Dear Dumbass ...

close your eyes and fall asleep, pray to god for no bad dreams

Helley was up early, showered and dressed, ready for work. She was finally allowed back and she was going to be on top of Knox, getting all her cases back and working on any new developments he’d uncovered during her time off. Her cases had been spread out across the department but he had the most because they all knew she’d throw a shit storm of a tantrum when she got back if her cases were given to utter morons. Helley had little faith in her colleagues' abilities to do things properly. Sure she’d have their backs in a duel, and she knew they’d have hers, but when it came to everything else, they were all kind of useless.

The Daily Prophet arrived and Helley was going to ignore it like she usually did, but it was the first of the month, which would mean the new matches were out. After last month’s chaos she was concerned at what she’d see. She’d faced the fact that Leo could be matched again. Last month had been some kind of typo but he was certainly on the radar of the Goddesses which meant he could be matched this month. After last month’s reaction she decided it was best to take herself somewhere that she could do less damage. Helley held the newspaper in her hand and disapparated. She took herself to the middle of Dartmoor, picking a secluded spot that was seldom visited, particularly in the cold of late autumn. The part of the moor she arrived at was deserted and somewhat barren looking. A lot of hills, a lot of random rocks, and sad looking shrubbery everywhere. Helley spotted a pony not too far off but beyond that, the space was just as she had hoped, although a lot windier than she’d anticipated. She hadn’t opened the paper yet. She only cared about two names and she didn’t want to see either of them in the paper. Leo and herself.

After last month's matches, Helley had to mentally prepare herself for if she did see Leo’s name in the paper again. If he was matched then she had to face it and deal with it in a much better way. Atti would be protected, Helley would always make sure he was looked after in this whole mess, but there wasn’t anything she could do to protect Leo, not legally anyway. Just in case Leo’s name was in today’s paper, Helley wanted to give herself a little space to express herself without hurting anyone or having to call Totty out to cover up her mess. She could do this, she could read a few lines of text without having a colossal breakdown, or if she did have a colossal breakdown then at least she was on her own. She could blast a giant boulder into a thousand pieces and no one would be any the wiser.

Helley decided it was time. She had work to be getting to and she wanted to get there early. She gripped the paper tightly so it wouldn’t fly away and pulled open the pages as the wind beat against them, flapping them noisily. Helley managed to finally get to the matches page and she scanned the page quickly. Her eyes darted to his name, and she froze. His name was there again. She knew it would be. Her nightmare was starting all over again. She felt her stomach drop and churn and she made a nauseated moan. A tightness gripped her chest. How could this be happening again? How was it even possible? Were the Goddesses fixed on him after last month? But who was he matched with? Her eyes darted to the name besides Leo's. Helley froze. Her breathing stopped. She reread the name, made sure it was lined up right and reread it again. Her brain took a while processing the long name next to his. Her long name. She took a shuddering breath, her head spinning, making her dizzy, making the nausea worse. She let go of the paper, the breeze snapping it up in an instant and blowing the pages apart, spreading it across the moor in a blink of an eye while Helley slumped to the ground on her hands and knees and proceeded to vomit on the dry tuft of grass beneath her.

It took Helley a while to compose herself enough to head home. She went to the bathroom and started brushing her teeth frantically. This was not how she wanted to start her first day back at work. Oh for fucks sake. Her first day back at work. This was going to be playing on her mind all day. She was going to have to deal with fucking idiots and worst of all, she was going to have to deal with Izzy. Helley had always prepared herself to take a stay at Azkaban over getting forced into marriage but this match was swamping her mind with all sorts of thoughts already. Did she want to marry Leo? Of course the fuck not, but could she get on with her life and just act as though nothing had ever happened? Maybe. Get married, avoid prison, carry on with her life as she always did. That could be done. But what if Leo met someone? What if he fell in love with someone and wanted to marry them but couldn’t because he was tied to her? They were matched, it wasn’t as if they could just get a divorce, but if she took Azkaban, he could sham-marry someone and carry on living his life as a free man, able to divorce if he met someone he truly wanted to be with. Merlin that man was giving her a headache yet again and the idea of him being with anyone else, being that happy with some other woman was making her stomach churn again and she didn't want to think too deeply as to why. She cared about Leo, she knew that she did, but how far did that go? She remember wishing that if he had to be matched then couldn't it have been her. It felt like such a dumb thing to wish for now but with his name in the Goddesses grasp, Helley was certain it wasn't going anywhere. Last month a typo, this month her. If she chose Azkaban would he be matched with someone else next month? Helley believed so.

Helley knew she needed to talk to Leo but she didn’t want to. He was going to be a prick and for once she already knew that she couldn't handle it. Him telling her it must have been a dream come true for her, or insinuating that somehow she'd arranged this. She couldn't handle that shit right now. She knew talking to Izzy was going to be a drama. Izzy was in the process of marrying her own match and was actually happy about it. She loved Helley and she loved Leo so she'd probably think it was an unusual but tolerable match and of course, much better than either Helley or Leo facing Azkaban. Or there was the chance that Izzy would be elated by the news and that was certainly the kind of energy Helley couldn't deal with. Helley sincerely hoped that Izzy wouldn't be exited, that she'd see this as a shit thing, but Helley was so lost in her thoughts, bombarded with 'what ifs' that she couldn't think about her own reaction, let alone Izzy's. But Leo and Izzy were only the tip of the iceberg. Work. She couldn't avoid it. She'd just had over a month off. She knew what her colleagues were like and she predicted there would be a lot of mocking and ‘oooo’s by people begging for a punch to the face and honestly, that seemed like the best option right now.

Helley rinsed and gargled her mouth with mouthwash and then once more for good measure. She went to her bedroom and sat at her desk, frozen in front of her diary for a solid five minutes as she tried to compile her thoughts. Her mind was chaos. Helley opened the diary, slowly took up her quill and opened her inkwell, careful not to take the aggression she was feeling out on her quill. A thousand thoughts passed through her mind all at once. She dipped the nib and began to write in her diary. Once she was done she put her quill away and put the cap back on her inkwell.

Helley stood up and walked away from her diary and picked out a new outfit for work, the one that most screamed 'don't you dare fuck with me or I will knock your fucking lights out'. Her mind was silent as she changed, no longer able to think, only act. She disapparated to work, numbness having already taken over her mind and body. A single word left on the page of her diary.





Fuck.

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