Meet the Rosiers
“Is that a new watch, Evan?” Druella asks, with wet hair, “It’s lovely.”
“Yes, my father brought it back from France,” Evan replies. Pandora and him are supposed to be greeting the family as they arrive but she abandoned him the moment Reg arrived with Orion and Walburga.
“Must have cost him a fortune.”
“I suppose.”
She tilts her head to look behind him, “Where is your mother?”
“The salon with the others.”
“Oh, we aren’t late, are we?” She asks. They are but Evan can tell she doesn’t truly care.
“No.”
She smiles at him, “Cygnus is just giving his coat to the elf.”
“Okay.”
She brushes past him as she lays a cold hand on his shoulder. Her nails are long and red. Very much not classy, as his mother would say. But Evan finds them oddly comforting, they were a very prominent part of his childhood. In his memories, Druella was always sat in the corner, in a grand armchair, managing to smoke a ‘satin tipped’ vogue cigarette with these lengthy, crimson nails while drinking a glass of white wine and reading the latest copy of the daily prophet all at the same time.
He watches as Cygnus walks through the door, shaking the rain of himself like a dog, “Fucking raining, Durella insisted we apparated down the road first to look at the stars, stupid bitch, fuck me I’m covered in rain, fuck.”
“Uncle,” Evan greets. Cygnus always did swear a ridiculous amount but if you got a few glasses of whiskey in him he would be the sunniest of men. Evan always found that funny, for so many other men it’s the other way around. Cygnus’ favourite word is cunt, but Evan always thinks about how many times can one say that word before they become one.
“Can you believe that -” He snaps his fingers at Evan as if he is trying to recall his name, “Evan? My cunt of a wife, fucking romance, the stars, the constellations. Fuck!” He exclaims.
“That is unbelievable,” Evan says in a monotone voice.
“Mm,” Cygnus huffs, “Well how are you, my boy?”
Evan is most definitely not his boy considering Cygnus didn’t even remember his name just five seconds ago.
“Well, and yourself, Uncle?”
“Yes, yes all good, old man,” His uncle drones, he is hardly paying attention to Evan. Instead, he is ducking around him, probably looking for the booze.
“The whiskey is in the Salon with the others.”
Cygnus is still looking around him when he laughs, “You know me too well my boy, well I’ll get in there then,” he says as he rubs his hands together and offers Evan a handshake.
Evan hates how his uncles always shake his hand. He doesn’t know why there was just always something off about it.
“New watch?” Cygnus questions, admiring the strap like a magpie.
Merlin forbids this family to think of something individual to say, Evan thinks, of a murder of crows croaking the same bloody statement over and over again.
“Yes, my father brought it back with him from France,” Evan repeats.
“Very dashing,” Cygnus says, “Must have cost him a pretty penny.”
Then he stalks past him, presumably heading to get a drink.
“Thank Salazar, we just missed him,” Evan hears a familiar voice say. Bella steps through the door, Rudolphus shortly behind her, “Is Cissy in there?”
“Yes.”
Bella doesn’t say anything else, instead, she also pushes past him into the salon.
“Your elf smells,” Rudolphus says. To be frank, Rudolphus is Evan’s favourite in-law, not that that is saying much considering his competition is Lucius Malfoy, a cunt who Evan hates, and Ted Tonks, a man Evan has never met and never will.
“I shall tell him to bathe,” Evan replies.
“You do that,” Rudolphus says and claps him on the back. He also passes Evan, but he doesn’t push past or nudge him out of the way.
That’s all of them, Evan thinks with relief. But instead of going back to his family, he moves to the cloakroom. It’s full of peacoats and skinned animals that have been made into jackets, his mother will hate that. He delves into serval pockets of the more masculine coats, but everyone in this blasted family dresses the same and it takes him several tries till he finds what he is looking for. At first, he pulls out a small, leather black book in the coat he recognises as Lucius, he and Cygnus have the same Peacoat but his uncle’s is dripping wet. Curiosity gets the better of him and he flicks through the pages. They are blank. He pushes the book back into the pocket. How boring. Trust Lucius to have a blank fucking diary.
Then he hits gold, he pulls a pack of fags out of Malfoy’s jacket. He takes one and is about to put the pack back but decides to be a prick and pockets the rest, simply to annoy Lucius. Plus, he can give them to Barty on the train, he will appreciate that.
He leans against the wall outside, ashing the cigarette into a plant pot. He releases a cloud of smoke just as he hears footsteps. Fuck. Evan, frantically, starts waving his hand around to get the smoke to dissipate.
“Just us,” he hears. Pandora and Regulus are slipping around the corner towards him.
“You scared the shit out of me,” Evan says, clutching his chest for dramatic effect.
