MissGardenia: With an attitude like that, I think you'll like what I eventually have planned for the kids of Candyland.
Disclaimer: Despite claiming how much he hated staying at Privet Drive all summer long, did Harry ever go out and spend a day with Ron or Hermione once he knew about the Knight Bus? If not, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.
Chapter 5
Dancing Fool
"I have to admit," Jen said as she looked out from the balcony over the throng of people jumping and dancing to the beat of the music below her, "of all the places you might choose to meet, a dance club was not one I was expecting. I didn't even think you knew what these were, let alone that you would ever be found inside one."
"My life may be entirely in the magical world now, but that doesn't mean I didn't grow up among Muggles," Lily pointed out.
"Actually, I was referring to the fact that you're the mother of a teenage son and therefore not the clientele a place like this caters to. The drinks those five guys have bought you so far tonight say you're not unwelcome, though, I suppose."
The woman blushed the faintest amount at that. "While I may be thirty-six, in Muggle terms that means I look like I'm still in my late twenties. And you don't look like you're not yet sixteen, either." She smiled weakly. "I bet several people think we're sisters or something."
More likely the something else. Jen tipped the glass in her own hand toward Lily nonetheless. How the older witch had attracted more admirers than she had, she had no idea, but right now she found that little fact more amusing than insulting. Lily's displeasure that Jen was receiving drinks at all despite her age helped. "This is certainly a more fun place to talk than a lot of others would be. Why, it's almost enough to make me forget that you thought it your place to try to take me to task for what I told the Scrimgeour." Her smile turned decidedly frosty. "Almost."
"And I apologized for that in the letter I sent the next day, didn't I? I hadn't realized how… accusatory the way I phrased that first one could be taken until later," Lily explained.
"You apologized for the phrasing, not the sentiment behind it."
The matriarch of House Potter took a fortifying breath. "No, I suppose I didn't. But I was right, too, wasn't I? You did lie about what happened when you and Danny fought You-Know-Who."
"Everything I told the Aurors was the truth," she shot back. Well, mostly. She had left several things out, but the only outright, explicit lie she could recall was that she hit Voldemort with a Concussion Hex rather than a runic curse that would bind his soul together.
"But the story Danny tells is very different, and I know what he looks like when he's trying to come up with a lie. He was telling the truth."
"That is quite the conundrum," she agreed, grin taking on a dark edge. "I suppose the question you have to ask yourself, then, is this: Which child will you believe in this time?"
Lily grimaced as that barb sank deep, just as she meant it to. "That's not fair."
"Life's not fair. I learned that lesson a long, long time ago." Finally turning to face Lily fully, Jen wondered aloud, "The more I think about it, the stranger it seems that you would want to meet here of all places. What made you pick it?"
"You're not old enough to be allowed inside, even if you did have some kind of Muggle identification." The redhead glanced down at her lap, almost as if in shame, before looking back up at Jen's surprised expression. "I thought – I hoped – you would write me back saying you wouldn't be able to get in, but instead you waltzed up without a care in the world. You had to have used magic on the doorman. I…" Lily chewed on her bottom lip for a moment. "We know so little about each other. I just… I needed to know what you would do, how you would react."
"Clever," Jen muttered quietly, unheard against the deep bass rumbles coming from the speakers around them. "Very clever." Forcing her grin wide, she held out her arms in invitation and asked in a louder voice, "And after that little glimpse inside my head, what do you think?"
"I don't think you'd really like the answer to that question."
Perhaps, perhaps not. We aren't exactly working toward the same goal here, after all. Rather than reveal that thought, she simply let her arms fall. "Too bad."
"Why, Jennifer?" asked Lily in a beseeching voice. "Just because he's a Muggle doesn't mean you have the right to do whatever you want to him. He has rights, too, no matter what the Dark may say."
Jen had to fight not to snicker. It was not because he was a Muggle that she used her magic on him to get what she wanted; it was because he didn't matter one way or another to her. Not that she would tell Lily that, not when it gave her such a beautiful opening. "Don't pretend that you care about Muggles." When Lily opened her mouth to assert just that, she continued, "After all, what is a squib but a Muggle born to wizards? Once I was 'safely'"—she could not hold back the cruel smirk—"in the Dursleys' hands, did you ever think about me? Did you spare a moment to remember your poor, magicless daughter?"
