But I'm lonely now, and I don't know how [Emily]

To get it back to good

He knew that this was probably a bad idea. Even as he got dressed to leave he wondered what good could possibly come from going to see Emily. It wasn't as though that he wanted them to get back together. He had a new girlfriend now, sort-of... kind of. He had an eighteen year old child living with him until she recovered from her drug overdose—that was the same thing as a girlfriend, right? He just hated the way things ended with him. Emily had been such a good friend to him for so long, and he still cared about her, still loved her. He couldn't help but trying to find a way to keep her. A few months after their breakup, he hoped that they had both cooled off enough to talk about it like adults.

Even so, he felt a discomfort in his gut that told him that this was a horrible, horrible mistake. Things hadn't ended in the best way, and he'd said some things that he regretted. He probably had been controlling with her, he probably had tried to push her to fit into a box that she didn't belong in, but he'd never meant to hurt her. They just weren't right for each other, an he should have realized that sooner. She had been so good to him, she'd even stayed with him through his divorce. Amelia hadn't had that kind of support, and John felt almost guilty for that. Emily's affection and comfort had meant more to him that he could ever really express. That was why he needed to see her. That was why. She deserved more, and he missed her.

He missed her in little ways. Julia wasn't the bookish type, they couldn't talk about novels they'd read or nonfiction articles. He couldn't talk to her about medical journals, about films that were true works of art. He could take her out and show her off, but she was young and she was a party girl, and she acted the part. He thought that if he dressed her up to go to an art gala that she'd look stunning, but she wouldn't know anything about art, not the way Emily did.

He wanted that friendship, that kinship back. He closed his eyes and apparated, head swimming a little as he landed in Scotland, just a block away from Emily's bookshop. He had to remind himself that this was worth it as he walked the rest of the way to the door. He sighed as he pushed it open and came face to face with his ex.

“Hey...” He greeted, looking right at the girl. It was lucky they were alone, and he was glad that she couldn’t run from him, here. She would have to talk to him until something happened—good, bad, or otherwise.

Emily had learned long ago that if she crossed her legs too long, they'd fall asleep. Sat in one place too long, her joints would ache. Waited too long for some kind of positive sign, from some kind of benevolent force, her heart would stop just short of caving in. And it had, a few times. It was a little scary to think that she was subjecting herself to that kind of madness all over again -- in retrospect, she'd gone through enough. More than enough. Each time it happened, she found that being left by someone close to her, whether voluntarily or not, never got easier. It just became familiar -- kind of like slipping on a pair of her oldest sneakers. They weren't really comfortable anymore, were tattered and ripped and worn from ages of love and use, but they were familiar. Every curve and dent in the thinning soles told the story of a different kind of journey she'd embarked on, a mountain she'd had to climb just to taste a breath of fresh air.

These were the things Emily Fleming pondered on just about a daily basis. Unsurprisingly, she couldn't remember the last time she hadn't felt lonely. Loneliness was a lingering presence in her mind -- the most unwanted and hindering of companions, but she'd learned to make her peace with it. It took up its own little corner in her brain and as long as it didn't bleed over into everything else, every other aspect of her life -- it was manageable. The last few weeks, though, that feeling had been pushing past its normal boundaries. She missed someone. Someone who she wasn't even sure missed her in return. (The safe answer was no. Cynicism always resulted in either the expected outcome or a pleasant surprise.)

Not that there was any way to contact him, keep that probably already feeble connection intact -- because he was under that wretched spell that had been placed over the Hogwarts grounds. While Hogwarts had done well to provide Em with a foundation for her knowledge and expertise, it hadn't done much else. She had few fond memories of the school. In shining moments, it had served as a place of learning and solace from her rather disastrous upbringing, but its walls and the people within them had also done well to chastise her for a multitude of reasons. Emily and the rest of the muggleborn community had come close to death several times in the "safest" place for young witches and wizards many more times than she could count. The Ravenclaw wasn't sure how her Gryffindor counterpart felt about the school, but he was stuck there, nonetheless.

Mindlessly turning the page in a runic codex she was perusing for the nth time (she couldn't seem to concentrate on any new material), she hoped for his safety. Hoped the dome would give way soon.

The voice at the threshold startled her and she had forgotten about the possibility of customers. Straightening up, she cleared her throat and attempted a smile. That smile flickered and faltered almost immediately upon seeing the man's face. John.

