"Haunted" Susan/Seamus 8/13

[thanfiction.livejournal.com]

Title: Haunted
Pairing: Susan/Seamus
Prompt: A real close look
Rating: PG-13 (brief language)
Word Count: 2,300
Summary: Sometimes the things we need come from where they are least expected.
Author's Notes: Set in the DAYDverse, uses the canon of Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness and the sequel novel, Sluagh. Will not make sense without them. Both stories, as well as the rest of the 'verse, can be found here
Link to Prompt Table: On my LJ, here

OOO

“…and then we went tae the Potters, and they’ve a new bairn.  He’s really cute, Mr. Seamus…not much hair, but he’s got bonny green eyes, just like Uncle Harry, and he makes the sweetest wee noises!  Got a dumb name, though;” Cecily made a face, rolling her eyes. “Albus Severus Potter.”

Seamus nearly choked, swallowing the mouthful of roast quickly to avoid spitting it across the table.  “Severus!”  He looked incredulously to Susan, hoping that it was just a joke, but her chagrined nod confirmed it, and he shook his head.  “Lost his mind, has he?  Namin’ his kid after that cac ar oineach?”

“He wasn’t there that year –“ Susan began, but he cut her off with a skeptical frown.

“And what year were they on great terms?!”

“I’m sure he had his reasons,” she shrugged, no longer bothering to pretend that it made sense to her either.  “It’s really not our business what Harry and Ginny want to name their children.  Though that reminds me, did you know Bernie and Mandy are having a boy?  They asked me what your middle name was, and they’ve chosen Patrick.  It’s not quite as jarringly Irish as Seamus for the son of Bernard and Amanda Dunstan, but they’d have both died at Druim Cett without you.” 

The news was no less of a surprise, though of a far different kind than the Potters deciding to name their second son after their old enemy, and his mouth worked a moment before the appropriate response to such an unexpected compliment finally came.  “I’ll…I’ll send them an owl, I guess.  Honored, I am, though ‘tis a bit strange.”

Cecily was watching him with a very odd look on her face, as if assessing something, but she spoke before he could ask what it was.  “Everyone’s having babies…can I have one?”

“Some day,” Susan smiled gently.  “But only when you’re a grown witch.” 

“Nae like that,”Cecily corrected impatiently, “I mean, can I have a brother or sister?”

“Cecily, love, you know enough about where little ones come from…,” her mother chuckled.  “I can’t just order you one by owl post.” 

“Aye, they come from two people who love each other.” She nodded quite reasonably, gesturing with her fork at the two adults.  “So I thought ye and Mr. Seamus, mebbe?  I’d want it to have his eyes, though.  They’re prettier than yours, Mum.  But it could have your hair, if ye wanted.” 

Seamus wasn’t sure whether he wanted to laugh or cringe, and the question came half in that he wasn’t at all sure how innocently it had been asked.  She seemed all too aware of exactly what she had said, maybe not the exact mechanics of what would be needed to fulfill her wish, but the first part, the most dangerous part…. 

Thankfully, Susan intervened before he needed to, her smile a thin, tense line as her graceful fingers tightened on the handle of her fork.  “Mr. Seamus and I certainly care about one another a great deal, but that’s not the same as the kind of love that babies come from.  We’re just very, very good friends.”

“That’s not what Da said.”

Seamus heard himself gasp before he could catch it, and he licked his suddenly-dry lips.  “What’s Duncan been tellin’ ya, now?”

“Not Papa…” Cecily sighed, leaning forward to enunciate the word perfectly clearly for these very dense grownups.  “Da.”

Silence hung over the table for almost a full minute, then Susan took a deep breath, her voice edged in ice as she set down her fork and turned to face her daughter sternly.  “Cecily, that’s not funny.  Your father’s dead, and I thought you were old enough to properly understand that.  You haven’t pretended you could see him in a long time.”

“I don’t so much,” she insisted, “but sometimes I still see him when I’m scared or lonely or when I wake up from a nightmare.   And sometimes when I’m asleep.” 

