NOTES | Welcome back to the most self-indulgent AU I've ever written! We're back with Debbie's perspective for summer vacation, and boy, are we in for a little bit of an emotional ride.
They begin to grow familiar with each other, throughout the last few weeks before summer officially begins, in their secret shared place in the dead of night. Oddly, there is something comforting about this. At first, Debbie was certain it would be an absolute nightmare, entirely awkward, uncomfortable. She's been hovering on the borders of actually knowing Tammy Prescott since they were eleven years old, and she doesn't think they've actually spoken to each other properly before, not once. And now they're sitting in the Great Hall amidst the scratches of many quills and the shuffle of many pieces of parchment, writing their very last exam of fifth year, and she can see Tammy's blonde hair braided back and tied with a soft blue ribbon three rows ahead of her, and they've had maybe a dozen real conversations. Change is evident all around, now.
Somehow, Tammy is easy to talk to. Debbie doesn't think that she has ever experienced this level of simplicity in knowing anyone at all, besides maybe Lou; even Constance and Nine-Ball took untold amounts of time to reach this point.
But they only speak in one place. The top of the astronomy tower, with the night sky stretched wide above them, sitting side by side with their feet hanging out through the railings. That two-foot gap has lessened just slightly, but there is still a distance there, and Debbie can sometimes only string her words together into something that makes sense if she's not looking directly at the other girl. Anywhere else – seeing each other at mealtimes or passing each other in corridors or glancing at each other very briefly across a classroom – it's different. They don't talk, there. It's as if nothing has changed at all, except that Debbie has begun to expect that Tammy might be there when she sneaks up to the tower. Once, Debbie falls asleep for real and doesn't go at all; another night, Tammy doesn't show. It doesn't matter. There's a string of four nights in a row that they both wind up there, and that makes up for it.
They share a lot, more than Debbie thinks she would willingly share with people elsewhere. They talk about small, inconsequential things: How Tammy's favourite teacher is Professor Weasley and how Debbie's is Professor Longbottom, and how exhilarated Tammy felt when Ravenclaw beat Slytherin in the Quidditch Cup finals even though Daphne feigned anger for a full twenty-four hours. They talk about the medium things like which subjects are making their exam anxiety peak, and then there are the big things. Like how Tammy feels like she's forgetting important things about her dad every day that he's gone, and how sometimes there's something in Debbie's father's eyes that scares her, just a little bit. Like how they both feel small sometimes, like they don't quite fit anywhere just right. It's hard to figure out how, but there is a level of quiet, unhurried understanding between them that Debbie would never have expected.
Out in the Entrance Hall, when she files out of the exam with with the taste of summer in the air, her mother takes her by surprise. Hugs her right there in front of every student in her year, throwing all pretense of not giving Debbie special treatment to the wind. "I'm proud of you," she says, at just the right volume for Debbie to hear without anyone else catching the words. It warms something deep in Debbie's soul. She hesitates for a moment and then lifts her arms to hug her mother back.
— • —
On the first day of summer vacation, Debbie unpacks her trunk. This is not a notable activity until a slip of parchment falls out of the pocket of a sweater and flutters softly to the floor. She looks at it for a moment and then picks it up, and all that's there is an address. No name, just the street and city. And on the back, three words: Just in case.
Debbie looks back to the sweater she's dropped onto the foot of her bed. Is that the one she wore the last night she climbed the steps of the astronomy tower?
She should throw the note away. She does, actually. Almost. Except that an hour later, she snags the parchment back out of the trash and tucks it carefully into the centre drawer of her desk. Just in case. And then she forgets about it.
There is too much going on, anyway. Danny and Tess have graduated, have jobs lined up to start in September but are going traveling first. They want to see America, roam from one coast to the other hand-in-hand, before they settle into their respective Ministry careers. Debbie watches her father's chest swell with pride at the whole thing, hugs her brother fleetingly before he leaves, resigns herself to living underneath her parents' watchful eyes all summer long.
But the next night, everything falls apart. Her parents sit her down in the living room and tell her, calm and collected, that her mother is sick. It feels like her entire life is built from wooden blocks and someone has slid out one from the bottom, one of the pieces supporting the rest. Everything Debbie knows is teetering dangerously close to collapsing.
