Chapter Text
i.
He was young still when he understood that his mother had done a Bad Thing. It was a realization that came in pieces, building up to form a larger work.
His mother was beautiful, he always thought. Maybe she didn’t look like those girls in the magazines or the rich women in the street but he didn’t mind. Her long brown hair tumbled down her back when she took it out of her net and for as long as he could remember her dark eyes smiled when she looked at him. He never said but he was a little heartbroken when he came back from his sixth year at Ilvermorny and all that was left of her hair curled at the sides of her chin.
She was voluptuous and buxom and he was young too when he felt eyes following them as they walked down the street. They didn’t seem to care that her dress was five years out of style and her shoes scuffed, and that she was holding one boy by one hand and several parcels in the other. Eyes followed often and he didn’t like it.
She told him stories of her island sometimes, especially when he was younger and the green grass, so impossibly green, seemed so strange to him, a born New Yorker, used to the grey of the city.
He’s young when he realized they were alone in the world. It was a strange time for such an epiphany. He had woken to see her sitting at the open window, looking outside into another tenement. The kitchen table was strewn with vials, a cauldron at the center. The smell stung at his eyes and he blinked rapidly. His mother looked sad. It was jarring to him to understand he only saw half of her, the smiling part that held his hand, and said “don’t worry, a thaisce”.
His mother is a woman alone.
There is no man in their house. No loud, booming voice, which he didn’t particularly mind, because most of his neighbours didn’t sound particularly nice. She is a foreigner and he sees the sneers sometimes when she talks.
It got worse when he started Ilvermorny. People assume his father’s a No-Maj (he doesn’t dare ask his mother) which was apparently worse than being No-Maj born because that meant his mother had done a Bad Thing.
He couldn’t bring himself to care. So what if he’s a half-blood. His mother was beautiful and alone and an immigrant and poor and frankly, they’ve already heard it all before. The magical world was not so diferent from the No-Maj, in the end. There were those at the top (students from families like the Quahogs and the Picquerys and the Graves, Old Blood and Old Money, looking pristine at all times) and then there was everybody else.
He was unsuprised to find himself in the second group, with his scuffed shoes and second hand books. His mother had worked twice as hard for three months to afford his materials and the thought of being ashamed crossed his mind for half a second. His mother loves him. She sacrificed her rest and her pride for him and how many of his classmates could say that. He missed her so much he could hardly eat during the first week, sitting silently at the Wampus table, before reminding himself that there was no use in moping. He must make his own way.
He excelled in his studies (he already had a leg up in potions thanks to his mother, but he takes quite naturally to Charms) and the thought that he was making his mother proud filled his heart. When he went home for Christmas, his mother covered his face with kisses. That first night, he slept in her bed, something which he hadn’t done for five years when she bought him his own.
“Oh my dear, dear heart” She whispered into his black hair, the only thing his father ever gave him.
He went through school with silent stoicism (he learns that word in a No-Maj library he went to sometimes and likes the sound of it). During the summers, he’d taken up work as a delivery boy. It was a quiet life. His mother kept on making her potions, he read and worked and sometimes they allowed themselves the rare luxury of going to the moving pictures.
He never made it a habit of planning ahead. Their lives moved week by week, rent by rent. The only exceptions are the too long pants his mother bought for him, periodically rolling down the seam she’d sown months ago because he grew up tall and lanky, taller than her. It was another of his father’s inheritances and as he grew, his faced narrowed, changing so much that at fourteen her eyes are all that was left of his mother in him.
That year he bought his mother a hat from a department store with the money he’d made during his deliveries. He wasn’t funny or talkative but he was pretty as a girl according to the older ladies he delivered to and they tipped generously.
It was also the year that he found Elaine Graves crying in the library because her brothers were going off to war. She was in her sixth year, and although they were both in Wampus, their social circles didn’t often touch. When she saw him, her eyes widdened before hastily wiping at her eyes with her hands.
“Sorry.” He didn’t quite know why he was apologizing, it was hardly his fault, but he valued his privacy and he had inadvertedly violated hers.
“It’s alright.” Elaine didn’t seem like the type of person who cried often. When he saw her she was often smiling with her friends, her pretty black hair perfectly coiffed, her cheeks flushed. He reached for the handkerchief in his bag, and held it out to her.
“It’s clean.” He kept himself from snapping as she stared at his hand.
“I didn’t mean-“ She stopped herself, taking a deep breath. “I’m sorry. Thank you.”
He nodded and after dabbing at her eyes primly, she told him all about her family. The Graves popped up every once in a while in his History textbooks, but those are not the Graves Elaine talked about. They were older than her, the middle brother, Gareth, by ten years, newly married to just the funniest girl from Louisiana. Percival was the oldest and an Auror. They weren’t all that close but she loved them all the same.
He thought about it for some time afterwards, the idea of loving somebody without being close to them seemed foreign to him. He loved his mother and could hardly bear going over a few weeks without a letter from her (he doesn’t have to, every week they arrive, sometimes with a parcel and he keeps everything, all the scarves and warm socks and sweaters). It made him wonder if he could find it in himself to love his father, despite not knowing him. He decided then that he wouldn’t bother with such ideas. He had his mother and didn’t need anybody else.
1918 was an important year. He started it with a nice pair of gloves, made of real leather, that his mother bought him that Christmas. The Graves brothers went off to war, along with thousands of others (the next time he sees Elaine crying is in the following year, sharp cries like a wounded animal).
And in May, he fought a battle of his own, when John Vilde kissed him.
He liked it. He liked it a lot.
He told his mother that summer and the hand on his hair stilled for a heart stopping, terrifying second before continuing its downward path to the nape of his neck.
He almost cried in relief.
He kissed a few more boys after that.
He was seventeen when he sat his exams. He didn’t have much doubts in his abilities but he noticed a few eyebrows raising during his practical evaluation. He graduated with his mother looking proudly at him from where she sat with the other parents, pretty and sharp in a new blue dress. He was coming back with snacks from the table when a man he recognized as one of the examinators caught up to him.
“Say, young man, have you considered what you’re going to do now?” He looked at the man, waiting for him to continue. Hear everything out, but don’t commit unless you’re sure, his mother taught him that too.
“My name is Bill Quahog, I work with MACUSA, and I think you have enormous potential.” The man continued, smiling as him.
“Doing what?” His mother had caught up to them, standing at his side.
“Ma’am, with his grades and his power, he can do anything he wants.”