Title: Heart Knows Truth
Author: Lady Altair
Summary: You'll live this moment again, and somewhere you already know that. {Hestia Jones and the First War}
Author's Note: Some of you may be familiar with my unfinished Life in Black and White. I've basically come to the conclusion that while I have stories to tell about Hestia, Caradoc, etc., I can convey them far better in such a format as this. So that work is discontinued, but the story lives on in my more traditional formate of one-shots and drabbles. And, actually, if there are any particular things you want to hear about in that story line, feel free to let me know - reviews are one of my favorite forms of inspiration. And, for those of you unfamiliar with it...it really doesn't matter, each installation will stand alone pretty well.
Caradoc has her draft his will, and that's when she finally realizes, that's when the war slaps her across the face and she can no longer close her eyes to it. He assures her it is only practice, smiles like she's being silly when she creases her brow and worries and wonders how it's all snuck up on her.
If she thinks too long on it, it leaves her breathless, so she tries to joke. "You're leaving me everything, you know. Might want to rethink that – you know how I am with money, I'll sell the house for shoes." And Caradoc only smiles at her. But it's not his real smile - it's tired, and afraid, though he's so good at looking confident. Sometimes she wonders if she's ever seen him truly smile at all, because she's only ever known him in war, she's just now realizing – that fear has always been lurking, it's only that she knows where to find it now, hidden in the growing creases on his brow.
"Well, it is only a draft," he teases back.
They have Alasdair Diggory execute the formalities, have some of the others in the office witness. "I'm just teaching you to do it right, hummingbird," he tells her on the way out of Alasdair's office, his arm pulling her close against him for a moment. "For the first poor sod you write for. Don't want to have the court overturn it for impropriety. First rule – don't draft a will you have a personal interest in."
"So we broke the first rule the minute I put quill to parchment." Hestia shoves him lightly. "Good teaching, Juriswizard Dearborn."
"Just a draft," he reminds her. And she looks up into his face, the lines she can read so well now. And her heart shrinks down in her chest, sick and nervous in a way that never quite goes away anymore, just cycles in and out like the tide. She quickens her step, lengthens her stride because she can't bear the lies he's wearing in his face when he tells her it's just a draft. Drafts don't sit filed in law offices, signed and witnessed and ready for probate, death the only missing variable in the equation.
Hestia will remember Helen Field for the rest of her life, remember the quiet, black-hole sadness of the thirty-something widow who sat in her first little cubby of an office as Hestia fumbled over her husband's will, the first she'd ever handled on her own.
She bungles the first enchantment on the letter to Gringotts, gets flustered and ruins the whole letter. Hestia mutters apology after apology, fishing out a new piece of parchment, but the woman across from her just waves them off with this horrible broken smile, shattered pieces feigning wholeness. "I'm in no hurry," she says, and it freezes Hestia down to the marrow of her bones. Hestia looks, sees across the desk at this woman and this isn't just meaningless paperwork she's filing, this is the end of someone's life. And maybe it's just her pregnancy hormones making her maudlin, but she has to choke back tears over the second letter.
Caradoc finds her behind her desk after Mrs. Field has left, shoes off, curled up into her chair, knees tucked as close to her chest as the slight swell of her stomach allows. "Oh, hummingbird," he says in that voice, like he knows just what she's feeling. He's trying to soothe her, kneeling before her chair, smoothing his hands down her forearms. Hestia smiles sadly at him, raising her fingertips to his face, tracing the lines already worn there, the silver just starting to color his temples - hard to see in his golden hair, but she knows where to find it.
He runs his hand over the curve of her stomach, smiles at her with such simple, quiet happiness that her breath grows short and maybe it's just her pregnancy hormones making her maudlin, but she has to bury her face into his chest in another embrace so he doesn't see the happy tears shining in her eyes. This is hers, this life, this man, this family they're making, and it's so much quieter, simpler than she ever imagined wanting, but so much better, as well.
They spend their lunch hour sitting in her office talking about names for the baby, about what to have for dinner, both of them on the tiny velvet loveseat jammed up between the bookcases, her head tucked to his chest, his arms around her.
And after he finally slips out of her office, Hestia is in every hurry, to go home, maybe even forgo dinner just to peel her clothes off and wrap herself around him, skin to skin, and never ever let go, to live while she can.
