WHO: Lumos Boot & Byron Kettleburn WHAT: Clearing the air. WHEN: Last night, March 28 WHERE: Byron's flat
It was lonely at home.
Lumos kept telling herself Terry would be there soon and it wasn’t like she’d spent that much time with her mother when she’d been there, but it was still lonely, she still felt guilty and anxious, and the world kept spinning even further out of her control.
How that translated to knocking on Byron’s door, she wasn’t entirely sure, but she didn’t put much thought into it until he opened the door.
“Hi,” she said, fiddling with the strap of her handbag at her shoulder. “Sorry. I should’ve rang first.”
The last person Byron had expected to find at the door to his flat was Lumos. For a moment, he stared at her dumbfounded, but he eventually regained his ability to form words and stepped out of the way for her to come inside.
“It’s fine. Come in,” he said, waving her into his flat. When he thought she wasn’t looking, he combed his hands through his hair and gave his breath and his t-shirt a subtle sniff to make sure they weren’t foul. He tried for a casual shrug when she looked at him again, like he wasn’t at all flustered by her dropping in. “Uh...what’s up?”
“Nothing. I just —” She tried to think of a good reason for being there, but there wasn’t really anything but the truth. “I don’t know. I guess I was lonely.” She wrinkled her nose as she said it, feeling embarrassed.
Byron gave her an open-mouthed stare for a beat as he swung his door closed and locked behind her. “Well, you’re welcome to stay. It’s just me here,” he said, trying not to think too hard on why she’d come here for company when she had any number of other people to hang out with. “Lakshmi must be busy?”
“I don’t know,” she said again, feeling even more embarrassed now. “I didn’t ask.” To cover, she slid her handbag off her shoulder and then her arms out of her coat before handing both off to Byron.
“Oh,” he said, taking her things from her and moving to hang them up on hooks near his door. “Do you want something to eat? Drink?”
“Can I have something to drink?” she asked, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. “I’ll take anything.”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, moving immediately for the kitchen. “Make yourself at home.”
“Okay.” She sat on the sofa, feeling even less sure of herself. Now that he was in the kitchen, she self-consciously fluffed her hair and tugged at the hem of her shirt to make sure it laid flat. A thought struck her and she called out, “Wait, do you actually have food?”
“Uhhh…” Byron opened the fridge door and stared at the lonely box of leftover white rice on the shelf, flanked by a dozen assorted condiments. He called back, “I could order something.”
“Oh, only if you want! I was just curious.”
He popped the cork off a bottle of cheap wine. “I’ve got menus in the drawer.”
Glad for something to do and, she realized, hungry, Lumos hopped to her feet. After rifling through the menus, she poked her head into the kitchen and asked, “How do you feel about shawarma?” She held up the menu.
“Sounds good to me,” he said, glancing briefly up at her mid-pour. When he finished, he offered her a glass. When she took it, he held up his own in a mute toast.
He took a small sip at first, contemplating moderation. But when she dropped her eyes back to the menu, he downed the rest of his glass.
“I’ve never thought Jeremy Clarkson was funny,” Byron said, giving the tv screen a skeptical look around the last bite of his dinner. “Maybe it’s just the look of him.”
“Is it because he’s taller than you?” Lumos asked, dabbing at her mouth with her napkin.
“Yes, that’s it.” He leaned back against the sofa and nodded at her. “He emasculates me and that’s why I don’t think he’s funny.”
“I knew it.” She neatly arranged the remains of her dinner, folding her napkin over the wrapper and closing the styrofoam around it. She squinted at the tv, though, which was swimming a little from the wine. “He’s all right. Sometimes I don’t think he’s funny either.”
“He’s the sort of guy I wouldn’t want to be alone in a room with for a prolonged period of time,” he said, slouching a bit more in his seat. “Especially not with a rotisserie chicken.”
“Wait, why?” she asked. “Would he —” She made a face and an attempt at a gesture that made her blush.
“What?” Byron blinked at her for a moment before he realized what she meant and burst into a laugh. “No — I meant, would you want to watch Jeremy Clarkson eat a rotisserie chicken?”
