What's Left of My Heart's Still Made of Gold (Jamie)

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

Unless something strange had happened with the scoring, Maxima Greyback knew that she didn't need a feast to tell her that Elias hadn't won the Triwizard Tournament. She had since washed the Durmstrang-red paint from her face, though it had taken enough scrubbing that her cheeks had been made rosier than usual in the process of trying to get it all off before the start of the feast. Last she had checked the time, she still had about an hour remaining until then, enough time to stop by the Hufflepuff Common Room and hope that Georgie was free. (If Jamie was anywhere, she guessed that she was one of two places. Either she was in her common room, or she was with either Anna or Elias, and Maria probably wasn't too far behind the latter.)

Not wanting a repeat dousing in vinegar, Max flagged down the first person she recognized as a Hufflepuff who was walking in her direction. “Sorry,” she said quickly, not wanting to waste their time, “but have you seen—”

She turned her head when she noticed another person, also walking in the direction of the dungeons. “Jamie!”

Walking at a quicker pace to reach her half-sister that much sooner, Max stopped a few feet short so that they wouldn't accidentally collide. “Is Elias still in the Hospital Wing, do you know?” she wondered, knowing that all three Champions had been taken there to be patched up. Jamie must have gone up to see him, she assumed, though Max didn't think that his injuries had been as bad this time as they had been following the maze.

@jamie

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Jamie hadn’t particularly enjoyed watching the third task. It was rather repetitive, watching the Champions run from their cages and back again. She knew the various creatures had been meant to collide with the Champions and keep the game interesting, but if she was honest, the altercations weren’t all that scary. She didn’t take Care of Magical Creatures, so she couldn’t judge how dangerous the creatures were, but she knew that the Tournament creators wouldn’t allow anything too dangerous, since they were so focused on keeping all of the Champions alive this time around. She hadn’t really paid much attention to the task, but she had been pleasantly surprised by how well Elias had done – it was the best he had performed, as far as she was concerned. Jamie was making her way back to the common room, contemplating asking Liona to attend the feast with her. It was really just dinner, but since the Triwizard Tournament winner would be announced, Jamie figured it was special. She was still thinking about it, when she heard her name called. Jamie turned to see the source of the voice, and smiled when she saw her younger sister there. “Hey, Max.” She responded happily. At the question about Elias, Jamie shrugged her shoulders. “Did you see him drink the potion when he got back to his cage? I think those fixed them up.” All of the Champions had been given potions when they had had an altercation with a creature, presumably so they could continue the task. Jamie was sure it wasn’t a replacement for actual medical care, but she would hazard a guess that their brother required only minimal medical care and was thus out of the hospital wing.

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

“Hey, Max,” Jamie greeted her. In response to her question about Elias, though, she merely shrugged. “Did you see him drink the potion when he got back to his cage?” she asked. “I think those fixed them up.” So she didn’t know anything more, either, it sounded like. At least they had the sense to do that—for the final task, of course—instead of keeping the Champions in the Hospital Wing for any extended period when it really wasn’t their fault that they were injured, anyway.

Nodding to what Jamie had said about Elias, Max thought for a moment. “Yeah, true,” she said, solely to keep the subject of their half-brother from hanging. “I, uh, don’t want to bother you if you’re on your way somewhere or something,” she considered—unless Jamie had been walking towards the Slytherin dungeons to find her, which was a possibility—“but I actually wanted—have been wanting?—to talk to you… about… something…”

Max knew as soon as she had spoken that she could have and should have tried to find a better way to word what she had said. Bringing it up to Odette had been just as awkward, but at least explaining it to Jamie would make it easier to explain it to more people—Georgie, for one, still needed to know, and she hadn’t really explained it all to her mother or Mike, either. At least writing it out gave her the ability to edit what she was going to say so that she didn’t sound out of her mind.

She was sure that it had reached the Hufflepuff Common Room in some way already, though Jamie had ignored it, probably, since she had N.E.W.T. revision. Why, then, did it feel to Max as though it was some huge secret that she was about to spill? In the silence, she crossed her fingers that Jamie would ask her what it was, just so she wouldn’t have to blurt it out first.

