endure, endure

Frank was suggesting another little gathering, a way to try to life spirits, but it felt more and more like no one really wanted that. Which made sense. There came a point where distractions couldn’t help any longer. There came a point when the only thing that could truly life spirits was some sort of change, some sort of outside sign that things could actually get better, that their future wasn’t being confined to the glum seaside town forever trying to come up with plans of protection, and hypothetical plans of action that might never come to fruition.

And what did you do when it got to that point? Give up? Accept it?

Ted didn’t quite know.

He wanted to somehow be able to reassure his friend, offer him some kind of comfort or knowledge, but he didn’t know what he could say to possibly make things seem better. Anything he could say would be a lie. A lie that even he couldn’t convince himself to believe.

“I know, Frank. I feel the same way,” he said with a bit of a sigh, as he scooted forward in his chair, only really succeeding in making the table wobble precariously again. “But we have to try, right? There’s no point in giving up just yet,”–not when the only other option is hopelessness– “And you’re not alone, yeah? You’ve got to share the load, d’you know what I mean? When you don’t, that’s when things get hard, that’s when it gets tough to go on. And if we let that happen, we’re giving up. We can’t do that. We can’t,” he finished, voice a little more forceful than necessary. Because, honestly, the words were as much for himself as they were for Frank.

Indeed, Frank was feeling somewhat tender at that moment, but the butterbeer did little to absolve him of the achey soul, achey legs. Only Ted was helping him with that. He could tell that his friend was struggling, the admirable affection of his nature urging his persistence in comforting Frank.

But it was eaiser for Frank to take, the soothing words and attempt to console, in this slightly different manner of approach: rather than sympathising with his friend — which was more than a kindness to him, and which made Frank somewhat bashful and remorseful that he should even need such comfort from his friends, heightening his perceived duty as caregiver and encouraging him to shake off and bottle up his agonies — Ted now empathised with him, sharing in the mutual feeling of despondency and frustration, fatigue and helplessness. It still pained Frank to not appear the sturdy, hale protector of his friend, but did much to put him at ease nonetheless.

@frankmathew

She did not enjoy cutting Frank’s hair by any means. She enjoyed spending time with him, mundane moments between the lines, routines that everything fell into place around. But her cuts were imprecise and his hair always ended up uneven, somewhere: he always swore he didn’t see it but she’d bite her lip when she noticed it for the next week and a half, until it grew out enough that his curls covered the slanted lines. She liked his hair longer.

But she was his wife, his partner of many years, and she knew everything there was to know about Frank. He had stopped asking her to cut his hair; it was beginning to curl. The night patrols had halted; he was less consistent at waking up before her every morning. His time in the garden was less calming: he jumped more often, dark circles were forming under his eyes. Vivienne Travers was in his head. The stress of inventing a cure caused tremors in his hands. Her Frank was dissolving.

Moody gave her the night shift infrequently. He preferred her on her feet during the day; Alice functioned inconsistently on little sleep, and since she’d discovered her condition she’d noticed a fatigue setting in at odd times. Her mentor had given her an odd look when she’d volunteered for this shift.

Frank did not pass the night peacefully, seeming almost fitful in his sleep. As usual, he dreamt of disintegrating in some form: his usual nightmare, of sinking through the forest floor and dissolving in the soil, had shifted to one of him fizzing out as foam in a choppy sea. It ended with the faces of the Death Eaters in whom he’d once confided, with whom he’d once laughed, danced, passed away hours. It always ended this way: there was no other ending to his dreams besides their faces, bleeding black liquid from eyes without pupils.

It took little to rouse him, therefore, just before the dawn: he’d missed the sunrise so often, lately, that it was beginning to disqualify as a custom. Frank had built his stability, his peace of mind in the Port, on habit, on routine. He was beginning to slip away. 

But the sun would still rise, and his wife would still move and breathe with him no matter which fragments were splintering. Indeed, he wondered with a familiar knot in his stomach where Alice was, as he slowly dressed and wrapped a scarf about his neck, passing quietly through the cottage and not seeing her returned.