Seamus reached out, taking her little hand between both of his and trying to make her see in his eyes that although he wasn’t angry yet, this was very serious nonetheless.  “Dreams ain’t the same as real life, Banphrionsa.  Ya know that.” 

Cecily pulled away, shaking her head furiously, her cheeks flushed with indignation as she looked beseechingly at Susan.  “I ain’t lying, Mum!  I were scared, ‘cause ye and Mr. Seamus been acting funnier and funnier with each other, and I thought mebbe he were going tae be leaving us, an’ I didnae want it so!  He’s closest I’ve ever had tae a Da what’s real, what’s here, and Da said I didn’t have tae be ‘fraid, that ye were just in love, and it’d be all right when ye sorted it out!” 

Susan looked closer to losing her temper than Seamus ever remembered seeing, and her hands clenched the tabletop until the knuckles looked about to burst the skin of her fingers, her voice shaking with what sounded like a thousand things beyond and fighting for space in the burning dark eyes with the anger itself.  “That’s enough, Cecily.”

“He said ye were both just afraid –“

“That’s ENOUGH, Cecily!” Her shout cut the girl off mid-sentence, but the two witches still faced each other stubbornly, matching mouths set in equal resolve, but Susan was still the girl’s mother, and she stood, jabbing her finger towards the open door.  “Go.  To.  Bed.  Now.”

Cecily looked like she had been struck, her hazel eyes wide and springing abruptly with tears.  “That’s nae FAIR!” she wailed, but the outraged protest was to no effect. 

“You have to the count of three, young lady.  One.  Two….”

“Yer…yer…” Cecily sputtered, even as she was smart enough to get up from the table, throwing her napkin down on her chair.  She stopped at last at the door, turning back, her face twisted in wounded rage.  “Yer mean!  Both of ye!”

The door slammed, surprisingly heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs, there was another slam, and only then did Susan turn back to him, and he didn’t know why it hurt that her expression was so unreadable.  “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what –“

“Don’t worry ‘bout it,” he sighed, standing to wrap a comforting arm around her shoulders.  “She’s just startin’ to get to that age where she wants to be like her friends, she does, and that means a Mum and a Stepda’s a lot more normal than ‘this is me Mum and this is the convict what lives with us.’”

“That may be,” Susan insisted, “but that doesn’t excuse making up stories about Ernie.  I really thought she was past that phase.” 

“Maybe ya should go talk to her, ya know?  If nothin’ else, make sure she knows I ain’t goin’ nowhere at least until she’s nineteen.”

The dark head shook sadly, and she stepped away, her voice quiet as she looked away to the closed door.  “She knows you’re eligible for parole at five years.”

“I said, I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

“Seamus, we don’t expect….”

“She’s Ernie’s, I ain’t never forgettin’ that,” he said firmly.  “But she’s been mine too for three and a half years, and I ain’t never gonna walk out on a child.  Now go take care o’ your daughter.  I’ll wash up.  Not much appetite now, ya know?”

“Me neither.  Do you want my wand?”

“I’ll do it the Muggle way.”

“All right.”  Her hand went to the doorknob, but then she paused, and when she looked back, her eyes were more frightened, more vunerable than he had ever seen, though there was no hint of fear in her tone.  “We can talk about the other part later.”

His own throat was suddenly far too tight to hope to answer, but he nodded, and there was the weak flicker of a smile before she was gone, and he almost flung himself towards the table, gathering up half-filled plates and cups as if he could speed away from what would be coming when she returned.  His heart was hammering, his hands numb as he fumbled for the taps, trying desperately not to break anything despite how hard he was shaking.  There was no way around it now, he was going to have to…but how, and what if, and oh, please….

“Seamus….”

The voice was the last he had ever expected to hear, and the plate he was holding fell from his hands, shattering unnoticed against the stone floor as he whirled, feeling every bit of color drain from his face at the sight of the man standing in the center of the kitchen only a few feet away.  Except it wasn’t a man, not properly.  The figure was silver-white, wholly transparent, and although he recognized him instantly – the school uniform, the thickly muscular build, the head of ringlets, the twice-broken nose – his mind refused to accept it so easily, and all that emerged from his mouth was a strangled noise that had tried unsuccessfully to form a name. 

