Written for The Houses Competition Year 12 Practice Round

House: Slytherin

Class: Alchemy

Prompts:

List 1: [Word] Battery

List 2: [Object] Ice cube

Word Count: 1850

TW: non-specified disorder making a stressful situation overwhelming. Mentioned mental health issues, and one (1) bad word, so still PG13.

Thanks to my fellow Slytherins for the beta work!

Maybe it would've been fine if she'd started at 100%. If she'd had a wonderful week at work with everything going exactly as planned, if she'd gotten a full eight hours of sleep, if her cat hadn't got sick on her first choice of dress, if James hadn't floo'ed to her apartment earlier than planned because "basically everyone's already there, come on".

But nothing had gone to plan, and Tamara had been on edge even before she'd been surrounded by the entire Weasley clan plus in-laws.

She politely extricated herself from a conversation about cooking—she knew nothing about cooking. She ate 80% of her meals at the cafeteria at work and ordered in the other 20%—and started looking for James. A knee-high missile intercepted her, and before she realised what was going on, she'd been roped into a weird game of nebulous rules and vague guidelines with a handful of the dozens of children she didn't recognise. They couldn't all be related by blood, right? It wasn't possible. Some didn't even vaguely resemble each other.

As soon as Tamara found a way to "die" in the game, she begged off being revived and headed towards the house at a clipped pace that didn't invite chit-chat. Thanks to some deity she definitely didn't spend enough time worshipping, she made it to the living room without being roped into gossiping in the kitchen. For the first time since nine that morning, Tamara took a deep breath with no one inside her personal bubble. It was heaven.

Did she have to talk to James? Maybe she could just head out and firecall him the next day. Her social battery was on its last dregs. He wouldn't resent her for that, right? And if he did, perhaps it would be a sign that they'd been rushing, and the first serious relationship she'd got into while still at Hogwarts wasn't actually meant to—

"Tamara!"

She jumped, startled out of her thoughts, and turned towards the voice calling out to her. When James tried to come in for a quick hug like he was wont to do after the briefest separation, a big grin lighting up his face, Tamara stepped back and raised a hand between them.

"No, thank you. Sorry, I played some game—anyway, I'm all touched out."

James lowered his arms easily without losing his smile.

"Yeah, the kids can be a bit much, but you were a big hit with them! I saw you heading inside—" James's eyes wandered around the empty living room like he was looking for someone she may have come in to talk to. "Did you need a minute?" he finally asked when no likely talking partner jumped up from behind the sofa.

Tamara shrugged, not quite willing to commit to only needing a minute.

James seemed to read some of her thought process on her face because his eyes went soft and earnest.

"You're doing great," he said earnestly, swaying forward like it was all he could do to stop himself from reassuring her with a hand on her forearm or some other kind of contact. "And, hey, volunteering to babysit is always a great way to score easy points with the mums! Just, maybe not in front of Grandma Molly—she gets huffy when she thinks someone's implying she's not perfectly fit to look after all the great-grandkids on her own. But you can talk to her about recipes! Complimenting her cooking immediately wins you a lot of goodwill. Though if you do it in front of Aunt Fleur they'll start to compare British and French cuisine, and I swear it's all in good fun but it can get a little heated, and if Aunt Angelina's anywhere near that discussion she'll accuse both British and French people of not knowing how to use spices. But you can always hide behind Uncle Ron! He's got a great protego and he's not shy about whipping it out at the least provocation, and if you want to talk curses and countercurses—"

Tamara felt attacked—crushed under a wall of words, assaulted by the deluge of familial anecdotes and all they implied.

"Maybe we're going too fast." It was her voice, and her mouth shaping the sounds, but she hadn't known she was going to talk until her words put an abrupt end to James's torrent of information.

He blinked at her and said sheepishly, "Right, you don't necessarily know everyone I'm talking about. I can slow down."

And that was sweet. James was sweet, but Tamara felt like breathing was becoming an issue.

"No, I mean, I don't think I can do this," she said slowly, staring at the window behind James's ear rather than directly at him. She still caught it when he moved in her direction and immediately took a step back to maintain the same distance.

"Back off. Seriously, I'm maxed out. My social battery is dead, and I can't deal with anything else. And it's awful! I mean, I'm awful—your family's great. This is on me. I can't deal with it so I'm tapping out. Sorry. No more spoons in the drawer."

James backed off, showing her his empty palms in the most unthreatening manner possible.

