Growing Pains solo Finished

The kitchen floor had always been cold during the wintertime, and Hans regretted not having put snacks in his room beforehand.

He had not, which not only led to unnecessary hassle, but more so a conversation he had not been well-prepared for at such a late hour. Creaking open the refrigerator door with a noise far too loud than he had expected - not so used to mundane household items anymore, he noticed sourly, Hans grabbed for a Lebkuchen. Taking a bit of the cookie he almost choked at the voice from behind.

“Johannes?”

“Shit,” he cursed on instinct as his mother startled him, then realising whom he was speaking to corrected himself awkwardly, “Uh… sorry. Yes?” Turning to look at his mother Hans found himself taken aback at the dimly illuminated sight behind him. He hadn’t noticed Greta, much less the flickering Lumos shining almost ominously on the dining table, creating dancing shadows across her face. After two years immersed breathless in it magic was a sight all but too familiar, but just not in this household. In this household it was a sight so strange he started to wonder if it was all just a dream.

“Come, Hans, sit.”

Following instructions, the aspirating little lionheart sat to find another surprise. His mother rarely drunk, a past habit but she had tried to sober up ever since planning to have a child. The effort was admirable and more or less effective, which meant that whenever she had a beer in her hand, she had a thought on her mind, which, knowing his mother, was never a good thing so late at night. Eyes skirting to the table as he realised something was off, Hans stood suddenly, whipping the wand away. “Mama, Lumos creates heat, you shouldn’t have it on wood.” Fires, after the “Pyre” on Hogsmeade ceased to carry connotations as positive as they first had in his dormitory. And like any sane person he would rather not have his house burn down.

“Yes, you’re right, my bad.” With a soft “nox” she flicked her wand hard as if trying to extinguish a flame, then turned on the light almost in defeat. She couldn’t remember things like that anymore, and Hans knew that. He almost said something more, but bit his tongue seeing the exhaustion lining her face - and so soon after Christmas; frustration didn’t even wait in the face of the holidays. Eyes following her intently as Greta laid her face in her hands they sat in wordlessness for an painfully long minute. The lighting suddenly seemed a stark artificial contrast to the magic he had just witnessed, as if to sickeningly highlight the moment’s uncomfortableness.

“The last time you did that was when you were-” Hans started finally, breaking the silence.

“Sixteen,” she slowly finished for him, a faraway look in those same chocolatey eyes as each letter seemed to be stressed. “I haven’t touched my wand in thirty years.” Greta rested her head on the chair back, staring into the nothingness as Hans just sat by her side, the sudden conversation so startling that he, so silver-tongued and smooth talking, would rather see those hag slugs again than sit through the talk.

“So why now?”

“I’m not sure, actually.” Silence, again. Hans was not sensing a point in their calculated responses.

“Do you know why I stopped doing magic?” The unexpected question did not receive a prompt answer, not because Hans did not have one in mind - he did, it was simply that he could not bear to say the words “because you were scared of it”. With so many years of dismissing fear as that inconvenient, disgusting obstacle that barred him from opportunity after opportunity behind him, every time he blamed his mother for the terrors of the world was another time he felt ignorant. Was another time remembering how he too had been paralysed in horror when bombs were dropped in a world he had thought would never bring him harm. Was another time remembering that he felt naïve for believing the lie of utopia. Before him so many had suffered. Irina Zverera, the girl he was too ignorant to help, Meiyu Xiang, with troubles he certainly did know of; Nikolai Vol’ka, who thought his magic a curse. And for all this time, Greta Jenssen, whom he had even deemed to be idiotic. It didn’t feel like something he had the right to speak about.

“I can’t really give an answer.” He could imagine why, though.

“In 1994, the Triwizard Tournament was held once more despite the dangers and I was one of the Durmstrang students who attended. That year our professors had thought they had everything under control, but then Diggory from Hogwarts died, and Voldemort was reborn. And that was above all the dangerous events they had already. Suffice it to say that hadn’t left me feeling safe at all. Since then it wasn’t a game anymore. It was real. It will never be a game again.” One hand clasping onto Hans’, who was surprised at the contact but said nothing, while the other reached for another sip of the beverage. Continuing with brows furrowed she said, “But really that was just the last straw. I hated how Durmstrang taught us dark magic, hated the pureblood aristocracy, hated how dangerous it was to just exist in this world, you know? It was for my father, maybe it’s for you, but it was just not for me.”

