somebody that I used to know [michael]

January 2004

It was absolutely freezing, the blonde Hufflepuff thought as she tucked her hands under her arms and walked a little faster towards Hogsmeade. She had lost her gloves last week and no Accio charm in the world could apparently find them. She was certain that they had run off just like that one earring she also couldn't find, or the yellow hair bow that she had sworn had been in her trunk. Whether she was forgetful or just messy and unorganized didn't really help her right now though. Wini cast a small warming charm and her shoulders dropped, releasing some of the tension she hadn't realized she had been holding there.

It was another January weekend, cold and blustery, and instead of being cooped up in the common room again, Wini had wanted to venture out. Marin was feeling a little under the weather and Phillip was nowhere to be found so she had decided to take the trip down to Hogsmeade alone. It was... odd for her. She felt like everyone was looking at her strangely, picking her out for being all alone even though some rational tiny part of her mind told her she was just being silly, telling her she could go somewhere without needing someone beside her. But still.. the thought lingered. She rushed a little more towards Honeydukes, in search of some sugar and the sweet smell of chocolate that reminded her of home for some reason. If Marin had come with her, she might have ventured into the Three Broomsticks for a warm drink too before trekking back up to the castle, but she wasn't sure she wanted to all alone.

And maybe it was because she wasn't with anyone else that she was more aware of other people as they came and went about their business as she walked through the small town or maybe it was because she was always a little nosy, but she couldn't help think that something about the guy walking towards her, with his tall frame and dark hair, was.. familiar. Her eyes traced his features, mundane curiosity stirring while something niggled in her mind, a memory from a dark time she didn't like to recall. She had just passed him when it clicked and she turned on her heel.

"Michael?" she called on a gasp, louder than she had meant, but her surprise had struck her stupid as she stood rooted to the spot. "Michael Corner?" she repeated his name, her voice a plea, a rejoice, a memory floating on the wind.

@Michael Corner

Michael didn’t like to turn his collar up -- it made him look ostentatious, and vaguely vampiric -- but it was too cold not to, so he was trudging ominously through the muddy snow, twiddling with a thread coming loose on the elbow patch of his long coat -- it was older than he was, and long since overdue to fall apart, but he didn’t want it to.

His sisters had been well; he had wanted (1.) to apologise for Christmas -- mostly in the hope that they would rush to say Christmas hadn’t been his fault (a bust, as Esther had fixed him with a severe look and said, you should be) -- and (2.) to engage them in pointless discussion of Quidditch and politics -- Mavis had a lot to say about all this Obliviation stuff, which had led them to (3.) asking about his girlfriend. Back in the day, they hadn’t cared at all who he was dating (back in the day he had done his utmost to come across as though he lived a lifestyle analogous to a hermit or a monk.)

Both his sisters had to study, which he suspected was their front for wanting to go hang out with their friends instead, so he had only been allowed to entertain them for about a butterbeer and a baked potato each before they’d made their respective excuses and departed, and Michael -- who hadn’t been to Hogsmeade in almost a year -- went wandering. It was late enough in the school year that the crowds of students had thinned out a little, the novelty of the village less interesting than the warmth in the castle.

The little blonde coming at him was looking at him like she recognised him; this happened less and less as the Hogwarts student populace grew up, but he was pretty sure the year above Esther had overlapped with his first seventh year at Hogwarts, and Esther was a sixth year. He opted to ignore it -- if he didn’t bother her, she wouldn’t bother him -- and to keep trudging. They passed each other, and Michael reached up to rub his nose, and then she bothered him anyway.

She remembered his name, so he turned around, holding his arms out in a ”this is he” way, and then it sank in for him, too, who she was. God help him, he didn’t remember her name at all -- it was Wanda, or Wendy, or Winnie, or something like that -- he cleared his throat to override the instinctive way it’d closed up and said, “Well, damn me. How are you? I haven’t seen you in --” he didn’t think he’d even sought her out afterwards, so it could easily have been five years -- “a while.”

