InsaneJournal

With a sniffle, Glynnis looked out the window with a sigh, leaning her head against the wall as she sat on the balcony off of her bedroom, staring at the ruins of the neighbourhood. The ruined cathedral was nearby: this was nowhere near the docks, there wasn't anything strategic here, in what used to be a peaceful, posh address. The Nazis wanted to bring the cathedral down to break the spirit of the Welsh, and in trying, they took this whole neighbourhood with it. If you had told Glynnis two years ago that she would be living in Hightower Lane, she would have laughed--as if her tad could afford a flat here! But now, with their own flat a pile of rubble and this building half-destroyed, now they were Hightower worthy.

Maybe if they had been Hightower people all along, Tiberius wouldn't have ignored her so much since the Hogwarts letters came. He told her that he loved how she was smart and didn't care that she was just a blue-collar Taffy, but maybe...if she had been different...she would have been more important than schoolwork and Head Boy. Maybe, she would have been? Her eyes filled with tears again. The truth was, she just wasn't important enough. Not a single boy had ever turned her down, hadn't fawned over her--but that wasn't really what hurt her so badly. It was being ignored, abandoned. Glynnis thought of her old flat. Where her mother had lived, had left. Left Glynnis. That was the hurt that Tiberius had ripped open.

She stared at the sky, waiting for her owl. She had sent Scarlett out with a letter for Brutus which should have gotten there about now, and she was wondering if she would get a response--or if he would do what she had asked:

Brutie--
I broke up with Tibby. I need a friend, and I've cried enough to Gwen to fill a lake--Apparate to see me? If it's after six, think of the alley behind the Genedlaethol y Glannau Dance Hall. Before that, just think of my bedroom--my new bedroom in Cardiff. I'd have you come to the sitting room, but if you come while Tad's still around, you might scare the shite out of him if you just Apparate in, so just come into my room. We don't have wards, so you'll be fine.
Glynnie

Summer, for Brutus, meant long days of Quidditching with his cousins, with breaks only to eat and sleep. As the troupe tromped through his mother’s formerly spotless kitchen to gulp down the lemonade she’d called them inside for, his mood couldn’t have been more different than Glynnis’s; he was literally glowing, pink-faced and shining with happiness and sunshine and good old-fashioned physical exertion. He’d just caught his brother Derek in a jovial headlock, getting his lemonade spilled all down the front of his shirt in the process, when his mother managed to make herself heard over the general noise to inform him he’d received an owl while he was out flying.

Several hands reached to try to snatch it from him but he managed to push them away and fight through the throng to go read it in the hallway, in relative quiet. He read it twice through before it sank in, and even then, mostly all he gleaned from it was the words “broke up” and “bedroom.” That was enough; in moments he was halfway up the stairs, shouting down “What time is it? Mum, I’m going out!” He just had to change into something more presentable, less soaked with sweat and lemonade, and splash some water on his face. It was 5:30, the hall clock informed him—he didn’t want to miss the window of time where he was promised a bedroom instead of a back alley, so a shower would have to wait. Anyway, she’d told him once that she liked snogging him after he’d been training hard. But Glynnis said a lot of things. He wasn’t always sure he could believe them.


A glance in the mirror showed him that he looked a bit more rumpled and sweaty than he would have liked, but there was no time to do more than try to tamp down his hair and hurry back down the stairs. He ignored his fellow players’ questions and pleas for him to stay, that they still had time for one more game before nightfall, and he just called back “Save some dinner for me!” before hopping off the front step, spinning on the spot, and reappearing a moment later in Glynnis’s bedroom. He didn’t have much Apparition experience yet, and his landing was a bit ungainly; he fell rather noisily into her desk, and followed that up with some choice language before glancing around quickly to see that Glynnis didn’t seem to be there. He worried he was late after all—he worried that after 6, her father would be home.


Six o'clock wasn't 'Tad returns home,' it was time for her to go to work: dinner service went until eight and then the dancing began, and while she wasn't due until then, it seemed better to be around people and put on her best face, pretending to be cheery and merry, as if her heart wasn't broken. It was like being in a theatrical, pretending she was Rita Hayworth or Vivien Leigh. She could do that a lot better than being her. Glynnis Griffiths, heartbroken, as...Glynnis Griffiths, whole.


