While she had long reconciled herself with the treacherous nature of Balfour's vocation, the witch felt a familiar pang of concern at the worry that Johann so openly expressed. She had a vague idea of where this new companion was coming from - Knox saw it in his reaction to her comment on their grandfather, saw traces of something gentler in the furrow of his brow. Her brother surrounded himself with the most fascinating creatures.

And so eager to be of use! Johann was back to the stones once more, the great house settling into its previous silence in spite of conversational echoes drifting in from the main hall as people came or left in a hurry. Carr was taking his time with the bairns. She suspected him of marshalling some mischievous prank for later that night.

Nathaira climbed on to one of the sofas in front of the fireplace and stretched her legs out along it, staring pensively at her feet as her guest continued his work. Looking at her, it was easy to imagine a younger counterpart. Glowing blonde hair and gangly pale legs sticking out from underneath the skirts.

Toes wriggling as she rested on her elbows to give Johann a quick smile, chin tilted down to fix her gaze meaningfully. She delighted in the fact that they would be undisturbed for a little while.

"Crowded, there always used to be family visiting. But we were very lucky to grow up here and I have the fondest memories of childhood." Her hand slid on to her stomach unconsciously, a thought occurring. This wasn't always going to be her home. Knox didn't let the realisation dampen their exchange. "You must mean Balfour's embarrassing stories." A knowing grin.

There were many, after all. "Grizelda?" she turned her head, a muted pop! preceding the appearance of an old, prim looking house elf between the coffee table and furniture. "Balfy's album, won't you please?" The house elf blinked, was gone in an instant.

Before she could explain to Johann her habit of keeping a respective photo album for each Spectre sibling, Grizelda reappeared holding two leather tomes almost as large as her frame. Ever efficient. She placed them on the table, next to the labelled divining stones, and stayed only long enough to accept a quick thank you from Knox before being called away to some other corner of the estate.

"Don't mind Grizelda, she almost never speaks." Knox swung her feet about and gracefully slipped down to the floor so that she might join the wizard - she took the topmost album, plopping it pragmatically between them and sending up a billow of white dust from the carpet. "He hates it when I show this to people but I've no idea why. We think he was such a fetching boy."


The album opened up to its first page, where a formal group photograph exhibited the four Spectres posed in the same drawing room in late afternoon light. They were young - Nathaira at least eight - and dressed in formal robes. The three brothers wore kilts in their clan's tartan print and the twins bookended their sister, in front of whom stood five year old Balfour. Cormag and Goraidh were arguing soundlessly. Knox had a hand in her youngest brother's strawberry blonde curls as he protested the show of affection.

In the present, this incited a smirk. "Did Balfour ever say he was slightly premature? Runt of the litter and small even for his age..." she pinched several pages at once, flipping through the album. "Let me see if I can find someth-- ah. My favourite. Easter."

On the right page, grabbing one's attention almost immediately, a young adolescent Balfour Spectre stares begrudgingly at the camera. He was outdoors wearing a bright pink bunny onesie - complete with matching ears - and surrounded by a crowd of small children grabbing his legs in merry dance.

"Lost a bet with seanair." Nathaira explained and slid the photo album closer to Johann, looking at him with impish wisdom. "If he ever gets too full of himself, remind him of this. Look at him sulk! Oh, he was such a crybaby."

The photograph on the left page was more recent but she didn't think to reference it yet. Seventeen or eighteen years old, Balfour was sat crosslegged at what looked like the crest of a towering hill, next to a dark skinned witch his age. They had the same intense blue eyes, and wore matching jeans and white t-shirts. An old, russet cocker spaniel lay at their feet as they gave its ears a tousle.

"You must mean Balfour's embarrassing stories." Johann glanced up and raised an eyebrow to Knox as if to suggest she would be missing a fine opportunity if she didn't succumb to his suggestion. The arrival of the house elf made him blink twice, but the use of Balfy made him smile to himself as he consulted another name, the pile of diving stones growing with neatly chalked names.

Grizelda reappeared almost instantly, and he couldn't suppress the slight jump at the suddenness. She bore photograph albums and at once Johann's interest was piqued.
"You've raised me one, embarrassing stories with illustrations." He added to Knox with an approving smile. The rate he was going to chalk these stones was going to decrease at a rate of knots.
"..We think he was such a fetching boy."
"Still is." Johann echoed, wearing his boyish smile.

As the pages creaked open, the heavy paper and sticking charms of excellent quality, Johann noted (forever drawn to fine stationery) the diving stone clasped in his left hand fell into his lap, immediately distracted.

"Aha," He spoke almost beneath his breath on seeing the four children together in formal attire, Balfour at the front, his twin brothers, (Johann had been careful to commit names to memory ahead of the day). Each of them recognisable. His keen blue eyes studied the details - the recognisable tartan he'd spied in Balfour's wardrobe once the similarities in the drawing room as it was today. He glanced up at the fireplace before them in reference.