She was surprised when he turned around and acknowledged her call to him even though she had been 95% sure it was him. Michael Corner. Somehow she hadn't thought of for years and his voice didn't sound familiar at all and he looked older, but it was still him and she couldn't hold back as she stepped closer, smiling up at him as he greeted her. Wini hadn't expected him to remember her in the least bit, but he seemed to and it made her smile wider.

"I'm good, but how are you?-- I haven't seen you since--" her words overlapping his in her excitement and surprise, her fingers clasped together as she took him in. Tall, lanky, looked well enough. At least better than the last time she had seen him. At the thought, she blurted out, "Can I hug you?" because she had learned over the years, mostly from Marin, that not everyone loved spontaneous displays of physical affection. But then again, there were times like now where she couldn't really wait for an answer. She swooped in without waiting for a reply, wrapping her arms around him tightly for a moment, then half a second longer before she stepped back, and smiled up at him sheepishly. "Sorry, but I guess I'm just happy to see you," she glanced down as she bit her lip and the memories came back to her.

Wini had had nightmares for months about being chained up by the Carrows in the dungeons. It wasn't the first time she had gained their attention, but it was almost worse than when they stood her up in front of the class and had students hex her as part of their 'assignment.' She had been alone in the basement, without a way of escape, not knowing what would happen to her, terrified and crying. But then Michael had come down to save her, Michael who she didn't even know and had never met before. Michael, who she heard had gotten tortured a lot just for saving her. Michael, who she hadn't seen after, mostly because she went to class, where she kept her head down like Hannah taught her and then straight back to her dorm. "I never--" she swallowed thickly as she flicked her gaze back up to him. "I never got to thank you, for you know, that night." There were so many words that got stuck in her throat and she didn't know how to say them all after so much time.

"Can I buy you a butterbeer?" she offered instead. She knew she could never make it up to him for what he had done and maybe it didn't mean anything to him anymore, but she was still so grateful to him and happy to see him again.

Having been addressed before he could touch his nose, Michael really wanted to do it now, but he resisted the urge and dropped his hands back to his sides, trying to look over the girl without looking like a pervert or being too obvious about it. She looked healthy and happy, but it wasn’t at all reasonable to gauge whether she looked like somebody who had been saved a lifetime’s worth of torment. She had grown up quite a lot since she’d been twelve, but then he’d only really seen her in the dark, and she’d been crying at the time. He remembered that vividly; he’d asked her to stop.

She asked for a hug, and then took it before he could answer in either the affirmative or negative (he wasn’t sure which he would have chosen, although – as she squeezed him tightly – he decided maybe the former.) She let him go awkwardly – “It’s alright,” he said, “It’s nice to see you too. You look pretty good.”

Oh God, what was her name? He really should have asked. He took a shot – “Was it Wendy? or Winnie?” He toyed with the idea of making an excuse for not remembering, before deciding that was asinine.

Though he was focussing deliberately on the particulars of their shared history that he didn’t have to sit down to think about, she was clearly about three steps ahead of him; she looked like she was going to cry. “Please don’t cry,” he said, before the déjà vu set in (he was five years older, and his voice no longer cracked, but he’d said that exactly, probably.) He added hastily, “Er, you’re welcome.”

He sort of felt like a liar just saying that, since he was pretty sure it had been a one-off thing – he hadn’t rescued any other first years – so, theoretically, nobody was welcome, and doubly not when he’d done it mostly to meet the inevitable before it could get any less evitable. But this was all semantics and he had to stop thinking about it. He said, strongly, “Yes” and stepped to the side and flapped one arm awkwardly to invite her to walk beside him – “The Three Broomsticks okay?” he asked, though he’d just come from there – every time he went to the Hog’s Head, he left it swearing never to return.

It’s nice to see you too. You look pretty good. She smiled widely up at him, saying "thanks" in a pleased breath. Was it too much to say 'all thanks to you"? Probably. She didn't want to scare him off. She'd done that once or twice before and she had kind of learned her lesson. Wini at least wanted to thank him first, buy him a butterbeer, ask what he was up to, see if he had saved any other twelve year olds lately. She smiled to herself at the last one. But--oh! He had even remembered her name.

