The next morning, already a Monday and the beginning of the working week, Guidry and Harry went downstairs to open up the shop (soundlessly, the tension still unbroken from the previous day) and found a letter already slipped under the crack in the doorway. It was addressed to Harry personally, written in a flowery, exuberant hand. Even though it was intended for Harry, Guidry took it and immediately pried it open, reading it before Harry did. After a few seconds, he flung the note at Harry and went into his study with a grunt.
The letter was rather long because it could be boiled down to a bare three sentences: a hello, an invitation, and the time and date. But Carmelita Lundelville had pulled out all the stops, and she explained how ecstatic she was to have Harry attend her little tea party with all her friends so that they may become better acquainted. Really, the letter was so sticky sweet it made Harry feel nauseous. He pocketed it together with the orb and said nothing. It was for tomorrow at three.
He didn't have to worry about it yet. Instead, he focused on Guidry's black mood, his odd attachment to the dark orb, and the fact that as he scoured the pages of the thick tome that Guidry had given him, nothing seemed relevant to his case. Really, most of it just looked like chicken scratch, written in a fast and sloppy hand, and what wasn't completely incomprehensible just spoke of different concoctions one could make using varying plants, or herbs, or even how to better communicate with spirits of light and dark.
It made Harry better understand the Cormiers' craft, but it had nothing to do with the magic that he knew, the magic that had sent him there in the first place. But he still had a lot to get through despite how far-fetched the book was in the way of helping him out.
The day passed with relative ease and quiet, the same stream of customers that Harry had witnessed the previous week remaining pretty constant. He couldn't help but notice how long his shadow seemed as he sat on the chair at the counter, the blaring light of the outside hitting him, making him look taller.
He attributed it all to what had happened the other night - surely, his shadow wasn't taller. That was just stupid. But he couldn't help but think of the black orb in his pocket, how the shadows had swallowed him. Was it possible he had swallowed them, too? He shuddered at the thought and leaned back over the massive book Guidry had given him as he waited for another customer to attend to. Guidry, on his part, didn't surface until lunchtime. Harry kept looking at his stomach as if expecting a shadow to pop out of his belly button.
When the day was over and Mrs. Cormier arrived, things were much the same: the silence, awkwardness, and visible tension between them and Harry and the couple. Harry informed Mrs. Cormier that he had to head over to Carmelita's the following day. Still, far from objecting, she just pursed her lips and seemed to sink deeper into her dinner was over and Guidry retired to his room without even smoking his habitual cigarette, Mrs. Cormier assured Harry that he would be back to normal in no time, but even she seemed saddened by it.
The next day, at five o'clock, Guidry walked Harry over to the Lundelville's. Harry had thought it best to go on his own, but since he hadn't really seen the town aside from when he had arrived in utter confusion, he thought it was best for Guidry to show him the way, at least that the first time.
He did his best to memorize all the streets and where they were turning, but Carmelita lived in what seemed to be the exact opposite end of town, which, Harry noticed quietly, was far prettier than where the Cormiers lived.
Her house was made of the same materials, but it appeared sturdier, cleaner, newer, gleaming in the afternoon sun expensively. It was hard to believe her father was only a barber. Guidry didn't wish him good luck, didn't give him any tips, and he only said he would be back in three hours to pick him up again as if Harry was a toddler and he was a tired parent.
Still, he would be picking him up and giving him an excuse not to be trapped in that god-forsaken house until the end of his days. Harry nodded at him as he left and then knocked on the door.
He was led inside by a black woman wearing pristine white garments, her hunch prominent and a weak, practiced smile on her lips. Harry told her who he was, and she led him through the light-filled, white-adorned house into a lounging room. Harry heard all the women way before he saw him - could even smell them, too.
It made an awful impression on him. Gathered around a sturdy coffee table were Carmelita and three other women, all of which Harry had seen a few days ago in the session. When Harry arrived, they straightened their backs and squealed with delight.
Carmelita, seated on the single and highest couch, immediately sprung up and darted over to Harry. She wrapped her bony arms around him and gave him two dry kisses on his cheeks. The urge to wipe his face was too great. "Alastor!" She exclaimed, clapping her hands into his with too much force. "How lovely to see you! Come, come, d'you fancy a bit of a sandwich?" She questioned, leading him by the hand to the couch that was nearest her. There was another girl seated at her side, but she kicked the girl's leg, and she scooted aside like a whipped dog. Harry sat down, already feeling a hard flush coming on. Really, their very scent made him feel embarrassed and uneasy.