“I don’t know!” She covered her face with her hands. “I’ve never thought about it!” But after a beat, she emerged from behind her hands. “I’ve given it some thought and no, I wouldn’t want to watch that.”
His shoulders shook with laughter. “On either note, really, no one needs to see that.”
“We’re forgetting the other note!” Lumos insisted.
“I don’t think I can ever forget the other note,” he said and picked himself up to retrieve his wine glass for another sip. A moment of silence passed before he glanced at Lumos and asked, “Did you really just come over here because you were bored?”
“Lonely,” she corrected, breathing out an embarrassed laugh. “But I probably should’ve said I was bored.”
“Lonely,” he conceded with a glance down at his wine. “You’re sure that’s all? It’s not that something’s wrong?”
Clearing her throat, she reached for her own wine, glancing over at him while she gulped down the rest of glass. “Um,” she mumbled, letting that hang between them for a long moment while she set her glass down and tried to think of something to say. A ‘something is always wrong’ was on the tip of her brain, but she said, “I don’t know where my mum is anymore.”
Byron raised his eyebrows, but he chose his words carefully. “You mean, you’ve heard from her? Recently?”
Even with the wine, it wasn’t that she suddenly couldn’t keep a secret. It was more that she was going to burst if she didn’t say something to someone and Rhys and Nora had just lost their home and she couldn’t burden Lakshmi so that left her with Byron. “No, I knew where she was and now I don’t.”
“You knew where she was?” He’d lost his slouch and shifted to sit up straighter beside her. “What’s happened?”
“You can’t tell anyone,” she said.
He shook his head. “Of course not.”
Her eyes searched his face and finally, after a deep breath, she said, “She was in my cellar.”
“Your cellar,” he echoed in disbelief. “This entire time?”
Lumos nodded, wringing her hands in her lap. But she added, “Until earlier this month, anyway. A snatcher found her so I obliviated him, but she obviously couldn’t stay there anymore. What if they showed up when I wasn’t there?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head slowly, repeating ‘your cellar’ under his breath. Clearing his throat, he looked at her again. “Has she run off then?”
Her knuckles were turning white from her hand wringing. “No.” She swallowed hard and stared down at her hands, but she was going to keep Rhys and Nora’s secret at least. “I moved her somewhere else, but something happened so now she’s been sent somewhere else and I have no idea who she’s with or where she is. She’s safe, supposedly, but.” She glanced up at Byron. The contents of her stomach felt heavy, but she already felt a little bit lighter. “How can I know that?”
“I don’t know,” Byron said, thinking about Terry and the message carved into the back of his hand. “It doesn’t seem like there are many options right now.”
“There aren’t,” she said miserably. “Because she’s not safe at mine either and she wasn’t safe where I sent her and…” She broke off, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. This wasn’t why I — I was going to lose my head if I didn’t get out of there.”
“I don’t blame you,” Byron said, his eyes fixed but not quite focused on the telly. After a beat, he looked at her again. “Did Terry know?”
“No!” Lumos said, shaking her head again. “I couldn’t ask him to keep a secret like that. And she didn’t want me to tell anyone, anyway.”
“He’d have kept the secret.” He combed a hand through his hair. “I mean, I know why you didn’t tell him, but he could’ve handled it.”
“I don’t know…” she said slowly. “He’s already going through so much as it is.”
“Did he tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
Byron slowly wrung his hands, his fingertips brushing over the back of his hand. “Everything he’s going through.”
She glanced down, at Byron’s hands, and then back up. “No,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “Did he tell you?”
“He told me a bit.” He kept his eyes lowered. “About his detentions and the things going on at Hogwarts.”
“Byron.” She clenched the fingers of one hand into a loose fist, hesitating, before reaching for his arm, tugging just a little, trying to draw his attention to her. There was an urgency in her voice now. “What did he say?”
“Well, for starters, he asked me not to tell you,” Byron admitted after heaving out a large sigh. “He thinks you’ve got enough to deal with too.”
