[exeter] you'll come back when they call you [edith]

march 2003

Ari's legs dangled off her childhood bed, periodically deforming her old green quilt, looking quite faded now but softer than ever. She was faintly embarrassed, she realized, looking at Edith sitting in the chair she'd used for eighteen years not so much as a seat but as a clothes-broom-book-holding device. The few times she'd seen the rest of the older DA members she'd felt uncomfortably like a child despite only knowing them through the one thing that had prematurely aged them all, because even if she could argue that they'd all been children, she'd been more of a child then, and only half of them had any idea who she was, Edith previously included in the other half. It was different one on one - much better, almost especially when they didn't have any memories of her from back then - but being in a room that still had a little straw Quidditch player she'd made when she was seven sitting on the dresser was not helpful. It was nice that it meant Edith was sort of a family friend now, but still.

Progress on her mum's book - previously thought nearly completed - had stalled out entirely when everything had happened with Edith's column and the Prophet, to be picked apart and rearranged now in the face of a new political situation in which these kinds of stories were now less a retrospective than a lens and a statement. On the other hand, Eliza Laurier seemed to think that the whole experience was the biggest recommendation anyone could come with, and Ari had noticed the Quibbler was now delivered to the Laurier home along with the Prophet for the occasional piece of Edith's, which was read with great interest and occasionally led to visits like this. Of course, Ari was usually in London, but her own visit home happened to coincide this time. "Sounds productive? Anyway, it's good to see you again," she said, topping off a brief back and forth about how the dicussion had gone. "You might go home with a chapter to read tonight if you're not careful. Mum's started calling you an alpha reader behind your back, you know."

Ari's eyes kept skipping over that stupid straw doll, and, unable to stand the sight of her own handiwork any longer, she stood up. "Do you wanna go for a walk? We can go to the field I used to practice Quidditch in, it's nice to be somewhere open when I'm not in London or Paris." It wasn't that there wasn't anywhere to go, just that excuses were easier, even for someone who had once been such an avid outdoorsperson. "I guess I started telling myself I'm busy with work and stopped going to Hyde Park."

@Edith Holthouse

Edith shrugged, tearing her gaze away from The Standard Book of Spells, Year Three and letting it fall back on Ariana. “Productive enough, yeah.” She smiled almost halfway, nodding. “You too.” It was good to see her and it had been a productive visit, but she didn’t love talking about it. She was thrilled to not be employed by The Prophet anymore, shunted slightly out of the spotlight and into the pages of The Quibbler. She could publish the same column in both pieces of print and it wouldn’t be considered as political in the magazine; that much was nice. People remembering her from the paper and wanting her to continue on with that same political fervor? That was less nice.

Ari’s mum fell somewhere in the middle. She had been the one to get Edith a job with The Prophet in the first place after they had figured out they were more or less working on the same thing. Edith had sort of derailed Eliza’s book; Eliza insisted it had needed a rework, anyway, but Edith figured she was just saying that. But the book was getting there, again, and Edith -- feeling bad about everything already -- didn’t say no when asked to look over some stuff for her. There had been hints toward Edith needing to think about a book of her own, but she was better at ignoring these.

“She’s called me a beta reader to my face, so I’ll take it,” she said with a laugh. She was going to be handed two chapters to take home, actually; she only needed to wait around while Eliza got everything ready to go. Ariana was home on a visit so the wait was miles better than usual, when Edith usually found herself in a staring contest with the family’s owl. She was exhausted and wanted a beer, but this was good. Better, even.

She nodded again, standing up with a, “Yeah.” She didn’t ask about Paris like she probably should have, but she had plenty to say about London. She waited until they were outside, at least, Edith half a step behind Ari. “Are you really that busy with work?” She shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket, nodding again. “I just mean-- I dunno.” She knew plenty of people that worked at the Ministry, even after taking a public stance against it; it shouldn’t have been that hard to ask about. “Do you like it? The job.”

"You say that now, but wait until she upgrades you in person and just sends you home with the whole manuscript," Ari warned teasingly. "Once when we were little she decided that she was going to make one reading lesson a week just be chapters from some very 'literary' and depressing family saga, so now you know she has a history of coerced and unpleasant labor. The only thing that was fun for a nine-year-old in that book was the grumpy twelve-year-old cat."

It had rained earlier in the morning, leaving a pleasing springy damp to the grass. A loudly whistling wheatear announced the arrival of early spring, and Ari tugged at the unbuttoned sides of her jacket as if to fend off the slight spring chill. The complete absence of people here, where she'd spent all her younger years, presented a stark contrast to the crowds in both of the cities she spent the most time in now, and she thought about that as Edith asked her whether about work. "I don't know," she shrugged. "It feels like I am, but I kind of feel like everything feels busy all the time in the city, you know?" Furrowing her brow a little, she realized maybe she had missed the point. "Wait, d'you mean like--" like what it would mean if she was that busy at work? "I mean, yeah, but it's training stuff mostly still..." she trailed off, then sighed, scuffing the dirt a little with her boots.

