Francis tapped gently on the ajar bedroom door. It had only been a couple of days since the boys got home, but the carpet in Ambrose's room was already littered with curls of parchment and bits of feather from the end of quills.

There, at the normally quite empty desk, sat his son, which surprised Francis. This was normally a sight for the last few days of the summer holiday if Ambrose had been given some work to do by a professor over summer. Normally he avoided everything possible so as to not bring anything home to study.

Ambrose's fingers were spotted with blue ink and there was a text book with what looked like a furry cover open on the desktop, beside an empty glass, the inkwell (sat in a little tray in the vain hope of catching drips as Ambrose dipped it) and there was a smear down one of his son's cheeks from his ear where he'd seemingly rubbed at it earlier.

"Ah, you're working," Francis addressed his older son, calmly, "I didn't mean to interrupt."

Ambrose looked up in surprise at the door coming open and his father's voice. The house was otherwise quiet, Tim had gone out to attempt to play football with a few old friends from primary school. Tim playing football had been odd enough before he had discovered Ambrose studying. What had got into his sons...? Not that he was about to knock it.

"Homework?" He asked tentatively, stepping into the doorway properly, but not close enough to see what Ambrose was writing on the curl of parchment.

"It's for Professor Donovan, and then I've got an essay for Professor Kesali." Ambrose replied, his quill dropping ink on the page as his attention was drawn away from his work.

"Ah, watch your quill." Francis interjected softly, making a hand gesture for the boy to raise his quill.
"Here." He stepped forward hastily, pulling a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and pressed it against the page where there ink had landed, uttering under his breath before lifting it away - the ink gone.

Ambrose had put his quill aside and sat back slightly while this was done, and then peered with curiosity at the page, pleased to see that his father's magic had intervened and stopped him marking his essay with an ink smear.
 
"Cool, thanks Dad." He replied, pleased at the save it seemed. There was a pause between the two for a moment, Ambrose observing the fact Francis had now stepped into his bedroom properly, and hadn't yet declared a motive.

"Right, yes. Uhm," Francis began aloud, shoving his handkerchief back where it had come from. "Do you have a moment?"

"Er, I suppose." His teenage son replied with a tone that indicated I suppose if it isn't now, you're going to try again later.

Francis made a little hmm noise and stepped through the discarded parchment and settled at the foot of Ambrose's bed on the crimson duvet cover. Gabrielle had suggested it might be more fitting of a Gryffindor teenage boy than the elderly set Francis had absentmindedly laundered over Christmas while she'd been in the kitchen - purchased when Ambrose had been eight.

Ambrose twisted round in his chair to face his father properly, wiping his inky hands on his sleeve without much thought of doing otherwise.

"It's about your Mum," Francis began, resting his hands in his own lap, and taking a deep breath. "I don't think - the healers don't think she'll get better very soon now, if at all."

There. It was said. He studied his son's expression with concern, hoping that his delivery hadn't been too abrupt, though he hadn't wanted to dance around the issue.

"Right." Ambrose managed, though his gaze had dropped to the carpet between them. The tone of his answer was as if the wind had been knocked out of him.

"It's been so long, Ambrose. They've tried so much, we've tried so much..."

"I know." Ambrose agreed, and nodded gently, sounding tired. "I just hoped, you know?"

Francis let out a short puff of air that he'd held while listening to the response. It was precisely this he'd been doing every waking hour since the incident in the house. To wind back and repair everything, to believe that his wife would find her way back.

"She may still get better, but it's likely to be years, decades… if ever. And she probably won't be at all the same as she was, Ambrose." Francis elaborated, trying to help his son understand. "Ambrose, this is really hard to explain, but…"

Across from him, at the desk, Ambrose's head snapped up, and he looked fiercely back at his father suddenly. It was as if the son that had gone to school for the start of January had come back five years older all of a sudden, for Francis, who suddenly saw how grown up Ambrose had become with the way he looked back at his father.

"You and Gabrielle. I know."

"It's not that-."

"It's ok, Uncle Octavius explained."

"He did?"

"You've not been to see Mum half as much." Ambrose explained, keeping his gaze level, his tone verging on accusatory, which set Francis on edge, he suddenly felt like sitting on the end of Ambrose's bed was a great intrusion.

