Chapter Text
Christmas Night, 1988
This wasn’t like sleeping in the dorms, when Merula would watch the lake-light dapple the stone walls and listen to Ismelda snore, to Liz muttering softly in her sleep. Insufferable as it was, at least Merula knew they were there, and what they were doing. Bill’s little sister was a loud sleeper too—tossing and turning all night—only to wake Merula early, chattering on about the dreams she had: she flew across an ocean on the back of a dragon; all of her toes fell off and mice, taking one a piece, absconded with them; Gwenog Jones bought her an ice cream and they exchanged friendship bracelets. It wasn’t all bad, Merula had to admit. It had been cute, kind of, sharing a room with a kid so excited to talk to someone new for once.
But Ginny had fallen asleep on the sofa, clutching her new plush Quaffle to her chest, just after the Weasleys, Merula, and Wen had finished dessert. Drawing a blanket over her, Mrs. Weasley had insisted that they let her sleep there, the look on her face so fond and… motherly that Merula had to look away, her protests dying in her throat.
So, there was Wen in the bed next to her, silent and still.
The window behind her cast Wen’s face in shadow, and Merula couldn’t tell if she was asleep or awake and, gods forbid, looking at her. Thin fingers of moonlight traced the edges of Wen’s hair, loose and slightly mussed. Her hand hung nearly off the bed, wrist turned up to the ceiling. The room was so small. She was so close, Merula could reach out and touch Wen’s fingers, that upturned wrist. Thinking this, Merula crossed her arms tight across her chest, and pulled her knees higher, pushing her back flush against the cold plaster wall.
It was weird, seeing Wen like this. Like any of the girls in her dorm could, every night, fall through summer.
Merula fixed her gaze on the window, then the Quidditch poster next to it: the Holyhead Harpies drifting sleepily in and out of view. Her breathing deepened, more relaxed. She counted the stuffed teddies on the bookshelf near the door; the books were harder to differentiate from one another in the night. Merula listened, trying to catch a sound—a Weasley brother padding to the toilet, the ghoul in the attic—but there was nothing to catch.
The moonlight grew stronger, lighter, casting its spell on the room and everything it touched. The bookshelf, the poster, even Merula’s own hand, now that she looked at it, looked strange. Unreal. Like… like this was a time outside of time, with her and Wen kept close inside it.
Her eyes returned to Wen before she realized they had. Merula lightly worried the inside of her lip with her teeth, peering at the shadow that obscured Wen’s face.
It hadn’t been the worst Christmas break, this year. Bill had invited her—his parents wanted to meet Rakepick’s other apprentices, pick their brains about her mentorship—but she’d almost backed out once she learned Wen would come to stay for Christmas and Boxing Day. It was one thing to spend a fortnight with Bill: she could get more training in with him. Even though Wen would only spend two nights with the Weasleys, it seemed, somehow, too much—to have to sit there and watch Wen open gifts from her gaggle of idiots, from her moronic boyfriend.
It had been fun, at least, to watch Wen lose two games of chess to an eight-year-old… And interesting, too, to see how she reacted to each item the owls brought in to add to her annoyingly large pile of gifts and letters. Of course, she lingered over the parcel from Khanna, and Merula didn’t bother to hide her scowl when Wen giggled over whatever Tulip sent her, but… It had struck Merula as odd, when Wen crumpled the note from Winger. Had something happened there? Did they even talk that much? And it was weird, too, how lazily she treated the letter from Barnaby—you’d think she’d care more about whatever dross he wrote her, since they’re together. Disgusting.
And there was nothing at all—no present, trinket, or letter, even—from anyone Wen called mum or dad.
A question rose up again, the one that had pricked at her all day. Merula stared at Wen’s wrist and furrowed her brow, thinking of it.
The parts of Wen the moon touched seemed to glow.
“Wen?” Merula asked, her voice low and hoarse.
Time passed, and Merula couldn’t tell how much. The room darkened again, a cloud likely passing before the moon, but it left behind its strangeness. The back of her neck grew warm as the time slipped by, and Merula looked away, up to the window. This was stupid. She ought to—
“Yeah?” Wen replied.
Merula couldn’t tell by her voice if Wen had been asleep or not, and she stifled a twinge in her chest. Did she catch me staring at her?
“Can I ask you a question?”
“…Alright?” Wen sounded tense, and for a moment, Merula considered saying ‘Nothing, forget it’. Wen’s wrist retracted, pulling her arm back.
Merula couldn’t back down now. So, she asked.
“Where are you parents?”
