atlas drowned

The delicate touch of Amycus’s fingers pushing an errant strand of hair behind her ear only tempted Amelia to bury her face deeper into the fabric of Amycus’s sweater. Inhaling deeply, she momentarily thought about burying it in the crook of his neck instead. The thought of pulling away, even for a moment, seemed dreadful and disconcerting but she shouldn’t remain this way. At least not in the middle of an ice cream shop. Amelia could suddenly feel the lingering gaze of spectators once more. Curiously watching the two of them like they were characters in the most compelling story ever written. 

Gently, Amelia pulled away from Amycus’s shoulder. A small, shy smile on her face as Amelia took one of his hands in her’s, turning it over so she could trace the lines of his palms with her fingertips. Slightly concerned that looking Amycus directly in the eye would cause more high-pitched, nervous laughter to tumble out of her. There was comfort in being so close with him. A frightening exhilaration, like one foot was on the very edge of a cliff while the other rested in complete safety. 

“You’d think he’d never seen two people— ” Amelia started, only to stop short before she realized she what about to say. Two people snogging. Amelia cleared her throat, “I just…You’d think he’d never seen two people together before.” It was baffling as to why the man would be so interested in what what happening between them anyway. Amelia could recall that Florean’s was a rather popular spot for teenagers during her Hogwarts years. It was almost a given that he would’ve seen worse over the years.

If Florean had spoken up, if Alecto had said something, Amelia might not have let herself sink deeper and deeper into this attachment with no worries about how this might crash and burn in the future. Completely and utterly besotted with a man who was hiding something terrifying. Amelia knew that Amycus had suffered in his life and it hurt her deeply to think of anyone hurting him. She wouldn’t dare consider, or even comprehend, the thought of him hurting someone else.

“Yeah, of course.” Amelia answered. It was easy to imagine that she would go anywhere Amycus was now. To the end of the earth even. Finally catching his eye, Amelia lifted his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “The zoo or a museum…Either one would be nice as long as it’s ah..As long as I’m with you.”

Amycus knew precisely why they were staring — why Florean couldn’t keep his eyes off the spectacle of one of the strange Carrows wearing someone else’s skin and pretending, for once, to be something resembling human. It made his skin itch uncomfortably beneath the bandaging and his eyes dart, nervous and electric, to the table before him and to the door and to Florean, still pretending to be sweeping and back to Amelia.

Amelia who was the only reason he was putting up with any of this. A catalyst for something, though he hardly knew what that something might end up being.

“Lets go,” he suggested with perhaps more zeal than it needed, the hitch of discomfort lingering somewhere at the back of his throat as his lips tingled and his fingers curled around hers. “Anywhere. Somewhere.”

He shuffled them both out of the booth, twitchy fingered and nervous eyed, only finding some small moment of relief when the fresh air of the outdoor world hit him and the bell chimed behind them, leaving Florean and his ever-vigilant eyes behind them. His hand was still tangled up in hers. Everywhere, it seemed, people were watching. (Or was he just paranoid? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been accused of paranoia.)

“I’ve never been to a museum,” he offered, to break the murmurs buzzing in his pinkening ears, tucking hair behind them with his free hand and holding on firmly with the other, their hands swinging between them as they navigated through the sparsely populated alley. “I — mother — was always concerned that we were too sickly to take us out.”

And that was the first time he’d offered information about his family, his childhood, without prompting in .. a very long time.

They were kids that I once knew Now they're all dead hearts to you.

And now it hurts what we've become 'Cause you taught me how to love It's me who taught you how to stop

His eyes were glassy, his voice wobbly, and he sounded hysterical–to Alecto’s utmost surprise, Amycus was crying, or about to, and now that was two things in the span of less than an hour to happen that she’d never connected with her brother before. Amycus didn’t panic, didn’t get emotional, and most certainly didn’t cry, but it seemed he had reached a breaking point and reacted the only way he knew how: with destruction. Alecto instinctively felt protective, something rare considering the nature of her as a person, but he’d never had to deal with emotions, and now they were all crashing in at once.

All of this happened because Amelia Bones came into Amycus’ life. Alecto fully blamed her for the state her brother was in now. 

You were cross with me, he said, and Alecto sighed, summoning a potion and handing it to him. “For the pain,” she explained before sitting back on her heels. She certainly knew how to do emotions, and rarely were they positive, but in this instance she knew her brother needed assurance, maybe even comfort. She wasn’t entirely sure she knew how to deliver on those fronts, having never been on the receiving end of either feeling, but if Amycus could get out of his comfort zone and feel this much, then she could too.

“That doesn’t mean I would have left you in the dust,” she said slowly, reaching and turning Amycus’ head so they could make eye contact. “I was cross with you, yes, and still am a bit, but you’re my brother. Of course I would help you, you dimwit.” The next words caught in her throat, because they didn’t talk about this stuff, but she pushed through anyway. “You’re all I have, and an argument won’t change that.”

Alecto took a deep, shaky breath and let her discomfort fade away, focusing in on the solution to this mess. “For one, you need to stop casting Fiendfyre everywhere. You know that’s near impossible to stop, and it won’t do you any good to drain your energy on such a thing. I will take care of Potter personally.” She paused a moment. “Can you cast an illusion to hide the damage from everyone? Obliviate any potential witnesses? Were there any witnesses?”

Shock was a medical phenomena that even a lifetime of wilful destruction couldn’t cure him of and Amycus could feel the curse snarling inside of him still, consuming and wrathful. They were bookends, he and her, one full of emotion and the other bereft of it, one bursting with wrath while the other laid their revenge in clinical, clean strokes. Bits and pieces of one person torn and plucked into two and Amycus had never felt that so acutely now, with him the exploded landmine and her staring down at the wreckage with a surgeon’s eye as if to determine how best to fashion him back together.

