Snow in June
Chapter Five
She woke up in her bedroom in her mother’s house, in her nightdress and in a miniature hell whose tortures seemed encased inside her skull.
And then her mind grew aware past the ache in her head and the dryness in her mouth and Hermione wished she was back asleep again.
She summoned a glass of water, gulped it down, and ended up muttering Aquamenti into her glass ten times. She thought to summon a vial of headache potion as well, but her pounding head was a blessing in disguise. It distracted her from... goddammit, there went her distraction.
Suddenly, she couldn’t spend one more second in that house, not even to change her clothes. She fumbled like a blind woman for her dressing gown, fumbled to her feet, fumbled donning her dressing gown, and fumbled knotting it. When they were good and tight, she spun in place, no longer fumbling, despite the alcohol. She had always been confident with her magic. Magic was the one thing that never let her down.
Well, except once. And it had been all her fault, hadn’t it? All her grievous fault.
It squeezed her breathless, her guilt.
It felt like dying. Dying by knives.
She gasped and retched and didn’t have time to check which limbs had been chopped off. She heard and felt a splatter, a wetness, before her vision went black for several hair-raising eternities. And then her sight returned, revealing the kitchen. Of her mother’s house. She was still in her mother’s house.
What on earth?
“Are you trying to kill yourself, you stupid cow?”
Hermione lashed out with her arm toward that voice. Her sight and equilibrium might be dysfunctional right then, but her temper hadn’t slowed or diminished an iota. She was irritated and she was furious.
She’d have satisfied her irritation and fury better if her stomach wasn’t in sync with her pique. It roiled and pitched its own fit as soon as she decided to move her arm. Ugh.
“That’s Le Degustacion Chocolat, I think. With your many glasses of burgundy. Keep on and we might wear your Legumes Rotis next.”
“Let go of me and leave me alone.”
“You don’t want to be sitting on the floor just now, trust me. I can’t feel my arse cheeks any more.”
She was so enraged she forgot the miniature hell she was hosting and headbutted Draco’s chin. They both howled in pain.
“Bloody hell, will you settle down, you insane cow? If you can get up at all you could have done so ages ago! But as it is, stop maiming me so I can at least get us off the bleeding floor.”
Hermione settled down, but not before pounding Draco’s chest.
“I’m going to be black and blue tomorrow, you ungrateful cow.”
“Stop me calling me a cow.”
Either he’d decided to ignore the threat in her voice or he was suicidal. Her wand was right there in her hand. Still, he snaked his arms around her back and around her knees more securely. He got up. Merlin, he was going to kill her by making her puke every single inch of her intestines out. She thumped him again. “The minute I down a potion for this is the minute you die, Draco Sodding Malfoy.”
“Stop growling. I can barely understand you and you sound hilarious.” He sat down on a stool beside the island.
“Put me down.”
He only pulled her deeper into his lap, closer to his chest, squashing the sick on their clothes between them. She tried not to think about it so that she wouldn’t add another layer to it. He didn’t seem to notice or mind at all, didn’t even think of Scourgifying it, the idiotic disgusting clod. “I told you, you don’t want the floor. It’s cold.”
“I’d prefer the floor to your person, thank you very much.”
He met her glare head on. It was like killing fire with fire. She frowned down at her stupid dressing gown and discovered one knot insufficient.
He extended the hand he had around her waist and held her fingers still. With his other hand, he turned her face up to him. His palm lingered on her cheek, warm and soft. “What’s gotten into you?” he said softly.
“What’s gotten into me?” She batted his hand away. She wanted to bat him away, only she wasn’t keen on tumbling and end up landing on her own puddle of puke. “Did you do this? Lucius detailed the house’s modifications to me. Anti-Disapparition Charms were not in that list. Not in my bedroom. Not for me. I could have splinched myself. You better be out of the country before I so much as sniff a Hellaway Potion. I swear you’ll””
His hand came back, this time encircling one side of her neck and cupping her jaw, silencing her. He was also so very close. She had to remind herself to blink, she had to remind herself not to count his eyelashes, not to drink him in, not to listen to whatever he was about to say.
“Do you have no shame at all? Blowing essence of bile all over my face?”
Of course, being drunk, she had trouble listening to her own mantra. She heard that and snarled all over his face next. He laughed.
