Sometimes It Ends Well
Disclaimer: Harry Potter isn't mine.
Why does this story exist? It exists because Seamus and his mother could so, so easily have had a much sadder story.
"I'm half-and-half," said Seamus. "Me dad's a Muggle. Mom didn't tell him she was a witch 'til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter Seven
Lia Finnigan closed the book in her lap and leaned her head back against the chair cushions. There were so many things her son had never told her, and she wasn't sure now whether she really had wanted to know. She had known general things of course, but she might have been able to go to her grave without some of those details.
[more]
Well, she knew now, and she had always told him that she wanted to know. He had just never been willing to share the details with her. He had taken her by surprise the previous afternoon. He didn't usually just drop by his childhood home without any notice. It was not that he wasn't welcome, mind you, it just wasn't his style. There he had stood on the doorstop clutching a book of all things in his hands and looking as nervous as the day he had come to ask his father for advice on how to propose.
He hadn't stayed long. He pushed the book into her hands, mumbled something about wanting her to have this, given her an abrupt kiss on the cheek, and apparated before she could ask him what this was all about. The book that he had brought her wasn't even due out for another couple of weeks. Some of her friends had been awaiting it with intense interest, and she had been planning on getting a copy herself. When she had mentioned putting her name on a waiting list, Eileen had asked why she was bothering when she had a firsthand source in her own family. She had been too embarrassed to admit that her son never shared stories of the war with her.
Seamus must have gotten an advance copy of the book since he was a contributor. Lia had devoured it - even forgoing sleeping to keep reading. Michael would normally have objected to that type of behavior, but once he understood what it was that Seamus had delivered he merely told her to hurry it up so he could have a go.
She traced her finger over the embossed title Standing Where You Are: A History of the "DA" Resistance at Hogwarts by Sadie Creevey. She flipped it open and traced over her son's handwriting inside the cover.
"I'm glad I can give you this because I never knew how to tell you."
She understood that. She understood that statement far better than her son probably would ever know.
Nearly a lifetime earlier
She still wasn't entirely sure how it was that she had ended up here in the first place. One minute she had been bemoaning her need for a vacation to her best friend, and the next thing she knew she was committed to spending two weeks in some little sea side village that she had never heard of before. Dru could be quite persuasive when she put her mind to it.
"It'll be great fun," she had insisted. "Me mam used to make us do this all the time."
Dru had made it sound adventurous somehow. You picked up a map and pointed to a random place on the shore (Dru had stressed that point very strenuously; you had to be by the sea.) and off you went for two weeks of sea air, relaxing quiet, and no worries because you were surrounded by people you were never going to see again. She had even tacked on a guilt trip for good measure.
"It won't be any fun off on my own. If you won't come, I won't take a trip at all." That had been that. It hadn't been what she had been thinking of when the need for a vacation had occurred to her, but she had wanted to get away somewhere. This was somewhere, and it was quiet. She was with Dru, and Dru had a bizarre habit of turning the most mundane of occasions into something entertaining.
Still, she had to admit to herself that she was nervous. This little town was completely and utterly muggle. Dru hadn't bothered to tell her that until she had been standing in front of her fireplace with bags in hand (or it may actually not have occurred to Dru, being muggle born, until that point that it was something that she needed to explain). Two weeks of being more or less magic free. Dru had rolled her eyes and told her she was over reacting. She had pointed out (and Lia had to grudgingly admit that she was correct) that it wasn't really like that. They simply had to watch their language in front of the locals and not do any magic in front of anyone.
That didn't change the fact that the very fact that she had to be conscious of her usage of magic made her feel like she couldn't use magic at all. She wasn't used to such a situation. The longest she had ever had to go in a magic free environment before this trip was during her Hogwarts' years when she ducked through the crowds at King's Cross Station. Dru (having spent over half of her life keeping the existence of a magical community from the knowledge of various family members) was lacking in sympathy to her plight. Lia supposed the difference in their backgrounds contributed to their inability to grasp each other's viewpoints. She had come anyway.
As Dru had said, "What a waste of all those years in muggle studies if you never use them doing something like this." It wasn't bad; it was just weird. She was, after all, only on day two. She might even get used to it before the trip was over. In an attempt to improve her comfort level, (well, that was Dru's version, she thought Dru was just being lazy and refusing to move from the comfy chair in which she had deposited herself back at their bed and breakfast) Lia had set out (or been dispatched) on a trip to the town's post office.
Dru had a long standing habit of mailing post cards from her vacation spots of choice to all of her muggle family members. She hadn't been able to explain why. She had merely shrugged her shoulders and commented that all of her extended family did it. If she didn't participate (she insisted), everyone would think she was stuck up and shun her at the next family reunion.
Lia wasn't quite sure whether she was completely and utterly full of it or if she had the strangest family traditions that Lia had ever heard of in her life. She supposed she didn't have much basis for comparison. Her extended family didn't mix much. She was proud that she had managed to use her head and answer her question as to why Dru didn't just use an owl in her own head before the words had escaped her mouth. Dru enjoyed taking the mickey a little too much for her not to be grateful that she had sidestepped that one.
She had a handful of letters and a pocket full of muggle money, and she was ready to go out and employ those skills she had supposedly learned in five years of class work. She was actually glad, she decided, that Dru hadn't come along. She was entirely too nervous about this whole thing. She was going to have a lovely walk and successfully complete her errand, and this nagging feeling that was plaguing her that everyone was staring was going to go away. They were just people. She had been in crowds of people that were strangers before. These people just happened to not know any magic. No one was looking at her. She was dressed just like everyone else. She didn't need magic to walk up to someone and ask for directions. She didn't need magic to walk down the street, and she didn't need magic to send those letters. She could do this. She was going to do this. She was under no circumstances going to run back to Dru and beg to go home.
Where did that thought even come from? What was wrong with her? She loosened her grip on the now dented letters she had been clenching in her hand. Was she really this pathetic? This was a town full of perfectly nice people - it was just like being around Dru's parents only multiplied a couple of hundred times. She got on swimmingly with Dru's parents - except Dru's parents knew exactly what she was and what she could do. That might not have been the best of examples.
For one brief, horrifying moment, Lia found herself wondering if she was (deep down) prejudiced like those obnoxious pure blood supremacists that her path had occasionally crossed while in school. She shook off the thought nearly as quickly as it had come. She wasn't frightened right now because she thought she was better than the other people here. Why was she frightened? She pushed beyond the feeling of being trapped that held her for a moment as a clutch of children chasing a ball hurried by her (great, she was becoming claustrophobic only with people instead of walls) and decided that the middle of the street was not the best place for her to be standing while she tried to figure this out.
She edged into an alleyway (feeling ridiculous as she went) and rested her head against an obliging wall as she took deep breaths. The sense of panic that had been slowly building ever since she ventured out without Dru eased a little as she hid in her little shadowed refuge. Dru's parents had never made her this nervous, she had been perfectly fine yesterday when she had Dru with her, so what was so different about today? She was crumpling up the post again. She forced her fingers to loosen and in the half distracted moment the answer suddenly came to her.
She was scared because she was alone. She was alone in the midst of a group of people who she had been taught from childhood made it necessary to hide. She had no one with her to correct her mistakes. She had no one with her whom she could speak to without worrying whether she was giving something away. She had never done this before, and she was absolutely petrified of messing it up. Years and years of being drilled on the Statute of Secrecy and the necessity of caution least her world be found out by the "others" was turning her into a pathetic, quivering mess.
She felt better somehow knowing what it was that was wrong with her. It was as if the very knowing somehow made its impact less. Did the muggle borns go through this when they first started to school? Some of them likely did. She understood Dru's first few weeks of jumpiness in a way she never had before. Someone should offer them integration classes before dropping them in the middle of everything like that. Someone should take the muggle studies classes on field trips as well. This was crazy.
She sighed and brushed a bit of dirt she had collected from leaning against the wall off of her skirt as she gathered her wits about her. She was not going to single handedly destroy muggle ignorance of the magical world. She knew how to count the muggle money, she knew what to ask for at the post office, and she knew better than to mention anything magical to anyone she encountered. She was going to run her errand. She was going to enjoy her two weeks of relaxation. She was going to mingle with people she would never see again, and they weren't going to be the least bit suspicious. She was going to learn how all of her theoretical, classroom knowledge was practically applied. Most of all, she was going to have fun.