“You are spending too much time with Barty,” Reg says and Evan’s heart leaps into his throat, “That is something he would do.”
He glares at Regulus for scaring him like that. It’s not that he doesn’t want Pandora to know, she probably already does, knowing her. It’s just that he doesn’t want to say something he can’t take back. He wants to keep his cards clutched to his chest a little longer.
“Have you heard from him?” Panda says as she plucks the cig from between his fingers, “I haven’t, I know he can’t write that much at home but normally he will get at least one letter to me just to piss you,” she nods at Evan, “off.”
Which is true, now that he thinks about it. He supposes he had been trying to push Barty so far from his mind that he hadn’t even thought about writing him.
“I haven’t got anything,” Reg says casually with a wave of his hand, but Evan can see how his brow is slightly furrowed with worry, “Dorcas wrote to me though, she quit that breakfast place, and said she couldn’t do 3 jobs anymore.”
“Bless her,” Evam says, but he isn’t truly paying that much attention.
“She was so overrun by that place during summer,” Pandora explains, “She was telling me about it before we broke up.”
“They’re not even that poor,” Regulus says.
“Exactly, it’s just that she can only work during the holidays, so it’s hard to save.”
“She said she gets good money if she works Christmas and New Year’s though.”
“Should we go back inside,” Evan cuts in.
Regulus looks around, “Yes, well, I suppose we should.”
Evan tosses the cigarette to the ground and Pandora treads on it lightly.
There is a pig on the table – bronzed and gleaming with honey—piles of sprouts and broccoli, carrot and sweet potatoes, dauphine potatoes and decanters of the port.
“Blood runs down his forearm and you can just tell it’s pure,” Bella is speaking, he isn’t really listening, “I mean you can smell it – there’s nothing metallic in it, like others. Just pure blood – I swore I could see steam coming out of it, that’s how hot it is.”
“I thought Avery saw the steam?” Lucien drawls.
“Is this hardly proper dinner conversation?” One of the many mothers at the table hisses.
“When have we ever had ‘proper’ conversation at these family dinners?” His father cheers, “Do continue Bellatrix.”
Evan might claw his eyes out of their sockets with this Persian cutlery if he must bear another minute of this. A small grace he has been granted is that Pandora is to his left, yet annoyingly Regulus is at the other end of the table, sitting miserably.
“So, Avery said that he could see the smoke from the heat and Nott… I swear it was Nott – said he could feel the room shake slightly as he bled for us,” Bella continues.
“No. No, I said that not Nott,” Rudolphus says, “Nott is a bastard, hardly knows his left from right – “
“I thought he worked at the ministry?” Narcissa pipes in.
“Yes, he does, darling, but he is still a half-wit,” Lucius says patronisingly as he strokes her arm. Truth be told, it makes Evan feel the food turn in his stomach, Lucius Malfoy has that effect on people.
“Anyway, as I was saying,” Rudolphus mutters, “Avery is a half-wit, wait no I meant Nott.”
Evan can stand these events with everyone talking over each other believing their statement is so very fucking clever, when in truth they seem like a circus act of jabbering parrots and dancing monkeys.
“Well, Nott has always been lacking in moral fibre,” Evan’s father says, swirling his glass and pretentiously inhaling – which is saying something considering Evan finds it hard to make even inhaling pretentious.
“Yes,” Orion points at Evan’s father, “But he knows a lot about French whiskey, I will say that.”
“That’s hardly a substitute,” Evan says, those being his first words since he sat down at the table.
There is a great upheaval of laughter. Pandora turns into him more, “Well done.”
“Mm,” Evan hums and downs his glass.
“Can I finish my story?” Bella says and flashes him a smile, although Evan would say it is more of a show of teeth than a grin.
“Yes, yes, Bella, go on,” Cygnus states, but Evan can hear the tweak in his tone as if he was speaking to a small child. Evan has the privilege of being a man at this table, which means they laugh at his jokes and don’t interrupt when he speaks. They used to plainly ignore Pandora’s efforts at conversation leading her to not bother anymore.
“So… Well… Ugh… I can’t remember now you made me forget where I was,” She crows.
“Steam from his blood,” Narcissa adds helpfully, but it only seems to make Bella more frustrated.
“Yes, thank you, Cissy,” Bellatrix says, rolling her eyes, “As I was saying the Dark Lord, let this blood drip into a bowl and as we stared at the water we watched as it turned to dust, it evaporated in this water.”
It sounds like a cheap party trick to Evan.
“And he explained that that is how our pureblood is wasted on Mudbloods,” Bella finally finishes, “It’s not even just diluted it’s old and dried up, they are scraping by on stolen magic.”
Evan swears he sees Regulus roll his eyes and he can practically read his mind, ‘You can’t steal magic’.