“That’s the second time you did that today. Don’t get into the habit, dearest. It’s undignified. Here, drink this.” A glass of water appeared in his hand. She glared at him. Because he’d conjured a tall glass, her eyes might have crossed for several seconds while glaring and tipping the last drop of water to her mouth.
”I have. Every right. To snarl at you. Draco Malfoy. And you. Don’t know. How lucky. You are. I’m boneless. Just now.” For each declaratory clause, she thumped the side of the glass to his damnably smooth cheek. She could swear he was bald all over except the crown of his head.
He took the glass from her and Vanished it. What was he staring at? He was staring.
“Hasn’t Weasley ever set you drunk before? If he has, I think you’d have been married by now. Shotgun wedding. You look incredibly... When you’re drunk, you look like a goddess, did you know that? Maybe because you’ve been pummeling me. Does Helen have a shotgun?”
With that, he closed the small distance between them and kissed her.
Well, only at the first second did he kiss her. A kiss was a gentle touch of the lips. Not nibbling and suckling and licking, which was what he began doing, was still doing... And she was nibbling, suckling and licking him back. Because that was what you did in paradise’s banquet. You didn’t sit there and look. You tasted and devoured and touched and clung.
And then the frenzy slowed, and you realized and remembered things, and you pushed away from the banquet.
Hermione wrenched herself from Draco’s arms and nearly toppled off his lap. He caught her in time and pulled her back in, despite her thrashing.
“All right, what now? Get it over with!” she gritted out.
“Sorry?”
His calm infuriated her more. “Oh, right, I forgot. You’ll wait until I’m all mollified and beguiled first before kicking me off like a despised boot.”
“Are you even talking to me? Or is the alcohol making you see another person just now?”
“Nice. Clever. So now you’re insinuating I’m a slut, kissing men right and left that I’ll mistake some””
His slid his hands up to her shoulders and shook her gently. “What are you ranting about, woman?”
“She’s indisposed, Draco. Hadn’t we better get you to bed, Hermione?”
At that familiar drawl from the doorway, they both looked up sharply”and ignored the crack their foreheads made banging together at their simultaneous movement. A twitch made an appearance on both Lucius’s and Helen’s lips. They held on to their impassive expressions, however.
“Come on, then, darling,” Helen said, moving toward Hermione, only to stop cold when Hermione, who felt all the air being vacuumed away from her, cried out, “Don’t come near me! I want to go home.”
Hermione was worrying the nap of her dressing gown so she only heard Helen’s gasp and hastily stifled sob, rather than saw how the three people in the room took her words, her panic. She could feel Draco’s gaze, however, a burning wandtip pointed at her. “What are you talking about?” he murmured. “You’re home.”
“Oh, yes I am,” she whispered back through gritted teeth. She gulped in air. “I’m in”I’m in a remand home. I’ve done something terrible and I’ve officially been forgiven for it. Only officially, though. Not for real. So this is it instead. A limbo of pseudo-love and punishment.”
The hurt and pain she had always compressed in a tiny vein throbbed and ruptured. She was in so much misery it took her some time to be aware of Helen suddenly being in front of her and shaking her right there in Draco’s lap.
“What did you say, Hermione?”
“If you heard it, what are you asking for?”
“How dare you. I raised you better than this! I don’t even know what you’re talking about! How dare you! Pseudo-love? What have I ever done to you?”
There were no stoppers or walls now. The proverbial dam was gone as if it had never been there. Hermione felt about four years old. She even found herself looking around frantically for something plush and soft to curl into. But there was only Draco. She grabbed the lapels of his dressing gown and buried her face in his chest. “You’re still doing it! You’re punishing me!”
“Punishing you?” said Helen, still in that bewildered tone.
“You married the man who owned the house where I was tortured!”
“You never even told me that.”
“Now you know, don’t you?”
“Lucius is the one who told me.”
“I’m glad you’re happy with him.”
“Hermione Jean Granger, I am this close to hitting you for the first time since I gave birth to you. I am not even following any of this. In the first place, what am I supposed to be punishing you for?”
“I killed Daddy!”
No one spoke after that pitiful moan. Who could? Even Hermione had to gasp and release pent-up sobs first. She was crying to Draco’s shirt, still hadn’t looked up at her mother. She couldn’t bear to.
“Oh. Hermione.”
