o' death @wldnmacnair - Tumblr Blog

“Why do you look like someone just kicked a baby dragon?”

littlelestrange:

Rabastan stared, mouth open, trying to process what was going on. But then Walden smiled, laughed, made a stupid smart arse remark, and Rabastan knew that it didn’t matter what had brought Walden back to Hogwarts. What mattered was that Walden was here, and Rab wasn’t going to ask questions right now, because he couldn’t even process them, he couldn’t even form real thoughts, or make reasonable decisions. It was a blank buzz of joy that rose from his stomach to his chest to his head.

Perhaps this blankness was what propelled Rabastan to surge forward, thow his arms around his best friend, and stay like that for several seconds. Perhaps this was what guided Rabastan’s face away from Walden’s shoulder, towards his own face, and what made Rabastan move his hands from Walden’s back and onto the sides of his face. Perhaps it was what told Rabastan to kiss him, kiss him now, and what drowned out every other voice that had protested against that desire for the past year. Perhaps it was what convinced Rabastan, after staring into those goddamn brown eyes for the time it took to breathe two shaking breaths, to move forward, and press his lips against Walden’s. Yes, that was it. It was Walden and Rabastan and the blank buzz of joy and nothing else, for nearly three seconds.

And then the real world was there again. The muffler on his senses was turn off and Rabastan leaped back, a look of horror on his face at what he had done.

“I– don’t know why I did that,” he murmured, and his voice was impossibly small. He exhaled a shuddering sigh. “Fuck.” Now there were even more questions: why did he do that? Why didn’t he stop himself? What would the consequences be? Had he just lost his best friend in one moment of adrenaline? He was so overwhelmed, so jacked up with energy, he couldn’t even see Walden’s face properly. He felt dizzy, and nauseous, and terrified. What would happen next?

Walden’s laughter grew louder as his friend sprung into action. Thrown of balance slightly as the other boy threw his arms around him. His hands shot out, momentarily resting on the Rabastan’s hips as he caught him before they slid their way around him to return the hug. This had been more of what he’d been expecting.

Until–

Everything froze. He couldn’t make out what was said after Rabastan pulled back. His thoughts running a thousand miles a second, his fingers hovered just above his previously occupied lips.

‘I didn’t expect anything like that’, ‘then again this is Rabastan, he’s always been strangely affectionate – we’ve always been strangely affectionate’, ‘yeah, but never like that – that it’s not right’, ‘but apparently neither is attacking mudbloods, so what do you care about not right?’, ‘no that’s not remotely the same, this is wrong on a completely different level’, ‘it’s not– men aren’t supposed to’, ‘but every god damn fairy tale, every love story you’ve ever heard think about them what do they all have in common?’, ‘a man and a woman’, ‘no smartarse it’s two people who trust each other more than anything, about spending your life with your best friend a person who knows you inside and out but still wants you despite all the damage’, ‘a bit extreme given the circumstances’, ‘or maybe not when it is something so in grained into you that it’s wrong’.

Walden shook himself out of his thoughts. Parts of him wanting to ignore it all, pretend nothing happened. It’d be easy enough, passed off as excitement, never to be mentioned. But a bigger part of him wanted to know why. Where exactly had that come from, why would Rabastan have even done that unless. It was terrifying to think, but it was possible. He could find out, he had to find out.

Walden sighed, and pushed the hair from his face, before he closed distance between them. His fingertips ghosting across the other boys chin, as he kissed his best friend for a second time.

#rabastan #10.73 #did it need three gifs probably not but here we are

littlelestrange:

The past six weeks hadn’t been easy for Rabastan, not only because Hogwarts without Walden was boring as all hell, but because Rab had managed to get himself into more trouble in the last month and a half than he ever had during the five years prior. It was part restlessness, part the desire to remind administration that expelling one student wouldn’t keep things any tamer, and part the knowledge that if he got really out of control, he might get himself expelled. If he had been able to think straight, he would have realized what a poor idea it was to try to get himself expelled, but he wasn’t able to think straight. He wasn’t able to think of much else besides Walden. He barely noticed that the majority of his house now despised him for putting Slytherin so far into the negatives so early in the year, because he spent all of his time either in detention, by himself, or waiting for an owl from Walden.

