CARNIVAL du MYSTIQUE
A Harry Potter UNIVERSE/ Sasporilla Bucket Fan Fiction
by Darren Kelly
Chapter 6
*The character of Nancy Nightingale was created by Daisy Durr- used with permission.
**Artwork above of Nancy Nightingale is by Darren Kelly (Based on the mental images of Daisy Durr)
It was a long weekend for Sasporilla packing up the caravan not just for summer living but for storing the things that she wanted to keep from the house. There really wasn't that much. The Buckets hadn't been a rich family and therefore had never really been material people.
Her mothers guitar and framed photograph of Sassy with her mum and dad, taken in the door way of the Dog and Pony Pub. Most of the things in the house were new and had no sentimental value. By the end of the boxing most of it went to the charity shops. Sasporilla kept her Dad's old cap and her mom's favorite poncho as well as a few small things. It came to just over half a box which she stored away with her own things in the caravan.
By Sunday night the house was mostly packed up, emptied and ready for the new owners to do with as they would. Sasporilla walked into the back yard, with s quick cast the caravan returned itself into her Triumphant twelve-hundred X.
Sasporilla called her broom to her hand and climbed aboard. She smiled refusing to look back at the house.
"Just move on Sassy." She heard her dad say. "Make your own way in life my girl."
Sasporilla set her brooms invisibility option and took off into the warm evening air.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Sasporilla Bucket was not one for being late. She arrived at the Carnival du Mystique nearly thirty minutes before they were to move out to the next town. She carried her broom through the unmanned turn style.
A crowd of carnies gathered outside the hall of mirrors. What ever was holding up the Carnival du Mystique moving on to the next town was obviously happening here.
"Every darn time." Alana, the muggle magicians assistant sighed, throwing her hands in the air as she walked away from the fiasco shaking her head in utter frustration.
"What's going on?" Sasporilla asked.
"What goes on in every city and every town we have visited for two years." Ferdinad Beauxchamps smiled. "A young woman has locked herself in the hall of mirrors and refuses to leave."
"How do you usually deal with it?" Sassy asked.
"Alohamorah the door, try and talk her into leaving peacefully." Ferdinad Beauxchamps sighed. "And when that fails we have to stupify her and carry her off the grounds and leave her at the nearest authorities."
"I see." Sasporilla said sadly.
"Then as soon as the gates open in the new location," Areus Extravagonzo said throwing hands in the air, "She's the first through buying tickets for all four days!!!"
"Well at least she's honest and pays her way." Sasporilla said.
"So you see good in her." Ferdinad Beauxchamps smiled. "As do I. The others see only wanton madness and obsession. Everyone here has spoken with her. Everyone but you. Perhaps you can get through to her where others can not."
"I'd be happy to try." Sasporilla said drawing her wand and pointing it at the hall of mirrors door. "Alohamora."
Sassy pushed the door open and walked in. The hall of mirrors really was very much just as advertised. Just a long room full of different mirrors mounted on walls. Some mirrors made you look short and fat, some made you look tall and thin.
Sure enough a raven haired rubenesque woman stood staring into a mirror at the end of the hall.
"Be careful of the mirror with red velvet ropes." The woman said bringing to them to Sassy's attention. "If you get any closer to them you'll regret it."
Blackened fiery arms reached out from the mirror and grasped at the air. Finding nothing to drag with them back to the nether realms they returned back into the depths of the glass.
"Thank you for the warning." Sasporilla said.
"Have you come to ask me to leave or to knock me out?" The woman asked.
"I'd prefer to talk first." Sasporilla said approaching the woman. "Do you have a name?"
"Nancy Nightingale." The woman smiled not taking her eyes off the mirror. "And you are?"
"Sasporilla Bucket." Sassy said. "I'm new to the Carnival. Do I detect a hint of a German accent?"
"Yes." Nancy said. "Though I have not been home for a long time. I follow the mirror to be with my love."
Sasporilla looked into the mirror. Sassy saw Nancy and no one else.
"I'm sorry." Sasporilla said. "I only see you in the mirror. I don't see anyone with you."
"No." Nancy said. "This mirror was made as an early work by the same maker as the mirror of errisad. It can only show one persons true love at one time. For me it is my darling Severus."
"Severus?" Sasporilla asked. "Not professor Severus Snape?"
"Yes." Nancy said stiffly with a hint of defencive pride. "I have always loved him. From the first time I saw him as a girl in Flourish and Blots. We reached for the same book on potions and our hands touched. I knew we were meant for each other. I felt it in my heart. His heart was already another's."
