(A/N): Twelve year anniversary! Woo! We're back with Elaine, Remus, and Dahrya, and they soon meet up with Mia. Foreshadowing, some (hopefully) subtle, and some quite heavy handed, if I'm honest. Forgot I was supposed to upload this chapter today until the day of, because I was trying to work out what I'm going to write for next year's Anniversary chapter (because it's almost time for me to write it), and I was like '...hey, wait, isn't it the anniversary TODAY? Did I not have a chapter planned for that?' So, yeah. Thankfully, I remembered, and here it is. Next chapter will be uploaded next Monday (10/6/24).
Trigger Warnings: Themes/mentions of child abuse (neglect, abandonment, Sebastien stunning Mia, all parties involved being generally wary of Cipicia).
Elaine
With none of us being able to come up with something to discuss concerning Leo's experience with vampirism, we- Remus, Dahrya, and I- decided to stick together as we continued onward, to meet up with Mia. It made sense, considering that Mia and Dahrya were, by all accounts, friends. "Ah, here comes my favorite menace," Mia called as we approached, clearly referring to Dahrya, since her gaze moved to Remus and I a second later. "And my brother's two favorite menaces."
Well. That was a rather sweet ego boost I wasn't sure Remus and I needed. Speaking of Remus, he flashed her a smile that was a little broader than I thought was strictly necessary, and said, "Other than you, you mean- right?" Mia didn't blush, but I had the feeling it was a closer call that she might've liked. "I can't think of any troublemaker Leo loves more than you." She rolled her eyes at him, albeit quite fondly.
"I said 'menace', not 'troublemaker'- totally different designations. I'll admit that I forgot to account for my own tendency to be a menace- at least in Leo's eyes- but in all fairness, I've always been a bit like that, and Leo's always put up with it. Sure, he'd prefer if I sat back and behaved, but with you- he enjoys it. At least, that's the impression I get, anyway." Remus and I stared at her for a long moment, both touched and marginally confused.
"He doesn't enjoy it when we 'misbehave'- assuming what you mean by that is that we don't do exactly what he says whenever he says it. He gets incredibly-"
She cut me off with a snort, rolling her eyes again. "Leo doesn't care about that, I promise you. Sure, he gets frustrated when he can't control you- because he feels like it's the only way he can keep you safe- but you'll notice that whenever you do something that isn't life or death related, he's all too happy to have you do something unexpected... because he enjoys how boldly you're- you." Remus shot me a look, and I jumped on her insight eagerly.
"Why?" I asked, and she blinked heavily- as though she was both surprised and confused. "Why does he enjoy that? We're trying to understand Leo- and his motivations- a little better, and Lily pointed out that you're the best person to ask about all things- well... Leonides." It felt odd calling him that, even if he wasn't around to hear it. Maybe that was just because I wouldn't have liked one of my friends using my full name behind my back, but I didn't see an alternative. After all, Leo had only started using that nickname after being kicked out, and I needed to know about before that.
Mia looked sympathetic to our cause, thankfully- so even if she didn't want to 'betray' Leo, I was confident we could work with her to come to some sort of agreement. "I don't know if you're ready to hear about 'Leonides'." She put his name in quotes, as if to separate them more physically. "He was a different person, back then- I'd like to say I was, too, but even if I'd had a more defined personality at such a young age, I didn't have the same opportunity to grow and change the way Leo did." She frowned. "We always talk about it like it's a good thing- because it is- but it didn't feel that way at the time." I didn't doubt that. Sure, there were quite a few more years between Jay and I than there were between Leo and Mia, but if my brother had been thrown out when I was just five years old, I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to see the positives of such a situation.
"Maybe we're not ready," I admitted, which seemed to surprise her. "But we'll never know for sure unless we try- and for Leo, we'll always try." She appreciated this sentiment- or at least, I thought she did.
"Has he ever told you what happened? That day?" Assuming she meant the day he was kicked out, I shook my head. "I can't explain everything, obviously- I wasn't there for... a lot of it- but I can tell you what I was there for, and what happened afterward. Leo and I have only spoken about it briefly- never in depth. I don't even know how he ended up with his father." Remus and I shared a look- Leo had told us that the Healers revealed what he was to his parents, and they'd subsequently thrown him out, only for Nicholai to 'take him under his wing'. Now that our attention had been drawn to it, I did notice that there was quite a bit of ambiguity to that statement- which was incredibly worrying, considering that this was Leo we were talking about.
In service of trying to keep the lines of communication open, I did my best to explain what we knew. "He didn't tell us much- what else is new for Leo, right?- but what he did tell us was, unfortunately, vague enough that, being something straight from Leo's mouth, could really mean anything." I saw Dahrya roll her eyes, which wasn't surprising given the fact that he was currently stonewalling her via letter. "Even if you can't give us much insight into Leo- we would still like to hear about you, Mia. If you want to tell us, of course." She seemed skeptical for a moment, before her expression softened as though she was touched when she recognised I was being genuine.
