The Heart Knows ((Closed))

[Carey Brighton H5]

Carey pushed open the cottage door with a small sigh as Loki turned and left to head back into the village. She really wished he wouldn’t go, but she knew it was something he had to do. That didn’t stop the knot of worry that formed in her stomach whenever she thought about it. Carey stepped inside the brightly lit cottage with a heavy heart and took off her black jacket, hanging it up on the coat hook beside the door, before entering into the small living room where she normally met her father. Her brown eyes looked distant as she sat down on the armchair beside her father’s with a silence that was normally quite unlike her. David looked over at her with a confused expression on his face, but he did not question why she was so quiet or why Loki was not with her. This, however, didn’t mean that Carey wasn’t going to tell him because if she didn’t, her father would get the impression that they had broken up – which they hadn’t done and they had no plans to do, “Loki had a meeting with someone of his own accord, so it’s just me tonight.” Her voice held an iciness to it that was, again, quite unlike her and her father seemed very taken aback. David took a moment and then pulled out some files, arranging them on the table before them so that whomever they were meeting with would be able to read them easily. While he did this, Carey took the moment to look around the cottage like she always did.

Her father didn’t believe in holding business meetings at their manor so he had bought this cottage for the sole purpose of running business meetings. Everyone who was anyone in the wizarding business world knew where David Brighton’s cottage was in Hogsmeade and they were constantly calling his office to get meetings there. Carey had noticed that over the past two months they had become busier and busier and she was starting to wonder whether or not that was coincidental or if her father had planned it that way because of Carey’s sudden new boyfriend. Whatever the case, Carey couldn’t say no because she was to take over the business some day and she had to know what was happening before she could take it over. The cottage was one roomed, meaning that the living room was the only room. But it was nicely furnished with a nice couch, two sturdy armchairs, a nice coffee table in between the couch and armchairs, and bookshelves lining the walls with light fixtures along them as well. Carey could say one thing about her father, he had great decorative taste. And she knew it was his doing because her mother couldn’t decorate worth her life. She let her eyes flicker back to her father as he stood to go answer the door that had just been knocked upon.

Moments later, he returned with a man about the same age as him by his side. Her father was laughing at something the man had said but when they entered the living room and he spotted Carey, he immediately turned into business mode and took his seat beside her while she stood and shook hands with the client. Immediately, they dove into their meeting and immediately Carey knew it was going to be a long meeting. She inwardly sighed, wondering how long it would take Loki to finish up what he needed to do. Inside, though, deep down she knew that there was something wrong – something was going wrong. She just couldn’t shake that anxious feeling she got inside of her when she could just feel that something was not right. She didn’t act upon it, though, because what was she supposed to do? Run out screaming to the Hog’s Head only to find that Loki was perfectly safe? That was a foolish notion, and so Carey sat and did business even though that feeling in her stomach remained.

[Carey Brighton H5]

“Mr. Kr-…”

“Carey, I understand what you’re saying, but it just won’t work.”

“Yes, it will. Would you trust me on my judgement, Father? Please? When have I ever let you down?” David Brighton reluctantly sat back in his armchair and waved his arm as if to tell her to proceed. Carey smiled a small thanks and turned back to the wizard they were doing business with to jump back into what she had been trying to say before her father had interrupted. Her father had understood when she had first explained it but Mr. Krauss had not and therefore, Carey had started to put it into lamens terms for the man, but her father had decided it wasn’t even a good enough plan to worry about explaining to the man. Carey thought anything was worth a shot, though, so she had somehow talked her dad into letting her explain – even though what she really wanted to do was go and look for Loki. Surely he should have been done by now? Carey had been ignoring the pain in her heart for the past half hour. She kept telling herself she was just over-worrying and that she needed to focus on this account. But she just couldn’t. She couldn’t focus on something that seemed so insignificant compared to Loki. A lump rose in her throat as she leaned forward and started to explain to Mr. Krauss exactly what benefits he would get from merging with Brighton Enterprises.

