May 9th, 1888 - Black's

August was sat at Black's in what could best be described as the corner. His good leg jittered up and down. He came here to avoid his sister - who, yes, was probably breaking into his house as he sat here - after sending Lysander and the nanny to visit his mother in the country. He brought a case file to Black's but it remained unopened. All he could think about was that newspaper headline, that dangerous opener.

Charlotte Potter Returns from the Dead.

Before this, he started to think that she left again, or that she was not going to reveal herself. But she had. Oh, she had - and now all he could think of was her eyes staring up at him from the paper. How was she going to make this work? Had the Potter widow found out? Would she send him a letter again?

Their son had her eyes. Oh, he had her pale skin and sharper canines, but he had her eyes. August was still lost in thought when, finally, it happened:

"Weren't you engaged to her?"

August's eyes slid to attention, moving from the wall to the man speaking to him. He flashed a smile at him. "Before she died."

---

This was not the first time that August wished that Albert was Thom. This was, actually, almost always his first thought when he was faced with Albert - but he would take Albert over David, and Albert wasn't a dick, and he really just wanted someone to talk at.

"No," August lied, "I thought she was dead until - well, the article."

---

This, then, was a question that August was actually seeking the answer to.

"I don't know," he said, "It was all a long time ago."

He wanted to see her again. He did. It had been years and he had journals full of things he had wanted to say to her. But it was a long time ago. They were different people now - in that she was not a person anymore, and he had to put Lysander first, because that was what you sometimes had to do as a parent.

"What would you do?"

---

Albert Pettigrew's advice more or less meant fuck-all, but was more coherent than he expected to get from most people, and thus appreciated. It was also significantly more sober than the advice he could expect if he talked to Leon about this. Merlin.

August smiled wryly. "I never had her declared dead, so my pretending wouldn't change much," he said, "That would be the brothers. Who are both dead now. Go figure." This all would have been much easier if Darcy or Bennet Potter was still alive to cheerfully have their family reunion.

---

August snorted. "If she's in the Forbidden Forest, then it seems likely," he said, "But who's to say?"

Somewhere in Wellingtonshire, Elsbeth was probably having an aneurysm.

"Have you ever met a vampire, Mr. Pettigrew?" August asked, raising an eyebrow at Thom's younger brother. Maybe this, too, was why he was having a hard time taking the advice seriously - this was Thom's younger brother. August remembered bullying (well, maybe that was Leon) the younger Pettigrew boys as children.

---

And this would be why he wished all the male Pettigrews were actually Thom, thank you. August shrugged his shoulders. "I suppose that's a course of action," he said dryly, "If it was recent. This was '83, after all. The past has a way of dredging itself back up."

If the past was turned into a vampire and returned to achieve political goals, that was.

"You're more likely to run into her than I am, anyways, what with the Ministry."

---

August rolled his eyes and regretted that 'your brother likes me better than you' was not a polite comeback. Or even a particularly useful one.

"Ha ha," he said, in his snarkiest tone, "I suppose you could always take measurements of her teeth, you know, for research."

---

Probably he could not tell Albert Pettigrew to fuck off in public, no matter how much he wanted to.

"She's taller than you, you know," August said instead, "So I'm not sure how well that would go for you."

---