Wen didn’t move, her face still in shadow, and the silence tightened horribly between them. Merula’s face burned; she squeezed her arms tighter across her chest. She realized, belatedly, that the window must be shining directly on her, and that Wen could see everything, each twitch of her face. She shouldn’t have asked—she should have just waited until they were back at Hogwarts, and asked around—
“My dad’s dead,” Wen answered, her voice distant and flat.
Merula’s throat went dry.
“He died when I was eight,” Wen continued, “him and my sister.”
“I didn’t know—” Merula’s stomach lurched. Wen had a sister?
“I know,” Wen said, almost matter-of-fact. She shifted her head, and while Merula still couldn’t make the other girl’s face out, she knew that Wen was gazing right back, into her eyes. Merula felt her left arm, the one she was laying on, start to go numb. She didn’t move it.
“Do you remember, during the war,” Wen asked, “when Death Eaters bombed Diagon Alley?”
Merula racked her memories, not sure—there was so much—her parents—but nodded anyway, tight and quick.
Wait—is she suggesting I should know, because of my parents?
“My dad and my sister were there, buying an owl. She would’ve been in Bill’s year.” Wen fell silent, and Merula didn’t dare say anything.
Wen turned, laid on her back. Merula studied Wen’s profile in the moonlight, now that she could, even as her thoughts raced. A familiar spike of… something, like shame and defensiveness together, lodged itself deep in Merula.
And yet there was Wen, washed in silver, her expression impossible to read. Unbidden, the image of a little Wen crossing a street with an older sister, holding hands, rose before her mind’s eye.
Could my parents have killed her father and sister?
Wen let out a short sigh, drawing Merula half-out of her horror.
“Jacob went missing, I think, three or four months later? My mum—” Wen furrowed her brows, blinking quickly. “She could be in New York, or back in Greece or Singapore—she doesn’t bother to let me know.” Wen’s voice was hard. She angled her head away, slightly, from Merula.
Merula didn’t know what to say. All her thoughts were still converged on the question of whether or not—but it seemed like Wen was waiting for Merula to say something, as if—as if she thought Merula would make some horrible joke about it.
Don’t act so shocked, Merula’s inner voice whispered, scraping against her like a stone. You’ve done worse.
When Merula didn’t, Wen looked fully away, out the window. Merula gazed out the window with her, eyes unfocused.
She didn’t like to think about the… things her parents did. She didn’t. It was too—but she tried to remember, now, the times her parents talked in low voices in the study, when Merula would press her ear to the door to learn what they were hiding from her; the times her mum would sit Merula down on the settee, after a few days or a whole week away, to explain the things they’d done; even those moments when her parents would be so caught up laughing about those acts that they’d miss that Merula was standing right there, the book of fairy tales she held forgotten.
Her mother’s hand around hers, guiding her through the wand movement. Her mother’s instruction, soft in her ear: You must think of what you hate the most.
If her parents had—if they had been involved, she would have known about it.
But as Merula sifted through all that she remembered—what she told the Aurors, and later the Wizengamot, as well as what she didn’t say—she couldn’t remember anything about an attack on Diagon Alley. It must have been someone else.
Her shoulders loosened.
They didn’t kill Wen’s family.
Relief, instant and heady, flooded Merula. If she were a different sort of person—if it were a different sort of night—she might have laughed.
“What was her name?” Merula asked, not thinking.
“Hmm?” Wen turned her head slightly, as if to point her ear at Merula.
Shit—
“Er—I asked what your sister’s name was,” Merula’s voice curled up at the end, half a question.
Wen turned onto her side fully to look at Merula, face again in shadow. She seemed to relax, if only a little. Merula drew in a sharp breath, feeling oddly pinned in place.
“Phoebe.” Merula heard a bit of a smile creep into Wen’s voice, if a small one. “She wanted to be a broom racer. Quidditch bored her—always said they never went fast enough.” Wen gave out a soft, deflated huff, less than a laugh. “It drove Mum spare. But my dad made brooms for Comet, you know, so sometimes he’d take us to the workshop so she could ‘test them out’.”
Merula didn’t know Wen’s dad made brooms for Comet. Why did she phrase it like that? …Should I have known? Why would she think I would know that?
“Do you—?” Wen began, in a quieter voice, but stopped. Like she was taking it back.
“Do I what?” Merula asked, a little unsteadily. She felt unsteady, now, but not knowing what Wen wanted to ask her was unthinkable.
“Do you have… people, that you live with?” Wen asked.
Merula didn’t know what she’d expected, but her eyes flew away from Wen in irritation. What kind of question is that? She moved the arm she had been laying on and winced as the feeling returned in a painful rush.
