#event13:w5

@littlegoldtaube

“What would it be like to work at Hogwarts?” Aloma mumbled quietly to herself as she sat at a small table in the Leaky Cauldron. The thought had crossed her mind several times, working as a Care of Magical Creatures professor, though she always found a reason to put it off. She sighed as she glanced over the Daily Prophet, scowling when she saw Rita Skeeter’s name on the front page. Didn’t she have anything better to do with her time than stir up panic and emotions that, publicly at least, had been dead nearly thirty years?

She rolled her eyes a bit and laid the paper down, taking a sip of her drink before glancing about. Her eyes were drawn to the view outside the window, several of the storefronts and small shops were covered in a thin layer of snow as if nature itself was trying to send the reminder “It’s almost Christmas, be happy!” Though Almoa knew happiness would be hard to find this year. Between the travel ban and her own crazy work schedule, visiting her parents for the holidays was out of the question, she knew that. Her thoughts wandered the longer she sat staring out the window, her focus not completely on her surroundings or the people in them as her mind continued to return to thinking of the upcoming holiday. “Wonder what Christmas will be like this year…”

“I don’t see why you keep waiting to work at Hogwarts…” Julian rolled his eyes playfully, his hand drumming against the back of the chair across Aloma. Truth be told, Julian didn’t expect that his career trajectory would revolve around making sure the school didn’t implode on itself – or at least having the students evacuate before all of that happened. “… I certainly didn’t wait very long.”

He had been under McGonagall’s wing since he consistently received top marks in Transfiguration since his fourth year. Whatever potential he had after finishing his NEWTs was something he didn’t think should be wasted on the Ministry, and having looked up to Professor McGonagall for so long he was more than floored that she had offered to keep him as teaching assistant after he voiced his concerns about the kind of work the Ministry had to offer.

“Now that Hagrid had passed, Care of Magical Creatures has been… well, it actually hasn’t been. It’s been a struggle to find a substitute on such short notice, especially dealing with the more temperamental animals.”

The two had been friends, though their busy schedules meant that they were typically unable to meet regularly. It just so happened that Julian was making his way through to do his own shopping, having stayed in London as he recovered from the attack. St. Mungo’s finally let him go – though it may have been his brother’s frightening demeanor that convinced them rather than his actual state of wellness.

Lucy didn’t cry; that was Dom’s job. Her job was to watch in silence and offer condolences. She always played spectator, never the player; she was the one always the talking, but never the one who was talked about. But a part of her craved that fame; when she was the most honest with herself, she wanted to be an athlete’s girlfriend. She wanted to be something more than a Weasley – long before she realized that there was no escape from the name or the infamy and that it was easier to embrace than to avoid.

But she wouldn’t see Aidan ever again and the thought of it was still shocking. And if she saw him, it’d be herself she’d be fighting – because she sure as hell wasn’t the one who wasn’t going to apologize. She needed time. Maybe that time was a month. Maybe that time was forever. In a way it was still one less problem for her to deal with, and as much as she didn’t want to think of Aidan as a problem… that was the truth of it.

When the relationship started, Lucy thought she was the accessory on his arm to be paraded as the other half of a star couple that everyone envied to be part of. But it ended the opposite; all he had been was extraneous weight that Lucy could no longer carry. She didn’t know what she could do to change that, but he wasn’t even around to listen to her tell him what she wanted. And even then she had a feeling they would just fight again about whatever they were dealing with individually, but not quite individually because there was no separating their love lives from everything else going on. There were too many issues getting in the way for any of it to work.

Why did he have to make it so hard? Why couldn’t he just listen? Why couldn’t he just be a good boyfriend like he was in the beginning?

She gave a loud sob, then pushed the door out. The Burrow had at least seven fucking bedrooms in it, but Lucy knew which one belonged to her father. It was the one that stayed the cleanest and the one that was the least crooked out of all of the ones that had been added and attached to the building over the last few years. She coughed and rubbed her eyes, trying to make sure that Percy’s old bedroom didn’t have any sign of her sitting on the bed and rubbing her makeup all over the sheets – though she wasn’t sure how long those sheets had been there.

Then she shrieked. Lucy had just quieted herself enough that she heard something and it wasn’t from one of the party favors they were giving away outside or the pseudo-Quidditch players yelling at each other on the makeshift pitch. She didn’t expect anyone in this part of the house either, even doing more illicit activities. Doing drugs or making out was just weird when you know that you’re doing all of that in your uncle’s (or aunt’s) bedroom.

