fragments { phillip }

Standing barely a foot from her now, Phillip's stomach lurched from being so close. It wasn't the same sort of anxiety he would have felt before; there was no excitement, just sickness. He was looking at someone he didn't recognize anymore; even her voice sounded unfamiliar. She began to explain, and although it was more than she had said in the last five minutes, it still wasn't enough. Phillip doubted anything Billie said could have ever satisfied him. There would always be pieces missing, and he would never trust that he had gotten the full story. And to make things worse, the teenager wasn't even sure if he wanted to know everything. Could he handle everything he was on the cusp of learning? He had barely found the tip of the iceberg, and it was already breaking him.

Billie's words were fragmented and not at all her characteristically thought out and delicately delivered sentences. Even though he should have known it was because this was painful for her to speak about, Phillip assumed it was because she was hiding things. He couldn't help but think she was choosing her words carefully and purposefully, leaving things out because there were secrets she was still trying to protect. Things she still refused to tell him. Every ounce of trust Phillip had in Billie had been shattered.

"So you are a Sinnoway..." He confirmed, but there was no relief in his voice. Earning one grain of information only served him a basket full of new questions. Even Phillip was unsure of what he actually knew, bits and pieces gleaned from an overload of information. It was confusing, and intricate, and frustrating. "Am I right about who your parents were, then? About what they did?" There was a stillness about Phillip in the way he stood rigidly over her, barely blinking despite the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes as he waited for more answers.

“…But it’s complicated,“ she breathed, the addendum barely audible and trailing at the end. All kinds of denials and backtracking bubbled up inside her as soon as she’d spoken. She shook her head again, feeling jittery and shivery and wanting to reach for him but not wanting to move a millimetre. She swayed near-imperceptibly, her body anticipating a step forward before she made herself stay where she was. She felt like she couldn’t breathe.

Mine.

Billie had a lot of things, now. A room at Kendrick’s house, at least for this winter and the following summer. She had more friends than she had any right to. Two houses and everything in them. Enough money to get more, if all of that wasn’t enough. But that name? She couldn’t bring herself to say it, and could barely bring herself to think it right now. It certainly didn’t feel like it was hers anymore; it had been lost, along with the other version of her. Abandoned in an old estate, alone on an island. Billie missed that girl, missed her father, missed her name. She grieved for it all.

She had a secret, and her name was Sybil Sinnoway.

Billie nodded, her gaze downturned once more. A part of her wanted to clarify it for him, but she didn’t want it enough to actually say the whole name. Not just a Sinnoway, as he'd put it, but Sybil, specifically. She swallowed before answering the second part, and clasped her hands together a little more tightly. “I… think so,” she said in a small voice. “My mother,” she added, offering another part-answer to his question. “Nellwyn.”

From a certain point of view, it had been her mother who had done the worst things. The things Phillip was probably talking about, things that had made the paper. The witch wasn’t sure if her father had ever killed a person – not so directly, anyway. She felt like something was crawling up her skin, over her shoulders. She felt sick anticipating his next questions, and moreso anticipating the end of the conversation.

Phillip sucked in a rough breath as Billie spoke. Every bit of information broke over him like a wave; there was no comfort in her words. "I think so," she had said, and Phillip wished he had never asked the question. The intellectual and persistently curious wizard had thought not knowing the truth was what hurt the most, but knowing the truth was so much worse. Phillip's hand moved to cover his mouth, the feeling like he might be sick from what he'd just learned crept up his throat and forced him to pause. How could this beautiful, wonderful, brilliant witch belong to such a terrible family? It did not compute.

From the first time Phillip had seen Billie, he had been drawn to her. The wizard had very few friends and preferred to be alone, but Billie had changed all of that. He'd finally found someone to share things with, and he had loved it. And now, Phillip felt like such an idiot. The wizard had always considered himself to be quite intelligent, but he never saw this coming. Billie had managed to fool him and to prove that he should have continued not trusting anyone.

The names on the crumpled list repeated in his head, and Phillip's heart broke for each of them. How many of them had families left behind? How many innocent children had Nellwyn Sinnoway, her mother, orphaned? It was all too much. Phillip was overwhelmed by his anger and the grief he felt not only for all of the names on the list but for the best friend he had lost. Phillip mourned the death of Billie Fay. The loss of everything they had shared and that left him feeling so weak. Slumping to his knees, Phillip's hands fell to the sides, and he stared at the ground.

