He had been trying so hard. Trying to be in good spirits, to feel any kind of excitement for the Christmas season, to act as normally as he possibly could so that it might feel like every other year. He'd never been much of a Christmas person before, but this year he had spent many of the last few weeks smiling until his mouth ached, not wanting to drag anyone else down with him. Jason would be home from Hogwarts, and they'd exchange presents, have a nice meal, look towards the future in the hopes that the next year might deal them a decent hand. 

He'd not gone back to work at the casino. And not for lack of trying, either. Somehow no one had thought it would much work out, a security guard who could not see. He would have gone back as a bartender or a waiter, or even a cleaner, if sight was not a presumed part of the skillset in those. He'd wondered about any of the shops in Salem Square, whether they could use anyone, but after months of stumbling in, still unused to the cane, and wreaking havoc with their displays and other customers, Jeremy had ruled those out too. 

He couldn't just sit around helplessly forever. He'd had to dig into his own - his personal savings - for the rest of their presents this year, and he had no way of replenishing any of the money. And he certainly wasn't going to let Saturday and Josiah take care of him until the end of his days.

Sattie had been on his arm to navigate the winter fair - Jeremy had prodded them all into going, it had been he who had insisted it would be fun - but the fountain was a tree today, apparently, and there were twice as many people as usual, so he didn't know how he would be managing by himself. They'd made it over to the sleigh ride stop. At the last minute, Jeremy shook his head. Waving Sattie and Jason on to the ride - he heard the jostling of sleigh bells as they were pulled away - Jeremy shuffled over to stand somewhere out of the way of the sleigh ride queues. 

He kept catching snippets of carol-singing, somewhere, but it took straining his ears to keep track of it; the whole square was a pulsating hub of noise, a tangled cacophony, a hive of bees. 

He'd told them he would wait for them to return, but standing here forlornly was possibly more depressing than a bumpy ride in the dark would have been. He could almost feel people's eyes passing over him as gazes slid between activities, too, so that finally spurred Jeremy to move. But the cane would only help him so far; the world had become a constant puzzle, a box full of jigsaw pieces laid out neatly that he only had to memorize. When locations moved, it was as though the whole box had been shaken, the pieces tossed out into chaos, with no easy place to start. 

"Which way's the mulled wine?" Jeremy murmured, to the most likely direction of a nearby bystander. He could have sworn he'd smelled it somewhere on his way across the square.

Bones healed, lungs working at full capacity again, and in possession of a body that could stand to move around for more than ten minutes at a time, Margaret couldn’t help but wonder what fresh hell would assault her next year. With her run of luck she would probably cough up blood at New Year or contract diphtheria and die like the muggle Queen’s children, leaving Attie and Ivy to wonder what had happened to the strong, healthy woman of a few years ago.

On the other hand, she mused as she sipped her mulled wine, glad to be out of the house and part of the revels even if she’d been obliged to endure the vomitous feeling of side-along apparition to be here, perhaps it was somebody else’s turn to bear misfortune? Like this poor bastard next to her, who she assumed didn’t know if he was next to a person, a carthorse or a haystack, and looked for all the world like a dog who had been abandoned by his owners. Which was probably harsh but Margaret couldn’t help but feel a stab of solidarity with the man as he stood sorrowful, sightlessly watching the sleigh rides and holding his cane with hands that seemed unused to the shape of it.

When he began to move she frowned, feeling a baffling degree of concern for his well-being as he navigated the crowds so poorly. A quick glance at the sleigh rides told her that Minnie and Attie were likely to be happily occupied for the time being and wouldn’t miss her, and Margaret followed him, feeling like a bit of an idiot, because if he didn’t speak and eventually reached his companions, whoever they were, then she was just an odd woman following him and casually drinking wine as she went. Still, at least she wouldn’t find herself worrying about him later, wondering what had happened to the blind stranger.

