The sight in Genevieve García-Gamp’s living room was a usual one for a quiet evening. After all, even a Queen couldn’t party every night. Tonight, she was curled up on the sofa, her feet tucked up under her, and Bruce the elderly fat grey cat spread out across the other seat cushion. He was snoring, a noise impossible to hear over the music playing in the background over the wireless on the sideboard. Gen was dressed in a pair of jeans and a cardigan over her blouse. She was still wearing her makeup from the day, and her hair was hanging loosely over her shoulders in neat dark waves. In her hands was a book, a newly printed copy she’d been sent to pre-read before release the following week. Authors did that in the hopes of a mention in Witch Weekly.

On the coffee table was a large glass of red wine, half drunk. The remainder of the bottle was sat open on the kitchen surface. A copy of the Daily Prophet lay closed in the middle of the coffee table, Alec Carter’s face staring up at her, grinning handsomely like he never would again. A plate of leftover Chinese takeaway was also decorating the table; noodles and a few pieces of chicken left abandoned and uneaten.

Gen was just mentally getting into chapter three when a knock at the front door made her jump. She frowned, uncurling her feet. Bruce meowed to let her know how unimpressed he was, before resting his head back down and rolling over onto his back. Who in Merlin’s name was knocking on her door at 7:30 in the evening? The office downstairs had cleared out, and she should have been the only one in the building.

“You just lie there, puss. Lazy sod.” Gen rolled her eyes, giving Bruce a quick rub on his wobbly belly before she padded bare feet to the door. On tiptoes, dark eyes searched through the peep hole, and the sight of the guest caused the witch to swear under her breath. She’d done a remarkable job of avoiding him since Dante had returned to Hogwarts. A moment was taken to calm herself before Gen pulled the door open and looked up at the much taller wizard.

Leo Gamp may not have been as young and healthy looking as he had once been, he may not have been as muscled and chiselled, either, but he was still clearly handsome. There was definitely still something there, even with all of the complicated feelings that had been stirring inside of her for years. He was dressed normally, shaved and much better looking than he’d been even the days after his release.

“Hi.” Gen said, unsure what else she could possibly say. She’d left her wand on the coffee table, a novice move.

In the week following his release from Azkaban, Leo Gamp had almost become a regular in the halls of Witch Weekly.  He'd never stayed for long -- chosen to make his entrances and exits as far from the humdrum of the magazine's busiest hours as much as he could -- but once Genny had returned home from St. Mungo's, he'd been in and out nearly twice a day, fetching Dante and dropping him off again, making himself useful with little favors while his wife recovered from her lack of magic.

Now that his son had been back at Hogwarts for over a week, there was little to draw him here.  He had plenty to occupy himself with back home as it was: reacquainting himself with life in the world, renewing relationships with old friends and relatives, preparing with Enid for the next stage of their lawsuit against the Ministry.  Once she started to feel better, Genny had hardly taken it upon herself to reach out.

But it was Dante's business that had brought him here tonight.  Leo waited as the shuffling on the other side of the door subsided, and his estranged wife pulled it open.  She looked better than she had in recent weeks, with color back in her cheeks and a hint of makeup.

Leo held his wife's gaze for a beat too long, green eyes fixed on hers.  Silently, he raised the book that he was holding.  The cover read, The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection.

"Dante wrote.  He left this at my parents' house."  A half-bemused smile tugged at his mouth; his son may have returned to school, but he hadn't missed a beat in trying to accomplish his obvious family-related objective.  "He said you'd be putting together a few things to send to him, so he suggested I leave this with you."

“Oh.” Leo held up the book and explained it had been left at his parents’. The wizard’s smile revealed that he, too, saw straight through their son’s ploy. Gen may have laughed if Leo’s presence didn’t make her feel so on edge. He may have been perfectly pleasant to her in front of Dante, but how would he act with Dante back at school? Leo had been the picture of the ideal wizard while she’d been ill, happily looking after their son and making sure that she had enough food in. He’d been helpful and kind. It surely couldn’t last. She was waiting for the hammer to drop. The heavily annotated booked crammed into the cupboard to her right were a constant reminder about how Leo now felt about her.