Caradoc writes love letters to her, sneaks them into places he knows she'll find. They're never very long, usually not much more than a scrap of parchment, but Hestia loves every one, loves the smooth black lines of his neat, utilitarian handwriting and the way the simple letters form his simple, unaffected poetry. He's always been more eloquent in writing.
My hummingbird, he calls her. I had to leave last night, and when I got out of bed, you stirred and reached for me, some vague syllable of my name on your lips, even in sleep. I love you, too.
His handwriting, even in the documents at work, brings a smile to her face and she loves the lines, black and neat, that form her name.
She finds a few of them after…less obvious hiding places kept them out of her hands until he'd disappeared. The last one she finds is simple and painfully short, an inch of parchment curled up into the tube of lipstick he'd loved best on her. You're beautiful without it, hummingbird, come give me a kiss, wherever I am.
Megan Dearborn is not to be.
Hestia, still shaky and fragile from her lonely childbirth, fills out the information on Megan's birth certificate as Caradoc's parents coo over their new little granddaughter, tears of joy and loss in their eyes. When she goes to fill in Caradoc's name, naming him as Megan's father, the inked letters fade and disappear as soon as the quill has looped over the flourish at the end of his surname, no matter how many times she writes it over in the blank space.
Only then does she notice at the top, where she'd written Megan's full name – Megan Caron Dearborn. Written instead, somehow still in her own hand, is Megan Caron Jones.
Megan is not legally Caradoc's daughter; born out of wedlock, it's not Hestia's name to give, and he's not there to claim her. Even his parents try to write his name for her, but their attempts are similarly fruitless. Practically, it makes little difference, for when Caradoc is declared dead (she clings to if in action and word, but her heart knows truth – he would come back to her if he could) the will is very simple and clear – everything to Hestia to do with as she sees fit. It doesn't matter that she isn't legally Caradoc's daughter, but Hestia wants so badly for Megan to carry his name that she retraces Caradoc Dearborn into the space until her fingertips are raw from the sharp edge of the quill and Sturgis has to take the parchment away from her and have it filed into record.
Eight months into life after Caradoc, she's sitting at tea with his parents, juggling a content Megan between the three of them between sips, when Albus Dumbledore raps on the frame of the kitchen window, thrown open for the fair spring day.
Hestia's hands go numb at the sight of Hogwarts' headmaster standing in the garden of Caradoc's parents muggle rowhouse, waving politely in through the open window. Anne is holding Megan, thankfully, because Hestia loses grip and drops her teacup to the ground. It's back in her hands, undisturbed, as Ivor is up at the back door, inviting "Mr. Dumbledore" in. They greet him like an old friend, and Hestia has the feeling this is not the first visit he's paid to this kind muggle couple who treat her like the daughter she really isn't.
And somehow she's sipping Tetley from the cup Professor Dumbledore rescued midair from ruin on the linoleum in Anne Dearborn's muggle kitchen in Beaumaris while the wizarding world's golden hope discusses the rose bushes in the back garden. Then the tide of conversation sweeps in so fast she loses her footing and tips her teacup too far, streaming cold tea down her front and onto Megan's head. "I was hoping, Miss Jones, that you might lend your expertise to some of my associates? And myself, of course." Megan tosses her head, butting it back into her mother's chest, laughing and thrashing til she nearly slithers from Hestia's arms.
And Hestia knows what he means, what he wants, what he's come for. It's the same thing Emmeline Vance came around to ask, months ago when Megan was newborn, and Hestia has the sudden but quickly quashed urge to tell the Headmaster exactly what she told Emmeline – fuck your Order.
They want someone in the DML and they have Caradoc's sacrifice to hold over her head and Sturgis to plead their case; she's by far the easiest mark. The last thing in the world she wants to do is write out another will, court more ill luck with preparation, do anything for the cause that took Caradoc from her, but Hestia's always had difficulty saying no to authority. The obnoxiously self-impressed Head Girl from school days gone by had been one thing, the Headmaster of Hogwarts entirely another. She's sure he knew that. Telling Albus Dumbledore exactly what she thinks of his little cabal of vigilantes in front of Caradoc's grieving parents would be too cruel - she's sure he knew that, too.