As it was he did not get far before stopping and looking completely and utterly lost. People brushed past, either too busy or too ignorant to concern themselves and Margaret felt the sympathy spring forth again as she came closer and heard him speak to the air.

“It’s this way,” reaching out she pressed a hand to his elbow. “Shall I lead you? I could do with a top up myself.”

If no one had offered an answer, it may have been humiliating, but also no more than he'd been expecting. Thus, the touch to his elbow came as something of a surprise, but Jeremy turned into it, altering the direction of his gaze to where the words had come from and drawing his cane in, lest he rap anyone with it.

It was a woman's voice, though not one that he instantly recognised. This way, though an answer, did not tell him much, but she had added an offer beyond what he'd been entreating. It did not sound as though it would be much of an inconvenience to her, if she did actually get some for herself, but it made Jeremy sting with guilt all the same. Guilt and that thudding awareness of his own pitifulness.

And he'd asked for help, so there really was no sense in rejecting it now. "Well, if you like," he sighed in answer, supposing that if she did - now was her chance to back out - that he probably ought to replace the churlishness with gratitude.

Well that was certainly a grumpier response than she had expected but Margaret couldn’t help the corners of her lips curling slightly. There was nothing amusing in this poor bugger’s plight of course, but she recognised all too well the sound of somebody who begrudged every moment of help they were forced to accept.

“I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t mean it lad, believe me.”

Glancing briefly at his pocket she spotted nothing that looked like a wand and wondered if this was one of the fabled muggles that lived here and they were supposedly so intertwined with. Had she ever met a muggle? Would she actually be able to spot one of she did, she pondered, steering him gently till he was facing the right direction. He had to be one didn’t he? Any sensible wizard would have some way of sensing their way about, not just rapping things with a walking stick and hoping for the best. Blimey, it was a wonder he was still going at all.

“Come on then, before we both die of thirst.”

That was that, and it made him feel a sniff better that she had not hesitated.

So he nodded, then, in silent acquiescence and silent thanks. He could no longer read these signals from other people, but at least he could still manage them. Jeremy had never been talkative to begin with, so being able to communicate without saying everything plain and aloud was a small comfort.

He let her begin to guide them, holding the cane loosely at his side for the moment, trusting she'd be able to stop him before she had him walk over a small child or right into something. He snorted slightly at her latter remark, a little amused despite his characteristic dourness.

"I'd not have to ask, but they've put nothin' in the same place today," Jeremy returned eventually, conceding to a bit of conversation. Though it was true - he could navigate the Square decently enough on a normal day, despite most often avoiding market mornings - it also served him to seem a little bit less useless. Not that they ordinarily sold mulled wine at a stall anyway; there was another positive to today.

Having never had much cause to visit Irvingly before Margaret couldn’t honestly say she knew the layout especially well but a periphery glance around did suggest that while there were more people here than usual they organisers had not taken the opportunity to rearrange the topography of the whole bloody place. The majority of the stalls looked as though they were fixed to the ground, so sunk into the mud that it would take magic to free them, and nobody else seemed to be at a loss.

Then again no one else seemed to be blind as a bat so there was that.

“Bloody Christmas isn’t it? They can never just leave things as they are,” she agreed with a grumpy mutter, inclined to save the man’s blushes and play along. After months of lying in bed feeling sorry for herself she could easily muster sympathy for a poor bugger who was stuck like this all the time. Unless there was something the healers could do? She highly doubted any muggle healer would possess half the skill Ivy did so maybe there was something to be said for these muggles getting off their high horse and asking for help like normal people?

“Always feel the need to make things harder than they need to be.”

The fact that he was greeted by a measure of grumpiness in return saw Jeremy relax a little more, grateful that he could have a break from perpetual, mouth-aching, put-on Christmas cheer. He gave a hmmph aloud, though his mouth twitched into a wry sort of smile.

"I'll say." Harder than they needed to be - well, if that wasn't everything, exactly put. There was so much effort gone to for the unnecessary, so much fussing around that need not be. During the holiday season, during every day... his whole life, really. His siblings running around fretting after him, even when they pretended not to, never able to just leave things be.