They told Danny before they told her, before he left England with Tess. Told him to go anyway, only it gets bad sooner than anyone expects. There was supposed to be more time.
Debbie spends the last two weeks of July at St Mungo's, living off the food from the cafeteria and sneaking some of it upstairs for her mum, even though the Healers shake their heads and recite all the reasons that she should be eating the healthy food wheeled into her room on a cart instead. But wizards and witches have no magical cure for stage-four cancer; if they did, they would have shared it with the Muggles by now. If time is running out, then why does it matter what type of food she eats?
It's better during the hours when her dad is at work. He can't get the time off, not even for this, and she wrote a letter to Danny but it's taking what feels like a million years to get to him because he's so damn far away. And so it's mostly just the two of them: Debbie and her mother. She is well-versed in the art of pulling herself together on the outside, puts on a good front for anyone who looks her way. And for herself, too. If she lets herself think about it for too long, she worries something on her outsides will crack. The nurses keep calling her strong, and it feels like a lie.
Her friends come to visit, Lou tugging Constance and Nine-Ball in her wake when she sweeps into the room in that commanding way she does that makes it feel like she belongs here. "How're you feeling, Professor O?" asks Constance, smiling at the woman like there's nothing wrong. Like she's not somehow towering over the woman simply because she can't stand up anymore.
"I'm doing okay, Constance," says Debbie's mum, and they all let the lie slide. Nine-Ball has snuck in bags of junk food, and they spend the afternoon playing mindless card games in chairs drawn up around the bed, stashing the snacks by their feet when the Healers come in on their rounds as if that renders them invisible. It doesn't work, not really, but nobody says anything. Debbie wonders if that's just another hint shining a light on how bad it's getting.
"Why didn't you tell us earlier?" she asks later, after her friends have filed out of the room to head for home. She shuffles the deck of cards on the white sheets, just for something to do with her hands. The question has been weighing heavy on her shoulders since her parents told her the news, evidently months after receiving the diagnosis.
Her mother sighs, reaching out to place a hand over Debbie's, effectively stopping her from moving. She doesn't have the heart to slide her hand away to keep fiddling with the playing cards. "We didn't want to distract you," she says. Her fingers are cold.
It makes sense, and Debbie nods, sure that she understands the implied meaning. "Right. My OWLs, Danny's NEWTs." School, grades, future careers: That's what it always comes down to, in the end, right?
"Yes, and no," her mum answers, cryptic as ever. She hesitates, looking at her daughter until Debbie, reluctantly, looks back. Very solemnly, she elaborates, "Your father wants to ensure you'll be successful, both of you. Danny's going to be an Auror and maybe you'll go into the Ministry in some way, too." It's the first time Debbie thinks that word has ever been uttered in terms of her future: Maybe. It sounds like possibilities. "Your studies are important, and I know you've worked very hard this year for your OWLs. You're going to do big things one day, Deborah. I know that." A pause, here, to allow this to sink in. And then, quieter but more weighted somehow, "I think maybe I just want you to be happy, too."
— • —
Healer Radley blocks her way down the hallway on the last Tuesday of July. "I'm sorry, Miss Ocean, you can't go in there right now," he says, very seriously, all apologetic frowns behind his beard. And just like that, Debbie knows it's happening.
Time has run out, no sand left in the hourglass. That tower of wooden blocks making up Debbie's life seems as if it's swaying unsteadily, and she feels entirely out of control, like she's watching things happen to her from afar. It's an unfamiliar state to be in, and she doesn't like it.
Danny and Tess get her letter, finally. Apparate in just barely too late, don't get to say goodbye. She watches her brother's face carefully, searching for a twist of emotion, but he keeps himself in check, and she wants to scream at him for it. If there's ever going to be a moment for Danny to let himself go, she thinks this is it. How could it not be?
She doesn't speak for seven days. She feels hollow inside.
The funeral is sad in that emotionless, fragile sort of way that only the Oceans can truly pull off. People crowd into the church clad in all black and tell each other stories about her mother that she has never heard before. They circle around to tell anyone who will listen that they are sorry, like that fixes anything. Thank you, her dad and Danny say, but Debbie doesn't say anything, only nods. Lou sticks to her side like glue, and Constance brings flowers, and Nine-Ball doesn't even bristle at the purebloods side-eying her like she doesn't belong. None of them push her to talk to them, only brush their shoulders with hers occasionally all day so she knows they are there, and Debbie is eternally grateful for all three of them.