This was her long wanted (and very much needed) vacation, and she was going to enjoy it. She tried to make her exit from the alley look as casual as possible (it didn't really matter as no one was watching). She pasted what she hoped was a comfortable looking smile on her face and approached a young woman with a toddler in her arms to ask for directions. As the woman gave them and the two exchanged pleasantries over the cute way the child buried his head in his mother's shoulders, Lia felt the smile become less forced and more natural.
"See," she found herself telling herself, "I can do this." The other woman's directions proved to be simple enough to follow, and she found the post office without incident. She winced a bit at the rather creased state of the mail that Dru's relatives were going to be receiving but decided that it didn't really matter all that much in the end. (After all, Dru could have chosen to run her own errands, couldn't she have?)
She didn't even have to force the smile for the man behind the counter. She was feeling better and better with every moment she spent out in the open confronting her fears. She had a perfectly lovely exchange of meaningless chit chat about how pretty the beach was and how much she was enjoying her holiday. The old man didn't even blink at any of her postage questions, so they must have been perfectly normal ones. She barely hesitated when she counted the money, and she was sure that he hadn't even noticed (he had, after all, been in the middle of making suggestions as to where she and Dru should go for supper at the time).
In short, she was feeling quite pleased with herself by the time she and Mr. Kelch exchanged good days. She was quickly deciding that she had had nothing to worry about and this was going to be an absolutely lovely couple of weeks (not that she was getting big headed about it at all, she still knew she would have to watch her speaking habits around the natives, but she was quite sure she could handle it now). She was even beginning to wonder if Dru had done this to her on purpose. She probably had now she thought about it. She would take a few minutes when she got back to be perfectly furious with her for not warning her before she thanked her for putting her in a situation that made her confront and get over her nerves. Then, they could go off and find that place Mr. Kelch had told her about. The man's eyes had positively glazed over as he told her of the dessert selection, and she deserved a treat after what she had been through she reasoned.
She was so focused on thoughts of indulging her sweet tooth that she failed to pay attention as she walked out of the post office door. It wouldn't have been a problem if the way had been clear, but that was not the case. As it was, she walked directly into a man that had been passing by with enough force that they both stumbled. He was able to recover his balance sufficiently to stay on his feet, but her ankle turned (drat her affinity for cute but impractical footwear) leaving her sitting on the ground blinking up at him.
Unfortunately, she was blinking because looking at him required her to be looking toward the sun. This meant that she couldn't see whether he looked angry at being run over or not. As she started to push herself up, she noticed that he was offering her a hand up. That was probably a good sign (although he might simply be being a gentleman). She accepted the help and opened her mouth to apologize, but he spoke first.
"Sorry 'bout that." He offered. Lia was confused.
"Sorry?" She responded. "What are you sorry for? I nearly knocked you into the dust. I'm sorry."
"Well, I tried to catch you, but I wasn't quick enough. I wasn't really prepared . . .." He trailed off with a shrug.
"I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going." Lia continued. "If you had caught me, we likely both would have ended up on the ground." She reasoned.
"Might not 'ave been so bad," he muttered. She brushed herself off and moved slightly so the sun wasn't blocking her view of his face. He was grinning at her, so her worries that he was going to be angry were put to rest (not that the whole apologizing for not being prepared to be run into wasn't already a clue).
"I guess we'll both have to pay more attention." He was saying to her, and she noticed his eyes running over her. Before she could take offense, she realized with a start that the look in his eyes wasn't the leering one that she was expecting. He looked concerned, and she thought he appeared to be looking her over to see whether she was hurt. His next words confirmed it for her. "You landed pretty hard there. You all right?"
"Mmhmm," she responded with a nod finishing knocking dust from her skirt (and testing the weight on her ankle, it seemed to be fine). "Sorry again," she tried unsure of how to end the conversation. "I didn't intend to interrupt your day."
"Wasn't in a hurry," he commented. "I've not seen you around before. New?" He inquired sounding oddly hopeful.
"Holiday," Lia replied.
"Pity," he replied as he continued to grin. "For me," he clarified, "I'm sure you deserve a holiday."
He offered his hand to her once again. "I'm Michael," he told her. "Michael Finnigan."
He was flirting with her, she thought looking at that grin that made him look troublesome and attractive all at the same time. Her eyes flicked back up to his. They were grey, and the only adjective that came into her head as she looked into them was kind. Besides, what could it hurt to shake the man's hand after she had smacked into him the way that she had? She placed her hand into his and found herself smiling once again without effort involved.
"I'm Lia," she replied deciding at the last moment not to add her last name. She was only being polite she told herself. There wasn't anything more to this.
Three days later she was regretting her politeness to the man. It hadn't crossed the line into creepy yet, but it was slightly disconcerting the number of places that she and Dru had run across him. He merely nodded or exchanged casual remarks on the weather (once, they had spoken long enough for her to introduce Dru) with an inviting smile. She never took the invitation, and he would wander off to wherever it was that he went when he wasn't hanging around making her feel nervous (in a jittery, somewhat frazzled way as opposed to the panic inducing way she had felt before her trip to the post office).
Despite Michael's continual appearances, her other nerves had settled. She was enjoying her walks on the beach, scattered shopping, and (most of all) the knowledge that she could wake up in the morning and not have to go anywhere if she didn't want to get out of bed. It was a pleasant way to spend her holiday that was only marred by Dru's insistence on keeping up her running commentary. She thought Michael's appearances were endearing and couldn't fathom why Lia wouldn't talk to him more.
Her comments on being here for a relaxing, stress free few days and not to pick up strange men fell on deaf ears. Dru was apparently of the opinion that there was nothing in the world more relaxing than being followed around by a "cutie" who was "working up the nerve" to ask her out (Dru's words, not hers). Dru had actually invited him to join them at their table as they ate this evening.
If she were thinking about the evening in an unbiased manner, she would have to admit that Michael seemed sweet and funny with quite the gift for storytelling. Lia, however, was feeling anything but unbiased. She was absolutely furious with Dru and had spent most of the meal deflecting personal questions (and trying to not laugh at Michael's stories, she didn't want to encourage him). When he had excused himself to go to the loo, she had rounded on Dru.
"What were you thinking?" She demanded of the woman whose status as "friend" was in danger of slipping at the moment.
"I was thinking that we're here to have fun." Dru replied unfazed by Lia's glaring. "He's fun, and he wants to spend time with you. Heaven knows why. You're a heartbeat away from being absolutely rude to him."
"Dru, I can't hang out with him."
"Why not?"
"You know why."
"Don't even go there," Dru said looking perturbed. "Go and have a pint with the man," she insisted. "That's all he wants. Go have some fun."
Looking back, Lia realized that it hadn't taken much for Dru to convince her to go because deep down she really wanted to go. A week later Lia knew that her impressions over dinner had been correct. Michael was charming. He was sweet, he had an amazing sense of humor, and she knew she could listen to the man spin his stories quite happily for hours upon end. She didn't often get the chance because for some reason he most often wanted to talk about her. She had found herself running details of her life by Dru for muggle adjustment so she would be prepared for their conversations.
It would be easy to say that she had no idea how she had gotten to this point, but the truth was that she really did. It had started with Dru's insisted upon a pint with Michael that evening at the pub. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed so hard. That night had flowed into an invitation for dinner without Dru that had turned into going for walks together after he got off work in the evenings. That had led to another dinner ending up with a picnic and whole Saturday spent together on the beach.
It was just so easy to spend time with him, and she had let it snowball knowing full well that is was snowballing as she went. Dru didn't even have the grace to rein her in by being snarky about being ditched so often. She didn't mind at all and kept reminding her that they were there to have fun. If she had known how hard Lia's heart had pounded every time that Michael reached over to hold her hand, maybe she would have taken the seriousness of the situation a little more . . . well . . . seriously.
Lia hadn't told her. She had constrained herself to comments of Michael being amusing and their excursions being a pleasant way to pass the time. That, however, was all about to come crashing down around her ears. Their trip was quickly drawing to a close, and she caught herself on more than one occasion thinking of the "after" of her holiday and Michael's presence in it. The catching herself part of those occasions consisting of her reminding herself that there wasn't supposed to be any Michael in the world after her holiday. The thought hurt in this bizarre aching manner in her chest that she didn't want to explore further. It meant that she had let things snowball further than she should have. It meant that her couple of weeks of entertaining company with a nice man that she was never going to see again had turned into something else entirely.
What bothered her the most, though, was the nagging thought in the back of her head that Michael might be in the same place that she was. Well, not in exactly the same place, because naturally Michael wasn't hiding massive parts of his life while doing this whatever this was that they were doing. But, he might be getting more attached to her than he should be as well. He had known from the beginning that she was only here temporarily, but it did not necessarily follow that he hadn't gotten caught up in the moment the way that she had.
