The Coffin Is Moving [Georgie]

[Deleted]

@georgiana

There was something about the couches in the Hufflepuff common room that Lance liked. When he was a first year, they had been the largest couches he had seen since home. Home being South Carolina still at that point, because he had convinced himself that Art and Barb were playing an elaborate prank or were on a secret mission for work. He knew better than that now, but his eleven year-old self was still hopeful. That was a lie. Upon finding out they were still alive six months ago, he felt a little bit of that hope emerge once again. But now…now he could care less. Georgie had told him to take his feelings and turn them into his motivation to move on, and so far it was working extremely well. If there were letters from their mother, Georgie took care of them. And aside from that, all had been well. All his worries were gone for the time being, and he could focus on wrapping up the school year before going back to the orphanage for the summer. That would be the hardest part of this all, because he knew Barb would try and get them out of there, or at the very least, try and visit them from time to time. It was hard to explain to other people how he felt about her. The last thing he wanted to do was look selfish in front of the other orphans; the ones who had absolutely no one to go to. Lance was supposed to be their role model, and whining and complaining about having a parent when the rest had nothing…that didn’t sit well with him.

These were the little things that he wondered about on a daily basis, even though he knew he didn’t have to anymore. He had ideas of what would fix all of it, but from the way he had interacted with Barb the last time they had talked, and then the attached letter he sent, probably burned any remaining bridges they had. At least they had in his opinion. Turning around now and begging to be her child again wouldn’t be him, and he didn’t want that in the slightest. She needed to understand that what she did was wrong and that not being able to reach him now was the consequence. It made perfect sense in his head.

[Deleted]

Georgie didn’t know how she was going to break the news to Lance. At breakfast that morning, she had received a letter from her mother. Georgie hadn’t had time to read it until after lunch, and its contents had shocked her. Her mother was leaving – going back to America to care for her ailing parents. Georgie was mad about that for a lot of different reasons, starting with the fact that her mother’s parents had refused to take her and Lance in and let them remain in America. Her mother was choosing her parents over her children, and to Georgie, that just seemed wrong. She also hated that her mother hadn’t sent a similar letter to Lance – something about him not reading it. Which meant that Georgie was responsible for telling her brother that their mother had left them… Again. And if she was mad, Georgie was certain her brother was going to be furious – or apathetic. One of the two. She was still trying to figure out what to tell him, the letter clutched in her clenched fist, when she entered the Hufflepuff common room.

Of course, Lance just had to be there. There were some days when Georgie actively went looking for her brother and couldn’t find him anywhere, and the one time she wanted to avoid him, to give herself more time to think, he happened to be right on her path. Georgie wasn’t sure which would be worse – faking a smile or looking like she was about to deliver Lance a death sentence, so she just schooled her face into something she hoped resembled neutrality. “Hey, Lance.” Georgie said, surprised by how shaky her voice was. She was angry about this, of course, but judging only by the tone of her voice, one might think that she was... sad. Or disappointed. Georgie made her way over to the couch to sit next to her brother, crumpling the letter into a ball so that he couldn’t see it. “There’s something I need to tell you.” Wow, this really was sounding like a death sentence. Georgie didn’t want to worry her brother any more than she probably already had, so she decided to just come right out and say it. “Mama moved back to America.” Georgie closed her eyes, but didn’t look away from her brother, not sure what he was going to say or if he was going to shoot the messenger.

lancelot ray linley

[Deleted]

@georgiana

Lost in his thoughts, the only thing that really mattered was the comfort of the couch. They weren’t necessarily a safety blanket for him, but they helped because they were extremely relaxing. He had all sorts of news broken to him while he was crashed in one of them. It made it all easier when he was already sitting down. Though having to find a seat certainly added to the dramatic flair when it came to it. So Georgie entering the common room and making a beeline for him was made all the more easy with him already sunk a few inches into the cushions. He probably wouldn’t be able to get out even if he tried, so he was trapped through whatever his sister was about to spill on him. As she sat down next to him, Lance turned his head, prepared for the worst. And of course it was something he had always thought was a possibility but never actually expected to happen. At least not this soon. He looked away from Georgie as he tried to process her words again. Barb was going back to America. Taking a deep breath, he let it out after a few seconds.

