J'ai Perdu Ma Soeur

It had been a quiet night, just Will and Willow, and whereas he had spent the whole time restless and watching TV, hoping that Willow would want to play some form of game or entertainment, his little sister seemed pretty content reading, and that, in Will's opinion, was boring.

So when Lucy had arrived, Will had virtually jumped on her, pulling her out of the house and into the garden in the dark (he did at least have some standards). It wasn't that he didn't like Willow. She was one of his favourite siblings, just because she was so calm and kind and quiet, a hangover's best friend. She was also very sweet to him at all times. He'd never known her to be nasty to anyone. But that didn't mean that he didn't want her to talk to him now, on the one occasion he was happy to play fun big brother.

And then he returned. And there was no-one there.

"Lowie?" he called. "LOWIE?" Merlin. He'd lost his sister. He'd chosen Lucy and he'd lost her sister. He was going to hell for this. He was an awful brother. "Luce," he said quietly. "Tell me I'm hallucinating and Willow's actually sitting on the sofa reading. Tell me, please."

"You… lost… Willow. God, you're an awful babysitter McKinnon." Lucy bit down on her lip to stop a grin from spreading. Leave it to her to find the fact that an eleven year old had been lost on their watch funny.

She brushed a hand over her shirt to smooth down the fabric and looked around. He was right, Willow seemed to be lost. "Willow? Willow?" she called out, getting slightly nervous. "Willy's sorry for leaving you!" she looked around again in hope that Willow was just hiding behind the couch or something, before she found Will's face again. "I can't believe you lost her!"

Okay, technically it wasn't all his fault. Sometimes they really needed to think with their brains and not… whatever they thought with when they… Yeah. They really should focus on finding Willow. Where the hell could she have gone and why? Lucy's face paled slightly. "You don't think.. she went to.. erm.. look for us?" … If she did, Lucy really hoped that she hadn't found them.

Willow was completely and utterly absorbed in her book. She barely noticed when Lucy arrived at their house and Will disappeared, making a dim note in the back of her mind that they'd gone outside or something. Really, she had more important things to worry about. Like getting to the end of this chapter with her favourite character still alive. Those adventurers and their life threatening situations. They could give her a heart attack.

But then she got hungry. And no matter how much she tried, hunger did not bode well for concentration. So she put her book down and slipped a bookmark into the pages, wandering out to find Will and Lucy and ask them for food, heading outside before she caught the glimpse of something hopping about in the dark, deciding to follow it.

And then after a while of following it, she finally caught the animal in the light, stopping dead in her tracks as she realised it was a rabit. She was going to stop being so curious. And since when did her garden get so many trees?

"Will?" she called out, glancing around. "Lucy? Are you out here?"

Will was starting to worry now. "Okay. Stop talking. She must be somewhere. She can't have gone far..." He pointed in the direction of the staircase. "You check the rooms, I'll check downstairs."

He began on a procedure of tearing apart the downstairs floor, yelling his sister's name every few seconds. She had to be somewhere. Oh he hoped Lucy was wrong. He really hoped Lucy was wrong.

"Do you think she's outside?" he hollered to Lucy, ignoring the mud that had spread from his clothes to the rest of the house in his search. He couldn't have lost her. He'd never lost a kid in his life, never mind a responsible one.

Lucy did as she was told and threaded her way through all the rooms on the second floor, in the McKinnon house, but Willow seemed nowhere to be found.

She made her way back down the stairs slowly, slightly amused by how freaked out William was. She wondered if she should mention how often she lost Christopher, and he was even younger than Willow. But the again, usually he didn't go much further than behind the couch and Willow really didn't seem to be hiding under any couches.

"She might be outside, should we go out and look for her? I can't believe we lost her." The girl reached the final step and then made her way towards William, crossing her arms and tilting her head. "You're really adorable freaking out like this." Whoops. Sometimes she wondered if it was physically possible for her to be serious for more than five minutes at a time. "Right. We should go outside, I swear if she fucking wandered off down the street, we're so screwed."

Willow swore she heard someone shouting her name. Someone who sounded a lot like Will. But it was dark, and there were too many trees, and she was kind of worried about making too much noise and attracting unwanted attention. And it was dark. She wasn't overly fond of the dark. Instead, she began walking towards the direction she thought she heard his voice coming from.

Sucking up all her courage, Will stopped and put her hands against her mouth, shouting as loudly as she could. "I'm outside!"

She didn't even realise she could make her voice go that loud.

"You're not exactly filling me with confidence here," Will snapped, opening a cabinet that was far too small even for Odette to crawl into, when a noise shattered through the night. "Did you hear that?" he whispered, looking at Lucy, before throwing the door open and pelting from the house at full speed, slipping down a hill and sprawling awkwardly at the bottom.

"WILLOW?" he yelled, looking around frantically. Where was his wand? Now he could hardly make out anything. Nice one McKinnon.

"That's what I'm here for darling, to make you feel unconfident and frustrated." She responded, rolling her eyes at him. He was such a girl freaking out like that.