In the midst of changing from her day clothes to her work dress, she heard the crack and then the cussing--she startled slightly as she stepped out of the WC and dashed back to the bedroom, dropping the bloomers in her hand onto the floor as she left. Wincing, she scrambled over to Brutus, inspecting the desk with worry. Her tad had brought it home at the first of the month so that she could work at it with her books for anything due before school, but the too-casual way he talked about it made it clear that this desk had been looted from an abandoned flat, the way that someone had looted this flat when its original tenants had left. And so the cycle goes.


But the desk was fine, and now she could turn her attention fully to Brutus, putting her hands on his. "Oh, sugar, are you alright? You had a bit of a bang?" She paused and then threw her arms around him. "And you came."


Brutus noticed, frowning, that the desk got a looking over before he did, and when she did turn to him with her concerned cooing, it rubbed him the wrong way. “I’m fine, thanks,” he replied a bit stiffly, ignoring his throbbing elbow. But then she pulled him into a hug, and his sour mood melted away. “Of course I came,” he said simply, pulling her closer and kissing the top of her head. “You can cry on me a while.” He lowered his voice as he added, “Is your dad home? Am I allowed to be here?”

At the mere mention of crying, Glynnis's eyes filled with tears, and she pressed her face into his shirt. She could tell instantly that he had been out flying from the smell, and actually, it wasn't just a line--she did find it attractive when he had come from the pitch, because of how familiar it was to her, how comforting Quidditch was. She had spent the days after the breakup practically living on her broom, Flooing to the Morgans first thing in the morning and heading out to the fields, as if finding the snitch over and over again would shake this feeling of despair.

She sniffed again, drawing back and nodding. "Tad's at the hall, he'll be there until...half past midnight? One? Depends on whose turn it is to lock up, his or Big Eddie's. The manager," she added, forgetting if Brutus knew the staff by name now from her stories. Glynnis hadn't bothered with mascara or eye makeup, knowing she'd cry it off, which was possibly the greatest tragedy of the whole situation, that she was denying herself makeup! "He doesn't mind if I have friends in my room...we don't really have furniture in the sitting room. I'm sorry I had you Floo in here, but we have to use the fire stairs to get in since the stairs are rotting in, and if you knocked on the kitchen window, I might not have heard you, and..." She trailed off, her lips starting to shake. "I just wanted you to come."

Normally, few things made Brutus more uncomfortable than the sight of a girl crying. It was either awkward and he preferred to pretend it wasn’t happening, or, if the girl in question was one of his sisters, her crying usually meant he was about to get a sound slap from his father. But this wasn’t so bad, Glynnis all sad and shaking and clinging to him, and he didn’t even notice she wasn’t wearing her makeup; she looked pretty like this, staring up at him with a tremble in her lip and her eyes shining and her eyelashes dark and glistening with tears. He wasn't really listening, at least he'd stopped listening once she'd said her father wasn't around. He was just waiting for her to pause so he could lean in and kiss away her tears, which was the sort of thing he imagined a girl like Glynnis would go wild for. The brawny heroes of the books the girls giggled about in the Common Room always seemed to be doing things like that, anyway.

Actually doing it was mostly just sort of wet and salty, but he hoped she appreciated the effect, and at least it gave him an excuse to pull her close against him again. “It’s okay,” he murmured, between kisses. “I’m here now.” He was pretty sure the brawny heroes all said things like that, too. He snuck a glance over her shoulder to the bed behind her, and wondered how he might maneuver her in that direction. This sure beat stealing kisses in an empty classroom.

Well, that was desperately romantic--something that Clark Gable would do, maybe. Not Bogart, he didn't seem like the type, and actually, she couldn't see Rhett Butler do it, exactly, it seemed more of an Ashley Wilkes move, tender and sensitive, but it was romantic and cinematic, and that counted to her, it counted. She thought of Tiberius, of how they never were cinematic, even when they declared their love for each other the month before, with all of their bumbling and fumbling, the spats where she felt hurt and he was flummoxed as to why. Like when he ignored her for days on end for his bloody books, and--Glynnis' chest started to ache, and the tears welled back up again and she leaned back into Brutus and cried.

