as sudden as the onset of winter [cordelia]

OTTERY ST. CATCHPOLE | DECEMBER 2003

Michael’s first trip to Ottery St. Catchpole had been only months ago, at the wedding; though the wedding had been muggy and bright, the town felt sleepy and small in December -- the snow had probably been pristine in the morning, but had since been trudged into muddy footpaths. He liked it; he liked dull, dreary winters. They suited him better than cheery ones, at least, and always had.

He was shivering under his cloak, lips chapped and ears cold. He’d taken off his mittens to keep from getting ice cream on them, so his fingers were stiff and tingly -- he squeezed Cordelia’s hand, hoping she’d squeeze it back. He’d wanted to get ice cream, which precluded him from complaining about what had been his own horrible, faintly masochistic idea, but he breathed out a little cloud of air and said, “Cold out here, like,” as though it would be any warmer where he lived.

Though ostensibly they were out getting dessert before they each headed back home -- possibly together, they hadn’t discussed it yet and he wasn’t sure if they would or if they’d just do as they normally did and make that choice on the fly -- Michael was mostly sure that they had opted to do a circuit around the village first so they could discuss whether Cordelia’s parents liked him or not. It was a frankly pointless exercise, since he had worked with her parents (and her brother) for four years and had been gambling with her father (and her brother) for three, but he wasn’t opposed to discussing it just to discuss something.

He was reluctant to say he had felt one way or the other -- he didn’t want to offend her by considering her parents rude, nor did he want to flatter himself by considering himself likable, nor did he want to look like he put too much stock into his ability to read people, nor did he want to look socially inept -- so he swallowed his ice cream and said, his breath foggy in the cold, “What’d you reckon?”

@Cordelia Leighton

Michael had excused them to go get dessert in town. Ice cream in the dead of winter. Cordelia was in love. It was a little surprising to her sometimes still how enamoured she was with Michael despite (or perhaps because of!) his strange choices. Ice cream in December. Her glove with the cone in it had some drippings on the leather - the other was wrapped around Michael's bare fingers, leaning into the squeeze of affection with a little pulsing press of her own. "I hadn't noticed," she replied, tone dry but her affection clear when she knocked lightly into his arm.

“What’d you reckon?”

Cordelia pressed her lips together at the question, tilting her head like she needed to think about it. There wasn't much here to contemplate - Camilla Leighton was the only wild card here. Lowell and Lysander had been shocked when she finally mentioned that she and Michael were together, back in the summer when she had to explain that she would be arriving at the wedding with her boyfriend and not the rest of them. First, the shock that Cordelia was seeing anyone seriously enough to bring to a wedding, and then who she was dating. That had been fun, watching the series of expressions on Sandy's face as he worked out yes, it was that Michael Corner, the one from work, the one with the Quidditch betting ring and what do mean you've been seeing him for six months? Lowell had been more normal about it, thank Merlin.

Camilla, though, wasn't in this club and apparently didn't know anything about its existence. Which had been delightfully tense at dinner, for Cordelia, to watch Sandy in particular sweat when Camilla didn't understand the familiarity. Cordelia had inherited her bullshit detector from her mother - she was fairly confident that either her father or brother were getting an Earful back at the house.

"Think Mum's about to figure it out," she admitted after a moment, "about you and Sandy and Dad's extracurriculars. Maybe not today. Soon though." Her voice was light, though a little congested - the cold was turning her nose red, and she pushed her face further into the warmth of her scarf. "But, pretty sure she won't hold it against you." She glanced sideways, looking at her boyfriend's face in profile for a moment. "Reckon they all like you well enough. Dad is - being less territorial than I expected. Good job, you." She bumped his shoulder lightly again before taking another lick of her own ice cream.

She leaned into him and he inclined his head toward her, not quite low enough to knock against hers; even though it was gone in less than a second, the pressure along his arm warmed him straight through the cloak. That was, Michael thought, probably a placebo effect of some kind, but he didn’t really care -- he said, just to say something, “Really?” and bit the top third off his ice cream. 

