Somebody That I Used to Know

Jack felt pretty good actually.

It wasn't a typical thing for Jack to feel more good than bad after a Quidditch match. Because there was always something just not right about the whole thing. There was someone under-performing, some shady behavior from the other side. But the world cup was different. These teams were thrown together, different from the regular season, and while the stakes were much higher, the players knew this was more of a time to show off their skillsets than to win games.

Jack had been terrified that her new team would just not understand her. Some had told her at least she had a teammate with her - that did not make her feel any better when the player in question was Robin Ivanov. He would not be happy until he gave her a full on stress-induced stroke, so Jack had not had high hopes for this cup.

But her team had been happy to run through practices, happy to talk strategy, happy to compare strengths and weaknesses. And there had been this great sportmanship between England and Spain. It was as though they had put aside their own desires to win and had just striven for a good game for the audience. England clinched the win with a fifty point lead, meaning they would move on. So while Jack could think of all that could go wrong, and all of the weaknesses still present, it was hard to ignore the fact that they had delivered on bringing a great game.

She spent extra time in the lockers. Her family was probably waiting for her, but she had told Max that her usual wind-down routine would probably take longer, so she was hoping they were out scrounging something to eat. She pulled on an old Hogwarts t-shirt, tucking her stuff into her duffel bag and shouldering her broom. The rest of the team had cleared out, all promising to meet at the Quidditch players tent later to get a pint and talk about their strategy against Finland.

Finally, Jack exited the lockers, but rather than following the crowd, she made her way out to the pitch, to enjoy an empty stadium and a quiet moment. It was very rare she got such a chance, so she had no qualms at taking such an opportunity.

The grass was fresh cut and there was a pleasantness in the air. She could smell barbecue and adrenaline and people were still loitering in the stands. She cast an eye around, checking out what the world had to offer.

She would have recognized that blonde head of hair anyway.

Her eyes stopped, focused completely on Ariel Greyback. He was still in the stands. And he had just caught sight of her.

When the game finally drew to a close, Ariel sank into his seat. He gave a little groan, his hand snaking down to grope at his leg. It ached. It ached in a way that stressed the full meaning of the word – the full, wolfian meaning of the word. He found himself reaching into the pocket of his jacket which he’d donned as a chill had whipped through the stadium. He opened up the little book he removed and found that he was due a pain potion as prescribed by a rather put out looking healer who seemed to recognise him and not believe that his name was actually ‘Sam Henderson.’ Ariel had been contrite enough. The healer couldn’t not give it to him.

He had every intention to lope back towards his tent. He’d replaced the book back in his pocket and had dropped his hands back down to his sides. It was a red little number tonight. It would get him through until morning when, he believed, he was due a green one. Only, before he could shuffle off and get the potion and procure some dinner, he caught sight of a witch striding out onto the neatly trimmed pitch. As ever, his breath caught in his throat. He felt his heart constrict painfully in his chest and with teenaged petulance written across his face, Ariel Greyback was reminded that however much he disliked her now, he was still in love with Jack Dyllan.

Ariel knew immediately that he wanted to talk to her. Half of him wanted to find that she had turned cruel and careless. In fact, a might bit more than half of him was desirous of that. It would have helped nurse some of that lingering resentment that he’d not gotten the girl. It couldn’t be, though. He knew that. Otherwise a Hufflepuff wouldn’t have fallen for her. No, cruel and careless was him. It didn’t entirely fit, mind you, but of the two of them it was the most obvious distinction. He’d become cruel, mainly to protect himself. He’d become careless only because he had nothing to care for barring his friends who seemed happy enough to continue on without him. He was alone. Lone. Lone werewolf, as ever.

He left the stands, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to go down on the pitch. Reaching down, Ariel fiddled with the chain around his ankle, giving it a tug to let the aurors know that he knew they were watching him. He wondered if they paid attention to who he was conversing with. He hoped that when he next visited them they’d have the name of the witch he’d gotten a room at the Leaky Cauldron with the other night. Perhaps then he really would call her. It was a bit of an empty promise, really, until then. Ariel instead sufficed to wait outside the stadium, hands loose in his pockets, telling himself that he’d just look and see whether or not it had been a mistake to linger.

He knew he didn’t need the confirmation. If she was still her, it would be a mistake – and the Jack he knew didn’t change for anyone.

