28 February, 1894 — Take Two — Various Locations
Ben didn’t exactly remember getting back to his bed the night before, but he wasn’t entirely shocked to find himself waking in his room at the Hogwarts castle. It was where he lived, after all; there was no place else that could reasonably be called home, certainly not with Melody gone. Home would, he supposed, eventually be wherever Nora was living, but for now she was still at Diana Abbott’s house, until more permanent arrangements could be made. He hadn’t had anything to drink last night but he still felt groggy this morning, like he was hungover — could someone be hungover from grief?
He had no intention of teaching today, even if the snow had cleared, but he thought it would be best to take a peek at the weather before he approached the Deputy Head about it. It would help him frame the conversation better if he knew whether there was a “reasonable” excuse for canceling classes or whether he would have to make time to give a rough lesson plan to whoever was going to cover for him. If that was the case, he'd only be able to get the day off by letting everyone know there had been a death in the family — or another excuse Valenduris came up with. He wasn’t especially eager for his students to know anything about it, because he didn’t want to have to guard his feelings for the rest of the year while they brought it up with all the grace eleven-year-olds possessed (none), but it it was the only way to get himself the time he needed to process things then he’d have to do it. But maybe if he was lucky the blizzard would be back, and he could hide in his quarters all day with a flask of whiskey and not have to share his grief with anyone. If the bad weather lasted just one more day after this then he’d make it to the weekend, and maybe by Monday he’d have pulled himself together enough to at least get through an hour long flying lesson and a handful of Quidditch practices and the cover wouldn't be necessary at all.
It wasn’t actively snowing when he checked, but it seemed that it had snowed again last night; the ground in the courtyard was a clean white sheet. Something bothered him about it, but it took him a moment of staring morosely out the castle window to realize what it was. All of the things the students had done in this courtyard yesterday were completely gone. The snowmen, the forts, the paths beaten down by repeated footprints, the scattered snow angels. A dusting of fresh snow might have obscured them, but it wouldn’t have erased them — not unless they’d gotten more feet of snowfall last night instead of just inches. Ben felt like he would have noticed if it had been storming that hard again last night, even in the midst of everything else he was going through… and there was something off about that, too, because they had already had several feet of snow, and if they’d gotten several more feet the window he was looking through would have been buried by now. So — what? The snow had melted all the signs of the children’s play away sometime after he’d left yesterday, and then a bunch more of it had fallen, and somehow he hadn’t noticed any of it?
Of course, there could have been a magical explanation for it. Maybe the groundskeeper had finally found a spell that worked at clearing away the snow — Ben knew he’d been trying at it for most of yesterday. It was a bit of an odd choice for him to use it just to demolish snowmen and not to actually clear walking paths through the courtyard, but — well, Ben wasn’t really in a position to tell Copper how to do his job. It was weird, but hardly the biggest thing for Ben to worry about right now. His wife was dead; his child was motherless; he needed to go find the Deputy Head and see who was taking flying class today so he could try and wrap his mind around the concept of planning a funeral.
He headed to the Great Hall, because that seemed the most likely place to find Valenduris at this time of the morning. The atmosphere seemed different, abuzz with something — some students were chattering to themselves in low voices, while others seemed confused. For a moment he irrationally assumed they had all heard about his wife already, somehow, but there was no way that was possible. Ben hadn’t told anyone beyond Skeeter, who hardly seemed the gossiping type. Some of the staff members might have heard, but certainly none of the students. It wouldn’t have been in the paper; Ben hadn’t written to them yet to print her death announcement, and she wasn’t well known enough in society (anymore) for anyone else to have reported it. But the scattered hushed conversation in the Great Hall reminded him of the days after Pembroke’s death; it made him feel as though something had happened, and so he grabbed a copy of the Daily Prophet from the edge of the staff table before he sought out the Deputy Headmaster and scanned the front page for anything that might have caused such a stir.
The headline was mundane enough, but then he realized that was because he was holding yesterday’s paper. He frowned and tossed it back on the edge of the table, then approached another staff member with a paper in hand. “Is that today’s?” he asked, with a nod to it. “Do you mind —? Just for a second.” They surrendered it without a fuss, and Ben scanned the front page again… and saw the same thing he just had, on the paper he’d discarded. He flipped through to the sports section, the only one he reliably read, and scanned that — the same thing he’d read yesterday, article for article. So this wasn’t just a misprint on the date or even on the front page — this was an entire paper that had already been delivered, except the person who’d given it to him apparently hadn’t noticed it at all.
