SECOND HAND NEWS;

BASICS

NAME: Fabian Prewett

AGE: 22 years

PRIMARY: Puddlemere Institute for Boys, class of 1976

HOGWARTS: Gryffindor, class of 1979, Pre-Auror

OCCUPATION: freelance security in the music industry; Auror trainee

BLOOD STATUS: pure-blood

“TRAUMA” (lmao ok) DUMP

Fabian is a true middle child, forever making peace between his friends and family, if only to make up for the inner peace he can never quite seem to manifest. But now that his friends and siblings are settling into a new way of life – even Gideon, with his surprise son, Freddie Moon – Fabian can’t help but feel he’s lacking a little in the life purpose department. He loves his nephews more than his own life, but it was always himself that he imagined with the picture perfect family right out of Hogwarts. For now, he’s more than happy to play the Cool Uncle™ to the boys until that day comes. And, of course, after—just on top of husbandly and fatherly duties, too.

In his final year of Hogwarts, Fabian embarked on an Independent Study project that he gifted to his sister this past Christmas. It was a clock, charmed with intensive, advanced magic, the arms of which were magicked to keep track of his nephews on Molly’s behalf. The project has since been forgotten by Fabian, but it is undoubtedly one of his greater accomplishments.

After years of achievement in academics, athletics, and his social life, Fabian took the next carefully planned step: the Auror Academy. He was accepted upon his graduation from Hogwarts, and began training that fall. However, Fabian’s career at the Academy was short-lived. By December, he was burnt out, and by April, he was on leave, touring as a security manager for the band Her Majesty’s Clever Whale across Europe until May. When the gig ended, it led to another, and then another, keeping the bills paid, and keeping Fabian out of the Academy.

The most disarming thing for Fabian these past two years has been his “relationship” with Amelia Bones. The woman he might have once called the love of his life is no longer in his life, which has forced him to reexamine the way he thinks about love, especially when it comes to his future. Nothing in life is certain, nor is it guaranteed—a hard lesson for the hardworking, goal-oriented Fabian to learn. But he’s learning alright, and he’s all the better for it, even if he is reluctant to admit it just yet.

I KNOW WHAT HE DID THIS SUMMER

After a handful of counseling sessions with the DMLE psychiatrist, Fabian has been officially cleared to resume his training with the Auror Academy, though he will have to repeat the majority of the work he did in his first year. Will he still be there a year from now? Even Fabian doesn’t know the answer to that, but at least this is better than aimlessly floating through life in the meantime. Isn’t it?

SEX & DRUGS & ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

Andromeda Black: primary, 1973-ish

dated briefly in primary; cute !!!! but star-crossed

Dawn Withey: primary, 1974-ish

the first, uwu

Clementine Robards: primary, 1975??? - February 1979

long term on again, off again girlfriend; their moms wanted them to get married; not on good terms : (

Wendy Slinkhard: summer 1978 - Valentine’s Day 1979

she dumped his ass; he’s still salty smh my head

Hollie Hopkirk: January 1980 - ???

“I feel confused.” It was something she found easy to admit to Fabian. She reached out, patted his shin over the hospital covers. It was almost motherly. “Though I’ve always found confusion a bit exciting. When you don’t know the ending yet, it all feels so different.”

She’d turned into something wistful then. No, she didn’t feel hopeful. “It’s going to sound darker than I mean it,” she prefaced, “but I don’t know that it’s hope I feel. It’s more like… well, you probably never rummaged in your mother’s jewelry box like I did, but I’ll tell you I feel like I’m a music box ballerina.” She only paused to catch her breath, and not long enough to think about how she mentioned her mother so casually. “Like maybe I used to hope one day I’d get out of that box when I was still new but now I’m just grateful for the days when someone decides to open the lid, wind my cogs, and look at me so for a moment between darknesses I can live without fear of when life is going to start happening, or when I’ll be passed on to the next owner or the next, some leaving my lid open and surrounding me in jewels, others shoving me in the basement on a dusty shelf.” Mary finally grew quiet. “And some are better and some are worse, but the point is that it’s still never my choice how I get to exist in society. How I get to be displayed.”

