'where we are now' remus lupin & regulus black

Scrawny

"Aren't you going to ask your own mother about her Christmas? " Rose asks with a wry smile playing on her lips.

Cordelia coughs, splutters. I hold her hand under the table. "How was your Christmas, own mother?" She asks dryly.

"Always making snide comments," Rose makes a tsk noise and puts out her cigarette, tapping it rhythmically against the ashtray.

I almost yelp from Cordelia's new grip on my hand. "Why the hell am I here?" She snaps.

Rose points at Cordelia, "Don't speak to me like that." She lectures. "And sit up straight, you look like an animal."

Cordelia immediately straightens her back. "I am an animal," She mutters under her breath.

"What?"

I can't decide if I should sit silently or intervene.

Moral support or knight in shining armour.

"You heard me."

Sit silently, definitely sit silently.

Moral support.

"Well who's fault is that?" Rose challenges. Cordelia pales in the face a bit. "That's right, your principal told me why you were out that night. Smoking pot? Really Cordelia, you could not be anymore embarrassing."

Cordelia laughs sarcastically and loudly. "Like my father?"

Rose smiles. "Precisely. See, I have taught you something."

The kitchen goes quiet and all that can be heard is the breathing of the two women. If looks could kill, they'd both be dead and cold.

Cordelia holds her head a bit higher, "You have taught me nothing but self hatred and disguised it as lessons on being humble," Rose rolls her eyes as if she's bored of hearing a sob story.

"And look at you now. Independent, demanding, cold." Cold? Does this woman know her daughter at all?

"I didn't need be independent!" Cordelia rips her hand from mine and slams it on the table. "I didn't need to be demanding! I needed to be loved! I needed to feel safe and cared for! I needed to be a fucking child!"

Rose and I watch silently as Cordelia rises to her feet. While i'm awestruck, Rose looks like she's stifling a yawn. "I didn't need to take care of my mother after she got piss drunk! I didn't need to make sure you slept on your side so you wouldn't choke on your own vomit! But I did it, because who the fuck else would've!?"

"You should have just let me die." Rose says indifferently. A maniacal smile rising to her lips, "Like. Your. Father." She whispers, annunciating each word carefully.

"You cunt!" Cordelia jumps onto the table, kicking plates and glasses off as she storms towards her mother. This is getting dangerously close to me having to intervene. "You foul, bitter, wretched cunt! I hate you! I hate you! I fucking loathe your guts!" By the end of her sentence Cordelia is heaving and her wand is pointed in her mother's face.

I stand up.

"Then it'll be good news to hear that i'm dying, won't it?"

I sit back down.

Cordelia lowers her wand slightly. "What?"

"Stage four lung cancer," Rose takes a long draw from her cigarette, her killer. "It's terminal, obviously. They gave me four to six weeks before I kick the bucket."

"You write me for the first time in months, to tell me that your dying?" Cordelia jumps off the table and stares at her mother. "How long have you known?"