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author's notes:
Hello, friends. It's my pleasure to inform you that Fair Fortune has a total of 3,815 views so far. This is amazing. To those who have left me reviews, messages, and asks, I thank you. The outcry of support is heartwarming. To those of you who've asked about my original work – knowing that you're ready to support any original work I put out is just… wow. I am very lucky to have the love of such wonderful readers. It's humbling to know that you will be with me until the very end. Enjoy.
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fair fortune
by
sweetasylums
"So things go." – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Twins.
How alike they are.
How different.
Lily wails for every reason, for no reason. She screams when she's hungry, when she's tired, when she's gassy, when she's bored. Petunia was the same. Every night, like clockwork, the echoes of crying reach her from down the hall and Ivy makes her way to the nursery. And every night, like clockwork, she finds herself hoping that it might be Hermione who's crying this time.
It never is.
Family and friends fawn over the twins after their Christening, take turns holding them. Lily is just as Petunia was once. She gets red in the face, struggles out of the grip of strangers. She wants the familiar comfort of her mother or father. They laugh at that, give her to her mother. Ivy holds Lily, rocks her until she's quiet.
"Hermione," they coo. "She's such a good child," they say. "She's so mild. Such a good temperament." Hermione doesn't struggle, doesn't whinge. "She must be a dream."
Ivy smiles, agrees. What else is she supposed to do?
She doesn't tell them that her daughter's silence keeps her awake at night.
Ivy watches her youngest daughter whenever she has the chance. She checks for signs of – well, she doesn't really know what.
Normalcy, perhaps.
When Lily sleeps, it's a calm slumber. Her body is still apart from the occasional kick, her face is serene. She even smiles sometimes.
When Hermione is asleep, her face twists like she's in pain. Her head moves from side to side. Some nights she wakes up often.
Some nights she barely sleeps at all.
Hermione is awake when Ivy rests her elbows on the edge of the crib. Her daughter's hair is a tuft of dark, dark red. Darker than Lily's, lighter than Ivy's. Like Lily, Hermione's eyes are an endless array of greens and golds. But there's something so drastically different behind hers, so unlike her sister's.
Hermione is staring up at her and if she didn't know better, Ivy would think her daughter is just as pensive as she is. She holds out her hand and Hermione watches it come toward her, reaches out to wrap her chubby fingers around Ivy's pinky. If she were like Lily, she would try to grab the wedding ring, touch her painted nails - but she doesn't. She looks away from the glittering rings, away from the bright varnish. She stares up instead, straight into Ivy's eyes.
Fluffy yellow stars and a soft pale moon dangle from the mobile over Hermione's crib. She switches it on and they twirl around in a sluggish circle, spinning to the chimes of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Ivy sings along in quiet tones. Hermione watches her in a curious way.
"Then the traveler in the dark, thanks you for your tiny sparks; he could not see which way to go, if you did not twinkle so."
Hermione looks sad at that. Troubled, even. It's so strange to see a baby's face go through such complex emotions.
Her grip loosens and her little head turns away. Her eyes are shut now.
Ivy is dismissed.
"Have you heard Hermione cry?"
It's the first time she's asking. She has put it off for so long. Too long.
Robert shrugs with his free arm. Hermione is leaning on his chest, her chin propped up on his shoulder. "I dunno. I'm sure I have. Why?"
"Because I haven't. She doesn't cry, Robert. Ever."
There's surprise in his eyes. "Why do you sound upset? She's a quiet baby, that's all."
"This goes beyond being a quiet baby, Robert." Ivy can feel her eyes welling up. Her voice is full of the emotion she has been burying for months. "I'm afraid there might be something wrong."
A sound cuts the silence.
A beautiful, wondrous sound. She almost doesn't believe it's real, but it is. Robert holds Hermione up, showing off her scrunched red face. She's crying.
"I think she heard you," Robert laughs.
With one hand over her chest, she tries to steady her thumping heart.
Ivy thinks so, too.
Robert's pale face is looming over her in the dark bedroom. He's shaking her awake.
"What?" she scowls.
"The house is haunted."
"Bugger off," says Ivy, rolling to her other side in an attempt to fall back asleep.
"I'm serious. The house is haunted. I put Lily's bottle down on one side of the room and when I turned around, it was in the crib with her."
"Oh, it helps with the kids? Tell it to start changing diapers."
The following week, a startled Ivy watches as a fluffy penguin floats off a shelf in the nursery and falls gently into the crib beside Lily.
She yells Robert's name, tells him that they're moving. Immediately.
They find a house in the Midlands.
A Victorian that's three stories high, white with black trimmings. Two acres in the backyard with trees all around. It's everything they've dreamed of.
They make it a home.