".. and small even for his age." Johann suppressed more than one impolite comment comparing present-day Balfour to this description, and hastily chalked the name onto the divining stone, shifting forward a little to grab another while Knox turned more pages to Easter.

The diving stone tumbled from his hand onto the carpet, and he couldn't help but laugh.
"My goodness, what by Merlin…?" Knox was only too eager to oblige with an explanation. Johann had to take the opportunity to incline a little more towards her, for better inspection of the expression and the suit. "Der Osterhase, excellent. How old was he then?" He sat up again, still wearing a wide grin of amusement.

As Knox recounted it, Johann's eyes wandered to a nearby photo, a recognisable Balfour from his late teens, by Johann's estimate. A younger, less muscled version, trapped in time within a photograph album. He was rather more handsome than Johann ever considered himself at that time, lucky chap. No wonder he'd had fun through his teens and twenties. Never an ugly duckling, despite his sister's explanations of his early birth. He couldn't help but feel a little jealous.

"That one will stay with me. Might even be worth investing in one for him after Christmas just to see the look on his face." Johann agreed, meaning the Easter Rabbit costume.

"I had anticipated a photo album of Balfour would not be complete without copious shots including animals." Johann mused aloud, pointing with the chalk but taking care not to drop any dust onto the album. "Not a school friend?" If she was, they were altogether very good school friends. He had at very first glance considered Ghastly, but it was clearly not her once he looked properly and stopped giggling about the rabbit costume. "I must say, your family has quite the eye for photography. There's a few headless photograph occupants in my family's thanks to my father's haphazard cropping." He retrieved the stone from the carpet with his left hand without looking, glanced to the list and chalked while he listened to Knox.

Nathaira allowed for her companion to take charge of the album, sliding it even closer to him while she answered that Balfour had been about fourteen in the Easter photograph. It was a naturally awkward age but her brother was impish enough to wear ungainly looks with a handsome shade of mischief. Bunny costume or not.

She glanced over at Johann, noticing that the other image had also caught his eye. A Balfour better resembling his adult self stared back with a laughing smile. Knox could still recall taking the picture - just at the edge of the estate, the youngest two of them listless with the relief of recent graduation.

They were a charming pair. "That's Francis, his half-sister." Nathaira's fair gaze flickered kindly to the darker face in the photograph, and then to Johann's hands as she watched him scribble a divining stone for great aunt Catriona. "She used to visit every summer until Balfour ran away to do his dragon training."

It often felt to the rest of the clan that Francis was a sort of misplaced and distant cousin. Knox knew that Balfour didn't see it that way - he could never help growing close to the people around him - but the thought never failed to occur to her whenever she saw the other witch.

Johann's remark on their eye for photography made her laugh lightly, and she flipped a few pages forward in the album while she replied.

"We only use the good photographs in these albums. The blurry ones are all in a shoebox somewhere." Knox smiled, pausing at a spread of pictures that look like they'd seen some wear and were taken on different cameras. "Is your father a frequent practitioner of cropping family photos, then?" she looked at her guest with a level, friendly air.

It wasn't unusual for family patriarchs to go around crossing members from trees, albums, invitation lists. There was a time when father had been tempted to cross Balfour off the clan wall.

She returned her attention to the album. Two of the photos were clumsily taken - late twenties Balfour living in what looked like a rustic cabin. He stood next to a stove in one, trying to heat up a small cauldron and grinning at the photographer with henna mud in his hair. The other image was of him and a younger man[1] crouching shirtless in the cabin fireplace, a bottle of Firewhiskey between them. It looked like they were playing a convoluted drinking game.

The remaining pictures were in the same vein, the two wizards out exploring in a mountainous range.

"French Alps. This was just before he came back from travelling." Nathaira noted as the image of her brother at the stove winked cheekily at his watchers. "Something to do with Graphorns and Trolls. Would you like to look at some younger ones? I might have something from when he met his first Hippogriff."

1.	Sylvain Onuris

"Ah yes, I recall that name." Johann replied as Knox explained, though he was concentrating on the riona order of the stone to make sure it fitted equally after the space he'd awarded the C.

"Of course," Johann agreed to Knox's mention of blurred photograph being somewhere else, "Unfortunately we did not have a luxury of a good shot often from my father, but he did prevail to practice. He just didn't have an eye for it, rather than anything malicious. My mother however, thankfully can frame a decent shot. I don't own a camera." He shrugged and put aside another stone, smudging chalk on the tip of his nose without realising.

He shuffled himself a little so he could peer over, but kept his hands away, shots of Balfour that looked to have been taken in the last decade. All with a theme of fun and the outdoors, recognisably Balfour's preferred lifestyle outside of the city. He was happy, there were fewer lines around his eyes, not that his lover had many, but Johann had studied them all like a map. Less scars too, he noticed as his gaze lingered on the photograph of the drinking game.

Knox's explanation startled him ever so slightly from his scrutiny. His hands had fallen idle through it. He looked up, conscious of his distraction and nodded hastily.
"Thank you," he replied and cleared his throat, a little colour to his cheeks.

