#whoisleftparent

Vince Sinclair was - quite obviously, if you asked him, but apparently not if you asked a few well-meaning mothers in the foyer - not a parent. It was not, technically, exactly his weekend to be visiting Hogwarts.

But, perhaps unsurprisingly, he was there anyway. The turmoil and terror that had plagued Hogwarts the past year, most recently the attack in the castle and the nearby village, was still perfectly newsworthy; which was why his editor was mildly impressed by Vince’s pitch (”these students have gone through hell and they’re still all graduating on time, and parents are going to be there - we’ll get fluff and we’ll get some drama stirring from the older folks talking about how they barely wanted to send them back at all!”) and okay’d the long weekend.

It was only half for work, anyway, which Vince mused thoughtfully on as he stepped out of the way of a gaggle of ooh-ing and aww-ing muggle parents being reminded by a long-suffering prefect the rules for wandering the castle wandless. The very conditions he was going to be writing whatever puff piece on were also making for a highly likely recipe for more terror.

Dumbledore had of course arranged for more Auror presence, all professors on deck as well; but having a couple Order folks helpfully placed among the masses wasn’t a hard leap for he and Moody to make. 

“‘scuse me!” Vince called out, blinking at a nearby someone’s back - a good enough place to start, really, since they didn’t seem to be actively being doted upon by another visitor - and tapping on their shoulder. “I’m with the Daily Prophet, how’s the weekend going so far?”

Lydia had a way of getting into places she didn’t belong. If no one was around, she would sneak. And if she got caught, she would charm. And if, God forbid, charm didn’t work, she could always lie.

So, she took the first moment she could to slip away from her family and go exploring. If any of them thought she wasn’t going to take the chance to explore some old-ass literal castle that was full of magic, they were crazy. This was the only chance she was ever going to get there, after all. A fact that would never make her jealous of her sister but excited for the opportunity. 

She was somewhere underground now, judging by the grass on the other side of the highly placed windows on the walls. That seemed strange, since she was pretty sure she went up more than she went down. But then, she wasn’t paying very close attention. The hallways were a maze and Lydia was happy to get lost in them. It would all work out eventually, it always did.

With a soft push, another door opened to her with a loud creak that bounced off all the stonework. Peeked in and of course, it was pitch black. “How does this damn school survive without electricity?” Lydia mumbled to herself.

Giving up on that, she turned away and was confronted with a figure standing down the hall. The sight immediately put a smile on her face as she left behind the still ajar door to walk closer and get a better look at them. She wasn’t entirely sure if she was allowed to be there right now. But, she could err on the side of not being in the wrong and only apologize if it became necessary.

“Oh, good. I hope you are one of the personal guides sent out to help the lost girls like me. I would first like to know if there’s a single light switch in this entire place.”

Lucinda, after having to fight to keep her lips firmly shut on the walk down the locker rooms, found herself struggling for words as she walked by the bench in the middle. It wasn't like anything changed in the past few minutes. She had everything she wanted: Emma and privacy. And now, her mouth chose to shut down? Great. Sure, she hadn't succeeded in her initial goal, telling Emma that her lunch with her mother had not gone well, thank you, but it was only the surface.

"We need to talk about your future."

"Oh! The physical therapy position. I still need my NEWTs to come in, but it's looking pretty promising."

"No, no," Antoinette had said. "You won't be doing that."

There it was. That was enough to launch her internal monologue external, and once that happened, it was best to just hang on tight for her and everyone caught in it. 

"Okay. Here we go. I had a great lunch with Mum," Lucinda said. The sarcasm was almost lost to the wind with how quickly the words came out, but it was Emma. She knew there was no such thing as a "great lunch with Antoinette Talkalot." When her brain caught up, she'd have to tell her that. "And, you know, she had some thoughts about everything I've ever done in my life and the nerve—the nerve of this one, Emma, I swear.

"I mean, who does she think she is? Coming in here and telling me that no, I can't take the job that I set up for myself. No help from her, decided help from you, and something I was excited to do and might be good at. But no," she paused for a breath and nothing more, "if I'm going to be the 'British representation of the Talkalot name'—which I never once asked to be, mind you—then that just won't do."

Her head was killing her, and she reached up to find it was still pinned back, nearly within an inch of its life into something a bit more practical. After all, Christmas had come with comments about how wild she looked, and inevitably, today she had to hear about how she had great curls and it was beyond her why she might try to smother them. She started pulling them out too aggressively, barely solving the problem of the headache but getting further away from who her mother wanted her to be... and maybe closer. It didn't matter; this was for her.

"She and my dad just went and took matters into their own hands and got me a job as a cultural attache or consultant or something for the Ministry. I'll start with someone specific—couldn't tell you who for the life of me—but it'll go beyond that." Lucinda dropped the pins on the bench with a clatter, two more to go. One she got easily and stuck in the corner of her mouth, very ineffectively trying to speak around it. 

"As for where I stand, well—" It was a mumbled mess and she gave up quickly, tossing the bobby pin toward the bench with the others and still fighting with the tricky remaining one.

