Item one on her list was checked off that evening. Her parents, as well as Carlisle and his family, were all out at various places, so she got in the car and drove to a phone booth on a lonely country road not far from Crevan's manor. She called Muggle Dave and found out that they'd been broken up since she'd gone to Hogwarts.
"What do you mean, 'broken up'?" she spat. "You told me you loved me. All I did was go away to school. I told you—"
"You told me there were no phones and no post! What kind of a school is that? 'She's either going to prison,' I thought, 'or she just wants to break up with you and hasn't got the guts to actually pull the trigger.' Why wouldn't I think we were broken up?"
"Because I didn't say we were. I mean, it was a nice thing, I thought, what we had. Wasn't it? I mean, it was fun. It was lovely."
"I…it was. Then why did you lie?"
"Lie? I didn't lie! I haven't got to lie! There's no phones and no post!"
"You might've got away. You might've called me at least once. I mean—anyway. I've moved on. I assume you have, too."
"What? I haven't…moved anything! I thought we'd pick up where we left off."
Dave sighed. "I—for a while, I thought that, too. Then I thought, 'Dave, you're stupid. You'd have got a sign from her by now.' So I started going out with this girl called Angela. Even then I wanted you to call. I'd have chucked Angela in a second if you had, but you didn't."
"God, Dave, how fast do you move? I've only been away for what, three months?"
"Four. Nearly four." There was silence for a moment. "Look, Tina, I…I'm sorry, all right? I'm sorry I made assumptions. I'm sorry I acted on them. But any sane person would've made the same assumptions."
"I…I guess you're right. Sorry, Dave." She hung up on him before the conversation could continue to deteriorate into more inane apologies.
She was disappointed. She thought she might at least have Muggle Dave to amuse herself with over the holidays, and evidently he was amusing himself with someone called Angela. She couldn't tell if she actually was upset over losing the distraction or over losing Dave until the memories hit her like a flash. The floppy hair, the Beatles, the vibrations of his voice as she kissed his neck and he said her name. She cried then, as if she'd actually loved him.
It was raining and cold and getting dark, and the heat in the Alpine didn't work. Nevertheless she got in and drove, counting out the days ahead of her. Tomorrow, December 23rd. Christmas Eve, the day after; and Christmas, the day after that. They didn't go back until Epiphany. How long was that? Fifteen days. Fifteen days of boredom. Fifteen days of her family.
She was already bored. She drove onto the high street of Telford, which wasn't much of a high street. The music on the radio wasn't even any good. "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the Rolling Stones was playing, which she found suitable. She couldn't seem to do anything about the Death Eaters who'd killed her brother and her (vile) uncle, she couldn't fritter away her time in the company of a nice bloke like Muggle Dave, and she realized with a sudden jolt that she was completely lost and in need of petrol. Mick Jagger, you fucking liar, she thought. "Sometimes" you get what you need. Purposefully vague, aren't you? Shouldn't you have said, "Hardly ever"?
The Alpine chundered dopily down residential roads that were oddly devoid of people. Was this some sort of Twilight Zone episode? Not even a bored housewife walking a dog. Not even a confused old geezer.
Finally she happened upon a couple of men (both a few sheets to the wind) who were walking home from the pub. They might've been sloshed, but they still knew where to find petrol. By the time she obtained petrol and found her way back to the country road that'd brought her there, it was nearly eight-thirty and pitch black, and frost was forming on the car windows.
It was nine-fifteen, many stops to scrape the windows later, when she arrived at the road down to Crevan's manor. It just sat there, glowing in the middle of the field. Why hadn't the Bertrands been keen on trees? There were hedge mazes, but that wasn't the same as a nice thicket of trees. It just made the house look rather ridiculous.
The lights in the west wing—the wing in which Crevan had died—were all ablaze, and it seemed like a party was going on. If Eglantine had been a braver, more idiotic sort of person, she'd have crashed the party. Instead, she contented herself with roaring by the house in her car, as if daring them to come at her thinking she was some hapless Muggle motorist. It would at least be a fun way to kick the bucket. (To her relief, they didn't actually seem to notice.)
At home, she found Carlisle and Linda sitting with her parents in the living room, listening to the Wizarding Wireless Network (really, thought Eglantine, we're so backwards in every way but magic). Her mother was knitting a hat. Her father was pretending to be asleep so nobody would talk to him.
"There's my long-lost daughter!" exclaimed Eglantine's mother, putting the hat aside to enfold Eglantine in a heavily-perfumed hug. "How are you, darling? Where've you been?"
"Out," replied Eglantine. "My boyfriend broke up with me." She wasn't sure that he had, in fact, been anything like a boyfriend (which she thought was a stupid word to begin with), but her mother would enjoy the hint of drama that the sentence implied.
"Oh, no! Who was he? I'd no idea you had a boyfriend, love. We must talk more often."
Eglantine shrugged. "He was a Muggle named Dave who liked the Beatles. I hadn't talked to him since the summer, which is why he broke up with me. Well. Evidently we'd been broken up."
"Ahh," her mother said knowingly. "You know, that's often the difficulty with magical-Muggle relationships. They just don't understand. Lovely people, of course, but especially at your age, how would they understand the lifestyle, darling? You need yourself a nice magical fellow, like Camilla's got. Like—" Eglantine braced herself; she could almost see the neurons firing in her mother's brain. "Like, well, like that Sirius Black. He seems rather keen on you, from what Camilla says. Maybe you ought to give him a chance."
"Are you mad? I've known Sirius since he was missing his two front teeth. He's known me since I was missing the two teeth on either side of my two front teeth and looked like a gopher."
"You could be like Heathcliff and Cathy, darling. Like from that Muggle book you gave me for Christmas? So in love, those two."
"Heathcliff was a raving lunatic and a vengeful jackass and an animal abuser! We are not like Heathcliff and Cathy, nor do I want to be! What is it with you and Cam? She said we were like Bonnie and Clyde. Why can't I be me, and Sirius is himself, and we remain completely unattached and not in this supposed 'love' thing you people keep trying to foist on me?"
"I think you mean Cletus and Barbara, love."
"I do not! I mean Bonnie and ruddy Clyde!"
"I think you'll find that it's Cletus and Barbara."
"Nice to see you!" called out Eglantine's father as she turned and strode out of the room. It was past infuriating that people seemed bent on attempting to shove them together.
He wasn't even attractive.
Maybe he was, a little bit. But he was…he was…sort of grating. Not as grating as Peter or James, but grating nonetheless. He was no Beige Remus. (Ha, now you're doing it too.) He was certainly no Muggle Dave. He was…
It would never work, anyway. He was essentially a Potter now—James's adopted brother—and James hated her. And she spent all her time with Severus Snape trying to learn Legilimency. You couldn't find two more dissimilar people than her and James. Even if Sirius thought he liked her now, that would soon cease to matter. (And she didn't like him, anyway.)
And truth be told, he was kind of dull. What did he even do with his time? What were his interests? (Not that she cared. But what were they?)
It was hard for her to think of anybody in whom she was less interested than Sirius. The trouble was, she couldn't stop thinking about how uninterested she supposedly was.