Her body stiffened. There had definitely been a noise. "Do you think-" but he was already gone. "Merlin fucking Jesus Christ's left fucking shoe!" Lucy sighed, following William outside. "Such an over reactive girl." she muttered under her breath as she tried to make out where he had gone, but with no luck. Damn, it was getting dark outside.

"Willow? Are you here? Will, where the hell did you go!?" Eugh, she really did not fancy being alone in the dark. "Willow! William! McKinnons! Show yourselves now!" Fucking McKinnon's, going to be the death of me.

Willow felt a smile break onto her face as she heard Will's voice but closer, speeding up and heading towards it. And then she heard Lucy's voice, and sped up, heading through the trees and stumbling once or twice, not wanting to shout out again really. That last one had taken up all her courage.

And then she saw a house and stopped dead in her tracks, suddenly very aware of the fact it was night time and people might be sleeping. Because that certainly was not her house. Glancing around while trying to be sneaky, Willow deduced that she was in fact in the neighbours garden. From what she could remember. Looking over the fence she was fairly certain she could spot her house a few houses down.

"Will!" she whispered as loudly as she could, trying to trace her steps back. At least she knew where she was now. "I'm in the neighbour's garden!"

Oh brilliant, now he had lost Lucy. Where the hell was Lucy? Where was Willow-?

He heard her whisper-shout and span around. The neighbours? Who were the neighbours? "HOLD ON LO!" he hollered, before turning back in the general direction he had left Lucy. "LUCY, WHO ARE THE NEIGHBOURS?" He had a feeling this was painstakingly obvious, but it wasn't coming. Instead, he threw himself in the other direction, trying to find Willow, and instead coming out on a road he did not recognise at all.

"Willow?" he said tentatively. "Lo?"

Oh. Where the hell was he now? And it was cold. And he had no jacket. And he had no Odair. And most of all, he had lost his sister.

It was very dark. Why was it so dark? Lucy could usually handle the dark. When she was with other people. Close to the light.

"William, this is not funny! Where did you go?" she swore she could hear both of them shouting. But where were they? "WILLOW FUCKING MCKINNON WHERE ARE YOU?" That was not a nice word. "I MEAN…" she sighed frustrated. "I'M JUST GOING TO WAIT HERE!"

Okay, waiting wasn't going well. Lucy swallowed the lump in her throat and picked a random direction. "Willow! Which garden are you in?"

Willow knew that the best way to be found was to stay where you were, rather than wandering round. But she heard Will's voice, and heard it getting further away, glancing at the neighbour's house. And then she saw someone moving inside of the house and squeaked, scared that she'd gone into the Crazy Man's garden who always kept the balls that landed in his garden and if she stayed he'd keep her. She didn't wanted to be kept.

As quickly as she could, Willow darted back the way she came, finding a gap in the fence and ducking into a different garden, trying to actually get back to the woods. Since when was her sense of direction so shot? "I don't know!" Willow called back to Lucy, hearing a door open and panicking again. "I think I'm five houses down!" she called, trying to spot her house.

Will didn't even bother to admonish Lucy for her distant swearing as he ran out into the empty road, barefooted. Where the fuck am I? It was a shame he didn't know the area as well as he could. It really really was a shame. Maybe if he could find the main road, he could walk back round. That would be simple enough.

Hold the phone. He was a wizard, wasn't he? He could apparate back to the house. That would be simple enough. He focused on doing this, when he realised with a feeling that made him want to wrench his hair in fistfuls from his head that he had forgotten his wand. Fanfuckingtastic.

He twisted his hands together and turned back towards the trees. "HOLD ON LO, I'M COMING BACK!" he hollered, before chanting a quick rhyme to decide the direction in which to run in search of the main road. It would be slightly funny, he decided, in fifty years, when he had got over the whole fiasco.

Lucy was getting very nervous. Very very very nervous and freaked out.

How the hell had they managed to get this lost? She was in a garden now, but she had no idea which garden it was or if it was remotely close to the garden Willow had wandered into.

"WILL? LOWIE? I'M IN A GARDEN!" Lucy shouted, looking around. There were noises coming from somewhere, but who was making them or what it was or where it was, she had no idea and she wasn't even sure if she wanted to know. "WILLOW? IS THIS THE GARDEN? WHERE ARE YOU?" This was like being stuck in a bloody horror movie, just this time she wasn't just watching and making fun of the person about to get slaughtered brutally.

Willow paced slightly in frustration, trying to figure out what to do, before simply allowing her shoulders to slump, raising her hands to her mouth once again to speak. "I'll just wait here!" she called. "I think I can see our house! I'm like, on the left, if you were looking at the house!"

And then she caught something out the corner of her eye, something that made her heart lift with hope. A trampoline. Rushing over to it, she climbed up and onto it, beginning to bounce and turning in the direction that she thought she'd heard Lucy and Will, trying to bounce as high as she cold.

"There's a trampoline!" she shouted, with a slightly fractured voice. "Can you see me?!"

A trampoline? Who the hell had a trampoline?

