#when she said she 'couldn't give it to carewyn' it was because she had her own plans for the heart not because she physically couldn't DX | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

carewyncromwell · 4 months

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"Senior class president, She must be heaven sent! She was never the last one standing... A backseat debutante -- Everything that you want -- Never too harsh or too demanding...

Maybe, I'll admit it, I'm a little bitter... Everybody loves her, but I just want to hit her!"

~"Girl Next Door" by Saving Jane

x~x~x~x

Bill Weasley didn't surprise much of anyone when he elected to become a Cursebreaker for Gringotts Wizarding Bank. He and his best friend Carewyn Cromwell had been well-known for breaking the curses on all five of Hogwarts's Cursed Vaults with help from their circle of friends, and even before that, Bill had expressed a lot of interest in Cursebreaking. He'd collected Muggle and magical travel books about Egypt, Greece, and Rome as a kid, and he checked out every single book about it out of the library while he was at Hogwarts. Even disregarding Bill's experience with and passion for the subject, his great grades, his amiable personality, and his positions as Prefect and later Head Boy made Gringotts' choice to employ him incredibly easy. And so Bill was soon off to the races, traveling abroad on official cursebreaking assignments.

Although Bill's best friend Carewyn didn't become a Cursebreaker like he did, her brother Jacob did. But if you think that these two working at the same tombs together from time to time helped them become closer, you would be mistaken.

"Jacob!" said Bill, delighted. "What are you doing here?"

Jacob looked up, startled. Upon registering the tall, leather-jacketed ginger man that approached him, however, his expression deadpanned, the usual boyish light in his hollowed-out blue eyes dying at once.

"Translating these hieroglyphics into Greek, at present," he said dully. He then rather rudely turned away, back to the wall he'd been focused on. "And I fully intend to go right back to that too, now that I've answered that question -- "

"Were you sent here by Gringotts?" asked Bill. "Or did someone else send you here, free-lance?"

"I came here because I wanted to," Jacob said without looking up again. "I don't need someone to give me an assignment to be interested in the ruins of Abusir."

Bill offered his best smile. "I can't blame you for that -- what we've unearthed is beautiful. The papyri we've found alone contain some of the oldest recorded spells ever discovered -- "

"Some of the oldest in the Egyptian Old Kingdom -- Babylon and Mesopotamia have plenty of papyri that likely transcribe ancient spells, they just haven't been properly translated," Jacob cut him off very coolly. "Not to mention Sudan, which has spells, potions and other magics that have been passed down by word of mouth for ages -- there's evidence that even the Animagi process used by Sudanese wizards today is identical to the process used by Nubian kings, back in the 2000's B.C.E..."

Despite the obnoxiousness of Jacob's correction, Bill looked rather interested. Before he could make any follow-up comments or ask any questions, however, Jacob had gotten to his feet, his robes and bell bottom jeans billowing in the movement, and started to walk off without looking back once.

"Welp, I'm out of here. Peace."

Startled, Bill tried to follow him. "What? Wait, hold on -- "

CRACK.

Just as Bill managed to touch Jacob's shoulder, Carewyn's brother had uncouthly Disapparated right out from under the taller ginger's hand.

Jacob Cromwell and Bill Weasley truthfully couldn't be more different as people. Jacob had been a Ravenclaw alumnus -- a flighty, disorganized eccentric with genius intellect, a hot temper, and almost no people skills, obsessed with knowledge and reckless in the face of danger. Bill, in contrast, was patient, organized, grounded, and surprisingly understated; however bold he could be on the Dueling Field, the eldest Weasley was surprisingly sensitive and not the type who could easily rile up a crowd. Even when he had his first crush, it took forever for him to nut up and make a move, and when it blew up in his face, Bill immediately retreated to be by himself. Bill had named Prefect and Head Boy for his mentorship of younger students and his ability to set a good example -- Jacob was a rebel and serial troublemaker who didn't give a damn about rules or if people disliked him, so long as he learned as much as he possibly could and got top grades. Jacob was prone to wearing his emotions on his sleeve, to the point that many people found him obnoxious -- Bill might've been raised in a large and loud family, but he often ended up having a quiet mediating influence on his other much more hot-blooded siblings.

And this wasn't even touching their contrasting backgrounds.

Jacob and Carewyn had been raised largely in the Muggle World since their father was a Muggle, but only Carewyn had known about her magic prior to receiving her letter. Jacob had been raised feeling like a freak and treated like a delinquent for "bad behavior" he hadn't been responsible for. All of the kids in grade school avoided him or made fun of him for both his nerdy interests and his bad reputation. Even his own father Evan Bach -- who was just as diametrically opposed from Arthur Weasley as Jacob was from Bill -- constantly tried to mold Jacob into his image of a fine, upstanding son and disciplined and shamed Jacob when he refused to play along. Jacob had an age gap with Carewyn similar to Bill's with his brothers Fred and George, but after Carewyn was born, Evan completely dropped out of her life from an emotional standpoint. Therefore, unlike Bill who only had to help his parents look after his siblings, Jacob ended up becoming the closest thing Carewyn had to a father. He encouraged her, protected her, comforted her, sang songs with her, made her laugh, helped her when she had trouble doing things, and worked his butt off to make sure Carewyn felt special and wonderful, just the way she was. Not that Jacob ever would've lamented this loss of a childhood -- Carewyn was the most important person in his life, and being her older brother was the aspect of himself Jacob was most proud of.