She does qualify her commitment, however, nervous and sort of desperate at the front door as she shows him out. "I can't fight," she says, quavering. "I'm useless at dueling. You ask me for my position and that is all you'll have of me. I have a daughter," and this welds steel to her words. "You can't ask her to go without both parents; she's already given you her father. So don't you dare ask that of me." She finds strength for her daughter that she couldn't find for herself and stares up at him, and for once in her life, even with her feet flat on the ground, she doesn't feel small.
He looks at her, his eyes softened for once from their usual sharp, snapping blue. It's the first time Hestia has had any idea of how sorry he is for what he must do, for the costs others must incur and something nasty churns in her stomach. "Of course, my dear," he replies gently, taking her hand and squeezing it softly. For the first time, she can see the terrible price he pays, the horrible responsibility he shoulders.
That night she cries herself to sleep for the first time in weeks - most of her anger has evaporated and all that's left is simple loss. It's almost harder.
The Department of Magical Law is dwindling – Hestia's own Lower Temple has been ravaged, the member roster nearly halved, and the other Inns are hardly better off – and procedure is falling by the wayside. The only relief, if you could call it that, is that Barty Crouch has completely dispensed with anything resembling due process. There are no criminal cases, no presumed innocence; only sham declarations of guilt and the chains of Azkaban. Not that they're catching anyone, or that it's doing any good.
There are only wills and probate and contests and grieving widows and squabbling relatives and so much death that Hestia, for the first time in her life, truly hates her job. Even in the face of war and collapse and chaos, people still can fight over Mum's silver tea service like it really means something, and it's a scathing commentary on humanity that leaves a bitter taste on Hestia's tongue.
The department's a grim place to be anymore. Abandoned desks, still strewn with half-finished notes and family photographs, checker the offices, and paperwork with too-familiar names crosses their desks too often. Daniel Abbott's gentle face is worn with secondhand grief, and even Alasdair Diggory has grown less caustic. Grief and fear have wearied him just as they have her, filed down his once razor edge just as they've sharpened her once relentlessly cheery temper and now they've met in the middle, both broken in their own ways.
Some nights she Floos into Anne and Ivor's to pick up Megan and just ends up staying. It's so much easier to sleep in a house where there are other people, sleeping, breathing, where she can sit at tea with Anne and listen to her stories about Caradoc as a child until they're both sobbing and smiling love into the tile-top kitchen table, can hear Ivor laugh and close her eyes and for a moment let Caradoc live again, outside her heart.
Every morning Hestia wakes up to Megan and Anne and Ivor, she thanks Caradoc for this family he gave her; the best bequest she has of him, not written in any will.
Alasdair slips his hand into hers at Dorcas Meadowes' funeral, squeezes it reassuringly and holds on. Sturgis stands next to her, Megan asleep against his chest – he's just taken the little girl from her mother, and Hestia's hands, deprived of the comforting, wearying weight, are shaking.
Hestia glances up from the ground she's been staring at, to their hands, up to Alasdair. He's looking over at her, a sad quirk at the corner of his mouth, and something lurches in Hestia and she has to bite back a sharp, painful laugh that sticks in her throat until it's come up as tears. The closest thing to a smile she's ever seen on Alasdair's face and it's at a funeral.
Hestia feels as though she's lived this moment before – it's frightening how familiar this all feels. Another funeral, another Phoenix burns, never to rise, only ashes.
Daniel Abbott handles her mother's will – she thinks Daniel tried to spare her any contact with her family, but her father barges into her office before he leaves the department, and it's the first time she's seen him since she'd walked out after the dessert conversation had turned ugly one night, before Caradoc had even gone missing. What will everyone think of us, Hestia, with you carrying that bastard halfblood child, you can't be dreaming of keeping it. You have better options. Rabastan Lestrange would still hang the moon for you. Caradoc's name was never spoken, he was never even referenced – he didn't exist, it was that shameful.
She can't share his grief, can't even stand to witness it. He makes some awkward overtures of reconciliation towards her, gives her a ruby necklace that her mother had owned, won't let her refuse it. You're still our blood, Hestia, never forget. She loved you to the end, though you had turned away. He doesn't ask about Megan, though, the only thing that might have turned her heart to forgiveness. Grief has softened him, but he is still the same, and part of her knows her parents sighed with relief when Caradoc disappeared.
