Where It Began

On a train approaching Cardiff...

Lainey bit at her thumbnail, though she wasn't actually chewing it. This was awkward. Granted, less awkward than, say, if they had driven. The redhead was tentatively trusting of her new-found brother, but they still hardly knew each other. And he knew more about her life than she knew about his. (This, owing to the fact that in a moment of temporary insanity, she had believed it a good idea to leave him the letters she'd been writing him the past ten years. Maybe it had been. The jury was still out.)

"So..." Lainey began aimlessly in an effort to break the silence. Somehow, it only made things more awkward, particularly since she couldn't quite pull her gaze from the window.

Eli looked around the train almost a little too eagerly. He hadn't been on one of these things in at least six years, and he hadn't been on a muggle train in... what... ten? Twelve? Looking around at all the muggles in the car, a smile was brought on by how incredibly mundane they were, especially their clothes, which he found amusing.

He turned his head to Lainey when she spoke. He noticed her eyes glued to the window and sensed she was trying to start a conversation, "So..." he fished around for a topic, "I found out a couple of days ago that I'm dating the Minister of Magic."

Lainey sputtered in surprise, then stared at him a moment. "You're twenty-three," she finally said. "Wouldn't the Minister be... old?" The girl shook her head, then laughed.

"I remember when you still thought girls had germs," Lainey mused softly. "Except me. I was immune. Or maybe you were just always immune to me."

She lightly placed her fingers on his bare arm. "I still find it strange. It makes me uneasy, knowing you have..." Her green eyes flitted to those seated nearby. "... and not being able to take it from you. I'm not used to it. It makes me feel defenseless - and I know it's not wholly logical, I just..."

Lainey shrugged helplessly, letting her words trail off. Sighing, she slouched down in her seat, turning her attention to picking at her cuticles.

Eli laughed loudly, drawing the eyes of a few passengers, "No. No, she's actually very young for a Minister," he looked out the window, smiling, "Kallie's really something...."

He laughed again, this time much softer, "That's right. I forgot about the whole cooties epidemic I started at the elementary school," he sighed, "Everything was so simple back them. Sometimes I wish I was still eight."

"I get it," he looked at her thoughtfully, "Mom always used to pick at her nails like that..."

He shook his head, and nearly jumped out of his seat when a moment later the speakers built into the train blared an announcement that they were nearing Cardiff, "How much longer now?"

He knew it was a stupid question, but this train ride felt like it had taken a century. Why hadn't muggles found a substitute for apparation yet?

"That's good. I was starting to think you were into cougars," Lainey teased.

She paused in her assault on her nails, not wholly conscious she had been doing so. "She did," the girl recalled after a moment. That time seemed so distant, sometimes. The redhead looked over at her brother, chewing her lip a moment. "Did they really -" she broke off, then let out a rather bitter laugh.

"I thought that everything was so perfect, then. Our family - I thought we were happy. It wasn't real, though, was it?" Lainey asked rhetorically. "I guess the only thing real about my life is all the crap that's happened since."

Lainey tilted her head, a wry smile pulling at her lips. "A few minutes," she informed him dryly. "The train's got to stop in the station and all that. Then, we can get off and you can stop fidgeting like a four-year-old on too much sugar."

Eli couldn't help but snicker at Lainey's comment. Maybe he could live with this new, cynical Lainey. After all, he had changed too. At least, he hoped he had changed since the fourth grade.

Eli looked straight ahead with a blank face, "We were happy. Maybe... maybe I wasn't happy all the time, but the moments we shared were as real as they come. And our lives were sure as hell better when we were together as a family than they are right now. "

A wary look crossed his face at the mention of stopping at the station, "Is the station here going to have those huge security checkpoints again? We never had to stop through those when we were kids. I swear, all this violence has done nothing but make things difficult."

Besides, he was almost positive that thing had malfunctioned. He wasn't so ignorant as to not know how to walk through a metal detector. The worst part was definitely the security officers. "I always forget how smug muggles can be," he added sourly.

"Were they?" It wasn't really a question; merely skepticism uttered aloud. She said nothing further on the matter.

Lainey burst into a brief fit of nearly child-like giggles. "Don't worry," she told him as seriously as she could manage. "I'm sure the metal detector will go haywire just for you, again." She grinned impishly at him, bottom lip catching between her teeth.

The redhead made an unconvincing attempt to hide an amused snort behind her hand. She stood up, grabbing her bag from the overhead before moving around him. "And your sort aren't the same?" she quipped lightly. For once, 'your sort' wasn't a slander, just a differentiation.

Lainey proceeded out of the compartment, a smile still pulling at her lips.

Eli grinned, "Of course. It was set off by none other than my natural magnetism," he couldn't help but follow that up with a giggle, sure that the lousy pun was bound to annoy her at least little.

He stood up with a frown, reaching distractedly for his bag. "Well," he said after awhile, "I suppose they can be. They just usually aren't to me." He grinned again, "And of course, we all know that's what really matters."

Navigating his way through the crowd of people exiting the train, he followed Lainey outside. The train station was, once again, very surreal. It really had been a long time since he'd been around this many muggles.

This time, though, he got through security without too much of a problem, and it was only a few minutes until they were out of the building and in the middle of Cardiff.