"I don't know what it'll be like later, I guess, so it's hard to say how that'll be. Right now it feels like...it's a thing I'm better at than most people, if that makes sense. In whatever messed up way that is," she laughed to lighten the tone, although she turned contemplative again. "Training is kind of scary sometimes, because the people who are supposed to be guiding you are also the ones putting you through all of it, and that all of it is a lot. And then what does that say about what it's really like? But then, if that's what it's really like, then I kind of feel obligated because I think I can do it. Because I got good at it, because I had to do it already. So I might as well use all that for something, right?" She shrugged again, turning her head a little backward to glance at Edith, trying to gauge her reaction. Obviously, it wasn't the choice Edith had made. Or Cordy, or Dean, or Harri, or...or Dennis. Obviously.

She thought Ariana was missing the point, a little. Sure, Edith thought that Ari had to have ample time to take a walk -- did she not take a lunch break? that was always Edith’s favorite part of the work day -- but she knew what she had been hinting at. The Ministry work, the auror work, itself. Probably; being direct wasn’t Edith’s strong suit. Still, she nodded. London was busy; it was nice to get out every once in a while.

But Ari cottoned on and Edith shrugged both shoulders, her hands still in the pockets of her jacket. “Right, sure.” She’d had training for her own Ministry job, though it had been nowhere as extensive as what Ari was going through now -- and Edith kept quiet about how Obliviators really should have more training but that was for another time -- and she fell into step with her friend as they kept walking.

Edith laughed when Ari did; she knew exactly what she meant with that messed up way. She’d been a good Obliviator; she should have applied herself more to the non-field work aspects of the job and actually tried for promotions but she’d been better off coasting where it didn’t really matter; she’d still been good at messing with peoples’ -- muggles’ -- memories. There wasn’t much more messed up than that.

Ariana let loose her stream of consciousness and Edith remained quiet. She thought it was more of a rhetorical question, that Ari wasn’t really looking for an answer, but when she glanced over Edith offered a quiet, “Yeah.” The Ministry had assumed everyone at the battle was ‘good at it’; Edith had been offered the option of taking her previously offered -- and then rescinded -- job in the Obliviator department or heading towards Auror and she thought she had made the better choice. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, or whatever.

“I get that,” she added, belatedly. “Like, what else are you going to do?” Edith had already had her crisis, she guessed, but she was young and there was plenty of time for another one. “I guess you won’t know if you really like it until you’re out of training.” She shrugged again as she scratched her cheek. “How much longer?”

Her eyes drifted off to the side. Ari knew Edith was probably thinking of that whole battle offer they'd made just to try and fill up their empty ranks, but even if it was still extended to people like her after three entire years, she hadn't dared to inquire about it. She wasn't even supposed to be there, and the bravery and purpose she had felt as a teenager had long since (if not quite yet by the time she'd put in her application, certainly now) curdled into shame, crystallized by those few interactions with Dennis. The Dome made up for it in that regard, though, for all it had cost them too.

She gave her own "Yeah," to Edith's own rhetorical question, adding a quick "A year, I guess," before biting her lip nervously. The inevitable way Edith had put it resonated uncomfortably with the inner conversation she'd had over and over for the past eight months or so, always coming to the same conclusion without resolving any of her unease. She'd told Freya about it, but the conversation had all been more in the context of what it meant about her and Prosper's relationship, if anything. As for what it meant for her...

"Um. Did I tell you what I did to Prosper last June?" She knew the answer was no, but she had to start the conversation somewhere. Not wanting to drag it out, she sighed and continued. "I kind of...attacked him. At home. He tried to surprise me with dinner and I--" she cut off, feeling as she always did that her actions were not explainable. "I don't know, I had some reflex, saw and smelled something unfamiliar, felt like it could be dangerous, and before I even really registered who it was..." she gestured in front of her helplessly.

They'd reached the field - it wasn't far away for the small legs the Laurier kids had once run around on - and Ari looked out at it for a bit before tugging her wand out from her pocket and spinning a circle, conjuring a quaint picnic-style blanket on the field and sitting down on it, motioning with her head to the spot next to her. She let a long pause fill up the space before shrugging. "It feels like...like magic could do so many good things, but none of the good things last," she said, lifting up the edge of the blanket as an example. You couldn't make something that would stay from magic alone. "But all of the bad things can." Her left arm throbbed a little bit in its familiar painful way. "I don't know. You probably know more about that feeling than me."

Edith nodded; a year. Honestly, she couldn’t remember how many years into training Ariana was -- there’d been other things to talk about when they first started talking properly -- and she didn’t bother asking now.

She turned her head toward Ari as she asked if she knew about Prosper and she shook her head before looking back to watch where she walked. She bit her bottom lip as she listened; she’d nearly done the same to Elias, though she hadn’t had her wand on her so she had resorted to more physical (and less harmful because look at her) violence. After a few more seconds of explanation, her and Ari’s reasons drifted.

