memorize the lines and try to work within the frame [dennis]

Thinking about that morning at the hostel was weighing on him; he could feel it internally, in his body, as well as externally, in his expression. Dennis didn't really want to think about it, or talk about it. He knew - everyone who wasn't naive, knew - that people weren't just good or just bad. But it was still difficult to reconcile things of conflicting natures into one person. Edith obviously wasn't a "bad person" - Dennis didn't really think a lot of those existed. However, a stubbornly Gryffindor streak in him sometimes wished things were that easy, that good and bad people were easily distinguishable from each other. That good and bad were so easily identified.

He and Edith agreed - evidently - that there was something really wrong about playing god with people's memories. On an emotional level, the fact that she'd done it to someone he'd known, even cared about despite Foxglove being almost a stranger, was impacting. Dennis didn't let go of old hurts very easily. But he didn't want to think about any of this, because it made him uncomfortable. Especially in moments like this. He tried to put it to rest as she spoke again.

Obvious? Dennis swallowed his lemonadey rum and placed his glass back down on the table. After a moment's hesitation, he nodded. When he'd read it the first time, it had been obvious - well, seemed obvious - but then, as the weeks had gone on he'd started doubting himself. It was true that there were ideas in there, phrases, that had been taken straight from their conversation that night, but there was always a chance that she'd just used them subconsciously. Maybe there hadn't ever been a chance of that, and he was just paranoid and overthinking things. Again.

"I know," he said, then had to qualify with, "sort of." Really, she said. "I mean, I didn't wanna assume." There was something familiar about the way she was talking. Again, he was afraid to assume things - and make an idiot of himself - but if he had to guess how she felt right now, he knew what he'd go with. Dennis felt like she was reaching out. Hadn't it worked like this that night? Confession for confession? He distinctly remembered offering her truths in an attempt to stop her from leaving. Honesty for company, or something like that. Was it possible that that was what she was doing right now? Offering him this unguarded explanation like an open hand?

It wasn't cheesy. Not to him. "Yeah, I... It was intense, wasn't it?" Dennis asked this question out loud, a crease in between his eyebrows. He mumbled the words, still somewhat reluctant to let them out into the open. Now that was going to take some time to process. "Intense" was how it had felt at the time, and how it had felt the next day, but with time and distance in between that night and himself, it was difficult to know what was and wasn't true. It was easy to recolour things if you thought about them too much. Easy to change the way you felt about something if you reframed it and picked it to pieces repeatedly.

After all, if he was wrong, and that feeling had been one-sided, then it put him in a vulnerable position that he didn't really want to be in. Dennis wasn't the sort of person who easily believed that other people liked him, cared about him, wanted to spend time with him. He had a hard time believing that other people gained positive things from his presence. This had felt especially true (again) for the past few months. Some kind of post-breakup self esteem hit, maybe.

He held his glass in one hand in front of him, feeling the coolness of the drink against the warmth of his palm. He wanted to sip but he wanted to talk too; the latter won out. "I haven't talked about that stuff before," he said quietly, only to her. He'd said something similar that night, but it seemed important to bring up again now despite his obvious discomfort. "Not like that, anyway. Weirdly easy," he said, shrugging a bit to soften the weight of his words with some casualness.

Edith shrugged. “You would’ve been right.” She had assumed that she wouldn’t see him again, and for a while she had thought she was right about that. But especially in that moment, in that final decision to publish the borrowed words alongside her own, she was convinced she wouldn’t have to explain herself. She had proven herself wrong, now; she didn’t find herself minding much at all. His assumptions would have been right, at least. He hadn’t beat around his question; are you gonna write about yourself too? It was a direct leap from that to the column, or at least as direct as it could have been with all the detours their conversation had taken them on that night.

Intense. Edith nodded slowly. “That’s one word for it.” She had come up with other words for it in the weeks since: easy, eye-opening, eerie, heartbreaking. Stupid came to mind once or twice. She figured she had come out of the whole thing better than him; at least, she didn’t think she regretted anything about the night -- except maybe being completely honest with Elias -- and she didn’t think the same could be said for him. Telling her things; telling her things. She hoped he hadn’t felt pathetic -- was that the word he had used -- after the fact. She didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to be proven wrong again.

She studied his face as he spoke again, seeing the truth of his words written there. “Yeah.” She had said something to that effect that night, had admitted that she hadn’t been able to talk to her own boyfriend about some of the things she had detailed. It had been easy, she thought again, not having to explain things. He already knew how the muggleborn protocol had unfolded; she hadn’t had to backtrack when she mentioned the DA galleon, didn’t think she would need to explain why it was still in her backpack on the bench next to her; she didn’t need to have some grand diagnosis to explain why her thoughts were stuck in the past.

Weirdly easy, he said; she smiled. “Get out of my head.” She couldn’t think of a more serious thing to say. This was what she had been searching for, had appreciated so much before, only having to say things to reiterate them because they already knew. She didn’t want any sort of confirmation that he regretted any part of it, didn’t need to know that he wanted to take back a word he said.

“I keep waiting for the catch.” She shifted herself, propping an elbow up on the table and resting her cheek on her fist. “The ‘we can talk about all of this, but…’” Earlier, even an hour ago, it had seemed that the ‘but’ was followed by ‘we’ll never talk again’; now she wasn’t sure what to think. She blinked the all roads lead to dead ends thought out of her brain and shrugged; after a second of hesitation she took a drink to drown out the thought, too.

