VOLATILE TIMES

Frank O. Longbottom faithful husband and dedicated auror April 17 1956 - October 22, 1981

[maskedauror]

Spinner’s End

15th January 1982

12:00 pm

@severssnpe

His hands were shaking, why wouldn’t they stop shaking? He rapped at the unfamiliar door his discreet apparation led him to with reddened knuckles, each knock growing louder than the last–––––––– 

but he stepped back once he’d knocked enough, pulling his cloak closer around his face with those damn shaking hands. Wards be damned, no one could see his face. No one could see him. Not even muggles, not even those who’d pass him over after a glance as nothing particularly interesting. He couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t. Not with this face. This face that had once been so familiar to him and now only caused a spark of  p a n i c  when it was all that faced him in a mirror.

He stepped forward to knock at the door again, teeth clenching. “..C’mon,” He murmured through gritted teeth. “C’mon, c’mon...” Of course, it was so rude of Severus not to answer Frank’s unsolicited and completely unwarned little visit. After all, if it wasn’t Frank’s fault he hadn’t thought to send an owl beforehand to warn the darker man, then whose was it? 

His head jerked back suddenly at some near-inaudible noise, red-rimmed eyes scanning his surroundings for moments upon painstaking moments.. before the cloaked man left out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in the first place, satisfied at his apparent safety despite the face he was wearing–– or wasn’t wearing ––and knocks on the door one last irritated time.

[porcelaindagger]

          Was. 

“He was,” she nodded, voice muted in quiet agreement. Alice wasn’t entirely sure if she wanted to continue to spill her guts to this stranger, but since she was certain she would never see him again, she couldn’t really see the harm in it. He was kind enough; he hadn’t mocked her too terribly. “He, uh,” she began again; saying it aloud was much more difficult than she had anticipated, “he died. ‘S been hard. I just miss him, all the goddamn time.” She shook her head, hopeful that he would not ooh and aww over her misfortune; she’d had enough of that. She wasn’t going to crumble without him; she was just going to return to him as quickly as she could- it was as easy as that. 

She looked in the mirror at the thin lines the template had left over her skin; she could just picture it- their two matching patronuses, traipsing about on her skin as if Frank had never been gone in the first place. If only he were here to see her now; he would likely tease her for being a sap, but that would be something akin to the kettle calling the pot black. 

“Yeah, I know how it’ll work,” she nodded, “Just as long as there’s something else to ogle at, other than the bloody scars. You’d think people’ve never seen scars before.” Alice shook her head, chuckling ruefully. She was a spectacle for more reasons than just one, but perhaps this tattoo could be a move in her favor; she was taking control of her own skin. 

She sobered, however, when he spoke again, her eyes flickering back to his face, her cynical expression melting into one rife with sympathy. “I’m sorry,” she muttered; she hadn’t meant to overload him with her problems when he, himself, was dealing with just as much, or so it seemed. “What was she like?” Alice couldn’t help her curiosity, though she immediately realized what an inappropriate question it must have been, “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to- was presumptuous of me to ask.”

[maskedauror]

He shook his head, using his free hand to gesture for her to sit down so the actual tattooing process could begin–– and using  t h a t  as a cover up for the fact that hearing the news of his supposed death from her own lips nearly made him choke up.

 “...I’m sorry for your loss,” He murmured, voice rough with pent-up emotion he could never afford to let loose. Not here. Not in front of her. Not like this. “I’m sure he loved you just as much as you do him....” 

He falls silent after that, speaking again only to warn her that he’d start off by testing out a small line of the stencil of his needle so that she’d know what to brace herself for. Of course, it’s once his needle hits her beautiful, scarred skin that he has to open his godforsaken mouth once more. 

“..She was––.. She is the light of my life.” He sits back once he’d etched the line, wiping away the excess ink from her skin along with any blood that may have welled up along with it. A shaky breath, and he continues along his train of thought while waiting for her signal for him to continue the tattoo. 

“..I–– I’m lost.. without her. Every day is just..” Frank sighs, shaking his head, and shutting down. “...I’m sorry. You’re paying me to help you remember your lost loved one, not mine. I shouldn’t have––..” He cuts himself off before he can make another mistake. He was a trained auror, and more. This shouldn’t be any more difficult than any other undercover job. It’d been years since he met Alice–– why, after all this time, after his own fake death, did she still have the ability to make frank an utter fool out of himself for her?

[girl-meet-world-blog]

“Well, no pain, no gain.” Glenda shrugged, the smile still hovering over the corner of her mouth. 

“So, how much do you think it’s going to cost, and how long will it take?”

[maskedauror]

He thought about the image she wanted and chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment, definitely spacing out more than making actual estimations.

Merlin, being a tattoo artist wasn’t as easy as it looked, was it? 

