A Gift For rosevalleynb: see it all through a telescope, (Alicia/Terence, M15)
Author: darkhairedgirl
Recipeint: rosevalleynb
Title: see it all through a telescope
Summary: We don’t always pick the ones we love, or the ones who love us. Alicia and Terence, through the years.
Characters/Pairing(s): Alicia Spinnet/Terence Higgs
Rating: M15
Word Count: 6166
Warning(s): Swearing, alcohol, allusions to canon violence.
Disclaimer: None of this is mine: anybody with a name you recognize belongs to Our Lady of the Horcrux Hunt, J.K. Rowling. Story title and inspiration comes from the song “Gotta Have You” by The Weepies.
A/N: Written for rosevalleynb. I hope you like it! :o)
1994
It’s the summer before sixth year and their parents push them together after the luncheon, their signatures at the bottom of the contract still glowing faintly blue where the unrolled parchment rests on his father’s desk. Alicia and Terence sit across from each other in high-backed mahogany chairs in his father’s study, the door closed behind them but the noise of the party still audible through the wall. This is the longest they’ve ever been alone together, and Alicia’s throat constricts at the realization.
It could be worse, she thinks, swallowing her sadness and tugging at the lace edging on the sleeves of her dress, watching as Terence digs the heel of his shoe into the plush Oriental carpet to disrupt the pattern. And it’s true, things could always be worse: they could have had the ceremony today; her parents could have pulled her out of Hogwarts; it could be Marcus Flint in the chair across from her, or Cassius Warrington, or Derek Bole. Alicia looks back at her intended and tries to find the silver lining - she can graduate and get her MAGI; they can wait until her twenty-first birthday; she won’t have to be the bride of a half-wizard, half-concussed troll. She can find peace of mind in all of this; she can find her own ways to be happy.
At least Higgs is attractive, she tries to tell herself, and from the way he’s looking her up and down, she’s fairly certain that he’s thinking something similar.
“This doesn’t have to be terrible,” Terence says to her, and Alicia suddenly feels every wall she’s built up around her heart in these past few weeks fall to complete and utter pieces. It’s the nonchalance in the way that he says it that makes her feel unsteady, like she’s been sent nosediving after the Quaffle and lost control of her broom; it’s the resignation in his tone that makes her burst into tears.
Alicia falls forward, head cradled into her hands as she cries. They don’t say anything else the entire time they sit there: unbothered, alone.
1989
“Mr. Higgs will be dealt with once Madam Pomfrey releases him from the Hospital Wing,” McGonagall says, and Alicia nods without response, eyes glued on the stone floor and thinking back on the past hour. It’s all a blur: the space between third-period Potions and fourth-period Charms edged with white noise, Patricia Stimpson’s tear-streaked face, the feeling of Terence Higgs’s nose breaking under her fist. McGonagall watches her from the other side of her desk with her fingers steepled on the blotter, peering at Alicia over the rims of her square-shaped spectacles. Her mouth is a thin line, her eyes dark and questioning, and Alicia wants to sink through her chair and into the floor under the spotlight glare of that expectant look. Eleven years old and three weeks into her first year at Hogwarts, and oh, bloody Merlin, what will her mother say when she finds out about this mess?
“Do you have anything you’d like to say for yourself, Miss Spinnet?” McGonagall asks, and Alicia can’t stop the tears welling up; they fall from her eyes faster than she can blink them away, trailing down her cheeks, hot and wet, until they drip into her lap. She pulls her lower lip between her teeth, trying to keep herself calm, composed; she lifts her chin, defiant, and tries to speak.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” she finally says, voice thick, “But Higgs, he and - and his friends, Warrington, and Pucey, they had Patricia backed up into the corner, and then Bole pushed him forward, and Higgs, he - he - he called her a -”
Alicia hiccups on the sob caught in her throat, the word Mudblood hanging unspoken in the air between her and her favorite professor. Professor McGonagall rises from her chair and Alicia looks away again, back to her shoes, the mud-splattered hem of her robes, and it isn’t until McGonagall offers her a tartan-patterned handkerchief that she realizes that the look her head of house is giving her now isn’t one of disappointment, or of shame, but of quiet approval. Not even her housemate, barely a friend, but that Gryffindor courage still sparked Alicia into action - eleven years old, and it still made her stand up and run, headfirst, into the fray.
“It shouldn’t matter,” she says boldly, and then almost immediately recoils under Professor McGonagall’s stern gaze, twisting the handkerchief in her lap. “It doesn’t matter what she is, or what we are. It wasn’t fair.”
“You’re right,” McGonagall says, “It wasn’t. But it is not your responsibility to defend each and every student in the school in such a manner. Detention for you, and for Mr. Higgs, is most definitely in order.”
Alicia nods, accepting her punishment with the kind of quiet dignity her mother would be proud of. Professor McGonagall assigns them lines, and she and Terence sit side by side at desks in her office for an entire week, the two of them scratching out I will not harm others, I will not use foul language with their quills onto rolls and rolls of empty parchment.
2000
It’s Katie’s hen night and Alicia is out with the girls, Katie and Leanne and Patricia burning up the dance floor while Cho leans over the counter at the bar, her shirt open at the third button and trying to catch the bartender for another round of shots. Alicia can see them all through the archway between the balcony and the main part of the club, and she rests back against the railing when Angelina makes her way through the crowd to join her.
“Some party, eh?” Angelina laughs, passing Alicia a glass filled with a liquid a shade of green that isn’t found in nature. Alicia can smell the vodka in it without even bringing it to her lips. She grins and raises her drink to Angelina’s, clicking their glasses together. Out on the dance floor Katie is rolling her hips in time to the beat, Leanne’s arm swung around her neck as they laugh at something Patricia says, all their voices lost to the music. Katie is the last of their little trio to get married and Angelina comments on this, watching their friend spin like a top under the multicolored lights as the bass thuds through the floor, all the way up into Alicia’s bones.
“I still can’t believe that you went through with yours,” Angelina says suddenly, setting her glass down on the railing. The heat of the evening, the club, makes water bead up on the sides, dripping down the glass to soak in the wood. Angelina is newly married herself and it doesn’t seem to suit her; she looks tired, most days, and more troubled than Alicia wants to admit when it comes to her closest friend. Alicia twists the ring on her finger without really thinking about it, the diamond scraping sharp against the pad of her thumb as she does.
“It was either that or instant death,” is her immediate response, trying to make light. “Unbreakable Vows are like that.”
Angelina snorts. “Still. You were sixteen when your parents made you sign that contract. You could have had the whole thing annulled once the ceremony was over. It probably still would have counted.”
Alicia runs her thumb over the lip of her glass when she picks it up again, her palm wet from condensation as the ice clicks against the sides. What can she even say to that? That her marriage isn’t as horrible as she imagined it would be, that maybe some kind of love really can be found somewhere in the middle of compromise and responsibility? The alcohol makes her want to get mean - another word out of Angelina and Alicia might turn it all back on her best friend, bring up old wounds and lost loves, and Alicia drains her glass rather than go down that road, shaking her head at the burn the vodka leaves behind.
She walks back onto the dance floor without answering Angelina, pulling her friend by the hand back toward the crush of dancers spinning across the floor; now, more than ever, she needs to get a little lost.
1993
After the match against Hufflepuff, after Dumbledore sent the Dementors away, after Wood gave them his dead-eyed concession speech in the lockers, Alicia still feels sick, all the way down to her bones, when she thinks of Harry’s body sliding off his broom.