She glanced up from her drink after realizing she had been focusing on that instead of the man across from her. “Elias didn’t want to read it,” she said quickly and quietly, leaning back to put some semblance of space between her and the truth, her eyes still on Dennis. “I mean, he did read it, but I don’t think he wanted to.” They hadn’t had a specific conversation about it, but she knew from previous experience that he blamed himself for what happened during the war and to her, specifically, even though she hadn't met him until months after. Elias only knew this version of her, the post-war, traumatized sort, hadn’t seen firsthand how much it had changed her. She was back to not wanting to have to explain things, but just as equally she hadn’t wanted to disturb what they had -- it was so fragile already.

What other words were there? Anomalous. Strange. Unnerving. It hadn't been bad, he decided now (though that had been something he'd been tossing around for a few weeks now), but it was definitely... weird. With her here in front of him, speaking so candidly, there was no way he could bring himself to hate that night. Even the parts that still made him cringe. He could probably thank the alcohol for her honesty, but that didn't matter so much to the teenager. Being here with her, now, hearing and seeing her speak, he could somehow tell that she meant what she said. And that meant a lot to him.

Dennis smiled a bit in response to her comment about being in her head; now he felt like they were just repeating things back at each other. More echoes from a night two months ago. The teenager didn't speak though, opting to raise his glass to his lips again instead. It was still awkward, to have this openness. He downed his drink swiftly. If she meant what she said - and she looked like she did - then maybe they didn't need to know all of the regular things about each other that friends tended to know. Maybe she didn't need to know things like his timetable, or his favourite classes or the kind of music he liked. He didn't need to know how old she was, or what sports she was into.They'd sort of skipped the small talk and headed straight for the big talk. Maybe that was okay.

"Hmm?" The man raised his eyebrows, wondering what she meant by the catch. He placed his glass back on the table, sat up a little straighter. "Oh, right," he said, nodding as he understood. And he did understand. In Dennis' experience, easy things weren't ever really easy. Unlike Edith, though, his mind spun a few endings for that sentence without much effort. But I didn't tell my boyfriend about talking to you, he thought first. Why was that, exactly? She hadn't said; he hadn't asked. But we can't really be friends. Not the regular sort, anyway. Not when he was still in high school and she was a proper adult, with a job and a boyfriend and presumably a network of friends. But I obliviated... - no. He didn't want to finish that one.

"But only when we're drinking?" Dennis joked instead, holding up his now-empty glass with a bit of a smile. It wasn't something he'd usually make fun of - especially not after what had happened last term, with Clem. But Edith had said that sappy shit, and then she'd said get out of my head, and it was sort of true anyway, wasn't it? Besides, the drinking thing had come up last time. If he really was in her head, then she'd get that, wouldn't she? He placed the glass back down again, this time leaning back in his seat. Finally, he was starting to feel the effects of drinking a few drinks in such a short period of time. A sort of dullness at the edges of his senses. He felt better now than he had when she'd first approached him. Less anxious.

He frowned deeply at her next words though. If Edith had any intention of endearing him to her boyfriend, she wasn't doing a very good job. He didn't know her that well - at least not in the regular way - but even he had some idea about what writing that piece must have meant for her. "What?" he asked bluntly, a defensive sort of disbelief creeping into his expression. The drink in his system urged him to go on, to disregard tact. Her boyfriend hadn't wanted to read...? "I don't get it," he said after a moment's pause. Dennis intentionally toned down the disapproval as he spoke, leaving out some observations that would probably be inappropriate for him to make. "Why not?" he asked instead.

“Right,” Edith agreed, shrugging to slough off some of the weight from her shoulders. She was happy that he didn’t finish her sentence that time, almost afraid of what would have followed the ‘but’ in his world. It was probably better this way, not knowing. She hesitated when he opened his mouth to speak again, but her look of mild apprehension shifted to a smile as he completed his thought. Edith picked up her glass to toast to drinking. “It could be worse.” Sure, but it could be better, she supposed.

Edith shrugged again, dismissing that anyone could have a hard time believing Elias hadn’t wanted to read that column. Dennis didn’t get it, and he said as much; what she would give to have this be another one of those he just knows sort of moments.

“I--” she started, a crease between her eyebrows before she shrugged. She had thought about this so often, had come to her own conclusions without asking him for confirmation. It was easier that way, no risk of ruining things if she just never brought them up. Still, she had trouble explaining her own reasoning to herself, sometimes. Elias had witnessed first hand how she dealt with the aftershocks of the Dome, had held her together that night as she had cried herself out on the floor. She had started to tell him things -- as much as she could while getting snot all over his shirt -- but he had offered her the out, in case she wasn’t sure. And he had kept offering her the out since then, never pressing her for details.

“He has to fix things,” she continued, looking down into her glass, one hand drumming fingers against the side. It was easier to talk about her boyfriend to Dennis when she wasn’t looking at him. “It’s just what he does. He wants to fix things and make my life better.” It must be killing him now to know all these new details about the woman he had lived with over half a year, been in love with longer; all these new details with no way of helping her, no way to undo the past.

Edith glanced up, but only briefly, before dropping her gaze back to her drink. “And then I dump this on him, out of the blue, literally no warning.” She dropped her hands from her glass and scooted back, shoving one hand in her pocket, pushing the hair out of her face with the other. “Nothing more than, ‘Would you mind looking this over?’ after days of speaking maybe four words to him.” She shrugged, shoving her free hand to join the other in her pocket. “And he can’t fix it. I don’t even know what there is to fix.” I’m still not sure what I’m trying to achieve with this column, she had written. “Not pointless, but what’s the point?” Hadn’t that been one of Dennis’s questions?

