Who: Florinda McGonagall and Gregor McGregor What: Meeting to pick up Lynn. When: December 22. Where: King's Cross Station Warnings: Discussion of domestic violence
Gregor lit another fag and took a long draw. At least wizards didn’t care if you smoked on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. He was getting looks from muggle parents though. He let the familiar motions and the chemicals in the cigarette calm him. He needed it. He’d expected Florrie McGonagall to be here to help him; she’d confirmed it at the finish line of Jason’s big broom race, too. He hoped she’d make it. He hadn’t ever actually had responsibility for another person and Lynn hadn’t had it easy her first year. At least she was half done. And as a second year, it wasn’t a complete mine-field. Still, she’d been raised in a city and might go insane in the wee cottage. But he couldn’t let her down.
Gregor looked at the clock and then stared back at some parent who was giving him the side-eye about smoking. People needed to mind their own business. The train … wasn’t late.
When the train finally pulled into the station, Florinda McGonagall was on it, rather than the platform. She could see Gregor from her window and made sure to step out and call and wave immediately. Lynn was with her; Minerva had introduced them this morning and though they hadn't sat together on the train, Florrie had found her on the final approach to London so they could meet Gregor together.
"Hullo!" she called out, waving so he could catch sight of her among the dozens of students and families reuniting. "I forgot to ward you, didn't I? I'm so sorry. Lynn and I met this morning at Hogsmeade. Aunt Minerva asked me to ride down today at the last minute." She was trying not to self-consciously touch her face; it was an effort. She was too busy trying not to to remember to fuss at Gregor for smoking, so he hastily stubbed it out without a reprimand for once.
Gregor practically melted with relief. He came forward and hugged Lynn. The book on parenting that Cho had recommended said you should and he was going to take any advice he could get. They didn’t come from a hugging family. “I’m so glad to see you. Thank you, Florrie. How was the trip down?”
"Quite easy for me, and I think for Lynn, though she was in a different carriage on the way down." Florrie smiled at Lynn, who had of course wanted to visit with friends for the length of the train ride.
“Good. We’ll have a wait while the elves unload the luggage. So let’s sit. Lynn, how was school?” The platform, unlike the muggle platforms surrounding, was magically warm. That would last until they went back through the brick wall.
“School was fine. My friends Susan and Sheila are in Transfigurations with me and I got to fly on a real broom.” She caught her breath. “I’m not good enough to play on the team yet, but the olders are soooooo good. We played Slytherin and beat them!” She smiled at Florrie. “Why do they take us to London when we just go back to Scotland from here?”
"They used to have people arrive directly in Scotland but that didn't work so well, so they gathered everyone up at King's Cross instead. Now it's just custom, I suppose. I asked the same question when I was your age, and that was what Aunt Minerva told me." Florrie grinned right back at her, because she really had asked the same question on her first Christmas home, a bit more truculently than Lynn. "Do you want to get something real to eat in the Alley before we go? Or at one of the Muggle places around here? I can change up to something suitable before we go out."
“Personally, I think it’s so that they can put you in the shopping district at Christmastime. If you can stand the, ah ‘bruising’ pace of Diagon at Christmas, we can certainly go. Lynn, do you need anything while we’re in town?” But Lynn had leapt up and was running towards a redheaded family coming down the platform.
“Sheila!”, she said running towards them.
“So, I’m sure I’m about to be named Mad Gregor McGregor, the Muggleborn Meddler of Montrose, but I notice that you weren’t sporting bruise paste on your face at the broom race yesterday.”
Florrie huffed out a sigh; there was no avoiding it, just as there had been no avoiding it with Minerva and Poppy. "No, no I wasn't. It's all right, and I'm fine, and I'd just as soon not talk about it now, if that's fine with you."
Gregor looked skeptical. It wasn’t fine with him. “So having been around it way too much as a kid, I can tell you that you’re going to need to learn to lie more smoothly if you want to get good at covering up violence. I’ve already picked up that it’s there, you didn’t even try stop one on the denial express, 'I ran into a door', so I know someone hit you. Now I’m wondering if your brother isn’t going to cause the biggest quidditch scandal of the century, and it’s been a hell of a century so far.
“Anyone who sees you will go from fill in the blank on the equation ‘two plus what equals four’ with ‘I think she’s dating Sebastian Cavallero, the manager of Portree’. Did he hit you? And does your brother know?”