“I killed Daddy, I did. And I know you hate me for it. I’m sorry. I can’t bear it. You have every right to hate me. But please. Please stop throwing it in my face.”
She wanted to curl into a ball and just sleep. She was exhausted. So she didn’t know where she got the energy to get off Draco and spin in place.
There was a loud burst of profanity behind her and then she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t see again.
________________
“Excuse him, dearest," said Lucius, "but your daughter is almost certainly injured somewhere right now. It’s probably healthy if you join Draco in his profanity chant.”
Draco stopped his furious litany and stopped pounding the counter. Ow. Next time, perhaps he should vent his ire on much more pliable surfaces. Like pizza dough. He turned to his father and stepmother. Helen’s face was red and wet. He’d never seen her look like that before. She looked like his mother during her bad fits of depression. Draco wanted to wring Hermione’s neck.
Where was she? And was she even in one place, all parts of her? Draco dragged his hand over his face and nodded to his father as Lucius steered his wife out of the kitchen, mouthing to his son that they’d be in the library.
Draco had placed an Anti-Disapparition Jinx on the house because he didn’t want Hermione running away. He’d intended to question her, to meddle as he’d never done before, to find out just what was eating her. This was something beyond their earlier spat. And he’d been right, hadn’t he? Merlin.
When she’d literally dropped into the kitchen and started covering them both with projectile vomit, he’d wanted to flay her alive. He had never considered she’d dare Apparate drunk. Anyone sober would have noticed a wand’s warning vibration and heeded it. Anti-Disapparation Jinxes warned people, and did not splinch people. People only splinched themselves when they were idiots.
The second he saw she hadn’t been harmed much by her idiocy, his anger had gone and he’d thought they would settle things between them, but what happened was a bloody hurricane instead, and then there was Hermione’s bewildering tempest. He couldn’t even begin to grasp it. He’d suspected and felt there was this wall between mother and daughter, but he hadn’t expected it to be one-sided and going back years and years ago. Helen’s first husband was past ten years dead now.
He jumped when a bright silver thing streaked through the oriel window and flew to him. He ducked and then was irritated with himself. It was only a Patronus. So distinct. A dragon. It even spoke, by Circe. “Garden. Garden. Quick. I’m bleeding.”
What garden? He could only think of one, and his heart went still as he remembered the well. No, she wasn’t down there. He was going to kill her when he found her. Please let me find that daft bint.
As he tore through the kitchen door, the dragon followed him and then slowly dissipated into silver smoke, blending into the fog hanging low on the ground and the puffs of breath coming from Draco’s mouth and nose. It was freezing. Without stopping his stride, Draco transfigured his dressing gown into a thick woolen cloak. He lit all the lamps dotting the grounds and saw something on his cloak. He’d forgotten the vomit. He grimaced. Bits of it clung to the wool.
“Scourgify.”
He climbed pell-mell up to the walled garden and blasted the door off its hinges in his hurry.
“Lumos!”
There she was at the foot of the ash tree, between the tree’s trunk and the garden’s wall. Draco jumped over bushes and cracked his shin on urns and statuettes in his mad dash to Hermione. By the time he reached her, he was as furious as a starved troll. But one look at her and his anger melted and was swamped with fear.
“Look what you did to yourself, you stupid cow,” he hissed. She was bleeding. It looked like she’d been stabbed in the stomach. He reached for the knot of her robe to untie it and his hand was immediately wet with blood. He grimaced and winced and gritted his teeth. His hands were trembling as he carefully peeled off her dressing gown and then lifted a section of her nightdress and cut it with a spell from his wand. He ripped the fabric across her stomach.
It wasn’t as horrible as he’d dreaded. About an inch’s diameter of skin to the right of her navel had been splinched. He stopped the bleeding with a spell and then cleaned the wound with another. He transfigured a torn strip from her nightdress into a length of gauze and patched her up. Healing would have to wait. Those spells made things worse if not done right.
“Where else? Did you hurt your head or your back falling?” he asked, because she was crying softly as if in pain, even after he’d added a numbing spell to the others he’d placed on her stomach.
She shook her head and tried to stifle her sobs. It was some minutes before she succeeded. By this time, Draco had contrived to get her away from the wall and into his arms. He leaned against the tree and held her while she calmed down. He cleaned, repaired and transfigured her dressing gown into a thick blanket. He cocooned them both under and over it, but not before fixing her nightdress and noticing it”silk”and the skin it covered”silk, too.