She balled her hand up into a fist, placed it on the table, and rested her forehead on it, effectively shutting everything out with a curtain of dark hair. “Fuck.” She should not have been talking this much; she certainly shouldn’t be talking about her and her boyfriend’s business with anyone other than herself or Elias; alcohol, she excused herself. She had waved off the questions about this topic from other outside parties, hadn’t she? Dennis didn’t seem like an outside party -- not after all of this.

She sat up quickly, blinking the sat-up-too-quick bright spots out of her eyes. “People know about us--” the Edith and Elias ‘us’ not the present ‘us’ “--even though that’s nobody’s business. The Ministry knows so now it’s only a matter of time before I cost him his job and then everyone will know about us and--” Edith stopped suddenly, shaking her head, not letting herself dwell on that inevitable milestone in their relationship. “I’m just creating more problems he can’t fix.” She had included him from the get go; she wouldn’t have published anything under her own name if he hadn’t wanted her to; maybe he was just too polite to say anything.

"Okay..." So Elias had to fix things. What did that mean, exactly, in this context? Did he not... know? Edith had said she hadn't talked to anyone about all of that shit, but he hadn't really though she'd meant that she hadn't said anything about it. Dennis' frown deepened as she went on. "Wait," Dennis said, their words overlapping, the disbelief back in his voice again, "warning?". She felt like she needed to "warn" him about what exactly? It wasn't out of the blue, or it shouldn't have been. Hadn't Elias asked her about it? Hadn't he wondered what she'd done that year, or wondered how it had affected her? He felt a dissonant flutter in his chest somewhere; was the Edith he knew anything like the Edith anyone else saw? It all seemed so obvious to him, but apparently there was something either he or the others were missing.

Dennis wasn't really in any sort of position to be giving out relationship advice, and he knew it. His one and only relationship had fallen apart because he wasn't a very good partner. He wasn't a good communicator - couldn't talk about his feelings, or his past, or his thoughts. It wasn't that he hadn't noticed or felt the flutter of odious red flags scattered between December and June, or that he hadn't cared - it certainly wasn't that. He was just bad at holding onto relationships. Bad at holding onto himself, too. Anyway, point was, he knew that he wasn't the sort of person whose opinions anyone did - or should - care about when it came to relationships. But suddenly, he had a lot of opinions on hers.

Dennis just watched Edith slump forward on the table, at a bit of a loss for words. He knew what it felt like to care about someone and feel guilty for your impact on their life; wasn't that sort of his thing, the cyclical process of fucking everything up and feeling guilty about it? He'd lost himself down that path more than once. This didn't feel the same, though. A part of him was still grappling with the idea that she was seeing some pureblood from a family who'd arranged his engagement for him and worked at the ministry of magic. "His ministry job," he said unnecessarily, as if he was clarifying something. As if he didn't know already. "You're scared your column is going to cost him his ministry job," he said, this time actually clarifying.

There were a lot of things that he wanted to say just then. He wanted to ask about Elias' job at the ministry, his family's position on mudbloods, whether or not he cared about that shit. Dennis wanted to know what Elias thought about the war, where he'd been, what he'd done. Working at the ministry while your girlfriend wrote about how the place had fucked her - and a lot of other people like her - over seemed kind of messed up to him. His words - the ones Edith had referenced in her piece last month - rung in his head. Sure, lots of people worked at the ministry, but he didn't think many of them were seriously involved with people who hated the institution. If Elias didn't know how she felt, then that felt like a pretty serious display of ignorance. And if he did... Dennis shook his head.

There were a lot of things on the tip of his tongue. As Dennis leaned forward, however, concern in his eyes, the words that came out weren't the ones he'd expected. It wasn't the defensive words, or the irritated words. Just the very genuine ones. "But why didn't he want to read it?" he asked quietly, his question soft but insistent. "Doesn't he want to know?"

Edith fell quiet, replaying the words that had tumbled out of her mouth mere seconds ago. her thoughts weren’t cooperating enough for her to figure out what was wrong with her, why she felt the need to answer the question with so many words -- had she answered the question? what was the question? -- why being honest was so easy in that moment. She wasn’t sure if she only had alcohol to blame for her honesty; she figured that Dennis being here had something to do with it. They had already gone well past the bounds of regular conversation, what was a little more honesty on top of everything else?

“I--” she glanced up as Dennis spoke, but she couldn’t keep eye contact once he finished his question -- it wasn’t so much a question as it was just stating the obvious. A neatly succinct and bordering on accusatory summary of her last few minutes of rambling. It wasn’t a question, so did she need to answer? “Er-- yep,” she answered anyway, her mouth set in a hard line, her gaze still avoiding his. She picked up her drink after another hesitation, taking a swallow, eyebrows raised as she stared at the ceiling instead of over the rim.

She knew how it sounded, was intimately aware that this should the least of her worries. Take down the Ministry, with the small caveat of not disturbing her boyfriend’s life anymore than she already had. He didn’t technically work for the British Ministry, anyway, she had reminded herself on countless occasions. Besides, that wasn’t even close to being the part of her relationship that was weighing on her the most.

Edith leaned back, one hand in her pocket, the other still around the glass that she had pulled closer to her. She didn’t want any follow up questions; she was already getting too close to saying things that weren’t her business to say; wasn’t her job focused on only revealing stories if the storyteller wanted them to be? Wasn’t this just some other sort of story, all the reasons she and Elias were complicated? She was still focusing on her glass but she caught Dennis’s movement; it was a few seconds after his questions before she looked up at him.

He has to fix things, she repeated internally, unsure how to be more clear than that. He wants to fix things, make everything okay, even when the things are seemingly unfixable. Realistic or not, the need was still there and she wasn’t making it any easier. She didn’t know how to clarify anything she had already said; it was all so obvious to her at this point, so internalized, and so not-talked-about.

