For Everything solo Closed

Roleplaying as Hans Jenssen

Christmas. Oh how Hans dreaded the holiday he once so adored. With his reunion with his parents would come not laughter and relief but their familiar quarrels and relentless badgering that they only had his best intentions in mind, tearing him between the two worlds when he had so confidently thought he could experience a foot in both. He had entered what had been perceived as an idealised utopia thinking he would even be willing to sacrifice his past life for the future one if he was called do so. Now after seeing them in their true colours why must he trade one for the other? And why must both sides have such compelling arguments? The German, dauntless as he was, had no qualms with a good challenge, no, what he feared was being challenged by the people whom he loved, for it always pained him so deeply to fight back.

The tick of the clock suddenly became unbearably loud, the constant reminder that whatever family fun time he would enjoy soon would only be a temporary bliss. Like everything else Christmas was bound to be but a distraction. Lost in thought, Hans would find himself zoning out as his fingers rested absent-mindedly over his fork, which he had been poking into his sausage for definitely more times than necessary.

“Johannes?”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Now, dear, we’ve been considering your place at Durmstrang. Would you like to hear?” Fuck no - though of course he would never say that - when just once he thought they could dance around the sensitive topic for at least the two days of Christmas, there his mother was, casually leaning over potato salad as if what she was about to say wouldn't matter the world to him.

“Mama, please, I don’t want to talk about it now. I’m scared it would lead to all sorts of arguments and unpleasantness,” the boy said, forcing down both his trepidation and the last spoonful he could muster. After the turmoil of last semester could he not even be blessed with two - two! - days of reconciliation before ruining their delicate relationship once more with shouting and tears. Often he found himself plagued with heartache, simply because this tearing back and forth left him too exhausted, as if he was merely a pawn for the fight of power between his parents and grandfather. If only it would cease long enough for him to regain his bearings and heal the many wounds inflicted along the way he would be thankful. The words had been formed long before, he knew already to whom he owed apologies and gratefulness, and how overdue they were.

“When did you become scared of things, hm, Johannes? I thought you were quite positively invincible.” It was difficult to discern the playful sarcasm in her voice, a tone Hans rarely picked up on or truthfully, cared to listen to. The arrow struck at his Achilles’ Heel; fear and fearlessness was a subject he would still feel sore bringing up with his mother. Since the stout-hearted boy first learnt of her uneasy history giving up magic, blame for giving up unimaginable opportunities had been shot her way. Yet then naïvety still coursed through his blood, as often happened hand in hand with recklessness. Then his innocence was perhaps a blessing, for he did not know of the horrors he would see first hand in a world he thought would be perfection. Then he was oblivious to not simply the desire but the adamant need to protect, which was all his mother had been striving for. With an unsuccessful attempt to dodge the ruffle she gave his hair, he flashed her mother a look a familiar annoyance meant a disguise for his disgruntlement.

“Mama!-” He protested loudly, only to be cut off as soon as he begun.

“Come,” came the collected voice of his father, extending a hand towards him as nonchalantly as his mother’s tone, “If you don’t want to talk let’s open your present first.” Gripping onto it reluctantly, Hans rose with uncertainty. He had his own guesses for what he would be getting this year: objects, and only objects - things impersonal as can be, but things worth too much for him to decline, designed more as a bribe for him to stay in their world than anything. On the Amazon Wishlist he had not touched for God knows how long still sat that huge resource for products he had thought he wanted but could not care for less anymore. Since his youth he knew value was not born from how much money had been spent, but since his youth he knew the value in material could never be denied.

Awaiting Hans was an abnormally long yet abnormally thin box that left him with more questions than guesses. What first caught his attention was the Christmas card placed atop, different from the red and greens he usually received in all its gold-glittered shine. Opening it gingerly as if it was to contain some bomb inside, his eyes scanned over his mother’s distinctly crisp handwriting. Biting down an inexplicable complexity of emotions he hesitated. Admittedly, the card read more as a letter than what it was meant to be, but clearing his throat at his father’s gesture, Hans begun to read aloud,

“Dear Johannes,

From the very beginning you have brought us all the delight we could ever ask for. You are resilient, loving, and kind-hearted, yet we feel we appreciate that too little. We have had our fair share of arguments, as we believe all parents and their children do, but beneath that headstrong mordancy” - trust his parents to use words like ‘mordancy’ in a Christmas card - “of yours is our beautiful, brave son. We have been blessed with a child with as many dreams as you, and we wish to support them to the best of our ability. You have always been our light and we strive to be yours. Through these turbulent and ever-changing times, we hope the holidays can bring you a spark of joy. Merry Christmas!