@jamie

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Jamie nodded when Max agreed with her logic about Elias and his stay (or lack thereof) in the hospital wing. It appeared that their half-brother had been meant more as a conversation starter and a segue into something else, because Max said that she didn’t want to bother Jamie, et cetera et cetera, but she wanted to talk to her about something. Considering Jamie’s plans had only been to make more plans, she wasn’t too fussed by abandoning her idea of asking Liona to the feast. Especially with all that had been going on lately, Jamie had been meaning to catch up with Max. “Is… everything okay?” Jamie asked cautiously, wanting to mentally prepare herself if this was going to be a talk that related to Max’s previous suicide attempt in October. It would make sense if she was having those kinds of thoughts again, given all of the crap their family had gone through between Adrian leaving and Odette losing her baby, but being able to steel herself even a little bit for that conversation would help Jamie immensely. She couldn’t be the cool, collected big sister figure if she felt like she was on the verge of tears the entire time.

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

“Is… everything okay?”

Scaring Jamie by saying that everything wasn't okay would have been cruel of her, Max decided, even though saying that everything was okay didn't sound particularly accurate, either. With that in mind, she gave a halfhearted nod. “Yeah,” she answered her. “I mean…” Things could have been better, she supposed, but they weren't the worst that she had ever experienced; she just needed to tell Jamie that she was even more abnormal than she had thought she was before.

“I know I'm going to sound mad, and I've already told Odette, but… I can heal people, Jamie.” Every time she thought about it, it sounded like she was admitting to having some sort of sixth sense. “I healed a first-year just by touching his leg—without a spell or anything.”

@jamie

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Jamie relaxed marginally when Max said that everything was okay, but that relaxation was short lived when her sister started another sentence, only to trail off. It sounded like she was about to quantify her okay-ness, and to Jamie, that meant that nothing good was coming. She closed her eyes for a moment, and took a deep breath, telling herself that no matter what was happening, she could handle it, and she could help Max through it.

The Slytherin announced that she could heal people, and the Hufflepuff’s eyes snapped open. Why was that such a bad thing? Max had mentioned the idea of wanting to be a healer before, so the fact that she could do what she wanted sounded like a good thing, not a bad one. When Max said that she had healed someone without a spell, though, Jamie’s mouth formed into an o shape. That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it? It was an awful thought, but for a moment, Jamie was jealous. Her sister could heal people, and all that Jamie could do was turn into a rampaging murder beast once a month. “That’s… interesting.” Jamie said in lieu of any real response. Her mother had always told her that if she couldn’t say anything nice she shouldn’t say anything at all, and since no answer wasn’t an option at the moment, a short, meaningless answer was the best Jamie could do.

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

“That's… interesting.”

The words that came out of Jamie's mouth weren't at all what Max had expected her to say, especially after Odette had been so full of questions. She hadn't wanted pity, but she felt the slightest bit hurt—angry, even—that that was all Jamie had had to say about it.

“Well, what were you expecting?” Max asked in reply, both confused and accusatory. It wasn't like Jamie to be so dismissive. “For me to say that I want to die again?” It was harsh, but it seemed to be what Jamie's response had suggested. Somehow, her revealing something that had been on her mind since it had happened—something that she hadn't even told Georgie about—wasn't interesting enough or worth enough of Jamie's time for her to consider that maybe there was a reason why she had stopped her and said that she wanted to talk.

“I did something that isn't normal,” Max reminded, “and it scared me, and I thought that my half-sister might want to know that I'm that much more of a freak.” Healing people wasn't a bad ability, if it was something that even would happen again, but she hadn't known that she could do it like that.

@jamie

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Jamie pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to force herself to breathe so she didn’t react to her sister’s accusation in pure anger. “I don’t know what I was expecting, Max.” Jamie said with a sigh. She felt like everything that had been stressing her out was now building up in one big, horrible tidal wave that was waiting to drown her. “I’m just… stressed, okay?” Jamie wasn’t going to admit to her sister that she still didn’t know where she was going to live after graduation, because she didn’t want to intrude on Max’s family and she didn’t want to accept anyone’s charity. She didn’t want to admit that no matter how much she studied for her N.E.W.T.s, she was still terrified of failing, and she didn’t want admit that even though her talks with the Harpies were becoming serious, she still worried she would be jobless. At the moment, Jamie considered herself homeless and jobless, with the real world hanging over her like a huge dark cloud. For someone who considered herself good at giving advice and help, Jamie was remarkably bad at receiving it.