“It’s… easier not to know, sometimes.” She swallowed hard, holding his gaze. Just because it was easy didn’t make it right; she knew that. But he had read it; he did know. So what if he didn’t go out right away and quit his job? That didn’t make her any less grateful for him. “I have a fairly firm track record of not talking about that stuff.” She started again with a nod. “Ever. I never wanted to.” Some of her words were ringing familiar. “He was ready to listen if I ever had wanted to talk about things, but,” she paused to shrug. Talking about the good things about Elias seemed so much more personal. “Things were easier for me, too. People not knowing. Now I’m all--” vulnerable, she finished silently, shaking her head.

She picked up her glass and drained it, shrugging again as she replaced it on the table. “People expect things now.” Her gaze left Dennis only briefly to look for the waitress, eager to get themselves some more alcohol. Looking back to him, she shrugged again before scratching idly at her cheek. “I still don’t know what I’m doing,” she reasoned, mostly with herself.

Easier not to know? "Yeah, I guess," Dennis said, clearly unconvinced. He had a lot more that he wanted to say, a lot more he wanted to ask, but he kept his mouth shut instead. It wasn't his place to criticise her; he didn't really know her, after all. Then again, as she held his gaze now, Dennis doubted that he had to say anything for her to feel his hesitation. They were there again, back in the space where they didn't really need to go into details. He hoped they were, at least. He hadn't imagined her words earlier. Maybe she could feel the skepticism he wasn't voicing.

Hypocrite, he thought. How could he be so judgemental when he doubted he'd do anything differently in her shoes? After all, Dennis and Clem had never had a proper conversation about Colin, or his year spent up north, or the year after that. He knew what Edith was saying; Clementine would have listened if Dennis had wanted to talk about his parents too, but she'd never pushed to know more than he'd offered, and he'd been thankful. Then again, he thought, look how that had turned out in the end. Was it possible to really be with someone and not share these parts of yourself? These important parts? Dennis didn't know. Part of the reason he'd loved being with Clem was because of how she'd taken him out of that place inside himself. He'd loved her for it. Still did, kinda.

That thought hurt a little, so he drew himself back to the present.

He nodded slowly at her next words. She and Dennis were the same with this particular thing; they'd said it more than once, that they didn't talk about this. He supposed he just hadn't followed that line of thought to its obvious conclusion. "Now it's all out there," Dennis finished for her. Now she was exposed. Did she regret it, then? Giving up her anonymity? She'd described it as necessary, but was that the same as wanting something?

His thoughts drifted back to Elias and the questions that surrounded him and his relationship with Edith. Maybe Dennis was just hypercritical of it because the whole relationship thing hadn't worked out for him. After all, he knew how hard it was to talk about any of that stuff at all, let alone with someone who didn't - couldn't - understand. Even if Elias had participated in the war, even if he'd fought, even if he'd lost someone he loved... it still wasn't the same for him. He hadn't been inducted into their society as a child and then later blamed for it. There hadn't been people in power who hated him for what he was.

"Expect what?" Dennis urged. Expect her to... not be living with someone who worked in the ministry? He could see why some people might expect that sort of thing now. Her piece last month had literally been called Ministry of Miseries. It must seem strange to people, as it did to him, that her partner was a pureblood. A traditional one, even. "What does he think now that he has read it?" Dennis mused out loud, leaning back into his chair. Then he shook his head, "I guess you haven't talked about that. Does his family know you're a writer?" He glanced back up at her inquisitively, sure that he didn't need to clarify; he wasn't asking if his family knew she wrote, rather if they knew what she wrote.

“Now it’s all out there,” she agreed with a slow nod. She had clung to that maybe no one will read it feeling for as long as she could; sure it might have been a lot of wasted effort to put so much work into an article that went unread, but wouldn’t that have been better than it actually being successful? Privacy, safety, her contented this-is-enough feeling; she had placed everything at risk for the byline. Necessary, she reminded herself, closing her eyes for a couple seconds. The less-than-enthusiastic fan mail, the office visits, that inevitable meeting with the MInistry’s press office that she kept putting off; this was all part and parcel of finally doing something, right? She’d have thought it’d have made her feel a bit better, then.

Expect what? Edith shrugged. “Some grand gesture, some amazing exposé, sweeping reform…” She waved a hand in front of her, letting him take his pick. “Like, I wrote that so I must have something big planned.” She laughed. “Apparently no one thought I was dumb enough to publish it without a plan.” But she was; she never had a plan. Still didn’t. But those same questions had come up before, when she had first quit her job at the MInistry. There was the shock that it had happened, followed by the disbelief about why it had happened, then the smug looks when talking about the International Statute of Secrecy, and lastly: the look of pity when it became clear that Edith hadn’t thought things through any farther into the future than where her next drink would be.

“Er--” They hadn’t really discussed it. She’d given Elias  the article and left the apartment; she knew she wouldn’t be able to be there while he was reading it. She had come back after a while and there hadn’t been some huge exchange of words. They were actual shit at communicating verbally and she was well aware of it, but he hadn’t brushed her off, didn’t protest when she told him she was going to publish it as soon as she could. They were much better at expressing themselves physically, and not just in the makes-her-want-to-blush-just-thinking-about-it sort of way. She couldn’t very well explain it to herself, let alone try to explain it to Dennis.