Of course, she might be overreacting completely. Michael might not be thinking any such thing. He might be enjoying her company in a purely "in the moment" she's going to be gone soon so what does it matter kind of a way. He might not find her nearly as interesting as she found him. Maybe guys didn't even stress about the future the way she did at all. She might not even be as attached to him as she thought she was in the first place. Everything had happened really quickly. She might have just gotten into the habit of having him around. She might have a couple of weeks of withdraw (just like breaking any other habit) and be over it.
This was confusing, and it made her head hurt. She didn't want to think about it any more (especially as she had been sitting absolutely still for the past half hour when she was supposed to be getting ready for dinner with Michael and Dru was starting to look at her suspiciously). She wasn't going to worry. It was just as silly as her original panic over being surrounded by muggles. She was going to enjoy a couple of more days of her holiday. She was going to chill and enjoy Michael's stories. She was going to laugh at his jokes (because it felt good to laugh at them). She was going to eat dessert first and not worry about what was going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month. She was going to be in the now because she was on holiday and that was what holidays were supposed to be about. She wasn't going to fret because there was nothing to fret about. She would enjoy her holiday and go home and go back to her life as usual. That was the plan, and that was what was going to happen.
Dru's brow was furrowed as she watched Lia grab her hairbrush and attack her hair. "Is something bothering you?" She asked in that knowing tone that best friends use when they think you are trying to keep something from them. Lia shook off her previous thoughts and focused on her reflection in the mirror (avoiding making eye contact with Dru in the process).
"Nope," she answered still keeping her attention on her hair. "Everything's fine." She replied with a tone of assurance that she couldn't be certain was successful. She could feel Dru's eyes on her for a few moments longer (she still wasn't making eye contact).
"Be that way," she muttered as she left the room. Lia's shoulders relaxed, and she turned her thoughts to Michael and their upcoming evening. A smile twitched across her face as the hairbrush was placed back down. She hadn't intended for this to happen, but that seemed to be a phrase that she was over using lately. She had been resolved, and she was going to follow the plan. Her time with Michael was going to end with the final day of her vacation, and everything was going to go back to the way it had been before.
She was going to go back to normal. She remembered normal. Normal was the place where she used her magic without a second thought because there was no one around to care. Normal was the time when she didn't adjust the details of her life to make them sound like someone else's version of normal. Normal was when she didn't change her clothes twice before leaving because she wanted someone else's approval. Normal was when her heart didn't hammer in her chest because some guy was smiling at her. Normal was when she was a sensible person whose lips didn't involuntarily twitch into an upward curve every time she thought of the name "Michael." Normal was when there wasn't a nagging little voice in the back of her head telling her that she was lying by omission in every conversation that they had. She had been sure that she was going back to normal, and she had been positive that normal was going to be wonderful.
She couldn't do it. When he had held her hand and looked in her eyes and asked if there could still be a them after she had gone home, she couldn't do it. She couldn't tell him no. She had been too caught up in his soft, grey eyes (that looked so hopeful that it hurt to even think that she might make that look go away) and that pounding of her heart that should have had her worried for her health instead of feeling all warm and fuzzy and completely unlevelheaded. She had done the best she could when her brain was as she liked to call it - Michael muddled. She had told him that she didn't know. She had told him that she would tell him tomorrow before she left.
He hadn't pushed. He hadn't argued. He had only squeezed her hand and continued on their walk across the sand. Somehow, that made it all the harder to think of all the reasons why saying anything other than "no" was such a horribly bad idea.
When she sank into her bed that night with no Michael around to muddle her thinking, it should have been easier to remember. She should have regathered her resolve. She should have hardened her heart. She should have woken up Dru and begged to be talked into sense. She should have written him a letter and packed her bags and left before she had time to change her mind. She did none of those things. She lay in her bed and thought and wondered and raged about why it had to be so hard, and she cried.
In the morning, the note she wrote didn't contain goodbyes. It didn't convey an ending. She reasoned to herself that it probably didn't matter any way. They would both go back to normal and time and distance would even out their emotions, and it would all come to nothing. That theory didn't explain why she waited until after they were gone to confide in Dru. She wouldn't have been so worried about being talked out of the course of action she had decided upon if she really believed that it didn't matter.
So she avoided Dru all morning with excuses of packing and a last walk on the beach, and she went and caught Michael on his lunch break and kissed him on the cheek leaving a crumbled piece of paper with a number and an address in his hand. She mayn't have confided in Dru that afternoon at all if it weren't for the fact that Dru was now necessary. She, after all, didn't have a telephone number or an address where muggle post was delivered. Dru had both as part of her continued relationship with her unknowing muggle cousins. If Michael were to call or send something, and Dru were to not know what was going on . . . well, that would be bad, and Lia was fairly certain that she was already in the midst of enough bad to be going on with.
She was prepared for a lecture. She was even prepared for some anger (she had been giving Dru's personal information to a relative stranger, and she was pretty sure that was considered bad form on the friendship scale). She got neither.
Dru had sighed and asked her why she hadn't told her that she liked him that much. Lia's answer wasn't really an answer so much as a long rambling spiel about how she was sure Michael had only asked out of politeness and she was sure he wouldn't actually call and . . . She never got to the "and" because Dru had rolled her eyes and cut her off muttering about her having it bad and saying she would field the phone calls because she had encouraged her in the first place and that was what best friends did and she better get to be the maid of honor at the wedding. At least, that was most of what Lia had made out from the muttering.
Lia had smacked Dru over the head with a throw pillow, and they had both started laughing. There was ice cream, there was talking, and everything had seemed all right with the world for a few hours. Then, the phone had rung, and all of Lia's pretenses of nothing coming of this were shattered into dust crumbling to the floor.
It hadn't been fair to Dru in the least. The number of times that she had floo called Lia to come over and take a phone call, and the number of excuses she had made as to where Lia was "out" qualified her for some type of above and beyond best friend award. Michael thought they were flatmates, and he never questioned why it was always Dru who answered his calls. Dru did it all with only one complaint - when was Lia going to eliminate the need for this subterfuge by telling Michael what she was?
Lia didn't have an answer to that because she didn't know the answer herself. In a world where she had always been told "statute of secrecy, statute of secrecy, statute of secrecy," no one had ever clarified when the statute of secrecy became flexible. Dru's parents knew because they had to know. They were her family - her siblings (if she had had any) would have been included as well.
Michael was iffy ground. He wasn't her family. She wasn't exactly sure what he was. Somehow explaining to the Ministry of Magic that she had let the proverbial cat out of the bag about their world because a man made her happy seemed like a really bad idea. Lia was balancing some bizarre line where she was growing daily closer to Michael while simultaneously keeping this huge piece of her life held back. She did nothing to change the status quo, and things continued to progress between them. She assuaged her conscience where the inconveniencing of Dru was concerned by arranging the time for their calls in advance.
They talked, they met for a few weekends, they talked more, and soon she was promising to come and spend Christmas and meet his parents. She deflected any topics of conversation that would have led down a road of a mention of meeting hers. They didn't even know that Michael existed. By the time the Christmas holidays rolled around, Lia was a wreck. Dru had stopped asking altogether and contented herself with giving Lia reproachful looks.
Something had to change. It wasn't fair to Michael. It wasn't fair to her. If only the man didn't scramble her brain so, she might have been able to cobble some sort of a solution together. That wasn't fair, but she said it to herself any way. She knew things needed to change, but she didn't know how. She didn't know if she could tell him, but she knew she didn't want to give them up. She was stuck, and she had no one to blame but herself.
Christmas was wonderful. Michael's parents were so excited to meet her. It was a lovely day and a lovely visit, and it would have been perfect if she hadn't been feeling so guilty. She was nearly teary eyed over the whole ordeal and had decided that she had to tell him something despite the rolling of the acid in her stomach.
He asked her to go for a walk, and she tried to plan some coherent form of expression as they put on their coats. She was just opening her mouth to say something that probably would have sounded crazy and made very little sense at all when she looked to see Michael holding a ring box. All of her thoughts and plans fell out of her head and the word "yes" popped out of her mouth seemingly unbidden.
She had never lived through anything like the days following Michael's proposal. She was an awful person, and that was all there was to it. Well, she was also a coward. That much she knew. She had dug herself into a hole so deep that she wasn't sure if digging herself out of it was even possible any more. There is a line between "I didn't tell you because there was no reason for you to know," "I didn't tell you because I couldn't," and "I didn't tell you because I was scared of what you would do because I hadn't told you." The problem is that that line is blurry and more difficult to see when you are standing on top of it than you could ever possibly begin to imagine. The problem is that you cross over it without even realizing that the moment has come and gone. The problem is that there is no "good way" to try to remedy the fact that you have crossed over it. You're there before you know that you got there, and what do you do then?
