| Details for Boabies and Apologies |
| Summary: | Angus invites Lucretia for a walk down by the Black Lake and Medusa finally catches up with the pair of party prankers. |
| Date: | 1939-01-07 |
| Location: | Hogwart's Lake Shore |
| Related: | — |
| Characters |
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Entry Hall
The marble beginnng of the staircases leading upwards into the castle face the heavy oak doors that lead outside across a flagged stone expanse that could fit an average house. Looking up, one can see the staircases shifting from one landing to the next, on up into the shadows making it difficult to tell just how high the Entrance Hall really is. The torches in the walls do little to pierce the dimness overhead, but cast light on the suits of armor flanking the front doors and the many doors spaced at odd intervals leading to the Great Hall, Slytherin Dungeons, Staff quarters, and even a broom closet.
Perhaps the thing of greatest interest in this entry though, at least to the students, are the four large hourglasses housed in niches on one of the walls opposite the doors. One filled with sapphires, one with emeralds, one with rubies, and the last with topaz, these hourglasses keep track of the all important House points. The gems in the bottom half represent the points earned so far by houses Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin.
The odd thing about being back at Hogwarts, is that it tends to feel as if you've never left. At least that's how it feels for Lucretia on the first day back after the break. Wrapped up warmly in her thickest robes and with a green and silver Slytherin scarf wound about her neck, she strides through the entry hall and heads towards the doors that lead outside.
Angus has his robes hiked up in a belt- so that they resemble nothing so much as a very drab great plaid, and under it his solidest walking boots and socks, and tweed trousers, "Ah, Lulu! Grreat! You've just time tae go get yoursel' changed!"
Lucretia pulls to a halt, her head twisting to look for where Angus, for it surely must be him, is standing. "What? I was just going out for a walk. Why do I need to change? And what on earth have you done with your robes, Angus MacMillan?"
Angus says, "Aye? Well, so woas Ah, but Ah thought you wanted tae learrn a wee bittie more aboot th' wilderness."
"I do, but I don't have anything remotely like the boots that you're wearing and there's nothing wrong with my skirt." As she speaks, Lucretia smoothes her hands down the front of said skirt, the garment perfectly pressed with knife-edged pleats. "Where were you heading anyway? There's not an awful amount of time before dinner's due and it'd be terrible to miss it on the first proper day back."
Angus grumbles, "Och, spose you're right. But lets get out, anyhoo, aye?"
Lucretia tilts her head, regarding Angus like a cat might regard a mouse. "You're not going to do something stupid like sling mud at me, are you?"
Angus rolls his eyes upwards, "No. Dinnae be soft heeded, Quine!"
Lucretia grumbles a face and adjusts her scarf, pulling it up and over her mouth. "Fine." The word is muffled, but she moves a little closer to her classmate, pulling gloves onto her hands as she does.
Hogwarts Lake Shore
This narrow crescent of grainy sand and smooth small beach stones spans east to west between the cliff face to the east and the large fortified stone campus perimeter wall to the west that runs north to south until it runs many yards into the water of the Black Lake itself and further off to the north. The only spot along the shore that isn't given completely to a topography of rocks and roots, the latter of which extend right out into the lake, it's a commonplace sight to see students hopping about on the rocks or skipping stones across the water.
Angus leads the pair of them down to the beach, and says carefully, "I'm sorry fur what happened, Lulu, y'ken, aye?"
Lucretia bends and picks up a stone, one hand trapping her scarf to her chest so it doesn't flop on the ground. "What do you mean? Sorry for what?" Straightening back up she weights the pebble carefully in the palm of her hand, one finger rubbing along the flattened edges. Perfect for skimming, she chooses not to do that just yet, her eyes lifting to find Angus' as she waits for him to explain.
Angus picks up a stone of his own, "Well, the party. And… well, manhandling you. Didnae want you to dae something you'd regret afterwards, ken?"
Lucretia nods. "Its fine. I lost my temper and you were right to stop me. Sometimes its not a good idea to hit someone because you can't control yourself." She turns, catches her tongue between her teeth and sends the pebble skimming over the surface of the water. She's awful at it; the stone arcs too high and plops heavily on the second bounce, sinking from sight.
Angus looks relieved, and casually sends his own stone skimming. Five bounces. "Aye. Glad yehs see it that way. I dinnae wanna lose yehs as a friend, ken?"
Lucretia watches Angus' stone skip and hunches her shoulders. "If you lost me as a friend because of one argument, it wasn't much of a friendship to start with," she says quietly, picking a strand of dark hair from where it whips across her face with the wind. Anchoring it back behind the curve of one ear, she tries a small smile, probably one of the first she's managed since returning to school. "Now that you've got me down here, what is it you were going to show me?"
