The Will of Gryffindor

A little house in the middle of nowhere would have done Elijah nicely. He didn’t care for the extravagance his mother and father had always seemingly needed. He didn’t know if Mira would ever want that, though. He just wanted a nice place to retreat where he could let the world revolve without him. He wanted to spend his daylight hours painting and drinking cider from his own orchard. He didn’t ever see that as something his wife-to-be would want though. His plans to retire to Paris or to the countryside would be shot before he even had the groundwork down. She was a social flower and with his family’s influence, she’d flourish even further.

“My father mentioned yours once...said something about your dad’s fixation with plants.” Elijah smiled. “It’s kooky but kind of...kind of nice. Beats being a professional Quidditch player I don’t doubt.”

Elijah watched as Frank inspected the picture, a smile forming at the sides of his lips. He took the picture and folded it up again. He slotted it back into his wallet and slid his fingers through his hair, a shy smile on his face. He picked up his tea and brought it to his lips, tentively sipping the hot drink. He put his cup down again and nodded, his fingers going back to his hair.

“Yeah,” he murmured, “they are...or at least, I hope they are. That’s always what I’ve wanted to make sure...that they were okay. I’ve never really cared about myself as much as I do them. I’ve always tried to make sure that they’re okay...happy and healthy and you know...the important things. I don’t know what I’d do without them. They keep me...grounded until it gets a little bit too much...until this whole thing...this living thing...gets too much. It’ll be good to go home to them tonight.”

He chuckled when Frank spoke of the doilies and he nodded, knowing that he’d spent a long time trying to placate and humour his nanny who had been more of a mother than his had been. He often had to give his opinion on curtains or something equally bizarre. It was so much easier to humour family members than it was to actually give an opinion.

“My father has never really known me. What shocks him is that I’m not what he ever imagined him to be. I don’t think he’s ever seen me as anything other than the disappointment I was as a child and in my early teens.” Elijah shook his head and picked his tea up again. “I am an artist. I want to paint for the rest of my life but he thinks I’m going to join the Bulgarian Ministry or something and just...try my hand in business as he did after Quidditch. I don’t want that. He thinks that I....He thinks that I got over a terrible thing a long time ago and I...he thinks I’m stronger. He thinks I can lead our family. I can’t even...I don’t let things go. I thinks...I don’t know what he thinks anymore but he certainly assumes I can do what I was born to do. I can barely tie my shoes some days so I don’t know...”

Elijah sighed shakily and listened to the story. It was one that Micah had told him as a child but Elijah hadn’t heard it in years. It helped; more than he’d thought.

“I feel as if I’m in the outtake of the story...where the Hippogriff gets buried.” Elijah sighed. “This is just a bad day...one out of a thousand. The light is at the end of the tunnel but I don’t doubt for a second there is another after it.”

"Kids are great," Frank said. "They know what's important, y'know? They can look past all the unimportant and extraneous details and focus on the good things.. And they only care for the details that make them happy. They really should teach everyone to stay like that.." He took a drink of his tea, straightening the lacy doily hiding beneath.

He continued on and Frank nodded glumly. "That's part of that whole 'parents not knowing what to do about their family.' Dads can recognize something off but they don't let themselves delve. They really care but they are terrified they wouldn't know what to do, so they convince themselves they haven't noticed anything wrong.. Then they're not failing us.My dad does the same, if it helps." It was true, Neville never suspected Frank's true passions did not lie in the Ministry or the Order. Well, he did, but he was not about to bring it up and face the fact.

Elijah said something about a terrible thing and Frank pursed his lips, fiddling with the doily. "Y'know, I'm not a shrink. I'm just here to help. I prolly won't even talk to your dad about this. People always talk about getting over the things that have happened to us. I don't think we should do it quickly.. or maybe even completely. Those who do stop feeling. It's just a problem of striking the balance between being able to remember and being able to remember without being consumed by it."

