Benefits Isis was not often one to beat around the bush. In her lifetime, she had already experienced what she could only imagine were beyond the normal worst possible outcomes, so at this point, she generally felt that she had little to fear in the way of repercussions. It could never be worse than what she’d already been through, and she had survived all of it thus far.
But today, she was nervous. Her finger traced the rim of her mostly-emptied scotch glass, glancing up at her neighbor. Alfie Pye was not exactly the type of person she would generally consider a confidant; he was too mysterious, and Isis did not necessarily trust him. She was naturally a suspicious person, and Alfie’s secrecy only fed into this side of her. But he was the only one who could be of use in this situation, which was why she had asked him for this evening out together, no Tallec, no Amelle.
She hadn’t spoken in a while, leaving things a bit awkward and silent despite the noise of the bar around them. Putting down her glass and pulling her nervous hands back from it, Isis took a deep breath. “Do you trust your brother Barnaby?” she asked directly. With her hands hidden in her lap, all physical signs of her nerves were buried, her dark eyes burning into him with all of her ferocity.
Alfie Pye was not a nervous person. But when Isis asked him to join her at a bar, just the two of them, and then proceeded to go about the night as skittish as one could possibly be around a wizard with whom they’d slept with numerous times (he’d already seen her naked, for Merlin’s sake, what else was there to be nervous around him for?)... Well, he just got the feeling that perhaps their relationship was evolving upwards from that “bit of fun” they’d once mutually shared and...he didn’t quite know how to feel about that.
He was just about getting ready to let Isis down gently, that no, he couldn’t seriously date her (because what kind of idiot would get anyone else further involved in his life when the people already in it to that degree were already walking a perilous edge) but he did care for her friendship so could they stay friends? (Work friends though, like how he was with Amelle and Tallec, because Merlin knew that if he took any of the three of them back to his flat in London for, what the kids these days were calling a “hang out” there would be hell to pay afterwards and he was willing to bet it would not be his blood that would be paying), when she opened her mouth and asked him the most ridiculous question about his little brother, Barnaby.
On second thought, however, it was not as ridiculous a question as he had originally thought. Did he trust Barnaby? Alfie was unsure how to answer that. Barnaby was thirteen. He was still, for all intents and purposes, a child. But he was also a Pye, and he was not a rebellious Pye like Alfie himself had been. He was a good Pye, an obedient Pye, and he liked to hang around that Holt kid whose intense stare quite frankly gave Alfie the creeps. “Trust,” Alfie said carefully, trying to buy himself a bit of time. “It’s a funny word, isn’t it? To ask if I trust my own brother, it would mean one of a few things. Either something has happened and Barnaby told you something and you’re unsure whether to believe him or not; perhaps, on the other hand, Barnaby caught you doing something you didn’t want him to catch you doing and you’ve sworn him to secrecy, there’s that sort of trust too; or,” and Alfie wondered why it was she hadn’t interrupted him yet because he really was making an arse of himself. “Perhaps it’s something else, you’ve--”
The sound of breaking glass surprised Alfie and he cut off, only to realize that he had not been speaking at all, that Isis was still waiting for his reply, that, in his internal monologue, he had pushed his glass off the bar. Well, that was as good a distraction as any, he thought to himself, as he vanished away the broken pieces and assured the flustered bartender that he was not too drunk, that he hadn’t been paying attention, that he would (of course) pay back the damage in full.
“I suppose I do,” he said to her, once he had settled the matter of the broken cup. Barnaby was his brother, and whatever quarrel they had was family business. Besides, he wasn’t to involve anyone else in their mess, and if he told Isis he didn’t trust a thirteen year old then she’d want to know why and then there would be a whole different kind of problem at hand. “He’s my brother.”
Something didn’t ring completely true in what he said--maybe it was the breaking of the glass--but Isis was not currently concerned with their family dysfunction. “Barnaby…. worries me. Both you Pyes do to an extent, if I’m being honest. But it’s not… You aren’t… affiliated with her.” She bit her lip. “Barnaby seems to have made friends with Nevaeh Reed. And that worries me. She’s a good deal younger than him. I saw them talking at the Opening Feast, and I’ve seen them together since then, too. And I just…. want to confirm that I’m overreacting.” It was one thing having Alfie in her life; she was an adult, and she’d been around the block a few times. Nevaeh was young, naive, trusting. And while she had never done much in the past, it was Isis’s job to look after her.
Alfie’s Auror senses went on high alert as Isis seemingly, in the guise of an innocent professor looking out for an equally innocent kid, probed Alfie for information about his kid brother. Nevaeh Reed was not unlike the hundreds, if not seventeen other first years who had joined the school that fall. Who was she to Professor Isis Carter? It was true that his little brother had not quite befriended anyone else at the school, and he used the term “friend” loosely because so far as he could tell Barnaby just allowed the girl to hang around him occasionally, but no one had thrown up a fuss when Jake Manger and Ginger Pierce picked up their friendship and it was the same age difference.