It was perhaps a symptom of his current state that he wordlessly accepted the potion in his shaking hands, that he didn’t regard it with the suspicion that he rightfully should have. Love was poison, his mother had taught him that, but he tipped the potion down his throat and did his best not to gag on it. Pain was better felt, or at least that’s what he’d always believed, but the potion soothed all those firing nerve endings that screamed like he was still on fire and dulled his echoing thoughts into a heavy, blanketed silence.

He blinked, slowly, steadily, the potion vial a weight in his lax fingers and considered it dully, his heart a swollen distraction in his chest that thudded in his ears. Alecto’s fingers grazed his chin and he didn’t flinch, blinking instead over at her as she insisted she would help him no matter what. That was not how family worked, they both knew that. Arguments were their currency, they both knew that. But the world wasn’t quite the same shape as it used to be, nothing fit into the same places they should have done, like he’d outgrown the shape of the person he used to be and was now struggling for more space.

“There were no witnesses,” he replied slowly, robotically, distracted by the crack of his jaw and the way it twinged beneath the illusion of dulled pain, “Potter’s parents were upstairs,” trapped in the flames, “I doubt they made it out,” or had the stamina to survive the smoke. “The fire will—” consume until there was nothing left to consume and then turn upon itself, “Take care of itself.”

He reached up to rub, distractedly at his stinging eyes and found his face wet, the immediate shaking panic subsided in the wake of whatever had been stowed into that potion bottle. His voice was rough with smoke as he added, “Alecto?” He reached to catch her arm with his own blood-and-soot-smeared fingers, “I’m—” his voice wobbled uncertainly, “Sorry I didn’t send for you.”

The blood currently rushing to Amelia’s head somehow dampened the ear-piercing sound of shattering glass. She didn’t move to investigate what had happened to Florean now, completely oblivious to the noise and chatter of concerned patrons who were now moving to help the poor man. The option to revel in Amycus’s lips pressed against hers for those few, tender moments, seemed like the better option as white noise seemed to fill her ears. Desperately wishing that each second would just drag on just a tiny bit longer.

When Amycus did finally pull away to look at her, one of his hands was still tracing the curve of her cheek gently. Warm and inviting. She could only stare at him in wonder, breathless, and surprised that she hadn’t frightened him away. A dazed expression, stupidly love-struck, had made its home, as a nervous laugh bubbled in her chest before she was able to push it away. Fearing that she might ruin the moment.

Amelia listened as Amycus seemed to stumble over his words, trying to find the right thing to say. Reaching up again to stroke his cheek, she wanted to reassure him that she had wanted this. “Don’t be sorry.” The words quickly tumbled out of her mouth in his defense. She had made the first move, if anyone should be sorry it was her. “Never be sorry for that.”

Amycus’s fingers were still tangled in her hair and they still so close. It was all she could do to not kiss him again. If she were cleverer she imagined she would have said something else by now. All she could seem to do was press her forehead against his shoulder with a small hum of satisfaction. “We can do that again, if you like?” she managed to say, finally letting some nervous laughter slip out. Amelia hoped for a moment that he hadn’t heard her, her voice being slightly muffled by the fabric of his sweater.

It had been a tumultuous fortnight of swooping highs and devastating lows that Amycus, so accustomed to a sullen flatline of emotion, couldn’t seem to get a grip on; it felt like catapulting through a rollercoaster track where all he could do was hold on with a white-knuckled grip. This, however; scrunched up in the odd vinyl-booth at Fortescue’s, all odd angles and bent limbs, with Amelia pressed against his side seemed to, for a moment at least, have suspended that disastrous descent. The cavernous angry spaces of his brain that were forever echoing with debate fell silent, drowned out by the soft buzzing that had filled his ears and the jingle of glass as it was swept away by hand somewhere in the background.

A dull, passing thought occurred to him that an evanesco would be quicker.

Her head collided with his shoulder, a soft thump that rattled through his collarbone and punctuated the weird fizz and bubble inside his chest and honestly — he wasn’t a child, he should be better equipped to understand how to process things like this in the way he could process any other information but all he could focus on was the tingle in his lips. He sunk his teeth into them like it might help. “I think Florean is watching.”

A small furrow formed in his brow, counteracting the weird wiggling laughter that seemed to be taunting his lips and his fingers twitched erratically before smoothing the hair he’d tangled in his fingers back behind her ear and clearing his throat. Even the painful stretch of slowly healing skin upon his arms couldn’t seem to chase the feeling away. 

“I’d like to—” Do that again? Do that all the time? Feel easily, unreservedly, like this without the inevitable crash into all the wreckage that awaited them and seemed to be staring him down the further he fell down this rabbit hole. Her and her family of blood traitors, his steadfast avoidance of the subject like if he didn’t know for sure he could pretend it didn’t matter. Alecto’s disapproval that settled heavily overhead like a storm cloud, just waiting to burst again. “I’d like to go to the zoo again. Or—”

Or live anywhere that was not within the crushing inevitability of his own life and the path they were headed down. Because these strange, fractured pieces he was constructing were not going to withstand the eventual impact, but he’d never been a selfless creature. “—You said you wanted to go to that — that museum.”

Amelia had thought it might be kinder to give Amycus a way out. A way to gracefully extract himself from this conversation and not ruin whatever trust they might have built up over time. To Amelia’s immense relief, he didn’t seem to want to take it. Amelia turned to look at Amycus with wide, concerned eyes, watching him push the curtain of hair away from his face as he stumbled over his words. 

In what felt like only a second, Amycus’s fingertips were suddenly on her cheek. Amelia immediately froze in surprise. Millions of thoughts flittered around her head, though none of them comprehensible. Amelia desperately tried to focus on what Amycus was saying instead of the warm feeling of his hand on her cheek. He had a look in his eyes, pleading her to see him, believe him. That he wasn’t trying to brush the conversation off, that he just didn’t know how to have it.