She didn’t know how she did it, but she somehow landed the Krauss account. The next thing she knew, they were standing and shaking hands – bidding each other farewell. The moment the door closed behind Krauss, Carey turned and reached up for her jacket – pulling it on her shoulders and then tugging her long brown hair out of its collar. Her father looked at her, his jovial demeanour slowly diminishing, “Off already, Carey? I thought we could go through some of these statistics.” Carey looked at her dad with a ferocity that could knock anyone down a few notches if they really paid attention to her glare, but David Brighton was never intimidated by his daughter –why should he be? He had power over her, or at least he thought he did. Carey shook her head at him as she proceeded to pull on her jacket and button it, “I’m worried about Loki.” Her father immediately scoffed and clenched his fists, causing Carey to eye him with a look that said she was tired of his childish antics, “He was supposed to meet me here when he was done, and I didn’t think it’d take this long. I think something’s wrong, and I’m going to go find out what.” David reached for her arm as she opened the door, nearly yanking her back to him; “Carey, don’t be ridiculous. He’s fine. Let’s go over these statistics.”

“No, I’m going to find Loki. You can tag along if you wish and then maybe once I find him we’ll go over the statistics. But at this moment, Loki is the number one most important thing to me and if you can’t deal with that, then you don’t have to deal with it at all. Just go home and maybe you can get Jeremy to help you.” Carey yanked her arm back and stepped outside into the cold air as she hurried toward the Hog’s Head. Her breathing was irregular as she neared and all sound she had blocked from her mind. Her focus was on getting to Loki. She hadn’t realized that her father had indeed followed her and was struggling to keep up with her. Carey just kept walking, very fast, toward the Hog’s Head and when she finally reached it – she wasted no time in opening the door. The pub was empty except for the bartender who was cleaning up a back table, and Carey immediately knew something had gone terribly wrong.

[Carey Brighton H5]

“What do you mean they left an hour ago?!” Carey asked with her voice near hysterics. She had her fists on the bar and she was standing with a gleam in her eye that suggested she was not in the mood to mess around with this guy, “I don’t know, okay? Merlin, you bloody kids! All you ever think about is what you want. Don’t you think I have other things to do?” Carey continued to glare at the man and in seconds she had climbed over the bar and was standing in front of him, her hands on her hips, “WHERE DID THEY GO!?” The man shook slightly and stuttered over his next sentence, which proved to even more useless than his attitude was just moments before. Carey scowled and left from behind the bar back into the open area. Her father had sat down and ordered a drink as he waited for his daughter to finish up with her “tantrum” as he said. Carey was only growing more and more agitated as her father seemed to take the fact that her boyfriend had been kidnapped (because she had no doubt in her mind that he was) with a calmness that was just frustrating! She stared at him as he finished off his butterbeer and stood from his chair, “Let’s get you back to Hogwarts, Carey.” He told her with a tone that stated he was too bored to do anything but take her back to the school. Carey shook her head. She had no intention of going back to the school if Loki wasn’t going to be with her.

David stood, setting down a sickle, and looked at his daughter with a look that told her he was getting even more frustrated; “Carey Louise…”

“David James… I don’t want to go and you can’t make me. I’ll stay in the cottage until I hear something from Loki…if I hear anything from Loki…” Her voice quieted at that last sentence and she dropped her head slightly, missing her father’s protests about her staying in the cottage. She wasn’t returning to Hogwarts and she wasn’t going to stay at the manor. She wouldn’t feel right staying at the manor and besides that it was too far away from Hogwarts. How she’d get out of classes, she wasn’t sure, but she’d think of something. Carey was clever that way. She just couldn’t return there alone. She just couldn’t. “Tell Mother and Mallory I say hello,” she told her father as she looked back up and started to head toward the door that lead back out, “and tell them I’m staying at the cottage.” David opened his mouth to say something more, but Carey was just too destroyed to argue with him so she just walked out of the pub and returned to the cottage where she collapsed on the couch with a sigh. It didn’t take her long for her to start crying.

