mother cannot guide you – now you're on your own [hannah]

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Jamie had been at the Leaky Cauldron for almost six hours now. Her meeting with Jayden had started at noon, and now it was nearly dinnertime. The Hufflepuff girl had brought some Muggle money with her, and departed the pub briefly to exchange the bills for a handful of Galleons and Sickles. She had returned not a half an hour later, and sat along one of the pub’s walls, sipping cherry sodas at a steady pace since then. All Jamie really wanted to do was avoid going home, because she really didn’t want to spend any more time with her mother, who was insisting that she and Jamie needed to talk. In Jamie’s opinion, there was nothing left to talk about. No amount of explanation could make it okay to choose yourself over your child. Jamie didn’t even have children, and she knew that. The anger that had been sitting in Jamie’s stomach since the day she found out had alternated between feeling burning hot and ice cold, but now it just…sat. And she was tired of the weight of it. Talking about it had helped, but only for a little while. The stupid thing was that, after it all, Jamie just wanted a hug.

Madam Macmillan’s voice rang in the back of her head, talking about how Jamie shouldn’t wish for things that weren’t possible, and the Hufflepuff sighed. She began swirling the drink around in her glass, trying to find something to do to occupy her brain. Since it was dinnertime, or thereabouts, she could order food. Or, she could just continue to drink cherry sodas and pray that she’d vanish into thin air. The pub was pretty empty, probably because it was a Sunday night in the middle of the summer holidays, and Jamie wondered if that made it more or less likely that someone would notice if she disappeared, because the more time passed, the more she was considering it as a viable option. People who vanished didn’t have to deal with selfish mothers or psychopathic fathers or a life built on lies or all of the above. That would be nice.

@hannah

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Hannah was obviously aware of the girl sipping cherry sodas back against the wall. She had been running busy today, as usual the first few weeks of summer, and hadn’t gone out to greet people in person as much as she usually did. She finally had a small breather where people weren’t asking her things left and right. She also had a few students working there for the summer and often had to answer their questions about how to do things. They seemed to be holding their own at the moment and Hannah took the opportunity to go talk to that girl. The one who Jayden had mentioned was a Hufflepuff friend of his.

The girl hadn’t eating almost all day as far as Hannah could tell. She whipped up a quick sandwich and crossed the pub to the girl, standing behind the chair across from her to set the sandwich down. ”On the house. May I join you? We badgers must stick together, no?” she said with a soft smile, though her exhaustion was clear in her voice.

@jamie

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Having not expected to be noticed, Jamie was surprised when the landlady of the pub – Jayden’s mother – came to sit at her table, a sandwich in hand. “Oh, thank you.” She said, slightly startled when Mrs. Longbottom announced that the sandwich was at no cost to Jamie. “Sure, sit down.” The Hufflepuff agreed at the older woman’s inquiry. It seemed rude to deny someone a seat, especially at their own establishment. Jamie hadn’t realized that Jayden’s mother was a Hufflepuff, and her eyebrows lifted in surprise. Everyone knew that her husband, the headmaster, was a Gryffindor, mostly because of the war stories that centered around Harry Potter and his friends, but Jamie hadn’t thought to ask what house his mother had belonged to.

Mentally, Jamie tried to work through all of the reasons why Mrs. Longbottom might have come over to see her, and settled on one as the most likely. “Do you need me to leave? I’m sorry I’ve been taking up one of your tables for so long, I really didn’t meant to be a bother.” The offer sounded half-hearted, even to Jamie’s own ears, not that it was particularly shocking. She wasn’t going to leave London until she was absolutely sure her mother wouldn’t be waiting for her at home, and that could still be a very long while. The Leaky Cauldron was probably the least dangerous place to stay after the sun went down, so Jamie wasn’t keen on parting from it.

To keep herself from saying anything else stupid, the girl took a bite from the sandwich she had been given. It was good, better than she would have expected form pub food. As she chewed and swallowed, Jamie glanced up at Mrs. Longbottom, unsure if her eyes betrayed just how much she wanted to stay.

@hannah

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Hannah smiled with relief as the girl said she could sit and did that very thing, her shoulders relaxing as she did. She saw the girls eyebrows raise at the mention of ‘badgers’ and smiled, sure that Jayden hadn’t mentioned it to her. Then she asked if she needed to leave and Hannah shook her head, taking a sip of her drink in hand. ”Oh no! That is not a problem. There are plenty of tables here,” she gestured around the room behind her. She was glad when the girl took a bite of the sandwich. Heck, she looked like she hadn’t eaten in days. Hannah tilted her head to the side, ”I am curious, however, why you’ve been hanging around here all day? I’m sure there are much more exciting things to do than sit around a pub with a bunch of old people,” she chuckled.

