June 3rd, 1888 - Frederick and Sarah's House

Unsettled by Cass' vision a few days ago, Meer had spent no small amount of time waffling about it before finally deciding that Sarah ought to know. Once she told Sarah, she would make the rounds to Abe and Leo, and then everyone in the family would know. Not that Miriam knew what it meant; nor, she thought, did Cassie. But it meant something bad was happening, and while that vague something was not enough to pilot Miriam towards the Prophet, it was enough to send her to family.

After a few days of long shifts, she finally had a day off. Miriam apparated from her home with Cassandra in Swallowbury to the outside of Sarah's home, a familiar gesture that had her arriving with a crack! Politely - although MT was not known for politeness - she knocked on the door.

Frankly, it had not occurred to MT that seeing Frederick was an option. She tried to forget about him as much as possible when she was not coming up with ways to hurt him. So as soon as he tugged the door open, Meer remembered that he did live here when he was not cavorting with his whores.

Her expression soured; eyebrows flattened, mouth pressed into a thin line. "Frederick," Meer said disdainfully.

---

  

Frederick was enjoying his favorite morning beverage when the knock came at the door. Enjoying may have been a strong word; the cup of coffee laced with a trace of cheap whiskey was just what made the mornings bearable, and any feelings of actual happiness rarely played into the matter. Frederick had never been a morning person, but as he'd aged he'd acquired a small-but-annoying headache that troubled him every morning, until he had a drink. The magic line to cross was about halfway down his coffee mug, and he was still an inch away from it when the noise interrupted him.

It could have been worse, he figured as he looked over his sister-in-law and swung the door open a little wider. If it had been one of his siblings he would have felt obliged to be nice.

"Miss Miriam, what an absolute delight," he said with obviously put-on cheerfulness. "To what do we owe the pleasure? We haven't forgotten a birthday for any of the little Trelawneys, have we?" Or a birth, he added sarcastically in his head. All of Sarah's siblings seemed to be procreating as prolifically as their mother had done before them, without a care in the world as to who would raise the resulting offspring. It was an odd turn of events that he had ended up with the one member of their large number who was opposed to handing her virtue out before marriage — and the one who, even years after the marriage bans had been read, still hadn't managed to create a small army of Trelawney infants.

  

"Mmmmnope," Miriam drawled. One of these days, Frederick was going to go too far - she thought it was inevitable - and she was going to get to hit him. She was very much looking forward to this, but knew that she ought to hold off until the moment came.

"Is my sister around?" she asked, perking up for the first time. If Sarah was in, then she could dispense with this interaction as soon as possible, and be on her merry way back to Irvingly. Thank Merlin.

---

  

"Oh, I expect so," he said with an offhand shrug, being intentionally vague because he thought that would be the surest way to annoy her, and he liked poking the bear, so to speak. Particularly when said bear was incapable of actually swatting at him, because he was still married to the bear's sister and at least a show of good relations had to be maintained. "It's not as though being a welcome witch is the sort of job where you get called in at all hours to deal with emergencies," he continued. He had always been rather dismissive of Sarah's "occupation," though luckily he didn't think they had such a difference of opinion on that. She sat at a desk all day and smiled at people, for Merlin's sake — though at least they did pay her to do it.

  

Miriam sighed, but not in annoyance - she sighed because she agreed with him, which really meant that she was being terrible because agreeing with Frederick was a red flag. But Sarah's occupation could be done by anyone, and so could Cassandra's - she loved them, she did, but they were not exactly changing the world, were they?

"I don't suppose I can talk to her?" she asked, raising her eyebrows at him. "It's important." Or, at least, it could be.

---

  

"Important!" he echoed, his tone one of mocking awe as though he could simply not wait to hear whatever news it was she had come to bring them. In reality, he had very little notion that this would prove to be actually important. Women in general tended to overstate things, he had always found, and the Trelawneys in general had a proclivity towards melodramatics.

"I'm sure Sarah would be delighted to speak to you," he continued, before taking a long drink of his coffee. He made no movement either to go and fetch Sarah, nor to indicate where she was. The house was hardly a large one; it was not as though Miriam would get lost looking for her sister on her own, and he wasn't thrilled by the prospect of playing errand boy and going to track his wife down.

  

One of these days, Meer thought, she was finally going to haul off and punch Freddie right in his smug face. She usually abstained from punching - thought it rather beneath her - but she would make an exception for him. Unfortunately, this was going to have to come after Sarah finally stopped loving this moron.

She visualized the punch, the follow-through of her fist to his jaw, the coffee going flying, and kept it in her mind's eye. And she let it pass her by.

"Can I come inside then?" she asked instead, the shrillness of her voice escalating. She should have just sent a letter.

---

  

He was running out of ways to reasonably dance around her object in coming here, which was a pity. Unless he were to wax lyrical about the nature of barriers and walls — how do we really define inside, and what makes it different, at the most basic level, from out? — he couldn't think of any way to not answer her question directly, and he didn't really have the energy to pretend to be a philosopher, when he was still only midway through his coffee.

"Come inside? Oh, certainly," he said with false cheerfulness as he took a (very small) step back to allow her inside the house. "I'm sure you'll forgive the mess; we weren't prepared for such grand and illustrious visitors," he added, with thinly veiled sarcasm.

  

Meer stepped into the house, only to find herself edged uncomfortably close to both Freddie and the wall. She wrinkled her nose at him. "Well of course I know that you're much too busy to keep house," she said in her own falsely cheerful voice. Busy running around with other women and depriving Sarah of children, hmph.

---

  

"That's right," he said, with a quirk of a smile. "Big shot reporter, you know. Always places to go and people to see. Which I ought to be getting to," he continued, downing half of his cup of coffee in one sip and reaching for his jacket. He didn't actually have anywhere to be, but he didn't want to linger and have to keep conversing with Miriam, and he was equally unenthused about the idea of sticking around and comforting Sarah if she had something serious and dire to relay.

  

Miriam pressed her mouth into a thin line. "Of course," she said again, although her tone was more than slightly pained. "Well. Good luck with that!"

Next time she was just going to send Sarah a damn letter and have her come to Irvingly.

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