Usually, Justin spent his Easter holiday in Gstaad. Susan and Ernie, heading to one of the holiday spots frequented by the other admired families of wizarding Britain, perhaps the Isle of Elisian or Luzia, if not a jaunt over to America or Canada--even sunny Australia!--if the older folks in the family were up for the slalom of that floo trip.
Hannah and her mum traded off Easter travel with her aunt Louise, every other year rotating between where Louise lived with her partner in Toronto and the Abbott/Elliot flat in Bloomsbury. When Hannah and her mum hosted, Easter dinner was giant bowls of ramen at the Hare and Tortoise, unabashed slurping noises punctuating all of the conversation and laughter. Moments like that, Hannah could watch her mother and see all of the woman's soft spots, where exactly her father had struck a young Annemarie to make her so weak to fall for his (cliche, predictable, sexy ) rebellious Gryffindor charms, yo-yoing on and off with him for their whole twenties. Ten years later, Sirius Black could only hope to engage in such pureblood, Muggle-loving rebellion: Thomas Abbott III already did it, kicking off to his Muggle rock band and literally soiling his Sacred 28-blood with his Muggle loving. Try living up to that two-fingered salute!
“If there is anything I ask of you, as you get to the age where you start dating,” Annemarie Elliot had sighed to Hannah one night during the summer before Hannah’s fourth year, “it’s that you don’t be stupid. It drives me insane that no matter what I do, I’ll always be some bloody cliche: The over-achieving good girl who falls for the bad boy. Even more pathetic that I’m a Muggleborn and he was pure-blooded,” though the said the last word with a roll of her eyes. Though her mother’s lips rippled, and Hannah thought, not for the first time, that had her father not been killed in the first war back when she was too small to make memories, her entire life would have been watching her parents crash together and careen apart. That she would have been a tennis ball viciously batted between them because their chemistry and their lack of compatibility would always be at war.
There wasn’t a single day that she didn’t wish her father was still alive. Still: she was grateful she got to avoid that . And the fact she held both thoughts in her heart made her chest painfully tight.
It was painfully tight more often than not anymore.
This year, they should have gone to Canada, where Louise had moved back in 1985 to follow the love of her life, a Canadian witch who straddled both the magical and Muggle worlds as a painter; she inspired Hannah’s aunt to follow her own desires to write. (Her mother and her aunt, the Ravenclaw spectrum, as the two of them would laugh.) But it was O.W.L.s year, and instead of Toronto and Gstaad and anywhere-but-here, Hannah and her three best friends had plotted out a non-holiday holiday, a cram session so intense that even Ernie was concerned they were pushing it.
“We will eat?” he asked once they had drawn up their schedule. He paused. “We don’t need to break for meals, but--we will eat, at least. Also, we’ll need a coffee maker everywhere we go.”
They spent the first four days at Justin’s, bickering and debating over their major takeaways and understandings (that is not how you say that charm! Did you even read the theory behind it?) from the first two terms in relative luxury in the Finch-Fletchley’s Kensington home--and engaging in the foursome’s favorite pastime: Jus and Han Introduce Ern and Suz to Muggle Pop Culture.
(Not that it stopped when they got to Hannah’s flat--as if. Hannah’s mother had decided to live in the Muggle world for a lot of reasons, but number one was that Annemarie said she’d rather give up her magic than give up her telly and compact discs. But watching movies, listening to music, watching satellite television with American stations at Justin’s just felt different. Slipping under a velvet rope into a new kind of life. Like you were in a movie studio’s screening room, like you were listening to a playback on some grotty couch at Electric Lady Studios, like being at the BBC as Tom Baker tossed his scarf in a jaunty loop around his neck. Even Susan and Ernie--agape at Muggle culture--leaned in a bit more, widened their eyes a bit more, when watching and listening to things at Justin’s. Not that Hannah was watching them; it was just as transfixing for her. Then again, great movies and shows and songs always were, they just found a way to arrow into her heart.
Because her heart was a giant target, Justin would tease, keeping his mouth open wide in an affectionate smile until she would laugh, and Ernie would laugh while Susan shot her a wink.)
They hadn’t been laughing or teasing or winking for the past two days, when they started what Susan had called The Gauntlet --her title, of course, since they were starting at the Bones’ home on the shore near Botham, converting the Bones’ backyard conservatory into a makeshift classroom complete with a blackboard that Emma Bones had transfigured from a drink coaster. First was Susan’s father, who was the lead parliamentarian for the Wizengamot legislature but had a real hankering for Arithmancy, followed by her cousin Nigel’s lecture on Astronomy complete with a model of the southern constellations made out of the food in the Bones’ pantry and icebox.
