Warnings: coarse language, mentions of self-harm.
Black Magicians and Black Charms.
Tobias couldn't bear to look her in the eyes that entire evening. It made fucking her quite awkward.
She didn't seem to realise, though.
"Where have you been hiding that all my married life?" Ei asked, blissfully astounded.
"I just…" Toby was still facing away from her, glaring at the wall. I just wanted to make up for stealing your money? I just wanted to continuously make up from all the money I am yet to steal from you because I'm bloody coward who can't face telling you how much of a shit we're in with a drug dealer who will probably batter me to death if I don't give him all the money we're ever gonna earn? "… I just want yeh to be happy is all."
He felt her shift in the bed and press her body against his naked back. A pair of cold lips came into contact with the back of his neck, which made him flinch. He didn't deserve her.
"Well, I'm very happy." Ei's arms snaked their way around his waist, craving contact.
"Good," Toby whispered into his pillow. Because you won't be when you find all of your cash is missing. There aint no scumbag as scummy as me…
Suddenly, something stirred, and before he knew it he had pushed his wife away and pulled on his trousers. She didn't question his motives – they had been living together for more than twenty-five years, they were used to coming and goings. He stood on the landing and took a few minutes to compose himself. Anger bubbled up inside his blood to such a level that he began to shake. Fuck, fuck he needed a drink. A drink or a smoke or fucking something. Sobriety was hell.
Concerned that his constant pacing would alert Ei, he went into Severus's room and locked the door (it was the only room in the house with a lock), where he promptly searched for something to hurt himself with. If he couldn't escape with drink, it was his only choice.
He rummaged around in the dark and found that most of Sev's belongings had been packed away and taken with him. There were a few empty bottles underneath his bed that Toby attempted to down despite knowing that they certainly would not, nor had they ever, contained alcohol. He didn't give a shit about that… he just needed something in him to change, and perhaps one of them would succeed in knocking him out. When not one drop of liquid touched his lips he threw it across the other side of the room – gently, though, so that it wouldn't smash and make a ruckus. He fell onto the floor and hit his head hard on the bedpost. A jolt of satisfying pain followed, so he did it once more.
Toby looked around Severus's room that was bathed in the light from the lamppost directly outside. He knew just by looking that the little shit was not going to come back to Spinner's End, not ever. The whole place had been stripped. He was glad that his son wasn't here any longer, he would surely notice that his father was nicking money right of his mother's purse and God knows what he would do to him. Ei was much easier to deceive than Severus because she actually loved him. Very foolish of her.
He gave one more sweep underneath the bed for anything consumable when his hand hit something much bigger. Toby pulled out the object in question and squinted in the dim light. Huh. It was that stupid book that Ei had been so protective about that day that girl had dropped it off. Advanced Potion Making. Advanced potion making? Bloody ridiculous if you asked him. What could be so difficult about chucking bits of plants and 'eyes of newts' or whatever it was that they always used into a cauldron and stirring it with a ladle?
Toby sat himself down on Severus's bed and flicked through the pages, scoffing about every five seconds or so. Eventually the scoffing turned into tutting, and the tutting turned into grimacing. There were all sorts of awful scribbles and doodlings in these pages, and it was definitely Sev's girly handwriting that had done them. "For enemies…" he mouthed noiselessly as he flicked to a new page, suddenly feeling very edgy. This all looked like black magic to him, whatever that was, and to have a son who appeared to be practising this sort of shite, who also hated you, was a distressing thing indeed. He began to feel even worse when he remembered how protective Ei had been about this book… she could very well be a black magician too; despite all of her lectures about how "most wizards and witches were fundamentally good, Tobias, it's not a Muggle fairytale", Toby felt every single scrap of authority he still possessed being ripped away from him. He had worked so hard to achieve that authority. You needed every bit of it when you had a wife and a son who could click their fingers and command the most unimaginable acts upon you, and there would be nowt you could do about it. It was his greatest insecurity at the best of times, but seeing his son's work in writing quadrupled that insecurity. He despised the both of them all over again; his guilt had been replaced by a feeling he was far more used to.
He pushed the book quietly back into its hidey-hole and planned to ponder what he was going to do next back in bed. The light was off when returned and he could hear Ei's light breathing. At least she was pleased tonight – he wouldn't be poisoned as he slept. Ah, it was against nature that a husband should be so fucking scared of his woman! Well, she was never going to bloody know it.
Aurora needed a stiff drink after the orientation day at the Academy of Astrophysics. The workload looked fascinating, but the institution itself was daunting. So structured and so political… perhaps she should have taken a longer break from Hogwarts before she got into any of that again. Then again, it would mean she would become a well-recognised and revered Astronomer sooner rather than later.
She sat in the darkest booth of the Leaky Cauldron and sipped her redcurrant rum as she flicked through the hundreds of booklets and course materials – the Academy must have had its own adjoining forest to make the amount of trees needed for just this pile.
Statistical Analysis and Modelling, Cosmology and Advanced Astrophysics, Multivariable Calculus, Electromagnetism, Optics and Photonics…
The list of what she would be studying the next five years went on. It would have bored the robes off most people and incensed those bigoted magical folk who still thought of Astronomy as completely Muggle, but this was her forte right to the core. Aurora allowed herself a smile over her tankard. Perhaps the future was not so bleak. The music played by the three-man band in the corner had piped up a bit too.