It was the same as her last odd encounter with Ariel – she simultaneously couldn’t figure out whether the pair was stuck in time or had changed considerably. She knew change must have come, because Ariel did not look as healthy as before, and he had been struggling back then, and he looked tired and full of bad feeling. She knew was different too. She had a family, she had big plans. She wasn’t the sort to be caught on Christmas alone anymore.

But this feeling. This weird, conflicted feeling that the blonde meant trouble and yet she really wanted to face it… That had not changed at all. And the shame, and guilt, and pain from their graduation night when he had all but called her a monster settled into a sizable lump in her throat which was intent on remaining. And no one made her feel like that for long. But Ariel could do it, five years after he had been the only person she felt like caring about. Just because he had left, didn’t meant the care followed so easily.

And then he was walking, and she was adjusting the strap on her bag. They were moving now, but she knew that the look had not been a good bye, but rather a painfully awkward hello. Their last meeting had not given either anything, beyond the gentlest of introductions back into a world where they might run into each other once more. Jack did not know how to handle someone like Ariel. Because, while a reconciliation seemed perfect, what normal did they return to? She had just gotten herself deep into something with Max. And regardless of the fact that she had no idea how he felt back, she could not ignore that, for the first time, she loved someone who did not need her to save them.

Forgive and forget. She had forgiven. But she sort of… didn’t want to forget.

And there he was, outside the door of the stadium. And for one moment, one second of make believe, everything was different.

Graduation had been rocky, but everything had been talked through. Jack swore to cut ties with Vito, and Ari had recognized that her mistakes were apart of who she was. They went on to work in the Department of Ministries. Jack was so busy hanging out with Ariel and Ollie and Chase and Andrew that she never gave Vito another opportunity to hurt any of them, that she never happened upon a young man, bloodied and near death, on the floor of the Ministry. Around the time that Chase and Andrew announced their engagement, she and Ariel finally gave in and moved in together. The grounds behind their little cottage was big enough for his monthly transformations, and for Jack to keep some illegal dragons. Ariel had been grumpy to lose his lunch mate, but had accepted Jack’s jump from the Ministry to a Quidditch career, knowing how much she wanted it. He had listened to her strategies and worries so much that he could practically hear her commentary in his head as he watched her fly in her first world cup. And now, after all the crowds had gone, he was waiting for her at the stadium doors, where he could pull her into a hug, share a private kiss, and they could revel in the joy that was sharing life with someone you loved.

But the moment was not real, and Jack had never allowed herself luxuries such as dreams and what if’s. They didn’t make now better, they didn’t fix problems. This was Ariel. He had looked at her with near disgust when she told her worst secret, and they she had not seen him for months. They worked together, never speaking, and then he had been gone. Now, he was back, and he was standing near the stadium. This was real.

She stopped in front of him. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

In another world somewhere, parallel to this one, Ariel imagined himself calling it out vibrantly as he came in through the front door after another day of work. He imagined himself properly clean shaven with hair that had style to it rather than just being shorn for the sake of having it short. He imagined redheaded children bounding down the stairs to greet him and loping, smiling teenagers, former stragglers who had found a home, exiting from the living room to say hello. He imagined her. Absurdly, he imagined her plump with child and besotted with him. It was a pipe dream he’d unwittingly been nursing for years. Alas, had it been true he would have been an entirely different man. Instead he was tagged, miserable and decidedly losing the will to keep playing these old games.

“How are you, Jaquellene?” He inquired, unable to quite help himself. Her name rolled off his tongue as of old and he was ready for the reproach. “Satisfied with the match?”

Ariel wondered whether he was supposed to be the man he was now. He wondered if that day he’d quit on her was supposed to have happened quite like that. He wondered if he should have absconded with his father, grown up bitter, gotten his step-father sent to prison. He found himself wondering whether he should have even come home in the first place and bothered Ollie again. He felt as though he should have let the man rent out his room and Ariel himself should have strayed in Istanbul or Cairo, wherever he found himself last, and married some foolish woman with too much money and not enough sense and spent the rest of his years in a white suit, riding Nile steamers playing poker games he knew he’d lose. It sounded better than the cold light of reality. But then, everything always did when thought about in relation to what really was.