"I had no Idea Professor Snape loved anyone." Sasporilla said. "He always seemed incapable of loving anyone."
"You're just like everyone else!" Nancy yelled. "Judging my Severus when you never really knew him at all!!!"
"I do know that when a group of boys were merciliously beating up a Slytherin friend of mine, Professor Snape gave him a safe place to sleep a set a trap to catch them." Sasporilla said.
"The Zarcazzian boy." Nancy gasped. "I heard about that. I was in teachers college when that happened. Wait, the Zarcazzian boy is your friend?"
"Yes." Sasporilla smiled. "His last name is Curtiss now. He took his wifes last name when they got married. It's s long story."
"Are you a Slytherin?" Nancy asked.
"No." Sasporilla sighed. "I'm a Hufflepuff."
"Then how were you friends with a Slytherin?" Nancy asked.
"I don't believe in judging people by their house." Sasporilla stiffened defencively. "I pick my friends based on them being good people, despite their house, colour, sex, blood line, nationality, religion, or anything else."
Nancy Nightingale gave the strange pink haired witch a long hard look.
"Good for you." Nancy smiled and turned back to the mirror stubbornly. "Have you ever been in love Sasporilla Bucket?"
"Yes." Sassy said quietly.
"I don't mean puppy love," Nancy said, "a crush. I mean really in love from your heart to your bones. So in love that you ached for him, longed for him. Could not bare to be out of his presence for a second of your life? And then have someone or something take it from you?"
"I lost my first love to a girl under going the Asensionmorphosus Ritual." Sasporilla said.
"That's horrible." Nancy frowned still not looking away from the mirror. "I understand he would have had no choice if he was her soul mate but the odds of it being your love are astronomical."
"Honestly for the amount of bad things that happen to me," Sasporilla sighed, "I'd say the odds were a safe bet."
"You said FIRST love?" Nancy asked?
"Yes." Sasporilla said. "I did fall in love again. A different boy, a bit younger and very different from the first. He actually perused me. Wasn't there ever a boy who showed interest in you?"
"Yes." Nancy sighed. "Narwel. A Hufflepuff boy a year younger than me. He was very big. In his first year he was well above six and a half feet tall and brawny, brutish. Though he was a gentle soul. He wouldn't harm a butterfly, but if someone hurt him or he saw someone being hurt he would become very aggressive. He could become quite frightening. His grasp of magic was atrocious but he worked do hard. He was very sweet and would write me poetry. Leave me candy and flowers. Eventually I had to explain that I was not interested in him. At best we could be friends."
"He must have been heart broken?" Sasporilla asked.
"I honestly don't know." Nancy said. "He was expelled the next day for fighting. He put nine Slytherins in the infirmary and broke two limbs on the whomping willow. You fell for your peruser?"
"I was going to tell him the same thing." Sasporilla said. "Your not my type, just friends, and he laid a kiss on me and I melted. I knew."
"Oh my." Nancy said with sad surprise taking her eyes off the mirror for the first time. "That is so beautiful. I hope you will be very happy."
"All his memories of me were stolen from him by his mother." Sasporilla sighed. "They have been irreversibly erased and destroyed."
"Perhaps of all the people sent to pull me from the mirror you will be the closest to understanding why I will not leave." Nancy smiled. "My love Severus, loved another. Like you, like me, he loved one who loved him but not as much as the person who stole their heart away from him. I never gave up hopes that our friendship, no matter how distant would blossom into love. Especially once she had passed on but he refused to let her love for Lily Potter go."
"Lily Potter?" Sasporilla asked surprised. "Harry Potters mother?"
"Yes." Nancy said sadly. "He had loved her since they were children. They grew up together. James Potter stole her heart and broke my dear Severus' heart. It left a whole in his sensitive heart that he would let no one else fill. Not even me. When I look into this mirror, it allows me the honour of seeing my life as it should have been with him. I have seen our joys and sorrows. Our children and grand children. A long happy life of love in each others arms. I will not walk away from it. I will have to be ripped away from the loving arms of my Severus unconscious!"
"The other boy brought you flowers?" Sasporilla asked.
"What?" Nancy asked confused.
"The other boy? Narwel?" Sasporilla asked. "You said he brought you flowers. What kind?"
