Shell Shocked

Why was she doing this? This was the worst idea ever. She didn't want to tell them. Though she knew she should. Ginny sighed, running a hand through her red hair, summoning her resolve. She knew this was going to go down badly. Her relationship with Lily was already a little wobbly, and she couldn't see James taking it well at all, and Albus...she grimaced. She didn't even want to think about it.

Heading to the stairs, Ginny called up to her kids, knowing they'd probably be in their rooms. Unless Albus disappeared to Scorpius' house again. That train of thought was so not helping. Best to not think about that. At all. "Kids! Get downstairs now, I have something I need to tell you!"

Whether she wanted to do this or not, she had to, Ginny knew that. There was no way around it. She had to suck it up and do what she had to do. She'd stared down death eaters, she could bloody well handle her children. And the sooner they knew, the easier it would be to juggle seeing them and seeing Zach. Because they would definitely be seeing each other more often.

This was why Christmas sucked. Normally Christmas didn't really suck because you got presents and presents were awesome. But you also had to get other people presents and that was just hard.

So James had been leaning against the wall and banging his head against it repeatedly, trying to think of something to get his siblings. Was it acceptable to give his young brother a pack of beer? Ha. Like he'd ever give Albus something he could drink himself. Maybe he could give him an old shirt or something.

The oldest Potter boy groaned when he heard his mother yelling. Yay, telling them stuff. That didn't sound like it would be something painful at all. Was it a good or a bad thing that they were all home now? Beside Dad, of course, but he was too much of a touchy subject for everyone.

Lazily, James made his way down the stairs and raised his eyebrows at his mother once he saw her. "Have you ruined dinner or something? Has something been set on fire? Cos if it was, it was Albus. Not me."

So far, for the great majority of the time Lily had spent back at the Potter household for the Winter break, she'd been questioning exactly what in Merlin's name had possessed her to return in the first place. Before she'd began going to Hogwarts, Christmas was something to look forward to. It had been her favorite holiday (besides Halloween, of course).

Now, she couldn't find it in herself to spend more than fifteen minutes away from her books and be downstairs, having 'family bonding time' with her parents and siblings. But that was when she still had parents and siblings. Lily only had her mum (but they fought so much their relationship hardly resembled a mother-daughter one, anymore), and two brothers who weren't around so often that it was like she didn't have two brothers at all.

Lily slammed her book shut, dropping it onto her desk and rubbed her temples irritably. This better be good. She followed her brother down the stairs, arms crossed and scowling bitterly at everything and everyone. "Obviously nothing's on fire, James, otherwise there'd be smoke. Duh." She rolled her eyes at her brother's stupidity. Everything seemed stupider when she was at home. "Why you insist on making these kinds of jokes, I'll never understand. They're not funny at all."

Albus had actually wanted to stay at Hogwarts during Christmas break, and he had nearly done so. But if he stayed at Hogwarts, he wouldn't be seeing Scor at all. And if he went home, he could at least go and visit (because Albus didn't really liked spending time in his own house anymore) him as often as possible. Everything reminded him of his dad, even though he had been gone for nearly a year now. Albus was still convinced he would come back. Because he was Harry Potter. Harry Potter always came back. He just spend most of his time locked away in his room, even though part of that could probably also be blamed on the fact he was a moody teenager, although Albus would never admit that.

He'd changed quite a bit since he was a child. Or even a First year. The boy himself claimed not to notice it, but it was probably quite obvious to anyone else that wished to see. After his mum found out about him and Scor (in a not that pleasant way), Albus felt quite uncomfortable around her. Even though she'd accepted them (which he was grateful about) he didn't know what to do about the embarrassment he felt when he saw her. Because he'd gone to Hogwarts before they could really resolve the awkwardness, Al still felt it when he got home for Christmas break.

His mum called that she had something to tell him, and Albus wanted to pretend that he didn't hear, but went downstairs anyway.

"I agree with Lily there James, I mean, no fire without smoke. And clearly it would've been you, because you're the clumsy one. Everyone knows that," he said as he entered the living room, leaning against the wall and looking at his mum. "What did you have to tell us then?"

Ginny's three little angels. Though Lily was being quite grumpy. And it worried her that she seemed to find James slightly more amusing than his siblings. Clearly having him live at home again was having a negative influence on her. Though Albus kind of had a point. She would look at James first as far as fires went. Especially after he tried cooking bacon.

"Come sit down," Ginny said, though more for her benefit than anyone else's. She needed to sit down. Badly. "I have something very important to tell you all, and you're probably not going to like it," she really could've done without saying that. Damnit she wanted a strong drink right about now. How was she going to phrase this again? It wasn't like she'd been thinking about it for days on end.

