| maggie mattias | (littlefierce) wrote in valesco, @ 2015-11-14 23:36:00 |
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Entry tags: | adrian mattias, arthur griffiths, magnolia mattias, odette boot |
WHO: The Mattias-MacFarlan Clan!
WHAT: Maggie has dug up some interesting information
WHERE: Braga, Portugal
WHEN: Tonight?!
Odette laughed, her voice high and condescending.
“That’s ridiculous,” she waved, her palm pressed flat into the air as she looked off and away from the sitting couple before her. Even though it was nearing winter, the view from Maggie and Adrian’s living room in their Portuguese home was stellar. Of course they had a beachfront property, and she couldn’t help but dryly note how the calm, lapping waves of the ocean felt the exact opposite of the emotions currently riding through her. Adrian’s owl had had her thinking--- the worst, that something horrible had happened, that--- well, she hadn’t been sure. But this?
Her mouth set into a fine line as she dragged her gaze back to her half brother, and then his wife. Maggie seemed very calm, a stark contrast to Adrian’s frank bumbling anxiety, and it was truly the only thing that had Odette not totally dismissing this entire conversation as some elaborate and poorly executed joke.
“It is true, Odette! Maggie knows! She is not wrong,” Adrian said, his hand flitted to Maggie’s back to brush it quickly before standing up. It seemed that he could not contain himself to be reposed like her, so he joined his sister in standing, but his voice was much quieter than hers.
Odette crossed her arms over her chest, pressing her elbows down tight.
“I of all people am not going to question just how adulterous our father is,” Odette let out, side-eying Adrian in a unabashedly manner. “But Artie? A MacFarlan?”
She exposed her open hand again, pressing it toward Maggie and Adrian Mattias as a means to further explain and convey her skepticism.
Maggie pressed her lips together, listening for the steps that led up to the front door for when Artie returned home. Since arriving in Portugal, he had spent an hour and fifteen minutes on a run, or doing whatever it was he did, before dinner. Adrian was very big on family dinners, and...she supposed there was some sort of irony in her husband’s insistence that Artie attend them. Maggie didn’t have time to dwell on it, as their latest surprise relative was due to return in approximately twenty minutes.
She reached forward toward the coffee table and pushed forward a folder of flattened out parchment. Maggie had, with the help of friends back in England, begun looking at reports about stadium wards and the committees who controlled them. Glynnis Griffiths’ name of course popped up a lot because of her title in the Ministry, but a peculiar incident report between her and Hamish MacFarlan had sparked Maggie’s interest. From the volatile description, it was strange that nothing had come out from it, so she had begun to...look for other instances, other times the two were at odds, and Merlin, it had been a lot. Going back as far as her playing days, even, and it was then that she noticed a flurry of milestone events in Griffiths’ life.
Getting the starting spot on the Harpies over a much more experienced player. Endorsements with some of Scotland’s biggest lines. But then---a shotgun wedding, a baby less than nine months after the nuptials. A visitor’s log signed by H. Mac, mysterious monthly deposits to an account that her husband wasn’t on. Goblins had excellent memories, they remembered the dark haired man who had come in, who had started coming in not a week after Artie Griffiths was born…
“There’s too much for it to be a coincidence,” Maggie said, sitting back. A copy of Gringotts’ deposit slips, Mungo’s visitor logs, the pictures that had Artie striking a remarkable resemblance to Adrian when he was a child, it...there was more, but Maggie would let Odette decide for herself. But, to be safe...
“I was able to find all of this information because I’m The Tempest,” she explained, sitting back into the couch cushions, eyeing Odette for a moment before looking at the clock.
“What the fuck?!” Odette let out, both her hands raising back into the air with disbelief. Eyes condescending and wide, she waited for a further explanation, but when none came, she let out a great huff. What was this all about? She had come all the way from the States for this?
“The whole time?” she demanded, looking away from Maggie to turn to Adrian. “You knew about this? And didn’t say anything?”
Adrian’s eyes darted between his sister and his wife, finding himself in a place that, while already in a heightened state of panic by all that had been revealed thus far, made him feel incredibly uncomfortable.
