WHO: Ian & Elizabeth Bell
WHAT: Liz makes a slip :[
WHEN: Tonight
WHERE: The Bell residence
"
I personally don't see what's so bad about it."
Ian Bell leaned back slightly in the bar stool at the kitchen island. A content Katie ate silently from a bottle in his hand, and he looked away only in short intervals (like now) to watch his wife as she started their dinner. It was so difficult some days, deciding which of his girls--oh, he did indeed call them that--to pay attention to at any given time. And Katie so hated it when she noticed that he wasn't paying enough of that attention to
her, making the whole process a very delicate balance.
He was like an artist.
Feeling the baby stir in his arms, Ian quickly turned his gaze back down to his daughter, but continued speaking to Liz. "Being a halfblood's got lots of perks. Like---how we get denied basic human rights, and how we're not considered real citizens, and--and oh, the
best is when we get called 'mudblood' under people's breaths while we're taking a lift through the Ministry. That one's my personal favorite."
He glanced up to her, flashing her a grin. "See, you've got tons to look forward to!"
Elizabeth Bell, would like you to know, that she was an
excellent cook. Her recipes might not be fancy and inventive, but damn it all if she didn't follow the instructions on the back of the box to a bloody
tee. Boiling the spaghetti for eleven minutes? Done. Keeping the bread in for a good twenty to twenty-five minutes? Liz took that sucker out twenty-two minutes and thirty seconds on the friggin'
dot. She figured that since she'd agreed to be Ian's wife for the rest of her life (and maybe even eternity, seeing as she could always turn into a ghost, or something), that she better get this dinner business straightened out before they ended up resorting to rations or---cat food.
Well---he was rich. They
could just order out every night, but Liz admittedly enjoyed the homely feeling she got when she was preparing dinner. She hadn't looked for a job since she quit the Prophet, and while she told people that she was, that she wanted to get back out there, no real effort had been put forward. Maybe she just liked being a wife and a mother more.
Definitely not something she'd ever thought she'd say or think.
"I used to get
so jealous of all the attention Lily and Mary would get in school," she said in an overly whiny voice, "All these evil, death eater wannabe boys would just
stare at them, and talk to
them, and gosh---some of them actually looked like You-Know-Who himself!" Liz turned and pouted greatly, holding out the expression until Ian looked back up at her. Damn her daughter for being so cute. "And none of them paid attention to little ol' pure-pants over here. Pure-pants. You think I could coin that as a derogatory term for purebloods?"
Ian nodded solemnly, looking thoughtful at the same time. "Oh, I think you could make a whole new trend. They would call it pureblood bias-chic."
The bottle finished, he set it down on the counter and brought Katie up to his chest and patted her back lightly. A moment later, the baby gave in to the coaxing and burped quietly. Ian smirked--see, no matter how his teammates had joked that he'd end up dropping Katie on her head or something, he was excelling at this being a daddy business. Four months without incident, and he could read her cries like she was screaming in plain-as-day English, and he could feed and burp her,
and she liked him. As far as Ian was concerned, he was a total rock star.
"But I think you should probably keep your terms to yourself," he said. Now that Katie's head was observing the world that existed over his shoulder, he could watch Liz full-time. "How do you think all of the other halfbloods and Muggleborns would feel, if you stole all our thunder like that? The Ministry would leave us alone, and then there would be riots in the streets."
"I'm new in town, I've got to make a name for myself," she said with a click of her teeth as she turned to pour the sauce onto the spaghetti. Aha--yes, it looked oh-so-good and she was
so going to get her own cooking show on the wireless one day. Even if it sucked, she could so ride on Ian's coattails and get famous that way. It should probably be a bad thing, the way these thoughts so easily coursed through her mind (Liz doubted it was a good thing, thinking of ways to use her husband's fame and fortune to her own benefit) but she supposed that since she never actually went through with any of her hair-brained schemes she wasn't really doing anything wrong.
Her wand struck out and she summoned plates and utensils from the drawers with skill. Of course, they had to minimize the amount of objects on table tops and counters until Liz's accuracy was perfected, but she was slowly getting there.
"Man, I should form a group, or something," she started, putting on her oven mitts (a cooling charm on the pot handles would be fine, but why miss out on such a housewife necessity like oven mitts?) to carry the spaghetti over and serve dinner. "Find a bunch of purebloods that have all been demoted to your
lowly halfblood status."