“If you’re a freak, at least you’re a freak that can do some good.” Jamie ground out. She was not in the mood to submit to Max’s self-pity when she was ignoring the potential she had to change the world for the better. Jamie had already had to struggle through that crucible on her own – it was up to Max to figure out if she wanted to keep moping or figure out how to turn this into something positive.

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

Max watched Jamie cautiously and waited for her to say something else. She didn't want to blow up in her face; she'd already burnt enough bridges, it felt like, and half the time she wasn't even aware of them until well after the fact.

“I don’t know what I was expecting, Max,” Jamie sighed back in response. “I’m just… stressed, okay?”

Maybe she wasn't the best person to be offering advice, Max thought to herself, but she could be supportive, at least, if that was what Jamie needed. N.E.W.T.s were supposed to be brutal, from what she had heard, and she wasn't looking forward to them. Jamie, meanwhile, had them approaching before too much longer.

Jamie was always the happy one; she had the answers, so hearing her sound so pessimistic was an unusual change. “If you’re a freak,” she said, “at least you’re a freak that can do some good.”

After Jamie's having mentioned that she was stressed, Max tried not to take it to heart. It was a touch of the positivity that she was used to hearing from the Hufflepuff, forcing her to think about the good side of what she could do.

“If this is because of werewolf stuff,” Max began, her tone nearly normal, “I don't know what to say.” She couldn't pretend that she knew what it was like; Jamie would chew her out for it. “But we're both stressed,” she considered plainly, “and it isn't like you to be stressed.” At least, Jamie wasn't the type to admit to feeling stressed. “And I don't even know what I'm trying to say, but if you want to talk… Or punch me…” Max breathed out. “I'm here.”

@jamie

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Jamie just sighed when Max said that if this was about werewolf stuff then she didn’t know what to say. How had her sister missed that it was about her? Jamie was not a preacher, and she didn’t know what to say to make someone understand what she meant, but it seemed like Max was purposefully misinterpreting her or diverting the conversation so that she didn’t have to talk about her own problems. Everything in Jamie’s life could be eventually traced back to werewolf stuff, including Max herself, so the pair of words was essentially meaningless. “I’ve never been on the cusp of having to live on my own for the first time in my life before.” She pointed out. A lot of seventh years were doing things that weren’t like them in a last-ditch attempt to hold onto their own youth. Being stressed was perhaps the least of all the evils. Jamie rolled her eyes at Max. “I’m not going to punch you.” Punching rarely did anyone any good in the end. And Jamie had other people to talk to who better understood her worries and fears than her younger sister did – her peers and the people who had graduated before her, who knew how terrifying it was to have adulthood staring you in the face.

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

“I’ve never been on the cusp of having to live on my own for the first time in my life before,” Jamie shared. It was so far away for Max, on the other hand, that she hadn't given her own departure from school much thought. She didn't think that she would find it easy to live completely on her own, but she wasn't sure if she could say that for certain. She had overheard plenty of older students talking about how different they thought it would be to enter the “real world” beyond the castle, but they all talked about it as though it was the end of everything.

Getting punched by Jamie clearly wasn't still on the table, as she unequivocally said that she wasn't going to punch her and rolled her eyes at the thought.

“It's not like I wouldn't be able to heal your knuckles after,” Max considered, giving Jamie a small smile as she tried to figure out what she could say to help. It wasn't the same as helping Quinn, she realized, or even Georgie. There were concrete factors there, and they were the same age—not two years apart.

She sighed, thinking back on what Jamie had told her. “How did you feel when you knew that you were going to Hogwarts for the first time?” she asked. Not having been seventeen and almost finished with school for good, it was the closest parallel that Max could draw. Although she didn't want to jump to conclusions, Max felt it safe to add, “You were nervous, weren't you?” Anyone who claimed that they weren't worried about a thing when they first arrived at Hogwarts had to be lying, making the question more rhetorical than not.

