go, can't you go [michael]

why is nobody listening?

july 2003. a sunday

brandon, county durham

Cordelia liked Michael's little park home. It was loads bigger than her flat, and there was a yard. The green space was a nice change of scene from London, even it wasn't particularly well-manicured. The second bedroom is more of a craft room, though Michael wouldn't call it that. Cordelia today was investigating the bookshelf again. She had woken up before him, which was a surprise, but she was a little afraid of the coffee machine and wasn't quite ready to attempt real breakfast. So, a glass of orange juice in hand, Cordelia was just browsing.

It was refreshing, Michael's house, smelling like pine oil and full of knickknacks. She poked idly at a VCR machine up on one of the bookshelves, sticking her hand in for the hell of it. There was a book that looked to be on mermaids, or possibly kelpies? Certainly some water creature. Cordelia hadn't noticed that one before. She pulled it off the shelf. No dust on the dustjacket. Cordelia smiled to herself. She shouldn't be surprised, she wasn't surprised, but little things like no dust on the bookshelf made her smile. Michael's mark on his space was the absence of marks or something. It was feeling more and more like home. She flipped through the book. It wasn't on moon whales, but maybe Callum would be interested in giving it a look. Michael could probably handle Callum. He should meet more of her friends besides Ari, sometime in the nearish future.

Her stomach growled. Cordelia, admitting to defeat, went to raid the fridge. There were eggs and bacon in there, a tomato, more orange juice - she could put together a full English - well, maybe just a fry-up, she wasn't up to beans today. She pulled the egg carton out first, closing the fridge door and intending to go put it on the counter, when a familiar fancy card caught her eye.

Ginny Weasley and Cordelia Leighton weren't close and she certainly had no personal interaction with Harry Potter in, well, ever, but Cordelia had been invited to the wedding of a generation too. How could she have turned it down? Even if she had beef with the groom (that the groom didn't know about), Ginny had been her general during the worst year of Cordy's life, and also this was the scoop of the year.

Cordy put the egg carton down and removed the invitation from the magnet pinning it to the fridge. It looked like it had barely been touched- like it had gone straight from the envelope to the fridge.

There was some movement behind her - Michael, waking up and coming for coffee, no doubt. "Morning," she said, turning to greet him, invite still in hand. "Was about to make a fry-up, that okay?"


@Michael Corner
shoutout to @Ginny Weasley and @Callum Kirk and @Ariana Laurier

When he woke up he felt like death, but it was nothing he couldn’t fix by brushing his teeth. It was almost disorienting to wake up alone. More often it was Michael who woke up first. Sometimes he had to leave for work before she was awake, but more often he just stayed, warmed by Cordelia next to him, calmed by her slow breathing. He’d had a late night, though, and an uneasy rest; this morning it was just him and the bedding, rumpled and empty.

The sun through the blinds was getting in his eyes; with resignation Michael stood up and shuffled to the bathroom to wash his face. Over the running water of the sink he heard, from the kitchen, the vacuum-seal of the refrigerator door being opened; he finished brushing his teeth and wandered out to investigate.

Cordy was standing by the fridge, egg carton on the counter next to her. “Morning,” echoed Michael, and grimaced. “Yeah. I can’t eat right now, though.” The coffeemaker made a creaking, complaining sound when he flipped the top up to put the filter in; in a mutter he added, “Shut up.”

The coffeemaker needed some persuading (a solid whack) but once it was steaming he let it percolate and leaned on the counter, to take a bit of weight off of his feet. “What’s that there?” he said, noting for the first time that she was holding a card; he held out a hand to take it and she flipped it around so he could see.

“Oh,” he said.

Michael had decided early on not to be weird about Ginny getting married, and had then ignored his own decision for months. It was impossible not to think about -- not only had Ginny been his first real girlfriend and a key source of wartime stress and misery, but she was a famous Quidditch player getting married to the Chosen One, which meant he heard about it on a roughly weekly business. Michael literally couldn’t avoid thinking about it, unfair though it was to his current girlfriend. He glanced sideways at the coffeemaker and changed the topic feebly -- “It’s nice out.”

She smiled at the sight of him, his hair damp from patting it down with water. "Sleep okay?" It was a fair question: he almost never woke up after her, and he had shifted quite a bit in the night. Cordy wondered if she should be worried. Being worried was a domestic thing to feel, but she was enjoying being a little domestic.