This, however, led into what really made Jacob resent Bill, far more than his stable home life with a large, supportive family in the Wizarding World ever could -- Bill's close friendship with Carewyn. Because as much as Bill would've never wanted it to be true, in those years that Jacob was trapped in a magical portrait inside one of the Cursed Vaults, Bill filled the role in Carewyn's life that Jacob once had. Bill had been Carewyn's right-hand man at school -- he'd emotionally supported her; he'd encouraged and protected her; he'd helped her with the Vaults' curses and school assignments and helped her become a stronger, more complete version of herself. Bill had watched Carewyn grow up -- something Jacob regretted and resented having missed everyday, all because of R and the Cursed Vaults.

Now, of course, if one really challenged Jacob on this, he would acknowledge that he knew he should be grateful that Bill was there for Carewyn when he couldn't be. He might even have admitted that he should really be nicer to Bill, just out of respect for Carewyn. But however much Jacob knew this intellectually, it wasn't easy to put into practice. However much Jacob knew Bill was a decent person and knew how much his sister cherished him as a friend, his heart would still pump cold, bitter poison whenever he was in the same space as Bill Weasley.

This was why -- even when Bill ended up saving Jacob's arse from an cursed, fire-breathing marble sphinx in an underground tomb in the Valley of the Kings -- the shorter man couldn't help but snipe at him.

"What the bloody hell -- how did YOU get here, Weasley?!"

"Carey said in one of her letters you were visiting Turkey last month -- " huffed Bill, running up alongside Jacob even while shooting additional silent Blasting Curses over his shoulder, " -- ugh -- to appraise the Lion Gate...I guessed you had to be visiting -- Depulso! -- Hattusha -- and there's been some discussion at Gringotts about the Siren Queen of the Mediterranean seeking out lost treasures in Egypt, lost to the Hittites back in the 1200's B.C.E. -- ack -- so, putting it together, it would make sense for some of the Hittites' stolen treasures to end up in the tombs of their allies at the time!"

"Blah blah, yeah, that much is obvious!" Jacob said waspishly. "I meant how the hell you knew I'd be here!"

"I may or may not have asked the magic carpet vendor back in Cairo to send me an owl if you ever popped in to buy one to go somewhere," Bill said with a wry twinkle in his eye. "But hey, how else would I be able to check in on you for Carey, whenever you're in my sphere? I'd certainly prefer exchanging letters with you..."

"Not happening," snapped Jacob.

When Jacob and Bill finally got out of that tomb with a certain golden harp in tow, Bill was ultimately the one to hand it off to the Siren Queen. Jacob ended up charming the Queen, however, since he had picked up a bit of Mermish in his travels -- he even helped the Siren Queen test out the harp by singing a few bars that she could play along to, and she was clearly delighted by his handsome voice. She even allowed Jacob to kiss her webbed hand before departing back into the water.

"This'll be some story to tell Carey, huh?" asked Bill.

"Hmph." Jacob didn't look at him, instead keeping his focus on the horizon.

Bill tilted his head a bit, trying to get a better look at Jacob's face. His stare was so deep that his thoughts were likely miles away.

"...Look," Bill said after a minute, "I know you aren't happy that I followed you...but I wasn't trying to steal your thunder, really. It's just that I've been to the Valley of the Kings, and those magical tombs have sneakier traps than most -- "

"I don't need your help," Jacob cut him off harshly.

"Maybe not," Bill said with a frown. "I know you're capable of protecting yourself, Jacob. But for what it's worth, you shouldn't have had to face them alone. ...I wouldn't have wanted Carey to face that kind of danger alone either."

Jacob was very quiet for a moment. His skull-like blue eyes flickered over his shoulder in Bill's direction, considering him for a moment, before very quickly looking away again.

"...Pip was never the type to do dangerous things," he said lowly under his breath. "She never wanted to make Mum or me worry."

Bill's eyes softened slightly. "She did for you, though. Without hesitation. When I first asked her why she wanted to find the Cursed Vaults, she even said so. She said, 'I can't not do something, if Jacob's in trouble.'"

Jacob didn't reply. He seemed to have trouble knowing what to say. Bill once again tried to maneuver so as to look Jacob in the face, but the smaller man seemed to predict the move well before he made it and shifted around purposefully to avoid his eye.

"Pip never got into any trouble," Jacob reiterated again. "It was always me. Both before and after Pip was born...I was the magnet for trouble..."

Jacob closed his eyes, his brows creased low over them.

"...And most of the time, I dealt with it myself."

Bill felt his heart prickle with pity.

"Maybe," he said lowly. "But you shouldn't have had to. Neither you nor Carey...neither of you should've had to deal with so much pain by yourselves -- "

"Should've, would've, could've," Jacob shut Bill down. "It doesn't matter. The point is we did, and we got through it -- we got through it together, because at least we had each other. And that was enough. Back then...that was more than enough."

Jacob began to walk away, adjusting his robes as he went. Rather than chase him, Bill let him go, but didn't hold back from shouting after him,

"You're welcome at the Burrow whenever, Jacob! You and your mum -- I've told Carey that too -- "

CRACK.

Jacob Disapparated without a word.

Three years later, however, in the midst of the Second Wizarding War, Bill was very startled when a small package arrived by Owl Post to the Burrow, just before his wedding: two stalks of bamboo in a blue and white ceramic vase painted with charmed moving pictures. Enclosed was a very short, terse-sounding note written in messy handwriting on the back of a cafe napkin --

A gift for you and your bride. In case you don't know, bamboo represents peace, happiness, wealth, and longevity and is considered very lucky in China. The two stalks specifically represent love, for obvious reasons. Don't take this as permission to write to me -- I'm only sending this along because Pip misses you terribly and I hate seeing her unhappy. Peace out, string bean. JC

#hphm #hogwarts mystery #bill weasley #jacob cromwell #carewyn cromwell #my writing #fanfiction

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