“When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”
― Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

Ten minutes after Zora Roh left Gen’s office on the Saturday afternoon, Geneveive García-Gamp chose to do 2 things. The first was the hire a lawyer. The second was to ink a letter addressed to the Azkaban Visitor’s office. She fully intended to return to Azkaban, but not to once more come face to face with Theodora Kingstreet. No, Gen intended to have her third visit with her husband in thirteen years.

The response had been fairly quick, and Gen was booked in for Sunday at 3pm. Which was why, at 3pm on her usual day off, the witch was stood at the door to the room that held her husband. She dressed decidedly plainly in a pair of jeans, high heeled knee high black boots and a green jumper. Despite the comparatively plain clothing to her ‘Queen G’ attire, Gen still presented herself pristinely with neatly waved dark hair and expertly applied makeup. Regardless of the location, this was still a public appearance. She had an oversized scarf wrapped around her neck and was grasping nervously at the woollen accessory as the door was opened and she stepped into the private visitation room.

Dark eyes danced immediately across to the barely familiar figure sat in the wooden chair, his ankles and wrists secured by magical chains. The room’s icy chill only seemed exacerbated by the look passing between the spouses as Gen slowly took her seat. This afternoon, Gen did not look angry; she looked anxious and as if she’d not been sleeping. In truth, she barely had.

It wouldn’t have taken a legilimens to sense the insurmountable anger that Leo Gamp clearly held for his wife. Gen, for the first time in years, felt that she may have been slowly starting to understand this anger. If her research was right, he had every right to be raging uncontrollably with her. Not only had she failed to believe and support her innocent husband, but she’d robbed him of knowing his son for 13 years, too.

Gen was extremely stiff as she sat in the chair across the table from her estranged husband. The door closed to leave them with the false illusion of privacy.

A surprisingly steady hand reached into her jean pocket, and Gen pulled out a photograph. She slid it across the table to Leo.
“He’s called Dante. It means enduring. He’s a Ravenclaw. He’s scarily intelligent and far more mature than a 12-year-old should ever be.” Gen looked up from the magical photograph of their son holding Bruce, the fat grey cat she and Leo had accidently adopted back in the days of the Knockturn alley flat. “He has your scruffy hair and I swear he’s going to be taller than you.”

Eleven years, one month, and sixteen days.

It had been eleven years, one month, and sixteen days since last she’d come to see him.  At one point, it felt like he could have calculated it down to the number of hours, minutes, and seconds, the time that has passed since Genny had deigned to be in his company; since she’d come, standing bravely in heels with her lower lip jutted out and trembling, to shove a piece of paper at her beloved husband and demand that he throw away the life they’d built together.

He’d tried.  He’d tried everything he could.  He’d raged, shouted; pleaded and implored her; sent her letter upon letter begging for her mercy, to believe him.  When that hadn’t worked, he’d erupted, exploded, fired off missives calling her every horrible name he could think of with every awful threat he could imagine, if only to get a reaction.  Two years ago, when he’d finally broken down and accepted that not even his rage could move her, he’d given up on her and everything, descended into a sort of sulking, solitary depression that had been sure to last him the rest of his days, if a flickering candle hadn’t come to kiss away the darkness at last.

But now at last, here she was.  Twice in two months, she’d come.  Once in response to the summons he’d sent her, and now once more of her own accord, after he’d sent her a message to make sure that she knew that he knew her lies.  This time, she’d come wearing green, wrapped up in a scarf that looked bigger than she was, if she could ward away the ugliness of her husband’s truth simply by dressing the part.

He watched her enter with cold, searing eyes.  She’d never wanted to believe him when it had only been his word and their love; never even bothered to listen to his entreaties.  But now, now that the burden of proof had started to shift and it was clear that she risked being judged by Society once more for her poor life choices, she’d come crawling back to him, just as she’d implied she would in the article that Enid had brought him. 

She sat down across from him, and he stared at her, thinking of all the horrible things he’d wished on her over the past four thousand and sixty-three days.

Genny looked awful.  He knew her tells; knew them even now, twelve and a half years later.  Anxious, worried, bleary-eyed: it was still all part of the new role that she was playing.  It made a part of him feel pleased to see her this way, even as another, larger part only became more angry.

She reached into her pocket.  With anyone else, he would have instinctively followed her movements with his eyes, ready for an attack or an ambush, but instead he stayed coldly focused on her face.

Genny pulled out a piece of paper, never hesitating, and slid it across the table to him.

”He’s called Dante…”

Something ugly and awful and scorching boiled up deep inside his chest, threatened to burn him up from the inside out as his wife began to speak.