Lia didn't know. Dru was no help. "Just tell him" was something that didn't provide her any direction. It sounded simple, but it wasn't. How did she "just tell him" after not "just telling him" for so long already? What had possessed her to say yes? She knew the answer to that one. She wanted to marry Michael. She wanted to marry Michael more than anything she had ever wanted in her life. He was wonderful is so many ways that she couldn't even begin to catalog them. She loved him, and he loved her.
She shook off the nagging voice that insisted on plaguing her with the taunt that he didn't really know her. He did know her. Being a witch was something she could do, it wasn't who she was. There she was bemuddled and tormented without a best friend with whom she could talk things over. She was still stuck. It was still all her own doing, and she still wasn't doing anything to fix it.
She would tell him someday. She would tell him soon. She would. It just wouldn't be today. She was a coward, but she was a coward who was going to spend the rest of her life with Michael. Somehow, in her thoughts, that point always trumped all of her objections (even when she wondered if it was even fair to marry him and drag him into her world that was in the midst of a conflict with blood supremacists).
It was by her doing something via doing nothing approach that she found herself on the day before her wedding mentally preparing herself for the millionth time in the past few months to spit out the words and just tell him already (Dru's voice had practically become a mantra in her head). It didn't happen. He had whisked her off after the rehearsal to a picnic dinner on a blanket on the beach under the stars full of apologies for her parent's nonattendance (as if it had anything to do with him). She had tried (really she had though obviously not hard enough), but she had choked on the words and ended up crying on his shoulder instead.
They were married the next day (her parents absent because they felt that her duplicity was a mistake, she agreed with them) with Dru by her side (being supportive despite her disapproval). She would tell him. She would. It just wouldn't be today. It was their wedding day. Whatever the right time was, a wedding day was not it.
Then, it was their honeymoon. One didn't bring up things like the existence of hidden communities of people while one was on one's honeymoon. It didn't seem like an appropriate topic of conversation.
Then, they were settling into their new lives together. That was a difficult enough transition without adding additional stress to it. It was just so easy to not tell him. It was just so easy to keep making excuses. It was just so easy to pretend that things were perfect as they were. Not using magic around him had become so much second nature that she didn't even have to think about it anymore. Ignoring her guilt over the deceit was slightly harder, but she had managed it for this long.
It was a couple of weeks before she even realized how much the stress was getting to her. Why couldn't he ever come and see this place she worked? What did he need to do to make things up with her parents? Why wasn't Dru coming around? Why did she always bring her pay home in cash (what would she have done without Gringotts' money changers?)? Why did she never unpack that trunk in the closet? What was it that was bothering her so?
It wasn't lies of omission anymore. It was lying with more lying and extra lying to cover for the other lies, and it always ended with the same answer "I'm fine. Nothing's wrong. Nothing's bothering me. You're imagining things."
She had lied because she was petrified of losing him, and she was losing him anyway. A sudden blow up would have been infinitely preferable to this slow torture of watching him gradually slip away. He thought she didn't trust him, and she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs that it wasn't true. Except, it was, wasn't it? She didn't trust him, hadn't trusted him with the truth. She didn't trust him enough to stay.
Her guilt wracked her more, and he withdrew more. She still didn't speak up. She still couldn't make the words come. They had only been married for eight weeks. An unbiased observer might have marveled that things could unravel so quickly. Lia didn't have the luxury of unbiased observation. They hadn't spoken for two days on the afternoon that she realized she was pregnant.
It was a sign of how overwrought she was (or perhaps the hormones were already causing her difficulties) that she sank onto the bed laughing over the remembrance of one of Dru's early rants on the subject.
"You're going to have to tell him, Lia. I think he might notice when the children turn his hair green."
She was going to have a baby. She and Michael were going to be bringing a person into the world. Michael, her Michael, was going to be a wonderful daddy. Her reverie was interrupted by her recollection of how things stood between the two of them at present. She had to fix things as best she could. Michael deserved better. The baby deserved better.
She would tell him tonight. She would confess, and she would apologize. The apology might not matter. He might not accept it, but he deserved to know the truth. She would wait to tell him about the baby. He needed to make a decision as to whether he could accept her (and the fact that she had lied to him) without any outside complications. She hadn't trusted him enough to give him that choice before; she was going to give it to him now. She didn't want to spend the rest of her live wondering if the man she loved with all her heart only tolerated her out of a sense of obligation.
If he still wanted her, if he stayed, then the baby would be a pleasant surprise she could share a few days down the road.
If he didn't, then they would work out some sort of arrangement. She knew Michael, and she knew he would always take care of his child.
She was nervous, she was scared, but she also felt better than she had in weeks. This was the right thing to do. It was long overdue, but that made it no less right. She could do this. She would do this. There would be no backing down or losing the words tonight.
"We need to talk about something, Michael" were likely the most coherent words she had managed during her whole muddled attempt at an explanation. She wasn't entirely sure herself what all she had said, and she wasn't entirely sure what Michael had said in return. He was upset and hurt. She had managed to process that much (what with the slamming or the front door and all). What she didn't know was where they stood now, or what was going to happen next. It was pouring down rain out there, and he was going to catch cold, and why in the world was she thinking of that when her husband might very well be leaving her and she couldn't even complain because it was all her own doing in the first place?
Should have, should have, should have were the only words that her brain seemed capable of using at the moment, but should have didn't help her. It didn't matter now what she should have done or when she should have done it because she hadn't. She could only go from now, and she didn't have control over anything at the moment. She wasn't sure how long she had been curled up on the floor in front of the sofa crying. She wasn't even sure why it was that she was on the floor. It seemed appropriate somehow, and she was too tired and miserable to hoist herself up on the couch. The fact that someone was knocking on the door was just a troublesome addition to her . . . Wait, someone was knocking on the door?
She pushed herself up and pushed her hair back out of her face. It didn't help; it fell back in front of her eyes. She held it back with one hand and turned the knob with the other one. Michael was standing on the doorstep sopping wet. Her mouth decided to operate without giving her brain time to think about words.
"Why are you knocking? You live here." He shrugged his shoulders and stepped across the threshold.
"It seemed appropriate given . . .." He let the sentence die without completion.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Her brain had caught up to her mouth at last. He was looking her up and down, and the expression in his eyes echoed the concerned checking over she had experienced on their first meeting. It was so reassuring that she nearly threw herself into his arms in relief. She ignored the impulse. Things weren't okay between them right now.
"Are you all right?" He was asking as he took in her tear stained, just been huddled in a ball on the floor for a few hours appearance.
"No," she told him looking him in the eyes. "I'm not." He actually grinned at her in response.
"Thank goodness," he told her. "I was sick to death of hearing that you were fine." His tone changed to one that bordered on disappointment. "Don't you know I know you better than that?"
"I do," she admitted. "That's part of what made it so hard." She noticed that he was still dripping. "You should change clothes," she admonished.
"Yeah," he responded. "After I do that, I think we should talk." Her chin dropped into her chest, but he reached out and lifted it so that they were looking into each other's eyes. "It hurts," he informed her. "I'm not gonna pretend otherwise. There's lots I don't understand."
She nodded, but he continued before she could comment.
"I figure you can explain it to me. Then, we can never go through these last couple a weeks again. 'Cause you'll know that you can trust me."
"That's not what . . .." He shushed her.
"I love you. There's nothing about you that I'm ever going to not want to know. Got it?"
She nodded and slid into his arms despite his protest that she was going to get soaked. It wasn't all settled, but they would get there. It would be all right because they were going to make it all right together-the way that she should have let them in the first place.
"Michael?"
An "umhmm" was mumbled from somewhere buried in her hair.
"I found something out today."
Present
Lia ran her finger over her son's words one more time. She definitely understood that feeling of not knowing how to tell someone something. It must have gotten harder for Seamus to find the words with every year that went by. She was pleased for him that he didn't have to carry that burden any longer. It had worked out well that this book had come along.
She closed it and decided to leave it on the bookshelf so Michael could find it when he got back. She would leave him a note telling him that she was going to visit their son. Michael would understand why she unexpectedly wasn't home. Michael always understood.
She wedged the book into a space next to the biography of Severus Snape and thought to herself for the 87 millionth time that her and her son's life had worked out very well indeed.