He liked being out here with Cordelia; it was a charming village, and her parents had a charming house, and he couldn’t help trying to see it as it might have been when she’d been growing up. He wanted to know the Cordelian counterparts to the Chinese restaurant where his dad had taught him to write on the paper placemats, or the park bench he’d burnt his initials into with a magnifying glass when he was seven -- she’d been to his hometown already, so it was only fair he nosed around hers.

Having spent twentyish years in his hometown, of course, he thought it unspeakably dull; he wondered if she was thinking that about Ottery St. Catchpole now, but he couldn’t find the words to reassure her that this was boundlessly interesting to him. Or at least not the words to say it without sounding kind of unhinged.

“I’d hope not,” he said -- Lowell Leighton had been involved in the club long before Michael had been. Michael sort of suspected he’d been involved before Michael had been born. Cordelia was looking up at him -- he could sort of see her face in his peripheral vision -- he wasn’t sure how he felt about being liked well enough but he’d certainly been liked less than that, so he laughed and said, “I’ll take that.” She gave him another nudge and this time Michael did lean in enough to rest his head on top of hers for a couple of steps. Good job, you -- he was feeling affectionate enough not to mind the condescension.

He hadn’t really expected much to start with -- it was one thing to get on fine with the Leightons when he was running their betting pool, and another thing to get on fine with the Leightons when he was their janitor. Dating their daughter was so removed from those things that it may as well have been on the moon. he’d attempted at first not to bring up his job at all, but it’d taken about ten seconds for the Ministry to come up in conversation. He had another mouthful of ice cream -- it made his teeth hurt -- and decided not to bring this up. “Your mum scares the shit out of me,” he said instead; this pulled another laugh out of him, choking the last few words.

Michael bit the top of his ice cream, which just seemed absolutely mental to Cordelia on top of the ice cream in winter thing. She laughed brightly before taking a lick of her own. It should be illegal for ice cream to melt when it was this cold, she thought.

The ice cream shop hadn't been there when she was a kid - or, it had, but they hadn't done ice cream or hot drinks back then, just candies and chocolates and flower arrangements. The village seemed smaller than it once had, back when it had been It pretty much the entire world for her and her brothers. Just the distance between their house and the Burrow had once seemed insurmountable. Now, it felt like an old baby blanket, soft but far too small for her.

"She's got a nose for that sort of thing," Cordelia said, partly to explain and partly to defend Camilla's honour. "I doubt she'll do anything about it, though. It makes Dad feel normal, seems like." She left it there - they talked fewer circles around the war since July, but Cordelia still did not enjoy talking about the ever-present trauma running through them both. It would be clear enough, she thought - Michael knew Lowell was muggleborn.

Your mum scares the shit out of me, Michael said, and Cordelia's laugh came out the same time as his. "Good," Cordelia replied, "she is the scary one."

She hummed for a moment, taking another lick of ice cream. "My turn," she said after a moment. "I know Mavis likes me. What about the rest?"

Michael nudged a half-frozen bush with his leg as they passed it; the motion left little frostlike caps of water on his trouser leg. He doubted Mrs. Leighton would have needed a nose for this sort of thing to sniff him out -- by this point he was secretive only for appearances -- but he shrugged. It makes him feel normal -- he thought it might make him look sad to say that it did the same for him, but he did anyway, as best he could. “Yeah, and me.”

(At that he did look down at her, squinting against the cold, but she didn’t seem to be dwelling on it, so -- though he thought it was sort of a false equivalence and would have loved to decide right now whether it was or not -- he didn’t dwell on it either.)

It felt good to laugh with her -- less disruptive than laughing alone, at least, with the rest of this village hibernating. Privately it comforted him to feel on the same page -- they compared their metaphorical books so infrequently he was never quite sure they were. “Oh aye, if that were your dad territorial I don’t doubt it,” he said. Mrs. Leighton intimidated him more for being Cordelia’s mother than she did for any other reason, and he was rather difficult to intimidate these days. He thought he’d done a capital job keeping up conversation given the circumstances, at least. He hadn’t had quite the advantage as Cordelia had at his family’s -- she’d been sitting next to Mavis.