Really, everything in Rabastan’s revolved around Walden. It had for a while. He had only started noticing it around a year and a half ago, and even more recently had he figured out what it meant, but — especially now — he was past fighting it. The previous year, Rab had seen Walden with girls. Actually, this wasn’t new, but only within the ‘72-’73 school term did he realize how much it bothered him, beyond a “my friends are becoming somewhat sexually active and I am not at that point in my life and that makes me feel bitter/uncomfortable/abnormal” way. That was the way he had tried to pass his discomfort off for about a month, but… well, then he had cried about it, and at that point the fact that he was in love with Walden Macnair was a fact too overwhelming to deny.

Summer happened just as usual, but with a new excitement and purpose — a delusional hope for the prospect of romance. Walden’s every gesture was given meaning through the lens of Rabastan’s infatuation, even though nothing was really any different, besides Rab keeping extra careful that he wasn’t staring into Walden’s eyes too much. But when Walden was expelled, Rabastan had stopped focusing on that and started focusing on how the hell he was going to keep Walden safe. And he had failed, because when September came, he had shot a violent glare in the direction of his brother, slumped onto the Hogwarts express, and curled up in the corner of an empty compartment.

This evening, after being released from detention, he hadn’t gone to the great hall or to the common room, but instead wandered out to the black lake and attempted to burn the giant squid with lit cigarettes, pretending that it was Robert King or Warren Macnair. Then, he snuck back into the castle (something that had increased in difficulty since Lucius had graduated the summer of the previous year), and walked up to the owlery. He found what looked like the strongest owl (he always sent the strongest owl to the Macnair household in case Warren decided to abuse the owl, too) and attached a note to its leg that read:

After watching the owl take off, he began his adventure back down to the dungeons, but by the time he reached the common room, he felt uneasy. He wasn’t sure why — maybe it was the potential of having to interact with Podmore — but something felt off. He decided to shake off the feeling, and made his way into the dorm, heading towards his bed and hardly registering the presence of the other person in the room before falling face first into the mattress.

But there had been another person.

What?

Rabastan rolled over, sat up, and– yes. Another person.

Walden Macnair.

The sound of the door opening then promptly slamming behind the person snapped Walden out of his thoughts. Unable to suppress his laughter as he could almost see the wave of realization travel through Rabastan’s body. “You know, for some reason I expected more of a reaction, but I guess I’ll settle for stunned silence.”

#rabastan #10.73

Arriving at Hogwarts a month and a half late, by stumbling through the fire place in Dumbledore’s office felt surreal. Though in all honesty it was surreal. He shouldn’t have been here, he shouldn’t be allowed to carry a wand let alone make his way though the familiar stone corridors. And yet, here he was. It felt like relief in an odd way, even if he was for all intents and purposes a bug under a microscope. The degree of magic he’d used against King made everyone uneasy – even if Rodolphus had gotten people to believe that it had been self-defense.

It wasn’t until he flopped down onto the cool green sheets of his bed that any of this truly felt real to Walden. He was back, he’d been given a pass from having to join the others for dinner. Afraid it might be too overwhelming, and instead allowed to eat in the kitchens while his classmates finished their last lessons and he was sent on his way to his dorm.

All that was left now was to wait.

@littlelestrange

#rabastan #10.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan moved his face out of Walden’s shoulder, just so he could mumble a “Yeah.” He wanted to hold on to Walden forever, but he knew he couldn’t do that, so he sighed, let go, and crumpled onto the bed. “I can’t believe I’m going to have to dorm with Podmore, alone.”

Walden laughed slightly. “It could be worse. I mean Podmore’s not great, but it could be worse. Could be stuck with Montague. At least Podmore won’t try to start debates.”

“You’ll be back for the holidays before you know it.”

#rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan was startled when Walden grabbed him, and he felt his face flush, but he didn’t look away from him. He listened, and after a long pause, sighed, heavily, knowing Walden was right, knowing there was nothing he could do to help, knowing that the most compelling argument Rabastan had for not going back to Hogwarts was ‘I don’t want to because the one person who makes me happy won’t be there so what’s the point.’ So he did the only thing that felt right, which was fall into the boy’s shoulder and wrap his arms around him.

Walden tensed when Rabastan wrapped his arms around him, his instincts telling him to push the other boy away. It had been years, longer than he could remember, since Walden had found human contact comforting. But this was someone who wasn’t out to hurt him, no, it was Rabastan – who was possibly the only person Walden fully trusted. After seconds, that felt like hours, Walden let himself relax into the embrace, his head falling on top of the one on his shoulder. “S’gonna suck without you.”