Another tricky issue. He was a person, but most definitely a subject matter, too. A pretty significant figure in her life. The one she'd thought she'd been in love with, the one she'd given herself away so eagerly to, stayed with when the secret of his marriage had been unveiled to her so cruelly. It had been quite awhile since they'd parted ways, and they definitely hadn't talked much, but Emily was almost certain he was moved on. Wasn't bothered by the whole thing anymore. Nothing about what he'd said to her could've been rooted in positive intention. Quite a bit had been bleak, actually. (Dull and useless as wet cardboard, her conscience reminded her. He thinks you are equivalent to a piece of wet, soggy paper.)

And he'd been just about the last person on earth she could've expected to saunter in in the middle of the day. "Hi." Finally she answered him, resisting the urge to wince at the telltale crack in her voice. "What are you doing here?" The next part came out before she could filter it, but she didn't demand, didn't glare. Truly, she was curious. What on earth could he possibly have wanted or needed from someone he apparently considered on par with a dirty dishrag?

The crack in Emily's voice said everything that she didn't say. She was just as surprised to see him as he thought that she might be. After all, the breakup hadn't been.... good. He'd said a lot of things in anger that he didn't mean, and he'd been hurt to find that she was leaving him for someone else. It was ironic, really, because he he had been the one cheating on her and his wife, both. Emily had stayed with him even through that, but he couldn't even leave her with a kind world as she went off to try and find happiness. What kind of low creature was he? He'd really let his temper get the best of him, but hopefully he could fix that here and now.

She looked the same as he remembered, it felt almost too easy to look at her, as though he'd done it for years already. She was beautiful like he remembered, too, but he tried to ignore that. He was not here to begin another affair. He just wanted some.. closure. Closure? No, that wasn't right. He wanted a new chance to be friends the way they had never been. Just friends.

“I came to see you.” John began, knowing that she would likely be incredulous. “Just to talk. I don't like how we ended things.” He explained. “Do you have a minute?” He asked. This was giving her an out, but she had to know him better than that. He wouldn't let her take it. If he had, he wouldn't have cornered her when she was working to try and talk to her. He wanted her to be there, having to listen to him.

“I missed you.”

"To see me."  She parroted, eyebrows flickering to raise a fraction in an almost-scoffing sort of manner before she backed down, moving to close the book. Her slender fingers folded on top of it, a sort of anchor to hold herself there to the moment, to hold onto something (even if that something was, as it usually was, herself) in case that churning urge to run in her belly materialized to something more tangible. Feeling his eyes scanning her over made her skin crawl -- and not in the way one might've expected. It was like he was waking up all her nerve endings, good and bad, however intentionally or unintentionally. God, she couldn't afford this. Not right now. Not when things were... sort of on the upswing for her. Did he just... innately know the best time to wedge right in and fuck everything up? It seemed that way.

"You don't like how we ended things," Emily repeated again, squeezing yellow-green eyes shut and white-knuckling her hands together. Did he realize how he sounded? How trite and false it all seemed? There was a small part of her that wanted to grasp at those straws, to attempt to find a shred of genuine emotion in anything he was saying -- but after the words that had been exchanged between them months ago, it seemed an insurmountable task.

"Yeah." Em finally answered, exasperated sigh escaping through her suddenly very dry mouth. "I have a minute. Not exactly hopping with customers this time of day, as you might've noticed." She gestured insincerely to the space around her and slouched back into her chair, sure she didn't look very inviting. Not that she owed him anything. This was her space. Her home. He'd walked in. Just like the last first meeting they'd had. It wrenched her insides to think back on that. "I don't know how I feel. I know I feel sick when I see you. I don't know if that tells you anything." She muttered, not meaning to bite into him -- if his feelings were hurt, though, she supposed she wasn't sorry for it. A tiny ping in his armor today was nothing compared to the way she'd been through the fucking wringer the last time they'd seen each other.

She certainly wasn't happy to see him, that much was absolutely clear. John didn't know what he'd expected, but it hadn't been this. He didn't think he'd find Emily open-armed and ready to fall back into swing with him, but he hadn't expected to be stonewalled like this. He hadn't expected her to cut him down like he meant nothing. They had shared something, once, something that meant a great deal to him. He couldn't, wouldn't believe that the two years she spent saving him hadn't also been profoundly moving to her. He couldn’t and wouldn't believe that she no-longer cared for him at all.