Angus gestures broadly with his arms and swings around, "Mah playgroond, Lulu! Is it no beautiful?" And then he adds gallantly, "No as beautiful as you, o'course!"
"The Black Lake is your playground?" Lu takes a look around her and steps up onto one of the boulders that litter the shore, neatly polished black shoes just catching one edge so the toe scuffs a little. She frowns. "But everybody comes here, show me something that I don't know about already." Did she hear the compliment? If she did, she shows no signs of acknowledging it, a hand sweeping up as she tries to tame her hair where it dances capriciously in the wind. "A cave. A secret place. A hidden path? Anything…?"
Angus says, "The Noo? It's a wee bittie short notice. But there's some great views from th' hills." He gestures, "We could broom up there, another time, aye?"
Lucretia wraps her arms around her waist and looks down at Angus. "Yes. The Noo. Otherwise what did we come here for? You say that its your playground… well you must know somewhere interesting to go." Cheeks flushed from the wind, she turns into it and lets it pull her hair away from her face, eyes closed against the harshness of it. "C'mon Angus. Think."
Angus says cautiously, "Well, there's some caves in the cliffs, but it's usually a broom tae get tae it." He pauses, "Or there's the wee falls on the other side. They dinnae get many folks to them."
Lucretia stands on one leg, then on the other, testing her balance in the wind. "Right. So tell me again just why you thought I should dress up for a day's hill walking when you invited me to come here with you?"
Angus says cheerfully, "Well, partly fur the laughs. But just in case we had a wee bit more time, tae get up, and look down on Hogwarts. Another day, maybe."
"Right." There's real disappointment in Lucretia's voice as she hops down off her rock, feet crunching briefly in the gravelled pebbles before she sits down on her former perch. Another turn of her scarf is given around her neck and she pushes her hands deep into the folds of her robes. "At least there's none of them here," she says eventually, trusting Angus to know exactly who 'they' are.
Angus says cheerfully, "Most o' the time, out in the wilds, there's nobody at all, good or bad. Just you, and the burds and beasts."
Lucretia ghosts a smile. "So what are you. Bird or beast?"
Angus points towards Lucretia, "Burd. High class Burd, but Burd none-the-less." He then jerks a thumb towards himself, "So Beast, aye?"
Lucretia shakes her head. "No. I am me. You said 'You, the birds and the beasts'." A pause. "I do believe that I've won that game." Her smile grows a little and she wafts a gloved hand in the air, slipping into the softness of Italian that's fluid and practiced, "«I will certainly allow that you're a beast, though sometimes heroic and not without a little charm of your own.»"
Angus's brow lifts, "Ah dinnae ken whoat you're sayin', Lulu!" A suspicious look, "Ah bet you were teasin' me!"
There's a small shrug of Lu's shoulders. "I confess to nothing, except to admit that you were indeed a beast," she says, a smugness in the lift of one dark brow. "Do you speak any launguages besides English and broad Aberdeenshire? I'm counting that as a second language because, Merlin preserve me, but I can scarce understand you at times." A pause. "I meant to ask you, what's a boabie?"
Angus starts to answer in the negative, and then bursts out laughing, "Y'ken, it's… a… y'know….."
Lucretia shakes her head. "No. I don't know. Though it was bad enough that Douglas nearly killed you for it."
Angus clears his throat, "Y'ken, a gurl has boobies, an' a boy has a boabie?" He's a little flushed.
Lucretia turns scarlet. "Oh." Her mouth snaps shut and she turns away from Angus, looking out over the lake. As ever, she's not quiet for long and there's the smallest clearing of her throat followed by an uplift of her chin. "I simply can't believe that Douglas and you were shouting that out in the middle of Flourish and Blotts," she says, still not looking at Angus.
Angus picks up a stone, and skims it again, probably stunning some poor Merman. "Well, it's no like any o' the Sassanachs unnerstood, ken?"
"Even so," Lucretia says, "Its not really something that should be yelled about. Not in public. Now that I know what it means, I hope I won't hear it again. Ken?"
Angus kicks at a stone, and mumbles, "Aye, Lulu."
Lucretia picks another stone from a pile at her feet and sends its spinning across the water. This one sinks without trace without even bouncing once. "You really don't have to agree with me on everything," she says. "I don't mind if you don't agree with me on things. Like, for instance, what do you really think of mudb— muggle-borns and half-bloods? Which side would you stand on if forced to choose?"