“I’ve missed you,” he decided to admit, unable to help himself. “Everything about you and I needed you to know that because I don’t know when I’m ever going to get to tell you that again so … I wanted you to know that.” He swallowed. “How’s … How’s married life treating you?”

How oxymoronic, Ariel thought bitterly. He couldn’t have juxtaposed that any more beautifully if he’d tried. He recognised that he had more or less told her that he loved her, cancelling one word out for another out of fear. He wasn’t technically lying, either. He did miss her, bitterly, even as a friend. He didn’t have many of those anymore. Conservatively he’d say he had one, just on the off chance that Ollie was angry with him – at least he had Alice. But then, she was a moon to her other half’s planet and vice versa. He just lived there. Some days, he didn’t even do that.

Was he even a man anymore?

She had not really considered what would come after she said hello, too afraid of following a path that could easily lend to even more what if's. Besides, Jack Dyllan forgetting to think before she spoke, acting on instinct rather than planning? Whaaaat? Never.

When he did speak, however, she found herself surprisingly amused. She had squashed most people's inkling to attempt to call her by her full name, employing the usual tactics of fear and intimidation that had helped her throughout her life. Hearing it now, after all of her work, should have been irksome. But nostalgia was a very strong force, one that could not be beaten by pride alone, and she found that while her eye's flashed and her lips dipped into a frown, a softness took the shine from her greens, and her lips managed to flip upwards into a surprised, if amused smirk.

He asked about the match and she lifted a shoulder, dropping it. "It went better than I had hoped - but I'm thinking too long term about the Cup to get cocky now." She might not have been able to speak so well as a distracted student, but her uncanny zeal for Quidditch was still there. Why the sport, of all of the magical world, had become so important to her, she did not know, nor did she labor to know. She had always taken it seriously, and now was no exception.

She had a habit of caring too much.

Before she could properly answer his first question, however, he was speaking. There was something awkward to it, though the sincerity was evident. Perhaps because she and him had never exactly told each other how they felt. Obviously, something had been stirring in them both, but they talked about his condition, the Triwizard tournament, crappy families. They never said how much they had relied on each other's company, how he could get on her nerves in this delightfully new way, how important the other had become. So it was strange, after harboring those feelings with little expression, that he expressed himself now when, for all intents and purposes, it was too late.

But too late for what? They had missed their chance for teenaged romance, but maybe that was a... good thing? Because Jack had never really needed a boyfriend, or whatever, and that wasn't what she had been looking for in Hogwarts. She had been looking for a friend.

Before she could answer, he forged on, and the question, asked politely enough, felt like the first spell in a duel - unexpected and stinging. And the thing was, she wasn't sure she knew what to say in response.

Married life. Married life. She had to address it. "I mean... it's a bit different when it was Ministry prompted. It's..." she struggled to find words, so she chose answering it as truthfully as she could. "I don't know what it is."

She didn't know what to say to his first question, though. Things could get really complicated if she tried to balance her feelings of obligation and her feelings of uncertainty, so she decided it was best to just, once again, speak honestly. "I had kinda hoped we would have stayed friends so we didn't have to miss each other too much." Ouch. That hurt. And the slight traces of vulnerability on the perpetually strong face must have been indication of that. She shrugged, because it had not been her decision that they go their separate ways. "I miss you too."

Nodding to show his interest, Ariel tucked his hands into the pockets of his jeans and tried to find some sort of reply for Jack but it didn’t come. He didn’t know if he could talk Quidditch with her, even if he had asked. He didn’t know if he had it in him to be that casual with her, as though nothing that had transpired had, in fact, transpired. He inhaled shakily through his mouth and eyed her as she tried to find an answer for him. He almost felt a little bit selfish for asking. No, it had been selfish. He knew that.

“Forget I asked,” he ventured after a moment. “It just felt …” he bit the inside of his cheek. “Never mind.”

He swallowed and took one hand from his pocket to scratch behind his ear. He wanted to tell her that he wished he’d been there to stop it – even though his attempts to solve the marriage problem would have invariably led to him ending up in Azkaban just like the Ministry wanted for him. After all said and done, werewolf blood wasn’t the sort of thing they wanted entering the wizarding gene pool. It was probably bad enough he existed. Perish the thought of him reproducing.