“She sent a letter?” Lance finally asked. That was obvious. She wouldn’t suddenly show up at the castle crying to them that she was going back. Or would she? It sounded Barb-like. If that was the case, he was thankful he hadn’t been there to witness it. “Abandoned again, huh? It hurts more than I expected it too.” For a split-second, he wished that she hadn’t left them again. He knew that she was still their mother, as much as he hated to admit that, and while there was no love lost between them at this point, that didn’t change the fact that she apparently had no problem packing up and leaving them at the drop of a hat. Was it because of him? Was it Art’s death and wanting to be closer to family? But that meant that he and Georgie weren’t family, not anymore. While he was fine with losing that privilege, his sister didn’t deserve it too. That was just cruel on Barb’s part. “What now?” Lance asked as he looked back at Georgie.

#LanceFor100

[Deleted]

Georgie nodded, face stony, when Lance asked if their mother had sent a letter. She was trying not to harp on the fact that their mother had turned their worlds upside down again over a letter, but she couldn’t. That stung. Then again, their mother had done a lot of other things over letter, too, so maybe she thought it was socially acceptable. Hell, maybe it was, in America. It wasn’t like she or Lance had ever received much post when they were children, but maybe it was the way of their homeland to do ridiculously important things over scraps of paper. Georgie nodded when her brother asked if they were abandoned again, trying to ignore the stinging sensation in the back of her eyes when he said that it hurt more than he had expected it to. “Yeah.” Georgie agreed, sounding more choked than she liked. She didn’t want to start crying, because then Lance would feel like he had to comfort her, and then he couldn’t feel what he needed to feel. That had worked once when they were younger, but Georgie liked to think that she was old enough now to manage her own emotions, without needing her older brother to protect her.

Lance asked what happened now, and Georgie was relieved that she had at least a little good news to give. “She said that she leased an apartment for us, under your name. So we don’t have to go back to the orphanage this summer.” The younger Linley responded. “We’re lucky that you reached your age of majority already, or it would be more complicated.” Technically they could still have the apartment under their mother’s name, but Georgie thought that probably was borderline illegal. “And she opened a Gringotts account for us to share. Spending money and such.” There wasn’t much in the account, but not much was better than nothing. Their mother had made it sound like she would still be working in addition to caring for their grandparents, too, so unlike their other funds, these were replacing themselves, albeit at a lethargic speed. “Other than that, though…” Georgie trailed off. It was just the two of them before, and it would be the two of them again. It surprised Georgie that the revelation was a relief, rather than a burden. She know how to survive when it was just her and Lance – it would be easy to go back to that.

lancelot ray linley

[Deleted]

@georgiana

Lance knew the answer about the letter before his sister answered. After asking, he realized that there wouldn’t be any other way to do it. Confronting them and telling them face to face was too hard for Barb to do; that’s why it was so easy to leave them behind the first time. When Georgie answered, Lance clenched his jaw. It was suffocating, knowing that their own mother would rather run off and send a letter to tell them about it. She had never once asked him what he wanted her to do. The easy answer was to be a family again, and while Lance knew that would be hard for him to overcome at the time, that seemed like a lot better of a result from what he was getting now. He had heard about no-majs doing this kind of thing before. People dumping their significant others over text or email instead of toughing it out in person. There was a special place in hell for someone that couldn’t deal with confrontation like that. If there was resolve to get it down and over with, then doing it in person would be easy for even the most difficult situations. Barb just proved that she didn’t care about them and that her words were meaningless. Apparently he had been right all along. That didn’t make it any easier to process.

The next part he didn’t expect. They had an apartment and an account at Gringotts. Barb did that. For them. There had to be a trick to it right? Some kind of catch? Unless this was her way of saying sorry. It was relatively materialistic, but at least it was something. He still wanted a formal apology for everything. The one he had been given after Art died…that wasn’t enough. And now with this additional walk out, Lance believed they were owed something aside from an apartment and some money. That would only get them so far, and didn’t really solve any problems. “I guess we are lucky,” he repeated. Things could certainly worse, but they could also be a whole lot better too.

Not going back to the orphanage was going to be difficult. That and Hogwarts and had become their home. Lance knew that it was going to have to come to an end after the next school year anyways, but now it was just a few months away. “So will finally have a home,” he said. “A real one.” Georgie had stopped talking, and Lance wasn’t sure what else to add. It was strange. He knew that they were probably both thinking the same thing. “How are you holding up?” Lance finally asked, breaking the silence.