Michael slid past her, en route to abuse the coffee machine. Cordy gave him a quick peck on the cheek as he did. "Make me a cup too, thanks." She would have made one earlier, but she and the coffee maker had an understanding - in the food chain of the Corner household, Cordelia had enough power to sass the car in the garage as Michael tried in vain to make it go, but not enough to get coffee without going through her boyfriend. She regularly suppressed the need to apologize to the machine. It seemed like it was waiting for her to mess up and go the way of Michael's old girlfriends. Cordy didn't know how many had come before her, exactly, but assuming at least two, three more since school days seemed reasonable. Maybe more - she had more dalliances than that since graduation, hadn't she? It had yet to come up.

"What's that there?" Cordy frowned, glancing down at the card in her hand. The little return RSVP slip was sticking out the side, she could feel it falling into her palm. After a second, she flipped it around so Michael could see the lettering. He let out a lacklustre oh, sliding his gaze back to the coffee maker, which was burping in a slightly threatening manner.

Cordy, watching Michael's face, nodded slowly. "It is." Pause, wait for a reaction, then she continued, "It's supposed to stay nice all week. Including the wedding." She shook out the RSVP card and set the rest of the invite down. "Thought you would be going, of course."

“Yeah, fine,” said Michael. “Just had a late night.” It was most of the way true -- he’d had dinner too late, and stayed up too late reading, even before he’d dreamt (of roaches taking over the house. He was still overstimulated and crawly all over.) She kissed him on the cheek as he passed -- had to stand up on her toes to do it -- and he managed a small smile.

Cordy was wary of his coffeemaker, a sentiment he couldn’t blame her for. Michael sort of enjoyed the antagonism (and he felt like the coffeemaker did too) but by now, he and coffeepot were so deeply into this war of attrition that poor Cordelia, having joined in several months late, had no chance of catching up. Frankly Michael was running out of ways to threaten the thing, though he thought that Cordelia still needing to ask him to ask it for coffee was keeping it happy, for now.

“Right-o,” he said, getting a second mug and the sugar out of the cupboard; the coffeemaker hissed when he set them down on the kitchen counter, sensing that he was giving it more work to do.

Michael was a little hopeful that Cordelia was going to let him get away with his pathetic change of subject, but she was looking at him intently in a way that suggested otherwise. Michael kept his gaze trained on the coffeemaker, a little tense. He was glad he’d thought to put on a shirt but he was antsy -- he was unpleasantly conscious of the fabric where it draped on his shoulders. Including the wedding, said Cordelia; he couldn’t help feeling a flicker of frustrated, guilty annoyance that she hadn’t let it go, and knew those feelings had played straight over his face, like a teenager being told off.

The invitation been on his refrigerator for months -- in fact, it’d been there probably since Cordelia had been coming ‘round his place -- so he was, he thought, within his rights to not understand the presumption. He looked back at her, gave her a wary stare and fussed absentmindedly with the hem of his shirt. “Don’t know why you would’ve,” he said, holding her gaze-- his voice was lower and more grumbly than he wanted it to be, so he cleared his throat, even though he didn’t have anything else to say about it.

The first time she was at the house in Brandon, after a month or so of Michael exclusively sleeping over at her place, Cordelia had noted the invite with a little bit of fear. If this didn’t work, if this went sideways, would that make the wedding awkward? She wouldn’t want to do that to Ginny, though she couldn’t give a hoot about how the groom felt. Eventually, as she and Michael settled into a happy status quo, the invite had become part of the background noise. Holding the heavy paper in her hand now, Cordy couldn’t believe she had let it slide so far into the background. A week to go, and the RSVP slip still blank. Good lord, Michael.

Cordelia watched his face, the softness disappearing from his features when she mentioned the wedding. It was only a moment, but long enough to trouble her. He broke his staring match with the coffeemaker long enough to catch her eyes. He was being cagey, sullen even, and she could not understand.

Another day, another topic, and she would have let it rest. But this was bothering her. Her brow furrowed slightly as she leaned back onto the side of the fridge. The shirt she was wearing, one of Michael’s, big on her, slipped slightly off one shoulder, and she tugged at the neckline to readjust it. “Don’t know why you wouldn’t be going,” Cordelia said, spinning his phrasing back to him. “Do you have problems with Harry or something?” She was pretty sure she knew what the problem was, actually, but maybe by acting a little bit dumber than she was, Michael would realize on his own he was being stupid about it.

Cordelia was still holding his invitation, had even taken the little R.S.V.P. card out so that he could see she’d noticed it. Michael was starting to regret that he hadn’t just binned it when it’d arrived. He had a sense that his logic -- he hadn’t wanted to accept the invitation, since he didn’t want to go to the wedding, but he hadn’t wanted to decline it, since he didn’t want to look bitter -- was, at best, unsound. Cordelia wasn’t stupid; she would see straight through that. And, Jesus Christ, he just hadn’t thought that this would matter so much.