It had been for him, perfectly fitting for that young, wide-eyed Hans who sought “that sweet, rapturous, but ever-fleeting edge” Valentin had so lovingly described. Durmstrang’s champion had been right. Then he could not have cared any less for deaths or suffering or the dark arts, for during those brief yet beautiful two years he had found that edge, whether it was on his broom or late in the night with his dorm mate, or under that pelting, August rain that now felt so unbelievably foreign. Even the fight with slugs during camp had been thrilling, humbling perhaps but still a hero’s first quest fresh out of his mundane status quo. Summer had only been a mere half a year before, but then was a world he will never return to. Because since Pyre it wasn’t a game anymore. It was real. It will never be a game again. Magic was no fantasy; fantasies weren’t weapons.

“Actually I get what you’re saying,” Hans said with a guarded cautiousness unlike him, “Going into magic I thought it would be the answer to all my problems, but in hindsight it only generated more problems. I think there’s a reason people call magic extraordinary - ordinary stuff is neutral, but extraordinary both grants you great gains and great losses. I just chose to see those gains over the losses, and they were great you know? But now I’m not sure? Like I don’t know why I’d bother with magic anymore. I feel stuck in between again. I just don’t know, and I don’t feel good with not knowing, you understand that, mama.” His gaze met hers as she looked up suddenly, fingers drawing listlessly on the wood. Hans pushed down the smile he was about to muster, allowing himself to drop those useless veneers for once.

“Why did you start doing magic? Because of Otto?”

“Yes.” Hans looked away in thought, then back again when he continued, “But not just because of him. He showed me a lot of things I would have never imagined, but I also think I have a legacy to fill that isn’t just in this world. That I could be more than whatever I was given, and that is just to get a good career and start a family like ours I feel, so we could draw even further away from you know the ‘extraordinary’. I don’t like- I don’t want to give up the only opportunity I was given. I don’t want what our family built up before to all go to waste. I don’t actually know if it makes sense anymore now I guess but that was what I thought.” His eyes flitted downwards in regret of the words he had never said before now.

“And what do you stay for?” Still she pushed, but her tone was far too gentle for that verb, and Hans supposed in ways his mother understood best.

“I’m not sure… Maybe I shouldn’t- maybe I just shouldn't stay at all.” Then he could have given his mother a million reasons, yet none of them had true basis. Had all those nights convincing himself to persevere been merely a precariously constructed foundation of excuses? Grades, athleticism, friends - all features of the magical realm but none of them had he been lacking in the Muggle one .... Yet instead of providing magic seemed to have cruelly taken away. He could still pretend to be a mirror image of the Hans who made facetious jests or had no care for anything, but he knew it was warped when he saw his own reflection. After Pyre he had still managed the laughter, but for far too long he too had been laughing on edge. For all the young Hans' faults, then he had been the boy he should have been. For something he had sacrificed so much for at such a young age, what good had it done him?

“Hm?” An enigmatically raised brow.

Hans paused, forcing himself to think for a proper answer. “I mean like, originally I think I had a very good reason to, but things are kind of different now. I don’t really know how to talk about it.” Involuntarily, his breath caught and he swallowed down both a bite of cookie far too dry and a truth he would rather not admit. “I- also…never mind.”

“Go on, what were you going to say?”

“I can’t let you down now that you’re supporting me in that decision.” Ah, there it was. Hans felt a dull throbbing in his heart, as his fingers clenched tighter around the sweet, almost leaving it in crumbs. Because this decision was exactly that, decisive, a one way road down a lane he did not know, mapless. He still couldn’t believe that life-changing Christmas Eve had been a mere few days ago; since then nothing felt the same as before, and even though words could not express his appreciation, it had thrust him into a position as foreign as magic first had. Expectations were now at the core of his life, from the unintelligible whispers of his peers and the implicit conversations with his parents, to the anticipated encouragements of his grandfather, and of course the unforgettable, constant shouting within his own self. In the past semester he had done everything to reassure himself the wizard, the friend, the son, the person he was was enough already, but beyond that bold bravado was the bolder plague of insecurity. If he had mastered one world he needed the other, if he was good enough he needed to be better. Hans thought himself a disappointment once before, how could he live with knowing he had let their hopes falter once more?