Lumos drew her hand away, looking down at her lap and muttering Terry’s name. There was a brief flicker of annoyance with Byron for letting that be a good enough reason not to tell her, but she was too overwhelmed to let it become a full-blown annoyance so she sighed, too. “All right,” she said, looking up again. “What did he say?”
“He’s —” Byron hesitated, unsure of where to start. There were at least three things he needed to tell her and he worried about her reaction to all of them. He sounded as unsure as he felt when he picked up with, “Well, he’s been publishing a newsletter at school. For Dumbledore’s Army, if you remember all that.”
She blinked. The food in her stomach felt heavier still and she was suddenly sorry her glass was empty so she reached for the bottle and her glass, emptying one into the other. She took a drink and lifted her eyes back to Byron. “Oh.” She’d heard about the newsletter before, but just as she was thinking it made sense that Terry would write one, she remembered where she’d read about it. “Oh.”
“And the, uh.” He motioned to one of his hands with the other. “The thing, there. It says ‘I will not hide mudbloods.’” The way he said mudbloods made it sound like a wince. “Those were the lines they gave him in detention.”
Tears stung at the back of her eyes and she set aside her glass to bring both of her hands to her mouth. “Oh, Terry,” she said, through her fingers. “I was the one hiding —” She wouldn’t, couldn’t say mudbloods, so she stopped and took a deep breath. “That’s horrible.”
Byron took a deep breath and sank bank in his seat. “Yeah.” He nodded, staring at Lumos’ takeaway box. “There’s not much good left to say about Hogwarts.”
Her mind cycled through a thousand defenses of Terry’s innocence that she would never be able to give, a thousand things she wished she could tell her Death Eater boss that she would never gather the courage to say. He had a son. How could he allow something to happen to other people’s children?
“We have to send him back there,” she said, letting her hands fall to her lap. “After Easter. We’re just supposed to put him back on that train like it’s nothing.”
“I know,” he said with a heavy sigh. “And it’s probably only gotten worse since the last time I talked to him.”
She nodded. But. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Part of me thought it was better if you didn’t know,” he said with a shrug and a guilty stare down at his knees. “And another part of me didn’t want to break Terry’s trust. We don’t —” He shrugged again. “I haven’t really been there.”
“Oh.” Lumos studied Byron for a long moment. He reminded her so much of Terry sitting there, shrugging and staring at his knees. “Okay. It wasn’t better, not knowing, but okay.” She felt a little like reaching out to touch him again, but she didn’t. “You were always welcome to be there, Byron.”
“It was always complicated.” His eyes fell on the wine glass now. He couldn’t quite feel the tip of his nose. “I mean, not that it’s a good excuse. But I don’t think I really wanted to be there. You and he had your thing together. You seemed like you were doing a fine job without me and I only ever ruin things. So I don’t know — it’s not like we were ever going to be normal family.”
It took her another long moment to unpack what he said. She felt like she had to tread carefully. And not for the first time in their lives, she felt a little like this was her fault, like she’d broken them by handling getting pregnant at fifteen so badly.
“No, I guess we weren’t,” she said finally. “But we’d make room for you. You’re always going to be his dad no matter what.” She tilted a little, like she wanted to catch his eye, but not enough to actually catch it. Firmly, she added, “You don’t only ruin things. We were really young when we had Terry. I wasn’t — I’m the one who made a mess of things. Not you.”
“It’s more than that,” Byron said, clearly struggling to put words to ideas he’d never tried to articulate before. “It’s — I’m just not cut out for this stuff. For being a dad or a third wheel or getting Terry to trust me. I felt like it was always obvious — I mean, you knew.”
“I didn’t, I don’t,” she said, shaking her head. “You aren’t a third wheel. I’m sorry if I — you’re better at this than you’re giving yourself credit for. I mean, that’s not to say I don’t wish you’d been around more because I do, but Terry loves you and he loves spending time with you and god, I wish I hadn’t been so stupid.”
“I don’t think you’ve been stupid,” he said with the hollow breath of a laugh. “You’ve just been looking out for him.”
“Not with you, though.” Now she reached out, resting her hand on his arm. “You’ve never heard him talk about you, but he looks up to you so much. He wants to be you and if I — I’ve never told him that’s a bad thing because it isn’t.”
