Knockturn Bound - Suburban Homes

5 1/2 Temple Meadow - The Shape of Home | Rossian

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 21:30:40 +0000

Saturday, August 26, 1922

The McCormick Home
6:30 AM

The light filtered through his curtains in a soft amber glow, casting shimmers of gold along his bedroom walls. The scent of cinnamon filled her senses as she inhaled deeply, a reminder of the place she'd fallen asleep the night before. With her eyes still closed, her fingers walked across the mattress, in search of the boy she'd come home to. So many nights she'd fallen asleep crying, and equally as many mornings when she'd woken to reach for him, only to remember why he wasn't there.

This time, her hand grazed his side and she hummed, closing the distance between them as she snuggled closer, resting her head between his neck and shoulder. "Morning," she murmured, dropping a series of brief kisses along his neck, and feeling more at peace than she had in months. Her arm wrapped around his middle as her eyes finally opened, peering up at her husband while a smile peeked at the corner of her lips. He was always cutest in the morning, she mused, when his curls were all messy and wild and the creases of the pillows had made small indents on his cheeks.

It was hard to believe she was here. Despite everything that had happened the night before, some part of Rosalie had expected to wake up in Maddox and Julia's attic with Fawn curled up on her chest. But she was home, with Cassian, where she belonged. The only thing missing was her little demiguise, but she'd collect her later that morning when she went back to the Barlowes' to pack her things.

Speaking of which.

"I'll have to head back to Maddox's," and then quickly, before confusion or panic could set in, "To get Fawn and my things. Julia's probably wondering where I am." She squeezed him a little tighter, unable to tear her eyes from him. It had felt like ages since she'd been able to properly look at him, and now that he was here, she could hardly get enough. "Staying here or want to come with me?"

Rosie finally let him go as she sat up in the bed, stretching her arms above her head before she tousled her hair back and away from her face. "Bet your parents will be surprised." She grinned down at him, her eyes finding the sparkle that she'd hidden away for awhile. "Hope we didn't keep them up too late."

Later, at Breakfast

"I spread extra butter on your toast." She smiled, setting his breakfast down in front of him and then settling herself directly onto his lap. Looping one arm around his shoulders, Rosie nuzzled his face with hers, dropping a tiny kiss on the tip of his nose. How Cassian intended to eat with his wife perched completely in the way of his food, she didn't know but those were his worries, not hers.

The house had been quiet when the two had snuck downstairs, hand-in-hand. His parents slept in on the weekends, and while Cassian and Rosalie usually did as well, they figured it'd be easier to have a few moments to themselves if they started breakfast a bit early.

The tea kettle was the only noise loud enough to sound through the house and as soon as it began to whistle, the girl hopped up from his lap and hurried back to the stove. "I've got orange juice for you, gimme just a second," she called over her shoulder. Cassian had never been a big fan of tea - some Englishman he was, she mused - but Kari had apparently gone to the market within the last day or so and had gotten a fresh container of juice for him.

It was interesting to her how easily she fell right back into domesticity with him, wanting to take care of her husband in the way she couldn't while she'd been gone. She knew he didn't expect it of her, but she liked the role she had given herself and was happy to take up her place within it again.

Her tea fixed and his juice poured, Rosie turned back to the table, just in time to see Julian descend the last step and stop. He looked back and forth between the two of them, while Rosie offered him a shy smile. "Morning, Mister McCormick," she said softly, setting Cass's glass in front of him as she resumed her spot on his lap and took a quick sip from her own.

She met Cass's gaze, her eyes laughing over the rim of the teacup. "Kettle's fresh if you or Kari want any."

5 1/2 Temple Meadow - Aftershock || Cassian Snaps [Closed]

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:45:07 +0000

Monday, July 3, 1922
~ 8:00 AM

Shffft.

The curtain opened without ceremony, the same as it had done the day before and the day before that. Obtrusive rays of sunlight flooded the once shadowy room, filling every inch to chase away the darkness. It made no difference against the deeper and more terrifying darkness that had clung to Cassian since the night that Rosie left.

‘Close them,’ he wanted to say, but the boy couldn’t locate his lips to complete the gesture.

His mother wouldn’t listen even if he could.

As adamant as he was to withdraw from the world and hide himself where neither shame nor heartbreak could find him, Kari McCormick was determined to ensure her son did not simply lay there and rot. The woman brought him meals, forcing spoonfuls into his mouth when there was need. She forced him out of his room for showers. In the evenings, she brought her sewing supplies into his room, sitting by his bed to discuss the day’s market while she practiced her needlework.