[Carey Brighton H5]

It had gotten darker outside from the time Carey had collapsed on the couch and curled up into a ball. Her quiet crying had grown into sobs of pain and from there she was just wailing. She knew that if she didn’t get ahold of herself soon, her father’s cottage would become the new shrieking shack. She couldn’t help it, though, she wasn’t whole. Loki was missing. Loki was missing. Loki. Was. Missing. Therefore, half of her was missing. Carey had never felt so alone in her life. She had never felt so defeated and destroyed. She didn’t know what to do with herself. She knew she couldn’t do anything to find him, but she couldn’t just sit around and cry the whole time Loki was gone from her. Oh, God, what if Loki never came back? A fresh torrent of tears issued from Carey as she sat up on the couch and covered her face with her shaking hands. She didn’t know what she could do. She felt so completely useless. So alone. So so alone. Carey took a deep breath and tried to calm herself considerably so she could get up and get her something to eat from the cupboard that lined the wall to the right of the couch. She hadn’t eaten since that morning and it had to have been nearing 8 o’clock. She also had a write a letter to the Headmaster explaining that she would not be attending classes for the week because she was bedridden at home and if he would please talk to Flitwick about sending her homework to her via owl, along with Loki’s because he would not be in class either for other serious afflictions.

There was no way Carey was going to allow the both of them to get caught behind in their school work over this. No way. Then again, that might have just been the perfectionist inside Carey talking. She sighed heavily and stood from the couch to get a bag of crackers from the cupboard. It was all she could even think of eating. Her stomach was churning and the only reason she was eating was because she knew she had to. If she didn’t eat, she’d die, and well what if Loki came back and she was dead? Eh, Carey would rather like to avoid a whole Romeo and Juliet scenario, therefore, she ate. Carey nibbled on the crackers as she tucked her knees up to her chest and looked around the small one room cottage. She would have to sleep on the couch, but she wouldn’t be able to do that without any blankets. So, after she had finished her crackers, she started on a search to find some blankets. You wouldn’t think there would be too many places to look for blankets in a cottage, but this was a magical cottage and there were a lot of hiding places that Carey knew of. And one that she didn’t. She didn’t know how she had stumbled upon it, she must’ve pushed something on the floor – a stray floorboard or something; but either way the floor opened up below her. There were stairs that led down into what should have been the ground and Carey found herself teetering on the edge of the staircase a moment before looking up and grabbing the lantern, lighting it, and then making her way down the stairs into the darkness.

The lantern cast shadows along the walls as she descended the stairs, counting them at each new step. She didn’t know how far down the staircase went, but she had already counted some 25 steps. Finally, she reached the bottom and raised the lantern high above her head – casting the light in a wide circle around her. She couldn’t see much with the dim lantern that was slowly flickering out, so she quickly looked around for some form of light source, and she found a muggle styled light switch that had to have been running off some form of magic. She flipped the switch and light flooded the small basement type room just as her lantern went out. Carey set the lantern on the ground beside her feet before she even began to look around. The room was about the same size as the cottage if not a bit bigger with a bathroom attached to it and a small kitchen off to the side. A bed resided in the corner with a faded yellow and black quilt and white pillows. Bookshelves lined the walls like upstairs and there was a desk beside the bed with a lamp. Parchment was spread out over the desktop and there were quills and inkpots on top of the parchment. A black rug sat in the centre of the floor over the white wooden floorboards and it looked completely new. In fact, Carey looked around again at the entire room, everything looked completely new. As if it hadn’t ever been used. That couldn’t have been possible, though, because if her father had stayed in here before – he surely would have used these things. Only, why Hufflepuff colours? The mystery made Carey shiver, but she found herself quite happy that she found a bed to sleep on instead of having to sleep on the couch.

[Carey Brighton H5]

Carey folded the parchment into three folds and slid it into a parchment envelope. She sealed the flap and then addressed the envelope to Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts. In her letter was her practically begging for her and Loki’s homework to be sent to the cottage so they wouldn’t fall too behind in classes upon their desperate time of need. She knew Dumbledore could easily deny her but she didn’t think he would. Dumbledore was a nice man that way. Carey stood from the desk in the small underground room and made her way over to the staircase and up that to the cottage aboveground. She had been going back and forth for the past two hours, trying to decide whether or not she wanted to stay down in that room or stay in the cottage above where it didn’t look nearly as creepy – but she had decided to that the room below was much more accommodated for her comfort, so she was staying there. The only downfall to the room beneath the ground was that it was such a long way up to the ground so she could go into the village. And she figured she’d need to go into the village often, like now. She needed to mail the letter to Dumbledore and since she didn’t have an owl with her, she would have to use the post office in the village. It wasn’t that big of a deal, except for the fact that Carey was still feeling to empty to get out and about. She had to, though, and so she did.