“We don’t— ” Amelia had began to say, wanting to tell Amycus that it was fine, that she knew it was hard for him. It had been difficult for Amelia to tell him how she felt. She had stuttered, tripping over her words and mumbling about fancying him like some silly teenage girl. Amelia could only imagine what it was like for someone who had such a torturous childhood. Amycus had already said enough to satisfy her. That he wanted her to stay, that he didn’t want to forget all of the feelings Amelia had just thrust upon him.

Again the words on the tip of her tongue seemed to get lost somewhere as soon as she felt Amycus’s nose clumsily press against her cheek. His lips softly pressing against the corner of her mouth. A fog settled over her as if nothing else seemed to matter in that moment. All the self-doubt and nosy inquests from coworkers. Even Florean, who was no doubt still trying to stealthily observe this interaction while casually acting like he wasn’t. She had been stupid to think this was entirely one-sided. 

Amycus had lingered near her mouth for a moment. The smell of chocolate, something medicinal, lingering so very close that it made it hard to think and process what she was about to do. On impulse, Amelia reached up to gently touch Amycus’s cheek, turning her head slightly to press her lips against his. 

There was a great crash of glass from behind the counter, deafening in the otherwise quiet shop, but Amycus did not notice. He stayed perfectly still, save for the faint twitch of his fingers against the skin of Amelia’s cheek, his breath caught fast in his throat and his eyes fluttering once, twice and then shut at the warm brush of Amelia’s lips against his. It was strange and consuming, the smell of her shampoo mixed with the smell of chocolate and a prevailing scent of burn salve, and the corners of his lips twitched upward, insistently, of their own accord against hers.

His breath shuddered out of him in one abrupt huff, startled but .. happy, as he drew backwards, far enough for his eyes to flicker open and his fingers to linger on her face, distractedly tracing the curve of her cheek. Alecto would say he was being impulsive again. That he was being reckless. “I—” his tongue stuck and he cleared his throat awkwardly, aware suddenly of the lack of personal space and the way his fingers had drifted to curl through her hair of their own accord.

Hesitating on the brink of pulling back or leaning forward he listened to the blood rushing in his ears, to the internal wave of panic or excitement or fear that crashed through his chest. “I, uh,” and the realisation that he didn’t know what he’d intended to say stuttered through him before he forged onward, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

He did mean to, actually, and that thought alone was enough to tug at the odd dazed smile pulling at his lips. 

An engagement notice. Of course.

To anyone else, that excuse alone would have sounded ludicrous, a testimony that wouldn’t hold up in court. Someone’s engagement notice, sending him into a frenzy that led to burning down the Potter Estate? Anyone else would have found it mad, but Alecto knew, she knew why he felt the need to go for the estate because she had felt it too when she’d seen it in the Daily Prophet: hatred, resentment, longing. How could someone be so proud of their child that they announced his engagement to the world, no matter if they knew the people or not? Alecto tried to imagine a world where their parents would have done the same, a world where they cared about whether or not their children lived or died, or simply cared about their happiness. 

She tried, desperately, but nothing came to mind.

Still, she hadn’t gone and destroyed the Potters for it. Alecto felt deeply, but years of those feelings had taught her to hold them back until a later time when she absolutely needed that rage. Amycus, however, had never been an emotional person as long as she’d known him, or if he was it was certainly never to her face. Alecto knew that would have backfired eventually, all that bottled up emotion, and it had finally landed her brother injured and exposed and scared in her office. Alecto tightened her grip on Amycus’ hand instinctively, jaw setting as he explained how he’d gotten in and what, exactly, had transpired. She had enough of the puzzle to see the picture, and Alecto sighed. 

“That’s the problem, Amycus. You didn’t think. You reacted impulsively, and it landed you here. Don’t you think I want to see them suffer too? Yet you don’t see me breaking and entering.” Yet, she didn’t say, but it was certainly implied. “He used the Cruciatus curse? I hadn’t expected that.” It was hard not to be a little impressed, even if she wanted to toss it right back at Potter. Another sigh, and Alecto attended to the rest of his visible wounds, focusing on them intently as she continued, “I know you weren’t supposed to be there. You wouldn’t be panicked otherwise, save for the Potter ordeal.”

Azkaban was the least of his worries if word reached the Dark Lord. 

Alecto looked back up when she finished tending to him, finally deflating his bobblehead and meeting his eyes. “You didn’t answer my question, Amy. Why didn’t you come get me? Even if you weren’t supposed to be here, you know I would have been there in an instant if you’d sent for me.” 

And he knew that, of course he did, like impulsive behaviour hadn’t been his downfall once before, but Alecto was determined to dissect every decision he’d made today as if it could rationalised and the adrenaline that had spurred him onwards was crashing, his hands shaking as nerve endings began to catch alight and the burns he’d barely felt before seared through him. 

All of these things, all of these complicated tangle of emotions that snarled and knotted in ways he’d forgotten they could rose up and his eyes were burning (it must have been from the smoke) and his throat knotted tight (the smoke) and all he could think about was not James Potter or his doting parents or his mudblood fiancee — not the fire or the wrath of the Dark Lord. He thought about all of it and none of it but there, at the center of it all, was her.

“You wouldn’t have come,” he replied, his voice wobbling strangely and he could hardly control his own limbs, let alone the tone of his voice (it was the smoke, it had to be), “You were cross with me.”

And it sounded borderline hysterical now, if he were to listen to it logically, but there was a curse hungrily consuming an old family estate in the West Country and hungrily devouring his own energy to sustain itself and Amelia was leaving and everything in the world seemed to be reaching catastrophic levels of self-combustion. Logic had fallen to the wayside when emotion had taken up residence inside of him like an unwanted guest. “What am I going to do?”