Frank told himself that perhaps Moody had needed her to stay on, with nothing to be concerned about: he told himself this again and again as he beat out his regular path to the bluffs, hoping at every turn to spot Alice approaching from the opposite way. But he only spotted her once he’d almost arrived, and, hastening significantly in his pace, he reached her just as the sun broke loose over the horizon. 

As he turned back to the kitchen for the diversion of finding more biscuits, though, he couldn’t help but wish there was something else he could say or do to help Frank. He was fairly sure, though, that anything else he could say would be too much, would only succeed in making it worse instead of better. So for once, he decided to stop there, and instead he turned his attention to finding the tin of biscuits and bringing it back over to the table for both of them.

He could recognize Frank’s attempt at lightening the mood from miles away. It was a very Frank thing to try to do, but Ted had also noticed that more than anything whenever he was around the others all they wanted to do was try to distract him-and maybe themselves too–from thinking too deeply. He agreed that thinking too much on any of it was counterproductive, since at the present moment there wasn’t much to do about anything but stay safe, but he’d also never liked shying away from emotions.

“Yeah, yeah. That’d be real nice. Maybe the water will still enough for a nice after supper dip, even,” he said absently, returning to the table with the tin. He put it down and took his seat across from Frank again. Ted couldn’t help but frown slightly, looking back at his friend. He didn’t want to push the matter, but he just couldn’t keep on like this was a casual afternoon drink like before. His own misstep had made sure of that.

The others had passed in equal tranquility, but with less frequency as the winter nights drew in tighter and frostier, and as the chill of the waters dissuaded all from dipping even a toe. Frank had felt the mood drop significantly in those icy weeks, many smiles scrubbed off by the biting wind and blistering cold. But their spirits had arisen to ring in Christmas, and welcome the New Year with a pulse of tentative hope quickening at their wrists.

And once the festivities died down and left them with January’s frost, still he did all he could to keep morale high, to preserve the flickering whispers of hope and compassion alive within them all: he made enough vegetable soups to feed an army, and made the beds of snowdrops dance. He called the entire Order round to listen to the dusty old gramophone, monumental in their living room, or play a tournament of exploding snap. He sought out individuals, too, when they met him along the shore or wrestled the upshoots of weeds with him in the garden, to offer words of comfort, to listen to their doubts. 

He did little strategy or defence for the Order, but served dutifully as their clandestine counsellor. Most of all, he just did his best.

But the arrival of chaos and disease had diminished his best to a point that Ted was here offering him counsel, that Frank was struggling to do what he’d always done so well. So he suggested another gathering, another soirée, and smiled at his friend’s reply however much they both knew the idea would not come to fruition. As Ted returned to set the biscuit tin upon the table, he brought with him a mutual understanding that the congenial afternoon was now overcast.

ok so i throw loads of headcanons into my paras and then always forget about them so i thought i’d compile a list of them for reference (thru this i’ve also come to realise that frank is adorable)

on frank’s guilt about finding the cure:

Yet all the while, as his friends gathered cuttings and read histories of the Scottish highlands, he felt guiltier and guiltier: in part, because he ought to have beencapable with a cure. Herbology and botany were, indeed, his greatest skills, and the only things which made him feel useful here — made him feel like he was doing his bit.

He’d refused night patrols so as to be with Alice; he could scarcely look at Emma and the others without trembling with the burdens of his past; he didn’t partake in strategy meetings, stubbornly insistent that they had no need to rebuild beyond the port. Port Montrose was their home, now, and he feared any further uprooting.

Yet with his allotments, and the cottage garden, he’d been useful. And that capability had brought to him this task, of curing them all, but in this so far he was failing. The help of others was a painful reminder that he had not been able to take care of them, to fix the problem for them. He was not capable enough.

on frank’s guilt about vivienne:

Frank had another cause for guilt, too, although it was somewhat more foolish: despite having had no part in the course of events which led her to their new home, their new haven of safety, Frank to an extent felt culpable for Vivienne. He of all had known her most intimately; he could not forget that, and nor could the others — however much they neglected to mention the shades of his past. Yet as he had ventured into the light, straying from his old friends’ darkness, she had travelled all the more daringly into the black night. He had left them, certainly, but he had not stopped them.