Minutes passed before Phillip found his voice again, and although he couldn't bring himself to look at her, he managed to ask another set of questions. "Are you like them? Do you believe in what they believed in?"

Though she tried to do it silently, her expression crumpled and she started crying a little harder when he asked his question. It didn’t shock her so much as hurt that he would ask a something like that, though of course she felt guilty for it. Guilty that she’d put him in a position to be asking such things. Guilty about feeling hurt at all. If she was more composed, had more time to calm down and actually think about it, she’d know how to answer what he was asking. She could say that she hadn’t known a thing about muggles, muggleborns, magical politics, or blood purism until she was practically a teenager. Explain that she’d grown up in almost utter isolation.

Instead, she just shook her head again and wiped more tears with the back of her hands. Was she like them? Billie fixated on these words in particular, understanding what he was asking but taking the question out of context and spinning it around in her head anyway. Was she like her parents? Her father was clever and soft-spoken – a Ravenclaw, too. She looked more like him than her mother. Tall, though – or was that just in her memory from the perspective of a young child?

It felt so wrong that he was on the ground and that she was still standing, but she was frozen in place. She wanted to run her hands through his hair and hold him, soothe him like she’d done before, but she was sure he’d stop her if she tried. Billie wasn’t sure she could handle that kind of rejection. So she let the silence stretch for too long instead, the only sound her own uneven breaths. Was he cold? Her cheeks were stinging. “I didn’t understand,” she murmured eventually. “I didn’t know, growing up.”

Rationally Phillip understood what she meant, and he wanted so badly to believe it. The war was a long time ago now, as so many people liked to remind him, and a lot had changed since then. Phillip himself had only been a child when Voldemort had returned, and Billie would have been even younger. It wasn't as if she had anything to do with what her parents had done, and it was hypocritical for him to judge her based solely on who her parents were. And yet, despite all of that, he was having a hard time separating it all. The sting of betrayal clouding everything else and blurring the lines so much that it didn't matter. She had lied to him, and he couldn't see his way past that.

"That is not what I asked," Phillip stated bluntly, forcing himself to sit up a little as he tilted his head and looked at her. She wasn't his Billie anymore; she was someone else, someone he could never trust. Maybe she wasn't evil, but that didn't matter either. Phillip wanted to think that he knew the truth about her, that deep down, she was still the same person he knew. The one who was always polite, who cared about making sure everyone around her was comfortable, even at her own expense; the witch that made her own soap and baked muffins with her guardian because it was important to spend time together. Looking up at Billie, her bright blond hair gathered around her face glowed in the moonlight, Phillip was desperate to see that same girl.

But all he felt was anger and defeat. "I want to know if you think they were right," Phillip hadn't found much about her parents, but it had been enough to get the idea. Enough to know what kind of people they were and what they were willing to do in pursuit of the Dark Lord's agenda. Billie might have been a kid back then, but they were nearly grown now, and Phillip felt like he was owed an answer.

Billie winced when he spoke.

She clenched her jaw a little tighter to stop her teeth from chattering. What had he asked, exactly? She was having trouble distilling his perspective, his knowledge from her own. He was bringing up things that she had spent a lot of time not talking about; her thoughts were frayed and disjointed. Shaking her head as an answer, Billie pushed herself internally to think more clearly. Did she think her parents were right to follow the Dark Lord? Was her mother right to kill people? Was her father right to hide her away? The first questions were easier to answer, but even now she had a difficult time thinking badly of him.

Of course not was the answer, but she corrected it simply to: “No.” Of course was an inconsiderate lead-in when the answers clearly weren’t so obvious to him. Her words were soft, but pained. “No, I don’t,” she said again. Billie hadn’t ever had a conversation like this; Kendrick had never forced her to, and her aunt had never spoken of the topic at all. Others – Gaius, Evie – hadn’t brought it up so explicitly, either.

It was complicated in a way that she tried very hard not to think of at all, and compartmentalised so efficiently by now that it took a ridiculous amount of effort for her to make herself think about it at all. Of course she was against the violence, the ideology, the blood purism, and the oppression. Of course she was against discrimination – for muggleborns, magical creatures, for muggles themselves.