He could admit to himself that he was being immature, but the Venn diagram of things Michael could admit to himself and the things Michael would let other people accuse him of had one overlap (pretension) and everything else -- e.g. immaturity -- was nobody’s business but his own. Five years ago, Anthony hadn’t thought much of his refusal to testify against the Carrows, and though Michael hadn’t thought much of himself either, it’d irked him anyway. Tony hadn’t been pulped at brekkie in front of a couple hundred of their peers, which had seemed to Michael like the kind of pronounced difference in experience that might have affected their feelings on related matters.

Likewise, Cordelia hadn’t dated Ginny Weasley.

Michael glanced back at the coffeemaker, conceding the staring contest (with Cordelia, not the coffeemaker), just before sparks started flying (from the coffeemaker, not the staring contest, though he was getting nervous that this was becoming a spat) and quickly put a mug under the spout for collection. “Not with Harry,” he muttered, and looked back at her. He felt like an arse griping about the bride without justifying it first, so he said, “Come on, would you go to your ex’s wedding?”

Ah, there it was. Cordelia pushed down a self-satisfied grin, only letting the corners of her lips twitch slightly upward. He had looked away, too. That was a little victory already. Not that this was a fight, with points being kept for either side. It was more like the beginnings of tug-o'-war. Cordelia was determined to pull her boyfriend over the line in the grass.

Would she go to her ex's wedding? Cordelia tapped the little RSVP slip against her cheek. "Probably," she settled on saying. It was true. There would be no way in hell she'd miss Ollie's wedding, they were good mates now. Brennan was still on her shit list, but after their recent interaction, she was inclined to start forgiving him, very slowly, sometime soon. If he ever managed to settle down, the wedding would probably be extravagant and Cordelia was not in the business of missing a good party. Maybe not Gregory's wedding, though. Apparently, he was vegan now.

Of course, that wasn't fair to Michael. None of Cordelia's ex-boyfriends were student revolutionaries with her. Up to now, she had been exclusively dating people who weren't in the DA, or even better, had been pulled out of school that year. She didn't know, but she had a hunch Michael had been doing the same. Her thoughts kept circling back to this mystery list of women Michael had seen before her.

The coffeemaker burped and released the dark drink, finally. "It wasn't that bad of a breakup, I heard," she said, trying to coax Michael to admit to whatever the real problem with Ginny was. "Is it DA shit, then?"

Probably. Michael didn’t bother to hide his doubt -- he pressed his lips into a thin line, opting not to say anything for fear of succumbing to baseless accusations. Don’t lie to me. That was unfair; he didn’t think Cordelia was lying to him -- just oversimplifying. Who wasn’t guilty of that?

Not Michael; he’d taken a whack at it thirty seconds ago, which Cordelia was stolidly not accepting. He stopped fucking with his shirt and put his hand on the counter instead, stared at the way his tense wrist made the fingertips tap on the tile, which was an easier thing to focus on than which of his ex-girlfriends’ weddings he’d skip, given the opportunity. Most of his other relationships hadn’t lasted long enough to hurt (and most of his ex-girlfriends probably wouldn’t invite him to their weddings.)

Michael’s relationship with Ginny hadn’t ended so badly, even -- which, apparently, Cordelia knew (God, he had hated Hogwarts gossip.) Her next question was a little more tentative, and frustrated him a little more -- what, in his whole life, wasn’t D.A. shit? He’d spent the last five years controlled by D.A. shit. It was a question she already knew the answer to, and they both knew it. She was such a journalist sometimes -- couldn’t let a non-answer lie.

Making two cups of coffee at once was an operation of vigilance, stealth, and switching mugs under the spout as quickly as possible at the opportune moment, to which he was beyond glad to give his attention to right now, but it was a fairly brief affair. Not quite long enough to let him formulate a better excuse. Michael pushed a full mug and the sugar bowl along the counter to his girlfriend. “Cream’s in the refrigerator,” he said quietly, and, more quietly, “‘Course it is. That still doesn’t make this your problem.”

"Don't look at me like that," she said, half mock pouting, half genuinely put out by Michael's sudden tight expression. She hadn't expected him to be so affected by her answer. She tried to give him a smile, attempting to play it off a little more jokingly than she had said before. A sad attempt, all in all, and sadder still if Michael fell for it. He was tapping with his fingers on the tile - unconsciously, her hand reached up to her hairline, scratching lightly at the raised scar there.

She knew the answer before he said it. Of course it was DA shit. What did either of them have that wasn't DA shit? Work. Drink. Weed. Vapid distractions and shallow friendships.