But before she could even form the rest of her hesitation, he had moved on, assuming correctly. Edith had nearly smiled at how accurate he was, but she stopped herself as he continued to his next question. “Yes,” she said quickly, before shaking her head and adding, “And no.” She blew air through pursed lips and shrugged. “Mostly no.” She glanced away, looking for that elusive waitress again, then back to Dennis when she was nowhere to be found. “I don’t think--” she knew “--the news of me quitting the Ministry has made it quite that far, yet.” She assumed he was asking about his parents, specifically, though she was still blurry on some of the details involving the sisters as well.

As far as the elder Dörflers knew, Elias and his roommate were colleagues. Edith was prolonging the inevitable; she didn’t want to push Elias to tell them before he was ready but now -- after the  column -- the longer he waited, the worse it was going to get. She was usually better at ignoring one particular conversation they had had: responsibility to the community, the family, the magical line. He had said all of that before all of this. He had been so dense, had been so much better, but when the recollections were all there and laid out clearly for her, just for her to ignore them some more… Edith shrugged again. It was this, this feeling of having to explain this to people, to have to defend something that shouldn’t need defending; this was why they didn’t know. God, she hated how obvious the whole thing was. She hated that it was starting to make sense.

“I thought it would be better saved for Christmas. Just wrap all the presents with the newspaper. Ruin a family holiday with it all.” She shrugged again, though this time she added a lopsided smile: the waitress was finally coming back. “More of everything, please and thank you.”

"Yeah, maybe we should storm the Ministry," Dennis joked lightly, as if he were in any sort of shape to be storming anything right now. Radical muggleborn revolution, what an idea. Edith would have to lead the way, he thought amusedly. The only time he'd been to the ministry of magic was for his hearing, and he didn't exactly remember how to get in, or how to get around once inside. All he remembered was being led down further and further into the depths of the building, wishing he'd asked Dean for help after all. It was a scary thing to face alone. He'd felt like a child that day.

There had been a time when Dennis Creevey had considered the ministry a place he might work when he "grew up". At eleven or twelve, he'd heard from one of his yearmates that there were super secret magic-science departments there, where witches and wizards tried to solve seemingly unsolvable things. As a child, Dennis had been driven by a ravenous sort of curiosity about everything - especially magic. The prospect of working on finding out all kinds of new things, and working on groundbreaking science - with magic - was wildly appealing back then. It unsettled him to think about now.

"Oh," Dennis said again, the syllable apparently a recurring placeholder for responses he didn't seem to have. Yes and no? He let her stumble through the sentences as he tried to put it together. "Shit," he added, but the word was said casually, an afterthought. He didn't know what to say to that; he didn't know enough to comment properly. Who cared if her boyfriend's parents knew what she did for a living? Who cared if they were traditional? Elias was living with Edith now; he obviously didn't care too much what his traditional parents thought. Dennis smiled at her joke, then followed her gaze upward as she ordered more drinks. He just nodded at the woman to confirm Edith's request.

"That kind of stuff matters to them, then?" he asked, glancing back down at his empty glass. She'd been joking, but the truth of that particular element was laced neatly through her words. A part of him wanted to stop asking these questions; there was probably a reason that none of this had come up when they'd spoken a few weeks ago. It wasn't any of his business and he'd be blind if he hadn't noticed how uncomfortable she was talking about it. Another part of him, though, wanted to know.

Now that he was sitting here with her, a few drinks in him, it was obvious that he hadn't imagined that pervasive sense of familiarity when they spoke. Dennis hadn't ever been very good at reading people, but here it felt a little easier to guess her thoughts. Maybe that was why this particular part of her irked him; it was a mystery that he just didn't get. So even though he probably should have dropped it, he didn't.

“Shit,” Edith agreed; that was probably the best way to sum this whole thing up: shit. She had thought about telling them, a couple times, and as much as she would like to claim that they were, they weren’t always drunk thoughts. But she was good at talking herself out of things sometimes. Elias had forgiven her for a lot of things he had every right to be mad about, but she was pretty sure that this wouldn’t be one of those things. She had told her own parents, and that was the extent of her responsibility. She was good at convincing herself about things, too.

She mild gratefully at the waitress, following her with her gaze to make sure she got started on their order right away. But Dennis spoke again and she lost focus, turning to look at him instead. That kind of stuff. It sounded so much easier that way, trivial almost. “It is, yeah.” It wasn’t like these were things she figured out after she and Elias had started dating. They were all so obvious long before, yet she had somehow let herself get attached anyway. It seemed Elias had the same train of thought, anyway. The whole falling-for-him thing had been so gradual that she hadn’t noticed it until it was too late. There had been an opportunity to move on, when she had switched to night shift, gave herself a little bit of space, reminded herself that he was engaged. But then he wasn’t engaged, and what? That was good enough for her? She was still fuzzy on the timeline of that whole business anyway. It was easier for everyone just to not ask.

It’s not my prejudice, it’s theirs, he had said the last time she had brought it all up. She hadn’t pushed him any further, but now she was starting to wonder how long she could keep herself refraining. “He went to Durmstrang,” she started again, her eyes still on Dennis, no drink to focus on instead. “They don’t let muggleborns go there.” She paused to swallow, though her mouth was feeling dry. “I doubt he had even met a muggleborn before the tournament.” She tilted her head in Hogwarts’ direction.

“I dunno,” she finished. He had ‘circumstances of family’ just as much as she did. It wasn’t a comparison that she liked to make, but on the really bad and doubtful days, it was the sort of thing that she needed to regather her thoughts, to get them away from the looming destruction of their relationship. It’s easier not to know, sometimes, she reminded herself. And just because it was easy didn’t make it right, she reminded herself again. The waitress reappeared an Edith smiled again; she was grateful for the distraction. She reached quickly for one of the shot glasses before Dennis could get another idea.

