Honest Infidelity

Honest Infidelity

'I didn't sleep tonight, you know,' Helga mumbled, sipping her tea. It was still dark when Rowena reached Helga's tower, her office where she had a lovely window to study the stars and the quiet she preferred in when thinking of the future. Rowena knew Helga didn't need silence to make predictions. It just made things seem simpler when she said she did. The two were sitting at her desk, and Helga had already conjured cups and received tea from the house-elves before Rowena had arrived. 'It seemed pointless. I just stayed here and waited for you to come.'

'Mmm,' Rowena agreed, her eyes surveying Helga in the frothy light of the soft, red flame candle Rowena had placed on Helga's desk. Helga must have known that was coming, as well, as she hadn't set up any candles or torches of her own.

'Rowena,' Helga set her cup down, only tealeaves and stranded drops still clinging inside. 'I've seen something I wish I could forget. May I lock it inside you?'

'Of course, sister.'

She rested her face in her hands. Silver crowned blonde curls slipped into a curtain around her face. The strawberry glow illuminated the labyrinths on the backs of her hands. At forty, she was ten years younger than Rowena, yet age crept in quicker, weariness storing itself in her bones. Her mind and Sight were what made up for this.

'He is unfaithful,' she said quietly.

Rowena didn't ask to whom Helga referred.

'All that will and does matter is Gunter. The meaning of our love is and was Gunter. The meaning of our parting will be Gunter.'

Rowena said nothing.

'Do you know, sister, what is the worst sin?'

Only the crickets chirped.

'Gunter,' Rowena muttered, as if it were the answer to a riddle.

'It will end by the next moon,' Helga sighed, taking in the full moon in small, morning sky eyes. 'If I do nothing.'

'You know that answer,' Rowena said swiftly, her hand grasping Helga's and holding it firm. 'You know you cannot change it.'

Helga looked down to the stone floor. It was not the first time Rowena didn't envy Helga's Sight. Fame and fortune, but never fortunate.

'Will Salazar return?' Rowena asked softly. Helga took her eyes from the floor and met Rowena's, at first with anger hidden behind them, but then only weariness.

'Yes.'

'Will he have changed?'

'No.'

Only bleak lies were ahead.

'What will we do?'

Silence.

'You can't tell me?'

Helga looked straight into Rowena's eyes. But said nothing.

'But you know?'

'Yes.'

'I'm sorry.'

The teapot refilled Helga's cup. She lifted and drank, drowning her lassitude in boiled leaves.

'Do you know why we can't sleep tonight?' Rowena enquired, finishing her own cup and setting it down on Helga's desk to be filled.

'I'm not gifted in Legilimency,' Helga replied in a reminding tone.

'Nothing in my mind would answer you,' Rowena shrugged. Helga leaned back in her chair, her eyes drifting upward to the dimly lit ceiling. She was waiting for something, which startled Rowena - this usually meant someone was coming.

'It's now, isn't it?' Rowena whispered, 'Now is when you're going to find out?'

Helga nodded, but closed her lips. For the next few minutes, neither could speak.

A rustling sounded in the outside corridor. Hurried footsteps, and the exchange of low voices, speaking without worry of being overheard. One voice Rowena recognized - it was that of Henrick, Helga's husband, who lived in the castle with her and with whom she'd had her son. The other voice was unfamiliar - higher pitched, definitely belonging to a woman. An older woman, at the sound of it. Perhaps in her late eighties. She was stepping more slowly, and Rowena could faintly understand Henrick beckoning her forward. They were both speaking Helga's tongue - Rowena could not understand any phrase. Rowena could see Helga was taking in every word.

'Hurry, Mother. She is still sleeping, I am sure. I wish you to see Gunter before the sun rises. When she wakes, I will explain your arrival.'

'Son, you have promised to return with your heir sooner than this. Now that you have your son, why not just leave?'

'Mother, you do not understand the power Helga possesses. I was unwise in choosing a wife in this manner. She Sees, she knows everything before it will happen. I chose too greedily - instead of marrying an average witch, I was seduced by her beauty and supremacy.'

'You should not be so harsh on yourself, Son. It is likely Gunter has inherited the gift from his mother, which will make him very powerful in our country, as well.'

'Mother, you do not understand. My wife also has authority. If she found I've betrayed her, she and her colleagues could come after me. And, her friends are the most dangerous witches and wizards I've ever known. Also, she is not far from the High King and Queen of Britannia. If they send after me-'

'We are a fighting people, Son. We can confront them.'