[Deleted]

Georgie couldn’t tell whether Lance’s voice actually was hollow when he repeated that they were lucky, or if she was just projecting her own uncertainty and emotional wariness onto her brother. Honestly, it was a little bit of both. She had liked having her parents back, however briefly, but at this point, having no parents was better than having the emotional whiplash of having no parents and then having both parents and then only having one parent and then going back to no parents again. Not having to worry about her mother and when she would waltz back into their life was a relief, as Georgie kept trying to remind herself. Having the money and the apartment was going to make things better, but Georgie wondered if it was going to make things even more confusing. She wanted to have a home, and at least the orphanage had been that, even if it wasn’t a typical home. Would she and Lance be able to make any place a home when they were only planning on living in it three months of the year? At least it meant that she could leave the castle for Christmas, however small of a comfort that was. Lance seemed to be having the same thoughts as she was about homes, so Georgie just nodded when he said that they’d finally have a real home, whatever that meant. For Georgie, home was becoming less about places, and more about the people she shared them with.

Then came the question Georgie had been dreading: how she was, as Lance put it, “holding up”. “I’m just tired, Lance.” Tired of always wondering what was next and who would leave and why. It would be so much easier to be angry, but Georgie had already been angry, and she didn’t dare show Lance the depths of her sadness. It wasn’t his responsibility to fix her. It wasn’t anyone’s but her own, and Georgie was really trying to make that the truth. “I guess you knew all along that this was going to happen, huh?” All the times she had pressed him to be more optimistic had resulted in this – and Lance had seen through the masks and into the truth.

lancelot ray linley

[Deleted]

@georgiana

Lance sighed, hoping that it would feel like the weight of all of this would be lifted off of his shoulders, but it didn’t. Having an apartment and money; both of which they would need to survive over the summer, was nice, but that added so many other things on top. Food and living expenses came first, obviously, but there were other things too. Like furniture? Was the place fully furnished? Or would they have to weigh the options of either living on peanut butter sandwiches and noodles, or owning furniture and beds? He had no idea how to deal with an apartment, which he had always figured would be explained by the folks at the orphanage when it came time for him to move out and get a job. That wasn’t supposed to happen for another year. Now he had to deal with it in a few months. All of this was happening way too fast. Georgie would have to write back to Barb to get all the details, assuming their mother would even care to respond back again. Giving them a place to live seemed like her way of sending them off with the intentions of moving on. They were on their own once again, and while that was nothing new, it was territory neither of them had ever touched before.

He nodded his head as his sister said that she was tired. Weren’t they both? They thought it was done with years ago, and now it was back once again. The only thing that had changed was that Barb was alive and Art was actually dead. Gone for good. “I am too,” he frowned. There wasn’t much more to add to that, other than the fact that he was disappointed in Barb for not becoming the mother she was supposed to be. She couldn’t blame their reactions to her return on them; that was all her. She didn’t understand, even though she tried to make it seem like she did. That was impossible to ever do. “Kind of,” he started. “I had it down to her either trying to get us back from the orphanage to be a ‘proper’ family, or her running off again,” Lance swallowed to allow himself to think about what he was saying next. “I wanted to believe that she was going to try and be a real parent, but you’re right. I knew something like this would happen eventually.” It was like once reality hit that Art was dead and she had to suddenly become a mother again, it was easier to run off than to try and make amends. How could any parent do that to their children? He couldn’t understand it.

[Deleted]

Georgie gave her brother a grim smile when he said that he was tired, too. After the year they’d had, they deserved a rest, Georgie thought. Maybe they could find a way to take a vacation that summer, Georgie thought. Even a day trip to the beach would be nice, especially without all of the restrictions that the orphanage would place upon them. She would suggest it when the summer got closer, Georgie decided, setting her mouth in a stubborn line, even though Lance wouldn’t know the source of the stubbornness.

Lance was gracious about his ‘told you so’ moment, saying that he had only sort of guessed what would happen, narrowing it down to two choices but not sure of which one would come to pass. Georgie was glad that he wasn’t trying to rub in the fact that he’d been right. Then again, he probably hadn’t wanted to be right, so the situation was… complicated. “I wonder what happens to someone to make them make that sort of choice.” Georgie said with a sigh. From the stories she had been told, her mother’s parents had been good to her, and should have been good role models on how to parent children. Then again, the fact that they had denied to take Georgie and Lance in was probably indicative that the problem with commitment extended much further back than they had originally believed. Georgie heaved a sigh, and looked up at her brother. “At least now we can rest easy.” There wouldn’t be any more surprises, and maybe that would be good for them, regardless of the fact that their mother had run away from them.

lancelot ray linley
(sorry for crap post~ i figure we can wrap this up?)

