InsaneJournal

Who: Fabian Prewett and his parents
What: The problem with secrets is they have to come out
When: Evening of 5 March 1998
Where: Prewett House
Warnings: Language



Fabian strode up the long circular drive to Prewett House from the apparition borders, the slightest bit of dread curdling his stomach in ways that had ruined his appetite for the upcoming dinner more thoroughly than the stress of magical transport. He was greeted at the door by the family house-elf, who took his cloak, and whose expressions of distress did not involve ear-wringing but were almost as palpable to Fabian. This was going to be bad.

In the years since his release from prison, Fabian had come to an understanding with his parents: he had a cordial, if not particularly close, relationship with his mother, all those years of Howlers for unapproved conduct carefully swept under the rug and forgot, and a fonder one with his father, who had always been closer to Fabian. It was from his father than Fabian had learned his love for travel and all things foreign, particularly Chinese and Japanese after a stint the elder Prewett had spent in that part of the world. For all that Fabian wouldn't set foot in the Ministry where his father still held a part-time appointment, they met for lunch every few weeks to trade news, gossip, and anything else that seemed right. Visits to the home Fabian had grown up in were fewer and farther between. He hadn't been back since Christmas Eve.

They were waiting for Fabian in the parlour. His mother presented her cheek for a dutiful kiss and his father offered a pleasant clasp of greeting, neither disguising the tension. Fabian took his customary seat and dispensed with the pleasantries. "What's wrong?" he asked, scanning between the two of them for signs of illness.

The discussion rapidly took on a dreamlike quality for Fabian. The exact words spoken had faded before he made it back to London, and only the gist of the tale remained, though Fabian did recall clearly that he'd had to remind his mother that Caradoc Dearborn had been a friend of his as well as a colleague in the Order of the Phoenix, and that Fabian would take it amiss if Caradoc's late sister were called names. The gist of it was clear, though: one of Gideon's liaisons with women had resulted in a pregnancy, and his parents, fearing another situation like Molly's, had paid her off and sent her to America. And now the child had come home--had, Fabian now realised, been sitting in his office this very afternoon--and there had been hell to pay.

And one more time, it was Fabian's to fix. He sat with his face buried in his hands, considering his options. Finally, he looked up, and it was at his father. "Is this the potential caveat you mentioned about the entail on the estate? Is this why you were so insistent that I ought to go to America, so I could find the child and make this right?"

"John," his mother gasped, and his father wouldn't look at either of them.

"What do you want me to do?" And Fabian's tone there, cool and professional, all the solicitor he once had been and not at all the son, was a warning that his father understood and his mother no longer knew him well enough to interpret.

She started in at once, because she had a list. "You need to make your brother see reason. We can still fix everything for him, even now, if he'll just stop what he's doing. The woman is dead; he could even adopt the boy and we could make something of him. But not if he's on that farm--doing whatever he's doing--with that Weasley."

Fabian's detachment shattered again. "Bilius is my brother-in-law and my friend. Don't speak of him that way to me."

John Prewett sighed quietly. "He's Gideon's lover, Martha. Just say it. Did you know about this, Fabian?"

"Not," Fabian snapped, "from Gideon. But yes, I know. And here is what I'm going to do about this: nothing. Gideon doesn't want me interfering. He's made that clear and I'm done fighting with him. And I'm done fighting with you, too. Neither of us are your pawns any more.

"And I warn you: if you decide to disinherit Gideon over this, as I know you're thinking of doing--" and Fabian looked hard at his mother "--you'd best disinherit me as well, because the horror you should have at what I'll do with this house and the estate should dwarf the terror you feel about Gideon's half-blood bastard inheriting by orders of magnitude." Fabian's hands were balled into fists; he forced his fingers to unclench. "Because I helped break those purist fuckers under cover of night when I was in the Order, and I will burn them to the ground from this house if you leave it in my charge using all the tools and tricks you taught me. Which Godric and Salazar know will be better than anything you've done with it." Fabian pushed himself to his feet and realised he was shaking. "I'm done here." He started to say something about the courtesy of notice if he were cut off, but it occurred to him that he didn't care. "I'm done here," he repeated, and turned on his heel to leave.

The house-elf was waiting with Fabian's cloak, and this time she was twisting her ear. "It's not your fault," Fabian told her through clenched teeth. "You didn't make us this way. No matter what Mum tells you." Behind him, his father was calling his name, and that was more than Fabian could handle at the moment. The brisk pace Fabian took to the end of the drive was not quite a run.

Deliberation, Destination, Determination. Eyes closed, Fabian vanished, expecting never to return.