They arrived at her house within a handful of minutes, Andrea annoyed at Julian for talking about her mother in such a disgusting way, and Julian annoyed at her for spilling his tea despite having gone to great pains to make such a thing impossible.
"Couldn't you just magic me more clothes?" she asked, to which he shook his head, "No."
"And here I thought that you were able to do anything," she said, rolling her eyes.
"Where would I even begin, Andrea? I don't know your size, how much cloth and wool would be needed, nor anything about your sense of style, other than it is appalling. Now, could I solve these issues? Surely, I am Julian Nerva for Christ's Sake. But will I?"
"I doubt it," Andrea stomped her feet towards her home, "It would be a nice thing to do, and you're Julian Nerva, for Christ's sake."
She slammed the door behind her and almost jumped out of her shoes when she saw him standing there, "Why are you here?"
Julian blew his lips and shrugged, "Why are any of us here, really? What is the meaning of life, and our living it? There's just so many ways to answer that question, Andrea."
She walked past him and climbed the stairs, "I fucking hate you."
Andrea slammed her bedroom door shut and knocked back into it when Julian startled her again, "Shit!"
He grimaced and she pulled the middle finger up at him, "You do that often, huh? Sneak your way into little girl's rooms?"
Julian rolled his eyes at her, "Now, now, there is no need to be so crass, Andrea."
Andrea decided to try and ignore him as she pulled out her luggage bag and put as many items of clothing as she could get her hands on before looking towards her creams and make-ups and toothbrush and hairbrush and—
"Do you really require all of this?" Julian asked, annoying her with his…. Perfectly soothing voice, "Am I putting all of this in my luggage bag?"
"I suppose."
"Then you have your answer." She snapped, finishing up by taking a picture she had copied of her grandmother and her parents, a picture that was in Julian's hands before she could even put it down, "Hey!"
He looked down at it and smiled, "Amusing."
Andrea marched over towards him to snatch the picture from out his hands, "Yep, funny as funny can be. My granny and her folks decided to take a family picture together in-between fighting off poverty and ducking Jim Crow. Oh, what little rascals."
"…. This is a picture of your mother and her parents." Julian said, his hands now in the pocket of his navy-blue colored suit.
Andrea raised an eyebrow at him, not entirely sure if she had heard him correctly, "What?"
He turned towards the door, "I'll tell you more later…. Or I just won't and let your curiosity and desire for answers make you go crazy. I have a feeling I know which I will choose to do."
"Juli—" she could barely get out more than half his name when he disappeared, as if he had never been there to begin with.
Andrea jumped onto the bed to throw a tantrum, kicking and slamming her fists down, Fuck Fuck Fuck FUCK!!!
If this were how things were going to be, she would be back in New Orleans within the month.
She got up off the bed and took her luggage bag, struggling to drag it towards her bedroom door when she heard a knock and opened it to find the invisible butler standing there, offering to help.
"Thanks." Andrea muttered, still a little in awe at watching an invisible man lift the luggage bag she intended to take with her to a magic school in England.
She hurried down the stairs after him, stopping to stare at the pictures of her Granny and mother, her eyebrows furrowing as she began to think over what Julian had said, "You've got to be fucking kidding me…." She muttered before clearing the stairs in two strides. Andrea stormed her way out the house and back into the chariot, finding Julian sat cross-legged with a newspaper in his hands, "Did Mr. Unseen help you come alright?"
"Go and fuck yourself." She muttered, sitting herself across from him as they waited for his invisible man to place her suitcase in the corner, "What did you mean up there, Julian?"
He ignored her as he continued to read the paper, reading it undisturbed until she slapped at it, "Julian!"
"It's Mr. Nerva." He said, fixing the paper and going back to reading, "And I will tell you, on one condition."
Andrea sunk back into her seat, "My… momma told me that there is power in words, especially promises."
"Good to see that she actually taught you something worth a damn." He muttered, and that annoyed her a great deal, "She taught me how to speak my mind."