“Yes,” Adrian lied, thinking that the best response. “But I think that--- for now, it is more important to discuss Artie because h---”
“Oh for the love of Merlin!” Odette let out suddenly, and with a flourish dropped the folder of documents mere seconds after begrudgingly picking it up to inspect. The first thing she had seen upon opening the folder were a pair of pictures, and certainly unable to deal with that, quickly stashed them away.
While it all seemed rather ludicrous, Odette knew herself to be in a position not truly able question what she was told. While Adrian probably could find his way out of a cauldron, Maggie was no dud. Undoubtedly, there was more files, more information… she didn’t need to hear it. Running her hands through her hair once, Odette tossed them up into the air in defeat.
“So what? You wanted me here to tell him?” she asked, rather begrudgingly. She supposed she could appreciate the sentiment, as the last time around with this kind of business, Adrian had thrown it in her face outside the Great Hall... but it was all rather hard to swallow. Another sibling?
“I thought it to be best… if we discuss… together... the next proper… course of action… together… for…” Adrian began, and over her crossed arms, Odette glared at him. His words sounded far too together to be his own, and much more believable if they had come straight from Maggie’s mouth instead.
“Obviously we shouldn’t tell him,” Odette rebutted, tightening her arms over her chest again. “He is far better off never knowing. Are our lives any better because of Hamish MacFarlan?”
Adrian waited a moment, his brow furrowed in contemplative worry. His mouth pressed together, and he darted a glance at Maggie before standing up a bit straighter in front of Odette.
“I want to tell him,” he said, his chin sticking out as he spoke. “He has a right to know. We are his family, his whole life, he has thought one thing, believed to be something, but that is not the truth. It is--- if we know something about who he is, then we must tell him! He is not a person on the street, he is our---”
“Stop!” Odette interrupted, throwing her hand out toward Adrian’s direction. Adrian Mattias was an idealist, he only saw what he wanted to believe, only thought about what his far-reaching brain could grasp around, but Odette knew better.
“His life isn’t going to be made better with the knowledge that he’s our brother. It will only make his life more complicated. More things, more people, he already--- struggles.” Odette caught herself, her eyes going low for a moment as she thought of Artie’s Griffith’s oddities. He was a young wizard, a gifted quidditch player (which could now, most unfortunately, be explained by a potent MacFarlan trait both she and Adrian shared as well), but nonetheless not someone that needed another burden to bear. Not yet.
“We must tell him,” Adrian repeated, his voice much firmer now after the short silence that had grown in the room.
“Are you deaf? I just---- Maggie, tell him!”
Odette turned to Maggie, jutting her palm out toward Adrian in an exhausted and annoyed way. She clearly thought Maggie should control her husband, but Adrian, in a surprising kind of way, spoke first.
“He is our brother, Odette! We will help him, we will make sure he does not make our mistakes. We will protect him, because that is what you do. He must know, it will help him understand who he is, it is our duty to do so. It is only right. The whole world doesn’t have to know, but he should. He should, he should, we must tell him!”
“You don’t even---!” Odette began, gritting her teeth as she spoke. Now, her hands balled into fists and she approached him in an irritated way. “You don’t know anything about duty, being a brother, protection, all these things you think you are so clever about, when we both know---”
“I did not when I was fifteen, but I do now!”
Odette sucked in a great breath of air, the back of her throat making a wheezing kind of noise as she did so. She glared, glared fiercely at Adrian Mattias, who, in turn, stood very tall in the wake of such a blistering stare. But he was resolute, he truly believed, as Odette realized, that it would be wrong to not act upon the reveal of this new information. So she too readjusted to stand up straight, unclenching her fists.
“How would you tell him?” she asked, her voice icy cold. “Would you start with explaining that the family he has been living with for the past two months is really his brother, his niece and nephews? That, his teammate, the one there in Caerphilly that night, is his sister? That, most likely, the reason behind the unexplained misfortune in his career can no longer be written off by bad luck, but Hamish MacFarlan? Would you start with those facts, Adrian?
“Or, perhaps, you could shower him with Montrose history! Explain to him the lucky childhoods we had, how wonderfully we love each other, how happy this has all been. Anyone would be so jealous to be a MacFarlan! Endless fame! Such talent! A Scottish legacy!”