“You don’t have to—” Wen added hurriedly, and Merula’s eyes swept back to her.
This whole thing is ridiculous, her inner voice sneered, even as she found that she didn’t want to end this… whatever it was, so soon.
“I,” Merula bit the inside of her cheek. “I have an aunt. But I don’t live with her.”
What are you doing? the inner voice hissed. Don’t give her anything she could—
“I don’t live with my mum,” Wen said, slowly, like she was testing her footing.
Merula stared at her, mind momentarily blank.
Wen drew her upturned shoulder to her ear in a shrug. “I think a lot of kids our age are like us,” Merula started involuntarily at the word ‘us,’ but Wen went on, “with our… patchwork families.”
“So,” Merula swallowed, unsure of this narrow ledge of trust she felt between them, “who do you live with?”
This is mental.
“Della and Ned,” Wen answered simply. “They foster a lot of kids, so they have to work all the time.”
A hard place inside of Merula scoffed Figures she’d land on her feet. But… she ignored it.
“Do you like them?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s… They’re not my parents. I didn’t like them, after everything, for a long time. Sometimes I still don’t.”
Merula nodded. Swallowed. Her throat, her mouth was still too dry.
“I don’t like my aunt,” Merula said, haltingly. She felt the effort it cost her, deep in her lungs, to say this thing out loud.
I wish I could see her—see what face she’s making.
“I don’t—no one lives with me,” Merula added, feeling a bit mad for doing so. “She’s supposed to, but she never does, not for more than one or two nights at a time.”
A beat passed.
“Yeah, I’d hate her too,” Wen said, with a wry exhale.
Merula couldn’t help it. She smiled.
She tried to swallow her laugh, but it escaped her; she watched as Wen covered her mouth with her hand a second too late, a quiet snicker escaping her too.
This is mental.
“Who knew you could be funny?” Merula huffed, trying to bite back the stupid grin on her face. Don’t be such a fucking idiot, Merlin’s balls—
“Plenty of people,” Wen replied archly, a teasing warmth in her voice.
“Yeah, plenty,” Merula hurried to roll her eyes even as her stomach swooped low, making her feel hot and hollow inside. “Is that why—”
“What’s her—”
They had both spoken at the same time; Merula snapped her mouth shut, wishing she’d been fast enough to trap those words, that reflex, behind her teeth.
Wen had caught her tone, the drift of her words—of course she did—and Merula watched the line of Wen’s shoulder stiffen, rigid, against the light from the window behind her.
Even in shadow, Merula knew how Wen must look now. She knew that set of her mouth, that glint that flashed across her dark eyes whenever Merula slung some insult her way, right before she slung something right back.
Was your brother this thick-headed, or just you? He must have been the smarter Wen to leave your dead weight behind!
I wonder what it says about you, that your parents would rather die in Azkaban than spend another moment with you!
Strange, Merula registered distantly. It had thrilled her, once, when she could make Wen look at her like that. The feeling that brewed in her stomach now—whatever this clenching, this sinking was—it was not thrill.
“What?” Wen asked, her voice sharper than it had been.
“Nothing—”
You’re such a fucking moron. You fuck everything up.
The room fell quiet again, as if they had not spoken at all, but worse: Wen was still facing her—looking at her—no doubt marking every flick of her eyes, each bob of her throat.
The silence stretched further, and Merula squirmed under it. It was too much.
“I was just—” Merula began, knowing she must say something. “Why… aren’t you at Khanna’s farm? You’re joined at the hip; it’s sickening.”
It was a pathetic attempt. Merula couldn’t tell, now, if the room was too small or too big, how to judge the space between them. Merula—she didn’t want to babble; she didn’t want to grimace, and have Wen watch her screw her eyes shut.
Wen curled her knees closer to her chest, and wriggled the shoulder she laid on a little deeper into the mattress, looking… vulnerable, and defensive, like—like a stupid badger, or something.
A pause.
Then Wen let out a short, percussive breath.
“Because Rowan’s family is much, much better at Quidditch, and I knew I could at least score a goal here, against that little prat Percy.”
Wen’s voice was arch again, if quieter, a touch brittle, but Merula couldn’t help but let out a weak, startled laugh. She knew it was a lie—Wen didn’t care much for flying; she had to be coaxed that afternoon, by Charlie and wee Ginny, before she’d play—but Merula found she didn’t much care.
“You know I’m surprised?” Merula grinned. “You don’t think Percy’s the best of the lot? I thought you’d be fast friends.”