“He did?” Gen’s eyebrows raised as she reached to take the book off him. The last time she’d seen Leo, she’d been in her pyjamas and a large dressing gown, looking very sorry for herself. “You know, he’s pretty meticulous. This is the first time he’s forgotten anything going back to Hogwarts. I supposed he even told you where we left it, too.” She knew her son. Dante thought he was cleverer than everyone else. Clearly there was something in it, because Leo was stood on her doorstep.

“Do you…” she frowned, second guessing her offer. Did Gen really want him to come in? He’d come all this way, clearly for a ploy. Perhaps actually talking without their 12-year-old within earshot would be beneficial, even if she’d tried to delay and avoid it. “Do you want to come in?”

"In great detail."  The dryness in the wizard's voice was enough to parch moisture from the Sahara.  He arched an eyebrow at his wife.  "I'm not sure how it managed to get all the way into a drawer inside the wardrobe, but at least he had an idea of where it might be."

Genny began to speak, and then hesitated.  Seeing her here like this, speaking so haltingly, it was almost possible to forget the lies of the past twelve years, the distance and abdication.  She'd never been uncertain before: that was the part of her that he had always remembered the best, in the fleeting moments when he'd let himself ruminate on the best of times.  Genny was passionate and assertive; she'd always been the one of them to take the first leap, to jump in wholeheartedly and tug him along with her.  She'd convinced him that she should drop out of Hogwarts early, move in together, that they would find a way to make things work.

And so they had, up until they hadn't.

Did he want to come in?  Leo smiled faintly.

"I hate to bother you," he said as he stepped easily inside the flat.  "But I'm afraid that our son might twist my ear the next time he sees me if I let all of his scheming go to waste."

"I hate to bother you," Leo said. But as he said it, he crossed the threshold regardless. He was going to bother her. Gen found herself instantly regretting her polite gesture because now it meant that he was in her apartment, and there was no Dante to buffer his comments.

She took a step back, trying to look as relaxed as possible as she shut the door behind him. He mentioned ‘our son’, words which sat very strangely in her gut. She wasn’t sure she’d ever so casually referred to Dante as their son. He was hers. She’d carried him for nine months and given birth to him. She’d brought him up when Leo couldn’t be there. But now, these past weeks, she’d watched him excitedly get to know his father, seemingly moving away from her.

“He’s very persistent.” Gen agreed quietly, aware of how much that of her own persistence she saw in their 12-year-old. You didn’t just say ‘no’ to Dante, because he wanted reasoning so he could come back to you with a better argument. Leo using this excuse now felt very odd indeed.

“You want a drink?” Gen asked as she stepped down from the hallway into the candlelit living room. It was dim, but the flickering light set it in a calm and warm atmosphere, like a cocoon of pleasantness. After a moment’s thought, she scanned back to the wizard, frowning. He used to drink. “Have you drunk since you got out? Or has Mommy Gamp kept you on a tight lead?” Mommy Gamp was said with a similar amount of loathing to how she’d always used it before. Mrs Gamp, Leo’s mother, had always disapproved of Gen. They’d come to a truce in the past years over Dante, but that was about it.

Genny dwindled in front of him as he stepped inside her flat.  Persistent was certainly one way to describe the son that he’d only just begun to know.  Dante had inherited that from his mother, who’d once fought as fiercely to impose her will on the world around her.  Her fighting spirit was one of the things he’d fallen in love with, once upon a time.

It didn’t feel as strange as it should following her down the hallway into the candlelit living room.  Ever since he’d finally departed Azkaban three weeks before, Leo’s world had become a swirling mixture of places that blended the familiar and not-familiar.  His parents’ home, Diagon Alley, even the rooms of law on Level Ten at the Ministry: all of these were locations that he had once frequented and known well.  But even as they were familiar to him, the small differences that accumulated over a dozen years made them feel even more alien, as if he’d stepped through a veil and into a mirror world that wasn’t quite his own.

Genny’s flat, though, was the opposite.  He’d only come to know his still-wife’s new home after his exoneration, but it somehow felt like a natural evolution of all the places he’d known Genny to frequent before.  Tucked above the Witch Weekly offices (a place she never would have worked if she hadn’t let him be shuffled off stage), the parts of it that he’d seen were slightly bigger than the shitty little castle they’d once shared in Knockturn Alley, but it was comfortably and fittingly furnished, with an airy light and flashes of color that matched his wife’s tastes more than a decade before.