While Amelia had not expected rapturous declarations of love from Amycus ( though she wouldn’t thumb her nose at the prospect ) his hesitance to accept what she was telling him hurt unexpectedly. In a odd way she wasn’t sure she would able to articulate if even asked to. She was being vulnerable, but so was he. She had to remind herself that it was the same sort of skepticism that she had experienced in her conversations Alecto. Only with a slightly less blunt edge. Amelia thought of the pain he was forced to endure at the the hands of someone who was supposed to love him. The thought that Amelia might care for him, especially in a romantic way, must be terrifying.

Amelia glanced back over her shoulder warily as Amycus dug back into his ice cream. Wondering if Florean or anyone else was still eavesdropping. While it irked her, maybe the old man was just worried that one of his customers had been upsetting her. Amelia had come into his shop, initially in a good mood, only to walk away with no warning and start fussing at one of his patrons. Still, she lowered her voice as not to be overheard, fed up with being the subject of people’s gossip and fodder. 

A strange match. That’s what they all kept saying. In harsh whispers during uncomfortable elevator rides or as she passed coworkers on her way to get coffee in the morning. Amelia would argue that there was nothing strange about this…Whatever this was. What all these people didn’t understand, as they all observed them with curious, hungry eyes, was that Amelia was happy, peaceful. A contradiction to the aching feeling she felt in her chest when they were unable to see each other or the nervous butterflies in her stomach when they held hands. Like maybe Amycus saw all the things she didn’t like about herself and liked them anyway. That they could sit in complete and utter silence and still be happy to just be in one another’s orbit.

“I don’t want anything from you.” Amelia answered, her voice was gentle and soft. Her eyes wide with concern as she looked at Amycus, silently willing him to believe she wouldn’t lie to him about a thing like this, “I just want you.” 

She let her words hang in the air for a few moments, wondering if they might’ve been too bold.  Looking down at their hands intertwined together, Amelia watched his thumb gently trace circles on the back of her hand. She noticed a few splotchy, healing areas of skin, and frowned, wondering how he had hurt himself this time. Reminding herself to ask him about it later, if there was a later after this. “You’re different.” she said, an attempt to elaborate on the feelings she had just laid bare, “There’s no pretense when I’m with you and when we’re alone together everything feels…right.” Amelia paused for a moment before adding, “You make me very happy.”

Worried that maybe this would be too much for him, Amelia wondered if she should give Amycus an out. If he didn’t feel exactly the same way, if he wasn’t emotionally able, maybe they could sweep it under the rug and pretend that nothing happened. As much as that thought made her want to curl up in a ball and hide. “If…” she started but stopped, fearful thoughts beginning to make their home in her head once again, “If you’d rather forget that I said all of this…I just wanted you to know how I feel.”

I just want you.

Like it was a logical sequence of words that somehow fit together in relation to him. Like Amycus wasn’t strange or offputting or incapable of understanding what other people felt. There was conviction and concern bundled up together, like she didn’t know how he was going to react and Amycus didn’t know either; poison had been his lifelong companion but he still didn’t know how to stomach kindness.

And he was different, everyone had always known that; from his mother’s society friends who’d cooed over her odd little boy’s prospects to the girls at school. He had been a burden; a weight around mother’s neck that she’d desperately tried to be rid of or a tag-a-long for Alecto who never seemed to fit in anywhere. Amelia didn’t see that.  

There was no logic to follow except that he liked talking to Amelia. That he liked spending time with her. That the feelings that sloshed uncomfortably around inside him had emerged at her bidding. She’d broken him, somehow, despite only ever treating him with the utmost caution and she was still offering him a way out of this, a way to pretend that none of it had ever happened and that he could go back to the way he always had been.

“I don’t want to forget.” And it was childish and stubborn, spoken in spite of himself, as he stared down at their fingers coiled together and the scent of chocolate thick in his nostrils, syrupy and sweet and it felt like an early-Autumn day at the Zoo with dappled sunlight and milling crowds. “I don’t want to stop spending time with you.”

And the curtain of his hair was pushed back, his hand tentatively moving onward to trace fingers like cautious ghosts across her cheek, like he wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t burn. Everything eventually did after it had come into contact with him. “Do we have to talk about it?” She was so pretty, in the way that he always averted his eyes from and he was something monstrous, bandages poking out of the sleeves of his shirt and burn salve mingling with the sweet smell of chocolate and words had always, always failed him. “I don’t know how to—”

“That’s Dolores for you.” Amelia sighed as the truth of what really happened sunk in. Instead of being a mature adult and seeking Amycus out for answers, Amelia had let her own fears stop her from finding out what was really going on. It was a guilty sort of feeling in the pit of her stomach and she felt even worse that Amycus thought she didn’t want to see him anymore. On top of her coworker’s meddling, Alecto had also made Amelia feel like she wasn’t worthy of spending time with him, even only as friends.

“I still don’t think your sister likes me but…” Amelia said in reference to Alecto’s protectiveness, “We…No I hugged her and she didn’t hex me immediately after…I suppose that’s progress?…” It had been a strange encounter on Halloween, ending up with Amelia sobbing to the owner of the Century about how heartbroken she was feeling despite the peculiar olive branch Alecto had offered her. Maybe things would be alright in the future, when Alecto realized that Amelia wasn’t a threat to the sibling’s relationship.

Amelia listened, meeting Amycus’s eyes as he spoke. Her breathe catching in her throat for a moment as she tried to swallow it back down. Caught somewhere between the urge to squeal in excitement or start crying, she bit down on her bottom lip to keep from doing either. While her cheeks pinked at the very thought of him feeling anything remotely close to how she felt, Amelia immediately asked herself why she was dancing around the subject in the first place. She had already made the mistake of assuming that he didn’t want anything more to do with her, why shouldn’t she just say what she wanted to say.