They sing the ABC's to the girls, try to teach them simple words. Mama, Dada, cat, dog.
When the twins are just a year old, Lily stares up at them as they repeat 'Mama,' 'Dada' again and again. She is moving her lips, trying to mimic what they're saying. She's younger than Petunia was when their first daughter said their first word, but she does it.
"Da!" she finally shouts.
Ivy and Robert cheer and Lily laughs, claps her hands.
"Can you say Mama, Hermione?" Ivy asks her youngest daughter.
Hermione looks away from Lily, shifts her weight to look at her mother.
"Ma," says Hermione, and Robert pumps his fist in the air and cheers.
Ivy smiles, surprised, and claps her hands.
She finds it curious that Hermione didn't even struggle.
First words, first sentences. Lily is always the first at everything.
Hermione is content to learn from her.
Or, as Ivy sometimes thinks, Hermione is content to wait for her.
Petunia has left her school things out and Lily has a pair of scissors in her hand. Her fingers are resting between both blades. Ivy rushes across the room at superhuman speed.
And then Ivy stops short, astounded. She watches as Hermione pries the scissors away from Lily.
Hermione catches her staring and lowers her eyes, holds the scissors out for her.
Ivy takes them away.
"Thank you for looking after your sister, Hermione."
It's a complex sentence to say to such a little girl.
She thinks Hermione understands.
Over the years, odd things happen.
Lights will go on when they know they shut them. Things will be where they didn't put them.
They chalk it up to an old house with old wiring and old minds with old age.
On Lily and Hermione's third birthday, Robert and Ivy take all three girls to the zoo.
Lily clutches the flipper of her favourite stuffed penguin as she points out the animals. Petunia holds her hand and they take turns pulling each other in different directions. When they get to the actual penguins, Lily squeals with delight, presses both hands up to the glass and jumps excitedly. Hermione stares at the fact chart, runs her eyes over toilsome sentences.
Ivy nudges Robert, points at Hermione. They smile together.
It's always so cute when she pretends she can read.
When they get home, Lily starts to wail. She cries and cries, devastated because her stuffed penguin is gone.
They search everywhere. The diaper bags, the strollers, under the beds, around the house. It's nowhere to be found.
"Mum," she weeps as Ivy helps them into their pyjamas.
"I'm sorry, Lily. I don't know where he is." Ivy is heartbroken for her daughter. She lays with Lily as her daughter cries herself to sleep. When Lily's breath evens, Ivy stands up, kisses Hermione's forehead on her way out.
"Goodnight, Hermione. I love you."
"I love you too, Mum," she says distractedly, staring out the window, searching the sky.
As she leaves the room, Ivy wonders what she's looking for.
The next morning, Lily comes bounding into their bedroom, exuberant.
"Mummy! Daddy! It's Penguin!" she jumps on their bed and holds the worn penguin up triumphantly. It's him, dangling eye and threadbare flippers.
"Who found him?" Robert asks with a smile. Lily points to the doorway.
Hermione's standing there, watching her sister with a small smile.
"Where did you find it?" asks Ivy, her brow knit with confusion.
"Under her bed," Hermione answers. She's looking right into her eyes.
Ivy looks away from her daughter, stares at the stuffed penguin.
She knows she checked under that bed three times.
They go to the park every Friday and Ivy sits on a bench and reads, occasionally looking over the book to make sure the girls are alright. It's a nice park, clean, with more than one slide. Some parents come from towns over just to let their kids play here. The girls usually chase each other around, play tag, dangle from the monkey bars. They can go for hours.
Every Friday on their way home from the park, Ivy stops in the quaint little bookshop a few blocks away. Lily and Petunia usually stay close to her, occasionally ask if they can leave soon. Oftentimes they'll try to tug her in the direction of the children's books.
Hermione is adorable. Sometimes she stands on her tiptoes and tugs a novel out, carries it over to Ivy in a careful way. She'll lift it up and say, "Mum, you should get this one."
Ivy learns to take her advice.
They're always good books.
Hermione is a quiet child.
She's not one to fuss. Never complains when they're having broccoli for dinner, never whinges when it's time to shut off the tele. She's not hyper, doesn't jump around. Whenever Ivy or Robert are reading anything, be it the newspaper or a thick novel, Hermione climbs up next to them and sits beside them. She peers over their arms or lays against their chest, eyes zooming over the pages.
Occasionally, Ivy finds Hermione staring up at her impatiently.
The look always disappears once Ivy turns the page.
On their first day of school, Lily cries as Ivy leaves the classroom.
Hermione waves goodbye.
When the twins are seven years old, their teacher asks to see Ivy and Robert.