Lily hesitated a beat too long. "Yes."
"Oh ho, just yes?" she crowed. "No 'How could you think I wouldn't?' or 'Not a day went by when I didn't'? Just a simple 'yes'?" Her laugh was harsh and cold, the sound only making Lily's expression more mournful. "A bit of friendly advice for you: Never try your hand at poker. A mirror would be a better bluffer.
"But we aren't here to talk about the past, are we?" Folding her hands on top of her belly, she leaned back in her chair. "Why did you call me out here? I presume it wasn't just to chide me about your son's embellishments. Not if you have any sense at all."
"Can't I just want to talk?" the woman asked quietly.
"No. Or, perhaps more accurately, I have no reason to stay if that's the entire reason. Our relationship is not a personal one," she explained to Lily's gaping mouth, "but rather a business arrangement. You offer me something I want and in return ask me for something you want. If you don't have anything to give me, I see no reason to stick around." She stood. "Have a good evening, Lily."
"Wait, wait." The redhead scrubbed her face with one hand, and even without looking into the older witch's head Jen was almost positive that Lily was trying to figure out something to say to make her stay. Counting silently, she hit five and started walking. "It's the Order. And you. How they view you."
"They don't like me," she guessed with a smile, not bothering to turn around and face Lily. "That's not really a surprise, is it?"
"It's more than that. Most of them…" The woman who gave birth to her – calling her 'mother' in any fashion was giving her far, far too much credit – sighed and admitted, "Most of them think you're a spoiled brat. They weren't impressed that you ignored the invitation to join us, and when Sirius said it was because you had better things to do? They took it as you blowing us off."
Lily's expression was the tiniest bit hopeful, as if she thought Jen would say that was not the real reason. It was too much for Jen to leave intact. "I didn't miss that meeting of your little club because I had lots of other things to do, and what I was doing certainly wasn't important. I did blow you off, though, and it's because I don't see much point in the Order's very existence." Watching the woman grow flushed from irritation with no little amusement, she added, "I think we've already had this conversation before, actually. I put much more trust in the Ministry than I do in Dumbledore to keep me and anyone else safe. When You-Know-Who attacked Hogsmeade, it certainly wasn't the Order that showed up to drive him and the Death Eaters off."
"We were a little busy elsewhere."
"Yes, running straight into a trap. I'm aware. How's James coming along with using his peg leg?" she asked with a curious tilt of her head.
For once, Lily's face displayed the true depths of what she was feeling. That the emotion in question was anger was not a surprise; Elsie had often told her she had a talent for driving people into a rage, though the Haitian woman generally followed it with an admonishment not to exercise that particular talent quite so freely. "He lost his leg. To Bellatrix Lestrange. Who you're still claiming as your mother. How do you think he's doing?!"
Jen bit her tongue. For all that she liked getting a rise out of people, saying what she was thinking would probably push the redhead far enough over the edge that curses would be exchanged. That on its own was not a problem – she would put money on her being able to outfight Lily Potter without even needing to dip into all the dark magic she had been learning over the years, especially this last one – but covering up the evidence of that fight? That would be more complicated. Locking the doors in the middle of their spat to keep any of the Muggles from running away, repairing the walls and floors, wiping everyone's memory, finding and sabotaging the tapes for the cameras…
That was all more of a hassle than she really wanted to deal with.
Instead she smothered the smile that wanted to appear on her face and walked back to the railing of the balcony, snatching one of Lily's cocktails on her way past. It wasn't like the other witch was drinking any of them. "Jennifer! You're not old enough to—"
"Of all the things I could be doing right now, trust me when I say underage drinking is far from the worst." Lily had nothing to say to that, so the black-haired witch leaned against the railing. "You said only most of the Order had mistaken me for a spoiled brat. What about the rest?"
"They think you're trying to defeat You-Know-Who so you can take his place."
The sip of margarita she had just taken promptly choked her. "They what?"
"They think you're angling to become a Dark Lady. With them citing your apparent lack of morals"—Lily's nose turned up the slightest bit, probably a subconscious action—"they have gained a little bit of traction with the rest of the Order."
