Creating a future

[Philip Garwin]

"You can't do this." Pip stared at her furiously, jaw tight with frustration and fingers curled into fists with the anger that always seemed to be simmering just under the surface of his skin. He wouldn't never hurt her, would never lay a hand on any female, but the temptation to shake some sense into her empty head was overwhelming. This wasn't the sharp-tongued, headstrong girl he had fallen in love with; that girl would never have let her family rule her in this way. There was no trace of his Natalia in those bitter and resigned brown eyes. He hadn't seen his Natalia in months, not since she had left him and erased nearly all signs of his one time presence in her life. Rosalind and Riona hadn't left his side in nearly as long because, while Killian's little sister wasn't as close to Rosa as Layla was (no two girls could ever be as close as his sister and Ashlyn's cousin, Pip privately thought, because the two girls were as close as sisters and seemed very nearly telepathic sometimes), they were still family, and Leon was probably the closest thing Pip had to a best friend.

"You don't get a say in this, Philip. My family will take responsibility for Cecelia's shoddy potions making. No one need ever know." That was only partially true and they both knew it. Oh, certainly, no one would ever have any concrete proof. Every inch of clothing and silver jewellery touching Natalia's skin had spells and charms woven within them to project a strong and nearly impenetrable glamour. To his eyes, she was as beautiful and lithe as ever. It was an impressive net of spellwork, doubtlessly the best that the vast Ramírez fortune could afford. In the back of his mind, Pip briefly wondered whether Nieve had been consulted before promptly shoving that line of thought away because if Nieve knew then Gabriel probably knew and he couldn't bear to think that his family had kept something like this from him. His mind wasn't fooled by the image before his eyes however. Pip had been at the sidelines for more than one of his female relatives' pregnancies and all of them had shown one definite telltale symptom that Natalia shared even now. Her glamour could hide the roundness of her stomach and her self-control could deny the strange food cravings but not even she could resist the protective hand resting on the curve of her belly.

"Told you we ought to have used one of Lita's," Pip murmured, and the answering smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth made it seem just like old times again, like she was still the girl he loved and they were just two stupid kids who didn't have to face the responsibilities of the world outside their relationship. They were still kids, not even seventeen yet, and he still loved her, but nothing would ever be the same between them, not like it used to be. "I'll never forgive you if you do this," he warned flatly. "That's my kid, Talia. You're not giving it up for adoption like a puppy you don't want anymore. You don't want it, fine. But I do."

"You don't have any clue about raising a child," Natalia sighed, and in that moment she looked so old and world-weary that his heart ached. "Besides, your brother-in-law's family name will only go so far to protect you and the child. Everyone will know he's illegitimate. There will never be a proper place for him in society without an old bloodline backing him, and you simply don't have that."

Didn't he? Pip very much begged to differ on that. His mother's line wasn't as old as Rister's or even Natalia's but the Cartier family was still old and wealthy and well-established enough to protect his child from the old-fashioned sensitivities of the Pureblood wizarding world. Their grandmother had accepted Merry back into the family for a period of time before she had married Rister and become a Graas. There was a chance she wouldn't turn him away if he went to her, and he believed the thought of his child would bend his pride enough for him to beg if it came to that. This was something only he could do, this was a mess that not even Rister could rescue him from. That was a sobering thought, that there were some things not even his brother could help him with, but it made Pip stand taller, his eyes cold and steely.

"Give me four months," he proposed steadily, not a flicker of uncertainty or hesitation in his voice. "If I don't have a signet ring for him by then, you can give him to your sister and her husband. Agreed?"

"Four months," Natalia agreed slowly. "But please don't do anything stupid."

[Philip Garwin]

His grandmother, when Pip got an invitation to meet her not even a week after he sent his letter, proved to be nothing like his expectations. He loved his parents and he had been fully prepared to despise the tough, unloving woman who had kicked her oldest daughter out of the family. He hadn't been expecting to be greeted by a lady with white-blonde hair and an ornate wooden cane that did nothing to detract from the smile on her mouth. Nothing could have prepared him to be ushered into a small, cosy sitting room and have biscuits pushed at him because he was apparently too skinny. Merry had never mentioned anything about this, Pip thought dryly, but then his older sister had never wanted to speak much about their mother's side of the family.