Edith was past the point of toasting to anything; she swallowed the whisky as she simultaneously forgot that it was supposed to be distracting her from thoughts about her seemingly doomed relationship. “It took him a while to tell them about the engagement,” she shrugged, her words a little blurry around the edges. “Or lack thereof.” She leaned back with a sigh, pulling her beer close. “So who knows how long it’ll before they know we’re living together living together.” It was meant as a joke, but Edith forgot to laugh. At least her parents weren’t the sort to hound her about marriage now that she was seeing someone, though somehow she thought it would be easier to explain it all to them than it was to explain it to Dennis.

"I didn' know that," Dennis said, raising his eyebrows a little. A part of him wanted to reel with this information; what happened to the muggleborns in the Durmstrang area? If Elias had been a muggleborn, what would have happened to him? Briefly, an image skimmed the surface of his mind. He would never forget the morning that the ministry employee had been sent to their house to explain everything to their parents. He'd only been nine years old then, but it was seared into his head. Did they still tell them, he wondered? Was there somewhere else that they went? Dennis had only heard of Hogwarts as an option for magical children for the United Kingdom; maybe Germany and Russia and wherever else Durmstrang accepted students from had other options.

He didn't let himself get to carried away with this line of thought, however, because he instinctively felt that it would derail everything that was happening here right now. He purposefully relaxed his shoulders, made sure his hands didn't curl into fists involuntarily.

Dennis only remembered his plan to drink her drink as she was already downing it. Belatedly, he reached for his shot glass too, drinking it quickly before moving onto the bigger glass, no longer caring at this point exactly what was in it, or considering the fact that he'd probably need to be leaving shortly. He raised the rum absentmindedly, hesitating before his lip touched the glass. "That's intense," Dennis said dimly, trying to draw parallels to the modern muggle world. High schools that only accepted white kids or something. Nothing felt intuitive. He zoned back in as she spoke again, his green-brown eyes finding her more hazel ones with sudden clarity as he realised what she was saying.

"He hasn't told his family about you," Dennis said, meeting her eyes. It wasn't a question. Even the way she'd phrased it - who knows how long it'll be before they know - was wrong, somehow. Distracted as he was, he couldn't pinpoint it, but instinctively he felt the lack of Elias in that sentence. He felt the way it was shaped around his parents instead, like it was somehow on them to just spontaneously possess the knowledge without being told. When Dennis rephrased her sentence, he corrected it without really noticing what he was doing.

Dennis shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. He couldn't shake the feeling that things weren't right. Still, he'd sounded harsher than he'd meant to and it was time to backtrack a little. "Sorry," he said quickly, looking down at the table, interrogating himself internally. He had never been particularly good at dissecting his feelings in any sort of healthy way, but right now he wanted to, badly. "I just... I'm sure you guys are happy or whatever - " not that there was any way for him to actually know that, " - but you get it right, how it sounds?" The teenager placed his drink back on the table, flicking his eyes up to meet hers again.

He really didn't mean to be confrontational; she was obviously defensive of her relationship, despite the parts of it that sounded like red flags. The parts that she'd brought up, he reminded himself before quickly dismissing the thought. He shifted forward in his seat, reached inward for an explanation, played with his glass between two hands. He held her gaze, silently pleading with her to understand that he was being genuine. Things had gotten really comfortable in the past few drinks; he didn't want to fuck it up.

"Obviously the only people who really understand a relationship are the people in it," he started very diplomatically, picking his words as carefully as he could, "but at face value it seems like a kind of shitty situation." So much for keeping his mouth shut, then, he thought. Dennis didn't want her to go, or to be angry with him. He knew he was in a weird position here - he knew he could have just nodded and drank and said nothing. But that thing, that thing they'd talked about a moment ago - the weirdly easy of it all - compelled him to speak. A part of him didn't think she'd want him to keep quiet, either. He didn't know if she wanted to hear what he was saying exactly, but when she'd asked for his thoughts on anything else - her column, the point of it all - he felt like she actually wanted to hear them.

Edith glanced up, her brow knitting together as she comprehended what he said, how he said it. He knew the answer to his (non)question without her having to say anything, and she hoped that he wouldn’t make her. It was hard enough telling it to herself, ‘coming to terms’ with it, whatever she was doing with the information. She didn’t bother to correct him, either; the term ‘family’ was too broad; they were down to just his parents and brother not knowing. That was something, right? She swallowed, her eyes still on his; her breathing had quickened a little, she thought.

She didn’t look away when he did, but she took the chance to take a healthy sip from her beer. The whisky was catching up, but all she wanted was to drown the feeling in a bit more alcohol, especially as she heard the whooshing of the fireplace behind her once again.

Happy or whatever. Edith still wasn’t answering, but if she had, she probably would have told him that they were closer to the ‘whatever’ side of things at present, though overall she’d have to go with ‘happy’. But he looked back at her and she felt herself nodding. “I know.” She got it, knew exactly how it sounded. He was right -- because of course he was -- and it was all her worries of the past year and a half bunching up on her. But now, in the context of the whole column, it was so much more obvious, wasn’t it?

She had opened her mouth to say something else -- what, exactly, she wasn’t sure -- but Dennis beat her to it, so she stayed silent. He was right, again, but she didn’t jump on his statement to point out just how right he was, that it wasn’t any of his business, that he should just butt out because really, she and Elias were the ones needing to figure all of this out. She nodded instead at the second part of his sentence; it was a kind of shitty situation. “It’s...“ She glanced down at her glass before looking back up; she had lost count of how many drinks she had, but she was pretty sure that didn’t matter. This didn’t feel like an alcohol-fueled conversation anymore. “Not ideal,” she finished, sighing instead of exhaling normally. She thought that if it came down to it, and he had to make some sort of ultimate choice, her or his parents, it would be her. But she didn’t want that, didn’t want him to ruin his relationship with them for her sake.

