stella fawcett (ginger_roots) wrote in caged, @ 2013-11-03 01:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 97-11, [ narrative ], stella fawcett |
WHO: Stella Fawcett and Byron Fawcett
WHERE: The House of Fawcett in Ottery St. Catchpole
WHEN: Past midnight of Saturday, 2 November (or technically, Sunday 3 November)
WHAT: The remaining Fawcetts share their pain.
RATING: PGish.
STATUS: narrative; complete.
Stella woke up with a start to a completely dark room, the house seemingly quiet and empty. In reality, it was far from empty. Relatives had been in and out all day, and it seemed like they had all finally shifted into the guest bedroom or retired back to their own homes by the time she had woken up. It also seemed like she’d pretty much just knocked out in the living room and someone had decided to place a blanket over her instead of moving her to her bedroom. She let the blanket fall off as she straightened up. Stella wished with every ounce of her being that it could all be a bad dream and she could be still reliving a day during the summer hols, before her sixth year started, before she had gotten to take those awful classes and especially before her best friend decided to go on a run. Hell, could it be a summer night about three years ago or something? Back when she was younger and had literally nothing to worry about outside of how puberty was affecting her? Needless to say, every cell in her brain made her aware that none of it had been a dream. It wasn’t a summer day before her sixth year, but the first Saturday of November, probably twelve hours after finding out what had happened to her mother in the attack at the Ministry. None of that was a dream at all, her mind told her. The only thing that felt surreal was to be back home. Stella stood up, shoving her feet into her slippers as she made her way to the kitchen. She’d gone from having a near panic attack in the Ravenclaw dormitory as she packed her things -- and she probably would have actually had one if it wasn’t for June -- to going quiet the second she had entered the house where her father’s sister scooped her up in hug immediately. It’s not that she hadn’t felt the urge to cry but she’d been holding back. Dad needed her. She’d be strong for him, because her aunt tended to fly into histrionics. And arrange the collection of mugs wrong. She frowned into the cabinet that she had opened to pick out a glass. Tea would be good at this hour but that arrangement… her mother had a specific way of organizing them but her aunt, having used them for anyone who had arrived to give condolences, had clearly put them back haphazardly. She started to pull out the mugs, placing them on the counter below, a loud clink sounding as they made contact with the surface. Nothing was bloody correct. You put the tall cups with the tall cups. They were also ordered from her favorites on the lower shelf to the less sentimentals on the highest shelf. Who didn’t get that? Or at least just put them where they were initially were? Letting out a sigh of frustration, Stella stood on her tiptoes, attempting to grab the light blue one by it’s handle, cursing her own height. She could have levitated it down but her wand was probably somewhere in her room or in the living room and she couldn’t care about it (or maybe think rationally enough) to get it. In midst of the shuffling of mugs, though, she hadn’t realized that her father, still awake, had entered the room at the sound of her commotion. “Stella?” She had only just looped a finger around the handle when Byron Fawcett startled her and the mug slipped from her hand. “No.. oh no. Oh, no.” She stooped down to her knees and start to pick up the pieces of the now-shattered cup. “I’m… I was fixing things. It was all wrong, and I just wanted to make it like Mum liked.” Her mother would have been upset at this one. It was definitely her favorite. It came with a gift set from Honeydukes and it was the cutest thing that Stella had spotted out and now it looked like nothing except rubble. “Dad, your wand. Can you fix it, please?” “Stella, what are you doing?” he moved closer and squatted down to her level, his face ragged and tired from pain of losing his wife and the stress from thinking about how it would affect his daughter now and in the future. “It’s okay. Let it be. It’s okay, Stels.” “No, it’s not.” Stella quickly picked up the bigger pieces, cupping them in her hand and looking up at her dad from her. “This was her favorite. She’d be so mad. We have to fix it, Dad. Everything was-- it’s all wrong!” When she looked up at him with those pleading eyes, his heart broke into a million pieces all over again. His little girl, who looked so much her mother… the same brilliant red and orange locks, the same spit-fire determination written all over her face even as desperation was written on it too. Byron placed her hands on her shoulders and forced himself to look directly at her. “I’m so sorry.” She looked from him to the pieces, not wanting to believe that she couldn’t put it back together, but she placed them back on the floor anyway, silently. The second her hands were free, though, she was clasping them over her mouth as a fresh wave of pain and sadness washed over her and she let out a sob. “This shouldn’t have happened.” Byron shifted to a cross-legged sitting position on the floor and pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around his daughter as she cried freely into his sweater. “I know.” |