"Yeah, it's Wini, that's so sweet of you to remember," the Hufflepuff said as she tucked her hair behind her ear. Wow, she hadn't expected that at all. And he was funny too. She laughed and scrunched her nose at him as she shook her head. "I won't, promise," she told him, even though whenever someone told her not to cry she somehow felt like doing the exact opposite. Wini sniffled though and rubbed at her nose, not wanting to shed tears in front of him. She felt the emotion rising in her - relief, surprise, gratitude, happiness, curiosity, all of it mixing into some big mash that was hard to sort through. Luckily for her, she would have time to sort through them since he agreed to the butterbeer idea.

She grinned up at him, dimpled cheeks and all, as he gestured toward the Three Broomsticks and she started toward the saggy building, eager to get inside for its warmth and coziness. "That's perfect," she told him. "How have things been for you? What are you doing now?" she couldn't wait to ask as they walked and she turned to look up at him as she pulled the door open and then held it for him before shuffling inside and picking a little rickety table against the wall.

"Want anything else besides a butterbeer?" she asked as she peeled off her heavy wool coat and untwisted her pink and yellow scarf from around her neck.

What are you doing now? was, when he thought about it, the natural course of the conversation – they hadn’t seen each other for years, at least, and she was probably at about the age to start thinking about what she would be doing soon – but it was a conversational course he did not like to traverse at the best of times. He waited until they were inside (he reached for the door handle, but she got it first) and said, “Thank you. Er, I work at the Ministry now.”

As much as he didn’t like to tell people he was in maintenance, he liked it nearly as little to tell them he was in the government. His father had been no great lover of bureaucracy, and though Michael had seen its merits once he was old enough not to idolise the chaotic way Douglas Corner had lived, he didn’t like it much either. Surely there were better places to do thankless work.

He wanted a shot of firewhisky in his, he wanted to say, but it seemed like a steep ask for a seventeen-year-old girl buying him a drink, so he said, “No, just butterbeer is fine,” and unbuttoned his coat, pulled the loop of his scarf down to clear himself some breathing room. “What about you? How have you been keeping?”

"Ooh, the Ministry. What department?" she asked, her brows perked with curiosity. On the occasions she had thought about the boy (man?) who had saved her, she had never really imagined what he would be doing now. It was always hard for her to reflect on what had happened and she didn't often delve into those memories, but it was interesting now to explore those questions without the heaviness of having the past creep on her. She could focus on the Michael who was here and now in front of her. "My friend wants to go into Ministry work after we graduate this year. I'm graduating this year," she supplied helpfully, not really expecting him to have remembered much about her. It's not like they had had a great conversation that night.

She gave him a tentative smile and a nod at his order and then asked the server for two butterbeers. Wini fidgeted with her scarf in her hand as he asked after her. "I've been good, really good. I'm Prefect this year and keeping busy with studying for NEWTs. I'm going for Gorsemoor, y'know mediwitch, but the Potions NEWT has me worried and it's one of the reqs," she rambled, perhaps a little more than usual because she was nervous. She gave him a sheepish smile, but she wasn't exactly sure what to ask someone who had saved her from a terrible fate or what polite conversation one had with your childhood savior.

"Why are you in Hogsmeade?" she settled on before she glanced up at the server and gave the other witch a nice smile and a 'thanks' before wrapping her hands around the mug and sipping.

Damn him! But Michael had braced himself for the question already, and couldn’t be mad. “Maintenance,” he said, not untragically. He rubbed his nose where it curved and added, making an effort to sound less woebegone, “It’s alright.” He didn’t love his job – that was no secret to anybody on speaking terms with him – but he didn’t need Wini to know that, not when he could pinpoint the moment they’d met as the moment his life had turned for the worse. It wasn’t like that, was it? It couldn’t be – he and his friends, he and his entire generation had all been churned out of the war like so much traumatised sausage. Almost anything that year could have ruined the rest of his life.