"It's been a year since your father went on his mission," was she really doing this? "And a little less than a year since he was reported missing," Albus still believed him to be alive. He was going to hate her. She didn't want him to hate her. "Even before he left, our...marriage was a little bit rocky, and..." she trailed off. She had no idea where to go from here. How could she break this to them slowly?

She looked up, staring each on of them in the eyes. Ginny was not a coward. "I'm seeing someone."

That was a gross exaggeration of exactly what her relationship with Zach was. Not a coward then, just a bit of a truth-tweeker.

"I feel sorry for you lot," James shook his head, folding his arms and resisting the urge to pout as he leaned against the wall, eying his siblings. "You act like you're not dying from laughter on the inside from all my amazingly org-" No can't use that word, Lily's here. "-brilliantly perfect and hilarious jokes, and instead you pretend to like used up old shittery." James shook his head again. "You sadden me, but never mind, at least I still have Lou."

It took him a moment to realise his brother has called him the clumsy one and he gasped dramatically. Merlin, what a Slytherin whore Albus could be. "Hey, you silly little-" Got to stop wanting to swear so badly. "I'm not the clumsy one! I'm not the one that might fall out a window later! On accident of course, out of sheer clumsiness."

Okay, got to pay attention to Mum now, James. Was he going mad? He was talking to himself quite a lot now. Maybe he had hit his head against the wall too hard. Or maybe he was drunk, that wouldn't be the first time. Because of his momentarily distracted mind, James only started listening to his mother in midspeech, though when he heard what she said he wished he'd tuned her out completely.

The hell did she just say-?! "You're what now?" he demanded, voice angrier than he meant it to be. Or wait, maybe it wasn't angry enough. "Are you-" he couldn't continue, his arms dropped to his sides and he stared at his mother, a lot of complicated feelings mixing in a bubbling pit in his stomach. "You're shitting me, right? Tell me you're joking."

Lily's eyebrow shot upward as James paused in the middle of his sentence, changing his mind mid-word. She regarded her brother coldly. "Yes, we're definitely all dying from laughter. I can hardly breathe from laughing so hard."

All irritation at being taken away from her bedroom and her books dissipated all at once at hearing her mother's words. "You are? She is?" she spluttered, turning to her brothers to check whether they'd heard the same as she had, utter and complete disbelief evident in her voice. Surely she had just been imagining things. Her mother? In a relationship? How was her mother in a relationship? How did that even make sense? Were mothers even allowed to be in relationships with other people that were not their husbands? A hundred questions whirled around Lily's head, but she squashed each and every one of them as soon as they appeared. Silly questions, they were - of course her mother was allowed to be in a relationship with someone other than Harry; he had been gone for months now - but Lily couldn't help but half-hope that some of them were actual, genuinely legitimate questions.

Lily also hoped that no one else would point out the fact that their mother was at perfect liberty to do whatever she wanted with whomever she wanted because it wouldn't technically be cheating, per se. If only for the fact that her mother was her mother and Lily's mother should not be allowed to see other people who weren't Lily's father because that would mean that Harry really was gone (which, even despite insisting that he was when their mother had broken the news, she had never really come to terms with) and there was nothing left to help her pretend that he wasn't. Also that no child should have to have their mother tell them that they were dating - that was just... Dating just wasn't meant for old people with children. It just wasn't meant to be a topic of discussion between a parent and their children if it was the parent who was doing the dating.

This really, really couldn't be happening to her, though. Maybe she'd wake up any second now, upstairs, in her room, from a horrible, horrible nightmare. Lily fought to keep her jaw off the floor and her composure intact. "With who?"

Albus needed quite some willpower not to stick his tongue out at James. He didn't, because he wasn't a ten year old anymore, but he really, really wanted to. "You sure about that brother? Because I have a feeling that you'd fall from a window way faster than I would, with your two left feet and all," he said instead, crossing his arms over his chest. But before Al, or James, could say something else, their mother interrupted them and blurted out something that Al did not expect to hear, nor did he want to hear it, at all.

He fell silent, and let his siblings to the talking for now. She was seeing someone. Someone that wasn't their dad because their dad wasn't here yet. His mum was cheating on his dad. She was just throwing him away like he meant absolutely nothing to her. Albus bit his lower lip to keep himself from saying things he would regret, even though he wanted to say it all. Shout and scream and curse. He wanted to keep himself from saying anything, he really did, but the Slyhterin had never been very good at keeping his mouth shut.

"And you're just tossing dad away like that? He's not dead you know, he's going to come back and you'll be seeing some shitty other guy?" he hissed out the words with as much venom in his voice as he could manage. It was all he could do to keep himself from shouting.

