ashes to ashes

♦ about ♦

age: 20 relationship status: dating a muggleborn education: cambridge academy ‘78 / hogwarts ‘81 occupation: murdering

♦ recap ♦

Asher entered Hogwarts angry, vengeful, and filled with nothing by a fire to free his mother from Azkaban. Most of this, fueled by his view of injustice in the world, made him a terror to be around for too long. He made enemies out of most, but there was one person who had stuck around him: Caroline.

That companionship was short-lived as her heritage was revealed, and he, along with Marceaux Travers, killed both Caroline and her friend Jake. This formative experience was Asher’s first taste of murder, and he found that he didn’t wear it well.

Just a few short months later, Asher officially joined the Death Eaters, reluctantly following in his father’s footsteps in hopes that maybe then he’d be able to free his mother from Azkaban, once and for all.

Instead of freeing his mother, Asher participated in the murder/suicide of his father and Prija Avery. 

One would hope that this was where his crimes might cease, but he was also there when Mulciber played games with Mary Macdonald at the Kinky Kestral. He didn’t once raise his wand, but he didn’t exactly stop his comrade either.

At the start of the new school year Asher did his best to blend. To become a better person and rise above what was happening around him, and what would surely be asked of him. This didn’t last long as he helped Rosalind Selwyn cover up the murder of her dearly-departed husband.

Currently, Asher is dating Greta Catchlove, something that will surely end in nothing but disaster.

♦ dating history ♦

caroline brown (deceased): sort of? dated 

rosalind selwyn (have fun in paris): fucked a few times

prija avery (killed this one): ?????

amelia bones: literally one date dude

1. describe a time in your life when you were afraid

ask meme ♡

hello hi here’s a short little ask meme to spice up your inbox. feel free to answer them as your character or as their writer, from whatever perspective you wish. if you want to add links to your inboxes at the bottom instead of reblogging to each account feel free ♡

1. describe a time in your life when you were afraid   2. what is one memory from childhood you’ll carry with you forever   3. have you considered starting a family  4. do you believe in the concept of soulmates  5. what’s one of the positives that have come out of the statute breaking  6. money is no object, what do you do with your life  7. what’s one thing you wish others understood about you  8. you’re stuck on a deserted island, list the three things you’d take with you  9. what do you think happens after you die  10. what event in your life do you wish you could change  11. dream blunt rotation  12. if you could kiss one person without consequence, who are you kissing  13. you get famous and wixmart wants to make a drawstring doll in your likeness;  what are the three catchphrases your toy parrots  14. describe the hypothetical best day of your life   15. what is the weakness that would make you fold in an interrogation   16. name the one meal you are an absolute pro at making, bonus points for sharing the recipe  17. what trope always makes you cry in a movie  18. if you could respawn in a different era which would you choose to grow up in  19. how do you do your laundry (how long do you put it off, how long does it sit, do you use fabric softener, take it to the dry cleaners…)  20. if you have a lucky item, what is it

Adelaide Avery. Leonora was more familiar with the name than she was with the actual person. All that she really knew was that Asher’s mother had been in Azkaban for a while, and that it was a sore subject for him. It never felt right to ask anything further than that.

Leo had long ago reconciled with the fact that she wasn’t a good friend. She wasn’t the one to offer a warm hug, nor give Asher sweet words of hope. It didn’t mean she didn’t care, though, and she wasn’t about to turn her back on him when he clearly needed the help. “Okay.” She nodded. An I’m sorry almost slipped out, but it felt entirely pointless, so she held back. “I’m in. Just know I might use you as an alibi too.”

.

His flash of a smile said it all. Asher would be more than willing to offer himself up as alibi in return. No questions asked. This was the problem with having too many secrets. Eventually, you had to get other people involved in them, and in this case, he knew he could trust Leo with this one. Was it dangerous placing this sort of confidence in a fellow Death Eater?

The easy answer was yes, the harder answer was, better her than anyone else. “To a long and happy life together, Leo.” In the dark night sky, among the plants, and bushes, Asher raised an invisible glass and clinked it with the air.

“That’s an unfortunate truth,” Ella nodded solemnly. “I suppose you just have to find something worth dying for.”

.

“Hopefully I don’t find that out as I die. That seems like it’d be awfully anti-climactic.” He’d at least like a few days with the realization to fully appreciate it. Not seconds. Until then, he’d have to sit with himself, sort out his mind, and do more than just wish.