Amelia glanced at the chocolate ice cream melting into a sugary soup in front of them before turning to look at him once more, “Your sister…I…You know it’s so stupid that I can’t just say it.” Amelia snorted at her own discomfort, self-consciously reaching up and rubbing her side of her face. “I fancy you, I really can’t help it. I know it sounds so childish…Alecto might have made that scene but she wasn’t lying to you about what I said. I-I just thought I should say it, I guess..”

She felt laid bare, glancing back over at Amycus to see if his expression had suddenly morphed into something unexpected. He was still looking at her intently and Amelia momentarily remembered Alecto telling her that Amycus wasn’t much for speaking but for doing. The familiar twitch in her fingertips tempted her to scoot a little closer and grab his hand. Pressing a gentle kiss to his cheek, like that day in the zoo, trying to carefully avoid the bruise outlining his jaw.

It was the sudden sound of glass shattering that broke whatever spell she had fallen under. Amelia glanced over her shoulder, a panicked looking Florean’s gaze meeting her own bewildered eyes. Florean, who had apparently been watching them both with rapt attention while simultaneously pretending that he was cleaning the same spot on the counter, over and over. Amelia raised a curious eyebrow, wondering what had gotten into him today. He wasn’t the type to be so nosy.

“You hugged her,” Amycus replied, as if the sentence didn’t quite compute and he was trying to process it. Alecto and Amelia had been in the same room, again, since the disastrous fight in the Atrium. Since Alecto had fixed Amycus’s messes with the long suffering air of a sibling who now had some fairly spectacular leverage over him. 

The idea left him reeling enough that even unprecedented sentences like, I like you, leaving his own mouth, like a co-ordinated attempt to uproot the very foundations upon which he lived his life, were muffled beneath a bewilderment that was enough to keep him grounded. And Amelia didn’t look entirely horrified at the idea, which had been one of many probabilities reeling through his head for how this scenario might play out, instead she seemed to be warring with her own thoughts, starting and stopping and laughing at herself before presenting the same sentiments to him that Alecto had in the atrium.

I fancy you. Not a kind dismissal or an unkind bush-off or an outright denial of what had been said in the Atrium that day. And it was — an unfamiliar relief, like sunshine or icecream or the satisfaction of finding exactly the right book he needed. Amelia fancied him and she wasn’t leaving and some tense knot in the base of his throat he hadn’t known was there released, easing his shoulders downwards and a smile brimmed upon his lips, spilling over out of surprise as she eased closer, her fingers entwining with his and the warm press of her lips against his cheek a perfect placebo effect against the ache in his jaw.

He opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off by the abrupt crash of glass from the counter, Amycus’s head turning sharply to find Florean staring at them, eyes fixed intently on Amelia with apparent concern.  Amycus’s shoulders hunched upward against the extra attention, reminded abruptly that everything hurt and that he was tired, his fingers twitching faintly in Amelia’s grasp as he reached for the ice cream spoon with his free hand, fishing out a largely unmelted glob of ice cream and taking a pointed spoonful. Nosy old git. 

“I—” his resolve wavered for a moment, uncertain of what he wanted to say but lowering his voice against the persistent stare fixed upon them, “I’m not very good with people,” the understatement of the century, “Or with knowing what they want from me. I don’t have friends,” not really, not in the sense that other people had friends that they talked to and who understood them. Amycus’s friends were usually people who needed something from him. “People don’t really — they don’t fancy me,” and he wasn’t sure exactly what he was trying to do here except that he’d relinquished the spoon and that hand had fallen ontop of their hands wrapped together, shiny, healing burns splattered across the back of it and his thumb traced absently across the back of her hand. “I don’t fancy them either, usually,” he offered, blinking down at their hands coiled around each other. “Why do you like me? Alecto thinks you want something but I don’t — I don’t have anything.”

Alecto wished she could be nurturing. 

She had an inkling that, in the wake of her brother’s obvious panic, she should be kneeling down to calm him like their parents never would have, to assure him that everything would be okay and they’d work it out. Had their lives been any different, maybe she would have; maybe they would have been happy and not slightly insane, or maybe she’d know exactly how to deal with the consequences of Amycus’ actions and not have to deal with the fact that this could very well send him to Azkaban–and, perhaps, herself as well if she were implicated in any way.

Potter had unmasked her brother, had burned him and hurt him and put genuine fear onto his face. Alecto wanted to find him, wherever he may be in the hospital, and tear him apart limb from limb. Rather than act like Bones might and smooth away Amycus’ worries, Alecto let the rage she felt toward Potter and the hurt she still felt from her fight with her brother settle in her stomach as she grabbed his arm, turning it forward and back to take a look at the burn that had seared away his Dark Mark. Were the effects of the spell still there? It was something she’d figure out later.

“I don’t have to do anything,” she said shortly, tearing her eyes from the burn to meet Amycus’. “You’re the one who went to Potter’s home, Amycus, and you’re the one who should know better than to play with fire. Now look what’s happened.” Her eyes closed, and Alecto counted to ten before continuing. “… they’re not sending you to Azkaban, Amycus, quit panicking about that. Potter will be dead before he gets a chance to lock you up.” Maybe death wasn’t the best course of action here, but she still fed the rage that festered within her. She would until she had to actually face Potter himself; then she’d probably use a memory charm like most of their hunts. 

Alecto stared at the hand Amycus had grabbed, then looked at the pure panic all over his face, and sighed slowly. “Fine. Why did you attack Potter’s place, then? What spurred you on to do such a thing without making sure you had backup?” And maybe she was still a bit bitter, and definitely still hurt from the atrium, but she had her brother cornered and they would talk dammit. “Why didn’t you fetch me? Are you too ashamed to go on hunts with me now, or are you afraid I’ll simply ruin it?”