"My apparent lack of morals." Thin fingers played up and down the stem of the glass as Jen tried to recall the names of the Order's members Sirius and Cissy had told her, specifically which would bear her some sort of grudge. Dumbledore, obviously; she knew that he feared her rising in power thanks to the prophecy he had heard from Trelawney. Given the attitude of the average Order member, though, if he had said anything, the majority would be against her rather than just a few. The Aurors, Shacklebolt and Moody, she had few if any dealings with, and Dora had given them her seal of approval, anyway. Snape liked her. James and Lily, although it sounded like one of them was revising her opinion. Augusta Longbottom— Ah. And speaking of guardians who might wish her ill… "This faction is led by Longbottom and the Weasleys, I take it?"
"I wouldn't say they lead it, but they are definitely vocal. Molly's become almost militant since Bill, her eldest, passed away in that ambush you were speaking so lightheartedly about." Was that glare supposed to shame her? "Augusta has… Well, I think she might be feeding some of Molly's anger, but I don't believe she is doing so with the intention of aiming it at you."
Jen shrugged. "Longbottom hates me because of what Bellatrix did to her son and daughter-in-law. She hates all the Blacks for it, too, according to Sirius and Aunt Narcissa. What did I do that has the Weasleys so up in arms, though?"
"Humiliating their son is almost certainly part of it." Jen nodded. That was what she thought the reasoning might be, but it was nice to have confirmation, no matter how insignificant the inciting incident was in the grand scheme of things. "And like I said, she's looking for someone to blame. You claim to be the child of a Death Eater, and supposedly you come across as Dark to those of her children who know you."
"None of her children know me," she denied. Nor, honestly, did she know or wish to know them. "Besides, their devotion to Dumbledore is so slavish it's scary. They probably think anyone who doesn't kiss the hem of his robes is Dark."
A grimace crossed Lily's face at that mental image. "Please don't say something like that again. Even if you don't like him, you know Dumbledore would never act like that. That's something You-Know-Who would make his followers do."
That was the comparison I was going for, yes. The Weasley twins had been expelled from Hogwarts because they chose to view the Ministry's takeover of Hogwarts as an usurpation rather than chasing out a criminal who meddled with people's minds, which was a good indication of just what lessons they had learned growing up, and even though actual evidence supporting the DMLE's accusations had been released, Cissy reported that the Weasley matriarch had lashed out almost rabidly at their mere mention. That certainly sounded like cultish devotion to her.
She did not get that upset about people denigrating the Old Ways, and she occasionally played host to an actual god.
"I don't know. You-Know-Who has an ego, all right, but I can't see that telling his followers to bow down and worship him would be worth the trouble." 'Herding cats' was how Voldemort had described keeping the Death Eaters in line during their single friendly conversation, and he probably avoided making any demands that would make that task more difficult and would serve no real purpose. Shrugging the memory of that night away, Jen asked, "Just what has this little group proposed to do about me, then, if they are so terrified of what I might become?"
"Right now, nothing. They're still trying to convince other people that they haven't taken leave of their senses." Lily frowned before hesitantly asking, "But you wouldn't really do something like that, anyway, would you? Try to take over the country?"
Admitting that she had considered just that while contemplating what she wanted to do with the rest of her life was probably a bad idea, wasn't it? "You don't sound very confident in me," she said instead. "I'm hurt. But no, as much as 'Dark Lady Black' has a nice ring to it, especially when paired with some suitably respectful manner of address like 'Your Majesty', I'm afraid I have to disappoint." A gentle chuckle bubbled up. "I'm the heiress of one of the most influential Houses in the Wizengamot. I already have power, or I will in the next few decades when Sirius finally decides to step down and let me run the show. What need have I to wage a bloody revolution just for a little more?"
From the way Lily's eyes were widening and her mouth was falling open, that was apparently not the answer she was looking for.
"That's… That's it? The only reason you wouldn't go do something that… evil is because what you would get out of it wouldn't be enough to go through the trouble?!" The woman shook her head as if to scrub away her memory of the last half-minute. "Jennifer, I shouldn't have to explain how awful that is! How could you even say something like that?! Don't you know how people are suffering right now because of what You-Know-Who is doing? And you see nothing wrong with that?"
It was a serious effort on Jen's part not to roll her eyes at Lily's overblown outpouring of emotion. For all the dramatics, little had happened so far in this war; until the attack the Death Eaters launched on Hogsmeade, the number of civilian casualties had still been in the single digits, and the group had seemingly vanished following that outing. The country was still very much in the opening stages of this fight.