“He’s my son.”  The words forced their way out through clenched teeth.  He knew because he’d counted the days.  Unless she’d had a habit of lying even before she’d revealed herself as a betrayer, Dante had to be his.

He stared at her, still largely unblinking.  His mouth twitched into a sneer.  “Or have you been so busy telling lies about me that you let yourself forget about that, Genny?”

Even three words spoken from Leo’s mouth made Gen feel like her stomach was full of poisonous acid that was working its way up her gullet. Before he spoke, Gen could feel his clearly irrepressible wrath. If she was now correct, she was the untrusting wife who’d given up on him and ignored his pleas with years of unopened letters still piled up in her wardrobe at home. She was the bitch who hadn’t trusted her husband and had kept him from his son for thirteen years. If she was correct, the guilt was probably going to eat away at her until it became as unbearable as his resentment.

He hadn’t even looked away from her to the picture of his son. Was his hatred that strong?

“Would it matter what I say, Leo? You’ve already decided that I’m a lying bitch. Your message on my birthday was loud and clear.” Gen retorted, pulling her hand back from the picture and retreating to grip her large scarf. “You were arrested for being a Death Eater. You were convicted of murder and torture and kidnap. I wrote about what happened. Your son and I had to deal with the effects of what happened. My experiences.”

Gen couldn’t help her own emotion from flooding out. Despite her newfound understanding of Leo’s rightful anger, she was deeply frustrated by it. He couldn’t see past his own situation. He couldn’t see what it had been like for her. She wasn’t going to apologise for finding a way to thrive rather than survive under the adversity.
“We were broke before you were arrested and it only got worse with lawyers bills. I didn’t have enough money to provide for your son. Would you have had me struggling to afford that hovel in Knockturn Alley?”

And so it had barely taken any time at all for his beloved wife to crack.  Genny had marched into this meeting determined to play the role of the gracious, forgiving lover, doing her best to make amends and heal the chasm between them now that news of his innocence had trickled out into the world.  She was trying on the part that she'd begun to write for herself in that perfidious Prophet article, which had made him so angry that he'd screamed at the wall for an hour.  But all it had taken was one strike of his tongue, and she'd retreated into the guise that she knew best, that of the poor, abused ingenue who could barely make her way in the world after her horrible husband's cruel misdeeds.

Ten years ago, a lifetime ago, seeing her act in person would have infuriated him.  But now, with everything he knew about her, he threw back his head and laughed.

He laughed, and laughed, and laughed.  It was a bold, audacious fit of laughter: one that shook his shoulders and left his gaunt frame half-doubled over amidst a flurry of coughing.  Still smirking, giving a wheezing half-chuckle, he raised his head to meet her gaze again.

"Brava," he told her, with feeling.  "Always dedicated to your art.  I can see how all of your adoring fans must love your spirit." 

The words seemed to sharpen in his throat.  His smile vanished, and he leaned forward in his chair.

 "Your experiences," he repeated coldly.  "Would you like to tell me some more about how horrible your experiences have been, Genny?  I've been wondering all of this time, after all."  He sneered, showing another flash of yellowed teeth.  "Clearly, you've suffered the real hardship in all of this."

A stranger was sitting across the table to Genevieve. Her husband may not have been a saint, but she’d never known him to be cruel. Leo Gamp had been a well built and handsome man who, despite their many rows, had never left her in any doubt how he’d felt about her. People would often say how their lover’s smile would bring them to their knees, but Leo’s really had. Gen hadn’t used hyperbole when she’d said in the article that Leo made her feel like he wanted to give her the world. He’d made her feel like there was only her. Now, the gaunt and cold wizard with overgrown hair and a scruffy beard was laughing callously at her before coughing violently. Her husband was gone, and in his place sat an angry wizard in chains. Gen sat back in her seat, leaving the photo on the table between them. She wanted to get up and leave when he directed his anger at her, but she didn’t move from her seat. He was trying to bait her and she didn’t want to let him.

“I’ve not come for a competition of who was screwed over more, Leo. And I’m not going to grovel for your forgiveness, either. I did what I thought was right to protect my son.” Sod him if he didn’t leave it at that. Anger and resentment could poison a person’s soul. It was clearly working its way through Leo’s now.