#rabastan

littlelestrange:

“No, I can’t go back to Hogwarts and leave you with Warren and without a wand.” Rabastan shifted, too, sitting up straight, because he was dead serious about this. “Besides, what am I supposed to do at Hogwarts without you, anyway? I sort of despise most of the people there.”

Walden pushed himself back up, grabbing the other boy by the shoulders. “No. Go back. I’ll be fine. I doubt I’ll be home often, and I’ll be seventeen soon so I’ll be able to get my own flat. And I know where my grandfather’s wand is, so I won’t be defenseless. Don’t fuck yourself over.”

“Besides, if you dropped out because of this Warren would be the least of my worries. Veronkia would skin me alive.”

#rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan listened, but didn’t speak for a while after Walden had finished. He just sat, looked at Walden, because Walden wasn’t looking at him, and chewed on the inside of his lip (something he did absentmindedly when he was thinking). After a few moments he spoke again, quietly and perhaps too casually, “Well, I can’t go back either, then.”

Walden froze, before he shifted to face his best friend. “No. You’re going back. You can’t throw out your future because I did.”

#rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan sighed, and pulled his knees up to his chest. “What’s going to happen?” he whispered, but he didn’t really want to know the answer, because he knew it wouldn’t be good.

Walden shrugged, and threw an arm over his eyes. “I don’t know. I find a job that doesn’t require a wand. If I can, that is. Avoid Warren at all costs.” End it, maybe. He finished silently. The idea had become more than appealing, getting away from Warren now that he was never going to find a stable job – or at the very least one that could help him afford a place of his own it – a lifetime of suffering, and it could stop. He could stop it. Though this wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed his mind through the years, but every time there had been a little part of him that said to hold on. Only a few more years until he could leave the pain behind – until he’d ruined it. Until he’d thrown the opportunity away. And it all lead back to his father.

#rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan’s eyes were streaming now, as he stared at Walden, powerless to be of any help. He pulled his legs up onto the bed and leaned against the headboard. The worst part of all of this was that Walden was right. This wasn’t a matter of dramatic interpretation, these were just the facts of his life. He took a shuddering breath and offered what he thought was probably the stupidest form of comfort he had ever offered in his life.

“I w– I’m glad you’re not dead.” He shook his head. “I don’t know if that counts for much, but, I– you’re not– it wouldn’t have saved me any trouble.” He smirked, trying to show that he was sort of kidding, but he wasn’t really. “If he had killed you then I would have to go find him and kill him myself, which would… I’ve never killed anyone before. It would be a lot more work for me.”

“If you’d have tried, he would have killed you too. All that would have accomplished is making me a very guilty ghost.”

#rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan listened, trying to come up with some words of comfort, but the only thing he could think of was how unfair it was. How unfair it was that Walden had to live with his Warren, who regularly abused him in every way, and who received no punishment for it. And how unfair that Warren had pushed Walden to the edge like this, how unfair that now he was treated like every other kid in the eyes of the law, even though the law didn’t give a shit about Walden before, and now were going to put him in even more danger by preventing him from going to Hogwarts. Worst of all was what Walden had said about control, how he needed to feel it. Because Rabastan knew how he felt, especially right now, when his best friend was in horrible danger and he could do absolutely nothing about it.

Imagining Walden in a holding cell, imagining how Warren must have reacted, it was all too horrible. Rabastan kept his head down as a tear dropped from his eye onto his hand, both of which were balled tight in his lap. He shook his head. He wasn’t in a state of disbelief, but he almost wished he was. So he tried for denial instead. “No. No, they can’t do that. They can’t– they can’t make you stay, not with Warren, that’s not– not fair,” he said, a childish stubbornness in his voice. He sighed a shuddering, almost gasping sigh, and brought his head back up to look at Walden. “The law is supposed to help people, they can’t make you– you need to go to Hogwarts.”

“They can. They have.” He shrugged, though it was followed by a humorless laugh. “Fair? When has anything in my life ever been fair?” Walden closed his eyes trying to hold angry tears at bay. “They didn’t want me. She left me with him, and Merlin knows he didn’t want me. Not unless I was perfect, which I clearly wasn’t. He should have just finished me off what he was at it. Saved everyone the bloody trouble.”

#rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan nodded. He sat on the edge of his bed, careful not to get too close, and studied Walden. Something was wrong. Not hearing from him for days, the excess of injuries, him not having his wand – Rabastan was struck with a terrible thought, but before he had the chance to even open his mouth, Walden confirmed it.