When she cries that night, on the Dearborns' sofa, sandwiched between Anne and Ivor, face in her palms and four loving arms wrapped around her, it's not for the woman in the ground. It's for the mother Hestia once thought she'd had, when she was young and love seemed unconditional and blood meant nothing more than the liquid red she stained her robes with when she scraped her knees.
She sells her mother's necklace and buys another with the money, sets it aside in a jewelry box for Megan's wedding.
Lily and James Potter have a will. Hestia drafted it for them, the three of them sitting around the kitchen table as Megan and Harry banged their blocks together on the floor until James had excused himself from 'this morbid business' to sit down on the floor and play with them. Hestia remembers the day better than the will itself, sitting at the kitchen table with Lily, watching James build up little wooden castles from the brightly colored blocks and setting Harry and Megan into gales of sweet baby laughter by knocking them down. One of those happy, golden days when the parchments on the table had seemed unnecessary and their perfect little world untouchable; there had been too few of those days.
There are never any formalities, nothing executed in the aftermath of their deaths. Everyone just assumes that Lily's sister is the natural choice for their son's guardian.
But Hestia herself wrote the list, scrolling down into the double digits, of people the Potters preferred as their son's guardian before Petunia Dursley. James Potter's family branches out through the wizarding world, none closer kin than Petunia but still preceding her on their List. It would be an exaggeration to say they'd have given Harry to the milkman over Lily's sister, but not much of one – Remus Lupin is the first feasible named guardian, and most of the wizarding world would consider a stranger on the street a better choice than a werewolf.
But Dumbledore quashes her questions kindly, and Hestia doesn't dare pursue it any further. There are a few rumbles of contest from a some of James' closer cousins, but they disappear and Hestia has more than a vague idea of why.
It's a night Sturgis is out on patrol. Nowadays it's an easier task, more aimed at keeping a leash on the revelers, making sure the pubs and bars empty out with a minimum of drunken brawls between those who still can't shed the mistrustful tendencies of the war even as they rejoice in its ending.
Gone are the nervous nights of pacing up the floor with Megan, worrying about Caradoc and Sturgis, out in the night. Megan, coming up on her second birthday, sleeps through the night now, and so Hestia gets to as well. And she only has one man to worry about, walking the world at night.
On one of the first nights in years Hestia sleeps soundly, not fearing a knock on the door or a whoosh in the floo bearing bad news, someone knocks politely at the front door. And Hestia flies up in bed, the same old fear and hope reborn in her chest. Megan, likewise woken, starts screaming. She gathers Megan up from her room, hefting her onto her hip and bouncing her till she quiets, trying to delay the door, trying to catch her breath. And there's another knock, insistent down below.
Hestia is expecting to find some of the Enforcers on Sturgis' contingent, wringing their hands behind their backs as they tell her he's been killed (and part of her, firmly trussed by reason but not quite silenced, still sings of hope, of Caradoc behind the door). Instead, at the door she finds Rabastan, dead-eyed and looking so haunted she can't even gather breath enough for a surprised gasp. She only clutches Megan closer to her, steps back from the frame, speechless in fear and loathing for what she knows he is, what he's done, that mark on his arm she's seen mirrored in the sky over unspeakable horrors.
"You call Sturgis right now, we'll be at the Longbottoms' in Blackburn. You get Enforcers there fast, Hestia, it's important." Rabastan is not meeting her eyes, hunched over, his voice rasping. He doesn't come inside, hangs just outside the door. One hand goes to his cloak pocket, lingers in there. The outside light Hestia left on for Sturgis is harsh overhead, making Rabastan look so much older than she remembers - or maybe he's done that to himself.
Megan isn't crying. She waves at Rabastan, "Why 'lo dere!" she screeches cheerfully into the night, parroting Sturgis' favorite way of greeting her, oblivious to the tension. She rocks back and forth in Hestia's arms, waving enthusiastically at the visitor. And Rabastan looks at her, disarmed, and something strange, sad, and regretful shadows across his face. Hestia shifts, pivoting her body to shield her daughter from this wretch hanging in the doorway, presses Megan's face into her shoulder, smoothes her wispy hair with nervous, readying hands. She might not have a wand (foolish, fucking foolish it's still on her nightstand, the war is supposed to be over, she doesn't answer the door armed any longer) but she will protect her daughter, she will fight him with teeth and nails if he trips the wire she's mentally strung in the space between them.
