Absit Omen RPG

1-19-2012

Dear Wesley,

I received the Headmaster's letter. I understand why you like him so much. I'm very glad we get to see you. Your Uncle Mark is upset, yes, but he's handling it. Wren and Wyatt know a little, but not everything. Wendy understands and can't wait to see you. Write to me anytime to tell me how you are doing. There's nothing wrong with feeling sad sometimes.

Would you please give this enclosed letter to the Headmaster? It explains when we are available to meet. I've driven your uncle a bit mad trying to think of everything. If there are trains involved, we won't mix them up this time. I promise.

Love,
Aunt Ronnie

1-19-2012

Aunt Ronnie,

They told me. Sometimes I'm ok and sometimes I'm not. Is Uncle Mark ok? Is he sad and angry?

Do Wren and Wyatt understand? Do they know everything? It's really bad. It's a bad truth. I don't like it. Do you know she saved me?

I get to see you. Headmaster Greyfrur is sending you a letter to tell you. I get to see you soon.

Love
Wesley

This letter was written on lined muggle paper. Auror Trevelyan hand-delivered it to Wesley during this thread.


Dear Wesley,

Hi sweetheart. I'm writing this quickly as your Uncle Mark is finishing up talking to the Orroar. He seems a decent sort, and I expect that he'll tell you everything kindly. He seems to know quite a bit about our way of life here.

Wesley, I'm so very sorry that your mother has passed. You must be going through a lot of pain and dissapointment. I'd always hoped that we would find answers for you and your siblings, but not like this. Uncle Mark had hoped, too. We just hide the hope better, you know that? With lack of answers we invent all manner of wonderful and horrible things. And you, Wesley, have always favored the wonderful.

Please write back as soon as you can and tell me how you are doing and what you are feeling. Even if it's just a few short lines. We'll worry otherwise. I don't want to push you to talk too much, but don't hold back on our account. Anything you need to say, any anger or frustration or sadness, you can write to me and tell me.

I know you didn't want to talk about the visit to the farm, but listen, if there's anything

They are finished speaking. I'll seal this and hand it to Orror Trevelyan. Much love. We love you so much. We don't say it enough, but we do.

Aunt Rhonwen

"Thanks," Wes told the Auror, sounding much more like the boy who had first entered this office. An Auror card! He flipped the card over to look for some kind of magical enchantment, but the words were magic enough for him, and he tucked the card in his pocket.

He patted his pocket the way he'd seen the Headmaster do sometimes, when he wanted to remember something important.

His aunt's letter remained in his hand, carefully held by his cleanest fingers. Just as important as the Auror card.

He knew more than he did before, and more than he should, he thought. But maybe he wasn't on his own. The Headmaster's deep voice sounded, agreeing to his request. Wes went to the desk to watch him pen the letter, dodging the cat looking for treats.

He wanted to say thank you. He meant to, but it got stuck in his throat. Wes looked from the letter to look at the Headmaster, the barest glint of hope returning to his eyes.

Wes looked up at the Headmaster. Uh oh. Greyfriar was too smart for this. Wesley held his gaze for a moment, his expression similar to the many times in class when he tried to look innocent after causing trouble. His eyes were too wide, and he shrugged a shoulder mechanically.

No, the Headmaster was never angry. The Headmaster always listened, and just now, Wesley didn't want to tell this tale.

"Can I see my aunt and uncle? When can I?" Wes asked, his voice tight.

All he wanted was to go home.

The auror was listening. Wesley's eyebrows raised just a little. Though the tale of his dream had morphed into a big fat lie several sentences ago, the Wesley that felt stuck in this chair also felt stuck with the words he'd conjured.

"No," he answered the Auror's question simply.

Wes scrunched his nose. He had to think of something else. It was hard to think when he didn't understand why he was doing this. Maybe this was how his old neighbor, Alan, felt whenever he drove past the farmhouse and glimpsed something not right. Something just on the edges of his consciousness that he couldn't face full on.

That was it!