“I’ve fucked up, Leo.” Gen’s arms were crossed over her chest while her eyes danced over his drastically different face. There was still something of the man she’d loved there, but merely a shadow. Gen began to whisper. “I came to see Kingstreet a couple of weeks ago to find out if she’d faked evidence against you. She had me thrown out, screaming that I’d attacked her after basically admitting what I‘d suspected. Last week, the guard that let me in turned up dead, thrown off some cliff in Yorkshire. My shoe was found next to him.” Would he, she wondered, laugh in her face once more before telling her to get out, or give her some of the advice she’d always valued years ago? Was he a completely changed man, fuelled only by anger?
“Zora Roh came to my office yesterday. Someone broke into my flat to get this shoe, Leo.” Chancing it, Gen leaned forwards, elbows once more on the table between them. “We both know that one stolen shoe is just the possible beginning.”

Warning - language.

Dear Genny hadn't come for a fight about who had screwed over whom the most.  He let out another wheezing laugh, clutching at his belly.  Of course she hadn't.  She'd come here to play the tearful, frightened wife, so that he could offer his forgiveness and they could bond over love for their son, and within the hour, the scene would conform to the romantic escapade that she'd already written for herself...

And then she said the one word that could make ice shoot through his veins and freeze him in his seat like a look from a basilisk.

Kingstreet.

His eyes widened.

"You stupid bitch."  His eyes darted frantically from side to side, scanning the room, the corners, flicking back towards the door.   There was no one else here, no one that he could see, but even an empty room meant nothing where she was concerned. 

"What the $#!& were you thinking?" he hissed at her.  He pressed himself back into the chair, feeling the wood dig into his back, push into his arms, as if he could distance himself from his wife's idiocy if only he willed it.  The magnitude of what she was saying had only just barely begun to sink in.  "You went to see her?  About me?"

"You stupid bitch." Leo was no long ranting at her, there was a change in his demeanour. While there was clearly an anger there, something else was brewing. Fear? Anxiety? Either way, Gen bristled visibly at his words. Seeing ‘lying bitch’ scrawled all over her book had been harrowing enough, but to hear the words spill from his mouth with the voice that she’d loved from the age of 15 stung beyond words. Gen hadn’t imagined she’d have an easy conversation with her husband of 16 years, but she’d certainly not fully prepared herself for this.

For most of her life, Gen had breezed through with a laissez-faire attitude to most things. People thought she was flighty and without real emotion. In truth, Gen tried to avoid feeling anything because it only hurt. Brushing off insults and verbal abuse had always been the easiest option. Unfortunately, when guilt was mixed in and it was her husband dishing out the verbal barrage, Gen didn’t know how to handle it.

“I’m a stupid bitch for trying to help your case?” Gen bit back, still leaning forward on the table. She wasn’t going to let Leo cause her to freak out. He wanted to get under her skin. “I was thinking that I wanted answers. But she’s crackbrained. A window licking nut job who’d probably get off on ramming a quill up her arse and jamming her head in a filing cabinet.” An imagine that Gen certainly did not want. “But she had someone killed for letting me in to her. I’m close to something and she’s trying to scare me.”

He was here, in a small, cold room that was brightly lit.  He could feel the wood as he dug his fingers into the chair, the too-tight metal around his wrists as he flexed his arms.  But it was all too easy to slip away to somewhere else, to a room that was colder and darker, where something let out an ear piercing skreeee as it was dragged across a surface and something wet fell onto his right shoe, one drop after another, and a pair of small, blue eyes stared at him unblinkingly, outlined perfectly by entirely round black circles.

He would have twisted back, let out a shriek, shouted for the guard -- anything to avoid getting pulled back into that place. He would have even left Genny to that fate, as she'd once abandoned him.  But it was Dante -- Dante, with his shaggy brown hair and large brown eyes that somehow looked so like his mother -- who was staring up at him from the table, from the photograph that Genny had brought and then forgotten when he hadn't proven willing to play along with her scheme.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he made a small, plaintive noise, as if somehow he could just will all of this to go away.

"She's trying to kill you," he growled at her. 

Dante.  He couldn't help but think of Dante.  His son, who loved History of Magic and had too many friends to count.  But now, his son was just one more thing that she'd take away from him, because of his mother's stupid, selfish insistence that she had to be the one to save them.

"This isn't a %*&@ing game, Genny," he ground out through gritted teeth.   His fingers were gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that his hands hurt.   "You don't get to make up a happy ending and just wish it on the world.  If she killed someone for 'letting you in to see her' -- "  He clenched his jaw through the palpable air quotes.  "-- then what the $@!% do you think she already has planned for you?!"

Why couldn’t she make up a happy ending? Gen had spent years imagining what would have happened had Leo never been arrested. Would they have stayed together? Would they have more children than Dante? Would Dante even be the same? She did will a happy ending. Of course, she did because regardless of what she made out, Gen was far from happy.

