February 28th #1, 1894 — ---

Alexandra hadn't slept.

There wasn't much that upset her enough to disrupt her sleep — the children being ill or otherwise upset and Philip's continued odd behaviors were generally the only culprits. However, Alexandra had known as soon as the sun set beyond the horizon that something was amiss. Snowstorms didn't abruptly begin and end at scheduled intervals, nor did they bring such a massive amount of snow that everyone was seemingly buried inside their homes. Snowstorms came and went, of course, but never like this. Never every thirty minutes on the dot (she had timed it after the fourth stop).

She checked on the children countless times throughout the night, as if reassuring herself of the warming charms' effectiveness would somehow keep them safe from whatever magical foolery was afoot. She paced the length of her room to the point that she had already made a note to have her carpet replaced. She even thought about rousing Philip to demand he find some sort of answer to this storm — he was the man of the house, after all, surely it was his responsibility to ensure the snow wouldn't cause the house to collapse upon itself. Alexandra had even made it to his door before abruptly returning to her room. The old Philip would've soothed her fears in his monotone voice, the old Philip would've reassured her that no, the house wouldn't collapse. This Philip was entirely unknown to her, what with the way he stubbornly continued making absurd choices without consulting her. Alexandra didn't dare risk revealing a moment where she felt vulnerable.

Then, as suddenly as the storm began, it ended.

Alexandra breathed a sigh of relief when the sun began to poke through the clouds. Surely, if the sun had returned then the worst was over.

Oh, how wrong she'd been.

She was nearly asleep when her maid woke her frantically with some tale about Florence having gone missing in the snow. The children had asked to go outside, to play in the very source of Alexandra's nightmares, and somehow the nurse had lost track of Florence. Her heart stilled in her chest, her blood turning to ice in her veins. Her daughter, who wasn't yet five, was somewhere out in this weather.

Shouts began echoing around the house immediately, a search party ordered before she even had her boots pulled on. "Not again." Alexandra began to mutter to herself as she commanded the housekeeper, governess and nurse to remain with Albert. She couldn't weather the loss of her child again, she couldn't feel that helpless — that desperate — again. And so, despite not having flown a broom since her first year of school, Alexandra retrieved one from the newly appeared stack by the door and flew into the frigid weather in search of her youngest daughter.

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Philip Rowle | Elias Grimstone

  

Sometimes Philip found he had to ask himself: were his children cursed? (Not in the way he and his siblings had been, at their varying ages – but naturally cursed by other things, by an automaton of a father and a probably-just-as-neglectful mother?)

Or were they just children?

Maybe. Florence had been discovered, guileless and unscathed, shortly after her disappearance, thank fucking Merlin – but as the girl and her search party tramped back towards the house, they found they had lost her mother in return. She’d taken a broom, they said, a footman fretted; but of course no one would go after her. Philip rolled his eyes, but back out he went into the snow – part begrudging, and part relishing the opportunity to be buffeted about in the freezing air with wild childish glee. He could feel the cold piercing his skin, wind streaming through his hair; his hands were numb through his gloves on the broom, and a sharp turn against the wind had almost unseated him once or twice. But he squinted and finally spotted her.

“Alexandra!” Philip roared to get her attention, as he all but leapt from the broom in a hasty, graceless landing, the greenhouse behind him a recognisable landmark in the snow-buried gardens, if he wasn’t. “Alexandra! Come here,” he demanded; he was still breathless when she got close enough to speak levelly. “We found her. She’s fine.”

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The frigid air bit at her cheeks as she flew shakily around the areas of the yard that she knew to be Florence's favorite. It was impossible to believe a child would have managed to make it this far without leaving so much as a single footprint, but if not here then where? The broom wobbled uncertainly beneath her, the tail scrapping over the snow for a moment when she flew too close to the ground. Alexandra knew she had no business being out here — she had no business flying a broom after nearly twenty-five years of having avoided this very activity.