"And now the world suffers for it." Julian sighed, setting aside the newspaper and looking at her intensely, "When we get to Camelot, you will mention nothing of any form of bond or relationship between us beyond the fact that I brought you in. You will call me Mr. Nerva in public, and you must muster up the crumble of respect that I know that Antonina has instilled in you and behave accordingly."
She thought it over before sighing and closing her eyes, "Only in public?"
He nodded his head, "Only in public."
"You have yourself a deal, Juli-Boy!"
He barely reacted to that, "You come from a better home than your behavior, Andrea."
She mumbled that he was right, bitterly agreeing to call him Mr. Nerva and Julian just as she felt the tendrils of sleep begin to grab hold of her.
Andrea could hear Julian sigh again, probably because of something she did, like breathe a little too hard in his presence, "Rest then, I suppose it was a very eventful day. When you wake, we will begin with the basics."
Andrea dreamt of spiders and burning trees, slowly waking to the smell of something warm and savory, opening her eyes to be greeted by the sight of freshly baked pie and a slice set aside for her.
She yawned and stretched, feeling like she got a good eight hours of wonderful sleep, her body feeling better than it had in ages.
"Well rested?" Julian asked, still somehow enthralled by the newspaper in front of him
"Good enough, I guess. How long have I been out?"
"It should be chasing midnight." He said, looking at his watch and nodding, "Ten minutes to twelve, as I suspected."
"Yeah," Andrea got up and stretched some more, "Congrats, you're the G.O.A.T for real."
After getting the blood flowing again, Andrea waved at Mr. Unseen, who bowed in return, "How are you, Mr. Unseen?"
He made the 'A-Okay' gesture with his gloved fingers, and then pointed at her, drawing a laugh out of Andrea, "I've been better, Mr. Unseen. Thanks for asking."
"Stop talking to the imaginary help, Andrea," Julian muttered, "Once you start, they'll start to believe that they are people."
"Yes, Master Julian." She mimicked him in a trash-sounding version of his lovely accent. She looked at Mr. Unseen and rolled her eyes whilst pointing at Julian, which the servant seemed very amused by.
"Enough." Julian said, never once looking up from what he was reading. She folded her arms over her chest and huffed, "I promised to be nicer to you, and you promised to explain the photographs of my family. Time to live up to your part of the deal."
He nodded his head slowly, "That I did. That photograph I said was of your mother and her parents is, shockingly, actually, a photograph of your mother and her parents."
Andrea was silent for a heartbeat before bursting out into laughter, "Fine then, have it your way. Good luck hearing a 'Mr. Nerva' come out of me ever again, Julian."
He had the faint trance of a smirk appeared on his irritating face, "You should not be so skeptical, Andrea. For you're talking to someone who was born in 1857."
She almost laughed again until she saw that he was absolutely serious. Andrea turned towards the butler, "Mr. Unseen…. Is this true?"
The butler nodded, and now she had to believe it.
Well…. I did think he seemed to have appeared out of a period movie….
"How?" she muttered, and Julian's smirk finally appeared, "Magic."
Andrea, despite being shocked, could not help but roll her eyes, "No shit, Bruh. I mean explain it."
"The source fuels us, and in turn, we live a little longer. The more powerful a person is, the more their life span will be." He said, and she gasped at hearing it, "Oh, for real?! It fuels you for how long?"
He set down a side plate on the tray, "The average magician will live 120 years before they die, which means the likes of myself will be sticking around this sorry planet for over 300 years. It says a lot about your mother that she still looks the way that she does at 98-years-old."
It was a good thing that Andrea was sitting down, or else she would have collapsed from the madness of it all, "Then…. No, that makes no sense. We have neighbors who talk about other family members helping them in court cases decades ago!"
He sat back into his chair, "I think that you can guess how…."