They're in the corridor, waiting to be called into the class. Ivy feels like an unruly student when the stern teacher beckons them through the door. They both sit down on hard wooden chairs in front of Mrs. Gilliam's desk, clearing their throats somewhat nervously.
"What's this all about?" asks Robert, after the formalities are over.
"Your daughter, Hermione," says Mrs. Gilliam, crisply.
"What about her?" Ivy questions, icily. There's something about this woman's tone that she doesn't like.
"Hermione is…" says Mrs. Gilliam, trailing off, choosing her words carefully. "I've been teaching for eighteen years and I've never come across a child like her. She doesn't interact with the other children." They blink, unconcerned. Hermione is a quiet girl. There's nothing wrong with that. "I sometimes ask the children to draw what they're thinking about. Here is an example of Lily's." She opens a folder, pulls out various sheets of white paper. Pictures of her family, little stick figures of Lily with both of her sisters, her parents. Smiling suns and little flower shapes. A house with a chimney. One picture has a unicorn, another has a picture of Santa next to a Christmas tree. They go on and on.
Ivy passes the pictures to Robert after she looks at each one. "And?"
"Here's Hermione's," says Mrs. Gilliam, sliding another folder across the desk.
Ivy picks it up, opens it. The first picture is a rainbow. A vibrant arc of colors, swooped from one side of the paper to the other, with clouds on either end.
She thumbs to the next picture. Another rainbow. Exactly the same colors in exactly the same order, clouds the exact shade of bluish grey. The next paper is the same. And the one after that. And the one after that one. It's a folder full of rainbows.
Ivy passes the folder to Robert.
"So," Robert says after careful inspection, closing the folder. "You've brought us here to tell us that our daughter really likes rainbows?"
"There are other things. She won't answer questions in class. She waits for the other children to answer. She writes exactly the way Lily writes. She copies her sister. I sat them on opposite ends of the room, then she started copying off of the boy next to her. I moved her to that desk over there," she points to a lone desk in the corner, way in back of the classroom, segregated from the other desks. Ivy feels rage bubbling up inside of her. "Now she won't work at all."
"Maybe she won't work because you were humiliating her!" Robert says before Ivy has the chance.
"What good was it to sit her by herself? Why make a show out of her for the whole class to see?" Ivy demands.
"I needed to see if she could work on her own and she can't. Mr. and Mrs. Evans," the teacher sighs. "I'm sorry to be the one to say this, but I think your daughter has a learning disability."
They both sit silent, shocked.
When they come to their senses, Robert throws the folder back in Mrs. Gilliam's direction and storms out. Rainbows are still cascading down around Mrs. Gilliam when Ivy gets up.
"It's curious that you think my seven-year-old daughter is the one with the learning disability," she says slowly, venomously, "but you're the one who failed to notice that all of those rainbows are arranged by color of decreasing wavelengths." Ivy follows Robert out and slams the door behind her.
They decide to home-school after that.
It's the middle of the night and Ivy jolts awake. Distressed sounds travel down the hall. She hurries to the twins' room, finds Hermione whipping from side to side. A trick of the light – she looks like she's rising off the bed.
Ivy shakes her awake. Hermione gasps, her eyes fly open. She's staring at Ivy, trying to catch her breath.
"Tell me what you see when you're sleeping," Ivy begs.
"Everything," her daughter says, and she'll say no more.
Ivy holds her until she falls back to sleep. She holds her long after that too.
The girls are close.
They're often found huddled in corners together, whispering to one another.
Sometimes Lily holds her hands out and Petunia gasps. Whenever Ivy tries to see what they're whispering about, there's nothing more than a toy or a flower in her daughter's hands. "What's going on?" asks Ivy.
"Nothing," they all say innocently. It was very suspicious, indeed.
Robert is carrying boxes down from the attic one morning when he slips on the stairs.
All four women in the house see it happen as though it's in slow motion.
Ivy nearly has a heart attack. She watches him slip, hears him shout, sees him fall forward. She thinks he's going to break his neck.
And then, miraculously, he kicks his feet in mid-air a few times, regains his balance, grabs the banister.
"Wow, that was close!" he laughs. He's looking at the staircase in a confused way.
Lily and Petunia are looking at Hermione.
They're smiling.
Hermione's sleep is still fitful.
Ivy walks past their bedroom one night and sees Hermione tossing and turning. She walks in, tries to calm her, presses a hand to her daughter's forehead.
Her daughter's eyes snap open and her hand wraps around Ivy's wrist. A flash of searing pain shoots up Ivy's arm and she tries to pull away, but it's gone as soon as it came. Hermione's eyes are in focus now, she's awake and alert.
"Are you okay?" her daughter asks, concerned.
"I'm fine," she tells her, rubbing her own wrist. "Must have turned my wrist the wrong way."
