Who: Georgi Draganov and Ernie Macmillan What: Talking about all the colors of the rainbow, especially pink, and making decisions that might change a life. When: Sunday morning, 4 February, 2000. Where: Leannan Boathouse, Dundee. Warnings: Soul-searching, difficult topics.
Snow had turned to rain as March came in, leaving the path around the pond too slushy to walk like Georgi had wanted to this morning, so instead he'd set up a nest of blankets and pillows for him and Ernie on the little balcony outside his bedroom. With a shielding charm to keep the rain away and a warming charm to keep the chill away, it was peaceful and cozy, like they were alone in the world.
He was trying something new today, drawing Ernie with colored pencils instead of his usual plain grey, and he laughed at himself as he reached for the eraser again to fix a line that was clearly not right. "Stop moving," he ordered, looking up to smile at Ernie. "You want me to finish this or not?"
There was something entirely cat-like in the way that Ernie was burrowed in the blankets, surrounded in the soft smell of Georgi cut with the faint scent of laundry detergent. “My legs keep falling asleep and I am overheating in all of these blankets,” he explained, laughing a little.
"No excuses," Georgi answered, reaching out to tug the blanket away anyway to give Ernie a little air. "You know, I heard an artist talk about process once, and she said art is not true unless you suffer for it." He pointed a pencil at Ernie. "I think she meant you."
He bent over his paper again, sketching in the curve of Ernie's cheek with careful attention. "One week from today Miro will be here," he mentioned. "I want to thank your friend Justin for using his bank credit cards and helping me bring my brother here. What can I do or give to him that he'd like?"
“Oh… hm,” Ernie said, mouth falling into a slight frown. He knew what he would like to give Justin and that was the truth about this relationship, but he didn't think Georgi would go over for that. “I… maybe dinner? For him and Monte? Or… or, you know, you're an international player and he's trying to start a quidditch team. I'm sure you have some connections that would be helpful for him to make,” Ernie thought more seriously, sitting up to have an actual conversation.
Georgi nodded thoughtfully, glancing up from his drawing. Ernie had moved again, and he shook his head fondly and put his sketchpad aside, leaning back against the wall of pillows he'd built behind them. "Yeah, I can offer him my help. It would be exciting for me, too, to help build this new team." He smiled over at Ernie. "And I think buying him and his… boyfriend dinner is a good idea too." The word still made him flush, it felt so strange to say out loud.
He leaned his head back against the cushion, still thinking about his brother's visit. He'd been hoping and planning for a long time now what it would be like when Miro was with him, and Ernie was a vital part of those plans. "You'll take my brother to the match next week in case I'm playing and can't be there?" he asked. "And keep him safe? Sorry," he added apologetically. "I worry about him, without magic. And he hasn't been to a Quidditch game since he was very small."
“Of course I will. I figure they'll probably be a thicket of Pink we could go haunt, that way if the game goes on for hours he'll have some other people to chat with that knows how Muggle things go. I'm only so entertaining and if Kenmare was any comparable experience, it got pretty slow on the pitch after hour fourteen,” Ernie laughed.
"I think you're very entertaining," Georgi informed him, smiling, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders to pull him close. "And I think Miro might like to talk to the Muggleborns."
He turned more sober, watching the rain fall down over the pond, as he considered the ever-growing pink movement and his own dilemma. "Ernie?" he said after a moment. "Can I ask you about something? With the pink?"
“Me? Aren't you on a team with the leader himself?” Ernie looked up at him curiously, then shifted to position himself better against him.
"Yeah," he answered, and frowned briefly. "This is part of the problem. Jason is asking if the whole team will put on pink for the Wigtown match. Maybe all the matches after that, I don't know. But I don't know if…" Georgi shrugged helplessly, tightening his arm around Ernie's shoulders. "If I can get involved in these politics. Because of my family and who I am. Of course I want to support my team and I don't want to cause problems, but." He glanced down at Ernie. "I don't know what I should do."
Ernie sat up out of his arms slowly and looked hesitantly at Georgi. “What politics do you think you're supporting by wearing pink at a quidditch match?” Ernie asked, feeling some rubber bands inside of him beginning to tighten up.
Georgi looked at him in surprise. "It is political -- yeah? Like a protest against the Ministry? When I asked Jason about this, when I first came to Scotland and I saw him wearing pink, he said his goals are to change laws and get rid of the old traditions. I know it has to do with the war, and I don't understand everything about it, because I wasn't here and we don't have all these same problems in Bulgaria. But… I don't know exactly, Ernie. I just know that my parents wouldn't want me to get involved with this."