Moments later, she was walking to the post office with her jacket on again, through the streets of Hogsmeade. She reached the post office, gave them a sickle, and then sent an owl off with the letter before telling the clerk that she was staying in Brighton Enterprises Business Cottage down the way. The clerk nodded with a smile and Carey tried to return the smile as she turned and walked away, wanting to return to the solitude of her father’s cottage. She needed to know that if Loki returned, he could find her at the cottage. Maybe that’s why she had decided to stay there – because she knew that if Loki did return, he would look there first. Carey couldn’t afford to leave and then realize he had returned only to find she had left him there. She felt like some fairytale princess, locked up in a tower, waiting for her prince charming but refusing to leave because she knew the moment she did he would appear. Carey wanted her fairytale life back, she wanted that happily ever after she was so sure she was going to be getting with Loki by her side. She couldn’t have that, though, because he had disappeared and she wasn’t sure where he was or if he was going to come back. “He has to come back,” she whispered to herself as she reached the cottage, “He just has to.” Carey closed her eyes a moment, took a deep breath, and then pushed open the door to the cottage.

A few minutes later, Carey was back downstairs and boiling water in a kettle she had found in a cabinet with some tea bags and looking through some photo albums that she had found under the bed. They didn’t make any sense to Carey, even though she recognized her father in a fair few of them – most of the pictures were of a women with black hair and a baby girl. Perhaps if she wasn’t so emotionally exhausted, Carey would have realized the baby girl in the picture was her, but she was far too worn out to connect anything together. Instead, she closed the album and shoved it aside as the kettle began to whistle. When her tea was poured, she curled up on the bed and sipped it gingerly, her eyes welling up with tears for the millionth time that day. Loki was missing. He was gone. She didn’t know where he was, whether he was okay, whether he was de…no, she wouldn’t think about that! Carey set her tea on the desk beside the bed and crawled underneath the blankets, curling up in a ball with the pillow hugged tight to her. She just couldn’t think about Loki. But how was she going to expel him from her mind if he was everything to her? The point remained that she couldn’t do that. She would have to deal with every memory that washed over her with him in it. She would have to deal with every laugh, smile, kiss, hug, that was fresh in her mind. And she would have to deal with the fact that it was very well possible she wouldn’t be able to do it ever again. Carey didn’t know how she fell asleep while thinking through all of those things, but she did.

[Carey Brighton H5]

Carey awoke in the morning to a dark room (because she was underground) and a vague memory of where she was or what she was doing there. The moment she sat up in the bed, though, she remembered everything from the previous day and all her grief washed over her once more. It left her whole body numb as she sat up in the bed and stared into the darkness of the room but the grief and the pain did not spare her heart. No, that kept pounding in her chest – reminding her that it was completely empty without Loki. She knew she had to get a hold of herself sooner rather than later, but she just wished she wouldn’t have to do that at all. She wished that yesterday had been a terrible nightmare and that she was in the 5th year Hufflepuff girls dormitories and that any moment she would have to wake up and go meet Loki outside the portrait hole. No such thing had happened, though, and Carey only made herself sadder than she originally was by thinking that perhaps it was all just a terrible nightmare. “Who am I fooling?” Carey whispered to herself as she stood and stumbled to the wall that held the light switch, flipping it up to reveal the room she had slept in, “This isn’t a nightmare, it’s real life. I’ve got to figure out how to deal with it. I’m not going to wake up in Loki’s arms with him smoothing my hair and telling me I’ve fallen asleep and that I was just having a dream. This is reality, Carey, so get a grip.”