(Of course, there was a point to the latter end of her remark, too. Was he doing that? Jeremy asked himself. If he just swallowed his pride, asked for help - not just now, but all the time - and actually accepted it, mightn't he find things simpler for him?)

He shook off those thoughts.

"Have many holiday plans, then?" He said gruffly, his sincerest effort at continued small talk. He didn't recognise the voice, anyway, didn't know her, so. Everyone had holiday plans, to some extent. Aside from this fun day out.

Wrinkling her nose at the very thought of the season Margaret considered how Christmas would go. Being close to Attie was good. Being away from her family not so much. Watching her lover be happy with her children warmed her heart. Knowing she would never be allowed to be part of that with the woman she loved made her feel cold inside. No doubt she would spend her Christmas alternating between pining at doorways and aggressively smoking outside where she couldn’t be disturbed and wouldn’t be missed. Christmas promised to be a bleak affair with occasional, agonising glimpses of another life that wasn’t hers and never would be.

“The usual,” she said with a sniff, already feeling maudlin about her lot again. Still, she thought with a glance up that lingered when she realised he was hardly going to catch her out staring, it could be worse. “I work for a family in Wellingtonshire so they’ll have a grand time no doubt, whilst I’ll be lucky to sneak away for any time with my lot.”

She drank her drink. Thought about the bustle of her natal family at home compared to the quiet gentility at Attie’s. The former would be noisy, rambunctious, probably descend into an argument over nonsense and would likely end with one of her sisters-in-law pitching a fit about something and her having to mediate.

“I usually find about fifteen minutes does it. And yourself?”

Strangely enough, hearing that sniff, the less-than-cheerful tone and all, was actually lifting Jeremy's own spirits, in a depressing sort of way. It was an invitation to be as grumpy as he liked in return. (He knew he must have been spending too much time with family when he hadn't had enough time to himself to just mope.)

"Ah, Wellingtonshire," he muttered, as if he knew more about the place than he did. Hogsmeade, then. It was the upper end of the magical town, he thought he recalled, which would make sense, if the family was having a grand time. "What do you do for them?" He interrupted mildly, weighing up the possibilities: housekeeper, cook, maid of some kind. Time off would be scarce, whatever position she had.

Jeremy snorted at the rounding off of the thought of holiday time with her own family. "Fifteen minutes might do me, too," he half-joked, "Short and sweet." But then he shook his head. "No, they're not bad, I shouldn't complain. My youngest brother'll be back from Hogwarts, too, which'll be nice. Only thing with our plans - just spending time with family, not much else - is that I don't know how often I'll get to leave the house, so." Not for him, at least, not by himself. He could feel it already: with added family members and added fussing, being in the house would just be more claustrophobic.

The man, whom Meg had assumed to be as bitter as the wind and with a good reason, seemed marginally more animated speaking about his family but she was bemused to hear that her general outlook on family life was one that was shared. Having spent so long surrounded by the theoretically happy families in Wellingtonshire – families that were probably as happy as they were because they barely saw each other – Meg had begun to wonder whether her attitude was the odd one.

Nope. Families were terrible. Validated.

“Lady’s maid. So it’s just one really.” And the details of her duties certainly didn’t need elaborating upon with a stranger so Margaret quickly jumped back to the much safer topic of being miserable with one’s family and overall lot in life. It was, after all, practically her speciality. “That’ll be nice for him,” holidays at the castle had always been a special treat, from what she could very vividly remember. Perhaps he wasn’t a muggle then? Just someone who couldn’t suss out a way of seeing properly? It was a shame really. “Maybe he can distract them? I remember when my sister first went up everyone crowded around her during the holidays so you might slip out. Assuming it’s still a novelty that is?”

Of course if he came from a long line of pure bloods she might be barking up entirely the wrong tree!