“A tea party?” She shouldn’t have joked, Gen knew this. But she struggled to handle serious situations without a poorly timed joke. It was her coping mechanism. It always had been. “Don’t get your hopes up, Leo.” Gen shook her head, looking away. It was no secret that Gen annoyed a lot of people, but she wasn’t important or interesting enough to want to kill. Getting involved in Leo’s case and trying to seek answers wasn’t enough for even the psycho to want to take her out. Why was everyone so paranoid? Her husband worrying over a threat out in the open was one thing, but to fear someone locked up with no access to the outside world? It was ridiculous.

“If she was trying to kill me, I’d be dead and you’d be crying bitterly at my funeral.” A brief frown crossed her features as she thought of all of the hateful messages from her ‘loving husband’. “Or cheering.” There was a sadness in Gen’s eyes as she looked down at her hands on the table. Dante’s face stared up at her, grinning broadly as he grasped onto Bruce. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were.” This was the longest that Gen had stayed in the same room as Leo since his sentencing. She’d never actually asked Leo if he was guilty or innocent and this was the only time she’d admitted any fault in any of this. She knew now how she should have stuck by him. But she’d prioritised Dante’s safety. Standing by a husband convicted of being a Death Eater wasn’t something that would have kept her or Dante safe. Leo would never get that.

For years, he'd thought about what he'd say if he ever saw his wife again.  He'd played the scene out over and over again until fantasy had come alive as a sort of vivid memories.  Sometimes he forgave her, after she threw herself at his feet; sometimes he railed at her, screaming at her until she burst into tears.  Sometimes she came to him to beg his forgiveness when he was on his death bed, and sometimes, he imagined in exquisite detail how he would escape from Azkaban and turn her life into a Merlin-cursed hell that not even Salazar Slytherin could have fathomed.

But seeing her before him now: this was too real.  There were no poetic justice, nothing that brought him any sense of resounding satisfaction that could begin to make up for the past twelve years.  Everything was drab and sepia-toned.  There was only the cold, hard reality of Genny's lies and stories; the web that she wove to place herself firmly and selfishly at the center of everything.

Of course she'd set Kingstreet after her; of course, of course, of course.  She may have even gone and actually done it, the damn silly girl, actually gone to see her.  Genny couldn't handle the fact that he was telling his own story now: that he could be free of Azkaban and force his way back into her life on his own terms, not hers.  Of course she desperately wanted to play a central role in his fight for freedom, especially now that she was at risk of everyone realizing that she had lied.

He stared at her so long and hard that it hurt; it hurt to focus on anything for so long.  He let himself give another half-wheezing laugh. 

"Oh, baby," he said, almost crooning.  "Do you really think I'd even notice?"

Leo’s words didn’t hold the power that he’d no doubt hoped that they would. For years, Gen had willed that attitude to be true. She’d wanted him to forget about her and leave her to continue her life. For years, she’d believed that he was a criminal, a monster. He’d sent her messages pleading for her to listen to him, and perhaps she should have. But when these letters didn’t receive the desired response, Leo’s words had turned sour and his letters had become acidic. What Gen would have given for a reprieve back then from the letters. What she would have given for his signature on the divorce papers.

“My loving husband? Not noticing? Rubbish.” A serious urge to bite back was presenting itself, but Gen schooled her compulsion, wringing her hands together on the table. “I’ve not come to spar with you, Leo.” But it was glaringly obvious that he wanted to start a fire between them.

“I’m sorry.” The editor forced herself to meet his gaze. Her eyes glistened with the thread of emotion and tears, but nothing had escaped yet. “You deserved better than the wife that gave up on you.” she didn’t want to give up again, but would he force her? It didn’t matter how guilty Gen felt about their situation, how much verbal abuse could she put up with before she tried once more to cut him out of her life? He may not have been a bad person before Azkaban, but had the prison changed him? Was this now the man he would be for the remainder of his life? So very full of hate?

“I want to help now because I couldn’t back then.” Would he decide that was a lie, too? “But if all you want is to throw hate at me, send me another letter.”

She hadn't come to spar with him.  She'd only lied: lied to him and about him.  Lied about their life together, and lied about his son.  She'd refused his missives for years, and returned his pleas for mercy with demands for divorce.  She'd ignored him and left him to die all alone in this place, until he'd lost all sense of himself, until the raging and pleading and misery had subsided into a monotonous malaise. She could have broken all that in only an instant if she'd cared, if only she'd reached out to show him even the slightest merciful touch. 

