The winds around the Finnigan household, buried in Cumbria where they could not be so readily sourced from their beds, had long since changed. They had altered from the way they had crashed and burned around their world upon the death of their patriarch. He had meant everything to all of them. He had been the centre around which the children had gravitated and absorbed the irrational, irrevocable, forever-love that Seamus Finnigan had to give to his son and daughter. Without him, the bitterness that their mother was famed for, renowned for, across every land that had ever dared cross in her path had increased a hundredfold. Her flashes of anger were directed, ultimately, at her children. Her weak, wounded son and daughter who had foolishly looked to her for love and affection. They got neither: only hatred and scorn for they were every bit like their father and produced in Lavender a mixture of lividness and betrayal no one could emerge from, truly. They thought they had. They all thought they had: but they hadn’t.
Rather like a lost boy, Elliot Charles Michael Finnigan had turned up on the doorstep of his sister’s in-laws feeling completely ridiculous. With a duffle bag slung over his shoulder and a jitter in his body that came from not owning a proper coat he managed to raise a smile to his lips as a harried, flour-covered woman opened the door, looking every bit like the kind lady who had hugged him needlessly, naturally, at his sister’s wedding. She hugged him again upon sight of him and he only just managed to keep hold of his bag as he was tugged into the Irish house that was a beautiful building, too pretty to really be called home, too large and impersonal from the outside. Inside, though, it was most certainly home and they had welcomed Christmas to it in every way: small and large. Bridget welcomed Elliot, too.
Ironically he’d beaten his sister and brother-in-law to the house. Being that he had a lot less to pack and a lot less to do in the build up to the season, he could Apparate out of Hogsmeade as soon as he broke the anti-Apparation wards of Hogwarts’ grounds. He was home free, beaming from Hogsmeade to Dublin to the countryside where he knew he’d come to find the Hayes household. He hadn’t had to look far. Rummaging through his brother-in-law’s things (hey, he had to make sure the bloke wasn’t a crazy axe murderer who was going to murder his baby sister in the night) had told Elliot exactly where he needed to go and thus it was onto the doorstep and into the house he’d ended up, sitting at the kitchen island with a mug of cocoa and a freshly baked cookie, watching as his, what, mother-in-law, could he say that, baked away, happily talking to him about the Christmas plans he was suddenly privy to in a way he hadn’t at all realised or intended.
It seemed as though she knew. Without having to say anything she knew. A true mother’s intuition. She knew when a little lost boy needed somewhere to go, someone to love him. Merlin, he was grateful.
Of course, what Elliot hadn’t been expecting was the thorough scrub that he go as a result of lingering. While vegetables were bubbling on the aga stove getting ready to be made into bubble and squeak, a tin tub was put in front of the large fire place in the hearth of which a whole pig was calmly turning on a spit. Hot water was thrown in as well as a few bars of soap and after that so too was Elliot, spilling water all over the stone floor. Bridget wasn’t a woman who admired the modesty and washed him head to toe without so much as blinking, looking at Elliot funnily when he stole back the sponge long enough to give a cursory glance of it around his lower echelons. With the way she’d dug her nails into his hair and his back, there was no way he was letting her have a go at the crown jewels – not that he would’ve let her even if she had been soft about it.
From there he was dragged from the bathtub and given a pair of old flannel pyjama bottoms. A clean, crisp shirt that smelled like morning dew and grass was pulled over his head and following that a green woollen jumper that the smell of which told Elliot that it had once been Kieran’s and recently too as it smelt just like the chambers that he and Millie shared at Hogwarts. Then, a sheet was draped around Elliot’s shoulders and he was put down on a stool and his hair was given a good hack at. For a year or so since his father’s death he’d left it in a disarray, left it to grow long. He’d plaited bits. Other bits had become matted and useless. Some bits had bells and charms and beads hanging and just as they were cut off, the fish earring in his ear was taken out too.
He was left with a puff of sorts. The woman seemed to know something about haircuts and Elliot played with the thin course of hair that covered his scalp interestedly in the mirror when she was done. A dusting of blonde hair still covered his jaw much to his delight though that too had gotten a trim lest it become too unruly and just like that he was a man again and less like a dramatic yellow beast. He was a human again. The only evidence that he’d ever been anything other was the thick bit of chord still sat against the hollow of his throat holding his father’s signet ring with two red ornamental beads either side. But even that was taken off and the ring was slipped onto his finger. There, he was normal again.
Elliot turned to thank the woman but as though she’d not spent the last hour hacking at his form as though he was a marble block and she a sculptress searching for the real form, she’d returned to her baking. None of it had happened. The cookies, the cakes and the pastries needed doing. Uttering his thanks that she paid no mind to, Elliot returned to his chair and chuckled a little before refilling his mug with cocoa. He then flicked his wand at the radio and Christmas tunes began to play merrily into the kitchen.
Time elapsed comfortably and Elliot had left his perch to try and get a baking lesson. Bridget happily complied and set him to kneading bread dough which she was incredibly happy about – a good pair of strong hands was always a useful addition in the kitchen. Soon enough the bread was twisted into its shape and set in the oven and as Elliot eagerly moved on to cakes, Bridget’s whole countenance changed, as if she sensed something. Just as Elliot was about to ask, a million-watt smile lit up her face and she hurried out of the room as Kieran’s voice called out to her. Elliot smiled despite himself, wondering how on earth she’d even known. Mother’s intuition, it must’ve been, yet again. What a lady.
Millie looked away from her staring first drink of the world around her: Kieran’s world that he tottered around in when he was a baby, barely able to keep on his feet. He must have fallen, have tittered and cried before stifling his wobbly lips and picked himself up again, pressing on regardless of the pain that ruptured through his hands and his knees, perhaps even his little bottom. He pressed on throughout the house until each room he walked into he walked through it a man, an adult, a changed creature entirely. Now she was his. Walking into his home as a married man.
When she settled her gaze it was upon a flour-covered, jovial Bridget who she eagerly returned her embrace to. Millie laughed as Bridget reached belatedly to brush off the flower. Millie couldn’t care a whit about it though. She was just excited to be in a home. A real, proper home. It wasn’t made of card or fake flours or kept up with useless, petty money. There was a mother in it baking and cooking and making all of these treats for her family. She used endearments like ‘hun’ and ‘dears’ and it all so desperately mattered to Millie that she was there to feel that atmosphere. She wanted to feel that unconditional love.
Of course, while she didn’t know about it, that didn’t mean she wanted to be scrubbed and dressed and have a haircut courtesy of Bridget. She was quietly quite fond of Kieran’s mother but she wasn’t nearly as absurdly tolerant as her brother on that front. She wouldn’t take to water quite like the fish he was. She much preferred showers, regardless, and washing herself.
The blonde turned to her husband and slid her hands contentedly to his, lacing his fingers in around his longer ones. She leaned up, stealing a kiss from him before sliding her hands up his arms to tuck her limbs around his torso. She hugged him tight to her and smiled again before pulling away, taking his hands in her littler ones once more.
“Where first, maestro?” She asked, tearing her eyes across the foyer once more with a bright smile before turning her gaze onto him, a devilish grin replacing her gentle look. “Do I get to see baby pictures?”