[[OOC: This is the part where we skip the journey through Cardiff to the Library]]

Eli stood in front of the large double doors. If they were lucky, or most likely unlucky, this was where they would find the fate of their parents. He took a deep breath and turned his head to Lainey, offering her his hand, "You ready?"

Lainey suddenly felt reluctant. Or maybe it wasn't sudden, at all, judging by the way she had drank herself into oblivion a few days before in anticipation of this trip. She wasn't sure she wanted to find out what had really happened to their parents. She wasn't sure which would be worse - if wizards had killed them, or if it had merely been an accident.

She finally did take his hand, though, clinging far too tightly to hide her anxiety.

The search seemed to take hours, until the two siblings were surrounded by innumerable newspapers from more than a decade past. It was while she was perusing a paper from eleven years ago that the girl suddenly jumped up, knocking her chair over in the process, scrambling back from the paper as though it had tried to attack her.

A miserable keening rose from her throat, before it constricted and she unable to make any sound at all. Lainey clasped a hand over her heart, the other arm wrapping tightly about her middle. Tears streamed down her face, horrified gaze fixed on the paper.

It took her several attempts to get herself to breathe again, let alone speak.

"They-" she managed between desperate sobs, "th-they started.. i-t themselves! ... Whi-while they were st-still inside! W-why-" She had meant to ask, 'Why would they do that?', but her throat had constricted again as horrified panic seized hold her.

Lainey hadn't even realized that she'd been hoping they were still alive.

Lainey's outburst came out of nowhere. He was dozing off over what seemed to be the most boring article ever written on wizard-related murders. The sudden movement, along with the loud crashing of the chair, caused Eli to jump out of his seat along with her.

He watched in horror as she completely lost control, following the finger that was pointed at an old paper lying innocently on the table. His arm shot out of its own accord and grabbed it, then brought it closer to his face.

His hazel eyes scanned the article as fast as they could until coming across two words. "Suspected suicide". He read those words maybe a dozen times before he really understood them, and he heard his sister's cries in the back of his head as he read them a dozen times more.

The worst part was, he knew why they did it. They did it because they lived for their children, and their children were taken away, so what was there to live for?

And all this time... All this time he had thought no one had loved him except for Lainey. But he was wrong. Despite all their twisted prejudices, Eli's parents had never really hated him, but wanted the best for him. That is, what they thought was best for him.

But they did love him. And they didn't deserve all the hatred Eli felt towards them, nor did they deserve to have their daughter all but die at the hands of his neglect. He had always placed the blame on them for just about anything that had gone wrong in his life, because he thought they had rejected him as a son. What an idiot he was.

He fell back in the chair, the paper still clutched in his hand, a dull buzzing sound the only thing left in his head. If he had the capacity to cry, he would have cried for hours.

Some time later...


Lainey sat on the top step of the stairs, arms wrapped around herself and tear-brimmed green eyes gazing blankly ahead. Somehow, after what had seemed like hours, but was probably only several minutes, an empathetic yet stern librarian had ushered them out. At some point, Lainey had remembered to breathe, again. Her chest still hurt, though whether that was from the oxygen deprivation or the knowledge that her parents were, in fact, irrefutably dead was not entirely certain.

"I still hoped," Lainey whispered hoarsely. "Thought I didn't, but... I did. Should'a known better."

Eli sat next to Lainey, one of his legs bent in towards him and his arms hanging limply around it. All his attention was concentrated on the cars going by in front of him, letting them settle into a comfortable blur of traffic.

He tried to listen to what Lainey was saying, but it was all gibberish. He ran the words through his head a couple times more until he finally figured out their meaning. But he didn't want to address them. All Eli wanted to do was run away from this place. Run away from all the pain.

Finally, though, he spoke, and the thoughts he had been keeping inside him tumbled out, "When you told me that they were dead, I didn't want to believe you," A single tear slid down his cheek, "Because, I thought they still hated me. And..." Another tear, "And I always wanted to go back, y'know? To say..." and another, "I suppose, to say I was sorry."

Eli sniffed and wiped his face with one of his sleeves, "But now they're gone," this was followed by a muffled sob, "They've been gone for- for years." He groaned and put his face in his hands, pushing them against his eyes so the pressure would distract him, and maybe even hold back the tears. He realized, this was the first time in five years that he had really cried, because five years ago he had finally stopped thinking about his family.

Wiping his eyes with his sleeve once again, he stood up, noticing the sun setting against the cities ancient buildings. Eli sighed, digging his hands into his pockets, "I'm gonna head home. This place is already depressing and I'm in serious need of some comfort food." His head turned to Lainey, "Are you coming?"

Lainey leaned against her brother, as much to receive consolation as to give it. She drew in a shuddering breath.

"They didn't hate you," she murmured. "Mum cried for days, after they took you away. Never where I'd see her, but... I could tell."

She straightened when Eli scrubbed at his face with his sleeve, watching as he stood and stuffed his hands into his pockets. He'd done that since they were kids.

"Home is hours away!" the redhead whined childishly. It was really only about three hours by train, but that was beside the point.

Nevertheless, Lainey grabbed the handrail and pulled herself up off the step. She just wanted to go home, too. Maybe eat some ice cream. If she even had ice cream at her flat.