“Well Mavis talks that much to everybody,” he said noncommittally, though he thought Cordelia had gauged correctly that Mavis might, in fact, think she was cooler than Michael. The years he’d been the eldest and most dramatic nevertheless wouldn’t make him a fashion reporter and he had grown rather dull since the nineties. “Esther liked you too, she just can’t appear to agree with Mavis these days, don’t ask me why. My mum said she thought you were a good match when she called me out to choose a wine.” He was less sure about Ray, but he still wasn’t convinced Ray liked him.

His next bite of ice cream broke the cone in his hands; he swore under his breath.

Yeah, and me. Cordelia gave him a small squeeze on the arm again, keeping her eyes straight ahead. Men and their games. She knew that there must be some women in the club, but it seemed, by dint of the three most important living men in her life being involved, inherently masculine. If it helped Michael feel grounded, too, like it seemed to keep her father attached to reality, that was good.

Dad seemed to be doing good this year, this Christmas. Healthier, laughing more. Making more jokes about his bad leg than he had the year before. Cordelia glanced sideways at Michael, tucking her red face behind her scarf for a moment. She wondered if he had noticed any changes in her dad over the last couple years - he had only gone back to work at the end of ninety-nine, early two thousand, after Michael had started there, which seemed long enough to notice a change in demeanour - but Michael didn't really work with the other Leightons, so that seemed an unfair, self-centred question to ask.

"He can be more," Cordelia said, bringing forth a carefully cut memory of @Mary Hunt's interrogation years ago at a long-ago Easter. "He's just, mellowed out, I suppose." Or, he liked Michael - liked Michael for her. The thought brought a small smile to her face.

Mavis talked like that to everyone? "Then I think Mavis must like everyone," Cordelia figured, her tone light and warm. It was good that the other sister also liked her, Esther had seemed less enthusiastic at the event about her. Cordelia hadn't been sure if it was just the girl's personality or if she had said something wrong.

"Really?" That she hadn't expected - Michael's relationship with his mum seemed so fraught, Cordelia had just assumed she had been being polite. "That's good." She took another lick of ice cream, laughing as Michael's cone shattered. "Sorry," she mumbled, releasing his arm to brush errant crumbs off his coat. "D'you want to get another?" She wanted to ask what his step-father thought of her, but it seemed not the time with the ice cream melting onto Michael's bare hands.

“Makes one of us,” said Michael, which wasn’t strictly true. Five years on from the war he had mellowed out quite a bit, but -- given how confrontational he still was -- that reflected badly on him. He wished, more painfully than he’d expected to, that Cordelia could have met his dad. Doug had been territorial ,hadn’t even liked Michael being out of the house overnight to stay with his mother. He wondered if she would have liked his dad, though. He was inclined to think not, so he was inclined not to bring it up at all.

It was easier anyway to rest on his laurels of having gotten on alright with her dad -- it sort of blew that their attempts to find commonalities had landed first on their gimp legs, but unluck was a lot easier to bond over than really anything else. Michael had made a fair few friends on the overnight shift.

“No,” said Michael, “Not at all. Don’t worry, though, you’d know if she didn’t like you.” She hadn’t mentioned Esther, which he thought could only be because she’d been less sure about it, so he frowned thoughtfully and moved on to speculate about the rest of his family.

Cordelia seemed sort of surprised by Michael’s mum’s assessment -- he shrugged, trying to twist his wrist enough to bite the drooping side of his cone, and said, “Why aye, inasmuch’s she could know what’s good for me,” he said, but he squeezed her hand again. “She’s my mother, so she reckons she knows better than I do, but I’ll just take it as a good sign anyway.”

With his ice cream running more urgently down his hand, though, he let her hand drop and tried to salvage his cone -- Cordelia brushed briskly at his front. “No,” he sighed, “Not in the business of making obvious mistakes twice.” He finished it in another few bites -- the cold lingered, throbbing in his skull -- then dug out a handkerchief to wipe his hand, slipped his hand back into hers. “You’re the first girl I’ve let them meet,” he said, “I think she imagined I was spending all my free time in my house, like, dusting my furniture.” This wasn’t even a euphemism, which was sort of worse.

You'd know if she didn't like you. Mavis was like Luke, that way -- straightforward, with her heart on her sleeve. Esther reminded her more of Lysander -- "Esther reminds me a bit of Sandy, but less of a dork," Cordelia offered, voicing the comparison that hurt less. "I like her, too." Would Michael have liked Luke? It wasn't so hard to imagine -- maybe they had interacted, Michael was closer to Luke in age at school, but Cordelia couldn't bring herself to ask.