Ernie poised his lips and tried to save this conversation a little. “Why would your parents not want you to be involved with supporting muggleborns? A protest against the Ministry… possibly, I guess, but the Ministry agrees with them. Our Minister was a member of the Order of the Phoenix and you don't get much more supportive than that. It’s not really politically controversial to support Muggleborns, Georgi. This is a social movement. Meant to get the rest of the population along.”
Georgi looked down at his hands, empty and useless now with Ernie pulling away. "My family are… old-fashioned and conservative, Ernie. You know what I mean. They are against anything that could make them change. My father's cousin married a Muggleborn, and he has not spoken to her since. And you know what they did to Miro." He frowned down at his fingers, curling his hands together in his lap. "I can have different opinions, but not in public, because I represent my family here. I have this duty. You understand?"
“I’m taking your squib brother to a match you are playing in - that’s not public?” Ernie retorted, rubbing one fingernail into the pad of his thumb as a sort of reminder that he needed to Stay Calm.
"In public he's not my brother," Georgi told him, a little more sharply than he intended to, and in apology he softened his tone and reached out to touch Ernie's arm tentatively. "You know why I have these secrets, Ernie. The same reason that you keep this secret from your family. Because there are some things you can believe and do and love in private that you can't when the rest of the world is watching."
Ernie looked down at the hand reaching to touch his arm and exhaled carefully. Maybe this was nothing but it felt like one straw too many.
“And yet you still sent me a massive care package while I was at a match with my friends,” he added, then closed his eyes. “You know, Georgi… I have heard this sentiment a lot from you. That you care for me. That you care for your brother. That you support your teammates. That you believe in all these good and righteous things - peace, equity, liberalism, the whole lot. But I’m… I’m starting to wonder if maybe… your parents aren’t just a convenient excuse to not have to act upon any of that.”
Ernie licked his lips and opened his eyes. Looking up at Georgi and, after very deliberately pulling the blankets off of him, Ernie stood up.
“No. No… no. I… I’m afraid, yes. I’m afraid what my family and friends will say, I’m afraid that I won’t be allowed to see my cousins, I’m afraid, I am terrified… but… I have been wracking my brain, and my heart, wondering if this…” Ernie screwed himself up mentally, setting his shoulders and adding with a little more forcefulness, “if this love is a thing worth fighting for. If it’s a thing I believe in enough to sacrifice my comfort and my inheritance. And I don’t have an answer for that yet, but… it’s not good enough to just believe things in private. In secret. That I do know. That I have lived.”
Ernie took a deep breath that skittered a little in his chest and rubbed the back of his neck as he tried to fight off the anxious tears that were threatening to jump to his eyes. “Private beliefs never changed anything. It’s only when you’re willing to say them aloud, believe them aloud, put your money where your mouth is that they mean anything.”
Georgi stayed put through this speech, staring up at Ernie. His chest was tight at all of those words, and he wanted to defend himself, but… he wasn't sure that Ernie wasn't right about him. He did have a duty to his family, he was sure about that. But maybe there was a greater duty to himself and to his society that he'd wanted to ignore for exactly the reasons Ernie had said: his own comfort, everything he'd grown up believing, the privilege that came along with his family name. That wasn't noble or honorable, and if Jason and Ernie talking about it made him feel defensive and ashamed, then maybe the shame was deserved.
He pulled his knees in to his chest, wrapping his arms around them, and stared out into the rain from the shelter of the balcony. "I'm afraid, too," he said, turning his face away from Ernie. "I wish I was as brave as you. What you and your friends did when you were only teenagers was better than anything my family has done in generations, since my great-grandfather's brother spoke out against Grindelwald." Georgi took a deep breath through a tight throat. "I want to be better. I want to be just a little bit as brave as you."
It was not the reaction that Ernie was expecting. He was expecting a fight, he was expecting to be denied, he wasn’t expecting… this: Georgi curled into himself, eyes cast down, shamed. His mouth worked out some attempts at speaking, at responding, but for the moment, they failed.
Ernie sat back down, but didn’t try pulling Georgi’s face back to his. Instead, he just mirrored his position, legs pulled up and his arms wrapped around them.
“Sometimes we know better than our parents,” Ernie finally said, softly. “Do you know what works for me? When I want to be brave?”