“It’s just--” she started, but she hardly knew how to explain it to herself. “I feel--” she started again, but those words weren’t quite right, either. She shook her head and shrugged, dropping her gaze back to her drink, to her hands around the glass, her thumbs stacked neatly, right over left. “He makes me feel safe,” she said finally, though it must have been only a couple seconds since her last hesitation. “Not like, physically -- I mean, that too, but not just that -- mentally, whatever.” She chanced a glance back up, but she dropped it just as quickly. There were still pieces of her that she hadn’t shared with Dennis, and she intended to keep it that way -- partially because a big chunk of those things had to do with that obliviation. She could only imagine how this might have turned out if she hadn’t gone back on leave, had been required to attend and testify at his hearing -- there probably would have been a lot more yelling that night several weeks ago.

“Like a lot of the time,” she looked up as she shifted in her seat, straightening up a bit, finding some words even if they weren’t the right ones. “I don’t even think about talking about this stuff. I can actually think about other things, nice things, because I’m not so focused in on my own thoughts that they’re just so completely overwhelming.” Her words were coming quickly now but she was still managing to keep her volume low. She reached a hand up behind the lens of her glasses and rubbed her eye quickly before dropping her hand back to her lap and leaning forward against the table. “Not that I want to just brush all this to the side because I know it’s important and I actually feel like I’m doing something, but it’s almost like forgetting without actually --” She stopped and leaned back, keeping herself from crossing the line toward talking about obliviation. “So fuck his parents,” she added with a bit more volume and a lot more finality.

I know.

Dennis nodded, thankful that she hadn't reacted defensively, even if he could sense the defensiveness across the table. Dennis wasn't usually so sure of himself, but maybe that was part of the magic of being with someone who obviously thought about things the same way you did. And the alcohol, of course.

Edith started and restarted her sentence a couple of times and Dennis listened silently, freely sipping on his drink while she spoke. He had things he could interject with here, but he didn't want to interrupt her flow. Not when she was being so candid. Something about the way she spoke to him made him feel like it was important for him to listen. Undoubtedly it had to do with the fact that he knew - not just guessed, or assumed, but knew - that there was an element of verity here, a certain tone through at least some of her words, that only he had experienced. In that way, it was important that he listened. He suddenly found himself wanting to be here for her too, and not just himself.

Dennis nodded. He'd give up just about anything for that feeling too, that safe feeling she was describing. Dean had done it for him, for a while. He'd described it as feeling here, like his existence was firmly rooted in current, present reality. Like his tethers to everything weren't fragile, or even if they were, it didn't matter, because the thread with Dean's name on it was made from steel. That sort of security was priceless. He loved Dean, he really did - had, maybe - but that situation was completely different to Edith's. The disparity in their feelings made him uncomfortable to think about now. He missed Dean, still. Felt a little guilty about disappearing for months. But those feelings were for another time.

And Clementine... Well, with her he hadn't felt quite that same secure feeling, but he had found a way out of his head, the way Edith was describing now. She'd taken him outside himself; what could be more precious? Dennis knew exactly what Edith spoke of; what a relief it had been to be able to think about things like hanging out with Clem, or future dates or past memories spent in clandestine nooks throughout the castle? It felt sacrilegious to think too much about those things now.

Security, escape. Who could say no to that? Who wouldn't give up just about anything to have those things? Dennis grimaced a little, more at his own thoughts than her words. It sounded too similar to a different thing they'd spoken about. A different imperfect thing that was just as impossible to turn your back on. He didn't think she'd be comfortable with him making that comparison, even in his head. He took a long sip from his glass, tilting his chin up a fraction as he finished the liquid.

Placing the glass back on the table, Dennis nodded. This part, at least, they were on the same page about. "Yeah, fuck his parents," he agreed, his words slightly mumbled. He ignored the voice in his head that pointed out that the parents weren't the ones keeping her a secret. The whole thing made him feel defensive. For Edith or for himself - for muggleborns in general - he wasn't sure. Whatever, though. He understood it at least, even if there were still parts of it that he wanted to pick at, wanted to question further.

"Talking about it now, it's different isn't it?" Dennis asked. It was mostly rhetorical; he was describing his own thoughts as much as guessing at hers. Besides, she'd almost said as much many times over. It didn't stop it from feeling good when she said it, though. He was lingering on one of the things she'd said, but moving on from the Elias thing. Mostly. "I mean, when I think about all of that stuff, most of the time it's..." Overwhelming. Unhealthy. Dennis gestured with his hand, aware that he probably didn't even have to say it out loud. No words seemed to fit; every metaphor sounded too dramatic, too girly. "...All twisted up," he settled on. Thinking about it, or imagining trying to talk about it, in any other situation, with anyone else made something in him want to shut down defensively.

Edith glanced down, her hands back on her glass, turning it slowly instead of drinking it like she really ought to be. Fuck his parents was her mantra of the moment, though she was painfully aware that it wasn’t going to solve anything. It made her feel better, though, momentarily at least. Dennis agreeing with her -- or at least not disagreeing with her -- made her feel better, too. She should probably consider telling these things to Elias; wouldn’t that be what a mature adult with a healthy relationship would do? She wasn’t sure which part of that -- mature, adult, healthy -- applied the least.