Angus pauses, "Choose? It's hard tae say. Ah mean, some half bloods are probably relations, ken? And loyalty's a fine thing. And Ah dinnae ken for sure. Ah get riled at a ton of them for being idjuts, but…. that disnae make em all."
"I don't know about your family and how they handle such things, in mine they get disowned and not spoken of again. I have a very distant cousin, Cedrella, she married a blood traitor and that was the end of her so far as my family were concerned. There's been others too." An exhale of Lucretia's breath and she twists the stone between her fingers, rubbing her thumb over the vein of colours that run through it. "I suppose that that's why its such a simple thing for me. I know where I stand."
Angus gives a little nod, "Aye, well, we're clannish, ken? It's no as bad as that." He shrugs again. "Well, we're no a Black or Malfoy…"
Lucretia is standing on the lake's shore with Angus, the pair chatting quietly and skimming stones across the water. Or, in Lucretia's case, not skimming. Her's bounce once at most before sinking from sight. Its cold and windy, but despite this the topic of conversation seems serious if Lu's expression is anything to go by. "I suppose you're not at that." There's another frown and she tosses her pebble up and down, not throwing it just yet, just looking at it as if the secret to skipping them lies in them themselves.
Wearing knee-high boots rather than the heeled ones she wears inside the castle, Medusa makes her way along the path towards the lake. She has on her warm woolen coat and /her/ knit hat in Gryffindor colours. As she nears the lakeshore she pauses, hearing voices, though she is not yet able to see them. It has been days since Alphard's party and thankfully the dye wore off but those purple arms and neck kept her from the Sykes' party. A party where her brother was tortured. As such it is a very quiet and thoughtful Medusa who walks along the shoreline. Rounding a boulder she spies the two youngsters and blinks, her normally steely gaze more owlish.
Angus shoves his hands in his pockets, "Ah mean, y'ken we're no rich. Duggie woas talkin' bout his Quine's folks no likin' us bein' poor."
Lucretia rotates the pebble in her fingers then tosses it away in favour of selecting another. Had she not turned and bent to find another at that point its highly unlikely that she'd have seen Medusa. But she does. "Angus…" she hisses, straightening up. Feigning a complete lack of recognition, she takes a step closer to her partner in crime and points out and over the water, speaking quietly. "Don't look now, but there's someone just over there behind us. I think it might be Medusa. Don't look."
Walking over to the two she looks to see what it is they are doing. "Hello," she says, her voice a bit croaky. Having not come up on the train, but been escorted to the gates of the school by a security detail provided by her family.
Angus turns around, and gives a rictus of a smile, "Uh… Malfoy? Have yehs come tae put me in th' Infirmary?"
Lucretia hunches her shoulders, then turns. By the time she completes the turn she has a smile on her face. "Hello Medusa." Yes, she goes for the familiar because to revert to using her surname would suggest that there'd be reason for Medusa to forbid her use it. "I was so sorry to hear about what happened to your brother at the party. I heard he's making a good recovery. Your family must all be so relieved."
Clearing her throat Medusa nods slowly. "Thank you, Lucretia." She shoves her hands into her pockets. "I spotted you at the party…Alphard's party I mean." Medusa looks at Angus, "You ran right past me." And a glance to Lucretia. "And you were dancing with Variel while I was dancing with Tony Rowle."
Angus nods, "Aye. Ah tol' Lucretia we should try an' sneak in, ken? It was my idea!"
"We gate-crashed," Lu admits. "Alphard was furious, but then I knew he would be. I didn't actually get to dance with Weasley, I didn't have the chance. I was shoved back through the floo system. Still. Next year perhaps I'll get my first proper dance." There's a small glance away, the girl not quite able to meet Medusa's eyes, twin spots of colour suddenly evident in her cheeks. "I'm really sorry about the itching powder and the dye. I really am. We are. Aren't we Angus? It was just a prank and it just seemed a funny thing to do at the time."
"The floo network worked didn't it?" Medusa well remembers giving Lucretia that advice. Eyeing the pair of them she smirks, "I hardly doubt either of you decided to act on your own. More likely the two of you thought you'd be more successful working together, and as you are kin it seemed a good idea to trust one another with your plans."
Angus protests, "Aye, Ah'm sowry, but Ah came up wi' the idea! Lucretia just went along wi' it! Dinnae blame her! She was jus' tryin' to impress me!"
Lucretia turns and thumps Angus on his arm. "Shut up, Angus! You know it was me that suggested it, it was me that Alphard banned from attending." A snag of her teeth to her lower lip and she looks immediately contrite, exhaling a breath through her teeth as she turns back to Medusa. "It was both of us, and we're both sorry for the itching and the dye. Douglas said that it might have caused real problems for you both as you're not meant to be seeing each other and it wasn't meant to cause trouble. We just didn't think."