And Frank nodded once again as Elijah commented on the story. "Some days we're the hippogriff, some days we're the wizard. On the worst day's we're the dirt." He allowed for a small smile. "The message is to choose being the smart hippogriff that teaches the wizard what it's like to overcome, even if he's exhausted and scared. Eventually, every well has to have a top."

Elijah wished sometimes he could turn back the clock and fix his mistakes. He wished he could get hold of a Time Turner and take back everything that had ever gone wrong. He wished he could have saved Alice. He wished he could have saved his mother. He wished that he could have told Andrew that he could look after Chase. He wished he could have proved that no matter what the obstacle, as long as he looked after the redhead...everything would be okay. He wished he could have gone back and given something for Vito to play with – so he hadn’t gone for Chase’s family. He wished he could have saved them. He wished so much that he forgot sometimes that in the present, things were in his power to change. He spent too much time dwelling on the past – so much so that he forgot to live; to the point where when he stopped brooding...he found himself in a state similar to this.

“They have it all figured out,” he murmured. “They’re at the best times in their lives. Their lives are so uncomplicated. Their friends are their friends...there are no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’. I wish it was like that again. I wish I could have no care in the world. It’ll never be like that again though.” He rapped his knuckles idly against the cup and gave a heavy sigh. “I look back on my life so far and I could write a book or two on it. All I’d fill the pages with though is regret. With some things it’s...it’s not about regret. With some things I don’t regret them for a second I just wish I’d done it differently. Chase and Kitty for example. I wish I could have changed what I did. I don’t regret either of them. My daughter she...she was a mistake but that doesn’t mean I love her any less. I just wish I could apologize to Chase. I wish she would give me five minutes...just to say sorry. I want to help her...I want to help raise my own child but she...she hates me. That’s where I’ve stumbled these past months. I just...I don’t know anymore.”

Elijah exhaled slowly and curved his finger around the rim of the cup. “Maybe I should just take up gardening or something. I could grow man-eating plants and put them in my front garden so they can digest oncoming family members.” Elijah’s lips quirked a little and he looked at Frank again. “My father just wants everything regimented and perfect. I’ve never fit the mould he wanted and I think he’s trying to fix it. Though...I fear it might be too late for that.” That pleased Elijah more than he was about to let on, though. “Sometimes I get these ideas that I could just pack up and move out...that I could turn my back on all of them. Everything would be so much easier without the expectations but I...I don’t know where I’d begin. Then something happens and I’m distracted and I forget; I forget what I want to do.”

Elijah knew that Frank was only trying to help but he didn’t know whether he wanted to trust him or not. Alice was private. She was his ghost. Elijah had only told one other person and even then it had been vague. He didn’t know whether he wanted to tell Frank or not but it seemed like the sensible thing to do. He’d understand then – even if it was only a little bit.

“I...um....I’ve been able to see Thestrals since I was nine years old,” he started, “In the December I witnessed the murder of my best friend. Alice Anderson. She and I...we were...” Elijah bit his lip. “We grew up together and I wanted, even then, to make her my wife when I was ‘bigger’ as we called it then. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I can remember how bitterly cold it was...how the next day...the sun was shining...an insult to her memory. I remember the blood...I remember the glee in that bastards eyes. I can still feel the hand shaped bruises as they held me back. I can still hear her screams. I still have nightmares. I still relive that night in my dreams. I can remember holding her to me...not knowing how to save her but desperately wishing I could. They left her to die and I...I felt responsible. They killed her in cold blood and I...” Elijah ran his fingers through his hair as he felt the sides of his eyes prick with tears. “I can remember the look in her eyes. They were the brightest of blues but they were so dull that night. I watched her die. I still feel as if her blood is on my hands. It feels as if it soaked through. I loved her so much I can’t even...I can’t even look at her sister without seeing her. I just...I feel as if everything stopped after that one event. I feel as if after that I stopped living and died with her...that I merely started existing. I want it to stop. I feel so empty all of the time and nothing fills the void. I can’t...I can’t function like this. It’s been so long and I’ve put up with this for so long but I can’t change it. I don’t know how. It’s suffocating. I’m lost.”