"That's not tr-."

"But I can see why, the healers told him that you make her upset these days."

"I what- oh Son."

There was a horrible moment of awkward quiet between them, Francis at a loss of what to say, rather wrong-footed by Ambrose and Octavius interfering. His brother wasn't all that approving of Gabrielle becoming close to Francis again, he knew that, but he didn't expect or want his brother to interfere with his own son on the topic.

He didn't know Octavius had been visiting, or that the healers would have divulged the information. However, they were both family, and in the early days, Octavius had been far more level headed than Francis over matters, so the healers had been given permission to say about as much to either brother.

Suddenly the fact that he'd been burying himself in Gabrielle's rekindled love made him compare himself to the way he'd been unable to deal with simple things at the time Claire had been obliviated. Again, his family had continued around him, making their own moves and talking amongst themselves without pushing him, letting him do what he needed to get past. Only he'd not realised it was happening this time.

"Dad," Ambrose began, looking back at the carpet again, a shake in his voice that his father could detect - but didn't want to point out. It brought Francis out of his thoughts, and the horrified expression across the older wizard's features fell away.

"You explained at Christmas about Gabrielle, we saw Mum, she isn't right." Ambrose looked up, "I know she isn't a Muggle, and I know it isn't like she got run over or something, but when I was over at Phil's down the road, I looked it up on the computer. It's often the end of marriages if they weren't happy."

Francis was silenced, jaw loose as he stared at his son. Eventually he managed to string words together, a hundred and two things he could say, but none quite as sincere.

"I'm sorry Ambrose, I really am…"

"Dad, it's ok. I've had time to think, put it in perspective. Like, Cy lost her mum, and I guess we have too. I get that you asked Gabrielle first, that if she'd said yes, I wouldn't be here, or I'd be you son with her.

Stunned into silence, Francis was somewhat agape at his teenage son who threw his hands down onto his thighs and then got to his feet, plopping down on the bed beside his father, close enough that their arms rested against each other.

"My boy, I underestimate you once again." Francis uttered quietly, putting his right arm around Ambrose, and his eyes closed. "I am so sorry, so very sorry Ambrose. But in the past few months I've realised that - as your uncle has told you - that your mother no longer needs or recognises me. My continued visits confuse her, and she is trying her very best to carve herself a new identity with what memories she can retain. Your uncle visits because he too cares, but he'd cheer up most of St Mungo's with his anecdotes and hijinks, don't you think?"

Ambrose nodded and smiled sadly beside him, and brushed his hand across the duvet beneath them.
"We'll still go see her though, right? She'll still be our mother, but we've got to do what's best. I get it." Despite his words, Francis felt his older son didn't entirely, but was trying to do what was best for everyone. It pained him to consider it. For all of Ambrose's academic struggles, he had the biggest heart of the lot of them.

"Not sure how Tim's gonna take it though."

"That's been troubling me, which is why I came to you first, Ambrose." Francis admitted, brow furrowed. "You'll help me explain? Merlin, he'll hate me, he's been so fragile." It had not escaped his observation how Timothy had been when Gabrielle had been around, how cautious he had been at first, and how he was anxious whenever they visited Claire.

"Of course I will." Ambrose agreed and puffed out his cheeks. Both of them relieved to have that agreed, even if neither of them were particularly looking forward to explaining this added complication to Tim.

"Dad?"

"Ambrose?"

"You won't mind if I don't call Gabrielle 'mum' will you?"

"Oh, heavens," Francis replied, surprised at the question, but it had obviously been preoccupying Ambrose somewhat in getting his head wrapped around it all, "I don't think she'll expect you to, son. But I think you might get smothered in a hug if you did. She's not your mum, no, but she wants to be there for you to help too. The two of us want to be. If you want."

"Yeah, cool... Help and all..." Ambrose agreed, seemingly distracted, eyes looking to his desk where the essay was. "'Cause I've got stuck on Kesali's charms questions...."

Before his father's eyes, that man who had appeared was back to the awkward teenager he knew well and he let out a relieved chuckle, clasping his son to him for a moment in thanks.



End