"I suppose not," Cordelia conceded, turning her attention briefly to the task of retrieving the cream. Quiet hung over the kitchen for a moment as she poured the cream. She stared at the blossoming pattern in the dark liquid, curling into her thoughts for a moment. "Guess it doesn't really matter." She tried to keep her tone light, but it came out just soft instead, soft and timid. She took a long sip of coffee, leaning against the fridge facing Michael but not quite looking at him. "I'd like you to come, is all. Thought you would be going, but I guess I should have mentioned sooner." It felt childish even as the words were coming out of her mouth. Too late now. She pulled her head up, watching Michael's expression.

Michael was getting a little tetchy now -- not at her, he had to reassure himself, just in general. Coffee would help -- he glanced back at his machine (he was no longer looking at Cordelia like that, at least) and resisted the urge to smack it again. “I wouldn’t go to a single one of my ex’s weddings,” he said stubbornly. “That’s just the polite thing to do.”

It was rich of him to lecture her about what was polite when he hadn’t even bothered to R.S.V.P., of course, but she accepted his argument without much of a fight, which took him more aback than it would’ve if she’d thrown it back in his face (he was too used to his friends, he thought with a little twinge of guilt -- they wouldn’t have let him get away with this hypocritical, self-centred tosh. They’d had about a dozen years more than Cordelia had to practise fighting with him.)

It was kind of sweet that she wanted him to go, anyway.

He glanced back at up her as she was sipping her coffee, cradled his own cup in his hands. He hadn’t put cream in it to cut the heat yet, so it burnt his lips; he twitched with most of his body and lowered it again, letting the warmth sit almost uncomfortably against his breastbone. “Alright, it’s not about her being my ex,” he said, though Cordelia had doubtless deciphered that already. “I was a real arse to her in seventh year, I don’t reckon she’d be glad to see me at all, let alone at her bleeding wedding.”

The polite thing to do. Cordelia snorted, wished she hadn't almost immediately after. Polite was relative, she supposed - not showing up was polite, but actually sending back the RSVP? Well, that had to be as rude as it could possibly get, letting the host know not to prepare an extra seat. She took another sip of coffee, both hands curled around the mug, looking at Michael's face over the rim. "It's good," she mumbled. The damn machine would have burnt her cup if it had known which was which, probably.

She pushed the cream across the counter, her fingertips lingering on the carton. There was part of her that wanted to just drop it now - she wasn't obligated to press Michael on this, he wasn't the subject of an article this time. They could go back to not talking about it, easily. That was the comfort with Michael. Not having to talk about some of these things. This thing. The background noise of the whole relationship. Resting easily in the quiet.

Unfortunately for Cordelia's own wellbeing, she was an incorrigible busybody.

Michael spoke again - Cordelia watched his hands, curled around his own mug. "That's it?" One eyebrow quirked upwards. "None of us were at our best that year. I'm sure if she still resented you for it- " a glance back at the invite - "she wouldn't have sent that." She wondered, briefly, how differently she and Michael saw Ginny. To her, she was a leader and a childhood friend, their camaraderie good but at enough distance that they had never squabbled. (Any thoughts about Harry, Cordelia had kept to herself.)

Michael kept his eyes on Cordelia and she kept her eyes on him, barely even looking away to sip her coffee. She was devoted -- he was as impressed as he was annoyed. What, did he have to stare her down now, as he sipped his? It felt like he did (but he didn’t; the coffee was far too hot to keep a straight face.)

Lightly, he tapped his index finger against the rim of the cup, and didn’t break eye contact, even though he was starting to feel nonplussed. He knew he should feel guilty -- it wasn’t the same as feeling guilty, but damn close -- and he was starting to itch under her gaze. Maybe the crawling feeling had just never gone away. He did his best to relax his shoulders.

That’s it?

For a moment Michael didn’t have anything to say to that -- his jaw went just slightly slack. If he’d been any more awake he’d have done a double take; as he was, one sip of coffee into what was shaping up to be a lousy morning, he only blinked.

Finally he found his voice. “No,” he said, “I reckon not.” He turned his most base, instinctive judgment around his mind for a moment -- you don’t understand -- but then she would ask him to make her understand, and he wouldn’t know how to. She wasn’t looking directly at him anymore, though, so he didn’t look directly at her, and gave it a shot. “I just had a really different idea what the D.A. should be, and I wouldn’t let up trying to tell her what to do with it. I just -- I thought they would beat us. Like, in the end, I thought they’d win.” He turned his mug round in his hands, watched the surface of the dark liquid within as it wavered with the movement, then added, “I still sort of think they did.”