For a long time, Frank just listened. He made no comments, from Elijah's musings about kids, to the story of his childhood friend. There was no need to. His hands lay curled around the soft sides of the mug, though he did not lift it to drink. His pinkie vaguely fingered the lace of the doily, his eyelashes met as he blinked every so often, denying th \e world small milliseconds of his kind, brown eyes.

What sort of world had the wizarding world become? They all spoke of how superior they were to muggles, who still lived like savaged.. But what kind of world let a little girl get beaten to death? What kind of world allowed for shells of young boys to exist, numbed of any good feelings? What kind of world took children from parents? Let parents dictate the lives of their young so harshly? No, wizards were absolutely no better. The only thing that set them apart was they routinely carried sticks with them.

A lot of things made sense now. Cecily and her little gang had spoken of Elijah, for he had quite the reputation at Hogwarts. As heartbreaker and heartthrob, dangerously mysterious as a painter, yet easy to get to know if you wanted to. It weirded Frank out that he knew such things of Elijah, things gleamed from the minds of his teenaged fan club, but at least now things made a little more sense. The girl's had made him seem like God's gift, while simultaneously chastising him for his lack of indiscretion. There was thing they had refused to recognize, one thing they had refused to believe he had, because it might alter their oh-so wise and upright opinion of him:

A past.

After Elijah's story, Frank left a few moments to silence, out of respect to the story, respect to Alice's memory, respect to Elijah's pain. Finally, he said something that Elijah needed to hear, something people probably refused to recognize of him. "You really loved her," he stated, as fact and truth. Elijah needed to know that someone believed that.

"You'd do anything for her, wouldn't you?" he asked quietly, staring into his mug. "Anything to honor her, keep her alive. Through you, she lives. But does she live, if you really don't?" He glanced up. "I know it's cliche but it's something that needs to be considered- Would she want you to be in agony? You could devote your entire life to pleasing her by doing as she wished- by living happily, the way I'm sure she'd want you to."

Just like every time he thought of her; her smiling face mixed with the horror of that night – it ruined him. Her laughter mixed with her screams and it all rocketed around inside Elijah’s head, on a never-ending movie reel His shoulders shook and he buried his face in his hands as he tried to block out the memories that plagued him so. The tears that had threatened to fall slid out from the sides of Elijah’s eyes. They ran across his cheek and fell into his palms, pooling there before slipping out between his fingers. Each droplet dribbled down the back of his hand and down his arm before disappearing underneath the crisp white shirt that had splotches of paint decorating it. The sobs were not made vocal though they wracked his body all the same. He looked tiny again. He wasn’t the big, tall, strong Krum man...he was the little boy again...the boy who’d lost his best friend, his childhood and his life.

“She was everything to me.” He whispered brokenly, screwing his hands up into fists to wipe the tears away. “And the fact that those miserable bastards...those Magic-deprived fiends...the fact that they could take her away from me with their hands and blades...it’s a wonder I haven’t become a Muggle-hating lunatic. I know though...I know that they’re better than that. They are better than what they were. One day I’ll find them and I’ll make them feel every ounce of pain she felt...and every agonising moment I’ve gone through since then. I’ll make them regret the day they were born...I swear it. Viktor would throttle me if he heard me say that...and throttle me again for not getting over her. I loved her so much and I suppose it’s obvious I still do. She is nought but a distant memory to them I don’t doubt. I can barely remember her face. I’ll make them remember though. Bollocks to the Statute of Secrecy. They killed her because they were scared; scared of what she could do. They would have had me too if I’d shown magic. If I’d made the grass grow or if I’d conjured a flower and put it in her hair...I wouldn’t have been here. I went after them though. Stupidly even then I thought I could take them. They didn’t kill me. I’m sure they wanted to make me suffer; and I have. I hope they’re proud of themselves.”