But it was not the statistics that were of the greatest relevance here. No, right now Jen had an opportunity, an opportunity to finally force into Lily's head the ugly truth of the situation that the older witch had so far been intent on ignoring. "I feel like we've had this conversation before, too. I care about myself, my House, and my allies. I told you this the very first time we sat down to talk. Have you forgotten that already? Or perhaps," she added, watching Lily's face carefully, "you just didn't believe me. What is the point of asking your questions or trying to work out who I am if you just ignore the answers?"
"It doesn't change the fact that that isn't how a good person should see the world! It isn't right!"
"No, what you mean to say is it isn't Light. But the Blacks aren't Light, are we?" she asked, the question more rhetorical than anything else.
"You were a Potter for a long time before you were a Black." Tears were now dripping down Lily's cheeks. "Even if we didn't raise you, you should still be better than this."
Anger sizzled at the edges of Jen's mind. As if their abandonment of her was not reason enough for her to despise them! She held up her arms in a gesture of feigned surrender. "I am but the product of my history. It is the life I have lived that has forged me into the person I am. You think I am such a terrible person? Perhaps, just perhaps, you should stop and consider what experiences they must have been to make me who I am today." She sneered. "And who should really be held responsible for allowing those events to take place at all."
"Our mistakes don't mean you didn't have choices."
"Yet does not the world one lives in determine what choices she has? Do you want to know what my choice was?" She did not give Lily a chance to answer. "My choice has always been, and will always be, to survive. To thrive, even. Without that, there are no choices to come later."
"And that excuses your… your… self-centeredness?" Lily demanded.
The smile Jen gave the redhead was cold and sharp. "Survival is an inherently selfish decision. If I can only stay afloat by shoving someone else under the water, then that's just the way it goes."
"You're better than this, Jenny," Lily whispered again, shaking her head in disappointment.
At the sound of that name, the fake smile on Jen's face vanished; the mask her face became gave no hint of the rage roaring inside her like wildfire. That was something else they had discussed, the only real rule of their conversations. She set the glass in her hand on the table and walked toward the stairs. "Goodbye, Lady Potter."
"Jennifer? Jennifer!"
For the next week, a letter came to Jen daily from Lily Potter. She burned all of them without reading.
Green fire billowed around her as Jen stepped out of the Floo. Little had changed since the last time she had visited the Lovegoods' home: the printing press was still churning out magazines, the kitchen was still cluttered with books and statuettes. The infestation of mistletoe was gone, but that was no great surprise.
"Luna?" she called out.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs, and a missile of female flesh slammed into her and wrapped arms around her neck. Interestingly, the hair in front of her face was not blonde, but chestnut brown.
"Thank Merlin you're here!" Tracey exclaimed. "I need someone with some semblance of sanity. It's all been crazy animals that don't exist and weird foods and half-riddles with them. I feel like I'm losing my mind!"
Luna came down this time with an indulgent smile on her face, as though she had heard this complaint before and now only found it amusing. It contrasted nicely with the mock outrage of her voice. "Don't believe a word she says. It's all filthy lies."
"I don't know," Jen joked. "I've never known Tracey to blow things completely out of proportion. I mean, it isn't like she has any flair for the dramatic at all…"
The brunette pulled away with a huff, though Luna was quick to fill the void she left behind. "What is it, pick on Tracey day?"
"Of course it is. Didn't you look at the calendar?" Jen just laughed harder at the sour expression on her best friend's face. "But what are you even doing here? I thought you were spending the summer with Morag."
Most Hogwarts students would have spent their summer holidays at their own home, but Tracey's situation was a little complicated. After her grandfather died of a heart attack – a fate Jen might have played a minor role in – following him trying to arrange for her to be married and subsequently murdered, Tracey had taken on her rightful position of Head of House Davis. The issue that immediately arose was that she was a Halfblood, and her aunts and uncles and cousins, blood purists all, would never allow that to stand. Until she turned seventeen and could claim the legal powers of the position that went along with the social ones, including the authority to disown current members of the family, staying in her childhood home was a terrible folly.
"I was," Tracey replied, "but then her grandmother got sick and needed to stay with them, and they only have the one spare room, and I didn't want to intrude. Padma's in India, so she was out, and while I'm not a total stranger to the Muggle world, I don't think I would have been comfortable staying with Justin. Kenneth was willing to let me stay with him, but he's still living with his parents right now, and apparently his mother didn't like the idea of an eighteen-year-old guy offering to let a teenage girl spend the summer."