“It's like that, sort of…” Wasn't it? “Only… in reverse?” Jamie was seventeen now, and she knew the people who had been on the Hogwarts Express with her and into which House she had been Sorted, but they were all of those same people who were about to leave Hogwarts.

About midway through her thought process about how going to school paralleled leaving it, Max realized that it probably was about “werewolf stuff”, as she had called it. Jamie had been able to get Wolfsbane Potion without hassle for every full moon. Outside of Hogwarts, it would be difficult to come by. Max clenched her jaw briefly, wishing that she could have slammed her head into the wall, instead. It wasn't so much about leaving the safety of Hogwarts itself as it was everything that had been provided for her.

“Wolfsbane Potion… Right?” she asked quietly. “You'll be able to get it once you've left, won't you? And your mum, and—I'm sorry, I…” Jamie probably did want to punch her for the reminders now, if she truthfully hadn't wanted to before. “I forgot.”

@jamie

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Jamie sighed a little, wondering how someone who was in a house that valued cunning could be so thick sometimes. “It’s not my knuckles I’m worried about.” Jamie said – she had already broken her hand for Max once, since she had punched a wall the night after her sister had tried to kill herself. The implication in her words that it was her sister she cared for. Hurting Max was unimaginable, especially as a stress-reliever – if anything, punching her sister was going to make Jamie feel worse, because the Hufflepuff would make herself sick with worry.

Jamie shook her head when Max asked how she had felt when she had first gone to Hogwarts. “I didn’t know anyone or anything, and even though I was nervous, it was a clean slate. I wasn’t trying to make myself live up to anything, because I didn’t know there was anything to live up to.” Jamie’s desperation to become something bigger and better had developed the more she had learned about her father and his history, and then again when she had discovered her siblings, because she wasn’t just working for her own sake, but for the sake of the others who shared her family name. “Now I am… very aware of the expectations for me and my life.” She was aware that there were still people – and would probably always be people – who discriminated against werewolves. She was aware that there were people that would disagree with her decision to keep the Greyback name instead of letting it be turned to dust by the passage of time. She was aware that there would always be someone who wanted her to fail, for one reason or another. It seemed like there were always a hundred different things to think about, no matter how hard she tried to quiet her mind and just be.

“St. Mungo’s has a program for Wolfsbane retrieval, but the clinic is only open at certain times and I’ll be working, and…” Jamie sighed. The Mungo’s Wolfsbane initiative was certainly going to be helpful in terms of keeping her from going bankrupt by purchasing a potion that was basically a necessity for her, but it wasn’t going to be as easy as making a detour on her way back to the dormitory to pick up the potion from the hospital wing. It was just another thing on a long list of things that Jamie was hoping she’d figure out when the time came.

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[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

When she had first started at Hogwarts, Jamie said, “I didn’t know anyone or anything, and even though I was nervous, it was a clean slate. I wasn’t trying to make myself live up to anything, because I didn’t know there was anything to live up to.” She hadn’t known about the history—or burden, if that was a better way of putting it—that came with the Greyback name or that she was one of a murderer’s multiple illegitimate children, in other words. “Now I am… very aware of the expectations for me and my life.”

Some of those expectations were pressures that Jamie put on herself, Max knew, but she wondered how much of it had come from the press that were reporting on Elias every day. They had wanted to see if he was at all like his father; that much was clear, and it was a constant reminder that Fenrir Greyback wasn’t just another name or the “absent sperm donor”-type narrative that made it easier to for Max accept that half of her had come from him, instead of spending every moment thinking about all of what he’d done.

The way Max saw it, she was already messed up and didn’t need to get worse, but she didn’t think that Jamie would ever fall into the trap of becoming like Fenrir. Forget her having offered to let Jamie punch her and Jamie’s saying no; Fenrir wouldn’t have thought twice about doing as much harm as he could as soon as he could do it. He was intentionally a horrible monster, and just being a werewolf didn’t make Jamie like him in the slightest.

If it was the media that was making Jamie think the way she was, Max wasn’t going to take it, thinking back to her earlier conversation with Zaire. The Daily Prophet didn’t want to lose their subscribers, and the Ministry would keep doing anything they could to make themselves look favorable. “If anyone tries to tell you that you can’t do something because you’re a werewolf…” Max warned, leaving it at that. The more subtle forms of discrimination—the microaggressions—maybe she couldn’t control those, but anyone who tried to mess with a seventeen-year-old girl for something she couldn’t control was going to have to face her younger sister, too.