"Daisys." Nancy said her gaze breaking from the mirror for just a second again. "Narwel always said most women wanted Roses because they thought themselves like Roses. He thought Roses the most stuck up of flowers. Over priced, hard to raise, thorny and only pretty for a short time. He brought me Daisys because he said Daisys were the most beautiful of flowers. Hardy, beautiful for a long time, always there and nicer smelling than Roses. His logic was you always saw more bees on Daisys than on Roses."
The women chuckled as Sasporilla quietly snapped her fingers and cast Nancy Nightingale to sleep, catching her as she fell.
Sassy drew her wand and cast levicorpus to carry the woman out of the hall of mirrors as gently as she could.
"What took so long?" One of the carnnies yelled.
"I wanted to find out why she didn't want to leave." Sasporilla said.
"It's ok." Ferdinad Beauxchamps said. "We still have three minutes to midnight. Ms.Bucket if you would be so kind as to carry her off the grounds. Take your broom and this flyer for the shows next location incase you can not make it back inside in time for the port jump."
Sasporilla levitated Nancy Nightingale through the turnstiles and out into the night air of Piccadillycircus. Much to her surprise a giant of a man stepped in her way.
"I will take her." The man said.
"Who are you?" Sasporilla asked?
"I am Narwel." The giant smiled gently taking Nancy into his arms. "I come and get Nancy every Sunday night and take her to a local police station, fire house or hospital after the Carnival closes. I watch over her until she awakens, then I leave. She never knows I'm around."
"You still love her." Sasporilla smiled. "After all this time."
"Always." Narwel said turning to carry his unconscious love away.
"Narwel." Sasporilla said. "When Nancy wakes up, stay and tell her you've never given up your love for her. Before she can tell you anything.... kiss her. I'm not saying it's the right move, or the safe move but it worked gang busters for someone I know."
With a nod and a one sided smile Narwel walked off into the night. A giant of a man carrying his rubenesque love. Spending the few minutes a week he got to hold her in his arms.
Sasporilla thought for a moment of when she glimpsed herself in the mirror and it showed her standing next to the person that was to be her one true love. A tear ran down her cheek. In a flash the carnival box office disappeared.
*The character of Nancy Nightingale was created by Daisy Durr- used with permission.
**Artwork above of Nancy Nightingale is by Darren Kelly (Based on the mental images of Daisy Durr)
It was a long weekend for Sasporilla packing up the caravan not just for summer living but for storing the things that she wanted to keep from the house. There really wasn't that much. The Buckets hadn't been a rich family and therefore had never really been material people.
Her mothers guitar and framed photograph of Sassy with her mum and dad, taken in the door way of the Dog and Pony Pub. Most of the things in the house were new and had no sentimental value. By the end of the boxing most of it went to the charity shops. Sasporilla kept her Dad's old cap and her mom's favorite poncho as well as a few small things. It came to just over half a box which she stored away with her own things in the caravan.
By Sunday night the house was mostly packed up, emptied and ready for the new owners to do with as they would. Sasporilla walked into the back yard, with s quick cast the caravan returned itself into her Triumphant twelve-hundred X.
Sasporilla called her broom to her hand and climbed aboard. She smiled refusing to look back at the house.
"Just move on Sassy." She heard her dad say. "Make your own way in life my girl."
Sasporilla set her brooms invisibility option and took off into the warm evening air.
*****************************************************************************************************************
Sasporilla Bucket was not one for being late. She arrived at the Carnival du Mystique nearly thirty minutes before they were to move out to the next town. She carried her broom through the unmanned turn style.
A crowd of carnies gathered outside the hall of mirrors. What ever was holding up the Carnival du Mystique moving on to the next town was obviously happening here.
"Every darn time." Alana, the muggle magicians assistant sighed, throwing her hands in the air as she walked away from the fiasco shaking her head in utter frustration.
"What's going on?" Sasporilla asked.
"What goes on in every city and every town we have visited for two years." Ferdinad Beauxchamps smiled. "A young woman has locked herself in the hall of mirrors and refuses to leave."
"How do you usually deal with it?" Sassy asked.
"Alohamorah the door, try and talk her into leaving peacefully." Ferdinad Beauxchamps sighed. "And when that fails we have to stupify her and carry her off the grounds and leave her at the nearest authorities."
"I see." Sasporilla said sadly.
"Then as soon as the gates open in the new location," Areus Extravagonzo said throwing hands in the air, "She's the first through buying tickets for all four days!!!"
"Well at least she's honest and pays her way." Sasporilla said.
"So you see good in her." Ferdinad Beauxchamps smiled. "As do I. The others see only wanton madness and obsession. Everyone here has spoken with her. Everyone but you. Perhaps you can get through to her where others can not."