There wasn’t really anything else he could point to, though; it didn’t bear mention. “Does your friend know where in the Ministry?” he said, just to be polite; he’d started considering working for the Ministry long before its sense of guilt over the war had gotten him a job, mostly because his dad had hated the idea, and Michael had spent most of his adolescence as an unforgivable tool. As a result, he thought he knew the place fairly well; it helped to have spent near five years cleaning every inch of it.

He had known she was graduating this year, so he just nodded rather than express any feigned surprise about where the time had gone, or whatever. “That’s good,” he said, and steepled his fingers in front of his face to listen. “So you want to be a Mediwitch! Cool. I never thought I had the temperament for Healing, I’m not good with patience.”

Their butterbeers arrived; Michael had a long sip of the hot liquid, a little longer than the more tentative one Wini had taken. “My sisters are at Hogwarts still,” he said, “I was in for a visit – it’d been a while anyway since I was out here.” It hadn’t changed much.

"Oh, nice," Wini said as he told her what department. "You fix everything right? William told me about one day when he was at the Ministry and it started raining inside and hey, maybe, that was you that fixed it. I bet everyone's really glad when you show up, right?" she said with a growing smile. She didn't know everything about the Ministry and the different departments other than little anecdotes she had heard from others, but she was curious enough about it initially to wonder if a governmental career might be good for her. Especially after Lip expressed interest in a Ministry career. It would've been fun to go into the next stage of her life with a friend at her side. She had even tried to convince Marin to go to Gorsemoor's with her. No luck there. Yet.

As he asked after lip, she swallowed some butterbeer and gave him a little shrug. "No, I don't think so. Or at least he hasn't told me," she said with a roll of her eyes, her tone a grumble. Lip not telling her something? Yeah, it was a common occurrence and she wasn't happy about it. "Hey maybe I could-- I mean, would you mind if I gave him your name and he could owl you or something if he had questions?" she asked, thinking that might be helpful for her Ravenclaw friend. Then a thought occurred to her and she grinned, laughing lightly at the notion. "He might not bother you though. He's not like me at all," she told him, thinking of how she'd probably have a billion questions if she was in Lip's place and that would just be the first letter.

Wini sipped more at her butterbeer as her eyes traced his features. She didn't know if she had remembered his face very well. Perhaps it had been the trauma or stress or that she had just been busy trying not to die (or what felt like). She was really glad and grateful that she had noticed him even if she hadn't remembered him perfectly. She was glad he hadn't minded getting a butterbeer with her. She tried not to get misty eyed over it again. Merlin, her emotions were all over the place today. She tried to subtly rub at her nose as she gave him a nod, focusing on mediwitch stuff. "Yeah, well, hopefully I have enough patience for it too," she said with a sheepish smile. She could be very impatient at times. "But I love helping people so I think I might be good at it. Hopefully I'll be good at it," she said with a frown and then shrugged. "I have to pass my Potions NEWT first." She was considering praying to the Potions gods that she got a pass on that NEWT.

She blinked, her brows raising at mention of his sisters. She hadn't known he had sisters. "Oh who? What house? Maybe I know them," she said curiously. Then it occurred to her why he might not like to come back. Considering the last time he had been here might have been the battle. Wini had been swiftly escorted to safety with the rest of the youngest students. Michael, however, was old enough to be one of the ones who fought. She didn't know for sure, but considering his bravery, she could guess that he might have stayed to fight. "Do you not like to come back.. because of what happened?" she asked hesitantly. She didn't want to pry, not really, not like she usually did with her friends, but she felt a little sad if that was the case for him.

Michael didn’t know who William was – there were probably a good dozen of them at the Ministry – but he shrugged. “I do do a lot of screwing around with the weather,” he said modestly, “If he works on level four that might’ve been me.” His alleged specialty didn’t mean much lately, as his ability to force his sleep schedule to conform to his work schedule meant that he mostly did whatever work nobody else could take.

