The cards in Avery’s hands might as well have crumbled to dust by now. They’d been turned in her hands over and over until they were flexible and might as well have dissolved in the pouring, freezing rain like sugar. Ever since she got home, the outcomes of what would follow after meeting Mr. Berkwood in London had tumbled through her head until they made her dizzy. Could he take her daughter away from her if he tried? After a little digging she’d found out exactly what Mr. Berkwood’s station was. Upper Class. Male. She knew the sort of crowds he likely walked amongst. Knowing that one word from him might get her labelled as unsuitable as a mother was more than a possibility; it had happened to one of the girls back home. Avery hadn’t seen her since her child was taken away.

But in the end, Avery decided something had to be done; there was no other way to move forward without knowing what she was up against. So she found herself at Mr. Berkwood’s address with her heart in her throat as she raised a wet hand to knock on the door as water poured from the brim of her thoroughly soaked through hat. When the door creaked open, she tilted her chin up slightly and drew a breath.

---

Harry had had a very long week. After his impromptu meeting with the woman on the street, he'd gone straight to find his brother. If, in the--ncredibly unlikely, but he supposed theoretically possible--event that Harry had somehow gotten a woman pregnant, there was little question what he would have done about it. Perhaps that was the root of the problem with these sorts of situations. Maybe the sorts of men who would take responsibility for the consequences of their actions were not the sort of men likely to get into this mess in the first place. Harry didn't know.

Needless to say, the conversation with his brother hadn't gone well.

The morning of their scheduled meeting, Harry had mostly spent stress tidying his laboratory. It was possibly the cleanest the space had been since he'd set up shop there, and for once he was grateful that he'd failed to hire an assistant. He felt better doing the work himself, and had cleared the little seating area that he occasionally used to meet with people when they came to visit the lab in person. It was not particularly fancy, at least not by the standards one would expect of someone in his standing, but this was a space meant for practical use more than it was meant for showing off.

By the time the knock finally came at the door, Harry was just about vibrating with nerves. Taking a deep breath, Harry stepped to the door and opened it. "Come in, come in," he said, stepping to the side to let the woman past. "Would you like some tea?" The deep-seated instinct to make tea in the face of crisis was probably less about Harry being stereotypically English and more about desperately needing something to do with his hands.

---

What in the Lord’s name was it with British people and their fascination with tea? The tension that had her shoulders in knots battled with the strong tug of traditional Southern hospitality she was raised with. Upon first glance in the room, it looks quite tidy; a good sign that she wasn’t about to be pounced upon. Avery had taken a few measures to ensure she had some sort of weapon on herself besides a wand. For all she knew, he had planned this to set henchmen upon her and force her daughter’s location out of her. Even as she thought about it, nothing seemed to be terribly amiss, and she had long since learned to trust her instincts.

“Don’t suppose you have anythin’ stronger than tea?” She asked as she moved towards the table and chairs that had been set out. Taking her wand out she tapped it on her hat which immediately dried itself, and she took it off to hang it on the chair. Turning to look at him, she waited to sit down. He was tall with brown hair, brown eyes and a stature that made him look as if he’d be knocked over any minute if the wind blew at him in the right direction. He also looked a little frazzled; about how she felt at the moment. Avery didn’t want to smile, not yet, but she at least tried to soften her expression. “If not, a strong cup if you don’t mind.”

---

"It's usually a bad idea to mix alcohol and potentially dangerous chemicals," Harry said honestly. "But a strong cup of tea I can do." He set about putting the kettle on before pulling out his own chair and, with a motion for her to take her own seat, sitting down.

"You didn't give me your name," he said, by way of preamble. "So I should ask what I should call you." He didn't know what, if anything, was the appropriate protocol here. It wasn't as though he could ask anyone for their advice, after all. Harry supposed that, when in doubt, the best thing to do was just ask.

---

Avery had begun taking off her gloves now, to have something to do with her hands whilst she took in her surroundings: looking around to see what escape routes (if any) she could take if this went south. She paused pulling the glove off the middle finger of her right hand and pinned him with a look. “I meant coffee.” If that didn’t speak to what kind of mother he thought she might be, then she didn’t know what would.

Pursing her lips, she set her gloves down on the table and sat down after him. She’d run this scenario through her head as well; would she give him a false name, or use her current one? Then that led down the very slippery slope of the many names she’d gone by in the past. “If your story is to be believed, your brother would know me as Ruby.” the crinkle of her nose should let him know exactly what she thought of that name. “But nowadays I’m called Avery.” She hadn’t decided on telling him her name until she sat down. It wasn’t the name she was born with by any means, so what was the harm?