“Survive the Gauntlet!” Susan’s older brothers chanted--Sam in the regular magical enforcement ranks for now and Edwin in his second year of Hit Wizard training--after concluding their day-long D.A.D.A review. “Only the strongest survive!”
As Susan let out a shriek, squirming wildly as her brothers descended to rub their knuckles into her hair and tickle her sides, Hannah turned chalk-white. Ernie poured a round of firewhiskey from the bottle that Edwin brought, his face glowing from the feeling of being The Kind of Man who ends the day with a quality glass of liquor with his quality mates. “To Susan’s Gauntlet of Knowledge!”
And Justin--oh, Justin , catching a look at Hannah’s expression and starting to tear in two between his girlfriend and his best friend. The clash of the affable aflluent confidence that he’d pull out the right marks no matter how they all decided to study together against his gnawing fear that Hannah’s anxiety would tank her own exams. So perhaps Hannah needed more calm and structure…but Susan had boldly snuck into his room all four nights at his place, so… because honestly, they could coax Hannah through! She could stiff-upper-lip like the rest of them, right?
Eh, mate? Yeah?
Nevermind he already knew that the answer was no .
He knew it when he told Neville in Herbology just a week ago, right before the end of second term, watching her start to breathe raggedly while trying to reinvigorate her bed of echolilacs, “I think Hannah’s mum might be a bit of a stress on Hannah.” And he paused before whispering, “And I really like Han’s mum, don’t get me wrong, she’s capital, great taste in music, but--she’s…tough on Hannie.” And he paused again, his voice barely audible, “Let’s put it this way: at the start of every term, Hannah tells Snape that her mum sends her regards. And he gives her one of his usual looks, but he jerks out this nod. It’s--okay, have Harry or Dean ever used the Muggle saying, ‘Game recognizes Game?’”
Neville stared at Justin. He glanced at Hannah, then blinked as if to make Justin come into focus. “Uhhh…they have not.”
“Right. Well. Her mum’s the head potion-master at Bobbin’s. For all the UK stores. They supply Hogwarts with our potions supplies--she showed us her vault once, it had the ingredients to make every potion, pretty much. And her mum was a Muggleborn who made it through the first Who-Know-Who War. So. She--” Justin watched Hannah start to leak out tears, Susan and Ernie immediately intervening to calm her, to avoid everyone else’s attention, stroking Hannah’s wrist and whispering in her ear. “She doesn’t…have a lot of sympathy when…people aren’t strong.”
Neville stopped blinking, stopped wincing at the mentions of Snape, and centered his gaze on Hannah. “I think…people can be strong in a lot of different ways.”
//
(This, this is what it was like in Hannah’s head all the time. A cacophony of thoughts and impulses and energy, tangents because they weren’t tangents just a different way to tell a thing and all of its narrative nooks and crevices matter because the tiny spaces where we tuck a piece of ourselves and our story, it’s all important--and besides, isn’t it all important because to that somebody storyteller, it matters ?
Her brain, it was like this.
“It sounds,” her mother would say, sometimes exasperated--or flat--or withering, that was the tone that always cut into Hannah’s marrow, “that you’re giving yourself a pass from doing the hard work. And being disciplined is hard work, Hannah.” She always shrugged, sometimes with her hands, too. “I don’t know what to tell you. Whether you do what it takes to get the marks you want and eventually the O.W.L.s you want, that’s entirely up to you. But you’re fully capable.”)
//
The potions review at Hannah's was last, along with Aunts Louise and Rebecca’s Muggle Studies review (they promised that it would be sufficiently un-Canadian in a letter to a concerned Ernie). But that was ages away still: before that, they got a few days in the Scottish highlands. Ernie’s extended family coached them in charms and runes and divination and even various beasties and creatures between "forced fun," as Ernie's mum called it, ordering the foursome to take a break and head outside for fresh air and romping in the muck around the Macmillan estate, where Hannah and Ernie rode horses through craggy trails…and ignored how many times Justin and Susan stopped to “adjust their saddles,” which was the absolute most cringe-worthy term for “snog and a grope” Hannah had ever heard (and the Ravenclaw boys in the D.A. had a lot of them).