When: 2nd March

Where: Wimbourne House

Who: Open

Availability: ½

Over a year ago, Lily had made a promise to herself never to set foot in Wimbourne House ever again. It was funny how life always had other ideas for you, she thought, as she curled up in the tightest corner and tried to make herself as small as possible. Once upon a time she had planned to be best friends with Petunia forever; first they’d go to the same school, then the same university, then they’d live together as they took their first steps into the working world. But when she was eleven, she had received a letter that had made it so she and Petunia could barely be in the same room together anymore. Life had had other ideas. Another time, Lily had thought she would stay on her show on the HWN till she graduated, and then maybe find a job at the WWN, playing in the big leagues instead of the small ones. But they had started to argue against her, and now she had no show and idea of what she might do after she finished at Hogwarts. 

On Halloween 1980, Lily had swore she wouldn’t ever come back to Wimbourne House, that she would have to be dragged there before she would ever go in voluntarily. Then the fires had started. Life had had other ideas. It had been a long twenty fours hours of trying to stay unnoticed and in that time, Lily hadn’t eaten or drunk a morsel. Last time she had been here she’d been poisoned or drugged somehow, she was quite certain of that, and she didn’t trust anything edible in this house. She was beginning to feel quite unwell, dehydration attacking her body, but still she waved off another offer of food. “No, I’m not hungry thank you.” She wanted to get out of this place.

.

Asher nodded, taking back the sandwich he had extended, and without further prompting needed, eating it himself. Something about being confined in any situation, far away from his mother, was making him more anxious than he could’ve possibly expected. It meant, even now, his hand was shaking. Would she be alright? Did she understand why he couldn’t be there with her?

“Quite the year,” Asher said, finally speaking. He wondered if he wasn’t even recognizable anyone. Would she remember him? Would anyone? His thoughts were so clouded, warped from doing his best and usually failing, that selfishness came easily.

“It’s a lousy thing to be,” she agreed. If Mary valued anger, she wouldn’t be having this conversation with him. She thought that went without saying. “I’ll stop by on Sunday to bring these,” she lifted the photos, “to your mum?”

.

“And if you happen to find my soulmate along the way, be sure to bring them around, too.” He was only half joking. Or a quarter joking. Asher wasn’t that desperate. Then again, the case could’ve been made for just how needy he had grown in his self-imposed exile and isolation. Spending one’s entire day with a mostly addled mother couldn’t have been healthy. 

“Who are you trying to be now?” Mary asked. Perhaps the right question was: why are you trying to be someone you aren’t? But it wasn’t the one she cared about.

.

“Myself? Less angry. I spent a lot of time being angry, and I’m tired of it.” Not that he could quit an emotion completely, but he figured he owed it to both himself and his mother to do more with his lifer than harbor ill will against anyone.

A philosopher’s too, in many ways. “What wouldn’t you be willing to share with the person you love?” Mary asked; it was rhetorical and she made that clear. “I’m not asking to hear your secrets, mind you. I just mean… if it’s real love, shouldn’t there be nothing you can’t share?” 

As soon as she asked it, she realized she opposed her own argument. This made her smile. “I mean, what absolute dribble though. You have to have secrets. If you have nothing that’s just your own, you can never be sure you know who you are when no one else is watching.”

.

“I just have a habit of losing myself in relationships, and every time I come out of them, I forget who I was trying to be beforehand.” Asher had unknowingly become a chameleon. Transforming himself into whatever might be easier to digest to a person he was attracted to. He wasn’t proud of it. It was just something that happened on cue.

“Excuses, excuses,” she teased, waving him off with her hand. Later, she would marvel at how easy this had all been. How amicable. The feeling of it now was what prompted her not to stop before asking, “Well then, what would you say is? Though I suppose just because a person knows what their type isn’t doesn’t mean they also then know what their type is.”

.

“Fuck if I know. I’m sure if I described all of my failing relationships, or non-relationships, there’d be a horrible pattern to compile together. I suppose I just want someone that’s going to love all of me, even if there are parts I’m not willing to show.” The gender didn’t necessarily matter, though he could see the distrust he had with most men in his life. That even though he was attracted to them, that wasn’t necessarily enough to ever do commit to anything more than physical. Asher was a psychologist’s wildest dream.

“Well, and it’s an awful lot of money you might win.” She considered that this probably wasn’t as big an incentive to a Pureblood like Asher Avery as it was to someone in Mary’s financial situation, but she decided not to say anything about it. “I know Lorcan, actually,” she went on to say. “He doesn’t have a filter, but he does have a good heart.” He was like so many others in the music industry. Bravado was the armor the artist wore. 

.

He shrugged. He didn’t need the money. Actually, if he even won it, he was sure the first thing he’d do would be to donate it all to a much better cause than his own bank account. “Lorcan seems alright, I’m just not convinced they’re entirely my type.” Though, now that he said it, Asher didn’t know what his type anymore. Or what a type even meant.

