Let Your Clarity Define You (Georgiana)

[Deleted]

People always talked about how rainy London was, and—if this day was any indication—they hadn't been kidding. The sky was heavy and grey, and from it came a near-constant drizzle, leaving the cobblestones of Diagon Alley slick and wet. Barbara was careful to watch her step; hobbling back to the Leaky Cauldron with a twisted ankle wouldn't be good, especially since she and her husband, Art, had only been in Britain for a few days.

Barbara carried an umbrella with her, though she felt that opening it up would be more trouble than it was worth. Diagon Alley was apparently the go-to shopping street for the magical community in Britain, and the crowds confirmed it. The rain, it seemed, was no deterrent—not for the British, anyway. For the American woman, meanwhile, rain was a reminder of the struggle she had gone through with her daughter, whose Inner Eye was activated by contact with water.

Knowing that she and her husband were so close to seeing their children again was the only thing that had kept Barbara going. Coming up with a more permanent solution was the only thing that stood between them and their children. They could go back to being a family then, just as they had been years before.

That was the hope, anyway, Barbara thought, looking in the window of a shop called Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. Most of the robes she owned—including the ones she was wearing—were older, since she had spent the past few years living as a No-Maj, though most of the customers inside appeared to be school-age children who were being fitted with their uniforms. Seeing them, Barbara was reminded, once again, of her own children and her yearning to know every last detail of their lives since that December day. How many times had they walked this same street? Had they bought their school robes here, too? No, the orphanage had probably given them theirs.

Just then, in the glass of the window, Barbara caught sight of her own reflection. At first, she thought that it had been a droplet of rain that had dripped down the glass, but, when she went push a strand of hair out of her face, she was forced to accept the truth, which she wiped away with the back of her hand.

@georgiana

[Deleted]

Georgie was clutching onto her umbrella for dear life. She had pulled the collar of her raincoat up and wrapped a winter scarf around the majority of her face - which had attracted more than a few odd looks from strangers - but she really didn't want to know if the coming school year was going to be as horrible as the one previous. Getting wet was not an option. All she wanted was to get back to the Leaky Cauldron so that a chaperone from the orphanage could Apparate them back into the warm safety of the indoors.

Hurrying down Diagon Alley, Georgie paid little attention to anything other than her destination. When she stopped walking, it wasn't a conscious choice. Her feet slammed on the brakes and the rest of her body was forced to follow, or topple face first into a puddle. Georgie figured that her feet had stopped her because she was about to step into a puddle that would well deserve the name of lake, but normally she just subconsciously steered around such obstacles. She looked around, confused. Maybe someone had called her name? No, the only person in her area was a blonde woman looking into the window of Madame Malkin's. There was no way she would know the woman; the only adults she knew were Max and Louis's parents, the orphanage staff, and Hogwarts professors. Georgie was certain that this woman was none of the three. She needed to keep walking, Georgie decided, but her feet still couldn't move. She was staring, and she couldn't fathom why a woman looking into a window was so fascinatingly familiar. It was déjà vu, but Georgie didn't know where she could have seen such a thing before. It was puzzling and frustrating and Georgie wished that she could know.

@barbara

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Turning away from the window, Barbara was about to continue walking when she took notice of a young woman who stuck out like a sore thumb. Not only was her umbrella up, but the collar of her raincoat was, too. It was the scarf that covered most of her face that was the most peculiar thing about her, however, especially when it was summertime. For her Georgiana, resorting to such drastic measures had been a relatively normal thing. When the alternative had been having to put their little girl through the pain that water brought on, she and Art had had to come up with some creative solutions.

Barbara knew that her daughter had been on her mind, but she hadn't expected to hallucinate her presence. She would look again, and the young woman would be gone—or at least just standing there with her umbrella, waiting for someone, perhaps. Maybe it wouldn't even be a woman at all. It was all too uncanny, and Barbara couldn't shake the feeling that it was Georgie.

Chalking it up to jet lag, Barbara shook her head, determined not to stare at the stranger. “Lord.” Maybe she did need to go back to the Leaky Cauldron and sleep it off.

@georgiana

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The longer Georgie looked at the woman, the more it felt like her stomach was in a pool on the concrete. The child in her cried for her mama, for apple-scented hugs and sweet lullabies, but the teenager of steel that had spent the last five years of her life without parents knew that it was naïve to hope that some stranger in the street was her mother come back from the dead. There was nothing more to it than hope for something that could never be. Hope hurt more than it helped, at least for Georgie. She had hoped for too many tomorrows that never came. When the woman moved to turn, Georgie whipped her head straight forward - she didn't want to be caught looking, after all. She only hazarded a look a few moments later, when the Hufflepuff decided that the woman was most certainly not her mother. All of her memories were cloudy now, anyways. The face that she had once known like the back of her hand was nothing more than a pink blur surrounded by a blonde halo.

Georgie moved towards the woman, the only motion her frozen feet would allow. It was a half-step, barely anything, but it helped her hammering heart. She made a strangled noise in her throat, a pitiful attempt to ask the woman her name so the thought could die once and for all. Instead, Georgie just turned her nose back into her collar, hoping that the minuscule amount of space she had taken up with her shuffling step wouldn't be noticed by the stranger.

@barbara

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Barbara didn’t hear the shuffling of the young woman’s feet as she turned back towards the inn and began to walk with a hurried step. She was too lost in her own thoughts for that, and she was certain that she was really losing it. Was that what so many years without her children had done to her? She hadn’t imagined the figure—she wasn’t a Boggart or anything like that, Barbara was sure—but to think that it was her own daughter was ludicrous, and she knew it.

There were so many things that she wanted to say to Georgiana when she did see her again, not the least of which was an apology to her for having left her and Lancelot behind. She wanted to tell her how sorry she was for the pain that she and their father must have caused them both, and she wanted her to know how much she still loved her. She had never stopped loving her, and she had never stopped loving Lance, either.

Something told Barbara that telling her husband about how she had thought that she had seen their daughter while she was out wouldn’t go over well, so she vowed to keep that part of her outing to herself. She shifted her umbrella under her arm and glanced back over her shoulder at the young woman whose face was obscured by the scarf.

@georgiana

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Georgie watched as the familiar stranger began to move away from her. That was good. Distance was safe. Distance would help her clear her head, and then she wouldn’t feel so distraught about losing her mother again when the stranger obviously hadn’t been her mother to start with. She needed to get back to the orphanage, and staring at a woman at the street wasn’t going to get her there. Georgie bit her lip. If it was her mother, there were so many questions Georgie had. At the thought of that if, though, a flare of anger began to burn at Georgie’s heart, creating more heat than wearing a scarf in the middle of summer did. She needed to get over her poor, pathetic tragedy of a life and get back to living. She had people to live for, even if her parents weren’t them.

She took a step, and then another. It was easy to walk away once she got started. Georgie wondered if this was the same way her parents had disappeared; if they had thought that one step would just be one step, and then got swept up in how good the distance felt. Georgie wasn’t good at happy thoughts, evidently, but her musing was an honest one. Step by step, though, the Hufflepuff girl walked away from the stranger, maybe the same way her parents had walked away from her nearly six years ago. Now she would never know whether or not that maybe was reality.

@barbara
(the end?)