He wondered how much like a swamp he smelled but then considered that one second in this awfully perfumed room would have him smelling like a groomed poodle. Carmelita poured him some tea with an excellent technique, plopped in a sugar cube without even asking him, and watched her ladies in waiting as they all buzzed, excited at the fresh meat. Feeling very odd if he looked at any of their faces, his eyes strayed around the room - everything seemed lavish, powdered, the very image of horrid decadence. A wedding cake toppling over from too many layers.
He caught sight of a very crappy take, a portrait of a girl who must've been Carmelita. It was bad because she actually looked human in it. Carmelita caught him looking. "Isn't it lovely?" She asked, batting her eyes at him. "Yeah, err, lovely," Harry said, trying his best not to be awkward. "Oh, how I love your accent!" Exclaimed the girl sitting next to him - she looked much like Carmelita, what with the monotony of her rouged face, besides the fact that her ringlets were brown. Harry had a feeling that she was Carmelita's right hand. "Really, I can't remember the last time we had a European-," and she said this word with particular enthusiasm -"here. Nothing ever happens in this town, so boring," she sighed, taking a sip of her tea. Nothing like hanging innocent people, right? Harry thought bitterly, but he didn't say anything. "Oh, hush now, Helen, no bad-mouthing the town," Carmelita giggled.
Harry thought it might have been preferable to have another drug trip than to endure the sound of her laughter. The ladies, without much reserve, then plunged into a conversation about the town's latest gossip, of which Harry, of course, knew nothing about, and so it bored him more than it would've otherwise.
Thankfully, they didn't expect him to contribute much to the conversation, only making him speak to ask his singular input as a foreigner. It didn't really matter that his sentences were abrupt and choppy: they laughed and were evidently delighted by every word that came out of his mouth. He felt a little like a miniature donkey that they had hired for the entertainment. Three hours of this?
He thought with some dread. He wished he could've been studying the weird almanac Guidry had given him. Though feeling like he was in a dangerous environment, Harry was soon utterly bored by their endless prattle, and by the fifth stifled yawn, another person entered the house. This was a mustached gentleman wearing excellent clothes, and when he arrived, Carmelita sprung from her chair again and greeted him warmly. "Papa! How good you're here. I just wanted to show them that new contraption you brought!" She exclaimed. The man looked over at the crowd gathered in his house. "Ladies," he greeted, and then his eyes fell on Harry, "and…". "Oh, papa, this is Alastor. He'sfrom England," she informed him. "Ah," he huffed as if this had given him any kind of relevant information on Harry. "Mr…" "Alastor is fine, sir," Harry told him. "Right. A pleasure to meet you, Alastor," he said with a nod and then looked back at Carmelita, "I'll be back in a bit and show you the radio," he said, putting some heavy emphasis on the word as if wanting Carmelita to retain it. "Right, the radio," she repeated with mock severity.
He smiled tightly at her and left them. Carmelita returned to her chair. "It's a neat device," Carmelita told them, flicking her curls. Evidently, she was very pleased with being able to flaunt the new technology that she had. "Lets you hear things from all over - papa says you can hear people from any state! Ain't that lovely?" "Like that… tell… telly…". Helen stammered. "Telephone. Yes, like the telephone. Only, since you don't have one, we really don't put much use into it," Carmelita said backhandedly. Helen flushed a deep scarlet. Harry had to resist the urge to laugh. Finally, there was something that seemed interesting to him, something that seemed pulled straight out of a history book - if Ron could see the way these women spoke of a telephone, they'd have a good laugh about how they almost seemed like Mr. Weasley in their fascination of things that to them were common items.
He felt a pang of longing for home, for his friends, and he craved to see the radio, even the telephone. Maybe they would drive away the feeling of otherworldliness. "So, what's the difference?" One of Carmelita's friends, whose name Harry hadn't caught, asked timidly. "Well…" Carmelita began, looking a little perplexed herself.
obviously, she only liked these things because she could show them off, not because she actually valued or understood them. "You can't actually communicate through a telephone," Harry explained, speaking unprompted for the first time. "A radio is just to hear other people talking. They usually tell stories or the news." When he caught their stupefied expressions, he retracted. "I think." "Ain't you a brainy one!" Carmelita said with some delight. "But of course you are. Are there a lot of radios in England?" She asked, her eyes twinkling. "Uhm. Yes." Harry replied. He actually didn't have a clue, but it wasn't like these people were going to know, anyway. Carmelita's father resurfaced, at that moment holding a massive thing that looked like a cinder block in his hands.