Getting up with as little jarring movement as possible, Ian walked into the adjoining living room with the drowsy baby--see, he could even tell that without looking at her, how awesome a dad was
he?--resting her head limply on his shoulder. He lifted her away gently, and lowered her down into the small playpen that was sitting there in the middle of the room, allowing her to lay down and doze off (hopefully) while they took a second to eat their dinner.
He stayed there for a moment while he half-listened to Liz, staring down into Katie's eyes, which were slowly drooping closed. He didn't dare move, you see, until she had completely succumbed to sleep, because once that happened they could kiss a quiet dinner goodbye. She took after her mother, liking the center stage as she did, and Katie could certainly raise hell if she thought that you were setting her down just so you could run off and do something else. Ian didn't care how many people told him that she couldn't possibly know--she
knew.
"Oh yes, I'm sure that you could find a lot of people to join your little resistance," he commented once he'd turned away from the playpen at last. Ian slid back into his counter seat, checking just once over his shoulder before believing it was safe to tuck in. "You seem to have a lot of friends that are just boiling over with the fighting spirit over this stuff."
Liz's mouth dropped in feigned amazement at Ian's idea, and she slid up onto the stool beside him, fork swishing through the air like a baton. Between Katie's demand for attention (where on
earth had she gotten
that from?) and Liz's incessant talking (hey--Ian had a big mouth
too!) the food on the table usually ended up being rather cold. But---eh. Didn't really matter. Dinner time was supposed to be when the family bonded, right? At least that's what she heard, she hadn't had a family dinner outside of this house in years, so.
Too much thinking. More talking!
"You know! You're right!" Liz stabbed her fork into the spaghetti to begin to twirl. It would be a giant spool of pasta by the time she noticed it, but that was the usual case, "James is one of those blood traitors, I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Alice---mmm,
maybe, but then Frank would like---he'd literally blow me up, I think, because he's kind of nuts like that."
Her fork scratched the bottom of her plate as a brilliant idea struck, "Why didn't I---I'll just get Marlie to do it!" Liz lifted the fork finally and tried to jam all of the spaghetti into her mouth, but predictably failed and sent Ian a sheepish grin as she---ugh, she probably looked like a bloody five year old. But goodness this sauce was good. Total five-star chef.
The casual exclamation of that name from his wife's mouth took Ian aback, and the fact that it had taken him aback and not her had taken him even
more aback. He sat, frozen, hand holding his fork poised in the air over the spaghetti on his plate, and looking at her strangely.
Either she was really over the deaths of the McKinnons, or she hadn't realized what she'd just let slip out, and Ian was betting that it wasn't the former. Liz had been so broken up after the news had come--she was still broken up just days ago, as far as he had known--and it seemed nigh impossible that she could have just made the switch into being alright so quickly. So she had to have slipped, absolutely
had to have.
But then what did he do?
Ian's mouth opened to say what he was thinking, but his lips didn't move to form the words. Liz seemed so completely and blissfully unaware of what she'd just said, and to let her know---what would that do? He didn't rightly know. But then what if she just kept talking about Marlie like she was alive, and then realized it herself? Would he be yelled at for not stopping her earlier? And what if this was completely off of anything he'd imagined, and it was a delusional act instead? What if she was trying to pretend that her friend was alive and letting her keep doing it was going to be psychologically damag---
Oh, to hell with it all. He would have ended up saying it anyway.
"Liz, Marlie can't do it," he muttered quietly. Just because he'd said it didn't mean he enjoyed doing it.
She'd stared at Ian for a good five seconds, trying to figure out what he meant, that maybe he had some strange idea that Marlie wouldn't go along with one of her crazy ideas, when the realization hit her square in the gut.
Oh.
"Did I really say--? " Liz smirked at herself, letting out a short laugh and shaking her head. She looked down at her plate before looking back up at Ian. "I--yeah, wow, that was---"
That was scary. More than scary, really, that was---that was strange and weird and
how could she have forgotten that one of her best friends was dead? Not even forgotten, forgotten gave you that
DUH kind of reaction, this was...this felt like a huge disappointment, like her stomach was turning at the prospect of getting caught in a lie. Liz didn't think she'd purposefully pushed it so far out of her mind that she didn't
recall the murders, but holy hell! What else could it be? She wasn't
that busy, she couldn't have just found other things to occupy her mind with, she---she wasn't
over it, but life was moving on like it would've whether or not Marlie was around or not and---
"Weird," she said with a light shrug, looking down at her food once more, beginning to poke at it. She didn't feel like eating anymore, but she didn't want Ian to think anything was
really wrong. Liz twirled her pasta once again and let out a breath, "Just not used to it, I guess, yikes---real mood killer there, yeah?"
