She'd asked Seamus if he wanted to come with and he'd waffled in indecision for hours and decided against, so she's on the Thomas's doorstep alone, with a bowl of fruit. An offering of sorts.
"Dean's not here," says his sister, when she opens the door. She glances around then, realising that Seamus isn't here, either. She looks up with a suspicious understanding.
"I know," says Nora.
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above
The angels, whispering to one another,
"No proper goodbyes even," says Maggie. "He just left a box of his things on his bed with a last will and testament. Can you- you can't even imagine. Poor Beth found it."
Nora nods, at a loss for words. She is grateful, now, that she hadn't brought Seamus.
"How long has this been coming?" says Maggie, looking at Nora for the first time. "When did it start?"
"Since 1995," admits Nora. "That was when- that was when some people first started saying that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was back. It wasn't common belief until- until maybe 1996."
"A year," says Maggie. "Two years, maybe. And I find out two days ago."
"I thought Dean would have told you," says Nora.
Maggie shakes her head, and only now does Nora realise how furious the other woman must be. Maybe not with Nora necessarily. With her son who had hid this from her for years. "Not a goddamn word," Maggie says quietly.
Sometimes Nora doesn't realise that she's an anomaly, that most teenage boys don't actually talk to their mothers. Even when Seamus is actively hiding things from her, she can guess at more than what she suspects Dean must have told his family.
"I'm sorry," she offers, a useless plea.
Maggie nods, her lips pressed together tightly. "It's fine."
She and Seamus are alone for a few weeks, Jack packed to his brother's house in Galway. She doesn't know how he'll explain it- it's not like he can tell the truth- but it's out of her hands for now. She tells him that once he's out of the house he'll be irrelevant- just another Muggle who'd had a magical child- and she hopes, fervently, that she's right.
Seamus is constantly in one of his moods, flipping indiscriminately between contrary or sarcastic or miserable. She doesn't know how to help him- she's his mother, not his friend, and right now what he needs is a friend.
"Your book list came this morning," she says, trying to get him to talk to her. "I didn't know you'd signed up for Muggle Studies." It must be a symbolic gesture of sorts. Some kind of solidarity. Support for his father, or Dean, or something.
At first it's like he ignores it; his thumb circles the side of his glass absently. She worries. No matter why he'd signed up for the class, it's unwise right now. He had been a baby during the first war and can't possibly understand the statement he's making.
"I didn't sign up for Muggle Studies," he says finally. "Must be some mistake."
She visits the Thomases throughout the autumn. They have no other magical visitors- neither Dean nor Snatchers nor Death Eaters. Maggie tells her belated stories about the Thomases and their interactions with magic, or with Seamus. Nora tries to fill Maggie in on the war.
There's not much of substance she can tell them most of the time. They won't care too much about the rumours of Hogwarts she's prying out of her colleagues and her brother and his friends, and they won't understand the Ministry or the politics. All she can really tell them is that there's been no word of Dean.
She and Seamus had been alone together years ago, after she'd told Jack about magic and shattered his worldview. With nothing better to do, she'd spoiled Seamus rotten, as if it would make up for driving his father away. Jack had been appalled when he'd come back to them. "You've been letting him eat what," she remembers him saying, at dinner.
Since then she is less indulgent. Just because she'd do almost anything for her son doesn't mean that he should know that. But special circumstances certainly apply- this is the first time in years that they haven't had Jack here; this is surely a difficult holiday for Seamus with Dean still missing.
"We could go out to London and see if there's anything fun in Diagon Alley," she suggests, too aware of how lackluster it sounds.
Sure enough, Seamus is uninterested.
She hates his apathy more than anything else; it feels unnatural. They stay at home for most of the holiday, bored and tentative, and she lies awake in bed and muses over what he's told her about Hogwarts.
If he's getting tortured over schoolboy antics she can't imagine what's going on elsewhere. She'll have to tell Maggie Thomas but she dreads it.
She visits one day and Maggie greets her in the doorway. "Have you heard of Potterwatch?" she says abruptly.
Nora hasn't.
Maggie doesn't explain what she meant by Potterwatch, but she sits Nora down and says that Dean's been tracked down, sort of. "He was with a group," she says, and shakes her head. "God knows where he got a group of other wizards to stay with, but he did."
"It's lucky," says Nora.
"No. Two of the men are dead and Dean's gone missing. They think he escaped, but they don't know."
Nora quietly takes it back.
"I wish he'd call," says Maggie. They both know he can't, they both know he won't.
"He's a smart boy," says Nora. "He'll be alright."
Maggie looks away.
Can find, among their burning terms of love
None so devotional as that of 'Mother'
Her bedroom door creeps open on Good Friday night. She doesn't roll over to look- there's only one person it could be. It's been months since Jack's been home.
Seamus doesn't speak, just sits at the foot of the bed where his father would be normally. She shifts to see him adjusting himself, cross-legged and slouching. She can tell that he's achy and sore and she can't tell if it's normal end-of-day achiness or leftover torture.
"Is something the matter?" she says. He is quiet for a moment and she wonders if he's just lost in his own thoughts. Maybe he's ignoring her. He scratches the back of his neck.
"I'm sorry about what's happening at Hogwarts," he says, at length.
"It's not your fault," she says, and Seamus shakes his head and looks away. The only light is from the hallway outside and with his face shadowed he looks unreal, like he could melt away. She sits up and reaches for his shoulder; he lets her.
"Mam," he says. "If anything happens to-"
"Seamus," she says pleadingly, before he can make her cry. "Promise you'll stay safe. It's only a few more months."