Why does this story exist? It exists because Seamus and his mother could so, so easily have had a much sadder story.
"I'm half-and-half," said Seamus. "Me dad's a Muggle. Mom didn't tell him she was a witch 'til after they were married. Bit of a nasty shock for him." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter Seven
Lia Finnigan closed the book in her lap and leaned her head back against the chair cushions. There were so many things her son had never told her, and she wasn't sure now whether she really had wanted to know. She had known general things of course, but she might have been able to go to her grave without some of those details.
[more]
Well, she knew now, and she had always told him that she wanted to know. He had just never been willing to share the details with her. He had taken her by surprise the previous afternoon. He didn't usually just drop by his childhood home without any notice. It was not that he wasn't welcome, mind you, it just wasn't his style. There he had stood on the doorstop clutching a book of all things in his hands and looking as nervous as the day he had come to ask his father for advice on how to propose.
He hadn't stayed long. He pushed the book into her hands, mumbled something about wanting her to have this, given her an abrupt kiss on the cheek, and apparated before she could ask him what this was all about. The book that he had brought her wasn't even due out for another couple of weeks. Some of her friends had been awaiting it with intense interest, and she had been planning on getting a copy herself. When she had mentioned putting her name on a waiting list, Eileen had asked why she was bothering when she had a firsthand source in her own family. She had been too embarrassed to admit that her son never shared stories of the war with her.
Seamus must have gotten an advance copy of the book since he was a contributor. Lia had devoured it - even forgoing sleeping to keep reading. Michael would normally have objected to that type of behavior, but once he understood what it was that Seamus had delivered he merely told her to hurry it up so he could have a go.
She traced her finger over the embossed title Standing Where You Are: A History of the "DA" Resistance at Hogwarts by Sadie Creevey. She flipped it open and traced over her son's handwriting inside the cover.
"I'm glad I can give you this because I never knew how to tell you."
She understood that. She understood that statement far better than her son probably would ever know.
Nearly a lifetime earlier
She still wasn't entirely sure how it was that she had ended up here in the first place. One minute she had been bemoaning her need for a vacation to her best friend, and the next thing she knew she was committed to spending two weeks in some little sea side village that she had never heard of before. Dru could be quite persuasive when she put her mind to it.
"It'll be great fun," she had insisted. "Me mam used to make us do this all the time."
Dru had made it sound adventurous somehow. You picked up a map and pointed to a random place on the shore (Dru had stressed that point very strenuously; you had to be by the sea.) and off you went for two weeks of sea air, relaxing quiet, and no worries because you were surrounded by people you were never going to see again. She had even tacked on a guilt trip for good measure.
"It won't be any fun off on my own. If you won't come, I won't take a trip at all." That had been that. It hadn't been what she had been thinking of when the need for a vacation had occurred to her, but she had wanted to get away somewhere. This was somewhere, and it was quiet. She was with Dru, and Dru had a bizarre habit of turning the most mundane of occasions into something entertaining.
Still, she had to admit to herself that she was nervous. This little town was completely and utterly muggle. Dru hadn't bothered to tell her that until she had been standing in front of her fireplace with bags in hand (or it may actually not have occurred to Dru, being muggle born, until that point that it was something that she needed to explain). Two weeks of being more or less magic free. Dru had rolled her eyes and told her she was over reacting. She had pointed out (and Lia had to grudgingly admit that she was correct) that it wasn't really like that. They simply had to watch their language in front of the locals and not do any magic in front of anyone.
That didn't change the fact that the very fact that she had to be conscious of her usage of magic made her feel like she couldn't use magic at all. She wasn't used to such a situation. The longest she had ever had to go in a magic free environment before this trip was during her Hogwarts' years when she ducked through the crowds at King's Cross Station. Dru (having spent over half of her life keeping the existence of a magical community from the knowledge of various family members) was lacking in sympathy to her plight. Lia supposed the difference in their backgrounds contributed to their inability to grasp each other's viewpoints. She had come anyway.
As Dru had said, "What a waste of all those years in muggle studies if you never use them doing something like this." It wasn't bad; it was just weird. She was, after all, only on day two. She might even get used to it before the trip was over. In an attempt to improve her comfort level, (well, that was Dru's version, she thought Dru was just being lazy and refusing to move from the comfy chair in which she had deposited herself back at their bed and breakfast) Lia had set out (or been dispatched) on a trip to the town's post office.
Dru had a long standing habit of mailing post cards from her vacation spots of choice to all of her muggle family members. She hadn't been able to explain why. She had merely shrugged her shoulders and commented that all of her extended family did it. If she didn't participate (she insisted), everyone would think she was stuck up and shun her at the next family reunion.
Lia wasn't quite sure whether she was completely and utterly full of it or if she had the strangest family traditions that Lia had ever heard of in her life. She supposed she didn't have much basis for comparison. Her extended family didn't mix much. She was proud that she had managed to use her head and answer her question as to why Dru didn't just use an owl in her own head before the words had escaped her mouth. Dru enjoyed taking the mickey a little too much for her not to be grateful that she had sidestepped that one.
She had a handful of letters and a pocket full of muggle money, and she was ready to go out and employ those skills she had supposedly learned in five years of class work. She was actually glad, she decided, that Dru hadn't come along. She was entirely too nervous about this whole thing. She was going to have a lovely walk and successfully complete her errand, and this nagging feeling that was plaguing her that everyone was staring was going to go away. They were just people. She had been in crowds of people that were strangers before. These people just happened to not know any magic. No one was looking at her. She was dressed just like everyone else. She didn't need magic to walk up to someone and ask for directions. She didn't need magic to walk down the street, and she didn't need magic to send those letters. She could do this. She was going to do this. She was under no circumstances going to run back to Dru and beg to go home.
Where did that thought even come from? What was wrong with her? She loosened her grip on the now dented letters she had been clenching in her hand. Was she really this pathetic? This was a town full of perfectly nice people - it was just like being around Dru's parents only multiplied a couple of hundred times. She got on swimmingly with Dru's parents - except Dru's parents knew exactly what she was and what she could do. That might not have been the best of examples.
For one brief, horrifying moment, Lia found herself wondering if she was (deep down) prejudiced like those obnoxious pure blood supremacists that her path had occasionally crossed while in school. She shook off the thought nearly as quickly as it had come. She wasn't frightened right now because she thought she was better than the other people here. Why was she frightened? She pushed beyond the feeling of being trapped that held her for a moment as a clutch of children chasing a ball hurried by her (great, she was becoming claustrophobic only with people instead of walls) and decided that the middle of the street was not the best place for her to be standing while she tried to figure this out.
She edged into an alleyway (feeling ridiculous as she went) and rested her head against an obliging wall as she took deep breaths. The sense of panic that had been slowly building ever since she ventured out without Dru eased a little as she hid in her little shadowed refuge. Dru's parents had never made her this nervous, she had been perfectly fine yesterday when she had Dru with her, so what was so different about today? She was crumpling up the post again. She forced her fingers to loosen and in the half distracted moment the answer suddenly came to her.
She was scared because she was alone. She was alone in the midst of a group of people who she had been taught from childhood made it necessary to hide. She had no one with her to correct her mistakes. She had no one with her whom she could speak to without worrying whether she was giving something away. She had never done this before, and she was absolutely petrified of messing it up. Years and years of being drilled on the Statute of Secrecy and the necessity of caution least her world be found out by the "others" was turning her into a pathetic, quivering mess.
She felt better somehow knowing what it was that was wrong with her. It was as if the very knowing somehow made its impact less. Did the muggle borns go through this when they first started to school? Some of them likely did. She understood Dru's first few weeks of jumpiness in a way she never had before. Someone should offer them integration classes before dropping them in the middle of everything like that. Someone should take the muggle studies classes on field trips as well. This was crazy.
She sighed and brushed a bit of dirt she had collected from leaning against the wall off of her skirt as she gathered her wits about her. She was not going to single handedly destroy muggle ignorance of the magical world. She knew how to count the muggle money, she knew what to ask for at the post office, and she knew better than to mention anything magical to anyone she encountered. She was going to run her errand. She was going to enjoy her two weeks of relaxation. She was going to mingle with people she would never see again, and they weren't going to be the least bit suspicious. She was going to learn how all of her theoretical, classroom knowledge was practically applied. Most of all, she was going to have fun.
This was her long wanted (and very much needed) vacation, and she was going to enjoy it. She tried to make her exit from the alley look as casual as possible (it didn't really matter as no one was watching). She pasted what she hoped was a comfortable looking smile on her face and approached a young woman with a toddler in her arms to ask for directions. As the woman gave them and the two exchanged pleasantries over the cute way the child buried his head in his mother's shoulders, Lia felt the smile become less forced and more natural.