Elias made her feel safe; she didn’t think whatever happened with Ariana and Prosper could happen to thembut a more realistic part of her knew it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. She slept less these days, what with the war and everything about it and then all the Sweden shit, all of it constantly at the front of her brain because she’d somehow made it into her job-- she blew air through pursed lips, more of a response to Ari’s details of events than a non-response; there just weren’t any words that’d do a better job.

They stood silent for a couple seconds and Edith took the cue from Ari to look out at the field, too. It nearly reminded her of the country just outside of Lunt but she didn’t have too long to think about it before Ari was moving again, making them a blanket even though Edith had zero qualms about grass stains on her jeans. She sat down cross-legged and continued the silence, leaning back on her hands to expose her face to the still-in-hiding sun.

Ariana spoke and Edith opened her eyes to look at her; she sighed before agreeing. “Yeah.” She nodded slowly as Ari then finished her thought. “No, I--” she frowned, lost in thought for a second. The bad things certainly outweighed the good but there were bright spots; she didn’t think Ariana would appreciate her recommendation to ‘drink more’ because it was a good distraction. “I think I’ve just been more vocal about it.” She shrugged; that much was true, anyway.

She sat up and rested her elbows on her knees, propping her cheek up with a fist. “I just didn’t want to be on the bad side of things anymore.” She sniffed. “Obliviating,” she clarified. “Some of the Auror stuff would be on the good side, wouldn’t it?” If things were even that clear, good vs. bad.

Saying it out loud, hearing Edith's wordless response, made Ari feel like a monster, even though she didn't think that Edith exactly saw it that way. The other woman knew how messed up all of the context made it, how scrambled and disjointed their reactions had become. But that, too, felt like blaming it on something else instead of taking responsibility. Ari had done her best to get better about it, to always take just another moment before she tried to act on anything, to be more discriminating than broad, and she'd done it because no matter the reasons she was who and how she was, it was still her fault.

She thought about Edith's response, but she shook her head a little, pressing the point. "I meant more like--" it felt awkward to say, given everything that Edith had been through, "feel free to yell at me if this is insensitive or something, but more like because you know what it's like to live without it. Like there was a before and an after and you can compare them. And because it was so much...worse for you." She had a queasy feeling, saying all this - it felt like only supremacists would make a point out of something like this, a witch was a witch - but there was a reason why Edith had so much to write about, because she could be both inside and outside at the same time. "Mum can tell me what it was like before and after for her, and I know what it's like to hang out with my grandparents for a few weeks, but I think it'd be pretty presumptuous for me to pretend it's the same."

Even this response. She understood Edith's stance on Obliviation intellectually, had done the thought exercise of trying to imagine what it would be like if her memories were erased, if she knew that she couldn't trust her own mind, had read the case studies about Obliviation gone terribly wrong, but she'd also spent her entire life in a world where it was taken for granted that it was something that was necessary to keep both wizards and Muggles alike safe. It was a cognitive dissonance that she didn't really know how to resolve without a good true resolution, an alternative where it never needed to be used. "Writing's better," she agreed simply, and gave a shrug. "I mean, I wouldn't have signed up for it if I didn't think it would be good for something. Finding and disarming people who've hurt other people is pretty noble...right up until you have to fight fire with fire, and then it's a little murkier." Ari stuck her legs out straight and leaned back on her palms, looking up at the sky. "If everything I'm really uniquely good at is destructive, even if I'm using it for a good reason against people who've done terrible things, is that enough?" It was more rhetorical than anything, although part of her wished that someone, Edith or whoever, might have more answers about it.

"I don't know. I've been thinking about it since what happened with Prosper, but I'm still here, I guess. Whether that's inertia or excuses or lack of any better ideas."

“It’s not the same,” Edith murmured in agreement. She reached up and rubbed her eye with one finger, behind her glasses. “Doesn’t make you less…” She glanced sideways at her, starting over. “Sure, it’s different and there’s a before and an after but--” She looked forward again as she stretched her arms out behind her. “The concept of magic was probably just as idealistic for you as it was for me even if you grew up with it. No washing up by hand, fuckin’ teleporting.” She looked at Ariana again. Magic was cool and the understanding didn’t really set it that there were people who would use it in a very uncool way didn’t set in until there was no other option. “We were kids.”

She almost laughed at how simple it could all sound: writing’s better. She hadn’t exactly effected any change with her words; a clearer conscience, maybe, though now new doubts were creeping in. Everyone she wrote about agreed to it all but it still felt like exploitation, almost. And then tidbits of conversations like this -- the ones that weren’t about her or her article -- would sneak into her writing whether she realized she was doing it or not. She thought it’d only been intentional a time or two, but--

Ariana was still talking and Edith blinked, catching up. “Yeah.” Being an auror was noble right up until… it wasn’t. She sat up and turned to look at her a little more straight on, trying to figure out if she wanted an answer to that. It wasn’t enough, not for Edith, not anymore, but who was she to give career advice? “All of the above, maybe.” Inertia, excuses, lack of better ideas. “I quit without having any sort of a plan.” Both times, the Ministry and the paper. “Wasn’t smart,” she added with a soft snort. 

“If it’s just not knowing what else to do, though..” Edith shrugged. “That’s fixable. If that’s what you want.”