"It's al—"

"Don't say it's all right. It's obviously not. This is your family, and if I can't handle being around them for less than a day, what does that say about us?" Tamara spoke fast, looking off to the side and twisting her fingers as the worst of her doubts exploded out of her because of how overwhelmed she felt. "Maybe we jumped the gun. Maybe this relationship isn't meant to be. James, your family is wonderful, but I counted thirty people before I gave up trying to keep them straight. I'm not used to all this. It's always been just my mum and me—that's what I'm used to. And this… this is a lot. I don't know if I'm cut out for it. So maybe we should just—" She knew how she meant to finish that sentence, but the words got stuck in her throat with her next breath. She didn't want to break up—she liked James, which was the whole reason she even thought she could do this—but today had been too much. She was spiralling. She knew it but couldn't stop herself. She wanted to go home, to forget about the last hour, hug her cat, and not leave her bed until Monday, when she had to.

Then James conjured an ice cube.

It appeared in mid-air over her twisting fingers, and she automatically turned her palms up to catch it when gravity reasserted itself over magic.

It was cold and hard. It started melting immediately in the warmth of her hands, and Tamara extended them outwards to avoid dripping water on her shoes.

She stared at the melting ice cube for a while—long enough for the corners to become rounded—before her brain caught up with reality, and she frowned at it.

She raised her head to look at James, who'd put away his wand and was waiting patiently, if a little wide-eyed.

"An ice cube?" she asked.

"I panicked! An ice cube helps my dad sometimes."

Tamara felt inordinately slow—what was James talking about?

"Your dad?"

"Yeah, he's been known to hold an ice cube or two in his time," James said, visibly relieved to see Tamara on a more even keel and wiggling his eyebrows as if inviting her in on the joke.

Tamara only rolled her eyes, asking, "Why?" a little pointedly.

James shrugged.

"He's fucked up, so whatever helps, you know? And he definitely needs all the help he can get."

Tamara pursed her lips to contain a shocked laugh. "James! That's an awful thing to say."

"What? It's true!" James defended himself with an amused spark in his eyes. "But we love him anyway," he continued more seriously, looking straight at her.

Tamara looked away first, as was usually the case.

"But why an ice cube?" she asked again, sincerely curious and trying to move the conversation on at the same time.

James allowed it gracefully, scrunching up his nose as he telegraphed how deeply he was thinking about the issue.

"I don't know, really. He said something about the… sudden cold, er—helping him remember where, or when, he is?" he ended his sentence in a questioning tone, looking about ready to cartoonishly scratch his head.

Tamara glanced down at the small pool of cold water in the cup of her hands, only a small slice of ice floating along. "It's a technique to deal with PTSD?"

James lifted a shoulder non-committedly.

Tamara frowned at him.

"Don't you know?" she asked.

"I have…" James started, looking sorry about it, "no idea what PTSD is."

Tamara breathed a laugh, suddenly more willing to be amused.

"God, you're such a pureblood," she accused lightly.

James gasped dramatically.

"No, I'm not!" he argued. "Take that back this instant."

Tamara raised her eyebrows, the hint of a grin bending the corner of her lips, and doubled down.

"Four magical grandparents, isn't it?"

"My dad grew up in the Muggle world because his parents were dead, doesn't that count for something?"

Tamara chuckled despite herself.

"All right, I'm feeling better. You can stop saying wildly inappropriate things and making fun of your family trauma to cheer me up."

"Are you sure? Because I haven't even touched on Mum's trauma yet," James said, grinning widely now, eyes sparkling with mischief softened by genuine affection.

Tamara swayed towards him. Breathing was coming easily, and all the reasons she'd had for spiralling, although not gone, felt further away.

"Sorry," she murmured.

James jerked as if hit and immediately started shaking his head.

"Don't apologise! I'm sorry I didn't notice how overwhelming it all was. Meeting the whole family in one fell swoop sounded like a better idea in my head," he said sheepishly.

"It's not as if I didn't know what I was getting into—the sheer number of people you were related to at Hogwarts was a big clue," Tamara admitted. "I'm just… spent."

James smiled at her.

"Hey, I may not know how batteries work, but saying yours is "dead" was pretty clear. How about we get out of here?"

"James, no! Keeping you from your family is exactly what I don't want to do!"

James laughed.

"It's not that serious, Tamara. I see these people every other day anyway. I'd rather spend time with you. If… that's what you want too?"

Tamara couldn't suppress the smile slowly curving her lips, but she still tried to rein it in and be responsible.

"I should say goodbye to everyone, and thank—"

"Oh no, absolutely no need. With this many people? Just start doing what everyone else does and floo in and out whenever. By the third time, most people will have forgotten you haven't always been around."

That level of unconcern surrounding social interaction seemed rather far-fetched.

"And no one will mind?" she asked.

"I promise." James smiled, and Tamara let herself imagine it.

Maybe they would work, after all.