Andrea was prepared to cuss at him should he had simply said the word 'magic' again, but then it hit her, "Fuck me…. are those stories cause of fog-fuckery?"
Julian's smirk deluded into a small smile, "A rather indelicate way of putting things, but yes, you are correct, Andrea."
She felt almost ashamed to humble herself so, but her curiosity had gotten the better of her, "Could you tell me more." She mumbled, and Julian, to her surprise, kindly obliged, "Your great-great-grandfather started your family practice sometime after the civil war, part of Grant's attempts at helping black owned business here in the south. The many stories of ancestors helping people in courtly matters is just an assortment of acts performed by either your mother or her father or his father before him."
Andrea took a moment to take it all in before asking a question she was terrified of learning the answer to, "So…. Am I actually sixteen…? Or is that part of the fog too?"
What little joy expressed upon his face quickly fell away, "That is a boring question, Andrea."
"Easy for you to say!" She snapped at him, "I need to know if everything apart of my life is a lie, so sorry if my questions don't pique your high-brow interests!"
"You're sixteen." He spoke.
"And how do you know that for a fact?"
He shrugged, an infuriating sight that seemed so nonchalant to him, "Your insolence is a dead giveaway. And, because your body is only drawing enough of the source's power so as to draw attention from the likes of Jeremiah Riggs. That usually only happens sometime after puberty."
Andrea exhaled a sigh of relief; at least that part of my life is not a lie….
"So…. I will get to live 120 years too, huh?" She tried to focus on the bright side, but Julian seemed opposed to any future where she was even remotely happy, "I severely doubt it."
She was disgusted and deflated by that response, "If what I am sensing from you is correct, which it is, you don't seem to have enough magical potency to live past 100."
Andrea frowned, "What?"
He cocked his head slightly, "I had meant to be insulting before, but did your mother actually teach you nothing?"
For some reason, Andrea felt the urge to blush under his scrutinizing glare, "Outside of that promise thing…. No, not really."
"Not even the basics?" Andrea had never thought she would see him so…. disappointed.
"You said you would teach me the basics." She snapped back at him, resenting him for making her feel this way. Julian sighed for the hundredth time and set aside his newspaper for good, folding it neatly to place beside him, "I did indeed. Now, I will leave most of the boring origin aspect to your lecturers and begin with something actually crucial. The manipulation of the fog."
Andrea sat up, "Finally! Magic time!"
Julian sat up as well, in a far more refined and respectable manner than she had, "Yes, magic time. Firstly, a little boring background."
"But you said—"
"Hush." He quietened her, "The source is connected to every person on the planet. As an infant, your connection is barely a thread amongst the billions of billions of tethers connecting humanity to the Source. And so, one is unable to do magic or have their souls feed the Source. This connection grows and grows until one has reached the age of maturity, at which point, the Source is able to detect them and take the energy it had given them back. Think of it akin to the ocean. What is one wave crashing on some beach compared to the vast volume of water that covers over seventy percent of the planet? Nothing. But that water is still pulled back in by the tides regardless. The Source operates in a similar manner. It is why people begin to grow old and die once they stop growing and maturing."
Julian, especially this version of him, seemed almost bored by everything around him, a consequence of life being too easy for a magician of his caliber, she reckoned. But now, his otherwise blank expression was a little more…. Animated, and his eyes, usually looking big and empty, had the threat of a spark within them as he went on to explain magic to her. Andrea did not like the man and might even go so far as to say that she hated him on a bad day. But in that moment, she was completely under his spell, listening to him and only him as he peeled back the curtain and let her see the world for what it really was. A world she was equal parts terrified and excited to be a part of.
"Most people only have a strong enough connection to the source to give twenty-five to maybe forty years' worth of energy back, and a couple of outliers may dare give fifty. Medicine and science have gone some way to combating this, revitalizing the body and strengthening it against the illnesses of the world that would otherwise make the human vessel wain some."