As she quieted, the garden began to chirp and hum and croak around them. It was cold, but apparently, here in the garden, the critters were secure and went on with their business. He made a fire and it added its merry crackle to the chorus.
“Even in this state, you’re a showoff,” he whispered, amused that she was surreptitiously using his sleeve to wipe her face. As if he wouldn’t feel it.
“What do you mean?” She seemed content to just lie there half on him and half on the blanket. If she fell asleep, he’d slap her awake. She may be tired, but she had questions to answer first, not to mention a mother to whom she should apologise.
“Your Patronus nearly scared the crap out of me.”
She snorted. “I’m so sorry for frightening your delicate sensibilities, darling. But we don’t choose our Patronuses. Did you expect a fuzzy rabbit or a kitten?”
He tugged her hair for her insolence. “Try being charged by a Patronus that big.”
“My Patronus is an otter. It’s not that big.”
“Otter, my arse. You sicced an Antipodean Opaleye on me. Very flashy.”
She sat up thoughtlessly and suddenly enough to make herself cry out, the idiot. They both looked down and only resumed breathing when no fresh blood stained her nightdress. She gingerly leaned back beside him, facing him now. “An Antipodean Opaleye?”
“You know, the Swiss dragon. Mother-of-pearl scales. Pupil-less eyes and””
“I know what it is! My Patronus is an otter, not a dragon!”
“Well, somebody with a dragon Patronus sent for me then. ‘Garden, garden. Quick. I’m bleeding!’” He imitated her frantic voice. “Wasn’t that you? Is someone else in a garden somewhere bleeding?” She only frowned at him, bewildered.
She fumbled under the blanket and brought out her wand. She raised it, probably about to conjure her Patronus again, but he lowered her wand arm and tucked it back under the blanket. “Don’t think you’ll distract me. What happened back there? You made Helen cry.”
He saw her face flush and crumple before she turned away from him and scooted lower on his side until she was liable to speak to his waist. He carefully pulled her and nestled her on his chest instead. She felt soft and warm and bloody wonderful even though she was a baffling mess just then.
“I want to go home. Help me back to the house and I’ll use the Floo””
“Why do you think you killed your father?”
She hesitated a long while, only answering just as he was about to repeat his question. “I don’t think I killed him. I killed him.”
“What, you stabbed him? Clobbered him? Poisoned him? Hit him with the Av””
“Stop it!”
She was crying again. She sniffled and wiped with the blanket this time.
Draco found himself talking instead. “My mother had been ill and hadn’t made it to my father’s trial. His last words to me before he was dragged off to Azkaban had been, ‘Do not tell your mother.’ I thought that was stupid. I wasn’t about to lie to my mother and make her think my father’s just off on some jaunt and would return any day or that we can pack our bags and join him somewhere. So I told her we wouldn’t see my father for at least two years. That was the last time she was lucid.” He sighed. And roughly two years later, she died. Talk about killing your parent.
Hermione, intelligent creature that she was, heard his unspoken words, and slid her arm over his waist and squeezed. He tightened his arms around her shoulders. “Was that what you did, too? Told your father about the War perhaps? Defied him when he told you to not return to the wizarding world?”
She took a deep breath and expelled it in a puff. “The opposite. I didn’t tell them. And you can call it defiance, can’t you, if you dabble with nature and erase your parents’ memories of you? Their love for you?”
“Merlin, Hermione.” Draco was dumbfounded. “You Obliviated them? Why didn’t I think of that?”
She punched his chest lightly. “It’s no joking matter. I made them think they didn’t have a daughter, that they were Wendell and Monica Wilkins, jetsetters eager to experience the outback, so they’d be safe. Safe from being pursued and questioned. Safe from grieving if something happened to me. I was so afraid, you know. I myself would prefer blissful ignorance than memories.”
He hesitated a couple of moments before saying, “That’s twisted, but I’m not sure I don’t agree with it.”
Imagine living now, not having the memory of being branded and tainted, of only being saved from becoming a murderer by his victims’ sheer luck, of leaving a friend behind in a fire... Yule would also be so much more bearable without memories of his mother’s mad obsession with presents and decorations...