Expelled. The words rang in his ears, and Rabastan felt his entire body go numb. He blinked, trying to keep the tears that had suddenly pooled as subtle as possible. He opened his mouth, and his shaken breaths became more audible. He wouldn’t be able to speak without sounding like he was crying, he knew this, but he didn’t care. “What? Why?” he said, voice shaky and broken, and he searched for more words, mouth open but nothing coming of it, looking a bit like a lost fish. “Why?”

“I fucked up.” He shrugged. “Warren had been more insufferable than usual, and I needed – I don’t know – I needed to feel like I was in control. Tristan and I were out and that mudblood, King, he just was in the wrong place at the right time. But I got caught.” He ran his hand over his face. “Snapped my wand, and expelled me without a thought. Threw me in a holding cell until they could get a hold of Warren to come get me. When I got home, it went from bad to worse.”

#rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan just watched Walden, noticing, really, how much worse than usual Walden looked. He just wanted to… hold on to him, or something. Find some way to keep all the shite that Walden had to deal with far away from him.

Rabastan shook his head, insistently. “Fuck that. Here, lie down on my bed and I’ll say… I’ll make something up, something that has nothing to do with you. Seriously, don’t even try to argue with me on this. We’ve got elves for a reason.” Rabastan glanced back at his bed. He hadn’t actually slept in it for a couple days. Over the summer he had gotten in the habit of drawing things when he was bored at night, and just falling asleep wherever he was when he got tired. He had done that two nights in a row, now, which was new – usually he tried to go to bed like a normal person the next day if he had done it like a weirdo the previous night. But for some reason it had been different these few days. It certainly wasn’t because he was thinking about Walden. That wasn’t it at all.

“Thanks.” His reply felt weak, but he couldn’t come up with anything better, anything more. Instead he quietly and carefully climbed into Rabastan’s bed, lying quietly for a few minutes before he finally found his voice again. “I’ve been expelled.”

#but no chick ya know #rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan nodded. “Fair enough,” he said, smiling weakly at Walden’s feigned casualness.

Rabastan’s eyebrows shot up, and he remained silent for a moment, as questions raced through his mind, but thought he should probably answer Walden, first. “Yeah, of– of course,” he said, grabbing his wand from off the nightstand where it sat, and handing it to him. He stared at Walden, his eyebrows pushed together in thought and concern. “Do you want to, like… sit down, or something?”

Walden took the wand with a slight nod of thanks. The end pointed at different cuts and bruises as he silently healed himself, lingering slightly longer over his ribs, relishing in the almost foreign feeling of using magic. “No, I– Honestly laying on something other than a bloody floor sounds great. But, I know I’d never hear the end of it if I got blood on any of your furniture.”

#rabastan #08.73

littlelestrange:

Rabastan paced around his room, picking off pieces of peeling wallpaper and rolling them between his fingers before letting them fall to the ground. He hadn’t heard from or seen Walden in a few days, which probably just meant that he was busy. Sometimes he had to remind himself that most people weren’t as obsessive about their best friends as he was, but it wasn’t as if his constant worrying about Walden was unjustified. Warren Macnair was a bloody monster, and sometimes Rabastan would ponder how long it would take to find out that Walden was dead if his father had killed him or something.

He’d probably tell everyone that his son had ran away, Rabastan thought, and nobody would believe me when I would call him a liar, and Walden’s disappearance would go unsolved forever. These were morbid thoughts, but not uncommon ones for Rabastan, given the tendency towards violence that ran in his family.

He sighed, and fell, face forward, onto the bed that lay in the center of the room. It was hard to breathe with his face smooshed into the mattress, so he turned his head to the left. But now he couldn’t see, because his hair was in his eyes. But he supposed that didn’t really matter, because there was nothing to see.

Not until a flash of flame erupted in the fireplace, and Rabastan jolted up, moving the hair from his face just as the smoke cleared and Walden Macnair stumbled out, looking more beaten and bloodied than was normal, even for him.

Rabastan didn’t know whether to go to him or to just stay where he was, so he met halfway and stood up, but didn’t actually move or do anything useful.

“Hi,” he said, trying to find the mix of not-apathetic-but-casual that fit the situation. As he got a better look at Walden, his eyes widened, and he bit his lip.

“How’s… your face doing? And the rest of your body? And your mental and emotional wellbeing?”

“Hi.” He responded, as he pushed himself off the ground using anything stable within his reach to hold himself upright. Walden did his best to shrug off Rabastan’s concern, the grunt of pain the movement caused betraying him. “Oh you know, sort of wishing I were dead, but decent.”