'Mother, that is ridiculous. Now, hurry. I shall be leaving soon enough, and without a host of angry wizards and witches following after me. When I leave, she shall wish to return with me, as my wife. I will learn to love her, it is the only safe way.'

The voices died as the two reached the far end of the corridor. Rowena had not understood a single word, but knew the conversation by the look on Helga's face. Though she'd already known it was happening, Helga looked lost - desperate for a way out. To make it untrue. It would be like undoing a butterfly - except this one had bat wings and a poisonous sting.

'It's done?' Rowena asked finally, avoiding Helga's eyes.

'The fact that he never loved me was already done,' Helga said smoothly, in a voice that did not match her face. 'The fact that he only married me for a child was already true. Nothing is newly completed.'

'Helga-' Rowena began, but Helga stood so suddenly that Rowena nearly gasped in surprise. Helga was not very tall at full height, even smaller than Rowena, the vivid moonlight clinging to the silver in her hair. Like raindrops. She turned, silhouetted in hoar so her face was darkened storm. Her soft features (sparrow-like - too nervous to be apparent) were illuminated in saint halo light, with the sadness of martyrdom to match. A tear escaped.

Rowena jumped to her feet, as well. No one was to make Helga cry. It was like butchering a unicorn, strangling a blue bird - undeserved cruelty only humanity was capable of. Too much love between them, not enough understanding, as Rowena drew out her wand, her hand shaking, eyes full of rage like pots of boiling oil.

'Say the word, and I'll kill him now,' Rowena hissed, as if speaking Salazar's 'Parseltongue.' A cobra's fang flashed in her hair. Helga couldn't stop the flow of tears, but she smiled slightly. Rowena, like Godric, saw her as the little girl who needed protecting. Neither realizing it to be the other way around. Gently, she reached out to the hand in which Rowena clutched her wand, and slipped in her own hand.

'Shh,' she whispered, slinking the wand out and placing it tenderly on her desk. Rowena didn't relax - her breathing was sharp, piercing the silence. She still shook, and her eyes searched desperately for Helga's. Now, Helga gazed back. She walked forward towards Rowena - a head shorter yet somehow more potent than Rowena had ever was. Helga continued forward, as though able to walk right through Rowena. Slowly, Helga drifted into Rowena's arms, composed - except for silent tears. Rowena locked Helga into herself, closing her arms around Helga's tiny figure, resting her head on her silver-blonde curls that fell down to her mid-upper arms, so Rowena could finger its lace-like ends.

Helga looked up, breaking the embrace, her cream face stained by tear lines. Rowena's darkened seas had been cooled, no longer enraged, and Helga stared into them. They were ensnared - for eternal seconds - in their own loneliness. A pair of long lost half-souls joined like lock-and-key. No longer 'I and I' but 'we'. Anyone who knew this moment would realise the secret of Rowena and Helga's uncanny perception of each other. Of their minds. Helga pushed herself up, through Rowena's arms, rising onto her toes, their lips meeting like ruffled feathers.

And their hearts.

*

She, like Io, was seduced by a cloud.

Henrick, shrivelled to a pigeon, first approached Helga in a way she'd never been greeted - as child to mother. When most met Helga, with her tiny stature and fond little smile, they behaved as an adult would before a small child. Confident. Foolish. And always overly-pleased with themselves for being understood, as it was often assumed Helga could not speak English. Helga found pleasure in taking her acquaintances by surprise, speaking in smooth, Elderberry-wine English after they'd shouted as if she was deaf. But, Henrick held an uncertain posture, and spoke in their native tongue. As though she were a woman of the Norse. Of the country she'd abandoned - but which had first abandoned her.

It was not a difficult seduction for Henrick. At least, he did not understand it to be. He didn't feel the despair that trickled through Helga's kisses, the misplaced longing that sparked in her caress. He didn't realise the Seer in Helga knew, beyond his soft, fluffy cuddles and tender promises, underneath their exchanges was a storm already brewing.

They first met ten years before the opening of Hogwarts. Henrick courted her rapidly - showering Helga in a pink-and-gold rain, with the illusions of blood-ties and native bonds. They were supposed to be two of their kind - both immigrants, alone in their heritage, their tongue, and their beliefs. Plighting love refugees. A custard cloud to hide their own less flattering truths. In some ways, it was what Helga always wanted. Perhaps it was why she fell in so fast. Despite knowing its impending doom - that even the cream cloud was truly full of thunder. He took her under the cloak of marriage two years after they met. He helped in the construction of Hogwarts, aided his wife in many requests. But as the years passed, and no child was born, even ignorant eyes could notice a fade. Before it was completed.

