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thelure · 3 years ago

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ERNIE MACMILLAN: AN APP

so this is an app for one, ernie macmillan, on a time clash site (i promise i don't only rp hp but i've been in a nostalgic mood). anyway, i am posting it here because i'm proud i finished it (lol) and because i've had so much anxiety about my writing, if anyone ends up reading this for fun please tell me what you think <3

who are you anyway? a macmillan, so they say. but you aren’t one, not really.you bare another name, secretly hold it close to your chest. they might find it burnt into your bones but they would have to skin you for it first, you’ll be damned.so who are you? a macmillan, or so your mother says. it is up for you to choose but do you have a choice? not really.for who would willingly choose a father that refused to let your mother hyphen your surname? nothing but a shame on your paternal family’s house, on their pure blooded legacy, all because you were born a bastard before marriage. but weren’t they betrothed anyway?weren’t they getting married? mother reasons that it’s not so bad, that she had tried to love your father but couldn’t.mother reasons that it’s not so bad because for all her trying at least she got you.you’ve never been able to ask that big question: why. why couldn’t she love him? why wouldn’t he love her? but you think you understand that cold, hard, faraway look that glistens in her eyes when she talks about your father. the way her eyebrows furrow with a fierce determination. you think you understand that she was too good for your father. in more ways than one. so, who are you?ernest. ernie.pride is a fickle thing if you haven’t got the self-esteem for it and you’ve never had that problem. no. not you. for what better way to spite the family that rejects you? what’s really wrong with you anyway? just a bastard pureblood, raised by your single mother, but really, what’s wrong with that? for there was really no shame in the name ‘macmillan’ no matter what room it was you walked into. macmillans are truly not used to being anything outside of well liked and prominent. as far back as wizarding society could remember, only your untraditional birth is the ink stain on a perfectly fresh parchment. what’s wrong with being macmillan when it means you could walk into a room a black may be occupying while chatting with a werewolf — if the company might have pleased you — and toujours pur would still maybe even give you a quick hello under that nasty breath.(pride is what you hold on to as if it’s the last thing you do. you walk with your head high, you walk with your back straight. you move crisp and fluid, unaffected like a thick skinned boar.)mother’s love has always been enough. tall and willowy, gaunt faced mother who loves linen cloth and muggle records and wearing sheer glitter on her eyelids. who always smells like soap and fresh lilacs. who’s smile is as golden sweet as honey. as a small child you loved to watch her arrange flowers in a vase, freshly cut from her own garden, and the way she’d concentrate so hard the tip of her tongue poked out the side of pink lips. you sat there perched with one of her old first year books but it’s really her you study. engraving every inch of the moment down to the golden hour sun setting alight her hair through the window because you always wanted to remember this:to remember the way mother was always giving and good natured. to remember that she never walked around with a chip on her shoulder, holding grudges. that she was always considerate even to the tiny petals of the flowers she loved so much, ensuring that not even the limpest of them were ever mishandled.to remember how you swore to yourself every time in such moment, that you would always be her son. dutifully. that you were always going to choose to be the kind of man that made that kind of mother proud. you love your mother dearly, for all that she has done for you. so you choose to be macmillan.(not like you had a choice.)

ii.