And he feared he could not stop her.

on frank & edgar’s renovation work:

He and Edgar and the others had managed to clear out the supply shed at the back of the sixth cottage somewhat, propping spades and rakes against the paint-chipped outdoor walls of the boxy cabin, and even sacrificing an upturned chest of drawers from one of the cottages to tidy away most of the shed’s clutter. In turn they had re-cluttered the place themselves, until by now each possible inch of floor and shelf and desk was covered in plants, herbs, potions. Each surface was caked in mud, and had been so for coming up to months now, and still they were no further than they had been at the start in finding a cure.

on hand-washing:

Long before she found herself struggling with a mandrake or watching a potion turn just the right shade of purple after the final addition of a few carefully chopped herbs Aisling had been aware of the magic of plants. Growing up darting through the flowers and herbs of her grandmother’s garden and sitting on the counter next to brewing tinctures and bowls of milk left for household spirits it had not taken an owl delivered letter or wand for Aisling to know that her world was magical. Caoilinn McCrae had carried on the generations old tradition of treating their village’s scrapes and heartaches with herbs and kind words of wisdom and Aisling had trailed after her with stars in her eyes from the time she could crawl. Even when she grew old enough that her own inventions began to steal away some of her time and attention she would often wander outside to watch her grandmother when she went gathering in her garden and beyond in the woods along the river listening eagerly to the names and uses of everything she placed in her basket. It was her grandmother who taught her that some of many plants that boasted ugly finger-shredding thorns had the greatest potential for healing inside of them and that nothing should be taken at face value.  “Everything blooms for a reason, a stór,” her grandmother would chide as she carefully plucked yellow flowers from an aiteann bush.

Aisling thought back to her grandmother’s words and her tenderness with the cuts and scrapes that often appeared on Aisling’s impatience hands following such excursions as she looked down at her similarly abused hands. Everything blooms for a reason. She had memorized dozens of herbs by name and sight and learned the reasons under the tutelage of Caoilinn in Ireland and her potions and herbology teachers when she was whisked away to a different land of magic. Now she knew the reason but whatever plant bloomed to fill the need stubbornly evaded her. She had been sketching the plants that grew around their new home since her first hike into the rocky hills but her urgency had spiked since the arrival of their hostile patient and the deadly threat she carried in her blood. Dirty blood…I wonder if she sees the irony… But with inventions gathering dust in her room back in the Port and requests piling up she soon realized that spending her days walking the miles back and forth into the hills were not practical. She had tried dragging back a number of cuttings to study and while they dried nicely and she labeled them known and unknown in small pouches alongside her other herbs a living plant seemed more likely to give out secrets than a dead one. After a disastrous attempt at potting a few of them she decided it would be best to appeal to Frank and see if he might be willing to adopt a few more leafy children into his garden.

Frank? Are you around?

At once, he plunged both hands into the basin, causing water to slap about the countertop. “Here!” he called, though Aisling would see him the moment she crossed the threshold regardless. As she ambled in, burdened somewhat by the buckets in her hands, Frank twisted his body to face her and lifted a hand from the sink, stretching towards her. “Do you need a hand?” 

He stepped tentatively from the basin, quickly rubbing his hands dry with a washrag as he reached to help with the buckets. “Looks like you’ve been pretty busy,” he grinned, tossing the dishcloth over his hands. Frank peered into one of the buckets. The water, being disturbed, rippled over the plants within, obscuring them from his attempt at identification. “What’ve you got here, then?”

As much as the whole pursuit pained him, Frank appreciated Aisling’s help with the search for a cure. Yet all the while, as his friends gathered cuttings and read histories of the Scottish highlands, he felt guiltier and guiltier: in part, because he ought to have been capable with a cure. Herbology and botany were, indeed, his greatest skills, and the only things which made him feel useful here — made him feel like he was doing his bit. 