He went over to a small table in the corner of the lounge and propped the radio there. Harry skittered over to look at it along with the rest of the women. They were all buzzing about, trying to catch a better glimpse at the many little handles and the antennae of the thing. Harry was mesmerized by the ancient machine, but he thought that even in that old mangy contraption, there were many similarities to the user-friendly ones he was used to. They all watched as Mr. Lundelville struggled to set up the device, and once he had finally gotten it on, a lot of the ladies had already lost their amusement and ambled about the room. When the static started crackling in their ears, they all began to complain that they might get headaches. Mr. Lundelville rolled his eyes at them subtly, and Harry couldn't help but share the sentiment. however, he couldn't get a single station on, and he clumsily tried to make it work. "Oh, papa, make it stop," Carmelita complained, pacing around the little table where her father was seated. Harry sat down on the chair beside him. "May I?" He asked timidly.
The man looked up at him with some amusement and incredulity. "If you like," he said, though there was a lot of condescension in his voice. Harry set to work. Really, it was quite different, but the tricks he had learned over the years and the habit of turning on the radio were familiar to him, so in no time, he had got the hang of what the old device needed. After half a minute, a voice came through the static, and all the ladies yelped in surprise. Mr. Lundelville nodded at Harry appreciatively, as if showing his respect. Harry didn't know why, but he found it slightly repulsive. "Oh, ain't he just the handiest!" Carmelita sighed, setting her hands on Harry's shoulders.
He tensed. Mr. Lundelville nodded at Carmelita, by now completely entranced by the radio. Harry, too, didn't wish to hear any more compliments, and he pretended to be just as enthralled with the radio, trying to see if he could get it to switch stations while Carmelita's father asked him how he had done this or that. After a while of speaking about it and flitting around the radio as if it were an exotic animal, it lost its charm to the vapid women, and they all went back to order some more tea and the tiniest sandwiches Harry had seen in his life. Carmelita asked him whether he would join them back at the couches, but Harry asked if it was alright if he could listen to the radio a bit longer.
Not wanting to be an ungracious host, she accepted it and left her ladies with some dejection. Carmelita's father didn't seem to mind Harry, and Harry didn't mind him, so they both sat trying to make sense of the words being spoken by some southern gentleman through the static. Harry managed to get a clear sound out of it with a few more twists on the dials and poking around a bit,
It was weird listening to it in such an old-time sense - the man that was narrating some news or other about something happening in New York lacked charisma or the essential vitality that most radio hosts unwaveringly possessed in Harry's time, and he supposed it would take a little time for them to adopt that way of speaking. Still, the program was soothing to Harry. It made him feel connected and reassured him that there was more life than this depressing little town with these awful people. He suddenly found himself fantasizing about living in New York, or New Orleans, or some cool place that had always seemed so enticing to him when he'd watched historical movies.
He even forgot, for a moment, as he listened to the presenter, about the babbling bunch of ladies in the room with him, and when he asked what time it was, snapped out of his stupor by the low position of the sun, he remembers that Guidry had said he would pick him up after three hours, and it was already past six. He excused himself as he stood and thanked Mr. Lundelville for his hospitality and for letting him listen to the radio. "No problem, boy. You come 'round as often as you want - I doubt I could get this thing running by myself," he said with a chuckle and a somewhat warm yet weary smile. It was hard not to like the man. After all, it couldn't be easy living with Carmelita, and he hadn't even met her mother yet.
And yet, he had to remember that this man was as much of an accomplice as all the rest of them, and he was the reason that Carmelita wielded all the power that she did. Besides, what hidden depths could he have, considering that he had raised Carmelita? Harry smiled tightly and went to excuse himself to the ladies.