if only you knew what i had been through, if you knew, you would rejoice too.but it’s hard. to look back and remember the beginning. such a peaceful, hopeful beginning, full of love and the addictive buzzing of an excited, thrumming heart. it’s a struggle but with a bit of effort — with a bit of conviction and sincerity — and the ghost of your mother’s smile, it comes back to you.(almost.)the moments that remind you what you’re living for.to remember that dark haired boy who couldn’t seem to quite make it past the first step on the hogwarts express, the panicked look he’d shoot to those behind him. waiting. watching. how it brought a smile to your own. for you were nervous too but you were always much more brave. much more prideful. you push through the older and the taller and when he makes another attempt to step down back on the platform you place the palm of your hand on the small of his back. firm but kind and encouraging. “up you go now, next foot forward. you don’t want the train to leave without you.”it’s your mother’s way of speech that comes out of your tiny mouth but it seems to be what he needs to continue moving. justin finch-fletchley. it rolls off your tongue. not as your mother’s words but your own that feel almost like a stranger to you. justin finch-fletchley. you repeat his name back to him before introducing your own. you repeat his name over and over again in your mind. it rolls around as you look into soft, kind eyes and you smile so hard it makes you both blush. you think before you know, before it truly manifests itself, that you would like to stay by his side forever.( he is beautiful. not like you. you who have become sharp and angular. you who bares scars, some uglier than others and the memory that for all your wounds, you’ve still seen worse. and maybe he has too. maybe his scars are hidden in his breastbone like the name you secretly carry. but he is beautiful, not like you. soft and gentle and like the foggy glow of a full moon reflecting in a midsummer night’s lake. and his eyes. somehow, through it all, his glittering, kind eyes stayed the same and you fear most that when he looks back at you he sees something different. something that’s changed. that something which has been lost to you. and yet nothings lost, not really. not when his eyes are fixed on yours and his body is so close. when despite all the metallic sweat and blood and dust, his lips are so sweet and warm— the only thing you taste. and finally— finally, you know he’s alive and you’ve got him in your arms and without even having to think, you know that from now on, you’ll be by his side forever. )if only you knew what i had been through, if you knew, you would rejoice too.but it's hard.hard to rejoice in the now when you remember what you had done it all for. the memories don’t come back in night terrors but rather like this: when the caressing summer breeze, folds around your face and the sun peaks out into a blue sky, so warm and so welcoming, it’s light seeps through to the bone and wraps around your soul. the innocent sound of laughter from children no older than eleven, the buzzing excitement of first time wands and school robes rings through your ears and one accidentally bumps into you sending their ice cream cup flying so you offer to buy them a new one. and like a flood it comes back. knocks the very breath right out of you and suddenly you are back on hogwarts grounds and right in front of you is a child, eleven. a child being punished with the cruciatus curse and your body moves faster than your brain can think, faster than your wand hand can jinx, and collides with a carrow. hands with a mind of it’s own shoving a face into wet dirt. a righteous fury burning in your heart. a group of first years silently horrified. like fighting through thick fog you blink your way back into the present but the glaze that covers your eyes doesn’t go unnoticed and you can feel them watching you when you awkwardly stumble away — with the ringing of screams in your ears and the pulseless wrists of the bodies you check on

your fingers and the smell of metallic blood in your nose as you help heal the wounded — because it is not your name they know or remember. and you don’t blame them. you’re not prideful any more anyway and you’re not bitter because for all your scars, you’ve seen worse.if only you knew what i had been through, if you knew, you would rejoice too that you're still here amongst the living.

iii.

bones stretch against hard surface that is as cool as the marble statues that haunt the old macmillan estate. hot flesh stings from the chill so that the sweat stuck to your back starts to make you shiver. you had sworn you could do this. where had that little boy gone? you swore that you were fine, strong enough to follow the seasons into the icy winter where wildflowers died waiting to be reborn. redefined with the melting renewal of spring. you got stuck in the winter of your life.( and how dare you feel this way, what gives you the right? how selfish and miserable it makes you feel when you know it could all have been worse. much worse. when you know how fortunate you are that at least justin and hannah and susan are breathing, and ginny, neville and luna, and god— harry! thank god for harry, who suffered most of all. )healing is a hard, thankless work and you feel the weight of lives in the bags of your eyes and in the bag you once called your body. and there you are scared to close them even for a moment because they are heavy and you fear you might not wake up again. for while you wrestle with the lives of the living, you feel like you're walking amongst ghosts. the resting of eyes so tempting and sweet, you could keep your body there: propped up against the walls of st. mungo’s where you melt under pressure and remain but a ghost along with them. he was cut out for this. you? you don’t know who you are anymore or where that little boy has gone. and all you want to do is cry out for mother (hold her a little bit, feel the stroke of her gentle long fingers, her soft voice as sweet as her honey sweet smile vibrating from her chest as your head rests on her shoulder, mother who would know exactly what to say) but you know she won’t hear you being just another ghosts too. one more casualty of war, a death kept close to your chest. he was cut out for this. you? what happened to you?where did you go?back to where you could feel the presence of mother in search of some peace of mind. back to the dusty boarded up shop, strategically placed right before diagon alley gives way to knockturn, where you begin to clean up the last of the aftermath of war in your life. the one thing you had yet to touch because it had hurt too much to see it. hurt to see the dried blood left over on bits of broken glass because she had not gone easily, your mother. and you try your best not to think of your father as you sweep up the dust and pieces of wood, or what he would have thought upon hearing the news. you don’t want to know which of the bastards had done it, try not to think of how many there had been to come calling once she’d been found out for helping muggleborns flee the country. most of all, as you fix the apothecary your mother left behind, you ignore the nagging thought in your head that maybe he had been here too.( in fact you try hard not to think of him at all. he’s always been a fragment rather than a memory. a looming presence like the dark side of the moon to which you know is there but as they say— out of sight out of mind. and what had he ever done for you to occupy a space in your mind anyway outside of conflicting you with a deep sense of loathing and a burning need to prove yourself better off. what had he given you other than small fragments, not real memories of being around for a christmas or two, and maybe he had taught you how to read on one of those occasions. been the one to show you that you pause for a breath after a ‘period’ so that your sentences weren’t all monotone and run on. but what did he really give you aside of a deep sense of shame?and possibly a memory, not just a fragment, of being the one thing that could always make your mother cry. )so what happened to you, where did you go?back to where love was more than a distant memory. something you knew of once in your past. for not even the soothing waves of the ocean that sing you lullabies and glitter against light like an omnipresent beacon could have given you such peace as this kind of love.where he smells like wildflowers and wet

