no my dog won't bite you though she had the right to
you oughta give her credit 'cause she knows i woulda let it happen
blame it all on me 'cause god i need a cold one now
( non binary | she/they | luca hollestelle ) —— isn’t that AINSLEY JEAN PODMORE? yeah that is them, outside the three broomsticks! they used to be in GRYFFINDOR but apparently they now work as a HITWIX at the DMLE. sybill once said that they reminded her of rain crashing against a window, cans of paint used as doorstops, a guard swan named tuna, and bonfires on the beach, which seems about right. anyway i’ve heard they’re still a bit IMPULSIVE, KIND, and ACTIVE, they’re TWENTY-THREE now but some things never change! i wonder how being a PUREBLOOD is affecting them after school, especially now they’re an AGENT with the ORDER OF THE PHOENIX? i guess only time will tell…
bio (tw drinking, death):
ainsley’s ten years younger than her brother and around five years younger than her sister-- definitely the baby of the family, looked up to sturgeon sturgis like he hung the stars in the sky
always trying to prove herself, maybe a little too competitive, did all the team sports (maybe she started out playing keeper in quidditch because the older kids wanted her to stay over there, but that’s neither here nor there bc she was damn good at it ok)
had a habit of bringing home stray animals, always had some kind of injured owl or cat or fish or lizard or ferret that she was taking care of
kind of popular in school-- maybe a little awkward and unconfident, but being pretty and good at sports makes up for a lot. didn’t tend to say ‘no’ a whole lot, afraid of the social repercussions of it
then she’s 16/17/18/19 and mixed up in a good bit more than she should, drinking more than she should, going out more than she should. it’s okay though, because it’s not real life yet
20, hitwix trainee, and still trying to make the point that it’s not real life yet as long as she’s still a trainee
goes out on her first actual day in the field, all idealistic and excited to finally be able to help people. but they got there too late and, well, there’s no one left alive to help.
all of a sudden it’s real fucking life.
she didn’t sign up to help the mediwix load big black bags onto stretchers. wonders what the damn point is. doesn’t show up to work the next day.
gets her shit together, though, and goes back on day two. there’s always going to be more people that needs help, right?
they get the next call and it’s too late again.
nearly quits her job. it’s not the adrenaline and perfect endings she always pictured it would be and, well, she’s a normal kid from the suburbs.
she gets her shit together again though, and this time it’s not too late. the kid doesn’t get hurt. she gives him her jacket to wear while they wait for the medics to clear him. he hugs her before he leaves with his mum, and then his mum hugs her too.
so she doesn’t quit her job. she quits partying instead and dumps her significant other. it is worth it for the people they can help, no matter how awful it can get.
decides to keep herself out of trouble by moving out of the city and giving herself some real goals. so she ends up buying a decommissioned, abandoned lighthouse. it’s in such bad shape it’s almost free, even though it comes with its own small island.
all her free time last year went into making it the base standard of liveable-- she put in floors, fixed the roofs, got almost maybe half a kitchen, clears out the area where the light used to be and puts her bed there.
builds a chicken coop, ends up with a guard swan, has some sheep for a while (misses them dearly), watches her cat roam around,.
new hobbies, because she can never sit still. knitting, canning fruit, baking, painting-- anything she can do without relying on a social group that meets in a pub.
maybe she’s gotten pretty goddamn lonely sometimes, but she’s mostly stopped feeling like she’s going to die before she’s thirty.
“Oh f- duck!” Ned bellows, barrelling his way over to the stands atop his trusty Comet 220 and slamming his bat hard into the rogue bludger that comes just inches away from taking someone’s head off.
Ainsley hadn’t played Quidditch in ages, but she still knew what it meant when a beater yelled to duck. She felt the bludger whoosh past, heard the crack of the bat, and then sprung back up. “Can you see the exits from up there? I need to know if it’s safe to send people out!”
“Lord Stair’s not a guard dog, he’s Employee of the Month.” Edith said, gesturing towards the row of neatly framed photos. “A guard swan? And it doesn’t attack you as well? Blimey, can I meet it?”
–
“I’m sorry, my mistake.” Ainsley smiled as she looked at the pictures, though she didn’t quite understand why there were so many. “Yep, she guards my chickens from everything— including me. So you could meet her, but she’d probably bite you.”
kseniya couldn’t help but roll her eyes at the question , forgetting for just a moment that not everyone had been trusted to run around the shop since they were a toddler . ❝ some of its just old ❞ she shrugged . ❝ if that’s your worry then you should be fine , you’d be after cursed curtains for that ❞
“Just old is perfect.” Ainsley hoped that also meant cheaper, but she had no idea if things that weren’t cursed would be priced higher or lower than things that were. “That’s a.. relief, I suppose, but do you actually have those curtains?”
𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑑𝑔𝑒 𝑜𝑓 his coat gets caught in a bit of fence that he pries off , hand still up in surrender to the dweller on this island , ❛ see — okay , i know we talked about this , ❜ dung states , finally turning back as he comes forward , wincing at the weight on his calf as he does so . ❛ but i’m bleedin’ dry on the leg right now from tripping over rocks when that seagull started squawking at me so i’d really appreciate not swimming back right now . ❜
It wasn’t every day that Ainsley got unexpected visitors. Generally, living on an otherwise-uninhabited island with nothing much of value and rotten weather kept that to a minimum. At least Mundungus didn’t seem likely to judge her paint-splattered clothes and messy hair.
“It’s Tuna’s island, she’s got more’v’a right to squawk than you.” Ainsley put her paintbrush down on top of a fence post and vanished the paint off her hands, though she doubted any injuries Dung had would be serious enough to actually need healing. “Really, you need to start bringing her treats. That’d buy you enough time to run.”
“some money,” he says with a humourless laugh. “could get paid more,” he muses, “especially since i’m the one who is always tasked to train your arses,” he jokes, he didn’t mind it, but the first few weeks of training were the worst trying to break every eager young hitwixes bad habits.
“I mean, I knew that going in.” Ainsley couldn’t help but sound halfhearted saying it, even though it was true. “I’ve thought about getting out in a couple years to do the Gringotts’ thing, but it seems like a wash between low pay or getting stuck in some awful desert stealing stuff out of a pyramid.”
“Is, like, everything here cursed?” Ainsley looked around, thinking she might have found herself in the wrong place. “Someone said this place might have antique-looking curtain rods, but I’m really not looking to get stranged by drapery.”
“painsley, where are you?! I got that chicken feed you wanted!” as he dropped the large bags of birdseed on the ground, he had his eyes peeled for the swan, not wanting to be caught off guard because he got distracted looking for a slightly larger pain in his arse. “where is everyone? where are the boys? hell, where’s tuna? I got the good french bread, as a treat!”
“Watch out, Tuna’s behind the chicken coop!” Ainsley called, thinking she deserved credit for warning Stu rather than watching him figure it out on its own. She carefully leaned the window screen she’d been putting in up against the side of the lighthouse, then walked round to be in view. “And-- also watch out, there’s not floor in some of the kitchen right now. And watch out for excited chickens, they love that stuff.”
“No, really, swans are great guard animals. Tuna fought the tax assessor once, it was amazing.” Ainsley laughed, picking up the framed photo on her desk to show Amycus. “I’m sure the panthers could do more damage, but Tuna can do plenty when she feels like it.”
You're in a fight to the death my friend
Airways a grand battlefield
You've got your past on your breath my friend
Now name all the monsters you've killed
Let's name all the monsters you've killed
In my sleep I build machines
But nobody ever wants to hear about my dreams
Last night I saw a burning Ferris Wheel
The meaning's anybody's guess
Oh yes