The difficulty sat with the dishonesty in her denouncing her parents, her family, as evil people. Her father, especially; she still cried on the anniversary of his death, still dreamed about him and felt chagrin upon waking. Phillip had seen her mourning for a life that had been swept out from under her, and none of those feelings were fabricated. It was impossible to disentangle for Billie, who felt all things far too deeply; how could she miss a man who might have hated people with different blood – like Killian? A man who might have killed people? And yet… how could she not, when her father had loved her more than anything? When her memories of the man were gentle and tender?

Phillip had hope for some sense of relief when Billie answered his question, but there was none. It was pathetic to think that one answer could somehow sweep away everything else, and the teenager struggled with that part of himself. The part that wished everything could go back to how it was before, the part that would always love the Billie Fay he knew. The confusing mess of emotions inside of him was overwhelming, and it left him feeling defenseless. It was hard to know where his anger ended and sorrow began, and Phillip was left feeling all of it, all together, like a chaotic storm.

It wasn't just ire and sadness, though, and Phillip shifted uncomfortably as something else began to swallow him whole: disappointment. As mad as he might have been, Phillip was consumed by contempt. Billie had lied to him from the moment that they met. Everything they had was built on top of that falsity. His grief had brought him to his knees, but it was disdain that made Phillip stand back up again. Pushing himself up, Phillip ran his hands over his face miserably. There were so many questions he needed her to answer, an unimaginable amount of information he was desperate to know, but where to start.

"I can't believe you did this," Lying, pretending, kept secrets, and so much more. Intellectually, and with some time, Phillip would probably have understood why Billie had done it. Regardless of her own allegiances, being known as the daughter of two death eaters in a Post-Voldemort world would have been nothing short of torture. Hiding wasn't only easier but safer. When they had first met, Phillip was an angry wizard orphaned by the war, Billie had no reason to tell him, but it was everything that came after that disappointed him the most. How many secrets had he shared with her? How many times had he told her the things he couldn't bear to tell anyone else. And not once, in all of those long conversations, nights spent on the astronomy tower or the empty common room, and notes exchanged, did she think to come clean. Phillip had to find out for himself, and that made it so much worse.

"Would you have ever told me?" He asked, but he wasn't entirely sure if he would believe her answer either way. If he hadn't found what he did if he hadn't been persistent enough to ask the questions finally, would they have just continued? Would she have let him in the dark forever? Phillip supposed they would never know.

I can’t believe you did this.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered automatically. It all seemed so clear at the moment – the things she’d done that were wrong. She wanted to say that it wasn’t what she wanted, and that changing her name wasn’t her idea, but it was so much more complicated than that. She couldn’t remember wanting much of anything back then – aside from the impossible, of course. If her aunt had told her something was happening, it hadn’t been her place to have an opinion on it. The world had warped itself so thoroughly out of what she’d known to be true that all she’d wished for was her father. And how could she explain all of that? Autonomy had been terrifying then.

Sometimes she imagined the past in varying degrees of saturation. Higher intensity for the times that felt more vivid in her memories, less saturated in the times that felt more abstract, or blurred together. She’d only been with her aunt for a year before she was getting ready to go to school; by her second year she’d spent more time sleeping in a bed beside Barbie’s than sleeping under her Aunt’s roof. That year had been spent relearning just how big the world was, and how everything worked. Looking back, it wasn’t a vivid time period for Billie at all; it was desaturated and confusing.

His next question brought her thoughts back to the surface, back to the imminent problem. She swallowed, then parted her lips to speak, then hesitated. Would she have ever told him? With every year Sybil Sinnoway died a little more; very few people had ever known she’d existed at all, and that number had shrunk in the past few years. Sometimes Billie thought it hurt her to pretend that both of these versions of herself were real; there were a couple of people with whom she was Sybil, and with everyone else she was Billie. It was easier to reflect back other people’s expectations. Sometimes autonomy was still scary.

“I don’t know,” she managed. Her mouth clearly didn't want to form the words. After a beat, she added quietly, "It doesn't... Feel real."

There were scores of books written about betrayal, countless accounts of jilted lovers, and friendships ruined, but none of those stories felt comparable to the weight that Phillip suffered under now. Reading about pain was a lot different from feeling it, and unfortunately, this pair of teenagers had weathered more than their fair share. And unlike the pages of a book, the Ravenclaw could not see an end to this feeling. Like a storm that just kept crashing against him, an endless high tide that would break him into little bits. Billie had been the closest thing to family that he had left, and now she too was lost. The water had taken her just like it had swept everything else away. And left in the familiar cold darkness, Phillip was alone again.