Florence was somewhere out here though. And Alexandra refused to pace the parlor awaiting what would only be bad news.

She was doing her second loop around the buried hedge maze when she heard Philip's shouts over the wind. Her head snapped in his direction, a slew of demands already poised on her tongue, momentarily forgetting the extreme importance of watching where she flew. She saw the tree with enough time to avoid collision, though her quick maneuvering saw the broom spiraling until she crashed down a few feet from Philip.

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His heart might have stopped in that moment, as if seeing it in slow motion: Alexandra’s head turned his way; the oncoming tree; her sudden spinning out of the way. When his pulse restarted, he could feel it in his throat – felt a sickening fear in his stomach – and he didn’t even know why. (She was his wife and the mother of his children, but still he had not known her long, not properly; he didn’t know if he loved her yet, if he would miss her, if, if, if.)

At least it was a soft landing, in the snowdrift: he plunged through the few feet of snow towards her. “Damn it, woman,” Philip exclaimed in a rough tone, because it was easier to blame her for her own recklessness than himself (for having the brooms by the door, for letting her go outside at all, for the way his children kept getting into dangerous situations without his leave, and him so ineffective at rescuing them.) “Who let you on a broom?”

Still, he scanned her from head to foot to see if she had gotten hurt in the crash landing, and slid an arm under her to prop her up – he was prepared to pick her up entirely if he had to.

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Dizzy and soaked, Alexandra sat dazed in the snow. The chill seeped through her cloak into her gown and underthings, freezing her from the outside in in what felt like seconds. Alexandra hadn't thought to protect herself against the weather before beginning the search for their daughter. "Florence -" she managed suddenly through chattering teeth as she clung to Philip's arm. He said they'd found her, but was she alright?

The aforementioned broom laid splintered in half besides her in the snow, the impact soft enough to not cause any lasting injuries (though her nose and chest now ached something fierce from being forced face down into the snow) but not soft enough to protect the wood. Alexandra fisted his coat in her hands and leaned heavier against him. It was perhaps the first time she'd ever allowed herself to rely on him in years. "Florence," she repeated, "she's alright?"

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Her skin looked ashen, either from being sick with worry or sapped from too long out in the cold. She was shivering; her teeth were chattering; she’d just had a fall. Fuck. “She found her own way back to the house,” he explained, although her lack of protest to his approach had settled his course of action now, so he was more preoccupied with scooping her up into his arms. She was lighter than he’d expected, even tall as she was, but he felt that her clothes were sodden through from the snow – trudging all the way back through the grounds like this would do her no favours, and he didn’t trust her to be able to hold onto the remaining broom. So he bundled them both into the greenhouse, which wasn’t warm, but felt relatively temperate and sheltered compared to the white outside.

He glanced around, trying to decide where to set her down, whether there was anything here to make use of to warm her, and whether she was already shivering too much to stand. He moved his arm out from under her knees to set her feet down, but kept a grasp around her arms to steady her. “So she’ll be fine. Unless she loses her mother in a snowstorm, that is,” he added pointedly, with some bite. “In which case I’m sure there’ll be some lingering distress.”

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Alexandra was certain to box Florence's ears once she had warmed up enough to travel back to the house. There was no excuse for wandering out into the frigid tundra unescorted, and a five year old ought to have more sense than that by now. Perhaps Alexandra had coddled the girl too much, perhaps the thought of her being their last baby kept her from ensuring Florence received appropriate punishments. "Why must all our children have a death wish?" She muttered through clattering teeth. Between one son drowning in the bath, another nearly eaten by dragons, and now a daughter searching out death by hypothermia, Alexandra was ready to rage at them all.

She wouldn't survive another heartbreak.

"I am fine." Her violent shivering said otherwise, but she wasn't likely to die in the immediate future. Not as long as they managed to warm her up somehow. To this, she looked up at him and asked, "Do you not have your wand?"