Andrea loathed interrupting him, but the curiosity within her was too much not to, "Then shouldn't using magic impact the years a person has, not give them more?"
Julian smiled softly, "A decent question, one that will be addressed soon enough. About 6 000 years ago, pockets of people all over the world had sort of…. They stumbled their way into grasping a very minute understanding of the Source. And the few amongst them realized that if their bodies naturally can give to the Source, then those very same vessels should in theory be able to take as well."
"Wow…." Was all her dumb mind could contribute to this discussion, way to go brain!
"Wow indeed," Julian surprised her by not taking the opportunity to insult her., as she might have had their roles been reversed.
"These beings, taking the energy of the Source to revitalize themselves, began to live longer and longer. This is where shamans and religious figures soon began to pop up, and civilizations began to form. The Source, which had just been a cauldron of energy before, soon began to change with humanity, taking on its ideals and thoughts and personality, the good with the bad. Do you understand why, Andrea?"
She sat and thought it over for a good moment, reviewing what he had told her repeatedly until Andrea sighed, "Don't laugh but…. You said the Source is connected to a person's mind and soul as well as the body…. So wouldn't what's on our minds also be sent to…. the Source… as well…. Never mind, it sounds stupid."
His smile grew, "No, you are exactly correct, Andrea. Well done!"
It frustrated her to admit it, but his praise of her made her return the smile, "Thanks…. Mr. Nerva."
He was about to continue his lecture when a bell's ringing interrupted him, sucking out the little joy that Julian seemed able to muster as he stood up from his seat, "Well, this ends our lecture. Thank you for being an attentive student."
Andrea did not feel the carriage descend, but somehow knew that they were on the ground now, "Wait, what about the fog?"
Julian took her luggage bag and lifted it with one hand, as if it weighed nothing, fixing his tie with the other hand before opening the door for her, "That will be explained to you during your Magic Society 1A lecture. Probably your first one in fact, if I know Professor Gywendd like I think I do."
She stepped outside onto a busy street, people coming and going as if there were not some large carriages with several ethereal horses stood beside the sidewalk in front of them, under the instruction of a headless man in a tired suit and an invisible butler stood waving at them.
"Where are we?" Andrea asked, and Julian pointed to the clock in the far distance, "What, do you need an establishing shot with the word 'London' written out upon the screen for you?"
Andrea rolled her eyes as she followed him onto the sidewalk, "Cool reference, old man. Now, go on an hour-long rant about how the talkies in your day were real cinema."
Julian smiled at that, "That was actually amusing. Now come, we're about to enter the Underground."
Andrea frowned, "Isn't that y'all's version of the subway?"
His expression contorted into such disgust that it was as if she had just spat at him, "Look upon my suit, little girl. What I wear could be donated to an orphanage and keep them fed for a few months.
"No. The Underground is the world beneath this one, the one within the fog."
He stopped at a street sign that read 'Gibraltar Avenue' and tapped it twice.
"Oh! Are we about to pull a Harry Potter?" she asked excitedly, and her question only worsened the disgust upon Julian's face, "No, we are not about to 'pull a Harry Potter'. This is magic, Andrea, real magic. Not whatever nonsense passes for sorcery in—"
Andrea ignored him as she stepped towards the street sign, knocking her forehead against steel before yelping as she stumbled backwards, "Ow! Julian! I thought we were about to pull a Harry Potter. Why did you tell me this thing was a portal, or whatever, if it was not?"
"I just told you that there will be no Harry Potter-ing of any sort."
Andrea sniffled as she rubbed her forehead, certain that there would be a red mark and perhaps a welt there later, "I wanted us to be like Harry Potter so bad though."
Julian looked at her blankly for a moment before he turned away and said something in Latin. The street sign began to tilt to the right before it fell into the ground, making a full revolution and appearing on the other side before standing back up again. Andrea was about to ask what had happened before she looked around and noticed that they stood within a different city, and the sight took her breath away, "Whoa...."