“What happened to your father? You restored their memories and he was furious with you?”
“Oh, I wish!” Hermione sobbed. “No, he d-died not knowing me. He died just two days before I arrived in Australia to take him and Mum back. H-he had a” a heart attack. Do you know, I arrived at the viewing, and my mum was all alone there except for the minister and his wife. The neighbors had retired for the night. Monica Wilkins thought she and her husband didn’t have family, so she was alone and didn’t question it. She was so surprised with me. Didn’t have an idea who I was. Wondered how distant I was related to her husband.” She gave short mirthless chuckle.
“How was your father’s heart attack your fault? I recall Helen saying he died fishing.”
She shuddered, or was she holding back another fit of sobs?
“I made them forget, didn’t I? They forgot Daddy had to be careful. He shouldn’t have dared going on his boat alone, shouldn’t have dared sport fishing in the Pacific.” The blanket tented as she gestured with her hand toward the fire. “And this damnable weather isn’t helping. It was June and it was exactly this cold when I found them again”well, found Mum again and found Daddy was dead.”
The pea soup that was her past cleared a little. And Merlin, he could see why she’d broken down on his shirtfront earlier. It was his turn to give her a squeeze. “I hope he was found quickly? That was winter over there.”
She was startled with this tangency, but seemed grateful. Good. He’d wanted to distract her from the misery of believing she had killed her father, but a far less subtle changing of the subject would have been coarse. “Oh. Yes. He was alone in his boat but there were others who also wanted to exploit the recent storm. Apparently, that’s when fish become frantic looking for food. Before or after the water is disturbed like that.”
“They probably upchuck their food during all the commotion, don’t they?”
“Can you not mention ‘upchucking’ for at least a decade starting now?”
He chuckled, and then kissed her forehead. “I grew up with phony relations, Hermione. Trust me, I’ll know if your mother hates you. She doesn’t. It’s her who’s been rather insecure about you. If you so much as leave the room, she all but whines like an injured puppy to my father.”
That startled her. “I”I didn’t think she’d notice. I don’t mean to hurt her. I’ve been staying away because I don’t want to intrude on her happiness. That sounds trite, but there it is. I’m a tattered pair of nylons awkward with her new shoes. Like our old house. She’s sold it. I went there one day and it was locked and empty and””
“You’re the one who’s angst-ridden, not Helen.”
She gaped at him, shaking her head.
“Come now, really,” said Draco. If she wanted their old house, she need only say so. But there was another time and place for releasing that particular snidget. He doubted it would go over well just now, that he’d bought the house only because Helen had been offering to give it to him. She’d said she and Hermione couldn’t bear the house. It seemed he was the dump of unwanted houses. He bought the house, but hadn’t planned to possess it. Someone meddlesome”namely, the estate agent” had changed the locks and probably stashed all the furniture in the attic. “And I’m sure Helen meant nothing by making Lucius modify the Le Gavroche staff’s memories. She’s a little excitable when there’s company, isn’t she?”
A strange sound that was half-sob and half-laughter burst from her. She was still shaking her head. “You’re probably right. But it was too much. The cold. In June. And then””
“So that’s what made you guzzle down wine? The cold? Wanted to warm your insides, did you?”
She pretended to buy his pretend thickness. “Oh yes. Too bad they didn’t have firewhisky. I had to settle for red wine.”
“I thought you were just so depressed with your date.”
“Viktor wasn’t my date. He was in town and wanted to see me and tell me his news. He’s engaged. I’m to come to the wedding.”
He’d expected her to be defensive, to champion her darling Krum, but that was stupid of him. She had never been predictable in their dialogues, which was why he liked their banter so much. He suddenly felt himself grinning widely. He really liked their banter so much. What she just said had nothing to do with it, absolutely nothing.
“We met Julia in Canterbury. Well, she called out to us, the insufferable bint. Helen invited her.”
She looked up and peered at his face in the firelight. What did he say? Her eyes were still staring into his but they were now shuttered and”uh-oh, hostile. Right. He’d forgotten their standoff.
“My mother invited her? You didn’t bring her in some stupid campaign to hurt me again?” There was no resentment in her voice, only curiosity, and it pricked him all the more. Hurt her again? Was this her evening of recalling ancient sorrows and gripes?