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Because they were raised by an automaton and me, Philip thought dryly, but – for once in his life – swallowed it before he could say it. He was worried about the children, too, and all the effects of their upbringing. Not just the children, even: he was worried about them all.

Worried enough, apparently, to have left the house rashly. “...no,” Philip admitted reluctantly, but was not about to let her think him sheepish for it. He had been too excited about taking the broom. He still wasn’t in the habit of relying on his wand, these days; all the missed years of practice with spellcasting had made it hard to learn the things he should be able to do without thinking. He had been – worried about her. He hadn’t thought about a wand, in the moment; evidently, neither had she, or she wouldn’t be asking for his. They would just have to manage without. But she was still shivering, in spite of the slight protection of the greenhouse.

Philip laughed humourlessly. Talk about death wishes. “But I expect they learnt it from you.”

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"Me?!" She bristled and turned in his grasp to glare hard at him. Their children — their surviving children, as Frederick's death was fully attributed in Alexandra's mind to the stupidity of the nanny — had never experienced a parent acting impulsively until Philip's abrupt personality change last year. They experienced her temper, sure, as she was certain Philippa remembered the outbursts that happened in the months following Frederick's death, but never a follow through on dangerous impulses. Philip, on the other hand, had since purchased a quidditch team and now possessed all new sorts of grand delusions. If anything, her own near demise only minutes ago was also his fault!

She inched out of his grasp entirely, her arms now wrapped tightly around herself to provide some of the warmth he'd been providing. "And who ensured there would be brooms at every entrance? Who encouraged the behavior?" Alexandra continued, scowling at him.

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“Ah,” Philip said, as if he was indignant about her counter – although in truth he was always quietly satisfied when could provoke an affronted reaction from her. (In spite of the ludicrous life she had been leading, married to an empty shell of a man and running a lonely household like a fortress, Alexandra somehow didn’t have a death wish – to her credit, she seemed extraordinarily sane. Philip was rather fascinated by her.)

“Blaming me for everything, I see,” he said, mostly to keep vexing her (but if it helped her blood rise and fight off the chills, so much the better). “How dare I encourage anyone in anything. You’d rather I went back to ignoring all of you as much as I possibly can.” (The truth was she probably did. Philip didn’t know if it would hurt or help to hear it plainly from her.)

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"Indeed, how dare you." Alexandra repeated. He was fortunate it was she who nearly collided into the tree and not one of their children. The wrath she would have rained down upon him would have paled in comparison to this frigid tundra. She would have dragged his unconscious body into the skies only to drop him from above the clouds. Or roasted his beloved limbs over a fire. Or surprised him with a portkey to the bloody North Pole. Philip wouldn't have known his death was coming until she was ready, until she could have ensured his end. But, had he injured one of their children with his ridiculous and utterly foolish notions about bloody quidditch, ensured it she would have.

It registered then, seconds or minutes later, what had followed that initial statement. The ice in her veins had slowed her ability to process quickly, but he'd said went back to like ignoring them had been a choice for him. Like he was consciously aware of the abrupt shift between then and now. "Yes, Philip. I truly enjoyed grieving our son's death alone." She shot back, her words as cold as the air between them. "Please do, go back to that version of yourself so I might not have to grieve another's soon." Bloody fucking quidditch and flying and brooms.

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   Philip Rowle

His previous goading had been all but empty – incendiary just for the sake of it, because he had decided he enjoyed her anger. But then she brought up their son’s death, and not just that, but the grief of it, and her sudden coldness struck a rawer nerve in him.

“Don’t tell me I don’t care about our children,” he snarled, almost shocked at his own anger. She didn’t know it, but he had cared as much as he could, under a curse that would not let him grieve, would not have let him feel anything other than stagnant peace forever, even if he had just sawn off his own limbs. And still, when Frederick had died – he had cared enough to break out of it for a minute, and feel the grief for their son. Philip did not have many real memories from the last twenty-four years: just a few stolen glimpses of something true amidst the haze. Losing their son had been one.