He looks back at Hestia, can surely sense the feral, maternal rage that's setting her shoulders, and the shadow across his face has settled into an expression just as indistinguishable. "She's…I…" His mouth closes back up, and there are no words. His hand reaches in and Hestia backs further into the dark foyer, though she is already far from his reach. He sets something on the table beside the door.
Rabastan meets her eyes one last time, and maybe, just for a moment, the weight of the years falls away and Hestia can remember that boy, clean eyed and chivalrous, who'd snuck back to Madame Malkin's without his family to sweep her off for a first date on her lunch break. The man who stands before her is such a tragic fucking ruin of that boy she can barely breathe, her chest filled up with pity and revulsion. And it doesn't seem so abhorrent to admit that she'd loved him once - whatever it was she loved has shriveled and died, just as lost to her as Caradoc.
Then he turns and retreats. There's the soft pop of Apparation from somewhere in the dark of the lawn. Hestia throws the door back shut, the heavy oak thundering in the night, and turns back upstairs for her wand, praying she has enough of a memory for a Patronus to alert Sturgis. And all her pity for Rabastan has gone, she tells herself, and it's easy to believe because the tiny drop of it left in her soul is drowned in heavy, vicious loathing.
She never really knows why he came to her that night, confessed his crime before he'd even committed it, purposely courted capture. Maybe it was remorse, regret…she doesn't know, doesn't like to think too long on it. Alasdair is the lead Juriswizard on the case, and sometimes she pages through some of the parchments, helps him read through case law because she's so much faster. He knows better than to ever speak about it though – on any other case, he'd ask her opinion on his argument, but he knows better. Sturgis keeps her name out of it, calls it an anonymous tip that led his contingent to the Longbottoms' home, and she never goes to court, and never sees Rabastan again. Life in Azkaban, of course, and when she sees what he's done to Alice and Frank, she has just enough hate in her to think he deserves it.
Hestia unceremoniously bins the battered velvet jeweler's box unopened, thinking she knows what's inside – the flashy, beautiful diamond ring Rabastan had tried to give her so long ago, seen and refused and never worn. Her memory's faded too much to remember that Rabastan's box had been black – this is midnight blue, and the unseen ring inside is far simpler, and there's the tiniest scrap of parchment tied with golden wire to the ring – will you, my Hummingbird?
She throws away an answer to the question that has haunted her for years, but another thousand questions and a hundred tortured nights turning them over in her head join it in the bin, so maybe it's for the best.
Megan calls Sturgis 'daddy', and Hestia surprises herself with how sharply she corrects the toddler. "No, Megan, Uncle Sturgis, not daddy." And Megan bursts into tears and sits down hard on the carpet, her unsteady toddler legs failing her, and Hestia wants to do the same. It's another of those moments, when the ultimate unfairness of the world settles down hard on her shoulders and she wants to join Megan's party and wail. They've grown less frequent, those heart-crushing seconds – her burden has lessened with the passing time, with peace, but when it hits her all over again, it still knocks the wind from her lungs. That Caradoc's daughter calls another man daddy knifes into some soft, unhealed part of Hestia's heart and she just can't bear it.
It's hardly Megan's fault; Sturgis is the closest thing to a father she knows. The man who won't commit to dinner plans with his boyfriend of three months lives in their home, plans holidays with Hestia and her daughter, sits at dinner every night, soothes Megan when she cries, makes her laugh, changes her nappy, loves her like a father should – Megan deserves that, and Caradoc would want it.
Sturgis picks Megan up from the floor and hustles Hestia to the sofa, pulling mother and daughter against him, soothing the tears Megan's crying and the ones Hestia is fighting. Hestia manages a thank you around the tightness in her throat, cuddled against her best friend and wishing, not for the first time, that love was simple and this patchwork family could be enough for all of them.
The next time Megan calls Sturgis daddy Hestia doesn't correct her – she had the right of it the first time. Though photographs of Caradoc still hang in places of honor throughout the house, it is one of the three of them in the Brighton sunshine, Sturgis and Megan appearing to any stranger as father and daughter with their matching blonde hair, that Hestia wakes to in the morning, framed in silver on her vanity.