Michael came unfocused, blinking at her with a blankness so complete that Cordelia was sure she must have bludgeoned him when she wasn't looking. She ran over the sentence in her head, found the mistake in her first, knee-jerk reaction to his plight. Aw, hell. That was the joy of revisions - being able to proofread her words for tone. Not be left stuck with whatever fell out her mouth, clumsy and judgemental.

She set the coffee down, wrapping her arms under her chest as if they would shield her. Michael didn't flip it back at her, though, which took Cordelia off-guard. He wasn't looking at her, which is only knew because she checked, of course, she wasn't looking at him after sticking her foot in her mouth like that.

Cordelia looked up anyway, a soft cross between pity and concern settling on her expression. Oh, Michael. She hadn't been privy to whatever it was the leadership of the DA had bickered about, but she could imagine it, knowing Ginny and now knowing Michael. Well, thought she could imagine it, anyway. It never hurts to have a different perspective, she thought. That would have been admirable, to challenge leadership, wouldn't it have been?

"I still sort of think they did."

Cordelia's arms dropped from her torso, looking up at Michael momentarily aghast. "You think--" Now she felt bludgeoned and dazed. "How-- what--" She gave up. "That doesn't make any sense." If they had won, if the Carrows had won, how could they be here? How could her father be at home with Mum? How could she be beginning to let herself feel any happiness?

She set the coffee on the table with little care and closed the gap between her and Michael, arms out to wrap around him. "They did not," Cordy said softly, almost more to herself than to her boyfriend. "They did not win."

Michael could tell even without looking at her that he wouldn’t want to see her face -- it was startling how easily, how naturally he could fall back into culpable self-satisfaction, back into that simple certainty that he’d made his point in the most effective way he could have. When he was eighteen he had felt everything so strongly and so immediately and the guilt of upsetting her would have dropped like a stone in his gut; now, five years on, it grew more slowly until her stuttering had landed on -- that doesn’t make any sense.

“Sorry,” he said in a low voice; she crossed the little kitchenette almost suddenly, giving him only barely enough time to hold his coffee out to his side. Cordelia’s voice was quiet when she spoke, enough that he could only hear it because somehow, with hot coffee spilt on his hand and backed into the counter and unable to see her face, his mind was remarkably clear, clear enough to focus on her small voice and his shaky breathing. He put his mug down.

“Well now,” he said uncomfortably. “I said sort of, mind.” He rubbed her back with his dry hand, a little absently, before he had to gently extricate himself and settle against the counter again, finally looking at her. It sank in almost suddenly that she had been younger than him during the war, and he had to take another sip of coffee.

After a moment, he said, “I mean, we were underground in April! I said for months that the longer we put it off, the worse it would be when they caught up to us.” He slanted a glance at her -- unlike Ginny, he was dead certain that Cordelia knew exactly how bad it had been, even though she’d never brought it up to him, even though he’d never brought it up to her. They had come just shy of the topic before they’d had the sense to trail off, like they had with everything else about that year. Suddenly he wasn’t so grateful for that mutual agreement.

But he trailed off anyway, wiped his hand on his shorts. He felt like a fool holding this conversation in underclothes. And this had all been about that wedding. “Ginny didn’t come back in April,” he said, like it was a confession.

She buried her face against his chest, fists balled up and pressing against his back for as long as he let Cordelia hold him. He rubbed her back for a moment, letting her squeeze tight for longer than Cordelia had anticipated. Still, there was an aching emptiness when Michael pulled away. Cordelia didn't need constant physical affection, she was usually content with the amount Michael could tolerate (little), but right now she felt cold without his warmth.

"Sort of," she repeated, reaching for her coffee again to have something to hold. The hell did 'sort of' mean? Michael began to explain, and it dawned on her that her boyfriend was talking just about Hogwarts as if there was a way to divorce that hellish term from the rest of the hell of the guerilla war outside the castle. Underground in April. Like that was some final nail in the coffin. Cordelia had seen her run to the Room as a regrouping, not a defeat. Through Michael's eyes, though, it must have seemed like a retreat. Was it a retreat?

"I know," she settled on saying, curling her fingers around the mug. "I was camping in there, too. In April."

She had never said that out loud to Michael before. She wondered if he had realized - she thought he had, but there had been so many of them there, and Michael almost certainly had no clue who she was back then. Cordy had been paying attention, trying to pay attention anyway, to the sixth and seventh years leading them. She shouldn't assume that was the norm.

"I know," she said again, for lack of anything new to add. "You weren't the only one paying attention when she disappeared."

She was feeling overwhelmed. Cordelia considered making her way to an actual chair but instead elected to lean against a wall and slide down, slowly, until she was sitting at its base.