"My mum's old neighbor gave us a ring," Wes straightened a fraction, mindful of the cat. "On the telephone. He talked about seeing strange lights at the house late at night. A phone is like the floo system when you put your head in, but it's just a voice," Wes added mechanically, used to explaining muggle technology.

"Anyway, that was a few days before Christmas."

Wesley stopped petting the cat for a moment. Christmastime, when his siblings and aunt and uncle and cousin had budged up on the same couch in front of the fireplace, even though they had the whole inn to themselves. His aunt had made extra cookies to help him forget the Demen-tor, and also to prod about the visit to the farm that Wesley didn't want to talk about and Uncle Mark kept forgetting about.

What if the Auror told his family about the dream he'd mostly made up? Auror Gwenna's Dad had to come by the inn sometime, to tell Uncle Mark about Wesley's mum.

To tell him...

Wesley's face fell, his shoulders hunching again. His uncle was going to be really sad and his aunt was going to be sad for him, and why was Wesley the only one who could remember everything - his mum, his dad, the visit to the farm - when everything was too hard to remember?

The cat let out a soft, plaintive meow.

The small smile that so often graced Wesley's face returned as he looked at the cat curled on his lap. He focused on Professor Greyfriar's voice, hearing his patient tone more than his meaning.

It gave him the strength to say what he was trying to say, even with snot on his sleeve and his throat hurting and the Auror in red hero robes watching.

"In my dream, I went back to my old house on the farm," Wesley kept his gaze on the Headmaster, who had heard him talk about his house before. At my old house, we hid drawings in the floorboards. At my old house, we carved our initials into the wooden table that we played hide and seek around in the greenhouse.

But never once had he said he'd returned to his old house. Only that he'd wanted to.

He swallowed, resting his hand gently atop the cat's head. This one reminded him of the orange and white-striped tabby at his new house, the house that had become home.

After a second, the cat head-butted his hand, and Wes gave him a nice rub around the cheeks.

"The door was open, and the house was really cold."

Dementor-cold.

"My mum was standing in front of the door. The air around her was warm though. Like summer."

When had he dreamed this? Sometime in December, maybe, before the train station incident. Time didn't matter much, he thought, when the dead could be alive and summer could be winter and dreams were a doorway into memory and could-be.

"She told me not to go inside the house. Not ever. Don't go inside, don't look for me."

His stomach gave a queasy jump and he scratched an itch on his nose. The cat moved his paws, curling them in to make them soft against Wesley's sweater.

"But I went in anyway. I saw a house elf inside, looking like she needed help. I heard a man making a howling sound. Not wolf-like but sad-like," he glanced away from the Headmaster.

"Um, and someone else."

Wesley met the Auror's eyes, which were kind, though the rest of him was in red.

"A witch was there, wearing my mum's gray cloak. She had it wrapped around her like it was hers. But it's not," his tone hardened.

It wasn't hers. She wasn't his mother.

Not anyone's mother, the house elf had told him in December, when Wes had ignored his dream, and Sulwen's dream, and his little sister's dream, and had stood in front of the old house he'd been told not to go to.[1]

1.	The Solstice

Wesley's gaze focused on the Auror again.

Someone at the train station.

He grasped at those words, making them settle in his head. Someone at the train station. Maybe Sulwen had seen! Or Natasha. Not Noah, he guessed.

His mum had hidden in someone? He shook his head, struggling with the idea of his strong mother hiding from bad siblings. He covered his face with his hands, rubbing at his eyes. He wanted to sleep. Escape. He didn't know.

He could believe that his mother would save him from a dementor. It made a consistent sort of awful sense. She always protected Wesley and Wren and Wyatt, just as she always helped people.

Where was she now? The question hovered in the air. Where was she, could she still be alive, if she was a spirit? If she'd recognized him, did that make her alive?

The threat of the dark cloak pressed on his chest and he almost burst into tears again. She'd saved him at least twice. At the train station and in the fields, when he'd smelled lavender where there was none in the dirt, and the sun had warmed his back where there'd been no sun.

He'd wanted to save her this time.

He looked at the Headmaster, a tentative understanding flickering over his face.