She wanted to know if he would consent to answering questions for her friend; he grimaced, but said, “Sure,” mostly because he doubted it would come to that, unless her friend wanted to work in his department. He’s not like me at all could have meant almost anything, but – not knowing what exactly Wini was like in the first place – Michael didn’t pry. He wasn’t sure if he was curious or not; principle of the thing or not, it would be rather disappointing not to get along with somebody he’d undergone the torment of ages for. Not that Wini struck him as somebody who was difficult to get along with.

Actually, she struck him as somebody who was difficult not to get along with, but then Michael had learned not to underestimate how difficult he was to get along with. She rubbed her nose, which made him want to rub his own; he resisted only because he was trying not to appear like he was thinking about it, as though he had gone a day in the last five years without thinking about it. He was pretty sure he was the most self-absorbed martyr he knew.

“Well now,” he said, and crinkled his nose with amusement, “wait long enough and the patients will come.”

His sisters were, “Esther and Mavis Nandamuri,” he said, “Gryffindors. Just a little younger than you.” He considered for a moment whether to explain that they were his half-sisters (that was kind of obvious to most people) but there was no need, as she changed the topic swiftly. “Er,” he said. “It’s a bit out of my way, you know, I work in London.” This was the sort of answer Anthony would have called out as a non-answer, so he pushed Anthony out of his mind and added, “Honestly, I do hate this place, but things were a lot worse when I was eighteen – don’t worry about it. Has it been hard for you?” At least he’d been, allegedly, an adult; at least he’d had the choice to leave.

"Ok great, I'll let him know," Wini said, her brown eyes bright as she made a mental note to tell @Phillip Donnelly  about the networking she had done on his behalf. Not that it was likely that he would thank her outright, but she knew somewhere in that broody, grumpy cloud of his, he might appreciate it. It might be nice if he showed it a little more, but whatever. She sipped at her butterbeer and gazed at Michael. Of course, he would agree though. He was so kind. And brave. And clearly good at his job. She smiled to herself as she thought of the hero's poem she was crafting for him in her head and wondering how embarrassed he would be by it if she ever put thoughts to paper and wrote it down. It almost made her laugh.

His joke about patients and patience did make her laugh though. Add it to his list of great qualities. "Hopefully," she said with a little shrug. For all the Hufflepuff qualities she had, patience didn't seem to be one of them, but she was willing to try.

"Esther and Mavis, hmm," she echoed, her eyes going up to the ceiling as she tried to recall them. She wasn't great at names though, @Marin Clare was always in charge of that department. But she didn't want to seem rude either so she gave him a "Oh yeahhh, I think I know them. They're nice," and it seemed like something that could be true enough if Michael was any standard for his siblings.

Wini shifted in her seat as he replied to her question that she had almost, kind of regretted the moment she had said it. She was the last person to bring up all of the difficult things that they had gone through that year, and considering that she guessed Michael had been there at the battle too, she knew he had faced much worse than she had. The time from then to now didn't make any of it easier to deal with like she might have thought though; it just seemed less sharp in her mind. She twisted the glass on the table as she nodded, looking down into the caramel warmth of her drink. He seemed to brush it off so easy and she struggled with the nonchalance and airiness to do the same.

Had it been hard for her? What a loaded question, but she settled with a "It's been okay, mostly good," she told him with what she hoped was a brave smile and then a shrug. "You know how it is," she added, waving a hand at the whole growing up experience that seemed unfair and at times cruel, even without the evil professors hexing you in front of the class and locking you in a dungeon thing. "But I'm almost out of here anyway," she added, a wistful tone at having something end with such certainty sneaking into her voice.

Michael pleaded to God that this friend would never take him up on this offer, and gulped his butterbeer.

She probably didn’t know either Esther or Mavis well – in Michael’s experience, either people knew exactly who they were, or didn’t know them at all, and he didn’t think ‘nice’ was the first word he’d have thought of, either, unless they both were putting on completely different faces at school. He supposed it wouldn’t surprise him – teenagers could be seriously two-faced. (How was it that his teenage (teenage-age?) seemed so distant now?)