Which, Jen knew, might not be a baseless concern. Tracey had once held quite the fancy for Kenneth, and while it had guttered out on its own, there was always the chance it could flare up again in the right conditions. "And Susan? I know she planned to stick around her house for most of the summer."
"There's no way I'm getting in the middle of that mess," Tracey said with a shake of her head. "Her aunt is the Minister of Magic, remember? That means she has two Aurors on bodyguard duty at pretty much all times, and since Susan's both her niece and the official Head of House Bones, she pulled some strings and got two more assigned to Susan for the hols. And apparently there are Hit Wizards stopping by every so often for something, Susan didn't know what, so no. I'm good without having half a dozen strangers pointing their wands at me every time I walk to a different room."
"She asked her mother if she could stay with her, too," added Luna.
"Yeah, but she's staying with old Hogwarts friends as well," Tracey explained, "and there really wasn't any space. Her friends have three kids of their own who are apparently a huge handful."
"You could have stayed with me, you know. It's just Sirius and Aunt Cissy and me living in a house meant for more than a dozen. We have plenty of space."
Tracey frowned. "Yeah, but first you were on the Continent for a while—"
"Less than a week."
"—and you said your family is involved in the war, which I want no part in, and…" She grimaced. "And you're going to be dealing with a bunch of betrothal contracts just next week, and no thank you. That's drama I am more than happy to avoid right now. One of the best parts of being an underage Head of House is that it's considered in poor taste to send me any offers of marriage until I can legally accept or decline them."
While Tracey was talking about the marriage offers, Luna had pulled away from their embrace and now was scowling. "Why do you have to go through with that?" she asked, her question less a demand and more a plea. "Can't you just… just tell them all to go away and leave you alone?"
"No, I can't," Jen sighed. Her girlfriend's motives for that particular suggestion were incredibly obvious, but as much as the blonde wanted it, things just weren't that simple. "That's not the way this societal game is played."
"Hang the stupid game! If you really didn't want this, you could tell your godfather to reject all of them! We both know he'd do it." Luna's expression of outrage crumbled. "But you won't, will you? You don't actually have a problem with being set up to marry some random man."
"It's not cut and dry like that. There are expectations I have to fulfill."
"Why?!"
"Because she can't just think about herself," Tracey gently cut in. "She has to do what's best for her House, too, and sometimes that means doing things you don't really want to do but know still need to be done."
Luna shot her guest a watery glare. "And how is Jen getting married a House issue?!"
"Betrothal contracts aren't just about how the wedding itself is supposed to go," Jen said, pulling Luna over to the kitchen portion of the room. She sat the blonde beside her, and to their surprise, Tracey chose the chair on Luna's other side. "They also involve exactly what the bride price will be. Physical property, business interests, rare items or knowledge, liquid wealth; all of that will go to the House of Black as a whole, not to me individually, though as I am the heir, that distinction gets a little blurry. There's also the political landscape to consider. Whomever I marry, his House and mine will then have an informal alliance at the very least. How will the House that I will be marrying into, or hopefully that will be marrying into mine, affect our relationships with the allies we already have in the Wizengamot? What new allies will it make available?" She patted Luna's hand. "There's a reason arranging political marriages generally takes years. It's a very involved and complicated process."
"And that's without talking about what to do about kids," added Tracey. "That's part of the contract, too, or it can be, anyway. How many kids are supposed to be born, how much time they'll spend with each House growing up, who will be the primary and secondary heir to which House. It can get pretty invasive before it's all finished and signed."
"Thankfully those are terms I mostly won't have to worry about meeting." Jen's grin was weak and humorless, and it quickly changed to a grimace. "It's our custom that we don't agree to any contract that details requirements about children. Our rate of miscarriages and stillbirths is just too high. The only one we might have to talk about is which kid gets the Black name, which is why Sirius and I agreed we'd give more weight to non-heirs who would be more open to giving up their name for ours. My chances of bearing a second child who could carry on the Black legacy are… not great. Honestly, I might be lucky just to have one. That Great-Aunt Walburga had both Sirius and his late brother Regulus is practically a miracle."