“No,” he admitted. “No...she hated it when I was sad...she found my face loathsome when it was drawn down. I had defeatist attitude even then. She’d demand I was happy. She made me promise once that I’d always pursue my own happiness. After she died...I...I couldn’t remember what that was. There’s a nursery...where we all grew up – all of us. We’d play in there every day and I can remember the day after and they stuck me back in there with my cousins. They all just sat there and stared. None of them understood. I can remember running away. I don’t know where I went. All I can remember now is that my cousin Harry found me. He took me home and promised he’d look after me. No matter what, he said. I didn’t believe him even then. I want to pursue my own happiness...like she asked me to. I know that wherever she is she wants to strangle me herself for being such a fool. But I...I don’t know how.”

Had it been a girl, Frank would be consoling at the first instance of any sort of crying. Boys got awkward sometimes about that. But sitting, simply watching Elijah's pain was not something Frank could do and feel okay with. The boy began to sob and Frank winced, fiddling awkwardly with the doily. And that's when he heard footsteps.

Alice entered and Frank paled. A girl named Alice.. Her mouth opened and she turned towards Frank, furious. WHAT THE HELL?! she mouthed. Frank shook his head madly, but Alice's eyes darted towards Elijah. For a girl dressed like a total punk, the sight of the crying Krum boy was enough to soften her features. She looked helplessly towards her brother who returned the expression. She sighed and walked over towards Elijah, sitting next to him and slinging an arm around him, resting a hand on his arm.

Frank cleared his throat. "My sister.. Al. She's too nice for her own good." She stuck her tongue out at him before looking back down at Elijah. Frank cleared his throat again and sighed. "Eli.. It's okay to be angry, to miss her, to want revenge... But she wouldn't want you ending up in Askaban. Not over them. They took her, don't let them take you."

He paused before pressing on. "It's always easier said than done. You have to allow the things that make you happy flourish in your life and you have to weed out the things that make you unhappy. Everyone struggles with it, Eli. I'm not perfectly happy." "I'm miserable most of the time," Alice offered softly. "Self-induced too. People don't know how to make themselves happy. We have to learn how."

Elijah heard the sound of footsteps and he lifted his head from his hands to see a blonde who he could only assume was Frank’s sister. He wiped his eyes and growled quietly to himself. He found himself as insufferable as Frank must have done. Elijah felt the girl sling her arm across his shoulders and he swallowed. Elijah looked over at Frank as he began to speak again and he nodded in understanding. Al. He wondered what that was short for. He could only guess. There were only a couple of names he could think of off of the top of his head and he wasn’t about to pretend to be surprised if her name turned out to be Alice.

“Azkaban...” Elijah scoffed. “The most fearsome fortress in the North Sea. There is nothing that they deserve more than exactly what they put her through. I don’t see why I can’t be the one to repay them for their kindness.” Elijah’s lip curled and he shook his head. He didn’t want to just get revenge. He wanted to feel as if he’d made it up to Alice. He wanted to apologize. He wanted to get them and make it his way of saying he was sorry for not doing so the first time; sorry for not saving her. He closed his eyes and sighed shakily before curling his hands around the teacup again.

Elijah nodded again and tapped his fingernail against the rim of cup. Weed out unhappiness...what induced his unhappiness – he could do that. Elijah tried to think of what made him unhappy first and foremost and a few things cropped up, most notably his family though he put that little vision to the back of his head. He knew what his mind was telling him. He knew he needed to walk away from the Krum family – if only for a decade or two. He didn’t know how much time he actually had left of his little life but he needed to start living it sooner rather than later.

“Maybe I could do with a holiday,” He joked with a half smile. “Sun, sea and sand is enough to make anyone happy isn’t it?”