Ah, lady's maid. Neither of his parents had been in domestic service - not many of his old acquaintances in his old hometown either; most people he'd known had been workers at the factories like him - but the position sounded like she had done quite well for herself. Jeremy hadn't expected, admittedly, wizards and witches to have all that much need for household staff. What was it for, appearances' sake? Surely they had spells to help them dress and clean and such? (Perhaps they were all just especially lazy, who knew.)

It turned out, Jeremy was realising, that now that he'd opened his mouth he had more to say than he'd ever thought he could. Practically a torrent, which was foreign to him, when he had made a case for years of keeping mum whenever possible, and even more so, when the recipient of all his complaints was a complete stranger.

Maybe that was advantage of this. He couldn't blow up at his siblings - not properly, not for too long, not in total honesty - because he would have to patch things up sooner rather than later, and they had to live with him. Couldn't to anyone he had to see regularly, every day. Even down at the Irvingly Arms, he couldn't say too much; what would anyone in Irvingly do with him then? Jeremy might as well take this accompaniment to the wine stall as the opportunity that it was to be forthcoming, for once in his life.

"True enough, you've got a point there." He said, thinking of Jason. Even during holidays, he spent more time at Noah and Tuesday's house, so the rest of them rarely got to see him. There'd be more than enough to catch up on, when they all saw him properly. "He's only been there for a couple o'years," Jeremy explained, "but, for that matter, he's the only wizard in the family, so I suspect the novelty won't ever much wear off." There was always that tense moment, admitting his status to a witch or wizard, wondering if their whole attitude would change. She'd taken the time to help him out, knowing he was blind, though, so it wasn't as though she could pity him too much more for his lack of magic, was it?

"Always more to hear about the magic school," Jeremy said, shaking his head, "I s'pose there will be a chance or two to slip out." It was a cheering thought, and about as much of a christmas gift as he was after, so. "How bad will it be with your lot, then, really?" He returned, wondering how much of an exaggeration (or not at all) her earlier remarks had been, whoever her family was composed of.

Sneering disdainfully at the thought of her family – they weren’t bad exactly, she just had the overwhelming urge to start a fight each and every time she saw most of them – Margaret closed her eyes for a moment as she controlled her thoughts. The last thing she wanted was to rant to a stranger.

A stranger that, it turned out, wasn’t one of them and Margaret tried to recall if she had ever met a proper muggle before. Years spent in small communities of witches and wizards had not offered much variety when it came to the kind of people one was likely to meet, and she had spent almost all of her adulthood working for rich families so staunchly stuck in their ways that they wouldn’t even entertain the notion of a muggleborn, let alone someone who possessed no magic at all.

So far, she was pleased to note, he didn’t seem especially envious of his siblings – as she had heard a number of her former employers imply muggles were – nor did he seem deficient. Apart from the obvious but for all she knew he had lost his sight defending somebodies life.

“ Same as ever,” she said miserably. “Younger brothers bitter they didn’t get to go to Hogwarts, my older two smug that they did and me in the middle. I got to go for a few years,” she clarified. “For all the good it did me.”

Being in the dark about so many things as he was, Jeremy had to strain to gauge reactions. There had been little - well, no - reaction to his admission of being non-magical, which could be perfectly fine or entirely terrible. However, judging by the fact she had not wrenched her guiding hand away, and that he'd heard no scoffing or footsteps making a beeline away, he assumed that whatever she thought of that, it could be far worse.

He felt there was a little of a pause, too, on the question about her family in return, which said enough in itself. He gave a sympathetic grimace at her explanation, though could not say whether she had seen it or not.

"So that school's not all its cracked up to be, then? Or is it?" Jeremy asked, frowning in thought at imagining that kind of tension. Really, he supposed he understood it well enough without imagining too far: even in the ordinary world, people like them had to grab for an education in the scraps they got of it - the luckier got more, and some missed out entirely. He'd always wished he'd had more to go on before starting at the factory, but that had been stupid and was still more stupid now: what good would it have done him?

