Around 2am

They’d agreed to take a backseat. Zora and Iona’s wayward and wild daughter was back home for the present, where they could keep more of an eye on her. After depositing their angry offspring at home, the pair had returned to the Ministry and spoken to the unhelpful vampire Tristan Vaillancourt, receiving nothing but a judgemental lecture on parenting and consent. Upon their final return home, Iona had run out of juice to be so angry, and had settled with merely simmering over a glass of wine and barely eating her pasta dinner. They hadn’t seen Waverly for the rest of that evening, but the conspicuous lack of Taco the cat confirmed she was safely locked away in her old bedroom.

Having gone to bed fairly late, as was usual, Iona had lain awake, listening to the muggle traffic outside and her wife’s breathing. She’d tried to sleep; been pretty determined to, in fact. Unfortunately, a mother’s mind never seemed to switch off when in a crisis, and to Iona, this was a crisis. After much tossing and turning and going over in her mind every possibility of how Waverly might fall into the depths of self-destruction or even become the resident blood bag for a coven of vampires, Iona finally gave a huff of frustration, flouncing onto her back.

“You asleep?” she whispered. It was a whisper to seem polite, it was loud enough to wake Zo up if she had been in a light sleep.

"Not really," Zora grumbled and rolled onto her back. She rubbed her rubbed her eyes and temples and took a big fortifying breath. After a couple hours of laying mostly awake, she'd drifted into a maze-link stream of disconnected ruminations on what had happened to Waverly, what had possessed her, and what was going to happen. Coloring every thought was a stomach-churning guilt. What had they done? What had they not done? At least she was safe down the hall, safe for now, quiet for now, out of trouble for now.

Zora sat up and and rested her elbows on her knees. She looked at Bruce in the dim light that came in from the street. She always looked so pretty and in the dark she sort of glowed. But tonight her face was lined with the same worried expression she'd had all day.

"I don't know what's worse, the vampire bite or the gillyweed." Although as soon as she said it, the worse was obvious. She scoffed to herself.

"Who could bring themselves to do that?"

Zora knew what was worse. They both knew what was worse. They’d been stunned and livid enough to have their only daughter dragged into the Ministry for dealing gillyweed. Finding the bite had been enough to tip Iona over the edge. Until a few years ago, she’d spent her life having control. Waverly, under 17, had still been under their control, and only recently they’d given her the ultimatum of get a job or move out. Waverly, quite convinced she was being pushed out, had chosen to do both. Now, the pair had lost their grip on their once little girl and she was spiralling out of control.

“Thrill seekers.” Having always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie, Iona understood that bit. The obvious difference here, however, was that she’d never wondered into a vampire den with her wrist outstretched for the taking. She’d never been quite as wild as their wild child, and she knew Zora hadn’t either.

“We shouldn’t have given her that ultimatum.” She told the dimly lit shadow of her wife. They had often disagreed on issues regarding Waverly, but they’d always worked to portray a united front. Tonight, that had failed because Iona had let her anger get the better of her; a terrifying side effect of an impending full moon. “I don’t even recognise her.”

Zora rubbed her face, weary from a long day and a sleepless night. The wine hadn't had the dream-making affect they'd hoped for. For here they sat here, whispering in the dark about their daughter, their wild and reckless daughter.

"It was going to happen either way," Zora said. She ought to validate Iona's regret and worry. "She's always been like this, don't you think?"

Zora turned her head to look at Iona again. "Like a cauldron ready to erupt. It's just that before she wasn't bored.  She's been bored. Without school, without a real career, without something focusing her she's just..."

She made a little explosion noise and tossed her hand.

"I don't know what to do."

Did Iona think Waverly had always been this way? Did she think their little girl had always been likely to explode and derail at some point? Was she this overexcited cauldron where the bubbling over had been inevitable?