Another forced laugh and she began to eat again, completely bewildered by her slip up.
It didn't take something as obvious as a lack of appetite to tip Ian off to Liz's being upset. Actually, even if she had been laughing
convincingly,--that being the key word here--he would have still been concerned. When he had spoken, he had anticipated that she would not take it well, and so---well, it just didn't take a rocket scientist to know that something was wrong.
Setting his fork down next to the plate, he spun his chair so that he was half-facing her, and his eyes studied her face as she stared down into her plate of food. She ate again, he noticed, but it didn't do anything to persuade him that she was alright.
"Liz," he began after a long silence, but his voice trailed. Yet again he had no idea what he was supposed to say, if anything. Maybe he wasn't half as good at the husband gig as he was at the daddy one. "Do you---want to---I don't know, do you want to talk about this... or something?" His voice ended in a question, pathetically obvious in how strange this territory he was treading on was--that he wasn't sure how to handle it, but was trying his best. Well, trying his best short of just letting the whole thing be and pass it off as something that would pass in time; which, honestly, he just didn't think was right. "I know I can't understand this---but maybe I can try, if you want?"
She had to give him credit for trying, for at least offering. Liz didn't
want to keep any feelings in, she felt like she
hadn't with all the crying she'd done about Marlie, but at the moment it felt more like a mistake she didn't want to be reminded of than a plea for help. Liz gave an uncomfortable shrug, dropping the fork (into the spaghetti) and swiveling to face Ian in a similar manner.
"I dunno, it's---strange to think about, I guess, I mean---" She didn't have any idea why she'd done it, how could she possibly explain it. "Like getting ready on September first to go to Hogwarts, it's just...something that was always there and now it's...not." Liz put her hand to her face, smooshing down her cheek and running it up and through her hair. "Oy, that's weird, isn't it? You're gonna tell me that I'm the only kid that started packing a trunk for the Hogwarts Express after I graduated."
Liz let out a breath through her nose. She didn't need another 'thing.' Not many knew about Evan and what had happened, but
she did, and
she knew that it made her act differently sometimes so---so she didn't
need to have some sort of strange and weird reaction to Marlie's death, her best friend was already taken from her, did she really need to have some strange mental problem to go with it?
Ian shook his head quickly, feeling relief that she had used an analogy that he could understand. He had been afraid once she'd started talking that she wouldn't be able to explain how she was feeling, and then he'd be sitting there lost and at a loss for what to say to her. Which---he still
was at something of a loss for what to say to her, as he'd been since the subject had come up, but at least he didn't feel like he was groping around in the dark to grasp what she was talking about. Much.
"No, you're not---it's not weird," he assured her, reaching out to put a hand on her cheek. "I mean---I never started packing a trunk on September first, but I know what---well, the feeling, I guess, of not having adjusted to major changes like that in your life."
Still, he didn't think that if one of his friends died he'd be able to just randomly forget and slip it into conversation, but. What did he know? He'd never been through anything like his wife had. Maybe he
would be acting like she was.
He offered up a soft smile and ran his thumb across her cheek affectionately before leaning over to press a kiss to her forehead. He lingered there, burying his nose in her hair for a long moment. "Maybe this is better, though. Maybe this is just another phase of grief."
Liz let herself get lost in the touch and the closeness, and she shut her eyes during the moment. It was good to know that Ian--that her
husband was so ready and willing to help her deal and cope with this rough time. Sometimes she felt guilty for constantly throwing her worries and troubles on him, and she probably always would, but the moment Ian needed her like she always needed him she would be there with a small shoulder to lean on and ears that were trained to listen. After years of living in an all girls dorm, Liz's listening skills were out of this world.
She twisted to kiss his jaw, hand going to rest on Ian's leg, and it was then that Katie started to whimper. Liz's face scrunched in annoyance against Ian's, and she froze, thinking that maybe her daughter would stop sensing that her daddy was paying another woman attention.
The long, high pitched whine proved that her attempts were foiled, and Liz let out a breath. "The princess is awaits." She smiled, though, and sat back, spinning on the stool for a moment before going back to her food. The one good thing about Ian being Katie's favorite (not that Liz would ever admit that out loud
ever) was that all those demanding moments were usually handed over to Daddy, leaving Mummy nice and...bored.
Katie better get over this 'loving Daddy' business,
quick.