Odette uncurled her fists, her chin now sticking out, but in an entirely different manner than her brother’s.
“Is that what you would tell him, Adrian?” she asked, her words colder than the ice in her heart. “That his life will now be better off, knowing?”
In time, Adrian had shrunk where he stood. Odette MacFarlan was no delicate rose, she did not seek to comfort the people around her, and her harsh reality concerning life had never been something Adrian coveted or dealt with easily. He… understood that their years together in Hogwarts had soured him to her forever, as he also knew that with Artie, it provided a way to… perhaps through indirect means… correct the wrongs he had done. But Odette did not make it easy…
“If he found out that we had known all along, and had not told him,” Adrian began in a small voice, one that was too far-off to be purely protective of a wizard he had previously (and quickly) considered a friend. “He would never forgive us. He would not forgive us.”
Adrian looked directly at Odette, stared hard into her narrowed, dark eyes, and braved the fear he had never truly been able to shake for a long time now.
“I shall not make that mistake again. I will say you do not know, that you have no idea, if that is what you want, but I will not lie to him.”
Odette turned away like a whip, her arms holding herself as she looked, silent, out the windows of the room. It took a while, it took her a while, but eventually, Odette did speak.
“Of course I don’t want to lie to him,” she murmured, her voice tender and airy. Her head dropped, the ends of her hair brushing along her arm. But unable to turn around, as her pride was still reconfiguring, Odette instead pressed her chin to her shoulder to look back at the only wizard in the room.
“But it cannot be all at once. Perhaps… over time, a slow couple of weeks, with… a gradual understanding, but not… all together, all in one swoop. It is too much, it will be too much…”
Maggie had made herself comfortable, knowing that the whole Tempest business was going to be the least of their problems, tonight. Perhaps that was why she had decided to slip it in so easily; she’d rather avoid any questions for now, until this whole mess with Artie was solved. She watched carefully as her husband and his sister (her best friend) went back and forth, with their years of pent up anger, frustrations, and everything else that came with having a sibling. Maggie, though she did not have the experiences that Adrian and Odette did, knew how a sibling could enrage you like no other person in the world. There was a...this was the one person in the world who, from your or their birth, should never betray you, hurt you. And when they did…
Her eyes darted between the two siblings, the clock, and the door, where their third would be making his appearance soon. Maggie knew that jumping into the middle of Adrian and Odette could cost someone their life, and she was glad that it had quieted down with enough time for them to spare.
A minute of preparation would be enough, wouldn’t it?
Maggie stood, her wand whipping out so that she could hide the folder of parchment back onto the highest shelf of the bookcase in the living room, behind an old decorational jewelry box. The living room looked as it should, save for the sudden appearance of Odette, whose presence she was sure would be questioned by Artie.
“He will literally be here in a minute,” Maggie said quickly, moving to Adrian’s side. Her hand went to her husband’s face, to gently try and sooth him, and she looked toward Odette with a sympathetic, but knowing glance. “We’re just the next stop of your worldwide tour, for now, okay?”
She knew that Odette would have no trouble covering herself, but Maggie said it to her friend so that it would give Adrian a cover to latch onto, for now. Odette was right, they could not stand here, looking and feeling as frantic as they did, and attempt to explain this huge, convoluted story to Artie. The clock struck the top of the hour, and her head turned to the door, expecting the outside light to turn on at the appearance of their most unusual houseguest…
...but Artie Griffiths had not gone out on his run that evening. He’d been feeling ill, probably from too much sun from the day before at practice, and had kept himself in bed to try and get over his headache. From the beginning of his stay here, Adrian and Maggie had not bothered him much with his daily routines, with the exception of dinner, so it wasn’t hard to spend the day without interruption. He had even been contemplating excusing himself from dinner, as he still felt a bit nauseous, but he’d heard a familiar, but confusing laugh.
Was that Odette?
After the disaster at Caerphilly, Odette MacFarlan had inserted herself into many aspects of his life. Fortunately, they had not been in the teasing, mean sense of inserting, and Artie found himself glad to hear her voice, thinking that it meant a surprise visit from Adrian’s sister and his first visitor in Portugal. Though, it would be a visitor through the Mattiases, of course, as he did not think his presence alone could draw Odette to a foreign country.
