InsaneJournal

Wednesday, 22nd October 1975.

Late autumn rained on south Dorchester's heart for weeks. Most townsman knew to expect the market to pull itself indoors when the weather was like this. The rain got under skin like the cold in Dorset never could. It drove its youngest citizens to torment its elders with whining, and while all the parents grit their teeth and put their foot down, it sounded like music to Charity Dearborn's ears, and still, she stood beneath an awning across the street from the house she shared with her husband.

For two years, she suffered disappointments. Every night, she went to bed with visions of dance recitals, changing nappies, the Tooth Fairy, and split peas behaving as an airplane in a spoon. But every month, she was shredded and torn, trying to put the failures -- her failures -- aside when the pregnancy test came up negative. Doc would rub her back and tell her they could try something else. She'd cry and hold onto him, but there was always hope.

And then, hope abandoned her. The knowledge that she'd never have to come up with creative ways to placate a child ached inside of her. Healers could find no reason why she couldn't get pregnant; it just wasn't happening. Every day, she wondered what use she was - to the world, to her family - if she couldn't do the one thing a woman should be able to do. It never had taken much convincing to believe herself damaged goods, and she excelled at pointing fingers at herself. Her own mother had stopped asking when she was going to get grandchildren.

As months turned to years, co-workers and friends announced pregnancies and baby showers and births. And then they began to say things like, "I'm so jealous of your freedom -- must be nice not to have all the responsibility of kids, to not be tied down." Or "See? It's not so bad that you can't have kids; look at all the travel you can do!" And all the while, they basked in their children's adoration. Meanwhile, Charity thought it must be nice never having to think about the alternative.

They say that no parent should ever have to bury a child, but what of all the children never born? What about all the dreams she'd had to bury? Didn't they count?

Usually polite and mostly forgiving, Charity Dearborn's patience and kindness was tried time and again for these past eight months. Doc's quiet unnerved her, and for once, she could no longer sense what he was thinking. Every look seemed to bore a hole, right down to the broken centre of her. There were other options, Doc insisted. Adoption, surrogates, Muggle drugs and surgeries. Advancements were made every day, after all. For that matter, magic opened a whole new venue of options. They shouldn't give up hope yet, and, he pointed out in that frustratingly calm voice of his, that Amos Diggory's parents thought they couldn't have children, and see how well that turned out?

Of course he would say that. No matter the harsh things she'd said to him these past few months, she knew that he would still do anything for her. Charity had always thought that he was too good for her. She'd never deserved his kind of unwavering devotion, and she was certain that one day, he'd realise it, too. He'd snap out of it, and resentment would follow. Her own pitiful self-loathing was one thing to endure, but Doc's animosity would kill her, and the idea that he could be happy and fulfilled with someone who could give him everything he wanted drove her away.

Misery had begun to set in, and in the fathomless rain, Charity held a set of papers that would fix everything but her broken heart. All she needed now was the courage to let him go.