Hadn’t he talked about quidditch? That felt wrong, but he was wracking his brain now and he couldn’t even remember watching a match recently. His memories were all scattered, anyway, but if he went rummaging around inside himself there were still vague outlines of things to trace: habits and customs and routines. (But no wants, no needs, no real opinions on anything: a blank slate of a man, the walking dead. A coat without an occupant.)
But his own habits were telling, even in what they left out: no quidditch tickets, not even for his sons – son. Subconscious, unconscious, muscle memories. He worked at the Ministry, had had small talk conversations in the lifts – Philip seemed to think he usually found them boring. He would rather talk about the weather than last week’s rankings. When he read the paper, he stopped after the politics and business pages – he handed off the gossip pages to his wife and the sports section to the footman to be shredded for the cat’s litter box.
Philip didn’t know himself anymore, but he already knew he hated whoever this was he had turned into.
And Sera had obviously been a tease and a flirt, then – which did not seem a real crime to him (now), but to the Philip of yesterday – to their mother and father – it may have been. At any rate, an embarrassment and a liability and... Well, selfishly, it was an odd comfort to find someone else in the same wrecked boat as him, even if it meant Seraphina’s personality had been pulverised.
(He was selfish, then. News to him, but good to note.)
His thoughts were grappling with a multitude of questions at once, and he started pacing back and forth opposite Sera, wall to wall like a wild lion in a cramped cage, voicing spiralling thoughts without any real connection or order or follow-through, just as they sprang to mind.
“Then he did it to you – and whatever he did, if it’s broken now because of his –” stroke, and in this instance he hated the man too much to bear hearing his own voice crack to say it, “... then it had to be a spell. A curse.” No potion, no unbreakable vow, nothing like that could have been so all-encompassing and so life-altering and then lifted just like that. “But not a memory charm,” he said, frustrated, because he still remembered things, they both still remembered who they were before, their father had not just erased it all and made simpletons of them. They would not have jobs and families and society lives now – they would have ended up in the asylum or a hospital ward eventually. No, instead this was more insidious and more deliberate. A course-correction, deftly made. Dark, illegal, something he had never so much as dreamed their father might have the steel to do. “An unforgivable?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, too lost in his own head, too bogged down by reality. He was fighting to keep his head above water. His strides got longer, his hands shakier. He wanted to hit something, kick something, tear down the walls. “You and me – not the others, though, do you think? What would they have done?” Nothing, was the answer. Robin had been perfect, hadn’t he? And Miranda had always been the same, really, since childhood – even if Father had wanted to make something more of her, her frailness could hardly have been cured by an Imperius charm. And Edwin... he couldn’t see any change in Edwin, not from anything he could excavate in his memories. And then –
“Years, you said?” he asked abruptly, and stopped pacing to look down at himself. He looked across at Sera, trying to guess her age. He remembered how old he had been, after the fight with Robin. Nineteen. He could not be a teenager now. He had a wife, and there were children – there was a picture of them here, on the desk – and they were young but no longer babies. “What year is it?” Philip demanded, as if Sera’s notion of the world could be any less confused than his own. He lurched to his desk, started riffling through papers without regard for their contents, frenzied, just searching somewhere, anywhere, for a marked date. August, fine, but what was the year? “How long have we been gone?”
But his own habits were telling, even in what they left out: no quidditch tickets, not even for his sons – son. Subconscious, unconscious, muscle memories. He worked at the Ministry, had had small talk conversations in the lifts – Philip seemed to think he usually found them boring. He would rather talk about the weather than last week’s rankings. When he read the paper, he stopped after the politics and business pages – he handed off the gossip pages to his wife and the sports section to the footman to be shredded for the cat’s litter box.
Philip didn’t know himself anymore, but he already knew he hated whoever this was he had turned into.
And Sera had obviously been a tease and a flirt, then – which did not seem a real crime to him (now), but to the Philip of yesterday – to their mother and father – it may have been. At any rate, an embarrassment and a liability and... Well, selfishly, it was an odd comfort to find someone else in the same wrecked boat as him, even if it meant Seraphina’s personality had been pulverised.
(He was selfish, then. News to him, but good to note.)
His thoughts were grappling with a multitude of questions at once, and he started pacing back and forth opposite Sera, wall to wall like a wild lion in a cramped cage, voicing spiralling thoughts without any real connection or order or follow-through, just as they sprang to mind.
“Then he did it to you – and whatever he did, if it’s broken now because of his –” stroke, and in this instance he hated the man too much to bear hearing his own voice crack to say it, “... then it had to be a spell. A curse.” No potion, no unbreakable vow, nothing like that could have been so all-encompassing and so life-altering and then lifted just like that. “But not a memory charm,” he said, frustrated, because he still remembered things, they both still remembered who they were before, their father had not just erased it all and made simpletons of them. They would not have jobs and families and society lives now – they would have ended up in the asylum or a hospital ward eventually. No, instead this was more insidious and more deliberate. A course-correction, deftly made. Dark, illegal, something he had never so much as dreamed their father might have the steel to do. “An unforgivable?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, too lost in his own head, too bogged down by reality. He was fighting to keep his head above water. His strides got longer, his hands shakier. He wanted to hit something, kick something, tear down the walls. “You and me – not the others, though, do you think? What would they have done?” Nothing, was the answer. Robin had been perfect, hadn’t he? And Miranda had always been the same, really, since childhood – even if Father had wanted to make something more of her, her frailness could hardly have been cured by an Imperius charm. And Edwin... he couldn’t see any change in Edwin, not from anything he could excavate in his memories. And then –
“Years, you said?” he asked abruptly, and stopped pacing to look down at himself. He looked across at Sera, trying to guess her age. He remembered how old he had been, after the fight with Robin. Nineteen. He could not be a teenager now. He had a wife, and there were children – there was a picture of them here, on the desk – and they were young but no longer babies. “What year is it?” Philip demanded, as if Sera’s notion of the world could be any less confused than his own. He lurched to his desk, started riffling through papers without regard for their contents, frenzied, just searching somewhere, anywhere, for a marked date. August, fine, but what was the year? “How long have we been gone?”