As Knox changed pages he frowned at the list with renewed concentration. Better the childhood photographs than the ones of his twenties. Johann was more than aware that Balfour had been through many relationships longer and fleeting, and although he did not let it bother him, to dwell on thoughts of them could conjure a little uncomfortable, jealous feeling in his belly. The regret that he had not met Balfour sooner, or the worry that he too was one of many, and that it might all be over by Christmas, that Balfour would be bored and on to the next. However terrible it was to think that way, Johann's romantic inexperience fed his worries when he contemplated his lover's tastes.

"Meeting a first hippogriff I anticipate is a right of passage for any Spectre." He spoke at last, shoving back the nagging concerns that plagued sleepless nights. "You bow to them, is that correct? I've never encountered one at close range." Hastily, he raised the hand with the chalk and flattened his palm, "I know, heathen, I wouldn't anywhere near qualify as a Spectre." He flashed a grin. "But I'm happy to muck in and learn." He followed with a gentler smile.

“Oooh, you’ll regret saying that,” said Aisling, appearing at the drawing room’s entrance into the main hall. A hand resting against one of the doors, the witch greeted both cousin and guest with a delighted grin. For the impending celebration she was dressed in an airy, sleeveless tunic and a green tartan skirt, a swathe of thick brown fur draped across her chest. “Unless you’re good at holding your liquor...?”

The pished Scotsman was a stereotype that, as stereotypes were wont to be, wasn’t always true, but there was often a grain of truth to them and the Spectres were no different. In fact, a great deal of their gatherings was comprised of them. Still, there was more to being a Spectre than getting drunk – or hippogriffs – and it was Aisling’s hope that her cousin’s lover would stay long enough to learn.

She had even gone so far as to get them the most perfect sweaters.

“Not that you have to be,” she amended a beat later. A pair of leather vambraces graced her forearms; she adjusted one of them now as she approached, quick fingers tugging expertly at its straps. “There is more than one kind of Spectre.” She flashed Knox a mischievous grin as she ducked down to kiss her cheek. To her credit it was more subtle than not all Spectres are born. As much as she liked to tease, she knew it was a bit soon for that.

Straightening, she faced Johann then—and lit up at the sight of a chalk-dusted nose. Aww. “You got a...” Aisling tapped the tip of her own then, offering the man a poorly concealed smirk.

"Oooh, you’ll regret saying that," a familiar voice interrupted from just outside the room. Johann's eyebrows shot up and he twisted round from his position on the floor with the stones, chalk and photo album.

He laughed and grinned at Aisling's remarks on the strength of liver of Spectres.
"Unless you’re good at holding your liquor...?"
"Not like you and Bal, no." He shook his head and shrugged, "I don't dare try."

"You got a..."
"Huh?" He was momentarily puzzled, following the tap of Aisling't hand to her nose - about to wipe more on his own nose instinctively with his hand when he realised, and dusted it on the arm of his jumper instead. "Oh! Thanks," He grinned at seeing the smudge of chalk. Well at least it hadn't been worse.

"Knox is indulging me with photographs. Will I find a young herbologist amongst the pages too?" He asked, glacing from Aisling to Knox and back again.

Before she could make a pronouncement on their guest's blasphemous inexperience with Hippogriffs, Aisling made a well-time appearance in the drawing room. Nathaira was most fond of their cousin - she had in fact plans to corner the precocious redhead with a request of making her their unborn child's godmother. Carr supported the decision entirely. Here on the estate, they lived in some other era and realm. An old fashioned place where records were played on old, inherited gramophones in the evenings and wizards or witches spun old dances across dusty carpets, and raucous toasts were given at long tables full of Spectres dressed to the nines.

Aisling was a breath of fresh air, in the same way that she supposed Johann was. Something new and exciting to compliment their warm, archaic ways.

"Knox is indulging me with photographs. Will I find a young herbologist amongst the pages too?" Johann explained with a glance between the two witches, and the older Spectre looked back down at the album to flip through the pages.

The same cheeky, adventurous grin stared back from several of the sheets.

"You shall indeed!" she exclaimed happily, a bit of mischief in her eye - same as she shared with Balfour. "I do believe there is one of wee Aisling and Balfour trying to squeeze into the fireplace." Knox wasn't certain what it was with her brother climbing into hearths but there were at least two other photographs of him ducking beneath various mantles.

She beckoned at Aisling to come sit next to them on the floor. "Come join us, greenfingers -" Nathaira was inspired to monopolise the two of them now that they were here, content to avoid running her usual Samhain errands. "- we might while away the time until they're done finding the tree and getting ready. Balfour ought to do some work if he's going to have his run of the place."

It was a running joke that Balfour hardly knew how to manage the estate, on account of having lived away for so long, but it was always meant with affection and with the understanding that he might be a better master of the house than their docile father. Nathaira shifted over on the rug to make room for Aisling and gave her cousin a kindly smile.

Was it the pregnancy? Every moment spent with her relations - and new possibilities, this Storm lad - seemed more precious than ever before. It was very good indeed to be surrounded by family.