There's a long pause as they both consider the futility of the request. "Yeah," he says.
He's looking away so she lets herself watch him a little. He's small for his age, huddled over himself. She supposes it's chilly.
"It's gotten worse," she says softly. "Hasn't it?"
He hesitates but doesn't lie to her. "Yeah," he says.
"How much worse?"
He hesitates again, like he's trying to parse his answer as inoffensively as he can. "They'll give us detention for less reason. Dress code violations, or missing assignments, or talking in class."
She knows him well enough to know that he's been engaged in all three. Probably all at the same time. "Please be careful," she says.
He shifts and she realises belatedly he's getting up again. "I'll see you in the morning," he mumbles. "I just- wanted to see you."
He closes the door quietly behind him and she stares at it long after he's gone. Her exhaustion renders the dim light from below the door a flickering, unsteady strip, and she watches it until her vision blurs. She wonders what he'd wanted to tell her.
She's not the same lovesick girl she'd been when she first met Jack but it's been too many months and she aches for him. He calls her four times a week- it's driving up their phone bill- but she doesn't mind.
She wishes she could just hold his hand at least.
He asks after Seamus but she doesn't know what to tell him. He ought to know, of course, what's happening at Hogwarts, but when she put him on speakerphone at Easter, Seamus lied through his teeth, said that he was doing just fine. Most damningly, Nora didn't correct him. Maybe it's just easier that way.
Of course she tells him in private when Seamus is back at school. Tells him the school's under Ministry control and has cracked down hard on insubordinate students. She doesn't know how to explain the Cruciatus curse, so she just doesn't. Probably he assumes they've started beating students; that's certainly not good but it's not unfamiliar. Jack thrives on familiarity, even with magic. Perhaps especially with magic.
Nora has tried to reconcile magic and Jack for twenty-one years. Magic makes no sense to Jack, and Jack probably makes no sense to magic.
He'll forgive her, she's sure.
Nora forgot to bring her purse and regrets it; as she and the other parents hurry up the hill to the castle she's desperate for a handkerchief, for a breath mint, for any of the other useless things in her handbag. She's woefully unprepared to deal with any of this- certainly not the idea that there'd been a Battle on school grounds- and forgetting her purse is the least of it.
Eamon had called her to tell her about the Battle. His boys were all graduated by now, his grandchildren too young for Hogwarts, but she's glad he'd thought to tell her. She is alone at home, Jack in Galway waiting out the war, and she doesn't want to imagine how it would have felt to find out about this in the papers tomorrow.
At the castle, she turns in wild circles, unable to find her son. The survivors have scattered, Professor Flitwick says when she and a few other parents cluster to worry. A number were taken to the Hospital, more are in St. Mungo's waiting room. There are students still looking around the castle for survivors.
Nora entertains the possibility that her son is dead. She's had the thought in the back of her mind since she'd received the letter that he'd gone missing, that if she was found to be harbouring him or any of his fellow fugitives, she'd be imprisoned. Back then it was easy to convince herself that he couldn't be dead- if he was dead, they'd have told her so. There's no letter now, though, just a panicked Floo call from her brother and the long hike from Hogsmeade to the castle.
Her boy's not very religious, hasn't been to church more than three times a year since 1994, but she wonders if he'd want last rites.
She finds them coming down the stairs on the fifth floor. Seamus is filthy and looks like he's been through hell, his face bruised and smudged. Dean looks a bit worse for the wear as well. Seamus still has his wand in his hand, like he's afraid to let it go.
Before she knows it, Nora is sobbing into their shoulders. They both smell horrible- sweaty and bloody and sooty- but she can't remember ever feeling so relieved.
"Mam," says Seamus, maybe in protest- Nora realises too late they could both be injured badly. She takes his face gingerly in her hands- "Are you hurt?"
It's a stupid question. He's clearly hurt. She just doesn't know what to do.
"I was so worried," she says. She looks over (and up) at Dean. "Oh Dean. You owe your mother an apology."
"I'm still furious with him," says Maggie. She and Nora both look out the window at Dean and Seamus on the porch. Seamus kicks at the ground, his hands in his pocket. Dean squints up at the sky. They are a picture of teenage listlessness.
"But?" says Nora.
"It's been so good to have him back home," says Maggie. She shakes her head. "At least he came back at all."
"He did," says Nora. "You're lucky he did." The papers say the Battle of Hogwarts had killed upwards of seventy people, over half of them students. Nora wonders suddenly how much Dean has told his mother about the war.
"He's lucky he did," Maggie replies. "I'd have raised him from the dead and killed him again."
Nora laughs.
The men are watching football in the sitting room with Dean's sister Beth; the sounds of the TV filter in. Outside, Dean leans casually against the window and Seamus swats him on the arm.
"I look up and instinctively check to see where he is," admits Maggie. "Once he was out mowing the lawn and I looked all over the house in a mad panic."
Nora can't say she doesn't understand that; she's grown so protective of Seamus that letting him out to the store makes her uneasy. He and Dean are planning to move out and get a flat; she's sure that she and Maggie have contributed substantially to that decision. She's worried for them but she's thrilled, too. It's the only thing Seamus seems excited about lately.
"Between the two of us, it's a shock they managed to grow up at all," says Nora.
"What can I say," says Maggie, watching the boys with an amused quirk in her mouth.
As it turns out neither of them can say anything; they sit in silence for a while as Dean and Seamus loaf around outside. Seamus makes a face at them through the window when he catches them watching; Maggie waves cheerily back.
"They'll be alright," says Maggie.
"My God," says Nora. "I hope so."
[Extract from To My Mother, Edgar Allen Poe.]