Love,
Mama and Papa.”

Fluttering to the ground was a piece of Polaroid film with a muddied background. Kneeling to pick it up, his soul left him for the past, when pleasures were simple and magic was the least of their worries. Scribbled onto it with a ballpoint pen was a messily-drawn tree that he guessed to be his own work. The photo had to be from a good ten-something years ago, but he could easily recognise his father and the toddler hoisted onto his back, touching the topmost angel on the Christmas tree. Same curtained windows, same bare walls, same man, different boy.

Reducio

Setting the picture down and forcing away his nostalgia, his hands paused over the unwieldily box, uncertain where to open but more so surprised by the sudden change of tone something as unremarkable as the card. He had his defences up, he had been prepared to dispute, had braced himself for it. Hans felt almost shaken, uncertain how to proceed. He shouldn’t be startled. It shouldn’t matter. He shouldn’t care. Of course, everything started to matter as he, accepting the crafting knife from his father, cut into the binding.

“Oh good God…” There Hans knelt, absolutely stunned, out of words, unable to believe the glorious sight in front of him. That meticulously designed silver handle was one he would knew any second of the day after having fantasised about owning it for as long as he mounted his first broom. His hands shook with excitement as he delicately, nervously edged crafting knife into tape, so afraid he might cut the wood but with such a magnificent tingling of thrillful glee shuddering through his body. Without even having to look at her he knew she was spectacular, divine, sensational! A Silver Arrow! A real, actual Silver Arrow and it was for him!

“Go on, son, open it.”

Oh how beautiful she was. 172 galleons, handmade - handmade! - by Leonard Jewkes, and reaching speeds of more than 100 kilometres an hour. Every inch of the grain, every bump and groove in the wood, every edge perfectly sanded down. Gripping his fingers around the handle and loosening them again, Hans’ imagination ran wild with scenes of him on the broom. How it would look like a shooting star in the sky, glinting under the sunlight, framing him in a halo of glory… and leading him to victory in his next race!

But all of that barely mattered. With eyes still wide in surprise, the boy shot his father a wild look of pure astonishment and was returned with a heartening smile. For half his life his grandest dream in the magic he so sought had always been scorned, ever since they first came to mind passions and hopes were dismissed as nothing more than an absurd waste of time, for as long as he could rememberHans had been denied what he wanted most. He thought his parents would never understand his pursuits, and yet now, when he expected it least, was acceptance. Not merely acceptance but miraculously encouragement. To think if he came home thrilled to have broken a personal record he would not be greeted with prompts to spend his time more productively but someone to share his pride with - that was all he wanted but what he thought he would never receive. Even if his achievements were not the one they had expected, only would unconditional support come his way, and that gleeful realisation would make all the difference.

“No…. You didn’t have to. That’s gotta be expensive,” still Hans backtracked, not yet quite believing the sudden u-turn their relationship took. His mother tipped her head and his father was still smiling, their gaze unwaveringly steady as he met theirs with uncertain eyes, as if to reinforce: It’s all yours. As jubilation rushed into his heart, he gently placed the broom back into its box, turned and beamed at his parents with all the joy he could ever experience renewed on his face. “I love you.” The present could wait, for now Hans only rushed into their open arms.

“We love you too, dear.”

“And thank you. Truly. Not just for the broom obviously. For everything. For your understanding and your support and your love and your faith in me. I know everything you said in that letter was because you loved me and you didn’t want to see me hurt. I should have… I know you love me and I hate always going against you and I never meant to make you worried, I- I just-” The words he had been waiting to say for an eternity slipped out of him, not in the calculated precision he had envisioned but a mess of emotion. There had always been so many things Hans wanted to say to his parents, who he too often blamed for his problems and too often appreciated too little of. Blind to how much they had given him he had only put them into fault with exaggerated magnification, two weeks suddenly felt like very little time to spend with them. Instantly he felt like the child he should have been again, opening up his heart instead of keeping everything hidden under a veil of rebellion. Too overwhelmed to brush away the tears sliding down his cheeks, he melted into their embrace, trailing off into sobs while the broom sat ignored on the floor.

“Shush Johannes…”

He quieted, then breathed out a soft, small, “I’m sorry.”

“Come now, what have you got to be sorry for?” Everything. Through all those years, from the way he thought of them to the way he talked to them to the way he evaded them. The guilt that had been plaguing him since having first read their letter was an icy knife twisted in his chest, but it was his mother's comforts that gently pulled it out, dabbing at the wound and stopping his heart from flowing out on that torrent of blood. His mother, holding him like she had all those years ago, like nothing had changed.

“Cheer up, Hans, merry Christmas.”