Witch What?| Doe and Rab | August 14, 1978
( Rab )
Rabastan had managed to glimpse the other side of the magazine before she smacked it shut, his mind already whirling. Those witches at the magazine had never told him what the layout was going to be and there he was, right next to the spread on helpful sex tips for young women trying to get their men to play more in the bedroom. He should probably be honored, especially considering how many members of the staff he’d gone through in that place, but he also felt a little embarrassed, knowing full well that Narcissa probably would not have agreed if she had known that this would be included in the issue.
Whack!
“What the hell, Doe?!” Rabastan yelped in surprise, rubbing the spot on his arm that she hit before listening to her rant. He eyed the rolled up glossy paper in her hand, wary of another strike, but his ears caught her plight. Werewolves? This wasn’t even about his naughty pictures, really? Rabastan relaxed his shoulders, shaking his head as he walked around the sofa and made to snatch the magazine with little effort. Of all the reasons to attack him, the fact that he appeared in the same issue as a derogatory werewolf piece was not what he expected.
“You act as if I planned out the issue myself. Honestly, Dorcas, do remember I cannot edit things I appear in.” He reopened the booklet, skimming through it with expertise. Rabastan wrinkled his nose at the werewolf piece - indeed absolutely uneducated and containing little fact of any of the last twenty years of research or personal experience - but then caught sight of his pages, pleased that his earlier observation had been correct. His face was next to a bunch of sex tips. He held up to magazine with ease, a smirk on his face.
“Besides, I would have thought you would have considered demeaning to my person of all things, love,” he offered, eyebrow arched as the small image of his stood proudly in his swim trunks and leaned against the beach chair, seemingly unaware of the naughty words splayed on the page beside him.
Dorcas had seen plenty of Rab over the years. Whether she wanted to or not most times, it seemed. She at least had a little decency when it came to most things, but the opposite could be said about the two men boys that she spent most of her time around. Her mother had been right all along on the matter of boys and their decency or lack thereof.
Shaking her head to get her mind back on track to what the real issue was here, Dorcas quickly steamed up again as Rab looked over the article on werewolves. The inaccuracies were horrendous and she didn’t know how much of an idiot a person had to be to come out with such writing. It didn’t seem at all possible to her and yet there it was in print for half of the bloody nation to read. She fumed at the thoughts of what this would do to the werewolf community, she was getting there slowly with her work, but articles like this would only slow her down in her need to change the legislation set by the Ministry.
“Don’t you even ask what they’re going to have in there? Why would you want your face featured in the same pages as… as that? It’s awful. They’ve got it all wrong and too many people are going to believe this. It’s not right.”
As for the photographs being shown to her, Dorcas made no indication she had seen or shown any knowledge of them other than the faint reddening of her cheeks. If he mentioned it then she could simply hit him again, not needing a magazine to get her point across if needs be. Of course she had noticed the way he looked before, how could she not when he flaunted it every single day of the year?
“Anyway what are you even doing here? It’s the middle of the day and Fab is at work... It shouldn’t be that surprising as he does have a job, even if he does like sneaking out more often than not to do something else. One day I might get him to do paperwork at his own desk, but that’s not the point. What are you doing here? Don’t you have something you’re supposed to be doing that’s not appearing in magazines filled with horrible so called articles about werewolves?”
Getting herself worked up about the article once more, Dorcas purposely flicked back to the pages the article was spread across. As she frowned, the telltale signs appeared on her face of another speech coming on, including the small creases at the top of her nose. Eyes flitted across the wrong facts on the pages, frown increasing at a steady rate.
“Who even wrote this? Dozens of werewolf attacks each full moon? What kind of hex did they have on them when they wrote that? ‘The number of werewolves in England alone have doubled in the past two decades’? That is entirely wrong. They’re an idiot. I don’t know where they could have gotten any of those figures from. It’s clear they’ve just made them up for the article, but people are going to believe it. Do you have any idea what this is going to do to my work? How much harder they’re going to make it for me to get legislation changed? If people think they’re going to step outside on a full moon and get attacked the they’ll never change anything!”