Will bit his lip and looked around, before seeing a shed in someone's back garden. Running to it, he used a flower pot to boost himself up, jumping onto the roof and looking around. He could see everything from here. He and Lucy would never be using the garden again. What if there were perverts?

He caught a glimpse of movement and spotted Willow, a few gardens down. Jumping off of the shed and landing hard on the ground, Will made his way to it, laughing a little. "Willow McKinnon, you scared the life out of me," he told her, before jumping onto the trampoline beside her and tackling her, tickling her, relieved.

"Right. Now where's Lucy?"

Right, Lucy did not like this one bit. How did they manage to get lost in their own neighbor hood? She was starting to get scared. And Lucy Odair wasn't supposed to be scared. But it was creepily dark and cold and she was bloody lost. Her toes were freezing, why didn't she have socks on? Why did she leave her shoes? Why did she go outside in the first place? Why did she go see the McKinnons? Stupid fucking McKinnons, trouble that's what they are.

"RIGHT! I'M COMING TO FIND YOU NOW!" she shouted, trying to find her way out of this garden and towards the garden that Willow was in, there was not a chance in Hell that Lucy was going to wait for them to find her, they seemed to be rubbish at it.

She moved quickly, because everything was creeping her out, even the trees looked like evil magical beings ready to murder her with their axes, you know, if trees carried axes around, so yeah, moving quickly was a good idea.

Then there was a new noise. An even scarier noise, but it didn't take Lucy long to recognize it and she breathed out relieved when she caught a glimpse of William and Willow. "I was starting to think you two had left me to die." she breathed out, making her way over to the two siblings. "Can we go inside now? And turn on all the lights, please. Good. Yes. Let's go."

Willow laughed as Will finally found her, a massive grin on her face as he tackled her, giggling helplessly at the tickling. She was nice and safe and in her brother's arms. "I'm sorry," she apologised, sincere and guilty despite the smile that was still on her face. "I didn't mean to. I came to find you, because I was getting hungry. But then I saw something that distracted me, and I started to follow it, and-!" she cut herself off, flushing at the memory of the rabit. "I found out what it was and I didn't want to follow it anymore."

She was even happier when Lucy joined them, climbing off the trampoline and rushing to the older girl, throwing her arms around her and giving Lucy a large hug. "I'm sorry for worrying you too, Lucy," she apologised, stepping back and moving to take Will's hand. She was going to refuse to let go of it until she was inside the house.

"Light sounds nice," Willow murmured, remembering once again why she was outside. "And food. I'm kind of hungry."

Willow was hugging her. Like actually hugging her. Like Willow's tiny arms wrapped around Lucy. Like an actual proper hug. And then it was over. Before Lucy could actually decide if she wanted to hug her back or not. What the hell was with bloody McKinnon's and hugging? Hugging was creepy. But still they seemed to do a lot of it. At least Willow wasn't hugging her on the floor in the kitchen, that was just weird.

Raising her eyebrows, Lucy looked over at William mouthing 'She hugged me' at him, with a frown, before she turned towards the girl. "Light sounds brilliant doesn't it? You have to promise to not run off again, okay?" she smiled, her smile growing more when she saw the two siblings holding hands. "I'm sure William is more than ready to cook us a master chief meal. Is he any good at cooking?" she remembered that Willow had told her Mel and James were both rubbish at cooking, but Lucy had no idea if Will could cook, she usually didn't stay around for food, but she was getting really hungry from all this getting-lost-and-losing-Willow, which was a 'game' she preferred not to play ever again.

Will grinned a little as Lucy appeared, his smirk widening as Willow hugged her. He laughed a little at what she was mouthing and gestured for her to hug her back, but Willow pulled away very quickly, and latched onto his hand rather tightly.

"Yeah, whatever. I can cook. I'm just not as good as Ollie. But no-one's as good as that boy, he's like, I don't know, he's got magic hands or something. Even more magical." He grinned and turned. "Okay, can anyone remember which way the house is?" he asked, biting his lip, before he spotted the road again, leading them back round towards it.

It was lovely and warm inside, extremely hot in contrast to the outdoors. "Right," he said, sitting Willow on a barstool and pulling out another one for Lucy, "What do you want to eat? Make it something nice. And I need something to take the edge away," he added in a murmur to Lucy, nodding to the bottle of firewhiskey someone had left on the side. "I say it's Willow's call in choice of food."

Willow nodded furiously as Lucy said to promise not to run off again. She wasn't doing that any time soon. "I promise. I won't do it again. I'll wait in the house next time."

She grinned as Will agreed to cook, allowing herself to be dragged home, resisting the urge to hold Lucy's hand. She wasn't sure if the older girl would appreciate it. She let out a breath of happiness when they stepped back into the house, pleased to be home, though still reluctant to let go of Will's hand. She sat on the barstool like a good girl however, pleased that Lucy would be next to her.

"Do we have pizza?" she asked shyly as Will said she could chose. "Or bacon sandwiches? And chips?" she really liked chips.