Not to be nosy || Alice & Kingsley
@alice-not-herself
The Shacklebolt children went through their fair share of nannies over the years, it wasn’t exactly that they were aiming to run them off, but more that their father had no idea the kind of person who really should be responsible for his children. Kingsley remembered one older woman in particular who liked to attempt to scare them into doing things. She used to tell the kind of stories that would give normal children nightmares for weeks. She’d been quite fond of one that involved a witch luring young children to her and spend weeks fattening them up and being kind to them only to shove them into her oven and feast on them. He hadn’t thought about the story in years, but somehow as he filled the plates on the table he felt a bit like the old hag in the story. Not that he had any plans for cannibalism, simply he felt like he’d lured her here under false pretenses. Though the feast he’d prepared that filled his table seemed to tell a different story.
They just needed to get out of the office, he felt like it was all going to hell in a handbasket as quickly a the river of fire’s current could pull them all in. If it wasn’t the Ministry setting up a completely useless task force to undermine and screw with their work, it was a leak that spewed everyone’s secrets out for all to see. Kingsley was far too suspicious to be an avid user of wizfi or any other version of the internet. Delilah though had a penchant for running off to places where phone service was often questionable, and now it was out there. Not spelled out like o many others but clues, straws for someone to grasp at. He’d been fighting to keep the knowledge a secret for so long that he’d had a brief moment where he thought it might be a relief not to have to hide. The reality of that crashed in on him for a moment, it had ceased being just about what his father would do if his shame was revealed as much as the fact that it opened Delilah up to danger.
No, the whole leak was a giant reminder of how dangerous personal information could be just floating around. He’d done his best to remove names from documents he’d sorted through when it came to people he interacted with on a regular basis. Alice and Frank though, it was different. They were people who he worked with day after day, not to mention people he cared for on a personal level. He’d seen the looks Alice had gotten since the leak, gone out of his way to keep their interactions the same as always. It didn’t change who she was and he thought it simply made the others look like foolish imbeciles.
While part of him thought that he should perhaps just mind hi own business something had spurred him to invite her over. It just wasn’t a conversation for the office or out in public, and this place may as well be used for more than a place to crash land when he couldn’t push himself any further. Alice deserved a real home cooked meal, and a night where the words NEAT and war weren’t the featured subject. The homecooked meal thing was well out of hi realm of possibility though, so the fare from the local steakhouse would have to do the job.
Despite the anticipation of her arrival, he reached for his wand at the sound of the knock. He spooned the last of the sauce onto the plates charmed to keep their food warm he made his way to the door, pulling it open for her. “You made it...”
