Rolf talked to a stranger. Once upon a time not long ago, this idea crossed his mind, but things started getting better. Rolf Scamander led the perfect life: a wife, a kid and another one on the way, and he walked in and demanded a job as Chief Consulting Magizoologist; Rolf crafted this nonsense out of nowhere, and Barnabas Cuffe lapped it up like a parched dog, desperate for a new angle to breathe life back into the once standard of wizarding newspapers across the world.
Seamus Finnegan seemed less effeminate than his boyfriend. He walked, talked and brogued right out of somewhere in Ireland. Weekly chats with his secretary's better half raised eyebrows and questions, but Rolf tried to keep an open mind. Seamus signed a wordy confidentiality agreement. The neutral colored walls provided good staring spots into space, so Rolf really had no complaints when he went on what the Muggles referred to as cruise control.
The few few weeks passed in a flurry of questions:
Do you sleep well?
Define "well". No, Rolf didn't sleep eight hours a night.
Are you finding it difficult to complete simple tasks?
No.
Is it difficult to find happiness?
Rolf threw this question out on principle, not bothering to place it on the back burner.
Did he go through ups and downs?
Rolf asked for the handwritten questionnaire at this point, for he could be dousing his sorrows in beer, or wine, or mead. As Seamus shared a bed with a black man, the race card thankfully stayed off the table. As Rolf came from New York, he called himself an African-American, but he sometimes chose "other." Seamus sat behind a desk and allowed Rolf to pace the room and reel off these answers, and Seamus never put a quill to parchment.
Was the glass half-empty or half-full?
"What kind of cliche nonsense is this?"
Rolf turned on his heel,going back the way he came and imagining himself wearing trenches into the carpet. Seamus sipped his afternoon tea, working straight through teatime to make time for his patient. Seamus shrugged, watching Rolf, apologizing for interrupting him. Rolf clenched his fists, furious beyond belief he ended up here. "My wife insisted I come here because she's growing two tiny humans and would rather not deal with a third child, so consider yourself a glorified babysitter. I want happy pills."
"No." Seamus scribbled something down and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt.
"Happy potions?" Rolf fished at the bottom of the barrel. Outside of his first world problems of forgetting protection almost seven months ago, he wanted an answer. The right one.
"No. Fresh out of happy pills and potions," said Seamus, lying through his teeth. Rolf took out a hip flask and enjoyed a swig of mead. "How's the sex life?"
"Would the pregnant wife give this one away?" Rolf, unabashed, swam through topics such as these because a beast functioned this way to weed out the weak. The sides of Seamus's mouth actually twitched, but he stayed in his austere, professional matter.
"You were left in a New York dumpster at Christmastime." Rolf blinked furiously, merely acknowledging this fact with a stiff nod. Seamus crossed his legs, and if he felt sorry for the unwanted Scamander boy, he hid his interpretation. "Your grandfather found you."
"What's your point?" Rolf gripped the arms of his chair, his knuckles not turning white.
"Do you want to be a father?" Seamus spoke softly, patiently, merely throwing the question out there.
Unconsciously, Rolf wiped something from his eye. What the hell did he know? If Rolf came along circa he'd find himself among friends or frenemies. Harry Potter, outside of holding the position of Rolf's wife's best friend's significant other, meant next to nothing to him.
Seamus got up to get the tea he'd turned down earlier and switched it to coffee with a nonverbal spell. He reached out to touch Rolf's hand as he sank back into the chair, but Rolf held his hands in his lap.
Seamus went fishing. "Do you not want these children?"
Rolf answered with silence, and apparently he spoke loudly enough because Seamus sat up straighter. None of this would reach Luna's ears, but Rolf had no idea what Seamus did in his spare time.
"When my wife told me she was pregnant, I wanted to call her a cheater so I could walk out and forget I came as close to…" Rolf observed Seamus's behaviors. He smiled sadly, his tears swimming in his eyes and accepted tissue paper. "Sorry."
"No apologies." Seamus cancelled his next appointment and parked his butt on the comfy couch. Rolf noticed he moved around a lot and made himself quite at home. Relieved they finally got somewhere, he, Seamus, ventured out long enough to say Francis's name. "Do you follow faith, Mr. Scamander?"
