#&gideon

At first she’d treated this with all the moodiness of a young girl with games waiting to be played. Sitting stiff and rigid, tensed, as he ran a brush through her damp hair. And her agitation had amused him, too. He didn’t have to take care of her like this. But he liked Fish enough not to let her wallow in her own filth, a prospect that didn’t exactly appeal to him anyway.

Abel knew what it was like to be restrained, however. To be held against his will, to have someone care for him at a basic level without his consent. As the weeks turned into months, this whole scenario became tainted. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

And yet...he didn’t know what else to do. He couldn’t let her go, didn’t want to. Instead his treatment became gradually softer. They were still aggressive towards eachother, inevitably annoying eachother, but not as often now. And as Abel sat there, setting the brush aside and carefully braiding Fish’s blue hair as he’d done for Eve so many times, he felt a strange sense of comfort. The two of them sitting quietly, calmly, in eachothers presence.

Fingers digging in the chair, Fish closed her eyes. Her body was tensed, and yet, the brush running through her hair left soft shivers on her scalp. This was... Nice? No. Humiliating? Yes. That was the word. Humiliating. She was not a child, she was not a doll he could wash and dress up at will. 

And yet...

No.

And yet it felt nice.

Abel’s touch had gotten softer over the weeks, and perhaps she had gotten softer too. But every time she felt her heart mellow, it awoke an even louder anger under her skin. As if to compensate, to appease the confusion.

His fingers caressed the back of her neck as he started braiding her hair. He seemed experienced with things like that, she had noticed. Did he used to braid Eve’s hair? When she was little, and it was time to go to school. She thought about the photo album, and about his smile, and how happy he had looked, holding the twins in his arms. It brought a strange warmth to her cheeks, as if she was currently witnessing a secret side of him. Intimate. Private.

Oh, how she hated herself.

name: gideon scalby gender & pronouns: UTP house: slytherin blood status: pureblood extra curricular: UTP fc suggestions: reece king, luka sabbat, justice smith role: open

( admin note: gideon is the child of bertha jorkins. ) 

relaxed posture. sitting spread out in a common room armchair, one leg dangling over the side. never quite feeling at home among the snakes; you think you’re too easygoing, too open, too languid. a snorting laugh. a pet rat perched on your shoulder. a brilliant mind, but no work ethic. undefeated at gobstones. not knowing how to respond when people say you’re approachable for a slytherin, friendly for a slytherin, chill for a slytherin. what does any of that even matter? a mind that itches at night and keeps you awake, thinking up worst possible scenarios: where are you, mum? please, please come back.  

spencer whiddon & malcolm ilminster → really, it was just you and spencer who clicked in the beginning. the two of you were thick as thieves on your own, at each others’ sides for those first few years at hogwarts and rolling your eyes at ilminster, the pompous brat. then, something about malcolm changed --- they mellowed a bit, finally rejected the extremist beliefs of their childhood, and you and spencer started to see the person underneath all of that. now it’s the three of you, laughing in the common room and studying together and confiding in one another. 

beatrice haywood → you’d seen them around school before, but you didn’t really know them all that well until the end of the summer, when you went into the ministry to collect your mother’s things from her office ( that is, the few things that weren’t being kept as evidence in the sorry excuse for an investigation ). beatrice approached you and explained that they were an intern in the department of magical games and sports, that they knew your mother, and that they wanted to express their deepest sympathies. since then, they’ve become someone for you to lean on through all of this, their kindness and solidity a significant comfort.