Now look what’s happened. 

And Alecto was right, of course, because he’d been more reckless tonight than he had been since the day he’d gotten them expelled from Hogwarts, more reckless than he had any right to be, but it seemed like lately the cool and detached absence of feeling he’d lived within since childhood had been abruptly upended. Emotions he had viciously amputated, one by one, over the years had returned full-force, spilling messily out of the walls he’d set up in his own head until they escaped from all the little cracks in his defences. He didn’t know how to deal with them anymore than he knew how to deal with his fading strength or the panic welling up inside him.

His fingers held onto Alecto’s arm regardless of her insistence she didn’t have to do anything, because he knew, instinctually, that however angry or hurt she was, Alecto wouldn’t let him nosedive into catastrophe. She never had before. “There was an engagement notice.”

And that had been enough, those short few lines sent in by some fortunate son’s doting parents, proudly proclaiming to the world their son’s upcoming marriage. One more thing that Amycus would never, could never, have in his life because he was wrong and damaged and broken in ways that he didn’t like to examine (except they’d been put under deep scrutiny lately, hadn’t they, with the press of Amelia’s lips to his cheek and Alecto prying and scrabbling for him to talk to her about everything that was bubbling up from beneath the surface.) 

“They had wards,” he offered stiltedly, dumbly, shaking the haze and the panic from his thoughts as he tried to form a coherent picture, “Old wards, they’ve been there for generations. It was a — a puzzle. Just something to solve. I didn’t expect to—”

He didn’t expect to get in. “I didn’t think I would get through and I didn’t think Potter would be there and it all just—”

Happened. 

Except it hadn’t just happened. He’d been at those wards for weeks like maybe they might hold the key to why he felt like someone had vigorously shaken his entire system awake and he’d chosen to stay put instead of hide when he’d heard Potter coming. He could have taken his memory then and there when his mask had been knocked loose. He could have, he could have, he could have .. Except he’d been angry and he’d been off balance and he’d had echoes of losing Amelia replaying through his head and nothing had quite sat right. 

“He used the cruciatus curse,” he breathed finally, blinking rapidly, as pain snarled through all his seared nerve endings, like he was still aflame. “I wasn’t supposed to be there Alecto.”

And his predilection for Fiendfyre was well known in their circles, if his carelessness got out and the Dark Lord was displeased then Azkaban could be the very least of his troubles.

Amelia’s heart ached in that same peculiar, wrenching way it always did whenever Amycus said anything remotely kind to her. It was like she was something special, worthy of his attention. The fact that Amycus had missed Amelia too, that he had taken the time to even think about her made Amelia hope that this was all just a misunderstanding. That whatever disconnect had happened between them was fixable. Amelia desperately wanted it to be so. 

“Umbridge.” Amelia sighed irritably, a new anger starting to roil inside of her. She should’ve known. “A good rule of thumb is to never believe a word that comes out of that woman’s mouth.. She’s…she is a terrible gossip. I should have warned you about her.” Amelia had slipped up a few times herself, thinking Dolores was just a concerned coworker. It quickly became apparent that Dolores was out for blood. Whether it was Amelia’s blood or if she just liked to sink her hooks into whoever was the hot topic of the day, Amelia couldn’t be certain. “Level two is not without its own mysteries…” she said bitterly, “The mystery of why Dolores Umbridge is a giant pain in the arse might be unsolvable though.”

Whether it was her own anger at the thought of someone like Umbridge trying to intimidate Amycus or if Amelia had simply not been paying attention when he gestured to the space across from him, she couldn’t tell you. All she had heard was an invitation to sit. Amelia gently slid into the same side of the booth as Amycus. Slipping her purse from her shoulder and dropping it next to her feet under the table as she stared at the different flavors of ice cream melting together before looking back at him with soft, concerned eyes. The faint purple bruise gracing his chin worried her.

“I..ah, saw Alecto again on Halloween?” Amelia offered. It felt like it might now be a necessity to share whatever run ins she had with his sister, just in case. “It wasn’t as…bad as the first time I met your sister. She told me a few things…personal things about the both of you.” Amelia paused, her eyes sorrowful, watery even, as she remembered what Alecto had said about their mother. “I understand how she feels now. She cares for you a great deal, I think…I wasn’t mad that she made a scene at the atrium that day…I wasn’t crying because I was ashamed of you or anything…I-I, I just…” How should she phrase this while dancing around the truth? 

“I felt a little like something had been stolen from me…You and I, you know?” Amelia paused for a moment before continuing, wondering if she was making even the faintest amount of sense as her hands twitched anxiously in her lap.  “My feelings about you are personal and I…I want to be the one to tell you…I was stupid to say something to Alecto.”

Amycus had missed her, was the thing. That feeling of connection that eluded him almost anywhere else that came so easily with Amelia and as she squeezed herself in next to him on his side of the booth he found it didn’t bother him, to have her closer than expected. He didn’t need to put walls and distance between them in the way he did with everyone else.

And Amelia managed to imbue enough anger into the name Umbridge alone that Amycus realised, with a faintly churning sense of unease, that the woman had fooled him. She’d seen the strings and pulled them for whatever reason it was that people did such things, though it seemed everybody in his life (and those outside of it too) seemed to now have an opinion on Amelia and himself. Amycus had always had enough trouble with his own emotions, let alone with other people throwing their ideas about them at him too.

“Oh,” he offered after a long moment of consideration, his eyes on the spoon as he reached carefully out to spin it back towards himself, the mysteries of level two had been growing in number since he’d first ventured up there. “I think she was offended I didn’t know who she was.”