"I don't know," Phillip struggled to look at Billie when she spoke but forced himself to. Out of stubbornness and a need for accountability, the teenager stared at her as she confessed that it didn't feel real. Hearing but not understanding, Phillip's face pulled into something between frustrated and irritated. It doesn't feel real, Billie had said, but Phillip didn't care. "Lying usually does that." He said sharply, ignoring the little voice in the back of his mind that wanted to be still concerned about her feelings. "Make shit up long enough, and you forget what the truth is, I guess."

There were few things in the world that Phillip held as sacred as the truth. He had spent his childhood living behind little lies and half-truths. The kinds of things that adults tell children when they think they can't handle the truth, or more commonly, as Phillip had come to learn when the lies were easier for adults to deal with. 'Your father is in a better place now,' or 'We're doing everything we can to find them,' things that were supposed to make him feel better, but always just felt like pacification. As he grew older, Phillip became obsessed with learning things independently; his lack of trust grew. It became better to trust no one and be alone because he didn't have to worry about being let down or, worse, losing someone else.

Billie had changed all that. Phillip had finally let someone in, and that trust had been the spark that set everything else alight. He'd started to enjoy things again, sharing opinions, feelings, and a yearning for knowledge; the teenager had even smiled—on the rare occasions. Billie had taught him to be more patient, and slightly less cynical, and much more. This last lesson was the hardest, though. As much as he valued the truth, Phillip ached as he understood that bringing some things to light only caused more darkness.

Lying usually does that.

She winced again, shook her head again, dropped her gaze again. There was so much more to it all than these last few – albeit long – minutes had revealed. But she didn’t know what he knew, didn’t know what he’d learned by himself. There was a good chance that anything she could say in her defense was something he’d already taken into account. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, fingers plucking helplessly at her sleeves.

“It’s not just that,” she heard herself say, her voice weak. Her eyes hurt from crying. Her muscles hurt from tensing too tightly, like a coiled spring. She breathed her next sentence shakily. “They’re all... gone, Phillip.” She wasn’t sure why she was protesting – somewhere she registered that things were pretty dire for her to willingly argue against him, when she was the one who’d lied. When all of this – the way she felt, his tears – was her fault.

I can’t believe you did this. His words repeated themselves in her mind; she was sure she'd hear them in his voice late into the night.

Phillip watched as she flinched and turned away, and inside he felt like he was at war with himself. Not wanting to cause her any more grief, because this was clearly a painful subject, but unable to stop himself from being angry and hurt at everything she had kept from him. It was a confusing mess, and he just wanted it all to go away. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Phillip waited for her to say the next thing. Finding an uncomfortable place between not wanting to talk and needing to know more, Phillip was silent.

"They're all... gone, Phillip." It was impossible not to react when she said his name, and out of anger or instinct, the teenager pulled away. Taking a small step away from her, Phillip shook his head. "Another lie," Phillip stated, his anger growing with the accusation. "Your mum is still alive. I know where she is." Phillip refused to be lied to anymore.

Once he had uncovered the name Sinnoway, everything else had fallen into place. Even as young as he had been when Nellwyn Sinnoway was sent to Azkaban, it was impossible for someone as obsessively curious as Phillip not to know the family name. Phillip had done the math, and Billie couldn't have been more than five when her mother went to prison, but that didn't soften the blow. Her mother was Death Eater and a murderer.

Billie looked up again as he pulled away, more fearful of him leaving than of him hating her. Weren’t they the same thing, though? In the end? I didn’t say dead. The words appeared in her mind a fraction of a second after he spoke, but she didn’t try to speak over him; it felt too disrespectful to do so. Deeply insulting. She’d be offended and angry on his behalf. She shook her head again at the last part though – the I know were she is. He didn’t understand. She hugged herself a little tighter, still shivering in the cold.