That was a wrinkle she really did not like considering. No one who knew the truth about her heritage was sure how the blood adoption to make her Bellatrix's daughter would affect her ability to carry children to term, but they were not exactly optimistic. Even if she had 'inherited' that trait to a lesser extent, it could still pose problems. Had Andi been born to any other family, Dora would be the third-oldest of a dozen siblings rather than an only child; for Jen to be pregnant even half as much would be unusual. And, just to complicate matters even more, she also had Black blood on her paternal side from her great-grandmother Dorea that had been present all her life, not just for the past two years.
"But couldn't you get around the children thing somehow?" Luna suggested, her voice almost desperate. "Adopt or something? Then you'd have an heir to continue the Black name without needing to get married."
She and Tracey, the only one of her friends to know the truth about her parentage, exchanged a significant look. That was exactly what she had done to become the 'true-born' heiress of Black, but there were several factors in her favor there, not the least of which was that even if Bellatrix were able to publicly deny their relationship, the woman's madness was so well known that no one would believe her. "They would need to be my children if they were to have any chance of fending off claims that whomever I named my heir was ineligible to become the new Lord or Lady Black. I've heard that the goblins have some magic that can trick blood-based lineage tests and pass on major traits to a child"—Tracey quickly suppressed a smile; visiting Gringotts to undergo a blood adoption was the explanation she had given the girl for how she could suddenly be Bellatrix's daughter—"but I don't know how true those rumors are, nor what it would take to convince them to do it. Even after it was all done, I would still need to explain how I could go nine months without anyone knowing I was pregnant and why the father did not remember sleeping with me. Unless I could explain all that away, all I would be doing would be setting up that child to be accused of attempted Line Theft or something."
"Besides, we all know why you're really objecting to all this," Tracey said with a small laugh. "Just because Jen will be getting married doesn't mean you two can't sleep together, you know. It's expected for people in arranged marriages like this to have somebody on the side."
"Expected?!" Luna echoed in total disbelief.
Jen shrugged. "Like we said, marriages like this are almost about politics and business more than they are about the marriage itself. Back in the Middle Ages, it was actually legal to have a pseudo-marriage with a concubine in addition to the real marriage, and while that was dropped from our laws many centuries ago, the custom itself is still around. I probably should have mentioned that before," she added thoughtfully.
"I…" A slew of emotions swept over Luna's face too fast for Jen to make out any one specifically. "I know you're trying to help, Tracey, but it doesn't." She turned to Jen. "I told you last year, but I don't share. I'm not going to settle for being a mistress. Whatever man or woman I wind up making a life with, they have to be with me, and just me."
"Well, enough about my problems," Jen said. Anything to get them off this subject before it got even more uncomfortable. "How have things been otherwise? Your father's magazine selling well?"
Luna hesitated before admitting, "Not so much. With everyone so scared about You-Know-Who and the war, a lot of people have canceled their subscriptions. It's not a big surprise; Daddy said that happened last time, and we made it out fine. It's just… Last time, Mum was around, too, and he said they relied on the rewards from her research and help from her family to get through the roughest patches, and we don't have that to fall back on anymore." In a bright voice that was obviously forced, she hurriedly continued, "But I'm at Hogwarts most of the time now, and Mum's family paid for my education after she passed away, so that does make things a little easier."
"Is there anything Sirius and I can do to help? I know he wouldn't mind. He really enjoyed coming over for Christmas Eve last year." Luna shook her head, but she pressed on, "At least let me buy your books for you this year. Consider it your birthday present."
"My birthday isn't till October."
"Even better," Tracey commented. "No worrying about owl-ordering something while we're in school. I can chip in some gold, too. Mum and I are the only ones who have access to the Davis vault anymore," she explained a little uncomfortably when Luna turned to stare at her. "I blocked everyone else out. That much I'm allowed to do before I come of age. You can consider it a thank you for letting me crash here if you want."
Tracey was totally unprepared for the blonde immediately trying to crush her ribs via hug.
And another nice, short snippet turns into a sprawling discussion, culminating in a debate over nature versus nurture before falling apart in the most awful way. Why does this always happen?
It's official: the romance subplot of this story is now completely out of my hands. I don't know what's going on or what will happen any more than you do, and right now the closest thing I have to a plan is to sit back and let Jen and Luna figure this mess out by themselves.
Silently Watches out.