The two of them, Cordelia and Michael, have all these interesting inversions - him the eldest, her the youngest, the only son and only daughter, with so much time between them and their next closest sibling. Cordelia wished often for a little sister, had imagined her when she was younger and it didn't seem like such a cruel demand. She would have had a C-name too, like all the Cleary women -- Chelsea, maybe. Or Charissa. It would have been nice, a little sister. She wondered if Michael ever longed for brothers.

Michael squeezed her hand, cold and clammy but still a reassuring pressure on her gloves. "Your mum is a smart woman," Cordy said, voice light and teasing. Ray seemed nice, too -- but Ray wasn't Michael's dad, was he? Cordelia let her keening grief at Luke's missing presence rise up, twist and join with sympathy for Michael and the father she would never meet. Pushed it back down and gave Michael another soft squeeze of the hand.

She laughed, hands raised and pressed against her cheeks, as Michael tried to save the ice cream situation. When his hand came back into hers, she could tell it was sticky from the cream, which made her laugh again. She leaned her head against his arm again, shaking her head.

First girl? Cordelia blinked. "Really?" She knew, vaguely, that there had been others before her, and not a small number, either -- it seemed natural to assume that one of them would have made it home for Christmas. She felt a little honored, a little anxious. "Probably good you didn't tell me that, beforehand." She would have been nervous, clumsy, self-conscious. "They aren't so wrong though, are they? You do dust so often." She paused in their walk, pushed up onto her toes to press a cold kiss to his cheek. 

Michael grinned — Esther was probably just as much a dork as Lysander was, just a different order or suborder of dork — but shrugged, rather than besmirch her to his girlfriend. He’d gotten the impression, certainly from Mavis and a little from Esther too, that both girls wanted Cordelia to like them.

Your mum is a smart woman. “Oh, she’s in a Ponzi scheme,” he said automatically, but he turned his lips down at the ends to keep from smiling. She squeezed his fingers again. Again he thought about his father — Doug would have liked Cordelia. Again he wondered if she would have liked Doug — not many had. Again he didn’t bring it up, just wrapped his hand back around hers, inclined his head to the side when she rested hers against him, though he was too much taller than her to rest his cheek against her hair.

A breeze whistled along the path; he bit his lip against it and stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. He’d had a sense, going in, that Cordelia would feel some sort of pressure if she knew she was the first girl he’d brought home — he wasn’t sure what kind of pressure, as she wouldn’t have had anybody to be judged against, although a part of him wondered if what Anthony had said at the wedding the last time they’d been in Ottery St. Catchpole had given her some kind of impression about what his ex-girlfriends had been like — but it was a relief anyway that she thought he’d made the right call. He didn’t know, when it came to things he didn’t say or didn’t let on, what was fair and what was duplicitous.

That was a nice thing about him and Cordelia — maybe they took a bit of time to get to the point, when they didn’t need to, but there wasn’t any rush, and then it wasn’t anybody’s fault. Just an unfortunate byproduct of being two guarded people. Safety in reciprocation, he thought, in a paradoxical way.

“And you love it,” he said, but not seriously; he smiled quickly and let it fade again, pressing his lips together as though in thought. A part of him wanted to bring up next year, as though it were a sure thing — maybe next year we’ll do Christmas with yours proper — but it had surprised him already to make it this far, and he didn’t know how to handle the idea of making it further. Until Cordelia, he hadn’t really thought about the futures of his relationships, beyond mentally shoring himself up for a breakup, and with Cordelia he’d stopped doing that in like, July.

He didn’t want to make any promises he couldn’t keep, so he made an easier promise: “I’ll have to bring you by for Easter, you can see how Mavis does up the house.” The decorations for Christmas were enough already, but the pastel colours of spring had always been positively grating.

"A what?" Cordelia asked, too content to mind looking a little foolish. "What's that, the pyramid thingy, everyone sells a share in a Snidget reserve to their mates type thing?" Sandra seemed too smart for such things, to Cordy, but perhaps one had to be smart to make such a disaster of a business plan work. Maybe Cordelia was thinking of the wrong setup entirely.