Slowly slipping out of his room because his muscles ached, Artie came carefully toward the stairwell (avoiding the table he always managed to bang into when he needed to use the loo at night), to try and make sure that it actually was Odette, and not another visitor. If it was, he’d be easily able to slink back into his room and no one would be any the wiser. He winced at her tone; it was definitely Odette, but it did not sound like something he should interrupt. Artie had been on the top steps of the staircase, ready to turn back to his room, when the sound of his name caused him to freeze in place.
But Artie? A MacFarlan?
He sunk down to the step, her words sending too much of a shock through him to move. What the hell were they talking about? Artie leaned forward, brows furrowed as he tried to get more information. Too many coincidences? Maggie was The Tempest? Artie blinked, unsure if he could truly be hearing all of this correctly; maybe he was sleepwalking, could he really be that sick? Their back and forth argument continued, the acceptance of these facts evident in Odette’s voice. A proper course of action? What the hell did that mean? What did any of this mean?
Artie pressed his head against the wall, feeling the throb of his headache return. He felt foul for so many different reasons, but a great calm had come over him. He was stuck in the eye of a hurricane, a hurricane involving...How could any of this be true?
The words ‘he’s our brother’ made Artie’s chest swell, thinking that while the words weren’t said with love and conviction, they weren’t spat, or forced. The siblings he’d grown up with despised him for reasons they couldn’t explain, his mother resented him and now he knew why, and his father...wasn’t his father...Artie felt his throat begin to close, his thoughts jumping to the fact that he’d been treated like an outsider in his own home all of his life because he was one, he wasn’t a Griffiths, he’d never…
He already---struggles.
Artie’s chin dropped, and his lips pressed into a frown. Odette knew very well of his struggles, and did they think...what did they think of him? He listened carefully to Adrian’s determined tone, his decisive voice in the choice of telling the truth, helping him through the news. Artie couldn’t decide, now that he knew, if he’d ever have wanted to know. It made sense, it made complete sense, but it gave...excuses for those who had been hurting him all these years. They...had a real reason to hate him, it hadn’t been because of ice cold hearts, there was a true, valid reason...
With his face twisted, Artie listened to Odette’s rant. It seemed like everything in his life led back to Hamish; could that be why he’d never been approached by the Magpies? Was this the reason he’d lost the starting chaser spot on the world cup team? The man was his hero, the quidditch player Artie idolized, and...to think...he’d intentionally...that he’d known...
The voices turned soft, and Artie’s back stiffened. He wiped at his face, sniffling quietly as they made their decision. How was he supposed to fake that he hadn’t heard everything? No, he would have to tell them that he knew, he would come forward first, to have some sort of upperhand in this crazy chess game that Hamish had begun all those years ago, but...he couldn’t tonight. Not tonight. It all felt like too much, and Artie winced at Maggie’s declaration that they were expecting him home any minute. The run!
Artie stood slowly, attempting to not make the stairs creak. He would make it back to his bedroom and pretend that he had been asleep the whole time. He felt ill enough to pass it off, and he would...hold off until tomorrow. Tomorrow, he would have had enough time to think, enough time to process…
“Shit!” he let out as he banged into the side table that he always banged into. The quiet voices downstairs went silent, and Artie knew he had blown his cover. Hearing the shuffling of feet, a call of his name, he pushed through the darkness of the upstairs of the house and into his room, shutting the door quickly (and unfortunately, loudly) behind him. Artie pressed against the wood, hearing the thudding of footsteps ascend the stairs. No, no, he couldn’t do this right now, not now! He needed time to think, to put things together, to accept that his whole life had been one miserable lie after another…
Wiping furiously at his face, Artie ignored the soft calls of his name and grabbed hold of his bag, one that was filled with muggle clothing for when he ventured out into the city. The handle of the door twisted, but he couldn’t---he couldn’t---
“Leave me alone!” he couldn’t help but shout, his voice cracking, feeling very much like...like...the little brother that he was. Artie glared hard at the door, knowing...knowing…not knowing anything! at this moment, and he swiped up his wand and disapparated with a loud crack into the night.