All things Harry Potter belong to J K Rowling. All things Magnificent Seven belong to someone else too. Everything that falls between, much like sofa change, is mine. This just flowed from my fingers after a prompt from a fellow fan of the boys. If you're not familiar with the Potter world, then this probably won't make a lot of sense. If you're a purist M7 fan, now's the time to mosey on.
Huddling closer to the tree, Vin Tanner fluffed his feathers up a little more to try and trap some warm air in them. Currently in his prairie falcon form, he was perched high in a tree in a deluge waiting on a dark wizard called Eli Joe to make an appearance. He'd been tracking the man through several states, ever since Eli Joe had set him up to take the fall for the death of Jess Kincaid, a popular shopkeeper in the wizarding town of Tascosa, Texas. The bounty hunter had managed to escape the clutches of the Patrol Aurors appointed by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Texas Branch, in Tascosa by the skin of his teeth. Fortunately, paperwork wasn't a specialty of his and he'd never gotten around to registering all of the forms he could take as an Animagi, so they weren't expecting him to transform into a mink and scamper through the bars. The protection charms and alarms that they'd cast over the cell alerted them to his absence, but not to the small dark brown animal in the shadows of the filing cabinet. Discovering a hole in the wall made by rats, Vin had grinned a small, sharp toothed and victorious smile, before making for the great outdoors and freedom.
Now Vin tracked the man who could clear his name and take the bounty off his own shaggy head. Hungry, cold, lonely and miserable, he shook his head vigorously and glared upwards after a particularly large drip fell on his head, snapping his beak irritably at the unrepentant clouds. Having waited for an hour, he was just about ready to give up when he saw the same wizard from yesterday emerge from the bar opposite. Since the bar was unplottable and as such invisible to muggles, he knew the man was a wizard, even though he couldn't sense any overt magic in him. Tall and thin, the blond gave off an aura of danger and menace that seemed almost laughable given his level of inebriation, but no discernible scent of magic. Vin had discovered at an early age that he could smell magic in people and places. A long, black duster was wrapped around him, as the fair haired man tried to protect himself from the rain. Another man emerged from the building soon after him, this one even taller with a large moustache and a hearty laugh. Clapping a genial hand to the thin man's shoulder, the taller one started to subtly herd his friend in the direction of a gaudy red Chevy pickup. Tilting his head, Vin wondered at the pull he felt when he saw the two wizards, particularly the blond.
Deciding that he'd had enough of sitting in the rain and that Eli Joe wasn't going to show as his informant had told him, Vin shook out his feathers and swooped down to land lightly in the back of the Chevy. His curiosity had been piqued by the odd duo and was clamouring to be satisfied. Changing from a bedraggled prairie falcon to an equally drenched mink, Vin crawled into an old screwed up blanket that was wedged between a toolbox and the back of the cab. Wriggling and squirming against the blanket, he endeavoured to dry out as much as possible before settling in to lick his coat dry as he sheltered in the folds of the blanket. It smelled rather musky, as though someone had used it for some sort of outdoor friskiness... Shaking his head and sneezing, Vin pawed at his nose and whiskers desperately as he suddenly identified the smell, trying very hard to rid himself of both the smell and taste that he'd inadvertently rubbed over himself. The rain was suddenly looking inviting and he stuck his head out far enough to lap at a small pool of rainwater.
Chris Larabee was not a happy man. Seething with restrained rage, he fumed as he sat in a sodden heap in the passenger seat of Buck Wilmington's pickup truck. It wasn't the first time that his old friend had hauled his ass out of a bar, but it never ceased to be annoying as hell and the fact that he was being dragged somewhere other than another bar, his house or Buck's apartment just added fuel to the fire. Since the deaths of his wife and son, Chris Larabee – legend of the Auror world - had become a virtual squib and an actual alcoholic. No-one was sure why his magic had lapsed into latency, but some of the more knowledgeable wizards thought it likely due to a combination of psychosomatic repression due to survivor's guilt and PTSD, and the vast amounts of alcohol he consumed on a daily basis. All Chris knew was that magic had taken his family, so he didn't need it or want it now.