Frank was glad to see Elijah was not protesting Alice's presence and he had not seemed to freaked out by his slight sister- Elijah was smart, he had probably guessed her name might be Alice and yet he had reacted calmly. And this way, Frank could focus on giving the proper advice. Elijah would get his comfort.. and maybe Alice would get a heart out of the deal.

At Elijah's words, Frank paused, chewing his lips. "It's understandable. You want to avenge her. You want to show them what they did to you both- but Alice is a person that reminds you of the good things, right? Don't let them taint that, don't let memories of her be ruined by them." His sister looked a little confused but she went along with it, pursing her lips and rubbing Eli's back slightly.

The idea of a holiday was not bad. Frank nodded, "That might actually be a good idea. You can either go alone or with someone you trust, someone who can watch out for you or make you laugh. Take things tha5t make you happy- eat junk food. Let loose and let yourself heal." He smiled. "and if you ever need to gt out of the house, we've become sort of a hotel for people who want to escape. Ask Al. It irritates her to no end." She shot him a dirty look and sighed. "It's true, we take in a lot of people," she said. "I don't mind as much as I let on- and if you tell Mum that, Frank, I will poison you."

“Have you ever seen someone die in the most horrific of ways, Frank?” Elijah asked slowly, his voice hallow and cut with emotion. “Have you ever watched the blood creep across the purest of snow yet could do nothing to quell the flow? Have you ever watched the light die in someone’s eyes? Have you ever heard the last words, the last breath that they spoke? You can’t forget that. Your mind doesn’t let you forget that. Everything else - the good times - is forgotten, replaced with that one ever-so-vivid memory. I can remember only that. I can’t ever remember her face as clearly as I can that night. Blood was smeared across her pallor; the skin that had once been pulled taught over her cheekbones was split and frayed like a piece of ribbon. I can’t remember her smile. I can’t ever remember a time where there was true light in her eyes. I can’t remember her happy; I just remember her demise. The good memories I have of her are long gone, replaced with the worst memory of all.”

Elijah sighed heavily and closed his eyes for a few moments before picking up his cup. He tapped his fingers against it and swallowed a few mouthfuls of the still-hot liquid before setting it down again.

“I couldn’t stay here.” Elijah murmured. “It wouldn’t be fair....even if you are a boarding house.” Elijah smiled a little. “I think I need to go away for a while. Not sure where. Maybe I should go to Paris and actually get some work done this summer.” Elijah laughed a little and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Merlin knows that would make Arnold happy. You can rarely please pushy art dealers.” Elijah ran a hand through his hair. “Do you have any plans to go away?” He asked, deciding to move away from the slightly depressing tone of the whole situation.

Frank had not experienced any of that and he was sure Elijah could sense that from him. Frank watched Frank sadly, almost an ashamed look on his face. What was Frank doing, telling this boy everything would be alright when he really did not know. He had seen the dead at the battle, but he had not seen them die. How could any of his words ever make a difference. He looked over at Alice who was incredibly pale, looking at Elijah with a newfound understand though she remained silent. She wallowed and looked up to meet Frank's gaze, before tearing her eyes away.

"I'm sorry," Frank finally said. "Maybe you could speak with my father. He saw a lot of his friends die at the First Battle of Hogwarts. He told me it was dreadful for a long time.. But he learned to get better." Frank nodded, but Alice whispered, "He still has nightmares." She glanced up, realizing she had spoken aloud. She flushed and shrunk slightly. "Occasionally. I can hear him. But he says they're not always so bad anymore."

Frank stared at his sister and then Elijah moved the subject and Frank nodded encouragingly. "That might help a lot actual. A distraction that is also productive. And don't worry yourself for a second about putting us out. If my father gets wind I invited you, he would have already begun decorating your room." He grinned. At his question, Frank shrugged. "Work. Enjoy being a student while you can. You don't get summer vacations after." He smiled. Alice said, "I have nowhere to go, I have no life." Her tone was forcibly light, trying to lighten the mood. Frank had truly never seen her so pleasant. He grinned at her. She was doing well.