“Are we placing too much pressure on you?” The question came softly, but it still startled him. Pressure, it was a word he disliked in this life he masked as carefree. In Hans’ unreliable narrator’s storyline pressure never played into a part when he broke time after time as an athlete, nor when he strived for higher marks despite insisting he didn’t study, nor when he thought he could never compare to all of Durmstrang’s shining stars. Through all those years he had made it clear that no one would be allowed to put him under strain, but beneath thick skin every comment and critique had been taken deep into heart. But he should be burdenless, and Hans had preferred to keep it that way - exactly, just another veneer to keep up, it should be as instinctive as breath.

“No, not at all…” yet his voice was unsteady to even himself, “I want this.” Do you? After that deep intake of breath that didn't help or the fleeting of your eyes in random directions... do you? Yet who are you lying for?

“Alright then.” Mother said, then paused, an awkward element starting to feature an uncomfortable amount in this late night chat - perhaps "chat" was not used wholly canny here, a chat was a far too relaxed noun. “Forget everyone else, what do you want? What’s your dream?” Suddenly his first meeting with Valentin came flooding back to him all again. Always decked in fine clothing and attention then Hans felt he had everything, and if he could become the upperclassman he would have his wildest fantasies come to reality. That he no longer held to be true, Valentin no longer a standard, but the champion’s words still stayed with him after all this time, worded as simply as it was… There are so many dreams one can chase in life. He was young, with still so much time and energy on hand, and yet he still had no idea. What was his?

“I don’t know. That’s a very big question to ask.”

“Well, let's brainstorm... what could a boy want? Fame, wealth, success, happiness?” All fair proposals, but she would not get the fairest of responses.

After all being out of words was a feeling Hans never allowed himself to experience, and he had no plans to start today. Due to this protest against often he said things meant to deliver an unpleasant naïve cheekiness. He may not have bricks and stone, but straw and mud were better to fill up the gaping hole of silence than leave the wound open. If he was lucky perhaps it would even strike on his mother’s fickle humour, and elicit a ice-shattering laughter he felt, considering he direction this was going towards, of urgent importance. “Mom, you sound like a therapist.” It came out harsher than he had expected as he inched away from his mother.

“I had to be my own for years.” His remark had been an offhand comment, one meant to spark some joy among their depressing talk and yet it worked only for the opposite effect. The reply left him speechless for as usual that tongue he thought as smooth was unresponsive for her. As much as Hans tried he never understood Greta, but then again Rome was not built overnight, and rash fire was not the answer to everything - that he had learnt harshly. It would be celebratory that tonight was a plank in their bridge just as any other. His mother was as much of an enigma as she had been all those years ago, and fine, while they were still not the best at communicating, Hans was working on it.

“But you could have just told me about your situation before. I would have understood,” Hans insisted. Would he have, though? Now even to him his words sounded far too forced to make for proper reassurance. Back then, when he was so hellbent on following that path to what he thought must have been a utopia? Recklessly ambitious, could he really have given a flying fuck when all he saw in his mother was an obstacle in his way, from her past and now in his present? Then Greta was more than an annoyance in his premature rebelliousness, having so crudely come to the baseless conclusion that his life would be so much better off without her in the picture. Dismissive, he would have waved his hand and headed off anyways arrogant into the face of a house cat rashly thinking he had been victorious over a lion. Such was the state of his existence for most of his late childhood: believing he was fearless in rushing waters and yet to have left the kiddy pool. Oh yes, that utopia as he had so rushed to call it must have become the epicentre of his callow ten-some years; after all, why would he have cared otherwise when all he ever wanted seemed to be in arm’s reach.

“You never listened… Johannes.”

“Yes… I know, that was my bad.” Hans stopped, gaze glumly staring into the dark nothingness of a distraction outside. Straightening, he continued, “But I will listen now, which I hope is what I was doing today. I don’t know how well it turned out, but I guess we’re all trying something new today, aren't we?” They were all trying, but if trying was always enough Hans would have been the happiest man on earth already. Yet while the fault was his that around his mother Hans’ defences were still up, they were holding on too strong to be allowed fallen, so instead of allowing himself to wallow in pensiveness before her, he simply stood and smiled a smile that didn’t look quite right, with “Sorry, I’m tired,” as his only explanation, though Greta must have known him well enough to understand fatigue was not the only thing drawing borders between them once more.

“You did finely. You always do, even if sometimes I can’t be by your side to congratulate you.” She turned, and said one final thing with a matching, small, delicate smile, “Don’t forget to brush your teeth. Good night, Hans.”