“She doesn’t know who I am,” she said, her voice softer and so much shakier than his. Billie – Sybil – whatever – wanted to impress this fact upon him; instinctively she wanted to make some kind of emotional appeal. She had to stop herself from using more emotive language, though, because that felt manipulative, even if it was true. Was it possible to strip her words of feeling? She didn’t think she could do it right now. Her protests were weak. “She. She doesn’t recognise me…” The blonde trailed off, feeling a sudden surge of futility. Her mother wasn’t well, and hadn’t been for a long time. There weren’t dementors at Azkaban anymore, but enough years spent in a cage with those monsters… Billie shivered again, remembering the way they’d made her feel. Billie’s panic was shifting slowly to something like despair, because none of it seemed to matter to Phillip.

"Would you want her to recognize you?" Phillip knew it was the same question he had asked several times before; some part of him would never stop wondering the answer. Was Billie like her parents? Was she a Sinnoway in name only, or was she inherently evil? Phillip didn't believe in judging someone based on who their parents were, but Billie's lies were making it difficult for him to see beyond the name.

Sometimes Phillip wondered what it would be like to see his mother again, and he was afraid of not being recognized, too. In that drawn parallel, he knew it was selfish to ask Billie to answer such a question. Emotions were intricate and complex; they were not black and white no matter how much the wizard wished they could be. The capacity to feel anger and love simultaneously, happiness despite overwhelming grief, was one of the most beautiful things about being human. But Phillip only felt the rawness of that complexity now. The anger surrounded him like darkness he couldn't find his way back through. His eyes were red, his throat sore, and he'd managed to pick the skin from around his fingernails until one bled. From one second to the next, his emotions surged back and forth, rage, unbearable sadness, and a loss of hope; it was exhausting to feel so much all at once. It was near impossible to navigate.

"I don't know what else to say." A sigh chasing his words, Phillip's eyes trailed out toward the frozen pond again. Everything was different now, broken, and he lacked the energy to consider if they could ever fix it.

She wasn’t sure exactly what had done it, but for a moment, it was as if the swell of panic she’d been desperately trying to keep afloat of had subsided. She knew it would come back – really knew it – but for now, in its absence, was something like despair. Was it all futile, then? Futile to try and answer, futile to speak? She felt like it was wrong to try and convince him of anything, but that feeling was at war with a very, very deep fear of abandonment. She’d been going back and forth on which one was driving her – everything she’d said had had an undercurrent of pleading. Please don’t go. She was saying it whether she actually said it, or not.

She was on the very edge of, of something. Fraying at the seams, spilling herself out into the open? Something like that. She understood why he’d say it, but at the same time – she didn’t. It was too much, to have him here in front of her, hurting her. It seemed so unimaginable. The knowledge that she was hurting him too – that she’d done far worse – was present, too, though. There were too many conflicting things.

There were fresh tears, again, but she felt a kind of resignation when he spoke. Her own voice was tired and emotional. “What kind of question is that?” she returned. It was true that her mother was awful, was a murderer, was anything else he wanted to call her. All of that was true. “Are you asking me if I'm glad that my mother doesn’t know who I am?” Nellwyn Sinnoway, murderer. Nellwyn Sinnoway, mother. She couldn’t help it – her voice broke on the words, her throat too tight to let them out freely. There were too many conflicting things. She was shaking, still. He still hadn’t noticed.

Between the two of them, certain things had always been true, regardless of whatever had been hidden underneath. Phillip was out-spoken and abrasive, whereas Billie was quiet and thoughtful. And while that hadn't changed, Phillip felt something shift as she answered his question with one of her own. Billie rarely did such a thing; she was too polite, too considerate not to answer what was asked of her. And the follow-up made Phillip feel guilty for having asked, and that quickly devolved back into anger. "That isn't what I asked." Phillip returned, feeling tense.

While that had not initially been what he had meant by the question, Phillip wasn't rushing to defend his words either. He wasn't the one who needed to explain. He hadn't done anything wrong. Turning his head toward her, Phillip saw the glossy lines that streamed down her cheeks, but they made him angrier. He took a deep breath but felt anything but steadier from it. "I don't understand. Why aren't you defending yourself? You are just standing there, say something. Tell me how you could keep lying to me after everything." Phillip needed to understand why she hadn't told him, after all, that they had been through and shared. How could she keep something like this from him, Billie had to know how much it would hurt him to find out, but hadn't she known how much worse it would be if he didn't hear it from her first? Had she considered his feelings at all?

"Or do you only regret that I found out?" It was a terrible thing to accuse her of, especially in the wake of every other painful thing he had brought up, but Phillip said it anyway. A cruel manifestation of the betrayal he felt projected back toward her.