Usually her children's banter had Ginny mildly amused, even if she tried not to show it. Today she was more concerned with what she had to say to really pay attention to them. She was too scared of their reactions to get caught up in anything else. She wished she didn't feel so guilty, if she didn't feel guilty that would make the whole thing so much simplier. The fact she felt guilty meant she had done something wrong.

James was angry. She'd expected anger. It was probably better than the complete truth of what was going on. It still hurt, even if she'd prepared for it, and understood why he was angry. It still hurt.

Lily sounded more shocked than anything else. Which was better than anger, at least. Though there was that horrific queston. The question she was dreading the most. Oh, how she wished she could now say the name of someone they'd never heard of, or someone that they at least liked a little bit. She wasn't entirely sure what they thought of their Charm's Professor, but she was fairly certain it wasn't amazing.

It was worse when Albus started speaking. She squeezed her eyes shut, taking a moment to compose herself. She had to stay calm. You didn't answer anger with anger. It would just make him more angry. This was the moment she was dreading. The moment where one of them mentioned their father.

"It's a lot more complicated than just that, Al," Ginny said as softly as she could. "I know this is hard for you, for you all, but it's hard for me also. We all have our seperate ways of dealing with things, especially things like this, so please understand that. I'm not just...tossing your father away."

She couldn't delay it any more. She gave a slightly shaky smile to Lily. "And to answer your question, his name is Zach. Zach Smith. You all know him, so it'll make the introductions a lot easier." Ginny looked at each of them again, trying to think of something tosay to make it better, though she could feel her eyes beginning to water. She could think of nothing. Nothing that would make them less angry.

His mother was dating someone else. His mother was dating. James wasn't even dating, but his married mother was dating. His supposedly married-to-James'-father-mother. Was she being serious? That didn't even make sense. His mother wasn't allowed to date people. His mother was married to his father. Even if his father wasn't technically there and he probably dead, if you thought about it. Though no-one in the family seemed to like to discuss that option, so what was James supposed to do with that? Wait for him to come back? Or admit to himself that he very possibly didn't have a father anymore?

"Do you have no decency?" James snapped, though he wasn't sure if his words were heard over Al's hisses. It was almost worrying how scary the younger boy sounded - it seemed like Al had finally grown into a proper Slytherin, but James didn't have time to dwell on that. He had more disturbing things to get to the bottom of.

He almost wanted to point out to his brother that their father was most likely dead, but he felt like that would be siding with their mother. And there was no way in Hell that he was going to even think about forgiving her, until she had explained herself and preferably told them this was all just a shitting joke-

"SMITH!?" James was completely blindsided and for a moment he was afraid he'd fall over. He pushed himself from the wall and took a step towards his mother, staring at her. There was like something inside of him was exploding and for a (slightly horrific) moment he wanted to reach out and grab his mother's shoulder and shake her. But he stopped himself by looking away from her and focusing on something else. He just wanted to look at something else - anything else than his mother, right now.

Lily blinked, feeling more stunned than she had ever in her life. "You have got to be kidding me," she muttered, voice barely audible in comparison to Albus's venom-filled hiss and James's snapping. "Of all people..." Of all people, why in Merlin's name did it have to be Professor Smith, of all people? No, not Smith. He wasn't to have any of her respect, now, not after this. Lily had never particularly liked the head of Hufflepuff, but he was a professor and that automatically commanded some degree of respect from her, at least. Well. Not anymore.

She listened numbly as her brothers, in turn, expressed their displeasure with this new development, agreeing completely and wholeheartedly with everything being said. Lily flinched, slightly, when Albus insisted their father was still alive; he wasn't, because it just simply wasn't possible (no one, not even the boy-who-lived, could survive for this long on his own), but she refused to be the one to point it out.

Lily took a deep, shuddering breath to steel herself. "Of all people you could've slept with," she murmured, pausing in an effort to find words again (so rarely did she find herself lacking words to express her thoughts), "you had to choose Smith, didn't you?" She locked her gaze on her mother, filling it with as much hatred as she could muster. Of course, this was probably typical of the Potter family; nothing could ever happen normally, not even their mother starting a relationship after she had recently been widowed. Key word being recently. It hadn't been a year since Harry had disappeared. Merlin, the scandal it would cause when word leaked. Of all people, why did her mother have to choose her professor?

Lily ripped her eyes off of Ginny and turned to her brothers. "Y'know what? If mum wants to whore herself out to Smith, it's her choice, isn't it? What and who she does in her spare time isn't any of our business at all, and we should respect that." She closed her eyes, inhaling and exhaling deeply to calm her nerves, feet already carrying her back out of the kitchen and up the stairs, back into her room and books where everything still made sense. "I'm just so done with all of you."