Remember, as far as anyone knows, we're a nice, normal family “Dorian?”
“Quoi?” he asked her through his toothbrush, eyeing Émilie’s reflection. Jehan was in his own room, so Dorian lapsed back into French. It was his sister’s preferred language, although he actually had a far more selfish motivation for choosing it this time.
“You know what!” she glared, continuing as he’d predicted she would in French. Émilie was easy to prompt into either language. He had predicted the topic too, and he had no desire for Jehan to understand it if he walked in on their conversation. Mandarin would have been safest, in terms of the amount Jehan spoke, but he and Émilie rarely had full conversations in it, and she would probably start switching into both French and English. He could keep her in French though, and he doubted Jehan’s level was up to following an argument in full flow. “How can you pretend you’re happy when they tell us things like that?” Émilie challenged.
He had sensed the atmosphere between her and their father the second he and Jehan had entered for breakfast…
“Bonne matin, papa,” Dorian offered a little hesitantly, going to kiss his father on the cheek, “Émi,” he added, kissing her too before sitting down next to her at the breakfast table.
"Salut," Émilie mumbled. She was definitely sulking.
"Hm, we are not lazy eggs today?" Dorian enquired, trying to raise a smile from her. On the first morning of his friend’s stay, Dorian had got rather distracted sitting and reading with him, until Émilie had been sent up to chase the pair down to breakfast. It hadn’t seemed like she was going to let them forget this in a hurry, and had been greeting them with ‘good morning, lazy eggs’ ever since, laughing as she said it.
“Your brother send his love,” Dorian’s mother informed him, tucking the slip of parchment she had been reading under her plate, and flicking her wand. A plate of croissants and other breakfast pastries floated over and continued to nudge both Dorian and Jehan in the shoulders until they had taken two each.
“Mmhmm,” Dorian nodded absently, grateful for the mouth of pain au raisin that excused him from any more eloquent remark on the subject. That was why Émi was sulking then. Sends his love… by a margin of how many points? he was tempted to ask. Matthieu only wrote them from Quidditch camp when he had something to brag about. He swallowed his sarcasm with his mouthful though. He knew that the quickest way out of this conversation was to take a polite interest, and he wanted the subject closed as quickly as possible. He didn’t want Matthieu hovering over his day like a dementor, sucking the happiness out of the room. “He wins his games?” he asked politely, but with absolutely no trace of interest.
“They want us to be happy that he break somebody arm!” Émilie exclaimed.
“Émilie! Ça suffit!” their father glared, “It’s a game. He’s a batteur.”
“Good for him,” Dorian replied flatly. “I send congratulation,”
“Émilie?”
“Yes. I am happy too,” she added, just as sullenly as before. “I’m happy that he tabasse people who want it, pour le changement,” she muttered under her breath, giving Dorian a pointed look. Or trying to. He was buttering his croissant and trying to look as if he hadn’t heard her.
“How can you pretend you’re happy when they tell us things like that?”
“Because,” Dorian answered, spitting his toothpaste into the sink, and wiping his mouth, “It makes no difference to me. Just pretend to be happy, and they stop talking about it.”
“And then, when he gets home, he’ll just start on you again.”
“Sulking over his Quidditch victories at the breakfast table isn’t going to change that. It’ll just make them pissed off at us.”
“Telling them might.”
“What for?” he asked. “Are they going to send him on some kind of course to reform his behaviour? Stop him training and building his muscles? He’ll just beat me up even worse for telling them.” He wondered sometimes… Were his parents just very good at seeing exactly what they wanted to see - and avoiding what they didn’t. Matthieu was spirited. He rough housed with his brother. Surely they knew it got out of hand all the time. They knew it wasn’t a fair fight because anyone who looked at the pair of them could see that. But he did his bit to perpetuate that. He agreed - yes, just roughhousing, all fine... Matthieu knew how to play him too. He wouldn’t ever go straight in for the kill if he thought he could bait Dorian into lashing out first, at least verbally, giving him less of a leg to stand on if he went crying to mummy. And he never did anything to him that Dorian couldn’t fix up himself - a bit of bruise balm, some murtlap essence… Half the time, it ended up feeling like it was his own fault for rising to the bait, and so he just settled for sorting it out himself. It had become something that was just an annoying fact of life… You had to use heating charms on cold days. You had to take Pepper Up Potion when you got sick. You had to put bruise balm on before bed when you were home for the summer. No one could fix the problem, so he treated the symptoms and then they all pretended it wasn’t happening at all. All except Émilie. “Why did you try to embarrass me in front of Jehan?” he rounded on her.
“I don’t think Jehan cares if I sulk about Matthieu breaking people’s arms,” once the boys were out of the room, their father had given her a few pointed words about manners and attitude at the table, especially when guests were present “You said he hates violence too.”
“Not that. You muttering about Matthieu beating up people who deserve it for a change. I hope to Maugris he didn’t hear you. Or if he did, he doesn’t know the word tabasser.”
“He doesn’t know?”
“He knows Matthieu is a jerk. Close enough.”
“You tell Jehan everything though.”
“Well, not that,” Dorian glared as if it was obvious. He’d never disguised his dislike of his brother around Jehan or his other friends. They had a rough sketch of Matthieu - playing beater for his house, rough, a jock… Not into languages, or reading, or culture. But he laughed it off. He got Tatya to teach him ‘gorilla’ in Russian, like that meant he’d have a chance at winning in a fight. They were just brothers who didn’t get on - that happened sometimes. Anyone who heard them described could see that they were alike as chalk and cheese. The fact that Matthieu always won… The fact that Dorian had had to hide, clinging to his mother’s apron skirts after using the insults Tatya had given him… The fact that his ‘welcome home’ from his brother had been a headlock and a friction burn. They didn’t need to know that. Matthieu always made him feel so weak, and so pathetic, and he didn’t want to tell his friends any stories where he was those things.