Georgi swiped his sleeve over his eyes hastily. His stomach was in a tight knot even with Ernie next to him again. "No," he said, still avoiding looking over at him. "What?"
It felt like a small punch to his gut, to see Georgi flickering his sleeve over his eyes; it deflated the last of the emotion he was just about to explain to the man.
“I get angry,” was his response. “All my life, I’ve been told to calm down and think things through and not let myself get so worked up. But it’s a kind of power, when you’re furious, when you just let yourself feel whatever it is you honestly feel - it charges your body and… in that moment, it’s easy to be brave because you’re in that fight or flight response. I mean… just now… I was… am… was so angry with you. Starting to, at least. Because… because you are this wonderful person that I just absolutely adore but you don’t… you don’t stand for anything. And when I think that I would have the same predicament with you if the war restarted tomorrow as I did with my cousins… that you would just cut off all relations with me because I would not be a person you could know… it hurts.”
Ernie shifted a little closer, unwrapping his knees so he could kneel on them before Georgi, not yet touching him even if he wanted to sort of dull that strong sentiment. “I don’t want to feel this way about you, but… I mean, Georgi, doesn’t it make you angry that you would invite your brother all this way here and then you wouldn’t tell people you were related? Doesn’t it make you angry that you’re destroying your relationship with your teammates because your parents wouldn’t want you to wear a color? That you had to change teams and leave the bloody country so that your cousin could marry who she wishes? Does any of it?”
He didn’t really know what an angry Georgi looked like, but Ernie really hoped he was about to see it.
Georgi was quiet for a long moment, just breathing and letting Ernie's questions churn in his mind.
Finally he looked back at him, frowning. "I haven't even thought about being angry in a long time," he admitted. "I was always told the same things as you. Be calm and be polite and be reasonable and keep a proper appearance for someone with the very important names Draganov and Hristov. When you grow up like this, all of these traditions and rules and the proper way to do things seems as big and solid as a mountain. Who can change the shape of a mountain? Not one wizard on his own, even with many spells."
He ducked his head, his heart heavy. "It never came into my head that I could be angry about these things you talked about, or that I could do anything to change them. It seemed like it's just the way things are. Even… when my parents sent away Miro…" His voice shook, and he had to clear his throat before going on. "It broke my heart and, yeah, it made me so angry. I was his big brother and I was supposed to take care of him. But I was only a kid. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even talk about it to anyone. So I made these feelings go away, and I kept everything I felt very secret."
Georgi had to wipe his eyes again on his sleeve. "Now I'm an adult, and I can choose for myself what to do, but I don't know… Ernie, it's been so long, I don't know if I remember how to be angry anymore."
He couldn’t stay so distant. Ernie leaned in and caught his cheek for half a moment, before setting his hand on Georgi’s shoulder, a pained look on his face. He leaned in further then, kissing him lightly on the lips before pulling back to his place on his haunches.
“You’re wrong, you know. A steady drip of water can punch through rock, over time.” Sighing a deep sigh, Ernie shook his head. “I can’t be the reason this is important to you, Georgi. I won’t be… I won’t be another way for you to abdicate your choice. You’re the only person who knows what matters to you and how that ranks and I think… maybe you need to figure out how all of this stacks against each other. Because when something matters to you… it’s not as hard as you think to act on it.”
Ernie's hand on his shoulder, and that brief kiss, was more comfort than Georgi could express. He reached up to cover Ernie's hand with his own. "I never have been brave enough to think that I could act," he said softly. "But it's time to change that."
He sighed, tightening his grip on Ernie's hand. "You're right. You're right. I'm afraid, but… you made me understand today that I don't only have a duty to my family and my name. I have a duty to my friends and my team, and my brother, and the society we live in. And I have a duty to myself and to my kids one day. I don't want my kids to grow up in a world that's the same as it was when I was young." He reached out to touch Ernie's cheek, meeting his eyes again. "I don't want any kids to grow up thinking like me. And if I can do something to help, then I will, even though I'm afraid."
It was easy to believe Georgi because it was it was so easy to fall into his steady presence and his methodical speech. Georgi touched him and Ernie smiled gently at him, he had to.
Be strong, Ernie reminded himself. Tough.
“Prove it,” Ernie said reassuringly, looking Georgi dead in the eye.
Georgi took a deep breath. His stomach was doing flips, but he squared his shoulders and firmed his lips. "I have to write some owls," he said.