Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

3 November, 1978 - Perfect

And now she was standing in front of him looking like she thought she might have just made a terrible mistake. He could only hope she didn't think that by the time this conversation was over.

He sat up, his previous exhaustion now utterly forgotten and watched her as her eyes darted around the room, looking everywhere but at him. This, he had noticed, was another nervous habit or hers.

"Of course we can talk," he told her carefully, trying to sound as gentle as possible. Lavinia expressing herself and being genuinely open was rare. And he suspected it was far from easy for her. So he did his best to make his reaction as gentle and understanding as possible.

"I..." She trailed off and hummed for a moment, her eyes flicking to him briefly and fingers working furiously at her sleeves. "I got some advice today," she began again. "From Mr. Hayes, my head healer."

Sirius suppressed a frown as her eyes flicked to him again. That was not at all what he'd expected her to say. A moment ago, he'd thought he'd had a pretty good guess where this was going, but now... What did her boss have to do with it? Then again, he supposed there was nothing for it but to wait and see.

"He told me I need to stop living my life like it's an exam," she continued. "Like there's a right answer and only one way to make things work out."

She sighed and glanced at him again and part of him wanted to tell her to just look at him. To say this to his face. But he also knew that she was probably panicking enough right now and that wouldn't help anyone.

Regardless, Mr. Hayes seemed to be rather insightful. Lavinia, he knew, was constantly striving for perfection. Everything could always be better and nothing was ever quite enough. It could be rather frustrating, actually, because trying to get her to recognize and take pride in the progress she had made was about as easy as herding owls.

As aggravating as it sometimes was, he understood why. She came from a world and a family that demanded perfection. That had told her time and time again that her achievements, her progress, was not enough. That she was not enough. And those words had stuck.

"And I never thought about it before," Lavinia was now continuing, "but he's right. I've spent my whole life afraid of giving the wrong answer because... because there always was a right one. In school or from my family... there was a right way to do things. And if I didn't do it, then I got punished."

She sighed and her fingers paused their fidgeting for a moment. "And I've still been acting that way. I've still been pretending there's some perfect way to go through life, some perfect answer to every problem and... Well. There's not." She added this last bit rather drily and sniffed a bit.

"And with you," she went on, and Sirius's stomach did a rather uncomfortable backflip. "With you, I've been waiting for some perfect moment, thinking there's a right way. Thinking I just don't have the right answer yet. For myself or for you. And it's stupid because I've spent more than a month knowing I was probably as ready as I was ever going to be, but I hesitated because... because I wasn't perfect. And I was afraid that anything less than perfect wouldn't be enough."

She sighed and this time her eyes landed on him and stayed there and they were soft and a little bit sad and he wanted so desperately to tell her that she had always been enough. That she always would be. That she didn't need to be perfect, now or ever. But she wasn't done, so he waited.

"I know that's just a long winded way to say I finally had a realization I should have had a while ago. And I'll probably forget all about it tomorrow and wake up afraid anyway, but... But I'm less afraid when I'm with you. I'm less afraid of being wrong and less afraid of the world and less afraid of myself. I feel safe and as close to happy as I think I've ever been." She paused and took a deep breath as she looked down for a minute. "And maybe it's not enough. Maybe it doesn't work out and it all falls apart but... But it's not fair to either of us if we don't give it a shot."