Chapter 17: I Receive Some Interesting Correspondence
The job topic is quickly and promptly dropped, washed away from the board with a few crocodile tears. As soon as I confess how I blame the beginning of the end all on myself, my dad forgets all about my unemployment.
All the better.
I'm kneading a ball of dough about the size of my head as Nat sips on wine across the kitchen island. She's reading some muggle magazine about celebrities and their scandals. I watch her closely as I work the dough, my eyes trained on her face.
"You're overworking it," she says, not looking up.
"Huh?"
"You're overworking the dough. The scones are going to come out tough," she says. "Add in your blueberries and stop mixing."
I wrinkle my nose at her and dump blueberries on top of the dough, folding them into the mixture. The flour on my hands isn't doing the trick anymore, and the dough begins to cling to my fingers. I hate the feeling. Like my hands are being suffocated. Buried alive.
"It's sticking because you overworked the dough," Nat says.
"I know, I know," I say and abandon the lump of unbaked scone before me to scrape dough from between my fingers.
"Want me to finish them off?" I ask.
"No, I can finish them," I say snippily, but I'm getting overwhelmed as I stare at the mess in front of me and feel my hands being coated in dough that feels like mud, that feels like
matted grass on lumpy dirt, and
I'm laying on my back when I stop rolling, covered in dead grass and dirt and a little bit of blood, and
"Harry, are you okay?" I ask and struggle to stand, my knees shaking under the weight of my body, and
I'm exhausted, and
a graveyard, and
moss is draped over headstones in thick blankets and the graves are crumbling from exposure to the elements, eroding from years of being forgotten and untended, and—
I'm blinking back tears as I try to scrape the dough from my fingers. I have to move them. I have to run my hand over my wound, but my hands are dirty, but I have to know. I have to know if my arm is fully here or if some of it is somewhere else, and I can feel it. I can feel my skin tearing. I can feel the blood on my shirt. I think it's bleeding. I think it hurts. I place my hand on top of the healing wound, and—
I take a deep breath.
My arm is whole and intact, and the wound is nothing more than a slight itch.
"Hon," Nat says, and she's right behind me, setting a hand on my back. I flinch and blink away tears, but the traitorous little things roll down my cheeks despite my efforts at concealment. "God, honey, what's wrong?"
And I don't answer because how do I tell her it's everything? That no moment is immune to these memories that are eating me alive. I don't know how to keep myself in the present because my mind is stuck somewhere on the past, reliving these experiences I just want to forget. How do I tell her that the feeling of dough on my hands reminds me of mud in a graveyard, and then suddenly, I'm there again, and I'm bleeding, and everything hurts, and I can't find Harry? How can I explain this?
How can I tell her that sometimes I don't know where I am? How, sometimes, the memories are so real, I think that they're happening? How can I tell her that the pain is seared into my memory so vividly that my brain can't help but to remember it?
"Nothing," I say instead. Because it's easier. I shrug away from her and wash my hands, rushing to my bedroom. I need to be alone. I need to think. No, I need to not think. I need to sleep or something, because anything is better than being awake and remembering. Because the dreams can be bad but they're never as bad as the memories.
I faceplant onto my bed and cry into my pillow, not caring that my pillowcase is getting wet or that anyone in the apartment can probably hear me. Because crying is distracting me. I'm not thinking about it anymore—not really.
That's what's so terrible about all of this. It isn't logical and it's driving me into these crazy reactions to every little thing. It's embarrassing after it's all over and done with, but I can't control them in the moment.
There's a soft knock on my door, and I ignore it, pushing my face deeper into my pillow and crying some more.
The knock comes again.
I ignore it again.
The door is not a suitable barrier.
"Honey," my dad says as he pushes through the door. His voice is so soft, I decide to ignore it. "Come on, my girl, look at me."
Are we sensing a pattern here? You guessed it, hotcakes—I ignore him.
"Alright," he says. "Up we go."
And his hands close around my torso and he heaves me upward despite my blubbering and my complaining. He manages to get me upright and facing him despite my best efforts, and then he's swiping tears from my cheeks and muttering quiet encouragement.
"Excuse me, father dear," I say through a sniffle, "I'm a bit busy. I'm in a meeting."
"Uh-huh," he says and sits beside me on my bed. "Busy day?"
"Oh, yeah," I mumble and hiccup, rubbing my nose.
"Nat said you got pretty upset back there."
"I'm method acting for my performance as someone with a terrible phobia of scones."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," I say and hiccup again.
"You're getting pretty good at acting, huh, dear? Anyone would think you just had a panic attack in the middle of the kitchen."
"My skills are funny like that, aren't they?"
"For sure," he says. "Let's talk."
"I don't want to," I whine.
"It's either about what just happened or about the stock market."
"I choose the stock market," I say and scooch away from him.
"Fine. You won't talk to me?"
"I'm talking to you right now."
"Okay, little Miss Einstein," he says and raises his eyebrows. "You know what I mean."
"As the sole inhabitor of my brain, I can assure you I do not."
"Fine, don't talk to your poor, old father. You got mail," he says and tosses a couple of envelopes down on my bed. He makes no move to leave. "Go ahead, open them up. I'm interested in what quidditch star Viktor Krum has to say to my daughter."
Immediately, my heart does a little gymnastics routine. I look down at the envelope on top of the stack and see Viktor's familiar handwriting—slanting but precise. I can remember how slowly he writes, the care he puts into each curve of a letter. I grab the envelope and begin to tear it open.