After a minute, she hiccuped herself to an end, pulling back and wiping at her eyes. "I know. You always are, when I need someone," she said with a watery smile, reaching up to put her hand on his shoulder. It was true, Brutus' loyalty was so Hufflepuff, it made her heart swell up. They didn't work as a couple for the very simple, basic truth that a relationship required more out of the people in it than mere physical lust, but it didn't mean that she didn't have an affection for him that transcended the fact that he sure did snog good. He was loyal and honest and true--and here. "I just--I just wish I could make the hurt stop," she sniffled again. "It hurts so bad."

But she couldn't tell what hurt more: how he ignored her or the breakup. It all mixed together in a painful lump that had grown into a boulder that was now rolling her over and crushing her to the ground.

Wow, she really was pretty broken up over this. And even though he’d shown up expecting more snogging and less sobbing—and even though she’d gone from sort of cutely pink and damp to sort of blotchy and snotty in the process—even Brutus couldn’t help but be moved. There was something nice, too, about thinking of himself as the bloke she came to cling to when another bloke broke her heart. “Here,” he said, catching her hand and pulling her toward him as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you want to… talk about it?” He dug in his pockets for a handkerchief, but, coming up empty, offered his sleeve instead, as he wrapped his other arm around her. She hadn’t been kissing him, only clinging, but she didn’t seem to mind him kissing her-- so he kept it up, pressing his lips to her hair and to her temple and hoping she would turn toward him and start snogging her cares away. That was what she’d asked him here for, wasn’t it?

Maybe. If Glynnis had laid down on a therapist's couch, she would have heard a tale of how her motherless upbringing and her abandonment issues were arrowing her directly to burying her misery under a hail of snogs. Ah, yes, they'd say with a knowing nod, spinning an explanation of how she used boys to validate an emptiness that her nan had left behind: tell me about your mother. Not just a Freudian punchline. Pish, like Glynnis knew that: she knew that she had flown so much with Gwen...and it didn't feel better. She had cried to the girls at the dance hall...and it didn't feel better. She had pretended everything was all better...and it didn't do a lick of good, it wasn't even a bit better. Boys always made things better for Glynnis, between the attention and the affection, and Brutus was the best at that. Unlike the soldiers who just wanted to paw at her, Brutus cared. The kisses he was giving made her feel better--made her feel wanted, though that brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes. The only person she wanted was Tibby, but there was no way he was Apparating back in, no matter how much she dreamed it.

"He said he loved me, but...he ignored me, he would just forget about me--his bloody, sodding NEWTs and his bloody, sodding Head Boy letter," she sniffled. She wiped her eyes on his sleeve, but she drew a handkerchief out of her pocket to wipe her face dry, before looking up at him. "If you love someone, how can you just forget about them like that?" she asked desperately.

“Uhh.” Brutus didn’t know. He’d never been in love, and looking at the state Glynnis was in, he counted himself lucky. Most of the time, being in love just seemed to make people stupid, or sad. “Hey, fu—forget him,” he said, stroking her cheek. “Or, you want I should beat him up for you?” He’d made the offer automatically, but now that he thought about it, he did feel irritated with Tiberius on Glynnis’s behalf. Who was he to choose NEWTs over her? It didn’t seem fair that somebody she cared about so much could make her cry like this, and then not be around to be the one to kiss her tears away. “I will beat him up,” he repeated, more firmly. “Where’s he live? He’s not Head Boy yet. I’ll make him cry.” The offer was sincere, but he smiled, hoping she might stop being all trembly-lipped long enough to smile back. He just wanted her to feel better, and if he could accomplish that with kissing her and mauling Tiberius-- well, both of those things were well within his repertoire.

Glynnis giggled despite herself, laughing as she sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. "Tad already said he'd get some of the GIs to do it, you're a little late," she told him with a shake of her head, pushing back a curl behind her ear. She had to grin, though, as she did when her father offered that...but she didn't want to hurt Tibby. She did want him to hurt and badly, but not like that. A broken nose or a black eye could be mended; she wanted him to hurt like she was, but as long as he loved his NEWTs or his leadership more, he never would.