Her father goes back to work and the newspapers praise him for it: Wizengamot member Elijah Ocean, standing strong in the face of losing his wife to cancer. Danny busies himself with moving into a flat in downtown London with Tess, throws himself into preparations to start his Auror training. Business-like, they begin to pack Caroline's things into boxes. During the daylight hours, when Debbie occupies the house all on her own, she sneaks things back out of their new snugly-packed homes and stashes them in her room. A necklace here, a scarf there, a whole shelf full of books two at a time. She climbs out her window to sit on the sloped roof and reads them by moonlight, traces her fingers over the places where her mother would have turned the pages.
She feels overwhelmingly alone. The quiet empty spaces inside of her grow and swell and threaten to take her over entirely. This feels unlike her; if it were anything else changing, anything that isn't like losing a piece of herself, she thinks she would be louder. Push more, fight more. But instead, it's like she has been thrown all off-balance, nothing weighted properly now that her mother isn't breathing anymore.
Nobody else understands this. Her friends try, but there is only so much sadness they can absorb out of her, and they can't possibly know exactly what it feels like. The only person who could is Danny, and he is determined not to talk about it at all.
Halfway through August, Debbie remembers that there is someone else who knows what this is like.
It hits her suddenly in the middle of the night and she's up out of her bed in a flash, pulling the scrap of parchment out of her desk and lighting the tip of her wand with a whispered word to squint at it. Just in case, it says, and before Debbie can think about all the reasons not to do it, she's tugged a scroll of parchment out to flatten it in front of her and is dipping a quill into ink.
Tammy, she writes, and the comma turns into a small smeared spot when she moves her hand across to start the first sentence. My mum passed away two weeks ago. It's a blunt beginning, no holding back, but the words are starting to flow now and Debbie thinks if she stops herself to try again and ease the other girl into the news, she won't be able to start again. It's just like you said before, like something is broken. Maybe it's me. I don't know why I didn't realize before how much she was holding me together.
It's not exactly a long letter by the time she signs her name at the bottom, but she sends it, anyway. Considers doing it by Muggle post to blend in better, but ends up tying it to her owl's leg instead because she thinks if she waits until a post office opens to buy Muggle stamps, she'll chicken out and not send it at all. Watching the barn owl spread her wings and take flight, silhouetted against a street lamp for a moment, feels good, somehow. Debbie gets back into bed feeling perhaps a little lighter.
The feeling disappears when Lilith returns the next night, carrying an envelope with Debbie's name written neatly on the front. The letter is written in ballpoint pen on loose-leaf lined paper, the kind Muggle children fill binders with for school. It feels thin in comparison to the heavy quality that parchment has, but Tammy has written more than Debbie did, filled both sides of two sheets entirely. There are hundreds of nice words here, carefully printed out just for her, line upon line of them. Tammy reminisces about the things she's learned from Debbie's mother, tells her stories about her dad, lists things that helped her when she lost him. She has pressed forget-me-nots between the pages, their small blue petals preserved for Debbie to trace her fingertips over. She tries to imagine the other girl picking the flowers and writing this letter out, pictures the concentrated expression Tammy always has in class, and something twists near her heart.
At the bottom, Tammy has written her name, circling the tail of the Y into a spiraled flourish. And underneath that is a hasty postscript, like maybe she wasn't going to add it but decided to at the very last moment. PS: My mum and I are moving in a few days, so it's sort of lucky that you wrote before the address changed, it says, and then a new street and house number. There's a tiny smiley face next to it, and it makes Debbie's mouth lift up at one corner for just a moment before a low buzz of panic sets into her bones and she shoves the letter into her desk, next to the slip of parchment with Tammy's old address.
She doesn't write back.
NOTES | Well, there's the sadness I promised. Thank you, as always, for reading! Please leave reviews or drop a favourite or something to let me know if you're reading, I feel like I'm yelling this fic into the void! Stay tuned for chapter 4 to see whatever the hell Tammy's been up to this summer.