earth in your bed and has a smile that is so warm and sweet, warmer and sweeter than even honey, that it feels like you’re being kissed by fresh spring sunlight after a dark, bitter winter whenever he fixes up the corners of his mouth. how could life be so pure with him that even the sight of the smallest potted succulent could have made your heart do flips. how come every place you went all you thought of was him. how he would like this and how he would want that. how was it possible that loving someone this way could have tempered your soul and suddenly you saw more — in everyone, young and old, every walking soul — of what people needed. you wanted to be kind like he was, much softer than someone like you could have been brought up to be. you wanted to smile at a stranger, to warm their heart and make their day, through the love that he has given you. it is not me you see but the man who loves me.justin finch-fletchley. (you’ll never forget that moment you saw him from across the great hall. how your body was ready to break and your heart swelled so large that it hurt inside your chest because there he was. brave and beautiful and my god- alive! you had spent every single day — waking and sleeping — thinking about the last time you’d seen him. how you watched his back until it disappeared in the train station with all the words you wanted to say boiling at the tip of your tongue and your hands tingling because they had wanted so badly to grab him and shake him and call him a fool, didn’t he know that it was all going to be different? couldn’t he sense that all your lives where about to change? but instead you watched him, silently let him go. and it dug in your brain like the worst, most sour kind of memory. and for every pain a carrow could have inflicted on you, it never felt worse than that image of watching his back fade away. but there he was brave and beautiful and my god— alive. and as your body had moved towards him you swore you would never leave his side. that you would stay there forever.)you think— you feel, as you put the pieces of your mother’s shop back together, that life should be simple like this. you had figured out that sometimes you could do more outside of the ministry and even further, you realized that sometimes you could heal others without healing work. sometimes you could heal them with some love, some kindness from a stranger.

iv. “give us a peace equal to the war or else our souls will be unsatisfied, and we will wonder what we have fought for and why the many died… “ - langston huges

you feel strange as you struggle to wake up from a dream that felt so tangible and real and you could have sworn that your fingers had been gripping justin’s hand— or was it susan’s? maybe hannah’s? with elation and excitement before the gravity that tethered you to the world breaks, pings melodically like the thread of a unicorn hair ripping apart, and your foot breaks through cement into a veil, like you are slipping through the crack of a sidewalk and it all goes dark. fuzzy. what had you been dreaming that felt so real? and why does your body feel so strange. knees burning with a sharp pain, spine twisted, a forearm pressing into a headboard so unfamiliar and yet too familiar. where did it go? this dream. why was everything in your mind so foggy and why does your heart feel so desperate like something is wrong. like something has been lost when finally all the pieces you’d been trying to pick up were reshaping into something exciting and new. you feel unfamiliar and familiar at the same time and it’s that familiarity which fills you with further dread. you stretch out old bones too big for the bed it’s curled up upon and instantly know where you are. home. and now you reason this must be it. this is the dream and you must have fallen asleep (so weird). so vivid and real but how else could you explain the unmistakable sound of the pan sizzling in a distant kitchen, and the sound of joni mitchell’s 'blue' album skipping where the vinyl was scratched, and the sound of your mother’s voice humming along. sweet as ever but off key like a little bird chirping at the wrong time of day. you stretch out your bones and your whole body cracks and that dread that you’ve been feeling seeps into where they’ve popped but you can’t help yourself. you must see it to the end. you jump up quickly, your childhood room not being spared a glance (but you wouldn’t have recognized it anyway if you had really taken a look and maybe that was for the better because it would have frightened you) and you run for that sound. the sound of home. of mother. and you tell yourself, very convincing of a job you do, rationalizing that you are trapped in a dream regardless of how it all feels so real. as real as the other dream. but which one is which? and your mother? her eyebrows frozen in a furrow at the sound of your footsteps tumbling through the house. the sound of a man’s body lumbering through. and the moment your eyes lay upon her you think, yes, it must be true. so your heart forgets that dread it had been feeling because she’s here. with you in this place. because you are home and you missed her so dearly. but her body feels too real, her heart hammering against your chest when in a thoughtless, childlike moment you hug her. you cry on her shoulder and you cry out the name ‘mother’ with such mournful sorrow she jerks away and it dawns on you she’s real. that she’s real but you’re real. but what does that mean? and oh, god— where is justin?

#character-dev*

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