He ought to have stopped there, because this was supposed to be old grief, not new. But Alexandra wanted him to go back to that, and suddenly he couldn’t stand her. “He died in the bath, Alexandra. Who was in charge at home then? Who was at fault for that? Not me. I wasn’t there.”

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The shock of his words had her hand whirling towards his face with as much strength as she could muster. Frederick's death had haunted her for years — haunted her still. After all, it was her fault that he died due to her poor choices. It was her fault that she hired such a dangerous, reckless woman, and it was her fault that she had relied fully upon and implicitly trusted the staff with her children. There were none who despised Alexandra's choices surrounding the matter more than herself, and, perhaps now that he revealed his own thoughts on the matter, Philip as well.

Her hand stung from the impact but the pain did nothing to deter her from striking him again. The sound of her hand striking his flesh reverberated throughout the snow covered greenhouse, and this time she flinched from the pain. "You are absolutely right, Philip," Alexandra spat venomously. "You weren't there. My son died, and you were not there."

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   Philip Rowle

Her hand came like ice, stinging hard against his skin. He sucked in a painful breath, winded by the shock or the impact of it, as if he had been doused in cold water.

She did it again. He felt drunk on this, maddened by her. No, I wasn’t there, he wanted to roar: It wasn’t me. It was never me. Philip closed his eyes for a brief moment to weather the feeling, and when he opened them again, he reached out to try and snatch her wrists and pin her arms down by her sides by force, whatever her protests.

“Did that make you feel better?” Philip jeered. “Do you want to do it again? Hit me a hundred times, then, see if that changes the truth.” Her fury felt good, like the blizzard had, the cold of the air or her palm against his cheek – the stinging pain of being alive, and of being guilty too. Because maybe he wanted to punish her for what he happened, but somewhere beneath that he agreed with her, knew he deserved to be punished too. He hadn’t been there. Instead, he had been some weak, terrible, soulless thing, and he needed to pay for it now, to feel that suffering the way she had.

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   Alexandra Rowle

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Alexandra yanked herself out of his grasp with such force that she momentarily stumbled. The slap hadn't healed her wounded heart, it hadn't taken away the years she spent mourning alone or the blame she ran so ferociously from. Nothing would ever take that pain away, just as nothing would ever bring Frederick back.

Still, it felt good — relieving almost — to lash out at Philip, to shift some of that blame from herself to him however temporarily. And so, rather than scream or argue or cry, Alexandra took his barbed words for what they were: an invitation.

Her hand still stung as she lurched forward to pummel her fists into his chest, her arms pounding wildly and without any real target.

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He almost flinched when she stumbled, startled as if he was tempted to reach for her to steady her; but when she took him at his word and launched herself at him, spitting with rage, he didn’t. He could feel the thud of her fists knocking right through to his ribcage, pounding out a new pulse. “That’s it,” he gasped. She caught his chin once in her swings – he felt it, painfully, reverberate through his jaw – and once at the base of his throat, another to his stomach, hard enough to wind him. And still, he wouldn’t be sorry if he had bruises for it: the pain felt deserved, and absurdly good. It was a privilege to feel the blows.

But she was going to hurt herself if she wasn’t careful, so as she continued to pummel him he stepped nearer, towards her, into it, knowing this would impede her ability to throw a punch; he was taller and he was sure he was stronger too. “Get – it – all out.” He still sounded goading, but – setting his jaw, Philip put his arms firmly around her, wrestling her into some kind of embrace, to pin her right up against him and hold her tight. It was an odd comfort to him, this closeness, even if she tried to scratch or claw or strike him. It didn’t matter. He felt it too. They were – both in pain, together in something. She may have lived a different tragedy of a life, but – in spite of that – Alexandra was as angry as him.

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