---

Harry let out a surprised laugh. It was a nervous, stressed sort of sound. "That would make more sense." And, he thought, said a lot about how he was feeling about this whole thing.

"Avery, then," he said, with an acknowledging nod. "My given name is Henry, but I prefer Harry." It might have rankled something in him to be so informal under normal circumstances, but the circumstances were so out of his depth that it felt silly to be a stickler for propriety. "I did ask my brother about you, but--" But he doesn't remember you, he didn't say. But he had nothing to say that I would repeat in the presence of a woman, he also didn't say, even if it was accurate. "--he had little interest in this conversation, I'm afraid."

---

The sound that he made at the misunderstanding told Avery he was just as on edge as her. Whether that was a comforting piece of information she had yet to discover. She scooted her chair closer to the table, however tilted it at an angle. She didn’t like feeling her back exposed like this. She picked up her gloves to have something to fiddle with, and examined them as he continued.

That his brother didn’t want anything to do with her wasn’t a surprise. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen it happen and it wasn’t the last. She supposed she should have felt relieved that the father wasn’t going to march into the room all of a sudden and demand that his bastard be raised in a proper home. Still, Avery squeezed the glove in her hand; aside from her nails digging into the soft leather, there was little change in her expression despite the intense wave of fury that washed over her. Coward. And then a small part of her, a part that she hadn’t known was there, seemed to shatter. Marigold had asked questions in the past. Avery had leaned on the fact that they would never meet to spin small stories for the sake of her daughter. But now…

Had little interest in this conversation. Little interest in the mother of his child. Little interest in the child. The insinuation wasn’t hard to make. Telling Marigold, however…

She smiled tightly at him. “No need to beat about the bush, then. If he wants nothin’ to do with me or with his daughter —” Her lip curled, the word foreign on her tongue. Marigold was hers. And yet he needed to know exactly what — who — he was abandoning here. A person. A child. “— then I’m failing to see what exactly you’d like to achieve here, Harry.”

---

If Harry was angry at his brother for this, he could only imagine how it felt for Avery. Harry wanted to say that he expected better from his brother, but that was... not really true. This had been hardly the first conversation the two had had about personal responsibility, and more and more Harry got the feeling his brother didn't feel much urgency for it. This wasn't that different, after all, from his brother's indifference toward getting married and having--legitimate--children of his own. It was fine, that's what spares were for, anyway. Harry would take care of it. Harry was the one with any real sense of family duty, after all.

And, well, it's not like Harry could argue that he was wrong. Here he was, taking care of it. "I'm not my brother," Harry said. "And I very much care what happens to my niece." And, theoretically, to her mother, if for no other reason than the child's well-being was dependent on it.

---

She couldn’t help but bristle as she gritted her teeth. Dammit, did she not just say there wasn’t a need to beat about the bush? Was that not a saying British people understood? The surge of fury that had bloomed in her chest was still simmering, settling across her skin as she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Leaning forward she locked eyes with him. He looked earnest but that made her bristle even more. He had no idea what she went through, but here he came supposedly wanting something to do with her, and Avery was supposed to just let him?

“I don’t know you or your brother from Adam,” She scowled, her drawl intensifying as her annoyance compounded. “Aside from the fact that he wants nothin’ to do with me or Marigold, but you seem to care about her, you’ll need to spell it out for me.” And he’d better make it quick. If she had her wand in her hand, it would be letting off sparks. “What do you want?”

---

"To do my duty." The kettle whistled then, and Harry got up to tend to it, but he continued talking as he did. "Or my brother's duty, I guess, technically, since he won't do it. The point is, to make sure she is taken care of." He paused his speaking for a moment to ready the tea, and to gather his own thoughts. It occurred to Harry, of course, that Avery had been "taking care of" her daughter this entire time, and he wasn't trying to insinuate anything--he didn't know her, there wasn't enough information for him to make judgments--but there was a reason conventional wisdom said a child needed two parents. It wasn't just a morality issue.

"At the very least," Harry said after a moment, turning around again, "I assume she's a witch." Given that Avery had pulled out a wand, and, to Harry's knowledge, that was the most common case with these things. Being muggleborn, he wasn't exactly an expert on how that worked, but he'd met enough people by now from different backgrounds that he thought his educated guess was, at least, sound. "I'd pay for her schooling. I'd like to pay for more than that. but at a minimum, seven years of schooling." It's not like he couldn't afford it, and Harry was an academic, of course education was among his top priorities in this situation.

"How do you take your tea?" he asked. He added two sugar cubes to his own cup. "And I would like to know her."

---

If she’d expected anything, it wasn’t that.

