Snow was swirling against the icy windows once more, and Quinn had made himself comfortable in the West manor's lounge, his feet folded up on the sofa with a cup of piping hot chocolate topped with roasted marshmallows on the top.
'Twas going to be a White Christmas.
A book floated in front of him, and when Quinn's eyes would reach the right page's end, the page would flip by the time, and he would continue on his handless reading experience.
"Are you done with your gifts?" asked Ms. Rosey, sitting in front of him with an embroidery hoop with a handkerchief that she was needling a design upon. "I hope you have already owled them to everyone."
"I sent them all the Christmas presents this morning," said Quinn. He glanced at the clock on the wall, "Most of them probably would have reached their recipients by now."
He himself had received multiple presents from his friends; some had either sent their presents through owl, while others had handed them theirs personally as owls were in high demand during the Christmas season, and the possibility of delayed delivery was high and not unusual. Quinn had sent all of his through owl as he had access to a premium eagle mailing service, much faster than the owl bird.
"What did you get for everyone?" asked Ms. Rosey.
"Let's see. . . I made Marcus a day planner— to-do lists, alerts, alarms, timers, and so much more in one diary-styled notebook; moreover, it's reusable, so at the end of the year, he can wipe everything with one wave, and it would update itself to the next year's template. . . one of my finest works, if I was to say myself."
"This Marcus, he's the one who met with Georgie last month," asked Ms. Rosey.
"Yes, one and the same. Why? Did grandfather say something?" he asked.
"He and Elliot were discussing about that friend of yours a couple weeks back," Ms. Rosey threaded an elegant silver thread through a carmine handkerchief.
Quinn put his feet down on the ground and leaned forward. "What did they talk about?" he asked. Marcus was going to work for the Wests; the question was where he was going to work.
"I do not know," she shook her head and gently pierced the cloth.
Quinn narrowed his eyes and stared at his caretaker. ". . . You know what they talked about. . . you were probably a part of the conversation. You just don't want to tell me, don't you?"
Ms. Rosey plainly nodded, "Yes, your grandfather has made a decision, but he needs more time to think about it before setting it in stone. He will tell you when he feels the time is correct; until then, you're not to ask."
Quinn leaned back and sipped his hot chocolate with a hidden pout. They could just give him the straight answer; it wasn't like he was going to leak it to Marcus, whatever the thing was.
"What about your other friends?" she asked.
"For Eddie, I created a charmed Quidditch pitch miniature equipped with miniature flying Quidditch players, all of the customizable in strength, speed, endurance, catching, hitting, manoeuvrability aspects, so he could do rough play formation, visualization, and testing to see if they work or not. . . again, one of my finest handcrafted items."
Since they had started the year, he had often seen Eddie buried in Quidditch tactics, planning and plotting a playbook for the Ravenclaw. Quinn hoped that giving Eddie something for rough simulation would help his decision-making process.
"For Luna, I created a subsurface detector which detects if there's something buried underground— it detects everything from scrap metal to wooden chests waiting to be unearthed. She can go exploring and dig when something pops up on the detector. . . I can only wonder what sorts of things she would find," said Quinn, satisfied with the blatant rip-off of the metal detector, only his was miles better as it didn't have the restriction of only finding metal.
"What about the Greengrass' eldest daughter? What did you get for her?" asked Ms. Rosey.
"You know you can call her by her name," said Quinn sighing.
"I will do so when I get to know her and decide if she's worthy," said Ms. Rosey with a raised chin.
Quinn sighed. Ms. Rosey's first reaction when he told her that he was dating Daphne was of indifference, which he thought, at that point, was expected of Ms. Rosey, but over time, he noticed she would probe him on how his relationship was going with Daphne, which was also when he noticed she refused to say her name, always referring as Greengrass' eldest daughter.
She wasn't like Lia's boyfriend, Abraham. But it turned out that Lia had been whispering information about Abraham into Ms. Rosey's ear even before she told George about Abraham, so when she finally revealed Abraham to the family, Ms. Rosey had already known much about the man.
'Why didn't I think of that,' he had thought when he had asked Lia for advice, and she had revealed the secret to him. Out of everybody, he wanted Ms. Rosey to like Daphne the most.
There was the option of letting Daphne spend some time with Ms. Rosey, but he wasn't ready to bring his girlfriend home just yet, as to say.
Quinn sighed before moving on from his thoughts, "For Daphne, I grew diamonds in my workshop—"
"You grew a diamond?" Ms. Rosey asked, her hands stopping her embroidery. "People can grow diamonds?"
"Oh yeah, diamonds can be grown— you just follow the same natural process of carbon condensation under heat and pressure, but you just speed up the process by a lot, and voila, you have a man-made diamond."
Ms. Rosey blinked, and Quinn wasn't surprised at the reaction. He was sure that at least in the northern part of the continent, no magical other than him was artificially growing diamonds. He wasn't sure about the rest of the world; there might be someone somewhere who was growing diamonds— the non-magicals, of course, had been doing it for a couple decades.