It was a silly thing to occupy her thoughts, that. It was nice to let her mind be occupied with silliness. Michael's head brushed up against the top of hers and a wave of affection coursed through her again. First girl brought home -- it was terrifying, but she felt a little pulse of pride anyway.

Michael teased, Cordelia laughed. "Hush," she said, not denying the declaration at all. Her smile stretched her whole face now, cheeks dimpling at the corners. "My sinuses certainly adore you," Cordy conceded, squeezing her boyfriend's hand once again. "And my top shelves." She had already kissed him on the cheek, but it simply felt right to kiss him again. She pulled their entwined hands up to her lips, pressing them gently against his sticky knuckles.

Easter. Cordelia pressed her lips together. One the one hand, that sounded so lovely. In the short time she had to get to know Mavis, Cordelia was certain it would be some sort of glittery pastel pink affair, and the thought of Michael pressed up against that backdrop was hysterical. And it was in four months -- the longest period out she could recall either of them planning anything together, which was exciting on its own.

 On the other -- "Would it be alright if it was around Easter, but not the Sunday?" Cordy was hesitant to ask. "Just -- Mum likes us all home that day." She knew she didn't need to explain for Michael. They both had enough little strangenesses that another wouldn't really merit comment. But Camilla Leighton wasn't here to defend her own sanity, so Cordelia took it upon herself to. "It was the last hol everyone was home for. And we visit Luke, usually."

She was surprisingly calm mentioning it, explaining it. A familiar lead weight in her stomach, but no tears, no urge to vomit. She squeezed Michael's fingers a little tighter, slowed her pace down just in case her stomach did decide to rebel. "He would have liked you, I think." Her breathing was speeding up, but not worryingly so yet. "But he liked everyone, so don't feel too special." It was a weak attempt at teasing, accompanied by a weak grin. She leaned heavier into Michael's side.

Michael nodded – “I had to make her swear not to try and sell you anything,” he said, “She’s been hawking reusable food packaging since I were, like, ten.” He supposed at least those were a little more practical than Snidget reserve shares; at least he used the stuff she’d given him as a housewarming present. Sometimes.

He worried often that he came across as judgmental or passive-aggressive, when he dusted or tried to tidy her place up – that was why he generally did it behind her back – but she didn’t seem defensive, the way his mum often was when he did it to her house; Michael was glad for that. “I’m taller than you,” he mumbled, “they bother me more.” She seemed sort of touched by this sentiment; he adjusted his grip in hers and worried about whether she could taste the vanilla on his hand.

“Sure,” he said easily; he tilted his head down to look at Cordelia, eyebrows drawing together seriously – she seemed to be wavering about going on, which meant that whatever it was she wanted to explain, it was important to her. Her expression flickered, only barely perceptible, only because Michael knew what to look for now, a tightness around her eyes or something. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, that makes sense.” It didn’t really – Michael’s last holiday at home with his dad had been Easter, too, and he’d never felt that strongly about Easter as a result. But the Leightons, he had long understood, were not like the Corners had been.

Cordelia squeezed his fingers; Michael slowed down a few steps after she did, once he realised his arm was starting to pull backwards. She was still looking grave. He said, “Cool,” for lack of anything else to say, and then grinned a little. He wanted to give her some sign that he understood that this was hard for her to talk about – way harder than talking about his dad had ever been for him – but he had no idea how, so he shrugged lopsidedly and said, “Well, I appreciate it anyway.” She leaned against him; he dropped her hand to squeeze her around the shoulder, let his fingers find hers and twine between them again.

For a moment he watched some family’s iced-over weather vane rotating slightly in the wind, instead of Cordelia, to give her a moment of privacy; after he thought it had elapsed, he glanced back at her. He didn’t know what to say, so he tilted his head again as though to indicate the path around them, and said, again, “Cold.”

"I could use some of that, I reckon," Cordelia said, smiling. "Maybe next time you let her make a pitch?" It sounded very useful, and perhaps Cordelia should eat out during lunch less often. Learn to cook, really cook, beyond the easy and the self-heating charmed meals. Like a mother, or a wife. Cordelia couldn't really see herself like that, not soon, but maybe cooking was something she could learn to do. Or desserts, cakes and such -- there was still a hint of vanilla on Michael's fingers, soft and sweet and fragrant.