"You remind me of her," Isabella Cartier sighed wistfully, peering at him through thin gold-framed glasses. "How is my Charisse? Goodness, you're so tall. I remember you as a baby, and your sister telling me about your first year at Hogwarts. My husband was still alive then, of course, Merlin rest his soul. It was such a sad day when he passed. I distinctly told him not to eat those cookies. They were for one of his business partners, I clearly told him, but he never did listen to me. Even if I had told him about the cyanide in them, I doubt he would have listened." Pip paled abruptly, his eyes falling to the plate of biscuits he had started picking at out of politeness, and Isabella's laugh rang out girlishly. Merry would murder him if he got himself poisoned by the family she had always told him to stay away from. "Those are fine, dear boy. The only thing my husband ever did right was giving me my three girls, and then they gave me my grandchildren. Even if he did make sure that I never got to see six of them growing up," she added crossly. "But I followed you all through that charming little column in the Daily Prophet, the one with the little sneak peeks into Hogwarts. Meredith was in that quite a few times when she was your age, and little Rosalind is a lot like your aunt Clarissa was when she was a teenager. My poor Charisse was always scolding her for being too forward and unladylike but no one had more spirit than your mother, oh yes."

Pip blinked unsurely, completely thrown by the woman sitting in front of him. They had all grown up with the unsaid truth that their mum's family hated them because of their dad but there was no sign of any pretence or falseness in the way she was happily reminiscing about her children's years at Hogwarts. He was so far out of his depth that he would drown if he didn't find a way to adapt until he was back in the safety of his common room. "I actually have a request to make," Pip said softly, catching his breath at the way those old hazel eyes instantly lit up, so much like Rosalind's when she was pleased.

"Oh anything at all, dear. Anything I can't do for you, Marcus will. He's Clarissa's eldest boy, such a lovely young man. He's my heir, you know," Isabella announced proudly, trying to hide the way her smile faltered guiltily when she glanced at him. "Your brother should have been my heir really because Charisse was my first child but Reginald wouldn't hear of having her children take his place as head of the family, not with who your father is." She made no apologies for being ruled by her husband but Pip didn't really expect any. He had never regretted any major parts of his childhood and he wouldn't have been the heir anyway. His attempt to explain his problem delicately earned a mild chuckle and a soft pat of his hands. "You're not the first boy to get a girl pregnant outside of wedlock, dear. Why, I remember Gwendolyn Rainier's wedding. The only thing larger than her dowry was her stomach, we used to say. Oh yes, we can certainly help you with this little issue."

Having said that, Isabella turned to her right decisively, clapping her hands to summon a house elf and sending it to collect Marcus. He must have been loitering outside, Pip surmised thoughtfully, given that a tall, light-haired man strode through the door less than two minutes later. He stooped to kiss his grandmother's cheek, letting her fuss over him with an indulgent smile for a few moments before he turned to Pip with an assessing light in his narrowed eyes. "So you've come to beg favour from Gran, have you, cousin? Perhaps you should have just been more careful about taking precautions before bedding someone."

"Marcus!" Isabella chided sharply, losing the dreamy quality in her voice for the first time since Pip had entered the house. "Mind your manners."

"It's alright," Pip assured her absently, keeping his eyes locked on his cousin's. "He's just afraid that I might want to make a claim on his position as the heir. Oh, I can't do anything this generation but if you claim me as a Cartier and I have a legitimate son of my own, well, that's a completely different story. My mother's older than his and my child's mother is from a better bloodline than his wife is. But I don't want anything to do with being the heir. You can keep it."

Marcus smiled, sharp and unpleasant. "Oh, I intend to, little cousin. You can have a signet ring for your little bastard, or a hair clip if it's a girl. You can even give it our name. But the official story will be that its mother is some common little muggleborn and Gran was just too compassionate to refuse when you begged for it to be part of the family. That's our solution. Take it or leave it."

How generous. Still, it wasn't like he had many other options. "I'll take it," Pip answered firmly. When the choice was between his pride or his child it wasn't a choice at all.

[Philip Garwin]

Marcus was as good as his word, which was a small mercy, Pip supposed. He could understand his cousin's worry over his social standing, with first Merry and now him and his unborn child being welcomed back into the family but he had no intention of involving himself with the Cartier family more than he absolutely had to. His grandmother wasn't quite the battleaxe that he had imagined her to be but there was no doubt in his mind that neither was she the doting old woman she had seemed. The looped scrawl of the letter promising him a ring or hair ornament upon the birth of his kid also reluctantly informed him that his own signet ring would be delivered within the next week, once Isabella made the trip to collect it from Gringotts, where it had apparently been resting alongside his siblings' since he had been born. It was difficult to not be slightly charmed by the old woman's affection for him but Pip already had a family and these people weren't it.