The team is gathered in the middle of the Great Hall, Wood still trying to drown himself in the showers, Fred and George catching Harry’s two friends out of the throng of students heading back to their dormitories. Angelina is leaning over Katie, who can’t seem to stop crying, and Alicia is just about to put her arm around the younger girl when the Slytherin team marches toward them in purposeful formation, mobbing around them at the foot of the stairs.
“Thought we’d catch you here,” Flint says when they approach, lip curled in a sneer that showcases his awful teeth.
Alicia glowers at the gang of them, these horrible vultures in green and silver, crossing her arms over her chest. Come to gloat about the loss, about Harry’s accident, that’s all they’re here for. Fred and George look murderous and Katie is gripping her wand like she’s ready for a fight, but Angelina is the one who squares off on them: she tosses her wet braids over her shoulder and levels the Slytherin captain with a dark, steady look when she asks him, “What the bloody fuck do you want, Flint?”
Flint shrugs and laughs, catching his thumbs on the belt loops of his trousers. “Nothing from you, Johnson. We just thought that Potter might want his broom back.”
Flint laughs again and Terence steps forward, taking that moment to dump the bag full of what’s left of Harry’s Nimbus 2000 into Alicia’s unready arms. Twigs and splinters dig at her wrists and forearms through the wet fabric of her Quidditch kit.
“Professor Flitwick brought it up,” Terence says, and Alicia lifts her eyes to meet his, brown boring into the grey-blue shade she’s long since learned to associate with inbreeding.
Ron Weasley rips the bag out of her arms with a snarl. “And you lot just volunteered to give it to us, did you?”
Hermione Granger puts her hand on Ron’s shoulder, holding him back. “Easy, Weasel,” Terence says, stepping backward. “Better go check on your friend. Make sure his head hasn’t split at the scar after a fall like that.”
Ron lunges forward and his brothers have to grab him by both arms to keep him still; Hermione looks hysterical, Katie has to stop her from grabbing her wand. The Slytherins all laugh, Flint clapping Terence on the shoulder, Pucey and Ianka Dolohov jockeying for a space next to him as he melts back into the group. Warrington makes some comment that Alicia doesn’t hear; her focus has narrowed down to the space between her and Higgs - his eyes are still locked on hers, his jaw set in such a way that shows just how shaken he is by the whole mess, how much this forced calm is costing him.
“We should go,” Alicia says at a break in Warrington’s taunting, glancing back at her team as she does, “Fighting won’t get us anywhere, we should be there when Harry wakes up,” and it takes a beat for her friends to murmur their grudging assent. They gather up their brooms, pull at their dripping clothing, and begin the slow, trudging climb to the seventh floor. Alicia looks back at Terence and finds his gaze has shifted - breaking their connection has severed whatever moment passed between them, and there is no way to bring it back. The Slytherins march off toward the dungeons and Ianka Dolohov sneers at Alicia from over Terence’s shoulder when she catches her looking back. Alicia looks away first, climbs the stairs up to the hospital wing with the rest of the team, muddy and shaking and cold.
1997
Midnight rotation is a dead rotation, and the St. Mungo’s halls are empty as Alicia makes her way to the emergency ward. She’s been one of the Order’s hospital contacts since the Ministry fell, and she’s been working two jobs since Thicknesse’s coup in August: she’s still an apprentice Healer, but she’s also smuggling potions out to people in the Underground and sabotaging processing paperwork; she’s Healing on the late rotations, sneaking her fellow Order members into the hospital and fixing them up the best she can, getting them to people who can help them when she can’t. Patronuses come to her late at night, dogs and cats and Kingsley’s lynx, Bill Weasley’s Egyptian oryx, speaking in voices she knows and others she doesn’t, all of them asking for aid.
Not one of ours, was the message she received tonight, the silver swan speaking in Cho’s voice as it flapped its great wings and said, Needs our help.
Alicia is expecting a half-blood out of hiding, a pureblood defector - anyone but who she finds waiting for her. Sitting ramrod straight on the end of the hospital bed, Terence looks surprised to see her as she walks toward him and the Healer tending to his wounds. She tugs self-consciously at the sleeves of her robes as she walks, hyperaware of the bright orange collar that marks her as a second-year novice; it’s been at least a week since she saw him up close, save for a few passing moments in the morning, the closing of their separate bedroom doors at night. Alicia clears her throat at her approach, trying to sound professional when she asks him, “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you that same question,” is his terse reply, squeezing his eyes shut as Healer Rowle runs the tip of her wand over one of the larger scratches on Terence’s cheek. The skin quivers and tightens before the wound closes itself, leaving nothing but a faint red mark in its wake.
“I work here - you know that.”
Healer Rowle tips Terence’s head back, trying to determine if his nose is broken. Terence winces, but still finds the wherewithal to roll his eyes.
“Obviously. I thought you had the morning rotation.”
“I traded shifts with Belby last week. I told you all about it, remember?”
Rowle looks back and forth between them, a curious smile turning up the corner of her mouth. “Do you know each other?” she asks, tucking her wand back in the holster up her sleeve, and Alicia nods curtly.
“He’s my fiancé,” she says, reaching for Terence’s intake chart and making a show of examining it - broken nose, three bruised ribs. Cuts and scratches, curse damage on his hands and knees.
“You’ve seen my ring,” she adds at Rowle’s widening eyes, tugging at the chain around her neck for emphasis; the diamond glints sharp under the bright lights as it bounces back against her collarbone, and Alicia reaches for her wand, twitches it on an Episkey that sets Terence’s nose back into place. He grunts, eyes watering, and Alicia hands him a tissue to wipe away the blood still dripping over his mouth. Rowle steps back, reaching for the chart, but Alicia keeps it out of her grasp, takes the moment to back Rowle out from the curtained-off hospital bed, away from Terence, away from her.
“Do you mind?” Alicia asks, not waiting for an answer before she shuts the curtain in Rowle’s face. She waits until the senior Healer’s shadow is gone, her footsteps sounding down the hall, before she turns back to Terence. She sets to work on closing the smaller cuts on his face, and she’s careful as she asks him, “What happened?”
“I remember a bright light?” is his response, still smearing blood away from his nose. “A bright light, and then absolute blinding pain.”
“But what happened?”
“Potter broke into the Ministry and everything went nuts, what do you think happened? Four dozen prisoners got out through the Floo grates and the security entrances, and all us underlings got left holding the bag.”
“And this is what happened when you tried to stop them?”
“I didn’t stop them,” he snaps, and Alicia nearly drops her wand. “All the kids - they were kids, did you know that? Umbridge had all these twelve-year-olds waiting outside her courtroom, without Advocates, or - God, not even their parents, and when they got to my door I couldn’t let them… I had to do something, and Runcorn is the one who fucked up, and we’re suddenly expected to pay for -” Terence stops, as if he’s suddenly just remembered where he is, who he’s talking to. Terence clears his throat and doesn’t look at her, not directly, as he goes on: “The rest of us just… we got caught in the middle. Everyone knows Yaxley’s curse-happy these days. Not our fault on that front.”
Alicia stares at him as she puts her wand away; her hand trembles where it rests at his hairline, thumb brushing lightly over the healed cut on his forehead. Never, not in the entirety of their three-year engagement, not in all the time she’s known him, has she ever felt as much affection for him as she does in this moment. All the things she wants to say, all the things they both have seen; she still can’t trust him, not yet, but God, this is the very first time that she’s ever wanted to. Terence looks up at her, his expression open, vulnerable. It makes her breath catch in her throat.
“That was… that was very brave of you,” she tells him, voice low, and Terence nods once, brings his hand up to cover hers. She casts her spells, she heals his wounds; they both know that they can never mention this again.