“What are you on about? I’m sorry about my insult earlier, but you really didn’t take that to heart, did you? It was juvenile. You know you’re beautiful, you daft cow.”
She left his side, sitting up and away from under the blanket in her shiny, shimmery, splendid silk nightdress. If she caught cold, he’d strangle her. But for now, he only stared and swallowed. He suddenly wanted to kiss the daft cow.
“I fell down and instead of helping me up, you just stood there and looked at me like you wanted to rub my face in the dirt.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t rub your face anywhere, except perhaps on my person.”
“Are you being funny?”
He smirked because she’d blushed. “Apparently not.”
She hissed like a cat. It made him laugh and haul her back beside him and under the blanket. She wasn’t able to fight him so she sat rigid to show her protest and shook his arm off when he draped it around her shoulders. He snaked it around her waist next, pulling her closer. She pinched his hand but he didn’t let go, only brought his other arm to fully encircle her. She gave up. And if she kept breathing hard like that, sending her chest rising and falling underneath her damnable blue silk, hang it all!
“What are you doing?” she said coolly. “Are you going to throw me into that fire after this?”
He didn’t understand that, so he ignored it. “I heard”from a very reliable source, mind”that you told your mother you aren’t friends with me. What poppycock, right? But because I couldn’t doubt my source, I let it be true. But afterwards, I decided I’d ignore my reliable source’s rubbish. Coincidence that you fell down just when I was being not friends with you, though.”
She tilted her face up, meeting his eyes. When she spoke, her breath joined his. “Are we? Friends, I mean? I suppose it’s coincidence that every time you’re nice to me, the next thing you do is leave, and ignore me and humiliate me and disappoint me and””
Godric and Salazar. She couldn’t be getting at what he thought she was getting at, could she?
“And?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.
“Nothing,” she answered, looking down and speaking to his clothes again. “That’s probably your way, isn’t it? You can’t go around giving me the notion that””
“That what? That I’m fond of you?”
She laughed. She actually laughed while he was all but swallowing his tongue. “Sheesh. Sweet Cerridwen, don’t make me laugh. It hurts. That you’re nice, warm and dependable is what I was going to say, you idiot. How do you explain yourself, Draco dearest?”
She was peering at her middle and checking if she was bleeding again. As he stared at her disheveled and foliage-littered hair, he suddenly realized he was done with games. He turned her face to him and slid his fingers from her chin to her neck.
“You were with Weasley, you daft bint. What was I supposed to do?”
She blinked at him and visibly shook. He felt it in his hands, too. “What are you talking about?”
He rolled his eyes. “For Merlin’s sake. For someone widely purported to be the brightest witch of Britain, you can be quite dim.”
“You can say that again, Draco.”
Draco could only gasp and cough his amusement at how fast and fierce Hermione scrambled and clawed to get out of his arms. Helen had arrived. She no longer looked woebegone, only furious. She wasn’t even clinging to his father. If anything, Lucius looked like he’d tried to drag his wife back and failed. Draco’s estimation of his stepmother went up another notch.
“So here you are. Were you planning to go back to the house at all? There I was rending leather off my good couch out of fret and fuss and you were just here quite cozy. Good thing I checked here before going off to the rest of Dover. Can you leave me with my daughter please, Draco? Lucius, stop hovering, I won’t faint or fall or whatever nonsense you think I’m in danger of doing!”
His father looked abashed. Draco couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Because he and his father failed to move, Helen added crisply, “Didn’t you hear me? I asked you to leave us.”
Wow. Draco grinned. His father glared at him and followed him to the garden doorway. Quite the spitfire, Helen. Draco could have kissed her just for putting his father in his place, if only she hadn’t so appallingly interrupted. As he stepped over the garden door he’d blasted into pieces on the ground, he looked back. Hermione quickly turned her eyes from him to Helen.
“Gods, Draco, what a pair you and I have become,” his father said flippantly. “I married a Muggle, you’re going to marry your stepsister... What would your children do? Marry Weasleys?”
“Bite your tongue, Father.” Draco cursed the cold; the blood that rushed to his cheeks burned worse because of it. “And why do you think I’m going to marry my””
“The only ones clueless have been you and your object of affections. Edrina only vents her tetchiness on me so she wouldn’t harangue you and her precious granddaughter instead, did you know that? I’ll thank you to end our pooled miseries.”