Everyone around the table nods as they discuss their prejudices about the race that they have stolen the holiday they are celebrating.
Evan can’t find it in himself to listen anymore, so he pours himself another glass of wine and downs that then repeats it.
He goes through the same old rigmarole of saying goodbye to everyone as they leave the dining room, only for the men to get stuck in conversation and declare they should speak it over a glass or two of whiskey. Evan knows how this goes, it means the women will leave while the men stay late into the night, drinking and smoking cigars.
Evan also knows they will try to rope him into staying up with them, so he quickly dashes up the stairs.
As he lies on his bed in an attempt to find sleep, all he can hear is bashing downstairs. He doesn’t know how long he stays lying at the ceiling reorganising in his mind every interaction he had had that night, but eventually, he hears the front door opening and closing several times, the chorus of the men leaving, and then eventually the shouting follows, the song of an argument between his parents. He blocks the sound out of his mind, he is quite good at that.
As he lies in bed, he thinks of all the Christmas dinners before this one. It’s funny how they pride themselves on purity but the minute there is an excuse to drink or eat it’s suddenly convenient for them to embrace some part of muggle normality. He thinks of Druella’s long nails, Cygnus’s sunny disposition after a glass or two, Bella’s nauseating smile, Narcissa’s unheard comments, Walburga’s trembling hand, Orion’s cold gaze, his mother’s French accent as she speaks of the arts, his father’s phoney comments on his colleagues that he will see in the morning when work rolls around, Pandora’s quite gifts of praise and Regulus furrowed brow.
Merlin, how some things don’t change. How is it that he is lying in bed, and he is five during the first Christmas dinner he can remember? He is 17, stuck at that dinner table, he is only just born, and he is a man grown. (He is none of these things).
He leans over and presses on the pin as he lets the record, he had on the disk start to spin.
Evan thinks of a story Barty told him when they were first friends.
“You are truly friends with Fortescue?”
“We went to church together,” Barty says. They are sat opposite each other on Barty’s bed, Evan doesn’t like outside clothes on his bed.
“You went to church?”
“Yep, mum made me.”
“Oh right.”
“I have a funny story about that actually,” a small smile grew on Barty’s face, Evan always thought he looked rather like one of those hyenas in the muggle studies book when he smiled like that. Especially when he shows his pointy canines, “My father thought I had no soul, or at least that’s what he told mum.”
“No soul?” Evan questions, “Can someone not have a soul?”
“Who knows but they thought I didn’t.”
“What could you have possibly done that would make your father think you had no soul?” Evan laughs.
Barty laughs with him; Evan always liked it when Barty did that. Evan’s mother never liked when Pandora and Evan found the same thing funny, she would say that they had to find their separate personalities not just to mirror each other. Another funny twin thing he guessed. But Barty and him have very different personalities but they find the same things funny. They spend so much time together in fact that people associate him and Barty together more than him and Pandora nowadays.
“I don’t know why he thought that but whatever little me did to make him think so is the kind of level of nuisance that I want to aspire to be,” Barty smiles.
“So, what happened?”
“Well, my mother speaks to this priest right and he says, ‘No problem, I will tell you if your son has no soul,” Barty laughs, putting on a Russian accent for the priest’s voice, “Poor me, I was sat on this pew while my mother held my hand- “
“Where was your father?”
“Work I would imagine, but anyways this Russian fellow walked in dressed to the nines in the whole priest shtick, right? And looks me dead in my eyes, oh! And he had this long beard and there was old food in it and everything… what was I saying? Right, he looks me dead in the eyes and then gravely turns to my mother and nods.”
“So, you had a soul?”
“Well, he said so but he winked at me when he said it so who knows,” Barty says and flops on to the bed.
Evan suppresses a smile as he remembers the memory, and lightly sings along to the song.
Then he hears the door click open and the sound of gentle feet walking over to his bed.
“You can hardly sing,” Evan’s mother quips.
He rolls over to face her, she has a small, tired smile on her face, “That’s nothing you should hear me play piano.”
His mother huffs out a laugh, “Can I sleep in here tonight, my darling,” she says gently as he reaches her hand out and gently strokes back his hair from his eyes, “My beautiful son.”
He hums at the feeling of her nails gently scraping his scalp. He doesn’t move a muscle as she slides under the covers.
She twists his braids tighter at the root as she soothes him, “Who did your hair?”
“Dorcas,” he lazily replies.
“Well tell Dorcas I said she has a very fine hand.”
“Will do.”
He lets his eyes flicker shut and he feels her press her lips to his forehead, ``Sleep now my darling boy.”
“Are you still upset,” Evan asks, regarding the argument.
“No, no,” she whispers, “Everything will be well in the morning.”
“Good,” he says as sleep grasps him from consciousness.