She ran her fingers through her dark brown hair and moved her way over to the little kitchen, looking through the cabinets for something to eat. She found some muggle food that was imperishable and was heating it up on the muggle stove when there came a shriek and a ball of fur seemed to fly smack dab into the wall from the stairs. Carey jumped, nearly knocking over her food, and looked at the owl that had appeared. It looked…mean. She looked apprehensively at the owl before stepping around the counter to it. It stuck out its leg and turned its head as if it were annoyed that it had been sent on this errand. Quickly, Carey took the parchment that was around the bird’s leg and unrolled it, sinking into the chair at the desk beside the bed. She immediately recognized Loki’s handwriting. Her eyes nearly devoured the letter, taking in every word he wrote. She kept telling herself that he was alive and that that was what mattered, but the further she read into his letter – Carey realized that the fact that he was alive had eased her fear of him being dead, but it did not dispel of the emptiness that clouded her and ate her alive. She found herself a bit bitter and even a tinge angry and as she sat down to write out a response, she found that she couldn’t sound happy…at all.

It took her five times before she finally wrote out a letter that didn’t sound completely angry, and she placed the parchment around the owl’s leg and it flew off once more. Carey watched it disappear for a moment and then turned back to her food which had sufficiently burnt now that she had spent five hours writing out a letter and not paying attention to the food. She threw it away and then started again, her mind reeling on where Loki could possibly be. “Well, at least he’s alive,” she told herself, not missing the note of bitterness in her own voice, “That’s good. But it doesn’t solve anything! Gah!” Carey ran her fingers through her hair and leaned against the small counter, her face in her hands as she took deep breaths. She needed him back here with her. It was the only that Carey could ever be happy again. She looked at her food, decided it was done, and then sat down to eat it – her eyes welling with tears again.

[Carey Brighton H5]

“Ow! Don’t peck me you bloody thing!” Carey yanked her hand away from the owl and sucked on her thumb that had just been nipped at by the evil, possessed, demonic owl that Loki kept using to send his letters. Her eyes glared at the owl as she reached out and attached the letter she had just written quickly. The owl made a sound, an evil, possessed, demonic sound, and then ruffled its feathers before taking off again. “You would think,” she told herself as she stood from the desk and made her way over to the closet that she had discovered the night before, “that the owl would grow an attachment to me, seeing me so often. But apparently not.” Carey sighed and shrugged as she opened the closet door and looked into the stacked shoe boxes. She reached up and pulled one down and sat on the floor opening it. What Carey had discovered yesterday had really shaken her up but after she had thought about it – after she had thought it all through – she realized that it wasn’t something that was going to bother her. So, Angela Brighton wasn’t her real mother. It wasn’t like Carey had been completely fond of the women. Angela had always been rather distant toward her. That would explain, though, why she got special treatment and was considered the golden child. Carey looked through the letters in the shoe box and started to unravel more about the story she had discovered only hours prior. It wasn’t confusing, but it wasn’t simple either.

Which was exactly why Carey had owled her father and was expecting him in the cottage at any given mo- CRACK! Carey jumped and looked up at the staircase, knowing her father had just apparated in. She waited, holding her breath, as David noticed the open floorboards and then hurried his way down to the cottage room beneath the ground. When he reached the room he looked around and then paused when he spotted Carey on the floor in front of the opened closet with a letter in her hands, “Carey, wha…what are you doing?” he asked with a look of shock and trepidation on his face. Carey smiled weakly and shrugged, folding up the letter, “Learning about my history as much as I can.” She put the letter away and then stood with the box underneath her right arm, eyeing her father, “Would you like to tell me all that I haven’t figured out?” David continued to stare at his daughter, as if he hadn’t ever really seen her before. She looked at him a moment and then smiled again and turned to sit the box of letters on the desk and sit on the bed. David didn’t move from his spot in front of the door and Carey didn’t blame him. Finally, he seemed to be defeated in the battle that was going on in his head and he leaned against the wall, his hands in his pockets. He hung his head and Carey waited patiently as she looked at him. After a moment, he spoke; “Her name was Louise, Carey. She’s your middle namesake. I…fell in love with her when we were in our 6th year at Hogwarts, while I was dating Angela.