Not that distant, in many respects – exempli gratia, Winifred had just slammed him back into feeling eighteen (in a bad way, not in a rejuvenated way) with one question – but the minutia of his time at Hogwarts seemed hazy. He couldn’t really believe himself, when he thought back to being fifteen and worrying only about girls and his O.W.L.s and whether his dad was happy or not.

“Cool,” he said. God, he was conversationally crippled. Cool – what was he, thirteen? “That’s good, I mean.” She said he knew how it was, which he was beginning to doubt. Again he thought about his voice cracking in the dungeon; at least he’d been old enough for it to crack. Until he’d started dating Cordelia he hadn’t considered the edge his age had given him that year. He’d worried for the younger students, he’d pitied the children, but sixth and seventh years had seemed to take the worst damage. Not him, of course – he’d played a good little brainwashed boy pretty convincingly for a good while.

He finished the last of his butterbeer and said, “It’ll be way easier than you’d think. Probably.”

It would be bitter and cold outside; maybe he had been heading home already, but now he wanted to stay here where it was warm, where it was bright, where it was busy, at least until he could be sure Cordy would be home if he stopped by; he wasn’t in the mood for either cold or solitude. He got up – “I’m going to get another,” he said. “You want one, or should you be going back to the castle?”

She nodded as she reached out to touch the tiny trifold menu stand at the center of the table, her mind briefly stuck on the bad feelings she experienced when she thought about graduation. Wini knew it was unavoidable (it was ridiculous to fail her exams somehow just to have another year, right? Right??), but there was this huge fear monster inside her that reared its head every time she thought about leaving. She never thought she was bad with change, and there were certain things she was excited about post graduation, but the overarching feeling with a big No thank you in her brain and it was had to overcome that.

As she glanced at Michael, taking in the slant of his nose and the slope of his brows, she knew it probably wouldn't be a great question to ask him. All things considered with the battle that concluded his seventh year with sever finality, Wini could guess at his sentiment about leaving.

"Really?" she asked, her eyes blinking wider as she met his gaze. "Was it easy for you?" Wini added before she realized what she said and she wanted to smack her palm to her forehead. "I mean, not with all the battle stuff because of the war," she tried to correct, but she didn't she was doing a great job. So she gave him a sheepish shrug.

So when he stood up, she had a moment of panic. "Wait, I--" she started to apologize and then replayed what he had said. "Oh, er, yes. Please," she tucked a piece of her blonde hair behind her ear, her cheeks hot as she realized he wasn't standing up because he was mad at the question and leaving, but just wanted another drink. She gave another little nod, "As long as it's ok with you?"

Had it been easy for him? Decidedly not, so Michael tried for a long moment to think of a euphemistic way to explain that – the battle stuff because of the war sure hadn’t helped – before finally saying, with a laugh, “...nee, I s’pose no – I didn’t do well on my N.E.W.T.s, though.” Because of the battle stuff, he’d told his mum, although he supposed it wasn’t implausible that he’d just burned out.

Wini seemed just as unwilling as he was to let this coincidence go – he wondered, not for the first time, how much she thought about that night. (He wondered this about everybody who’d been there to see the aftermath, of course, but few people had been as central to it as she had.) He supposed he ought not to be surprised if she did think about it – he thought rather lowly of himself for being so obsessed with it, but he’d accepted a while ago that it was probably natural that he was.

In any case he hoped they were done talking about it.

He nodded and stuffed his hands in his pockets; at least now they were on more equal footing, and had each purchased each other a drink. “Right,” he said, “Be right back,” and he headed back to the bar, trying to imagine what a seventeen-year-old witch would be interested in talking about that he would also be interested in talking about; considering what he’d been through on her behalf (even though he reminded himself firmly that it had been nothing personal) it was disgraceful that he knew nothing about her.


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