2008
At five years old, Nathan is bright and curious, full of questions and opinions and ideas - a true Ravenclaw in the making, Terence likes to joke, and Alicia admits she likes the sound of it. They’re progressive parents - or at least, they try to be - and they both do their best to let their son test his own boundaries, pushing back only when he might get hurt, or if it is something well above his comfort level. Alicia doesn’t worry too much about the war creeping in, not like Angelina does with her twins, or Katie with her daughter; Nathan’s main concerns are the flight paths of dragons and the next installment of The Golden Cloak on the wireless, biscuits and broom rides and how best to avoid his piano lessons.
They’re washing dishes when she regrets it, this choice to keep the ugly parts of her life away from her son. The three of them are passing plates around the sink in their modest kitchen when Nathan stands on his tiptoes and declares, “I don’t like Henry.”
Terence passes Alicia a plate and glances down at their son. “Who’s Henry?” he asks, and Alicia pushes a stray bit of hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Cho’s son,” she answers, “Why don’t you like Henry, sweetheart?”
“Because,” Nathan says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “His dad’s a Muggle, so that makes him a Mudblood.”
Alicia turns away from the sink with the wet dish still in her hand, soap dripping down to the floor as she gawks at her child. Terence has gone stock-still beside her, the only sound in the room the water running from the tap at the sink; Nathan looks at his parents earnestly, beaming up at them as he holds out his hands to take the dish from his mother, eager to dry it for her.
“Where did you hear that word?” she asks, “Nathan, where did you hear that word?”
Nathan’s smile drops so quickly it’s like it had never been there at all; distantly, Alicia realizes that she’s shouting, that the dish is no longer in her hands, but shattered across the tile floor. Terence has gone down to the floor, brushing aside the broken china to kneel at their son’s level. “From - from Grandpa John,” Nathan stammers, looking between his parents with wide blue eyes, so much like his father’s. “Grandpa John said it, he said it’s what Henry is.”
Alicia clenches her fists at her side, squeezing them so hard that her nails leave half-moon indents along the heels of her hands that won’t go away for a week. Terence looks somewhere between ashamed and distraught, grasping Nathan by the shoulders and not saying anything at all. Alicia’s own feelings are wavering between anger and outrage before landing squarely on disappointment, but even still she’s unsure if it’s at her father-in-law for saying it, or her husband for letting it happen - or at herself, for not seeing this moment coming. For not doing more, doing better
“Handle this,” she hisses to her husband, and is answered only with silence before she leaves the room.
1992
The Chamber opens and fear spills out, and somewhere in between the attack on Colin and the horrible aftermath of the dueling club Alicia finds herself crying when she least expects it, equal parts guilty and terrified. She wanders past the horrible message on the wall between Charms and Ancient Runes, staring at the paint that looks far too much like blood for comfort and tries not to think of the person who put them there, the faceless person who petrified Filch’s awful cat, poor Colin, Justin, ghostly Nick. Enemies of the Heir - Beware! screams out at her in dripping red print and Alicia is late for Vector’s class, her friends gone on ahead while she stands at the apex of the corridor and wonders which of her classmates did it, what kind of person could stand to do something like this.
They find her there, the group of them jostling through the crowded hallway and shoving past first-years, knocking books from arms and bags from shoulders. Warrington gets Alicia when she isn’t expecting it, thumping her in the back so hard that her books fall to the floor, his friends laughing down the hallway as he calls over his shoulder, “Maybe once the monster’s done with all the Mudbloods, it’ll take care of all the blood traitors, next.”
The disgust in Warrington’s voice makes Alicia shiver; she didn’t think anyone would actually want the monster to succeed, and the realization sends a fresh wave of dread running through her. She kneels down to gather up her belongings, hair hiding her face, and before she knows it Terence Higgs is ducking down beside her to retrieve her books, picking up her bag by the strap and handing it to her. She accepts it warily, hyperaware of his friends lingering a few feet away, as he helps her rise from the stone floor.
“What are you worried about?” Terence says, nodding towards the wall behind her, and she hates that he’s right: Spinnets are old blood and new money, she’s safer than most of their classmates, than any of her friends. Alicia glances past him to the group of Slytherins waiting for him at the end of the hall - most of the Quidditch team, from what she can tell, a few of their hangers-on, all of them clogging up the traffic in the mid-period shuffle between classes. Ianka Dolohov is watching them with her beady eyes narrowed, laser-focused on the way Terence leans into Alicia’s space, cups her elbow with his palm so that her gaze jumps back to his face. Her heart is already in knots and with the way her stomach is flipping at this unexpected nearness, Alicia can’t tell if the strange feeling washing over her means she wants to kiss him, or just punch him in the nose again.
“You’ll be fine, Spinnet,” he drawls, loud enough so his friends can hear, “What kind of beast would want you?”
She’s leaning more towards punch when a new voice surprises her, sharp and authoritarian as it asks, “Is there a problem, here?”
Alicia jerks back, pulling herself out of Terence’s grasp as Penelope Clearwater strides towards them, prefect badge gleaming bright on her chest and her curly hair wisping out of her braid. “No problem,” Terence says smoothly, brushing his hands on the front of his robes, “Just helping out a classmate who got turned around.”
Penelope eyes them skeptically, glancing at the red and green stitching on their collars, Alicia’s red eyes, then at the writing on the wall behind them.
“You’re both late,” she finally says, “Five points from both your houses if you aren’t in class in the next minute.”
Terence shrugs and backs away: “Not a problem,” he says again, “Already on my way,” and Alicia nods in agreement. Penelope taps her foot impatiently as Alicia gathers up her bag, as Terence rejoins his waiting friends, and as Alicia makes her way down the corridor she dares a glance at him over her shoulder. Terence is still there, and watches her leave.
1984
They didn’t grow up together; this is not the building of a lifelong connection, there is no groundwork laid for childhood romance. Her mother and his spent hours on the same charity committees, their fathers hunted nogtails every spring; when they were nine, running underfoot at a holiday party, Wade Rosier dared him to empty a punchbowl over her head. That was the extent of their interactions, their paths crossing prior to Hogwarts: there was no instant spark of love between them - it was something they would take years to earn.
But -
Their first meeting, at six, at the Higgs home in Nottingham, Alicia is brought along by her mother to one of her auxiliary meetings - a boring afternoon for anyone under the age of twenty, listening to older witches planning lunch menus and gossiping over place cards, seating arrangements, raising money for Squibs and sad, impoverished incoming Hogwarts students. Alicia escapes when a house-elf begins making rounds with hors d’oeuvres, she swipes a cherry tart off the tray and slides out through the drawing room door unnoticed, down a long hallway that twists and turns.
This is where she finds him: the only open door at the end of a row of locked rooms, a tutor sitting in the chair across from him, arms folded as he watches a boy her age struggling with the bow of a cello, dictates proper form, tells him to adjust his grip on the strings. He turns the sheet music for his student and when he tells him to play, the boy obeys, and Alicia finds herself frozen in her hiding spot. She’ll know this music later, a Bach cantata heard at dances and dinner parties, over the wireless in-between Potterwatch broadcasts; for now, it is nameless and beautiful in its beginner’s imperfection, the last low note still resonating inside of her long after the boy lifted his bow from the cello strings.
She doesn’t know what makes him look up: the movement of the door, her foot treading back on a creaking floorboard, an innate, childish need for distraction. Alicia turns to leave and finds herself caught, the boy staring at her with surprise, curiosity. He is an only child, Alicia knows that - he has lessons, that’s why he couldn’t play - and in this moment there is no malice between them, not yet, no Quidditch rivalry or schoolyard divisions, nothing but potential.
