Support Group
Marius joins a support group for squibs
QLFC Round 6: Link Em' Up
Tutshill Tornados, Chaser 3
Prompt: Marius and Arabella
Words: 2537
Optional prompts:
Action: Tripping over something
Emotion: Surprise
Dialogue: "Is that really what you want?"
A/N: Warning - Substance Abuse
The warm glow of an electric street lamp cast deep shadows across the street as the man hurried along, his lit cigarette illuminating his face in the darkness of his hat. He grumbled and looked up to the sky as it began to drizzle.
Marius was late. Not that it bothered him that much, he assumed that these sort of meetings didn't happen too often and they were nearly always the same. Guess that's what excuse he would tell himself this time.
When an old friend of his had first approached him to suggest the existence of a squib support group he had laughed in their face. Who wants to sit in a circle and bemoan the fact that your family wishes you weren't born? It wasn't until much later when he had begun to listen to her advice and appreciate the existence of this group.
Back when he had first come to terms with who he was, Marius had assumed that nothing would be more depressing than hearing other people going on about the same problems that you have. Yet, hundreds of other support groups were some quite significant evidence that this sort of worked, and it was about time that someone did something like this for them.
That being said, he was Marius Black and couldn't just turn up to the first meeting that had been set up. Even though he had been disinherited decades ago, he couldn't just shake that ingrained voice in his head that commanded at the worst of times, "Boy. You're a Black. No one sees any weakness." God forbid that anyone see that they were human.
Even now, in his early thirties, Marius was always hypersensitive when he uttered phrases like that, always remembering when children had laughed at him for occasionally cursing Salazar, or any other 'made up words'. There has been a period of time in his teens when these utterances flew past his lips or through his mind so quickly that shame would immediately follow at how much he had changed.
It was impossible to not change and adapt when he first entered the Muggle world, a homeless, deserted twelve year old with nothing but the clothes on his back and the conceited snobbishness that he had been told was his birth right. A few weeks at the orphanage that he was dumped into swiftly changed his attitude once he realised that no one had even heard of the sacred twenty eight, let alone the disowned fourth child of the Black family.
Every moment from there on out turned out to be a series of firsts; the first time riding in a moving car, the first time writing using a pen rather than a quill and the first time really taking care of himself. It had seemed preposterous when he had first entered the building and had realised that there were no house elves in sight, and that they were expected to clean up after themselves. He had made his sentiments on the issue very well known, but all he had received from the Nuns that were looking after them were harsh looks and the occasional blow when he asked if there were at least any servants.
He learnt many things in that period of his life, the most memorable being to wind your bloody neck in, because out in the big wide world, the most sensible course of action is usually to just blend in with the background. If his family saw him as a waste of space, then what did he expect anyone else would think?
This lesson came quickly when the other children at the orphanage worked out that he could read and write much better than them, and yet he still had no clue about anything that mattered. Manipulating, coercing and blackmailing him into helping them get out of situations at school or with the nuns, and later on, with the law. He was alone in the world unless he used his skills to buy people's allegiance.
It didn't take Marius very long to work out how most things worked in the Muggle world because after all, he wasn't thick, he just couldn't do magic. He began to use the people that used him in the most subtle and clever ways that they barely noticed until it was too late. By his early twenties, he had amassed himself quite a few pawns that he could use to get what he wanted, and yet remained in the shadows so as not to draw the attention of the people that could actually cause problems. If only his father could see that his diplomatic training that had been instilled at such a young age was actually paying off.
Predictably, he did well in school, not that anyone at that hovel really cared, and so he left as soon as possible, quickly finding a job at 16. Marius soon considered the menial, labour intensive jobs as beneath him and instead sought out a better way of gaining money. The other kids at the orphanage were expected to fall into crime, so why couldn't he?
Back when he had been taught by a personal governess, he had been highly praised on his ability at counting and maths in general, and that really came into play when someone needed to balance the books for various shady dealings. Marius always leapt at the opportunity and soon found himself present at many meetings, fading into the background like usual and collecting snippets of information about the goings ons of the low lifes of society.
It was expected that with a life of danger and adrenaline like that, that there would be an equally vibrant social scene, and Marius was often found partaking in booze, powders and the like, alongside plenty of women, and a couple of men. Where his siblings may have been arranging their marriages and schmoozing up to the pureblood elite, Marius spent the better part of his twenties in a haze in the underbelly of London.
Reflecting back on it now, it was obvious that he hadn't been well, and that it was a slippery slope until everything got worse. Using the alcohol and drugs to fill that space inside that made him useless to his family, had also made him useless in this new world, and the people that were once his peers began to exclude him from jobs. Marius couldn't help but spiral, becoming a danger to himself and others, and it wasn't like no one cared about him. When he inevitably would crash and need a place to implode, he knew that she would be there.
She had joined the orphanage a couple of years after he had and there was immediately something that had drawn his attention to her, whether it was the odd way that she dressed, or the even odder way that she looked at him. This soon became clear when she pulled him aside at breakfast the next day with a whispered, "I guess there is an unspoken rule that if you find out your child is a dud, then you have to fake their death and send them here?" He nearly dropped his bowl and wasted his meagre breakfast, but she had just smirked at the surprised look on his face.
