Marriage is Murder

Andrew had wanted to make another remark but he was distracted by a girlish giggle. There were a pair of girls that were close to his age, and they were standing across the room, looking at him and giggling shyly.

"They've got their eyes on you, Boy," Michael said. "Don't be shy. Go ask one of them to dance when that starts. Introduce yourself. It will be good practice for those dancing lessons Kate and I have been making you do with her." Andrew looked up at him with a look at basically said "Do I have to?" Michael had read the look in Andrew's eyes and simply said. "Yes. You do." Andrew excused himself and hesitantly made his way across the room. "They're the children of one of the staff members. His wife works in the kitchen in the barracks. They have a house in the village. Robert told them they could bring their daughters since they're on break as well. He's a good boy, Steven. He's just trying to be almost 14 and act and think like a man. Its a hard balance. I'm sure for him it feels a lot more like tightrope walking. When you get a chance, when the blizzard stops, just go take a walk with him. Talk to him. You're as nervous around him as he is around you. Clear it up so you both can go forward."

"And when precisely did you become psychic, Tex?" Michael scowled. "You have no idea what he's going to say. You just think you do. For your information, he wasn't angry. That isn't why he ran. He was uncomfortable. He was nervous and frightened that you wouldn't be able to deal with the fact that he has been with Robert. And he was uncomfortable that you were getting married again to someone he hadn't met. No offense, Cassidy. He isn't sure what that says about his worth to you that you didn't even write him last time and that he didn't even get an owl from you this time. He heard from Robert. He believes you gave up on him sometime about the time you started dating Ronata. And he didn't want to be where he wasn't welcome, even if Robert and I were here. He said to us that he felt he'd rather be alone than to ever again be anywhere he wasn't wanted. He lost the anger about a year ago. But the nerves? Well, that hasn't quite gone yet. We're talking to him but that might take awhile longer."

Andrew had chosen the girl who looked like the oldest daughter. She had chestnut colored hair and sparkling green eyes and a laugh that sounded like music to Andrew's ears. "Um...hi," he managed nervously. "I don't suppose...well,..." he began. At that moment, Frog jumped out of his tuxedo pocket causing Andrew to panic. Frog never jumped out of his pocket. Besides that, he knew girls hated frogs, and he figured she'd freak.

"I'll get him!" she said, ducking like lightning to scoop her hands into a potted indoor tree to fetch the tiny frog out of the dirt. Andrew stood amazed and thunderstruck. What girl liked frogs? That was just against...well, all the rules or something.

"The last thing he heard from you, pretty much, was putting him on the train the during the summer after his first year, Mate," Michael said gently. "He hasn't received a single thing from you after that. No allowance, no school supplies, no Christmas or birthday notes or gifts...not a bloody thing. He thought your words were genuine at the time when you found him but that you were more interested in, as he put it to me, 'chasing women' than in him. His words, not mine. Robert and I have worked a long time to read him in on Khaat's situation and that you honestly were working, and he does understand that now, and he accepts it. What he doesn't understand is why he never heard a syllable from you after you took him in, gave him a room of his own, made him part of your family...and then, in his mind, just utterly vanished.

"You do know that Robert has entirely supported him since you put him on the train at the beginning of his second year, right? Not out of Andrew's accounts, but out of Robert's accounts. Robert had himself appointed so that he could legally sign for any medical treatment, pay his expenses, sign any grade cards from the school, and do those tasks that needed done. It was not intended to separate you two. It was only ever intended to make sure the lad was taken care of. If you've been sending things, then I have no clue where its all gone. But he hasn't ever gotten a thing except from Robert since the start of his second year.

"Look, I am not saying these things to unsettle your wedding day, but these questions surely had to be brewing in your mind since you started to talk about this day. You had to know he'd be here if you did a wedding over the holidays so John could be here. Don't you think its time we answered them rather than having them hang over your head? If you can clear the air, then fine. It would be a wonderful wedding gift. But it doesn't have to happen today. Right now, Andrew knows you were working. He doesn't need all his questions answered today. And if you like, I can say a word to him so that he knows there's been a huge misunderstanding. It might make talking to him a bit easier.

"I believe you," Michael said. "I'm not your enemy. I'm your friend. But--what you may not know is that even the owls that the school sent to you came back unable to deliver them. And for an owl not to find someone almost never happens. The situation reached Robert just as a matter of ministry business. He knew you were working. He never questioned that. He had no idea that you were indeed sending things. He had no way of knowing. So he simply looked out for Andrew so that his education could be free from interruptions. I would recommend that you start working the case and start trying to find out why he didn't get what you sent and vice versa. As I said, that isn't necessary to do today, but its highly unlikely that every item either of you attempted to send to not reach their receiver simply by sheer coincidence.

"The only other thing that I know of that might remotely be a clue is that just after Andrew boarded the train for Hogwarts at the start of his second year, Gringotts' records for Andrew's accounts show a sharp drain on his funds and then, apparently, someone in Gringotts decided it was an error and the bank replaced the funds. When Robert took over Andrew's affairs, he moved Andrew's accounts into a different vault and under his own name rather than Andrew's. From what I know, Robert's kept those account books completely separate, so Andrew's funds are still his own, but Robert did not know who did or did not have access to Andrew's account, so he moved it to protect the Diamond fortune so Andrew would still have it when he grew up. And--as Robert told me, he didn't even know about the little snafu with the account until this summer. Just about the time you all went into the safehouse. He didn't have time to tell you because he's been busy trying to shield you and most of the wizarding world from Gellert Grindlewald."

"It might well be easier for me to do that than for you to do it from your end," Michael said. "But I'm curious as to why a moment of conversation, in your mind, sticks out for you as ruining your entire day? If Robert and I had known you would feel that way, we'd have kept Andrew away. It seems to me that the fact that he's here at all would have inevitably brought this up anyway. If you both were going to feel that Andrew ruined your day, we surely would not have brought him. Believe me, we do have other places we could have sent him. I fail to see how one young lad can ruin an entire day for two adults unless you let it. Pardon me. It seems as though he's lost Frog. I think I'll help him find him. You two go back to enjoying your day."

He walked away from them, heading for Andrew and the young girl who now was behind the indoor tree, looking for Frog, while Andrew was crawling, in his tux, on his hands and knees under an unused table, trying to talk Frog into coming out.