He smiles at her, and she smiles back.
2004
She comes home late one night to find Terence lying on the living room floor with Nathan on his chest, lazily turning his wand in the air for their one-year-old son. Smoky lights trail overhead as Alicia toes off her shoes and peels off her coat, crossing the room to where her husband and son have draped themselves across the carpet, watching the colored lights take constellation shapes. A fox, an owl, a niffler float overhead, gamboling together while Nathan claps his hands, and the sight makes Alicia smile - her evening was tense, difficult to get through, and coming home has never felt as wonderful as it does right in this moment.
“How was your shift?” Terence asks, and Alicia lays down beside him, stretches languidly as she lets herself get comfortable. Nathan blinks up at the ceiling, grasping for the starry rabbit, the lion, the snake.
“Fine, considering. Second shift on Spell Damage is never all that fun.”
“Did you eat?”
“No,” she says, “I thought my husband might have made something for me,” and the word makes something unexpected light up in her chest - husband, her husband. She knew he would be waiting for her when she finally Apparated outside their door; she knows his patterns, knows his habits, and it surprises her, just a little, how much she enjoys knowing someone this well. Terence grins, still twitching his wand so that golden smoke trails out, blue smoke, green, and Alicia lets out a deep, contented sigh. He sets his wand to the side and she lays her hand over his, warm skin over cool, and they lie in silence for a few moments.
“Are you happy?” he asks.
“Deliriously,” Alicia answers without thinking, but she can still feel Terence tense beside her. Nathan babbles to himself, hands waving through the disappearing smoke, and
“Would you do it again, if you could? Make a different choice?”
Alicia sits up on her elbow, looking down at Terence through a falling wave of her hair. “What’s bringing this on?” she asks, and he only shrugs, his expression one of quiet frustration, momentarily unreadable.
“Nothing, just… come on, Lish, can you say why you love me?” Terence speaks to the ceiling, holding one of Nathan’s chubby hands in his. “Because of some stupid piece of paper? Because we took a Vow?”
Alicia takes a moment to think, and then decides she doesn’t need it: she leans in and brings her hand to his face, pressing her lips to his. “I don’t care about all of that anymore,” she says when they pull apart, her fingertips pressing lightly into his jaw. “This is what I want, now - you know that, right? You and me and Nathan. This is what I want.”
It’s not everything, but it’s close enough to what she really wants to say, and when he smiles at her, she thinks he might understand. Terence reaches up and threads his fingers through her hair, right at the base of her skull, Nathan laughing on his chest between them when he pulls her down for another kiss.
1998
Alicia isn’t injured, not badly - not like the boys and girls she helps to carry on stretchers, on her shoulders, up to the castle. She’s been at Hogwarts since sundown on the 2nd, called by the Order and her old DA galleon and armed with her wand and a bag full of Skele-Gro, rolls of gauze, flask after flask of pain potions; Alicia does not share the sharp, undisguised shock that she sees in the faces of her fellow Healers, the men and women in harlequin-green robes who arrived after the worst was over, who magic up stretchers and triage tents and ask each other, maudlin and false, how such a tragedy could have been prevented. Alicia looks at them like they are exotic birds, old postcards - they are something out of another time, another life; they are bizarre oddities, completely out of place in this unexpected aftermath.
Her nerves are on a hair-trigger but Alicia can’t stop herself from moving; Marcus Belby’s legs were shattered and at least four women were bitten by off-moon werewolves, there’s broken wand hands and curse-blindness and all degrees of burns, bruised ribs, broken bones. It is pure emotional shock that keeps her going, that keeps her numb, that won’t let her give in to the uneasy calm that fills the Great Hall in the aftermath of battle. She pauses on a bench at what used to be the Hufflepuff table, eyes scanning the scene around her without really taking anything in: there are Death Eaters being processed at the alcove by the staircase, rainbow-edged sunlight streaming in through what’s left of the stained-glass windows, and the grand ceiling of the Great Hall is riddled with holes and exposed beams, the intricate spellwork gone now that the roof has practically been ripped away. People are crying and laughing around her, what feels like the entire world joining together in a mad rush of grief and love and relief, and somehow this is all she can focus on: a broken castle ceiling, the light streaming through where only magic has been for at least a thousand years. Cameras have been flashing all morning - Daily Prophet, Which Wizard, international press, they all arrived at the same time as the first round of MediWizards - but this much damage, this much blood, to it doesn’t feel like a victory.
“We need a medic!” someone shouts, and Alicia follows the sound of the voice, looks to the open doors leading out to the grounds as two young men limp forward, one practically carrying the other. The nearby Healers don’t move quick enough as they shuffle forward into the hall, met instead by one lone photographer who pushes his camera closer toward the injured boy’s face; Alicia drudges up the last bit of her energy as she lurches forward off the bench, rushes up to meet them with her wand already in hand, but the boy on the right beats her to it, pushing in and throwing his hand in front of the lens.
“Enough!” he barks, “We don’t need pictures, we need help!” He tightens his grip on his half-unconscious friend, whose head lolls dangerously against his shoulder; Alicia pushes the cameraman back at her approach, wand tip glowing red and dangerous, and when she wheels around to help the newcomers she finally realizes who she’s facing - Adrian Pucey borne in the arms of Terence Higgs, the two of them bloody and dirty and their clothes singed, their faces streaked with grime. His nose is bleeding, probably broken, again, but he makes no move to stop it. Terence blinks at her, blue eyes wide as dinner plates as she orders him to bring Adrian to the Ravenclaw table; he lays him out obediently, silently, watching while Alicia checks his friend’s vitals, scans him for internal injuries with her wand. Terence leans over the table, hands braced at the edge; his sleeves are torn and his arms dirty, but there is no Mark inked there, none that she can see.
“Where did you find him?” she asks, flashing light into Pucey’s eyes, checking for dilation, response delay.
“By the pitch,” he says, “We were on brooms, thought we’d go from above. When the giants came, he - he fell so far, I didn’t see -”
Alicia makes a low noise in the back of her throat; her wandwork shows broken feet, fractures on his ribs, he might have a concussion. Pucey’s arms are Markless and she unbuttons the rest of his shirt, feels for sensitivity, bruising, anything her magic might have missed.
“I looked for you,” Terence admits suddenly, and Alicia looks up sharply, bites her tongue to keep herself from saying anything back. Her necklace feels like a lead weight around her neck, the engagement ring he gave her still hanging heavy on the chain underneath her tattered blouse, resting right over her heart.
“Charlie Weasley - when he called for reinforcements, we - I - ” Terence swallows hard, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “I knew you’d be here. I didn’t… I didn’t want you to think I was a coward. That I was like them.”
Alicia lifts her hands from Pucey’s still body and reaches for Terence without thinking, grasping him by the front of his shirt and pulling him forward, kissing-distance close. He doesn’t fluster, doesn’t flinch; his eyes steady themselves on Alicia’s and don’t stray, not even when she brings her wand up, not even when she resets his nose.
“I know you’re not,” she says, and a dizzying wave of relief seems to wash over his entire body. She feels it, too. “I’ve always known what kind of man you are.”
Alicia releases Terence and he rocks slightly on his heels, a tentative smile on his face as she goes back to inspecting her patient. Adrian Pucey moans slightly underneath the press of her fingers against his ribcage; time and patience, a few potions, and he’ll be alright. Sunlight streams through the broken beams of the high ceiling, spotlighting the end of the table she and Terence stand at, and with the way he’s looking at her, the way she feels about him, she knows that they will be, too.