Mary wiped at her rouged cheeks. Tears came away on her hands, but she hadn’t realized she’d started to cry. “Maybe that is hopeful,” she amended. “The same way love and beauty are always darker than you expect, too.”

He shook his head. “John did. I’d lost my wand when it attacked.” He frowned, scooping out the rest of the pudding. “He’s still beating himself up about it, I think. Even though it saved my life.”

.

“How’s that?” Fabian asked, head cocked to the side as he settled in for the story.

Molly’s eyes lit up as Fabian told her his plans. “Bug, that’s brilliant!” She exclaimed. “That’s such a wonderful idea, honestly— and I’ll have you know there’s already interest in it. You should talk to Ted, he was over a few weeks ago. He’s getting into a new career path too. Which is fine by me, having you lot close to home and out of the line of danger suits me just fine.” She said with a teasing smile. “Anyway—” she started again, waving her hand. “He was interested in the clock. Wants to pursue magical technology and thought your clock was brilliant too.”

.

“Really?” A sign from fate, it felt like, sent straight from the gods. He noted the compliment with optimism. Ted, later. Molly, now. If there were anything else to talk about. He hadn’t expected she would have any reason to put up a fight, but he hadn’t anticipated it would have been this easy, either. Another sign from the universe, perhaps? How long it had been since something had come so effortlessly---

“It is pretty brilliant,” Fabian admitted. “Mind if we take it down and admire it up close?”

WHEN: 10 December, 1980 WHERE: Some Pub, London WHO: Fabian Prewett & Petty Evans​

“Absolutely not!” Petty barked into the payphone in the dining room’s corner. “I was promised that shipment of hardwood for the Montgomery project two days ago.” The pause that followed was full of anger. On the other line someone yap yap yapped and she huffed. “Fuck magic,” she hissed, “that’s no excuse. I don’t care if those stupid Night Biters, Death Dealers, whatever they’re called took out the bridge the lorry was on. Get. Me. That. Shipment.”

In the booth, she peered through the glass at the other patrons chatting happily in the dining area; Petty was full of envy thinly veiled as disgust at the Witches and Wizards she saw there who could walk around and hold these kinds of conversations, rather than being stuck in some germy booth. “Tim!” she interrupted sharply. “If you don’t have that wood to me by the time my first man sets foot on grounds tomorrow I’m going to come over there and hang you with the phone cord, do you understand me?” It seemed like he did from the way she hung up, turned, straightened her skirt and her smile. 

“Unreliable,” she hissed to no one in particular, simply in the mood to complain and be heard doing it. 

Unreliable. It wasn’t a word that existed in Fabian’s vocabulary, which was, perhaps, why it was the first thing about the woman to catch his attention. From his seat at the furthest table in the darkest corner of the pub, he chanced a glance over his menu. Whether it was that her clothes lacked in wrinkles, or that her smile hung on perfectly symmetrical hinges, something made Fabian wonder how the word had wormed its way into her vocabulary at all.

“What’s that?” Fabian asked, shrinking to make himself look as small as he felt in his suspicious position in the shadows. He was, after all, but a lone wizard who had wandered into a muggle establishment by accident. If something about the place that was unreliable, he wanted to know. Especially if the news was coming from someone with such a neatly pressed skirt.

“Well that’s good.” Frank let out a laugh. Trust Fabian to give them the space to have this conversation full of laughter. “Came up against an inferi. Had me by the legs, and the only thing to get rid of them is fire, so –” he gestured to his legs, that still lay wrapped, slowly healing.

.

Fabian waited for an ending to the story, one that never came. “So you---you set yourself on fire?” he guessed.

Frank let out a low whistle. He’d heard of the escape, of course. Every Auror was on the look out. But he’d had no idea Fabian was involved, and had gotten himself incapacitated soon after. “No, they’re not.” He took a spoonful of his pudding and swallowed, before asking, “You alright?”

