He batted at the kernels. "Oy, if you leave school, you just get a crappy job like V had. It is why she came back. They want you to finish even if it doesn't really mean much." He winced. Did he really just say that? He liked learning...well, not everything in school, but most things, and he could just hear every Ravenclaw ever groaning at him for saying education didn't matter just because they were in a stupid transient village.
He wondered why Frankie would think of his mum just then. She still wasn't anywhere near what either remembered and it wasn't like Frankie didn't know how it was adapting to things like that from his own mum. "I preferred her before," he said bluntly. "It is not her fault she needs to adjust again and has different memories now, but I already had one parent who changed the subject every time I brought something important up." He was being mean. He didn't want to talk about it for that reason. He didn't like being mean. "We don't need parents." Or even aunts or uncles. "We're of age." He glanced at the ticking clock on the wall. He went from dreading Scorpius' arrival to wanting it. "Is Gandalf still escaping?" He knew his friend probably wanted Neville around so it wasn't nice to complain. Heck, it wasn't nice to complain simply because Al loved his whole family regardless. It just hurt. It bloody hurt and he was tired of trying to make himself heard to people who wouldn't hear him. Losing his mother hurt. Losing Mr. M hurt. Scorpius returning came at the worst possible time and just rubbed salt in every wound. Great of them to try now for Lily, but that didn't make up for changing the subject or dropping the conversation every time Al brought up the Malfoys and their importance to him. It didn't make up for never apologizing for it. It didn't make up for the people he depended on most disappearing, some only to return quickly before he could get used to them being gone. Maybe then he'd adjust better.
Stupid stupid bloody village. He really needed to stop swearing. "We could probably work the wards to keep him inside," he continued, like the conversation was perfectly normal. "I hope they come back," he added. "Your grandparents, I mean." Except he hoped he wasn't in the village to see it.