Alecto jumped as the light clicked on and Annie swiveled around in her chair, unable to help but imagine the blonde practicing this while she waited on Alecto’s arrival home. Amycus wouldn’t be back until morning, and Annie had been prepared for that. What she obviously hadn’t been prepared for was Alecto taking off and leaving her in the Carrow manor all on her own, the flickering eyes of the portraits lining the walls her only company. It would take some time before Annie became accustomed to her husband’s codependent relationship with his twin sister, despite the obviousness of it all.
With Fiona gone, it was harder to distract Alecto from her worries for her brother when he was sent somewhere without her, and oftentimes she left Annie on her own to follow her brother’s mission anyways, leaving only when she was confident the job had been done and needed to disappear before the report was due.
Explaining herself to Annie, despite how easily it could have been done, was the last thing Alecto was in the mood for. She was drenched with rain and mud from a ridiculous run after some Order member they’d been tasked to track down, her cloak was dragging her already small frame and she was colder than she ever wanted to be with the remains of water dripping from her fiery hair down her back. All she wanted was a warm bath and to crawl into her bed. She was hardly enjoying the expectant look Annie was giving her.
“I’m home,” Was her only response, shucking off the heavy black cloak and dumping it into the waiting arms of the house elf who had followed her into the parlor, ignoring his little squeak of alarm, “Amycus will be back in the morning, and you should get some rest.”
Alecto moved through the room to get to the staircase, groaning internally as she saw Annie get up and follow, reaching the doorway before her. “What were you thinking? I’ve been worried sick about you, you could’ve at least left a-”
“Listen,” Alecto snapped, practically stretching on her toes in order to intimidate Annie, who was nearly a foot taller than she was, “I am not your husband, what I do is none of your business. Excuse me,” Without waiting for a response, Alecto was shoving past her sister-in-law, unable to believe she actually preferred her empty bed to the woman her brother chose to spend his life with.
“Five...four....” Josie was counting down. Bad things happened when Josie was the one who had lost enough patience to begin the countdown. If it was Caradoc, easy to get out of, but when both Doc and Benjy were faced with a very short, very angry Josie, shit was going to go down. Doc didn’t want to be around when she reached one.
“No, no, no,” He waved his hands in surrender, “Stop counting, Josie, take a breath and please stop counting.” Benjy meanwhile seemed to have stopped breathing altogether where he was balanced on the kitchen counter holding a mug of baileys mixed with hot chocolate, where he’d been dancing only a few seconds before Josie had come in from what had obviously been an extra stressful day at work. Her hair was frazzled in its ponytail and her glasses had dark smudges from where she’d probably been rubbing at her face the way she did when she got frustrated.
Doc, the more sober of the two, took her hands and led her over to the table, having managed to subdue her counting for the meantime, and sat her down in the chair, snatching Benjy’s mug from his hands as he turned, did a circle and brought the mug to Josie, hoping the alcoholic offering might make up for the fact that she had just walked in on her roommates bouncing around the kitchen like a bunch of animals.
Thankfully, Josie just took a long inhale of the warm drink and disappeared behind the mug, tipping the contents in, confirming Doc’s thoughts that she’d had a very bad day. When she was done, she slammed the mug onto the table and leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees.
“You will never guess what kind of fuck came into the office today.”
Lily looked up at the ceiling for a moment, wondering how long she could go before answering Mary’s question. It wasn’t like the could hide the stripper, she was already blasting music in the next room, the whoops of an overexcited Sirius diminishing any hope to blame the music on Peter or Dorcas’ shower routine.
“I may have....” she began, lurching forward to grab Mary’s arm as she stormed towards the blasting music, pulling her to a stop with her best pout.
“Mary, it’s his birthday, I wanted him to have fun!” She knew by the answering look Mary was giving her that that wouldn’t be enough to keep Mary from marching the stripper out of the flat as soon as Lily let go of her arm, but it wasn’t like she was lying. Sirius was always saying how no party was complete without a stripper, and he had been complaining for weeks how turning 19 was so uneventful, Lily just wanted him to remember it as the first time there was a stripper at his party, since it no doubt wouldn’t be the last.
“A stripper, Lily, a stripper,” Mary seemed to be repeating herself in order to convince Lily of the severity of her decision, but it was hard to feel guilty when Sirius was very obviously having the time of his life in the next room.
“I’ll order one for your birthday, too,” Lily poked her side, trying to coax a smile, but Mary just used the opportunity to go for the door again, swinging it open and looking at the room inside. She simply stood there, however, for longer than any girl might have when they were so determined to put a stop to it.
“Mary?” Lily coaxed, sidling up to look over her shoulder.
“I hate that you even have good taste in strippers.” was all Mary said in reply, before crossing the room to sit beside a mildly uncomfortable Remus.
send me ❥ for your muse to cuddle up next to mine while asleep on the couch
Alec grumbled quietly as the sofa shifted with new weight. He’d just managed to find the perfect balance as his head tilted back against the back of the seat. The Slytherin commons were rarely quiet enough to catch a nap without having some absurdly loud group of underclassmen storming through complaining about exams and taking no heed of their elder housemates who had a lot more to stress about.
And he swore to Salazar himself if it was one of these groups trying to take up residence on the sofa he’d claimed in order to play wizard chess the vein in his forehead was going to pop and the odds of him graduating on time would be even slimmer than Alexander Tripe’s. One eye opened murderously, prepared to tell whoever it was disturbing his nap to get lost before he tossed them into the lake, only to find one miss Fiona Rowle leaning into him, the amusement on her face undeniable. Whatever he had done to attract her attention in the past couple of weeks, she seemed oddly content with his reluctant acceptance to her odd insistence to constantly be in his personal space. There were plenty of other young men just dying for her to flounce into their laps with her tight little skirts and barely buttoned blouses, and yet she seemed determined to have him, instead. The more resigned he was to her, the more she seemed to enjoy his company, if one could call it that at all. Alec was hardly good company to his own twin, happy enough to sit in silence entertaining himself in the most mundane ways, reading or drawing on his own. Contact with other people just wasn’t appealing, and yet despite her irritable habit of clambering into his lap when he wanted a nap, such as she was just now, he had yet to shove Fiona away as he had a few unfortunate girls who sought to follow her example and be as spontaneous as possible. “I suppose it’s too much to ask to have a quiet moment to myself, hmm?” He asked, his other eye opening so he could squint at her while she laughed airily at the request, a prompt and secure ‘no,’ while she made herself comfortable across his lap, lounging in a way that would have most boy’s eyes popping out of their head. Alec shook his head to himself and let his head tip back, allowing Fiona’s slender fingers playing in his short hair to be his last thought before sleep took over.
