I Think I'm Losing My Mind Now (Georgiana)

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

As exciting as the news of the Triwizard Tournament was, it really only seemed to be exciting for everyone else. Maxima Greyback was already tired of listening to her classmates fawn over the foreign arrivals and their unfamiliar accents after her first bite of food. Jamie would probably enter the Tournament, she guessed, but there wasn't much for her to do except wait for the lucky students to be chosen from each of the three schools—not that being put in mortal danger for the sake of a trophy sounded particularly wonderful to Max.

There were more pressing issues at hand, including the whereabouts of her best friend. Max hadn't seen Georgiana on the Hogwarts Express, nor had she seen her in the carriages up to the school. As the students got up from their tables following the Start-of-Term Feast, Maxima maneuvered her way through Hogwarts and visiting students alike to get to the Hufflepuffs, who were making their way out of the Great Hall from their own table.

“Georgie!” Max grabbed the blonde by the forearm and pulled her aside, out of the way of a group of Beauxbatons students who were speaking in rapid French. “I thought that maybe you'd missed the train!” It wasn't like Georgie not to sit with her; she could have told her where she was, at least. She didn't bother telling Georgiana that, in her absence, she had spent the journey on the Hogwarts Express in the company of her cat and a group of incoming first-years.

Sometimes, it was really difficult to have a best friend who spent her life outside of school at an orphanage. Maxima was hardly clingy, but it wasn't as though she had seen her best friend very much at all over the summer. The last time they had seen each other, Georgie had gotten the bright idea to pour tea all over her arm, despite knowing that it would cause her to have visions.

“Where were you?!”

@georgiana

[Deleted]

Georgie still felt like her eyes were puffy and her cheeks were flushed from all the crying that she had done on the train, but they weren’t. She had gone to the bathroom almost as soon as they had gotten into the Great Hall to check, and the face starting back at her was normal. Perhaps a little more tired than the norm, but still in the normal range. Having the extra time to fade into the background during dinner was nice. She hadn’t been much interested in the foreign arrivals – the only difference that they made was that now Georgie wouldn’t be the only one with a weird accent. She didn’t need to make friends with people two years her senior, and she already had a boyfriend (though she still wasn't sure she was ready to be calling him that), so for all intents and purposes, all the foreigners were was extra bodies.

The Hufflepuff turned when she felt a hand on her arm and heard her name called. She was pulled aside from the group of students who were leaving, and turned to see Max next to her. Shoot. She had forgotten all about Max in the emotional haze that was the train ride, and then afterwards she had been so focused on making sure she didn’t look like she had just been crying to spare her friend more than a passing thought. At Max’s accusatory question, Georgie flinched. There was no good answer to this. “I was with Louis.” She said, deciding that coming out and saying it would be the best course of action. “I had a lot of things that I wanted to tell him, and now I have to tell you, too.” Max probably wouldn’t appreciate being the second to know, but she also hadn’t been the one that had seen her through her emotional breakdown on the train, so Georgie wasn’t expecting it to be that big of a thing.

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

Immediately, Georgiana's reaction was to flinch. Maxima thought for a moment that perhaps she had had some condensation or something her hand; that wasn't Georgie's normal reaction to her, aside from when she was getting a vision. It wasn't a Seer thing this time, Max realized, when Georgie gave her answer: She had been with Louis.

“Oh,” Max muttered. Louis was her friend, too. She wasn't anywhere near as close to him as she was to Georgiana, but there weren't many people whom Maxima could call her “friends”, and she didn't dislike Louis Weasley. Maybe they just hadn't seen her, or they had thought that she had been sitting with Jamie. Georgie wouldn't have forgotten about her.

Max listened as Georgie explained that she had had “a lot of things” to tell him. “And now I have to tell you, too.”

The way she said it, it didn't sound like good news. Maxima glanced at the students who were leaving the Great Hall and then looked warily back at her best friend. “…What's going on?”

@georgiana

[Deleted]

Max didn’t seem pleased with Georgie’s answer, but the Hufflepuff brushed it off. What was done was done, and she wasn’t going to regret the time she had spent with Louis. That was the only way she was anywhere near calm enough to consider telling Max everything that had happened. She took a deep breath, and then decided to put a disclaimer before her story. “I’m going to sound really calm about this, but that’s only because I’ve already had my emotional collapse for today, and I don’t want to start crying again.” Georgie licked her lips, took another steeling breath, and then continued. “Max, my parents are alive.” That was all there was to say about that, wasn’t it? She had already aired all of her insecurities with Louis, and rehashing them wasn’t going to help anyone, least of all Georgie with her ever-increasing fragile emotional state. The Hufflepuff blinked up at her Slytherin friend, still focusing on controlling her breaths, making them deep and slow so she wouldn’t have a chance to freak out again.

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

Georgie prefaced what she said by telling her that she had already suffered her “emotional collapse” for the day. Max wished that she would just get on with whatever she had to tell her. If it was really as important as Georgie had made it out to be, it couldn't wait.

As soon as Georgiana had told her, however, Max stared. Her parents weren't actually dead. They were alive. “They're… alive? Since when?” How could they be alive?! Georgie had been in the orphanage for as long as she had known her!

Taking in a breath, Max tried to imagine how Georgie must have felt. She had always known that Fenrir Greyback was somewhere out there, but his death would have been welcome to her. He was a murderer and hadn't done anything to raise her. Georgie had known her parents, though; for Max, it would have been as though her mother and Mike had suddenly vanished.

It was a good thing that Georgiana's parents were alive, she thought for a moment, before remembering that they were American and would probably want to bring their children back to their home country with them, if they hadn't been tortured to the point of insanity or anything. She couldn't lose Georgie.

@georgiana

[Deleted]

The stare that Max was giving Georgie was a little unnerving. She knew it was a lot to take in, but still, Georgie felt like she had done something wrong by making the announcement because of the way Max was staring. When her friend expressed her disbelief at the situation, Georgie just nodded. “Yeah, they’re alive.” She repeated, as if saying it enough would somehow make it less bizarre. “Turns out they never were dead.” Obviously, Georgie realized – not even magic could bring people back from the dead. “They left in the middle of the night because they thought it would keep me and Lance safe from some bad guys that they ran into when they were working in law enforcement.” Georgie tried to keep her voice from wavering or cracking – she really didn’t want to cry again. “My mama…In the middle of August, she just appeared out of nowhere, and…” She couldn’t say anything beyond that. There wasn’t anything left to say, really, other than that this didn’t change anything. “I’m still legally a ward of the orphanage, since my parents are still considered deceased. They don’t exist in many legal senses.” Georgie said with a sad laugh. Her parents were ghosts, for all intents and purposes. “I told them that I wouldn’t go back to America. I wouldn’t want to leave Louis…or you.”

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