And he was tired still and in pain but somehow both of those things felt a little less pressing with Amelia sitting next to him, carefully venturing into the topic of his sister (and just how much had Alecto shared to make Amelia’s eyes turn sad and dewy like that?) but he listened, none the less. “She looks out for me,” he offered slowly, after a moment, digging his spoon into the melting globs of ice cream and taking another bite as if something sweet might take the uncertain edge of their conversation. “We look out for each other, we always have. She gets,” jealous, “Protective, sometimes. I—”

Oh, he wasn’t good at this. He wasn’t good at feelings, but somehow he was stuck with trying to navigate them now. “Alecto said that you—” what, had a crush, on him? That he had a crush on her. It was a very schoolboy thing to say, but what experience did he have with crushes or feelings or anything of the sort. The only prevailing feelings he’d had about people that weren’t his family was the hero-worship (Crush, Alecto would tease) he’d carried for Lucius Malfoy since school.  Sweeping his hair back off his face with the faintest of winces as healing skin pulled, he sighed. Amelia was something else entirely.

Amycus never came to St. Mungo’s.

It made sense, considering their experiences with the place growing up, but Alecto had been able to suppress that part of her enough to work where she did. It also gave her a much-needed reprieve from the possibility of seeing her brother after their fight, time for her to decompress and mull over her encounter with Amelia at the Halloween party, and time to simply gather her thoughts in relative peace. She’d just finished writing down notes in one of her many journals when Amycus stumbled through the door to her office, slamming it shut with the weight of his body a moment later and looking more worse for wear than she’d seen him in a long time.

Amycus never came to St. Mungo’s willingly. 

Alecto hopped up from her seat and immediately cast a charm to brighten the room as she rushed over to her brother, eyes immediately looking over him to take in his injuries. The smell of fire and smoke and blood hit her nose, and her face contorted into a frown as she led her now-panicking brother to her chair so she could help him better. She took care of the most serious injuries that she saw first, soothing the burn and checking his mouth out with a hyperfocused concentration until she was sure they were at the very least better than before. His head was… large, like a bobblehead, and Alecto finally registered what Amycus had said.

I need to stop him before he tells.

“What happened?” she hissed, glancing at her door and waving her wand to lock it. Whatever was going on, no one needed to overhear it. “Why are you like this, and what does Potter have anything to do with this? You have to tell me everything, Amycus, or I swear to Merlin I will refuse to help you.”

Amycus hated St. Mungo’s in a visceral way, with an instinct he’d never been able to quash or soften with time, and being inside those walls had only ever set him further off-balance, enough that he couldn’t tell whether the tremor of his limbs was from adrenaline or fear or the after-effects of the Cruciatus curse or the heavy toll that the Fiendfyre left to run riot extracted from his strength; if it was shock from the raw and angry burns that had seared up his arms, burning through the fabric, or the blood from where he’d bitten through his tongue. 

He didn’t entirely recall Alecto forcing him into a chair or her hasty patch up job, his attention only refocusing from the frantic variables he was running through — he needed more time, time enough to erase the possibilities from eventuating except he didn’t even have the strength to stand again (a fact established when his knees folded at he first attempt to struggle up out of the chair) let alone to use any of the frustratingly finnicky time spells he’d been piecing together. Let alone to obscure James Potter’s memories.

“He unmasked me,” he replied, blinking rapidly to clear the bright spots from his vision, he could still feel the pull of fiendfyre at his reserves, burning out the magic from inside hm. “Potter he—” his tongue, wet with blood, licked the dryness from his lips and he focused hastily on Alecto’s face, “I used fiendfyre on their estate. He’ll tell them Alecto, he’ll tell them I’m a—” his eyes darted downwards, to ugly snarl of burns that had burnt away the skin of his forearms where his Dark Mark should be and for the first time he could recall in a very long time he remembered what it was to be afraid. “They’ll send me to Azkaban.”

Trying again to get up, the spots in his vision lit up and the chair rocked under the force of his slumping hastily back into it. “You have to help me,” his hand reached out to grab at hers, eyes wide and panicked amidst the soot and blood and smell of burning, “Please, Alecto. I can’t go to Azkaban, I can’t—”

She was a silly little girl. Jumping to conclusions about what Amycus wanted from their friendship, from one extreme to the other, while he had just been sick. She looked him over, noticing the faint bruise tracing his jawline, worried that he might still not be feeling well. That familiar itch in her fingertips with want creeped up, to touch him and to fix whatever was ailing him.

“I’m not leaving work?” Her expression morphed from utterly crushed to confused in a split second. Amelia dropped her arms to her side, no longer on the defensive. “Who said that?” It had been a passing thought but so had crawling under or a rock or finding a hole in the ground in which to hide. Running away to Italy with Sofia had also been an alluring option. These were all things that had been tempting to think about in the moment but would never really happen. Amelia liked her work. She liked her life. She liked spending time with Amycus. That’s why this absurd bereft misery had settled itself over her. Like she had somehow struck gold and lost it all in the same day.

“I-I did. I mean…some of the things Alecto said… ” were true. Amelia had cried. Not for the reasons Amycus might assume in his head but because her private thoughts and feelings had been aired for her coworkers to revel in and ask questions about. Amelia was a kind woman but she had always liked to keep more private things close to her chest. Amycus was a private thing. It had felt like an opportunity had been stolen from her, a right. Her right to be the one to tell him how she felt about him on her own time.

“I don’t feel obligated to talk to you.” Amelia responded in earnest. If he could only know that she’s been miserably sulking around her flat and office simply because she couldn’t talk to him. Pausing for a moment, she cleared her throat, her eyes dropping to her shoes like they were the most interesting thing in the world, “I missed you.”

“Look uh — ” Amelia’s voice was anxious again as she pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, shifting her weight from foot to foot, “Can I sit?…I-I can go if you want to be alone..”