.

“Well, I’m alive.” His grin quivered with amusement. “And I’m going home at the end of the week. What about you?”

That had been an unexpected answer. “What happened?”

.

“Dunno,” Fabian shrugged. It was easier to admit it to Frank than it had been to the Aurors he’d given his statement to. “I don’t know what we missed. Right at the end of our rounds, there was—” He checked every corner of the room before continuing in a low whisper. “A few prisoners escaped, after I went down,” Fabian was sure to clarify, even though he knew it wasn’t his fault. He and Betty hadn’t been the only people keeping watch that night, which made it all the more embarrassing for them Ministry. “I reckon they’re not really broadcasting that right now.”

Well, that certainly wasn’t what she was expecting. “The clock you made for me?” It had been proving quite useful the last few weeks. 

.

Molly was inherently invested in Fabian and Gideon’s futures so to say she would happily listen to Fabian’s plan was an understatement, she would cheer him on and help him in any way that she could if it meant he could succeed in anything that he wanted to do. 

She eyed his cane for a moment, wondering how long he was going to milk use of it before taking the seat across from him. She sat, dipping biscuits in her tea, stomach a fluttering mess for some reason as she waited for him to continue his train of thought.

.

“I’ve been thinking---” The pause sounded more dramatic than it actually was, as he analyzed the way he ought to begin the conversation. “Well, it’s about the clock.”

“I don’t know how good normal was, to start.” It pained her to admit it, and she knew that pain showed plainly on her face as she looked up and offered Fabian the sad half of a smile. It must have been a shock to Fabian, one she couldn’t fathom, for the world to be suddenly so much wider in a way. Mary had already been through that once as a Muggleborn, but it felt different when you were younger. Less impossible. She didn’t hold that against him, so the other half of her weak smile came as an apology for her bitterness. 

.

Mary was right. It had been easy to pin all the chaos of change on the obvious swings the universe had taken at reality. But for Fabian, trouble had started before the Statute had fallen. And for Mary, and people like her, long before that. “Do you feel hopeful?” Would that make all this change easier to swallow? Knowing that it was paving the way for something better, and not just a road of destruction? “Compared to before?”

“Oh,” Mary chirped, barely containing a laugh, “pretty terribly.” She did laugh then, full and unstoppable. Like a jewelry box wind up track, it had to play to the end and always started again after it seemed to have finally tapered out for good. “No, no, I’m kidding. I mean, I’m not. But, I am too. I think I’m doing surprisingly well for the amount of, just, cursedness, of it all. It really just feels like… a new life. Do you know what I mean?” she thought he would. “I feel like I’m getting my sea-legs all over again.”

.

“Yeah, all too well, actually.” But rather than finding relief in the companionship, all it did was made Fabian worry, that all of them were trying to get by like this. “I think I’m kinda operating under this false sense of security, that when I get discharged, everything’s gonna be normal again outside of here. Even though I know it’s not.” And it never would be again, would it?

“I expect you to sit on the couch with a full stomach and make a well thought out and detailed plan for the bakery downstairs.” Molly supplied matter-of-fact. “You’re not allowed near anything that might hurt you until you’re all better from this one, and that includes the stove.” She handed him an already prepared plate of food to take back to said couch. 

“Not that I don’t trust you, love. It’s the gas stove I don’t trust. Especially not after that disaster at the fitness centre. Which I know was not a gas problem, but just let me have this worry right now because if I focus on you and Frank and the boys, then I can keep my mind off literally anything else.”

.

Fabian took his first steps towards compliance and toppled over into the couch. “Yeah, the bakery.” The very expensive bakery that wasn’t bringing any money to pay for itself yet. The incident at Azkaban had unstalled his discharge from the department, which had opened up his calendar as far forward as he could see. It had also made his budget for that blank expanse of time much, much tighter.

“Not the gym.”

.

“Nah.” Fabian shook his head. With a full mouth of pudding, he said--- “Azkaban.”