"Blast from the not-so-distant past."
Aurora looked up to the voice that had cast a shadow over her reading material. She sighed. The present certainly looked bleak.
"Sirius." She said curtly.
It was a very awkward moment. Sirius Black wasn't helping the situation by just… standing there, either, drink in hand. But when Aurora looked up from her determined glare at the wall, she noticed he was reading what she had in her hand.
"Fuck me, Rora, off to Muggle University? This looks… specialised."
Aurora blinked at him for a few seconds before she answered. "Actually, it's the Academy of Astrophysics here in London. It's a magical institution for Astronomers. Muggle University with a sprinkle of pixie dust, you could say."
Sirius chuckled and she didn't like it.
"Can I assist you at all, Sirius?"
Sirius's grin fell into a more sombre one. He cleared his throat.
"Look… I just… I was drinking at the bar and noticed you here and… I wanted to clear the air a bit, you know? No hard feelings or whatever," he shrugged. "Can I?" he motioned to the spare seat opposite her. Aurora paused for a while before rolling her eyes and nodding apprehensively.
"I really had nothing against you, you know," he continued as he sat himself down. "Seeing as you were here I just thought I'd let you know."
She was rather stunned by this confession. Aurora had always thought of Sirius as your token arrogant tosser with all the sensitivity and understanding of an exceptionally homicidal Redcap; then memory came back to bite her.
"You called me an intrusive bitch."
Sirius pushed an uncomfortable laugh out of his closed lips. "You've called me worse. Come on, we were all stupid idiot teenagers. Anyway, you are an intrusive bitch."
She caught herself before she smirked. "You're so full of it," she said as bitingly as possible, despite her amusement. "You think you can stumble up here, crack some jokes and we'll be the best of mates? Pop that head of yours before it gives you a stroke, would you?"
"You know Snivellus is a worthless little weed, don't you?"
"Yep," Aurora replied automatically, taking a long sip.
"So why are you protecting him?"
"I am absolutely not!" she protested so raucously that the two witches to the right of them glanced over. "You can both fuck right off as far as I'm concerned. As least Severus already has – maybe you could follow suit. Bye-bye."
"Ouch, the intrusive bitch has claws. I'm liking you more with each passing minute."
Oh Merlin, what she wouldn't give to knock that stupid grin out of oblivion. Aurora began to flick through her booklets once more, counting down the seconds to which Sirius would finally give up and go back to getting pissed away from her.
When thirty seconds had passed and she still saw his shadow cast over the table, Aurora snapped her eyes back up at him, several rude words on the tip of her tongue… and from the second she did, the urge to suppress a smirk grew even stronger. He was bobbing his head theatrically up and down to the upbeat music.
"Get out of my booth, Black." She commanded - though the smirk finally did appear upon her lips.
"Nope," he retorted, now dancing even more idiotically in his seat. His head was moving to the right and left now.
Aurora's toothy smile defied all cerebral orders. "Can't you go and be an idiot with James?"
"Nah, James is an idiot at home tonight," Sirius replied casually, now moving his arms about in a ridiculously comical fashion. Aurora almost choked on her rum. "And Remus always refuses to come out on the prowl, so obviously you're my loneliness crutch for the night; I'm only using you, you see, I'm a pig like that."
"You come out on Friday nights without friends? You must be desperate."
"Hey, you did. Double standards, Sinistra - tut-tut."
"I had business to attend to, that's different."
"Sensible as always. Anyway," he continued, leaning forward slightly in his seat. "I don't need old friends to follow me everywhere I go: I can make new friends. What do you say, Rora?" Sirius held out his hand. "Friends? For the heck of it?"
Now this was a particularly tricky moment; as she frowned into the eyes of the boy she never really had taken much notice of other than the occasional scoff in the corridor in her Hogwarts years, but one who had plagued Severus's thoughts. But Merlin knew she hated Severus more than Sirius hated him - that was for cert. Aurora held out her hand in return - she deserved some frivolous, absolutely hollow happiness for once.
"For the heck of it."
Sirius grinned as he wrapped his rough hand around her softer one. "You made my night, you dirty little Slytherin, thanks for that. Hey, if you're not too busy you should meet us all back here next weekend – promise James and Remus won't bite, it's just me."
Aurora downed the rest of her drink and, feeling slightly uninhibited from the whole thing, packed away her papers into her inner-cloak pockets. "I think that's why you're my favourite."
"Good to know I'm already making a dazzling impression," said Sirius.
"Let's not go nuts; you're the only one who's made an effort," replied Aurora. "I might change my mind if Remus tries to make amends." They both leered at one another.
"Would you like to dance with me?" he suddenly enquired without any trepidation or doubt whatsoever. That confidence was either gratingly irritating or incredibly attractive; Aurora wasn't sure which one quite yet… but she didn't much care at present.
"It would make the decade worthwhile," she replied with equal amount of effrontery.
Thank you all for your reviews, as always. I would appreciate some more... they tend to spur me on.