Medusa looks between the two of them. "The problem with pranks is there can be reprocussions. My parents are snobs and they don't approve of Douglas because of his reputation at school. The fact he nearly has been expelled bothers them greatly. They of course appreciate that he is a Macmillan, because the Macmillan family is old, one of the sacred and pure. I'm working on convincing them that he is right for me, but anything could change their minds. Right now they're focused on Cassius, but they will be very security minded. It helps that Douglas is in the Magijugend with me."
Angus ouches, at being punched, "The pooder an' dye woahs mah idea, Lulu. Dinnae try an' tak th' blame." Medusa gets a solemn nod, "Aye. We'll no mess things for you and wee Duggie. We didnae know you twa were… uh…"
Lucretia gives a simple nod of her head. "They must be very worried about Cassius. You have my word, no more pranks or anything that might draw attention to you and Douglas." There's complete sincerity in her voice as she says that, her eyes coming back up to focus on Medusa. "Really. Promise. Especially not with the way that things are right now, there's a lot more important things to think about now."
Medusa's mouth twitches and she cannot help but add a little to Angus' discomfort, "Didn't know we were what?" She reaches over and ruffles the boy's hair. "You remind me of Douglas at your age. I hope you're better at potions than he is. Mind you, he did get this far in it." Nodding she says to Lucretia, "Thank you, I appreciate it. I am afraid that I cannot do anything about what Alphard does, but given that he passed out drunk on the floor you might be safe from him."
Lucretia's face twitches in a grimace. "Mmn. Well that's good. Not good that he passed out, but good that he mightn't remember too clearly things that happened. I expect he'll hunt me down though now that we're back at school. Right now I think he's too busy. He was quite the hero and I'm so terribly proud of him- he was the one that brought down the attacker they're holding."
Angus explains, sort of. "You twa were… ken….. explosed tae dye." Afterall, there's innocent little Lulu present. HE may be a Man of the World, but she is pure and innocent. Or something. "An' like Ah towld Duggie, we cannae promise yehs dinnae get caught by mistake again. Mebee, if we were to _warn_ yehs? But… ken, yeh couldnae tell anyone." It seems he doesn't plan on giving up pranks.
"Well no, I don't imagine you did know for certain that we were likely to be exposed to it, but you knew there was a possiblity. There was a possiblity for anyone at the party to be exposed. That was the point. The problem is that there are potential reprocussions. In any case it was my arms and neck which were effected. That is why I did not go to the Sykes' party. However, I will keep the names of the culprits to myself. No need to bring the wrath of the Malfoys down upon them, is there?"
"Thank you, Medusa," Lu says quickly, too quickly before shoving an elbow hard into Angus' ribs.
Angus says, "Ah, thank y-uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggghhHHHHhh"
Chuckling, Medusa pulls Angus towards her a bit protectively, hugging him against her chest. "Lucretia, you must stop beating up the poor boy. I really have to protest." After dropping a kiss to his cheek she releases him. "I should go check on Daphne. She's a bit ditzy."
Lucretia watches. Just watches. There's something in the way that Angus doesn't seem in the least to object to the way he's pulled into Medusa's chest that perhaps marks him out as Douglas' brother. "It seems to keep him under control," she mutters, eyes half-closing.
Angus is still coughing from being winded, when he is enbosumed, and doesn't know quite where to look, or, indeed, breathe. When freedom comes, it comes with a kiss. Which really flusters him a bit more, "Awa' wi yehs, Quine! I'm noo mah Brither!" But it's a bit of an automatic protest. Lucretia gets a slightly cautious glance shot towards her.
Thankfully for Angus, Medusa's coat is currently covering her star assets so he doesn't get an embarassing eyeful down her too tight jumper and haphazardly buttoned blouse. Strangely enough, or perhaps not, Medusa clearly understands what Angus said for she laughs. "I know who you are Angus." Looking between the pair of them something dawns on her and the Malfoy's blue eyes widen slightly. "I'll be off then. You two have fun." Turning back the way she came, she starts to walk off.
Lucretia nods to Medusa, the girl sucking in her cheeks so that she momentarily looks like a fish before she blows them out again. "Bye Medusa. And thank you!" There's even a small wave of gloved fingers before she thrusts them back deeply within her robes, a forlorn little picture of a girl as the wind tugs at her hair, tossing it messily about her head.
Angus picks up another stone, and skims it over the lake. "Now, fit's wi' hittin' me all the time, Quine?!"