He hesitated, trying to think of something else to say. His words had been rehearsed to the point where they lost their meaning. He meant what he said to her, he really did miss her and he really did hate the way they left it, but he was so determined to say the right thing, to do things properly that he'd planned it too much. It likely did sound cheap in comparison to his parting shot. He'd been cruel to her in their last meeting. He didn't remember everything he'd said, though he was sure that she remembered it, but he did remember comparing her personality to a piece of wet cardboard. Surprisingly, and despite how much he missed her, he wasn't convinced that it wasn't still accurate. He would never confess that to her, but he still didn't fully regret the words that passed his lips. She was intelligent, but not interesting. Still, she had meant so much to him in his time of great need. He couldn't let her go without a fight.

Now, things had calmed down, he hoped. Maybe she was in a happy relationship with whatever his name was now, and she didn't need him anymore. He was in a happy sort of relationship too, but it didn’t stop him from feeling an Emily-shaped hole in his chest. He wasn't the kind of person who let people go easily. He remembered and collected friends the way he collected lovers. He wanted a string of them to go to when he was bored or afraid of being alone. John drank too much when he was stuck with himself. He hated the man who cheated on the love of his life and betrayed his daughter's trust. He needed a distraction from that, and Emily had been that distraction so well for so long.

He frowned at her, unsure what to say. She felt sick when she saw him. Why would she feel sick? Did she regret being that person she had been with him? Did she regret staying with him after he left his wife? Some might call her a homewrecker, but the home had already been broken, long before her. There was no reason to hate herself for breaking up a marriage. Maybe she didn't, though. Maybe, in time, she had come to hate him for it, instead. Maybe she hated him for ruining two—three—lives. Or maybe he'd never know and he was just projecting his own feelings onto her. He certainly didn't feel sick when he looked at her. He felt... strangely complete. He'd truly missed her.

“Why do you feel sick?” He asked, finally. “What kind of sick?” It wasn't according to plan and it bothered him a lot that she felt that way. He couldn't explain it to himself. “If it's bad, Emily, I'll leave.” He decided, finally. “I just wanted you to hear my piece, but if it's too much for you, I'll just go.”

He was frowning at her, looking dumbfounded and eerily like a lost puppy. Surely he'd understand why she felt the way she did. Surely he'd understand that it was all a little more complex than blatant resentment and that, of course, she still harbored emotion for him, even if it was a shadow of what she'd felt before, and even if it was getting close to residual. Residual? Maybe nostalgic was a more appropriate term to use. Emily knew that John would always occupy a space in the inn, even if she'd tried her hardest to oust all of that out. It was a pattern with the men in her life, from her father to John to -- well. She didn't want to get ahead of herself. That was all still budding. It was new. It deserved its own, separate chance apart from this fiasco.

The cage of her chest was heaving a little as she leaned forward, closing her eyes even tighter than the last time and pressing index and middle fingers to her temples, massaging in circles. "All kinds of sick." She stopped for a moment to collect her thoughts, to try to will the pounding in her head to flutter away into the ceiling or somewhere far away from her thought processes. "Headache. Nausea. Anxiety. I don't know, John, I guess my body doesn't associate your arrival with sugar and spice and everything nice anymore." Emily didn't feel like she was totally in control of her body as her limbs moved, scrambling out from behind the desk and descending the two steps in front of the large podium she perched on all day to meet him on the ground.

"You don't honestly think that it'll be too much for me, John, or you wouldn't have come. You know me better than that. Of course you know I'll be fine. Maybe it'll give me some clarity. Peace of mind. Whatever you're hoping to accomplish." She rose her eyebrows and leaned her weight on one leg, crossing her arms across her chest decidedly. She was thankful, for some weird reason, that she looked nice today. That her hair wasn't flat and boring, that she was wearing rings, bracelets, a necklace, however dainty -- that she was made up and wearing a decently put-together ensemble. It made her feel dignified and even a little arrogant to show him that she was just fine without him.

Emily looked at him intently, chewing on her lip the way she so often did when deep in her ever-whirring thoughts. "I guess I'm just confused," The witch began, giving him a little ground, a little lee-way to wrench his way into the currently one-sided tirade of sorts. "I don't know why you'd be interested in repairing anything. You don't seem to view my personality or talents as assets to keep around, and you certainly aren't interested in me for any other reason, what with your tart of a new girlfriend." She sucked in another breath then and shook her head, putting a flat palm parallel to their bodies to offer a white flag of surrender. "I'm sorry, that was uncalled for, however true. What I mean to say is that I'm just not quite sure that you have any other reason to be here other than to try to scrub away some of your own guilt, if you have any. I suppose, though, that you can... say your piece."