He’d refused night patrols so as to be with Alice; he could scarcely look at Emma and the others without trembling with the burdens of his past; he didn’t partake in strategy meetings, stubbornly insistent that they had no need to rebuild beyond the port. Port Montrose was their home, now, and he feared any further uprooting. 

Yet with his allotments, and the cottage garden, he’d been useful. And that capability had brought to him this task, of curing them all, but in this so far he was failing. The help of others was a painful reminder that he had not been able to take care of them, to fix the problem for them. He was not capable enough.

Frank had another cause for guilt, too, although it was somewhat more foolish: despite having had no part in the course of events which led her to their new home, their new haven of safety, Frank to an extent felt culpable for Vivienne. He of all had known her most intimately; he could not forget that, and nor could the others — however much they neglected to mention the shades of his past. Yet as he had ventured into the light, straying from his old friends’ darkness, she had travelled all the more daringly into the black night. He had left them, certainly, but he had not stopped them. 

And he feared he could not stop her.

Still, he realized much too late the effect his words were going to have, unable to take back any of the dewy-eyed optimism, leaving himself rather helpless to stop the bitter reality from crashing down over his friend. Silently cursing himself and his carelessness, he put down his goblet, looking back at Frank as he tried to force himself to smile through the tears. It was like all at once his heart sank in his chest. This was going to be a nice afternoon, an afternoon of light and warmth and happiness, and he had been too oblivious to realize what he was saying, too selfishly focused on himself to think before speaking. It wasn’t anything new, really, but it usually didn’t hurt anyone, his carelessness usually didn’t bring up painful memories. It was second nature for him to go into damage control mode, though.

“No, no, no, I’m sorry. Dunno why I said any of that to you. I shouldn’t have brought it up, it was completely thick of me to bring it up at all. Foolish to say any of that,” he said quickly, moving through Frank’s poor attempt at a recovery. He pushed himself up from the table, a little too fast, knocking against the table hard enough to make the goblets rattle precariously, but it was easy to ignore.

It was a bit awkward, given how tall Frank was, but Ted sort of half-knelt near him, and put a firm hand on his shoulder, trying to give him the little comfort that he could provide, all while knowing he had caused the pain in the first place. He hated how fragile things suddenly felt, and because of him, because he didn’t know how to respond correctly. But he tried to power on.

“Listen to me, Frank, I shouldn’t even compare this feeling to what you feel, I can’t comprehend… I wasn’t thinking when I spoke, there’s no excuse. And you have nothing to apologize for. It must be impossible to be around…” he stopped himself again, knowing that he was just going to make things even worse if he went on that track. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts, focusing his energy on his friend.

It was something of his fault that Ted had lost Andromeda. Regardless of how many times Ted had insisted otherwise, Frank felt culpable: they had journeyed up as a foursome, traversing the northern wilderness together. Despite the raging war, despite the loss and the often-hollow flints of their eyes, at times they’d shared moments of light: taking refuge from cold rains within dark caves, telling tales of ghouls and goblins to frighten each other; huddling about cautious fires on dreary coasts, clasping hands against chests to stay warm; losing themselves within anonymous Muggle villages, rubbing shoulders with the locals in pubs and passing for wayward travellers, wild young fools on an adventure.

They’d gotten by just about fine until the ambush. Ten black cloaks against four tired souls. The hissing storm of red, green, blue flashes was near blinding — they duelled for what felt as long as hours, what felt as short as seconds — Frank could not tell if he was dead, alive, spectral. He was the weak link, overcome by shock and fear. His friends fought bitterly around him while he stood firing disarming charms and petty hexes, near paralysed. He let the skies crash down around them. And then, suddenly, the storm seemed to simmer: he felt a hand in his left — Alice — and a hand in his right — Ted. 

He had assumed that Ted’s other hand was not empty, either.

He had been wrong.

Had he fought more bravely, had he fired more potent curses, he would not feel guilty for Andromeda’s absence. By no means did he believe her dead — this he constantly reassured Ted, he could feel her aura sustained in life — yet, had she been captured, it was for cause of his own weakness. He could have protected them. 