"It's hard to- You have to understand, it was a different... time? Life? Look, maybe Sirius would be the best person to relate to it-" Remus jolted at that. "-but with the way we were raised- the way our parents were trying to teach us to think, act, and feel- we didn't exactly have a lot of room to assert our individuality. No one we knew did, which goes a long way to explain Leo's attraction to all things... unapologetically unashamed." But not all the way?
"But you don't feel the same way?" Remus asked, and Mia shot him a wary look. "You said Leo liked those things, but what about you? Did those eight years apart really separate you that much?"
Her face twisted, and I couldn't tell if it was because she was simply annoyed, or legitimately hurt. "Don't underestimate the distance our 'separation' caused between my brother's personality and mine- but you must know, I've always been a little less concerned with the whole 'honesty' thing than Leo. Which is a bit odd, considering he was the one that pretty much single-handedly taught me how to lie." I blinked. "Of course, he only did that to keep us safe, so- y'know. Swings and roundabouts." I- what? "Our governess called it 'twisting the truth'." Remus and I shared a shocked look-
Dahrya snorted aggressively. "Governess?" She asked incredulously. "You two had a governess? Merlin, I knew you were posh, but I didn't think you were that posh." While I wouldn't have phrased it that way, yes- I don't think Remus and I had known they were 'that posh', either.
"Yeah, until I mentioned the fact that we had a governess, there were absolutely no clues as to our... 'poshness'. Not the tutors or the maids and the gardeners, nor all of the house-elves. No, we were completely down to earth, before that." Dahrya rolled her eyes at that, even as she joined Remus and I in our bemused shock.
"I guess you hide it pretty well, then, if that's the case. I suppose that's- what did you call it? Twisting the truth?"
The corner of Mia's lips twitched skyward, before it dropped again abruptly. "I would've given it all up to have my brother back- once I knew he was gone, that is." I felt my eyebrows furrow.
"You didn't know he was- missing, at first?" She shook her head.
"No. I didn't find out until a day later- and even then, I didn't know what she'd done to him right away. She went so far as to say she killed him, when she told our- my father." Excuse me? "Of course, she was three drinks deep at that point, so I suppose she could be forgiven for the dramatics, if nothing else." She- What?
Remus was clearly just as confused as I was. "Wait, so... your father wasn't present when she kicked Leo out?" Mia blinked, apparently struggling to come to terms with the implications of this question before she shrugged.
"No, of course not. Did Leo tell you he was?" Remus and I shared yet another look.
"It was... heavily implied, if not stated outright."
Mia's face was full of sympathy, which, oddly enough, didn't make me feel any better about our uncertainty on the subject. "Fa- Sebastien, never attended any of our medical visits... or anything else involving either of us, to tell you the truth. He wasn't interested, and that was for the best- trust me." Better than the possibility of not having Cipicia involved? "No, she had to break the news afterward- after she took me to St Mungo's to make sure she wouldn't have to dispose of their other child, as well." 'Dispose of'... "She was very tight-lipped until we were in my f- Sebastien's, office. That's where he and I both found out what Leo was. What my mother had the Healers assess me for." She shrugged again. "Of course, when I tried to yell at her about it-" She- Merlin, Mia had always been like that, hadn't she? "-he stunned me, so..." He-
"He what?!" Clearly, Remus and I were on the same page- though he was seething far more blatantly than I was. "Mia, what-" She waved him off like it was nothing, making a face that almost read as... bored?
"Psh, hardly the worst thing he's ever done," She said, and I saw a muscle in Remus's jaw jump. "No, being stunned was nothing compared to what I woke up to."
(A/N): Leo tells Remus the story of how he was kicked out in Chapter 18 (Moony: Servant of the Night?), and since Elaine isn't present, we can probably assume that Leo told her the exact same story at a later date- the EXACT same story, as if it's rehearsed. Whether Leo rehearses this particular story because it's just the easiest way to get the message across even if it isn't PRECISELY true, or whether he rehearses it because he wants to make sure he can't get caught out on his careful lie, though... The problem is, before he saw her in Diagon Alley, Leo never really expected to see Mia again, and by the time she joined him at Hogwarts and met his friends, he wasn't thinking about the fact that she was probably the one person who knew the truth, and both could and WOULD call him out on his bullshit. How screwed Leo is basically depends on whether he lied because it was easier, or because he was hiding something.
So, technically Leo and Mia were only separated (as in, living in different places) for just under eight years (October 18th, 1967 - August 14th 1975) but Remus is just focusing on Leo having been seven when he was thrown out, and them finding out he'd rescued her after Leo's fifteenth birthday.
Mia fumbles and amends herself from calling Sebastien 'our father' to 'MY father', and then later from 'my father' to 'Sebastien', because she's still struggling with the fact that she can now call him whatever she wants without risk of someone overhearing and ratting her out to her parents and thus getting punished for it, and she wants to distance herself from him as much as possible.
This is the first in a series of chapters were Mia just absolutely unloads backstory on Elaine and Remus (and Dahrya, but mostly the other two), and we have to deal with the consequences.
