meredith watkins is in love with a killer (merewrites) wrote in find_horcruxes, @ 2010-01-01 04:29:00 |
|
|||
It wasn't easy for Seymour Watkins to admit that he was wrong. His children had inherited that stubborn streak from him - particularly his youngest daughter, Meredith. His wife might have been the overbearing one, and the one constantly poking at their children to settle down and have families and give her grandchildren before she got too old to enough them, but he was the stubborn one. He was the one who refused to back down, even when backed into a corner, even when he knew that Meredith would do the same thing. So they'd reached a crossroads, him and his daughter. Edward had been right: he needed to try harder to accept her or he and Meredith's mother would risk running her off for good. Meredith might not believe it, but that was the last thing he wanted. "Meredith," he started in a gruff voice, nodding towards his wife, nodding for her to leave the room for a moment. She knew they needed to talk, father to daughter, one on one. No matter how many times she tried to invite Meredith over for dinner and tried to include Barty, nothing would be fixed until father and daughter decided to start anew. "I was hoping we could talk," he continued, once Mabel Watkins had left the room. "Would you like a drink? I don't know what you kids like these days." A drink. Meredith looked up from her dessert at her father in surprise. Her father was really offering her a drink? She could just see Mum's look of disapproval, seeing as she still thought them too young to drink despite being of age. She almost asked for bourbon but stopped herself. Drinking probably wouldn't be helpful. She didn't have much of a filter between her brain and mouth as is, and alcohol would only make it worse. "No thank you," she said with a slight shake of her head. Here goes nothing, she basically thought. At some point, she knew she was going to be having yet another reconciliatory talk with them, but she wasn't sure when. It did make sense, though, to start off a new year with less tension and apprehension around one another in the family. At least they ought to be grateful that she decided to come by for New Year's Day, instead of cooping herself up with Barty again. Merlin only knew how much her mother wouldn't like the sound of that already. His eyebrows lifted in surprise, having fully expected his young daughter to take him up on the offer, but when she politely declined, he simply nodded his head and poured himself a drink. Perhaps she simply didn't like the sort of drinks he did. Something more feminine, perhaps? Lighter? He had no idea. The silence was somewhat stifling, and Seymour lifted a hand to tug at the collar of his shirt. He wasn't normally so uncomfortable with the whole... talking business, but this was one conversation he wasn't looking forward to. There was no telling how Meredith would react to anything these days, but that was precisely why he had to make amends. It was a brand-new year, and just the time for a new start for the whole family. He cleared his throat. "I... wanted to apologise for... how I have treated you in regards to Barty." Meredith had gone back to picking at her loaf cake with her spoon before he spoke again. She loved it, yeah. Favourite dessert that Mum decided to make for her (maybe she felt her daughter needed to be cajoled a bit to stay and talk). She would eat it eventually. She was just delaying it because of the chance that she needed something to cheer her up in case this talk crashed and burned in their faces again. She looked up at her father, studying his face, looking for... well, she didn't really know. Genuine guilt? Distaste? Tell-tale signs of lies? "I'm a big girl now, Dad," she started. "I'm not making irresponsible decisions. I'm not jumping to marrying him right away." Seymour nodded briskly, acknowledging that yes, at least his daughter wasn't getting married. That situation -- Boyd MacFusty and Adelaide Banges -- was different, in his mind, than the one Meredith and Barty Crouch Junior were in. He knew both Boyd and Addie well, or at least as well as one could know their children's best friends, and he knew that both had good heads on their shoulders. That was the trouble with the comparison: he didn't know Barty well enough to trust that he too had a good head on his shoulders. "You might not be getting married, but," he paused, looking from his daughter to the glass in his hands and back to his daughter, "simply because you don't think you are making irresponsible decisions doesn't mean they aren't. You don't --" There he cut himself off, feeling himself verging on a lecture they'd been over before, one that hadn't ended well. "Your own perspective colours the way you see your actions. I remember being eighteen years old. I remember thinking I was infallible. You are a great deal more responsible than I was at your age, but that does not mean you're always right." He paused. Merlin, he hoped she understood what he was saying. "Nor does it mean I am," he added quickly. "No one is. No one ever is, no matter how sure they are of it." Twice, Meredith nearly opened her mouth with a retort. She didn't think she was infallible. She definitely didn't think she was right all the time. And she nearly asked him to name a situation where she hadn't made a responsible decision. She had a job! She was paying rent at a cottage that she and her best friends were living in and taking care of it, and SURVIVING all on their own. And they didn't stay there during full moons. But snappy retorts were what she had to do less of, because that was what usually got her in trouble. She was aware of that completely. "I never said I'm always right, Dad. Everyone makes mistakes. I made a mistake of snapping at Mum the first dinner, but I don't