Natalia looked mildly impressed when he handed the parchment to her with a twist of his wrist. Maybe if he had reached out to his blood family years ago, she would have chosen to fight for him, Pip thought wistfully. He would still have been a half blood and he still would have had the Graas family at his back but he would have been respectable in his own right, as a blood member of an influential Pureblood family rather than just the ward of one. Ashlyn had taken the time to warn him of this years ago but Pip had been young and he had never imagined falling in love with anyone, much less this girl who was strong and rebellious enough to date him but too weak and distrustful to have faith in him. He deserved better. He deserved someone like Ashlyn, who would cast aside her own family, someone like Merry, who had walked into the Pureblood world with her eyes wide open and her head held high against the people who would scorn her, someone like Layla and Lita, who had fallen in love with one person and waited for him to open his eyes to her. He deserved someone with Leandra's fire and Morgana's subtle displays of affection, and Natalia had never given him any of those. And still he loved her, which made him even more of an idiot than her.

"You'll need two more of those," she informed him dully, holding none of the spirit that had attached him to her in the first place. Either the pregnancy or her family's reaction to it wasn't being kind to her. His bewildered expression earned the faintest flicker of a smile from her at least. "Triplets, Philip. Three boys. Do you still think you can handle this?"

Oh bloody hell. Triplets. Really? Pip exhaled shakily, suddenly feeling very young. He had managed to soldier through the last two weeks on determination and stubbornness alone, so he hadn't really stopped to think about what being a single father would mean until the revelation that he would have not one but three babies in his care. Honestly, of the two conversations that were to come - be with his parents, the other with Merry, Rister and Kris and Cleo - Pip couldn't foresee which would be more excruciating.

[Philip Garwin]

Pip chickened out five times before he could bring himself to touch the portkey that would take him to Italy. He'd done what he had supposed to be the hard part already. He told his parents already, last week, had to watch his mum's initial reaction of shock and disappointment before she could cover it up with a smile, had to sit and try not to squirm under the weight of his dad's openly disappointed stare. In the end though, they were his parents and they loved him and it wasn't like they were perfect specimens of humanity either. He had disappointed them a million times before and he would probably disappoint them again; sure, this was a bit more long lasting than kicking a football through old Mrs Riley's window because she gossiped about his family like they were her own private source of entertainment but he wasn't six anymore and Mrs Riley had been buried about half a decade ago now. When he left, his dad grasped his shoulder tightly and his mum hugged him like she could fix this with a bit of antiseptic and a bandage and a cuddle. Pip only wished it could be that simple but he appreciated the effort anyway. No one mentioned his grandmother beyond Pip's reference to her in his explanation, which he imagined would make Marcus happy if no one else.

Leon had had his back for this, which in Leon's world meant that he had dragged Pip out of Hogwarts for the day and proceeded to badger the truth out of him via the liberal application of whiskey. Honestly, it was a good thing that Leon and Rosalind had never realised precisely how similar they were because Pip would have hated to have to murder his best friend to keep Leon's hands off his little sister. Not that Leon had ever really seen any girl beyond Karalynn since he had first laid eyes on her.

"That sucks," Leon sympathised with a grimace, knocking back the last glass of whiskey before digging the portkey out from Pip's pocket. "But you have to tell them. Killian would murder me if I ever got a girl pregnant and didn't tell him. And look on the bright side. If your sister kills you, you can stay with me and Karalynn over the summer. Just don't give her any brilliant ideas about having a baby because I am so not ready for that."

They were lucky, in a way, that Layla and Jared were the first people they stumbled upon while Pip was giving increasingly convoluted and confusing directions to his room. Ashlyn would have just dumped him outside Merry and Rister's room, and Merry wouldn't ever be happy to see her little brother drunk and tripping over his own feet. He would have felt bad about intruding on them at any other time; even a blind man could see that they were having a moment, but Leon started snickering next to him and Pip had to cough to cover his own snort of laughter. At least Layla couldn't judge them for being drunk, he reasoned fuzzily, though her blue eyes were cold enough to resemble shards of ice when she turned to raise her eyebrows at them.

"Merlin above, you two. What brought this on? It's past midnight, and you should be in school, Pip."

"He's going to be a dad!" Leon replied indignantly, bristling under Layla's amused disapproval. "We had to celebrate!"

"He's going to be a what?" Ashlyn asked coolly, opening the door to her and Damon's bedroom in pyjamas with rumpled blonde hair but somehow managing to look terrifying to Pip's eyes. Leon apparently agreed, judging by the way he fell abruptly silent. "Because I'm sure if what you just said was true, you wouldn't have been tactless and thoughtless enough to announce it at 1am. Now, do I have to take you to Rister and your sister tomorrow morning - because I think you've woken enough people tonight with your antics - or do you think you can manage that by yourself?"