There was even that lovely, languid evening that they spent at the Leaky where Hannah's great-grandfather Tom showered them in endless rounds of perfectly fried thick-cut chips and ice-cold butterbeers (and when the crowds thinned down to a nearly empty pub, and it was just the four of them in their pajamas up in the guest suite that Tom had special for Hannah, cackling in front of the fire and doing shots from the rosemary-infused bottle of Vampire Vodka that Tom had left on the kitchenette counter). And in the morning, sitting in front of the pub's grand main fireplace, the Hufflepuffs placed Neville Longbottom in a place of virtual honor, staring at his herbology notes--Ernie in particular eyeing them with envy.
"I don't..." Neville still had Justin's owl letter crunched in his hand as he gestured at the fireplace, the fullest full English that had ever been set out for a breakfast weighing down the squat table in front of the sofa and chairs, Susan and Ernie laughing as they passed a jar of jam. He looked at Justin and Hannah pleadingly. "There isn't a single Bones or Macmillan or--anyone that...you really are sure that you want me to lead your O.W.L. review. Me."
"Mate, we only turn to the best," Justin declared.
"And we know the best when we see it," Hannah added, smiling at Neville, feeling her own cheeks flood with heat as he ducked his head for a moment; when he lifted it, his face was crimson. But he smiled back. "We have proof and everything, Nev. Ernie charted how many times people were praised in the first two terms for their work, and you were the leader by far. Including in the Ravenclaw/Slytherin sections!"
"How in the world did he chart what he wasn't there for?"
"You really don't want to ask--though do, you're not a prefect, and I'll be sure to put my fingers in my ears and drown it out again," Hannah giggled, impulsively reaching for his hand to gently tug him towards their circle. "Besides. We need a nice teacher before we have our lesson with my mother."
Maybe after all of that buildup, it was inevitable that their potions day was…almost unremarkable. Hannah’s mother--call me Annemarie , she had said years ago at that first quad-family summer vacation at the Finch-Flechley’s Tuscan villa--had spent two hours midday grading their practical exams and stopping to explain the theory behind each answer. She tapped at their scrolls and the textbooks on the table in front of her with the butt of her fountain pen; Susan and Ernie gaped openly at it, their mouths hanging wider whenever Annemarie idly capped it.
After an afternoon brewing both a Foggy Thought Draught and finishing a half-completed potion that they had to identify (a Pepper-Up Potion) and then complete (eight steps in all, ten if you did the variation with the soaked saffron), her mother uncapped a round of butterbeers that were chilled in the refrigerator for the kids, Louise and her partner bustling in the kitchen making dinner.
“Snape won’t take anyone who doesn’t get an O into N.E.W.T.s which is an unsporting line, I feel,” Ernie burst out. “It’s a break with precedent, my family’s said, and of course a notable deviation from the standards of his fellow faculty!”
Annemarie took a slow suck of her own butterbeer and then shrugged. “What do you need potions for?”
“To be a healer,” he said, gesturing at Hannah, who blushed. If she hadn’t shared her dream years ago with her friends, her mother’s asides the past day would beat them over the head.
“Don’t we want healers to be letter-perfect, as our bodies and lives are on the line?”
Susan squinted. Her eyes didn’t dart to Hannah, but Hannah could feel the weight of Susan’s thoughts landing on her regardless. “How is an EE not sufficient? Ernie’s right, none of the other professors require an O to advance--how is it fair to demand perfection and cut off a whole crop of healers and aurors and potion-masters and what-have-you because they, before the end of their schooling--were free of any mistake?”
Annemarie’s lips puckered from side to side. “Mm. Well. Do any of you know what text Severus--” The four of them choked softly at Snape’s first name because absolutely not! -- “assigns in the sixth year?”
“ Advanced Potion Making ,” Ernie and Hannah said in near unison.
“And why?”
After a beat to see if the others would answer first, Hannah said, “Because about thirty-five percent of the potions have inadequate instructions to reach the outcome.”
“And why would a professor assign a book that provides such shoddy instruction?” Annemarie said, seemingly nonchalant, but Justin’s eyes flickered into a squint. He knew by invisible pressures, navigating situations that had an unwritten, unseen protocol. His name was a hyphenate for more than just show, damn it.
“Because…knowing that the instruction is wrong is part of the lesson. It’s not valuable unless you can identify what was wrong and identify where you can attempt improvement,” Hannah said. She started to pick at a cuticle on her left hand.
