Follows Art Thou Departing Too, My Trembling Friend?
"Its so good to have you here, especially for your father's birthday."
"Great uncle's funeral."
[1]Johann tried to ignore his mother's expression, but it was hard. He didn't feel his irritation against her, she didn't deserve that retort.
Across the table, his father had stopped eating and was staring at him acutely. Johann's gaze levelled his father's bravely for a moment, and then dropped to his food.
"Beautiful steak, Mother." He managed, refusing to address his father.
"Your father requested it." Camille replied, her expression still a little disappointed. "I didn't let the house elf cook it."
You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed. Instead Johann heard the soft footsteps of the elf in question, realising it wasn't requested and sliding back into position just beside the doorway, head bowed.
It had been a long day already, with clearing the furniture from Merik's house in Hannover. Imelda was selling her father's furniture, Ignan was selling the house, and Johann, Wolfgang and Camille had been there all day assisting in various guises. Wolfgang had chivvied the bank's removals staff to load the furniture, and had been particularly displeased at the noisy disposal of a boggart found upstairs. Ignan had been invited to join them for dinner but had declined, stating he had a few social calls to make in the area, and then wanted to return to Hogwarts. The international floo was quieter in the early hours of the morning - travelling at this time of year was congested when people went to visit wider family, and he had no intentions to impose on family now the house was clear. Johann had been unable to refuse, as it was his father's birthday.
The house hadn't changed too much, but some of the paintings and ornaments had. Often they were on loan from
Chrysopoeia, the European wizard bank, a perk of being a senior employee for Wolfgang, along with the house. Johann found it amusing that his parents had been sealed to the organisation through their years of employment. They worked hard for the bank, and the bank looked after them - it was a convenient arrangement, but Johann couldn't help but feel like his parents were considered just an extension of assets for this.
Since arriving back his mother had been away into the kitchen with the elf, and he and his father had spent an uncomfortable time sniping at each other in low voices in the living room while drinking. Both had put on cordial expressions on Camille's return to the living room while the house elf arranged to serve dinner. Unfortunately neither father nor son were that good at keeping their irritation hidden when seated opposite each other, with wife and mother between them.
"Nothing better than my wonderful wife's fillet steak." Wolfgang's features turned from his glare to a soft, loving mask suddenly, and he squeezed Camille's arm. Johann felt his own features automatically tugged into a hint of a smile at seeing his parents showing love from one to the other like old times. He couldn't fault that his father, for all his disagreeable temper and conniving tactics, loved his wife tenderly and deeply.
It had been almost a year since Johann had sat at this very table, sharing a roast dinner with his parents when he still lived in the country. Before he'd tried to inform on one of his clients and it had backfired, sending him scurrying out of the country.
[2] He missed seeing his mother, if he had to admit it, but he'd only recognised this since his discharge from St Mungo's in early December.
[3] The lack of sleeping potion and the rest had cleared his chattering mind somewhat, and being ill had made him remember being a child in her care.
His mother had been beside herself with worry once she found out about his confinement. Wolfgang had laid on the guilt even further, and there had been yet another furious argument - at least not in Johann's home with Colin, but in the street outside the Ministry, which was as private but safe as Johann could consider at the moment he'd encountered his father.
It was this last unresolved argument just before Christmas that had laid the heated foundations that were crumbling that evening. That and the fact Johann was anxious that he could be vulnerable by those he'd informed on, and an easy target if they were aware he was back. The latter was almost entirely paranoia given that ten months had passed since the event.
"Thank you my love." Camille smiled at her husband and Johann kept his eyes resolutely on the plate before him, slicing the steak with more concentration than it required.
"I do wish you didn't have to travel back tonight, you could stay here." Camille turned her attention back to her son and spoke affectionately.
"No, but thank you." Johann replied without hesitation, setting down his cutlery and taking a sip of wine. "Ignan's keen to get back tonight, and I promised to go with him."
His mother continued to look disappointed and raised her hand to caress Johann's right cheek, being sat within close proximity to him it was easily within reach.
"You used to be my little boy. Why did you have to grow up?"
Wolfgang gave a sudden, loud snort and cough like he'd just choked on a piece of steak. No such luck. Johann recognised the gesture as attention-seeking, a signal that he disagreed with his wife's sentimental remark.
"Grow up?" Wolfgang remarked with incredulity. "He might be putting on the whole responsible adult act right now, hiding with Ignan, but it won't last."
Johann narrowed his eyes over the top of his wine glass, still between his long fingers.