"See," she found herself telling herself, "I can do this." The other woman's directions proved to be simple enough to follow, and she found the post office without incident. She winced a bit at the rather creased state of the mail that Dru's relatives were going to be receiving but decided that it didn't really matter all that much in the end. (After all, Dru could have chosen to run her own errands, couldn't she have?)
She didn't even have to force the smile for the man behind the counter. She was feeling better and better with every moment she spent out in the open confronting her fears. She had a perfectly lovely exchange of meaningless chit chat about how pretty the beach was and how much she was enjoying her holiday. The old man didn't even blink at any of her postage questions, so they must have been perfectly normal ones. She barely hesitated when she counted the money, and she was sure that he hadn't even noticed (he had, after all, been in the middle of making suggestions as to where she and Dru should go for supper at the time).
In short, she was feeling quite pleased with herself by the time she and Mr. Kelch exchanged good days. She was quickly deciding that she had had nothing to worry about and this was going to be an absolutely lovely couple of weeks (not that she was getting big headed about it at all, she still knew she would have to watch her speaking habits around the natives, but she was quite sure she could handle it now). She was even beginning to wonder if Dru had done this to her on purpose. She probably had now she thought about it. She would take a few minutes when she got back to be perfectly furious with her for not warning her before she thanked her for putting her in a situation that made her confront and get over her nerves. Then, they could go off and find that place Mr. Kelch had told her about. The man's eyes had positively glazed over as he told her of the dessert selection, and she deserved a treat after what she had been through she reasoned.
She was so focused on thoughts of indulging her sweet tooth that she failed to pay attention as she walked out of the post office door. It wouldn't have been a problem if the way had been clear, but that was not the case. As it was, she walked directly into a man that had been passing by with enough force that they both stumbled. He was able to recover his balance sufficiently to stay on his feet, but her ankle turned (drat her affinity for cute but impractical footwear) leaving her sitting on the ground blinking up at him.
Unfortunately, she was blinking because looking at him required her to be looking toward the sun. This meant that she couldn't see whether he looked angry at being run over or not. As she started to push herself up, she noticed that he was offering her a hand up. That was probably a good sign (although he might simply be being a gentleman). She accepted the help and opened her mouth to apologize, but he spoke first.
"Sorry 'bout that." He offered. Lia was confused.
"Sorry?" She responded. "What are you sorry for? I nearly knocked you into the dust. I'm sorry."
"Well, I tried to catch you, but I wasn't quick enough. I wasn't really prepared . . .." He trailed off with a shrug.
"I wasn't really paying attention to where I was going." Lia continued. "If you had caught me, we likely both would have ended up on the ground." She reasoned.
"Might not 'ave been so bad," he muttered. She brushed herself off and moved slightly so the sun wasn't blocking her view of his face. He was grinning at her, so her worries that he was going to be angry were put to rest (not that the whole apologizing for not being prepared to be run into wasn't already a clue).
"I guess we'll both have to pay more attention." He was saying to her, and she noticed his eyes running over her. Before she could take offense, she realized with a start that the look in his eyes wasn't the leering one that she was expecting. He looked concerned, and she thought he appeared to be looking her over to see whether she was hurt. His next words confirmed it for her. "You landed pretty hard there. You all right?"
"Mmhmm," she responded with a nod finishing knocking dust from her skirt (and testing the weight on her ankle, it seemed to be fine). "Sorry again," she tried unsure of how to end the conversation. "I didn't intend to interrupt your day."
"Wasn't in a hurry," he commented. "I've not seen you around before. New?" He inquired sounding oddly hopeful.
"Holiday," Lia replied.
"Pity," he replied as he continued to grin. "For me," he clarified, "I'm sure you deserve a holiday."
He offered his hand to her once again. "I'm Michael," he told her. "Michael Finnigan."
He was flirting with her, she thought looking at that grin that made him look troublesome and attractive all at the same time. Her eyes flicked back up to his. They were grey, and the only adjective that came into her head as she looked into them was kind. Besides, what could it hurt to shake the man's hand after she had smacked into him the way that she had? She placed her hand into his and found herself smiling once again without effort involved.
"I'm Lia," she replied deciding at the last moment not to add her last name. She was only being polite she told herself. There wasn't anything more to this.
Three days later she was regretting her politeness to the man. It hadn't crossed the line into creepy yet, but it was slightly disconcerting the number of places that she and Dru had run across him. He merely nodded or exchanged casual remarks on the weather (once, they had spoken long enough for her to introduce Dru) with an inviting smile. She never took the invitation, and he would wander off to wherever it was that he went when he wasn't hanging around making her feel nervous (in a jittery, somewhat frazzled way as opposed to the panic inducing way she had felt before her trip to the post office).
Despite Michael's continual appearances, her other nerves had settled. She was enjoying her walks on the beach, scattered shopping, and (most of all) the knowledge that she could wake up in the morning and not have to go anywhere if she didn't want to get out of bed. It was a pleasant way to spend her holiday that was only marred by Dru's insistence on keeping up her running commentary. She thought Michael's appearances were endearing and couldn't fathom why Lia wouldn't talk to him more.
Her comments on being here for a relaxing, stress free few days and not to pick up strange men fell on deaf ears. Dru was apparently of the opinion that there was nothing in the world more relaxing than being followed around by a "cutie" who was "working up the nerve" to ask her out (Dru's words, not hers). Dru had actually invited him to join them at their table as they ate this evening.
If she were thinking about the evening in an unbiased manner, she would have to admit that Michael seemed sweet and funny with quite the gift for storytelling. Lia, however, was feeling anything but unbiased. She was absolutely furious with Dru and had spent most of the meal deflecting personal questions (and trying to not laugh at Michael's stories, she didn't want to encourage him). When he had excused himself to go to the loo, she had rounded on Dru.
"What were you thinking?" She demanded of the woman whose status as "friend" was in danger of slipping at the moment.
"I was thinking that we're here to have fun." Dru replied unfazed by Lia's glaring. "He's fun, and he wants to spend time with you. Heaven knows why. You're a heartbeat away from being absolutely rude to him."
"Dru, I can't hang out with him."
"Why not?"
"You know why."
"Don't even go there," Dru said looking perturbed. "Go and have a pint with the man," she insisted. "That's all he wants. Go have some fun."
Looking back, Lia realized that it hadn't taken much for Dru to convince her to go because deep down she really wanted to go. A week later Lia knew that her impressions over dinner had been correct. Michael was charming. He was sweet, he had an amazing sense of humor, and she knew she could listen to the man spin his stories quite happily for hours upon end. She didn't often get the chance because for some reason he most often wanted to talk about her. She had found herself running details of her life by Dru for muggle adjustment so she would be prepared for their conversations.
It would be easy to say that she had no idea how she had gotten to this point, but the truth was that she really did. It had started with Dru's insisted upon a pint with Michael that evening at the pub. She couldn't remember the last time she had laughed so hard. That night had flowed into an invitation for dinner without Dru that had turned into going for walks together after he got off work in the evenings. That had led to another dinner ending up with a picnic and whole Saturday spent together on the beach.
It was just so easy to spend time with him, and she had let it snowball knowing full well that is was snowballing as she went. Dru didn't even have the grace to rein her in by being snarky about being ditched so often. She didn't mind at all and kept reminding her that they were there to have fun. If she had known how hard Lia's heart had pounded every time that Michael reached over to hold her hand, maybe she would have taken the seriousness of the situation a little more . . . well . . . seriously.
Lia hadn't told her. She had constrained herself to comments of Michael being amusing and their excursions being a pleasant way to pass the time. That, however, was all about to come crashing down around her ears. Their trip was quickly drawing to a close, and she caught herself on more than one occasion thinking of the "after" of her holiday and Michael's presence in it. The catching herself part of those occasions consisting of her reminding herself that there wasn't supposed to be any Michael in the world after her holiday. The thought hurt in this bizarre aching manner in her chest that she didn't want to explore further. It meant that she had let things snowball further than she should have. It meant that her couple of weeks of entertaining company with a nice man that she was never going to see again had turned into something else entirely.
What bothered her the most, though, was the nagging thought in the back of her head that Michael might be in the same place that she was. Well, not in exactly the same place, because naturally Michael wasn't hiding massive parts of his life while doing this whatever this was that they were doing. But, he might be getting more attached to her than he should be as well. He had known from the beginning that she was only here temporarily, but it did not necessarily follow that he hadn't gotten caught up in the moment the way that she had.