Recipeint: rosevalleynb
Title: see it all through a telescope
Summary: We don’t always pick the ones we love, or the ones who love us. Alicia and Terence, through the years.
Characters/Pairing(s): Alicia Spinnet/Terence Higgs
Rating: M15
Word Count: 6166
Warning(s): Swearing, alcohol, allusions to canon violence.
Disclaimer: None of this is mine: anybody with a name you recognize belongs to Our Lady of the Horcrux Hunt, J.K. Rowling. Story title and inspiration comes from the song “Gotta Have You” by The Weepies.
A/N: Written for rosevalleynb. I hope you like it! :o)
1994
It’s the summer before sixth year and their parents push them together after the luncheon, their signatures at the bottom of the contract still glowing faintly blue where the unrolled parchment rests on his father’s desk. Alicia and Terence sit across from each other in high-backed mahogany chairs in his father’s study, the door closed behind them but the noise of the party still audible through the wall. This is the longest they’ve ever been alone together, and Alicia’s throat constricts at the realization.
It could be worse, she thinks, swallowing her sadness and tugging at the lace edging on the sleeves of her dress, watching as Terence digs the heel of his shoe into the plush Oriental carpet to disrupt the pattern. And it’s true, things could always be worse: they could have had the ceremony today; her parents could have pulled her out of Hogwarts; it could be Marcus Flint in the chair across from her, or Cassius Warrington, or Derek Bole. Alicia looks back at her intended and tries to find the silver lining - she can graduate and get her MAGI; they can wait until her twenty-first birthday; she won’t have to be the bride of a half-wizard, half-concussed troll. She can find peace of mind in all of this; she can find her own ways to be happy.
At least Higgs is attractive, she tries to tell herself, and from the way he’s looking her up and down, she’s fairly certain that he’s thinking something similar.
“This doesn’t have to be terrible,” Terence says to her, and Alicia suddenly feels every wall she’s built up around her heart in these past few weeks fall to complete and utter pieces. It’s the nonchalance in the way that he says it that makes her feel unsteady, like she’s been sent nosediving after the Quaffle and lost control of her broom; it’s the resignation in his tone that makes her burst into tears.
Alicia falls forward, head cradled into her hands as she cries. They don’t say anything else the entire time they sit there: unbothered, alone.
1989
“Mr. Higgs will be dealt with once Madam Pomfrey releases him from the Hospital Wing,” McGonagall says, and Alicia nods without response, eyes glued on the stone floor and thinking back on the past hour. It’s all a blur: the space between third-period Potions and fourth-period Charms edged with white noise, Patricia Stimpson’s tear-streaked face, the feeling of Terence Higgs’s nose breaking under her fist. McGonagall watches her from the other side of her desk with her fingers steepled on the blotter, peering at Alicia over the rims of her square-shaped spectacles. Her mouth is a thin line, her eyes dark and questioning, and Alicia wants to sink through her chair and into the floor under the spotlight glare of that expectant look. Eleven years old and three weeks into her first year at Hogwarts, and oh, bloody Merlin, what will her mother say when she finds out about this mess?
“Do you have anything you’d like to say for yourself, Miss Spinnet?” McGonagall asks, and Alicia can’t stop the tears welling up; they fall from her eyes faster than she can blink them away, trailing down her cheeks, hot and wet, until they drip into her lap. She pulls her lower lip between her teeth, trying to keep herself calm, composed; she lifts her chin, defiant, and tries to speak.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” she finally says, voice thick, “But Higgs, he and - and his friends, Warrington, and Pucey, they had Patricia backed up into the corner, and then Bole pushed him forward, and Higgs, he - he - he called her a -”
Alicia hiccups on the sob caught in her throat, the word Mudblood hanging unspoken in the air between her and her favorite professor. Professor McGonagall rises from her chair and Alicia looks away again, back to her shoes, the mud-splattered hem of her robes, and it isn’t until McGonagall offers her a tartan-patterned handkerchief that she realizes that the look her head of house is giving her now isn’t one of disappointment, or of shame, but of quiet approval. Not even her housemate, barely a friend, but that Gryffindor courage still sparked Alicia into action - eleven years old, and it still made her stand up and run, headfirst, into the fray.
“It shouldn’t matter,” she says boldly, and then almost immediately recoils under Professor McGonagall’s stern gaze, twisting the handkerchief in her lap. “It doesn’t matter what she is, or what we are. It wasn’t fair.”
“You’re right,” McGonagall says, “It wasn’t. But it is not your responsibility to defend each and every student in the school in such a manner. Detention for you, and for Mr. Higgs, is most definitely in order.”
Alicia nods, accepting her punishment with the kind of quiet dignity her mother would be proud of. Professor McGonagall assigns them lines, and she and Terence sit side by side at desks in her office for an entire week, the two of them scratching out I will not harm others, I will not use foul language with their quills onto rolls and rolls of empty parchment.
2000
It’s Katie’s hen night and Alicia is out with the girls, Katie and Leanne and Patricia burning up the dance floor while Cho leans over the counter at the bar, her shirt open at the third button and trying to catch the bartender for another round of shots. Alicia can see them all through the archway between the balcony and the main part of the club, and she rests back against the railing when Angelina makes her way through the crowd to join her.
“Some party, eh?” Angelina laughs, passing Alicia a glass filled with a liquid a shade of green that isn’t found in nature. Alicia can smell the vodka in it without even bringing it to her lips. She grins and raises her drink to Angelina’s, clicking their glasses together. Out on the dance floor Katie is rolling her hips in time to the beat, Leanne’s arm swung around her neck as they laugh at something Patricia says, all their voices lost to the music. Katie is the last of their little trio to get married and Angelina comments on this, watching their friend spin like a top under the multicolored lights as the bass thuds through the floor, all the way up into Alicia’s bones.
“I still can’t believe that you went through with yours,” Angelina says suddenly, setting her glass down on the railing. The heat of the evening, the club, makes water bead up on the sides, dripping down the glass to soak in the wood. Angelina is newly married herself and it doesn’t seem to suit her; she looks tired, most days, and more troubled than Alicia wants to admit when it comes to her closest friend. Alicia twists the ring on her finger without really thinking about it, the diamond scraping sharp against the pad of her thumb as she does.
“It was either that or instant death,” is her immediate response, trying to make light. “Unbreakable Vows are like that.”
Angelina snorts. “Still. You were sixteen when your parents made you sign that contract. You could have had the whole thing annulled once the ceremony was over. It probably still would have counted.”
Alicia runs her thumb over the lip of her glass when she picks it up again, her palm wet from condensation as the ice clicks against the sides. What can she even say to that? That her marriage isn’t as horrible as she imagined it would be, that maybe some kind of love really can be found somewhere in the middle of compromise and responsibility? The alcohol makes her want to get mean - another word out of Angelina and Alicia might turn it all back on her best friend, bring up old wounds and lost loves, and Alicia drains her glass rather than go down that road, shaking her head at the burn the vodka leaves behind.
She walks back onto the dance floor without answering Angelina, pulling her friend by the hand back toward the crush of dancers spinning across the floor; now, more than ever, she needs to get a little lost.
1993
After the match against Hufflepuff, after Dumbledore sent the Dementors away, after Wood gave them his dead-eyed concession speech in the lockers, Alicia still feels sick, all the way down to her bones, when she thinks of Harry’s body sliding off his broom.