"I'd be happy to try." Sasporilla said drawing her wand and pointing it at the hall of mirrors door. "Alohamora."
Sassy pushed the door open and walked in. The hall of mirrors really was very much just as advertised. Just a long room full of different mirrors mounted on walls. Some mirrors made you look short and fat, some made you look tall and thin.
Sure enough a raven haired rubenesque woman stood staring into a mirror at the end of the hall.
"Be careful of the mirror with red velvet ropes." The woman said bringing to them to Sassy's attention. "If you get any closer to them you'll regret it."
Blackened fiery arms reached out from the mirror and grasped at the air. Finding nothing to drag with them back to the nether realms they returned back into the depths of the glass.
"Thank you for the warning." Sasporilla said.
"Have you come to ask me to leave or to knock me out?" The woman asked.
"I'd prefer to talk first." Sasporilla said approaching the woman. "Do you have a name?"
"Nancy Nightingale." The woman smiled not taking her eyes off the mirror. "And you are?"
"Sasporilla Bucket." Sassy said. "I'm new to the Carnival. Do I detect a hint of a German accent?"
"Yes." Nancy said. "Though I have not been home for a long time. I follow the mirror to be with my love."
Sasporilla looked into the mirror. Sassy saw Nancy and no one else.
"I'm sorry." Sasporilla said. "I only see you in the mirror. I don't see anyone with you."
"No." Nancy said. "This mirror was made as an early work by the same maker as the mirror of errisad. It can only show one persons true love at one time. For me it is my darling Severus."
"Severus?" Sasporilla asked. "Not professor Severus Snape?"
"Yes." Nancy said stiffly with a hint of defencive pride. "I have always loved him. From the first time I saw him as a girl in Flourish and Blots. We reached for the same book on potions and our hands touched. I knew we were meant for each other. I felt it in my heart. His heart was already another's."
"I had no Idea Professor Snape loved anyone." Sasporilla said. "He always seemed incapable of loving anyone."
"You're just like everyone else!" Nancy yelled. "Judging my Severus when you never really knew him at all!!!"
"I do know that when a group of boys were merciliously beating up a Slytherin friend of mine, Professor Snape gave him a safe place to sleep a set a trap to catch them." Sasporilla said.
"The Zarcazzian boy." Nancy gasped. "I heard about that. I was in teachers college when that happened. Wait, the Zarcazzian boy is your friend?"
"Yes." Sasporilla smiled. "His last name is Curtiss now. He took his wifes last name when they got married. It's s long story."
"Are you a Slytherin?" Nancy asked.
"No." Sasporilla sighed. "I'm a Hufflepuff."
"Then how were you friends with a Slytherin?" Nancy asked.
"I don't believe in judging people by their house." Sasporilla stiffened defencively. "I pick my friends based on them being good people, despite their house, colour, sex, blood line, nationality, religion, or anything else."
Nancy Nightingale gave the strange pink haired witch a long hard look.
"Good for you." Nancy smiled and turned back to the mirror stubbornly. "Have you ever been in love Sasporilla Bucket?"
"Yes." Sassy said quietly.
"I don't mean puppy love," Nancy said, "a crush. I mean really in love from your heart to your bones. So in love that you ached for him, longed for him. Could not bare to be out of his presence for a second of your life? And then have someone or something take it from you?"
"I lost my first love to a girl under going the Asensionmorphosus Ritual." Sasporilla said.
"That's horrible." Nancy frowned still not looking away from the mirror. "I understand he would have had no choice if he was her soul mate but the odds of it being your love are astronomical."
"Honestly for the amount of bad things that happen to me," Sasporilla sighed, "I'd say the odds were a safe bet."
"You said FIRST love?" Nancy asked?
"Yes." Sasporilla said. "I did fall in love again. A different boy, a bit younger and very different from the first. He actually perused me. Wasn't there ever a boy who showed interest in you?"
"Yes." Nancy sighed. "Narwel. A Hufflepuff boy a year younger than me. He was very big. In his first year he was well above six and a half feet tall and brawny, brutish. Though he was a gentle soul. He wouldn't harm a butterfly, but if someone hurt him or he saw someone being hurt he would become very aggressive. He could become quite frightening. His grasp of magic was atrocious but he worked do hard. He was very sweet and would write me poetry. Leave me candy and flowers. Eventually I had to explain that I was not interested in him. At best we could be friends."