He couldn’t hear her.

An impenetrable wall existed between mother and son. A box may have been more accurate. It locked Cassian within, muffling the noise of the outside world until his subconscious had nearly managed to convince him that he was under water.
Sometimes, his mother offered for them to take short walks; sometimes, she suggested they go downstairs to listen to the radio. She was looking for reasons for Cassian to leave his bed and face the world, but when Rosie had left, she’d taken every one of them with her.

He’d finally done it. Cassian had managed to drive the girl to the end of her rope. It snapped. The tether that had fastened them disappeared like the dew at dawn, leaving nothing more than a gaping hole where his heart used to be. She didn't think she could stay here with him. It had become more than she could bear, and he knew with every nerve that still dully fired that she was right.

That might have been the hardest part to reconcile. He’d done everything he could and had fought harder than he’d fought for anything else. He'd opened himself to the unpleasantness of confession because, for her, it felt worth it. Cassian hadn’t wanted to lose his wife—and certainly not the way he had. He believed love should conquer all; he believed that sincerity would serve as a sufficient balm and that caring about something meant never letting it go. Believing all that didn’t prevent him from understanding that only a selfish man would’ve tried to make her stay when she'd been so sure that she couldn't.

Rosie said she needed time—they needed time and distance to heal. The implication struck him, and he’d been reeling ever since. She didn’t think he could heal if she were around. She thought the only way to save him—save them—was to not be there.

What was left after that?

What did it say about him if the only way either of them could get better was for her to get away from him?

Was that it? The sum of all he’d accomplished as her husband? Cassian had driven her to a place from which the only way back was a road that diverted from his. And what was better? How did he know when either of them had arrived at that condition? Was it no more cravings? Was it never feeling like the world was too big?

Perhaps he could’ve lived with such a harrowing failure if it had sat quietly in the background while he’d been allowed to continue trying. Instead, in one night, his entire world had been upended. Rosie had told him that she didn't know when she could return. The next morning, there was no sun to rise in his sky, plunging his entire world in a darkness so thick that it pressed him into his bed.

“Coming down for breakfast?”

He didn’t answer.

How could he eat? Was there a point? Cassian could no longer envision a world where such things mattered.

He rolled onto his side, turning his back to the abrasive light that failed to warm him.

From somewhere across the room, his mother sighed. “Cassian…you can’t go on like this.” It wasn’t a reprimand but the plea of a woman who’d watched her child sink beneath the covers days ago and hadn’t been able to locate the will to get back out on his own.

His body and mind had crumbled together, falling into a full-system collapse.

She was gone. It was the only thought that occupied his mind, playing over and over on a loop as if it worried he might otherwise forget. Gone. They’d flirted with the idea of separation before…at least…Rosie had, but they’d never…it had never…there had always been a solution—a Hail Mary, a saving grace—seconds from disaster something always managed to pull them back together.

Where had that thing gone now, when he needed it the most? Why hadn’t it swooped in at the 11th hour to rescue them—rescue him—from this devastation? Was it even fair to ask for rescue? Knowing what he did, seeing the hurt that he had, did he have a right to wish she could stay for the sake of his own restoration? Rosie deserved to be better. She deserved the world. That was no longer compatible with remaining.

Each time the loop circled back to that conclusion, another dagger plunged itself deep inside his chest. He hadn’t cried since the night she left, but only because he’d poured himself dry. What remained was an emptiness he hadn’t felt since the ‘death’ of his mother. Cassian couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so lost and uncertain. The terror he’d felt in the clearing when her family had come to break up their happy home didn’t hold a candle to the ominous presence that saturated his limbs now.

He wasn’t afraid in the traditional sense. Rather, he was filled with a kind of dread that told him nothing would ever be okay again. There would never be another sunrise, never another sky littered with whimsical constellations that spoke of impossible love that dared to defy the cosmos.

If all those were gone, what was left?

5 1/2 Temple Meadow - The Quiet Things | Rossian

Mon, 29 Jun 2026 02:33:00 +0000

Friday, June 30, 1922

8:30 PM
❤︎⁠

Rosalie had been home for two days, and it was time for her husband to keep his promise.

Two weeks in Mungo's had made a vast difference in the girl's appearance and demeanor, and it had only strengthened her resolve to help Cassian begin his long road to healing. Neither of them had come out of the past month unscathed, and the evidence had been written all over the both of them physically and mentally.

