Visits to his grandparents were hardly his favourite activity, least of all when it was the height of summer holidays and Nicholas longed for nothing more than to focus on his whims and wants, be it flights of fancy or his ongoing quest to build his aerobic capacity in time for the new school year. But he understood what was required of him, his granddad was the family patriarch for one, and both he and Nicholas’s grandma loved their gaggle of grandchildren dearly and would be greatly upset if the whole month of July passed without a visit from their eldest son and his lot. But while the few days they would spend visiting were hardly offensive, the boy knew that they would be decisively boring. County Donegal was not only significantly more rural than Belfast but the particular part of the county that the Residence was in had not a neighbour in sight, just wind and rain.

But he'd made do, they all had, there had been more tea than he could drink. Then there'd been insistence that twelve was proper old enough for a lad to try firewhiskey and that attempts by Lachlan to stop his father from serving his son with the drink were soft-bellied. The family knew that it was all part of a game, but they played their roles to perfection, and the chuckles and joking arguments kept the nights from growing too dull.

But the game itself was not without its undertones, Nicholas alone had been named as old enough to try the drink, a fact that Travis had all but thrown a tantrum about. Were it an incident in isolation, it would have been left at that, but it wasn't, and throughout the stay the older McCowan seemed to hint more than a few times that Nicholas was older now, as if a year at Hogwarts had been at all enough to mature him. Some of his classmates perhaps, but Nicholas wasn't them. In fact he was so normal that it was abnormal. Death had not touched him, nor threatened him, he'd been but a spectator to the horrors inflicted upon the student base. Not that he was complaining about that, but when combined with his inadequacies elsewhere, he felt painfully behind in terms of skill and maturity. It bit at him, tore at his soul. He was supposed to be a somebody. Whether his grandfather sensed his feelings or if he had always intended to impart his wisdom to the boy, Nicholas did not know, but he found it had happened all the same.

The otherwise scorching summer day had been tempered by clouds and winds, not enough to hide the heat but enough to hinder it. Jock McCowan had called his grandson to wander the grounds with him, the wild expanse of untamed grasses that surrounded the Residence. The building had seen better days, the very image of former opulence reduced by age and loss of station, and the land itself seemed to mirror the fall.

They walked together for a while, idle chit chat filling the air, both man and boy in possession of the same tall and skinny stature. For a time, their silhouettes wandered in unison, a degree of casualness emanating even from a distance. It was only once the old man stopped and spoke, his tone distinctly different from what it had been not a moment before, that Nicholas knew that something had changed.

“So, how was the first year?” An unassuming question brimming with subtext.

“S’fine,” Nicholas shrugged, that same subtext entirely lost.

Jock’s eyebrow raised at the answer, obviously unsatisfied, “Fine? Not much of an answer, lad.”

“Nothing to write home about,” Nicholas elaborated, “Just a year.”

“You were happy with just a year?” Came the reply.

Nicholas blinked, dark eyebrows furrowing at the ad-hoc interrogation. What kind of question was that? “Aye, s’just a year, grandpa.”

Jock McCowan tutted and Nicholas could feel his hackles raise, for what purpose was his grandfather interrogating him? His mum had been more than content with his answers and explanations of the year, she’d even been overjoyed at the fact that he’d managed to avoid any of the danger that had plagued many of his upperclassmen.

“I know you, lad,” The old man spoke in his heavy brogue, “You were never the type to allow yourself to have just a year, you’d never allow that.”

Panic flashed in Nicholas’s eyes. The absolute last thing he wanted was to ever have to answer for himself, let alone to his family. He’d done nothing wrong and yet he was being treated as if he’d somehow disappointed the elderly codger by managing to avoid a train crash.

“Not everything needs to be…” He tried to fish for the word but couldn’t find it, instead he found himself standing dumbly before his increasingly smug grandfather.

“There’s no second place in life, Nico,” The answer came harsh, and in Ulster-Scots.

Instinctively, Nicholas switched to the language, not even registering the change, “What are you even talking about?”