Being bored was something Iona hadn’t understood until 2008, the year everything had changed. She’d always had her goals, her work and her family. Her own attack had plunged Iona into a frustration, loss and the inevitable boredom that rest and recuperation could yield. She’d flipped out and lost her temper a lot then. She understood it. But she’d been trapped. Waverly wasn’t trapped.

With a sigh, Iona pushed herself to sit up, cuddling up to Zora, she buried her face in her wife’s neck and bushy hair.
“You were bored when we met, Zo” she mumbled into the thick hair. “The difference is, your cauldron lid was firmly on. Snapped shut. Slowly simmering. Self-discipline.” It wasn’t that clear cut, Iona knew. They were all different people, and Waverly had been in her own trauma. Iona knew the catalyst for explosion. They both knew it.

“There isn’t a handbook on how to stop your daughter from blowing her life up, is there?”

Zora leaned into Iona and let her gaze go a thousand miles. There wasn't a handbook. Both Zora and her wife were in the business of enforcing the law in their own way. In Zora's case it wasn't up to her to make exceptions or look past the facts - that was up to Carstairs or the Wizengamot. It had been a shock to her system to be faced with the fragility of her own impartiality. Her oath as an Auror had collided into her obligations as a mother and the resulting rubble left no steady footing.

Self-disciplined was not a word Zora would have used to describe her twenty-year-old self because her parents had told her the exact opposite. Relative to her peers though, maybe she could have been considered self-disciplined, but really she was just stopping herself exploding. Funny. Zora hadn't related this much to her daughter in a long while.

"Yeah, right," Zora scoffed again derisively. "Unless what, we accept family counseling from that vampire liaison?"

Tristan Vaillancourt. "Loads of help."

The vampire liason, Tristan Vaillancourt, was not a name Iona wanted brought up in her bed. It wasn’t a name she wanted to think about because he only served as a reminder that vampires were selfish, bloody gorging monsters who served their own and seemed to think that living for however many years entitled them to judge the mere mortals that had chosen not to steal another’s life source to remain in a state of semi dead aliveness. It had been a huge mistake suggesting they speak to him, one which Iona rather hoped Zora wasn’t going to throw in her face. She knew Zora wasn’t like that, but this was an extreme situation.

“That was a crap suggestion.” Iona muttered into Zora’s hair before lifting her head up and resting her cheek on her wife’s shoulder. Maybe Waverly had always been a cauldron set to explode but Iona had been too focused on her own issues to see it coming. Even in the past months her mind had been on work and getting her own life together that she’d not even noticed her own daughter going off the rails.

“We need to do something. We can’t just leave this, Zo. We take a step back now and…”  Iona lifted her head up, doing the same gesture as Zora had a moment ago. “Boom…”

"Had to have been one of her friends," Zora said unable to answer Iona's notion about what they could possibly do. "I don't even know who they are anymore."

Waverly had gone through a change in friends when Iona got bit. She'd changed her way of dress, she'd abandoned old hobbies. As part of the reinvention and coming of age, the names of old chums had begun to disappear from letters home to be replaced with new ones.

"I can't fathom how she came to that, seeking out vampires on her own like this. She's never shown an interest in that, she's never seemed depressed everything she's been through."

Zora was preoccupied with the 'why' and the 'how' unable to move forward with Iona.

“What parent does?” Waverly was 19. She was an adult, living away from home and away from the prying eyes of her parents. What parent, at that age, could honestly say that they knew who their daughter was spending her time with? One hoped that by 17, the legal age of being a wizarding adult, one could make their own sensible decisions. Clearly, their offspring had missed the memo.

Zora was unable to move past the why and the reasoning behind their daughter’s actions. Perhaps that was the big difference in the couple. Iona wasn’t interested right now in why, she never had to really ask the question of why. Zora saw a problem and her whole career had been in asking those questions, in finding motive and reasoning. Iona just wanted the problem fixed. It didn’t matter how it had happened, it needed stopping.

“It has nothing to do with depression.” Iona brushed off the idea and sat back, lifting her legs up and resting her arms on her knees. “It’s nothing more than sheer recklessness. She wants adrenaline and to experience things. The wrong things. I got to wrestle werewolves and you, well, look at your first years on the job.” Zora hadn’t been the level headed auror that she was now.