“..Well, that depends. I estimate it’ll take more than one section, because of the size.. and the detail and the color. Each session will probably be an hour or a few long.. and the cost varies depending on what I get done in each session.”

                                  . . . 

             “So.. I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, then.”

[habeas-bones]

Millie held up her hands, her lips clenched in an attempt to stifle the laughter that threatened to spill over. “No you’re right- this is top secret super confidential  business- if anyone else finds out it would be devastating.” Millie couldn’t ignore the underlying tension that while dressing Alex wasn’t confidential, the man beneath the mask very much was. 

She held out her fingers, ticking off each item on Frank’s Alex’s checklist. “Feminine, Floral, er- hot, well fitting, flattering. All sounds doable- Malkins okay? That’s where you can get the basics… not that your tshirt dress isn’t well- stylish.”

[maskedauror]

He pursed his lips. “Malkins? That’s where I got my school robes. Are you sure that’s fashionable?” Frank frowns, pulling away from the mirror and grabbing a coat. “My tee-shirt dress is very stylish, but I hope you know I’m relying on you  s p e c i f i c a l l y  to not lead me astray or something.”

[girl-meet-world-blog]

“Depends where you kiss them, and stranger danger is just fair tale, told to scare off children.”

Glenda grinned again, then twisted away from the counter.

“But a good artist always needs to make sure that their customer is in the least amount of pain, wouldn’t you agree?”

[maskedauror]

“Then you’ve come to the wrong tattoo parlor, because I’m still waiting on my fairy godmother.” 

He smiled and shrugged, conceding to her point. 

“Yeah, but I can’t promise you that I’m not gonna be stabbing you with a needle a bunch of times to make a pretty permanent picture on your skin.”

[porcelaindagger]

She glanced again at her scars in the mirror; glaring, ugly, loud in their insistence that she remember why she had gotten them, and who she had gotten them from. Alice could only appreciate that this stranger didn’t ogle- nor did he fuss, or mock, or cringe. He was simply… indifferent. A certain indifference that might have perplexed Alice under different circumstances, but now was only a welcome relief. 

“I can handle pain,” she muttered, her voice an unintentional deadpan as she thought back to just how much pain she really could handle- and how desperately she’d begged for it, how as a result of it, she could’ve sworn she heard Frank’s voice. 

She was also starkly aware of how she wanted it to happen all over again, but of course that was not the sort of thing to be admitted to a stranger. So instead, she shifted, arching her torso to flatten her marred skin against too-prominent ribs. But then she couldn’t help but allow a smile to flit across her darkened features at another mention of Frank- even now, even in death, the mere mention of his name could brighten Alice like nothing else. 

“Nice,” she began, unable to stop the rambling words from tumbling forth, “is an understatement. He was just… everything, you know? ‘ve you ever met someone that’s just… you can’t breathe when you’re not near them, like they’re the only thing producing oxygen within a ten kilometer radius. He was just so damn good- I just- just… I dunno; I sound daft. Just bloody love him, is all. You probably hate it when customers ramble like this. As if you got into this business to hear about everyone’s problems.”

She looked at the stranger again, quickly realizing that she was descending down a dark and dangerous path to inevitable tears that she could not handle falling down. “Er, yeah,” Alice glanced at the position of the stencil in the mirror, “That’s good. And that’ll, uh, cover all that up pretty well, then?”

[maskedauror]

“He was?” He echoed,  the unspoken question hanging in the space between them even though he knew damn well why she’d referred to him in the past tense. For a moment, his fingers pressed too hard against her skin, too hard against the  p r o m i n e n t  bones that screamed at him that because he wasn’t there to care for her, she’d been losing far too much weight. That it was his fault. 

Everything was his fault, and the fact that she wasn’t eating enough was just another piece of evidence added to the guilt weighing him down.

But then he cleared his throat and reigned his composure back into place. He hadn’t passed his auror training with flying colors for nothing. 

“It’ll cover up everything it needs to–– but you should know that this isn’t gonna be some stone-still muggle tattoo. The needles here are charmed.. the shepards are probably gonna move around, so I can’t promise one-hundred-percent coverage all day every day.” 

It took another moment of silence, of peeling the template back from her skin and checking the faint outline it left over her scars, gaze intent on not screwing any of it up–– before he remembered her question, rhetorical though it might have been. “..I fell in love with someone like that a long time ago.. It’s hard to be apart from the love of your life.”

[maskedauror]

Lets be Frank, you may not have been with us Long but I adore your writing from the Bottom of my heart. Have a wonderful Thursday — Secret Santa.