“Alas, it seems that I’ve traded one gaoler for another,” Leo replied, arching a dry eyebrow.  He immediately headed for the sofa to sit, in-between the fringed pillows.  “Do you still drink red wine, or have you moved on to something else?”

Gen couldn’t help but give Leo a raise of her own eyebrows at the mention of his new gaoler. Clea Gamp was a formidable witch, one that had rather intimidated a young Genny. As youths, they’d banded against her, insisting that together, they would succeed regardless of Genny’s wrecklessness in leaving Hogwarts at the end of her sixth year. No NEWTS, just her handsome auror boyfriend who she’d been hopelessly in love with. Perhaps Clea Gamp had been right all along.

“Not the same red wine.” Gen found herself replying calmly as she moved past the living room to the kitchen area where she procured a second glass from the shelf. “This stuff doesn’t strip your insides.” Bare feet carried her back to the sofa where Leo had sat. She poured him some into the empty glass and handed it over, internally debating where she could sit. Would they be too close if she sat beside him on the sofa? Would it be rude and a step far to take residence in the armchair to the side? Would he read anything much into where she sat? Was she over thinking it? They had been apart for some long, so many emotions passing between them, but he was her husband, right? It felt like being married to a stranger with a familiar face.

“I’m not going to claim to be able to tell you about the tones and all that waffle. It’s wine.” Gen frowned. What else could she say on the topic of wine? Throughout their relationship and marriage, Gen and Leo hadn’t struggled to find things to talk about. They’d always naturally fallen into all sorts of conversations, and Gen rarely struggled to think of something to say with anyone. But what did they have in common now other than their son?
“He’s been so excited to have you back, you know.” She went back to the more obvious topic, lowering herself to sit at the opposite end of the sofa. “Says you’re better than he imagined.” Learning forward, Gen picked up her own half full glass and brought it to her lips.

He had no doubt that his once-wife's taste in wine had progressed if his few glimpses into her world now were any indication.  Where once their meager budget had set the limits that she'd had to skillfully weave her way between, it was clear that Genny was far better off now than they had ever been back then, when she'd been a Hogwarts dropout and the best he'd been able to afford on a trainee Auror's salary had been a damp, run-down flat in the grimy part of Knockturn.

Genny poured a glass and passed it to him, and then seemed to hover around the edges, as if she were unsure where to settle.  Leo raised his wine to sip at it cautiously, the tannins bitter in his mouth.

Finally, Genny chose a place on the opposite side of the sofa from him, well out of his reach, and turned the conversation back to his son.  The sentiment made the former Auror's expression soften slightly; lowering his glass, he glanced down the sofa at her.

"I might say the same, but I don't think I would have ever dared to imagine a son at all."  He gave a smile, slight but genuine.  Back in Azkaban, he'd imagined all sorts of things -- if the war had turned out differently, if he had somehow been able to stand and counter Kingstreet, if he could have gotten out, if he did somehow get released -- but a son had never been part of his darkened world until that faithful day when Enid Jingleberry had paid him a visit.  Dante was better than he ever could have hoped.  Smart, determined, eager, loving, forgiving -- in some ways, it felt as if they'd wasted no time in establishing the relationship that they'd ought to have had from the start.

But Genny had kept it from them.  And now -- looking at her now, here in the home that she'd made for their son -- he could at least see why.  Dante was too good, and so his wife had kept their son locked away from his father, wrapped him in secrets and shadows to keep him safe.

"I suppose I should thank his mother for the chance to get to know him at all," he remarked, his tone more pleasant than it might have been.  Arching an eyebrow at her, he raised his wine glass again.  "I know she was far less enthused than Dante was about the opportunity to have him meet me."

Leo’s comment sent an unexpected wave of guilt through Gen. There seemed to be no malice to his words; whatever anger he had seemed to be contained, but she felt terrible nonetheless. He’d never imagined a son. She’d been in the early stages of pregnancy when he’d not come home that night. She’d wanted to tell him, but had wanted to wait until things had settled from the war. After the arrest? It felt unfair to tell him of the child he’d never get to bring up. They’d briefly discussed children, but it had never been a concept set in concrete. They’d been so stretched for money, it hadn’t seemed sensible at the time. Now, he’d spent 12 years completely oblivious. Gen couldn’t blame him for being mad.