"Call me Rolf." Rolf burst out laughing, blubbering like a Mooncalf. If Seamus peeled away whatever with his chiseling and reduced the Chief Magizoologist to fat tears, he'd earned the right. "I'm a Jew."
This did not answer the question. Seamus moved his hand in a so so gesture, apparently deciding this might be the best he'd get.
"Religion passed down from your grandmother?" Seamus understood Jewishness got handed down on the maternal side. As Rolf had never met his mother, Porpentina Goldstein Scamander took on this role gladly. Rolf revealed a hidden Star of David pendant. "Cool."
He dropped the proper Mr. Scamander nonsense after this. Rolf grinned. He didn't call his biological mother by name. Charlie Weasley referred to her as Needles. This stuck.
"What's your grandmother like?" Seamus found a stash of chocolates and patted the spot on the couch and shared a box with Rolf.
"Grandma. She likes … Grandpa actually saluted her in an annual dinner with the Scamander Foundation." Seamus choked on a chocolate, and Rolf cleared his airway with a simple spell. He remembered this fondly. Newt Scamander didn't even "think as he presented a knee jerk reaction. 'They are a team."
"Getting on?" Seamus phrased this delicately because Rolf dwelled on this all the time. They were both pushing it past 110.
"Yes." Rolf chose a hazelnut sweet. He frowned. "Have you met them?"
"Yes." Seamus was either a really bad liar or a sneaky sneak.
"You talk about me?"
"Rolf." Seamus waited. Rolf clammed up for a while, not sure he felt bad about this one way or the other. They all knew he wouldn't say anything. "He loves you dearly. If my Pop Fergus loved me so, I'd be fat."
"I was. No, I swear to God. Chocolate chip cookies and ice cream. Called me Pudgy Badger in school. Nymphadora Tonks branded me with that name." Rolf, a naturalist, struggled a lot with keeping his inner fat boy in check. He did rather good after getting stationed in Romania with Charlie. Rolf didn't pay for these sessions, yet it secretly pleased him Seamus Finnegan didn't match himself with St. Mungo's. "I'm an open book. What do you want to know?"
"You've been a rather difficult read for a couple weeks." Seamus pointed out.
"You're lucky you got me in here." Rolf passed this off as ups and downs, and if Charlie hadn't threatened to sit sentry and add commentary whenever he damn well pleased, Rolf wouldn't be here.
"How are you?" Seamus asked this frequently.
Rolf often got crushed by how he really wanted to answer. "I tried to kill myself in Romania."
"Okay." Seamus sat back, clapping his hands together. He sounded like they discussed the weather and let Rolf take this conversation as far as he wished.
"I walked into a nest and I didn't go through protocol." Rolf remembered it like it was yesterday. A nesting mother broke every bone in his legs. "Charlie Apparated next to me. He said he couldn't shake a feeling."
"How did you feel?" Seamus made notes in a bound book.
"Empty." Rolf walked down the same path nowadays, and he couldn't quite explain the despair and loneliness he bore day in and day. If he called in sick, Rolf stayed trapped inside a mind he could rarely shake.
Seamus dipped his quill in ink. "Close your eyes."
Rolf followed the instructions.
"Explain the difference between loneliness and alone."
Tears spilled down Rolf's cheeks. He was never alone. His people, especially his grandparents and Charlie, saw it whenever Rolf fought to hide his dark side. As the head of a company worth billions, he couldn't falter as the weak link.
"You're good at this," said Rolf, taking the tissue from the box Seamus conjured. Seamus thanked him and abruptly snapped at him to keep his eyes shut. Rolf's timing at the end of the session proved impeccable, especially since they stole someone else's time. "I am never alone. I learned to love the loneliness and expected nothing else, so I guess I'm a high functioning…"
Seamus clicked his tongue disapprovingly. "Leave your self-diagnosis psycho babble at the door."
"Your boyfriend could tell you all the good stuff in pillow talk." Rolf shrugged this off as nothing, but a part of himself knew Dean Thomas didn't want to see him as any less than Mr. Scamander. Something bothered him about this ordeal, and Rolf warily chose not to put all his eggs in one basket. "Who referred me?"
"I can't tell you that," said Seamus.