think you were in the right spot to embarrass me in front of Barty like that. And he was still polite." "No, I wasn't," he admitted, looking genuinely sheepish. "I was wrong to respond the way I did. He handled it admirably." He sighed. Trying to make her understand where he was coming from was more difficult than he'd expected, but then again, trying to make himself understand was hard too. He sat down in the chair beside Meredith's. "We haven't given you enough of a chance to show us that you're old enough and mature enough to handle adult responsibilities and relationships. I have no excuses for that, save that no matter how old you are, you will always be my youngest daughter, and I will always worry, no matter how well you're doing for yourself. That is why... that is why I don-- didn't want you to go on a holiday with Barty. You might know him well, but we don't, and I worry because of that. We know very little about him, and you expect us to be thrilled when you say you want to go away with him?" Never mind the way she had gone about bringing it up, but that was besides the point. "Times like these, Meredith, we need to be careful." "I would have figured that me taking a trip to another country would be helpful," she muttered, sticking her spoon into the loaf cake. "Considering all the shite that's going down here." She didn't mean to swear, but it tended to come out. A lot of times. "He's not a bad bloke. He loves me. He's part of the DMLE, even. You've not heard Edward complain about him, and he sees him more than I do." Now that wasn't a bad point, and he ignored her curse word just that once - for the sake of attempting to make amends and because despite the colourful way she phrased it, she was right. "I would prefer it not to be alone with a young man we barely know, but another country would likely be safer, yes," he conceded. And she was right about the rest, too, save for the part about Barty loving her, but her father wasn't going to accept that easily just yet. He was willing to give them both the benefit of the doubt, for the family's sake, but he was cautious, too. "He has been very polite and attentive when he has been over," he agreed with a tiny smile. "And everything I've heard has been good. It's..." He sighed and took a sip from his glass. "It's not easy letting my little girl grow up." Meredith gave her usual frown at being treated like a little girl. It was somewhere between mild annoyance and embarrassment, even if she and her father were the only two people in the room. "I have to grow up at some point, Dad." With a deep sigh, he nodded again and downed the rest of the alcohol in his glass. "I know." And he did know that. It was an unfortunate side effect of having children: they couldn't stay children forever. One day, his children were running around in the backyard, yelling and laughing. The next, they were moving out of their home, entering Auror training and falling in love and moving in with their significant others and establishing lives that had very little to do with their parents. "I know you do," he repeated, "and though I wish you wouldn't..." He sighed wistfully and looked over at his daughter. "I'm proud of you. I want us," because he wasn't the only one who needed to work on his behaviour, "to try harder to get along in the new year. We could lose Edward at any second. I don't want to lose you too." Meredith sighed. She didn't like the coddling. He was coddling. As far as she knew, she was trying her damn hardest not to be killed, which was why she always went to a secure place during the days around the full moon. After taking a bite of her cake, she glanced up at her dad warily, before she spoke. "I will invite him over more. I'll give you more opportunities to get to know him. But you can't jump him with questions like what his intentions are. Nor will you just say NO to anything involving him and me." She placed her spoon down and turned to face her father. "I love Barty, Dad. I love him so much and I don't want to lose him just over some assumptions." He wasn't sure he could just say yes to everything involving Barty Crouch Jr and his daughter, but not saying no automatically? That he thought he could to. "No more hounding him with questions about his intentions with my daughter," Seymour affirmed, "and though I can't make any promises to the latter," and he dearly hoped she understood why, "I can promise to give you both a chance. He has given us no reason to doubt his sincerity when it comes to you, but I would like to be given the chance to get to know him before he whisks you away to some foreign country." As hesitant as he was to let his daughter grow up and fall in love with a man he barely knew, Seymour Watkins did not want to leave his daughter broken-hearted either. "We'll try harder with him. For your sake, we'll try." Because in the end, this young man made his daughter happy, and nothing was more important than his child's happiness. Meredith nodded. "Okay," she said, nodding a bit more before turning back to her cake. "I think I deserve another slice." And that was that, it seemed. The fact that they'd had a rational discussion about it and survived was mind-boggling, but it also meant a fresh start for father and daughter. It meant a fresh start for mother and daughter as well, Seymour assumed. If they all tried a little harder to be more understanding and accepting, there was no reason in his mind why they shouldn't all be able to get along, or at least discuss problems like rational adults. "I think we both do," he said as he rose, offering his daughter a small smile. A fresh start for a new year -- that was what Seymour Watkins hoped for, for all of them. It seemed they were on the right track, and though his happiness was still tentative, the hope that they could turn it around was there. |