Rosie wouldn't say she was fine now, necessarily, but she was recovering, and eating better than she ever had. She was smiling, authentically again, and her laughs now rose to her eyes rather than dying politely behind her lips. Where Cassian had dragged out a screaming, hysterical shell of a girl, now sat a young woman, still prone to moments of sadness and darkness that took hold, but surrounded by love and people that were determined to help her move through them to happier ones.

Rosie knew she had a long way to go. The trauma she'd endured didn't just magically go away with the two weeks of intense therapy and psychiatric care, but it didn't feel so heavy and overwhelming anymore. She could see light at the end of the tunnel, and in the meantime, she was finding joy in little every day things again.

Coming home had been the biggest.

"You can do this," she said softly, taking hold of Cassian's hand as they sat on his bed, summoning the courage to go downstairs and confess to his parents what had been going on. It was the promise she'd asked of him, not to make her carry all of this alone, especially when they both knew she'd tried and had been unsuccessful at it. More than that, for his own well-being, Rosalie didn't want Cassian overwhelmed with shame anymore. The more people that knew about his struggles - especially those that loved him - the better chance he had at getting better. More support could only be a good thing, even if the revelation was difficult.

Dinner cleaned up and the kitchen spotless, she was sure Julian and Kari weren't expecting to see the two for the rest of the night. The two had made early evenings of it since she'd returned home, preferring to sit up in bed together, reading books to one another out loud, or talking about the things that had come to pass. Interrupting his parents' evening radio program to talk about vices wouldn't be welcome news, she was sure.

But it was necessary.

"Do you want to call them up here, or do you want to go down?"

5 1/2 Temple Meadow - Immortal | Rossian

Sun, 24 May 2026 01:19:18 +0000

Sunday, June 11, 1922
9:00 AM
<3

"Cassian, breakfast!"

Rosie stood at the bottom of the stairs, wiping her hands on her apron while she waited to hear the sound of his bedroom door creak open. As the kitchen timer went off, she hurried back to the stove, offering a quick good morning to Julian as he sat himself at the table.

The scent of sausages, eggs and fried bread filled the kitchen as Rosie worked to ignore the pain in her stomach and the way her hands trembled as she plated Cassian's food. It was only a little hunger, she told herself, and everyone felt a little lightheaded in the morning sometimes.

While she'd been sleeping better in the last week, her eating habits had dwindled to nothing, her excuses becoming harder and harder to come up with, and she knew that the family was beginning to take notice.

She couldn't help it. There was no part of her, save her stomach, that wanted to eat. Every time a plate was placed in front of her, she felt sick. Every time a morsel passed between her lips, she wanted to throw up. Her body weakening every day and the fatigue that took hold weren't enough to dissuade her, though what her end goal was, she wasn't sure.

Even her thoughts didn't make sense anymore. The fog that was taking hold had washed out most of the thoughts that had plagued her, and while it had taken the more sensible ones too, Rosalie took it as a small blessing.

If she couldn't think, she couldn't worry. And all she had done since that night was worry. About Cassian, about herself, about his parents.

It was never ending.

Rosalie leaned into his hug when Cassian wandered into the kitchen, taking the plate she'd arranged for him. "Extra butter on your toast," she smiled, and nudged him towards the table as Kari set the teapot in front of Julian.

When they'd all sat she hurried to untie her apron and took her seat beside Cass. "I get to start work tomorrow," she said lightly as she poured her tea, wiping the table quickly when her shaky hands spilled a bit. "They said I could start as a waitress and maybe move up to behind the counter if I do well."

The Silver Cork didn't hire often, and considering Diagon Alley was a quick trip from the backyard alley, she considered herself fortunate to have been offered a position. Levitating her trays rather than having to balance all of them would certainly make things easier.

5 1/2 Temple Meadow - Convalescence | Rossian

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 15:39:30 +0000

Friday, June 2, 1922
4:20 PM
Days after this

He was tired of sleeping. Even after he'd been released from the hospital, it seemed all his mother believed he should do. When he woke, she stuffed him full of food – never mind how the healers had insisted he take things easy – then forcefully tucked him back in, insisting he still looked too pale and weak. Most of his meals went that way. They were his only real chance to socialise before she ushered herself and Rosie out, fussing over the importance of him regaining his strength.

His strength was back, more than back. The boy was starting to go stir-crazy staring at his ceiling while he listened to the world go by.