It was the tower of Babel - crumbling long before achievement. The fate they shared with Hogwarts.

The only pleasure Helga could gain was that of his sentence - fourteen years with her before a healthy, newborn son, coming just at the finish of her childbearing age. They were both thirty-eight, and now, in retrospect, Helga could see his impatience boiling like hot oil. Thunder ensembles. Lightning spires.

Desperate little poor boy without an heir.

Gunter was the solution. He had blond hair and blue eyes and his father's face. Helga spent nights searching her sleeping child for a sign of herself - her nose, arms, lips, curls - but the son was stubbornly alike his father. Features softened with sand and ignorance. Eyes so bright they popped out. Blond hair flat and creamy, not corn-yellow and curled to loose ringlets. Like his father, Gunter did not share himself with her. When she saw the plot behind him, Gunter tore her apart.

She loved the forbidden one, but not her own son. What vile monster was she?

Only one answer - her Henrick. She'd sentenced him to fifteen years as her husband. He sentenced her to the worst sin of all - deceived love. Leaving Helga to punish herself with a life ending in longing, despair, and self-loathing.

*

Helga's arms slid up to Rowena's shoulders.

*

Godric had been married. Once. A pair of pet lovebirds that were expected to cuddle but never wanted to. It's what Godric got for being a son of the Holy Roman Empire. Well, a distant one, at best. His family certainly bore perhaps no relation to the High King and Queen, but his mother was justly a daughter of the noble court, and so were wealthier than either Rowena or Helga could claim to be. Perhaps Salazar enjoyed such means in his childhood, but he rarely spoke of it. In any case, Godric - despite noble birth - was not meant for it. He used his financial assets, but refused the duties and lifestyle of his princely state. It's why he was married off so young.

At fifteen Godric was led to the girl next door. He told Rowena (while plaiting her hair) her name was Gladdis ('perhaps the ugliest name to part with lips'). She was actually older than he (close to twenty), which was generally unheard of among even the peasants and middle-class. Truthfully, there were few non-related noblewitches to be married to, and his parents were insistent on pureblood, another reason Godric abhorred them. But, the real reason for such early and unusual matrimony was truly a way for Godric's family to keep him out of trouble.

They didn't realize, when they bore him, that he would be so clever. Neither his father nor mother were the most gifted wizards, and Godric was trained by an Instructor who rarely veered to meet his pupils' curiosities. Despite this, Godric recognized his own natural talents, and taught himself much more than any tutor. Perhaps this was what made him arrogant, Rowena had thought, as Godric certainly enjoyed telling the story of his first inventions - at age six. Charms at nine, new jinxes at ten. He was fond of remembering how he'd been invited to join a group of Aurors on their search for the dark wizard Nethraples - a victorious expedition ending in Godric's capture of the wizard at only twelve years of age. While the Dark Defence Faction and High King and Queen were thrilled at such a prodigy, Godric found his own parents and grandparents to be the least elated of any. If, at thirteen, he was present in the High Court, he was often greeted with rapturous applause. If he recounted his daring story to his father or mother, he might receive an absent 'Congratulations' - if he was lucky. So, he embarked on more courageous endeavours, invented cleverer spells and objects, all in the hopes of pleasing his family. What he didn't realise was that this only increased his parents' exasperation as he ignored his title as heir of their nobility. He didn't understand how it would bring his fleeting downfall. He was jumping from a low tower in his ignorance.

Godric always described Gladdis to Rowena the same way - 'dreadfully boring and horridly chatty.' She was everything Godric's parents wanted in him, Rowena supposed. Disciplined. Respectful. Content with what she had, and not longing for what she wanted. Rowena once commented that this might have been a good quality. Godric stared, but never understood her true meaning.

In her Respectful, Womanly Duty, Gladdis bore Godric a child within their first year of marriage. A daughter, whom they named Élan, after someone Godric had forgotten. Shortly after the healthy birth, when Godric was sixteen and she twenty, Gladdis informed Godric that she would understand if he didn't wish to keep a daughter, and would prefer to impregnate her again immediately in hopes of a son.

Godric stared at her as though she were mad.

But, as Rowena knew retrospectively, Helga would have known from the start, and Godric would soon discover, their marriage was doomed to a miserable failure. Aside from the fact that neither found love in each other, nor comfort, but only a shared love of their daughter, Gladdis found herself in a predicament she'd never imagined would occur. After all, she was Disciplined, Respectful, and Content with what she had. How could she fall in love with another?