“St. Mungo’s has a program for Wolfsbane retrieval, but the clinic is only open at certain times and I’ll be working, and…”

”And can’t someone else get it for you? They can’t expect every werewolf in Britain to be available at the same time each month, can they?” Max asked, frustrated for Jamie’s sake. “Doesn’t that… imply that all werewolves are on the dole?”

@jamie

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Jamie sighed again as her sister said something half-baked about people telling her she couldn’t do things because she was a werewolf. Jamie already knew how to handle that sort of thing – she had been handling it since she was eleven and had made her debut into the magical world as Fenrir’s daughter. She didn’t need anyone to try to protect her from anyone with anti-werewolf sentiments, let alone her younger sister. It wasn’t like there were that many people who disliked werewolves, right…? Besides, Jamie had always been good about turning the other cheek. That was what being in Hufflepuff was about, at least for her. Kindness even in the face of adversity was the best kind of kindness that Jamie could imagine.

“I don’t know, Max.” Jamie said when her sister began to ask questions about the Wolfsbane distribution program. She had a lot on her mind, and trying to think that far ahead just wasn’t in the cards for her. She’d be able to keep using Hogwarts’s supply until she graduated, which meant it would be the June full moon when she had to worry about acquiring the potion herself. “They’re doing me a service.” Jamie reminded her sister. Wolfsbane was expensive, and the hospital was willing to give it for free for the greater good of society. Complaining that she was getting an expensive good for free just because it wasn’t at her preferred time seemed markedly ungrateful to Jamie. “As far as I know, werewolves are still allowed to forego the use of Wolfsbane as long as they don’t put others in danger.” It wasn’t like every werewolf had to make a report of every shift they made – if Muggles started dying in alarming synchronicity with the moon cycle then Jamie was sure there would be an investigation, but she wasn’t a prisoner. “And they can still buy it privately, if they choose.” Jamie just wasn’t in a position financially where she was comfortable making that sort of purchase for herself, especially since she didn’t know the reputations of any private dealers. St. Mungo’s was at least guaranteed to be safe – and if it wasn’t, then there would be records of her pickup, which meant she could litigate, though Jamie hoped that never, ever happened. “Let me concern myself with this, okay?” Max probing was just making Jamie aware of how much research she still had to do about everything, and she would rather not spend the rest of her night stressing out about it.

maxima ruqayyah greyback

[maxima ruqayyah greyback]

Jamie, who was less concerned about the underlying messages that the program St. Mungo's offered might have been sending, said that she didn't know; they were offering her a service, and so she was going to take it.

“As far as I know, werewolves are still allowed to forgo the use of Wolfsbane as long as they don’t put others in danger,” she explained, though Max had to wonder why anyone would want to go without it if they had the choice. “And they can still buy it privately, if they choose.” Sure, they could buy it, but…

“Let me concern myself with this, okay?”

“I'm sorry I don't understand, alright?” Max hadn't wanted Jamie to be angry with her. She didn't want Jamie to worry about how the world perceived her or about how she was going to get her Wolfsbane Potion. If she had to, she would send her mother a letter to ask if there was any way that she could be the one to pick up the potion from the hospital on Jamie's behalf if she had a scheduling conflict and couldn't do it. “I don't want you to drive yourself mad because of what you think people are going to think about you.” That was all. That was it. That was everything that she wanted to get across in one sentence.“Because I know that you know who you are, and you're not alone.” To keep from choking up, she was forced to lower her voice.

“I know I'm awful at helping, but I'm not trying to push people away. I haven't talked to Georgie in forever, and I know that I won't see you much after you leave, and Elias is going back home…” There was Quinn, and there were maybe a few other people who could keep her company, but how long would it be before she drove them away from her, too? Max sighed. “I don't want us to be angry, Jamie. I-If you don't want me to help you sort this out, I understand. I-I'm not a werewolf. I don't know what it's like.

“But I'm your sister. And we've only got a few weeks left together…” She couldn't end the year in anger.

@jamie