They were all whines and pleas to have him stay, but they were half-hearted, and in the end, with quite some fumbling, Harry managed to get to the entrance. He hadn't realized that Carmelita had chased after him before she grabbed him by the arm to stop his turning the doorknob. "I certainly hope you'll come next week, Alastor," she said, batting her eyelashes in a way that she probably thought was sweet. "We do this weekly. And maybe I'll call you some other time of the week…?" Her hand strayed from his forearm to his chest, and she gently patted it. It felt uncomfortably intimate, for some reason. He couldn't put his finger on it exactly. Still, something about her heavy lashes, the tarty makeup, the clownish lipstick, and overall demeanor made him think that she looked even worse than undesirable - she was horrible, detestable.
He felt a sudden urge to take her hand from his chest and wring it until the bones popped. Though the image had occurred to him in a flash, he was still horrified by it the moment he realized what he had been thinking. "Uhm, yeah, sure," he told her, swallowing hard. Without waiting for his dismissal, he turned the doorknob and exited before she could say anything else.
He didn't want to think what he was: that she would've deserved it if he broke her hand. If he broke her neck. Guidry was waiting for him just around the corner, a sour expression on his face. Harry approached him with a guilty look on his face. "You late," Guidry huffed, not waiting until Harry caught up to start going home. "You having too much of a good time?" He asked bitterly. That set off Harry's nerves. Though the radio had been a cool sort of solace, a connection to home that he didn't have at the Cormiers' home, the house was hell, and all the women in it were its demons. "You know I didn't," Harry responded with quite some apathy in his tone, angry at Guidry. He was only there because Carmelita had threatened the Cormiers - could this man really be treating him in this way because he was just a few minutes late?
It was the first time he had ever spoken that way to Guidry, and the man was taken aback. Even a little embarrassed. Harry was glad of it, and he didn't realize right at the moment that it wasn't just because Guidry seemed repentant of his bad moods but also because it made him feel a little above him. The walk back home was silent and loaded with uncomfortable tension. Guidry didn't even ask Harry to tidy up the shop, which he had already closed, and did it himself, leaving Harry to go sulkily to his room, where he examined the book Guidry had given him. But it wasn't of much use - he felt almost feverish, unsteady like his mind was in some indescribable state, and he couldn't tame it. He knew that he felt angry and irritated - at Carmelita, Guidry, and the useless goddamn mammoth te had given him to pore over. Hell, even the heat made him want to punch a wall.
He finally set down the book, too annoyed to be bothered with the task of deciphering its nearly illegible handwriting and incomprehensible, useless content. He lay back on his bed and stared ahead at the low ceiling, his hand in his pocket, where he had stowed the portkey. He thumbed it affectionately as though it was a source of comfort - and his own humor was so black he felt it was the only thing that felt attuned to him at the moment.
He didn't even get up when he heard the sounds of Mrs. Cormier coming home and the faint yet discordant noise of their abrupt speech. Even though he felt angry at the entire world, he could still sense that throbbing guilt that came when he remembered that he was the cause of their tension.
Sighing, he went back to studying the ledger Guidry had given him out of a sense of duty more than a desire. He had thought that studying this would be a relief, that he would finally feel like he was taking the appropriate steps to get back home and that his return would be as easy as completing a task of homework, but more than giving him hope, reading the ledger-diary-book-thing put the horribly daunting task ahead of him into perspective.
Maybe if he was Hermione, he would've been able to decipher what he had to, found the pages that would contain the answers that he sought, but the book was full of gargle that he couldn't bring himself to find a trace of hope in. So he sat in the weak light of the room, his body compressed in the small space, reading mechanically to see if anything jumped out at him until Mrs. Cormier called him to have dinner. The table was already set, and Mrs. Cormier was ladling soup into their plates. Guidry sat at his chair with a vacant, spiteful expression on his face, and Mrs. Cormier just looked downright sad. They ate with an uncomfortable cloud hanging over their heads, the sound of soup being slurped being the only discernible noise in the whole room aside from the Constance of the crackling fire.