"I had a dream about her after the train station," he started to say, unsure if the tangent would be welcome. The Headmaster listened so patiently in class, outside of class, in the Great Hall, in the library, on the grounds, and wherever else Wesley found him.

He hugged the Headmaster, who smelled faintly of cigars and autumn, and Wes could feel the warmth of the fire in the hearth behind him again, because that was the Headmaster, warm and friendly. Tears leaked out of his eyes and his nose ran, and he was making embarrassing sniffling sounds, but the Headmaster didn't seem to care, and Wesley was too upset to stop.

When his father had died, his mum had been the first one to tell him. He'd been very young, and he'd kept waiting for his father to walk into the house, and he'd kept asking for him, forgetting that he was dead. He'd understood bit by bit, watching his mother everyday, seeing her sadness and the emptiness of the house. His little sister had felt the loss too, the missing 'Dada', but then she'd learned other words, and those words had started to replace the word for dad, until she'd stopped calling for him altogether.

It had made a consistent sort of awful sense. Days had stretched into years, and still, his father was dead. Sometimes, horrible accidents happened.

Wesley could barely make sense out of this. Horrible accident? Not-accident?

After what felt like forever, he pulled away from the Headmaster, taking a moment to run the edge of his sleeve over his face.

He stared, brow furrowed, at his hands resting palms up on his knees.

Wesley didn't know what to say. His questions still stood. He still had hope. But it was hard to sit and think and reason through it. It swam in his head - terrible siblings, not-bad pentrals, his mum, and the dementor at the train station. A dark cloak could descend in the room again at any moment.

"It was more wispy," he mumbled, dropping his gaze. He didn't want to say it. If he were at home, he'd stand and fling jokes and denials at these adults, in the way that he knew annoyed his direct and no-nonsense uncle, and then he'd run to his room and laugh, having won, and maybe he'd cry a little when it all caught up to him, but someone always found him to tell him it was ok, usually his uncle with a hug, or his aunt, with calm and kind words.

He wanted to be home right now.

But he couldn't just walk out. He couldn't do that to a Headmaster and an Auror. He was stuck here, and his hope was fading fast, fading against a big dark cloak that smothered the warmth of the fire behind him.

The wispy thing had been a cloud of warmth in front of him. It hadn't flown so much as it had been there all at once, in front of him, spiraling out like a bright star, chasing away the terror brought on by the dementor. All he'd had in those moments was a sense of hope. Love.

First the wispy thing had guarded him, and then the patronus had chased the dementor away, and then he didn't know, he didn't remember exactly, after the hope and love.

"It was..." he faltered, fidgeting in his seat. No one had told him it was anything but a patronus.

"I don't know," he shot at the Auror, gaze bright. "How do you know? Where is it now?"

The lump in his throat rose again.

"It's not my mum!"

What if it was his mum? Tears pricked his eyes, but for once he didn't look away and hide them. Any movement on his part could start the flood in earnest, any word spoken after.

Pentrals were neither good nor bad. Wes tried to focus on the Headmaster, catching onto his sympathetic tone more than his words, but the Headmaster still thought Wesley's mum was dead. He still thought that, and Wes didn't know what to do.

Wes slumped in his seat, his thoughts retreating. What would have happened if he'd just kept walking down the hall, ignoring the Headmaster's summons? They would have found him eventually, but he could be in his common room right now, pestering Zeta Pepper with questions and showing her the little doodles of ghosts he drew on the margins of his parchment.

He looked up, realizing that the Auror had asked another question. The dementor? He'd already offered to tell them everything about the dementor. He didn't want to think about the dementor anymore.

"Yeah. A you know," he sighed. All those 'p' words. "A patronus got in front of me and drew the dementor away."

He looked at the Auror, wishing he'd stop with the random quizzes.

"There were two of them. Patronus-ees. Sulwen's aunt sent it. Or maybe the Auror did. I dunno."

He hadn't done anything cool or brave. He would have explained it better, earlier. Wesley had wondered what those two white, wispy things had been and why they'd looked different from each other. One - the second one - had flown in as a long-necked bird, and the other - the first one - had looked less like a creature and more like a...