He'd seen his father when he got home. Embarrassed as he'd been to face the man again after everything he'd failed to be, Cass had been overwhelmed by the warmth of his welcome. He thought he'd be mad or that he'd lecture him for his recklessness. While he hadn't been fully back on the ball when he'd first been brought to the house, he'd been prepared to face whatever wrath came his way humbly. In many ways, Cassian welcomed the return to being treated like a child – he craved it. Lying there in bed, there was a peace in knowing he didn't have to be up at 3 AM and toiling until the day was done. He let himself bask in the absence of bills piling up on an old dining table while the ice box taunted them with impending starvation unless they were able to figure something out.

His father went to work.

His mother cooked him meals.

The bills magically vanished the moment they appeared in the same way his laundry had been doing. It wasn't to say Rosie hadn't been doing a good enough job keeping their home and handling things. She was the best wife he could ever ask for and then some. Cassian simply found it nice that neither of them had to.

For the first time in so long, they could breathe, and the feeling was intoxicating.

"What are you doing out of bed?" his mother tutted as he slinked his way into the kitchen. She was the first of the two to notice him, while Rosie bent before the oven to put the beef in. The two had taken to preparing the meals together, his mother wanting not only to teach her recipes but to keep an eye on her. Too much time alone was how darker thoughts set in and she knew the girl had already been through a lot.

Being idle wouldn't do her any good.

"Go," she shooed, waving both her hands as she approached him.

Cassian slipped around her, finally regaining some of his agility and a bit of his cheek despite the way the sudden movement made him wince. Spinning once to stand clear of the hand that reached for his shirt, he settled by Rosie. His arm snaked around her waist, pulling her flush against him, hip to hip (sort of).

"I'm here to help. Just ask her. You won't find a better taste tester than me, right, gorgeous?"

He dropped a kiss atop her head, lingering close to indulge in the scent of cherry blossoms he'd missed.

"You need to rest."

"I need to move before my limbs forget how."

He was done being asleep and ready to start living again.

5 1/2 Temple Meadow - My Tears Ricochet | Rossian

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:11:56 +0000

Monday, May 29, 1922
8:45 PM
The McCormick Home
Immediately Following This

The street was quiet, all its occupants settled in for the night. Some were already tucked away in their beds, others staying up to finish their favorite radio programs or a bit of reading. In the small front gardens, crickets sang their lullabies to the stars while the warm spring air rustled the trees.

It was a typical night, made atypical with a rush of wind and a fierce SNAP that saw two teenagers suddenly appear on the stoop of number 5 1/2 Temple Meadow, one collapsing beneath the weight of the other.

Rosalie gasped as she fell onto the stoop, each breath shaking with whimpers as her entire body trembled. From shock, terror, exhaustion - she couldn't feel it. Couldn't feel anything, except Cassian. She cradled him in her arms, his body limp and heavy against hers, his blood taking the place of her own on her clothing, trickling warm and fresh from the gashes on his chest.

"Cass..." his name fractured in her throat as her eyes washed over his face, bruised and broken from the hits and kicks he'd taken. She shifted him in her arms, trying in vain to keep his head from lolling as she strained her bloodied outstretched arm to reach the front door.

He didn't answer. Somewhere between the last apparation and this one, he'd gone quiet and still in her arms, despite his efforts to hang on and fight. The scent of iron in the air was a familiar one, a nightmare replaying itself in real-time as she fought to keep her composure. "Stay with me, love," she begged, her fingertips just missing the front door. She shifted him again, struggling under his weight to get closer, and realizing she was running out of time.

The door loomed in front of her, a soft warm light exuding beneath the threshold, his parents somewhere behind it, oblivious to the state she was returning their cherished youngest child in. She grimaced as she reached again but slipped. She caught herself on the frame, dragged her weight and his forward another inch.

"Help!" she finally begged, not caring if she caught the attention of the entire neighborhood. She clutched him tighter with her arm and finally managed to slam her hand once against the door. “Please!” Her voice tore free of her, raw and hoarse, breaking against the door as she hit it again with the side of her fist, then her palm, frantic now, relentless.

"Mister McCormick," she screamed as fresh tears streaked down her cheeks, mixing with Cassian's dried blood that lingered on her face. "He's-"

She couldn't say it. Wouldn't. She couldn't lose him now. Couldn't breath reality into it.

"Open the door!" The plea rang out, sharp and desperate, her whole body shaking with it as she clung to her husband with one arm, the other still pounding uselessly against the door.

Behind her, the night remained unchanged, but inside the house something was shifting.