Ted fought to make it through each day, it was clear. Each sunrise was a battle, each sunset a lonely blast of the war-horn. Frank did not believe for a moment that his own struggles compared — and so his face burnt, and so he could scarcely do more than nod his head at his friend’s comforting words. He didn’t believe he needed them: he shouldn’t have needed them, he told himself, he was fine.

He lifted his hand to rest it gently upon Ted’s, the two against his shoulder. Frank traced his thumb along the back of his friend’s palm a few times, before patting his hand gently and returning his arm to lean against the table. He felt Ted’s reassuring squeeze, and smiled. One last tear rolled along his nose as he bowed his head for a moment, inhaling, before looking at Ted properly, his smile soft yet full. 

The answer had to somewhere. They had to be close by now. There was hardly combination that they haven’t tried yet they had no successful cure yet. Yet Edgar knew that he couldn’t give up no matter how much he wanted to flip the table over and scream that there was no cure. If there was one, they would’ve found it by now. But he couldn’t do that, how would that affect the group? They we’re already beaten down, but for him to finally admit defeat? That would surely send the port into a frenzy. Instead, Edgar remained bent over the table as he used a pair of tweezers and a extremely fine knife to cut away at some of the plants they had left over from Frank’s last run.

The longer the small group of them worked endlessly to find the cure, the more everything about these plants started to blend together. The names of them, the color, even the smells. Edgar was certain that it would only be time before he completely lost his mind looking for the right combination. It was amazing that he was the only one that had felt like this. The others worked so deliberately, also thinking of different ways to approach the problem or coming up with new solutions to equations that they’ve already tried multiple times. Maybe it was these people keeping the hope alive, not Edgar. It would be them that find the solution and not him. But they must of seen something in him that he hadn’t otherwise they would allow him to spend more time helping Lily with Molly and the baby.

It had been a while since Frank insisted that he go out and look for this rare plant that he was going on and on about the night before. Edgar knew that once Frank put his mind to something, he was never going to stop. Instead of fighting with him this time about running off and getting unnecessary materials, Edgar let him leave figuring he’d have some quite around the work area and maybe even stumble upon something that they could use to find the cure. But it had been hours since he had left and Edgar was starting to get nervous. Had something happened to him? Did someone pick him up while he was out? Edgar placed his tools on the table and took his apron off. He walked towards the door and was about to grab his sweater to go look for him before Frank came in carrying an armful of plants.

A small sigh escaped Edgar’s lips as he put the sweater back. Seeing Frank back and well might that maybe they weren’t here yet, that they still had a little bit of time left. Following Frank to the table, Edgar looked over the plants, not entirely sure all of what Frank brought back.

Only there were no hands, there were no arms, and limbless he would not only tumble to the muddy earth but through it, slipping into a subterranean realm. Musty and aspyhxiating air would ensconce him, cocooned, only he wasn’t just within the air, he was the air; particulate, empty, a whisper on the breeze. The sombre creak of an oak-tree bough.

He was haunted by these dreams as he now traipsed through the thickets, heading back to the shed. He’d left while the sun still hung high and trembled, amber bait at the top of a fisherman’s rod, but judging from the violet hue of the sky, the day had long since dipped beneath the waters of dusk. Frank hastened somewhat at the sharp realisation of the passage of time — he was becoming even less aware of it, these days, even more inclined to while away weeks in his garden — but, laden with freshly-uprooted plants, could only move so quickly.

He and Edgar and the others had managed to clear out the supply shed at the back of the sixth cottage somewhat, propping spades and rakes against the paint-chipped outdoor walls of the boxy cabin, and even sacrificing an upturned chest of drawers from one of the cottages to tidy away most of the shed’s clutter. In turn they had re-cluttered the place themselves, until by now each possible inch of floor and shelf and desk was covered in plants, herbs, potions. Each surface was caked in mud, and had been so for coming up to months now, and still they were no further than they had been at the start in finding a cure.

Internally, with his ears buried beneath his curling hair, the once-beaming beacon of Frank’s hope for their great discovery was beginning to fade. His light was dimmer now, but it was not easy to see: he hid it well, hid many things well. He always had a knack for concealing himself. 