The last time she saw him had been at that weird party at that quidditch player’s house where they had both been eager to do the same thing - get with one of the girls there. Only thing was Ana was pretty sure Danny had his eyes set on bedding her sometime in the future.

Now that wasn’t happening but that supply of drinks he’d managed to score her had been well worth his flirting so when she spotted him again she clapped him on the shoulder.  “What’s up? Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

She’d headed over to the bar to grab her and Rosa some drinks not expecting to bump into Danny but now that she was here she may as well see if she could get two drinks out of him.

Danny nearly jumped when someone got his attention, and he turned to see Chica – though truthfully, he never really did much to actually figure out what her name was. After their little meeting at Quidditch Bro’s place, he didn’t expect to see her either, but Danny was kind of stoked. At least enough to hold his hand up to greet her with a fist bump. “Yo girl, wassup? Don’t leave me hanging!”

Clearly Danny wasn’t bothered by the fact that he had just been broken up with. Dominique just didn’t get him, but it seemed like she didn’t get herself either. Sure, they had fun in bed together but if Danny wasn’t getting her what she wanted – like, I don’t know, an actual boyfriend – then she should have sought that somewhere else. Danny was not of the believer that one person had everything nor could one person meet everything that was expected of them. He was far from perfectionist.

“Dude, I’m like everywhere.” It wasn’t really an exaggeration; Danny often took the Floo from Diagon Alley to Hogsmeade. Danny was also invited to everything; his free access to clubs was dependent on how well he could cajole girls into coming with him for a good party, but considering the recent attacks on the school coupled with the fact that the weather was more suited for getting cozy instead of getting scantily clad. “What’s up with you? If you’re not like… everywhere everywhere, ya feel?”

Marius wasn’t left forgotten despite the fact the house elves have been busy making preparations for the holidays, and there was single glass and a bottle of wine waiting for him as he stepped out of the fireplace. The pile underneath the tree had grown over the past month, with Marius using the money he made from using his Veela charms to afford some kind of gift for the Zabinis – but that wasn’t enough to really buy anything and Marius was finally coming across a problem: what do you get someone who already has everything?

He got dressed and settled into the sitting room, waiting for the house elves to pour his wine for him. After all, he was still wandless and at this point none of the few galleons he had scraped together could afford him a wand, especially if he were trying to get a gift for the Zabinis.

Xola wasn’t back yet from whatever… celebration she was attending, and Marius had decided not to accompany her since he needed more time to figure out what gift expressed how grateful he was for what she and her family had done for him – especially at great personal cost. Was it today that he was going to tell her that perhaps his gift needed another day or week for him to get? Maybe owl-order taking too long was a good enough excuse (though Marius himself couldn’t afford to have it delivered by owl, similar to how muggles always complain about… shipping).

He sipped at the wine, letting himself get comfortable in front of the fireplace; he was deep in thought about how peculiar the situation was and he couldn’t help but feel screwed over something he had never had to struggle with before. The Lestrange vault was inaccessible – or was it? He blinked, slipping a hand into his pocket. Perhaps the answer to his predicament was there, and he just never thought about it all along.  

Lucy’s head throbbed. All of this emotional upheaval was stressful, even if she had let herself sit and cry in the Burrow. Even if she had gotten the tears out of the way, she couldn’t actually leave the party until the last guest decided that they were finished. Tito George already hunted her down to help decorate the place – so why can’t one of her other cousins be the one to clean it up?

The spiced cider was rumored to be good with firewhiskey, but Lucy wasn’t the type to drink her problems away. No amount of time in processing everything that had just happened could be delayed with drinking, and she had ruined her dress the last time she was drunk and upset. At least now it would be unlikely that Dominique would show up wearing the same dress, and Lucy was smarter now to just transfigure her dress than to throw a fit about it.

What she didn’t realize now that she was back to the party again was that she, despite her years of attention seeking and social ladder climbing, now had several people to avoid. Aidan in one corner, Rose in another, and her own sister someplace else mingling with everyone else.

“Oh shit – sorry!” Being a little too preoccupied with trying to stay invisible, Lucy didn’t watch where she was going; the drink in her hand splattered as she tried to use the closest person to shield herself from view. She immediately reached to put her drink down on the nearest chair before inspecting the damage; while stains were an easy fix, she wasn’t sure how well she’d be able to treat a burn from hot apple cider.