Michael didn't make a fuss about it. Cordy nodded, biting lightly on her lower lip. Did it make sense? It wasn't like it was Luke's birthday, that had been in – well, May. Mays were always awful. Camilla tried to make April bright instead, which only seemed to make the shadow over May seem darker. "Settled, then," she said, trying and failing to keep her voice at the same lightness.

She wanted to say something else, share some happy, goofy memory about her brother, contextualize why it was so important that Luke would have liked him. Couldn't figure out a way to say it without coming off like she had the world's strangest case of brother issues. Which, maybe she did, who knew? Words weren't ever as hard to find as they were when she talked about the missing piece of her family. Michael let go of her hand, wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She nuzzled closer, an errant snowflake landing on her cheek instead of his coat.

Michael looked away – Cordelia sucked in two slow, deep breaths. It was easier than she expected, to breath in for a count of five and out for a count of seven. Let the ghostly memory of her brother curl out and away from her with the warm vapour in her mouth. It was getting easier. It shouldn't be getting easier. The shape of grief shouldn't fit so well with the shape of love in her heart.

Cold, Michael said, stating the obvious like she had maybe just missed the memo. She shook her head, clearing her thoughts a little more. "Isn't it," she replied, cheeks dimpling into a slight smile. "Let's go home, warm up." They ought to discuss it, who's place, whether to Brandon or to London, whether Michael had had quite enough of Leighton family homesteads tonight. But it was cold. Cordelia moved her grip to his arm, as if for Side-along. "Before we lose a finger or two." 

Michael grimaced – the last thing he wanted was for his mother to make a pitch to his girlfriend. “You can use mine,” he said, “I’ve got dozens.” He’d have more, too, if he hadn’t gotten irritable the last time he got a covered dish for his birthday. (He was not proud of it, but it had done the trick – if he had a knut for every time that had been the case…)

He looked down at her again – her voice had sounded a little strained, and he wanted to say something like, you don’t need to explain it to me – not because it made any earthly sense, but because he knew why it didn’t – but he felt he’d come across as a tool. Instead, he squeezed her shoulders, let her tuck in, and limped along (they’d been out too long in the cold, he thought.) She puffed out her breath. God it was fucking cold.

Isn’t it?

She gripped his arm – Michael nodded, tucked his free hand back into his pocket to check that his gloves were there, to feel for his keys, his wand. He glanced around for any wandering eyes, but the little footpath out of the village was deserted; it was so well-trodden that there wouldn't be any sign they’d been there at all. He doubted she wanted him to Apparate – he’d gotten the sense that she didn’t like travelling Side-Along, and in any case he knew he’d had more incidents Apparating than she had. “If you don’t want us to lose any digits, you might as well take us,” he said. He didn’t want to watch the little scene disappear, so he shut his eyes.


OUT

"That a promise?" Cordelia teased. Where did he hide it all, the containers and lunch boxes? Had Cordelia missed them? Regardless, she wouldn't say no to borrowing one. It was a silly thing, a small thing to focus on instead of anything else.

Michael squeezed her shoulder. Cordelia breathed easier.

Cordelia didn't love Side-Along, but with Michael she tolerated it, trusted that they would be going somewhere safe if he was the caster. She liked to give him the opportunity, too. It seemed untoward to insist that she cast. It was better when Michael made it his idea, like he was doing now. Cordelia nodded, shifting her grip on his arm so she could slip her wand out. Her eyes slipped over – Michael's eyes were squeezed shut. She lifted up onto her toes and pressed a quick cold kiss to his cheek.

Home, then. Hers, straight into the little entrance, to light the fire, to set alight the little tree beside it. Home then, where Michael had a toothbrush and several towels and a mug that technically was hers but only Michael used now. Home, where their fingers would warm and in the morning they would be beside each other.

Cordelia clicked the heels of her boots together once. Home, then. Home, now.

A moment later, snowflakes began to fill their footprints. An hour later, it was like they had never been there at all.

/fin