Florrie closed her eyes and pinched the upper part of her nose and sighed again. "You'll notice I didn't go with 'and I bruise easily', either." It wasn't as though she'd never seen that sort of thing in community clinic.
There were too many people here to have an open discussion about it, but if anyone was listening, she did need to say this much. "It wasn't Cav. And yes, Merc is aware of it." She did not add, and I had to keep him from hitting anyone because she didn't have to.
It took her a moment to raise a privacy charm, which was probably going to elicit suspicion, but maybe anyone who wasn't listening before and caught the edges of it would assume they were discussing medical information. "It's worse than that. It was Ellie, at the Macmillan party. In the garden."
Gregor nodded. “OK, wouldn’t have been my first guess, but wow. The things you miss when you don’t go into the garden. That whole team has a problem. Meaghan and their new Aussie were caught fighting in by the paparazzi and then another one was tossed out of a chip shop in front of Circe. Did you hit her back?”
There was a frown at the question from Florrie. "No, of course not. I dropped her with the petrification spell we use on violent patients."
“Well, then,” said Gregor, “I don’t recall the hitwizards showing up at Macmillan Park, so I guess the rest of the ‘dealing with violent patients’ protocol was skipped. Why’d she hit you? Isn’t she related to you all? She can’t be MG’s cousin without also being your cousin, too.”
"No, we didn't want to make a fuss and ruin the party for the team. She might have been drunk but she wasn't under the influence of anything else, except anger, so I released her and she left with Doc under her own steam. Merc took me home and made my excuses, and Cav said he'd be all right." Florrie found herself pinching her nose again. "I didn't want to make a thing of this but I'm going to have to tell Aureliana about it, aren't I? And Gwen Miracle for Portree. Just in case someone else notices."
“In case? You mean ‘someone’ like the entire faculty and staff of Hogwarts, who all help students down to the trains? Or the two hundred and fifty or so children who see so much more than anyone ever expects? Or the hundreds of families on this platform? At this point, I’m only a moment from worrying that Circe will snap a picture of the two of us, decide that Lynn is our love-child, and that I’m beating you. Especially if you keep making that face. We’ll think of something, we have our love-child to think of.”
A trio of girls was coming towards them. One of them was Sheila. Gregor forgot the other’s name. He smiled in their direction. “We can talk more later.”
Well, she couldn't help laughing at that last bit even if Florrie didn't like to consider how many of her friends and a few former teachers had noticed, never mind the number of students who might recognise a facial bruise because of trouble in their own families. But the children were coming, so she had to dismiss the charm. "Hullo again, ladies," Florrie addressed them gravely. "I know Aunt Minerva introduced me round but I'm Florinda McGonagall and I work with Lynn's Uncle Gregor at Montrose, where I'm the medic. And I think you're Sheila and you're Meg, is that right?"
The girls nodded. Gregor was happy to get the prompt. “Hello Miss O’Sullivan, and also Miss O’Sullivan. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Can Lynn come to our house for Boxing Day?,” said Gemma, who was a year older.
Gregor nodded. “For a bit. We have some things to do.” They didn’t, but he didn’t want to say so.
“Lynn, do you know how to floo the O’Sullivans? Our new place is on the network, so we don’t have to go out to a public floo.”
A redheaded woman in her mid-30s came after the girls. “You must be Mister and Mrs. McGregor,” she said with a smile. “Sheila is so excited to have friends who she can see regularly. We just moved to Manchester, and she doesn’t know the local children.”
Gregor smiled “Ah, This is Florrie McGonagall, she’s a co-worker and a big help learning the ins and outs of Hogwarts. She’s the Headmistress's niece.”
Mrs. O’Sullivan smiled. “Ah, that’s right. And you’re Lynn’s uncle? Sheila wrote that she was coming to live with you. Do please let us know if there’s anything we can do. Merlin knows that girls are hard enough to raise…”
Gregor suppressed the deer-in-the-headlights expression that threatened to invade his face, “Thank you, yes, I’m Gregor McGregor. The girls are welcome to drop by and see Lynn any time.”
“Do come by for Boxing Day yourself, Mr. McGregor. We have a lot of people in and out and it would be no trouble at all.”
The girls said their goodbyes and promised to talk via the floo and the O’Sullivans left just around the time the porters brought Lynn’s bags. “Alright, off to the Leaky Cauldron and thence to the Wee Cottage?”