Still, that was the kind of reaction from Brutus that she was hoping for. Well, Gwen had offered it, too, but she was family, she had to! Brutus didn't, and yet he was. "I won't let you do that...but you're a doll for offering," she said with a bit of a crooked grin, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

Brutus made a disapproving sort of grunt at the mention of the GI's; he wasn't easily jealous of any of the boys Glynnis flirted or danced or more with-- that would be exhausting-- but he never much liked the idea of all those rowdy American Muggle boys having at her. He didn't like that there were so many of them, and that they were just passing through and having some fun with Glynnis while they were around, blowing through town then sending her love letters like they thought they knew her, always including stupid presents like chocolates or those 'nylons' things she was so crazy about. He hated it when she wore them; he liked her better as bare as possible, maybe with a slightly crooked line running up the back of her legs, like a path he could follow, leading somewhere good. He ran his hand over her knee, just under her skirt, and smiled to feel her skin was bare under his hand.

"You won't let me," he countered, leaning closer to her, pressing close enough that he hoped she'd take the hint and lie back on the bed, "so does that mean you'd be cross if I did it anyway?" He finally gave up on all this chaste pecking and sought her lips with his. The giggle he'd got out of her, small though it was, had seemed a good sign, and he hoped he wasn't miscalculating and would end up with a faceful of fresh tears.

Glynnis dumbly followed the clue to lie down because lying on her back--or being pressed against a wall--was an automatic response when a boy nudged at her. How far she let them go, well, that was up to debate. Still, when he began to kiss her, her mind clicked in, and she pressed her hands against his chest. "Brutie--" She didn't begin to cry, but her voice did feel thick as she tried to say, "Tibby and I just ended, and after four months, I..."

She...what? She had given Tiberius four months. Glynnis didn't date! She attached a boyfriend tag to a lucky bloke for a few weeks until it ended with a bored shrug, and usually just flitted from boy to boy--it was much more fun to have a harem than a single spouse, that's what the Arabs did, and it worked just fine for her, a little Scherezade of Scotland here. Four months, would anyone believe that Glynnis Griffiths could settle down that long? And for that, Tiberius had ignored her and broken her heart? Damn his excuses and his reasons, she deserved to be wanted! Brutus, with his hand already on her thigh and his lips on hers, he made her feel wanted! So why was she fighting it, her hand on his chest, pushing him back?

Brutus sighed audibly and lifted his head to look at her, but he made no move to roll off. He tried, and mostly succeeded, to keep his irritation from showing on his face as he coaxed her, "Come on, Glyn... Isn't this better than at school?" Maybe having a boy in her bed wasn't a novelty to her-- don't think about that, he told himself-- but it was new for Brutus, sinking into a soft mattress with a girl instead of furtively bumping up against the cold stone walls of Hogwarts, and he wasn't giving up without a fight. He'd skipped out on playing Quidditch to let her cry into his shirt; he wasn't about to just go home. "Just forget him," he continued, murmuring the words against her neck, brushing his lips very deliberately, but lightly, against her skin. He knew just what made her squirm; he paused just a moment, just long enough to make her want it, before starting to show her neck some serious attention. He couldn't imagine that swot Tiberius Ogden kissing her like this, he thought smugly-- but not quite smugly enough to want to ask her to verify. And, at this point, the less they talked about him the better.

Well, that wasn't fair, to kiss her favourite place to be kissed! Well, one of the top four places. Five. Five, she had a top five. But neck, oh, that was in the five. She felt that wobbly urge to cry as she thought of Tibby necking with her like this...of how he would come, tired from Apparating, and nap in this bed with her--innocent, just cuddled together and sleeping as the warm summer sun mixed with the sea breeze drifting through the open balcony doors. Months of just him, touching her and kissing her and...and now it was over.

She thought again about pushing Brutus off--he was always good, if she told him no, he stopped, though he would pout a bit. All she had to do was say no, and then her memories could be only of Tiberius still, like she was a bloody museum, roped off from all other visitors. Did she really want to be like that? Be alone like that? Brutus wanted her, his hands were already beginning to wander up her chest--right now, she was the most special girl to him. Not forgotten. Did she really want to be alone?

Sniffling once more, she decided to dive headlong into the answer: no. Turning her head, she caught him in a snog, deciding not to protest as she felt his hand fumble its way to the buttons of her dress. She wasn't going to shag Tiberius out of her head, not with her desire to make that first time special--the little girl's dream that the other dance hall girls teased her about, the dream she had of sharing with Tibby before the end of the summer, but--but...well, everything that she and Tibby had done...wouldn't it be best to erase that by replacing those memories with another boy?

Why not Brutus, she thought stubbornly, snogging him more ardently. Unlike some seventh years, he was here.