Mary couldn’t help but laugh. “I think you might be looking in the wrong place. I can only speak for myself, but when my husband and I went on Amortentia Island it wasn’t to find love. I don’t think that’s the intention of most people here. It’s all entertainment, you know?” She shrugged it off. “I mean, maybe some of them think that’s what they want. But if you’re looking, it’s never for love. Love is stationary, it doesn’t move.” That, she had learned. “You only look when you’re not ready to sit down and face love.” Mary gave a decisive nod at this. “Because you could fall in love with anyone, right? If you knew them. If you sat down and picked them and really knew them.” 

.

“Ah, maybe you’ve hit on the exact problem.” He shook his finger, feeling his smile turn more into a grimace. “I’m more than willing to do that for someone else, but I don’t want that knowing directed at me.” How many murderers were so self aware? Did they all hold this paranoia inside of them, and if so, was it ever directed in the direction of trying to find someone who could still love who they had become?

They were questions he couldn’t voice, but he thought all the same. “I think mostly I just figured, what the fuck did I have to lose by going on? Maybe it’d be different for me.”

“Well,” Mary lifted her shoulders. “Never say never and all that jazz. The world is full of unlikely encounters. You and I know that.” And speaking of. “How are you finding the game show? I was surprised when I saw your name on the call sheet,” she admitted, “though I suppose soon I’m going to have to stop being surprised when you surprise me.”

.

Asher groaned with the mention of it. “It’s a disaster. Lorcan, well, he’s Lorcan. And Esmeralda?” He almost started laughing at the ridiculous situation that he found himself in. “Her and I have a bit of a history, and none of it pleasant.” Except for the fact that she had mended his stomach back together, which seemed like something a sworn enemy wouldn’t do. Maybe that was too dramatic of him. They were just different people.

“I’m a horrible romantic, to tell you the truth. Couldn’t even tell you how many people I’ve fallen in and out of love with. Nothing seems to ever stick with me.” Certainly didn’t help that perhaps the deepest love had, incidentally, been killed by him. Sorry Prija.

“Be careful,” Mary warned him in jest, “I think they write poetry about that sort of loneliness. You don’t want to end up someone’s muse.” She considered the idea of island living for only a moment before realizing it was not very different to tour bus living. On the surface it may have seemed so—one so quiet and solitary, the other loud and crowded—yet both were just a way to be unfound. 

.

Asher snorted out a laugh. Something very unbecoming of a someone of his stature, and yet it suited him better than any title or pompous party ever could. “I doubt I’m in any danger of that happening. I’d have to meet someone. And then I’d have to meet someone who so desired to become a poet. Luckily for me, I have strong suspicions that neither will occur.”

“Oh, yes, I know.” No was one of her favorite words, small though it was. “I’m just not sure that I want to say no. That’s the curious part.” True though her words were, equally true was that she wasn’t sure she wanted to say yes. “I don’t want to say something now I’ll regret later. But I’m going to think about it.” There was merit in his points, and Mary knew that. She couldn’t help herself from recalling her father turning away home nurses for as long as he could manage to. 

Look where it got him, she thought bitterly. But then, immediately after she was comforted with a realization. Adelaide might improve. Mary’s mother never could have, no matter what any of them did.

“Where do you live?” She was wondering if she’d have an excuse to drive there. She was still in the market for a new car, but proximity to work had made it less a priority than Mary wanted it to be.

.

With his hands now free, one found the back of his head where he scratched somewhat anxiously. This was a budding friendship he had no intention of losing. Not when it felt like so much of his own humanity was tied up in it, and while that was an unfair thought, that didn’t make it any less true. If he could succeed here, on a smaller scale, everything else became a bonus.

“I live on the Isle of Man. Sort of wanted to get away from everything for a while.” Though in recent weeks he had been looking for a flat in London to help make his nighttime activities all the easier to accomplish. “Suppose it was a bit dramatic of me to choose an actual island.”

“Oh!” She didn’t try to hide her surprise, there was no point in pretending. “I—” Mary had to laugh. Being so infrequently rendered speechless, she had little use for remembering those things that people used in conversations to stall. (Uhm, er, but, and hmm, to name a few). “I didn’t expect you to say that,” she admitted instead. “I think I’m a little lost for words.” 

It was one thing to reunite a woman in need with her family and to ask about her and care to check in from time to time; it was quite another to become inserted in her life and recovery. It wasn’t that Mary necessarily didn’t want that responsibility, it was just that until this very moment she hadn’t considered it, and it was the sort of thing that took quite a bit of consideration. 

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“You can say no. You can think about it. There’s just very few people I actually trust with her, and since you’ve already—” Asher didn’t need to say it, because Mary knew quite well what her role in all of this was. It was a favor, a big one, and he wouldn’t have asked if he didn’t think it was the only real option he had in this instance.

“I think it’d be easier, with a familiar face. Someone not from her old life.”