The team is gathered in the middle of the Great Hall, Wood still trying to drown himself in the showers, Fred and George catching Harry’s two friends out of the throng of students heading back to their dormitories. Angelina is leaning over Katie, who can’t seem to stop crying, and Alicia is just about to put her arm around the younger girl when the Slytherin team marches toward them in purposeful formation, mobbing around them at the foot of the stairs.
“Thought we’d catch you here,” Flint says when they approach, lip curled in a sneer that showcases his awful teeth.
Alicia glowers at the gang of them, these horrible vultures in green and silver, crossing her arms over her chest. Come to gloat about the loss, about Harry’s accident, that’s all they’re here for. Fred and George look murderous and Katie is gripping her wand like she’s ready for a fight, but Angelina is the one who squares off on them: she tosses her wet braids over her shoulder and levels the Slytherin captain with a dark, steady look when she asks him, “What the bloody fuck do you want, Flint?”
Flint shrugs and laughs, catching his thumbs on the belt loops of his trousers. “Nothing from you, Johnson. We just thought that Potter might want his broom back.”
Flint laughs again and Terence steps forward, taking that moment to dump the bag full of what’s left of Harry’s Nimbus 2000 into Alicia’s unready arms. Twigs and splinters dig at her wrists and forearms through the wet fabric of her Quidditch kit.
“Professor Flitwick brought it up,” Terence says, and Alicia lifts her eyes to meet his, brown boring into the grey-blue shade she’s long since learned to associate with inbreeding.
Ron Weasley rips the bag out of her arms with a snarl. “And you lot just volunteered to give it to us, did you?”
Hermione Granger puts her hand on Ron’s shoulder, holding him back. “Easy, Weasel,” Terence says, stepping backward. “Better go check on your friend. Make sure his head hasn’t split at the scar after a fall like that.”
Ron lunges forward and his brothers have to grab him by both arms to keep him still; Hermione looks hysterical, Katie has to stop her from grabbing her wand. The Slytherins all laugh, Flint clapping Terence on the shoulder, Pucey and Ianka Dolohov jockeying for a space next to him as he melts back into the group. Warrington makes some comment that Alicia doesn’t hear; her focus has narrowed down to the space between her and Higgs - his eyes are still locked on hers, his jaw set in such a way that shows just how shaken he is by the whole mess, how much this forced calm is costing him.
“We should go,” Alicia says at a break in Warrington’s taunting, glancing back at her team as she does, “Fighting won’t get us anywhere, we should be there when Harry wakes up,” and it takes a beat for her friends to murmur their grudging assent. They gather up their brooms, pull at their dripping clothing, and begin the slow, trudging climb to the seventh floor. Alicia looks back at Terence and finds his gaze has shifted - breaking their connection has severed whatever moment passed between them, and there is no way to bring it back. The Slytherins march off toward the dungeons and Ianka Dolohov sneers at Alicia from over Terence’s shoulder when she catches her looking back. Alicia looks away first, climbs the stairs up to the hospital wing with the rest of the team, muddy and shaking and cold.
1997
Midnight rotation is a dead rotation, and the St. Mungo’s halls are empty as Alicia makes her way to the emergency ward. She’s been one of the Order’s hospital contacts since the Ministry fell, and she’s been working two jobs since Thicknesse’s coup in August: she’s still an apprentice Healer, but she’s also smuggling potions out to people in the Underground and sabotaging processing paperwork; she’s Healing on the late rotations, sneaking her fellow Order members into the hospital and fixing them up the best she can, getting them to people who can help them when she can’t. Patronuses come to her late at night, dogs and cats and Kingsley’s lynx, Bill Weasley’s Egyptian oryx, speaking in voices she knows and others she doesn’t, all of them asking for aid.
Not one of ours, was the message she received tonight, the silver swan speaking in Cho’s voice as it flapped its great wings and said, Needs our help.
Alicia is expecting a half-blood out of hiding, a pureblood defector - anyone but who she finds waiting for her. Sitting ramrod straight on the end of the hospital bed, Terence looks surprised to see her as she walks toward him and the Healer tending to his wounds. She tugs self-consciously at the sleeves of her robes as she walks, hyperaware of the bright orange collar that marks her as a second-year novice; it’s been at least a week since she saw him up close, save for a few passing moments in the morning, the closing of their separate bedroom doors at night. Alicia clears her throat at her approach, trying to sound professional when she asks him, “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you that same question,” is his terse reply, squeezing his eyes shut as Healer Rowle runs the tip of her wand over one of the larger scratches on Terence’s cheek. The skin quivers and tightens before the wound closes itself, leaving nothing but a faint red mark in its wake.
“I work here - you know that.”
Healer Rowle tips Terence’s head back, trying to determine if his nose is broken. Terence winces, but still finds the wherewithal to roll his eyes.
“Obviously. I thought you had the morning rotation.”
“I traded shifts with Belby last week. I told you all about it, remember?”
Rowle looks back and forth between them, a curious smile turning up the corner of her mouth. “Do you know each other?” she asks, tucking her wand back in the holster up her sleeve, and Alicia nods curtly.
“He’s my fiancé,” she says, reaching for Terence’s intake chart and making a show of examining it - broken nose, three bruised ribs. Cuts and scratches, curse damage on his hands and knees.
“You’ve seen my ring,” she adds at Rowle’s widening eyes, tugging at the chain around her neck for emphasis; the diamond glints sharp under the bright lights as it bounces back against her collarbone, and Alicia reaches for her wand, twitches it on an Episkey that sets Terence’s nose back into place. He grunts, eyes watering, and Alicia hands him a tissue to wipe away the blood still dripping over his mouth. Rowle steps back, reaching for the chart, but Alicia keeps it out of her grasp, takes the moment to back Rowle out from the curtained-off hospital bed, away from Terence, away from her.
“Do you mind?” Alicia asks, not waiting for an answer before she shuts the curtain in Rowle’s face. She waits until the senior Healer’s shadow is gone, her footsteps sounding down the hall, before she turns back to Terence. She sets to work on closing the smaller cuts on his face, and she’s careful as she asks him, “What happened?”
“I remember a bright light?” is his response, still smearing blood away from his nose. “A bright light, and then absolute blinding pain.”
“But what happened?”
“Potter broke into the Ministry and everything went nuts, what do you think happened? Four dozen prisoners got out through the Floo grates and the security entrances, and all us underlings got left holding the bag.”
“And this is what happened when you tried to stop them?”
“I didn’t stop them,” he snaps, and Alicia nearly drops her wand. “All the kids - they were kids, did you know that? Umbridge had all these twelve-year-olds waiting outside her courtroom, without Advocates, or - God, not even their parents, and when they got to my door I couldn’t let them… I had to do something, and Runcorn is the one who fucked up, and we’re suddenly expected to pay for -” Terence stops, as if he’s suddenly just remembered where he is, who he’s talking to. Terence clears his throat and doesn’t look at her, not directly, as he goes on: “The rest of us just… we got caught in the middle. Everyone knows Yaxley’s curse-happy these days. Not our fault on that front.”
Alicia stares at him as she puts her wand away; her hand trembles where it rests at his hairline, thumb brushing lightly over the healed cut on his forehead. Never, not in the entirety of their three-year engagement, not in all the time she’s known him, has she ever felt as much affection for him as she does in this moment. All the things she wants to say, all the things they both have seen; she still can’t trust him, not yet, but God, this is the very first time that she’s ever wanted to. Terence looks up at her, his expression open, vulnerable. It makes her breath catch in her throat.
“That was… that was very brave of you,” she tells him, voice low, and Terence nods once, brings his hand up to cover hers. She casts her spells, she heals his wounds; they both know that they can never mention this again.