“For example...ohhhh…here’s a classic from my own sixth year from ol' Sluggy: with a resilient knife, pulp the valerian roots to produce sufficient juice.” She waved an arm. “Go.” Then Annemarie pointed at Hannah. “Not you.” Then she squinted at her daughter. “Wait. No. You. I’ve explained this to you about a hundred times, let’s seeeee…if it sunk innnn…”
Hannah scooped in a shallow breath. She had just taken a drink, but her mouth felt like she had swallowed sand. But: no matter the level of panic starting to flood her veins, she had been at her mother’s hip for her whole life, she understood potions in the same way that she understood how to make a perfect bake in the kitchen, sixteen years of watching her mother so intensely that she absorbed it all, so she was able to find just enough calm to explain: “It’s got two traps: the type of knife and how to pulp. But ‘resilient’ knives are another way to describe a silver knife, because steel is reactive and silver isn’t, right, aaaaand…pulp…” Hannah squinted, then wrenched her face up as tight as she could manage. “Pulp…is about making it a gooey liquid mass, so you have to get as much juice out as possible, so…the trick is that you assume that the knife's gonna get you that by using it to cut the root but that’s not what the instruction actually told you, right…so you wanna use the knife in another way, like using it to crush the root? I'd guess?”
“Holy…” Justin whistled.
“Okay, okay,” Susan said, holding up a hand, “I get your point, we need to be exceedingly on the up and up in our N.E.W.T.s…but are we setting an unrealistic barrier? Why do we need to put all of that together ourselves?” Her jaw shifted, seemed to lock and give her face a fierce frame. “It sounds like it shifts the burden onto us, that what we learn is entirely on us to identify.”
“Again,” Ernie muttered, and Justin snorted.
Her mother’s eyes landed on Hannah’s and burned against her cheek until she lifted her head to meet that gaze. “Because,” Hannah said softly. “Either we’re fully capable or we’re not. It’s not Sn- Professor Snape’s responsibility to make sure we get it: it’s his job to just…give us the chances to figure it out.”
“That feels less fair and more ruthless,” Susan said, and in the kitchen, Hannah heard not the sounds of cooking--only silence. She dared to look that way, seeing her aunts watching the scene in the dining room, Louise’s eyes fixed on Hannah.
“I think--that’s a difference that people who didn’t feel the full brunt of the You-Know-Who War would draw,” Annemarie said evenly. “We didn’t get to draw lines over what was fair and not then. Hannah’s second cousin had an enchanted amethyst that he kept on him at all times. Because Alexander Dolohov needed it for a spell, the Death Eaters destroyed a whole Knight Bus. Two generations of Abbotts and Selwyns, gone in seconds. He’s back, and his followers are gaining strength, and there is no fair or unfair. You don’t have the room to give yourselves a break, to be EEs instead of Os, in a war. There are no passes in a war.” She looked at Hannah; Hannah closed her eyes for a second, bracing herself for what she knew the punchline was: “Susan’s family, Hannah’s dad…you let your guard down for a moment…so yes, that’s why Severus sets the bar high. Because that bar is your life. ”
Annemarie sighed and stood, going to the dry bar in the corner. She lifted a bottle of some brown liquor with the name of an American state--Kentucky--on its label. “Sod it. Let’s go turn on MTV and get silly.” As she stood, she reached over and brushed one of Hannah’s Dutch braids off of her daughter’s shoulder, brushing it so lightly and intentionally, it felt like love. “Let’s introduce this group to Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness and some American fire, yeah?”
“That feels…intimidating,” Ernie said, trying to laugh.
“It means Annemarie is trying to keep us very current, very cool,” Justin smiled, though he glanced at Hannah. Susan had been staring at her friend for the past few minutes, but Hannah looped her arm through Susan’s, tugging her forward.
“And get us a little drunk,” Hannah added, steering Susan to Justin, knowing that within minutes, as the Muggle music videos ensorcelled Susan and Susan’s dancing did the same to Justin, the knowing looks would fade and be forgotten. “Because she’s a cool mum.”
“Yeah? I’m a good mum?” Annemarie asked, picking up the telly remote and giving Hannah a crooked smile.
“The best,” Hannah said, reaching out and seizing her mother’s hand and holding it tight, because it was two things at once: the truth, and not the answer, all at the same time.