When Leo mentioned Gen’s lack of enthusiasm for the two to meet, she looked down at the wine glass resting on her thigh.

“I am sorry. For the secret. For not telling you.” she muttered quietly. The was a pause as she fiddled with the stem of the wine glass before resolving to look at him. The wine was placed on the coffee table, and Gen fixed his gaze. “I lost hope and I did what I thought was best. The book, you have a right to be angry with, but it made enough money for Dante and I to move out of that shit hole. I wasn’t going to bring my son up sharing a bed with his mum in a shitty flat in Knockturn Alley. He deserves more and now he has more.”

Gen had so much more to say, so much she needed to get off her chest, but how would he respond?

“I failed you, Leo. And I’m sorry for that. But I have done everything I can for our son.”

Once upon a time, Genny Gamp née Garcia had burned with her own bright fire.  She'd never shrunk back from challenging anyone, had never been afraid to stand up for herself.  That had been half the cause of their fun in the earliest days of their relationship, back when they'd started as star-crossed Hogwarts students from opposite families and different houses, and then later when she'd abandoned her last year at school to follow him into the adventure of the real world.  Later, it had caused most of their turmoil, when Genny's defiance had turned him to anger, and they'd fallen into a regular cycle of sparring and passionately making up and then sparring again.

But when he gazed at her now, Genny was anything but confident.  She dropped her gaze, looked away, fiddled with her wine glass before finally setting it down. 

The situation clearly still made her uncomfortable.  And more than that, Leo was starting to suspect, she knew that she'd been wrong.  She'd betrayed him, turning on him when he had needed her most at his trial.  And then later, she'd betrayed him again, spinning lies about him like a spider spun webs, trying to entrap her readers in untruths in her perfidious book.

"Failing hardly begins to capture it," Leo said conversationally, and then gave her a smile.  "But I am grateful that you've taken care of Dante."  His smile deepened slightly, nearly reaching his green eyes as he met her gaze.  "He deserves better than he would have gotten if he hadn't had you to depend on.  I'm glad that you've given him a home, especially one that's so far improved over our damp little flat in Knockturn Alley."

"Failing hardly begins to capture it," regardless of the calm tone, Gen had a fair idea of the level of anger behind that statement. Failure didn’t cover it. As teenagers, Gen and Leo had pledged themselves to one another. Gen, reckless as ever, had thrown caution to the wind and left Hogwarts with no qualifications just to be with Leo. They may have suffered through a lack of funds to keep them comfortable, but they’d been inseparable. It had been years before they finally wed, and only 3 after that before Leo had been arrested and their lives had fallen apart. Leo had spent longer in Azkaban than they had together. She hadn’t failed him. She’d abandoned him, and, for good measure, exposed their relationship in her book.

At least he seemed okay with how she’d brought Dante up. Perhaps that shouldn’t have mattered to Gen, but it really did. Years ago, when she’d found out about the pregnancy, she’d been excited. Leo, she’d believed, would have been an excellent father. Now, at least, he finally had the chance.

“That flat served us well for a long time.” As grotty as it had been when they’d moved in, Gen had tried to pimp it up with a little creativity. In fairness, however, it had been much comparable to the efforts one might go to polishing a turd.

Despite a momentarily wish to reminisce, Gen frowned. Too much not being said, it unsettled her.
“What do you want, Leo?” Suddenly, an obnoxiously loud meow from their feet distracted her. There, roaming up to Leo’s legs was Bruce, the chubby grey cat, now elderly at 22. Without any reservation, the cat rubbed up against Leo’s shins, purring loudly.

Memories had been all he’d had when he’d been in Azkaban; memories and cold gray stones, with nothing to look forward to and no way to mark the passage of time.  Days had stretched into monotonous days until even the brightest of his memories had faded, leaving him with nothing but anger and betrayal and bitterness, until even those last lingering emotions had started to dull.

Sitting here again with Genny, in this warm flat that she’d lived in for so many years with their son while he’d been wasting away in a distant prison, made something start to simmer inside him again.  This was the life he could have had, if he hadn’t been turned on by Theodora Kingstreet.  A home with his wife and son, a future driven by ambition and aspirations, instead of scrapping for whatever justice a bulldog like Enid Jingleberry could wrestle back for him.  It could have been his, if anyone besides his parents had stood beside him.