“Maybe it is.” He made a vague gesture to their surroundings. “I don’t have a whole lot going for me and I know it. And you know it, obviously. And I get that we’re just two different people and that’s okay. You don’t have to gas me up. You don’t have to be nice at all. I mean, you don’t owe me anything.”
Drawing her hand away again, she took a deep, bracing breath and said, “I asked you out last week.”
He angled a look of confusion at her without turning his head. “What?”
“Last week.” Her cheeks felt like they were on fire, but she made herself look at Byron as she spoke. “When I said you should buy me dinner sometime. It’s fine, but I’m not just being nice. I mean it.”
None of this did anything to alleviate Byron’s confusion. “Why?”
“Because I like you.”
He shook his head. “Since when? Because last I checked, you weren’t my biggest fan. I mean I’m just the asshole who got you pregnant when we were kids, so I get it. I don’t blame you.”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly, looking down at her hands now. “You started spending more and more time at mine and I don’t know. Something changed. And —” She glanced up. “I was the asshole. Not you. It’s my fault things are so complicated between us. I was horrible and I’m really sorry.”
“You —” Byron sat up straight and finally turned to look at her. He hadn’t quite processed everything she’d said, but he’d already said she didn’t owe him anything. “Lumos, it’s fine.”
“I don’t know,” he said, confusion settling over his features again. “I just need a minute to get my head around your not thinking I’m a waste of space.”
“I never said — okay,” she said, starting off heatedly and ending on a sigh. “I’ll wait.” She reached for her glass and took a long swallow.
He fell silent for a long moment, trying and failing to find a way to rationalize it. He’d spent years thinking he just wasn’t good enough — not for her, not for Terry, not for anything better than what he already had. It was difficult to imagine any other version of the truth than the one he knew.
Eventually he said, “I don’t know what to say.”
She took another swallow of her wine. “You don’t have to say anything.”
“I just —” He shook his head. “That time you kissed me? All those other times? I figured it was an alcohol and proximity thing.”
“It’s fine if that’s all it was!” Lumos said, her voice pitching higher with embarrassment.
“Okay, but.” He looked at her. “Was it?”
She cleared her throat. “Not entirely. Sometimes. But not always.”
Byron’s throat felt a little dry and he swallowed before he asked, “What if it happened now? Which one would it be?”
Because it would undermine her answer a little, she quickly set her glass down again and answered, “Not an alcohol and proximity thing.”
He eyed the glass anyway. “You’re sure?”
“We can brew some coffee and you can ask me again in an hour if you want,” she said.
“No, no, that’s okay,” he said. He picked himself up out of the crater he’d made in the sofa cushions and shifted in his seat to face her. “I don’t really get how any of this does it for you.” He gestured toward himself and then shrugged. “But all right.”
Now that he was looking at her and he knew, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. She didn’t dare reach for her wine again, though she wanted to. Badly. Instead, she scooted closer to him. “You’re a lot better than you think you are.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” As he raised his eyebrows, the corners of his mouth twitched into something approximating a smirk.
“Probably not, but let’s hear it,” she said, breathing out a laugh.
“We should make a baby.” He could barely keep a straight face. “Like, for old time’s sake.”
“Oh my god, shut up,” she said, laughing despite herself.
He grinned in earnest now and he barely showed his hesitation when he lifted his hand to her cheek. “We already know it’ll be cute,” he said and leaned in a bit closer. “My ears, your brains…”
“Another Ravenclaw, obviously,” she said matter-of-factly, lifting her hands to his neck, her thumbs grazing his jaw. She leaned in, too, but she leaned in all the way and pressed her lips to his.
Byron had at least twelve more jokes to make about the second child he was really in no rush to have, but he decided kissing Lumos would be better than breaking the kiss for a mediocre joke at best. It was at this stage of the night he didn’t usually care whether it was something real or something alcohol and proximity-induced.
Despite having her assurances it wasn’t just a lapse in judgement, he was ready to find out — tomorrow, next week, maybe — that it had been a mistake. Still, it was one he was happy to help commit.