After that, it seemed to become a mission of hers to throw him off at the worst possible moments and then avoid his presence as he attempted to get retribution. Which he actually never did. Of course he had wanted to connect to the only other person that could possibly understand what he was going through, and yet she was almost impossible to find and talk to at first. It was only by eavesdropping on the other children that he had worked out that her name was Arabella, with no known wizarding surname as well.
When he finally did track her down she had explained that she had changed it and was not going to tell him what it was. He had grown angry because how would he know how he was supposed to treat her if he didn't know her family tree, but she just laughed at him. And so their feud had begun.
Over the years they had endlessly ridiculed and belittled one another, both with varying degrees of success, but had both silently taken solace in each interaction, afraid that the other would find out. Of course, the other children had teased them that they must fancy each other, as annoying children do, but Marius couldn't help but see her as an annoying little sister that he couldn't just shake off, and he was sure that Arabella thought the same.
Nonetheless, they continued this relationship when he left the orphanage, and she was always happy to see him when he came back to visit, though she pretended not to be. It wasn't until she left herself that these visits began to sour, and instead of her looking up to him, she would wallow in pity as she cared for him when he ended up on her sofa. When he forgot to wash or cut his hair, it would be her that held it back as he vomited over a toilet, and it would be her that fixed him up again before he would leave. Inevitably, it would always be her that he went to when he was too out of his mind to think.
This continued for years as he slowly deteriorated, her face falling a little more every time that she came to the door, always alerted to the fact that it was him when he tripped over the gnome that she kept at her door. He argued that it wasn't even that he was drunk or high, it was just a stupid place to put a garden ornament, but she had just rolled her eyes and pointed out that no one else did it.
It wasn't until he wouldn't wake up one morning and had to be taken to hospital that she refused to keep doing it. Her face when he had woken up had been burned onto his retinas ever since as she choked out her ultimatum, "I'm getting married and moving so you can either keep doing what you're doing and end up dead in some ditch, or quit." The thought of losing her had effectively woken him out of his stupor and he had jolted upwards.
"You're getting married? To whom?" If anything, this had made her look even more distraught when she realised that he had been so out of it lately that he hadn't noticed her stepping out with someone.
"It's John from the shop, he actually carried you here this morning," she whispered, and Marius vaguely remembered the boy who had been working alongside her at the shop she worked at when he had visited. Their hands had brushed and she had blushed. Marius had teased her afterwards, already too high to really remember it that much, but she had just smacked him over the head and set up the blankets on her couch for another extended stay.
"If you don't do something about this soon then I promise that I won't be there the next time you need me and you will end up some useless nobody, just like your parents thought you would." They both had shuddered at the thought, which was the nightmare for both of them, and she grasped his hand tightly, "Is that really what you want?"
It would have been nice to say that this was the conversation that changed everything for him, and yet it was only a matter of hours later when he fell back into his old habits. Only this time around, she didn't answer the door when he tripped into it. She didn't answer her door when he kept coming back to bang on it and when the next person did, it was to tell him that she had got married and moved.
As time went on, and he sank deeper and deeper into himself, the hate for himself festered until he slowly forced himself to get better. The first step being steadily weaning himself off his usual poisons, and getting an apprenticeship as an accountant. Which, boring as it sounds, was actually a good use of his counting skills and kept his mind occupied enough to not think about his cravings. The second step was currently a work in progress as he had been attempting to come to this bloody stupid support group for weeks.
'For God's Sake!" he muttered as he tripped over the umbrella stand that had been stupidly placed in the doorway of the house where the meeting was taking place. The hapless fools that lived there had actually left the door on the latch for the meeting and he grumbled to himself about his stubbed toe as he shook the rain out of his coat.
With him being late, and with it also being his first meeting, it was not surprising that this utterance caused a scurry of footsteps to begin to move towards the front hall. "Sorry, we must have started without you," a woman called from the adjoining room, her voice growing louder with each footstep closer. Marius' heartbeat sped up as he recognised her voice, "Is that you Kathryn…?"
That well known voice trailed off into silence as she finally moved into the hallway and she saw who was waiting for her there. Marius smiled weakly as he stared deeply into her unfathomable eyes for a second, surprise written all over them at his mere presence. When it became too much for him to bear, he looked away, shucking his coat and looking for a peg to hang it on.
It wasn't long before he realised that there wasn't one free and so he just stood there for a moment, staring at the wall and slowly dripping onto the doormat. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched as Arabella seemed to shake herself out of the surprised stupor that he had fallen into. "Why don't you bring it through and put it on a radiator in the front room," she started, and caught his eye again, "You're almost too late for some tea and biscuits, but I'm sure I can put on another kettle."
He smiled slightly at the comment, one of those private smiles that only she saw, and reached down to kick his shoes off. "You should have realised that I would be late to the party," Marius called at her retreating figure, and she turned and smiled questioningly, "I always was the last to get to see you at the orphanage, so why should this be any different? Then again, I always found my way back in the end."
The smile that she wore slowly morphed into a grin and she walked back towards him only to launch herself into his arms, wet coat forgotten. "I'm so glad you're here." He smiled into her hair and they just held one another for a moment, both knowing that his mere presence at one of these godforsaken meetings was a start to getting better, no matter how small.
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