2008
At five years old, Nathan is bright and curious, full of questions and opinions and ideas - a true Ravenclaw in the making, Terence likes to joke, and Alicia admits she likes the sound of it. They’re progressive parents - or at least, they try to be - and they both do their best to let their son test his own boundaries, pushing back only when he might get hurt, or if it is something well above his comfort level. Alicia doesn’t worry too much about the war creeping in, not like Angelina does with her twins, or Katie with her daughter; Nathan’s main concerns are the flight paths of dragons and the next installment of The Golden Cloak on the wireless, biscuits and broom rides and how best to avoid his piano lessons.
They’re washing dishes when she regrets it, this choice to keep the ugly parts of her life away from her son. The three of them are passing plates around the sink in their modest kitchen when Nathan stands on his tiptoes and declares, “I don’t like Henry.”
Terence passes Alicia a plate and glances down at their son. “Who’s Henry?” he asks, and Alicia pushes a stray bit of hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Cho’s son,” she answers, “Why don’t you like Henry, sweetheart?”
“Because,” Nathan says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “His dad’s a Muggle, so that makes him a Mudblood.”
Alicia turns away from the sink with the wet dish still in her hand, soap dripping down to the floor as she gawks at her child. Terence has gone stock-still beside her, the only sound in the room the water running from the tap at the sink; Nathan looks at his parents earnestly, beaming up at them as he holds out his hands to take the dish from his mother, eager to dry it for her.
“Where did you hear that word?” she asks, “Nathan, where did you hear that word?”
Nathan’s smile drops so quickly it’s like it had never been there at all; distantly, Alicia realizes that she’s shouting, that the dish is no longer in her hands, but shattered across the tile floor. Terence has gone down to the floor, brushing aside the broken china to kneel at their son’s level. “From - from Grandpa John,” Nathan stammers, looking between his parents with wide blue eyes, so much like his father’s. “Grandpa John said it, he said it’s what Henry is.”
Alicia clenches her fists at her side, squeezing them so hard that her nails leave half-moon indents along the heels of her hands that won’t go away for a week. Terence looks somewhere between ashamed and distraught, grasping Nathan by the shoulders and not saying anything at all. Alicia’s own feelings are wavering between anger and outrage before landing squarely on disappointment, but even still she’s unsure if it’s at her father-in-law for saying it, or her husband for letting it happen - or at herself, for not seeing this moment coming. For not doing more, doing better
“Handle this,” she hisses to her husband, and is answered only with silence before she leaves the room.
1992
The Chamber opens and fear spills out, and somewhere in between the attack on Colin and the horrible aftermath of the dueling club Alicia finds herself crying when she least expects it, equal parts guilty and terrified. She wanders past the horrible message on the wall between Charms and Ancient Runes, staring at the paint that looks far too much like blood for comfort and tries not to think of the person who put them there, the faceless person who petrified Filch’s awful cat, poor Colin, Justin, ghostly Nick. Enemies of the Heir - Beware! screams out at her in dripping red print and Alicia is late for Vector’s class, her friends gone on ahead while she stands at the apex of the corridor and wonders which of her classmates did it, what kind of person could stand to do something like this.
They find her there, the group of them jostling through the crowded hallway and shoving past first-years, knocking books from arms and bags from shoulders. Warrington gets Alicia when she isn’t expecting it, thumping her in the back so hard that her books fall to the floor, his friends laughing down the hallway as he calls over his shoulder, “Maybe once the monster’s done with all the Mudbloods, it’ll take care of all the blood traitors, next.”
The disgust in Warrington’s voice makes Alicia shiver; she didn’t think anyone would actually want the monster to succeed, and the realization sends a fresh wave of dread running through her. She kneels down to gather up her belongings, hair hiding her face, and before she knows it Terence Higgs is ducking down beside her to retrieve her books, picking up her bag by the strap and handing it to her. She accepts it warily, hyperaware of his friends lingering a few feet away, as he helps her rise from the stone floor.
“What are you worried about?” Terence says, nodding towards the wall behind her, and she hates that he’s right: Spinnets are old blood and new money, she’s safer than most of their classmates, than any of her friends. Alicia glances past him to the group of Slytherins waiting for him at the end of the hall - most of the Quidditch team, from what she can tell, a few of their hangers-on, all of them clogging up the traffic in the mid-period shuffle between classes. Ianka Dolohov is watching them with her beady eyes narrowed, laser-focused on the way Terence leans into Alicia’s space, cups her elbow with his palm so that her gaze jumps back to his face. Her heart is already in knots and with the way her stomach is flipping at this unexpected nearness, Alicia can’t tell if the strange feeling washing over her means she wants to kiss him, or just punch him in the nose again.
“You’ll be fine, Spinnet,” he drawls, loud enough so his friends can hear, “What kind of beast would want you?”
She’s leaning more towards punch when a new voice surprises her, sharp and authoritarian as it asks, “Is there a problem, here?”
Alicia jerks back, pulling herself out of Terence’s grasp as Penelope Clearwater strides towards them, prefect badge gleaming bright on her chest and her curly hair wisping out of her braid. “No problem,” Terence says smoothly, brushing his hands on the front of his robes, “Just helping out a classmate who got turned around.”
Penelope eyes them skeptically, glancing at the red and green stitching on their collars, Alicia’s red eyes, then at the writing on the wall behind them.
“You’re both late,” she finally says, “Five points from both your houses if you aren’t in class in the next minute.”
Terence shrugs and backs away: “Not a problem,” he says again, “Already on my way,” and Alicia nods in agreement. Penelope taps her foot impatiently as Alicia gathers up her bag, as Terence rejoins his waiting friends, and as Alicia makes her way down the corridor she dares a glance at him over her shoulder. Terence is still there, and watches her leave.
1984
They didn’t grow up together; this is not the building of a lifelong connection, there is no groundwork laid for childhood romance. Her mother and his spent hours on the same charity committees, their fathers hunted nogtails every spring; when they were nine, running underfoot at a holiday party, Wade Rosier dared him to empty a punchbowl over her head. That was the extent of their interactions, their paths crossing prior to Hogwarts: there was no instant spark of love between them - it was something they would take years to earn.
But -
Their first meeting, at six, at the Higgs home in Nottingham, Alicia is brought along by her mother to one of her auxiliary meetings - a boring afternoon for anyone under the age of twenty, listening to older witches planning lunch menus and gossiping over place cards, seating arrangements, raising money for Squibs and sad, impoverished incoming Hogwarts students. Alicia escapes when a house-elf begins making rounds with hors d’oeuvres, she swipes a cherry tart off the tray and slides out through the drawing room door unnoticed, down a long hallway that twists and turns.
This is where she finds him: the only open door at the end of a row of locked rooms, a tutor sitting in the chair across from him, arms folded as he watches a boy her age struggling with the bow of a cello, dictates proper form, tells him to adjust his grip on the strings. He turns the sheet music for his student and when he tells him to play, the boy obeys, and Alicia finds herself frozen in her hiding spot. She’ll know this music later, a Bach cantata heard at dances and dinner parties, over the wireless in-between Potterwatch broadcasts; for now, it is nameless and beautiful in its beginner’s imperfection, the last low note still resonating inside of her long after the boy lifted his bow from the cello strings.
She doesn’t know what makes him look up: the movement of the door, her foot treading back on a creaking floorboard, an innate, childish need for distraction. Alicia turns to leave and finds herself caught, the boy staring at her with surprise, curiosity. He is an only child, Alicia knows that - he has lessons, that’s why he couldn’t play - and in this moment there is no malice between them, not yet, no Quidditch rivalry or schoolyard divisions, nothing but potential.