Hermione turns away, looks as troubled as Ivy feels.
Autumn rain is gently tapping on the glass panes. The kitchen window is open and it grants a view of the enormous backyard. The foliage is a bouquet of oranges and yellows and browns and reds as far as the eye can see. The leaves look heavy under the grey skies, weighed down by the weather, swaying in the chilly breeze. The girls are outside, jumping and splashing around in the puddles. Their bright raincoats and black wellies are slick and shining in the dull evening light. Ivy has been watching them as she makes dinner. A grandfather clock chimes from the next room. Robert will be home soon.
She's drying her hands with a dishtowel when she steps out onto the deck. Lily and Petunia are holding hands, giggling as they leap from one puddle to the next. Hermione is sitting under a tree, knees drawn up and a book propped against her legs.
"Five more minutes," Ivy tells them. "It's getting cold and it will be dark soon."
"Aww," says a disappointed Petunia.
"Ten more?" begs Lily. Three of her teeth are missing.
"Alright," Ivy concedes. "Ten more minutes. That's it."
Lily and Petunia shout their hoorays.
"Hermione?" Ivy calls. Hermione looks over at her, guarded. Ivy thinks her daughter already knows what she's going to say. "Why don't you play with your sisters?"
She watches as Hermione folds the corner of a page in her book and slips the paperback into her pocket. Her sisters stop and wait for her excitedly, grab her hands when she gets close enough. "Look, there's a big one!" calls Petunia, and they all jump in unison. Ivy watches with a smile.
The phone rings and she backtracks into the kitchen to answer it. She says hello and props the phone between her cheek and her shoulder as she stirs the beef and Guinness stew.
"I'm back from France," Robert's Aunt Muriel says.
Ivy's shoulders slump dejectedly. "Oh? How was your trip, Aunt Muriel?"
"Everyone was rude and the room service was shit. The pastries weren't all that good, either." Ivy rolls her eyes, tunes her out. She's humming distracted responses as she tastes the stew, adds more salt. Anytime she tries to interject a thought, Muriel presses on.
Robert walks into the kitchen and Ivy nearly jumps.
I didn't hear you come in, she mouths.
He gives her a peck hello. Who's that?
Ivy wraps the phone cord around her neck like a noose and mouths Muriel.
He shakes his head, tries to duck out of the room, but Ivy catches him by the belt. "Oh, Aunt Muriel, Robert just walked in," she says, untangling herself hastily. "He wants to hear all about your trip! Hold on!"
She tries to force the phone into his hand but he fights it, uses the baguette he brought home as a sword. He jabs her in the shoulder, then the tit. "Bloody fucking hell," Ivy laughs, grabbing her chest.
Robert takes the phone then. "Hate to run, Aunt Muriel, but Hermione hurt herself. Oh yeah, vocabulary like a sailor, that one," he responds hurriedly and then slams the phone down. Neither of them can stop giggling like teenagers.
"Do it, Hermione!" they hear Petunia plead. "Mum's on the phone with Aunt Muriel. She'll be ages."
Naturally, with both of their interests piqued, they creep toward the door to the deck to see what has their girls sneaking about. They both stick their heads out of the open door, one on top of the other in a comical way, waiting to uncover the mystery of what their daughters are up to.
Robert lets go of the baguette. It hits the wooden floor with a thud. Ivy is wide-eyed and slack-jawed.
Leaves are hovering in mid-air. Then, astoundingly, they fold in on themselves. They twist and contort, burst to life. They've sprouted wings. They've become butterflies. Petunia and Lily laugh, delighted, as the butterflies flutter around them, kiss their noses and cheeks. Hermione is smiling, watching her sisters bask in this… this supernatural thing.
"What the bloody hell am I seeing right now?" asks Robert.
Hermione's smile falls and with it go the butterflies. They're nothing but leaves on the ground again.
All the girls look caught.
"Somebody explain. Now," says Ivy.
Petunia and Lily look to Hermione.
Her youngest daughter sighs.
"Alright," she says in a tired way. "But let's go inside first."
Magic.
Lily can make flowers bloom, make things move. Their middle child demonstrates. Dried flowers in a vase spring back to life. The vase slides from side to side.
They watch, amazed.
They look to their youngest child.
"And what can you do, Hermione? Apart from the butterflies?" Ivy asks.
But Hermione won't say.
"I hope I'll see what you're capable of one day," Ivy tells her late that night, after Lily has fallen asleep. She's smiling down at Hermione, running her fingers through her daughter's hair. Hermione doesn't say anything. She closes her eyes, turns her head away.
Ivy leaves her alone, closes the door behind her.
Hermione finally responds. It's faint through the door. Ivy knows she isn't meant to hear it.
"I hope you never do."