“We can’t do ‘owt about the why. But we can sodding well stop it from happening again. I’m not sitting back until she gets dragged in for worse. Or ends up in St Mungo’s. Even if we have to lock her up until she's 30, merlin dammit."

Iona was always ready with an answer, or at least a reaction. Zora mulled over her words for longer, set her jaw and furrowed her brow and tried to straighten things out. It worked in the field. They were trained, they knew what to do, they'd seen everything, and there wasn't a need to say anything. But there was no manual for children. She couldn't help but worry what her own parents would think if they knew, that they'd blame it on Waverly not having a father.

But Iona had mentioned St. Mungo's.

"What about 'bones?" Athena Marrowbone, she was top of the Creature Injury floor at the hospital. She'd surely know about this vampire bite business.

What about Bones? Bones was the nickname for the healer that had, in no uncertain terms, sewn Iona back together after a werewolf had tried to rip her apart like an excited dog did to a teddybear. Ever since, Iona had held a great deal of respect and gratitude for Athena Marrowbone, and their healer/patient relationship had become rather unique.

At the mention of Bones, however, Iona didn’t look quite so confident. The idea was avoiding St Mungo’s rather than trudging down there to drag more people into their business. What would Bones say? Would she give any real advice or would it be the same, but nicer framed diatribe pointing to their lack of parenting skills?

“You think she can help?” The redhead asked, incredulous. “How?” Then she stopped and shook her head. How could anything really help right now? “How about you stick a couple of pictures of those Christmas day victims in her bedroom? A few in her coin purse. One on the bathroom mirror, maybe. Just to remind her what happens when you think vampires are safe to play with.” A terrible idea, but she was already at her wits end.

Zora moaned and fell gently back down to the pillow.

"You and the blood and gore," she said. "People think I'm the dark one, but you're the grim reaper. What, shall I spell it in gochujang in her eggs at breakfast?"

Maybe Iona was right, that involving Athena would make it worse. But coming down on Waverly even harder would likely just break what was already brittle.

"She doesn't trust us. Somewhere along the line," Zora said and pulled the cover up again, "she stopped trusting us."

“Good idea., do that,” Iona responded plainly to her wife’s suggestion. Zora was being sarcastic while Iona was perfectly serious. Anything that could be done to deter Waverly from this road to destruction was a welcome suggestion. For the many similarities that seemed to be shared between the two witches, they were often poles apart when it came to their opinions on raising their daughter. It came, they’d both agreed in the past, from their own very different upbringings. Iona had come from very relaxed almost hipster muggle parents who’d been decidedly relaxed about any parenting issue that had come their way. Her parents’ way of managing a problem? Hug it out with tea and welsh cakes. Zora, on the other hand, had been rather restricted by a far stricter regime. Zo had rebelled against it while Iona had been of the opinion that the light touch had not had the desired effect on their little rebel.

"…she stopped trusting us." Came the final words of resignation from the usual plucky witch. Iona pressed her lips together in frustration. They needed to agree on how to handle this situation, not just lie there brooding over it.

“I don’t believe that.” Iona shook her head, making no move to lie back down just yet. She, unlike Zora, wasn’t done with this conversation. “This isn’t about trust. You don’t tell your mothers that you casually deal gillyweed and play friendly with vampires. That is not on us.”

With a sigh, Iona pushed the covers back off her and started to turn around to get out of bed. Zora wanted to sleep and brood over what had happened, fine. Iona couldn’t just lie down and sleep right now.

Iona would pace in the kitchen, Zora guessed. In these red-eyed hours, Zora couldn't see a way this could be fixed while Iona wanted to hack a path through with a machete. They were chasing their daughter and they didn't know where she was going.

"I wish we just knew what she wanted," were Zora's parting words spoken to her wife's turned back.  Maybe then they could find their daughter again.