He smiles at her, and she smiles back.
2004
She comes home late one night to find Terence lying on the living room floor with Nathan on his chest, lazily turning his wand in the air for their one-year-old son. Smoky lights trail overhead as Alicia toes off her shoes and peels off her coat, crossing the room to where her husband and son have draped themselves across the carpet, watching the colored lights take constellation shapes. A fox, an owl, a niffler float overhead, gamboling together while Nathan claps his hands, and the sight makes Alicia smile - her evening was tense, difficult to get through, and coming home has never felt as wonderful as it does right in this moment.
“How was your shift?” Terence asks, and Alicia lays down beside him, stretches languidly as she lets herself get comfortable. Nathan blinks up at the ceiling, grasping for the starry rabbit, the lion, the snake.
“Fine, considering. Second shift on Spell Damage is never all that fun.”
“Did you eat?”
“No,” she says, “I thought my husband might have made something for me,” and the word makes something unexpected light up in her chest - husband, her husband. She knew he would be waiting for her when she finally Apparated outside their door; she knows his patterns, knows his habits, and it surprises her, just a little, how much she enjoys knowing someone this well. Terence grins, still twitching his wand so that golden smoke trails out, blue smoke, green, and Alicia lets out a deep, contented sigh. He sets his wand to the side and she lays her hand over his, warm skin over cool, and they lie in silence for a few moments.
“Are you happy?” he asks.
“Deliriously,” Alicia answers without thinking, but she can still feel Terence tense beside her. Nathan babbles to himself, hands waving through the disappearing smoke, and
“Would you do it again, if you could? Make a different choice?”
Alicia sits up on her elbow, looking down at Terence through a falling wave of her hair. “What’s bringing this on?” she asks, and he only shrugs, his expression one of quiet frustration, momentarily unreadable.
“Nothing, just… come on, Lish, can you say why you love me?” Terence speaks to the ceiling, holding one of Nathan’s chubby hands in his. “Because of some stupid piece of paper? Because we took a Vow?”
Alicia takes a moment to think, and then decides she doesn’t need it: she leans in and brings her hand to his face, pressing her lips to his. “I don’t care about all of that anymore,” she says when they pull apart, her fingertips pressing lightly into his jaw. “This is what I want, now - you know that, right? You and me and Nathan. This is what I want.”
It’s not everything, but it’s close enough to what she really wants to say, and when he smiles at her, she thinks he might understand. Terence reaches up and threads his fingers through her hair, right at the base of her skull, Nathan laughing on his chest between them when he pulls her down for another kiss.
1998
Alicia isn’t injured, not badly - not like the boys and girls she helps to carry on stretchers, on her shoulders, up to the castle. She’s been at Hogwarts since sundown on the 2nd, called by the Order and her old DA galleon and armed with her wand and a bag full of Skele-Gro, rolls of gauze, flask after flask of pain potions; Alicia does not share the sharp, undisguised shock that she sees in the faces of her fellow Healers, the men and women in harlequin-green robes who arrived after the worst was over, who magic up stretchers and triage tents and ask each other, maudlin and false, how such a tragedy could have been prevented. Alicia looks at them like they are exotic birds, old postcards - they are something out of another time, another life; they are bizarre oddities, completely out of place in this unexpected aftermath.
Her nerves are on a hair-trigger but Alicia can’t stop herself from moving; Marcus Belby’s legs were shattered and at least four women were bitten by off-moon werewolves, there’s broken wand hands and curse-blindness and all degrees of burns, bruised ribs, broken bones. It is pure emotional shock that keeps her going, that keeps her numb, that won’t let her give in to the uneasy calm that fills the Great Hall in the aftermath of battle. She pauses on a bench at what used to be the Hufflepuff table, eyes scanning the scene around her without really taking anything in: there are Death Eaters being processed at the alcove by the staircase, rainbow-edged sunlight streaming in through what’s left of the stained-glass windows, and the grand ceiling of the Great Hall is riddled with holes and exposed beams, the intricate spellwork gone now that the roof has practically been ripped away. People are crying and laughing around her, what feels like the entire world joining together in a mad rush of grief and love and relief, and somehow this is all she can focus on: a broken castle ceiling, the light streaming through where only magic has been for at least a thousand years. Cameras have been flashing all morning - Daily Prophet, Which Wizard, international press, they all arrived at the same time as the first round of MediWizards - but this much damage, this much blood, to it doesn’t feel like a victory.
“We need a medic!” someone shouts, and Alicia follows the sound of the voice, looks to the open doors leading out to the grounds as two young men limp forward, one practically carrying the other. The nearby Healers don’t move quick enough as they shuffle forward into the hall, met instead by one lone photographer who pushes his camera closer toward the injured boy’s face; Alicia drudges up the last bit of her energy as she lurches forward off the bench, rushes up to meet them with her wand already in hand, but the boy on the right beats her to it, pushing in and throwing his hand in front of the lens.
“Enough!” he barks, “We don’t need pictures, we need help!” He tightens his grip on his half-unconscious friend, whose head lolls dangerously against his shoulder; Alicia pushes the cameraman back at her approach, wand tip glowing red and dangerous, and when she wheels around to help the newcomers she finally realizes who she’s facing - Adrian Pucey borne in the arms of Terence Higgs, the two of them bloody and dirty and their clothes singed, their faces streaked with grime. His nose is bleeding, probably broken, again, but he makes no move to stop it. Terence blinks at her, blue eyes wide as dinner plates as she orders him to bring Adrian to the Ravenclaw table; he lays him out obediently, silently, watching while Alicia checks his friend’s vitals, scans him for internal injuries with her wand. Terence leans over the table, hands braced at the edge; his sleeves are torn and his arms dirty, but there is no Mark inked there, none that she can see.
“Where did you find him?” she asks, flashing light into Pucey’s eyes, checking for dilation, response delay.
“By the pitch,” he says, “We were on brooms, thought we’d go from above. When the giants came, he - he fell so far, I didn’t see -”
Alicia makes a low noise in the back of her throat; her wandwork shows broken feet, fractures on his ribs, he might have a concussion. Pucey’s arms are Markless and she unbuttons the rest of his shirt, feels for sensitivity, bruising, anything her magic might have missed.
“I looked for you,” Terence admits suddenly, and Alicia looks up sharply, bites her tongue to keep herself from saying anything back. Her necklace feels like a lead weight around her neck, the engagement ring he gave her still hanging heavy on the chain underneath her tattered blouse, resting right over her heart.
“Charlie Weasley - when he called for reinforcements, we - I - ” Terence swallows hard, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “I knew you’d be here. I didn’t… I didn’t want you to think I was a coward. That I was like them.”
Alicia lifts her hands from Pucey’s still body and reaches for Terence without thinking, grasping him by the front of his shirt and pulling him forward, kissing-distance close. He doesn’t fluster, doesn’t flinch; his eyes steady themselves on Alicia’s and don’t stray, not even when she brings her wand up, not even when she resets his nose.
“I know you’re not,” she says, and a dizzying wave of relief seems to wash over his entire body. She feels it, too. “I’ve always known what kind of man you are.”
Alicia releases Terence and he rocks slightly on his heels, a tentative smile on his face as she goes back to inspecting her patient. Adrian Pucey moans slightly underneath the press of her fingers against his ribcage; time and patience, a few potions, and he’ll be alright. Sunlight streams through the broken beams of the high ceiling, spotlighting the end of the table she and Terence stand at, and with the way he’s looking at her, the way she feels about him, she knows that they will be, too.