Apparently magical education might not be all-encompassing and all-empowering. "It's - er - you want to get to..." - what was it, that people had tried to explain to him? Jeremy was sure it had been some kind of tests, or something, but for some reason he could only recall people ranting about owls, and he wasn't sure what any kind of animal had to do with it... "- fifth year's good enough, isn't it?" How many years had she managed? How many years could they get Jason through? God knew that they'd not be able to manage seven for his youngest brother, especially if Jeremy couldn't bloody earn his own living.

“It is if you’re allowed to finish it,” she muttered bitterly, remembering all too well how much she had begged and pleaded to be allowed to go for just that one more year, so the previous four of scrimping and saving wouldn’t have been in vain but her mother’s final illness had engulfed them all and there had been no other option available to them. She had understood that. But understanding was quite different to accepting it and Margaret had carried that feeling of ill-use all her days and she knew she was far from the only one who had suffered such a fate.

Still, there was Ivy and somehow that eased the knot in her stomach. She might be stuck in service – albeit with certain wonderful things that made it considerably more than bearable – but her niece was able to make something better of herself and that was something. It didn’t make it all go away, but it was still something.

“Don’t mind me,” she said after a pause, taking a sip of her drink. “I’m a miserable cow, can’t help it,” she added with a smirk and humour in her voice. “And schooling’s not everything is it? I’ve known magic all my life so not having OWLs is a bugger but it’s not the end of the world. There’s plenty worse off so I shouldn’t grumble.”

Taking another sip she considered for a moment before adding matter-of-factly: “I don’t mean you by the way.”

By the sounds of it, then, she hadn't made it quite as far as would have been useful - (it had had to do with Owls!) - and his face flickered into a faint grimace of sympathy. Upon hearing miserable cow, it twisted back towards a grin, still tinged slightly by bitterness; but, for once, the bitterness didn't feel so sour in his gut. 'Course, maybe that was just the mulled wine.

He shrugged at her remark that schooling wasn't everything. Not being magical, she knew better than him. Jeremy had - when lack of schooling had been the worst of his problems - not getting enough lessons at school or Sunday school to rub together into more than being able to read and do a bit of arithmetic. He'd always wished he'd had more, had an alternate future tucked away in his imagination where he'd been able to get a job in some kind of office, clerking maybe, doing something - well, that wasn't the factory. But everyone had worked at that bloody factory; it wasn't as though there had been actual options. And now - well, maybe one day he'd have the funds and the practice to read anything in braille. 'Til then -

"Are you sure? You're welcome to," mean him, for he felt worse off in every way. Lacking magic, means, learning, sight... he let out a gruff laugh. If there was anything he could succeed at... "Reckon I've got a fairly strong case for myself, here." He jostled his cane ever so slightly in his hand as a gesture of his assets, in this rare case.

Despite knowing that she really shouldn’t be amused Meg couldn’t help herself and she had the impression that the muggle man wouldn’t mind at all. In fact he seemed to be of a similarly bleak outlook as she was and even if he wasn’t, she reasoned, he couldn’t see her smirk anyway so it didn’t matter anyway. There was something quite calming about him actually – she didn’t need to put on the face she did for her employers and she didn’t need to school her face so Attie didn’t get wind of how much it affected her not to be able to walk in the same world as her lover. Still, she had enough compassion to know what was ease for her must be a dreadful slog through life for him.

Poor bugger. At least she could tell when people were looking at her funny.

“Yes, I suppose you have,” she said candidly, seeing no point in pretending otherwise. The very least she could do for him was to be honest. “Do you mind me asking about it? Only you said earlier they’ve moved things so I wondered if it’s quite recent?”

Years ago she had known a deaf lad back home, but having lived with it all his life Peter had never seemed to miss what he’d never had – this man certainly seemed a lot more embittered about the whole thing. Not that even her propensity for candour would lead her to say it to him today – there was only so much honestly that could pass between strangers before she was accused of straightforward rudeness!