It’s different, isn’t it? “Very,” Edith said quickly, nodding before draining her glass about halfway. Eyes back on Dennis, she nodded again as he continued; he didn’t need to finish his sentence; she knew exactly what he meant. Most of the time is was nauseating, so choking that she had made a point to do whatever she could to not get in that headspace. It’s why she went back to work, why she never reached out to anyone she knew before the war, why she bothered to meet new people that had nothing to do with her. Things were blurry now; everything was coming together, all parts of her life, and it, too, was overwhelming. All twisted up, he said, and she nodded again.

There wasn’t nearly as much hesitation as there should have been. She had only second guessed herself a few times throughout their most recent conversations, she thought, only paused a few times to wonder if she was saying the wrong thing or if she was overstepping. It was easy. It was different. It was almost like she wanted to talk about it now, but Edith didn’t know where that feeling had come from, or why it was happening with Dennis. It couldn’t have been just a muggleborn thing -- she knew plenty, had talked to more the past six months than she had in her entire life, probably -- but she had no idea what it was. Their that year experiences had been different in countless ways, but there was still some inexplicable pull, words spilling out whether she wanted them to or not. A different sort of safe.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said that it meant a lot. This--” she drew a hand through the air between them, the we “--means a lot.” She nodded before shrugging a shoulder after another beat. “Kinda sucks that I couldn’t just run into you in London again.” She tilted her head toward the exit of the pub, probably not in the general direction of England, let alone London. She was getting ahead of herself, assuming they’d manage this again; still, she felt more confident now about there being a next time than she had last time. They had talked about so much by now but she was pretty sure they wouldn’t run out of things to say.

“Iii do not love it here,” she concluded. Not the Three Broomsticks, specifically, but just this close to Hogwarts. at least she hadn’t seen the actual bricks of the castle in a year and a half. She glanced back at Dennis, her thoughts still on the school. “Why’d you come back?” There wasn’t a point in going back, but there wasn’t a point in leaving -- isn’t that what he had said? Her thoughts ticked past that and landed on all roads; her gaze stayed trained on him as she reasoned that there must have been something; she didn’t focus too much on the fact that she probably would have done the same.

Dennis looked at her as she agreed with him, hesitating for a moment and then nodding too. Somehow she'd followed along with his thoughts despite their conversation lingering on other things. "This means a lot," she said, emphasis on the This. Dennis didn't know what to say to that; it felt too weighty to have been said at a booth in the Three Broomsticks, which had him second guessing whether it had been weighty at all. Maybe Edith just said things like this. Maybe it was normal for her. Maybe...? But no, he couldn't even follow those thoughts to their conclusions.

It was especially hard to twist her words with his more irrational insecurities when she was sitting right there. Her presence cut through his overworked thoughts like a knife; bringing with it, clarity. He knew what she meant, he thought. Right now, he knew. He felt too akward to say anything though, and was happy when she moved on.

London again, she said. He smiled a bit.

By now, his thoughts on the last time they'd met were properly muddled. The alcohol was obviously an affecting element there; his memory of the sequence of events wasn't exactly linear, and he knew it. But it was more than that. He'd thought about it too much, in too many different, sometimes warped, states of mind. Being with her now was confirming some parts of what he'd thought he'd imagined, but it was also dismissing others. Remembering things was a tricky business, he thought distantly. Now, for example, he was pretty sure she'd just said that she'd been wanting to see him again. It took on a strange meaning here, but he was reluctant to follow that thought. The one that connected this feeling and the fact that her boyfriend didn't know he existed. If he thought about it too much, he started thinking about the things he didn't really want to fixate on, like Edith's situation with Elias' parents and - a red ponytail flicked by in his mind's eye - other things.

"We could do London again," Dennis offered hesitantly, following her lead and pretending like the last time they'd met wasn't sort of depressing and absolutely an accident and potentially disastrous. No, he thought, it had been easy-ish enough so far to just pretend that the other stuff didn't exist. Like their drunk conversations could exist in isolation. It made hanging out less complicated. If she wanted, that was. Assuming that other people wanted to spend time with him - assuming that they liked him or whatever - not exactly a current strong suit. He shrugged. "I'll be in London in a couple weeks."

Dennis's eyes were on his drink when she asked her next question, and his lips quirked into a bit of a smile again. This time it was a bit more sarcastic, had a sardonic edge to it. "Good question," he started, stalling. Why was he still here? Dennis wasn't completely sure. The summer had been kind of... messy. He'd spent most of it drunk, alone. Tense and stressed over things that he had no control over, but also tense and stressed over things that he did. He'd berated himself a lot for stupid decisions, whether or not they'd turned out to be actually bad (like avoiding Dean, which was something he knew he should rectify soon) or only bad in his head (like the night with the woman sitting across from him).

"I didn't know what else to do," he answered finally, honestly. His magic was sort of shitty, his knowledge of bureaucratic processes in the wizarding world almost non-existent. "School breaks the past few years have almost all been shit," he said, playing with his glass on the table. Had he told her that he'd slept in parks and stuff? That he nicked cash from muggles and pulled some shady magical sleight of hand to pay for hostels to sleep in? "I dunno if I could get a proper full-time job - wouldn't know where to start." He couldn't really just pop back into the muggle world again, either. No formal education to speak of. No paperwork history describing his existence for the past few years.

Outside of the small towns he'd shifted around in up north, Dennis had only really been in London. Could he get a job that would pay for ridiculous London rent? "I dunno, maybe I'm stalling," he admitted, glancing up at her. "I just thought, if I could scrape a couple of NEWTs..." he trailed off with another shrug. After a moment's pause, he picked up his glass and finished its contents.