"Wait, fuck, I didn't even tell her." Lucinda dropped her hands and looked at Emma stricken and apologetic and honestly, breathing a little heavily because that was a lot even for her. "The whole reason I agreed to go down to village and have lunch with her was so I could tell her I was going to be living with you, and I didn't even manage that. Shit." 

After days of successfully avoiding his father, the inevitable happened: his father successfully managed to corner him. The hand on Evan’s shoulder looked like nothing more than a comforting fatherly embrace. It wasn’t. It was a leash, a leash Evan couldn’t free himself of without making a scene. The way his father leaned in looked friendly enough, and the whisper that left his father’s mouth was low enough only Evan could hear, Evan was sure of it. The fact that no one overheard what was said didn’t make his father’s words sting any less. One pat on the back later and his father was gone. 

Evan usually dealt with being forced to spend quality time with his dad by getting utterly and completely plastered, only he couldn’t get absolutely plastered because every other parent was he knew was in the castle, as well. 

Evan didn’t care. He slipped into the common room and found comfort in the alcohol he had stashed in his room. 

Before he knew it, he was stumbling back out of the common room entrance. Something caught his toe (a raised stone or his other shoe, Evan couldn’t tell) and Evan fell to the ground. Deciding the floor wasn’t a bad place to be, he righted himself to a sitting position...and he wasn’t wearing shoes. He was barefoot. Where had his shoes gone? A quick glance around told him he wasn’t in the dungeons. He was...somewhere in the castle. Joy. 

Hearing footsteps approach, he cursed under his breath. “No. Turn around. Back from whence you’ve came.”

Hope Lupin was technically no stranger to Hogwarts: last year’s Parents Weekend had been a bit of both a mini-vacation and a breakthrough for the Lupin family (dramatic, as most family matters can get) but she’d also made several trips throughout the year to visit Remus after particularly bad full moons; sometimes to bring him home to recover, other times simply to ease her own full moon worries and just see her boy.

This year, at least, there was far less drama going in: at least, that she was aware of. Her husband did tend to keep her slightly out of the loop when it came to matters of the wizarding world, and besides a few vague warnings to stay away from anyone who looked decidedly “pureblooded” (she knew what it meant, she also knew it was a bloody stupid thing to put any thought into) while she wandered alone.

She hadn’t gone to any fancy castle for school; her uniform had consisted of Catholic schoolgirl trappings, even if she often hid her packs of cigarettes in her stockings. So she was going to explore the place a bit, who could blame her for that? Hope had long lost track of what floor she was on and found herself watching, amused and fascinated, as a group of five proper looking ladies in massive, Easter-worthy pastel gowns gossiped and drank tea - inside their finely painted portrait, of course. 

“Poor dears. I do hope you get to go and have a bit of fun sometimes.” She murmured to herself (though, who knew, maybe they could hear her), laughing softly and quite unaware of anyone else joining her on the landing.

“Excuse me, I’m trying to get to the library, could you direct me?”

Every open door was an invitation to come right in. Clearly. Knocking on the doorframe was force of habit more than anything. It was there; he was barely going to break stride wandering right in. Perhaps for the better, his sister was the only one in the dorm. Wonderful. He’d been trying to track her down—not particularly hard with this being the third place he checked after the Great Hall (breakfast, late) and the common room which he had to wander through to get here.

He dropped right down on her bed without invitation, crossing his legs under him and watching her with a wide grin. It seemed like a number of their classmates were dreading the arrival of their parents, but he was excited. He had no reason not to be, and he was even happier about the addition of Parents’ Weekend than he was last year. It truly felt like a bonus, and he didn’t have anything he was waiting to get chewed out over. Really, he couldn’t be better off.

“Are you ready yet?” Davey asked. He looked up at her like he’d been waiting for more than two seconds, like he’d been invited to wait her in the first place. “Mum and Da are gonna be here soon. You know they’ll be some of the first in the door. Well, fireplace. You know what I’m getting at.”

Bellatrix was back in the castle with two distinct tasks. The first was by far the most important: finding her sisters and getting to spend time with them that could go a bit longer than a too quick dinner. She needed to do better about arranging them; currently, they only seemed to occur when there were pressing matters that were best shared in person. This weekend was theirs.

However, she was reasonable. She knew they would not be available to her at all hours, which brought her to her second task. The library here remained phenomenal. She came in with a list of what she might be able to pull over the course of a few days; she would see how far it took her. When she hadn’t seen Narcissa or Andromeda in the common room, she dropped notes on their beds and came here. She had little interest in frittering time away catching up with others. Anyone of interest, she saw regularly outside of these walls. Small talk was always a waste.

“I did not think I would see anyone else in here,” Bellatrix said. She had rounded a corner from the Potions aisle into the next and found that she wasn’t as alone as she assumed. Perhaps she should have been paying more attention, but all sounds were dulled here. She thought, for a moment, she could rest and enjoy the solitude and the books. It was why she bothered with the Archives, truly. She easily could have requested access, and no one would question her for not having a true job and “managing the family affairs”. There were few places in her life that were quiet.