The sunshine's gonna fade
And we can't stop it

❧

What was she doing here? Issa couldn’t honestly say that she knew for absolute certain, why she had decided to come to a university campus of all places. It might look a little strange to the average passerby--she was sure that it did, honestly. Maybe someone just thought that she was a professor. That didn’t make her too out of place and it was still technically summer anyhow. She had no idea when classes started up again here, but she’d just… ended up here regardless. She had been shopping in Bangor and had realized that she had never actually seen the campus before. There was no reason for her to want to see it now, not really.

Except for the fact that she’d never had the chance to go to school. Maybe she was just curious, she didn’t know. It wasn’t as if she could necessarily blame that on what had happened. Yes, she had spent the last three decades of her life the prisoner of her fiancé’s uncle, but… she had been twenty-one when that had happened. She could have gone to university right out of school. She wouldn’t have finished before she was taken, but she still could have. She had just chosen not to. But she didn’t know what would have happened in some alternate universe. Maybe she would have ended up at school. Maybe she even would have ended up here. She didn’t know.

In another life, where she had stayed in bed with Ares a couple minutes longer, and his uncle never managed to get his hands on her, maybe she would have ended up going to university.

Issa knew there was truly no use in wondering about that. That wasn’t something that she could change. Her life had panned out… the way that it had. She had lost three decades of it to an absolute psychopath, but she was free of that now. She had Ares. She had Orion, and Clary, and her life had not gone the way that she had thought it was going to. But it had taken her somewhere that she had always wanted to be--and that was married to Ares. That was being a mother. And so, she supposed she could be a little sad seeing a university campus and knowing that she might have gotten a degree from the place if her life had gone differently, but there was no reason to be.

Despite everything that had happened in her life, she was focused on moving forward not looking back. Coming here had simply been just because she was curious. She was hardly going to apply to the place and be the university’s oldest student, but she had been in the area. She hadn’t thought that there was much harm in checking it out. There was no reason to linger any longer than she already had, though, because she was sure that she was a little out of place. Even if she might look like a professor, actual professors would know that she wasn’t. The last thing that she wanted was for someone to call her out and ask her what she was doing there.

So, adjusting her bag, she turned to come back the way that she’d come. She hadn’t made it too far onto campus--just the quad, really. Enough to see the buildings and the lawns, but she wasn’t about to go wandering around inside any building. As she headed out, though, she found herself passing a familiar face and, for a moment, she hesitated as she tried to place it.

@meredith | Outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","lyric1uni"]song for another time

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[attr="class","lyric2uni"]And by this time tomorrow
I'll be singing yesterday
The sunshine's gonna fade

[attr="class","textboduni"]Meredith hadn't really gotten a spare moment all day, and she had an inkling that that wasn't about to change. With just a week to go until Welcome Week, this was the perfect time for shit to hit the fan. There was really no other way of putting it. If something was going to go wrong, it was going to happen in these final moments when it would hurt the most. Meredith was staying on high alert, as a result, keeping an eye out for any and all potential problems... and their potential solutions. She had to submit a review and finalize a research report for a Herbology journal, though, and that was taking first priority. Being Dean was important, but it also came hand in hand with having a personal assistant. Being a Herbologist... less so. And that was just one responsibility that Meredith hadn't been able to give up once she had gotten the position as Dean. She hadn't expected to grow quite this attached to Herbology and Potioneering, but this was far from the first surprise in her life. Sometimes she wondered if she even truly knew herself that well.

The next week would be putting her through the wringer, though. Between everything going on at the university and her lab pushing their paper to be published, Meredith was already doing the balancing act of her life. Top that off with that important dinner she was supposed to be hosting next Friday... Damn. She had to make time to get groceries for that. Ten-minute pasta would easily leave Idris with nothing but smiles, but it would hardly suffice for a dinner with the owner of his team. Brilliant, as if she didn't have enough to take care of. Yet another thing to be added to the mental list then. It would all be manageable. Nothing she couldn't handle. That was her hope, anyways.