"Happy birthday
Father." He retorted, raising the wine glass comically at the end in a sarcastic toast. "Only reason I'll tolerate you speaking to me like this is because it
is, and this is your house." His mother to his right gave a sharp intake of breath, and Johann added in a quieter voice without taking his eyes off his father.
"Sorry, Mother. I don't mean to upset."
Wolfgang Storm made a show of putting down his cutlery at eight and four on his plate, and dabbed his mouth with his napkin. Behind Johann, at the door to the room, the house elf shuffled backwards into the kitchen and shut the door after itself with a flick of its discoloured hand, recognising the danger.
"Listen to me, and listen to me well." Wolfgang began in a steady, low voice. "You have proved this year you are incapable of handling your own affairs. Allowed yourself to get involved with vagrants here, bringing trouble to the family, fleeing when you realised what you had done." Johann placed his wine glass down slowly.
"Then in Britain, have yourself thrown out of another family home for your behaviour, only to take up residence in a hole with," Johann watched his father's features twist into a fascinating combination of shapes as it tried to work out which emotion summarised best his disgust, "a man you hold close relations with, surrounded by the work of Muggles..."
[4] Camille had dropped her cutlery and grasped her own napkin, eyes wide towards her husband.
"... After relations with a woman healer who was also a werewolf, outed in the national newspaper …"
"What?!" Camille exclaimed, but Johann's father ploughed on, his voice crescendoing, and gradually getting to his feet at the same time.
"... Culminating in treatment for an addiction in St Mungo's Infirmary
[5], unfit to carry out your employment during an international event!"
There was a rattle of pans from the kitchen. The house elf was now burying itself inside the pan cupboard in the hope of weathering its master's temper in the adjacent room. The three family members didn't notice, though it threw Camille enough for a moment to stumble over her words.
"What, Joh- what on earth are you, Wolfgang,
what are you telling me?"
There were tears in her eyes, she hated to see them quarrel, always had. She was the peacekeeper of the family, gentle mother, loving wife. For the majority of the time Wolfgang kept his temper away at work, away from his wife and son. The times that it would boil over, Johann would take the hiding in punishment, or run away and hide until his mother could talk his father round.
Thankfully those moments had been few and far between - he had been a good son, and as an adult he'd been lucky in what had got back to the family. He had definitely underestimated his father of late though, and Johann's own reluctance to write with any detail to his mother had given his father time to gather his own wrong assumptions, twist them and present them in this way.
"That I am a disappointment to him." Johann replied cooly, having lost his appetite. He tossed the napkin down beside his plate on the table.
As calmly as he could, his voice betraying him as his father towered over them both, he took his mother's left hand tightly in his right hand and looked at her directly.
"It is true I made bad choices here, and I ran away. But I left Gabrielle's house because working and living together was becoming a strain on us both, not because I was thrown out. Ask her, you have her address from my letters." His eyes flicked to his father momentarily, "Yes my friend, a well respected healer, was turned and became a werewolf a few months ago, and unlike my father I do not-."
"He was sharing a bed with a
lycan!" Johann's grip tightened further and his mother's face twisted in discomfort, but he had to keep her attention.
"I do not shun her, and I did not share a bed with her, we are
friends." Dear Merlin, a hug for the woman was too far in Hannah Bombay's eyes. His father erupted the other side of the table.
"You lied to me then?"
The birthday dinner rapidly deteriorated into a shouting match led by Wolfgang. Before long, Johann was also on his feet and his mother was in floods of tears between them, hiding her face in her napkin. It only stopped when Wolfgang's wand poked firmly into Johann's sternum. The two of them were breathing rapidly with the adrenaline rush. A vein in Wolfgang's face ticked ominously, and the tendons in his neck were taught.
"You've got your birthday present, I believe." Johann replied coldly, taking a step back, his fingers on the handle of his own only in case his father tried to hex him again.
It took a moment for Johann to catch his breath after reappearing on the doorstep of what had until recently, been Merik Storm's home. He ended up sat on the step in the cold, shaking as the frustration and upset over what had just happened at his parent's dinner table broke loose with nobody to witness it. He'd fled
again, though he had initially tried to stand his ground, unsuccessfully. He was almost certain that fleeing earlier would have been a better plan.
Ignan's footsteps interrupted, his tall form progressing as a dark shape up the garden path. Returning from the visits he had been making, he found Johann crying like a child in the dark.
"Time to go home." He addressed his younger relative as patiently as he could muster in the circumstances. Scrambling to his feet, Johann nodded and wiped his face, ashamed, glad to run back to Britain once again.
[Dec 30] [Snapshot] Draw Thy Little Lustre to its End