“I wasn’t a good guy in school, Carey, you’ve got to realise this. I know, I’m not the best guy now, but I was worse then. Angela and I…we’d met at the wedding like we’ve always told you, but we were really young. Around 14 or so. We didn’t lie to you about that, Carey, we did meet at the wedding. But I didn’t love her. It was quite the…annoyance relationship. I didn’t fall in love with her until later…much later. I married her, yes, but because I was expected to. The woman I loved was Louise, but that would never be allowed.” David moved away from the wall and walked over to the box of letters, picking up one of them and smiling sadly before looking up at his daughter again, “You see, I’m pureblood, you know that. You’ve met my parents, you’ve seen how firm they are on pureblooded beliefs. You know I was raised in that environment and I believe the same things as they do, but I’m telling you… 15 or 18 years ago? I didn’t believe anything like they did.” Carey cocked her head to the side, her mind flickering back to Loki and how her father would react to knowing he was a werewolf, but she was drawn back in when David continued talking; “Louise wasn’t pure; in fact she was muggle born. She was in Hufflepuff, too, I always think about how you got that trait from her. I mean, Mallory and Jeremy were both in Slytherin like Angela and I were; but when you were sorted into Hufflepuff it was a surprise until I realised it made sense. It didn’t matter to me, though, that she wasn’t pure. Louise was everything I wanted and needed. We were nearly inseparable for the longest time, Carey. I couldn’t be seen without Louise and she couldn’t be seen without me. I’d be outside her common room every morning the moment I’d wake up and I would stay out there until she fell asleep in my lap.” Again, Carey’s mind flickered to Loki and she was getting quite frightened at the similarities. Oh, he’d get a good laugh out of that if he knew he did the same thing my father did…

“Angela was getting jealous, because I was supposed to be dating her – or well, I was dating her; but everyone knew I was really Louise’s not Angela’s. Angela grew jealous, so jealous that she told my parents about my relationship with Louise. Things grew out of hand and Louise and I were forbidden from seeing each other. By the end of our 7th year, we weren’t on talking terms. She had accused me of really wanting to be with Angela that was why I never fought to stay in their relationship, and I accused her of being something she wasn’t. I called her a mudblood, and it was then that it appeared our relationship was over for good. I graduated with an engagement ring on Angela’s finger and we were married about four months after graduation. The wedding was okay, but I wasn’t happy. When she told me she was pregnant, I couldn’t be happy at all. Angela didn’t care, though, she was ecstatic. It was when she was 8 months or so pregnant that Louise contacted me. Just out of nowhere. She just owled me. I debated for the longest time whether or not I should reply, and after I had sufficiently convinced myself that I shouldn’t…I did. We started talking a lot more, seeing each other almost daily. I gave her a place to work in my office, which hadn’t been as big as it is now, and we were…once again falling into that relationship. The night Mallory was born I wasn’t there, and Angela was getting agitated with me. She had noticed my increasing absence from home but she had surely thought I would be at our child’s birth. When I didn’t show up, she started to do some snooping. I stopped seeing Louise for awhile, and then Angela became pregnant again. Mallory had turned out to be a terror so I didn’t want another one, but Angela insisted that we keep it. So, Jeremy was born. By now, Louise had quit her job and moved away again and we had lost contact. But after Jeremy was born, I contacted her. I don’t know what possessed me to do it, but I did.”

David took a deep breath here and set the letter down in the box before sitting on the bed beside Carey, staring directly at her; “Louise and I got together again, only this time I wouldn’t be able to leave her. Within two years of Jeremy’s birth, Carey, Louise had gotten pregnant. She couldn’t be seen in public because I was married and everyone knew that the only person she spoke to was me. So… I built this room.” He looked around the small room, a nostalgic look in his eyes, “I built this room for her to stay in. She stayed here during her pregnancy, during the time when we made plans for me to leave Angela. Everything seemed like a fairy tale, Carey, and then you were born. You were the most amazing little girl, ever. You were perfect. You looked just like her, and you still do. But when you were born it meant that it was time for me to leave Angela and I was starting to grow cold toward the idea. Angela had become this basis in my life. I didn’t love her, no, but I needed her because she was practically what had started my business. It didn’t matter, though, because Angela found out about you an-“

“And demanded you take me from Louise and give me to her. I know that part…” Carey’s voice was nearly a whisper and she looked down at her hands which were shaking. David nodded slightly and looked at his hands as well. They let the silence engulf them. What were they supposed to say? What was there to say? Nothing. There was nothing. There was nothing they could say. So, they sat, in silence.