"Dad, I don't know if you want to see this," I say as I pull the letter out, not sure what it could contain. Who knows what he wrote?
"You know Krum is my favorite," Dad says.
"I know, but—"
My words die in my throat when I unfold the letter. There's not much written, just a date and a time and a little sentence explaining the significance. A simple sign-off, nothing fancy.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," I say and try to tuck the letter away, but Dad snatches it from my hands, placing one hand on top of my head to keep me on the bed.
It's silent for at least an entire minute. Maybe an hour. Maybe an eternity. My dad's eyes are roving over the words repeatedly, like there's a puzzle to solve somewhere in them. I don't think he realizes when the force behind his arm slowly dissipates.
"Dad?" I whisper. Because anything would be better than his silence.
"A try-out for the Ballycastle Bats," he says quietly. "Y/N, this is incredible. This is–this is truly incredible."
"I guess so." That's all I say. Because I don't want to tell him what I'm thinking. That I don't want this. That I'm not in the headspace for it. That I see no purpose in trying out for a team just to get rejected.
"Well... you're going to do it, right?"
It must be something on my face, some look in my eyes, because my dad's face hardens into something I've never seen before, and he tosses the letter down on my bed.
"I want you in the car in ten minutes," he says and leaves, saying nothing else.
"Dad!" I call after him. He doesn't respond.
I huff and frown at his back, picking up the letter. It's short and concise, just a little blurb from Viktor saying that he scored me a try-out for a vacancy as a chaser for the Ballycastle Bats. As if I need his charity. As if I want it.
The date is only a week out, and I'm not sure if I can even get on a broom and fly right now. With everything that's happened, I have no desire to. I scoff and clamber to my feet. If I know one thing, I know my dad is pissed off for some reason, and I don't intend to make it any worse.
I pull on some real pants and a sweater and emerge from my bedroom, eyeing Nat warily. She smiles at me and waves me over.
"What's he planning?" I ask. She only shrugs. I don't believe that she doesn't know. She guides me by the shoulders to sit and begins to weave my hair into a braid. It's quick and a bit messy as my hair never really cooperates, and then she pushes my shoulder and whispers, "Good luck."
When I climb into Nat's car, Dad already has the radio cranked high, some old muggle rock song playing. I don't dare say anything to Dad, whose face is pressed into a firm look. He doesn't acknowledge my presence as he pulls out of the driveway and onto the road.
I could lie and say I don't know where he's taking me. But the truth is that I do. It's a trip I know well, once that he and I have taken many times since we moved into Nat's muggle neighborhood. A little secluded area far enough away from prying muggle eyes.
The place my dad taught me to fly.
"Dad, I'm not in the mood right now," I say as he parks the car right on the grass that is just the beginning of the expanse of open ground before us. He climbs out and I feel compelled to follow. I don't want him disappointed in me, but I know that this isn't what I want. I don't know how to balance it.
"I don't care," he says, wrenching open the trunk to the car. "Play me." He tosses my broom at me, and I lunge to make sure it doesn't hit the ground.
"I'm serious," I say. "I'm not in the mood."
"And I'm serious too. I don't care." He straddles his own broom and kicks off into the air, a quaffle tucked under his arm. I stare up after him and sigh. I swing my leg over my broom and follow him.
When we're high enough up in the air, he meets my eyes.
"I'm worried about you," he says.
"I know. But I'm fine."
"You're not, and anyone with two eyes and a brain can see that."
I don't respond.
"Where's your fire, Y/N?" he asks. "Huh? Where's my girl?"
"I'm just not in the mood for anything like that," I say and glare at him. I barely have time to react as he hurls the quaffle at me. "Hey!" I catch the quaffle between my hands and stare at him, confused and irritated. Why won't he listen to me?
"Where's your fire?" he asks again.
"Dad, cut it out," I say.
He flies forward and clips the end of my broom, sending me spiraling through the air. The quaffle falls from between my hands as I fight to correct the broom, grinding my teeth together. I'm about fifteen feet lower than I was by the time I've regained control of the broom, but my irritation has only grown. When I'm steadied, I look up and see him with the quaffle between his hands again.
"Dad," I say, but he's already shooting through the air, the bristles of his broom almost catching my head. I duck down with a gasp and glance over my shoulder. He's already maneuvered his broom to swing back, and I duck again, glaring at him. "Stop!"
"Make me stop," he says, flying back toward me. "Get the quaffle."
There's a part of me that wants to land and get back in the car, leaving my dad up here all alone with his stupid quaffle and his old broom. But there's another part of me that's so incredibly angry– with him, with the tournament, with Viktor, all this pent up frustration from the last few weeks. And there's that craving hazing my mind, the need to feel the wind whipping my face and tousling my hair. The need to become one with the broom between my thighs. The need to play.
I shoot after him.
I'm leaning forward, rage fueling my focus, and he accelerates, rising higher into the sky, the quaffle secure in the crook of his elbow. I'm zeroed in on him and the quaffle, examining the movement of every muscle in his body, and when I see him adjust his leg, I know he's going to slow down and change course, so I do it first.
He doesn't have time to recalculate before I'm on him, wrestling the ball from his hands. He has to let go to make sure he doesn't fall from his broom. His cheeks are chapped from the wind and his face is unreadable, eyes searching mine.
I look down at the quaffle in my hands. Test its weight. Spin it, tucking my thumbs into the little grooves near the middle.
I meet his eyes and say, "Again?"