze in enough time for a couple drinks before bed.

The French lad tossed open the door, only to be stopped – very abruptly – by a moral dilemma. Mathieu wasn’t sure he knew the witch’s name, but surely his neighbor wasn’t planning on carrying both those bags of rubbish to the bins – and if she was, how could he just walk away and leave her to it?

Hitching a smile to his face, Mathieu propped his broom against his doorframe and strolled over to Coralie, wiping his sweaty palms on his jeans as he went. “Need a spot of help with those?” he asked, his thick French accent rolling smoothly from his tongue.

Cora was just glad to shove the key in the door and start to lock it. 

She tucked the key into her pocket and sighed, looking down at the two bags with a sort of resignation about the whole thing.  This was going to be a very slow descent from her floor…

Getting ready to turn around before grabbing them, Cora heard a very French voice.  Without really processing what was going on, she already had a wide grin planted on her face, “Thomas?! I didn’t kn-” She spun fairly quickly and realized, perhaps even quicker, that it was not her French beau at her door.

That was strange.  How many French people were just milling about in her life?  She recovered from the surprise of it not being him and actually took the time to understand what he was saying, which resulted in her staring at his mouth with her jaw slightly unhinged and eyebrows pulled in: total concentration. 

It finally hit her what he was talking about and Cora shook her head, reminding herself to be a normal person (difficult).  “These? Oh!” she looked down from the bags up to his face again and realized that perhaps he could use her sweater more than she could… apparently it was possible for someone sweaty to actually sparkle… particularly over cheekbones that could cut glass.

But it was just an observation, of course!  She quickly recovered and nodded, “I mean – it’s not a big deal – I can carry them,” she assured him (she was sure she’d seen this neighbor at least once before…) “but I mean, if it’s not too much trouble, I wouldn’t object,” she added with a final grin that was equal parts embarrassed and apologetic. 

Thomas? Did she say Thomas? What kind of a coincidence was that? This witch in his apartment complex randomly calling him by his brother’s name... how odd. The smile dropped from Mathieu’s face for a split second, but he quickly recovered and brought the smile back in full force, showing off his dazzlingly white teeth. “It’s Mathieu, actually,” He said – then realized his hallway companion was looking rather studiously at him.

The quidditch player self-consciously crossed his arms over his chest. He knew he was in rather good shape, but it was still so weird to him when people checked him out. “No reason for you to have to carry those alone. I’ll give you a hand, mon cher,” and without further ado grabbed the heaviest of the bags, which just happened to be full of kitchen-y grossness.

He was tempted to pull his wand from his back pocket and simply levitate both bags to the bins, but Mathieu stayed his hand. The lady with him hadn’t used her wand for the task, and that either meant that she was a squib or she wanted to do it the muggle way. If she was a squib it might be a little insensitive for him to flaunt his magical abilities and if she just wanted to do manual labor, Mathieu would look extremely unmanly whipping out his slab of wood and waving it around. He could handle a bag of trash.   

Mathieu.  The name sounded familiar.  She probably saw him in the hallway, or accidentally had received some of his postage before or something.   “Nice to meet you, Mathieu,” she nodded her head affirmatively.  “I’m Coralie,” she added, “Cora, for short,” and returned a grin that could probably only be described as cheesy. 

“I’m sorry, by the way,” she chattered, wrapping her hands around the slightly smaller bag, since he had the courtesy to grab the bigger one.  It hadn’t even crossed Cora’s mind to grab her wand from the counter inside.  “It’s weird,” she smiled before straining to pick up the bag and moved toward the stairs.  “Your voice sounded just like my boyfriend’s,” she informed him, “His name is Thomas..  He’s a wandmaker.” 

Of course, as she spoke, she realized that perhaps that might be something weird to say.  After all, he didn’t know her boyfriend, and probably didn’t care a whit about him either.  “But, that’s probably not interesting!  Sorry!” she chirped with a smile before moving to go down to the first landing, trying to be quick about it as the bag was quite heavy and bounced against her legs, which made her nervous (She did not want it exploding).  “Have you lived her long?  I don’t really remember if I’ve seen you before.”

“I loved in oh, I’d say two years ago?” she took a deep breath, moving to go down to the next floor, same process of quick steps followed by some fairly heavy breathing.  Why hadn’t she thought to get her wand to do this?  “Or are you here often? I know some tenants are in and out… you know, the nature of a building like this, I guess!”