As he spilled into the room, one foot clattering against a rack of test tubes on the floor, he almost leapt back at the sight of Edgar a mere foot away — “Merlin! Thought you were a ghost!” he said, smile growing as his eyebrows lowered from their jumped-up spot at the top of his forehead. He traipsed across the room barely able to see above the flowers and stalks in his arms, but managed to set them down onto their work-desk without too much breakage. 

Turning over his shoulder to Edgar, he could sense his partner’s bewilderment and mild exasperation, so launched into fervent enthusiasm. “These,” he said, pointing to a silver- and purple-blotched bunch of flowers with hairy stems and leathery leaves, “are liverwort. I read about them last night — long history of medical use, according to Pokeby. Wildflowers, grow really deep in the shade ... took me a while between all the snowdrops and everything, but I found them,” he finished, marvelling at the plants with an almost paternal mirth in his eyes.

Although, he wasn’t quite sure anything, even Frank, could do the job of keeping the fire kindled now that he could feel a bit of the familiar guilt in the pit of his stomach.

“Cheers, mate. Maybe I’ll have to start sleeping on your floor,” he said with a slight laugh, voice rather soft despite his best efforts. “Dunno how she does it, either. It’s nice to have her and Arthur around, though. Makes it feel a bit more homey. And the baby…” he trailed off slightly, something he realized he’d been doing more and more lately. When did he get so hesitant about being honest with anyone, especially someone he was as close to as Frank? If he wasn’t honest with anyone else, how could he be honest with himself?

Then again, he wasn’t really sure he wanted to be honest with himself. Being honest with himself would mean admitting that things might not get better, that he might never go back to a world in which he and Andromeda could invite Frank and Alice over for a Sunday roast in the small, but homey flat. He refused to give up the slimmest glimmer of hope, because if he did then he wasn’t sure what would happen to him.

Accepting a gingersnap with an appreciative nod, he quietly reminded himself to be thankful for even something so simple as sitting in the small kitchen with Frank, drinking homemade butterbeer, accidentally bumping knees under the table. There was enough sadness in Port Montrose, and it was a nice day, considering everything. It was times like this that it was best to swallow the guilt and hopelessness, and appreciate what was still left, what was still possible even in times as dreary as those.

He took a rather large bit of the biscuit, looking back at Frank rather thoughtfully. He took another swig of the butterbeer before continuing, pushing his glasses up into his hair as he spoke. Sometimes it was nice for the world to blur out of focus, everything becoming a colorful, happy fog. 

He was glad that this cottage was nothing akin to the one he and Alice razed to the ground. It was less colourful, less light, but infinitely more alive; it protected a choir of beating hearts, and almost seemed to have a pulse itself. Had it housed only two, as the first, Frank feared that its walls would echo the griefs of years past. That their sorrow would sink into the floorboards, only to float back up with the damp to consume them. That this house, too, would end up burnt to the ground. 

In the soft lull of conversation, after mentally chastising himself for wittering so much, banding about in caprice when all Ted probably wanted was a bit of quiet and a biscuit, Frank rolled his heavy head about the ball of his neck, cracking out the gardener’s pixies which lurked in his joints and made them ache. He shut his eyes, allowing his lungs to fill with abundance: he was so grateful for its highland purity, especially now that the Order’s bustle had truly shaken out the long-gathered dust from the place.

Ted’s lungs filled too, only he used the air to give a quiet power to his words: as he spoke, however, Frank couldn’t look at him. Such a beautiful thing. He kept his eyes set on the mug his hands had wrapped around and brought nearer to his chest. That little bundle. Ted was talking about seeing with clarity, but a terrible mist had risen in Frank’s eyes, and he cleared a grainy throat. I only wish that I could be a part of that. 

I only wish.

He could feel Ted’s eyes turning to him, and his eyebrows dimpled in the middle and his lips pinched somewhat, and he felt utterly cross, utterly cross at himself for reacting so. Ted would be uncomfortable, and it was his fault: he’d shattered the sunny sky with his foolish helpless hateful tears, and he moved the rough of a jumper sleeve to scrub them from his face.