His wife’s question cut to the thick of it.  Leo glanced at her, his green eyes unreadable.  What did he want?

Before he could answer, there was a loud meow, and something threw itself into his legs.  Leo started for only an instant before he realized what was responsible.

“Bruce!”  Grinning from ear to ear, he scooped up the enormous gray cat.  Bruce only protested with a brief yowl before he dissolved into purring again, sounding like a the motor of a Muggle automobile as the former Auror cradled him against his chest.

Something caught in his throat.  This was what home had been, once.  Closing his eyes, he let his head rest against the purring cat.

“It’s good to see you too, old fellow,” he said, sounding slightly muffled.  Lifting his head, he examined the feline, still smiling slightly.  Much older, and much, much larger; not the lean young cat that he remembered.  But still Bruce. 

“Your mum’s been giving you a bit too much to eat though, hasn’t she?” he asked, his smile lopsided.

The entrance from the fat grey-haired cat was as poorly timed as Romeo was to save Juliet. Perhaps, Gen considered as she watched her husband scoop Bruce into his arms, Leo wouldn’t be as appreciative of the reference as he would have been over a decade prior. He’d always indulged her in comparisons between themselves and the lovers of the classic stories she’d fallen in love with at a young age. Now, Gen was rather certain he wouldn’t indulge her in anything. Other than those same green eyes, her husband and soul mate had changed beyond recognition.

Seeing Leo and their shared pet cuddled together, Gen couldn’t help but have a small, begrudging smile. Their miniature grey tiger had been a gift to soften the blow of the grotty little flat. Now, at 22, perhaps Bruce was the only living being that hadn’t even temporarily abandoned Leo.

“He’s spoiled,” The witch explained, nursing her wine glass. “Spends his time in the offices downstairs begging for scraps. Greedy bugger cons them all into thinking I forgot his breakfast.” This whole conversation felt too surreal. Having him here sat in the living room drinking wine was like a dream; or perhaps a nightmare. time, she supposed, would tell which.

“He’s clearly missed you.”

Bruce was mrowling loudly, seizing the opportunity to knead his claws into the wizard's shoulder, twisting to butt his head up against his hand.  Leo obliged him, juggling the large cat's weight so that he could scratch him vigorously between the ears.

"Likewise," he said, swallowing past the knot in his throat as he smiled at the cat.  "It's been a long time, old fellow."

It had been too long of a time.  But it was somehow reassuring to know that, while Dante was growing up here in this small home without a father and with a mother who would rather spin lies than stand by the truth, at least he had had Bruce to keep him company.  Sitting back, Leo let the pushy cat settle in his lap, obligingly continuing to run his finger through Bruce's fur as the feline curled up into a large, sprawling ball.

Bruce had missed him.  Dante had too, even if he hadn't known of his son's existence until a few short months before.  Had Genny?  Leo glanced at his wife, reaching for the wine glass that he had abandoned when the cat had appeared.

"I suppose that makes it two things that you've managed to take care of while I was away," he said after a beat, his tone nebulous.  "Dante and Bruce."

It was quite the challenge not to be deeply frustrated by the badly timed arrival of Bruce the fat grey cat. Gen had cut to it with her question to Leo. What did he want? What was he most interested in gaining by being here in her living room? Back in Azkaban, he’d been angry and volatile, tense and unpleasant. In front of Dante, he’d been the perfect gentleman, eager to show his best side to the son he’d never known about. Even alone with her here, he wasn’t hostile, but he wasn’t warm and friendly either. As far as Leo Gamp was concerned, his wife had abandoned him and lied about her marriage to him during his entire incarceration. But he’d never agreed to divorce. So why was he here?

Gen passed a few moments by taking a sip from her wine glass. Perhaps after a few of those, she wouldn’t care so much about the answer to the big question playing on her over active mind.

“I’m not a total inept.” Gen responded to his comment about whom she’d looked after. Unable to figure out of this was an accusation or not, Gen tried to soften her expression. “Dante’s a good kid. He doesn’t take much looking after.” It was definitely best that Leo didn’t know how their young son had looked after his mother and her hangovers several times in the past. It was probably best that Leo didn’t know just how much his wife had partied and drank throughout the years.

“And this fat sod? As long as he can’t see the bottom of his bowl, he’s content.”