[Deleted]

@georgiana

Lance took a deep breath as his sister brought up the point of what made Barb the way she was. He had spent a lot of time thinking about that. A lot of time. Probably more than was healthy, if he were to be honest. He had beaten himself up over and over again for being conflicted on the whole situation, which seemed normal, but he knew wasn’t. Looking at everything in retrospect, he realized that he should have at least been grateful to know that their parents were alive and trying to look for the two of them. At the same time, they had already made the choice years earlier to leave them behind. There were many conclusions Lance had come to for why Barb left again. The most obvious was the one he liked the least. “I don’t think either of them were ready to be parents. So taking responsibility for their actions happened too late, and at that point it was easier to run away than confronting them head on,” he took a deep breath. “And that’s why it’s easier for her to leave now than to stay.”

He sighed as his sister said that they could rest easy now. That they could. There were a lot of questions answered now. Ones that he frankly didn’t know how to go about. Getting a job after his last year of school was going to be difficult, and finding an apartment on top of that would have certainly been a struggle. That was the best thing Barb had ever done for them, aside from bringing them into this world. “I feel like I could sleep forever now. A lot of problems have been figured out, and hopefully we’re in a better position now than we were before.”

[Deleted]

Georgie nodded when her brother said that their parents weren’t ready to be parents. The more she thought about it, the more sense that made. Her parents had had her and Lance rather young. Even though they had probably been expected to have kids once they had gotten married, it would have been better for all involved if they had waited. As for their idyllic childhood, that again crumbled under scrutiny. Georgie wondered how much of it had actually been wonderful – if her parents had really loved her once or if she had simply been too young to realize the signs of fractured relationships and people who had taken on more than they were ready for. “Kind of sucks to think of yourself as just a consequence.” Georgie mumbled. Even if that wasn’t what Lance had been getting at, wasn’t that the crux of the issue? She and her brother were just side effects of whatever bigger plan or problems their parents had.

Lance said that he felt like he could sleep forever, and Georgie chuckled. “Maybe that’s a sign that you need a nap.” She suggested, not entirely serious, but still wondering what Lance had been doing to take care of himself now that the storm had passed. “That way if anything else happens you’ll at least be well-rested.” She teased. Georgie couldn’t see what else could possibly occur – it wasn’t like their father could come back from the dead a second time or their mother would return immediately after leaving – but she wasn’t going to get her hopes up.

lancelot ray linley

[Deleted]

@georgiana

His sister’s comment about the two of them being nothing more than a consequence almost went unnoticed. Lance had never wanted to think of it that way, but her mumble made more sense than it should have. Barb and Art wanted to play the adult game when they were too young to manage it successfully, and Lance and Georgie were simply the outcome of what shouldn’t have happened right then and there. That wasn’t to say that they should have never been born; more that they didn’t deserve to be pushed aside the way that they had been and forgotten. Or ‘never forgotten’, as Barb had put it. He didn’t care if she remembered or not. Pretending they were dead and leaving them behind was enough to show how much they cared about their family. “They missed out,” Lance shrugged. That was all he could reason at this point.

Lance bobbed his head slowly as Georgie said that he probably needed a nap. That sounded like a great idea right about now. The last few months had been a drag when it came to trying to fall asleep. It was either one of two extremes: pass out cold from built up exhaustion, or not being able to drift off because of everything going through his head. He would take the former any day over the latter. “Nap it is then,” Lance blinked a few times. Just thinking about dozing off in bed brought on a yawn and the preliminary signs of sleepiness. That was a good sign. At least he was pretty sure that it was. “We’ll be fine Georgie,” Lance stated as he stood up. The reassurance of that sentence was more for himself than for his sister. “We always have been and always will be as long as it’s just us.” Giving his sister a weak smile, he yawned again and headed towards his dorm room.

[Lance End]

[Deleted]

Georgie just nodded when her brother said that their parents had missed out. That was the simplest explanation, and the easiest way to make both of them feel better about their situation. Lance said that he was going to take her suggestion to nap, and Georgie smiled a bit to herself as her brother yawned. She forced herself not to yawn in response, because she definitely didn’t need a laugh. Before he departed for his sleep, though, Lance said that they would be fine. They always had been, and they always would be, just the two of them. That was more comforting than anything else, even having her parents back, had been. All she needed was her brother. “Yeah.” Georgie echoed. “Just us.” Lance retreated to his dormitory, and Georgie lingered a moment longer. She looked at the letter that was in her hand, wanting nothing more than to throw it in the common room’s fire but also aware that there was important information, like the address of the place that was going to be their home this summer. Georgie took one last longing look at the fire before turning to return to her own dormitory, where she could hide the stupid letter in a book and try to forget this whole mess had ever happened.

lancelot ray linley
(le end~)