Who: Ernie and Davina Macmillan What: Ernie gets back from Bulgaria and his mother wants A Word. When: Tuesday 27 March, afternoon Where: Castle at Macmillan Park Warnings: yay spamming the comm
There was something wonderful about the feeling of absolute clarity of purpose. Ernie didn’t exactly chase it - he hadn’t chased getting involved in a war anymore than he chased building his motion capture devices - but when he found himself in the moments of knowing exactly what he wanted to do and feeling absolutely confident about his direction, he revelled in it. As he unpacked his bag of the few clothes he’d taken to Bulgaria, his eyes were already searching through his closet on what he needed to take to Georgi’s house.
He was waiting for Ernie. He needed him. And Ernie found that it was very easy to do whatever he needed to do to fulfill that direction.
He kept his toiletries in the bag and reached deep into the closet to pull out the small box of dreamless draught potion and carefully add a few vials into the small, soft, secret compartment in the suitcase.
“Ernie-”
Ernie jumped about a foot as he spun around to find his mother standing in the doorway. Eyes wide, he slowly straightened himself out. “Yes?”
Davina Macmillan’s head tilted slightly, a few dark strands coming out of her loosely pinned hair. Then it tilted more as she used it to gesture back towards the bedroom. “Have a seat.”
He didn’t quite deflate at the tone or the direction, but he moved out of the closet and back into his bedroom where his mother, still in her riding gear, was perched at the end. He tried to read the look on her face, but his mother was good at the sort of placidity that Ernie seemed to be incapable of. He sat down next to her.
“I have tried… to respect the fact that you are an adult. And that I don’t need to know where you are all the time, or what you’re doing. It’s difficult, considering you still live in this house and I can only be so blind, but I think both your father and I have let you have a very long rope to hang yourself. Right?” she said, giving Ernie an expectant look.
“To hang myself?” was Ernie’s reply, one heavy brow raised.
“Yes. Figuratively. As all young adults do at one time or another,” she replied in a slightly withering tone. “And as such, neither of us have said a word about all the sneaking out of the house you’ve been doing late at night the last few months. But Ernest,” she said more deliberately, “you’ve been gone since Saturday. It’s Tuesday. Without so much as a note. That’s not acceptable.”
Ernest. One name, not two or three. Annoyed but not infuriated. “I’m sorry-” he began, but Davina cut him right off.
“Where were you?” she asked, the same deliberate look.
“Mum-”
“Where were you?” she asked again, pressing harder, the look in her eyes becoming more stony.
Ernie’s lips clamped up as he looked over towards his headboard, tensing up at the insistence. He’d felt so ready just a few moments before - clear of purpose, of direction. And now, sitting here under her intensity, it seemed to wither somewhat. What did he say? He opened his mouth-
“I’m not going to ask you again,” she interrupted him flatly with that sixth sense of hers, sensing a lie coming on, then frowned as she put her hand on his knee, trying to mitigate the flatness of her words. “Puggle-”
“Bulgaria,” Ernie sighed as he rubbed his fingers over one eye, then pushed his glasses up his nose. “I was in Bulgaria with Georgi because his parents were disowning him and I didn’t think he should be by himself for that. He was cursed in the process and he couldn’t travel until just today and that’s… I have to go back over there. I’m going to stay there for a few days until… well. At least until I’m sure the curse has run its course.” Ernie snuck a look up at his mother, as if he were twelve and not actually twenty.
He wasn’t sure if the look of mild surprise was just that, or if it was all she could cover of a much larger shock. But if her silence was unsettling, so were the next words out of her mouth:
“Is he the one you’ve been-”
“Please.” It was Ernie’s turn to cut her off, his turn to be insistent as he paled and stiffened at the connection of dots, not ready to have this particular conversation, not just yet. “Mum, please. I don’t… I don’t want to talk about this right now. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I promise I will be more conscientious, but I have to get back.”
It was all he could do not to bolt out of the bedroom, let alone keep from fidgeting in place, but he sat still on the bed, looking at his mother and watching her features change, consider, then settle on pursed lips and a deep gaze.
“Do you know why we took you with us on your father’s missions?” she asked, shifting her head again, a few more tendrils falling out of the twist at the nape of her neck. Ernie’s worried look shifted into one of vague exasperation at the sudden turn of the conversation.
“Because it was the war and Uncle Walden was a psychopath who wanted to introduce you to murder?” Ernie replied ruefully.
Davina gave Ernie a disappointed look. “That was only 10 months of your youth - if the war was the only reason, I would have come back.”’ She reached back with her free hand and pulled the pins out of her hair, giving up the ghost as she raked all the strands back out of her face.
“Your father wanted nothing to do with Quidditch and everything to do with staking his claim on a new frontier, and I wanted to do something other than lunch with those vapid social-climbers and support, as you so elegantly put it, psychopaths. Running away to the Tropics seemed like every bit the thing we weren’t supposed to do and it made us so happy to do it. Neither of us were very happy with the expectations of our families and if there was one thing we knew when you unexpectedly came into our tent, it was that we didn’t want you to feel… trapped. By the branches of either tree. Like we did.”
There was a long silence and an onlooker would have seen that both Davina and Ernie wore the exact same look of introspection, one trying to figure out his own mind and the other trying to decipher it from afar.
Was she… was this… was Justin right? Or was Ernie reading what he wanted into this? He tried to run the words through his head again, seeing if he was misinterpreting--
She shifted the hand that was on Ernie’s knee to take his hand, then give it a squeeze.
“Presumably he’s got a Floo connection?”
“Leannan Boathouse,” Ernie said awkwardly, then shrugged a shoulder, a little off-kilter from the conversational U-turn. “It’s just in Dundee. Not too far.”
“Alright. Please extend my condolences and wishes for a speedy recovery. I’ll have Margie do up a few things to send over - lord knows what you were planning on feeding the man. Toast and coffee is hardly ‘cooking’,” she gave his hand another squeeze and then rose up.
“Mum.” Ernie stopped her briefly, looking up at her, the relieved feeling of not having to have this conversation now taking the tension out of his brow. He thought about thanking her, but then he might have to explain what he was thanking her for.
“There’s not really a difference between potions and cooking -”
“Stop by the kitchens before you poison him, Ernest - really.”