Hannah was intuitive, always had been. It came from being an older sister and a mother. She could tell that this girl had something right underneath the surface that wanted to break out, possibly scream out. Hannah had been in those situations before without many people there to talk with her about it. She didn’t want to let that happen to this girl.

@jamie

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Jamie used the hand that was not occupied with holding her food to rub her eyes. Being told she could stay had lifted a weight off of her shoulders, and she just needed a moment to process it before she could do much else. The question of why she was hanging around forced Jamie to take another bite of food, because she wasn’t sure if she could respond immediately without crying. She needed to compose herself, and the time it took to chew one bite of food was sufficient enough. “I don’t want to go back home.” Jamie replied brazenly when she had finished swallowing. She was hoping if she could put on a brave enough veneer, then she'd begin to feel something other than terror and anger. “My mother and I have had a…well, disagreement would be putting it lightly.” Saying that what Jamie had with her mother was a disagreement would be like saying that a hurricane was just a little breeze.

She groped for a minute for something else to say to dull the impact of a comment like that, and finally found one. “I’ve been spending a lot of my time with my siblings, so it’s really not that big of a deal.” Saying that everything was alright was beginning to physically hurt, so Jamie shut her mouth for a second. “Well, it is a big deal, but you’ve just got to grin and bear it, right?” She whispered. That was Jamie’s answer to a lot of things – ignore it and keep moving.

@hannah

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Hannah was not surprised at the girls honesty. She generally got honest answers from people because she had such a welcoming aura. She was honest, too, which always helped. Hannah stayed silent for a moment until Jamie explained a little further about the disagreement. Then she went on to say that she had been spending a lot of time with her siblings, and that she just had to grin and bear it. Hannah shook her head. ”I don’t believe in ‘grinning and bearing it’,” she leaned forward slightly as Jamie whispered and lowered her own voice to a soft, comforting and private level.


”It’s always better to try and make your situation better. Don’t ever settle,” she said with a firm nod. ”Is there anything we can help with here?” she offered. It was clear in Jamies voice that this was more than just a disagreement, but Hannah would never push for the whole story.


@jamie

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Jamie found that few people did believe in grinning and bearing it. Most of them just pretended to believe in it so that when they did it, it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Jamie took another thoughtful bite of her sandwich, listening to Mrs. Longbottom talk. “Can you tell me who I am? Because I thought I knew who Jamie Greyback was, but I’m not sure I do anymore.” Jamie sighed. “My mother told me that she had lied to me about something important to me, and it makes me wonder what else she lied about. I’m trying to be that girl, the old Jamie, but it’s like…she’s just somebody that I knew. Some days it’s easy to be her, but other days – today – I just…don’t know.” She sighed. “And the only one I know how to talk to about this stuff is my mother, but she’s not who I thought she was, either.” Jamie sniffled, and then stuffed more of the sandwich in her mouth to stop herself from exploding into waterworks. She hated this – she was having a life crisis and she was just barely an adult. Jamie hoped that this wouldn’t continue into the rest of her adulthood, because there were only so many times she could grin and bear it.

@hannah

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Hannah continued to listen once again as the girl spoke more. She had been lied to be her mother and no longer knew who she was she said. Hannah had seen that happen to people before. Not always the mother, of course, but someone they trusted betrayed them and they didn’t know how to grow from it. Hannah had seen it countless times. Heck, it happened to everyone at least once in some way, she was sure.


”You’re not the same girl you were before this, that I can assure you of. The most important thing, Jamie,” she leaned forward a little, ”is that you control what you get out of this. Don’t let this make decisions for you as to your future and who you are from day to day. That’s your choice. Always has been,” she nodded. ”I know it’s hard to see it right now, but this is going to not be as hard later on. It’ll still be a part of you, of course, but you have to decide how.”

@jamie

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She wasn’t the same girl as she was before? That didn’t make sense. No one had ever told her that before. She was supposed to stay Jamie, the one that the people who loved her knew. It had been hard enough to win their affection as the old Jamie, and new Jamie was a whole lot more dark and twisty and confused. As for control, it really would be nice if she had any say in all of this, but it had just swept her up. She couldn’t control it any more than she could control the wolf. Maybe she hadn’t adequately expressed just how big of a deal this was – it was definitely beyond normal teenager stuff, and Mrs. Longbottom probably hadn’t understood that.

“But it’s so…” Big. Infuriating. Sad. “Terrifying.” She finally decided. “My father found me once, and he could probably just as easily find me again. How do I keep that locked up?” Jamie realized what she said did nothing to convey just how enormous this whole thing was for her. She was used to having to grow up and biter her tongue, especially after the situation with Matt, but this was a challenge that put even that to shame. “He already screwed up my life enough, but apparently in a totally different way than I thought.” And now it wasn’t really about the lies, was it? It was about the truth that she still wished she could deny: she was Fenrir Greyback’s daughter. "I don't know how to make it a part of me." She declared. She didn't know how to make it a part of her without it becoming all of her. Jamie didn't do anything in moderation.

