Closed RP: Henry and Camilla get...surprised.

[h-m-winter.livejournal.com]

McCormack, Monagle, and White 4 November 2007
9738 Oxford Way
London

or

McCormack, Monagle, and White
676 Knockturn Alley
London

To Miss Camilla Macaulay and Mister Henry Winter,

I write to inform you that your request for a marriage license has been granted. The proper documents are attached, one copy for Wizarding records and one for use in Muggle society, should occasion require it.

I am pleased to assure you that Miss Macaulay's previous entanglement presents no obstacle to your aims, unless Mr. Papen should choose to file claim with the Ministry, at which point I believe a colleague of mine may be of immense use in disposing of that problem. So far as the Muggle world is concerned, Mr. Winter now has a new identity--the appropriate documentation will be sent along presently. All pertinent details remain the same, save for family and place of birth.

The process of creating documentation for Mr. Winter would have been far easier had I been supplied with more detailed information. Perhaps you were not aware that on the Marchbanks side of the family, Mr. Winter has living relatives in the wizarding world, a circumstance that obliged me to be considerably more creative in devising a fictitious identity.

What preliminary inquiries I myself have made did not meet with a promising welcome. It would seem that the Marchbanks scion from whom Mr. Winter descends had been born a Squib. I surmise the unfortunate individual must have been disowned. In any event, Mr. Winter is ineligible to inherit any part of the Marchbanks estate. I have avoided re-establishing this family connection in the new records that as per your request I have created. Further inquiries into this branch of the family should be addressed to Madam Griselda Marchbanks, in care of the Wizarding Examinations Authority, whose acting head she remains.

The enclosed documents should provide all that is needed by way of identification and official paperwork. The marriage license has also been enclosed and I have managed to waive any necessity for you to appear at the Ministry in person for the signing of papers. Your officiant and witnesses should sign the license and attached affidavits, upon which time they may be returned to me.

Your generous remuneration has been received by my office and I look forward to the continuance of a long and pleasant professional relationship.

sincerely,

Quentin McCormack

Comments

[h-m-winter.livejournal.com]

True. Henry counted Willow a fortunate acquaintance, just as he thought Ryder might potentially be useful--even Susan could well prove an asset, in the right situation. There were people Henry liked outside the little group--they were just very few and far between, and just because he liked them didn't mean he trusted them.

He did indeed know how Francis was. They couldn't ask too much of him, for his own health, whether they trusted him or no.

And Camilla had a valid point. Who knew what perception Merlin really had? Who knew how much he might learn, without one even being aware of it? While Henry didn't know just what judgment the wizard might pass if he were to find out they were murderers, he had no desire to find out.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla leaned back, propped on her arms, and watched Henry smoking silently. What she'd said must be sinking in, she was sure of it. No, maybe sinking in wasn't a good metaphor. He was taking the input and processing it, the way Willow did with that computer and the bank information and things.

At Hampden, Henry had been at the school a year before her, and she'd followed his lead. Now Camilla had the advantage of time, and the responsibility that came with it. She had to look out for him. She had to look out for the dangers he could pose to himself. She had to do this for her own self-interest, because if she lost him again, she lost everything again.

Otherwise she might not have said anything about this at all. She did not defer to him, precisely; she had her own ways of doing things; but she was not in the habit of playing advisor to Henry, either. It was right that he called the shots, and her objections, when she made them, tended to be either querulous or obstinate.

She wasn't objecting to anything now, per se. Just ... noting something. Pointing out something. Surely that was all right.

[h-m-winter.livejournal.com]

'Processing' really was a much better word. It didn't take Henry long to assimilate a new idea, but this wasn't precisely new; it was more recognition of something that had been lurking far below the surface of his cognizant thought.

The idea that Camilla looked after him, in her own way, wasn't new either. She'd been immensely strong when she'd dealt with his Obliviation--stronger than most people would have given her credit for. Henry had always known about that strength, however; just because it wasn't readily evident didn't mean it wasn't there. It just took real adversity to bring it out. And it was that strength that kept him from resenting her points now; Camilla alone of all people could advise him without fear of provoking him.

He looked at her, at her clear grey eyes. She knew him better than anyone else ever had--he shouldn't be surprised she'd seen something about him that he hadn't been aware of himself.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," he said, with quite open candor.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Clear, yes, and deceptively calm, her eyes looking him straight in the face.

"You'd get by," she said, after a moment. She thought it was true. "It's nicer if we don't have to find out, though, isn't it?"

[h-m-winter.livejournal.com]

Camilla might think so, but Henry knew better. She was the reason he was alive again at all; without her, his life would literally have no meaning. Camilla was the only thing that gave him even the glimmering of a conscience, and he knew it. If he lost her, he'd lose everything that made him human, and if that happened he might well be little better than Ryder.

"It is," he agreed, reaching out to cup the pale smoothness of her cheek.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla wouldn't have cared if Henry did lack even the glimmering of a conscience. He'd eroded her own conscience a fair bit, really, back at school. She'd be a different person if not for him. Though Julian had laid the groundwork for what they became -- what they both became -- for Camilla the catalyst had been Henry, and what she found in her heart for him. It was a truth Charles had known even when Camilla didn't.

She'd gone down into the ravine with him, while the others waited above, and she'd used her elegant little watch to keep the time for him while he gauged Bunny's dying pulse. She could simply have given him the watch and let him go by himself, but no, she'd climbed down with him. Maybe she would never know why. Maybe that was the beginning of something.

She had wanted to help him.

The hand that caressed her cheek was the same hand that had pushed Bunny to his death, and the same hand that had held the gun Henry had used to shoot himself in the head. From her expression -- serene, luminous, quietly joyous -- it would appear that to Camilla these facts signified absolutely nothing.

"Live forever," she said. Reclaiming Julian's words.

[h-m-winter.livejournal.com]

The significance of Camilla accompanying him down the ravine had not been lost on Henry, even at the time. While he might have changed her conscience, part of him was grateful that she forced him to keep some measure of his--he wasn't certain he wanted to think about what he would be without it. Camilla was the one thing that really connected him to the world outside of his own head; though she wasn't his angel in a literal sense, in a more metaphorical way she was.

It did not occur to him just then all that his hands had done. All he knew was that Camilla's cheek was smooth beneath his fingers, and that soon--very soon--they'd be married. They had one another, and so far as he was concerned everything else in the world--false mentors, false friends, murder and betrayal, all of it--was secondary.

"Live forever," he echoed.