But then … would that have been so dreadful, he wondered?

Despite himself, he found himself envisaging a little girl with white blonde hair and a gap-toothed smile with daisies in her hair. Perhaps it was the selfish desire to see another human in his image. Perhaps. Yet, at the same time … something churned yearningly in his stomach and he tried to shift it away by readdressing how he was stood. He was sure that for a moment that he could hear tinkling laughter in his ears and behind his eyelids he was sure he could see a little boy beside the girl, wearing a shock of curly ginger hair down to his shoulders. No, he told himself firmly.

“Yeah,” he croaked, looking down at his shoes. “I didn’t mean …” he licked his lips hesitantly. “I didn’t mean for things to pan out quite like they did. I …” he tried to find a smile and a slither of confidence which he sorely missed in situations like this. “I mean, of course you’d miss me. My winning personality, stunning wit, good looks, and charm? How could you do without me, kid?”

He muttered at her, apparently having changed his mind on the route of conversation, but it wasn't like Jack had followed the train of thought in much depth. He seemed to awkward and she just wanted to... hit him, or something. Jog him out out of this awkwardness that felt so uncomfortable. He had made her feel awkward on more than a few occasions - her first kiss which, until recently, had been her only kiss, for example. But never in such a way that felt so painful to them both.

She hated it.

Despite their split, she could not be too angry with him. Being angry at him would invalidate the anger he felt at her for her involvement with Vito. And while some of his accusations had been unfair, the basis of his wrath had been completely justified. What he had not seen, evidently, was how his disdain for her involvement, for her responsibility, would never manage to rival her own. Even now, when she had effectively driven him out of the world twice... she could not help fear the day she began seeing unexplained, violent deaths in the paper.

But he was making an attempt at the old Ari. Merlin, she remembered thinking he was a vain, proud thing before she really knew him. He had looked down his nose at her when he had seen her practicing for the Triwizard Tournament, objects spinning around her head, hair whirling in a magic-made storm of paperweights. She had remembered a very pleasant irritability form within her, one that was later smoothed over by the companionship that helped ease the pains of loneliness and weakness.

She preferred the Ari she remembered. The one that could irritate her.

"And your humility," she tacked on, looking serious until a smirk began to loosen her lips. There was still something uncomfortable and sad about their conversation, but Jack felt something of her youth boiling inside and she wanted to let it out, let it infect their interaction with humor and good will. So, in an awkward movement spurred by that youthful humor, she reached out and shoved his arm with a grin. "Come off it. You know I'm the better dueller anyway."

A wicked grin was sent fizzing in Jack’s direction. Some things never changed, even if everything else had. Of course, that included the way he felt about her. Still, the fact that he could still be her friend meant everything to Ariel. Friends came few and far between for the werewolf. He cleaved to Oliver and Alice even though he knew they grew tired of him, eager for their own space with the dogs. He could feel the grains of sand of time beginning to run out, too, as the Ministry closed in on him, squeezing him, demanding his final incarceration.

To have Jack now, even like this, was everything.

“Keep telling yourself that darling,” he drawled, chuckling deeply. He felt young again, just teasing her. The weight of the world seemed to lift a little bit from his shoulders and he looked charmingly goofy with the blonde scruff on his chin and jaw instead of unkemptly wearied. He felt as though he was young again, too. He felt as though he was back in Hogwarts, fostering his crush despite his acerbic nature, wanting to tease her to buggery and then covet her, too.

But everything had changed – and yet … and yet he still had this. And this was something. Something special. Important. At least to him.

“Can I treat you to something to eat?” He asked casually. “There are some food stalls up this way,” he gestured ahead of him.

And they were back. Back to taunts and teases, back to striving to forget those underlying affections threatening to topple what was so normal and so safe, acting cocky and confident even though they had probably been two of the most uncertain and tortured minds in all of Hogwarts. But she was a firm believer in the idea that reality was vastly affected by choice. And if she wanted to choose to have Ari Greyback back as a friend, nothing more or less, that she would choose that reality as quickly as she could.

"You buy the food, I buy the drinks," she amended. "I'll need one. My teammate Ivanov has been putting my through the mental ringer. If I didn't have alcohol, I wouldn't have my sanity."

((Sorry it's short. Trying to get back into the game. And catch up.))