“You’re a good kid, Nico, a kid who always knew what to do in order to succeed. In order to win.”

“What are you talking about?” The reply was harsher, anger beginning to tinge on the child’s voice.

“Don’t use that tone with me,” His grandfather snapped before softening, “I’m trying to teach you something. There’s no room for softness, no room for complacency, the second you get comfortable, you get dumb.”

“What does that have to do with me at all?” Anger mixed with confusion, the boy’s eyes twinkled with a mixture of rage and incomprehension.

“You’ll be the clan head one day,” The answer was flippant, “your siblings will rely on you, they already do, even if I can see that you want to throttle Trav every time you see him. You’ve got a great deal of potential, you’ve got drive, lad. Do not allow yourself to succumb to mediocrity, take what you want, if not for your own self but then for the Clan. We were great once, Nico, not only surviving but thriving. I want to see my line grow strong. I want to see you carry it to glory.”

“I-” But the response was lost, for the old man had turned away, leaving his flabbergasted grandson standing upon the grass.

“Remember the family words,” Was all he said as he left, surprisingly spry for a man of his advanced years.

Nicholas stood alone, trying to process what had just occurred. What the hell was that? He’d been browbeaten by his grandfather about his failure to stand out. It was nothing he hadn’t told himself, especially not toward the end of the school year, but he hadn’t been expecting it from a kindly old man he associated more with glasses of port and getting excited about the quidditch scores than family honour. They weren’t pureblooded, they made a point of reminding themselves of that, their wizarding blood did not elevate them above that of the muggles. After all, they had all been muggles once, muggles with more claim to title and to status than almost every pureblooded family west of the Channel. His father had hardly ever bothered to mention that history, and when he did it was in passing, as if it was lost to the past. It seemed that his father’s father had different ideas about tradition and about pride.

That same tradition had ingrained the family words upon their crest. Vae victus. Woe to the vanquished. The defeated had no say in their fate, history and their lot were to be written by the victors. The words were harsh, and their meaning more so, there was no place for second-guessing, nor was there time to try to allow oneself to be beset by doubts. If you were to lose, you were dead, it was a simple fact of life.

Nicholas lowered himself to the ground, suddenly aware of just how fatigued he was. The long wild grass bit at his bare legs as he did so, a reminder of the harshness of the lands upon which his ancestral home sat. Nicholas had been raised in the small little house in Belfast that his father too had grown up in, the elder McCowans only retiring out to Donegal as their own parents departed from the world. Tradition had been hammered into their bloodline for as long as the boy could remember, even if it was so often treated flippantly and with a subtle disregard. Maybe that too was tradition, adaptation to the modern era, another means to survive.

But his grandfather’s face rang true in his head, the shock of hearing the words had not lessened their value nor their meaning. The family, despite its words, had been conquered. Not by outside forces but by time and comfort. Maybe the future of his line did rest on his shoulders, maybe he had contented himself to mediocrity and merely allowed himself to retreat into delusions of fighting for his right to succeed. Grandeur had to be earned, he knew that. It was not blood or birth that allowed one to rise above their station, it was sheer undiluted drive and ruthlessness. Yet he’d allowed himself to be overtaken by the other students, he’d allowed himself to let not only himself down but his family.

Nicholas didn’t realise that his face been drawn taught into a snarl, only coming to the knowledge by the particular tightness around his forehead that such an expression wrought. What was he angry at? Who was he angry at? Himself for his lack of ambition? Perhaps, it was at his grandfather, perhaps his words were ludicrous, the ramblings of an old man trying to live vicariously through his progeny. Perhaps, it was directed at those who had bested him. Maybe the anger was driven by the fact that he didn’t know who to be angry at.

He had tried last year hadn’t he? Hadn’t he?

He didn’t know.

The realisation stung. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, who he was supposed to be. Perhaps that was the core of his grandfather’s words, perhaps he needed to stop trying to succeed per the requirements set and instead seize success, whoever in his way be damned.

No matter what it was, Nicholas hated the feeling that was welling inside of him. This year would be different, he would not allow himself to feel small again.