Ben frowned at the paper, trying to figure out what he was missing. It took a long moment, and then finally it clicked when he remembered the pristine courtyard: a crisp sheet of white snow with no sign of anything he’d seen built there the day before. It was the twenty-eighth of February.
He had no intention of teaching today, even if the snow had cleared, but he thought it would be best to take a peek at the weather before he approached the Deputy Head about it. It would help him frame the conversation better if he knew whether there was a “reasonable” excuse for canceling classes or whether he would have to make time to give a rough lesson plan to whoever was going to cover for him. If that was the case, he'd only be able to get the day off by letting everyone know there had been a death in the family — or another excuse Valenduris came up with. He wasn’t especially eager for his students to know anything about it, because he didn’t want to have to guard his feelings for the rest of the year while they brought it up with all the grace eleven-year-olds possessed (none), but it it was the only way to get himself the time he needed to process things then he’d have to do it. But maybe if he was lucky the blizzard would be back, and he could hide in his quarters all day with a flask of whiskey and not have to share his grief with anyone. If the bad weather lasted just one more day after this then he’d make it to the weekend, and maybe by Monday he’d have pulled himself together enough to at least get through an hour long flying lesson and a handful of Quidditch practices and the cover wouldn't be necessary at all.
It wasn’t actively snowing when he checked, but it seemed that it had snowed again last night; the ground in the courtyard was a clean white sheet. Something bothered him about it, but it took him a moment of staring morosely out the castle window to realize what it was. All of the things the students had done in this courtyard yesterday were completely gone. The snowmen, the forts, the paths beaten down by repeated footprints, the scattered snow angels. A dusting of fresh snow might have obscured them, but it wouldn’t have erased them — not unless they’d gotten more feet of snowfall last night instead of just inches. Ben felt like he would have noticed if it had been storming that hard again last night, even in the midst of everything else he was going through… and there was something off about that, too, because they had already had several feet of snow, and if they’d gotten several more feet the window he was looking through would have been buried by now. So — what? The snow had melted all the signs of the children’s play away sometime after he’d left yesterday, and then a bunch more of it had fallen, and somehow he hadn’t noticed any of it?
Of course, there could have been a magical explanation for it. Maybe the groundskeeper had finally found a spell that worked at clearing away the snow — Ben knew he’d been trying at it for most of yesterday. It was a bit of an odd choice for him to use it just to demolish snowmen and not to actually clear walking paths through the courtyard, but — well, Ben wasn’t really in a position to tell Copper how to do his job. It was weird, but hardly the biggest thing for Ben to worry about right now. His wife was dead; his child was motherless; he needed to go find the Deputy Head and see who was taking flying class today so he could try and wrap his mind around the concept of planning a funeral.
He headed to the Great Hall, because that seemed the most likely place to find Valenduris at this time of the morning. The atmosphere seemed different, abuzz with something — some students were chattering to themselves in low voices, while others seemed confused. For a moment he irrationally assumed they had all heard about his wife already, somehow, but there was no way that was possible. Ben hadn’t told anyone beyond Skeeter, who hardly seemed the gossiping type. Some of the staff members might have heard, but certainly none of the students. It wouldn’t have been in the paper; Ben hadn’t written to them yet to print her death announcement, and she wasn’t well known enough in society (anymore) for anyone else to have reported it. But the scattered hushed conversation in the Great Hall reminded him of the days after Pembroke’s death; it made him feel as though something had happened, and so he grabbed a copy of the Daily Prophet from the edge of the staff table before he sought out the Deputy Headmaster and scanned the front page for anything that might have caused such a stir.
The headline was mundane enough, but then he realized that was because he was holding yesterday’s paper. He frowned and tossed it back on the edge of the table, then approached another staff member with a paper in hand. “Is that today’s?” he asked, with a nod to it. “Do you mind —? Just for a second.” They surrendered it without a fuss, and Ben scanned the front page again… and saw the same thing he just had, on the paper he’d discarded. He flipped through to the sports section, the only one he reliably read, and scanned that — the same thing he’d read yesterday, article for article. So this wasn’t just a misprint on the date or even on the front page — this was an entire paper that had already been delivered, except the person who’d given it to him apparently hadn’t noticed it at all.
Ben frowned at the paper, trying to figure out what he was missing. It took a long moment, and then finally it clicked when he remembered the pristine courtyard: a crisp sheet of white snow with no sign of anything he’d seen built there the day before. It was the twenty-eighth of February.
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MJ made this <3