At some point, Mrs. Cormier looked over to Harry and asked him how his day had been at Carmelita's. It caused her some obvious strain not to say it spitefully, or with that dejected look of sadness she had sported the day that Harry had told her about the little arrangement, but she managed to get it all through without her face revealing much. Harry answered her curtly, even told her a little bit about the radio, which, she naturally, understood nothing about. "Glad you found somethin' to keep entertained there…". Guidry said. Harry shot him a look - even though initially, he had been ashamed of the comment he had made to Harry once they had left the Lundelville's, it seemed he was back to his former line of thinking. "Right, well, I don't think they'd like me much if I sulked the whole time," Harry pointed out bitterly. Mrs. Cormier cleared her throat. "Can't blame the boy for finding something nice, Guidry," she said tersely. "Maybe he wanna stay the-" "It's absolute hell being there!" Harry suddenly burst out at him furiously, feeling all his anger from before coming to burst from the surface, now completely unrestrained. "I'm only doing it so they won't… they won't-" "We know, Alastor, dear," Mrs. Cormier told him, looking warily between him and Guidry. "Well, it doesn't seem like Guidry knows," Harry said under his breath. Guidry huffed a bit but didn't counter the statement. It was all too much for Harry to handle - the shitty situation at Carmelita's, Guidry's bad moods and clear apathy towards him, the endless frustration of the book.
It was all too much, too much, and he couldn't deal with it - or at least he couldn't deal with it without snapping. He felt like screaming, or punching Guidry and then making a run for it, or flipping the table and splattering all its contents over the Cormiers. He settled for slamming his spoon down on the table, dragging his chair back, and storming out in a good teenager-ish fashion. He heard the faint voices of the Cormiers arguing in some very low, muted voices as he accommodated his pillows and blew out light in his room.
He lay down in a fit, trying to calm himself down even though he couldn't quite understand why he was in such a passion. Sure, he had many things in his mind and reasons enough to be upset, but to this extent? To be acting in such a way?
He didn't know, but it couldn't quite bring himself to rein it all in in the state that he was n. He didn't know how he fell asleep, his mind giving him hot flashes throughout it all. He thought of going back, apologizing, or packing his two meager belongings and taking his chances in this wild world. He thought of anything and everything he might do, and yet he landed on nothing concrete and awoke early the next morning, feeling numb. After that, one day was much like the next.
There were no more fights between him and Guidry, no back-handed comments, but still, the relationship could not be fully mended, and the tension was there at all times, just unresolved and verging on the precipice of an argument. It all boiled down to the fact that Guidry didn't trust him. Mrs. Cormier didn't like the atmosphere that had been established in her otherwise more or less peaceful home, but she didn't seem to have much power to do anything about it.
They all waded, carefully treading on the eggshells of their interactions, working mechanically and doing everything that they had to do without giving it much of a thought. For the most part, it was easy. Still, Harry would sometimes get flashes of weird clarity in which he realized it would be easy to be the bigger person, apologize to Guidry, and try to be the bigger person. Still, those flashes lasted very little and could not be acted upon.
He started staying up later and getting up earlier due to the strange restlessness that had gotten hold of him. He was feverish and restless at every moment, and even if his body felt like it was about to shut down from exhaustion, he couldn't fully rest. Mrs. Cormier made some comments about his tired appearance, but he didn't give a concrete answer, and she felt she didn't have the space to pry any further.
He stayed up with a candle poring over book after musty book of chicken scratch, trying to find something that might help him get back home, but each book just seemed all the more ridiculous to him, tackling subjects he knew nothing about and didn't care a smidgeon for. Though the books certainly added to the sense of frustration that he had, the more he read, the more relentless he became in his search, desperate for something - anything - that could help him out. In some deep, now buried part of him, he wanted something to pull him out of the weird apathetic state that he had entered, a state that was rarely broken, sometimes only by fear. His shadows become long under the sun and even longer under the light of the candle.
When he got distracted, he thought, for little moments in time, that his shadow moved even when he didn't. When he looked back at it, though, it was just a normal shadow. He attributed it to his sleep deprivation. Carmelita's home had become a biweekly occurrence. After that first time, Guidry didn't bother accompanying him, so he got lost when he tried to go by himself the first few times. She would invite him over to her weekly little tea party with all her insufferable friends, and, surprisingly, those were the best times.
That one time a week, she was mostly distracted by the prattle of the ladies, who chattered away incessantly, now as if oblivious to Harry's presence. They left him alone to listen to the radio. Sometimes Carmelita's father would silently join him at the lonesome table where the radio was propped. Still, a lot of the time, he was alone, listening, entranced, the only time of the week in which he felt some sort of escape from his stifling, life-sucking circumstances. Though not as good as those he was used to, the voices in the radio did their job at transporting him to whatever they transmitted.