Of course, she might be overreacting completely. Michael might not be thinking any such thing. He might be enjoying her company in a purely "in the moment" she's going to be gone soon so what does it matter kind of a way. He might not find her nearly as interesting as she found him. Maybe guys didn't even stress about the future the way she did at all. She might not even be as attached to him as she thought she was in the first place. Everything had happened really quickly. She might have just gotten into the habit of having him around. She might have a couple of weeks of withdraw (just like breaking any other habit) and be over it.
This was confusing, and it made her head hurt. She didn't want to think about it any more (especially as she had been sitting absolutely still for the past half hour when she was supposed to be getting ready for dinner with Michael and Dru was starting to look at her suspiciously). She wasn't going to worry. It was just as silly as her original panic over being surrounded by muggles. She was going to enjoy a couple of more days of her holiday. She was going to chill and enjoy Michael's stories. She was going to laugh at his jokes (because it felt good to laugh at them). She was going to eat dessert first and not worry about what was going to happen tomorrow or next week or next month. She was going to be in the now because she was on holiday and that was what holidays were supposed to be about. She wasn't going to fret because there was nothing to fret about. She would enjoy her holiday and go home and go back to her life as usual. That was the plan, and that was what was going to happen.
Dru's brow was furrowed as she watched Lia grab her hairbrush and attack her hair. "Is something bothering you?" She asked in that knowing tone that best friends use when they think you are trying to keep something from them. Lia shook off her previous thoughts and focused on her reflection in the mirror (avoiding making eye contact with Dru in the process).
"Nope," she answered still keeping her attention on her hair. "Everything's fine." She replied with a tone of assurance that she couldn't be certain was successful. She could feel Dru's eyes on her for a few moments longer (she still wasn't making eye contact).
"Be that way," she muttered as she left the room. Lia's shoulders relaxed, and she turned her thoughts to Michael and their upcoming evening. A smile twitched across her face as the hairbrush was placed back down. She hadn't intended for this to happen, but that seemed to be a phrase that she was over using lately. She had been resolved, and she was going to follow the plan. Her time with Michael was going to end with the final day of her vacation, and everything was going to go back to the way it had been before.
She was going to go back to normal. She remembered normal. Normal was the place where she used her magic without a second thought because there was no one around to care. Normal was the time when she didn't adjust the details of her life to make them sound like someone else's version of normal. Normal was when she didn't change her clothes twice before leaving because she wanted someone else's approval. Normal was when her heart didn't hammer in her chest because some guy was smiling at her. Normal was when she was a sensible person whose lips didn't involuntarily twitch into an upward curve every time she thought of the name "Michael." Normal was when there wasn't a nagging little voice in the back of her head telling her that she was lying by omission in every conversation that they had. She had been sure that she was going back to normal, and she had been positive that normal was going to be wonderful.
She couldn't do it. When he had held her hand and looked in her eyes and asked if there could still be a them after she had gone home, she couldn't do it. She couldn't tell him no. She had been too caught up in his soft, grey eyes (that looked so hopeful that it hurt to even think that she might make that look go away) and that pounding of her heart that should have had her worried for her health instead of feeling all warm and fuzzy and completely unlevelheaded. She had done the best she could when her brain was as she liked to call it - Michael muddled. She had told him that she didn't know. She had told him that she would tell him tomorrow before she left.
He hadn't pushed. He hadn't argued. He had only squeezed her hand and continued on their walk across the sand. Somehow, that made it all the harder to think of all the reasons why saying anything other than "no" was such a horribly bad idea.
When she sank into her bed that night with no Michael around to muddle her thinking, it should have been easier to remember. She should have regathered her resolve. She should have hardened her heart. She should have woken up Dru and begged to be talked into sense. She should have written him a letter and packed her bags and left before she had time to change her mind. She did none of those things. She lay in her bed and thought and wondered and raged about why it had to be so hard, and she cried.
In the morning, the note she wrote didn't contain goodbyes. It didn't convey an ending. She reasoned to herself that it probably didn't matter any way. They would both go back to normal and time and distance would even out their emotions, and it would all come to nothing. That theory didn't explain why she waited until after they were gone to confide in Dru. She wouldn't have been so worried about being talked out of the course of action she had decided upon if she really believed that it didn't matter.
So she avoided Dru all morning with excuses of packing and a last walk on the beach, and she went and caught Michael on his lunch break and kissed him on the cheek leaving a crumbled piece of paper with a number and an address in his hand. She mayn't have confided in Dru that afternoon at all if it weren't for the fact that Dru was now necessary. She, after all, didn't have a telephone number or an address where muggle post was delivered. Dru had both as part of her continued relationship with her unknowing muggle cousins. If Michael were to call or send something, and Dru were to not know what was going on . . . well, that would be bad, and Lia was fairly certain that she was already in the midst of enough bad to be going on with.
She was prepared for a lecture. She was even prepared for some anger (she had been giving Dru's personal information to a relative stranger, and she was pretty sure that was considered bad form on the friendship scale). She got neither.
Dru had sighed and asked her why she hadn't told her that she liked him that much. Lia's answer wasn't really an answer so much as a long rambling spiel about how she was sure Michael had only asked out of politeness and she was sure he wouldn't actually call and . . . She never got to the "and" because Dru had rolled her eyes and cut her off muttering about her having it bad and saying she would field the phone calls because she had encouraged her in the first place and that was what best friends did and she better get to be the maid of honor at the wedding. At least, that was most of what Lia had made out from the muttering.
Lia had smacked Dru over the head with a throw pillow, and they had both started laughing. There was ice cream, there was talking, and everything had seemed all right with the world for a few hours. Then, the phone had rung, and all of Lia's pretenses of nothing coming of this were shattered into dust crumbling to the floor.
It hadn't been fair to Dru in the least. The number of times that she had floo called Lia to come over and take a phone call, and the number of excuses she had made as to where Lia was "out" qualified her for some type of above and beyond best friend award. Michael thought they were flatmates, and he never questioned why it was always Dru who answered his calls. Dru did it all with only one complaint - when was Lia going to eliminate the need for this subterfuge by telling Michael what she was?
Lia didn't have an answer to that because she didn't know the answer herself. In a world where she had always been told "statute of secrecy, statute of secrecy, statute of secrecy," no one had ever clarified when the statute of secrecy became flexible. Dru's parents knew because they had to know. They were her family - her siblings (if she had had any) would have been included as well.
Michael was iffy ground. He wasn't her family. She wasn't exactly sure what he was. Somehow explaining to the Ministry of Magic that she had let the proverbial cat out of the bag about their world because a man made her happy seemed like a really bad idea. Lia was balancing some bizarre line where she was growing daily closer to Michael while simultaneously keeping this huge piece of her life held back. She did nothing to change the status quo, and things continued to progress between them. She assuaged her conscience where the inconveniencing of Dru was concerned by arranging the time for their calls in advance.
They talked, they met for a few weekends, they talked more, and soon she was promising to come and spend Christmas and meet his parents. She deflected any topics of conversation that would have led down a road of a mention of meeting hers. They didn't even know that Michael existed. By the time the Christmas holidays rolled around, Lia was a wreck. Dru had stopped asking altogether and contented herself with giving Lia reproachful looks.
Something had to change. It wasn't fair to Michael. It wasn't fair to her. If only the man didn't scramble her brain so, she might have been able to cobble some sort of a solution together. That wasn't fair, but she said it to herself any way. She knew things needed to change, but she didn't know how. She didn't know if she could tell him, but she knew she didn't want to give them up. She was stuck, and she had no one to blame but herself.
Christmas was wonderful. Michael's parents were so excited to meet her. It was a lovely day and a lovely visit, and it would have been perfect if she hadn't been feeling so guilty. She was nearly teary eyed over the whole ordeal and had decided that she had to tell him something despite the rolling of the acid in her stomach.
He asked her to go for a walk, and she tried to plan some coherent form of expression as they put on their coats. She was just opening her mouth to say something that probably would have sounded crazy and made very little sense at all when she looked to see Michael holding a ring box. All of her thoughts and plans fell out of her head and the word "yes" popped out of her mouth seemingly unbidden.
She had never lived through anything like the days following Michael's proposal. She was an awful person, and that was all there was to it. Well, she was also a coward. That much she knew. She had dug herself into a hole so deep that she wasn't sure if digging herself out of it was even possible any more. There is a line between "I didn't tell you because there was no reason for you to know," "I didn't tell you because I couldn't," and "I didn't tell you because I was scared of what you would do because I hadn't told you." The problem is that that line is blurry and more difficult to see when you are standing on top of it than you could ever possibly begin to imagine. The problem is that you cross over it without even realizing that the moment has come and gone. The problem is that there is no "good way" to try to remedy the fact that you have crossed over it. You're there before you know that you got there, and what do you do then?
