LUNAR (A Harry Potter Universe Fanfiction)

Sixteen. Sun Violet.

There was a big product launch coming up the following week and it had everyone in the office working overtime, which meant that Sean, who always worked overtime, could have worked through the night all week long and still wouldn't have been caught up. He had acquired a taste for coffee he'd never had before out of sheer necessity.

Evelyn had commented on this when he'd brought a bag of grounds home a few days previously. She'd come into the kitchen to make breakfast, not yet showered or dressed for the day, while he flicked his wand to fill his travel mug and had paused and said, "I didn't know you liked coffee."

For some reason, this comment irked him to no end. He had barely responded in the moment, but he had fumed about it for hours afterward, which only made him think how, had he confided in her, Evelyn would have told him it was nothing to waste his energy feeling angry about. Knowing this would be her response only made him angrier.

Evelyn didn't get it. Not anymore. She always had before, but she wouldn't now. She couldn't. She would downplay everything he was dealing with and come up with simple, obvious solutions to make everything better, and none of them would be remotely plausible, but she would go on in that perfectly calm, superior way she had always used to show off how grown up she was compared to everyone else.

All the things he had always appreciated about Evelyn were suddenly the things he couldn't stand. It was easier to be mad at something he knew well than to be mad at something he didn't understand at all. That was the truth of it.

And Sean knew it.

He just wouldn't let himself think about it.

So he went on fuming, letting his irritation be a constant soundtrack to accompany the endless piles of work he was stumbling his way through day after day.

Rhett came in at about four in the afternoon. "Hey there, Champ," he said. "Wrapping up for the night?"

Sean couldn't even justify this question with a response. He was so obviously behind. He'd been getting all manner of guilt-trips and pressure all week long for not having checked off every box people kept dumping onto his overpopulated to-do list.

"Just checking in on that engagement report," he said. "We really need that in by tomorrow morning."

"Right," said Sean. "i'll have it done."

"Good man," said Rhett, clapping Sean on the back, and he left again. Sean heard him calling goodnights to everyone else as he went down the hall on his way out. Sean put his head down on the desk and allowed himself two entire minutes to vent to himself and then he sat up and got back to work.

—-

When Sean finally got home, Evelyn was in bed again. She had been sitting up, covers pulled up over her legs and knees tucked up to her chest, staring at the wall next to the door. Her head felt so blank and empty, she didn't think a single coherent thought had passed through it in the last hour. Not until the moment she heard the crack of apparation as Sean arrived. She quickly reached for her book and flipped open to where she'd left off, but she only pretended to be reading when Sean came in.

She said a small, "Hi," but didn't comment on how late he'd gotten back. She knew better than that now. She knew better than to ask how his day had been, too.

"Hi," said Sean, but he barely looked at her. Evelyn stared at the same page in her book the whole while that Sean got ready for bed and laid out his clothes for work the next day. She waited until he started heading for the bed to close it and put it back on the nightstand, no further along than she had been when she picked it up.