He became wrapped up in old music he never thought he would like (realizing how much he had taken music and news for granted); he was invested in the recovery of a certain family whose house had been destroyed by a tornado or a criminal investigation happening in some city or other. The crimes were always the ones that caught his attention most. They were enthralling - it all felt so real, vibrant, and life-like in this town where everyone was a clay doll of malice, devoid of passion and true sentiment.
Even Mrs. Cormier, who he had positively adored at first, seemed to him almost detached, a sentient though thoughtless being. It was like his days were void, senseless, and colorless save for the few moments when he would sometimes listen to the radio and feel a little alive again - and they all swept down to the vortex of the night. The night was the only thing that truly pulsed, breathed, that wasn't just grey. But it was black. Harry slept little, little, and then less, each time, with each day that passed. When he did sleep now, his dreams, or, rather, nightmares, were littered with monsters and shadows, things that consumed him, severed heads that screamed at him until he jerked himself awake.
It got progressively worse, and the less he slept, the more nightmares plagued him, the more visions he had. They could mostly be attributed to tricks of the light and sleeplessness, but when the weekend came around. He had to help Guidry with his little show (which he now sat through as if it were medieval torture, he could physically feel the shadows tugging at his feet, rustling his hair like hands made of breeze and darkness. Now, he was prepared for such a thing, but he messed up in the performance. the first time it happened
He had to become accustomed to the fact that the shadows were living, breathing entities, and they had acquired a taste for him. Naturally, with the state in which he was with the Cormiers, he didn't speak a word of it to them, especially not after he was sure that Guidry thought he was cursed, that he was a dark stain upon their lives.
He knew that the best thing he could do for the Cormiers would be to leave them, to disappear into the night without a word - maybe it would've even been best for him as well, and he could forget the whole situation voodoo had brought upon him. But he couldn't leave them, and part of it was because of his paralyzing fear of this strange world, and part of it was because he couldn't do without the books that Guidry gave him to examine. One would've thought that studying a way to get back home would've been the highlight of his bleak days and endless nights, but it all just blurred into the same flurry of nothingness. He would pore over the books by candlelight, clutching the orb tightly in his hands, his eyes going red. One night, he woke up screaming, and Mrs. Cormier had to come into his room to rouse him.
He couldn't remember what nightmare he had been having, but his scar was burning as it used to when Voldemort was near him. Mrs. Cormier had been scared out of her wits, but Harry had tried to reassure her and get her back to bed. When she was gone, and he put his hand out to touch the portkey, his hand burned, and the scar throbbed again. All in all, he lived one day at a time, one dull suffering lived through, only to find something else that elicited a throbbing pain, a terrible discomfort that was even more horrifying than explicit agony because he didn't know how to make himself feel better.
He was almost unaware of the fact that he was not alright. Since his natural state was one of perpetual irritation, it took the slightest thing to annoy him to the point where he would snap at anyone and everyone. Since he wasn't in a position in which he had the right to do something like that, he mostly bottled his feelings and let them brew within him, his only solace coming from the increasingly violent scenarios he pictured in his head as an outlet. The only time he felt guilty for his bloody mental acts of vengeance was when he thought them about the Cormiers.
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It was a mild Thursday afternoon, with no wind and yet not a lot of stifling heat, when Carmelita committed her first real transgression. Or, at least, what Harry considered Carmelita's first real transgression because she had had many as the time wore on. She would brush past him, her skirts rubbing against his limbs, or run her pale hands through his shoulders many seconds more than necessary. She seemed to love rubbing at his chest before he left.
All these things made Harry shiver uncomfortably, but their intent was questionable, and so he couldn't do much about it, and he bore them well until he left the house and noticed how violated he felt. That Thursday afternoon, he had arrived at her home and immediately noticed her to be quite excited, even more restless and chirpy than usual. She greeted him with a wet, sloppy kiss on his cheek (she was usually more restrained) and took his hand, leading him to the tea room, where all her friends were in the same state as usual.
Harry learned that her mother was feeling much better and would probably be able to leave her bed in a few to come for tea. After a great deal of tedious and senseless conversations, Harry had, in the course of the past weeks, learned that Carmelita's mother was a wealthy lady (an inherited wealth, doubtless) who was tormented by terrible headaches and therefore rarely left her room to interact with people. After nearly a month of Harry going to her house twice a week (more than that, sometimes), he would finally be meeting her.