“You probably are,” Alfie said assuredly, glad that Cecily had forced him to work on his acting skills when she’d been his boss. Alfie had always been good at the angel act, getting someone to believe he hadn’t done something--being as fun orientated as he’d been back in the day this was something that had come in handy. But, when he reflected on it, it wasn’t really an act. He was sure that Isis was over-reacting. Whatever nefarious plans his little brother had, he was sure it wouldn’t concern a blind first-year whose presence he tolerated. “Why the sudden interest in the student body, Isis?” The casual question was accompanied with his sassy head prop and a sip of her drink since he’d spilled his and forgotten to order another one.
Isis ignored his humorous presentation of the question, favoring a conspiratorial glance about the bar. Then she leaned closer to him, her hand resting on his bicep, her expression quite serious. “I need to know this stays between us.” Her voice was low, barely discernible beneath the roar of the drunken patrons surrounding them. And she looked at him in a way she had never looked at him before, a grave seriousness, an honest vulnerability, tinged with slight desperation and even, if one looked hard enough, the trace elements of a threat. It was perhaps her truest form. “I don’t want it to affect her life here.”
Alfie raised his eyebrows. He was not nearly as drunk as some of the others in the bar, but he let himself waver slightly as he leaned forward to hear the deep, dark secret that apparently only Professor Isis Carter knew. He had learned a long time ago that the appearance of being vulnerable while waiting to receive confidential information was sometimes good, assuring the suspect or witness that little ol’ Alfie Pye could do no harm, to relax, to open up, to spill. “Of course,” he replied, letting the skin around his eyes relax, affording him a wide-eyed innocent look, one that was not mocking in nature but rather one of someone pledging to keep whatever foreboding news they were about to hear a secret.
She took a deep breath. “I was very young and very stupid,” she said with a sad laugh. “And wouldn’t you know it, I thought I was actually in love? Me, despite everything, believin’ in a thing like that.” She caught herself slipping out of proper speech patterns and did her best to rectify it. To her own surprise, Isis was tempted to tears by the memories of Deontay, of her life in the streets. “I made a lot of stupid mistakes, and… The Reeds were my teachers, and when they heard what was going on, they said they would take her off my hands so I could still try to make something of myself. So I… I gave her to them. Right when she was born. I barely even held her. But she’s mine, Alfie. God, she’s mine.” She never really knew whether or not she could trust Alfie Pye, but here she sat, reciting her damn sob story. It wasn’t nearly all of it, but it was more than she’d ever intended for anyone outside Detroit to ever hear again, a fact that made her very, very anxious.
To be completely honest, when Isis started out her story, Alfie was half-afraid she was going to admit that somehow she had caused Nevaeh’s blindness. How this would be possible, Alfie didn’t quite know, but it crossed his mind for a fleeting second before Isis delved into a story about how she’d thought she was in love and then, suddenly, she was saying that Nevaeh was hers? Alfie blinked for a minute.. It was probably a good thing that he’d broken his glass and was sipping off hers because at this point if he’d been drinking heartily from his own mug he’d likely have choked and then coughed it all up onto the rather weepy looking witch in front of him. Likely not something that would have been well received at all.
“I see,” he said. “Well, that’s interesting.” He turned to the barkeep. “Let’s have a round of shots, shall we?” The grin he gave the nervous man kind of gave the impression that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer, and he turned back to Isis. “Alcohol makes everything better, I promise,” he said, one hundred percent sincere this time. “How do you think I’ve coped with...” and he waved his hand, not ready to share his own backstory with anyone quite yet, but heavily implying that he had his own skeletons he yet to deal with. “All that. In the long run though, this really isn’t a bad thing, right? Nevaeh’s an Aladren! The best house there is, if I do say so myself. And she’s got a mother, who’s pretty great in the sack and a brilliant teacher, to look out for her while she’s at school so at the end of the day I’d say it’s all turned out alright, hmm?”
Which, he thought privately, was really more than anyone could ask for. Merlin help him if he ever had a kid. He’d likely take it to the Muggle government, he’d heard there was some sort of program for witnesses who didn’t want to be identified, perhaps he’d go in a disguise, or perhaps he’d imperio someone to do it for him so that he couldn’t be tracked... Whatever it was, however it was, he knew that his hypothetical child was not going to grow up as a Pye, his hypothetical child would (hopefully) never know the extent of atrocities which it’s biological family had committed, his hypothetical child would grow up thinking it was a muggleborn and though he would be a little sad to never watch it grow up, he knew that a life without the Pyes in it was the best thing for a hypothetical little It.
Isis wasn’t sure what sort of reaction she was expecting. Given she hadn’t expected to say nearly as much as she did, she supposed she really had no expectations for him. But somehow, Alfie always managed to defy even the non-existent ones. He was unpredictable and free, which was part of what made time with him so fun. And in a strange way, he was good for her. “Thanks,” she said with a growing crooked smile. “I guess I needed that.” The bartender placed their shots in front of them, and Isis quickly grabbed hers, her eyebrow raising in sync with her glass. “And I guess I needed this, too. But you’re paying.”
OOC: Co-written by myself and the lovely Pye author.