Lia didn't know. Dru was no help. "Just tell him" was something that didn't provide her any direction. It sounded simple, but it wasn't. How did she "just tell him" after not "just telling him" for so long already? What had possessed her to say yes? She knew the answer to that one. She wanted to marry Michael. She wanted to marry Michael more than anything she had ever wanted in her life. He was wonderful is so many ways that she couldn't even begin to catalog them. She loved him, and he loved her.
She shook off the nagging voice that insisted on plaguing her with the taunt that he didn't really know her. He did know her. Being a witch was something she could do, it wasn't who she was. There she was bemuddled and tormented without a best friend with whom she could talk things over. She was still stuck. It was still all her own doing, and she still wasn't doing anything to fix it.
She would tell him someday. She would tell him soon. She would. It just wouldn't be today. She was a coward, but she was a coward who was going to spend the rest of her life with Michael. Somehow, in her thoughts, that point always trumped all of her objections (even when she wondered if it was even fair to marry him and drag him into her world that was in the midst of a conflict with blood supremacists).
It was by her doing something via doing nothing approach that she found herself on the day before her wedding mentally preparing herself for the millionth time in the past few months to spit out the words and just tell him already (Dru's voice had practically become a mantra in her head). It didn't happen. He had whisked her off after the rehearsal to a picnic dinner on a blanket on the beach under the stars full of apologies for her parent's nonattendance (as if it had anything to do with him). She had tried (really she had though obviously not hard enough), but she had choked on the words and ended up crying on his shoulder instead.
They were married the next day (her parents absent because they felt that her duplicity was a mistake, she agreed with them) with Dru by her side (being supportive despite her disapproval). She would tell him. She would. It just wouldn't be today. It was their wedding day. Whatever the right time was, a wedding day was not it.
Then, it was their honeymoon. One didn't bring up things like the existence of hidden communities of people while one was on one's honeymoon. It didn't seem like an appropriate topic of conversation.
Then, they were settling into their new lives together. That was a difficult enough transition without adding additional stress to it. It was just so easy to not tell him. It was just so easy to keep making excuses. It was just so easy to pretend that things were perfect as they were. Not using magic around him had become so much second nature that she didn't even have to think about it anymore. Ignoring her guilt over the deceit was slightly harder, but she had managed it for this long.
It was a couple of weeks before she even realized how much the stress was getting to her. Why couldn't he ever come and see this place she worked? What did he need to do to make things up with her parents? Why wasn't Dru coming around? Why did she always bring her pay home in cash (what would she have done without Gringotts' money changers?)? Why did she never unpack that trunk in the closet? What was it that was bothering her so?
It wasn't lies of omission anymore. It was lying with more lying and extra lying to cover for the other lies, and it always ended with the same answer "I'm fine. Nothing's wrong. Nothing's bothering me. You're imagining things."
She had lied because she was petrified of losing him, and she was losing him anyway. A sudden blow up would have been infinitely preferable to this slow torture of watching him gradually slip away. He thought she didn't trust him, and she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs that it wasn't true. Except, it was, wasn't it? She didn't trust him, hadn't trusted him with the truth. She didn't trust him enough to stay.
Her guilt wracked her more, and he withdrew more. She still didn't speak up. She still couldn't make the words come. They had only been married for eight weeks. An unbiased observer might have marveled that things could unravel so quickly. Lia didn't have the luxury of unbiased observation. They hadn't spoken for two days on the afternoon that she realized she was pregnant.
It was a sign of how overwrought she was (or perhaps the hormones were already causing her difficulties) that she sank onto the bed laughing over the remembrance of one of Dru's early rants on the subject.
"You're going to have to tell him, Lia. I think he might notice when the children turn his hair green."
She was going to have a baby. She and Michael were going to be bringing a person into the world. Michael, her Michael, was going to be a wonderful daddy. Her reverie was interrupted by her recollection of how things stood between the two of them at present. She had to fix things as best she could. Michael deserved better. The baby deserved better.
She would tell him tonight. She would confess, and she would apologize. The apology might not matter. He might not accept it, but he deserved to know the truth. She would wait to tell him about the baby. He needed to make a decision as to whether he could accept her (and the fact that she had lied to him) without any outside complications. She hadn't trusted him enough to give him that choice before; she was going to give it to him now. She didn't want to spend the rest of her live wondering if the man she loved with all her heart only tolerated her out of a sense of obligation.
If he still wanted her, if he stayed, then the baby would be a pleasant surprise she could share a few days down the road.
If he didn't, then they would work out some sort of arrangement. She knew Michael, and she knew he would always take care of his child.
She was nervous, she was scared, but she also felt better than she had in weeks. This was the right thing to do. It was long overdue, but that made it no less right. She could do this. She would do this. There would be no backing down or losing the words tonight.
"We need to talk about something, Michael" were likely the most coherent words she had managed during her whole muddled attempt at an explanation. She wasn't entirely sure herself what all she had said, and she wasn't entirely sure what Michael had said in return. He was upset and hurt. She had managed to process that much (what with the slamming or the front door and all). What she didn't know was where they stood now, or what was going to happen next. It was pouring down rain out there, and he was going to catch cold, and why in the world was she thinking of that when her husband might very well be leaving her and she couldn't even complain because it was all her own doing in the first place?
Should have, should have, should have were the only words that her brain seemed capable of using at the moment, but should have didn't help her. It didn't matter now what she should have done or when she should have done it because she hadn't. She could only go from now, and she didn't have control over anything at the moment. She wasn't sure how long she had been curled up on the floor in front of the sofa crying. She wasn't even sure why it was that she was on the floor. It seemed appropriate somehow, and she was too tired and miserable to hoist herself up on the couch. The fact that someone was knocking on the door was just a troublesome addition to her . . . Wait, someone was knocking on the door?
She pushed herself up and pushed her hair back out of her face. It didn't help; it fell back in front of her eyes. She held it back with one hand and turned the knob with the other one. Michael was standing on the doorstep sopping wet. Her mouth decided to operate without giving her brain time to think about words.
"Why are you knocking? You live here." He shrugged his shoulders and stepped across the threshold.
"It seemed appropriate given . . .." He let the sentence die without completion.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Her brain had caught up to her mouth at last. He was looking her up and down, and the expression in his eyes echoed the concerned checking over she had experienced on their first meeting. It was so reassuring that she nearly threw herself into his arms in relief. She ignored the impulse. Things weren't okay between them right now.
"Are you all right?" He was asking as he took in her tear stained, just been huddled in a ball on the floor for a few hours appearance.
"No," she told him looking him in the eyes. "I'm not." He actually grinned at her in response.
"Thank goodness," he told her. "I was sick to death of hearing that you were fine." His tone changed to one that bordered on disappointment. "Don't you know I know you better than that?"
"I do," she admitted. "That's part of what made it so hard." She noticed that he was still dripping. "You should change clothes," she admonished.
"Yeah," he responded. "After I do that, I think we should talk." Her chin dropped into her chest, but he reached out and lifted it so that they were looking into each other's eyes. "It hurts," he informed her. "I'm not gonna pretend otherwise. There's lots I don't understand."
She nodded, but he continued before she could comment.
"I figure you can explain it to me. Then, we can never go through these last couple a weeks again. 'Cause you'll know that you can trust me."
"That's not what . . .." He shushed her.
"I love you. There's nothing about you that I'm ever going to not want to know. Got it?"
She nodded and slid into his arms despite his protest that she was going to get soaked. It wasn't all settled, but they would get there. It would be all right because they were going to make it all right together-the way that she should have let them in the first place.
"Michael?"
An "umhmm" was mumbled from somewhere buried in her hair.
"I found something out today."
Present
Lia ran her finger over her son's words one more time. She definitely understood that feeling of not knowing how to tell someone something. It must have gotten harder for Seamus to find the words with every year that went by. She was pleased for him that he didn't have to carry that burden any longer. It had worked out well that this book had come along.
She closed it and decided to leave it on the bookshelf so Michael could find it when he got back. She would leave him a note telling him that she was going to visit their son. Michael would understand why she unexpectedly wasn't home. Michael always understood.
She wedged the book into a space next to the biography of Severus Snape and thought to herself for the 87 millionth time that her and her son's life had worked out very well indeed.