@hannah

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Terrifying, was a good word to describe all this. Hannah listened as she went on about her fear of Greyback and her not knowing how to make it a part of her. "There is danger everywhere, it will never stop trying to find you," she didn't say that in an ominous voice or anything, just as a fact. "It is the forces of good and evil, always working in opposition. But that means the only way to stop it is to work on it. Staying stagnant is the surest way to lose yourself and fall into darkness. Trust me," she briefly thought of her youngest brother, the one who had slipped into darkness himself. She knew a part of that was due to complacency and unwillingness to fight back. "You can't let the threat of danger stop you from living. I beg of you not to," she said, her eyes fixated on Jamies firmly.

"You don't know now how to make all of this darkness find a place with you, but you will. No one can tell you how to do that. But as long as the desire is there, the desire to be good, you find find a balance, safety and some peace,"s he assured her.

@jamie
(this thread exhausts me hahah)

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Jamie listened to Mrs. Longbottom speak, more than a little in awe of the woman. She knew that the world was trending towards chaos and entropy was always increasing, since it had been taught to her in one of her Muggle science classes before Hogwarts, but Jamie had never made the connection between trending towards chaos and trending towards darkness, even if they were essentially the same thing. People had to choose every day to be good, and to be kind. Jamie knew, because the days when she had forgotten to choose still haunted her memories. It was all so inspirational, and Jamie didn’t understand how someone who had lived through a war could still see the world as so good and so prone to change. Jamie was losing that optimism and she hadn’t even lost anyone important to her, as she imagined Mrs. Longbottom had.

“I just want to change what the name Greyback means to people.” Jamie said. “I don’t know if that’s noble or selfish or stupid or all three, but I want people to know that just because someone is a werewolf, they’re not a monster. Is that the same thing as wanting to be good?” Jamie honestly wasn’t sure. It was a good cause, but maybe for all the wrong reasons, which probably nullified its goodness anyways.

@hannah

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Changing what your name meant to people was a hard thing to do. Hannah's brother was trying to do it, but not in a positive way it seemed. Hannah listened as Jamie explained what she meant further. So, she wanted to change the name 'werewolf' and the name 'Greyback'. "Names are fickle things, Jamie," she said, "names will always change on a whim and stay that way for generations. Tell me this, do you know anything about the Greybacks before your father? Whether they did good? Bad? No one does, because one person changed all of that. Which means, the opposite effect is possible.... but you can't guarantee it will stay the way you want it to," she explained, realizing she was going on a bit of a tangent. "And no. It isn't the same thing to wanting to be good, but it's a start. Once the actions come out, the intention will become more pure. But I can tell," she nodded, "you want more than just to make the names of werewolves or Greybacks good. You want the world to be good, don't you?"

@jamie

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“I tried to find them.” Jamie blurted out when Mrs. Longbottom asked about the Greybacks before Fenrir. She wanted to know about her grandmother and grandfather, see if she had aunts and uncles who were good people. “I searched for them, but it’s like time erased them. Like they never existed at all.” It was like nobody even cared who they were. The same thing could happen to her father, if she was good enough. But then, like Hannah said, her children, or their children, or their children could unravel that, too. Everything she did was pointless, like moving a single grain of sand in a desert. At least what Jamie had assumed, that she wasn’t actually a good person, was correct. But she did want the world to be good, didn't she? “Of course I want a good world. I want a world where my baby sister can tell everyone her name without being afraid of what they’d say. That sounds like a good world to me.” Again, it was probably more personal of a goal than a “good” person would have, but she was trying, and she hoped Mrs. Longbottom saw that. “Do you know how to fix this?” It was worth a try to ask, even if Mrs. Longbottom was just as clueless as Jamie was.

@hannah

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Hannah wasn't the least bit surprised that the girl tried to find some information on her ancestors, possibly other relatives in the flesh too. She knew that she would do the exact same thing. There was no way she could live without knowing as much as she could about where he came from, who sired her, what they did and who they were. Hannah frowned as Jamie explained her search was in vain. "Perhaps there is someone more official we can look. I would be happy to help, if I can. I'm not surprised, however. not all families keep extensive records and i'm sure if there were any passed onto Fenrir he probably didn't care for them and they were destroyed." She wouldn't be the least be surprised if that had already happened.

When Jamie asked if she knew how to fix this, Hannah shrugged. "In all honesty I don't know details, no. I think you have to discover that for yourself. You can always come to others for advice of course, but the surest way to really grow and really make a difference is to discover it yourself. In the moment. What's the best thing for you to do as an individual."

@jamie