A Callisto, perhaps.

Gladdis begged Godric to take her to the High Court when he met with the Dark Defence Faction in the castle outside Londinium. With a wife, he couldn't do as much as he had before marriage and child. But he could help with strategies, defensive spells, and the like. He didn't like it so much anymore, yet felt bound to attend. He didn't like showcasing his older-than-himself-wife to the High Court, either, but disliked hearing Gladdis whine over already arduous meals. 'Did you play with Élan? How was the High Court? Will you take me next time? Did the ladies wear silk? Did the Queen ask about me? Did the women ask for me? Are you going to go again soon?' (all of which Godric performed to Rowena in as mock-little-girl tone). So Gladdis left Élan with the maids and embroidered herself into a golden peacock - so sparklingly ostentatious that Godric dressed as plainly as possible in hope of countering his wife. It did quite the opposite - his unimpressive attire only allowed for more attention to be drawn to Gladdis' shimmering, gold robes and grandmother's sapphires and emeralds. Though he didn't realize it at the time, this embarrassment would likely save his life.

Gladdis was free to roam the court and gossip with the ladies as the lords gathered with Godric for discussion. Women were not permitted to take part in meetings of the Defence Faction (news that was greeted with a snort and 'Oh, you let women do the work, just don't admit they can do it,' by Rowena), so Godric was free of Gladdis for a few hours while Gladdis was entertained by romanticis Court life. He didn't expect someone to favourably notice his wife as she sipped red wine and nattered with her fellow ladies. He did not expect a High Lord of the West coast to approach his walking jewellery cabinet and ask for a dance to royal musicians.

Least of which did he expect Gladdis to be a topic of gossip herself.

But, Gladdis was Disciplined, Respectful, and Content with what she had. She didn't long for those she wanted, only Godric, whom she had! She didn't disrespect Godric with kisses on the cheeks and hands. She didn't break her discipline with nudges on the lips and waist.

But, she hadn't been in love when she'd adhered to such a creed.

The parting was simpler than it should have been. Gladdis guiltily confessed her feelings, broken and startled by Godric's delight. With the promise of his daughter's often visitations and the continuation, through her, of the Gryffindor lineage, Godric 'ran away from home' in sorts - no longer thriving on his family's gold flow but on his talents. It was shortly after this that he turned nineteen, and found his only love, though he didn't know it yet.

In fact, Rowena and Godric knew each other for nearly twenty years before Godric found himself in love - or at least admitted it. Rowena, like Helga, was not gifted in Legilimency. Her love thoughts were distracted elsewhere, in another corner, hiding under the dirt of immorality. Sin. Unbridled and unfortunate - but still sin. And, like Helga, Rowena saw the easier road. It would be fair to say that Rowena had better luck - she could truly say the love was returned. Godric was never a cloud - he wore his heart on his sleeve. With him, she could be reminded every day of her beauty. Charm. Wit. Fascination. He could be so much like an admiring house-elf. Rowena smiled outside, because her insides were too distracted covering iniquitous truths.

Sweet, simple love lies. Spooned out like strawberry jam.

*

Helga's feet slid back to the stone floor - the grave of dreams. Their eyes opened in unison, minds frozen with shock. Both knew this existed - neither believed it would happen. They had smashed the brimming moral dam, and now faced its ruthless emotion currents. Their eyes didn't part.

'D-did you kn-know that wou-would happen?' Rowena choked out finally. It was the first time Helga had ever heard her stutter.

'No,' Helga mumbled truthfully. 'I can tell you why we're unable to sleep now.'

Rowena didn't smile. Helga didn't expect her to.

'What - what are we supposed to do with this?' Rowena asked. Just like Rowena - practicality. Logic. The two things that came second only to love.

'I - I'm sorr-'

'No.' Rowena cradled Helga's head as she began to cry, cradling her head on her chest as one would an unhappy child. Helga's moonrain tears crept through her robes, sinking into her chest as though to steal air - but instead they stole her heart away.

'This is my - I'm just upset -'

'You know that's not true.'

Helga looked up again. More tear stains - little paths of love blood.

'Do we repent?'

Rowena held her tighter.

'I don't know.'

For a moment, it all dissolved. The stone beneath them, the scarlet flame, the kiss, and 'abomination'. This was all that was right. Together, in each other's arms, protected from the scars of night. They realized, in that moment, that this was the way it was supposed to be.

But the world would come back. And no one excused Venus' cruelty.

Rowena left. Helga stayed to grade papers. And both were strangled in Moira's grasp.