Casting apprehensive sideways glances towards his friend, Buck gripped the steering wheel a little tighter. Chris and he had met in Auror training and become instant friends; two sides of the same coin, with Chris tending towards the more serious and Buck being a perpetual clown. The two combined raised some serious hell, cutting a swathe through many towns as they fought, womanized and caroused. Until a pretty red-haired witch with Irish eyes and a wicked temper knocked Chris Larabee out cold in front of an entire restaurant full of people for asking if he could take her home. Sarah Connolly was a class act and it had been lust at first sight for Chris, a lust that had never abated but had been tempered by love, respect and trust. Once he'd come to, with the help of a glass of water thrown at him by a guffawing Buck, and apologized profusely before stammered his way into asking Sarah out on a proper date. Sarah had agreed, since Buck had smoothed the way be explaining that his friend really was a good man when he was sober, but decreed that Chris must abide by a no liquor rule when in her presence. It was a rule he'd upheld from that day forth. Even when their baby boy was born, Chris refused to wet Adam's head with anything stronger than beer. As happy as he was, he had no need for liquor.
Until three years ago.
Buck vividly remembered convincing his friend to stay an extra night in London, where they were attending an international Auror's conference. Drinking and swapping stories with other law enforcers from other countries until the wee hours, they'd finally staggered back to their hotel where Chris had called his wife to tell her he loved her. Sarah had scolded him for waking Adam and then laughed her full-throated, sexy as hell laugh before telling him that she loved him too and that she had a secret to tell him on his return. It had been all Buck could do to keep Larabee where he was and not go waking up the leader of their party to get to their portkey.
When they'd arrived back in Denver, it had been to the grim faces of their fellow Aurors, who had been tasked with the sad duty of informing Chris that his wife and child had been cruciated and killed by unknown dark wizards/witches in his absence. In shock, both of them had found themselves in the Denver morgue looking down at the faces of Sarah and Adam. A tear fell from Buck's eye as he once again remembered the clinical way the morgue assistant had told Chris that his wife had been pregnant at the time of her death. That news had driven Chris to his knees after he'd howled in fury and pain, smashing his fist into the door of one of the drawers on the morgue refrigerator. Refusing to allow any tears to fall, Chris had pushed Buck away with enough force to send the taller man flying and then run from the room, waiting in silence for Buck outside.
Aside from insisting that they be buried in the same casket, as Sarah would want to hold Adam to her for all eternity, Chris made no arrangements and didn't speak another word. Buck was the one to make the funeral arrangements, contacting family and friends with the news and trying to keep his friend from shattering, all whilst dealing with his own raw grief.
Hank Connolly, Sarah's estranged muggle father, showed up drunk and berated Chris for marrying his child and blaming both Chris and magic for killing his only child. Chris had just blinked, taken his wand out, snapped it over his knee, dropped the now useless wand to the ground and turned his back on his father-in-law, Buck, his job and the entire magical community. That night Chris disappeared and it took Buck three weeks to find him again, admitted to a muggle hospital with alcohol poisoning and a stab injury incurred in a bar fight. It was then that Buck realized that the distraught man had repressed his magic to the point of being considered a muggle. The blond had been thin as a rail, bruised and hollow-eyed. Buck shuddered as he remembered the deadness in his old friend's eyes, when he'd tried to take the man home. Refusing to go to the ranch he'd shared with his family, Chris had allowed Buck to take him back to his place and curled up on the big man's couch. The next morning, he was gone again and it took Buck a month to find him. The pattern was set and they'd been working it ever since in repetition ever since.
For the past three years, Buck had spent a large amount of time trailing his buddy around the seediest bars in towns he'd never even heard of before. In a way he was thankful that Chris had lost his magic, because he'd have never survived the man's wrath if he could still use the more deadly curses. As it was, Buck had suffered many an injury from his grieving friend's fists in the course of his faithful duty to prevent Chris from joining Sarah and Adam beyond the veil. A chance meeting with Orin Travis, who was now head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement in Colorado, had resulted in a job offer for both of them. Now he just had to convince Chris to dry out and join up with Orin's new cause. More accurately, he had to get the angry, grief-stricken man to Orin so that the older, more experienced wizard could convince his friend. Sighing heavily, Buck turned his gaze back to the road.
TBC⨪
