#the phantom may loathe the weasleys' spirits ESPECIALLY ghost host bill

[carewyncromwell]

"Playground school bell rings again... Rain clouds come to play again... Has no one told you she's not breathing? 'Hello -- I'm your mind giving you someone to talk to... 'Hello..."'

~"Hello" by Evanescence

x~x~x~x

Told you there'd be more Haunted Mansion AU content coming! This one, unfortunately, is more on the sad side. Also, sorry for the blood trigger -- the mental image just was too strong in my mind.

Okay, so in the Haunted Mansion AU, I have mentioned that Bill Weasley fills the role of the "Ghost Host" -- the spirit who greets Duncan when he first comes to the Cromwell Manor and, as it turns out, ends up mostly taking charge of the other ghosts and daily affairs inside the Manor while his BFF the Beating Heart Bride (Carewyn Cromwell) takes on the responsibility of keeping the actual Master of the House, the malevolent Phantom, contained to the attic so he won't terrorize everyone else. When Duncan investigates more about the Cromwell Manor's history and the Cromwell family by extension, though, he learns that Bill was Carewyn's childhood friend, and that the eldest Weasley not only tried and failed to help Jacob and Carewyn run away from their uncle Blaise before they died, but that he was the one who discovered Jacob's severed head and buried it on his family's property, which ended up resulting in Charles not being able to lay claim to Jacob's soul postmortem the way he'd planned. What only was briefly touched on in the AU, though, was Bill's reaction to what happened to Jacob and Carewyn.

Carewyn was Bill's first real friend in the world -- one he made when he and his family had only just immigrated to upstate New York and had never had a true equal who he could rely on for emotional support just as much as he supported them -- and for Carewyn, Bill was the same. Both Bill and Carewyn had had their respective brothers -- Charlie and Jacob -- as emotional support, of course, but Bill had still always taken on the "big brother" role with Charlie and Jacob obviously was that same "big brother" role for Carewyn. Even despite their two year age gap, Carewyn and Bill treated each other like peers and, due to their similar personalities, often ended up "taking care" of everyone else around them (sometimes together), as well as helping take care of each other. Carewyn would stand up for Bill while he was working multiple jobs as a child to support his family and even coaxed members of her own family to give him odd jobs, so as to support him. Bill would hide Carewyn (often with Charlie's help) in his family's barn when her uncle Blaise came looking for her and taught her how to climb a tree and read the stars. When Jacob was stuck with his tutors and Bill was forced to work unpleasant jobs to make ends meet, Carewyn would keep him company and even help him complete his tasks, just to show moral support, even though her grandfather and especially her uncle so disapproved.

It's frankly no wonder that Bill immediately agreed to help get Carewyn and Jacob out, when Jacob approached him for help. It's also little wonder -- considering how close Bill was to Carewyn and how much he knew she loved her brother -- that Bill reacted so hostilely toward Blaise, when he confronted him about finding Jacob's skull.

“The only piece we have of Carey’s brother is this skull, thanks to you,” barked Bill, “and the only piece of Carey even left in this world is trapped in there with you, rather than buried in the cemetery where we can visit – ” “I want my nephew,” Blaise interrupted him, very harshly. “I know you have him, so give him back.” Bill’s eyes flooded with angry, grief-stricken tears.  “If Jacob were with me,” he said very quietly, “I would sooner burn in Hell than let you lock him up in here again.”

There was no way that Bill was going to let Blaise have a single piece of the person his best friend loved more than her own life.

So Bill buried Jacob's head under a tree not far from the Weasley house. He also kept Carewyn's usual red hair ribbon -- something she'd left at the Weasley house, the night she and Jacob tried and failed to escape the Cromwell Manor -- wrapped around his hand as he worked, before tying it to a branch right over the tiny plot. This blood-red ribbon would serve as a marker many years later, when paranormal investigator Duncan Ashe eventually discovered the tree and the skull buried underneath it.

Fortunately Bill and Carewyn were reunited long before Duncan came along and discovered the truth of the Cromwell family murders, when Blaise Cromwell insisted the medium Madame Olivia bring back his lost family members.

Carewyn actually didn't fully materialize for a very long time after being forced back to the Manor, even with the ghostly medium summoning spirits non-stop. Instead she appeared as nothing but a cold, light blue, ghostly orb, floating aimlessly into and out of the attic with seemingly no awareness or direction.

It frustrated and grieved the Phantom to no end, especially since the orb that was Carewyn would never speak and would dissolve away out of his clawed hands if he tried to grab her.

It was only when Bill brought his hands around the orb, not to seize it, but to cradle it, that the orb finally stopped wandering. Bill immediately knew this fog-like orb was his friend's spirit, too melancholy and hopeless to fully materialize, and choking back tears, he spoke to her.

"...Carey...Carey, forgive me. ...I failed you, Carey -- you and Jacob. God, I wanted so much to get justice for you, but I failed, Carey. It's why I'm still here, why we're all still here -- we all knew we failed you, Carey. Charlie and Mum and Dad...all of us. We should've been able to protect you -- we should've been able to get you away from your uncle, and yet even now...even now, you've been brought back here, against your will. Brought back here to this terrible house without your brother, without your mother. ...But...I'm not leaving you this time. I'm not leaving you alone here with him -- not again. And I will never leave you again. I swear 't on my life -- nay, on my...on my death...I will never leave you again."

And as Bill bared his heart to this incorporeal ball in his arms, he suddenly felt the cold light expand, growing limbs that clung to him just as much in return, that shook in his arms with silent sobs as strong as his own as she tried to comfort him. For a moment, all Bill and Carewyn's spirits could do, upon both being fully materialized, was hug each other and cry.

If anyone were to want a reason why the Phantom never banished Bill or the Weasleys from the Cromwell Manor the way he did the Wanderer Orion Amari multiple times, even with how much Blaise Cromwell detested them in life...the fact that Bill was the reason Carewyn didn't choose to remain in that hellish, spiraling, maddening, timeless chaos that exists for ghosts without a proper home may be very enlightening.

"...Bill...it's not your fault. It's not your family's fault. I made a choice, and it was mine, and it was cowardly. ...Forgive me..." "No -- no, no, Carey, you weren't cowardly. You were grieving, you were in pain, and...I just wish I could've helped you..." "You have, Bill. You have."

#hphm #hogwarts mystery #tw: blood #tw: suicide #tw: depression #tw: grief #carewyn cromwell #bill weasley #my art #haunted mansion #blaise cromwell #jacob cromwell #charlie weasley #I honestly listened to the entirety of evanescence's first album drawing this XD; #hey it did come out in 2003 when the haunted mansion AU is set!! #I promise the next bit of haunted mansion content I post will be nicer :'( #but yeah I do see the phantom harboring some *twinge* of guilt about what happened to the weasleys #mostly because he knows carewyn would hate him all the more knowing he had a hand to play in their deaths as well as jacob's and lane's #the phantom may loathe the weasleys' spirits ESPECIALLY ghost host bill #but that doesn't mean he really wanted to murder their entire family including ron and ginny who were *really* young #and hey at least bill weasley never acted like a suitor to carewyn #just presumptuous enough to act like her family when he's nothing but a pauper :I