Perfection isn't overrated on At Home

Owain Clyde

May 14, 2020 7:11 AM

Perfection isn't overrated by Owain Clyde

He was a good man who deserved to be happy and he’d found it with Deidre. She had been everything to him and their life together had been perfect, doubling in happiness and perfection when Josie was born. For the first few years they had been happy together, but he knew that it had expiration date. He’d never told Deidre that he was a wizard. As much as he loved his heritage he also prayed that it would skip Josie, but he knew the odds of that were low.

When her magic began spilling out, as it did with all young children, he’d been able to keep it a secret. Passing the incidents off as freak accidents or funny happenstances would only last for as long as he could explain it away. He’d been lucky, but it all came to a head and, after an unavoidably magical incident, he came clean. He was a wizard and so was their baby.

Understandably, she’d been confused, she hadn’t even believed him at first, but that confusion had given way to outrage and fear. If he wasn’t the man she’d thought him to be then who was he? What was their marriage if it was built on lies? Were his feelings for her even real? Were hers? Did he just force her to fall in love with him? What had he done to Josie? What were they always doing on the roof?

He’d tried so hard to make her see reason, to make her see his side of things, but to no avail. She tried to leave him and that was one thing he would never accept.

The Clydes had always been good with Charms and with a few well-placed memory charms Owain had his happy family again. Josie’s magical outbreaks became a million times more manageable when he could just alter it into something else. He took Josie up to the roof to teach her about her history and their lineage.

Maybe it was because the first time had gone over so smoothly. It had emboldened him. He spent years altering Josie’s memory; giving and taking away lessons about being magical. His wife had never thought it strange; after all, it was sweet when a father could spend so much time with his daughter. In all honesty, when Deidre died he had felt relief before sadness, relieved that he no longer had to fiddle with the memories of his family. To live a lie.

But now Josie was at Sonora, learning magic in a formal setting. She’d be excellent at Charms, of that he had no doubt, but it was what might happen when she continued learning. Would she learn about memory charms and see the similarities to the patches in her own memory? Would she remember the strange absentmindedness of her mother and see it in a new light? Would it even affect her?

Not knowing drove him insane and it wasn’t as if he could ask either. Josie was coming home for the summer from her first year at Sonora. She would be filled to the brim with new magical knowledge and as excited as he was for her he was also apprehensive. He could only hope that Josie would never remember, never realize. That way they could keep their perfect family a little longer. Keep it perfect forever.

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Minnie Martin

June 11, 2020 7:51 AM

Delusions of grandeur by Minnie Martin

After the atrociously liberating end of her marriage Minnie had been quite content to spend the rest of her days as far away from that wretched excuse of a human being as possible. She’d left London for him, moved to the colonies for him, across the pond and away from her family and her roots and for what? For him? What an absolute waste of a perfectly good life. She had had a job at the Ministry of Magic. Naturally it was nothing too terribly important, but a Ministry job was a Ministry job. It fed what little professional drive and ambition she had and satisfied her. Then along came her ex-husband and his lofty ideas.

Move to America with me. I’ve found an excellent job there. You won’t need to work ever again. We can finally have children. There’s a magic school there. Quite good from what I heard. Come now darling, isn’t it my turn to make you happy? You can always find a job at the American Ministry. So off they went to the wilds of America. In truth, it was the chance of a MACUSA job that had made her relent. She had a few friends who’d gone to America years earlier and they had all found jobs with the “American Ministry”. With connections and the promise of a happy husband she was confident in her ability to adapt to her new life. But she quickly found that the fulfilling American life she’d envisioned had been nothing but that, a vision.

The impressive spec of his job had been trussed up like a Christmas goose, all glistening skin, but a tough and dry interior. She would have cursed him, but she was unfamiliar with the American laws and settled for verbally spewing hate at him instead. They’d fought magnificently and the passion that had led them to getting married at 18 made the kiss and makeup portion of their battles all the more passionate. All the making up led to her first pregnancy, not that it had made any significant difference in their relationship dynamic. Tumultuous and lonesome, she’d wanted nothing more than to Floo home and spend the remainder of her pregnancy among friends and family, but he stopped her. Not physically, of course, after all, he was a Squib. If she’d truly wanted to go home he couldn’t have stopped her. No, it was his thoughts that stopped her. She was no Legilimens, but she could practically taste his beliefs. He thought any child that they had would be magical and to this day, two beautiful, perfect, healthy sons later, she had no idea why.

Her ex-husband had been nothing but a Squib, even if he would never admit that to himself. The only child of two half-bloods meant that he grew up surrounded by magic, but never be able to access it. His parents had looked at her with pity and confusion when she met them the first time. What would someone like her, pureblooded comfort, see in a Squib from two half-bloods? But it was the iron grip of teenage hormones that won over common sense and the disapproval of her family. They almost eloped and it was only the pleas of her sickly grandmother that made them stay. Oh it was a happy marriage, at first, then it soured and curdled, but she was pregnant with their second child, stuck in the Americas, without a stable income. It took her years before she was free of him and by then she had a menial job at MACUSA and the boys were seven and ten.

Never again would she be swept off her feet by a man with fanciful delusions. Then along came Owain Clyde.

44 Minnie Martin Delusions of grandeur 0 Minnie Martin 0 5