Ernie’s mouth quirked into the familiar lopsided smile.  “I’m sorry, old chum, didn’t mean to scare you.  I suppose that would mean you can see me, then.”

“You’re dead!”

“Well, yes.”

“But --?!”  Seamus stopped himself, not even knowing what it was he had been about to say, but the longer he looked at the ghost of his former friend and comrade, the more surreal it seemed.  It was Ernie, no question at all about that, and he was exactly as Seamus remembered him…yet not, and it was more than just the issue of lacking color and substance.  Ernie had been one of the oldest in the DA, and memory recalled someone who was a grown man, broad-shouldered and work-weathered, but now that he took a real close look, he seemed so much younger, the shade of a boy merely in his late teens, and it was the most disconcerting thing of all to see so much more bluntly than photographs what children they all had been. 

“Ghosts don’t have a lot of freedom.” Ernie shrugged ruefully.  “We’re bound by the conditions under which we stayed behind…some of us are tied to a place, some of us doomed to keep repeating something forever…I’m just here to watch over Cecily.  That’s why you haven’t been able to see me.”

“Then,” Seamus asked carefully, grateful to find it at least a little easier to force words past the fading edges of the initial shock.  “Why can I see ya now?”

“Because you’re not going to believe her otherwise, and I don’t want her called a liar unfairly when it’s my fault.”

The reminder of Cecily’s awkward announcement bit keenly, and he steeled himself, realizing now what the real reason for this visitation must be.  “Then ya know about Sue, and ya know all o’ why I’m stayin’, but I swear, Ernie, there ain’t no need be tellin’ me to keep me hands to meself.” 

“Actually, I was rather going to ask you quite the opposite.”

Seamus frowned as if Ernie had just started speaking in fluent Japanese.  “I don’t reckon ya.”

“I didn’t give my life so that she could bury herself with me.  She’s only twenty-six, Seamus, but I’ve been dead now longer than she ever even knew me.” The look in his eyes was painful in a way that no one ever should have had to see, the bittersweet grief for his own surrendered life.  “It’s time for her to let go, and if we couldn’t have each other for very long, I’d feel a lot better knowing that she’s with someone that loves her – and Cecily – just as much as I did.”

He looked down at the jagged pieces of china at his feet as he felt his cheeks heat in shame over the ridiculous comparison.  “I could never do what ya did.”

The spectral hand reached out, and though it never actually touched him, he shivered, his skin crawling eerily as it hovered over his chest, eyes holding his with absolute honesty.  “You already have.”

“That were different.”

“I don’t happen to think so,” Ernie pressed, then withdrew the hand, and Seamus rubbed unconsciously at the scar that now itched as if fresh.  The curly head tilted, watching him, then the smile deepened, shadowing silver the dimple on his cheek.  “But if nothing else, will you remind Susan of something for me?”

“Can’t ya do it yourself?”

Ernie’s eyes closed so tightly that if he had been mortal, Seamus would have thought he was fighting back tears as he shook his head.  “For all that she misses me, she doesn’t actually want to see me again.  She’s afraid I’ll be angry at her for loving someone else.  You weren’t guarding against me.  I’ll still try, but….”

“’Course,” he said, and it was so strange to be trying to comfort a dead man, but living or not, Ernie had been his friend, and it was unthinkable to deny him whatever help he wanted.  “I’ll tell her whatever ya want, mate.”

The once-hazel eyes opened again, and what was in them was too many layers to separate, but plain and terrifying among them were love; deep, unconditional love, and a loss that was being accepted as more final than death alone had ever made it.  “Tell her that she’s not remembering all of the vows we made.”

He had begun to fade now, but the silvery image was still clear enough that Seamus could see as Ernie pressed his fingers to his lips in the memory of a kiss.  “As long as there was breath in my body.”

THE END