A patronus, patronus, patronus, Sulwen had repeated the word every time he'd asked.

His brow furrowed and he sat up a little straighter, his gaze intent on the Auror's face.

Wesley struggled to understand, the words pinging in his head. Dead. Dead four years ago. His mother had been selling potions and herbs that she'd made from their greenhouses. That was weird, he thought distantly. She hadn't told him that. She was proud of hard work, and she hadn't told him.

She hadn't told him about the two siblings from Cumbria, either. Siblings getting along and living together, he imagined her saying, with a significant glance at his younger siblings. She would have smiled a little at him, and he would have smiled with pretend-innocence, and his little sister would have protested that she was always the good one. If she'd told him, back when they were all together.

He looked up from his knees, meeting the Auror's serious gaze. Auror Trevelyan was saying something very important. Wesley swallowed past the tightness in his throat.

His mother was a pentral?

Dead, and a pentral?

For four years.

He shook his head, stuck on the thing that he didn't understand, the 'something wrong' that had happened. She had died accidentally? He could almost understand that. But he couldn't understand the siblings trapping her instead of helping her.

No. It was all a mistake!

"It's a mistake!" He said shakily, retreating into his seat as far as he could go, his back against the cushion.

"Pentrals are bad. She can't be a pentral. She can't be dead. The spirit or whoever played a trick on you," he spoke fast, trying to convince the adults in the room before they lost their patience.

"It is a mistake, sorry to tell you. She wouldn't have been friends with bad people, and she's not a bad person. My mother helps everyone she can."

He glanced around the room for an answer, his desperate gaze falling on the Headmaster.

Four years. The words jabbed him in the ribs. Not just some time ago. Four years ago. Before Wesley had ever come to Hogwarts, before he'd fully understood his magical powers, four years ago he'd had to leave home with his siblings because his mother had not come back, and four years ago his uncle and aunt had sat him down and were trying to speak as nicely as this Auror here about what her disappearance meant.

Four years.

He'd hoped that she would be back. Hogwarts had given him more hope. It was a cruel thing now, this hope, fluttering in his chest. He didn't believe it. Hope was real. More real than this stranger's words.

What was Auror Trevelyan saying about Cumbria and dementors? He'd barely paid attention to the news about the spirits and the poor squibs and the criminals who were up to no good. He'd survived the stray dementor at the train station, but they already knew that.

"Yeah? Penpals got loose. Pentrals," he corrected without his usual 'silly me!' smile, his voice tight and resentful. He didn't want a quiz. Just for the Auror to admit that he'd made a mistake.

"Spirits you don't wanna be penpals with, I guess?"

Headmaster had warned the kids about pentrals and dementors at the end-of-term feast. Zeta had said someone was stealing souls.[1] The ghost that Wes had met in the Hogwarts halls had mentioned pentrals too, holding up a protective charm.

"My mum's never been to Cumbria though."

He didn't think so. He glanced down at his hands, bouncing atop his bouncing knees. Cumbria was just so far from home.

1.	The feast in December

Some time.

His mother, dead for some time.

Wesley turned his head toward the Headmaster, staring at him as the seconds passed. No, that wasn't fair. That wasn't a good joke. Wes had the right answer, and it wasn't some time. No, she hadn't been dead for some time. She wasn't dead any time. He didn't like that word and his mother in the same sentence.

The words were wrong. Unreal. It felt like when his cousin Wendy poked him in the ribs a bunch of times to be funny. It didn't hurt yet, but if he heard it enough, over and over, it would hurt a lot, and he didn't know what he would do.

Headmaster Greyfriar was supposed to be on his side. He'd listened to him, and helped, and found that journal written about his mum in the library archives. So why was he saying such wrong things?

Wesley looked at the Auror. He frowned, his frown as slight as his usual smile.

"What happened?" Wesley paused. "Where is she? Is she here?"

He glanced at the door, and then at the fireplace, and then at the Auror again, his leg bouncing.