He could tell by thowCarmelita talked about her that they were very close, which made him awfully nervous. He expected a terrible woman capable of giving birth to the powdered monstrosity that was Carmelita. Harry got a bit jittery but otherwise said nothing. The sandwiches and customary tea were handed out, and after he had made some polite chitchat, he wandered over to the radio, where Carmelita's father was already hunched. Not an hour had passed before Mrs. Lundelville descended from her room.
Harry noticed the hubbub when all the ladies started clustering around her (Harry thought maybe he could understand the cause of her headaches, now: surely all the chattering couldn't be very good for her head). Both Harry and Mr. Lundelville stood for her entrance, and when the sea of woman had parted around her, Harry got his first glimpse.
She was a stately woman, though clearly much deteriorated by illness. That sort of sunken cheek and hollowed eye couldn't come only from chronic migraines. And yet she carried herself with pride, despite her obvious weakness, draped in a costume that didn't seem to fit her very well - maybe it had when she had had more than the skin on her bones, but now she looked to be better suited for a flimsy gown than the heavy skirts she sported. She looked like Carmelita in more than just the fact that her face was also laden with makeup.
When she had eased the eagerness of all the doves flocked about her, her eyes wandered over to Harry. They weren't kind eyes. They carried coldness and calculation, and she seemed to detest Harry the moment she saw him. "Mama! This is Alastor. Remember I told you so much about him?" Carmelita said with delight. "Hmph. And what's young Alastor doing all the way over there instead of with you lovely ladies?" She asked with an imperious though cracking voice. Harry's blood ran cold with the comment, and immediately he had the image of bashing her weak head in. Carmelita giggled. "Oh, mama, he's just a boy.
He likes playing with his little gadgets just like papa," she dismissed, guiding her mother over to one of the couches. Harry wandered from the radio over to where the ladies were sitting, his nerves feeling like they were being electrocuted. Mr. Lundelville dutifully sat with the ladies, also. The chatter continued much as it always had, the only difference being Mrs. Lundelville's somewhat passive-aggressive or even just aggressive comments. Her posture was like that of a judge, and she seemed to hear everything that was said as if searching for something to criticize. Harry loathed her. He might have even loathed her more than he did, Carmelita. And yet whenever Mrs. Lundelville threw in some acidic comment, all the ladies rustled and threw out their exclamations as to how wise and intelligent she was. Mrs. Lundelville took no flattery. Instead of assimilating their comments as if it was only natural, they should compliment her.
Harry could only entertain himself then by imagining how easy it would be to crack her fragile wrist and make her scream with much-deserved pain. By now, these comments were almost second nature to him, and he felt no need to repress them, as they brought him much comfort. After one or two hours, Mrs. Lundelville looked very deteriorated and told them she would need to retire. Though they were all deeply saddened, they didn't object. Harry watched her go with rage. Thankfully, however, she hadn't bothered saying another word to him other than that initial remark. She didn't even acknowledge his existence, even when Carmelita mentioned him.
After a time, Harry, too, excused himself, and Carmelita walked him over to the door. "What did you think of mama?" She asked at the doorway. "She's… very stately," he told her. She's a disgusting old hag, he thought. "Oh, that she is. You know, I've told her so much about you…." Carmelita uttered, batting her eyes at him. She moved closer to him, as she always did - or as close as her skirts would allow - and Harry was so frozen in place that he didn't have the good sense to move away.
Besides, he was used to her weird caresses by now. "I'm awfully fond of you, Alastor," she whispered in his ear, her hand reaching to his chest. Then, she wound her way down his shirt and hovered just over his pants, feeling him for a second before he jerked away violently, horrified. Carmelita also pulled back, looking flustered, even upset. "Aren't we friends?" She asked, her voice changing from its usual sickly sweetness to that of a demon's. "I- err- of course," Harry said, stumbling over his words, the need to leave the house immediately being incredibly overpowering. "Well, you ain't really behaving like a friend, are you?" She said, and, with a bounce of her horrible curls, she turned away from him.
He was grateful for her dramatic exit, and he was so disturbed by what had happened that he didn't even have time to consider that upsetting Carmelita was the last thing he should've done. Harry ran out of the house, feeling like he had to scrub himself clean of her.