But instead, his Genny had abandoned him.  The only reason she'd come to him now was because suddenly, it served her to play the other role.  To act the part of the dutiful, forgiving wife, rather than the cold-hearted bitch who'd turned her back on her husband when he needed her most. 

"You mean you wouldn't help," he growled, glaring back at her.  Beautiful Genny, who had once convinced him that they loved each other so much that their souls couldn't even bare to spend a year apart.  Whose eyes now glistened with deceitful tears, because suddenly she needed him to love her again.

"Not couldn't, Genny.  You wouldn't help!"  He spat the words out at her like venom, his voice rising.  "You testified against me!"  He was shouting now, leaning forward in his chair.  "They hauled me before the Wizengamot, and you let them put you on the stand!  You did it!"  He tried to point a finger at her, straining at his shackles.  "And now you've $@#!ing put our son at risk because you went to her!"

Whatever intention Gen had had upon coming to Azkaban today was long forgotten. Leo wasn’t going to suddenly back down from his long stewing hatred and once more befriend his wife. Kurby had probably been right, she should have reported the books earlier that month because this was no merely angry man wanting to send a message. Leo Gamp was still nurturing a 13-year-old grudge against his wife. This certainly wasn’t something she would change in one visit to him in prison.

“I let them, did I?” Gen spat back, unwilling to simply back down from this fight. “I thought you were intelligent, Leo. I had no choice. They held me to one of that legal bullshit where I had to take the stand. They were threatening me. Everyone thought I was involved. What was I supposed to do? Get myself thrown in here as well? Do they do shared cells for husbands and wives?”

Gen took a breath and rested her elbows on the table. Her dark eyes were boring into his.
“What lies did I tell, husband? What the %&^@ could I have done differently? You told me you were going to the battle. You were never home. We were always arguing. All facts. No lies.”

"YOU SELFISH $!@%!"  He was beside himself now, beyond the pale.  It was an ugly, detached feeling, almost as if he were standing beside the poor, withered shell of a man, watching his worst self scream at the woman who had once been the love of his life. 

But he couldn't do it, couldn't listen to her words, not when he knew what she'd done. He was so angry that he was shaking, his pale face flushed with crimson rage.  He yanked at the shackles keeping him bound to the table, slamming the chains forward as he pulled at them furiously, desperate to get free.

"I DID EVERYTHING I COULD TO PROTECT YOU!"  He was shouting so loudly that he couldn't hear if she tried to protest.  "AND YOU LAPPED UP EVERY LIE THEY TOLD!  YOU LET THEM LIE ABOUT ME!  AND YOU LIED!  ABOUT ME!   ABOUT DANTE!  YOU LIED!  YOU LI--"

The bright red flash of light hit him like a Seeker on a Firebolt.  He stiffened where he was, and then crumbled an instant later, collapsing back onto the chair. 

The Azkaban guard had burst into the little meeting room in the middle of the tirade.  He hadn't wasted any time in firing off a stunning spell at the screaming inmate.

"You alright, miss?" the guard asked.  He took a step towards Genevieve, extending a hand to her, and then hesitated, as if he weren't sure what kind of comfort would be appropriate to offer.  He seemed to settle for hovering awkwardly next to the immobile body.  "I'm sorry to jump in and interrupt you, but he knows the rules, he shouldn't be losing his temper like that --"

She may have baited him since her arrival, but Gen wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of hate and anger that was thrown at her with such aggressive energy. She wanted to hold her ground and stay where she sat, calm, elbows resting on the table between them, in control. But Leo was rising, pulling at the chains that bound him to the table. Gen shot back in her chair, stunned, almost incapacitated as she could only stare.

The light shot at him, stopping her husband mid-sentence as his body stiffened and then slumped down in the chair. Gen didn’t move; she continued only to stare even as the guard spoke to her.

“Are you going to be there for when he loses his temper on the outside?” Her eyes glistened with tears as she asked the question, still staring at the crumpled man immobilised in the chair. “No chains then.”

Slowly, Gen pushed herself up out of the chair. She wanted to tell him how he wouldn’t be coming anyway near Dante now, how her husband had clearly died 13 years ago, how she’d had faith in him, faith now destroyed by his anger and hatred. But those words didn’t come. In her couple of meetings with him, she’d never said anything similar. Leo had been her world. Even with these things he’d done or not done, you didn’t just stop loving someone whom you’d loved so strongly.
“I’d have done anything for you, Leo. I still would. I never lied.” She wasn’t even sure if he could hear her. Would it even matter if he could? Before anything else was said by her or the guard, Gen left.