“Is Dom hanging out with the Lestranges still?” Lucy hadn’t seen her cousin all night, and probably for the better. Lucy didn’t tell anyone yet about her breakup, but she didn’t want Dominique to be the one gloating about it. But now that Lucy thought about it, Dom could have Aidan – or however much Aidan there really was, which wasn’t much to Lucy.

That was the only thing that she and Victoire had ever really talked about, aside from the few times Percy and Audrey made Lucy shadow Victoire to inspire her to be a healer. Lucy the typical chatterbox couldn’t even find smalltalk to chat about, because there wasn’t a lot that Victoire was involved in that Lucy cared about. At least that was better than being in the middle of Lucy’s wrath, though she had a lot to go around. But she was a lot smarter to start talking smack about her own cousins… to her cousin.

Lucy rubbed her eyes. She just wanted to go home, especially after that fiasco with Aidan. Just because she was the one to initiate the breakup, doesn’t mean she couldn’t be upset about it. The most she could really do was remind herself that there wasn’t anything left holding on to and that being single now wouldn’t be that different than where she already was. Besides, she had loads of family who was single – so she couldn’t be the first to come to terms with dying alone… or whatever.

Once she saw her Grandma Molly, she decided she was going to go home after. She hadn’t been inside the Burrow; that was the first place Lucy checked after finding her father’s old room and trying to get as much of her crying out of the way as possible. Now she was outside, her cheeks stinging against the cold and her old Ravenclaw scarf haphazardly looped around her neck.

She was a hot mess, but that didn’t stop Lucy from checking her pocket mirror to make sure that her eyes weren’t puffy, but there wasn’t a cure to that aside from plowing herself facefirst into the snow to see if the swelling drops. She wasn’t that desperate enough to feign happiness; she just needed to look fine enough that no one would ask too many questions about what happened. Her usual gossipy self was drained of words to embellish the tale, her energy used on theories now belabored the facts in her mind that she had actually done it and cut ties with Aidan.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t her grandmother who greeted her next – and also bumped into her from behind. Lucy yelped a little too loudly, with a few nearby heads turning towards her – but they didn’t stop staring. Lucy could understand why Samuel Prince had bumped into her – he was over a foot taller than her, his gargantuan height perhaps accounting for the fact that Lucy might not have been in his field of vision.

“Uh – hello? Hello!” Lucy waved (or raised) her hand, trying to get Samuel Prince’s attention. They were friends; they collaborated on something together, though it sat in his studio displayed to no one but the empty tubes of paint and the dirty palate that they had been using to paint the scene. Maybe talking to him will keep her mind off of Aidan; if she were lucky, then maybe there would be another collaborative piece in the works.

Julian reached forward across the bar, but he wasn’t really reaching for anything. His arm had felt stiff from all of the bandages he had carried over his holiday. His chest injury had healed, but the muscles had been stiffened by the lack of flexibility the Healers allowed him. Most of his train ride back to Hogwarts involved him wandering around the carriage – mostly out of boredom.

Floo was his preferred method of transportation to the castle, but he wasn’t sure if his body could handle the push and pull of jumping from fireplace to fireplace. Julian wandered into Hogsmeade after a  brief glance at the castle. He wasn’t eager to go back, especially since his last memory of being in the castle was almost being murdered.

“Just a Butterbeer,” he said to the bartender at the Three Broomsticks, mostly empty because of the strange pause of the season between Christmas and New Years’. He didn’t have to be at the castle again, but he had told his mother he was seeing his friends and he had told his friends he was spending time with his mother. Julian had work to do that had been cast aside that he couldn’t ignore – and felt too guilty about ignoring it that he was willing to forgo a few days of his own rest to get it done.

He narrowed his eyes at the pair debating something on the other side of the bar. They were loud enough to hear especially since there weren’t very many other people at the Three Broomsticks. His eye twitched at whatever crap they were saying about Quidditch; they were casual fans who paraded as experts.

While Julian didn’t consider himself a fan of the sport – he certainly didn’t go and watch matches anymore -- he was holding himself back from entering the debate and correcting both parties. If there was something that Julian hated, it was people who didn’t know shit – and just kept talking. He looked down, trying to hide how annoyed he was.