Her vexation evaporated rather quickly as Harry stood up, much like a deflating puffer fish and she felt a flush of sheepishness start to overtake her. Avery was left staring at him, her mouth slightly open as he continued his explanation. For a brief moment, all she could hear was the slight clinking of the china as he prepared the tea. Not knowing what to say but feeling she had to say something, Avery opened her mouth. The relief that she felt when he kept talking was palpable, and she felt herself lean back in the chair.

She looked at him when he turned around, and nodded - again, wanting to say something more but feeling he wasn’t finished, deigned to wait until then. And then he said he wanted to pay for her schooling. “You wan—” At a minimum, seven years of schooling. Small as a number was in terms of everything else - currency, minutes, seconds - he'd just thrown ‘years’ at her. Avery hadn’t allowed herself to think something like that was possible for Marigold.

He’d asked how she took her tea in the midst of all that, and then added on that he wanted to get to know Marigold. “My tea?” She heard herself say. There was a faint ringing in her ears. She shook her head, holding up her hand. This was all moving too fast. “What d’you mean you’d like to get to know her? In what way?” Her quizzical gaze was back again, and she gripped the pair of gloves in her hand again. “What’s the catch?”

---

She didn't answer the question about the tea, so Harry was left staring down at her cup while he contemplated how to respond. At last, he brought over the sugar and the milk along with their tea, and set the accoutrements in the space between them for her to take or leave as she saw fit. "She is my niece. I would like to know my niece." A slight smile touched his face. "I like to think I'm a good uncle. I could get you references, if you like." A joke, like an olive branch held out.

Harry took his seat again and took up his own cup. "I realize this is a personal question, but it would be stupid of me not to ask it--what exactly are your circumstances, presently?"

---

She watched him come back over, tea in hand with the milk and sugar. It was hard to draw any assumptions about a man when he was bringing over milk and sugar. Though relaxed in posture, Avery still held onto suspicion like a life raft. He had sidestepped her last question. Perhaps his joke was an attempt to deflect, and yet she still briefly offered him a small smile.

He wasn’t wrong, Marigold was his niece. Never in a thousand years had Avery imagined that Marigold would ever meet anyone close to her father, and yet here one was right in front of her sipping from a rather lovely looking teacup. Pursing her lips again, Avery reached for the sugar, putting two spoonfuls in and stirring it with a spoon. His question came before she picked up the cup, but she still took her time to sip the hot tea before she answered, knowing now that he would only get part of the truth.

“I’m a creature healer and magizoologist.” She offered, sipping again; he didn’t need to know that the money tucked into her reticule was what Mr. Fisk had given her for her company last night. She caught onto an earlier statement, lowering the teacup. “You are a good uncle? You already have nieces and nephews then?”

---

"I have two married sisters," Harry said. "They have a couple of children apiece." Harry was, in fact, a devoted uncle. He liked to think it was one of his better qualities, something inherent that had nothing to do with his career or other accomplishments. He was devoted to his family--because he loved them, because they were important to him, because that was what you were supposed to do. You were supposed to take care of your own. Anything else was charity, and while that was certainly admirable and important, too, it was still a choice. Devotion to family, to Harry's mind, wasn't a choice anymore than it was a choice for him to be a man.

It was a hard thing to explain succinctly to another person, though, so what Harry said, "Listen, I know that you don't know me, but my family is important to me. So whatever my niece needs--I want to help." He paused to take a sip of his tea. "I'm not a parent. I expect you would know better than I would what she needs. But whatever it is, I want to help. I want to make it easier."

---

Again, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that an upper class man had married sisters and an extended family. Whether that was reassuring for Avery or not remained to be seen but she acknowledged the piece of information with a nod all the same. She should be relying on her instincts to determine whether he was earnest in his desire to want to know Marigold and support them but truthfully she was still reeling form his declaration of intention to pay for Marigold’s education. For all intents and purposes, he seemed like a well-rounded man; not the kind of feeling she was used experiencing around men back in California.

She regarded him over the rim of her teacup as she took another sip before setting it down on the saucer. “And if I say no.” She posited, eyebrow arched as she watched for his reaction. “That we are fine as we are; that we never needed your help or your charity; that I’m perfectly capable of protecting her and have been for the past five years.”

---

Harry wasn't surprised by the question. If Avery was an intelligent woman--and he had no reason to assume otherwise--there was no real reason to trust Harry at his word. Actions were the only good indicator of someone's intentions, and actions took time. Time that would be dangerous to offer the wrong person.

"I wouldn't be happy about it," Harry said, honestly. Better to be completely honest in this scenario than not, really. "But there's nothing I could really do." He shrugged. "Though, for what it's worth, I don't believe it counts as 'charity' when it's one's family. It's protecting one's own."

---