"He must have been heart broken?" Sasporilla asked.
"I honestly don't know." Nancy said. "He was expelled the next day for fighting. He put nine Slytherins in the infirmary and broke two limbs on the whomping willow. You fell for your peruser?"
"I was going to tell him the same thing." Sasporilla said. "Your not my type, just friends, and he laid a kiss on me and I melted. I knew."
"Oh my." Nancy said with sad surprise taking her eyes off the mirror for the first time. "That is so beautiful. I hope you will be very happy."
"All his memories of me were stolen from him by his mother." Sasporilla sighed. "They have been irreversibly erased and destroyed."
"Perhaps of all the people sent to pull me from the mirror you will be the closest to understanding why I will not leave." Nancy smiled. "My love Severus, loved another. Like you, like me, he loved one who loved him but not as much as the person who stole their heart away from him. I never gave up hopes that our friendship, no matter how distant would blossom into love. Especially once she had passed on but he refused to let her love for Lily Potter go."
"Lily Potter?" Sasporilla asked surprised. "Harry Potters mother?"
"Yes." Nancy said sadly. "He had loved her since they were children. They grew up together. James Potter stole her heart and broke my dear Severus' heart. It left a whole in his sensitive heart that he would let no one else fill. Not even me. When I look into this mirror, it allows me the honour of seeing my life as it should have been with him. I have seen our joys and sorrows. Our children and grand children. A long happy life of love in each others arms. I will not walk away from it. I will have to be ripped away from the loving arms of my Severus unconscious!"
"The other boy brought you flowers?" Sasporilla asked.
"What?" Nancy asked confused.
"The other boy? Narwel?" Sasporilla asked. "You said he brought you flowers. What kind?"
"Daisys." Nancy said her gaze breaking from the mirror for just a second again. "Narwel always said most women wanted Roses because they thought themselves like Roses. He thought Roses the most stuck up of flowers. Over priced, hard to raise, thorny and only pretty for a short time. He brought me Daisys because he said Daisys were the most beautiful of flowers. Hardy, beautiful for a long time, always there and nicer smelling than Roses. His logic was you always saw more bees on Daisys than on Roses."
The women chuckled as Sasporilla quietly snapped her fingers and cast Nancy Nightingale to sleep, catching her as she fell.
Sassy drew her wand and cast levicorpus to carry the woman out of the hall of mirrors as gently as she could.
"What took so long?" One of the carnnies yelled.
"I wanted to find out why she didn't want to leave." Sasporilla said.
"It's ok." Ferdinad Beauxchamps said. "We still have three minutes to midnight. Ms.Bucket if you would be so kind as to carry her off the grounds. Take your broom and this flyer for the shows next location incase you can not make it back inside in time for the port jump."
Sasporilla levitated Nancy Nightingale through the turnstiles and out into the night air of Piccadillycircus. Much to her surprise a giant of a man stepped in her way.
"I will take her." The man said.
"Who are you?" Sasporilla asked?
"I am Narwel." The giant smiled gently taking Nancy into his arms. "I come and get Nancy every Sunday night and take her to a local police station, fire house or hospital after the Carnival closes. I watch over her until she awakens, then I leave. She never knows I'm around."
"You still love her." Sasporilla smiled. "After all this time."
"Always." Narwel said turning to carry his unconscious love away.
"Narwel." Sasporilla said. "When Nancy wakes up, stay and tell her you've never given up your love for her. Before she can tell you anything.... kiss her. I'm not saying it's the right move, or the safe move but it worked gang busters for someone I know."
With a nod and a one sided smile Narwel walked off into the night. A giant of a man carrying his rubenesque love. Spending the few minutes a week he got to hold her in his arms.
Sasporilla thought for a moment of when she glimpsed herself in the mirror and it showed her standing next to the person that was to be her one true love. A tear ran down her cheek. In a flash the carnival box office disappeared.
PLEASE REMEMBER
I am in no way affiliated with Warner Bros. or with J.K.Rowling. My work is purely that of fan fiction & do not ask for, nor accept money, gifts or other compensation for my work. If you really feel you must do something, donate to J.K.Rowling's charitable foundation LUMOS! Link below! ( https://www.wearelumos.org/ )
I am in no way affiliated with Warner Bros. or with J.K.Rowling. My work is purely that of fan fiction & do not ask for, nor accept money, gifts or other compensation for my work. If you really feel you must do something, donate to J.K.Rowling's charitable foundation LUMOS! Link below! ( https://www.wearelumos.org/ )