Meredith knew she had to take one thing at a time, though, and the first thing on that list was wringing the scrawny little neck of the teaching assistant that had tried to get this rubbish paper past her. The labs at Bangor were supposed to be prestigious. They had a reputation to uphold, as far as magical studies went, and Meredith was hellbent on keeping it that way. She knew she was strict, she knew she could be scary... but she had gone back to school in her thirties and gotten this far. What she had to say was worth hearing. Meredith had grabbed a coffee and was passing through the quad with determination in her step to handle this situation. The campus was mostly empty at this time of year, considering there were no summer classes and the residences were yet to be occupied, so it made it rather quick for Meredith to get between buildings. It also meant that it stood out all too well when there was someone around that didn't quite fit. After all these years, Meredith had a mental catalogue of everyone at Bangor.

And she still had a mental catalogue of a fair amount of people she had gone to school with. That was the first thing that slowed her down, her eyes meeting the other woman's. She came to a full stop in front of her just as the name came to her. "Issa... not exactly where I thought I would run into you," Mere said slowly. Issadora Fairbanks had been a year above her, in Ravenclaw. They had crossed paths a bit, but maybe the biggest reason Mere recognized her was Ares - because he had been in the same year as Martyn and, well, everyone talked about the Wentzells. Especially in Slytherin. "Meredith Powell, by the way. I suppose it's been a while," she added with a slight smile, carefully watching the other woman. This was far from what she had expected to encounter today, but Mere felt herself intrigued to see how it would play out.

@ issa | 662 words | outfit (minus sunglasses)

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF GS + WW

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[attr="class","ctopline"]Brown eyed girl sweet Caroline

[attr="class","cscriptmisc"]free fall small town saturday night

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[attr="class","clyrics"]Before you lose that loving feeling[break]
Let's go dancing on the ceiling

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[attr="class","cbody"]Being on a university campus was just a strange feeling for her. She didn’t know why she had even come here. She supposed that a part of her was just feeling… unsettled. Ever since she had gotten back to England, it had just felt like something was missing.
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Not with Ares, or the parts of her life that were great. She was happy and they were finally married. She thought that him getting out of the Ministry had done him a lot of good and that he seemed happier too. They had Clary, and she loved her daughter more than words could even describe. But she also had Orion too. He wasn’t her son, not biologically, but she was the only mum that he was going to remember. She knew that didn’t negate the fact that Aurora was technically his mother, and she wasn’t trying to replace that. But she loved Orion like he was her own and when Ares had gotten papers drawn up so that she could adopt him… well, that had felt like another piece of the puzzle falling into place.
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But there was one way that she still felt… out of place--and that was the fact that she still didn’t have a job. She had been back for over a year now and she still wasn’t doing anything to work. Issa knew that they didn’t need the money but it wasn’t about the money. She didn’t want Ares to feel like she was trying to freeload off of him or anything. She didn’t think he would think that, but still. She felt like she should be doing something. Somewhere.
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She hadn’t been able to work for years. She hadn’t been able to even leave that house in Prague for years, and now that she was free, she should be grasping at every chance to have a real life. And that meant working.
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She just… wasn’t really qualified for anything. Issa had thought about going to university after she graduated, but she had wanted to wait until she knew what she wanted to do. Then she had gotten the gig at a publishing house doing editing and she had enjoyed that. With how much she loved reading, getting to pour over books day after day had been a good fit for her. But that had been decades ago now. Having a gap in her work history for that long wouldn’t bode all that well for any employer, really. She didn’t know if she was actually hirable anymore.
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It also just called into question who would watch the kids and if they would need to hire a nanny. Issa liked being home with them. She didn’t really want to have to hire a nanny or anything like that. If she could find something where she worked at home, then she thought that she would be all set. But that was easier said than done. It was just a problem that she hadn’t been able to solve, something that hadn’t… fit yet. And she truly didn’t know how to make it fit.
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The answer wasn’t here, though. There was no reason for her to come and walk around a university as if she was somehow going to figure out the answers. She wasn’t--and that was fine. But she figured she might as well go home, if only so she’d stop thinking about this for a little while. But it was on her way out that she saw the familiar face. For a moment, she wondered if she knew her at all or if it was just one of those situations where someone looked familiar for no reason at all.
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But the woman saying her name answered that. Clearly, she knew her right back. “Yes, I… suppose that’s a fair thought.” There wasn’t any reason for her to think she’d just randomly be on a university campus of a school that she had never gone to. She barely knew why she was here either. “Oh, Meredith. Of course. I’m sorry, usually I’m a little better with faces, but it has been a long time. How have you been?” She remembered her from Hogwarts now, and she was quite sure that she hadn’t seen her since she graduated.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]709 ● @ meredith ● outfit minus shades

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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