Here's to the breakups that didn't break us
The break down, wrong turn that takes us to

A Little Dive Bar in Dahlonega

Oralee's Outfit

There was something about leaving England, and just being someone else for a night that Lee liked the sound of. She knew that she wasn't a nobody, but she was enough of a nobody that she didn't think that she was going to know anyone in this bar in Ireland. She preferred to drink somewhere that wasn't England. Somewhere that there was little to no chance that she was going to have to deal with someone that was going to know Kingsley, or Merlin forbid, Kingsley himself. She thought that that was something that she was going to have to try and just get over. There was really no sense in hiding. Because essentially that was exactly what she was doing. She was hiding, and she knew it. But it wasn't that easy. It wasn't like there was anything about this that was easy. She was a single mum of a four year old, a professor, and she had three older kids to worry about as well. It wasn't like she was entirely on her own, but that didn't mean that she was going to know exactly how to handle herself either. 

Oralee knew that things with Kingsley were hard to explain. They were hard for anyone to explain, or understand, and she had been there, she had lived it. They had gotten into a fight, one of many after she had been hurt, and then things had just... Dissolved. She had taken Josie, and Audrey, and she had gone to her mum's. She had been met with something that she didn't understand, because Kingsley didn't understand. He didn't understand why she wasn't getting better, why she couldn't get better. There was no getting better about this. She was dying. Or at least then it had felt like she was dying. She wasn't, and they had saved her arm, partially. They had saved it enough that she could use it, but she would never feel again. And that was something that she had to come to terms with. That she had to try and understand. They had tried magic, they had tried potions, they had tried everything that they could think of, and they couldn't fix it. The curse that had taken her arm hadn't been a part of the explosion. It had been separate. Someone had aimed for her that day. 

That wasn't something that you just, got over. That wasn't something that you just bounced back from. She wanted someone to answer for that. For the loss of her arm. For the fact that if she would have moved, just a half a step further to the right, it would have hit Josie. For the fact that if she hadn't moved at all, it would have hit her heart. She wasn't ignorant. Oralee knew that when she had joined the Order in the first place she was making herself a target. Marrying Kingsley after the war had made her even more of one. She was a target because she was Oralee Shacklebolt. And they had taken that chance that day. Flourish and Blotts had been the distraction. Her book shop, had been the distraction. Because they had attacked her, and then they had killed Minerva, and she didn't think that there was any reason to think that any of that was by accident. Nothing happened by accident. There were no coincidences. Everything happened for a reason, Oralee believed that with every fiber of her being, it was just a matter of what exactly the reason had been that she had moved. That she was meant to stay alive. 

Not whole, not by any means, but alive. If she were whole she still would have been married. If she were whole they wouldn't have fought that way. If she were whole, she wouldn't be sitting here, in this bar, drinking whiskey straight from a glass. None of this would be where she was right now. But it was Saturday night, and her mum had Audrey, and she hadn't wanted to be in that house by herself anymore. And so she had come out here. She had come to Ireland, and she had ordered herself a drink, and she knew that she needed to just get over it. She knew that she needed to figure out exactly who she was going to be now, because she hadn't. She hadn't figured it out yet at all, and it had been over a year. They had filed for divorce before Christmas of 2016, and now it was April of 2018... She had to shake this off, she had to find out who she was. Because she had to make the best of it all. She had to make the best of everything. That's where she was tonight... Flagging down the bartender she ordered another round, "Johnnie Walker Black." 

Flora despised places like this. Hestia did not as much, so for the night she was half-Hestia.

She was a Carrow, and better than this, but Hestia was better at mingling, better at exchanging and gaining the confidences of others. To Flora, unless people were Hestia, they were things to hurt. To Hestia, they were things to manipulate.

Still, she was in her middle thirties, and she hadn't been in a bar less than the Adria for years-- and it was her first time without Hestia. Sebastian gave her quality, and Flora appreciated that. He did understand that. Perhaps it was to check an idle box, to prove to herself that she could be a better Hestia in this way, for the next time she was Hestia.