"Diamonds, yeah, made a batch of them from scratch, different sizes; then charmed them to be able to change color at command. Then I prepared several pairs of earrings from gold, white gold, rose gold, platinum, silver, titanium even— all of them capable of shifting into several shapes.
Together with the diamonds, they turn into a set of customizable earrings with several designs and diamond placements, and. . . and. . . and. . . ."
"What happened?" asked Ms. Rosey.
Quinn looked up at her in panic. "I-I. . . did I overdo it?! I mean, I have given her crystal jewellery before, but I diamond and all that other stuff. . . argh!! What was I thinking?!"
"It's okay, you didn't go overboard; I'm sure she will love it," said Ms. Rosey.
"Really?" he asked with hope.
"Of course, any girl would be happy to get a present from you," said Ms. Rosey and then humphed. "If that girl doesn't appreciate, she doesn't have good eyes."
". . . You're the wrong person to ask this question, aren't you," Quinn sat back on the sofa with a thump.
"I hope you sent something for Abraham," said Ms. Rosey.
"I did," said Quinn. "I don't know what to get him, so I had no idea what to make him, so I just ordered a top-of-the-line whetstone set. I hope that will be enough. I would get him something Quinn-made next time."
"That's more than enough," Ms. Rosey gave her seal of approval. "For Lia?"
"For Lia, I made a wristwatch, but because I know she's mostly in offices with a lot of time spent sitting around, I added additional features into the watch. . . . The watch can monitor her heart rate, keep a record of how many steps she took in a day, how much of sleep she got, track her mood, measure stress levels, and all sort of fitness-related features," said Quinn, once again quite happy with his fitbit rip-off.
He was going to leave it to Lia if she wanted to release the product to the public. It wasn't that difficult to make with magic, so anyone with rudimentary medical knowledge and charms skill could make it.
"As for Uncle Elliot, I brewed him a wide set of alchemic potions that he could use in his personal greenhouse to change the soil into practically every type he could think of and grow any plant he ever wanted to grow but couldn't because of environment restriction," Elliot was an avid home-gardener who would grow all sort of things— fruits, vegetable, potion herbs, as a hobby. He was impressed with Quinn's application of alchemy in Herbology, so Quinn decided to gift him alchemic potions.
"I also shared his personal WMF-id with Madam Pomfrey," said Quinn, "But that's more of a gift for her than him."
"What?"
"For grandfather, I made him a very classy ice cube maker. Capable of making ice cubes of various shapes and sizes— cubes, spheres, diamonds, thin cylinders, and many more. Moreover, there's an option of making clear ice without a blur of cloudiness. He will be able to enjoy his drinks with his choice of ice," said Quinn, knowing how much of a drinks guy his grandfather was. "Also, everything's instant, so yeah, quite bleeding edge, top-of-the-line, state-of-art system. Plus, there's a secret ice-shaving option in there hidden which he would have to explore the appliance to find."
"Hmm. . . good, you did well," Ms. Rosey nodded, satisfied with Quinn's Christmas gifts.
"You don't want to know what I got for you?" he asked.
"I will know when I open mine tomorrow morning. I don't want to know right now," she said.
Quinn shrugged. Her gift was a chair that could change itself according to the user's needs with several features like temperature control, a massage feature, cushion control, memory foam, among many other things, to provide maximum comfort, aiming to get their person addicted to sitting. . .
"What don't you want to know?"
Quinn and Ms. Rosey looked up to see George walk into the room with a letter in his hand.
"We were talking about Christmas presents," said Quinn. "What did you get me this year?"
"You will know tomorrow," George sat down on a single-seater. "Now, I want to talk to you about something," he raised the letter, "this is an invitation for a New Years gathering—"
"I don't want to go," said Quinn.
"— from Sirius Black. . ."
Quinn focused on George, "Black?"
"Yes, Sirius Black is hosting a gathering on New Year— according to the letter with the invitation, it's not a big party, only a few people."
"Where is it?" Quinn asked nonchalantly.
"At his house, Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place," said George, reading ht address off the invitation, "thus the small gathering."
Quinn went silent. Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, he knew of the address, and not once in the last few years had he forgotten about it, meaning that building never went under the cover of Fidelius Charm, telling that the place wasn't the headquarters of the Order of Pheonix.
But that wasn't what he was interested in. . .
"Do you want me to go?" Quinn asked.
"Yes, I want you to go," said George. "It will be a gathering of Light Faction, and meetings like those are difficult to get in— all faction gatherings are exclusive, and seeing that we received an invitation means that they are trying to gain our favor."
"Are you going to involve yourself with them?" Quinn asked, leaning forward. It was the last thing he wanted.
"No. Is that even a question," George scoffed. "I want you to go there to see what they have they have cooking there. Identify who is attending. If we are invited, some others outside the faction must be as well. So go there and see what's going on within the faction."
Quinn tapped on the armrest for a while before nodding.
"Okay, I will attend," he said with his hand going to his chest.
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Quinn West - MC - I make my own presents.
Ms. Rosey - Caretaker - Always be fussing.
George West - Grandfather - Go be a spy, son.
FictionOnlyReader - Author - It's subtle.