“I don’t know how he fits so much… git-ness into his little body, I swear.”
“Reckon he’s a changeling? Imagine—there’s the real Percy, all Weasley, in some uptight house in France somewhere while this Percy’s busy raining on everyone’s parade.”
Merula bit her lip. Shut up, Merula, why are you so—so—couldn’t you think of something funnier?
Wen’s chuckle was a shade polite—gods, let the bed swallow me whole—but it was an abrupt thing and soon over, the tail end overrun by some other mood.
But before Merula could make a better joke, or at least come up with something interesting to say, gods, Wen shifted closer.
Merula’s breath hitched as Wen tilted her head towards her, as if to search her eyes for something, before Wen quickly angled her face down and away.
“What?” Merula asked, barely louder than a breath.
“I just—” Wen seemed to shake her head, her voice louder than it had been before, but quieting once she went on, hissing, “I just can’t believe your aunt. Doesn’t the Ministry know, or Hogwarts?”
That… wasn’t what Merula expected her to say. She felt her brows draw together. “Probably? Why would they care?”
Wen let out a humph and, with an air of finality, turned heavily onto her back again. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
A hot surge of anger shot up Merula, from stomach to throat. She clenched her jaw.
“Yeah,” Merula bit out, her mocking words absolutely drenched in bitterness, “of course people like me deserve that, to grow up abandoned, what was I thinking?”
Wen’s head snapped back to Merula before she could study Wen’s face in profile again. An acidic lump caught in her throat as she watched Wen take a heaving breath: the moonlight, bright enough to be cruel, lingered on the deep rise and fall of her chest, her belly.
“What? That’s not—"
You can’t. You can’t cry.
“People in Cork?” Merula blinked furiously, her stupid voice gone all croaky. “They know the Snyde name. They know where I live, what—” Merula swallowed. “…what my parents have done.”
“No,” Wen sat up, swinging her legs onto the ground too quickly, too much for Merula to take in. “No, that’s not what I meant at all. If anything, that—”
“What?” Merula snapped, shutting her eyes. Wen was all silhouette now, anyway, and much, much too close.
This was a mistake.
There it was again, that tense silence pulled tight. Each second settled on Merula like a lead weight, but she couldn’t open her eyes. Not now. Not when everything was ruined, not when Merula was idiotic enough to—
“…I don’t know,” Wen’s voice stepped quietly out, towards her. “I guess I’m dumb—"
Merula held her breath.
“It’s just—if there’s anything I ought to know by now, it’s that our school wouldn’t care,” Wen continued in a murmur. “That the Ministry doesn’t care. It’s like we’re all just so much meat to them.”
Wen… she sounded bitter. Angry.
Merula didn’t know what to do. How to feel. She kept her eyes closed, willing away the heat she felt on her neck, around her eyes.
Time wore on as her mind worked.
She didn’t know Wen felt like that. She didn’t know anyone felt like that.
…Well, she knew her parents and their friends disapproved of the Ministry, of Hogwarts’ lenient Muggle-born policy—she had listened to their rants about Dumbledore for hours—but she also knew that those could never be Wen’s reasons. Not Wen, who’s the best of mates with Haywood and Copper, who turned her nose up at Dueling Club because she’d rather lounge around the bloody Muggle Music Appreciation Club instead. She even tried to befriend that Centaur last year, that her brother betrayed.
What does she mean by that, ‘we’re all just so much meat’?
And, for some inexplicable reason, she had seemed so angry on Merula’s behalf...
For perhaps the first time, Merula felt there was a lot about Wen she didn’t know.
Merula kept her eyes shut, but after what must have been a full minute or two, she heard the rustling of Wen’s bedsheets.
Her eyes flew open against her will—was she getting up? Moving further, closer?—to find Wen retreating into her bed, laying down on her back again. Merula’s eyes flicked over the part of Wen’s face now visible in the moonlight. She looked… pinched, somehow.
Something tight and painful inside Merula seemed to release and ease a bit, seeing that.
Merula sat up, more slowly than Wen had done. But even as Wen turned towards her, giving Merula the attention she wanted, Merula felt compelled to look away, casting her eyes down and to the door. She lingered a moment, unsure exactly what to say, but when she tried to turn and meet Wen’s shrouded eyes… she couldn’t.
“I’m sorry,” Merula whispered, “about your dad, a-and your sister.” Stammering idiot.
A pause, but Wen didn’t move. Didn’t reply.
Merula couldn’t stand it. And she couldn’t get back into bed—not now—how did she ever think she could share a room with Wen?
She got up and left, closing the door behind her as softly as she could.