Her brow furrowed at the names and at the prices. Lower than what she was used to, but. . . she gave a sigh. She'd be Hestia, and Hestia was more adventurous. "Guinness 1759," she told the waiter. Pity. She didn't much like Guinness, but it was likely the safest they had. Cheaper than anything the Adria offered, but . . perhaps she'd try. There was another blonde ordering not a few seats from her, her accent English.

At this point, she didn't care if she was a Mudblood or Muggle, but --

"Actually, Balvani Portwood-- a twenty-one year." She hadn't noticed the Scotch lists, which did feel embarrassing. As the waiter left, she turned to the other woman. "Around this place often?"

Perhaps the bravest thing that either one of them had done was sign those papers. Was leave. The bravest thing that Lee had ever done was leave. And she hadn't even gone that far. She had taken the girls, and she had gone to her mother's. She hadn't run away from him. She hadn't even really planned on leaving, she had just wanted to see if he was going to come after her. And he didn't. He hadn't come after her at all. She was a broken thing that he hadn't wanted anymore, and she had known that after that. He had come, but he had come looking for Josie. Not even Audrey, because she knew that he hadn't really wanted her either. Lee had wanted to adopt. Had thought that they were stable enough to take in a child, to make them their own. She was going to do that, she had been doing that, without him. She was strong enough to handle that. She was strong enough to do a lot of things, and she had learned that, since everything had ended. Lee had learned just how much of herself she had given up being Oralee Shacklebolt, and she didn't have to do that anymore.

She didn't have to be anyone that she didn't want to be, she didn't have to be anyone for anyone else. She only had herself and her children to answer to, and that was just fine. She thought that there was nothing that she could do that was going to make her go back to that now. That she was just fine on her own, and it was hard to explain it to everyone that had known them for so long. It was hard to explain that she was better off on her own. It was hard to explain that the man that did so much for everyone else, had wanted nothing to do with her when she was hurt, and broken, and damaged. She was still all of those things. She would always be hurt, and broken, and damaged. There was no denying that. Her arm showed the proof of that. The deep gash that ran around her arm had scarred. It was a daily reminder that she was strong enough to survive. That something that had been intended to kill her, had only handicapped her. And that she was stronger than that disability. She was stronger than she had thought that she was ever going to be, but she had proved that.

That she was good enough, that she was strong enough on her own. She had lost her trust in a lot of things for a long time, and she had lost her faith in herself. But she was working on putting herself back together. There had been a little while in there where she had thought that she would just be better off going back to him. Finding a way to make it work, but she knew that that wasn't a good idea. She knew that she couldn't go back, because she would lose everything that she hadn't even known that she had lost. She thought that it was far better to be alone in the dark than it was to deal with what would have happened should she have gone back. She didn't want to go back to someone that had seemed to hate her so much in the end. That hadn't known what to do for her. That hadn't known what it was that she was going to need, hadn't known how to support her. And she didn't understand that. He was amazing with everyone else. He had been so good as the Minister, and she would have supported him leading the Order…

He could have done all of that, and she would have stood behind him. But she couldn't be his wife. She could be the mother of his children, and she could love him from a distance. But she couldn't be his wife anymore. Not after everything that she knew now. When the divorce papers had come, and they had been inevitable after the fight that they had had. She had signed them without hesitation. She had signed them and taken her name back. And she had changed Audrey's too. She would never deny him rights to his natural born children, but the little girl that was so very much like her. The little girl that Oralee had bonded with so quickly, that little blonde haired, blue eyed, baby that she had left with her mother for the night, she was something that Lee would have fought him over. She was hers. There was no denying that. Subconsciously she tugged the left-hand sleeve of her sweater down as someone spoke next to her, and Oralee looked over to find a relatively unfamiliar face. "Not at all." She answered with a smile, "I've never actually been here before, but it's not England so..."