"Newt Scamander. Jeremiah Talbot." Rolf fired off Rio guesses, although he wasn't sure he got three of these. Seamus admitted he hadn't the slightest idea of who Jeremiah was. Rolf asked about Dean. "Jeremiah heads the reservation in Romania. Heartstrings Sanctuary."
"That's a helluva job."
"Jeremiah walks through fire unscathed," recited Rolf, adding fuel to the fictional fire. Jeremiah lived for dragons. Charlie did, too, but Jeremiah placed Heartstrings on the map when it came to dragon reservation and research. "Jeremiah. He cried when he heard Luna was pregnant. Man is a brick wall."
Seamus smiled. "Finally wanted to settle down?"
"Luna went on about this biological clock. And all I heard was this incessant 'tick, tick, tick.' One split into two. And your family growing exponentially doesn't help the insomnia." Rolf laughed uneasily with Seamus. "If I am anything like my father, she needs to take these children away from me. I don't… I didn't…"
"Most kids are accidents." Seamus said this strongly enough that it hit home. "Me Dad writes tax laws, and yes, it's as boring as it sounds. If what you say holds true about this father and son stuff, I took a wrong turn, and I'd rather continue on going the wrong way."
"What're you writing?" Rolf admired how Seamus moved with a fluidity in his work. He, Rolf, experienced headaches because of headaches he got from never slowing down.
"What do you like about your wife?"
Rolf got caught off guard. "What?"
Seamus repeated the question. Rolf automatically responded about the radish earrings, and Seamus burst out laughing.
"They're good on salads. I don't think they belong in your ears." Rolf's Aunt Sarah had followed Luna like a hawk in the beginning. She admired the Butterbeer cap necklace. (Sarah stole one once.) "No. Seriously. I like that she really doesn't give a fuck."
Seamus smiled. "More."
Rolf made him swear he'd never tell a soul. Seamus crossed his heart, a line he'd no doubt picked up from Dean, and hoped to die. But not really die. He hoped the Draught of Living Death might be handy and threw in this carefully phrased caveat.
"
"Okay." Rolf turned beet red. "I was virgin on my wedding day. Thirty-one."
Seamus waited.
"We married in Devon. She wore this dress. Made famous thanks to Rita Skeeter." Rolf scowled. He really hated this woman on principle. Seamus, cool you please, flashed a newspaper clipping.
"Unicorns and rainbows." Seamus got up to speed quickly.
"Yeah. So." Rolf crossed his legs, leaving it there for whatever it was worth. "So … we arrived in Rio de Janeiro and I cut her out of this thing and she walks into the water stalk naked. My jaw dropped. Needless to say, kudos all around."
Rolf recited a line he'd learned in Portuguese. Seamus inferred inferred whatever he needed from his imagination. Rolf and Luna spent the first year or two of their enjoying sex all over the world. Rolf usually shared this stuff with Charlie and bits and pieces with Jeremiah.
"Marriage? You roll over." Rolf snapped his fingers. Seamus excused himself at this point, and Rolf heard him laughing all the way down the hall. He pulled anything funny with the straightest face and often stumbled upon the everyday stuff. Seamus returned. "Kit Swordsen. Jewish comedian from Denver, Colorado."
"Funny?" Seamus stood by the door and checked his watch.
"Oh, my God. You'll laugh until you cry or piss yourself. Delivers dark humor like he's moving in on your girl." Rolf struck nothing better than lead whenever he happened to hit a funny bone. "I suffered what Charlie called a spell and he dragged me into the Red Rocks. I have a really, really Jewish grandma."
"I have a friend. Anthony Goldstein."
"Oooh, we might be related," said Rolf, shifting in his chair. Comfortable than he'd been in days, Rolf relaxed. "I can breathe. We might have to keep this up."
"Same time, same place." Seamus shook his hand and handed him a business card. Seamus clapped him on the shoulder and handed him a box as a parting gift. "You lock dark, scary things in the box and you walk away."
"Really?"
"Really, really." Seamus wrote an appointment slot on the back of a card and grinned when Rolf pocketed it. Boogeyman's real, my friend, we're gonna lock him away. Not today. We're okay."
Rolf left, muttering this line to himself like a mantra.