HAVE A HAPPY FRANK GIF CAUSE THIS IS THE SWEETEST AND I AM ENJOYING THESE PUNS SO MUCH 

ALSO BY THE TIME I’M ANSWERING THIS IT’S NOT THURSDAY AND I APOLOGIZE <3

[girl-meet-world-blog]

“Well-”

Glenda let her voice trail off slowly, her tongue poking out of her teeth as she smiled. While there had been a moment of hesitation, Eric was responding easily, a spark in his eyes that meant her advances weren’t unwelcome. He was cute, and she decided to go straight ahead. It should be fun!

“Tattoo first, and then you can kiss it better, if you want.”

[maskedauror]

“Didn’t anyone ever take the time to teach you about stranger danger?” 

Though the smirk on his borrowed features was beginning to become more and more of his own volition rather than an act, there was still something within him that tugged back, that d i s a p p r o v e d of the warm smiles and sly glances traded between them. 

“Kissing strangers doesn’t seem like the best plan, don’t you think?”

"Stop being so -" finish it in my ask.

[porcelaindagger]

With a dash of daring, she slipped her blouse over her head, leaving it hanging over her shoulders and arms, but fully exposing her torso- and by proxy, the rest of her scars. Her ribs were starkly visible beneath almost translucent skin; evidence of just how greatly the war- and Frank’s absence- had taken its toll on her. Alice’s sense of self preservation, it seemed, had always been directly tied to Frank. A forgotten meal here, a risky mission without proper preparation there- it all didn’t matter when she had no one to come home to. 

And that was evident enough. 

“Will it hurt much?” she inquired absently, as if pain was really something to deter her, of all people. After all, she had been the one actively seeking out Bellatrix for the singular purpose of feeling something. “My husband has tattoos, and he never complained much about getting them done. But, then again, he was always much stronger than I.”

She found herself smiling- genuinely, for the first time in a while- at the mention of Frank, not even noting the mingling of past and present tenses in her speech. Talking about him either made it better or worse, the hollowness in the pit of her chest- she was lucky that today was the former. 

[maskedauror]

The way she blended past and present tense when referring to him only distracted him from her suddenly bare torso for a few precious moment. The pang of longing for her, for their life was soon swept up in a wave of guilt at the better look at the scars. 

He felt responsible––––– and why shouldn’t he? It wasn’t as if decades had passed since he’d stood by her side and vowed never to leave it. It wasn’t as if he’d broken that vow, even under good intentions. 

           He was doing the right thing, wasn’t he? For her safety? For the greater good? 

                                                                  Only time would tell. 

“That depends on your pain threshold. It’d definitely not gonna be a kitten scratch, if that’s what you were hoping for.” He shrugged. “Don’t think it’ll hurt worse than what it’s covering up, though.” 

It was then that he paused, stopping himself before he could soften and say something stupid again, before he could ask a dumb question or blow his cover. Before he could drive her away when even these stolen moments gave him more life than anything else had in the past few months. 

“Sounds like a nice guy,” Were all the words Frank could allow himself to say, voice dropping to a near-murmur that almost sounded offhand as he finally leaned forward to position the stencil against the worst of the scars. “That good?”

[maskedauror]

Visit Original Link

Your eyes can be so cruel Just as I can be so cruel

[maskedauror]

What did prissy Cissy do to make you hate her so?

“She messed with the wrong Longbottom.”

[maskedauror]

FMK - Black sisters

“I’d kill Narcissa.”                         … Maybe he should worry about how fast that spilled from his lips, but the words Alice had told him in confidence–– or rather, Eric ––still echoed in his mind. 

“…then I’d probably marry Andie and Frank Bellatrix.” 

[maskedauror]

FMK - Gretchen, Doe, Marlene

“I haven’t played Frank, Marry, Kill since my sixth year. Wait, isn’t this kind of rude to ask a married man?”                 “..I’d have to marry Marlene, because she’d probably kill me if I chose any of the other options.. then… I’d Frank Doe, maybe? And…. sorry, Gretchen.”

[maskedauror]

If you had to choose between killing Alice or handing her over to the Death Eaters for strategical gain, what would you choose?

“What kind of fucked up question is this? Either answer is horrible in it’s own way. Who says I have to choose, anyway? How, in this world of infinite possibilities, can I only have two choices? What if I just faked her death? I’m quite good at that, y’know..” 

                          . . .

               “I’m a dead man, I shouldn’t have to make these kind of decisions.” 

[maskedauror]

Do you want kids? If so, what would you name them?

“I’ve always wanted children, honestly. There’s nothing I want more. I never really thought about names before, I always thought that Al–– that we’d just.. decide in the moment. Go with whatever feels right, you know? I don’t think you can really plan a miracle until it happens. Or––.. I dunno, give the miracle a name.”

[maskedauror]

What's you favorite memory?

“Utterly sappy as it may sound.. my first dance as a married man at my wedding.”