Amycus thought back to the uncomfortable encounter in the hallway of level two, of that office lady insisting that he let Amelia down easy, like he was the one with all the cards here. “Dolores,” he repeated at length, blinking slowly as he tried to recall anything about her except the curious ringing in his ears that had seemed to accompany her presence and that Amelia wasn’t leaving, that Dolores had lied to him for whatever reason and now he felt .. foolish in the face of it. “She caught me in the hallway and said that you’d been crying and that you had been to see your boss and were going to leave—” and a multitude of things about marriage and children that he still hadn’t found space to process.

But she wasn’t and her miserable, pretty eyes still looked sad and she’d heard Alecto (just like half the building had, he bet) all those accusations of crushes and she still wanted to talk to him. She missed him. It was an astonishing thing to say and he looked up as she looked down, that horrible off-balance feeling that had been sloshing around him settling just a little as he replied, truthfully, “I — missed you too.”

And was that what that was? Feeling like gravity had betrayed him just a little. Amycus cleared his throat, blinking steadily up at her as she refused to meet his eyes and he wanted her to look at him in a way he never wanted anyone to look at him. “You can—” he started, fingers curling awkwardly as he glanced down at his melting dish of ice cream and cleared his throat carefully, “You can have some, if you like.”

He wasn’t good at sharing — his thoughts or his feelings or the things he wanted to keep for himself and most especially not ice cream but he spun the spoon awkwardly around to the empty side of the booth in invitation, blinking up at Amelia under the expectation that she would sit down. “Alecto was mad at me because I hadn’t talked to her about you,” he offered after a long moment, as if he could retroactively fix the catastrophe of the Atrium, “It wasn’t your fault. I just didn’t want to .. share.”

Amelia was sad. Not that normal type of sadness or dissatisfaction that would creep up occasionally when she was alone but genuinely sad. Work and Halloween festivities had done little to fill a hole she wasn’t aware she had until Amycus’s visits had come to an end. Running into Alecto at the Century hadn’t done much to make her feel better about his absence. At least Amelia had some understanding of his sister’s motivations to sabotage their burgeoning relationship but that didn’t fix anything.

It had never been Amelia’s intention to come between the twins. In fact, there was a part of her that desperately wanted Alecto to like her. It would make things so much easier, getting closer to Amycus. Then again, what if that’s exactly why they hadn’t seen each other? It was possible that Amycus had zero interest in her that way and the thought of it alone horrified him to no end. Maybe he thought it easier to spare Amelia’s feelings by avoiding her? It wasn’t the first time it had happened to her and she was certain that it wouldn’t be the last.

It was on her day off that Amelia realized she needed a distraction. A change of scenery from the suddenly bleak and gloomy walls of her flat. It wouldn’t do to sulk or be angry about exactly why she was sulking over someone who had so easily forgotten her. She had spent a few moody hours reading in Flourish and Blotts. The shop girl shooting her weary looks the whole time, very aware that Amelia had no intention of buying anything. As she had passed Florean’s on her way out, the idea of burying her emotions in a bowl of ice cream seemed a more appealing option than going home to an empty flat. 

Florean had given her a bright smile like he usually did, always with the offer to try whatever new flavors he had been cooking up in the shop. Amelia had been considering doing that or getting her usual, when she glanced around the shop at the other patrons. Her eyes falling on a familiar mop of long hair buried in a sweater.

It couldn’t possibly be, could it? Amelia politely but quickly excused herself, ignoring Florean’s puzzled expression. Driven by the need for some sort of explanation, Amelia hadn’t hesitated until she was already standing in front of Amycus’s booth. He hadn’t noticed her at first, causing a knee-jerk reaction to flee, fearful that he wouldn’t have anything good to say if he was going to say anything at all. When Amelia heard his voice, her heart ached and she stopped, suddenly more determined than ever to speak with him.

“So are you just never going to speak to me again?” Amelia demanded, ignoring whatever words Amycus had just stuttered out. Her brow was drawn into a hard line as she crossed her arms over her chest. In hindsight she knew it was a stupid question, as he was now speaking to her. Amelia could tell he was shocked to see her. “Are you really that worried about what your sister thinks that’d you just avoid me altogether?” Amelia’s bravado wavered as she asked her next question, her tone betraying the hurt and stupid pining she had been dealing with the last couple of days. Her eyes suddenly started to look watery as she sniffed, fixing her gaze firmly on the table.

Amycus hadn’t expected her. An obvious statement, perhaps, but one that rang true regardless of where he was and what he was doing these days, he hadn’t expected Amelia but there she was, regardless, at the edge of his table and in his thoughts and tangled up somewhere in the midst of the ugly snarl of feelings he didn’t have a clue of what to do with. He cleared his throat uneasily, picking at his fingernails and daring to glance up as she cut him off.

Angry. Everyone seemed angry at him lately and Amycus had been struggling to figure out why. Alecto was still furious with him for excluding her, for keeping her at a distance, and now Amelia seemed to be doing the same, except worse — her voice had gone quiet and sad and she was staring anywhere but at him and he thought, maybe, she might be going to cry. 

It was troubling to think that it was his fault, again. That he had a habit of making her sad.

“I’m not avoiding you,” he replied after a long moment, blunt but truthful, his finger poised on the handle of his spoon and eyes darting uneasily from her face to Florean behind the counter to the curious eyes a couple of tables over and back to her, “I’ve been — I was — ill.”

His lips thinned, twitching, at the irony of that word, his shoulders inching upward as he tugged again at the cuffs of his sweater, dragging them down over his knuckles and ignoring the itch and pull and pain of burns trying to heal.  “I —” and his eyes darted down again as he picked up his spoon, clearing his throat uncomfortably, “Someone said you were leaving. Work. That you were crying after we — after Alecto in the .. I didn’t think you would want to—”

Trailing off, he dug his spoon into the dish of ice cream decisively. “I’m just saying. You don’t have to talk to me because you feel — obligated.”